the act of seeing with one's own eyes

gilmore girls: 4.2

2007-05-04T23:23:00.000-06:00

The Lorelais' First Day at Yale
written by Daniel Palledino, 2003

A sort of reprise to season one's "The Lorelais' First Day at Chilton," except the stakes are higher here. Rory's moving out of Stars Hollow into the scary world of New Haven, Connecticut. Allusions to season one are in place, and the way Daniel Palledino writes the exchanges between Rory and Lorelai as they try to hold back their fears is quite exquisite. As a high school junior, maybe the thread about leaving for college isn't hitting as hard as it will in the near future, but, strangely enough, this episode's subtext is almost too personal for reasons I will not go into right now. Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson are great as usual, but Alexis Bledel's damaged expressions steal the show. In its own way, "The Lorelais' First Day at Yale" approximates the greatness of one of my favorite Gilmore girls episodes, season one's "Rory's Birthday Parties," in which Lorelai deals with the fact that her little girl is growing up. And then there's always Paris, who turns out to be one of season four's greatest attributes.

gilmore girls: 4.1

2007-05-04T22:12:00.000-06:00

Ballrooms and Biscotti
written by Amy Sherman-Palladino, 2003

And so begins Gilmore Girls' greatest season. "Ballrooms and Biscotti" does not come close to the power of the later episodes, but it does anticipate the amount of careful crafting that went into every single episode of the show prior to season six. As the episode opens, Rory and Lorelai are making their way back home from Europe. They spend the next day planning how to get ready for the Yale orientation, which turns out to be a few days earlier than they originally thought. Rushing to buy everything they need, Lorelai skips Friday night dinner and ends up having to come pick Rory up after Emily forces her to watch ballroom dancing competitions--now the title makes sense. A ha. Other than that, this episode is very light on story, with the possible exception being Luke's mysterious cruise trip. We find out that he proposed, married, and divorced Nicole, though the real implications of this only surface later in the season. The best part of the episode, by far, is the last scene. It's a brilliantly understated moment between Lorelai and Rory--who are now both watching the ballroom dancing tapes as Emily sleeps. In a very soft voice, both comment on the biscotti, just as they realize how little time they have to spend together.

dirty

2007-04-09T22:55:00.000-06:00

Dirty
d. Stephen Dwoskin, 1971

Stephen Dwoskin's Dirty is anything but. In fact, it's closer to the melancholy longing of Chris Marker's La jetee (1962) than the eroticism of Jean Genet's Un chant d'amour (1950), though both films have a certain influence over this one. Unlike Genet's film, which is a masterpiece of rhythmic compositions coupled with tribal drums, Dirty is rather silent and meditative, more formally controlled. Dwoskin is more interested in investing his time in the structural aims of his work. Truly a one of a kind film, Dirty manipulates film by stopping on certain frames, slowing down others, and letting some just be what they are. In addition, the flickering and gritty quality of the film is nothing short of astonishing. Essentially, this is Andy Warhol's Beauty #2 (1965) but without the icy arrogance; instead, Dwoskin uses his subjects--identified as Barbara and Ann during the title sequence consisting of crumpled paper--to explore the relationship between movement and time, space and film.

P.S. Will someone please get me some more of Dwoskin's work? Dyn Amo (1972), perhaps...

odin's shield maiden

2007-04-09T22:51:00.000-06:00

Odin's Shield Maiden
d. Guy Maddin, 2007

Still haven't gotten around to watching any of Maddin's feature films, but his shorts continue to astound me. His latest, a 5-minute experiment titled Odin's Shield Maiden is quite beautiful if not all that thematically engaging. Essentially, it's a series of black-and-white shots of several women mourning the drowning of a guy named Mundi near the shore. The photography is, needless to say, stunning, and Maddin's lyrical rhythms are spot on. Still no Heart of the World (2001)--or even My Dad is 100 Years Old (2005)--but wonderful to watch, anyway.

grindhouse

2007-04-07T19:36:00.000-06:00

Grindhouse
d. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, 2007

I guess the "two directors for the price of one" fest continues. Not really much to say about this one, except that I really doubt I'll have more fun in a theater this year (unless I actually get to watch Lynch's Inland Empire. Pretty please.)This nostalgic and heartfelt piece of pop cinema is as perfectly-executed as one would have hoped. However, as there are two films by two very different directors with varying styles and approaches, comparisons are inevitable. On every count, Tarantino's Death Proof is superior to Rodriguez's Planet of Terror. The latter works fine as a "grindhouse" zombie film, but never engages on the same formal or narrative level as the former. Those calling Death Proof Tarantino's best film to date are not far off. Go see it; the three hours just fly by. It won't be as much fun on DVD.

performance

2007-04-06T16:07:00.000-06:00

Performance
d. Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg, 1970

Stunning and mystifying, Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg's 1970 work Performance is an all-too eerie film. It's such an unshakable experience not so much because of what the film itself presents, but for the very fact that, even after sitting through the entire movie, I still know very little about it. Characters are there on the screen, but they're never fully developed. Mick Jagger's rock star, for instance, is as valuable to Performance as a stained glass window with his portrait.

The story--what there is of it--concerns a British gangster getting too into his violent work, leading to the death of one of his colleagues. Scared, Chas runs away and ends up renting the basement of Jagger's building. Needless to say, the gangster does not fit in with the artist's hippie crew--the only reason Jagger lets him stay is because Chas tells him he is a different sort of artist, a juggler. From what we can derive of Chas, he's both anti-establishment, anti-individuality, and hates drugs, foreigners, and free love. However, Cammell, who wrote the film, and Roeg, who shot it, never really hit on any of these strands. Instead, they are allowed to weave in and out of the frame, never really becoming more than vague little notes.

In the end, Performance is undeniably fascinating, mostly due to Roeg's expert photography and the formal, exacting rigor every scene has. At its best, the film works as an avant-garde experience closer to Warhol and Garrel than whatever it was the filmmakers were going for. The scenes in Jagger's den are as hypnotic as they are terrifying.

I have no idea what the film, and its ending particular, means, but by the end of Performance--as in countless films from the 70s--it hardly matters. Jagger's crazed and lovely performance alone is reason to sit through this film. Who knows? It might even make sense after another viewing.

zodiac

2007-03-05T21:26:00.000-06:00

Zodiac
d. David Fincher, 2007

I really do wish I had something interesting to say about David Fincher's mesmerizing new film Zodiac, except that I think it's too unshakable an experience to really dissect on one viewing. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to seeing this film again, if only to marvel at Harris Savides' wonderful cinematography. Man, can that guy shoot a movie or what?

paris qui dort

2007-02-14T22:01:00.000-06:00

Paris qui dort
d. Rene Clair, 1925

As further proof of how uneducated I am, this is the first Clair film I've seen, but I do believe it's a good introduction to his work. Clocking in at 35 minutes, Paris qui dort has to be one of the earliest and most enjoyable science fiction films. The premise is simple: the watchman of the Eiffel tower wakes up to find the world has fallen asleep. Over the course of the film, he and some of his friends--who managed to avoid the sleep spell because they were flying over Paris--go around the city wreaking havoc. They drink, steal, and gamble. The film works both as a critique of modern life, mostly in the way we see the characters taking valuable possessions from the immobile civilians, when it's clear material goods will hardly matter when everyone else is dead. And on another level, it's also a very spiritual film, arguing that however fun it may be to always keep to oneself; in the end, no man is an island. Paris qui dort may not be as poetic as the work of Jean Cocteau, but it's a predecessor to films like Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987) and Ramis' Groundhog Day (1993). Most importantly, Paris qui dort is a gorgeous love letter to the city of Paris.

fat city, the dead

2007-02-11T12:47:00.000-06:00

Fat City
d. John Huston, 1972

John Huston's Fat City makes Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980) look like complete nonsense. I'm tempted to call this gritty slice of American poetry the best boxing film ever made (yes, better than The Set Up [1959]), though it's clearly much more than that. I'm not particularly interested in the sport, nor am I the same race or age as either of its main characters, but there's something entirely human about Huston's endeavor. As has been pointed out by many, this is like the flip side of the American dream, it's humanity at its most wretched, and terrifying to watch.

The Dead
d. John Huston, 1987

This is only the second Huston I've seen (see above), but it's clear that he's one of the great American directors. The Dead (1987), an adaptation of Joyce's short story of the same name, may not be as downright amazing as Fat City, but it's obviously a gorgeous piece of filmmaking. Taking one of Joyce's most accessible passages--certainly more so than anything in A Portrait of the Artist or Ulysses--Huston fashions one of the great literary adaptations of our time. In its brief 70 minute-long running time, The Dead encompasses a great deal of knowledge about humans, finally culminating in one of the most beautiful meditations on mortality ever filmed.

army of shadows

2007-02-06T23:17:00.000-06:00

Army of Shadows
d. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969

Like the existential fiction of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre—two writers whose metaphysical discomfort hovers over this film—Army of Shadows is as familiar as it is terrifying; it’s less a dull history lesson than an unsettling, present tense account of WWII’s psychological toll. To discover the film for the first time 38 years after it was made is not only a testament to its brilliance, but also to the staggering amount of valuable films made in the late 60s.

music list

2007-02-05T21:54:00.000-06:00

Haven't seen a movie since Saturday, so there's really no reason for me to be writing here. Nevertheless, I've been thinking about maybe incorporating more music-related material here; something like a weekly article about a new album I discover. To kick this off, I'll list my ten favorite albums of all time. There's no surprises here, but you know...

01. Blonde on Blonde (Bob Dylan, 1966)

02. Astral Weeks (Van Morrison, 1968)

03. Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan, 1965)

04. The Velvet Underground (The Velvet Underground, 1968)

05. Pet Sounds (The Beach Boys, 1965)

06. The Velvet Underground & Nico (The Velvet Underground, 1967)

07. Rubber Soul (The Beatles, 1965)

08. The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (Charles Mingus, 1963)

09. John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (John Lennon, 1970)

10. Revolver (The Beatles, 1966)

the royal tenenbaums

2007-02-03T20:30:00.000-06:00

The Royal Tenenbaums
d. Wes Anderson, 2001

Whether or not you enjoy The Royal Tenenbaums has a lot to do with how your own sensibilities respond to the idiosyncrasies of the film. In my case, Wes Anderson's life-changing masterpiece is as close to perfect a film as I've seen in a long time. It's an achingly beautiful, unbelievably hilarious, and ultimately heartbreaking portrayal of a group of wounded people.

The Royal Tenenbaums would be a major work if only for its carefully-crafted frames. Rarely has there been a film--I'm thinking Werckmeister Harmonies--where every single shot is a notable entity, something to be taken out and studied.

The film is the story of the Tenenbaum family; Royal, played by Gene Hackman, is the patriarch that's been away for many years, after the separation from his wife, Etheline, the wonderful Angelica Huston. The three children, Chas (Ben Stiller), Richie (Luke Wilson), and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), each have come to an uncomfortable place in their life, and soon after the film begins they find themselves under the same roof once again. What gets the film starting is Royal's claim that he will be dead in six weeks as a result of stomach cancer.

The rest of The Royal Tenenbaums plays out a series of low-key scenes culminating in one of the most moving final acts the cinema has ever given us. I wish I could say more, but this is the sort of film with images so unforgettable that to talk about them would only diminish their beauty.

miami vice

2007-02-03T18:02:00.000-06:00

Miami Vice
d. Michael Mann, 2006

It took me a while to finally get around to watching Michael Mann's latest film Miami Vice; having never encountered any of the Mann's work, I really had to idea what to expect. Also, I have never in my life seen an episode of the TV show that this movie's title comes from, though I imagine the show could not be this beautiful.

Despite my lack of knowledge about Mann and the movie's "source," I can say without question that this is easily one of the best and most underrated films of 2006. The actual cop-story of the film is still a little hazy in my mind, particularly because of how breathtaking the cinematography is, and I'm the kind of person that cares more about how a scene looks than how a drug deal is going down.

However, even if the narrative of the film were complete nonsense--which it isn't, it's a high-power drama that doesn't take itself seriously, adding a certain camp value--it would still be a landmark of modern cinema because of its digital photography. I'm still not entirely sure if the movie looks this good because of really smart location shooting or some other type of digital adjustments, but I don't really care.

I already admired Colin Farrel from his role in Malick's The New World, and it was Jamie Foxx that I was unsure about, but he does a fine job here, though his character pales in comparison to Farrel's and Gong Li's.

Digital filmmaking may be radically different than the use of traditional celluloid, but Miami Vice gives us a glimpse into a lush and crisp new world of its own.

la cicatrice intérieure

2007-01-31T22:06:00.000-06:00

La Cicatrice intérieure
d. Philippe Garrel, 1972

La Cicatrice intérieure may very well be the most arresting avant-garde film I have ever seen. I've encountered many great ones before, including Michael Snow's Wavelength (1967), Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (1975), and many of Brakhage's films, but never something that made me so aware (and, by turns, happy) that I was watching a film.

The other two Garrels I've seen, 1968's La revelateur and 2005's Regular Lovers, each have their own poetic essence, with the latter possibly being my favorite of his. But there's something altogether unnerving about a film like La Cicatrice intérieure, whose 60-minute length seems to encompass so much.

In essence, the film is like Satantango (1994), Gerry (2002), and the Brown Bunny (2003) in its portrayal of space and time, but Garrel's work (a tremendous influence on all these films) is more gorgeous and hypnotic, perhaps because of how completely it embraces the, I don't want to say pretension, but materialism of a landscape film.

Knowing very little about the film before watching it, I was shocked to see Nico in it. As it turns out, she was one of Garrel's major collaborators in the stage of his career immediately following La Cicatrice intérieure. Not only is she the emotional driving force of the film--delivering a performance that is both captivating and frightening--but her enigmatic and utterly amazing songs adorn the photography of the film.

In as much as can be reduced (though I don't really want to spend a lot of time breaking this film down), La Cicatrice intérieure seems to be a work about life. Garrel approaches the subject from an elemental point of view, shooting his film in long takes of people walking, without any deceitful editing. The viewer sits there, calm, fully aware of what's to happen in the next few minutes, with little to no surprises coming. This, to some, may seem like a harsh way to spend an hour, but it's really quite exciting and calming. Garrel is exploring what is beyond our physical experience, but the irony is how he does it in the most material and aesthetically-restricted form.

If the screams Nico howls in this film mean anything (and I'm not sure that they do), it has to do with something close to Garrel's title, a scar, an inner trouble. This, Garrel suggests, is what keeps us human, whether we like it or not.

Without a doubt, La Cicatrice intérieure is an unforgettable experience.

the night of the hunter

2007-01-28T09:53:00.000-06:00

The Night of the Hunter
d. Charles Laughton, 1955

After six viewings of The Night of the Hunter, it's becoming hard to discuss the film divorced from the way it makes me feel: genuinely happy, mildly disturbed, wildly amused, and even a bit nostalgic. It's a film of such captivating beauty that it defies criticism, which is ironic considering that its screenwriter, James Agee, was himself a prominent film critic. The story of the film, as everyone should know by now, is that of Harry Powell (Charles Laughton), a self-proclaimed preacher more interested in punishing people than saving them. Near the beginning of the film, he's put in the same cell as a man who killed two people and stole $10,000, which are now with his two young children. The rest of Night of the Hunter is an exploration of terror and shadowy compositions as seen from the perspective of a child. Stanley Cortez (who also shot Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons) carefully executes Charles Laughton's compositions, resulting in one of the most visually inventive films of all time, let alone of the 50s. A masterpiece.

head

2007-01-20T16:30:00.001-06:00

Head
d. Bob Rafelson, 1968

Bob Rafelson followed Head, a quirky film about the Monkees, with Five Easy Pieces (1970), and these two films couldn't have yielded more different results. The former is a relatively unknown collection of psychadelic imagery held together by the Monkees' tunes, while the latter is a revered character study with Jack Nicholson's most famous performance. Nicholson was involved with this film as well, penning the script with Rafelson. Above all, Head is a product of its era; at its best, it gives us a glimpse at some of what was going on in 1968. People may call this unfocused and simple-minded, but if this stuff is so easy to do, why aren't more films as enjoyable as this one?

chloe in the afternoon

2007-01-20T13:34:00.000-06:00

Chloe in the Afternoon
d. Eric Rohmer, 1972

As charming as anything I've seen by Rohmer, if not as achingly beautiful as My Night at Maud's (1969). Chloe in the Afternoon contains all of the major characteristics of Rohmer's Moral Tales, including the genuinely insecure male character surrounded by intelligent verbose people, a quiet discomfort which watches over the film, and, perhaps most impressively, Nestor Almendros' photography. Both in its episodic structure and the way its lead character dodges infidelity, Chloe in the Afternoon is very much like a less feverish, more straightforward version of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

rosemary's baby

2007-01-19T23:10:00.000-06:00

Rosemary's Baby
d. Roman Polanski, 1968

Having only seen two of Polanski's films--1965's Repulsion and 1974's Chinatown--I was certainly expecting Rosemary's Baby to be a good film, but I was not prepared for such an unshakable experience. First of all, Mia Farrow is simply stunning as the lead, and John Cassavetes' work here is only matched by his role in his own last film, Love Streams (1984). Though as not as physically powerful as Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby has the edge on narrative conviction; the viewer is effortlessly carried from one part of Polanski's ingenious story to the next, with rarely a down moment. I could go on and on about how the film subverts standard horror archetypes and rhythms, and I probably will, at a later. Truly a great film. I mean, goddamn.

a moment of innoncence

2007-01-18T21:47:00.000-06:00

A Moment of Innocence
d. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996

In what is surely one of the most accomplished films of the 1990s, director Mohsen Makhmalbaf attempts to recreate an event from his youth. At the age of 17, he stabbed a police officer. According to A Moment of Innocence, 20 years have passed and the officer has gotten in touch with Mr. Makhmalbaf. Throughout the film's brief 75 minutes, each of them spends time with the actor playing the younger version of themselves. The film is consistent in its ironies, and it's clear that Makhmalbaf has this whole thing more planned out than it appears on film, which makes it difficult to tell what moments are staged and which aren't. By the end of the film, however, by having spent time with both of the parties involved with the event, Mr. Makhmalbaf has succeeded in, yes, crafting a moment of innocence, as well as one of the most moving (if ambiguous) endings in modern cinema.

children of men

2007-01-14T12:33:00.000-06:00

Children of Men
d. Alfonso Cuaron, 2006

Among the current wave of Mexican filmmakers, Alfonso Cuarón, whose latest film Children of Men opened earlier this month, is the most talented and diverse. Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Blade II, Pan’s Labyrinth) works mostly within the horror genre, almost like a more competent pre-LOTR Peter Jackson; Alejandro González Iñárritu, the most pretentious “art” director of the three, has been making the same film, albeit masterfully, for over five years. Cuarón, however, has the amazing ability to go back-and-forth between his own personal projects (Y tu mama tambien) and Hollywood assignments (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Though expertly-styled, his mainstream films have always fallen short of his independent works; until, that is, Children of Men came along. A big-budget dystopian narrative starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore, Cuarón’s film also happens to be the best acted, photographed, edited, scored, and directed movie in recent memory.

Adapted from a 1992 P.D. James novel of the same name, Children of Men starts off twenty years from now in London. The rest of the world is in ruins and “only England soldiers on.” There’s another problem: women are no longer fertile, and the youngest person in the world (who was 18 years and several months old) has just been killed by a fanatic. Escaping a bombing at a coffee shop through sheer luck, the film’s protagonist, Theo (Owen), is an alcoholic not particularly interested in the world around him.

Soon after the film’s brilliant opening—consisting of a single shot that begins in the coffee shop, follows Theo outside, and ends with the bombing—he becomes involved with a plan he initially doesn’t understand. Contacted by his ex-wife Julian (Moore), a revolutionary rallying against the British government, he is convinced to find transit papers from his well-to-do cousin in order to get an illegal alien (“fugees” and “fish” in the film) past the security checkpoints that are now a fixture in London. He agrees, partly because of the 5,000 pounds he’s being paid, but also because of Julian, whom it is clear he still loves.

After several other astonishing sequences, it is revealed that the fugitive, Kee (Charlie-Hope Ashity), is pregnant, and the plan to see her past security is a way to get her to the Human Project, an organization working to find a cure for infertility. From the time Theo, Julian, Kee, and two of Julian’s colleagues first set out, Children of Men takes the form of a chase movie, and Cuarón indulges in all its possibilities, choosing to shoot his movie in incredible long takes that are, in and of themselves, worth the admission price (and I paid $9 dollars).

There are two or three breathtaking long shots in Children of Men that would make Andrei Tarkovsky and Bela Tarr look like amateurs. The first, an incredible six-minute sequence which takes place as a car is being attacked, allows the viewer to see it all without a single cut, making a scene that is funny and exhilarating, by turns beautiful and frightening. The second, easily the single greatest shot I’ve seen in a recent movie, is another several minute-long take, except this time Theo is walking through a war-torn immigrant city outside of Britain’s borders, and everything is falling apart. I have no idea how this was choreographed so perfectly, even following the protagonist through a run-down building and up a flight of stairs, but let’s thank God (and Cuarón) that it was.

Cuarón’s formal rigor is perfectly complimented by the gorgeous work of cinematographer and long-time collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki, who also shot Terrence Malick’s The New World. Children of Men compares favorably to The New World’s beautiful landscapes, and the gritty photography and textures of this film, not to mention the meticulous sound design and editing, are cinema at its most hypnotic.

Seeing Children of Men for the first time—a second viewing already awaits—was not unlike being taken to another, just as immediate, world. Part of me was so blown away by the film’s technical aspects that I don’t really care what it all means, whether it is reactionary or neutral to the issues it presents. Either way, Cuarón is to be commended for tackling such a troubling narrative, whose subject is nothing less than the world today

an inconvenient truth

2007-01-12T21:41:00.000-06:00

An Inconvenient Truth
d. David Guggenheim, 2006

In David Guggenheim’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore introduces himself as the “former next president of the United States of America.” It’s an offhand remark, to be sure, but it does reveal why some people may be turned off by the film. Some may go as far as to suggest this is but a political campaign by a guy thinking of running for president in 2008. For most of the movie’s 100 minutes, Gore and Guggenheim do a good job in not straying too far from the subject of their film—an account of Gore’s slideshow presentation about global warming, which he claims to have showcased more than a thousand times in cities all around the world—but An Inconvenient Truth is hardly as urgent as a film like this needed to be, nor is it a comprehensive look at all the issues surrounding the global warming debate.

Instead, An Inconvenient Truth is a glossed-over look at a major environmental issue. Gore gives us fact after fact, some quite terrifying, but at times—such as the introductory cartoon illustrating the nature of global warming—the film can seem condescending and simple-minded.

The center of Gore’s argument—that carbon dioxide emissions are one of the causes for rising global temperatures—is sound, but when he gets too far into his own issue and arrogantly assumes he’s on the winning side, the film falters. For example, most of the time, he doesn’t cite sources; as the uninformed audience, we are to blindly accept everything he throws at us. Gore’s reasoning is in place—a fact made clear by the way he engages the live audience—but I just wish his argument was better constructed.

I’m the last person you’ll hear supporting documentary objectivity—one of the reasons I prefer quirky Errol Morris docs to PBS specials—but parts of An Inconvenient Truth do feel particularly awkward. When Gore starts talking about his son’s accident and his sister’s death from lung cancer, it distracts the viewer from the film’s purpose, which is not to generate sympathize with Al Gore, but with a larger cause: saving planet Earth.

The second problem lies in Gore’s can-do attitude. Clearly, the man is motivated and believes we can all do our share to prevent global warming, but for someone so enamored with mankind, his presentation is terribly one-sided. It fails to acknowledge legitimate skepticism about the global warming issue, including the effect of lowering carbon dioxide emissions versus focusing on demographics. Gore talks of tragedies and tragedies, emphasizing the effect global warming can have on developing nations, but he never strays away from his projected timetables to consider more immediate solutions: providing clean drinking water, basic sanitation, health care, and education for these same third-world countries.

The DVD includes two audio commentaries with the filmmakers, a making-of featurette, and, to top it off, a paper/cardboard sleeve case made from recycled materials replacing the plastic case normally used to house DVD’s.

I’ve spent some time attacking Gore’s and Guggenheim’s methods, but part of me feels An Inconvenient Truth is still worth recommending. If nothing else, it’s a clear argument for an environmentally-conscious way of life, which can only help our current situation. My major problem with the film comes from Gore’s larger aims. In the end, his presentation is quite informative and entertaining. As strange as it sounds, An Inconvenient Truth also gives the viewer a glimpse to what might have been. People criticize (and will continue to criticize) Gore, but could you imagine sitting through a 100-minute lecture by George W. Bush?

volver

2007-01-12T21:34:00.000-06:00

Here is a longer version of my Volver review which appeared in the latest issue of my high school newspaper, The Kerronicle.

Volver
d. Pedro Almodovar, 2006

An overhead shot of a desolate kitchen somewhere in Madrid. A lifeless body, paper towels soaking the blood around it. A housewife (Penélope Cruz) meticulously cleans up the mess, and as she begins to stuff the corpse into her refrigerator, the doorbell rings.

This remarkable sequence from Pedro Almodóvar’s sensational new film, Volver, which opens this Friday at the Angelika, takes place about 15 minutes into the movie, and it stands as a constant reminder of the morbid backdrop for Almodóvar’s tender, compassionate story about a family of women.

Volver (“to return” in Spanish) opens to an extended shot of a windy cemetery. The audience is introduced to Raimunda (Cruz), her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo), and her sister Sole (Lola Dueñas), who are there to visit their mother’s grave. Irene (Carmen Maura) passed away four years prior, and it seems the family is well adjusted by now. After the cemetery, they drive by the small town where they grew up; they visit Aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave) and Agustina (Blanca Portillo), who takes care of Paula and whose own mother has been missing for four years.

Everything in the film seems rather calm and delicate up to this point, then, on cue, all hell breaks loose (this is, after all, an Almodóvar film). We see young Paula crying, telling her mother that the man she believes to be her father (Antonio de la Torre) tried to rape her. She grabbed a knife to scare him and ended up killing him. As Raimunda is deposing of the body, Sole calls to say Aunt Paula has died. Raimunda assures her that she is much too busy to attend the funeral, and urges Sole to go alone. While there, Sole catches a glimpse of her dead mother. As it turns out, Irene is not yet gone, and decides to come back to Madrid with Sole. In Almodovar’s world, death is not enough to keep a mother from loudly kissing her daughters.

This is the background of Volver. Recounting the rest of Almodóvar’s ingenious, gorgeously explosive story would only diminish from one’s viewing experience. The film’s formal aspects, however, may be even more accomplished than his narrative aims. He bathes his film in bright, lush colors that will be a wonder to see on the big screen; having only seen the film twice on an imported DVD in preparation for this review, I am quite anxious for a proper viewing. Volver’s soundtrack is also very vibrant, from the loud smooching sounds and the whistling of the wind down Almodóvar’s streets, to the beautiful strands of Alberto Iglesias’ lively score (the director’s exaggerated sound effects play a key role in establishing the relationship between the women in the film).

By the film’s end, Almodóvar’s title gains meaning. In a way, he’s returning to a type of film he hasn’t made since 1999’s All About My Mother (also starring Cruz). For the past couple of years, he has focused on films mainly about men: both of the female characters in 2002’s Talk to Her were comatose throughout the film; The Bad Education (2004) was a post-modern noir where the closest thing to a female protagonist was Gael García Bernal in drag. In Volver, the men are, quite literally, disposable. Almodóvar, like Josef von Sternberg and Rainer Werner Fassbinder before him, is a director who adores women, which is precisely the reason why Volver is such a success. Even at the points of highest melodrama, his film never feels exploitative, and it’s encouraging to see that a man can be so deft at writing dialogue for women My favorite exchange: “My mother has died, you must be her ghost or her spirit” “Yes, whatever you want, but get me out of the trunk of your car.”

An ensemble film though it may be—Cannes gave all of its female leads a collective “Best Actress” award earlier this year—Volver clearly belongs to Cruz. Her performance as Raimunda, balancing her husband’s corpse and a mother coming back from the dead, among other things, is as endearing as any I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s clear that Almodóvar has reached the point in his career where he can take any standard family story, add some Almodóvarian touches, and turn out an outright masterpiece. Seemingly rereading Fassbinder on the way back to Douglas Sirk, he brings together low camp—there’s always a place for a prostitute or a drag queen in his films—and high melodrama into an intensely involving and undeniably moving experience. The final scene is almost too lovely. “Don’t tell me that,” Irene calmly says. “I’ll cry. And you know ghosts don’t cry.”

satantango

2007-01-08T19:37:00.000-06:00

Satantango
d. Bela Tarr, 1994

Without a doubt, the experience of watching Bela Tarr's Satantango in a half-empty auditorium at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston ensures it is one of the greatest and most revelatory films of all time. As self-contained as its expansive, seven-hour narrative is, the film to me is more of a shocking exploration of what it means to be in a theatre for that long, as well as one of the most perverse experiments ever staged. Tarr's alternately bleak and beautiful imagery is never dull, and, towards the end of the film, I was hoping Satantango's extremely long takes would never end.

2006: the year in film

2007-01-03T17:12:00.000-06:00

For me, the film of the year was Andrew Bujalski's sophomore effort Mutual Appreciation. Its carefully-observed scenes and avant-garde editing won me over right away, something Bujalski's first film, 2003's Funny Ha Ha, failed to do. Essentially, this film is a mixture of Cassavetes and Rohmer. What more could you want?

Hou Hsiao-hsien's latest film Three Times is basically three different films, with the first of the segments being the best. It's an impossibly gorgeous and romantic account of a series of encounters between the two lead actors, Shu Qi and Chang Chen. The rest of the film doesn't quite live up to its lovely opening, but it hardly falters either.

I did not get to see Richard Linklater's other 2006 movie, Fast Food Nation, but it's not hard to call his Phillip K. Dick adaptation his best film since, well, the last one (give the guy a break, it's Before Sunset). A Scanner Darkly employs the same animation style as Linklater's own Waking Life, but to very different results. Both heartfelt and critical, Scanner shows how much its director has grown since Dazed and Confused.

Pedro Almodovar's latest doesn't quite live up to the formal rigor of The Bad Education, but Volver is a wonderful film on its own right. Almodovar's Volver is an undeniably moving and endlessly enjoyable melodrama in the style of Sirk or Fassbinder.

Brick, Rian Johnson's take on neo-noir, revisits the genre in a high school setting, and his inventive and stylized world is never less than fascinating. I look forward to watching it again.

L'enfant, the winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, is yet another rigorous experiment by the guys who brought us 1999's Rosetta. In essence, this film is quite simple, but the Dardennes' Bressonian approach to cinema is as refreshing as anything else I encountered this year.

Spike Lee's pseudo-heist movie Inside Man may very well be the comedy of 2006, as well as a throwback to old crime genre films. Not as powerful as his last notable film 25th Hour, but Inside Man could not have been more entertaining.

Quintessential Altman and a fitting swan song to one of the greatest of all filmmakers. R.I.P. Bob.

I feel like I am underrating Sofia Coppola's historical drama Marie Antoinette. It's certainly a ravishing film, but throughout my viewing I felt something was missing. In any case, it was one of the best looking films of the year.

Having not seen Carlos Reynaga's debut feature, Japon, I had no idea what to expect from Battle in Heaven. His unique brand of cinematic metaphors closely resemble those of French auteur Bruno Dumont, whose detachment from his subjects allow his films to work on multiple levels. Battle in Heaven is worth watching if only for its breathtaking photography of Mexico City.

idiocracy

2007-01-03T13:37:00.000-06:00

Idiocracy
d. Mike Judge, 2006

Mike Judge's new film in seven years--the last being 1999's Office Space--did not receive a proper distribution from its studio, 20th Century Fox. Hard to see why, as it's quite an enjoyable film, but also a biting satire of American culture. The film, a fusion of sci-fi and low-brow humor, begins with the assumption that an average man from the year 2005 (played by Luke Wilson) could very possibly be the smartest man on the planet by the time 2505 comes around. By then, culture has been reduced to watching a guy kicked in the groin on a 70-inch TV and ordering fries from an automatic dispenser (sound familiar?) The succes of Idiocracy is that it doesn't always play it straight; a casual viewer may even confuse its commentary for a simple comedy, which is a risk all good satires take. Hardly a masterpiece, but I imagine Idiocracy is better than most 2006 studio releases, and let's just hope it finds an audience on home video (as Judge's previous film, Office Space, did).

beauty #2

2007-01-02T22:01:00.000-06:00

Beauty #2
d. Andy Warhol, 1965

What better way to start off the new year than with a previously unseen Warhol? Part of me believes that if ever there was a film that defied criticism, this is it. Beauty #2 is what it is, and whether you love it or hate depends on if you find the idea of a static shot that seems to last for 66 minutes fascinating. If you're the kind of person that can sit through films like Jeanne Dielman, Warhol's own magnum opus Chelsea Girls, or even a Tarr--as I myself am--then you should find plenty to like here. If you, however, like most of the world require heavy plot and characters to be satisfied by a film, then keep away. Edie Sedgwick has more to do there than she did in Vinyl, and it pays off, as she is reason enough to sit through this film. In the end, Beauty #2 is kind of a struggle (even for a Warhol fan), but it's never less than fascinating.

l'age d'or

2006-12-31T14:15:00.000-06:00

L'Age d'Or
d. Luis Buñuel, 1930

I won't even pretend to have a handle on Luis Buñuel's second film, 1930's L'Age d'Or, on just one viewing (Mulholland Drive, anyone?), but it's certainly a fascinating piece of cinema. From the documentary-style opening sequences to the shocking imagery throughout, Buñuel never disappoints. J. Hoberman rightly points out in his review that L'Age d'Or is not as visceral as Buñuel's debut, Un chien andalou; instead, I think it points towards his later cinematic masterpieces in terms of subject matter and montage. It seems to me Buñuel is exploring the relationship between violence, sexual desires, and the divine in L'Age d'Or. More on this later, I suppose. Maybe I was still too hung up on Los Olvidados to think too much about this one.

all my life, castro street, mr. hayashi

2006-12-31T12:34:00.000-06:00

All My Life
d. Bruce Baillie, 1966

This 3-minute single shot panning along the length of a fence, only to move upward at the end of the film, is a delicate exploration of the simple marvels of the world. Accompanied by Ella Fitzgerald's titular song, there is really nothing to dislike about this marvelous film.

Castro Street
d. Bruce Baillie, 1966

More difficult than the pure euphoria of All My Life, but in many ways just as astonishing. In its 10 minutes, Castro Street paints a more complex view of a modern city than most feature-length films do. And there's also Baillie's juxtaposition of different formal aspects; his subtle use of music, black-and-white negatives, organic sounds, etc.
Mr. Hayashi
d. Bruce Baillie, 1961

Out of the three Baillies I saw, this is the only one with dialogue. The calm voice-over is narrated by a Japanese immigrant. More socially conscious than All My Life and Castro Street--though repeated viewings of the latter may reveal a deeper statement on cities--Mr. Hayashi also contains lush black-and-white images that I suspect will stay with me for a long time.

los olvidados

2006-12-31T01:31:00.000-06:00

Los Olvidados
d. Luis Buñuel, 1950

As trivial as it may be to say so, Los Olvidados could be the single greatest example of Luis Buñuel's genius. Buñuel's long, hard look at the slums of Mexico City filters the ideas of neorealist filmmakers like Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief, Umberto D.) through his singular point of view; the result is a heartbreaking portrayal of the disenfranchised byproducts of modern society. In its brief 80 minutes, Los Olvidados tells an incredibly vast story through a series of carefully-crafted characters. In essence, there's no solution to the problems Buñuel is portraying; even the reform facility one of the young delinquents is sent to proves to be quite useless. The power of the film comes from how immediate everything feels, the weight each and every single scene has. There are the incredibly vicious moments of the young ones beating up and robbing cripples, the brilliant dream sequence (which has to be one of the most terrifying sequences in Buñuel's ovure), and even the understated bond between Ojitos ("Small Eyes") and Metche. In many ways a perfect film, Los Olvidados is now my favorite Buñuel.

my dad is 100 years old

2006-12-30T23:22:00.000-06:00

My Dad is 100 Years Old
d. Guy Maddin, 2005

It was six years ago that Maddin gave the world his brilliant The Heart of the World, a 7-minute film that was more challenging and enjoyable than almost everything released that year. Having never seen any of Maddin's feature-length films (for no good reason, mind you), my familiarity with the filmmaker ends there. Nevertheless, I found My Dad is 100 Years Old, Maddin's collaboration with Isabella Rossellini (who scripted and is the sole actor of this film), to be quite spectacular. In essence, Ms. Rossellini is paying tribute to her father, neo-realist filmmaker Roberto Rossellini (another director whose films I haven't encountered; I really am that ignorant). In the process, however, Maddin and Rossellini are exploring different aspects of film history--through Rossellini's impersonations of Fellini, Hitchock, Chaplin, her mother, Ingrid Bergman, among others. A gem. Maybe I'll actually watch one of Maddin's feature films now...

still life

2006-12-29T12:14:00.000-06:00

Still Life
d. Jia Zhang-ke, 2006

Still Life, the latest film from Jia Zhang-ke, is a step in the right direction from a director whose last film, 2004's The World, suffered from the way it hammered on its central metaphor. This time around, Jia uses his formal and narrative abilities to produce a more complex and satisfying work. Working on HD video, Jia's films have a very distinct quality. What would pass for Antonioniesque if shot by another director turns into something altogether ravishing when composed by Jia. As Jonathan Rosenbaum has pointed out, he is amazingly talented when it comes to positioning actors within his frames. Still Life concerns itself with the lives of two characters--a departure from the large cast of The World--looking for their respective spouse in a soon-to-be-flooded town. Though the story seems to follow a pretty conventinal storyline (man/woman shows up, looks for his/her wife/husband, travels around for a while, then finds her/him), Jia is more interested in the way lives are lived, not the ways problems are solved. Needless to say, Still Life is a major work that would be worth watching if only for its beautiful compositions. Good job Venice Film Festival, which awarded this film its top prize earlier this year.

the host, shoot the piano player, the steel helmet

2006-12-10T15:07:00.000-06:00

The Host
d. Bong Joon-ho, 2006

One of the most acclaimed films of the year amongst serious cinephiles (though it won't actually be released in the States this year), The Host is an unlikely success. Ostensibly a movie about a monster and its effects on South Korea, it turns out to be more of an exercise on how audiences will react to such a story. Beautifully directed, The Host effortlessly carries the viewer through its involving story. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun watching a movie, let alone one about a monster.

Shoot the Piano Player d. Francois Truffaut, 1960

Made a year before Jules and Jim (Truffaut's greatest film), Shoot the Piano Player is somewhat less serious--at least during its first hour or so--and more playful than Truffaut's other works of the time (1959's The 400 Blows and 1961's aforementioned Jules and Jim). The film tells the story of a shy and reserved piano player who gets involved in a tricky crime story through his careless brother. More than that, however, Truffaut is using this vehicle--which he adapted from a crime novel--to craft a carefully observed character study. Clearly the pioneer of other noir deconstructions (The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, or even Bonnie and Clyde, which Truffaut was at one point set to direct), Shoot the Piano Player has its cake and eats it too--it manages to be gritty noir while at the same time revealing the deep insecurities behind typical crime-movie leads. If for nothing else (though there clearly is a lot more), the movie is a masterpiece for Raoul Coutard's cinematography and Georges Deleure's score. Oh, and the last act is to die for.

The Steel Helmet
d. Samuel Fuller, 1951

Two years before tackling the New York crime scene with Pickup on South Street (arguably his biggest success), Samuel Fuller made a more savage and gritty film, 1951's Korean war movie The Steel Helmet. It seems senseless to try to explain in words why this movie is so great, as it's more a film to be experienced than one to be analyed. Suffice it to say, Fuller's take on the subject of war is like none I've ever seen before, and like none we're likely to ever see in American movie theatres. His film isn't about heroism, but about a group of men that, for better or worse (probably the latter), are fighting a war that they neither care about nor fully understand. 55 years after its original release, it remains a relevant and poignant account of the madness of war.

offside

2006-11-22T23:18:00.000-06:00

Offside
d. Jafar Panahi, 2006

This is the first film by Jafar Panahi that I've seen (I came close to watching Crimson Gold a while back, but didn't, for whatever reason), but based solely on how great Offside, it's safe to say he's one of the great directors currently working. I found this film to be more accesible than that of Abbas Kiarostami--who wrote Panahi's last film--if not as formally rigorous. Regardless, this is essentially a flawless film. It briefly catalogues what it is like to be a woman in Iran that wants to go to a football match, which they are not allowed to do. The reason, as explained by the officers in the film, is because they may hear the men cursing. Offside isn't as angry as a film like this has a right to; instead, Panahi chooses to take a more humanistic approach: he presents the clear injustice of the situation, and layer by layer he peels away the inexplicable reasons a society ends up like this. Even the aforementioned officers in the film, who might very well be the "villains" in a Hollywood film tackling the topic of injustice, get their point of view across. Panahi is clearly a very intelligent filmmaker, and also one that can make a thoroughly enjoyable, not to mention brilliant, film out of a fantastic concept. I only wish more films were this subtle and engrossing.

wavelength

2006-11-22T11:12:00.000-06:00

Wavelength
d. Michael Snow, 1967

One of the two Snows I've seen, 1967's Wavelength does represent a kind of landmark in the history of experimental film. Ostensibly about the journey between a shot overlooking an entire loft to a close-up of a photograph pasted on the wall opposite the camera, the film has a lot to do with the way we perceive not only the cinema, but also reality. A formalist extravaganza, Wavelength is an experience like no other. In its 45 minutes, Snow manages to do what took Kubrick millions of dollars to put together the next year--when 2001 was released. An amazing movie.

regular lovers

2006-11-21T20:06:00.000-06:00

Regular Lovers
d. Philippe Garrel, 2005

This is one film that I'd been waiting to see since hearing about it many months ago. Whenever this happens, it's very difficult for the actual film to live up to my own weird expectations. In this case, watching Regular Lovers was more amazing an experience than I was prepared for. Miles away from Bertolucci's take on May '68, The Dreamers, Garrel's film represents something much more exquisite than a mere period piece, it's a captivating and intimidating monument on its own right. The film would be worth watching for just its beautiful photography; its black and white images as crisp and vibrant as anything by Godard or Warhol (two directors whose influenced is heavily felt in the movie). I could go on and on about Garrel's compositions, his masterful editing, the modulated performances (led by Garrel's own son, Louis, as the poet Francois), and I probably will, at a later date. As of now, let's just say I really love this film.

marie antoinette

2006-10-29T17:39:00.000-06:00

Marie Antoinette
d. Sofia Coppola, 2006

As good as I was expecting it to be, Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola's latest feature, does a good job in updating the historical drama, a genre that has not produced many good films in recent years. With the possible exception of The New World (2005) and Far From Heaven (2002), I can't think of another recent period piece that's as well observed; you'd have to go back to Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) to find such meticulous filmmaking. Coppola's film revolves around the life of the Austrian teenager sent to France when she was just fifteen as a diplomatic way to help divisions between the two nations. What follows is not a tedious history lesson, but a lush narrative filtered through the eyes of a teenager. Set to the tune of "I Want Candy," we sit there watching Dundst shop and dress up, and the film's photography (shot by Lance Acord) is as good as we're likely to see this year. I hate to say it, but sometimes it takes a rich girl from one of Hollywood's most prominent families to remind us just how much fun the movies can be.

i walked with a zombie

2006-10-28T10:23:00.000-06:00

I Walked With a Zombie
d. Jacques Tourneur, 1943

Miles away from the gore fests associated with horror films, Jacques Tourneur's somber I Walked With a Zombie instead establishes its eerie ambience through expressive compositions and rhythmic editing. The film tells the story of a Canadian nurse asked to help an ailing woman in St. Sebastian. Upon arriving, she finds that the woman's husband doesn't want to let her in on the details of her sickness. As it turns out, the woman is indeed the living dead, she's alive enough to walk around but dead in the sense that she doesn't know what goes on around her. Tourneur then throws in mysterious voodoo rituals and a strange love triangle that make this movie truly memorable.

gerry

2006-10-08T19:19:00.000-06:00

Gerry
d. Gus Van Sant, 2002

Rewatched about an hour of Gerry today. I have seen it three times before, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I always felt like I should like it more. The hour I saw today did not really change my opinion of the film, but more than ever it feels like a film I can always revisit (if only partially). Having just finished reading Beckett's Waiting for Godot, I finally understand the comparisons, although Van Sant's biggest influences in Gerry seem to be Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies, Claire Denis' Beau Travail, and the films of John Ford. Van Sant followed this one with Elephant (2003), a good film on its own right, but one that pails in comparison to Gerry's raw beauty. Last Days (2005), the final film in his trilogy of sorts, is also not quite up to par, but I would recommend all three. I still have problems with the way Gerry ends, but in cases like this, does it really matter?

volver

2006-10-07T20:06:00.000-06:00

Volver
d. Pedro Almodóvar, 2006

After spending the last five years or so making films centered around men, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar returns to a film much more like 1999's All About My Mother, which is to say, a woman's movie. His latest film, Volver (which literally means "to return"), is a delightful melodrama and a glorious entertainment. Though not as challenging and transporting as his last work The Bad Education, Almodóvar has reached the point in his career when even by reworking his past films he can make something amazing. The film begins with Raimunda (Penelope Cruz), her daugher Paula (Yohana Cobo), and sister Soledad (Lola Dueñas) visiting their mother's grave. She apparently died along with her husband in a fire while they slept. Soon after that, however, the mother, Irene (Carmen Maura), returns. I will not reveal the details of the story; even though I was expecting some Almodóvaresque twists and surprises, I was pretty shocked by some of Volver's developments. Anywho, I am writing about this for my school paper, so I do not want to spend too much time on it here. Let me just say that this will probably be in my top five favorite films of 2006. Watch it.

la collectionneuse

2006-09-10T12:38:00.000-06:00

La collectionneuse
d. Eric Rohmer, 1967

Though not as completely engaging as My Night at Maud's (1969) or Claire's Knee (1970), La collectionneuse is still a throughoughly enjoyable film. Most of the movie's pleasures lie in Nestor Almendors's beautiful cinematography, along with Rohmer's perfectly crafted shots. The script of La collectionneuse also seems more relaxed than in the other Rohmers I've seen, probably because the three main actors--Haydee Politoff, Patrick Bachau, and Daniel Pommereulle--worked on the dialogue with him. Overall just really great, organic material. Not a transcendental masterpiece or anything, but any movie that takes place in a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera is okay by me. I think.

metropolitan

2006-09-09T16:00:00.000-06:00

Metropolitan
d. Whit Stillman, 1990

I was uneasy through the first couple of sequences of Whit Stillman's Metropolitan. Bear in mind, I've just seen two Rohmer films (My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee--loved them both), and now here I am watching an American version of the same kind of 90 minute observation of privileged and articulate people. This kind of blows over once the audience discovers the main character, Tom (Edward Clements), is as much an outsider to the New York debutante lifestyle as the rest of us. Chris Eigeman plays the kind of character I would imagine Jason in Gilmore Girls to have been in his early twenties; Clements and the rest of the cast (which includes Carolyn Farina as the terribly attractive Audrey Roget) is quite superb, as is Stillman's writing and direction. Metropolitan turns out to be a charming, funny, and sad portrayal of what it means to grow up and leave friends behind, even if most of us don't live like the characters in the film.

the pervert's guide to cinema

2006-09-09T15:48:00.000-06:00

The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
d. Sophie Fiennes, 2006

Not the outwardly provocative film the title suggests, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema is instead a rather fascinating psychoanalytical look at a wide variety of movies, all guided by pop philosopher Slavoj Zizek. Really, this type of movie only works for people interested in the works being discussed, and considering a lot of my favorite films take up Zizek's time, I was bound to be taken by it. The film discusses films by Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars Von Trier, Charlie Chaplin, Michael Powell, Fritz Lang, et cetera. Despite the notoriety of the films*, I can't help but feel the film isn't complete. For instance, there's not a single mention of Luis Buñuel, Jean Cocteau, Nicholas Ray, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer. Hopefully there's a sequel.

*Complete list of films:

Alice in Wonderland

Alien

Alien Resurrection

The Birds

Blue Velvet

City Lights

The Conversation

Dead of Night

Dr. Strangelove

Dogville

Duck Soup

Dune

The Exorcist

Eyes Wide Shut

Fight Club

Frankenstein

The Great Dictator

Ivan the Terrible: Part 2

Kubanskie Kazaki

Lost Highway

The Matrix

Monkey Business

Mulholland Dr.

North By Northwest

Persona

The Piano Teacher

Pluto’s Judgment Day

Possessed

Psycho

Rear Window

The Red Shoes

Saboteur

Solaris

Stalker

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

The Ten Commandments

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

Three Colors: Blue

To Catch a Thief

Vertigo

Wild at Heart

The Wizard of Oz

claire's knee

2006-09-08T19:59:00.000-06:00

Claire's Knee
d. Eric Rohmer, 1970

Not quite as amazing as My Night at Maud's (1969), but I guess it doesn't have to be. This time around the "hero" of the story is Jerome, a 35-year-old who spends the summer at the villa where he grew up; his old friend Aurora, a writer, is also spending the summer there. Aurora convinces him to flirt with her landlady's daughter, Laura. Jerome goes along with the experiment for a while, until he discovers Laura's step-sister Claire (whose knee gives the film its title). Anywho, the two films I've seen by Rohmer have clearly won me over, but I still don't really know what to make of them, but I guess that's not too important. Claire's Knee is pretty amazing and all, but I just have to ask: Do people really live this? Because that is just too cool.

my night at maud's

2006-09-07T14:56:00.000-06:00

My Night at Maud's
d. Eric Rohmer, 1969

Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's is as close to perfect a film as I've seen in a long time; its sidelong beauty is apparent as soon as the film opens. For a film so notable for its dialogue, the first couple of sequences My Night at Maud's are filled with silence. We watch as Rohmer films Jean-Louis, his anti-hero of sorts, go to church an spot a girl that he likes, soon thereafter (while he follows her) he vows to marry her. The rest of the film plays out like a series of some of the greatest scenes in all movies. While watching the film, everything falls into place; after it was over, however, I found a lot of what went on to be much more ambiguous, only more reason to rewatch this wonderful film. Rohmer's direction here is almost invisible and completely unobstrusive; his most radical stylistic choice is the way he sometimes focuses on one character in a conversation instead of framing both of the participants. Not since I first came to Truffaut's Jules and Jim have I felt this way about a movie.

mutual appreciation

2006-09-06T14:13:00.000-06:00

Mutual Appreciation
d. Andrew Bujalski, 2005

Taking what he started with Funny Ha Ha (2003), director Andrew Bujalski expands on his kind of low key style of filmmaking with the brilliant and thoroughly engrossing sophomore effort Mutual Appreciation. It's really hard to write about a film that so completely achieves what it tries to do. Basically, Mutual Appreciation is a collection of really great scenes connected not so much by plot or story as with an overall mood. Alan (Justin Rice) is an aspiring rock star who just moved to New York City. He hangs out with his friends, Lawrence (Bujalski) and his girlfriend Ellie (Rachel Clift), and just kind of drifts in and out of very organic--though very well written and improvised--situations. Mutual Appreciation is also the kind of movie that people either fall in love with or utterly despise. I obviously belong to the former as I dont think I've seen many American independent films that are as meticulously composed and expertly crafted as this one. Bujalski's 16mm black-and-white compositions are some of the film's best assets, as is his masterful avant-garde influenced editing. Many have compared his filmmaking to that of John Cassavetes, and not without reason. It's hard to watch certain scenes of this film without automatically recalling Shadows (1959) or even later stuff like The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). With Mutual Appreciation, Bujalski emerges as the arguably the most talented director of his generation.

Note: People have also compared Bujalski's style to that of Eric Rohmer's, a director whose films I've unforgivably yet to discover. That ends today; I'm pretty sure I'll be watching My Night at Maud's (1969) later and a review will follow thereafter.

fear eats the soul

2006-09-03T20:09:00.000-06:00

Fear Eats the Soul
d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974

Fassbinder at his best. Though that's a pointless statement since I've yet to to dislike a film of his. Fear Eats the Soul is a loose remake of Douglas Sirk's 1955 masterpiece All That Heaven Allows, though on the surface Fassbinder's style borrows little from Sirk's glossy features. Through a series of carefully composed shots--much like those he uses in The Bitter Tears, though not as overbearingly rigorous-- Fassbinder creates a complex picture of the way societal prejudice can affect the personal lives of honest people. Emmi, an older German woman, falls in love with Ali, a Moroccan that's 20 or so years younger than her. They move in, get married, and become the ridicule of their neighbors. Not even Emmi's kids understand their relationship; one of them goes so far as smashing her TV set when first hearing the news. Unafraid of melodrama and using rethorical shifts, Fassbinder creates a film that is both intimate and all-encompassing; Fear Eats the Soul should be required viewing.

the wild blue yonder

2006-09-02T19:04:00.000-06:00

The Wild Blue Yonder
d. Werner Herzog, 2005

Werner Herzog's fascinating mockumentary The Wild Blue Yonder is the kind of film I would watch repeatedly if it ever opened in theatres. However, this wasn't as widely distributed as Herzog's other 2005 film, Grizzly Man, which I myself have not seen. The Wide Blue Yonder catalogues the fictional mission to find a new hospitable planet beyond the milky way. Narrated by a grumpy space alien (Brad Dourif), Herzog structures his film into different chapters--much like what he did in Lessons of Darkness--and cuts between Dourif's interviews and footage borrowed from NASA (thanked for its "sense of poetry" in the closing credits). Anywho, films this exciting don't come along very often; it may be the definitive sci-fi film of the decade.

the brown bunny, band of outsiders

2006-09-02T13:36:00.001-06:00

The Brown Bunny
d. Vincent Gallo, 2003

Vincent Gallo's tone poem The Brown Bunny is easily one of the most underrated American films of the past couple of years. By this point--only two years after its commercial release--it has become synonymous with bad movies and notorious only for its final, sexually explicit scene between Gallo and Chloe Sevigny. Though these judgements keep a lot of people from looking at the film seriously, it's hard to not be blown away by its sidelong beauty once you actually give it a chance. Filled with tender exchanges and sad glances, not to mention glorious shots of the road (with songs like Jackson C. Frank's "Milk and Honey" playing), The Brown Bunny is as honest and human a film as I've seen in a long time.

Band of Outsiders
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1964

Still my favorite Godard movie, a third viewing of Band of Outsiders really highlights some of the sadness in the film. Though not as wholly misogynist as some of Godard's other films of the time--particularly 1966's Masculine Feminine--there does seem to be a kind of underlying lack of respect for Anna Karina's character here. As far as the love triangle in the film goes, her character isn't similar to Jeanne Moreau's Catherine in Jules and Jim (a film Godard seems to be borrowing from). Other than that, this is an amazing movie all around. Raoul Coutard's cinematography here is vastly different than the more polished look of Godard's previous film, Contempt. Michel Legrand's uplifting and unspeakably cool musical score stands amongst his best and it even recalls some of his work with Jaques Demy. Godard's direction, free-form screenplay, and narration are the icing on the cake in this magnificent slice of 60's cinema.

last year at marienbad

2006-08-27T19:10:00.000-06:00

Last Year at Marienbad
d. Alain Resnais, 1961

Though more a film that I admire than one I actively enjoy, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is clearly a masterful work. If for no better reason, everyone should watch this film for its astounding beauty; Resnais' camera glides through the corridors and gardens of a large hotel, where his story takes place, and his black-and-white photography is some of the best I've seen. Delphine Seyrig (who, 14 years later, would play the title role in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman) stars as A, a woman who must deal with the constant bickering of X (Giorgio Albertazzi), a stranger trying to convince her that they met last year. The film's dialogue and compositions serve as a way for Resnais to explore his recurring themes: memory, time, what it means to be human. I've seen Marienbad twice now, and I'm no closer to deciphering its many mysteries (if they can even be deciphered, that is) than when I first came to it. Yet, I feel as though it's a film that I can always come back to, just to remind myself of cinema's possibilities. Plus, did I mention how beautiful it is to look at?

the lady from shanghai

2006-08-27T17:24:00.000-06:00

The Lady from Shanghai
d. Orson Welles, 1947

The Lady from Shanghai may not be Orson Welles' best movie (that, to me, would be F for Fake [1976]), but it's just further proof that the man was just so good at making movies. Parts of the film didn't make sense to me on a first viewing, and sometimes the plot seems almost incidental, but Welles' compositions are at their most playful here. Needless to say, Welles and Rita Hayworth are both incredible here, and the supporting cast (which includes Everett Sloane as Hayworth's husband) is almost as impressive. Hayworth gets first billing here, but it's most certainly Welles' film. Not only did he write, direct, produce, and act in it, but he narrates the story to us; sometimes the way the character of Michael O'Hara speaks sounds more like Orson himself than just another character in one of movies.

kicking and screaming

2006-08-27T17:22:00.000-06:00

Kicking and Screaming
d. Noah Baumbach, 1995

Noah Baumbach's wonderful first feature, Kicking and Screaming, holds a distinct place amoungs other independent films from the 90s. It does share certain qualities with movies like Richard Linklater's Slacker and Before Sunrise, but Baumbach seems to be shooting at something completely different. His film centers around the lives of a couple of 20-somethings who can't seem to figure what to do after graduation. One of them, Otis (Charles Jacott), won't leave for graduate school in Milwaukee because of the one hour time difference. Grover (Josh Hamilton) spends his time in a sort of paralysis after his girlfriend Jane (Olivia d'Abo) leaves for Prague. Max (Chris Eigeman, aka Jason Stiles of Gilmore Girls) plays a philosophy major who passes the time doing crosswords and talking about living.

What Baumbach manages to craft out of his conversational passages is a poignant and charming account of the nostalgia of leaving school; the kind of sad reminisces of things one would have complained about as they were happening. Though Baumbach's writing is likely to get the most credit here (or in his most recent film, The Squid and the Whale, for that matter), he is quite a good director. His long tracking shots -- particularly impressive in a scene with Grover and his dad (played by Elliot Gould) -- and fluid camera movement recalls directors like Robert Altman, Woody Allen (who is probably more of an influence on Baumbach's writing), and even Truffaut. In short, this is a vastly underrated film that is not to be missed.

P.S. Is it bad that I kind of feel the same as the the characters in Kicking and Screaming? I'm 16 (as of tomorrow) and junior year of high school just started, so probably.

the spirit of the beehive

2006-07-29T08:57:00.000-06:00

The Spirit of the Beehive
d. Victor Erice, 1973

I've never seen a film quite like The Spirit of the Beehive. It is so strikingly original yet instinctive all the way through that it's easy to call it one of the greatest Spanish films ever made. The film takes place in a rural Spanish town in the 1940s, right after the Spanish Civil War; we meet a young family, the father is a beekeeper, the mother writes longing letters to old relatives, and, just as the film is beginning, the two young daughters, Ana and Isabel, are attending a screening of James Whales' Frankenstein. After the movie, the younger girl, Ana, asks Isabel to explain the actions of the monster and of the people that killed him thereafter; Isabel explains that the monster is, in fact, not dead, but is a spirit that can not be killed. She claims to have already seen it, and eventually takes Ana to an abandoned barn with a well where she claims the spirit lives. For the rest of The Spirit of the Beehive, the vaguest hints at plot revolve around Ana's attempts to find the spirit.

This movie, however, is more interested at quietly observing this rather odd family structure. The Spirit of the Beehive is so achingly beautiful that I prefer to keep its images in my head rather than try to senselessly describe them. Luis Cuadrado, who shot the film, was apparently going blind while working on the film, which just makes his astonishing work here (both in lighting and use of the rural landscape) all the more notable. The musical score by Luis de Pablo is heartbreaking without having to underline anything in the movie, much like the spare music in Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies. Then there are the beautifully crafted compositions and poetic dialogue of Victor Erice, a mysterious and iconic director who has only made two other films seen this one. In the end, The Spirit of the Beehive is a lot things: a gorgeous portrayal of life in rural Spain, a love letter to the innocence of childhood and the questions it poses, and also a testament to the effect movies can have on us; few films have filled me with more joy.

contempt

2006-07-28T11:29:00.000-06:00

Contempt
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1963

One of Jean-Luc Godard's best works, 1963's gorgeous 'Scope epic Contempt, is also one of the best films about film ever made (another would be Fellini's 8 1/2, released the same year), though at times it seems more like a cross between an Antonioni study and a standard Godard self-reflexiveness. Contempt stars the beautiful Brigitte Bardot (who's never looked better) and the unforgettable Michel Piccoli; he's a screenwriter recently hired to adapted Homer's The Odyssey for a new Fritz Lang film (he plays himself here), she's the loving wife whose contempt for him provides most of the thematic groundwork in the movie. The film is basically divided into three parts: in the first part, we see Piccoli visiting a producer played by Jack Palance and Fritz Lang at a studio in Rome; in the second, and probably the most astonishing, we get a 33 minute scene which takes place entirely in Piccoli's and Bardot's apartment. This scene, which is the closest thing to an Antonioni scene outside of his own ouvre, portrays the relationship between the two characters as a rocky landscape on the verge of distruction. The final part of the film, and the most beautiful in terms of photography, takes place at Palance's villa where they are shooting Lang's film. The story comes full circle there and the shock ending is quite something. All in all, this is amongst the best films of the French New Wave.

badlands

2006-07-28T10:51:00.000-06:00

Badlands
d. Terrence Malick, 1973

Terrence Malick's best movie, and one of the key works of the 70s, follows in the same tradition as films like Bonnie and Clyde and more recently Wild at Heart and Natural Born Killers. But what separates Badlands from these other violent road movies is Malick's conviction and eye for beauty. He was 30 when he directed, wrote, and produced this film, and has gone on to make only three other (Days of Heaven in 78, The Thin Red Line in 98, and The New World in 05) since. Badlands follows Kit (Martin Sheen) and Holly (Sissy Spacek) as they make their away across South Dakota to the Badlands of Montana; while killing a few people on the way. Their relationship begins rather innocently, she's a 15 year old who lives with her dad, who moved the family to South Dakota after his wife's death; he's a 25 year old rebel who picks up trash for a living. Both are alienated in one way or another (Holly by her friends at her school, Kit by the adult world), so they find companion, albeit a foolish one, in one another. In a sudden act of violence, Kit kills Holly's father after announcing that he's taking her with him. And then, in one of the most powerful scenes in the film, proceeds to burn down the house while leaving a record with a false confession (We have decided to kill ourselves, the same way I did her dad") playing for the police to find. Kit and Holly then go on to spend some uneventful days driving through the country, bookmarked by several other killings, while the police is continuously on their trail. That Badlands ends with Kit and Holly finally surrendering isn't giving much away; the movie, like the time Kit and Holly spent together, is all about the journey and not the destination.

a scanner darkly

2006-07-27T20:26:00.000-06:00

A Scanner Darkly
d. Richard Linklater, 2006

With a little more than half of 2006 gone, Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly is easily one of - if not the - best films of the year. Using the same animation technique as in his 2001 masterpiece Waking Life, Linklater and his animators craft a wonderfully obstuse meditation on the drug culture. As a complete turnaround from his last serious project, Before Sunset, this film represents a more free-form type of narrative resembling something like Naked Lunch way more than Dazed and Confused or Before Sunrise. At the centre of the film is Keanu Reeves' character, Bob Arctor, an undercover agent who is supposed to spy on potential drug users. The action takes place "7 years from now" according to a title card, a time when 20% of the population is addicted to a drug called Substance D. "You are either on it or you haven't tried it," exclaims Robert Downey Jr.'s character when talking to a drug addled Rory Cochrane (who played the playful Slater in Linklater's Dazed and Confused, the complete opposite of his paranoid addict here). A Scanner Darkly comes down to a series of sequences following the set of drug users (of which Arctor is one), and the Phillip K. Dick narrative seems to organically grow out of these scenes. By the end, I was completely blown away by both the visuals of the film (it's a thrill to see on the big screen, so don't wait for video) and it's uncompromising take on the world of drugs. Without a doubt, no film out there right now is as astonishing as this one.

brick

2006-07-25T13:31:00.000-06:00

Brick
d. Rian Johnson, 2005

Rian Johnson's successful stab at neo-noir Brick follows an anti-social teenager (wonderfully acted by Joseph-Gordon Lewitt) as he tries to uncover the mystery surrounding his ex-girlfriend's whereabouts. Johnson recreates the gritty world of noir through his distant mise en scene and his intricate screenplay (complete with nicknames like "The Pin"). On a first viewing I mostly responded to the film as a formalist exercise made by someone who obviously respects and cherishes the tradition of film noirs; but there are moments of sincere raw emotion that lead me to believe subsequent viewings will reveal a more poignant statement. As it stands, Brick is a visually stunning study of high school ennui inside of a noir world; that alonge may make it the American film of the year.

the marriage of maria braun

2006-07-07T12:05:00.000-06:00

The Marriage of Maria Braun
d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979

By now I'm pretty convinced that virtually no director has had a better run of consistently great films than Rainer Werner Fassbinder had during the 1970s; including The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant in '72, Fear Eats the Soul in '74, In a Year of 13 Moons in '78, and The Marriage of Maria Braun in '79. The latter, one of Fassbinder's most exquisite masterpieces, concerns the life and times of Maria Braun, a strong and independent woman who sets out to make a life for herself after her husband, Hermann Braun, is sent to war. She remains faithful to him despite the fact they were married for just 2 days and only met weeks before that. Maria receives (incorrect) news that he was killed, and he comes home to find his wife with another man. She smashes a bottle over his head and kills the man, only to have Hermann take the blame for it. He's in prison for the great bulk of the movie, and Maria promises to wait for him and that they'll have a new life together. Through of a series of consequences which one may describe as Maria selling herself, she manages to land a lucrative position in a textile company. She changes throughout the film, and her naive love for Hermann also suffers the consequences. Then comes the final audacious scene; Fassbinder understands that he's too far into the narrative to insult the audience with a conventional ending. Both him and the audience understand that, for Maria Braun, there'll be no resolution without death.

monsieur verdoux

2006-07-06T19:35:00.000-06:00

Monsieur Verdoux
d. Charles Chaplin, 1947

I haven't seen enough of Chaplin's films to call this his best work (although I do prefer it to The Gold Rush [1925] and City Lights [1931]), but it's certainly brilliant. Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, scored, and starred in Monsieur Verdoux, one of his last films. Verdoux is a formally astonishing black comedy about a cynical man who provides for his family by killing women and taking their money. But this isn't one of those movies where we see some monster committing crimes and at the end we are supposed to learn some moral lesson about proper conduct; Chaplin's much too ambitious for that nonsense. Here he is using the pathos of his silent films to make us, though not necessarily identify with Verdoux, understand why these things happen. Verdoux is a man who worked for over 30 years as a bank clerk only to be fired after the depression. From that point on, he supported his invalid wife and young son by dealing in the aforementioned practices. That Chaplin manages to insert his signature brand of comedy into these situations is commendable; but more astonishing is the way he intellectually grips and ultimately moves the viewer with the experience. From the beginning we know that this story has already occurred (the first shot of the is of Verdoux's gravestone), and the last sequence deals with his trial and execution. Chaplin saved his most brilliant masterstroke for this scene, he gives us a character who has committed several murders, awaits his destiny, but also understands the way the world works, "One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow!" he tells a reporter who comes to him looking for a feature with a moral. This is what movies are all about; Monsieur Verdoux blew me away.

orpheus

2006-07-06T15:43:00.000-06:00

Orpheus
d. Jean Cocteau, 1949

Jean Cocteau's 1949 masterpiece Orpheus is one of the most magical of all films. It manages to transport the original Greek myth into modern times seamlessly through Cocteau's own brand of storytelling, his signature special effects (The Blood of Poet), and his inimitable poetic dialogue ("Mirrors are doors through which death comes and goes. Look at yourself in the mirror and you'll see death do its work."). Orpheus is the story of a poet by the same name, who becomes distracted by visions of greatness - in the guise of a "talking car" - and must descend into the underworld once Death takes away his wife. There, a court decides to allow Eurydice to return with the condition that Orpheus is not allowed to look at her. Surely enough, Orpheus can not resist, and his wife goes back to the underworld. And though there's a happy ending to the story for Orpheus and Eurydice, Cocteau still fashions a rather melancholic view on death. The story of Orpheus unfolds here as it did in the original myth, but Cocteau inserts little plot details to enhance his film. The most notable of these is the tangled love web that includes Death, Orpheus, Eurydice, and Death's chauffeur. Cocteau is certainly one of the greatest of all filmmakers, and Orpheus is arguably his best film. A must see.

red desert

2006-06-29T13:42:00.000-06:00

Red Desert
d. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964

Red Desert is Michelangelo Antonioni's intoxicating color feature that's not really about anything. It stars Monica Vitti as more or less a similar character to the ones she played in Antonioni's previous works L'Avventura and L'Eclisse, but here she's got a somewhat less subtle existential crisis. She'd been in a car accident and never really psychologically recovered from it, and the movie follows her through a series of situations of growing discontent. The beautiful color photography (certainly one of the most expressive use of Technicolor ever) evokes a palpable sense of discomfort, and it carries the movie a long way. At its simplest, Red Desert is a brilliantly fascinating portrayal of a disturbed woman. Not that it really matters, however, as Antonioni's intricate mise en scene and Monica Vitti are so charming.

singin' in the rain

2006-06-27T19:28:00.000-06:00

Singin' in the Rain
d. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952

Singin' in the Rain is easily the most famous movie musical of all time, I personally prefer something like Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort or Roubert Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight, but I would not hesitate to call this film a masterpiece. Singin' in the Rain is the kind of movie that eludes criticism, it so effortlessly and brilliantly succeeds as a fun musical that it seems pointless to call it what it is, "perfect." When the AFI published its outrageous list of the 100 greatest American films (no The Night of the Hunter or In a Lonely Place but Forrest Gump makes the cut), Singin' in the Rain placed 10th and it was one of the few films on the list that actually deserved a spot. The film is a life-affirming celebration of movies as well as a comic portrayal of the transition period between silent and sound film that occurred in the late 1920s. Singin' in the Rain contains what is perhaps the most famous scene in film: Gene Kelly singing in the rain. Everything else in the film is just as great, and almost 55 years after the film was made, I think it's safe to say that it will never date.

gentlemen prefer blondes

2006-06-27T09:49:00.000-06:00

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
d. Howard Hawks, 1953

One of Howard Hawks' greatest films may also be Marilyn Monroe's best movie, 1953's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Though not one of Hawks' best known works (that title would go to Bringing Up Baby or The Big Sleep), it's certainly one that has worked its way into the American consciousness. Whether it be through Madonna's "Material Girl" video, which pays tribute to a scene in the film, or because it features Monroe in her quintessential role as gold-digging lounge singer, the film is certainly one of the key films of the 1950s. Shot in glorious Technicolor by Harry J. Wild, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is probably the best example of Hollywood glamour in the 50s, and the musicals number here are never less than amazing. Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe play two young women on their way to Paris, where Monroe plans to marry a rich man played by Tommy Noonan. His father, however, disapproves of his choice and hires a detective to spy on her while on the cruise. The detective falls in love with Jane Russell and other stuff happens. That Gentlemen Prefer Blondes manages to be an enormous entertainment (I would place it above Singin' in the Rain) is certainly an achievement, but that it also manages to satirize and portray the American capitalist mindset is why it'll be remembered.

citizen kane

2006-06-25T12:13:00.000-06:00

Citizen Kane
d. Orson Welles, 1941

Orson Welles' Citizen Kane has had more written about it than virtually every other film in history, so it's kind of difficult to try to approach it in a new manner. This is my second viewing of the film, as I first came to it more than a year ago, and it was my first Welles movie. I now have to say that I personally prefer his F for Fake (1976) and I am dying to see The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) again. However, Citizen Kane is arguably the most important and accomplished of his films. For someone who discovered it more than 70 years after its original release, the film stands as one of the perfect examples of Hollywood cinema. For the most part, Citizen Kane is flawless filmmaking, both as a technical achievement and a narrative one. Welles - who co-wrote, directed, produced, and starred in this film - paints the story of tycoon Charles Foster Kane in a staggering collection of vivd scenes that have become landmarks of film history. Everything from the opening "News On the March" recounting the life of Mr. Kane to Welles' incredible use of deep focus photography. In the end, Citizen Kane, by forming a life out of a collection of memories told in flashback, becomes a sad tale about the way we all lead our lives. Needless to say, the film should be seen by everyone.

night and fog

2006-06-24T09:10:00.000-06:00

Night and Fog
d. Alain Resnais, 1955

As far as movies about the Holocaust go, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List and Claude Lanzmann's Shoah are perhaps the two most famous ones. I never really cared for the former and have not found the opportunity to approach the 9 1/2 hour Shoah (though I do plan to.) With that said, I think I can safely say that Alain Renais' Night and Fog holds a very important place amongst movies of the subject. Made only 10 years after the war ended, Resnais' film is perhaps the first cinematic account of what went on in concentration camps. The film plays out like a visual essay, and it's influence can be seen in the films of Chris Marker (an assistant director on this film.) It'd be pointless to talk about the images in Night and Fog, as they are not the type of things to be communicated verbally, as the deft narration often points out. Without a doubt, this is essential viewing.

double indemnity

2006-06-23T09:12:00.000-06:00

Double Indemnity
d. Billy Wilder, 1944

Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity is the definitive film noir, period. Sure, Fritz Lang laid the foundation with M (1931) and its shadowy compositions and high angles, and Orson Welles provided what is considered the last of the classical noirs with Touch of Evil (1958), but it's this Wilder masterpiece that stands above all others. First, Wilder used black-and-white photography as expressively as anyone else before him or since (Lang and Welles included), and John Seitz's impeccable cinematography in Double Indemnity is the perfect example of this. Second, Wilder's direction is as seductive as anything's that ever been filmed, but above all it's his writing that (justifiably) gets a lot of credit. In Double Indemnity, he collaborated with novelist Raymond Chandler - whose novels inspired Hawks' The Big Sleep and Altman's The Long Goodbye - on the screenplay, and I challenge anyone to find more perfect dialogue than is on showcase here. Lines like "How could I have known that murder could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?" and "I killed him for the money and for the woman. I didn't get the money... and I didn't get the woman." summarize the mood of Double Indemnity, and most of Wilder's work for that matter. And I haven't even talked about the story yet, as if it really mattered. Well, it's about insurance salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) and housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) plotting to rub off Phyllis' husband for his insurance money. As the viewer gathers in the first scene, everything went wrong, and the film recounts the fascinating relationship between Walter and Barbara. MacMurray and Stanwyck are at their finest here, and they make up one of the most captivating couples in film. Right up there with Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard's Breathless. And that's saying a lot.

the young girls of rochefort

2006-06-22T19:15:00.000-06:00

The Young Girls of Rochefort
d. Jacques Demy, 1967

Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort would be my own choice for the most enjoyable of all movie musicals. Demy's film is so formally astonishing it surpasses even the best Hollywood musicals from which it gains its inspiration; don't get me wrong, I love Singin' in the Rain and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as much as the next guy, but there's something about what Demy and Michel Legrand - who wrote and conducted the music - do here that I've seen nowhere else. The Young Girls of Rochefort even manages to be more than an exceptional musical; it tells a universal story about missed and fulfilled opportunities. Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum compares it to Playtime in its portrayal of these connections, and it's easy to spot elements of Jacques Tati through Demy's film. The cast - which includes real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac as the young girls and Gene Kelly as an American musician - is all around amazing, and the choreography is as creative as any ever put on screen. Cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet (who also shot Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar) takes full advantage of the town of Rochefort, with the action being mostly centered around the town square. The Young Girls of Rochefort takes place over the span of a weekend, culminating in a fair on Sunday; the rest of the film is filled with characters trying to find the person that makes them happy, and through a series of occurrences eventually come to find them. In his review of the film, Rosenbaum also points out that though the film ends in a happy mood (everyone meets the person they need), what sticks with the viewer is the sense of dissolution (the path they had to go through to reach the person), as there are many sad moments throughout the film. Rarely has the screen been a place filled with such loveliness.

playtime

2006-06-21T17:06:00.000-06:00

Playtime
d. Jacques Tati, 1967

Jacques Tati's Playtime is definitely one of the greatest films I've seen. I'm glad I was introduced to Tati through M. Hulot's Holiday (1953) and Mon Oncle (1958) before taking on this movie, as it's certainly his most ambitious film, and - in more ways than one - his best. Much like the aforementioned works, Playtime does not rely on dialogue or narrative to be efffective. Tati crafts his films around visual occurrences, rhythms, and intricate compositions and Playtime succeeds in every one of those aspects. Tati built a tremendous set called "Tativille" for Playtime, and I was blown away by how beautiful everything was. The huge modernist buildings with glass doors and windows must have been that much more astonishing back in 1967. Monsieur Hulot, the famous character acted by Tati himself, returns in Playtime, but plays a smaller role than in Tati's previous films. Instead, Tati gives us a cast of hundreds that include American, German, and French tourists that wander through the world he's created. I would go on about the way this movie has affected me, but I think it's the kind of film that has to be absorbed with as little knowledge as possible. As one of the most breathtaking films in history, Playtime is an unparalleled experience that I presume will get better with subsequent viewings.

P.S. I can not wait for the Criterion release of Playtime.

pee-wee's big adventure

2006-06-18T11:34:00.000-06:00

Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
d. Tim Burton, 1985

I'm tempted to call Tim Burton's first feature film, 1985's Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, his best movie to date. It contains the irreverent style he has come to be famous for; which includes the extravagant use of set designs, music, and actors. Having never seen his show, Paul Reubens's brilliant performance as Pee-Wee Herman came as a surprise to me. The film's structure has a legitimate beginning and ending, but the great bulk is mostly a hilarious succession of comic gags that call to mind such geniuses as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and even Jacques Tati. Burton makes a key decision in the film to use the set designs not as part of the story, but just elements by which to enhance the story (something a lot of directors don't do). A perfect example of this is the house Pee-Wee lives in, the opening sequence is so elaborate that it is astonishing Burton doesn't come back to it later in the film; he's brave enough to use this fantastic set for just this one scene and move on. The rest of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is just as good, as we follow the title character's journey to find his flamboyant bicycle.

the company

2006-06-17T20:36:00.000-06:00

The Company
d. Robert Altman, 2003

Robert Altman's enchanting ballet movie The Company is so good it may make me want to check out some more late Altman. His newest film, A Prairie Home Companion, is likable enough, but it lacks the masterful presence of this movie. Through almost two hours, Altman gives the audience a basically plotless portrayal of a ballet company. This may seem like a waste of time for some people, but The Company quickly turns from what could have been a standard ballet movie with a storyline to something more abstract, a celebration, not only of dance, but of making movies. For anyone willing to watch a beautiful film that's about nothing but the experience of watching it, The Company will not disappoint. (And if you like the ballet sequences in the film, I suggest you check out The Red Shoes, which is a more magical/fairy tale-ish take on dance).

the 5,000 fingers of dr. t

2006-06-16T11:25:00.000-06:00

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
d. Roy Rowland, 1953

Easily one of the greatest of all children's movies, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T also happens to be the only feature film written by Dr. Seuss, and it shows. The visual spectacle that the film provides is nearly unparalleled, especially when one compares it to the films kids are watching these days (Shrek is one that automatically comes to mind). The 5,000 Fingers is the kind of film that all children should enjoy, but anyone older should be able to recognize the technical genius if not connect with the glorious entertainment the film provides. It tells the story of a young boy, Bartholomew Collins, who "has only one enemy," his piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker, a European tyrant that makes Collins work like there was no tomorrow. One of the early sequences of the film shows him falling asleep, and most of the film is composed of Collins' Freudian fantasies as he deals with Terwilliker. In the dream, he's a madman with a plan to open an institution for 500 children (each having ten fingers, hence the title), where he will make them play and treat them like slaves. Not only that, but he plans to marry Collins' mother, who alrady is under Dr. T's spell. Through a series of wonderfully imaginative scenes, Collins and his plumber friend August Zabladowski have to find a way to stop Dr. T's plan. If this sounds like a standard kid movie, trust me, it isn't. Not only are the set designs and costumes completely out of a Seuss book, but the film's musical numbers - also of Seuss' lyrics - are quite astonishing (the dungeon scene alone is worth the ticket price). In short, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is one of the most glorious movies ever made.

In honor of the fantastic musical numbers of The 5,000 Fingers, here are my personal favorite musicals, in chronological order:

Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (Roy Rowland, 1953)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)

night of the living

2006-06-16T08:41:00.000-06:00

Night of the Living Dead
d. George A. Romero, 1968

To keep it short, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is the most effective horror film I have ever seen, period. I am usually not very scared by movies, and even Romero's Dawn of the Dead (which I saw a long time ago) didn't frighten me. Some people have called Night of the Living Dead a political allegory for what America was going through in 1968, but I think that only understimates what Romero is actually trying to do, which is disturb the audience in a way that had never been done before. The story is quite simple, a brother and sister are visiting a cemetery to bring flowers to their father's grave. They see a man walking in a strange way around the cemetery - which is otherwise empty - without realizing that he is, indeed, the living dead. Barbara manages to get away and ends up in a farm house nearby, while the creatures gather outside the house. Romero introduces a couple more characters, and most of the film takes place inside the farm house. Not only was this an effective way for him to reduce the budget of the film, but it places it amongst the great claustrophic films (The Exterminating Angel and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant), even if Romero is using this field in a much different way. The use of news reports was quite brilliant, as is most of everything else in the film, except for maybe the acting, but in a case like this I hardly think it matters. It all comes down to this: if you are looking for a horror movie, you won't do much better than Night of the Living Dead.

the exterminating angel

2006-06-15T22:09:00.000-06:00

The Exterminating Angel
d. Luis Buñuel, 1962

The Exterminating Angel, one of Buñuel's very best, is arguably the key surrealist work of the cinema in the 20th century. The intensity of its images here is only matched by 1972's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, the theoretical oppossite of The Exterminating Angel. The film begins with several servants to a rich family unexpectedly leaving their post; as the dinner party is about to begin, many of them make up excuses ("My sister is... sick") and make their way out of the enormous home. The guests enter the dining room and proceed to eat dinner as they chat indifferently about different subjects. Dinner ends and they move to the living room, where one of the guests plays one of her own pieces on the piano. Through some strange and unpredictable circumstance, the guests can't make their way out of the dinner party. For some reason or another they feel strangely compelled to remain in that room, and then we as the audience catch up to what Buñuel is up to. Layer by layer, he deconstructs the ideals of these people. It begins with their formal apparel, which they readily take off once it gets late in the night. Then it's proper etiquette, which surely does not include sleeping in your hosts' living room. Days (weeks?) go by and the situation only gets more complicated. One of the guests is seriously ill and eventually dies, rivalries arise, food becomes sparse, and the guests resort to breaking open a wall to find water. Out of this horrible, anarchic microcosm Buñuel crafts a brilliant comedy of manners and something that resembles a behavioral experiment more than a feature film. The brilliant final sequences of the movie, in which the audience watches as the cycle threatens to repeat itself, are quite something. The Exterminating Angel is a true masterpiece by one of cinema's greatest artists.

rashomon

2006-06-15T22:00:00.000-06:00

Rashomon
d. Akira Kurosawa, 1950

Kurosawa's first film to make it to the U.S., Rashomon, turned out to be a more modest picture than I had expected. Having only seen 1980's Kagemusha, I was looking forward to a more lavish picture. Instead, here he gives us a rather simple story told in a more dynamic way. The audience basically gets four different testimonies of what happened one day in the woods. The only fact that all four stories have in common is that a man ends up dead in each of them (through different circumstances). In essence, Kurosawa is talking to the audience about the nature of truth and how each person's point of view distorts events. This same principle would be explored by Sidney Lumet in 1957's 12 Angry Men, and Roshomon's evidence on that film is more than evident. Hugely important, if not as formally astonishing as I would have hoped.

m

2006-06-15T14:50:00.000-06:00

M
d. Fritz Lang, 1931

Fritz Lang's M, the best of all serial killer movies, has not dated one bit 75 years after it was first released. It marks one of the high points of film as an art form; it's an infinitely fascinating portrayal of a criminal, visually astonishing, and subtly disturbing in its suggestions about the way we as a culture handle criminals. M is about the effects a child murderer, Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), has on a German city. At first, it's mostly the police and parents of young kids who worry about the killer. But once daily raids start happening, the criminal underground of the city has to join, which is to say they need to protect their own right to committ crimes. The film's body is mostly concerned with switching back and forth between all the different perspectives. In one scene we see the police trying to figure out how to catch the murderer, in the next we see the criminals complaining, and next we might see Beckert looking at himself in the mirror or writing a letter to the papers. Everything leading up to the final scene of M is quite brilliant, certainly an amazing achievement in sound design, cinematography, and storytelling as whole. However, it's this final scene that qualifies M as one of the greatest of all movies. For the first time in the movie, the audience gets an extended sequence, and Peter Lorre delivers one of the great monologues. It takes place once the criminals have caught him, and they plan to sentence him to death"I have no control over this, the evil thing inside of me, the fire, the voices, the torment!" Beckert says. And, indeed, the moral ambiguity and irony of this final scene is one of the high points of M, a true masterpiece of cinema, and essential viewing for anyone halfway interested in anything.

naked lunch

2006-06-14T18:01:00.000-06:00

Naked Lunch
d. David Cronenberg, 1991

There's really not much I can say about David Cronenberg's wonderfully strange and brilliant movie Naked Lunch. Having not read the Burroughs novel myself, I can't compare it to its source; but I understand Cronenberg took elements from Burrough's other works and from his life. The result is a spellbinding film that stands as a collection of short paranoid vignettes revolving around exterminator William Lee (Peter Weller giving a brilliant performance). The special effects - including the creature pictured above - are quite astonishing, as is the photography by Peter Suschitzky, who's shot every Cronenberg movie since 1988's Dead Ringers. In its devotion to its distorted narrative, Cronenberg may have crafted in Naked Lunch the definitive movie about drugs.

the killing of a chinese bookie

2006-06-13T18:27:00.000-06:00

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
d. John Cassavetes, 1976

John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a more radical deconstruction of the crime genre than even Altman's The Long Goodbye, which came out three years earlier, and it's also a lot more satisfying than Polanski's overrated Chinatown. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie stands as perhaps the biggest achievement by one of the great American directors; Cassavetes' carefully constructed character study follows gentlemen's club owner Cosmo Vitelli (a brilliant Ben Gazzara). Shortly after the film begins, Cosmo loses $23,000 playing poker, which will eventually lead to the guys he owes the money to making follow through with the title action. Through his famous use of long takes and close-ups, Cassavetes makes the film more poignantly sad than most crime movies. Cosmo isn't the same type of two-dimensional character we've seen in endless film noirs, but a more flawed and complex character trying to live his life. After going through with the killing, Cosmo finds that he's been double-crossed and the gangsters are now out to kill him. Though particularly ambiguous when it comes to key points in the story (particularly the ending and his relationship to one of the strippers), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie manages to close off both its crime story and Cosmo's character arc on pretty good terms. This is one I'll be revisiting soon enough.

Note: I saw the original, 135 minute version, not the 1978 cut which runs about 108 minutes.

les fames du bois de boulogne

2006-06-13T12:32:00.000-06:00

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
d. Robert Bresson, 1945

Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne comes at an interesting point in the director's career. It was only his second film and the style we have now come to know as Bressonian was not yet fully developed. Made in 1945, it comes six years before Diary of a Country Priest, a more "Bressonian" study. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, however, is an interesting film on its own right. It tells of the efforts of a conniving woman, Helene (Maria Casares), to set up her ex-lover, Jean (Paul Bernard), with a prostitute. Even its premise it sounds more radical than Bresson's later efforts, and this film resembles something like David Lean's Brief Encounter more than, say, Au hasard Balthazar. Bresson, the master filmmaker, begins here.

meet me in st. louis

2006-06-13T09:05:00.000-06:00

Meet Me in St. Louis
d. Vincente Minnelli, 1944

Not much of a musical, but still quite a wonderful movie. Meet in St. Louis tells the story of the Smith family from summer 1903 to spring 1904. Each of the four seasons - all punctuated by a title card - brings about different problems for the family, most of them comical. In its nostalgic mood, the film recalls other works like Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (sans Technicolor). Judy Garland plays Esther, the Smiths' teenage daughter who is in love with her next door neighbor, John Truett (Tom Drake). Late in the film, Mr. Smith (Leon Ames) receives news that he has been offered a better job in New York, which would mean the family leave right after Christmas day. As is to be expected, the family complains, mostly because they've been looking forward to the St. Louis Fair of next spring. In the end, everyone gets what they want. Rose, the eldest daughter, gets married, Esther ends up with Truett, and the family stays in St. Louis. But what else would you expect from an MGM family movie from 1944?

beyond the valley of the dolls

2006-06-13T08:55:00.000-06:00

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
d. Russ Meyer, 1970

It seems particularly arbitrary to write a review of Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The movie is interesting enough, but it's so out there that no review can approximate its strangeness. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is about a female rock group (The Carrie Nations) going to L.A. to make it big. The lead singer of the band, Kelly (Dolly Read), has a rich aunt in L.A. that is winning to give her part of the fortune Kelly's mother wouldn't take. The film then continues through the usual kind of plot points that one would expect from a film about rock music. People cheat on each other, there's a lot of drug using, and a couple of fights. The melodrama that's been building for a large portion of the movie culminates in the final 20 minutes of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, perhaps the strangest of any film. These sequences are all the more eerie when the viewer recalls the opening credits, which had them playing behind them. After these irreverent and completly insane 20 minutes (in which several people die and someone gains the ability to walk again), the movie gives us a run through of what each character learned through the experience. Leave it to Roger Ebert - who wrote the film's screenplay - to critique the film before it's even over.

blue velvet

2006-06-12T18:08:00.000-06:00

Blue Velvet
d. David Lynch, 1986

David Lynch's Blue Velvet is arguably the greatest film of the 1980s. Though the film is completely original, perhaps the best way to describe it is as a mixture of Last Tango in Paris' frank sexuality, Rear Window's unparalleled suspense, and Buñuel's brand of cinematic surrealism. Blue Velvet's tagline is "It's a strange world," and that's also the best way to approach the film. The viewer should be prepared to see some of the strangest scenes ever staged, but more than that Blue Velvet is about coming to terms with the strange world we live in. Through his highly stylized story, Lynch explores buried and supressed emotions that lurk beneath the surface. The audience has to relate to Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a college student who comes home after his father has a stroke while watering the lawn. On the way back from the hospital, Jeffrey finds an ear and takes it to detective Williams (George Dickerson), a neighbor of his. A couple of days later Jeffrey goes back to his house to ask about the case, but Williams obviously can not release that kind of information. Sandy (Laura Dern), William's daughter, has heard some things from her father (her room is above his study), and she tells Jeffrey some things about the case. This leads him to develop a plan to sneak into a lounge singer's (Isabella Rossellini) apartment. Jeffrey, who was hiding in Dorothy's closet, is eventually discovered and she makes him strip for him with a knife in hand. Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) shows up, Jeffrey goes back to the closet, and he sees Dorothy submit to a more violent version of the encounter they just had. Jeffrey figures out that Frank kidnapped Dorothy's husband (who's ear he cut off) and kid, and is now holding them hostage to "make her do things for him." By the end of Blue Velvet, the mystery is solved but by then Lynch and the audience know that's not the point. The power of the film lies in the weight and depth of individual scenes and the audience's reaction to them. Rossellini's performance here is quite astonishing, as is Hopper's frightening take on Frank Booth. MacLachlan and Dern are quite adequate, but it's just that the other two roles required so much more. Angelo Badalamenti's music is never short of amazing, and the modern noir score of Blue Velvet is no different. Badalamenti even makes a cameo appearance as the piano player at Dorothy's club. Frederick Elmes - who also shot Lynch's first film Eraserhead - photographs the small town with vibrant colors. Then there's Lynch, whose direction and writing are in top form here. By any measure, Blue Velvet is an amazing achievement.

two-lane blacktop

2006-06-12T10:50:00.000-06:00

Two-Lane Blacktop
d. Monte Hellman, 1971

Nearly 35 after its original release, Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blactop feels starkly modern. Other films of the time - even loved ones like Easy Rider - don't feel nearly as powerful as I imagine they were upon their release. Hellman's film, which is the complete opposite of most car/road movies, tells its story with very little dialogue and a rather thin plot. At the center of the film are a cast of lonely characters and all of the actors are quite astonishing (with particularly brilliant performances by James Taylor as the Driver and Warren Oats as G.T.O). Though I'm sure it's not really important, the movie is about Taylor and Oats driving cross country (Taylor with a mechanic and a girl who tagged along pretter early on, Oats by himself), eventually G.T.O challenged the Driver to a race to Washington, D.C., and he accepts on the condition that they race for pink slips to their cars. Soon enough, the narrative gives way to the more abstract part of the film, in which G.T.O and his lies become the saddest part of the film. Hellman really had something going here, and I demand a second viewing.

who framed roger rabbit

2006-06-11T13:54:00.000-06:00

Who Framed Roger Rabbit
d. Robert Zemeckis, 1988

I'm not exactly sure why it took me so long to get around to watching Robert Zemeckis' Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Thankfully, the film lived up to its hype. It's terribly fun to watch, the way the filmmakers blend animations with live action scenes is quite astonishing. The film, for those of you who don't know, is a detective story that draws from elements of both Raymond Chandler and from films like Chinatown. The wonderful opening sequence shows Roger Rabbit (one of the craziest characters in the history of movies) rehearsing a scene from his later cartoon. His boss thinks the reason why Roger keeps messing up during the scene has to do with problems at home. He hires a detective, played by Bob Hoskins, to spy on Jessica Rabbit so he can convince Roger that she's cheating on him. Hoskins gets the evidence and Roger goes crazy. By the next morning, Marvin Acme - the guy who was allegedly having an affair with Jessica - is dead, and Roger is the prime suspect. The film then follows an intricate plot through a series of magnificent scenes which all come together in the end. The opening scene and the extended Toontown sequence are reasons to enough to watch the film. On any level, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is an awesome movie.

a hard day's night

2006-06-11T11:32:00.000-06:00

A Hard Day's Night
d. Richard Lester, 1964

Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night is loved by those who have seen it, but it is terribly underrated as a film. Lester would go on to make better films, particularly 1965's comedy The Knack... and How to Get It, but this is certainly his defining movie. At the time it was made, the Beatles were already superstars but not the icons that they are today, Lester had a very small budget for the film, so he had to incorporate the techniques directors like Cassavetes, Godard, and Truffaut invented. Lester's use of grainy photography, handheld cameras, and snappy editing is far more accesible here than it was in the films by the other directors, and it foreshadowed the change in the American studio system that would come about in the late 60s and through the 70s. The film, as everyone knows, follows the Beatles through a day in their life. The script, by Alun Owen, is quite funny and Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr are amazing here. Oh yeah, and the songs are pretty good too.

repulsion

2006-06-11T11:19:00.000-06:00

Repulsion
d. Roman Polanski, 1965

Roman Polanski's nightmare of a film, Repulsion, is perhaps his greatest achievement, it's certainly more accomplished than his overrated neo-noir Chinatown. Repulsion belongs to a small group of films outside of Buñuel's ouvre that have the courage to have the free-form structure of a dream; these films include Albert Zugsmith's Confessions of an Opium Eater, Ingmar Bergman's Persona, Robert Altman's 3 Women, David Lynch's Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive, among others. Polanski's film revolves around the beautiful Catherine Deneuve (from Jacques Demy's glorious musicals The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort) as she conjures a lot of strange fantasies when left alone in an apartment by her sister, who went on vacation with her boyfriend. The film appears to have been a huge influence on Lynch's Eraserhead, in that they both observe how a repressed character functions in the real world (Lynch's character with the parents of the girl he got pregnant, Polanski's in the workplace) but ultimately focus on the time they spend alone in their homes. Frightening, poignant, and ultimately quite disturbing, Repulsion is an unnerving piece of work.

l'avventura

2006-06-11T08:49:00.000-06:00

L'Avventura
d. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960

Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura ("The Adventure"), arguably the most startling of modern films, has had so much written about it that it seems kind of pointless to throw out more superlatives. Nevertheless, watching L'Avventura has surely been one of the highlights of my movie-watching experience, and there are plenty reasons to try to seek out this classic. First of all, it is certainly a beautiful film. Antonioni's stark, black-and-white compositions are in top form here, and he uses plenty of exotic locations (particularly the opening island and water sequences) to contrast the detached mindset of his rich characters. Plot doesn't really play a big part in the film, to the viewer it registers more like a series of haunting portrayals of modern ennui. But briefly, the film follows some rich couples as they go on a boating trip to some island. Anna (Lea Massari) wanders off from the group and is never found again, the rest of the couples move on as if nothing ever happened. Her boyfriend, Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) quickly makes advances on Anna's best friend, Claudia (the beautiful Monica Vitti). That's pretty much all the story in this 145-minute film. But it's not as if it ever gets tedious, Antonioni's mastery of the form guides the fascinated viewer along effortlessly. For all its brilliance, L'Avventura still falls short of Antonioni's 1962 film L'Eclisse ("Eclipse"), which also stars Vitti as a young woman in the midst of existential crisis. For whatever reason, if you ever want to see the most artistic and beautiful portrayals of modern ennui ever put on film, rent L'Avventura and L'Eclisse.

a prairie home companion

2006-06-10T19:10:00.000-06:00

A Prairie Home Companion
d. Robert Altman, 2006

I haven't really kept up with Altman's recent films. I worship the movies he made in the 70s and his comeback films from the early 90s, The Player and Short Cuts, but I haven't seen anything he made after that. That is, until this year's A Prairie Home Companion. Altman, who is now 81, still knows how to make a pretty good movie. The overlapping dialogue is there, the undercurrent of sadness is there, but there seems to be something missing from this film. I'm not really sure what it is, but it has something to do with the feel of his 70s movies. Of all the Altman films I have seen, none of them have a sentimental ending, but A Prairie does. It's that, along with several other missteps, that keep this film from standing alongside his better stuff. The film itself is very enjoyable, it follows the backstage antics of the last radio show of "A Prairie Home Companion." The audience gets several interesting performances by such diverse actors as Lily Tomlin (who starred in Altman's Nashville 31 years ago), Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, John C. Riley, Lindsay Lohan, and "Prairie Home Companion" veteran Garrison Keillor (who also scripted the movie). Now about those missteps, the whole thing with Virginia Madsen being an angel was rather superflous (was Altman thinking of Claudia Cardinale in Fellini's 8 1/2), and the Kevin Kline charatcter, though sometimes very funny, did not need to be the string holding the movie together. Still, I recommend the film, but anyone interested in Altman needs to seek out his earlier stuff (the Museum of Fine Arts is screening California Split in late July). Is this film as good as Altman's previous musical-driven movie, Nashville? Of course not, but that would be like saying "Well, Match Point isn't nearly as good as Annie Hall." It isn't, but we should be grateful to have such great directors still amongst us. And if Robert Altman never makes another movie, A Prairie Home Companion will be a fitting swan song.

three times

2006-06-10T15:17:00.000-06:00

Three Times
d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005

My only hope for watching Hou Hsiao-hsien's latest wonderful film Three Times again is that it is magically released in Houston. Either that or waiting for a DVD, but it's not remotely the same thing. At least the copy I saw of it was quite nice (import DVD quality), but this is truly a film that needs to be seen on the big screen.

Three Times is essentially three different films that revolve around the same two actors (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) in three different time periods: 1966, 1911, and 2005, in that order. The first part, subtitled "A Time for Love," tells the story of a soldier who falls in love with a girl who works at a pool hall. When he returns not to find her there, he searches all over Taiwan, and the section concludes with a lovely shot of them under an umbrella while it's raining, holding hands.

The second part ("A Time for Freedom"), the saddest of the three, takes place in 1911 and this time Shu is a concubine and Chang is a journalist. She wants to be freed (married) and he is too busy writing about his revolutionary ideals to really notice her. While the first section ends in hope, this part, which plays out like a silent film (title cards and all), ends with a shot of Shu crying, and Hou's compositions highlight her trapped environment.

"A Time for Youth," the concluding segment, takes place in modern day Taiwan and follows a bisexual rock star and her male photographer lover. The sequences in this final segment are particularly hypnotic and it may be my favorite of the three. It is in some ways also the darkest, with Shu's clingy female lover committing suicide and implying that another of Shu's lover has done so before. This last part ends the same way it begins, with the detached couple, Shu and Chang, riding in his motorcycle down a busy street. There is some symmetry between the three parts; the first ends in happiness, the second in sadness, and the final segment in utter indifference and ennui.

Three Times has a lot to say about the nature of relationships and the different barriers between people. Each of the three "times" could stand as its own great, if short, film, but the overall experience of watching the three segments is really something exceptional.

the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, the phantom of liberty, that obscure object of desire

2006-06-10T14:26:00.000-06:00

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
d. Luis Buñuel, 1972

In my opinion the greatest thing Buñuel ever made, 1972's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is truly a surreal masterpiece. It has all of Buñuel's signature aspects, including the matter-of-fact storytelling method, surreal images, and the assumption that the entire movie makes more sense if you think of it as a dream. It follows three rich couples as they find that they are not able to sit down for dinner. Brilliant scene after brilliant scene, Buñuel fights the bourgeois ideals that he was raised under, showing the true hypocrisy of human "progress."

The Phantom of Liberty
d. Luis Buñuel, 1974

Buñuel's most free-form film, this 1974 gem is perhaps his most audacious exercise. The basic structure of the film is that it follows one character through some strange incident where he comes across another character, which now becomes to the story's focal point, and so on until we've come so far from where we've started that all the audience can do is look back and reflect on Buñuel's formal mastery of the medium. Each of the surreal sequence is magnificent, and in each of them Buñuel is again challenging the accepted values of society.

That Obscure Object of Desire
d. Luis Buñuel, 1977

The last film Buñuel ever made, 1977's That Obscure Object of Desire, still showcases his trademark brand of filmmaking. He was almost 80 when he made it, but you wouldn't know it by watching the film, which is so full of intellectual wit and poignant satire that it could just as easily be the first film by an up and coming director. A great examination on the reasons why humans are instinctively drawn to one another, and the perils and charms of being attached to another person. The car blowing up at the beginning of the film could be seen as the summary of Buñuel's savage poetry.

in a lonely place

2006-06-10T14:12:00.000-06:00

In a Lonely Place
d. Nicholas Ray, 1950

One of the greatest of all film-noirs, Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place is a very special film. It features Humphrey Bogart in easily his greatest role (yes, better than Casablanca) it's also perhaps Ray's greatest film along with Johnny Guitar. In a Lonely Place is the story of a tough screenwriter named Dix Steele (Bogart) who at the beginning of the film takes a waitress home to read a book he has to adapt for him. She leaves his house and is found dead the next day. Being the last known person to see her alive, they call him into the police station. They also call in his neighbor Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), who says he saw her say goodbye to the waitress and get right into his bed. It is obvious that she is partly lying, but she trusts Dix entirely and eventually they begin seeing in each other, despite the suspicion of the police officers. Throughout the whole movie more and more about Dix's violent side is revealed; he beats up a young man who comments on his driving, he almost chokes Laurel, and suddenly the trust between them is so strong. By the end of the film, in which everything is resolved, Ray gives us a final, infinitely sad, shot of the Bogart walking away. Yes, everything is resolved. But for Laurel and Dix it is much too late.

the bitter tears of petra von kant

2006-06-10T14:00:00.000-06:00

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
d. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972

My favorite Fassbinder film, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, may also be his most underrated. Amongst mainstream film critcs, 1974's Fear Eats the Soul or The Marriage of Maria Braun are the most talked about. A lot of web critics prefer 1978's masterpiece In a Year of 13 Moons, but The Bitter Tears is the one that, for me, showcases the reasons why Fassbinder is one of the great modern filmmakers. It is certainly the most rigorous example of his visual style, as it all takes place in the title character's apartment. Adapted from his own play, Fassbinder structures the film with only four major scenes, and it runs about two hours long. The first scene introduces to Petra Von Kant, a famous fashion designer who mistreats her assistant Marlene. A friend of Petra's, Sidonie, comes to visit her and she brings her model friend, Karin, along. Petra invites the aspiring model for dinner, which will be the second scene. At the end of the second part, Petra convinces Karin to move in with her and they seem like they will be very happy. But this is a Fassbinder's film, and the third part shows us how their relationship has gone sour and Karin no longer listens to Petra, she even goes as far as leaving her for her husband. The last, and best, scene of the film shows Petra's breakdown as she comes to term with her loss. We see her mother and her teenage daughter for the first time. The final heartbreaking scene is truly breathtaking. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is claustrophic family melodrama at its finest.

the dreamers

2006-06-10T13:43:00.000-06:00

The Dreamers
d. Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003

Bernardo Bertolucci, the director of Last Tango in Paris, revisited the events of May '68 with his 2003 film The Dreamers. The first time I saw it, I was rather enchanted by it. What cinephile could resist a movie that contains so many movie references? Everything from Tod Browning's Freaks to Jean-Luc Godard's Band of Outsiders is mentioned in the film (for a purpose), and the soundtrack (Hendrix's "Hey Joe," The Doors' "The Spy," Bob Dylan's "Queen Jane Approximately" among others) is equally charming. However, subsequent viewings made me see the faults of the film, most notably the obvious romanticizing of the era, the lack of focus on Theo's (Louis Garrel) sexuality when Isabelle's (Eva Green) and Matthew's (Michael Pitt) are so thoroughly explored. Oh yeah, the film is about an American student, Matthew, who meets twins Isabella and Theo in Paris. They all love movies and they invite him to stay at their apartment for a month since their parents will be out of town. Trouble ensues. The one thing that doesn't wear off about The Dreamers is the knowledge that Bertolucci is one of the great painters of modern cinema. The scenes in the film are so delicately composed that it makes me want to forget the problems I had with the film. Nonetheless, problems there are. Oh, but what a lovely film this could have been.

P.S. Louis Garrel's father, experimental filmmaker Philippe Garrel made a film about the events of May '68 (as a response to Bertolucci's film) called The Regular Lovers. It has not screened in Houston but I hope to watch it in the near future.

y tu mama tambien

2006-06-10T13:32:00.000-06:00

Y tu mamá también
d. Alfonso Cuarón, 2001

Alfonso Cuarón's 2001 film Y tu mamá también is a rarity amongst film dealing with teenagers: it's funny, smart, and poignantly sad. Cuarón tells his story with an incredible amount of economy, leading the audience effortlessly through a landscape of difficult subjects while keeping them interested at all times. The beautiful grainy photography is beyong extraodinary, and the way Cuarón chooses to compose his shots reminded me of Antonioni. The script, which Cuarón wrote with his brother, is wonderfully effective and fells infinitely more real than the myriad of American teen comedies released around the same time (most notably the horrendous American Pie). As far as genre conventions go, Y tu mamá también would have to be defined as a road movie, and it works great as one. On one level it's a coming-of-age story of two teenage boys at the hands of an older woman, it's also about the way youth tends to block out the issues of the outside world, and finally it's about dealing and coming to terms with death. Y tu mamá también is a magnificent film indeed.

sunrise

2006-06-10T13:24:00.000-06:00

Sunrise
d. F.W. Murnau, 1927

In my opinion the greatest of all silent films, F.W. Murnau's Sunrise a film of great beauty. Murnau came to Hollywood to make this film from his native Germany, where he had created such works as Nosferatu and The Last Laugh. Great as those early films are, Sunrise is easily his greatest achievement and a summary of everything there is to admire about the lost art of silent film. Starting of with a rather simple story of marital discord - Man betrays his wife, plans to kill her, backs out, must redeem himself - and turns it into expressionistic poetry. In its striking montages, Murnau foreshadows the work of directors like Jean Cocteau as well a masterpieces like Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (which may be the only film that approximates the wonderful feel of this movie). As beautiful as any film ever made, Sunrise (subtitled "A Song of Two Humans") is a landmark of cinema.

vertigo

2006-06-10T12:56:00.000-06:00

Vertigo
d. Alfred Hitchcock, 1958

For the most part, it isn't very hard to write about films. During the viewing process one develops certain opinions on different aspects of the movie. But, every once in a while, there's a movie that eludes criticism. For me it's usually the films I love the most. It's more difficult for me to explain why I love, say, Jules and Jim so much than why I admire the work of John Cassavetes. The same goes for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which has been my favorite movie for quite some time. Yes, I can watch it endlessly, but what about is so captivating and mysterious that it seems to tower above all other films?

I'm not exactly sure that I'm yet ready to answer that question, but this "review" will serve as a series of reasons to why I cherish this film. First, it's certainly one of the most beautiful color films ever made, and Hitchcock's visual style has never been better. Everything from the famous zoom-in as the camera is pulled back right down to the final shot is absolutely incredible. Then there's the unforgettable Bernard Herrmann music, and Vertigo's is arguable his best score.

Briefly, Vertigo is about Scottie (James Stewart), a retired detective who is hired by his old college friend Gavin (Tom Helmore) to spy on his wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak). That's pretty much all one should know before watching Vertigo for the first time, as it features some of the craziest plot twists in the history of movies.

There's a fantastic sequence in Chris Marker's essay film Sans soleil where he revisits several places Hitchcock used Vertigo, Marker talks about the film's ability to represent something he calls "impossible memory," referring to the way Madeleine knows so much about someone she should never have met. There are a lot of questions left up to the viewer at the end of Vertigo, some that are never really answered, no matter how many times you watch it (Marker has seen it 17 times according to Sans soleil).

Basically, every film lover has a movie that for them summarizes all the reasons why they love film in the first place. Without a doubt, Vertigo is that film for me. And if I can't articulate my reasons for it, then maybe it's only appropiate.

mccabe & mrs. miller, the long goodbye, california split, nashville, 3 women

2006-06-10T12:24:00.000-06:00

With Robert Altman's recent honorary Academy Award and his new film, A Prairie Home Companion, out in theatres, I thought I'd look back on Altman's most productive decade, the 1970s. I can't think of another American director who had a better run than Altman did between 1971 and 1977. Great film after great film, and they are as follows:

McCabe & Mrs. Miller d. Robert Altman, 1971

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is my favorite Altman and also, in my opinion, the greatest western ever made. Few films are able to establish such an overwhelming sense of mood and location as this post-modern anti-western. The film is about two people, John McCabe (Warren Beatty) and Constance Miller (Julie Christie), who are not really able to communicate with the outside world. McCabe because of his own insecurities and fears, Mrs. Miller because of her opium smoking. As one of the most beautiful yet saddest films ever made, Altman's ethereal McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a melancholy poem and one of the key American films of all time.

The Long Goodbye d. Robert Altman, 1973

Altman's deonstruction of the crime genre is truly an amazing piece of cinema. Elliot Gould is exceptional as Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, and Altman takes Chandler's source material and turns it into a film that is definitely his own. At once funny, frightening, suspenseful, and elegiac, The Long Goodbye could be the definitive post-modern exercise of the decade.

California Split d. Robert Altman, 1974

The Museum of Fine Arts will be screening this film in late July, which will be a great opportunity to see Altman's 'Scope compositions on the big screen. Easily one of his best, California Split is in my opinion one of the best movies ever made about gambling. George Segal and Elliot Gould star as the gamblers who go from happy go-lucky pals to being involved in a desparate attempt to win back their money. Truly a heartbreaking (but as with all of Altman's, fun) portrayal of the utter emptiness of vices.
Nashville d. Robert Altman, 1975

One of Altman's most beloved films, Nashville takes place over the course of a weekend in the title city right before a Presidential primary. A film about a diverse group of characters go bump into one another through a series of brilliant scenes, this may be the most perfect example of Altman's signature style: overlapping dialogue, long takes, and an ironic sense of humanty (which crescendos on the final scene). Wonderful performances all around, which includes the singing a lot of these actors did for their role. In essence, Nashville is a film about America.

3 Women d. Robert Altman, 1977

If it weren't for McCabe, 3 Women would have to be my favorite Altman movie. Certainly his strangest film, it resembles something like Ingmar Bergman's Persona (an obvious influence on Altman) than the earlier movies he made. The film is about the relationship between 3 women (you don't say!) brilliantly played by Shelley Duvall (who wont Best Actress at Cannes for this film), Sissy Spacek (Badlands), and Janice Rule. 3 Women is an amazing, if indefinable, film that everyone needs to see; one of the key films of the 1970s.

before sunrise, before sunset

2006-06-10T11:56:00.000-06:00

Before Sunrise
d. Richard Linklater, 1995

Perhaps I didn't approach Before Sunrise the way it was actually meant to be seen. I saw this and its sequel on the same day, so, for me, the confusion people must have felt at the end of back in '95 was never really there. With that said, I don't know that that really diminished my viewing experience, and Sunrise is a great film. Having seen Dazed and Confused and Waking Life prior to this, I sort of knew what to expect. I was looking forward to watching a film that depended largely on conversation and not so much on plot, I was expecting some pretty long organic takes, and I knew I would not be disappointed. But my expectations, though all were met, did not prepare me for the nuance and power of Before Sunrise. Easily one of the great romances in the history of the movies, the film catalogues the first encounter between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), as they meet on a train to Vienna. He's the American guy touring Europe on his way to catch his plane, she's riding the train to Paris where she lives. After a spirited conversation, he convinces her to leave the train and walk around Vienna with him until he has to board his plane (at Sunrise). The film follows them around town as they talk about everything from dreams, to their past, and everything in between. The staggering amount of lovely scenes in Before Before make it worth the time even if it didn't have anything to say about the nature of human connections. By the end of the film, it becomes pretty obvious that Jesse and Celine have fallen in love. But being the optimistic young people that they are, they decide to meet in the same place 6 months later without exchanging phone numbers or any contact information. Sunrise ends with separate shots of each of them; it is shocking, because by this time we are not used to seeing them without each other.

Before Sunset
d. Richard Linklater, 2004

Like I mentioned earlier, I saw Before Sunset immediately after being blown away by Sunrise, and there was no way the sequel (made 9 years later) was going to approximate the power of the original. However, 5 minutes into the film it becomes pretty obvious that everyone involved in the film (from Hawke to Delpy to Linklater) have grown over the 9 years, and have learned how to make a better, more thoughtful and mature movie. Sunset begins in Paris, Jesse is doing a book-signing for the novel he just wrote about the night he spent with Celine in Vienna 9 years earlier. Celine, who lives in Paris, comes to the bookstore to meet him, and they spend the subsequent 80 minutes (the film plays out in real time) walking around Paris figuring out if they are still as in love as they once were. They are now more mature and have a seemingly different and more realistic perspectives on life. And if the connection is there even 9 years after they first met, both of them act as if nothing is going to happen between them again, they are much too settled in life for such a change. A synopsis of the film--2 people walk around Paris for 80 minutes--seems rather dull, but let me just say that this is one of the most exhilarating of all recent films (certainly one of the best of the decade thus far). Linklater's direction is invisible here, as Jesse and Celine stroll down the streets of Paris through long, elaborate shots with a seemingly weightless camera following them. The script, which Linklater worked on with Hawke and Delpy, is even better than Sunrise's, mostly because the characters are now more intelligent and perhaps have more experiences behind them. On the surface Before Sunset a simple love story between two individuals, but on a deeper level it becomes about everyone who's ever encountered someone they felt they had some kind of connection with. And deeper still, beyond the perils of romantic relationships, it's a surprisingly deep examination on the nature of time. Before Sunset exceeds its predecessor on level, which is saying quite a lot. Few films are this exquisitely divine.

the blood of a poet, orpheus, testament of orpheus

2006-06-10T11:29:00.000-06:00

The Blood of a Poet
d. Jean Cocteau, 1930

Cocteau's first film, The Blood of a Poet, could be seen as the birth of the cinematic avant-garde movement. Other notable films of this period include Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un chien andalou and the work of Dziga Vertov. Cocteau's film, a 50-minute exploration of what it means to be an artist, may the most radical and beautiful of them all. As a series of striking unforgettable images, The Blood of a Poet is quite astonishing. But I prefer the more artful reading of the film, in which Cocteau (not only a filmmaker, but a poet, writer, painter, and boxing promoter) laid out the simple outline of the perils of being an artist. To my eyes and my ears The Blood of a Poet registers like a poem.

Orpheus
d. Jean Cocteau, 1949

The most linear of the three, Orpheus is to many Cocteau's best work. It takes the old Orphic myth in which a Greek musician recedes to the land of the dead to find his lover. There, Hades agreed to let her back to the world of the living on the condition that he not look at her. Cocteau's adaptation keeps the basic structure, but he brilliantly adds his own personal touch. There is a love triangle between Orpheus, his wife, and Death. It's also a beautiful portrayal of the culture of the time.

Testament of Orpheus
d. Jean Cocteau, 1960

Cocteau's final film is also the most free-form narrative of these three films, as it features Cocteau revisiting several stages of his career. Closer in its theme to The Blood of a Poet, Testament of Orpheus serves a final goodbye to one of cinema's greatest figures, and a final poignant examination on the relationship between the director and his films. The film has appearances by Cocteau's friend, Pablo Picasso, the cast of Orpheus, and French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Leud.

pickpocket

2006-06-10T10:46:00.000-06:00

Pickpocket
d. Robert Bresson, 1959

Pickpocket, one of Bresson's very best, may very well the definitive Bressonian film. His technique, which many have tried to imitate, is in top form here; everything from his framing, editing rhythms, meticulous sound design (which includes the sparse use of music), right down to the final heartbreaking moment of true emotion.

Michel (Martin La Salle) is a pickpocket who is caught right at the beginning of the film. The police let him go - for they have no evidence - and he goes on with his activities without the slightest hint of guilt. Being a thief for Michel is not only a way for him to survive without having to get an actual job, one look at his eyes and the audience knows that he is looking for a true human connection. Bresson makes this very clear in the last few sequences, with Michel basically asking to be caught.

Over the course of Pickpocket, Michel also falls in love with Jeanne (Marika Green), who took care of his mother before she died. Jeanne constantly tried to convince Michel to go see her, but his arrogance (or maybe his guilt) kept him from ever actually speaking to her. Though it is obvious that Michel loves Jeanne from the first time they meet, the same insecurities that drove him to being a thief keep him from being able to connect with people. It isn't until the last shot that the audience, and Michel himself, can feel that there is hope for human connection even the most detached of enviornments. Pickpocket, along with Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (which also incorporates elements of Kafka and Sartre), may be the closest thing we have to Camus on the screen.

breathless to weekend

2006-06-09T19:55:00.000-06:00

Breathless
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960

Godard's first film and to many his best. Quite revolutionary and could be seen as the starting point for modern cinema. Belmondo and Seberg make up one of the best couples in the history of cinema. Fast-paced storytelling and post-modern existential crime story.

A Woman is a Woman
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1961

Very enjoyable musical beautifully shot in 'Scope. Anna Karina's performance is reason alone to seek out this film. But if you really want to see a brilliant French musical, seek out either Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort.

My Life to Live
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1962

Once again, Karina's performance is the highlight here. My Life to Live could very well be Godard's most poetic film, the editing rhythms are quite entrancing. The scene with Karina crying after watching Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc is heartbreaking.

Contempt
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1963

One of Godard's very best. A brilliant examination on why movies are important in the first place. Godard may be going to far by saying that cinema is more important than everything else, but it's still a brilliantly constructed movie. Fritz Lang playing himself, Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli playing a detached couple, and beautiful color cinematography. One of the great movies about making movies.

Band of Outsiders
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1964

In my opinion the best thing Godard's ever done. Odile (Anna Karina), Sami Frey (Franz), and Claude Brasseur (Arthur) make up one of the great love triangles in the movies. On the surface a post-modern exercise and reworking of Hollywood B-movies, on a deeper level a beautiful life-affirming statement about the world we live in.

Alphaville
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

Never really understood this one and I definitely should watch it again. From what I remember, it seemed like a pretty interesting take on the sci-fi genre. Karina, once again, was great.

Pierrot le fou
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

Perhaps the most captivating couple in all of Godard's movies, Karina and Belmondo drive the movie. The movie is a series of misadventures, and I remember most of them being quite amusing. As this is one of Godard's most revered films, it certainly warrants a second viewing.

Masculine-Feminine
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1966

Another one of my personal favorites. Chantal Goya plays a pop-star and the iconic Jean-Pierre Leud plays the intellectual young man, the epitome what I imagine someone from the 60s to be. One of Godard's most playful films, it's the best film ever made about "the kids of Marx and Coca-Cola."

Two or Three Things I Know About Her
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1967

The first Godard film I ever saw, and I didn't particularly respond to it immediately. Upon some thinking, however, a very visual satire on the American way of living. One of Godard's most complicated films, and perhaps it wasn't the best choice for me to be introduced to him. I urgently need to re-watch it.

Weekend
d. Jean-Luc Godard, 1967

This film, which closed off Godard's New Wave period, is perhaps his most anarchistic. Weekend is closer to the late work of Buñuel (particularly The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty) than to Godard's earlier stuff. There's a wonderfully long tracking shot that spans about ten minutes and chronicles a long line of traffic. As far as Godard's work goes, this rigorous shot is only matched by 1972's Tout va bien.

stranger than paradise

2006-06-09T18:46:00.000-06:00

Stranger Than Paradise
d. Jim Jarmusch, 1984

Perhaps more than any film of the 1980s, Jim Jarmusch's breakthrough film Stranger Than Paradise has everything that I instinctively love about movies. It has grainy, black-and-white compositions, all of the scenes are made up of one shot, there aren't a lot of characters in the film, and, above all, the story takes a back seat to character.

Stranger Than Paradise, Jarmusch's first non-student film, pretty much laid down the basic formula for his next couple of projects. It wasn't until 1995's Dead Man that he would depart from the Cassavetes meets Warhol New York hipster type of mentality (which I love). And this is the definitive film of that period in his career.

It tells the "story" of hipster Willie (John Lurie, who did the music for the film), who spends most of his time in his apartment watching tv or making money gambling or at the tracks with his friend Eddie (Richard Edson). At the beginning of the film, Willie receives the news that his Hungarian cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) will be visiting him for a week before she leaves for Ohio. At first, they don't really get along, and Jarmusch shoots their distant relationship in unforgettable single-shot scenes in which, for the most part, the camera doesn't move.

When it finally comes time for Eva to leave, Willie has become attached to her but is too cool to admit it. A couple of days later, after winning a lot of money from a game of cards, Willie and Eddie decide to take a roadtrip to Ohio and visit Eva and Willie's aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark). The scenes set in Ohio are just as captivating as the ones in New York, and the key line of the film comes when Eddie looks around the snow in Ohio and says, "you know, it's funny, you come someplace new, and everything looks the same."

Soon enough they get tired of Ohio and, for some reason or another, decided to go to Florida. They take Eva with them, and this concluding passage of the film is at once the best and most problematic (mostly due to story contrivances which don't really matter). Though the conclusion of Stranger Than Paradise is quite depressing, there was no better way for Jarmusch to end his beautifully melancholy film.