Recently Watched Films 2013

[Dan Warburton]

Louis Malle, Vie privée, 1962

A terrible bore, despite classy camerawork and decor. The dialogue is dull and stilted - it's even worse in the English dubbed version, apparently - and none of the actors seems remotely interested in the story. Certainly not Mastroianni, and he doesn't seem all that interested in Bardot either, which is a bit of a problem. Bardot pouts and curls her lower lip and looks bored, but that's just about all she ever did anyway. So what that the scene where she's recognised by a cleaning lady in a lift and chewed out good and proper actually happened to BB in real life - if you want to see herds of paparazzi trying to catch a glimpse of la star, watch Jacques Rozier's Paparazzi instead - it only lasts 20 minutes which means you'll have time to watch a decent movie afterwards.

[Dan Warburton]

Archie Mayo, The Petrified Forest, 1936

Still hilarious after all these years (though I don't think it was supposed to be) - with the exception of Bogart, whose Duke Mantee launched his career, it's a casting disaster. Never could take Leslie Howard seriously - best thing that happens to him is when Bogart blows him away - and can't decide whether Bette Davis is deliberately hamming it up to take the piss out of the whole affair.

[Dan Warburton]

Maya Deren, Ritual in Transfigured Time, 1946



Philippe Garrel, Rue Fontaine, 1984

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Rush, Lili Fini Zanuck, 1991

- Jason Patric, the reason I watched this film, was 24 years old at the time but easily looks ten years older- just to express my surprise.
- I like Jennifer Jason Leigh but there are moments where I find that her voice is really painful to hear. When she does what she believes is an impersonation of Dorothy Parker, in Mrs. Parker and The Vicious Circle by Alan Rudolph, it's even worse than that. Unfortunately for her, one can hear samples of Mrs. Parker's voice on youtube, which you couldn't do twenty years ago.
- Back to Rush, a wannabee The Panic In Needle Park (which I haven't seen), only with two undercover cops, I didn't like it, 'twas dull and boring.

[Dan Warburton]

Abdellatif Kechiche, La graine et le mulet ("Couscous"), 2007

The fact that the IMDb plot summary - itself cut 'n' pasted from the Venice Film Festival blurb - starts out by misspelling the principal character's name (Mr. Slimani, indeed - Slimane is his first name, you dingbats) speaks volumes. Overall, Mike Leigh fan that I am, I was quite impressed - the in-yer-face handheld camerawork didn't bother me too much, though it could have lost at least half an hour with a bit of judicious editing. 148 minutes is pushing it a bit. But what let it down more was the ending - after going out of his way throughout the film to show that Slimane and his family are as French as the snotty deputy mayor and his sicko wife, Kechiche throws in the ultimate exotic cliché by having his lead actress do a belly dance to keep the guests amused (the whole idea of the couscous not turning up inevitably reminded me of the legendary Fawlty Towers "Gourmet Night" episode), which is just about as silly as Slimane himself dropping dead from a heart attack. The thing should have ended as it began - neorealist, not surrealist.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

I haven't seen the film, except for an excerpt of that belly dance scene and even for someone like me who is completely ignorant on the subject, it's obvious that the actress wouldn't know how to belly dance her way out of a paper bag. Plus she seems to have put on too much weight (or Kechiche made her do that - something like 33 pounds from what I'm told) - again, there is no shortage of belly dance videos on youtube and if I'm to believe them, dancers look a little slimmer.



The Beast of War, Kevin Reynolds, 1988

Another one with Jason Patric. Hailed as an underrated masterpiece on imdb, while it has some of the trappings of Cold War propaganda, it's easy to look past them some twenty five years after the film's release and after America, among others, waged its own war in Afghanistan. At any rate, the film mostly works on a metaphorical level, and it's convenient that the soldiers should speak perfect American, they are as Americans as they are Russians and in fact, they could be anyone, isn't American English the new Esperanto? As for the film itself, there are some stunning ideas but it's only competently made which leaves one a little frustrated.

[Dan Warburton]

Alain Tanner, La salamandre, 1971

Only the second Tanner film I've seen, after Dans la ville blanche (reviews passim), but I'm going to grab as many of them as I can from now on. As one review put it rather eloquently, "this is what happens when the New Wave breaks on the rocky shores of 1968" (they said that about Out1 and La Maman et La Putain too, so I guess Mr T is in good company), or, rather, on the mountains of Jura, and turns into snow falling on the dreary suburbs of Geneva. It's funny, sure - Tanner allows his two male protagonists (the wonderfully unphotogenic Jean-Luc Bideau and Jacques Denis) plenty of opportunities to take the piss out of the staid mores of Suisse Romande, and each other - but kind of scary too. You come out with the feeling that Rosemonde - Bulle Ogier, a sensational performance - could end up doing something really stupid and life-threatening. Maybe she has already.. go see the film and find out!

[Dan Warburton]

James Foley, Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992

Apart from a coat check girl glimpsed briefly, there are no women anywhere to be found in David Mamet's adaptation of his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Presumably they've got more sense than to get involved with a crew of foulmouthed hypocrites such as this. IMDb helpfully informs us that there are 138 uses of the word ''fuck'' (no wonder the actors dubbed the thing "Death of a Fuckin' Salesman" in rehearsals), plus 50 shits, 6 cocksuckers, a couple of cunts and a faggot. But expletives have rarely been uttered with such spectacular relish. The stellar cast - Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin - chews the scenery to pieces. Quoth Wiki: "Because of the film’s modest budget" (dunno, $12m doesn't sound all that shabby for what is essentially a one room-set affair - two if you count the Chinese restaurant across the street) "many of the actors took significant pay cuts. For example, Pacino cut his per-movie price from $6 million to $1.5 million, Lemmon was paid $1 million, Baldwin received $250,000, and so on." Whether you think they're worth it or not is up to you, but considering the obscene sums that get paid to semi-literate cretins to kick balls at each other or slamdunk them into hoops, I'd say Pacino's pretty good value for money myself. That said, the (not inconsiderable) pleasure of the film is watching the actors do their thing - nobody does smarm better than Lemmon, and nobody does snide better than Spacey - there's no point looking for any "moral" in the story, other than capitalism is ruthless, cynical, dehumanizing and infinitely versatile, and you knew that anyway. The only character we might feel a slight twinge of sympathy for (Lemmon, and only then because we see he's trying desperately to scrape up the money for his daughter's medical care) turns out to be the one who actually commits the criminal offence.

[jon abbey]

I saw that on Broadway when I was 18, kind of shocked to see how short a run it had then (less than 11 months). I was a big Mamet fan around then, but I grew out of it pretty quickly. the cast to the film is incredible, though, that would have been great to see live.

[Dan Warburton]

I see from the Village Voice site I swiped the image from that Big Al has also played Shelly Levene on stage (as opposed to Ricky Roma in the film). He must really like the play! If you like a good bit of overacting, check out the movie, Jon.

[jon abbey]

yeah, I've seen it.

[Dan Warburton]

Yves Allégret, Manèges, 1949

Great title, which can translate as riding school, merrry-go-round, or little game. Poor sap Robert (Bernard Blier) gets taken for a ride all right by his pretty young wife Dora (Simone Signoret in one of her first really great roles) and her crass, scheming mother (Jane Marken, whose diabolical Wicked Witch of the West laughter haunts the film). The story's told through a complex web of voiceovers and flashbacks - those iris shots and fuzzy dissolves try the patience after a while - and the script is terrific, ranging from smart and subtle jibes at the class system to an explosion of expletives as Robert realises he's been well and truly had. Salope! Garce! (Once more I can only regret the strictures of the Production Code.. I would have loved to hear Bogart say "bitch!", or Bacall purr "bastard!") Nice article here, in French http://sniffandpuff.blogspot.fr/2009/04 ... -1949.html

[Dan Warburton]

Lars Von Trier, Melancholia, 2011

Just as the opening minutes of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra will forever be "the music from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey" (go google "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and that's the first thing that pops up - even Nietzsche gets pushed into second place!), I suspect I'll never again be able to listen to the Prelude from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde without thinking of LVT's 19-hole golf course, horses falling over, and Kirsten Dunst running in slowmotion dragging a huge ball of wool behind her. And LVT surely had 2001 in mind, if those planets moving past each other in the introductory sequence are anything to go by (this prelude tells the whole story of the film, such as it is, so if you want to watch that and then go to the movies, to quote Pauline Kael's line when she walked out of Céline et Julie vont en bateau, you can). But he was out-Kubricked for the Palme d'Or at Cannes that year by The Tree of Life, which, though I didn't like it any more than this, at least had some fine cinematography.
There's something slapdash and shoddy about the whole affair. "Trier employed his usual directing style with no rehearsals, instead the actors improvised and received instructions between the takes," we're told. Dogme95 was just fine in, well, 1995, but the "clash between what is romantic and grand and stylized and then some form of reality" doesn't mean anything here. It's one or the other - jittery handheld camera's fine for the family feuding (though Festen did it better), but a bit of decent camerawork and a well-written script might have been more appropriate for The End Of The World As We Know It (and Kirsten's feeling fine).
Penelope Cruz was originally slated to play Justine (but was eventually drawn to the Higher Art of Pirates of the Caribbean), which might have been more visually convincing. Dunst is OK - she doesn't have to do much, and I don't see why she managed to scoop up so many awards for what's basically little more than a competent performance - but she certainly bears no sororal resemblance to Charlotte Gainsbourg. Maybe that doesn't matter, but it bothered me. Nice cameos from John Hurt (who is ugly enough to pass as Charlotte's daddy) and Charlotte Rampling as his bitchy ex-wife, but the family story is never developed, and abandoned altogether as the blue death star zooms in in Part Two. We never find out why the husband (dreadful sub-Viggo Mortensen purring from Alexander Skarsgård) buggers off, or Hurt for that matter. Never mind, the topiary in the ground of Tjolöholm Castle is pretty. I'd like to think LVT chose it for its Last Year at Marienbad feel, but maybe he picked the place because it's just up the road from Copenhagen on the Swedish side of the pond, and he's too lazy to go the extra mile.

[Dan Warburton]

Nicholas Ray, Born to be Bad, 1950

[Dan Warburton]

David Lynch, Blue Velvet, 1986

[Dan Warburton]

Jacques Demy, La baie des anges, 1963

Interesting to see how opinion on this seems quite polarised. The story - humble bank clerk (Claude Mann, nondescript) who gets hooked on gambling, escapes to Riviera and shacks up with bleached blonde casino crawler (Jeanne Moreau, much better here than she was in Losey's Eva) wins, loses, wins, loses, wins a little and loses all - is a bore. The Michel Legrand theme music goes round and round and on and on and gets hopelessly stuck in your head - as all Michel Legrand tunes do. Maybe it's supposed to. Maybe I'm supposed to care about these people, but I don't. Some nice shots of old Nice, and there's the opening high-speed tracking shot along the Promenade des Anglais, but apart from that, nothing much to write home about.

[Dan Warburton]

Costa-Gavras, Z, 1969

Still packs a mighty punch. Terrific cast, great script (Semprun), magnificent camerawork (Raoul Coutard, say no more). Lots of tasty bonuses on the Criterion set too. Yippee.

[Dan Warburton]

Byambasuren Davaa, Die Höhle des gelben Hundes( "The Cave of the Yellow Dog"), 2005

Would I ever have heard of it, let alone seen it, if it hadn't been another one of the splendid KG Featured Torrents? Big fan that I am of Mikhalkov's Urga, I guess there's an outside chance. But I doubt it. Starring (not the word) a real family of Mongolian nomads - and their dog, which definitely deserves an Oscar - this is the only chance you're ever likely to get to see a yurt being dismantled, a side of mutton smoked over fire of dried ox dung and a two-and-a-half year old boy running fearlessly towards a pack of vicious vultures. Don't miss it. I suspect in half a century this way of life will be lost and gone forever.

[Hayao Yamaneko]

Great write up Dan - that looks fantastic. Definitely going on the list.

Off tonight, with high hopes, to see The Act of Killing.

[Hayao Yamaneko]

Just came back from the above.
Very singular film, very difficult to come to a conclusion. So what's below is just initial thoughts and thought processes.

I watched it with Dom Lash and I think he felt more uneasy about it than I did - and he might be right to. We talked about how it gave voice to the killers and not to the victims, how it acted as a grand cathartic therapy session for war criminals, and how maybe the pacing of the film, the way it ends, wrings out sympathy for the killer - veering too close to christian-humanist salation-by-confession.

I think all that is definitely true, though it's by no means exhaustive and I'm really still struggling to work out what I think and how I feel about it all.
I'm struggling to decide how the above criticisms weigh against the film's successes. Like showing the degree to which the legacy and memory of these murders are not only embedded in the fabric of indonesian society as an open secret, but even celebrated- so much so that the killings make an acceptable subject for light banter on a Jakartan chat show. Also the clarity with which the film shows evil becoming banal, becoming drained of affect, transformed into banter and dirty jokes.

For a lot of the running time, the events relayed are literally unbelievable. Perhaps this is a strange admission, and it might make me seem to lack empathy, but for most of the film I felt utterly removed from the truth of what they did - from any deeply felt sense of its awfulness, from any emotional response to it. And I felt that way as I watched them boasting in detail about what they did. And I'd hold that up as one of the film's strengths; it shows you that situation - the power of personality to mediate atrocities, the banality of crude charm - and gives you space to reflect on it.

Another thought that occurs to me is that though this fails to give any voice to the victims, that giving voice isn't the only way to intervene morally here. In fact, in our affetive regime, where atrocity-movies, abuse-narratives and shock-documentaries are popular entertainment, that approach has its own moral and political difficulties. What there is here in spades, in place of that, is the outright admission of guilt, and even of lying and moral and political fault captured on film, delivered, in most cases, boorishly, unattractively and unrepentantly. I wonder if holding up a mirror to that arrogance might be enough. The transmission of that to the population of Indonesia has to have its own value and impact.

It's a great shame though that the film ultimately lacks the courage to resist reverting to "one man's emotional journey". Because that man is a wealthy, famous and celebrated mass murderer still living with impunity alongside the children of his victims.