Recently Watched Films 2012

[Dan Warburton]

Red rag to a bull if ever I saw one! I won't try & convince you of their merits, Jon FWIW, the Phil Collins song I mentioned above apparently dates from 84. Oops. But 84 was about as awful as 85 anyway.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

He looks a little like Jeff Goldblum. Or someone else I can't put my finger on.

Sorry, I thought you were speaking of the film by Taylor Hackford with Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward, and the Phil Collins' song in it. It's delicate to ask whether or not this is a good film, since it is a remake of Tourneur's Out of The Past. But as I'm somehow attracted to all that pertains to 80's glossiness and, you know, sincere kitsch, I was curious about this one (and as I already said, Rachel Ward may not be a very good actress, but she has cachet, even when she's provided with a role in which she has little to do but looking good- sometimes without any clothes on - see the poster of Against All Odds - that's, quintessentially, 80's sleaziness, not really what I said I like- don't get me wrong, I have standards). Phil Collins is someone I have difficulty to deal with, though - I'm sure I'm not the only one in this case.

[Dan Warburton]

He looks a little like Jeff Goldblum.

Rachel Ward may not be a very good actress, but she has cachet

That's one way of putting it..

[Lao Tsu Ben]

It's been well over a decade since Rachel Ward abandoned her bid to become a bona fide movie star, but she's still smarting from the experience. Despite making a decent impression in a couple of respectable films - Burt Reynolds' Sharky's Machine (1981), her first major role, and James Foley's After Dark, My Sweet (1990) - she wishes she'd taken a different route.
"I would have liked to have been more involved in the independent filmmaking circuit," she says. "But I never was. I was mainstream Hollywood, a glamour girl playing two-dimensional, idiotic women parts."

Read here
I've only seen her in two films, but it's something that you strongly feel when you see her on the screen - the disappointment, the fact that she was too good for the material that was given to her, even in a film as good as After Dark, My Sweet, the wryness of her character is her own. So that is, pompously, my tribute to an unimportant actress who didn't belong. Reminds me of this song by Sylvan - check it out, if you like girl groups from the sixties.

[Dan Warburton]

Love those tubular bells. Nice article on Rachel too, thanks.



Sam Raimi, A Simple Plan, 1998

Outstanding in every way, again. Even the Danny Elfman score (I'm not usually a big fan).

[Dan Warburton]

Kim Ki-duk, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, 2003

[Dan Bennett]

Kim Ki-duk, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, 2003

I love that film. Things like the freestanding doorways sans walls - and the way they're still observed.

What did you think?

[Dan Warburton]

I enjoyed it a lot - some amazing images (if any of the IHM resident Korea hands have seen it, perhaps they could explain the character the Master writes and sticks over his eyes, ears and mouth before his final journey.. the French s/t translated it as "fermeture" (closure)..): love the heart sutra written using the cat's tail dipped in ink, the effortless mix of real and surreal: the Master seems to be able to teleport himself across the lake and stop moving objects at will. Beautiful scenery - anyone out there been to the place where he filmed it?

[Antoine]

Really loved this one from him : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423866/

[Antoine]

Beautiful scenery - anyone out there been to the place where he filmed it?

Meanwhile, in Serbia... http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic. ... 34#p241534

[Dan Warburton]

Spike Lee, Clockers, 1995

Third time, and the little nagging holes in the plot became more troublesome. Specifically, in case anyone wants to haggle: 1) the deus ex machina arrival of the mother in the police station telling us the Victor really did shoot Delroy after all, while Lee has gone out of his way throughout the film to depict him as the good guy with hardly an inkling of why he might want to pump four bullets into someone he doesn't know simply because his baby brother told him the guy was a shit; 2) what is Tyrone's motive for shooting Errol? We see only one very brief scene where he's being hassled by the guy - does Errol know Strike has recruited the youngster as one of his clockers, and would it make a difference if he did? Seems Lee just wants to use the event as another example of the same silly shit being passed on from generation to generation (several examples of this: Strike's "don't get high on your own supply" speech to Tyrone echoes what Rodney says to him; and Tyrone quoting verbatim all the stuff about Strike's toy trains); 3) is Strike's bleeding ulcer (or whatever ails him) nothing more than a play for sympathy on Lee's part (hard not to feel a little sorry for the guy coughing up blood), or supposed to be merely symbolic of his conscience eating him away?; 4) idem for the toy train set and his donation of mattresses paid for by drug money to André's kung fu club.. It seems clear that the only character Lee wants us to side with (care about? be in the shoes of?) is Strike, where Victor should have been given more depth and screen time. The script was originally earmarked for Scorsese, but he was too busy looking for fur coats for Sharon Stone in Casino and handed the joint over to Spike, who made it a 99% black thang by reducing the characters of Rocco Klein and his partner to mere ciphers. Rather liked the deliberately (I presume) inept (fuzzy, jittery, overexposed) cinematography by Malik Hassan Sayeed, could deal with the Terence Blanchard soundtrack overkill and appreciated the fine acting of Mekhi Phifer, Delroy Lindo and Harvey Keitel (Turturro has practically fuck all to do), but those nagging questions remain.

[jon abbey]

the book is way better and Price's 'Freedomland' is a notch better than that, both set in a renamed Jersey City.

[Dan Warburton]

Robert Bresson, Une femme douce, 1969

Just over a month to go to the release of the 5DVD box of Rivette's Out1 (if it ever happens.. it may well be postponed yet again, though I've pre-ordered my copy on amazon.de) - how long will we have to wait for a top notch HD version of this Bresson (and Quatre nuits d'un rêveur, from two years later, also based on Dostoievsky)? Pierre Clementi, racing cars on the TV screen (Michael Haneke!), tearing the plastic Christ from the golden crucifix, the white scarf floating to the ground, the coffin being closed, just open your eyes once more.. Further thoughts to follow maybe, if I can wipe the tears from my eyes.

[Dan Warburton]

Michael Wadleigh, Wolfen, 1981

One-off oddball horror flick (director Wadleigh's only other claim to fame was Woodstock) starring Albert Finney (Dustin Hoffman was actually turned down - the only time in his career) as the grouchy detective investigating a serious of brutal murders from Battery Park to the Bronx. Great footage of the city throughout - and the characters' discussion of terrorist attacks in NYC with the Twin Towers looming in the background is quite chilling - and some imaginative use of special effects, both visual (the wolf's eye view scenes proved quite influential) and aural (originally conceived for Megasound, a kind of early THX multispeaker system, there's great use of high and low frequency sound). It drags a bit, and Finney's love scene with Diane Venora is about as sexy as his hairdo (we won't mention Gregory Hines' tastes in music or fashion, either), but the final showdown is terrific. Was looking for a screenshot of the wolves staring through the metal blinds in the penthouse, à la Lady from Shanghai, but couldn't find one. But any film that starts with a sleazy billionaire and his cokehead wife getting their brains ripped out is cool by me.

[presquepartout]

clive barker hellraiser

[Dan Warburton]

Maïwenn, Polisse, 2011

A few days in the lives of the Child Protection Unit, racing around the 19th arrondissement raiding Romanian gypsy caravans while their own marriages and relationships fall apart, under the watchful eye of the director, who's written herself into the movie as a (totally unnecessary, for the plot, such as it is) photographer - not only do we never see any of the photographs she takes, she doesn't even know how to hold her Leica properly. None of the dozen or so child abuse stories gets resolved (we never find out what becomes of the Rom gypsy kids, or the Malian woman who leaves her son behind, or any of the other clichéd situations), the disco romance between Melissa (Maïwenn) and Fred (rapper Joey Starr) is heavyhanded and overdone (compared the subtlety of the Commodores scene in Claire Denis's 35 Rhums) and the surprise suicide dramatic ending unprepared and unconvincing. Maïwenn is a hell of a sight prettier than Bertrand Tavernier, and rarely misses an opportunity to prove it, but she's got a long way to go before she makes a film as good as L.627

[Dan Warburton]

Sergio Leone, Giù la testa, 1971

Western or war film? It's as if it can't make up its own mind (or decide on a title either - it's also known as A Fistful of Dynamite, Duck You Sucker and, if you're French, Il était une fois la révolution). Leone seems to be siding with Juan (Rod Steiger) when it comes to anti-war rhetoric, but when you see what the army gets up to (eg the awesome mass execution tracking shot above) it's hard not to side with those revolutionaries. Nice to hear some organic expletives to accompany the gritty violence (five years earlier, those F-words wouldn't have got past the censors.. nor, I suspect, would the Mao Tse Tung quote that opens the film): it's refreshingly natural to hear Sean (James Coburn) moaning about "fucking revolution" and Steiger's (well, Will Jordan's, to be more precise, who dubbed him) "Can I tell you something? Fuck you!" Underscoring - undermining, perhaps - it all is Morricone's absolutely potty music, turning Goya firing squads into Looney Tunes with its buzzes, honks and farts. Even Zorn's reworking of the piece on The Big Gundown sounds tame compared to the crazed original.

[Dan Warburton]

Woody Allen, Interiors, 1978

Impressed as I am by the quality of the decor, costumes and acting - everyone is superb, without exception - I come out feeling unmoved and "ice grey", the colour of just about everything in Eve's life. Instead of lines about "sick psyche" and "vulgarian" (a word I've honestly never heard once in a conversation in 49 years), one longs for a good healthy Mike Leigh explosion of feeling, or even one of Dustin's petulant Kramer vs Kramer tantrums. The film ends all too suddenly after the funeral, presumably because all three daughters succumb to ulcers. I defy you to find a single article or review of this movie that doesn't mention Bergman - and (as I'm sure Woody would admit) Bergman does Bergman much better. Pauline Kael nails it (again) in this extract from a longer essay, Fear of Movies - and do please read this, because it's one of the best things she ever wrote:
http://thisrecording.com/today/2009/7/2 ... thers.html

[Dan Warburton]

Alexander Dovzhenko, Земля ("Earth"), 1930

Compared to films of the same era from the West, these Soviet silent classics seem mighty strange today, when most of the people I deal with on a daily basis as students can hardly remember Margaret Thatcher, let alone Joseph Stalin. You'd better swot up on your history before tackling this one (I didn't), as it's assumed you know what a kulak is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak. I haven't seen the first two episodes of Dovzhenko's Ukraine Trilogy (Zvenigora and Arsenal) yet either - picked up this Bach Films DVD a) because it was dirt cheap and b) because it said le plus beau film du monde on the cover. Quite a claim - and I might even be inclined to agree with it was restored as lovingly and painstakingly as the Frank Borzage silent films I've been watching lately. As it is, this version - apparently restored by Mosfilm in 1971 - is so tattered and pockmarked it could be one of those Derek Jarman Super 8s from the early 70s. No worries about that (I love Derek Jarman's Super 8 films), but one wonders what Earth might look like if somebody (maybe one of these filthy rich Russian billionaires we keep reading about who have nothing better to do with their lives than buy London football clubs and sail yachts around the Mediterranean) really cleaned it up. Some truly stunning shots - check these out http://skinoapparatom.blogspot.fr/2008/ ... nding.html (and, as the man says, clear inspiration for Tarkovsky, to which I'd add Malick - those waving grasses - and Tarr) - and daring montage, especially during the scene when Vasyl goes apeshit with that combine harvester. Love the symphonic structure of the movie: four movements - slow fast slow moderato (the grandfather's death / the arrival of the tractor / night time and Vasyl's dance / the build up to the funeral). Of course, the Soviet bigwigs weren't all that chuffed, but back then those chaps got het up about just about anything (as Shostakovich found out). Wonder if it was the scene of the farmers pissing in the tractor radiator that annoyed them.

[Dan Warburton]

Ralph Nelson, tick...tick...tick..., 1970

Black man elected sheriff in redneck county (state not specified, but it's the gallant South) sounds like a recipe for a bloodbath in the hands of a Penn or a Peckinpah, especially with a cast including well-known nasties like Don Stroud, Dub Taylor and Clifton James, but Nelson, deliberately taking the opposite tack to Jewison in In The Heat Of The Night, keeps things quite light with dashes of screwball comedy and an alarmingly inappropriate (at times) C&W sountrack. Good solid performances from George Kennedy and Jim Brown, fresh out the NFL via Ice Station Zebra , but The Chase this is not.