Recently Watched Films 2013

[Dan Warburton]

Marguerite Duras, Baxter, Vera Baxter, 1977

If you're planning on watching this one in the foreseeable future, you might want to stop reading this right away, since anything I write about it is bound to spoil it for you. On the other hand, if you've got a thing against "art cinema", read on - but leave the film well alone. Nobody makes films like Marguerite Duras. Baxter, Vera Baxter makes Last Year in Marienbad feel like The Dirty Dozen in comparison. FWIW, the plot (that's not the word, really) consists of our eponymous heroine lounging around in a largely unfurnished modern villa not far from the coast in Normandy, questioned by two visitors about her decision to rent the place with a lover while husband Jean (whom we don't get to see) is with his mistress in Chantilly. Sasha Vierny's camera explores the house, nearby forest and beach in 360° pans, occasionally zooming in (though this is Duras, so that zoooooom is sloooooow) for no apparent reason on someone. Or something. But the most remarkable thing is the music, a loop of annoyingly upbeat South American (Ecuador is mentioned somewhere) charango music, with noodling quena (Andean flute) solo which kicks in about five minutes and goes on non-stop (with one tiny pause) until the end credits roll an hour and a half later. For Duras it represents "the link between Vera Baxter and the outside world, what stops her committing suicide" (though after about twenty minutes of those fucking panpipes it's not suicide as much as murder that might be on your mind..). The relation between the music and the rest of the film is constantly changing: at times the characters refer directly to it - it's supposed to be coming from a party in an adjacent house, though God knows what Ecuadorians are doing holidaying on the Normandy coast - and accordingly it sometimes recedes into the background, with a dab of reverb, before charging out again at high volume without warning. Michel Chion would have a field day with this. Once you get over the boredom threshold (recalls that story of Cage), it becomes perversely fascinating - without it, the 91 minutes would, I suspect, feel like six hours (there's as much space in Duras's dialogue as there is in a Taku Sugimoto guitar solo) - though you may feel like inflicting a horrible injury on the next Latin American Indian you come across.

[Dan Warburton]

Derek Jarman, The Last of England, 1987



Derek Jarman, The Art of Mirrors, 1973



Derek Jarman, Garden of Luxor, 1972

[Dan Warburton]

Delmer Daves, Dark Passage, 1947

This starts out as a real trip, a paranoia fest worthy of Pynchon - with the "first person camera" for the first 37 minutes and the post-plastic surgery facial bandages we don't actually get to see Bogart until an hour's gone by (Jack Warner was understandably pissed) - but it sort of unravels towards the end, when all the unlikely coincidences are revealed to be.. erm, unlikely coincidences. and Bogie morphs from Duke Mantee into Dix Steele and ends up luring Bacall to safely in a gaudy seaside sin city ostensibly in Peru (this two years before The Bribe, and Carl Reiner ripped both of them off beautifully in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid). Some great location shooting in and around San Francisco, and nice use of music and sound (love the eerie foghorn), but you feel the ending is a soppy cop-out to draw the Bogie / Bacall fans instead of the scary Point Blank-style headfuck it could have been.

[Dan Warburton]

Steven Soderbergh, Kafka, 1992

I read here http://www.aintitcool.com/node/60592 that Soderbergh is revamping this, but I don't have any major issues with the original. Of course, the influences are there for all to see - Gilliam's Brazil, Welles' The Trial and Reed's The Third Man, not forgetting Stalker , Borges and Alice in Wonderland - but as they're all favourites anyway, that's fine by me (similarly, the list of composers who pillaged Bartók would be quite long, but I'm not prepared to do without Martinů, Lutoslawki, Ligeti and even Stan Getz's Focus just because I can spot telltale traces of Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta). Sincerest form of flattery, and all that. It's a well-written thriller, beautifully filmed and well acted, and if it sends curious punters off to read The Castle and Metamorphosis, so much the better.

[Dan Warburton]

Werner Herzog, Fata Morgana, 1971

I'm sort of afraid to watch this with Herzog's commentary, though I'm told that it's well worth doing so (to find out exactly where these extraordinary landscapes are, as well as for the juicy anecdotes that inevitably accompany any Herzog adventure). If, heaven forbid, all of Herzog's work were to disappear off the face of the earth and only this were to survive, I'd say it'd be enough to assure his position as one of the great filmmakers. Hell, I'll even put up with Leonard Cohen singing "Suzanne."

[Dan Warburton]

Joseph Losey, Figures in a Landscape, 1970

Weird but intriguing "existentialist" chase movie in which Robert Shaw and Malcolm McDowell, escaped convicts (we never find out what they did) have to make their way across the rugged terrain of some unnamed Latin American country (though those olive trees tell us we're in Andalucia) while being pursued by.. a black helicopter! And about half a million soldiers too.. We don't get to learn much about the two characters in Robert Shaw"s script - not surprisingly perhaps as they spend most of the time running their asses off - maybe there's more meat in the Barry England novel the film's based on. But a Joe Losey action flick with stunning photography by Henri Alekan and a terrific score by Richard Rodney Bennett is too good to pass by, a strange cross between Butch Cassidy, Duel and Waiting for Godot, if you could imagine such a thing.

[Dan Warburton]

Claude Chabrol, Les godelureaux, 1961

Frequently hilarious but ultimately rather disturbing "revenge is a dish best eaten cold" tale in which effete (probably bisexual) fop Ronald (Jean-Claude Brialy) and deliciously slutty sidekick Ambroisine (Bernadette Lafont, naturellement) do their best to destroy Arthur (the rather nondescript Charles Belmont, who sank without trace at the end of the 60s), for the simple reason that he and his chums had the effrontery to move Ronald's sportscar from in front of the Café de Flore.. ah, happy days. The ending's a bit weak, but the scene in which Chabrol intercuts Arthur and his stuffy uncle having dinner in a dull provincial bistro with Brialy and his pals gleefully trashing the uncle's house in Paris in a Roman bacchanale is priceless.

[Dan Warburton]

Robert Rossen, Lilith, 1964

Not a happy film by any stretch of the imagination - movies about mental hospitals never are - but a great one. Outstanding performances from all concerned: this must be Jean Seberg's finest hour (is that a wig? who cares), at her scariest and most disturbing when she's smiling sweetly. God knows what she whispers to the little boy at the fairground. Warren Beatty too is spectacularly good (some people I've read moan that Jimmy Dean would have done the job better, but I'm not sure), the pain and tension of his previous life sucked deep inside somewhere. There's no need for the director to spell it out - in its beautifully elliptical approach to narrative this film is years ahead of its time: it could be something by Claire Denis. Great cameos from Jessica Walter and Gene Hackman - the "normal" folks outside the asylum are just as fucked as those inside - intriguing use of music, Kenyon Hopkins' cool bop appearing diegetically (on Peter Fonda's radio) and non-diegetically, once more a question of blurring distinctions (sane / insane, past / present, reality / fiction). And stunning photography from the mighty Eugen Schüfftan, of course.

[presquepartout]

been awhile since i've contributed to these threads....



aj schnack, david boone wilson // we always lie to strangers



harmony korine // spring breakers



matthew bright // tiptoes

[Dan Warburton]

Jack Clayton, The Innocents, 1961

There's an anecdote in the (rather good) documentary bonus telling the story of François Truffaut who spotted Jack Clayton dining in the same Soho restaurant and sent him a note saying he thought The Innocents was the best British film since Hitchcock left for America.. (bit of a backhanded compliment, but we all know what FT thought about British cinema). Well, it's certainly better than anything Truffaut ever did - though that makes me sound as petty and silly as he does

[Lao Tsu Ben]

matthew bright // tiptoes

I saw that one and my treasures of indulgence applied to it. But see the reviews on imdb, and more generally on the internet to see how people can be ruthlessly hard on a misguided, silly, and yes, bad movie. Does it make it more interesting or better? In my case, yes but don't go out of your way to see it. It's funny because I saw The Humain Stain recently (I had read the book before but I didn't remember that Philip Roth could be so serious, but I guess he is- serious - it's a good film and also a very good turn by Anthony Hopkins), which is very similar in many ways, even if dwarfism and racial discrimination aren't exactly equivalent predicaments.

Jack Clayton, The Innocents, 1961

There's an anecdote in the (rather good) documentary bonus telling the story of François Truffaut who spotted Jack Clayton dining in the same Soho restaurant and sent him a note saying he thought The Innocents was the best British film since Hitchcock left for America.. (bit of a backhanded compliment, but we all know what FT thought about British cinema). Well, it's certainly better than anything Truffaut ever did - though that makes me sound as petty and silly as he does

No, it's not silly. Truffaut, on the contrary, would have been well advised to keep quiet that day. I don't care much for him as a filmmaker while I like Godard, Bresson, and, less often, Rohmer, Rivette, and some others. Bill Douglas, Alan Clarke, Alex Cox, Ken Russell, that list could go on and on until, yes, Tony Scott. British cinema, that is silly, because so damn obvious, to say, is great.

[Dan Warburton]

Claude-Jean Bonnardot, L'invention de Morel, 1967

I had no idea, when I plucked this one off the "DVDs to Watch" shelf last night, that there was a connection with Louise Brooks (I'm on a Louise Brooks kick at the moment, reading Lulu in Hollywood and trying to hoover up as many of her films as possible). Argentinian novelist Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose weird and wonderful 1940 science-fiction novel, part Robinson Crusoe, part Island of Dr Moreau, was apparently inspired by Brooks' disappearance from the movies.

ABC: I was deeply in love with her. I didn't have any luck, because she disappeared quickly. She went to Europe, she made a film with Pabst, and then I didn't like her so much as when she was in Hollywood. And then, she vanished too early from the movies.

Interviewer: Could she be seen as one of the characters in La invención de Morel?

ABC: Yes, she would be Faustine.

I've yet to see Emidio Greco's 1974 adaptation, with Anna Karina as Faustine - that's in the "to watch" pile too - but enjoyed this earlier adaptation for French TV, despite some rather wooden acting and a few hilarious false cactuses standing forlornly in a landscape that looks suspiciously like Brittany. It's a shame Alain Resnais didn't get round to doing this - it would have been right up his street (and the connections between Robbe-Grillet's Marienbad and Bioy Casares's deserted museum are numerous..).

[presquepartout]

matthew bright // tiptoes

I saw that one and my treasures of indulgence applied to it. But see the reviews on imdb, and more generally on the internet to see how people can be ruthlessly hard on a misguided, silly, and yes, bad movie. Does it make it more interesting or better? In my case, yes but don't go out of your way to see it. It's funny because I saw The Humain Stain recently (I had read the book before but I didn't remember that Philip Roth could be so serious, but I guess he is- serious - it's a good film and also a very good turn by Anthony Hopkins), which is very similar in many ways, even if dwarfism and racial discrimination aren't exactly equivalent predicaments.

everything about it is regrettable and inexplicable.

[Dan Warburton]

Nicholas Ray, Knock on Any Door, 1949

Interesting to read in the IMDb comments that this movie still polarises opinion more than 60 years on. Depending on who you read, it's either a "masterpiece on juvenile delinquency" or a "pretentious attempt to glorify a young hoodlum" - in fact, it's a bit of both. Bogart's closing "society is to blame" courtoom speech (a cinematic tour de force which Ray insisted on shooting in a single take - makes for a nice comparison with Orson's rant in Compulsion) will raise a smile, and elsewhere the dialogue veers from tearjerker melodrama (Nick's wife is too good to be true) to sharp noir wisecracks (Bogey, understandably, gets the best ones). But there are plenty of well-drawn and amusing low-life minor characters and the cinematography and editing are tight and effective. That George Antheil soundtrack gets in the way a bit, but bad boy George always liked to get in the way.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Blume in Love, Paul Mazursky, 1973

Another film after Mahler that amusingly references Death in Venice, Blume, superbly played by George Segal- who for me is the exact cross between André Dussollier and Paul Rudd - tries to win back his ex-wife, gets chummy with his new boyfriend in order to do so, but since this boyfriend is Kris Kristofferson, it's also because he is so effortlessly likable. The plot resolves in a dumbfounding way that I will not disclose: you have to see it yourself. It's more disturbing than, say, Straw Dogs. This write-up sums up very well what problems it raises, but don't read it before watching it. It's odd that people like Roger Erbert or Pauline Kael didn't seem to raise an eyebrow at the time.

[Dan Warburton]

Vincente Minnelli, The Band Wagon, 1953

Reading the praise heaped on this all over the place makes me feel all grumpy and curmudgeonly for not enjoying it as much as everyone else seems to, and certainly nowhere near as much as Singin' in the Rain, to which it's frequently compared. Similar storyline - a musical about the making of a musical (if self referentiality, long a Hollywood speciality, is one of the hallmarks of postmodernism, Minnelli's a PoMo pioneer par excellence) - but the individual musical numbers here are weak (only "That's Entertainment" has survived) and the principal actors seem so distanced from the words they have to say, the end result feels oddly cool and detached. It's not a problem that Astaire was 54 at the time (Christ, if I can move like that when I'm 54 I'll be delighted): he certainly outshines his male co-stars Jack Buchanan (entertainly hammy but wooden) and Oscar Levant (terrible). Cyd Charisse is fine when she's dancing - the Central Park scene is magic - but she can't act her way out of a paper bag, and she can't sing either (she was overdubbed, of course). Best thing about it is the sets - Minnelli loves those sleazy reds and fluo greens, and can even make a clear blue sky look sickly and artificial - and the set-piece dance routines. Michael Jackson mercilessly ripped off the gangster barroom brawl. Figures.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Miami Blues, George Armitage, 1990

This came my way thanks to Jonathan Rosenbaum's recommendation (on this very good - except for the inclusion of the insignificant The Newton Boys but we all have our peculiarities of taste, don't we - list of "18 thrillers you might have missed"). It's a little reminiscent of Breathless indeed, and I wonder if the girl played by Jennifer Jason Leigh has also short hair in the book, not unlike that of Jean Seberg in the said film. It's, as they say, darkly comic and to see Alec Baldwin and Fred Ward vying with each other in boorishness in the first hour of the movie is really hilarious. This is as nasty as any adaptation of Jim Thompson should be (but never has been so far) and it makes me want to check out Charles Willeford's novels. Very entertaining stuff.

[Dan Warburton]

Definitely check out the book - and try Susan's recipe for Vinegar Pie at the end.. delicious.



Carlos Saura, Stress-es tres-tres, 1968

Could Carlos Saura have seen Ruy Guerra's Os Cafajestes before making this, I wonder? Two men, one woman, one car (though here it's a married couple and a friend rather than two lads out to pick up a girl..).. seems sure that Alfonso Cuarón had the Saura in mind for Y tu mamá también. Whatever, the title is appropriate - intriguing and tense Antonioniesque road movie, with sinister homoerotic undertones (who is the husband really jealous of?). Quite an achievement, getting this past Franco's censors.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

and try Susan's recipe for Vinegar Pie at the end.. delicious.

Thanks for the tip, I was hoping for something like that. Vinegar pie? I had never heard of such a thing.

The recipe, here.

[Dohol]

Cockfighter..



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071338/