Recently Watched Films 2013

[Matt Wuethrich]

George Sluizer, The Vanishing, 1988



Jonathan Miller, Whistle and I'll Come to You, 1968

On the surface these don't have a lot in common but watching one after the other made me think that at least their mechanisms, that is, how they generated their effects, were similar. Both have very little action until the very end, both concentrate more on character and mood (but really more on the former) and neither comes out and overtly explains anything.

The Vanishing obviously gets the nod as the more impressive of the two (especially in just plain creepiness --- and do I have to say that it's the one without the hint of the supernatural?) but I somehow love the idea that British families used to gather around their television sets at Christmas time to watch ghost stories.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Tattoo, Bob Brooks, 1981

Bruce Dern does his usual thing, which is playing a psycho very very well, but he can't really elevate material on his own and the film falls apart after one hour. The premise, I thought, was not uninteresting, a tattoo artist, who takes an unusual pride in his art, is genuinely interested by Japanese culture and also laughably prude as someone says on imdb, gets obsessed with a model, and that's pretty much it (I've already said he was a psycho). There is a risk that the film should come off a little sleazy, and of course, it does, but no more than something like Hardcore by Paul Schrader, which is really preposterous. Written by Luis Bunuel's daughter-in-law and by Bob Brooks who died last year and was apparently a famous commercial director.

[Dan Warburton]

Various, Les sept péchés capitaux, 1962

Jacques Demy's "Lust" is the best of the bunch, though Godard fans might enjoy Eddie Constantine reading Samuel Beckett (in "Sloth"), and the Tatiesque excesses of de Broca's "Gluttony" are amusing. Nice acting from Sami Frey and Marina Vlady can't disguise Roger Vadim's mediocrity though, and the opening "Anger" (script courtesy Ionesco), in which finding a fly in the Sunday soup eventually escalates into nuclear war, is, as you might expect, utterly bloody daft.

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Society, Brian Yuzna, 1989

Something between Blue Velvet and Nowhere by Gregg Araki, what a remarkable first film this is...

[Dan Warburton]

Too many tweets make a twat, as David Cameron once memorably quipped (I rather think he meant to say "twit"), but I don't have time to write my customary paragraph of twaddle this time, so here goes for last week's cinematographic adventures:



Lucio Fulci, Una sull'altra ("Perversion Story"), 1969

Too many wigs, coloured contact lenses, topless girls on trapezes and twists and turns in the convoluted plot for my liking, not to mention every visual San Francisco cliché in the book (why do these dudes always live on Lombard Street?), but some nice footage of the gas chamber in San Quentin.




Jesus Franco, Venus In Furs, 1969

Klaus doesn't have much to do here, unfortunately, though he does get busy with a knife for a while. Supposedly one of Franco's best efforts (if that's the case I don't want to see his worst), but unless gratuitous torrid lesbian scenes are your bag, baby (the script would make even Austin Powers blush), steer clear. Could have been much better - I like the idea of finding a body washed up on a beach and discovering it's yours.




Peter Watkins, The Gladiators, 1969

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-gladiators is a nice write-up, but I actually preferred this to Punishment Park myself. OK if you like Watkins' deadpan documentary style ("it may be of interest to know that in twenty minutes time four of the eight people in his room will be dead"), but it gets rather tiresome after a while. You know these poor sods aren't going to make it to the end of the game, and you wonder if you ought to make the effort yourself.




Agnès Varda, Du côté de la côte, 1958

Needed some fresh air and sunshine after all that, and couldn't do better than this. 24 minutes of delight, try it back to back with Vigo's A propos de Nice.




William Wellman, Wild Boys of the Road, 1933

Great cinematography again from Wellman (see Beggars of Life review from a while back), and even if this tale of kids who take to the tracks as hoboes during the Depression ends rather too happily, it still packs a punch. Solid performance from Frankie Darro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Darro) as Eddie.




Raoul Ruiz, La vocation suspendue, 1977

This complex reworking of Pierre Klossowski's 1950 novel, intercutting two "separate" films, one in b/w, the other colour (which eventually become as confused as you will be watching it) will need at least two concentrated viewings to figure out. Sort of Robbe-Grillet without the tits'n'ass. My first Ruiz, looking forward to more.




Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive, 2011

Curious to see how it was second time round. Enjoyed more than I thought I would - tension builds nicely from about halfway through - but the ending's still awful and that last song fucking dreadful. More you think about it the less there is (absolute opposite to the Ruiz above).

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Apocalypto, Mel Gibson, 2006

Gets very cliched in places and the big town sequence just had me thinking yeah Mel everybody knows you're a christian so inherently superior to savages don't they?
Just struck me as a rather conspicuous attempt at Propaganda.

What an unfair assessment of the film, which is very uneven but also interesting in many ways and a little more complicated than that. And loved that Mel Gibson has his characters speak in the Yucatec Maya language (though specialists may quibble with some inaccuracies). Give the man his credit.

[P. Wretch]

Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski, 2013)

This is the best new narrative film I've seen in some time, and makes me want to go back and take a look at some of the 'mumblecore' stuff which I'd previously overlooked (assuming it to be mostly hipster relationship dramas), although I gather this is a change of pace for Bujalski. A sort of period mockumentary set in the distant days of 1980, Computer Chess follows a group of computer programmers - played by an authentically nerdish cast of mostly non-actors - who have convened in a hotel to pit their chess programs against each other. It combines a certain amount of retro tech fetishism (it's filmed on vintage video cameras for that 'made for public access TV' look) with a genuine affection for the pre-internet, pre-Deep Blue pioneers of an era when an interest in computers still marked one out as eccentric. There's plenty of awkward comedy, and several swerves into Twin Peaksian bizarrerie - the hotel may have a hint of the Overlook about it.

A major 'minor' achievement, all presumably shot for less than the catering budget of the average Hollywood production. The Masters of Cinema DVD label seem to agree - they've already picked it up for future release.

[Dan Warburton]

Bill Douglas, My Childhood, 1972
Bill Douglas, My Ain Folk, 1973
Bill Douglas, My Way Home, 1978

Shot out to Jacques Oger for hipping me to Bill Douglas - funny, the French are often more better informed when it comes to British social realist cinema (Leigh, Loach, Clarke et al. - but also the sentimental crap like The Full Monty and Billy Elliot) than the Brits - this is an absolutely awesome achievement, easily on a par with the three chaps mentioned above, as well as Bresson, Bergman and Antonioni, whose work Douglas got to know when he settled in London in the late 1950s. Background info here http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/450700/ (though I heartily recommend the BFI double Blu-Ray / DVD triple disc), and if you want a catty, Dave Spart take on it, try this http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/artic ... mber=10525.

[Dan Warburton]

Harmony Korine, Trash Humpers, 2009

To quote John Gill's review of the first Nurse With Wound album: "?????"

[Matt Wuethrich]

Masaki Kobayashi, Kwaidan, 1964

A few of you seem lukewarm on this but I loved it. There's so much here that made this a highly unique viewing experience, much of it seemed very un-cinema like (at least in an accepted, mainstream sort of way): the hyper-artificiality of the sets, the minimal dialogue, the choreographed , theatrical movement, Takemitsu's sound design (soundtrack is a bit of naughty word here I would think --- it seems they removed all all of the diegetic sound and then dubbed in just those essential sounds that mattered, and the diegetic sounds they did re-add are hyper-stylized, just like lush painted backdrops. Seriously, listen to Hoichi eating the watermelon in the third story and tell me that's a representation of reality.)

Definitely have to move on to some other Kobayashi after this one.



Francis Ford Coppola, The Conversation, 1974

Give me a choice now and I would gladly watch this one again over Apocalypse Now (the absolute favorite of my younger years) and certainly over The Godfather (which has never really hit me like it seems to others). This is certainly one of the less ambitious of Coppola's films but what it lacks in ambition it makes up for in intelligence. The conflict of the film mostly takes place in Harry Caul's head (played by an audiophile, sax-solo-playing Gene Hackman) but the interest is in the way Coppola slow reveals that conflict through Harry's interaction with his environment and with the tape fragments of the titular conversation. It's like Harry himself doesn't even know why he does what he does.

I think it was Dan who pointed out in an earlier write-up of Videodrome that 70s surveillance movies like this seem too trapped in their moment, that they're about listening rather than watching, but remove all the period trappings (and why should we --- analog gearheads should go nuts over the equipment Caul uses in his trade) and this is a sharp representation of how subjective our perceptions really are and more important, how that subjectivity influences our actions.

[Dan Warburton]

Two cracking good fillums there, Matt. First time I saw Kwaidan I couldn't get into it, but something really clicked second time round. As for The Conversation, I think I've seen it about half a dozen times now, but that Walter Murch sound design blows me away every time. Thinking more and more about Kael's "once only" dogma, especially since I'm watching so much stuff at the moment I don't know exactly when I'll get round to things for a second viewing - so with Marie we've decided (more or less) to watch no new films at all next year (doubt it'll happen, but it's an idea). We've already drawn up a shortlist of things we have to see again, and it's not exactly short.. 95, and counting! I think I can say with some certainty though that Trash Humpers will not be on the list



Rachel was much prettier in Spring Breakers..

[jon abbey]

yeah, I'm not a big fan of Kwaidan, the segments are just too short for me to care much. Harakiri and The Human Condition and even Samurai Rebellion are all stone cold classics, though, so enjoy.

[Dan Warburton]

Theo Angelopoulos, Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα ("Eternity and a Day"), 1998

I liked this one about as much as I disliked the one with Harvey Keitel a few weeks ago, which is rather odd as they're not all that different. Same pastel-toned, elegiac, slowmo old man road movie with rather cloying soundtrack, which unsurprisingly has been released on ECM New Series (personally I'd have preferred some local folk ditties from our man Kostis Kilymis's Organized Music from Thessaloniki label ). But Bruno Ganz, even dubbed into Greek, succeeds where Harvey Keitel fails, and there are some truly amazing tableaux like the one above. Great performance from young Achileas Skevis as the Albanian refugee street-kid Ganz takes under his wing.

[Matt Wuethrich]

Věra Chytilová, Daisies, 1966

The form is well structured, the content is anarchy. Two teenage girls decide society is spoiled, so they might as well as be spoiled too. This gives them license to do what they wish. The result? Much food and drink consumed, many old men fooled and embarrassed, and many social restrictions kicked at (but not, it seems, ultimately broken, which is the kicker at the end). Along the way there’s creative use made of butterfly collections; as well as scissors, sausages, bananas and rolls; a colorful survey of pajamas and undergarments; dumb waiters as escape hatch; and Pilsner Urquell drunk through a straw.

Chytilová also gets license to do what she wants, so she throws narrative and character out and replaces them a host of editing tricks, found footage, a collage of musical genres, physical comedy from an earlier era of filmmaking, unexpected color shifts and all kinds of other surprises. Somehow, she manages to keep the whole mess clear and communicative. If this is indulgent, give me more.

[Matt Wuethrich]

yeah, I'm not a big fan of Kwaidan, the segments are just too short for me to care much. Harakiri and The Human Condition and even Samurai Rebellion are all stone cold classics, though, so enjoy.

Probably not a coincidence that the best of the four stories is the longest ("Hoichi, the Earless") but I think ghost stories adapt to the short film well, because most of the best ones are not that long to begin with. The more suggestive they are, the better.

[Dan Warburton]

Jean Renoir, Partie de campagne, 1936

Thirty-nine minutes of absolute pure magic.

[Matt Wuethrich]

Juraj Herz, Morgiana, 1972



Juraj Herz, The Cremator, 1969

Two Herz films, courtesy of the great Second Run. In Daniel Bird's Herz bio in the Morgiana booklet, he calls the director's pursuit of excess a formal strategy, and that pretty much nails it. Herz loves the lurching fish-eye lens shots, multiple camera angles in the same scene and some rapid editing. The soundtracks (Zdeněk Liška on The Cremator and Luboš Fišer on Morgiana, both great) pick up on that excess and push it further. If near constant soundtracks bug you, then these aren't for you, but I'd argue that they are so prominent that they take on a life of their own. Hard to imagine the films without them. In the interview with Herz on the Morgiana disc he says he liked to work out specific timings and themes for his soundtracks (though he does say Liška ignored them).

And then there's the unsettling creepiness of both films. The Cremator gets the nod because it more clearly violates the domestic space and Rudolf Hrušínský is straight-up sinister as karl Kopfrkingl (Definitely agree with Dan's bemusement that this is somehow a black comedy). The gaudy art nouveau decor and costumes make Morgiana a bit more fairy tale like but it's a damn scary one. Won't be letting my kids watch either of these for a long time!

[Dan Warburton]

Scared the whiskers off me, that film! Check out the other Chytilova FT over at KG, Matt (if you haven't already), wild stuff

[Matt Wuethrich]

Scared the whiskers off me, that film!

Maybe the creepiest bathroom ever.

Check out the other Chytilova FT over at KG, Matt (if you haven't already), wild stuff

You mean Fruit of Paradise, I assume? I've got it queued up. They also have Something Different, the film she did immediately before Daisies.

[Dan Warburton]

Marco Ferreri, L'ape regina, 1963

Marina Vlady looks gorgeous, for sure - but watch out if she lures you into the conjugal bed, gets you to sign over your business to her dumb brother and pushes you into an early grave. As usual with Ferreri, the comedy - and this is extremely funny, with Ugo Tognazzi on great form - is undershot with truly vicious cynicism. Terrific stuff - if VERY black comedy is your thing, check it out (check out any Ferreri, for that matter)