Recently Watched Films 2013

[Dan Warburton]

Carlos Saura, La Caza, 1966

Absolutely unremittingly vicious - a truly great and extremely disturbing film. Well worth your time - if you've got the guts.

[P. Wretch]

Haven't seen any pre-Cría cuervos Saura - looks promising. You do a good job of reminding us that the cinematic riches of the 60s/70s are seemingly bottomless.

[Dan Warburton]

Haven't seen any pre-Cría cuervos Saura - looks promising. You do a good job of reminding us that the cinematic riches of the 60s/70s are seemingly bottomless.

Word! I've only seen three pre-Cria Sauras myself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_prima_Ang%C3%A9lica , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_Is_Three and last night's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_caza but they've all been absolutely first class. If you like Cria Cuervos, you'll love La Prima Angelica.

[Dan Warburton]

Victor Sjöström, The Scarlet Letter, 1926

This was a box office flop at the time, apparently - maybe the dour Puritan subject matter? - but it's in dire need of a decent DVD reissue (so is The Wind). Lilian Gish is absolutely awesome throughout (can't say the same of her beau Lars Hanson, who spends most of the time nearly falling over and clutching his heart, until he finally falls over for good), and Sjöström's cinematography and lighting works beautifully. Not exactly a happy story, but those Puritans weren't a happy bunch. Did they really use those ridiculous courting tubes? Reading this http://ipswichwades.wordpress.com/categ ... -marriage/ it seems they did.. good grief!



John Woo, The Killer, 1989

Great fun - has stood the test of time remarkably well (I hear a remake is on the way, sigh). That final church shootout goes on a bit, but maybe that's because we made the mistake of watching the 124-minute version (Woo it seems prefers the 110-minute cut). Elsewhere, action galore - love the way car chases begin in multi-storey carparks and then miraculously cut to deserted back roads in the hills above Hong Kong! - you can see where Woo got it from and what Tarantino and a whole host of later folks got back from him in return. Not a film for feminists though.

[Dan Warburton]

Daniele Luchetti, La nostra vita, 2010

Fine acting from Elio Germano as a likeable but not altogether scrupulous recently widowed building contractor who gets into all kinds of difficulties with his Romanian and Moroccan "guest workers", not to mention trying to bring up three small boys and borrowing cash from the drug dealer who lives next door. Only thing I didn't really care for was Luchetti bringing a noodling guitar in at moments of high drama, when no music at all would have been better (often the case)

[Dan Warburton]

Hal Hartley, Simple Men, 1992

Quentin T isn't the only director to fall in love with the Madison in Bande à Part - and coincidentally not the only director to write a whole stretch of dialogue discussing the merits of Madonna. Echt Hartley - if you like his stuff, you can't not like this. Well-written (goes without saying), beautifully shot and edited (colour! framing!), lovely.

[Matt Wuethrich]

František Vláčil, The Valley of the Bees, 1968

This is the more strait-laced (should I say cloistered?) cousin to Vláčil's mind-bending, psychedelic B&W Middle Ages epic Marketa Lazarová (which I should watch again and post more about soon) but still it packs a punch. In fact, this film's leaner, more linear narrative and more stable camera work gives it its own strength. From the opening scene to the closing, Vláčil shows he can tell a powerful story as well. In a nutshell, a local lord gives his son to an order of knights and then we skip forward a decade or so, to when the now-grown son decides he wants out, escapes to his childhood home and is pursued by his former mentor and confidant.

The story works on at least two or three levels. It puts you deep in the milieu of 13th century Central European conflicts between Christianity and pagan beliefs and can double as an allegory on what happens when a foreign ideology takes hold of a new territory (e.g., what the Soviet Union did to Czechoslovakia and most of Eastern Europe). But it's never really as heavy handed as that sounds and instead feels a lot more intimate and close up than a typical historical film might.

And it goes without saying that Zdeněk Liška turns in another great score, this time dominated by haunting choral writing.

For those interested, I would say watch The Valley of the Bees first, then move on to Marketa Lazarová, because this one features some of Vláčil's elliptical storytelling but not the overload of the latter.

[Dan Warburton]

Jacques Rouffio, Sept morts sur ordonnance, 1975

With such a stellar cast - in addition to Vanel, Piccoli and Depardieu, there's Marina Vlady and Jane Birkin - one would have expected more. But this tale of how two doctors are driven to murder and suicide, though apparently true (and revealing this fact in a voiceover in the film's closing frames is a cop-out), isn't properly fleshed out, the characters lack depth (Michel Piccoli and Gérard Depardieu can do much more than merely bark and growl) and the flashback interleaving of their respective stories is clumsy. Maybe Chabrol would have done a better job, but he made some stinkers too.

[Dan Warburton]

Jean-Claude Rousseau, La vallée close, 1995

Getting the most out of these 143 minutes of experimental Super 8 footage shot in and around the abovementioned valley (which happens to be in the Vaucluse http://www.laprovence-luberon.com/fonta ... ucluse.htm and was immortalised by Petrarch - though I didn't know that until I found it out at the end of the film) requires a bit of effort on the part of the viewer, but it's worth it. Described by Jean-Marie Straub as one of the "greatest living filmmakers in Europe", Rousseau combines Bressonian austerity with a Godard-like fascination with taking the component elements of film - image, sound / music (diegetic or otherwise) and text (written or spoken) and arranging them in different combinations. A shot of a dingy hotel bedroom might be accompanied by the sound of a waterfall, or footage of the river Sorgue with one of several telephone conversations between the man in the room (who may or may not be the filmmaker himself, I can't tell) and his distant partner. Like the tourists he films approaching the famous grotte where the river emerges, we never quite see what's going on. Repeated shots of the interiors and exteriors of a deserted building (which reminds me of Stalker, though I imagine that's not intentional on the part of the director) are mildly unsettling, and Rousseau manages to make this colourful sunny region of France seem rather cold and uninviting, but there's a wry sense of humour at work too in the horrible Stevie Wonder cabaret at the local fairground. Intriguing.

[Dan Warburton]

Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity, 2013

Nice to go to the cinema for a change, not that watching this movie anywhere else (or in 2D) would be of any interest at all. OK, so you can't spacewalk from Hubble to ISS because they're in different orbits, OK Sandra Bullock's tears wouldn't float off her face and right into the camera, and her hair would float around in zero gravity, OK there's no need for George Clooney to sacrifice himself as, being weightless, a simple tug would have pulled him and Sandy back into the ISS, but who gives a damn? The story's pretty basic, though not as Pocohontas-cringeworthy as Avatar, and full of tasty clichés (which Clooney serves up with a delicious shitfaced grin, taking the piss out of himself beautifully - hell, you half-expect him to offer her a Nespresso instead of the vodka), but Emmanuel "Tree Of Life" Lubezki's photography and the special effects are so stunning that it really doesn't bother me. Great entertainment. We'll see how many Oscars Alfonso scoops up.

[Mo Noyz]

We're thinking about catching Gravity in 3D at the theater down the street. We usually don't go to the movies, but this one seems so visually stunning that I think it'll be worth it to see in 3D on a large screen.

[Dan Warburton]

Go for it - certainly the best 3D I've seen! You won't need earplugs either (Nolan this is not) - the music is a bit too present but at least it's not at Hans Zimmer puke threshold. Bon film à vous!

[Dan Warburton]

Carol Reed, Odd Man Out, 1947

Absolutely magnificent from start to finish - to say this is just the story of a wounded IRA terrorist trying to make his way across Belfast in a winter night is like describing King Lear as a tale of an old bloke having a few problems drawing up his will. Terrific acting from a fine cast - I can forgive the accents (at least the kids in the street were recruited locally) - in addition to James Mason, whose work here brought him to the attention of Hollywood, there's a bravura performance from Robert Newton as the half-crazed artist, and great cameos from William (later Dr. Who) Hartnell, FJ McCormick and Cyril Cusack. Great expressionist flourishes from Reed (love the hallucinations, pictures jumping off the walls and faces in beer droplets) and Robert Krasker's chiaroscuro cinematography is even more impressive here than in The Third Man. Incontournable, as the French say.

[Dan Warburton]

Marco de Gastyne, La merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d'Arc, 1929

Due to various contractual hassles this appeared after Dreyer's Passion, though it was shot before. Renée Falconetti's performance in Carl Theodor's opus is legendary, but there's a freshness and country charm about Simone Genevois (you might recognise her as Pauline Bonaparte in Gance's Napoléon), especially during the trial scenes. Makes for an interesting comparison with Florence Delay's reading in Bresson's Procès. And, since we're comparing Joan of Arc films, I'll bet Rivette was familiar with the Gastyne when he made his five-hour epic. Those long shots of horses against the sky.. The battle scenes, shot apparently at the Château de Pierrefonds north of Paris (well worth a visit, btw), are impressive, as is the coronation of Charles VII – elsewhere the plotholes filled in by intertitles and the editing is clumsy, especially the closing scene. De Gastyne, born a hundred years and a day after the French Revolution, lived on until 1982 and is also credited as having "discovered" French popstar Dalida. Whaddyaknow.

And now for something completely different..



Brian De Palma, Hi, Mom!, 1970

I'd never seen this before, and have still to see its predecessor Greetings, but absolutely loved it. But I'm a sucker for black comedy – puns intended, Be Black Baby! - not to mention anything filmed on the streets of New York ca.1970. Alan Arkin's Little Murders, for example. But this spazzed-out Python meets Cassavetes meets Rear Window is on a plane of its own. "This underground vaudeville show may have been too hip even for 1970; it didn't have the success it deserved. De Palma's dialogue may be the best that he has ever had to work with." Yes, Pauline. But that satire bites so hard it's genuinely disturbing – it's just one small step from Jon Rubin to Travis Bickle. As the photo shows.

[yonhosago]

Orson Welles The stranger

[Dan Warburton]

Nicholas Ray, On Dangerous Ground, 1952

What a smashing film - easily as good, imo, as more famous Nick Ray offerings such as Lonely Place, Rebel and Johnny Guitar - but an odd one: starts out as a hardboiled noir, with Robert Ryan truly scary, Dirty Harry-style (this is the best Ryan performance I can remember, though it's about time I revisited Caught), and ends up in the snowy wilds of Colorado as a tearjerker melodrama, with near-blind Ida Lupino looking cute and bumping into furniture all over the place. Some truly stunning moments, both visual - check out the hand-held camerawork in corridors and car backseats - and aural: love the metallic resonance of the corrugated iron in the scene above, and the windchimes by Lupino's front door. Outstanding stuff, a must for Ray fans who don't know it.

[Dan Warburton]

Agnès Varda, Les créatures, 1966

Piccoli and Deneuve predictably terrific - the former delightful playing her Peau d'Ane mute housewife, the latter tortured and mystified by the strange goings-on on the Ile de Noirmoutier. It's a Freudian dream, a tour de force of odd camera angles and spiky avant-garde (as they used to call it) music by Jean-Claude Bernede. As far as I can tell, he never scored another film, which is a shame. For once, Uncle Roger's on the money http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/les-creatures-1969




Richard Fleischer, 10 Rllington Place, 1971

Richard Attenborough scary as fuck as John Reginald Christie, notorious serial killer. Filmed in the very house the gruesome events took place in (the crew had to fight off morbid souvenir hunters during the shoot - and the building was demolished afterwards), it's a chilling case study, with a great script (Clive Exton, based on Ludovic Kennedy's book documenting the events) and typically efficient filming / editing from Fleischer. Check out John Hurt's Welsh accent, too.

[Dan Warburton]

Alfred Hitchcock, Mr & Mrs Smith, 1941

HItch reputedly didn't like it much, maybe because he wasn't closely involved in the scripting (he didn't need to be - Norman Krasna did a great job), and claimed he made the film as a favour to Carole Lombard, but there's plenty of fun to be had in the Master Of Suspense's only bona fide screwball comedy. Sez IMDb trivia: "Carole Lombard, in order to twit Alfred Hitchcock and generate publicity about his comment that 'actors are cattle', set up a miniature cattle pen on the set. The pen held three heifers, each emblazoned with the name of one of the three stars." Shame she died just a year later in a plane crash - I suspect we'd have seen a lot more of her in later Hitchcock outings.

[Matt Wuethrich]

Terry Zwigoff, Crumb, 1994

Starts out dark and gets darker. Ostensibly about the cartoonist George Crumb, it ends up being as much about the relationship between him and his two brothers, neither of which found the same success The little chuckle that Crumb and his brothers emit after nearly every bleak utterance regarding their childhood comes off as a particularly grim gallows humor. They seem to be honest and open about themselves and their childhood but a lot is alluded to, enough so that a full picture seems impossible. Deceptively simple structure as well, mostly interviews and observational footage, but the focus keeps shifting from historical to sociological to psychological to criticism. Fascinating.



Henri-Georges Clouzot, Les Diaboliques, 1955

Much has been said about this, so I'll chime in and say that if you haven't seen this, do so soon. Expertly plotted, splendid acting (Véra Clouzot and Simone Signoret go down as one of my favorite onscreen odd couples) and filled with intriguing shots.



Alan Arkin, Little Murders, 1971

What was that? All the write-ups call it a black comedy but I don't know if that really prepares you for what this is. For sure I laughed many times (especially during Donald Sutherland's monologue) but the form and plot of this is so oblique and all the characters seem so disconnected, so locked in their own worlds, that you're never sure of which way it's all headed. Put this on your second viewing list, Dan (I bet it already is.)



Peter Weir, Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975

A number of write-ups detour into how true is the story this is supposedly based on, but don't go that route. Instead, just like all the characters, follow Miranda up that rock and get lost. That way you ignore all the elided plot points and the slow clucking of 70s liberal tongues at the oh-so-scandalous turn-of-the-century repression. The way the story almost seems to dissipate during the last thirty minutes or so is where this film gets its power.



John Carpenter, The Fog, 1980

Ghost stories on the beach. The northern California coast. Creepy synth drones. Jamie Lee Curtis, Adrienne Barbeau AND Janet Leigh --- what's not to love? Would still watch The Thing and Halloween before this, but it's worth a look.

[Dan Warburton]

Ah, the lighthouse at Point Reyes, CA! Well worth a visit (as is Vladimir's Moravian restaurant in nearby Inverness - situated, as Vladimir himself proudly informed me, glass of slivovitz in hand, bang on the San Andreas Fault). Nice selection of films there Matt - and, yes, after Hi Mom! I'm cueing up Little Murders for a return visit next year).
After a glass or two of Vladimir's slivovitz btw you'll probably end up looking like this