Recently Watched Films 2013

[Dan Warburton]

Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Rosetta, 1999

Didn't enjoy this one as much as L'Enfant, though "enjoy" is hardly the word to describe the dreary drizzle and the rusting blast furnaces of the Dardennes' miserable Belgian hometown Seraing. The trademark almost continual handheld camerawork becomes seriously oppressive after about 15 minutes, presumably intentionally so – one longs for more structured shots, or at least a little perspective: how about zooming out a bit so we can see the full horror of the "Grand Canyon" trailer park where Rosetta lives with her deadbeat alcoholic mother? It's a dreadfully bleak affair, for sure, with just the faintest glimmer of hope at the end, and though I've seen it compared to Varda's Vagabond and Bresson's Mouchette, I don't think it's as good as either, not that the comparison makes much sense: Sandrine Bonnaire in the Varda is clearly opting out of society, while Emilie Dequenne's Rosetta is doing everything she can to be part of it. Mouchette is another grimly fatalist kettle of fish altogether, of course. The other names that come to mind when talking "gritty social(ist) realism" are Loach and Leigh, but while the Dardennes are clearly proud card-carrying socialists, they neither adopt Loach's vaguely sentimental portrayal of the working class nor indulge in Leigh's at times ridiculous class stereotypes. A bit more dialogue wouldn't have gone amiss, though.

[surfer]

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971) - I think I read somewhere that Altman disliked the plot of this rather uncomplicated story. I agree that its the least interesting part of the movie, although that could be equally applied to Long Goodbye, California Split, and Thieves Like Us. Additionally, there are essentially only two characters (I refuse to call the landscape a "character"), with John McCabe primarily speaking to himself in mumbled monologues. I mostly find Westerns dull, but the movie works for me because the relationship between the two is mercifully underplayed (see Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepard in Moonlighting as an example of how this type of relationship is usually handled - apologies to MRS). In fact we arent even cued to the fact that they are sleeping together until we see them in the bed. I know people love the Cohen songs, but honestly I wasnt fully convinced: too much of an emotional signifier for me, not to mention jarringly anachronistic. Also I've grown to hate all non-diegetic sound. Despite McCabe's ill-advised trip to his lawyer (should've called Saul) this isnt a "little man being crushed by corporation" movie, as much as its about a simple man who lacks the communication and negotiating skills to navigate heavy interests. Strong movie but not significantly better than Altman's other 70s output imo. Except maybe in the cinematography department, although its worth noting that the transfer is terrible.



Children of Men (Cuaron, 2006)

"Dont forget to tell Syd he's a fascist pig."

[Lao Tsu Ben]

Dèmoni, Lamerto Bava, 1985

I'm watching a lot of horror films these days because of a certain blog, which consists in conversations about some of them, and which I find very entertaining. In some ways, and if you have a thing for 80's slickness, the first half of Dèmoni is a triumph of artistic direction, it's cleverly edited, and the silliness is FUN; but when the murders begin, I cannot help but be bored and feel disinterested. But I'm almost always more interested in expositions than in developments anyway.

[Dan Warburton]

Ha, thanks for the link Ben - looks like an entertaining blog, though I think the gal who says Vera Clouzot is a great actress in the discussion on Les Diaboliques needs to be thrown into the swimming pool in the schoolyard..

[Kristine (The Girl)]

Hi, this is The Girl (or "gal") from Girl Meets Freak. Thrown in that cesspool swimming pool, eh? Mr. Warburton, I am scandalized and aghast!!!

Kidding.
Very happy you are checking out the blog, and are entertained by the writing and my, umm, quirky opinions about acting talent.

And Lao Tsu Ben, thanks for the kind words and the link to the Girl Meets Freak blog!

Cheers,
Kristine

[Dan Warburton]

Welcome aboard, Kristine! Hope you can stick around - keep up the good work over at GMF.



Jerzy Skolimowski, Le Départ, 1967

Enjoyed this enormously, but if Jean-Pierre Léaud gets up your nose, you'd better give it a wide berth, as he goes way over the top here in his portrayal of a hairdresser (!) determined at all costs to get hold of a Porsche 911 to take part in a rally (along the way he finds Catherine-Isabelle Duport, his co-star in Godard's Masculin féminin from the year before), jumping over walls, splashing through swimming pools or getting in arguments and even fistfights with everyone from the local sausage vendor to his best friend and colleague. The laughter is a bit forced and the dialogue abrasive at times - whether that's due to the director's lack of knowledge of French, as suggested on this blog http://www.blenheimgang.com/movie-le-depart/ (check out the video clips too!), or to a youthful desire to surf the nouvelle vague for all it's worth, I neither know nor care - but the rally car driving scenes, shot in and around Brussels, are thrilling, and Krzysztof Komeda's soundtrack kicks ass.

[yonhosago]

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.

saw it two days ago, beautiful! thanks DW!

[Dan Warburton]

You're welcome! Meanwhile, wasn't all that impressed by



Paul Seed, House of Cards, 1990

Not Ian Richardson's acting, which is outstanding, but the story itself and the way it's (not very well) paced. Maybe that's scriptwriter Andrew Davies' fault, but he worked with the author of the original novel, Michael Dobbs, so he's just as much to blame. It starts off OK, but gets into a lot of trouble trying to cram things into the last episode. The love plot isn't convincing - Richardson has charisma, but isn't at all sexy (I imagine Spacey in the recent US version is, on the other hand) - I suspect Mattie is a more complex and fucked-up character in the book (all that "I'll call you Daddy" crap), but has no real depth in the mini-series. The clash between the subtlety of characters like Urquhart and Stamper and the caricatural figures like Ben Landless (based on Robert Maxwell, I imagine, but who comes across more like Robbie Coltrane's Goldie in The Strike) is uncomfortable. Dobbs presumably couldn't decide whether he wanted to write Smiley's People or Dallas, and ended up in a strange mid-Atlantic no man's land somewhere in between. I might give the US version a try, but TV series aren't really my thing.

[Hayao Yamaneko]

I can't recommend the US version. It's pretty dire I think. It's some fine visual direction and good actors in search of an adequate script. Comically bad "slick" aphoristic dialogue at times, right out of CSI - and the schick of Kevin Spacey's character turning to camera starts out fine, but ends up just being used as a way of hammering home the (already none too subtle) subtext of each scene.

Having said that, a must watch for anyone who's wondered what it'd sound like if Foghorn Leghorn joined congress.

[Matt Wuethrich]

though I think the gal who says Vera Clouzot is a great actress in the discussion on Les Diaboliques needs to be thrown into the swimming pool in the schoolyard..

Maybe not a great actress but great for that role. Her wide-eyed, naive panic plays off the meanness of Signoret and Meurisse brilliantly.

[Matt Wuethrich]

Kenji Mizoguchi, Ugetsu Monogatari, 1953

I kept forgetting that this is billed as a ghost story, because Mizoguchi never really plays up the supernatural aspect. His concerns go more toward the psychological and social. Rewarding on many levels.

[Dan Warburton]

Philippe Garrel, La naissance de l'amour, 1993

Léaud and Castel splendid in their respective midlife crises, the former delivering his Eustache-like patter with sullen intensity (looks remarkably like Harry Dean Stanton at times), the latter almost annoyingly soft (could do to wash that hair more often, Lou). Cinematography by the mighty Raoul Coutard, but Garrel's trademark dithery handheld camera and occasional bleached-out overexposures in evidence. Dreamy noodling piano score courtesy John Cale. Art film, quoi.

[Dan Warburton]

Vincente Minnelli, Two Weeks in Another Town, 1962

OK so JLG put it in his 1963 Top Ten (of course he would - it's in the same ballpark as Le Mépris after all), but this overblown gaudy campy mess isn't a patch on the earlier Bad and the Beautiful, which it in fact "samples" halfway through (always a bad sign when a director has to resort to recycling his earlier work.. Truffaut did it when his Doinel trilogy ran out of steam). Perhaps the spectacular miscasting (Cyd Charisse as the femme fatale Carlotta? wha?) and appalling overacting (Oscar for Best Scenery Chewer goes to Claire Trevor) is deliberate - PoMo irony, ha - but even if that were the case, it wouldn't make the whole soggy thing any better.

[Dan Warburton]

Alain Tanner, Messidor, 1979

Road movies your thing? You need to see this right now. It's a shame this tale of two young Swiss lasses, one a student, the other a shop assistant, who take to the road, eventually run out of money but continue "playing the game" to the bitter end, isn't available on super duper Blu Ray, as the landscape and the way Tanner films it is as impressive (and understated) as the dialogue. As a committed cinéphile, Tanner would no doubt have known Easy Rider, and I'll hazard a bet he was familiar with Two-Lane Blacktop too (this is right up there with the latter, imo). Talking of possible influences, I doubt Callie Khouri was aware of Tanner's film when she penned the screenplay for Thelma & Louise, though Scott might have been. In any case, the differences between the two films far outnumber the similarities. And I'll take Messidor every time.

[Dan Warburton]

Joseph Cates, Who Killed Teddy Bear?, 1965

Dennis Schwartz takes a bit of dump on Cates over at Rotten Tomatoes, but I'm more inclined to agree with this review instead http://stinkylulu.blogspot.fr/2010/02/5 ... teddy.html. Can't really say much without spoiling it, though perhaps this paragraph (culled from the blog above) might give you an idea:
"Who Killed Teddy Bear? delivers a sexual frankness that's also curiously coy; like a nudist magazine, Teddy Bear lets it all hang out without really ever showing anything. And just as 'sleaze fiction' is the filthier, raunchier but not much more explicit older cousin to 'pulp,' Teddy Bear is also palpably lurid while somehow avoiding anything that might cross the line into obscenity. It's the kind of film that would have been nearly unthinkable in 1960, but hopelessly old-fashioned by 1970. Yet its also a clear (and clearly American) bridge between -- oh -- Psycho and Taxi Driver. No wonder it nearly got "lost" in the cultural tumult of the cinematic sixties."
And "I'm left wondering if this film was made 'for' -- or at least with an alertness to -- a gay urban audience at a moment when 'coded' depictions of cinematic queerness were beginning to give way to more overt depictions. That might be part of the reason this flick is routinely classified as 'exploitation' but I can't shake the feeling that there's something important in the fact this film seems to have been built to be seen by queer eyes."
Maybe that explains why the Youtube vid of Sal Mineo working out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK-zilnKh5c is the second thing that pops up when you google the film title.

[Dan Warburton]

Charles Burnett, The Glass Shield, 1994

Mixed bag of user reviews over at IMDb, more positive than negative, but - how do they decide this? - the most vicious putdown is the one you land on first. Moral in the story? I picked this up because Jonathan Rosenbaum raved about it - or about a version he saw before Miramax scooped it up and added some extra hiphop in the closing credits - and he was right to. It can hold its own against more famous offerings such as Serpico and Prince of New York before it and L.A. Confidential and Dark Blue, both of which came later. OK, Burnett goes a bit heavy on the affirmative action (never did Spike Lee any harm, mind): there's not a bad black guy to be found, and even Ice Cube looks rather cude and cuddly in his three-piece suit. He goes a bit heavy on that blue neon lighting, too (hey, it was the Nineties.. Heat, anybody?) - but what do you expect for $3m (less than a tenth of what it cost to make L.A. Confidential)? Proof that a strong cast - watch out for stellar cameos from M. Emmet Walsh and Elliott Gould - and a solid screenplay (only one nigger in the film, and that's the one you can see above, and not a ho or a muthafucka in sight) can build tension as effectively as a bloody gunfight.

[Dan Warburton]

Richard Fleischer, Follow Me Quietly, 1949

Fleischer, who I see is one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's favourite directors (interesting), was always seen as a safe pair of hands by the studio bosses, able to turn a film in on time and on (or under) budget. At just under an hour, this tight little B-movie is no exception, but it's not as good as Armored Car Robbery or 1952's stellar Narrow Margin. Put that down perhaps to a dull lead actor (William Lundigan can't hold a candle to Charles McGraw) and a conspicuous lack of background information about the serial killer and his motives. The final chase scene in an oil refinery (why do they always go up? just to fall to their death from a great height, I guess) is impressive, but without any character psychological underpinning we don't feel much. No femme fatale either - Dorothy Patrick is pretty in a Ginger Rogers sort of way, but there's no smouldering sexual tension between her and Lundigan. The faceless dummy scene is cool, though.

[Dan Warburton]

Souleymane Cissé, Yeelen ("Brightness"), 1987

"One of the supreme masterpieces in film history - vastly more interesting and beautiful than the complete works of Sydney Pollack or Brian De Palma", writes Jonathan Rosenbaum. JR's enthusiam is infectious - I probably wouldn't have got hold of this if I hadn't read the above line in Movies as Politics - but it's just about as useful as saying that a Salif Keita album is more "interesting and beautiful" than the entire discographies of Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. African Star Wars this is not - but JR can't resist making the comparison anyway, if only to put the boot into George Lucas again. Anyway, talking of Salif Keita, he provides music for Cissé's film and, if I'm not mistaken, appears himself as the albino Soma intends to sacrifice to the gods in order to find and kill his son. Good job we don't see that, because the scene at the beginning of the movie when a chicken goes up in flames (looks like a real one too, animal rights lovers be warned) is breathtaking. The basic Oedipal initiation scenario is quite straightforward (only here it's the father out to get the son), even if the origins of the Bambara myths Cissé brings to life are obscure (not that there's any great need to understand the significance of every symbolic gesture), but the pace is frustratingly slow at times. That said, images such as the old mother bathing herself in milk in the marshes or the boy and the egg in the desert are worth more than a thousand words, even nice ones from the Chicago Reader.

[Dan Warburton]

David Cronenberg, Shivers, 1975

And with that kiss, the only guy who had a chance of saving the world succumbs.. Hilarious stuff, great special effects, wonderfully lousy casting.. though you've got to dig Joe Silver munching a dill pickle while he raps on about diseased kidneys.




Jean-Pierre Melville, Deux hommes à Manhattan, 1959

Forget the story, such as it is (France's UN delegate - a ladies' man of course - goes missing, a journalist and a photographer set off to find him), forget the acting (with the possible exception of Pierre Grasset, absolutely terrible, especially Melville himself) and thrill to New York by night. That would seem to be the only reason why Melville made the film in the first place: gorgeous footage of late 50s Manhattan, stunning lighting and framing, smart, snappy Martial Solal score (yes, vibraphones galore!). Plot? Who cares?

[Dan Warburton]

Fred F. Sears, Wyoming Renegades, 1954

Nice tight B-movie western by the ridiculously prolific Fred Sears (54 features in 9 years, even beats Fassbinder), with a complex storyline that gallops along about as fast as the horses. Nice to see Butch Cassidy and Sundance KId as baddies for a change. Dumb trivia: Petey, the amiable retard who can't remember where he buried his gold, is played by Aaron Spelling. Wise career move on his part from acting to producing, methinks




Ferdinand Khittl, Die Parallelstrasse, 1962

Weird and sometimes wonderful Kafkaesque panel of five men and one supervisor watching and trying to make sense of a set of documents - brief films for the most part - that may or may not connect to some unseen protagonist. Or themselves. I really don't know, actually - but the footage of blokes painting Sydney Harbour Bridge, the crater of Kilimanjaro and the Key West bridge (above) is fun. So is the abattoir scene, which runs backwards, so we see folks stuffing intestines back into lambs before they trot off merrily. Who knows what it's all about?