THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FRAUD IN THE WORLD

25 (plus a few more) Most Anticipated Films of 2012

2012-01-30T16:00:00.001-05:00

Most of the following films will hit US cinemas sometime in this calendar year. Some of them will end up being held until 2013 (or even later) and therefore will pass onto my most anticipated list for next year (as in turn some of the films here have done after not arriving last year). All of these films are (obviously) ones I am excited about for one reason or another. Some of them will inevitably not live up to my expectations - hopefully not too many - but judging from last year's list, where two-thirds ending up being films I quite liked and twelve actually made my eventual top twenty list, it should be a pretty good year. So, without further ado, I give you my 25 most anticipated films of 2012.

1) Django Unchained - I don't think anyone who is a regular reader here will be surprised to find a Quentin Tarantino film at the top of this list. With a cast that keeps growing every day (or so it would seem), this QT-styled Spaghetti Western beast of a motion picture should (I now boldly proclaim) take the top spot on my Best of 2012 list. Granted, this film may end up going way past schedule (QT has been known to do that) and therefore not make its debut until 2013, but here's hoping the Christmas present that the Weinsteins plan on giving us (ie, the planned December release date) does not delay.

2) The Grandmasters - I sure do hope this Wong Kar-wai film about the man who taught Bruce Lee everything he knows, gets here soon. It was number one on my anticipated films list last year and I do not want to have to put it on next year's as well. Then again, WKW is rather notorious for production delays (2046 took four years to complete) so it is really anybody's guess.

3) The Master - Not to be confused with the number two film on this list, the next film from Paul Thomas Anderson is not about the man who taught Bruce Lee everything he knows. Actually it is ever so loosely based on the rise and fall of L. Ron Hubbard, but don't tell the Scientologists that or they will try to sue again. Seriously though, PTA has a new film coming - how freakin' cool is that?

4) Like Someone in Love - Like with last year's French/Italian hybrid, the brilliantly twisting Certified Copy, Iranian auteur extraordinaire Abbas Kiarostami (one of the five best director's working today!) has again ventured outside his native land (and its censors) and headed off to Japan for his latest film. The film, listed under the name The End on IMDb, is in post production right now and is tentatively slated for a Cannes premiere, with a hopeful US release sometime in the fall.

5) Untitled Terrence Malick Project - Though still going nameless as of the compilation of this list, this Malick film, boasting a cast that includes Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdmas, Javier Bardem, Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen and Jessica Chastain, is a strange creature to see on this list so soon after The Tree of Life. Known for taking years to finish his films, Malick is still probably an iffy bet from whom to see a 2012 release, but here is hoping we do.

6) Cosmopolis - A David Cronenberg that takes place mainly in the back of a limo cruising around NYC, and is given the director's usual treatment of sexual obsession and murder, all based on Don DeLillo's novel. From everything I have read this also seems to be a film that may delve back into the fringe dwelling the director used to partake in, while simultaneously playing as one of his more recent critical darling works.

7) Post Tenebras Lux - With each successive film, Mexican New Wave provocateur Carlos Reygadas gets better and better. From Japon to Battle in Heaven to Silent Light. A modern day Blend of Bresson and Dreyer (Silent Light was a remake of Ordet in many ways), Reygadas is an auteur to watch out for, and if my growing estimation of the director is any indication, then this new film, probably making its debut at Cannes, should be pretty damn good.

8) Inside Llewyn Davis - Based on the life of Dave van Ronk, and featuring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake, this new biopic from the brothers' Coen has aspirations of being something akin to Todd Haynes' Dylan deconstruction I'm Not There. Now granted, I do not think this film will go as far out as that brilliant work, but I still expect a damn good time.

9) Moonlight Kingdom - I can assure you that my lovely wife, a noted Wes Anderson hater (Rushmore notwithstanding) will not be a fan of this film, if I can even get her to watch it, but as I am much more thrilled with the auteur's past work, I am looking forward to this one with great glee. Oh yeah, and as is to be expected, we get Bill Motherfuckin' Murray too.

10) A Place Beyond the Plains - From Derek Cianfrance, the man who gave us the deafeningly emotional Blue Valentine, comes a movie starring Ryan Gosling as a motorcycle rider who turns to robbing banks to feed his family. I know, I know, it does bring up shades of Drive, but I am sure that is mere coincidence, and this film will be able to stand on its own.

11) Only God Forgives - The new film from Danish director Nicolas Winding-Refn will be coming to town sometime in late 2012. After having Drive take the fifth spot in my favourite films of this past year (though I must admit to not having seen any of this volatile director's other films - an oversight that will surely be corrected very soon), and seeing the Gosman cast again (directors must like working with the guy), this could easily become one of my favourites of this coming year.

12) The Great Gatsby - If any classic of 20th Century American literature deserves a brash 3D treatment from an over-the-top director like Baz Luhrmann, it is The Great Gatsby. Yeah, that was sarcasm. The thing that gives this strange strange film such an anticipatory flavour is the fact that it actually is a brash 3D treatment from an over-the-top director like Baz Luhrmann. Not sure I like the casting of Leo DiCaprio as Gatsby, but with Carey Mulligan as Daisy and Tobey Maguire seemingly perfectly cast as Nick, hopes are rather high.

13) Stoker - Starring Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode, this is Park Chan-wook's English language debut. The film may not actually make it to theaters until 2013, but if it is ready for Cannes, it could sneak in as a late 2012 release. The film seems a departure for the Korean filmmaker so famed for his revenge trilogy of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, but that means nothing really, for this still looks quite intriguing.

14) On the Road - This Walter Sallas directed adaptation of Kerouac's classic was on this very same list last year, but I think it may actually finally arrive this time around. Being a Beat aficionado from way back, I have been looking forward to this inevitable but always thwarted literary adaptation, through all of its tempting incarnations for years and years and years. It is about time dammit!

15) Magic Mike - With Steven Soderbergh's claims of early retirement, one supposes that with each of the director's new films, it could very well be his last. Now of course this talk of retirement has been scoffed at by many, including Soderbergh himself, decrying an upcoming sabbatical as the more likely outcome of cinematic frustrations, so we probably have nothing to worry about with this one being his last. As for the film itself, it is the story of a young male stripper who is taken under the wing of a mentor. Oddly enough, the film is based on the early days of Channing Tatum, with Tatum himself playing the mentor. Sounds fun.

16) Gravity - Now it may be somewhat surprising that I would place a film starring Sandra Bullock on this list, but here it is anyway. Actually, Bullock aside (though I did like her in the oft-overlooked Murder by Numbers), my main reason for anticipating this 3D sci-fi thriller (yeah, I know, everything is in 3D these days) is that it was written and directed by Alfonso Cauron. Starring Bullock and George Clooney as the only two surviving astronauts on a semi-demolished space station, the film should have a very high creep factor indeed with Cauron at the helm.

17) Amour - Austrian auteur Michael Haneke can be a bit hit or miss (though never having made an outright bad picture) but the hits certainly outweigh the few misses. Here is hoping this film about octogenarians in love and the daughter (played of course by the great Isabelle Huppert) who must care for them after one has a stroke, is one of those hits.

18) Nero Fiddled - After turning out the biggest box office hit of his career, Woody Allen is back with a film featuring Jesse Eisenberg as the movie's Woody surrogate (and a perfectly cast one at that), and boasting a cast that includes Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Page. Sure, the prolific auteur is hit or miss in recent decades, but here is hopin'.

19) Cogan's Trade - Directed by Andrew Dominik of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford fame (and we have had to wait five years for a follow-up), and featuring the cinematic outlaw himself, Brad Pitt, as a mob enforcer, this crime thriller promises to be a hell of a lot of fun. Well, at least we all hope so.

20) Prometheus - Ridley Scott is back, and he is at his probable sci-fi wheelhouse best. First rumoured to be an Alien prequel but now apparently taking on a life of its own (though still shrouded in mystery), this outer space horror movie starring Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender (fuck yeah!) could bring Scott back from his more recent spate of mediocrity.

21) Anna Karenina - This a hefty movie that Joe Wright has taken upon himself and it is a hefty role that his usual star Keira Knightley has taken upon herself. There are some questions about Knightley's ability to tackle such a role, but I have faith in the actress - she is a much weightier actor than many give credit for her being. The film also stars Aaron Johnson (John Lennon in Nowhere Boy) as Count Vronsky, and that may be a damn good casting choice indeed.

22) Argo - A new film starring Ben Affleck? Not really a reason to get all hot and bothered. A film directed by Ben Affleck? Now we are talking baby. After the spectacular Gone Baby Gone (one of the best films of the last decade) and the smart and intense The Town (albeit with a rather lackluster ending) this new film, set amidst the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, could and should prove quite intriguing.

23) The Cabin in the Woods - A self-proclaimed "twist" on the usual formula, this Joss Whedon written horror movie is co-written and directed by Drew Goddard, one of the writers of Lost, so we should possibly expect something that perhaps makes no sense at all. The Joss Whedon connection makes it an interesting-looking movie though. The film was originally set for an early 2010 release before being shelved indefinitely due to MGM financial woes. It appeared on this list last year but now there is an actual set release date, so here we go.

24) The Wettest County - Written by Nick Cave and directed by John Hillcoat, the team that last gave us the new wave revisionist western The Proposition back in 2005, this looks to be a quite rousing film about rural gangsters. Granted, the casting of Shia LaBeouf gives one pause, but perhaps we can get past that and just have a good old time.

25) The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man & The Avengers - Being a old comic book head, these three films needed to be on this list. Christopher Nolan's final piece in his Dark Knight trilogy, Mark Webb's retooling of everyone's favourite friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man (and what a perfectly named director for the job) and Joss Whedon's supergroup extravaganza (based on my personal favourite comicbook) all have great possibilities. Hopefully they all come through.

Some other films to look forward to (in no particular order): Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas); Gangster Squad (Ruben Fleischer); Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer and the Walchowskis); Take This Waltz (Sarah Polly); Looper (Rian Johnson); Rust and Bone (Daniel Audiard); Savages (Oliver Stone); The Hunger Games (Gary Ross); Snow White and the Huntsman (Rupert Sanders); Piranha 3DD (John Gulager); The Hobbit (Peter Jackson); Lincoln (Steven Spielberg); A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson); Skyfall (Sam Mendes); Dark Shadows (Tim Burton); Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Timur Bekmambetov); A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (Roman Coppola).

And one final film before we go:

Ted - A live action Seth MacFarlane movie? This is either going to be the greatest idea ever or it is going to end up being the very worst thing to ever happen. It really could go either way, but my love of Family Guy and MacFarlane make me willing to give it a chance.

Retro Review: Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 08)

2012-01-29T23:55:00.001-05:00

The following is part of a series where I bring back some of my "older" reviews (those written during my 2004-2010 tenure at the now mostly defunct The Cinematheque) and offer them up to a "newer" generation.

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Do you hear that? Those gargantuan footfalls? That hideous belching roar? That grotesquely insidious cackle? That repulsive stench so permeating, so loathsomely pungent that you can actually hear the stank of it? Run, don't walk from...Harry Knowles!?

Did you think I was talking about a monster? Well, I suppose I am - just not the particular monster one might expect to hear about at the beginning of a review of J.J. Abrams new monster mania piece of pop-trash formica. We'll get to that Manhattan-flattening, city-devouring mega monster in a bit, but first, a much more unscrupulous - and much more dangerous - beastie. Harry Knowles, the Larry Flynt of internet movie reviewing, and the red-haired soul-sucking boot-licking studio-bitch quote-whore that he is (and barring any sort of nuke-powered air strike akin to the one near the end of this movie, always will be) was one of the first (I dare not use the term critic, for then it would lose all meaning for the rest of us who rightfully wear that moniker) to hand out his assessment of the movie in question - and by assessment I mean handy-dandy blurb-friendly love song to J.J. Abrams and his army of cinematic sycophants.

Laden with about as much saliva-choked vim and vigor one might expect from a pillow-biting prone newbie on his first night in cell block F with his new "roomie" Bubba, Knowles, in all his monosyllabic one-note fanboy vernacular ain't-it-coolness, proceeds to sing the most ridiculous of praises, hosannas and hallelujahs over Abrams' Godzilla-meets-9/11 box office bugger-to-be, aligning his "review" in such a manner as to leave easy cut-n-paste jobs for the studio poster and ad men he so blatantly works for. My personal favourite is, and I quote: "Like Saving Private Ryan, but instead of Nazis it’s a giant monster". I am not even sure what to say after that! He has managed to glom onto one of the most over-ripe, and overused cliche's in historical allusiondom and at the very same moment managed to insult the memory of millions who died at the hands of those aforementioned Nazis. Bravo Mr. Knowles, brav-fucking-o.

Sure, I realize Knowles callous insipidity and lack of any cinematic knowledge or recognition of any film history whatsoever is an easy, and oft-aimed at target and that I am far from the first to say it out loud, and most assuredly not the last, and anyone who reads his website is of the same mental stuntedness as the fat man himself anyway and one should probably just leave the lion in his den of inadequacies and move on, but sometimes that orange-maned plague-of-criticism dung-heap studio-scab that calls himself Harry Knowles, cannot be ignored and so one must attack it with all one's got, no matter - as in the movie - how futile one's chances may be. Of course it could also be that I really have nothing at all to say about the movie itself. In fact, that is it. Far from great and far from terrible, not good, but not bad either, TV auteur J.J. Abrams' beat down of Manhattan via a cross between Godzilla, that thing from The Host and a oiled-up hairless, skinless Harry Knowles (I just had to get one more jab in) is painstakingly average in every way imaginable. Is this better or worse than being a straight up rotten film?

Made as a stunt, über-producer Abrams, through his vessel-for-hire Matt Reeves, whose one lone directorial credit was the abysmally mediocre The Pallbearer, gives us a third-hand look at the destruction of Manhattan by some sort of behemothic amphibimonster that may or may not be from outer space, through the omnipresent handheld camera of one of the movie's many non-descript characters-cum-monster fodder. Lost somewhere in between Independence Day and The Blair Witch Project. It's a gimmick that has already been used more progressively in Brian De Palma's Redacted and the latest, though not the best flesh-eating bon mot from George Romero, Diary of the Dead, but it is still a gimmick that nearly works here, especially amidst the obviously post-9/11-esque sturm und drang that Abrams is so callously (or is that brilliantly) playing upon. I guess after six-and-a-half years we can finally joke and laugh and use September 11th for our latest Hollywood entertainments. And why the hell shouldn't we? God bless America!

All YouTube filmmaking tricks and tropes aside though, Abrams' secret little movie, hyped right into the stratosphere upon the blogosphere, finally makes its big bang on the big screen and we must ask ourselves - this is all we get? 84 minutes of a bunch of interchangeable white-bread nitwits running around lower Manhattan trying not to get eaten by the big scary monster that may be worse than the Nazis even!? Trying to be so hip it hurts - so hip that J.J. and his posse want to scream it from the tops of the tallest skyscrapers in New York if they hadn't already levelled them all in their F/X fuck fest - what we get instead is the most banal of anti-archetypes fending for their lives throughout the streets and tunnels of this drudgingly middle-of-the-road anti-spectacle.

Manohla Dargis of the NY Times talked of the characters being so boring she was rooting for the monster and Nathan Lee of the Village Voice exclaimed "death to the shallow, unlikable heroes!". Hell, we never even get that great a look at the monster itself until the very end, which under different circumstances may make for a much more intense form of terror, but here is just waylaid in place of a reality-TV-like take on the modern monster movie. And again, just like reality-TV and all those zombiefied Stepford husbands and wives that keep the shows coming back year after year, season after season, we are left with the most average of motion pictures. Not good enough to be thought a breakthrough and not bad enough to be bellowed at in any fun Mystery Science Theatre 3000 kind of way. Merely mediocre.

Then again, we could always discuss the inconsistencies of the movie. Like why doesn't Hud put down the damn camera when the girl he has lusted after for so long is being attacked by some sort of mutant alien spider who has apparently mistaken her for Sigourney Weaver or why after semi-devouring one character, the monster suddenly vanishes so as to give the other characters time to swoop in and mourn their friend or how our intrepid heroes manage to travel the number 6 train tunnel from Spring Street to 59th Street in such a speedy fashion (if at all) or why every time the camera is dropped it conveniently falls facing the action and never once breaks or runs out of battery power or tape or how the hell the camera survives the destruction of Manhattan in order to be "shown" as a testimonial of what went down on the fateful day in New York in the first place.

We could do all that but then horror movies have always been chock full of such delectable little nuggets of character stupidities. If my house began bleeding and told me to get out, guess what? I am down at the post office filling out a change of address card! Or if there is a noise in the darkened attic and three people have already been murdered, guess who is NOT going in that attic!! Anyway, I digress. For all its inherited stupidities, Abrams attack-on-New York megaplexer is just another piece of slickly-tried pulp nowhere near the heights of its precursor big daddies Godzilla and King Kong (the originals of each mind you) yet also nowhere near the pits of someone like M. Night Shyamalan and his ridiculous dawdles of blasé bullshit. The biggest nagging nuisance being that the film has, or had great potential, and one can see a flair inside of Abrams' work (this is probably more his work than official director-for-hire Reeves) but sadly the film is happenstancely pedestrian in every way.

Truth be told though, I was actually kind of hoping for this to be a bad movie - a really bad movie. A really really really bad movie. Then I could toss all my acerbic critical wit at the problem and call it a day, feeling every bit the bad boy, as if I were the critical Jesse James or James Dean. But alas, the movie was not bad after all (just run-of-the-mill trying to be thought of as edgy) and all my acid-tongued insults are laid to waste just as Manhattan was in Abrams' "Fuck You" mega monster mediocrity known as Cloverfield. But not to worry for I still have Harry Knowles to lob critical bombs at - and with a target like that how could I miss.

[Originally published at The Cinematheque on 01/19/08]

*Addendum - Since first writing this review, J.J. Abrams has released two films as director. First the Star Trek reboot in 2009 and then the Spielbergian-influenced Super 8 in 2011. Both films would wind up on their respective year's top tens. I suppose what I am trying to say is that apparently I have grown quite fond of Abrams' work since first publishing this rather disdainful review oh so many years ago. Perhaps I would have enjoyed Cloverfield more if Abrams had actually directed it himself. I now consider Mr. Abrams one of the best big budget moviemakers (possibly the best) working in Hollywood today, and I eagerly await his next film.

My Quest To See the 1000 Greatest: #700 Thru #719

2012-01-26T20:25:00.000-05:00

Here is a look at the latest batch of twenty films in my Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films. A complete look at my quest can be viewed HERE.

#700 - L'Age d'Or (1930) - (#106 on TSPDT) Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike experimental film? How about how much disdain I have for most of Surrealism? Put these facts together with my hit or miss outlook on Buñuel, and you get a film I just could not stand. Yeah yeah, a great artist and all that, and many other times he is just that, but here - no way in hell.

#701 - Antonio das Mortes - (1969) - (#544 on TSPDT) I first came across the work of Glauber Rocha because of My Quest. This is the third of his films I have seen (Black God White Devil and Terra em Transe being the first two) and the third one I loved. Audacious and full of cinematic chutzpah, Antonio das Mortes, a sequel of sorts to Black God, is one of those pure cinema kind of films. If one had the need to label the Brazilian auteur-cum-L'enfant terrible, one could easily construe Rocha as being the Godard of Brazil. And of course I mean the good 1960's Godard, not the ridiculous modern day Godard.

#702 - Ceddo (1977) - (#774 on TSPDT) Western African cinema has a uniquely fairytale like quality to it and Ousmane Sembene, considered the Father of African Cinema, is the best at that fairytale filmmaking. Influenced by French cinema of course, Sembene brings the ancient traditions and mythologies of his native Senegal into play and creates the most entertaining of modern day fairytales - and Ceddo may well be his best.

#703 - The River (1951) - (#212 on TSPDT) Damn do I love Jean Renoir!! Before taking on the quest before me, I had seen just two Renoir films - they of course being Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game. Both brilliant films (the latter is in my all-time top twenty) but still I was but a novice when it came to the cinema of the man I now would place firmly in my five favourite directors of all-time. Now having seen Boudu Saved From Drowning, The Crime of Monsieur Lange and others...well, like I said, damn do I love Jean Renoir. Now comes one of the French auteur's Hollywood mad films, The River. Scorsese calls it one of the two most beautiful Technicolor films ever made (The Red Shoes of course being the other) and though I would not go quite that far, it is surely a stunning film - simply magnificent to look at. Have I mentioned that I love Jean Renoir? Damn!

#704 - Salesman (1970) - (#550 on TSPDT) I am usually not a fan of documentaries in general but sometimes I find them quite fascinating. Be it the subject matter or how the director sets the matter forth. Salesman is definitely one of those films. Subtly provocative, this simply set black and white doc by the Maysles brothers unexpectedly sucks you in and will not let go.

#705 - Les Maitres fous (1955) and #706 - Chronicle of a Summer (1960) - (#841 and 811 on TSPDT) These two films, French director Jean Rouch's only films on the list, are thought of, apparently, as intriguing looks into different societies. I found both of them dreadfully boring, the first was nearly incomprehensible bullshit while the second merely drab and dragging, and I see no appeal in either one. Maybe that is just me though. Hey, at least they were short.

#707 - Johnny Got His Gun (1970) - (#776 on TSPDT) A fascinating, almost experimental (but not in that annoying Stan Brakhage way) look at a WWI soldier who has had most of his body - arms, legs, face, chest cavity etc. - blown away by a bomb and is being kept alive in some sort of mad scientist way by the government. Macabre and with notions of Grand Guignol, Dalton Trumbo's film (adapted from his own novel) takes us into a warped world of fantasy and tragedy with the most ringing and unforgettable of final shots.

#708 - Eyes Without a Face (1959) - (#358 on TSPDT) Can a film be both horrifying and beautiful? Of course it can, and Georges Franju's psychological horror film is just that. I know the term is cliché and way way way overused, but there is no way I can describe this film without using the term haunting - because that is just what it is. It is the story of a genius, and very possibly mad surgeon who kidnaps girls and steals their faces in order to heal his daughter's mangled, hideous face. Incidentally, this film is a direct influence on (no, not Face-Off!) Almodóvar's recent The Skin I Live In.

#709 - Law of Desire (1987) - (#825 on TSPDT) Speaking of Almodóvar (as I just was in the entry above for those of you not playing along at home), here is one of his earlier works - a typically gay-themed, neo-noirish fractured fairytale. Definitely not one of the auteur's better works, it still shows many of the ideas that would flavour the director's films for years to come.

#710 - Le Bonheur (1934) - (#879 on TSPDT) A strange little French-Russian hybrid, this is a fun, but far from great little silent film. Comedies from early Soviet cinema are a lot lesser known than their dramatic counterparts, but still that stern Soviet block filmmaking is intact. As I said, fun, but not on par with either its Nationalist comrades Eisenstein and Pudovkin nor its silent comedy brethren Chaplin and Keaton.

#711 - Ivan's Childhood (1962) - (#602 on TSPDT) Early Tarkovsky, this film about war and death and sacrifice and loyalty, is, in my not-so-humble opinion, the director's most stunningly beautiful work of art. Perhaps it is not the Russian's best film overall (that would be Stalker probably - not a typical choice I know) but the beauty of the images is just masterful, and the final few shots, though predictable, are simply devastating to behold. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think that perhaps this is Tarkovsky's best film after all. Yeah, let's go with that.

#712 - The Mirror (1975) - (#67 on TSPDT) Tarkovsky's second highest ranked film on the list (after Rublev), but do not colour me impressed quite yet. As much as I liked (and praised) Ivan's Childhood above, that is how disappointed I was in The Mirror. Granted, there are some rather gorgeous shots, and certain sequences are enough to put some wiggle in your walk, but overall, the film fell rather flat for me. I have never been a huge Tarkovsky fan - never hating one of the director's films but never truly loving one either - so I suppose my disappointment was not too shocking, but it was still a somewhat surprising blow considering the double digit ranking of the film. Oh well.

#713 - The Story of a Cheat (1936) - (#594 on TSPDT) I had never seen a Sacha Guitry film before, having only heard of the director/writer/actor in the most peripheral of ways, but the list has offered my the opportunity to remedy that. Purchasing Criterion's Eclipse box set, Presenting Sacha Guitry, I went to town and was suitably impressed by this first of four films in the set. Sort of Lubitschy in its mannerisms but a bit more Sturgesy in its undertaking, Guitry's first film (after years of disdaining cinema from his perch trodding the boards) is a fun little romp. Never too deep but always very wry and often witty. To be honest, I was just as thrilled by the second film in the set, The Pearls of the Crown, but alas, that is not on the list.

#714 - Two For the Road (1967) - (#958 on TSPDT) A few weeks after watching this surprisingly delightful (and I mean that in the most subversive manner) film from Stanley Donan, the list had its annual update and the film was (gasp!) knocked off the list. Well dammit, I don't care, I am including it here anyway (after the update, my count stays then same anyway). A very witty, dare I say brilliantly conceived film that plays mind games with any sense of linear structure. Predating Annie Hall, a film with obvious influence taken (though with more bite), Donan's film is an acerbic, daring movie way ahead of its time - and a film that should not have been kicked of the list dammit! I think I would count it in my top 200, so a list of 1000 should be enough to contain such a film.

#715 - Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) - (#647 on TSPDT) I like opening the year with a strong start, and watching this early Bergman on New Year's Day is definitely the way to do such a thing. Quickly skyrocketing into the number two spot of my ranking of Bergman's films (Seventh Seal is still number one) this crisply shot circus film is a remarkably powerful film - both visually and emotionally. Part of that more humanistic, less religious early Bergman style, Sawdust and Tinsel is a film that rarely gets mentioned in talks of the Swedish auteur, but its recent restoration and DVD/BD release over at the house of Criterion, should remedy that. At least I would hope it does.

#716 - Hour of the Wolf (1968) - (#749 on TSPDT) Back-to-back Bergmans in just a few day span, I cannot say I was as pleased with this one as I was with the previous. As with many of the great Swede's late sixties work (Shame and Persona) this is a rather pretentious work, filled with unrequited bravado (a thing the other two aforementioned films, especially the quite brilliantly conceived Persona, manage to overcome much easier than this) and even though it is far from a bad movie, it is a lesser Bergman indeed.

#717 - Salvatore Giuliano (1961) - (#318 on TSPDT) For a film so high up on the list, I thought this was a pretty drab affair. Then again, it is not alone in that respect. - just check out the even higher placed first entry in this segment. Seeming like the kind of film I would normally enjoy, this subtly disarming gangster movie ends up being nothing more than a dragging experience interspersed with flashes of cinematic bravura. Unfortunately these moments of intensity are not enough to keep the film going for its entirety. And this is coming from someone who actually enjoys slow moving cinema.

#718 - Triumph of the Will (1935) - (#315 on TSPDT) We can put aside all the stories of Leni Riefenstahl's supposed Nazi sympathies (okay, even with her undying denial, these are probably more than supposed stories) because this film transcends any of the ugliness that is associated with Nazi Germany. Friends with Hitler (and supposedly enemies with Goebbels - she would not listen to his cultural demands) Riefenstahl was asked to film the 1934 National Socialist rallies. Using groundbreaking techniques, Riefenstahl, who had been favourably compared to the likes of Welles and Hitchcock in her day (Pauline Kael called this and her epic-length Olympia, the two greatest films ever directed by a woman), created a gorgeous work of cinematic art. We watch as Nazi soldiers goosestep, Hitler youth romp around in the most homoerotic manner and parades and speeches are glorified. If one can forget the atrocities that would come in the next few years, this is a beautiful film full of classic romantic cadence. As pure cinema, this is a great film - even with its rather sinister leanings.

#719 - Murder By Contract (1958) - (#873 on TSPDT) This is a fun movie. A giddy movie about a hired gun who runs into trouble with his latest target. Even though it is not technically in the genre, this film plays out in the same frame of mind, and has many of the same tropes as the more famed heist movies of the time like Rififi and The Killing. Perhaps it is not up to those film's levels, but it is quite fun indeed.

Film Review: Another Earth

2012-01-25T16:29:00.000-05:00

One would think, and rightfully so I believe, that a film about an alternate Earth orbiting around the sky would involve some sort of science-fiction element in its storytelling. When one is considering Mike Cahill's feature debut, Another Earth, one would surely be wrong. About as far from a sci-fi film as one can get (other than the peripheral planet X hovering above of course), Another Earth, much like its contemporaneously released brethren from Danish provocateur Lars von Trier, Melancholia, is more a look at the psychology of depression and guilt and how we get along with our fellow humans. Sure, as is the case with both films, there is that initial element of fantasy, but both films, Cahill's moreso considering von Trier's penchant for the absurd, are about as down to Earth as one could imaginably get. This is a film not about other planets but about human interaction and the effects even the smallest things have on our lives.

Another Earth is the story of a young woman named Rhoda. In the beginning it seems like a fairy tale as everything is lain out in front of her. With a scholarship to MIT awaiting her graduation, Rhoda fatefully decides to drive home after an alcohol-infused celebration. As the radio squawks on about another planet being discovered, Rhoda hits a car stopped at a traffic light, killing the woman, pregnant at that, and her toddler son. We find out later, after Rhoda has spent four years in prison, that the husband and father had survived the wreck and has just recently come out of a coma. Now working as a school janitor, Rhoda seeks the man out to tell him what she had done, but instead infiltrates his life and tries to do whatever she can to help him get through his pain. This is both Rhoda's penance, and her way to her own salvation in a way.

With a more Earthbound sense of dread than the aforementioned Melancholia (Cahill does not hurtle his planet at ours like von Trier does in the Dane's destructive nature) Rhoda seems to ease not only this man's pain but her own as well. In a way, Cahill's film is about hope (in a way von Trier's could never be) and the goodness that comes from guilt. With shades of Tarkovsky's Solaris - all of Tarkovsky really - Cahill builds his film up with moments of quiet self-fortitude and a cathartic cadence that drives the film with a methodical beauty hidden below the surface pain and anguish. Much of this selfless, disarming beauty comes from not only Cahill's subtle direction (again, like Tarkovsky but without the overall bravado) but also from the sleek, workmanlike performance of Brit Marling as the tragic Rhoda. Perhaps it lacks the cinematic chutzpah of the similarly themed, but ultimately dissimilar von Trier work, but what Cahill's film has going for it is its undying sense of humanity. It is in this humanity, and not in any perceived science fiction, that Another Earth works so well.

The Oscar Nominations Are Here!!

2012-01-24T13:51:00.003-05:00

So, after getting 89% of my predictions right two years ago and dipping slightly to 87% last year, I stumble down to a mere 82% with this morning's announcement. Ouch. Overall though, I suppose that isn't terrible - or is it? Anyway, the categories break down as such: Best Picture I went 8 for 9. Since we had no idea how many nods there were going to be, I just listed ten in order of probability. My first eight choices, in order of probability, The Artist, The Descendants, Midnight in Paris, Hugo, The Help, Moneyball, The Tree of Life and War Horse were all nominated. My number nine choice, The Ides of March was replaced with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Which is an extra bane upon my existence since I was hoping to avoid having to see the damned film, but now, due to my having to see all the nominees each year, will have to endure the beast sometime between now and February 26th. I guess you can sense my high hopes about the whole thing. Anyway, I digress.

I actually aced Best Director and am very glad to see some Malick love slip in there (in picture AND director). I ended up going 4 for 5 in all four acting categories. My Best Actor prediction of Michael Fassbender was replaced with the (somewhat) surprising nod for A Better Life's Demián Bichir ( a film I still need to see). Perhaps the Academy was scared off by the size of his.....anyway, I digress once again. Best Actress was marred by my choice of Charlize Theron (which was more than a bit scratchy anyway) but she was replaced by Rooney Mara for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which was a welcome surprise. Her performance is my personal favourite of the five nominees, so her (somewhat) surprise nomination was a welcome announcement indeed.

In the supporting categories, my prediction of Shailene Woodley was replaced by Janet McTeer for Albert Nobbs. This was not really a surprise since McTeer had been a likely dark horse. I did predict Melissa McCarthy's nod correctly - even though I absolutely loathed Bridesmaids (easily one of the worst films of last year). In Supporting Actor I did not predict Max von Sydow's nod. I figured he might sneak in but I figured he would replace my choice of Nick Nolte (how many predicted that one correctly!?) not Albert Brooks. Seriously, Brooks' performance in the criminally overlooked Drive was the frontrunner back in December and even after he lost frontrunner status to Christopher Plummer, he was still considered, pretty much across the board, as a lock for a nomination. Egad!

The last two categories I predicted, the screenplays, was where my weakest spot showed itself. Granted I pulled off a 4 out of 5 in Adapted Screenplay - my choice of The Help was (thankfully) replaced by The Ides of March - but in Original I went just 3 for 5 - my picks of Win Win and Young Adult were replaced with Margin Call and my dark horse candidate, A Separation. As far as the technical stuff goes, I did not post any of my predictions for these but judging from what I thought would be nominated, these would have kept by lackluster 82% winning percentage pretty much intact. Ah well. Anyway, now we can go on with other things in the cinematic world and ignore these things until the end of February when, as is tradition I suppose, I will make my final Oscar Predictions the night before the ceremony. A full list of the nominees can be found here.

Oscar Nomination Predictions

2012-01-22T22:50:00.004-05:00

Predicting the Oscars is not really that difficult of a task to do each year. So many of the spots in each category are shoo-ins, with usually only the last spot up for grabs - even if that one. The problem with predicting this year's Oscar race comes in the form of predicting just how many Best Pictures nominees will be announced on Tuesday morning. After upping the BP category to ten nominees a couple of years ago (from the previous amount of five - which in my not-so-humble opinion is the perfect amount) the Academy has announced that this year there will be between five and ten nominees for the top prize. There is a whole set of convoluted rules that go with this decision, reading like one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, but I will not bother you with trying to explain them. This of course makes it a bit more difficult, but who am I to complain. Anyway, on with the show. Below are my nomination predictions, with each category ordered in probability of nomination.

Best Picture

The Artist
The Descendants
Midnight in Paris
Hugo
The Help

If it goes further (my guess is seven nominees)

Moneyball
The Tree of Life

And if it goes even further (still in order of probability)

War Horse
The Ides of March
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Dark Horses: Bridesmaids and/or Harry Potter 7.5

The first three are shoo-ins. As for the next two, either one could be bumped for the two after that. It would give me such delight to see The Tree of Life get in there. Some little guy in the back of my head wants me to place the films in that top five, but that is just wishful thinking. Hell, placing it in the seventh spot may be a bit of wishful thinking as well. As for those last three, I do not think it will go that far, though number eight could replace The Tree of Life (egads no!!), but just in case, there they are. As for the dark horse choices, they may seem a bit silly, but it would not surprise me to hear either's name called on Tuesday morning. I guess there is always the possibility of something like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Drive (I would love that), My Week With Marilyn, J. Edgar or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close sneaking in there as well, (the latter of which had plenty of Oscar buzz early on but not so much these days) but these are unlikely.

Best Director

Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Martin Scorsese for Hugo
Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris
Alexander Payne for The Descendants
Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life

Dark Horse: David Fincher for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I think the top four are pretty much locks for the nomination. The number five spot is a killer though. Again, this may just be wishful thinking on my part, but I believe that even if his film is left out of the eventual nominees, Malick will get that fifth spot. Of course there is always the possibility of Tate Taylor or Bennett Miller grabbing that spot for either The Help or Moneyball respectively. These, especially Miller, are more likely scenarios but I must go with my heart here. Then again, we could always see Spielberg's name pop in there, even if he was snubbed (rightfully so, his film is typical Oscar dreck) by the DGA. They also snubbed (unrightfully if you ask me) Malick but let's just ignore that. As for the dark horse choice, a second possibility, though less likely (but more desirous) is Nicolas Winding Refn for Drive. Yeah, right.

Best Actor

George Clooney in The Descendants
Jean Dujardin in The Artist
Brad Pitt in Moneyball
Michael Fassbender in Shame
Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Dark Horse: Michael Shannon in Take Shelter

The first three are locks (with Clooney a near lock for the actual Oscar - for now) and I think the number four spot is close to a lock, as long as the AMPAS voters can get past the NC-17 rating (and possible jealousy over the rather enormous size of the actor's schlong). The number five spot is a bit trickier. Leo DiCaprio was a seeming lock when the awards season first kicked off, but after such mediocre reviews for his film, his Oscar buzz has dropped significantly. Still though, he is Leo DiCaprio and therefore is a possibility. Dropping Leo and adding Oldman as the fifth spot may not be a sure thing though. Oldman, who strangely enough has never been nominated before, gives a solid performance in the retro spy thriller, but it is one of those strong quiet performances that tend not to get noticed. But then the Academy does like to correct past errors and Oldman's lack of nominations could help him get that notice. Then again, Michael Shannon (the dark horse choice) has been the critical darling so him getting that fifth spot is quite possible. Of course I would love to see Ryan Gosling get nominated. Preferably for Drive, but more likely for The Ides of March. Perhaps the Gosman should be my dark horse.

Best Actress

Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn
Viola Davis in The Help
Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs
Charlize Theron in Young Adult

Dark Horse: Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin

The first three are locks, and I believe they are also the three that will battle for the win. Davis won the Critic's Choice Award while Streep and Williams split the Golden Globes (Drama and Comedy respectively). Personally I think with Octavia Spencer being the frontrunner for Supporting Actress (voters like spreading the wealth in the acting categories) and the less-than luke warm response that The Iron Lady has received (everything about the film sans La Streep's performances has been much criticized) that Williams' portrayal of Marilyn Monroe (the Academy loves actors playing other actors) could pull off a relatively shocking surprise come Oscar night. But that is speculation for another time. Right now I am just predicting the nominees, and all three of these ladies are going to be among them. I think the number four spot is pretty much a forgone conclusion as well. Not many people out in Peoria have seen the film yet but Glenn Close is highly respected and should be able to procure a nomination. Then (like in most categories) you have that fifth spot. This spot is pretty much a battle between Theron and the dark horse Swinton. It could pretty much go either way really. One other possibility (though not a strong one) is Elizabeth Olsen for her turn in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Earlier on she seemed like a shoo-in, but all that buzz has long gone away. Even Kiera Knightley or Rooney Mara could surprise but that is highly unlikely.

Best Supporting Actor

Christopher Plummer in Beginners
Albert Brooks in Drive
Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill in Moneyball
Nick Nolte in Warrior

Dark Horse: Patton Oswalt in Young Adult

The first three are locks, with Plummer as the frontrunner to win it all. Number four will sneak in there as long as Moneyball grabs enough attention - which I think it will (obviously). As for the fifth spot - as has been the case pretty much every time around - it is a veritable free-for-all. Early on it looked like Viggo Mortensen's performance as Sigmund Freud in A Dangerous Method would be a shoo-in, but pretty much all the buzz from that film has died. Patton Oswalt, our humble dark horse, had some buzz going for a while, but that has tapered off a bit. Ben Kingsley has a shot, especially with Hugo being so big in the awards world right now, and I almost went with him, but ended up going with Nolte for his role in the otherwise maligned Warrior. This culd end up being a mistake but there you have it anyway. One last possibility is Max von Sydow for Extremely Close or Loud or whatever that movie is called.

Best Supporting Actress

Octavia Spencer in The Help
Bérénice Bejo in The Artist
Shailene Woodley in The Descendants
Jessica Chastain in The Help
Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids

Dark Horse: Carey Mulligan in Shame

The first three are locks and I suppose number four is close to a lock as well. After all, since Chastain was in pretty much every movie made this past year, she should get a nomination for something, right? Of course this supersaturation could split any votes she gets and end up putting her on the proverbial cutting room floor. That fifth spot however (here we go again) is another free-for-all. Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs, the great Vanessa Redgrave for Coriolanus or Carey Mulligan in Shame (our dark horse) could all take that spot, but with the campaign for Bridesmaids, it looks as if McCarthy will nab that spot after all. One last note: I would love to see Marion Cotillard sneak in here for her role in Midnight in Paris. Unlikely though.

Best Original Screenplay

Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris
Michael Hazanavicius for The Artist
Diablo Cody for Young Adult
Annie Mumalo and Kristen Wiig for Bridesmaids
Tom McCarthy for Win Win

Dark Horse: Asghar Farhadi for A Separation

The first two are definites. Woody is bound to get his sixteenth writing nomination (and third win). The Woodman already broke Billy Wilder's record with his fifteenth nod. As for number two, The Artist did not grab a coveted WGA nomination and may have limitations due to it being a silent film, but the sweep that is likely to happen on Tuesday morning (my predix - 10 nods for The Artist) will surely include this category. The third is highly probable - she is already an Oscar winner. The fourth is pretty likely as well. The fifth spot will go to either Win Win or 50/50 (both WGA nominees). I could easily switch the fifth choice between either of these, but I think Win Win has the slightest of edges. Of course our dark horse could just as easily sweep in grab the last minute nod. Then again, we should not count out J.C. Chandor for Margin Call.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian for Moneyball
Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash for The Descendants
Tate Taylor for The Help
John Logan for Hugo
Bridget O'Conner and Peter Straughan for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Dark Horse: Steve Zaillian for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

The first three are pretty much locks, with number one being a screenplay (the likely winner I think) written by the two best damn writers in Hollywood. Meanwhile number four is a rather sure bet as well, and number five is a fairly respectable choice as well, but since it did not receive a WGA nod it could easily be replaced by our dark horse, which incidentally did receive a WGA nod. I think the thing that will put TTSS in over TGWTDT is the fact that voters will most likely choose one or the other Steve Zaillian scripts, but probably not both. Then again, what the hell do I know. We could also see War Horse surprise, but I think only if it grabs a lot of nominations, which I do not think it will do.

Well, I think I will stop here. Sure, I could go on and say how The Tree of Life and The Artist are shoo-ins for Best Cinematography, Hugo and Harry Potter are locks for Art Direction, Moneyball and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo will get Film Editing nods and The Rise of the Planet of the Apes will most likely win the Best Visual Effects Oscar - but I will not. I am just going to leave it at the big eight categories. Anyway, it helps my eventual winning percentage if I do. And speaking of winning percentages - I had an 87% accuracy rate last year, dipping down slightly from the 89% I scored in 2009. Here's hoping I can break into the ninety percentage range come Tuesday morning.

These predictions can also be found over at Anomalous Material, where I have a regular feature writer gig. It is pretty much just a copy and paste job (with some of the images altered a bit) but just thought I would let you know and perhaps help promote the fine folks over at AM in the meantime.

Retro Review: I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 07)

2012-01-21T17:31:00.001-05:00

*************

In the opening salvo of his near-Proustian length critique par excellence in the Village Voice, J. Hoberman called I'm Not There the movie of the year - and he may very well be right. In fact he could ostensibly exchange the word year for the word decade and still be very much within his rights. Easily the most daring experimentation in filmmaking (read: a bite in the ass of cinema) since Lars von Trier's Dogville in 2003.

Half casting stunt, half cinematic experimentation, Todd Haynes, the former Brown University semiotics major turned cinematic manipulator extraordinaire, and the man who gave us Far From Heaven, an impressionistic and socially rupturous homage to Douglas Sirk and a scathing indictment of American sexual mores, Velvet Goldmine, a kinky Citizen Kane structured ode to glam rock, [Safe], his diabolic take on the insecurities of humanity and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, an absurdist Barbie-dolled super-8 mockery of everything America holds dear (sort of), now hands us his by-far fullest plate yet - a deconstruction not only of the enigmatic Bob Dylan, a man who playing his own game of propagandism, already sliced and diced himself into a multitude of ideas and ideals, but of the very concept of cinema itself. Taking the typically one-man (or one-woman) ultra-polished horse and pony show that is the biopic genre, Haynes flips it on its already much beleaguered head and shows us not one man, but six (or really seven) different aspects of one man, here personified by six different actors, all of different ages, races and even genders. Six actors, but in search of what?

With influences ranging from Fellini and Godard to Laurence Sterne and James Joyce, with a bit of Rashomonian Chaucer thrown in and an undercurrent of Marshall McLuhan to boot, Todd Haynes has created not only a film "about" Bob Dylan, but also a film that plays at times as being from Dylan, to Dylan, by Dylan and even on occasion, becoming Dylan. Breathed of the same cubist air in which Dylan created his own self-imitating (and oft-maligned and highly underrated) opus Renaldo & Clara back in 1978, and possibly with many of the same box office blockades (as far as the common moviegoer is concerned - length, unwarranted philosophizing, a dibilitatingly obscure linear structure et al), Haynes' film is a stroke of mad genius mixed with an air of semi-satiric superiority and blended with the mystique of frustrated stardom - all rolled into some sort of postmodern concoction of deconstructive catharsis.

First up (and I say that with an air of trepidation since the film is only superficially linear and Haynes cuts back and forth at the slightest provocation and/or whim) is Ben Whishaw as the poet Arthur Rimbaud, the personification of Dylan's poetic aspirations. In the midst of an interrogation being held by an off-stage voice, Whishaw is both mouthpiece for Dylan and his very own Joan of Arc, his face as blaise here as Dreyer's Maria Falconetti's was tormented. He is the voice of dissident, and diffident, reason.

Next comes Marcus Carl Franklin as a ten year old train-hopping black runaway in 1959 who goes by the name Woody Guthrie. Rather appropriately played by a black child actor, considering Dylan's youthful exuberance for Guthrie and his being led to the origin of blues music through this exuberance, this is the boy the man would become. Obsessed to the point of believing his own lies, Woody is Dylan as Dylan perhaps dreamt himself as a child. Tremulous at times, yet full of verve and desire. Replete with likely apocryphal tales of being a serial runaway, Dylan's childhood fantasies of becoming his one-time idol - fantasies which have many times over either been surpassed or missed altogether - play as both prelude and omen to what is to come. Where Rimbaud is his mind, Woody is the heart of Bob Dylan.

After the child prodigy incarnation of Woody vanishes from the screen (for now), we are given Christian Bale as the finger-pointing, political singing-songwriting-harmonica-playing troubadour Jack Rollins, here accompanied by Julianne Moore doing her best Joan Baez in full VH1 Where Are They Now? mode, giving us the early acoustic-strung world shattering aspirations of a still quite green Dylan. We watch wide-eyed naivety turn to jaded indignance in Bale's superbly bitter (and typically tortured Bale-ian) performance. This is Dylan turning his back on what people "expected" him to be. This is Dylan refusing to be the left-wing lap-dog they wanted. This is Dylan turning toward a different left. The left of the counterculture. The left of his Beat idols like Ginsberg and Kerouac and McClure. This is the soul of Dylan, aching to be alive.

This turning away from the "established" folk-centered left and turning toward the beat aesthetic is perfectly played in what is surely the centerpiece of Haynes' cubist masterwork (as well as the film's most sincere shot at Oscar gold) - Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn, wild-eyed speed-freak electric rock & roll rebel at the apex of his (or her - does it even matter at this point?) circus cannonball blast to stardom. Shot in black and white and layered after both D.A. Pennebaker's 1965 Dylan doc Don't Look Back and Fellini's 1963 masterpiece of misinterpretation and misdirection 8 1/2, this section is rife with allegorical slaps at modern-day mass-hysteroid media and the often stampeding effect it has on celebrity, complete with a queer little helium-voiced "cameo" by four mop-topped lads from Liverpool, playing A Hard Day's Night/Help!-like with a similarly frolicking Jude/Dylan/Blanchett.

And if Dylan truly is the hero of our story then Bruce Greenwood as a quite nasty little Brit TV talk show host amalgamation known as Mr. Jones (who incidentally provocates a spectacular rendition of The Ballad of The Thin Man) is the villain. Snidely mocking Dylan's pretentiousness while snarkily being counter-attacked by Dylan/Quinn/Blanchett's sharp-tongued back quips, these Pennebaker-inspired sparring matches are the epitome of Dylan's jadedness toward the media. Meanwhile, amidst this Felliniesque circustry, we get David Cross as a pitch-perfect Allen Ginsberg making his entrance a la golf cart and Michelle Williams as part Edie Sedgewick, part personification of Dylan's fading muse. It was shortly after this time period - the Blonde on Blonde era and what many call the apogee of Dylan's songwriting career - that Dylan crashed his motorcycle and became a backwoods recluse for several years.

This segues nicely into Dylan's recluse days (the first version of them that is) and into the "family" life of Dylan personified here by Heath Ledger, doing his best James Dean (yet another Dylan idol). Ledger plays Robbie Clark, half rising half fading star of the silver screen and the incarnation of Dylan as Dylan himself showed in parts of Renaldo & Clara. Failing actor, failing husband and failing father. The "macho" antithesis of Blanchett's foppish Jude, Ledger's Robbie is a man at constant odds with himself and all those around him. Playing Robbie's wife (and stand-in for Sara Dylan, Suze Rotolo and other Dylan loves and muses - as well as Haynes own personal Anna Karina) is French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, appropriately (and surely uncoincidentally) cast in the role of spotlight mother, herself coming from the womb of a fashion model and the loins of a pop star. This is Dylan as false God. This is Dylan as faker. This is Dylan's lost soul.

And what would a lost soul be without someone to find - and save - it. This is exactly what happened to Dylan in the late seventies when he "found" Jesus and this is just what we get from Christian (aptly named?) Bale in redux. Former musical instigator Jack Rollins is now evangelical minister Paster John in what plays as a brief interlude from the rest of the story - which may just be what Dylan's own "rebirth" was. If Ledger's Robbie was his false God, then this could very well be Dylan as false Man.

Then comes the final act. The reclusive hermetic Dylan. The fantasy Dylan. The dream Dylan. He comes in the package of a frazzled greying Richard Gere known as Mr. B, or as we later find out, Billy the Kid. Running from the law, running from his music, running from his fans and running from himself perhaps, Gere's Billy the Kid appears in what could very well be a dream world, full of surreal imagery and replete with masked men, women and children. Everyone, even in his dreams, are hiding - and Dylan is no different. With the sudden (re)appearance of Bruce Greenwood, this time behind his own mask as an aging Pat Garrett, Gere's "Kid" goes on the run and finds himself hopping back on the trains of his youth - and in doing so, we are taken right back to the beginning again. Structured in many ways upon Joyce's Finnigan's Wake, it is Billy's temporally implausible discovery of Woody's guitar aboard an empty boxcar that brings Haynes' film river running itself right back to where we started from.

And still, while much of the film takes on a Joycean life of its own, and it is, of course, based on the life of (if not the ruminations of) Bob Dylan, not to mention the melange of influences cited earlier, there is yet another must-see influence weighing heavy upon the auteuristic stylings of Mr. Haynes (could it be that Haynes has as many sides as Dylan himself?), and that influence is Jean-Luc Godard. Beginning and ending (as useless as those relative terms are in this case) in much the same gunshot fashion as Godard's Masculine/Feminine - not coincidentally the only one of Godard's seemingly endless oeuvre to openly reference Dylan - Haynes, at his most Godardian (and really, what current filmmaker is any more Godardian than Haynes right now?), lock stocks and barrels his way through the life of Bob Dylan with the stream-of-consciousness rhythms of a deconstructionive mad scientist. Haynes as the all-knowing, all-seeing (all that can be known and/or seen that is) doctor, and the many ideas of who or what or where or when Bob Dylan is, as his somewhat flawed yet genius monster - all the while never kow-towing to what one expects from the genre of biopic. After all, as Haynes recently more than alludes to in an interview in Cineaste, there are lies in all biography, but at least here we are let in on the joke.

I have a good friend who is, and I don't think he would be the slightest bit offended by the choice of adjective, obsessed with all things Dylan. Having seen him in concert about 953 times or so and owning just about every recorded piece of music, bootlegs and all, and much of it on vinyl, and referring to Dylan as The P.I. (for those of us in the know, that stands for Prophet Incarnate), and being a true Dylanologist of the highest order, I am sure he would get many more of the referential moments than even I did. Which may very well beg for a precursive crash course in Dylanology for those out there not so inclined toward The P.I., and though the recurring tarantula should be quite obvious to even the novice Dylan acolyte, I'm sure a primer in watching Scorsese's expounding doc No Direction Home (a great film even outside of the predications of I'm Not There) wouldn't hurt anyone.

In sum, there are not many people who have been able to successfully metamorphose into so many different creatures (possibly John Lennon or Miles Davis or the aforementioned Godard), but still this film is not just about Dylan. Never uttering the name throughout, this film is as much about Bob Dylan as it is not about Bob Dylan. Taking Proust's idea of a "succession of selves" and running with it - as Dylan has done to himself throughout his career (we are still not sure of many of the facts) - Haynes shows us not just another life (or another movie), but life (or Cinema) itself.

[Originally published at The Cinematheque on 12/16/07]

Film Review: Carnage

2012-01-20T16:46:00.000-05:00

With obvious comparisons to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (though with more sobriety amongst the characters), this play turned movie, featuring just four characters and set inside one Brooklyn apartment, is a concise, acerbic, beast of a movie. Starring Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly as a couple whose son is beaten up by another boy, and Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz as the parents of the alleged offender, director Roman Polanski gives his actors just enough room (literally and figuratively) to do their interweaving diatribes of ferocity toward one another, but not enough room to be able to escape the vitriolic barbs of their close-quartered enemies. Sharply written and sharply acted, especially by Winslet and Waltz, Carnage, based on the play Le Dieu du carnage by Yasmina Reza, is a verbally caustic, attack-ready take on the ideas of societal civility and just how far one will go to either keep the facade up or viciously tear it down - and each character has his or her turn at both sides of the gun

At a very brisk 79 minutes (shot in real time), Polanski never lingers on anything for too long, his subtly constantly moving camera doing physically what his characters do emotionally, but as the niceties of the early scenes devolve into the vicious realities of each character's own psyches (Waltz is the one character that never really tries to hold back his barbarism) the film becomes more and more harrowing and the viewer more and more apprehensive about what will come next, or more aptly, who will come apart next. The characters begin to unravel - Winslet's indifference turning to open anger, Reilly's affable nature taken over by his inability to have control, Foster's faux liberalism taken to the breaking point of absurdity, Waltz's pomposity beaten down by the loss of his cell phone life line (we see his arrogance curled up on the floor like a reprimanded child) - and with each successive scene they fall apart more and more. With each passing moment they act worse and worse toward each other - far more childish than either of their children had acted in the first place.

Granted, the film never goes much deeper than a few figurative skin abrasions, and the barbed verbal attacks are nothing when compared to the monstrous goings-on in the aforementioned Virginia Woolf (the added tension of Taylor and Burton's real life relationship added to that as well) but nonetheless, Polanski gets some great, if not exactly powerful (all four have been harder hitting in other roles) performances out of his claustrophobic quartet, and the acid-tongued breaking down of civility is great fun to watch. Perhaps this is just this critic's own rather warped sense of societal rules. One could even say it is a giddy treat to see these four supposedly civilized people go from decorum to destruction in less than 79 minutes. I just wished there had been more - if not more time, at least more viciousness. Then again, perhaps that is just me. But really, it is quite fun to watch.

Anomalous Material Weekly Feature: 10 Most Heinous Oscar Snubs

2012-01-20T00:29:00.000-05:00

Here we are again true believers, with my latest weekly 10 best feature for the fine folks over at Anomalous Material. For those of you not in the know, those same said fine folks have given me a (possibly foolish on their behalf) regular gig as feature writer. It is a series of top ten lists on various cinematic subjects - and anyone who knows me can attest to how perfectly suited I am to such an endeavor (yes I am a list nerd). This week's feature, my twenty-first such feature, is all about the Oscars. The worst of the Oscars. With the Oscar nominations being announced this coming week, I thought I would take a look at the most unworthy Oscar winners in the award's history. The worst of the worst. It took a lot of whittling down since the Oscars are well known for some pretty bad atrocities of taste, but here they are - just one click away.

Read my feature article, "10 Most Heinous Oscar Snubs" at Anomalous Material.

This list is so full of horrendous Oscar blunders, the worst of the worst as I said, that the jackass screaming "I'm king of the world" in the picture below is not even included. Just imagine how bad the ten on the list must be.

The Best of 2011

2012-01-18T00:25:00.019-05:00

I have been busy busy busy this past holiday season, but that does not mean that I forgot about that staple of the year's end. Another year over and a new one just begun, and that means it's time for the film critic's most anticipated (and sometimes dreaded) annual obligation - the top ten list. A yearly look back at the hundreds of films seen throughout the year and a frenzied shuffling around to narrow your list down to just ten films (or in some cases, trying to find as many as ten films deemed worthy enough). I for one love this annual ritual and wait with giddy baited breath for it to come around, so without further ado, especially since I am kind of late in bringing this to you (but fashionably late dammit!!), I give you my choices for the best films 2011.

1. The Tree of Life - When I first saw this stunning film up on the big screen (the first of three such visits to the cinema in order to behold this spectacle of light) I knew there would be no competition for the top spot on my eventual best of the year list - and boy was I right. Resting the proverbial head and shoulders above all other takes, Terrence Malick's brilliant new film is not only the best film of 2011, but also an early candidate for the best film of the decade. My review can be read here.

2. Hugo - An adventure-filled fantasy film about the birth of cinema, using the most modern of technological moviemaking advances, this 3D motion picture experience from Martin Scorsese is a thing of such cinematic romanticism, with such an audacious love of film and its inherent history (a paean to film preservation if you will) that I defy any true cinephile to either condemn or ignore it. My review can be read here.

3. Melancholia - In all his hate him or love him glory (or should that be infamy?), Lars von Trier's latest film, taking on the subject of depression hidden in plain and brutal sight, smack dab in the middle of an end-of-the-world scenario, is a nerve-wrangling, twisting, turning, vituosic work of audacious, bullying cinema - and who could ask for anything more. My review can be read here.

4. Super 8 - Evoking the type of cinema that Steven Spielberg was putting out in the late seventies and early eighties (back when Mr. Spielberg still know how to make us believe) yet still full of the post-millennial chutzpah that is J.J. Abrams, this quaintest of monster movies, replete with those Abramsesque blue lens flares and a camera that seems to never stay put, is the best Summer blockbustery movie that Hollywood has put out in many a year. My review can be read here.

5. Drive - Ryan Gosling as a Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver for hire is one of the best genre pieces Hollywood has put out in a long long time. Cool and aloof, this film by Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn, is a work of sheer subversive beauty. Toss in Carey Mulligan as the Driver's only possible salvation and Albert Brooks as an against type small time mob boss (he should win an Oscar) and you have the makings of one damn fine motion picture. My review can be read here.

6. The Skin I Live In - Creepy and exotic, this psychological thriller from Almodovar is the Spanish auteur at his most dangerously Hitchcockian. A loose adaptation of Franju's Eyes Without A Face (though based on the French novel Tarantula), this strange creature of a movie is at times hilarious and at times harrowing. I dare even call it a brilliant psychosexual game of smoke and mirrors. My review can be read here.

7. Certified Copy - Iranian master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has made his first film outside of his native country. It is a twisting, turning, whirling dervish of cinematic bravura and storytelling audacity. As we watch Juliette Binoche and William Shimmel make their way through the winding streets of Tuscany, Kiarostami takes us deeper and deeper into his meta-manipulative world of filmmaking, where nothing is ever as it seems. My review can be read here.

8. Meek's Cutoff - Trudgingly beautiful, this film by the methodically melodic filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, and featuring the director's Wendy and Lucy heroine Michelle Williams in the central role, pissed a hell of a lot of moviegoers off this past year (though perhaps not as many as the number one spot on this list) but what they could not get behind, what they could not understand, was the inherent understated beauty of such a seemingly difficult film (it wasn't really difficult people) as Meek's Cutoff. My review can be read here.

9. Moneyball - The best damn sports movie ever made. Yeah, I know that is a pretty bold statement but there you have it - and I am sticking to it. Looking at the game of baseball from both a statistical mindset (the nerd in me loves that) and a romantic viewpoint (the sentimentalist in me loves that), Moneyball is, and I am going to boldly say it again, the best damn sports movie ever made. My review can be read here.

10. Attack the Block - Take John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 and replace the never-ending onslaught of nonspeaking L.A. gang members with equally non-speaking (though not non-growling) creatures from outer space and you pretty much get the gist of Attack the Block. This hit genre piece from the UK is a deliriously fun cinematic ride. My review can be read here.

11. The Artist - There are some quite remarkable shots in this film, many of them done as homage to either specific classic Hollywood works or a generalized silent era style, and it is in these shots that director Michel Hazanavicius brings such vibrant life to his black and white silent film. The current frontrunner to win the Best Picture Oscar, The Artist definitely has the visual audacity to pull off such a unique victory. My review can be read here.

12. A Dangerous Method - David Cronenberg somehow manages to take the already strange relationship between Jung and Freud and makes it even stranger. Of course this is what Cronenberg does best, so one should not be surprised. A psychosexual (that is at least the second time that term has been used on this list) mindfuck of a movie, hiding behind a supposed analytical period piece - and we get Michael Fassbender to boot. My review can be read here.

13. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - Many say Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul is an acquired taste, but when the director makes a film that involves ghost monkeys, ghosts of dead wives and a talking catfish who goes down on an ugly princess, how can you not fall in love? Seriously though, I have always been a fan of Joe (the long-named director's choice of nicknames) but this may very well be the auteur's best work yet. My review can be read here.

14. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - I must admit to not being much of a fan of the original Swedish films, finding them to be at times thrilling but mostly middle-of-the-road, but put David Fincher behind the wheel and you get a whole other thing entirely. With the director's more in your face style of moviemaking, this US remake does something not many other remakes have done, and that is improve the product. My review can be read here.

15. Midnight in Paris - This is Woody Allen as we have not seen Woody Allen in decades. Perhaps his latest film does not quite match up with many of the films from the director's Golden Age (1977-1992) but with its often biting dialogue and obvious nostalgic set pieces (showing a love for a lost Paris that nearly matches his love of the New York of his childhood) it comes closer than anything he has done since. My review can be read here.

16. Source Code - With more than an air of Hitchcock in it, Duncan Jones' deceptively brilliant Source Code (the director's more visceral, less moody followup to the equally impressive Moon), loosely based on Chris Marker's La Jetee, is one of those rare mainstream Hollywood movies that forces its viewers to stop being mindless automatons, and to think things out. My review can be read here.

17. Hanna - With Joe Wright's weaving, obtrusive camera, Saoirse Ronan's killer-diller, cold-blooded performance and a visual and aural in-your-face middle finger to the conventions of cinema, this calculating, visceral man-eating movie starts off slowly but once it gets going it does not stop until the abrupt bang bang credits roll. My review can be read here.

18. Shame - The harrowing story of one man obsessed with sex. From hard drives stuffed full of porn to old school girlie mags, from paid escorts to random sexual encounters with strangers, from constant masturbatory trips to the rest room during work to desperate and seedy club hopping, Michael Fassbender's sex addict is one of the finest performances of the year, in one of the most dangerously obsessive movies of the year. My review can be read here.

19. Kaboom - Gregg Araki's sci-fi/thriller/sex farce/comedy hybrid thingee from another seeming planet is a refreshing and unique look at the genre film - several genres at that. A mysterious movie that combines elements of David Lynch with moments of balls-out sex romp lunacy, this nearly uncategorizable film was one of the surprise highlights of the year. My review can be read here.

20. The Arbor - Half documentary, half experimental film, have self-referential stage play (yeah yeah I know - math has never been my strong suit), this quite subversive, quite harrowing biopic about late playwright Andrea Dunbar, is probably the most unique film of the year in its use of real life people (Dunbar's actual friends and family) blended with actors lipsynching the actual words of witnesses. A play within a play within a MacGuffin. My review can be read here.

21. Beginners - A sobering yet romantic look at one man's journey through the long and laborious death of his newly uncloseted elderly gay father. And as coolly written and directed as this film is by first timer Mike Mills (no, not the R.E.M. bassist), it is Christopher Plummer's spectacular performance in the film (one that may win the veteran actor his first Oscar) that puts it on this list. My review can be read here.

22. Rango - Take one animated lizard, give him the voice of Johnny Depp, the wardrobe of Hunter S. Thompson and the demeanor of Don Knotts, and place him smack dab in the middle of a Spaghetti Western styled remake of Chinatown, throw in a wild menagerie of supporting mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds, and you have the best animated film of 2011 - hands down. My review can be read here.

I suppose some runners-up would be appropriate right now, so here they are, in no particular order: The Guard, Take Shelter, Rubber, Hobo With A Shotgun, The Ides of March, Le Havre, Cracks, Drive Angry, Troll Hunter, Super, Horrible Bosses, Weekend, Higher Ground, Tuesday After Christmas, Another Earth, The Future, Terri, We Are What We Are, Cold Weather, I Saw the Devil, The Muppets, Tabloid, Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, Footloose, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes and X-Men: First Class.

Well that is it for 2011. Coming soon will be my most anticipated films of 2012 list, so stay tuned.

Film Review: The Skin I Live In

2012-01-16T22:48:00.001-05:00

For his eighteenth film, the modern day, melodramatic, maypole dancing Hitchcock-in-drag Spanish moviemaker Pedro Almodóvar, has sent forth the closest thing the auteur has ever come to a true blue horror movie. With nods to the Master's Vertigo, Franju's Eyes Without A Face (obviously) and, according to the director himself, Tom Six's Human Centipede, this somewhat loose adaptation of Thierry Jonquet's novel Tarantula, is a modern day look at loneliness, betrayal and sexual identity in the guise of a psychological thriller, all with a quirky spin all Almodóvar's own. The director himself calls the film, "a horror story without screams or frights," but there are frights nonetheless.

The film tells the labyrinthine tale of a man obsessed and the young woman who may be more than meets the eye. Antonio Banderas, in the actor's first film with his once regular collaborator in twenty-one years, plays a plastic surgeon who, much like Pierre Brasseur's Dr. Genessier in Eyes Without A Face, has become so obsessed with bringing back someone he has lost, that he begins to play God, blurring any line that had once been put in place as an ethics barrier. We first meet Banderas' charmingly mad Dr. Ledgard ("The things the love of a mad man can do.") as he is watching, on a giant screen surveillance monitor next to his bed nonetheless, a woman that we soon find out is being held as a prisoner in the not-so-good doctor's home. Vera, a stunning young woman dressed in a neck to toe body suit who wiles the long days away doing yoga, writing on the walls and creating strange dolls, is Dr. Ledgard's prisoner. The mad scientist's own little experimental baby doll.

Played by the beautiful Elena Anaya (another Almodovar regular, Penelope Cruz, had to back out due to scheduling conflicts), Vera quickly becomes an enigma. Is she falling for her captor? Is she plotting another escape attempt? Is any of this real? But then Almodovar's entire film is an enigma - even by Almodovar standards, which are pretty lax on the whole subject of linear moviemaking in the first place. Flashing back to six years earlier and the rape of Ledgard's own daughter and the doctor's kidnapping of yet another person, his daughter's rapist, the story begins to have more twists and turns than even the twistiest of the great Hitchcock, Almodovar's own obsession. Add in a strange and dangerous man dressed as a tiger ("El tigre que realmente me mal estado."), a dutiful housekeeper/mother hen played by another Almodovar regular, Marisa Paredes, and some rather strange medical implements, and you have one giddily bizarro motion picture. To say any more would demolish the waking dream of Almodovar's film, so I will let it go at that.

Film Review: Shame

2012-01-16T21:32:00.001-05:00

Starting out matter-of-factly enough to be considered a modern day, sex addict version of Jeanne Dielman, we watch the opening salvo as Michael Fassbender's Brandon - the titular, ostensibly shamed sexual obsessive - goes about his seemingly drudging daily and nightly routine of anonymous sex, ignoring the pleading messages on his voicemail, vigorous masturbation and online porn - all the while dragging along a seemingly worn out penis that even flaccid could easily be mistaken for a nine iron. Now even though this same said full frontal nudity, along with some pretty graphic sexual encounters (at least graphic for a mainstream movie), saddled the film with that bottom line kick in the balls NC-17 rating, Shame is not actually about sex so much as it is about addiction. An addiction that in this day and age could be just as dangerous, or at least just as much of a crap shoot as heroin or crack.

To further prove this is a film not about sex but about addiction, one is asked to look at the seeming sexiness of such a sexual film. Even with all the sex that is going on (some of it peripherally, some of it full frontal and center), never once is this film sexy. Instead, Fassbender's sex addict goes about in a veritable state of melancholy, his sexual encounters cold and formulaic, his demeanor one of diffident arrogance. Fassbender, whose smile incidentally, the few times we get to see it, is one of both disarming charity and predatory ferocity, goes about his role as if he is a dead man walking - no emotions (well, perhaps desire and some self-loathing) and no sense of community with anyone around him (well, except for when he is fucking them). Even when his sister comes to live with him (Carey Mulligan playing what one would call against type - and doing one hell of a job at it) we see a distance between these estranged siblings - Fassbender's cold as ice addict never letting anyone within, emotionally speaking, arm's reach. Perhaps Fassbender's humanity is hidden away somewhere, only allowed to see the light of neoned night when he thinks no one is looking (Mulligan's haunting jazzy rendition of New York New York brings the man to unwanted tears), but he keeps it so deep inside of him that he cannot even communicate without the aid of sexuality. This may even be more than alluded to in an incestuous way as well.

Directed by Steve McQueen (no, not that one), this highly anticipated followup to the artist-turned-filmmaker's debut feature Hunger (in which most people first became aware of how daring and remarkable an actor Herr Fassbender truly is) is a blast of sexually promiscuous arctic air. We see a man dying on the inside, unable to open up to anyone, unwilling to give any sort of loving emotion a second thought (if he even allows them a first one), trapped inside his own addiction, needing sex, in any form (and I mean that) to feel alive, yet still feeling dead inside. We see a man in the ups and downs of addiction - his hard drive being wiped clean at work, perusing subways and back alleys for any human touch - who finally succumbs to his self-destructive habits and hits that proverbial rock bottom of addictions. It is McQueen who gives his film an air of coolly derisive otherwordliness (the dank subways, the saturated lighting, the aforementioned Jeanne Dielman-esque cadence), but it is the it-boy Fassbender (though judging from the full frontal shots, perhaps it-man is more apropos) who makes us feel both repulsion and empathy for this lost soul and allows us into this world of desperation, this world of the walking dead - this world of shame.

Film Review: The Artist

2012-01-15T01:33:00.007-05:00

Playing as homage to a lost period in the film industry, this Star is Born-esque look at the onset of the sound era, done in pin-sharp black and white and an aspect ratio that hearkens back to the smaller screened world of pre-Cinemascope Hollywood, and made as, for all intents and purposes, an actual silent film, The Artist, directed by the charmingly quaint French-born auteur Michel Hazanavicius (now there is an ironic mouthful), and starring French Douglas Fairbanks look-a-like Jean Dujardin in its titular central role, is a quite stunning film to look at - which I suppose is the best thing going for a silent movie.

Granted, the story may leave a bit to be desired - it has been done to death (then again, it is an homage after all) - but when taken as purely visual (though the score, a slew of sound effects and a handful of spoken dialogue give it an audible nuance as well) and as a sort of love story to a time long lost, the film can be a thoroughly enjoyable moviegoing experience - and damn can Hazanavicius, along with cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman, paint a pretty picture in the shadows and lights of black and white.

Full of stunning shots (many influenced by the same German Expressionists that gave Welles and other Hollywood auteurs their legendary looks) and beautifully stylized set pieces, The Artist need not rely on such trivialities as script and story, for in the end, it is the panache that counts. Well, that and the ability to transit from the silent era to the sound era as Dujardin's dashing swashbuckler George Valentin must do in the film. The mostly unknown French actor (his success here - an Oscar nod is imminent - may finally get the actor's Little White Lies its long overdue US release) gives a bravura performance as this Douglas Fairbanks inspired (a bit of Rudolph Valentino may be in there too) work of silent era machismo, and it is this performance that acts as the proverbial heart and soul of the film.

But Dujardin is not alone here. Bérénice Bejo, an even lesser known Argentinian actress (and not so coincidentally, the director's wife), plays starlet Peppy Miller (with a career trajectory that most resembles a precode Joan Crawford), the Esther Blodgett to Dujardin's Norman Maine (sans the abusive nature of the latter). We also get a surprisingly svelte John Goodman (at least svelte by John Goodman standards) as the big boss of the studio, James Cromwell as Valentin's more than devoted man servant, and of course, Uggie as Jack the Dog, faithful companion to the big star and the has been Valentin both. Incidentally, while Dujardin was taking home the Best Actor award at Cannes, Uggie was awarded the coveted Palm Dog (and I am not making this up).

So even if the story is not the thing legends are made of (ironic considering the legendary status of such a so often told story), the look and feel of the film, along with the near constant homage to cinematic history - everyone from Hitchcock to Lang to Lubitsch and Murnau, to Singin' in the Rain (even Mary Pickford's house stands in for Peppy's) - more than makes up for any perceived (and they may be just that) shortcomings. Stylish and giddily melodramatic (the silent era melodrama was Hazanavicius' biggest single influence), The Artist may only be a replicate of the edge of the silent era, (sadly we cannot bring back the past - they certainly do not make them like they used to) but what a hell of a wallop it packs into its loving homagist punch.

Anomalous Material Weekly Feature: 10 Best Kevin Spacey Performances

2012-01-13T16:37:00.000-05:00

Here we are again true believers, with my latest weekly 10 best feature for the fine folks over at Anomalous Material. For those of you not in the know, those same said fine folks have given me a (possibly foolish on their behalf) regular gig as feature writer. It is a series of top ten lists on various cinematic subjects (and anyone who knows me can attest to how perfectly suited I am to such an endeavor - yes I am a list nerd). This week's feature, my twentieth such feature, is all about the Spaceman. Okay, that is just my dorky way of saying that this week we are taking a look at the films of Kevin Spacey. So go over there and check things out.

Read my feature article, "10 Best Kevin Spacey Performances" at Anomalous Material.

Film Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2012-01-12T20:53:00.002-05:00

Moody and melancholic, its foggy London atmosphere chilling the screen, its grey squat buildings of 1973 Eastern Bloc Europe deadening its hopes, this latter-day adaptation of John LeCarré's 1974 classic spy thriller is near pitch perfect in its boulevard of broken dreams demeanor. The spies shown here, played by a slew of brilliantly understated actors, have never come in from the cold (to paraphrase another LeCarré novel), and as broken down and beaten as its main protagonist, George Smiley, played with a deceptive canniness by Gary Oldman, seems to be, that too is how weathered, how battled and bedraggled this Cold War remnant shows itself to be - and that is exactly how this film should feel.

Much of this aforementioned gloomy, though appropriately so atmosphere is given its form by the apt direction of Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director who gave us the atmospheric horror film Let the Right One In (and that's how you do a romantic vampire movie!). A great pic to direct a pic as perversely period as this one. Add to this the melodic setting-appropriate score by Alberto Iglesias, the composer of choice for the majority of Pedro Almodóvar's films, and the mood-setting cinematography of Hoyte van Hoytema, the man who photographed the aforementioned Swedish vampire film, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an intriguing blend of neo-noir, spy thriller and wouldbe psychological horror movie, all rolled into a chilling, classically-styled cold war entanglement of red herrings and MacGuffins galore.

But it is in this very same convoluted screenplay where TTSS begins to unravel - or perhaps never quite ravels enough. Many have said (I have not read the book myself) that LeCarré's labyrinthine novel is way too much to capture in a feature length work of cinema, and that even the nearly five hour 1979 UK mini-series version could hardly handle the multitudes of twists and turns that LeCarré had put into his bestseller. This may very well be true as we see a lot of random threads go in and out here, without ever receiving any sort of denouement, and even though the film is not that particularly difficult to follow (many of its detractors claim it to be close to incoherent), the screenplay by Bridget O'Conner and Peter Straughan, seems at times lazy, but at others downright bewildered and bewildering. But then this may just be bellyaching on my part considering how in tune every other layer of the film is with what this spy thriller needs to be.

So while the acting is top notch - not just Oldman, but John Hurt, Mark Strong, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch and especially Tom Hardy and Colin Firth - replete with immaculately enunciated spytalk and desperate longing, and Alfredson's concoction of 1970's period drama is near pitch perfect, the film seems to fall a bit flat when it comes to its rendering of a storyline. This is no truer than in the end, when we finally find out just who the searched for spy actually is, and a feeling of ending not with a bang but with a whimper reverberates throughout this cold cold work of cinematic fiction - especially when the films leads, crescendo like, to what should be a big bang. Then again, this is just the culmination of a rather workingman ethic of the time period, so perhaps it does work in a way. - and perhaps this is just bellyaching on my part. But whatever the case, just to feel the long dead paranoiac atmosphere of Soviet spies and wondering just who is listening in, is worth having to put up with a little less than what meets the eye.

Film Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-11T18:27:00.000-05:00

I must admit to not being much of a fan of the original Swedish trilogy (and I haven't even read the bestselling novels they in turn were based upon!), and I am far from a proponent of Hollywood remaking every successful foreign film they can get their hungry little hands on (why can't American movie audiences just watch a damned subtitled film!?), but put a daring director like David Fincher behind the wheel and place a surprisingly powerful, relatively unknown actress like Rooney Mara as the titular tattooed lady, and you can certainly colour me impressed.

If I had any trepidation going in it would have been on the question of the brutality that was so inherent in the original series, and if a mainstream studio project (and Oscar hopeful to boot) would allow such unapologetic cruelty to be part of its make-up - even when that same said cruelty was integral to telling such a story. My hopes for such a positive transition from European art house to playing in Peoria were taken pretty high when I first heard that Fincher would be taking the reigns, but they went through the proverbial roof when I finally saw the picture and realized, from the very onset of the succulent black and white opening titles that looked as if they creeped out of a oil-drenched Bosch nightmare, that no one put this baby in a corner.

Without wavering, Fincher kept the film as brutal and as harrowing as it needed to be. The director even said, when he was first attached to the film, that he would not soft-peddle the literary content, and that this would be a "Hard R" rated movie. This may be a turn off for those on the squeamish side (the aforementioned brutality is certainly nothing to be trifled with), but to the fan of the books and/or the original trilogy who want the best adaptation money can buy, and to someone like me who believes in balls-to-the-wall filmmaking, it is the most necessary of evils. But still, the brutality is only the surface of this intricate and rather convoluted film (sometimes the storyline can more than border on the ridiculous) - the real stuff comes with the performance of Ms. Mara as the socially maladjusted computer hacker genius heroine of the whole shebang.

Setting aside the more than capable performances of Daniel Craig as the inquisitive lead Mikael Blomkvist, Christopher Plummer as the head of the most fucked-up family in Sweden and Stellan Skarsgård as an appropriately slimy wouldbe villain, this is Rooney Mara's film to either sink or swim with. As tattooed cover girl Lisbeth Salander, Mara (her closest claim to fame being her brief appearence as Jesse Eisenberg's rightfully jaded ex-girlfriend in Fincher's The Social Network) is a steely-eyed force of unnatural nature that can wreak revenge on a repugnant rapist with one hand (clasped around a tattoo gun or a lead pipe) while downloading the most encrypted of code to unearth a sadistic killer of women with the other.

Complete with a soundtrack from (Oscar Winners!!) Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and a roving, aggressive camera that has Fincher written all over its audacious brouhaha, Mara's bodacious performance - a more wily and humanistic version of Noomi Rapace's original Lisbeth - takes this film head and shoulders above the original (a rare thing indeed) and gives the film, even with any viewer of the original knowing exactly what is coming, a true sense of dread and danger. I still say Hollywood should stop trying to remake every foreign film they can, but in this rare case it actually worked. Imagine that.

My 25 (or so) Favourite Classic Films First Seen in 2011

2012-01-09T18:33:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the always charming, always enjoyable and always cinematically knowledgeable (and always alliterative, nomenclaturally speaking) Self-Styled Siren, I send forth a list of my 25 favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011. Classic, of course, being any movie made prior to 1960. And in keeping with the Siren's choice of keeping the descriptions to a bare bones minimum (actually inspired in turn by Clara at Via Margutta 51) I will try to hold my typically long-winded ramblings to a relative bare bones minimum as well. So without further ado, here are my favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011.

Oh wait! I do have some further ado to put forth - and possibly some rambling (see, I have already begun breaking promises). In order to keep this list to a nice and tidy twenty-five (yeah, right) I would like to preface said list with a pair of special mentions.

Powell/Pressburger: It is a rather sad fact but before this past year I had only seen three films by this brilliant British filmmaking duo known collectively as the Archers (Black Narcissus, Tales of Hoffman & of course The Red Shoes - my all-time favourite film if one wishes to keep track of such things). In 2011, I almost doubled my Powell/Pressburger film viewing prowess, by seeing five of their films for the very first time. These five films (in order of preference) are The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, Gone to Earth, A Matter of Life and Death & Oh...Rosalinda!!. Any one of these films could feasibly take the top spot on the below list, so since they are so many and so superior (at least mostly), I have decided to put them in a class all their own. In actuality this is merely a ploy (a clever ruse if you will) to make more room on the list for even more films since I could not narrow my list down very easily. The other special mention (just below) is another ploy to do the same damn thing.

Douglas Sirk: Believe it or not, prior to 2011, I had never seen a film directed by Herr Sirk. This sad fact was remedied last year by seeing five of his great melodramas (again, in order of preference) - Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession & A Time to Live and a Time to Die. Again, I believe these to be the proverbial head and shoulders above most of the films I saw in 2011, so they too will get a class all their own. And again, this is merely part of the aforementioned ploy. But enough of this. I promised not to ramble on, so now, (really) without further ado, I give you my 25 favourite classic films seen for the first time in 2011. I have tried to list these films in relative preferential order, but I think we all know how that ends up, so take the numbering order in any manner you see fit. Now here they are.

1) Leave Her to Heaven (John Stahl, 1945) - Beautiful and sinister as hell, and with the sexiest overbite in the history of Hollywood, this is Gene Tierney at her wicked best - and the glorious Technicolor (wonderfully and appropriately artificial) looks almost as good as she does. If you do not believe me, just check out that look she is giving you right now.

2) Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, 1958) - Very possibly the least known film on this list, this Egyptian film noir(ish) masterpiece (yeah! I called it that!) is like having Hawks, Hitchcock, Welles, Curtiz and Antonioni all rolled into one.

3) Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955) - Taking its place as my new favourite crime caper movie (my new second favourite of the genre can be seen in the number eight spot below), this French heist film is , to borrow an attitude from Mae West, great when it is loud but even greater when it doesn't say a word.

4) Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952) - The best thing to come out of Lang's Hollywood years, and a campy deeelight full of Marlene mayhem (looking a bit older than what she wanted to) and Mel Ferrer and his toothy, snarky grin. Fun stuff indeed. My review can be read here.

5) The Last Flight (William Dieterle, 1931) - If the Siren can wax poetic about Edmund Goulding then I can turn critical cartwheels over William Dieterle. What a great forgotten film (a loving piece in Film Comment made me seek it out), highlighting the equally forgotten (sad as that may be) Richard Barthelmess, David Manners, John Mack Brown and Helen Chandler. My review can be read here.

6) Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936) - How could it not be gorgeous - it's Renoir - but even by Renoir standards this forty minute film, based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, and centered around the drop dead gorgeous Sylvia Bataille as an objet d'art, is a complete stunner.

7) Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagen, 1931) - Even taking the sexy lesbian schoolgirl factor out of the mix (I am a guy after all), this early German sound film is more than well worth a look - a long look indeed. In fact one could (and should) call this film haunting - a term that could go all cliché if one is not careful, but that is not the case here. Seriously though, this is a very powerful film indeed. My review can be read here.

8) The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956) - Kubrick's rather demanding style has always appealed to me, and in this early work (his third) you can see that style hidden inside a more classic style. A great crime caper movie (my second favourite of the genre - see number 3 above) and easy to see the influence on Tarantino later on.

9) The Shanghai Gesture (Josef von Sternberg, 1941) - Another Gene Tierney vehicle (I suppose I was going through a Tierney phase in 2011), this rather sleazy, giddily B-grade picture was a delight from beginning to end. And not just Tierney (and that overbite) but also Victor Mature (I did say sleazy) and Ona Munson as Mother Gin Sling. Great stuff indeed.

10) The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921) - One of the creepiest and greatest silent films ever made. Who knew the Swedes could pull of as much silent era intensity and visual bravura as the Germans.

11) 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) - It is kind of shocking that I went through the first 43 years of my life (the first few understandably so) without ever seeing this film. Intense and brilliant, this film is the perfect blend of writing, directing and acting. And the scene where everyone, even the assholes in the group, turn their backs on the racist played by Ed Begley, is simply perfect.

12) The Cobweb (Vincente Minnelli, 1955) - One of the great Minnelli's lesser known works, and a film that is seen as too melodramatic by many, but I was blown away (as they say) by the damned thing. Granted, I like pretty much anything with Richard Widmark in it, and Gloria Grahame is ooh la la great just about every time out, and I prefer the overly melodramatic, so it was probably a forgone conclusion that I would love this picture. My review (actually more a list of my 10 favourite things about the film) can be read here.

13) Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz, 1935) - Swashbuckling at its very best. I think I can call this the greatest pirate movie ever made and I would not get much argument. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (their first of an eventual eight films together) and Basil Rathbone as the villain. What more need be said. Ahoy mateys, ahoy.

14) Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox, 1956) - A cool and pretty keen fifties sci-fi classic (based on The Tempest of all things) that shows a young, pre-parody, Leslie Nielsen as the heroic but somewhat hapless captain of a spacecraft trapped on the titular planet and a very highlighted, and very leggy Anne Francis as the object of the Captain's (and everyone else's) affections. Oh yeah, and Robby the Robot too. My review can be read here.

15) The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953) - This is the movie that has Brando in leather, with a revving, hulking machine roaring between his legs. No, not Last Tango in Paris. THis is the one with the motorcycles (get your mind out of the gutter). Cool as can be - and with Lee Marvin to boot. My review can be read here.

16) The Steel Helmet (Samuel Fuller, 1951) - Just Fuller's third film and already that growling Fullerian intensity is fully intact. Thanx to Criterion's great Eclipse series for getting this one two me in such pristine form. I think I would have to include this in any 10 Favourite war movies list I were to make.

17) The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956) - Seen during my summer kick of 1950's sci-fi/fantasy films, this is one of the creepiest movies I saw all year. It just goes and goes and never lets up - not even in the end.

18) Bienvenido Mr. Marshall (Luis Garcia Berlanga, 1953) - I must admit to never having heard of the director before coming across three of his films during My Quest, but I sure am glad I have finally found him. A screwball kind of film, Berlanga can be called a Spanish Billy Wilder without much fuss.

19) Caged (John Cromwell, 1950) - Subversive and more than bordering on the exploitative, this is a harrowing film and Eleanor Parker hands in a frazzled, frenzied but oh so chilling performance as an innocent turned jaded caged bird. My review can be read here.

20) The Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958) - Forget Ozu. Forget Kurosawa. Forget Mizoguchi and Naruse. 2011 was the year that turned Keisuke Kinoshita into my favourite classic Japanese director. This film is just beautiful as Kinoshita does wonders with colour.

21) The Silver Chalice (Victor Saville, 1954) - Mockingly nicknamed Paul Newman and the Holy Grail, and hated by Newman himself (this debut film would be the scorn of the actor's career), I quite enjoyed this rather laughable movie just for the very fact that it is so laughable. And at the top of this laughability - Jack Palance at his most campiest (no need to shut the closet on this performance). My review can be read here.

22) The Hurricane (John Ford, 1937) - Aside from the fun I had watching this while an actual hurricane was raging outside (or at least the more inland version of such), this is a very fun film in and of itself. Plus we get to see Dorothy Lamour tied to a palm tree. My review (or at least some thoughts on the film) can be read here.

23) Fig Leaves (Howard Hawks, 1925) - Howard Hawks does The Flintstones. This was a surprisingly fun film to watch. Granted, it was Hawks and I am certainly what one would call a Hitchcocko-Hawksian, but I still did not expect as much out of this silent film as I got. Seriously, did Hanna and Barbara see this film before creating The Flintstones? And if you watch, you will see that Howard Hawks invented the snooze alarm. My review can be read here.

24) The Outlaw (Howard Hughes, 1943) - I think the fact that Howard Hughes invented the underwire bra specifically for Jane Russell (in her film debut) to wear, makes this a very interesting behind-the-scenes tale. The movie itself is rather simple (Hughes is not a great director), but Russell makes it her own with her very own pair of great assets.

25) My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940) - I think the most fun about watching this screwball comedy is watching how nervous the muscled, mostly naked body of Randolph Scott seems to make Cary Grant - especially considering the real life relationship between the two. It doesn't hurt that Leo McCarey wrote the thing as well.

I could easily keep this list going with such first time fun as Designing Woman, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Blessed Event, Criminal Code, So Young So Bad, Detour, The Miracle Woman, Run For Cover, Untamed, Crossfire, The Egyptian, Ceiling Zero, Girls of the Road, The Hitch-Hiker, The Medium, East of Borneo, Land of the Pharaohs, Side Street, Stranger on the Third Floor and both versions of Dawn Patrol.

Also, I suppose a special mention should be made for a great double feature I saw for the first time in 2011. The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, both directed by Frank Tashlin and the first two starring roles for Jayne Mansfield, are a great pair of self-referential comedies - and I do love self-referential comedies.

One last thing before I shuffle off. As I made mention to above, I spent a lot of film-watching hours this past summer in the genre of 1950's Sci-fi - most of which I had never seen. Some of these were really good (The Man From Planet X, Invaders From Mars, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers) while some were pretty laughable (The Monolith Monsters, Robot Monster, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) but they were all pretty darn fun - even if in the cheesiest kind of way. In fact I liked these films so much that I even did a 10 Best 1950's Sci-Fi list for them over at Anomalous Material.

Once again I would like to thank the Self-Styled Siren for her inspiration in making this list. I hope to do it again next year, and that may include some of the films I have gleaned off of the Siren's list, and will watch for the first time in 2012.

Film Review: Attack the Block

2012-01-06T20:00:00.000-05:00

An ode in many ways, to John Carpenter's classic 1976 subversive genre work Assault on Precinct 13 - so much so in fact, that there is no way in hell that writer-director Joe Cornish is not a fan of the aforementioned Carpenter pic - the UK hit import Attack the Block takes the typically B-movie idea of the alien invasion film, tosses it on its head and hands us its deconstructed carcass like a trophy of its cinematic bravura and chutzpah. In other words, I really really liked this movie - and you probably should too.

Starting out on the dangerous streets of a South London project on what appears to be Guy Fawkes Night, as the fireworks sis boom bah through the night, a gang of five masked teenage hoodlums mug a young woman walking back to her flat, only to be interrupted mid-mugging by a falling projectile that demolishes a parked car nearby. Needless to say this is the beginning of an alien invasion that ends up forcing muggers and muggee, along with the local drug lord and a pair of seemingly clueless potheads (one played by the ubiquitously goofball Nick Frost) and a couple of cocksure little kid gangbanger wannabes, to team up and save the planet - or at least save the block since it appears to be an extremely localized alien invasion. With alien beasts replacing the L.A. gang members of Carpenter's Precinct 13 (which in essence were just that director's answer to the walking dead in Night of the Living Dead), and with a tongue-in-cheek satiric tone (Edgar 'Shaun of the Dead' Wright acts as exec producer), Attack the Block is a real kick in the head - for genre fans and non-fanboys alike.

As the hulking, black-furred aliens, impossibly giant sets of fangs glowing in the dark like fluorescent shards of impending death (think the gargoyles from Ghostbusters mixed with the blackest of black bears and something out of an acid-induced Dark Crystal nightmare), make their way into this towering den of iniquity, trapping our not-so-intrepid heroes inside with only each other, enemy and friend alike, to count on, Cornish's film - his directorial feature debut btw - becomes more and more claustrophobic and more and more dangerous. Fighting the seemingly inevitable destruction of the world, or at least the titular block, collateral and non-collateral damage being ripped to shreds through the halls and elevators around them, this ragtag band of survivors - again, much aligned to the same sort of doomed group from the aforementioned Carpenter classic - Attack the Block is a nearly non-stop adrenaline rush from start to finish. All-in-all, pretty fucking nifty for such a supposedly B-picture mentality - or perhaps pretty fucking nifty because of its B-picture mentality.

Film Review: War Horse

2012-01-05T18:43:00.000-05:00

Despite his irregularly inflated reputation among those movie going masses that flock in droves to see the director's works (and hand him inevitable yet inexplicable accolades), and in spite of the fact that the man can shell out one hell of a good action yarn, making his war torn movies explode with visual audacity, Steven Spielberg can be an extremely cloying, emotionally manipulative and downright syrupy filmmaker. With War Horse, his epic-wannabe World War I heart-tugging adventure story of a young man and his horse (or actually of a horse and his young man), Spielberg has accomplished to gather both sides of his filmmaking personality, the exciting actioner and the trite manipulator, into one fell cinematic swoop.

Playing at plastic emotions as always, the first act of Spielberg's movie, set in the rolling hills of Devon, England, is one long roiling melodrama of heart and hope and typical Spielbergian hooey. Once we get into the trenches of WWI France, the film predictably picks up, as the director's true forte is action - and he gives us plenty of it. As we follow this heroic yet somewhat hapless horse around the battlefields of war torn Europe, at times a steely mount of the allies, and at other times a bruised and battered pack animal of those damned pointy-helmeted boys of the Kaiser, the adventure is ofttimes quite spectacular. One scene in particular, as we see our intrepid hero running through the ramparts of war, leaping across trenches and facing down tanks, bravely rescuing a fellow equine, charging full throttle through the barbed wire terrors of war, is easily one of the ten or fifteen best filmed sequences in any movie this year. Sadly though, as the war happily comes to an end, Spielberg throttles it back into the oversentimentalized (and this complaint is coming from a very sentimental critic) tropes that give his films such an unneeded extra layer of thick fattening sauce.

I suppose when all is finally said and done, War Horse is not a terrible film, but then again it is certainly not a film I can recommend to anyone but the die hard Spielbergian filmgoer - whoever they may be. I once (half-jokingly) included the first twenty minutes of Spielberg's 1998 war opus Saving Private Ryan in my best of the year list, and I could probably do the same here, though War Horse's powerful twenty minutes or so are scattered in pieces throughout, and unlike the aforementioned Private Ryan, these few saving graces are not enough to rescue an otherwise trembling piece of manipulatively emotional moviemaking as War Horse ends up being. In the end, the better bet would be to go and see the contemporaneously released other Spielberg movie, The Adventures of Tintin (made by the action-fueled side of the director and hence a much better picture) and leave this trying film in the dark - even with its inevitably demanded forthcoming Oscar nominations (cloying has always done rather well at Oscar time) in tow.

Anomalous Material Weekly Feature: 10 Best Animated Movies

2012-01-03T23:22:00.000-05:00

Here we are again true believers, with my latest weekly 10 best feature for the fine folks over at Anomalous Material. For those of you not in the know, those same said fine folks have given me a (possibly foolish on their behalf) regular gig as feature writer. It is a series of top ten lists on various cinematic subjects (and anyone who knows me can attest to how perfectly suited I am to such an endeavor - yes I am a list nerd). This week's feature, my nineteenth such feature, is all about the animated side of cinema. Taking a look at the history of animated motion pictures - a history that is nearly as long as cinema itself - I send forth my choices for the ten best animated feature films of all-time.

Read my feature article, "10 Best Animated Movies" at Anomalous Material.

As an added bonus (see screenshot below), the film that would have come in at number eleven if I had extended my list, is the 1926 German film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, directed by Lotte Reiniger. It holds the honour of being the earliest surviving animated feature film. Done in a magic lantern/silhouette cutout technique, it is a wonder to behold. It is a good enough film to make me second guess leaving off the list, but alas, I do not wish to go back and disrupt such a list, so off it will stay - until I make my inevitable Top 100 Animated Features list later this year.

My Quest To See the 1000 Greatest: #680 Thru #699

2011-12-31T19:26:00.000-05:00

Here is a look at the latest batch of twenty films in my Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films. A complete look at my quest can be viewed HERE.

#680 - Written on the Wind (1956) - (#222 on TSPDT) The Sirkian melodrama, or weepie if you will (a friend calls them tear-jerking drivel, but who the hell listens to him!), may be an acquired tastes to many, but I must admit to instantly falling in love with the work of Sirk the very moment I saw my first one. That first one came just under a year ago, so I am what one would call a newcomer to the world of the Sirkian melodrama. After seeing several of these 1950's beasts lo this past year, Written on the Wind has taken its place atop my list of Sirk films. Starring Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone, and full of gorgeous cinematography in glorious Technicolor, and Sirk's bravura camera (Tarantino and Scorsese are his most similar modern equivalents), Written on the Wind simply oozes with the melodramatic flair that makes Sirkian cinema so damn tasty.

#681 - Partie de campagne (1936) - (#165 on TSPDT) Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, and just thirty-six minutes in length, this Jean Renoir picture is one of the most striking works of cinema that this critic has ever seen. Seeming to play as both a slight tale of French provincial life and as a much deeper, almost unbearably tragic story of loss and regret. Renoir will always be remembered as a master filmmaker and that mastery shows no less clearly, no less fervently and no less vibrantly in such a short work like here as it does in his many feature length masterpieces.

#682 - American Gigolo (1980) - (#919 on TSPDT) With Blondie's Call Me slinkily oozing from the soundtrack, this Paul Schrader written and directed film is a coolly crafted voyeuristic look into the world of the male paid escort - or more succinctly, one of these same said male escort's downfall from prized stallion to gelded ex-show pony. Actually, in essence it is a pseudo-remake of Bresson's brilliantly tragic Pickpocket, and when one watches the final shot, it is a modern retake of Bresson's famed final shot. Though a very stylistic film - sort of noir meets modern chic - it is Schrader's screenplay, bordering on the perverse just as the writer/director is best at, that makes the film stand up and get noticed.

#683 - Gregory's Girl (1981) - (#648 on TSPDT) I was quite surprised at my reaction to this film. Having not much knowledge of the cinema of Bill Forsythe (I have only seen, and have mostly forgotten, his 1987 film Housekeeping) I really had no clue as to what to expect, and must admit to not expecting much. Boy was I wrong. This Scottish coming-of-age film is a pure delight, not to sound too cheesy. A funny, and quite sly film, I am now, with great anticipation, looking forward to seeing the other Forsythe on the list, Local Hero.

#684 - The Phantom Carriage (1921) - (#763 on TSPDT) Victor Sjöström, considered to be the leading artistic talent of Swedish silent cinema (a consideration I must concur with), hands in a film whose beauty and haunting presence forces me to find a spot in my top 100 somewhere. The Phantom Carriage is one of those films where one can use terms such as haunting and not seem at all cliché. Easily one of the greatest silent films ever made - and I don't want to hear any arguments.

#685 - Un chant d'amour (1950) - (#573 on TSPDT) If you are looking for hard-core gay porn with a blunt pseudo-artistic style, then Jean Genet's 1950 experimental bon mot is the film for you. I have never been much of a fan of experimental cinema in the first place, but this (and let's put it as bluntly as the film puts itself forth) big piece of artistic-wannabe crap, a film that makes the cinema of Kenneth Anger look tasteful in comparison, is certainly not about to change my mind. Now I am far from a prude, but sexuality in cinema should be natural and artistic, not ugly and foul - at least not when you are going for something beautiful, which I believe Genet was.

#686 - Tobacco Road (1941) - (#956 on TSPDT) I am sure it wasn't John Ford's fault that this is such a tame version of a much more intricate and hard-hitting novel - he did have the Fox to contend with (a thing that may have made his Grapes of Wrath suffer as well) - but whatever the case may be, this is definitely Ford light. Ford is one my my favourite directors but I much prefer his westerns to his other works, and this is no exception. Not a bad movie mind you (and we get to see a barefoot, wild child Gene Tierney hooping and hollerin' around) but just not as great as what I am used to from the great John Ford.

#687 - The 39 Steps (1935) - (#336 on TSPDT) Hitchcock at the height of his British success (five years before coming to the States), this film, full of all those MacGuffin-loving things that made Hitch so fun to watch, is one of his better British works. Perhaps not as well-rounded as his later Hollywood work of the 1950's, but with its savvy sophisticated wit and ability to combine action, comedy and romance into intertwining moments, it is fun indeed.

#688 - Poison (1991) - (#973 on TSPDT) This Todd Haynes feature debut may have a few interesting moments throughout, but overall it is a film a sadly admit to disliking. I love the director's more recent work (Far From Heaven and I'm Not There are pretty damn close to masterpieces) but this one, though showing signs of the filmmaker to come, just did not do it for me.

#689 - Performance (1970) - (#191 on TSPDT) What a damn fine motion picture. Cool and suave as fuck, this very mod take on stardom from Nicholas Roeg (his first film!) and Donald Cammell, and starring James Fox and Mick Jagger, is a fun and groovy film indeed. Playing on the idea of split personality and mirror image, the film is a twisted, turning dance of po-mo cinema. Even though Richard Schickel said of the film, "the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing," it has been a great influence on everyone from Paul Schrader to Guy Ritchie to Quentin Tarantino. The film doesn't necessarily breech my top 100, but it does certainly make my second hundred.

#690 - Grave of the Fireflies (1988) - (#798 on TSPDT) Tragedy done as anime. The story of a Japanese village during WWII and the death and destruction that happens. Somewhere, I honestly forget where now, this film was voted the saddest movie ever made. I don't know if I would go quite that far but there certainly is a deep sadness to this animated picture.

#691 - Pursued (1947) - (#770 on TSPDT) Mitchum and Walsh - together. Sounds pretty manly huh? Well it is. Actually Mitchum is just trying to do right as an orphaned boy all grown up, but circumstances keep saying otherwise. Not Mitchum's best role (nor Walsh's best film) but still a decent enough action movie.

#692 - Imitation of Life (1959) - (#233 on TSPDT) Damn! Do I ever love Douglas Sirk! Just to think, a year ago today and I had not seen even a single film by the German ex-pat (yeah, yeah, I was late getting to the party!), and now I would consider him one of my favourite of directors. Having just seen Written on the Wind a few weeks before this (see the first entry in this post), I seem to have hit the motherload of the Sirkian melodrama. I am having one hell of a time deciding which of these two are my favourite. I think the emotional firebomb that is the final act of Imitation of Life (a final act that a friend, mentioned above, calls drivel - how dare he!?) seals the book on this, the film that would become his final feature film, as being my favourite Sirk - but just by a hair.

#693 - The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) - (#257 on TSPDT) Ah, Renoir. With films like Grand Illusion, La Bête Humaine and The Rules of the Game (one of my twenty favourite films) - not to mention the gorgeous short film Partie de campagne (mentioned above) - I expected to like this film, made during the same time period, much more than I did. Now do not get me wrong, I did quite like the film but I just did not love it as much as I had expected. Yes, the camerawork is pitch perfect (it is Renoir after all), and there are moments of pure bliss (gotta love those melodic tracking shots), but still, overall, it lacked something that the other aforementioned films from the master had in spades. Still, even lesser Renoir is better than many a director's best work.

#694 - White Heat (1949) - (#314 on TSPDT) Top of the World Ma! This Raoul Walsh directed Jimmy Cagney gangster vehicle may not be my favourite Cagney gangster vehicle (that would be The Public Enemy and/or Angels With Dirty Faces) but it still is great fun to watch the little guy go tough. Plus you get that great iconic fireball ending.

#695 - The Conformist (1970) - (#62 on TSPDT) Talk about a visually stunning motion picture! Bertolucci's political thriller - a case study in the evils of fascism if you will - is breathtaking to behold. The way the director and his DP Vittorio Storaro use light and colour and shadow and subjectivity is downright stunning. One scene in particular, a rather brutal yet beautiful chase through the woods is done to sheer cinematic perfection. The Conformist is very probably the best work Bertolucci has ever produced - and that is saying quite a lot. Sadly I watched the film on my TV (via DVD), but I will remedy that later this year (once I am done with My Quest) and watch it on the big screen.

#696 - And the Ship Sails On (1983) - (#949 on TSPDT) I have a friend, who incidentally happens to be on the same quest as I, who claims this as his favourite Fellini. This may sound a bit silly, especially considering that this friend has indeed seen La Strada, La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, but nonetheless, there you have it. As for me, I may not go to the extreme of my friend and fellow quester, but I was quite enthralled by this latter day Fellini. The story of a ship of fools, with typical Felliniesque surrealism and political satire, the film may not be my favourite Fellini, but it sure is much higher up in my esteem than I ever expected it to be.

#697 - Under the Bridges (1946) - (#950 on TSPDT) With inevitable comparisons to Vigo's L'Atalante, this German film from Helmut Käutner, is a nearly constantly moving cinematic feast. Full of beautiful imagery and romantic classicism (some perhaps a bit on the homoerotic side), this film was a great surprise.

#698 - Design For Living (1932) - (#691 on TSPDT) Ernst Lubitsch doing what Ernst Lubitsch did best - a sophisticated comedy of manners wrapped inside a quite open, Pre-Code mindset of sexually evocative moviemaking. The story of two men and one woman (played wonderfully on all sides by Gary Cooper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins) who strike up a ménage-à-trois, is based on the play by Noël Coward - a film version of which Coward was heavily critical of (Coward said, "I'm told that there are three of my original lines left in the film - such original ones as 'Pass the mustard'"). Released the same year as Lubitsch's Pre-Code masterpiece Trouble in Paradise, Design For Living may not sustain the same level of cinematic bravura that the former does (what film can say they do though?), but I would still call this one of Lubitsch's finest works of cinema - hands down.

#699 - Peter Ibbetson (1935) - (#815 on TSPDT) This film, directed by Henry Hathaway and starring Gary Cooper as a man lost in life who finds his long ago childhood love, only to end up in prison for accidentally killing her husband, is a film that was pretty much completely unknown to yours truly until finding it squirreled away on the list. With magical qualities that inevitably remind one of William Dieterle's Portrait of Jennie (also on this list but slightly lower down), this little film that evaded my gaze all these years is quite enjoyable indeed (though I would still put the aforementioned Dieterle film a bit higher up).

Film Review: Young Adult

2011-12-30T18:07:00.001-05:00

With Thank You For Smoking, Juno and Up in the Air, Jason Reitman, son of Ivan of Ghostbusters fame, has yet to make a movie that has truly impressed me. On the other hand, with the aforementioned trio of films, fils Reitman has yet to make a movie that has truly disappointed me. In other words, the director is very good at crafting inoffensive, mediocre pictures that really have no high point nor low point (okay, perhaps Juno had some high points, but they were more due to the acting not the direction or screenwriting) and are only spotlighted by occasional moments of cinematic artistry. In other other words, Reitman's still quite young oeuvre is, for better or for worse (you take your pick), about as middle-of-the-road as one can get.

Now along comes the director's fourth feature, Young Adult. The film stars Charlize Theron as Mavis Gary, a disgruntled thirtysomething writer of teen literature who returns to her small hometown to relive her glory days and attempt to reclaim her now happily married high school sweetheart from the perceived horrors of marriage and parenthood. With this release, my opinion has not been altered in the slightest. But do not take that as an absolute kicker, for the film does have some things going for it - even if a sense of cinematic wonder is not among these so-called things. Yes, Theron hands in a rather intriguing performance as the lonely and spiteful former prom queen (if one cares about such accolades, an Oscar nom may be on the horizon), and Patton Oswalt delivers a quite remarkable performance himself as an equally lonely and spiteful, action-figure playing, garage whiskey-making, comic book collecting nerd and former high school nobody who befriends our intrepid heroine (again, Oscar nod could be in the actor/comic/professional nerd's near future), but overall, the film ends up as rather flat and quite predictable.

The film, written by Diablo Cody, whose annoying hyper-speak antics in her Oscar winning screenplay for Juno have been toned down to a more realistic tone here, never takes flight as it should, but again, it never crash lands like it could either. Simply put, Young Adult is just sort of there. Never putting forth enough effort to either stumble or shine, it just meanders on to its inevitable, but rightful final act. The fact that Theron and Oswalt make their characters, neither of which is particularly likable outside of their oft-times brutal honesty (the only characters willing to be honest in the film), is a testament to their individual acting abilities - especially against the backdrop that is Reitman's uninspired direction. The rest of the cast do not fare as well though, running the gamut from lack of interest (a rather dead-eyed, though possibly purposely so, Patrick Wilson as Theron's long lost, soulless high school sweetheart) to lack of screen time (Mary Beth Hurt and Jill Eikenberry as typically concerned mothers). In the end though, we may not get the so-desired high points of the Reitman boilerplate standard, but we do get at the very least an interesting look at the perceived notions of adulthood and how they play out as false in almost every level - and no lessons need be learned.

Film Review: Martha Marcy May Marlene

2011-12-28T16:21:00.000-05:00

Considering the history of such things, it may sound a bit weird to hear the statement, the younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen is a damn fine actress, but nevertheless, there it is. Elizabeth Olsen, making her feature debut (the actress has several other finished films on the horizon), is actually quite spectacular in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Of course while her elder twin siblings were busy partying and becoming tabloid fodder, Lizzie was at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, exploring her craft. Whether acting school is a help or a hindrance (there are arguments in both directions), the fact that the younger Miss Olsen (twenty-one while filming) gives such a stunning and harrowing performance, and gives it with the unique subtlety of a seasoned thespian, makes one toss the idea of hereditary talent right out the proverbial window. But enough of this sibling rivalry (even as one-sided as it may very well be), for it is the film itself we are here to talk about today.

And as far as that film goes, the mysteriously and alliteratively titled Martha Marcy May Marlene, the directorial debut of Sean Durkin (winner of the Best Director prize at Sundance for his efforts) is just as subtlely harrowing as the aforementioned performance of Miss Olsen. Taking a look at a young woman, freshly escaped from a Manson-esque cult in the Catskills of New York, trying to attempt submersion back into the so-called real world. We first meet Martha (or Marcy May as she is rechristened by cult leader Patrick) in mid-escape, shortly before calling her estranged sister for help, and we, along with Martha, will spend the rest of the film in a state of trepidation and worried confusion. As Durkin leaps back and forth between Martha's uncomfortable homecoming and Marcy May's bewildering life inside the cult, many viewers may become a bit disoriented (at least those not familiar with such non-linear storytelling), but this is just what the filmmaker wants from his audience - a sense of bewilderment, just as Olsen's multi-named, multi-minded title character has.

Making allusions to Martha's sense of reality (at some points one even begins to wonder if it isn't all in her mind) and how manipulated her mind may very well be (at least some of her memories are true, but just how many are to be trusted), Durkin creates a nearly constant sense of looming dread around his star pupil, just as Olsen shows how deep such fear and confusion go. And the young actress does all of this by merely using the most important tool an actor has - her most expressive face. Olsen shows such feeling, such deep emotion, without ever resorting to cheap theatrics, that such a gift puts her in a class with more renowned actors such as Kate Winslet, Michelle Williams, Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman. We see on Olsen's face, the atrocities gone through, the anger and hurt and desperation in such a short life. Even when the film tends to sag a bit as it inevitably does at times, it is this young up-and-comer that hefts it back up onto her surprisingly powerful shoulders and keeps the harrowing journey going on and on until the final cut.

Merry Christmas To All

2011-12-24T11:21:00.000-05:00

"You know what I'm going to get you next Christmas, Mom? A big wooden cross, so that every time you feel unappreciated for your sacrifices, you can climb on up and nail yourself to it."

-Lloyd, as played by Kevin Spacey in the acerbic and quite cutthroat holiday 'classic' The Ref

Here's hoping your holidays go a little better than his.

Merry Christmas to all, from The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.....

Film Review: The Adventures of Tintin

2011-12-23T11:30:00.004-05:00

Even after seeing the rather rousing Steven Spielberg-directed mo-cap The Adventures of Tintin, I still cannot say I am a big fan of motion capture animation, those cherub cheeked half human hybrids lost somewhere in that uncanny valley one hears speak of, but as far as cinematic adventures go, the director, playing once again at his popcorn-fueled breakneck Indiana Jones/Jurassic Park pace, has created a rollicking, unpretentious, nearly non-stop swashbuckling hell of a fun ride.

First coming into contact with the Belgian comic book adventures of intrepid manchild Tintin back in 1981, after reading comparisons to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and as legend would have it, immediately falling in love with writer/artist Hergé's sleek and simple designs, Spielberg befriended the comic book creator (whose real name was George Remi) and would eventually acquire the rights to film his own version of the adventures of this beloved (but admittedly little-known outside of Europe) comic character. Cut to 2011, and years of artistic purgatory, and finally the director of E.T. and Hook has put character to screen to create what he himself has rather arrogantly, but innocently enough, called "Indiana Jones for kids." The end result may feel a little funny at times (I still cannot get past the mo-cap style, though to give the director his due, this is the closest I have yet come to doing so) and the payoff of the finale may not quite live up to the promise of its earlier set pieces, but all-in-all, it is indeed a balls-out parade of action and adventure and good old fashioned storytelling that Spielberg is always capable, of but rarely able to pull off in such a consistently effective manner.

Featuring Jamie "Billy Elliot" Bell in the titular role of journalist-cum-detective Tintin and mo-cap poster child Andy "Gollum" Serkis as his salty, besotted sea cap'n compatriot Haddock (not to mention nerd patrol bro-couple Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in the bumbling roles of inept policemen Thomson and Thompson - two characters that give the film its occasional screwball bent), The Adventures of Tintin is a story of intrigue and skulduggery, full of the MacGuffins of Spielberg's beloved Hitchcock, as well as high seas pirate adventures, Indiana Jones-esque sky hijinx and a Moroccan-set car chase involving man, dog and hawk that will knock your proverbial socks off. In other words, this is Spielberg, not wearing his morose serious face (which, even though overblown at times, does have its place in the director's oeuvre), but doing what he has always done best - telling a story full of bravura and classical cinematic kismet, while never thinking itself to be too high-minded to laugh at itself and its own tricks and tropes.

This is the kind of classical filmmaking, though ironically here, using some of the most advanced technological tools available, that first made Spielberg a star among the young turk Hollywood of the 1970's, and would inspire J.J. Abrams to make Super 8 earlier this year, his own homage to the director. I personally have always been much more of a fan of the fun-loving, rather than the serious-minded Spielberg (the director's serious-minded companion piece War Horse is due out any day now and I suspect it will have much the same cloying effect that well-received but fault-laden films like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan had), and this animated adventure tale certainly falls into that category. It also doesn't hurt to have a screenplay written by Edgar "Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz" Wright, Joe "Attack the Block" Cornish and Steven "Doctor Who" Moffat. These writers, also in a fun-loving mood, bring the characters of Hergé to bold and brilliant life - even if they are in mo-cap (the process, though at its best here, still has its bugs).

Now here, as in the comic, the character of Tintin is played as nothing more than a pragmatic and idealistic centerpiece for the much more layered supporting cast to rally around (or against as the case may be), so the character seems a bit flat at times, but the playfulness of the comics is given full share of these aforementioned adventures (the opening credits let us know right away that this will indeed be the case) and even the motion capture style has, as they say, come a long way baby. Playing out as some sort of blend of Indiana Jones (think the original Raiders or even Last Crusade) and The Pirates of the Caribbean (the actual Disney World ride, not the eponymous and increasingly annoying movie franchise) this first in its own inevitable animated franchise (Peter Jackson, who acts as producer here will supposedly take the director reigns of the next one) may not make the best use of 3D and CGI this holiday season (that would be Scorsese's succulent and homage-filled Hugo) but still, The Adventures of Tintin (subtitled The Secret of the Unicorn in some circles), despite its flaws, is one of the most rollicking, unpretentious, nearly non-stop swashbuckling hell of a good times to be had in cinema today. Granted, it may not be a great film (though solidly good throughout with moments of sheer cinematic giddiness), but it sure is fun fun fun - and that is what this Spielberg is all about.

Film Review: Sleeping Beauty

2011-12-21T16:47:00.002-05:00

If for nothing else than bitter audience reactions, Julia Leigh's debut feature film, Sleeping Beauty (no, not that Sleeping Beauty), can be nominally compared to Terrence Malick's bold masterpiece The Tree of Life. The comparisons to The Tree of Life go no further than audience reactions, as the two films are really nothing alike. While Malick's film is about the deconstruction of memory and the loss and regaining of faith, Ms. Leigh's film is essentially about the attempt of a young woman, who is dead on the inside, to find, for the most part unsuccessfully, an emotional outlet in any form she can find it. Where The Tree of Life is emotionally provocative and immensely draining, Sleeping Beauty is a void of insular excess, even while showing the most shocking of moments. In a way though, I suppose one could make a case for a connection, however soft it may be, between these two seemingly dissimilar films. Both films surely take on issues of repressed memory and the need for an emotional outlet of some sort. Granted, Malick's film is a masterpiece (and I do not use such a term lightly) and Leigh's, though with its share of cinematic bravura, most certainly is not.

Actually, if Leigh's film need be compared to anything or anyone (even T.S. Elliot said, "No artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone") then it would be to the cinema of Catherine Breillat. Leigh, in her directorial debut (she is a well-known novelist in Australia), imbues her film with a methodical, determined cadence and an almost deadening emotional effect that is allowed an explosive catharsis only in its final moments. This is the type of cinema that evokes the measured yet slyly rapturous oeuvre of the aforementioned Mme. Breillat. Of course the comparisons do not stop there. Other than Breillat being a novelist of some artistic renown in her own native France, she too released a film called Sleeping Beauty earlier this year. Entirely different stories - Breillat's is more Gothic fucked-up fairy-tale while Leigh's is more modern fucked-up malaise - but intriguing nonetheless.

But enough of these comparisons (we can say Breillat and Leigh have both been inspired by the likes of Bresson and Bergman and move on) for Leigh's film, whether it resembles the cinema of Breillat or not, does stand on its own merits. Leigh's Sleeping Beauty is the story of a young, somewhat promiscuous wayward woman trying to make ends meet by taking odd jobs such as waitress, medical experiment guinea pig and a job that seems to amount to scantily clad hostess of a fetish party (perhaps I am just a bit naive, but you have got to see it to believe it). Eventually she lands a job as the titular beauty. This job entails drinking a magical tea that puts her to sleep for several hours, in which time various wealthy older men have their way with her. Hey, at least the money's good - and you have no memory of what has been done to you. How many jobs offer that?

Emily Browning, last seen in the ridiculously inane Sucker Punch (so her calling card did not bode well for this critic), actually does a rather nice job with this deceptively daring role - just like a heroine from a Breillat film (but we are not doing that comparison anymore, so I digress). Now, I can understand how many can be lost in a film such as this. Between the deliberate pacing and the sexual frankness, one can see why certain audiences would feel either bored and/or uncomfortable - even those audiences who say they like art films (you know the kind, they watch Amelie and claim to be a foreign film connoisseur). Too daring for many, and in a way not daring enough for this critic (the artistic bent in the film could lead some to think it much better than it truly is), Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty is nonetheless, a sometimes powerful look at the so-called breaking point of a person's already fragile psyche.

Film Review: The Descendants

2011-12-20T15:33:00.002-05:00

It has been seven long years since Sideways, Alexander Payne's beautifully fraught paean to the middle age man, but the wait for a new film, just the director's fifth in fifteen years, is finally over. The Descendants, stars George Clooney as Matt King, a Hawaiian land baron who must deal with the stress of his wife being in a seemingly irreversible coma, finding out that she was having an affair and was going to leave him, having to care for his two daughters, one ten the other seventeen, by himself for the first time in his life, and brokering a deal for selling off the family land as all his money-hungry cousins breathe down his neck about it and his father-in-law blames him for the coma. In other words, it is the worst of times and it was the worser of times.

Essentially taking on the struggles of the middle age man once again, or perhaps slightly over middle age man (sorry George), Payne gives us a look into the life of one particular man who should be falling apart were he not as strong as he is - strong even when it looks as if he were not. And it is Clooney who makes this happen. In fact the entire film is George Clooney really. Payne gets a pair of stunningly subtle performances out of both Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as Clooney's daughters, as well as from Nick Krause as a doofus friend of his eldest daughter (Beau Bridges, Matthew Lillard, Judy Greer and Robert Forster also have small but productive roles), but when push comes to shove, The Descendants is Clooney's film to fly with or crash and burn with.

Now even though the film, or more accurately, the film's script, does border on the ordinary (though there is some pretty great stuff here, and it does have more maturity than his past works, this is surely Payne's least dynamic film), Clooney does manage to get the film to soar more often than not. With the actor's expressive eyes and unique body language (Clooney, often thought of as more of a movie star rather than as a bona fide actor, really is underrated in many circles) he gives his character both a sense of inherent grief and hopeful optimism, and he blends these two polar opposites into a surprisingly complex characterization of loss and rebirth. It is truly a testament to Clooney's acting ability, his prowess if you will, that a film that would have otherwise gone the way of most typical mainstream movies of this ilk, was made as dynamic as it was.

This bravura performance by Clooney (a work of remarkable subtlety actually) may not put The Descendants in a league with the aforementioned Sideways (this new film may be Payne's weakest work, but is still a film full of emotional depth, and as I stated earlier, surprising maturity), but it does put the character of Matt King in a league with Payne's other great men of ultimate sorrow, like the comic/tragic loneliness of About Schmidt's Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson's most absorbing performance since the seventies), the self-centered insecurities of Paul Giamatti's Miles in Sideways (no fucking merlot!) or the manic desperation of Jim McCallister in Election (Matthew Broderick playing the antithesis of his Ferris Bueller). It may not make Payne's film the great work I wish it had been, but it does raise it to a level it otherwise would not have reached. All-in-all, not a bad deal.

A New Look and a New Outlook.....

2011-12-19T18:12:00.000-05:00

It would seem that the new year is coming a few weeks early here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World. To ring in this early new year, I have updated the look of the site - as I am sure those who have been here before have already taken notice of. But wait, there is more! As some of you may already know, I have a sister site (an older sister, born in 2004) called The Cinematheque. This is where I have been writing and posting film reviews for the last (almost) eight years. Well from here on in, I will be posting these reviews right here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.

As for the fate of The Cinematheque - that site will still exist, and you will still be able to access those (almost) eight years worth of reviews over there, but otherwise, it is getting streamlined as an archive only kinda place. Most of the things I wish to save will eventually make their way over here. From now on, everything (new reviews, lists, classic film critiques, more lists and everything else) will be right here in one convenient place. Even all those aforementioned archived reviews will be linked to from here (the film reviews tab above will be up and running very soon).

As for the future of The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World - I have been rather inactive lately and will probably not be back up to full swing until the middle of January sometime. Meantime I will begin posting new reviews here, as promised, beginning with The Descendants sometime in the next twenty-four hours or so (unless of course you are reading this particular post later, and therefore are well behind the times, and then the new reviews have already begun appearing). The middle of January will also bring my much delayed Best of 2011 article, but more on that when the time arrives.

Something in the Slightly Inactive Department.....

2011-12-11T22:52:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't noticed (and who the hell knows how many of you out there even bother to pay attention to these cinematic ramblings), I have not exactly been overly active with my postings (aka, those parenthetically aforementioned cinematic ramblings) as of late. There is a reason for this. No, it is not laziness, nor is it procrastination, though I do suffer from both of these ailments on occasion. The reason is that I have just been doing other things. Between organizing our Tenth Anniversary events at Midtown Cinema and general pre-Christmas hoopla, not to mention some of that laziness and/or procrastination you heard speak of, chances to write new pieces for The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World, or at least a mind to, have not come up all too often.

Of course none of this means I have stopped watching movies. I am still as obsessive as ever on that end of things - I should hit 550 films watched by the end of the year (at least 120 of these being new releases). I am still regularly writing reviews over at The Cinematheque, with links to said reviews appearing here as usual - the next one of which will be for Alexander Payne's The Descendants. I am also continuing my regular gig over at Anomalous Material, writing up my 10 Best lists, with links to such lists posted here as well, as usual - the latest of which will be the 10 Best Animated Feature Films. I will also be updating the reviews in My Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films, as well as participating in a few blogathons later this month.

Actually, it would seem I will be just as busy as I always have been, so I suppose this little side note as it were, is not really all that necessary. But seriously, when it comes to fresh material for the fodder (except for links to my reviews, which should still be quite regularly appearing), it will be at least a bit slower, a bit more hit and miss around here until after the new year. Reviews for such films as Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sleeping Beauty, Sherlock Holmes, We Bought A Zoo, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, War Horse, Tintin, Young Adult, Shame, The Skin I Live In, The Artist, and several others will still appear over at The Cinematheque (again, linked to from here), but other than a few odds and ends sprinkled about, that will be about it until I announce my choices for the Best of 2011 sometime in the middle of January, followed closely by my final Oscar nomination predictions, and then a sort of reboot back into the more prolific writing and posting schedule everyone has become accustomed to lo this past year or so.

So, there is no need to panic Earthlings and true believers, if you are indeed out there listening, for I will be seeing you all again, right here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World. Actually, the alarmist that I inherently seem to be, I will not be leaving at all. Perhaps out in the netherworld more often than here in the perfect reality of cyberspace (he said tongue firmly in cheek) but still here somewhere. So just bear with the rather low production rate for the next month or so, and all will be right in your world once again. Now please enjoy this completely random publicity still of a very young Joan Crawford (+ friend?) and stop your worrying.

And don't forget to vote in my poll over in the sidebar, which will still be going strong all through the holiday season.

The Cinematheque Reviews: The Muppets

2011-12-07T23:49:00.000-05:00

And now let's get things started. Why don't you get things started. It's time to get things started. On the most sensational inspirational celebrational Muppetational. This is what we call the Muppet Show! Not since little Carol Anne Freeling spoke the infamous words back in 1986, has the phrase "They're Baaaaack" aroused so much giddy curiosity in those of the X Generation. Thirty-five years after their TV show made its debut and twelve years after their last foray into the wilds of theatrical release, Kermit, Fozzy, Animal, Beaker, Rowlf, Gonzo and Miss Piggy are indeed baaaack. Though it may lack a certain something that the original TV show and first movie had, I am still personally pleased as punch. My review of said new Muppet movie is now up and running over at The Cinematheque.

Read my review of The Muppets at The Cinematheque.

The Cinematheque Reviews: My Week With Marilyn

2011-12-07T19:22:00.001-05:00

Yeah yeah, stop your yammerin'. So she doesn't look all that much like Marilyn Monroe. Get over it. She does a relatively good job in an almost impossible role. Unfortunately the film as a whole, her performance notwithstanding, is just your typical middle-of-the-road biopic, so even if she were to blow us away with her portrayal (sadly she does well, but not that well) it would not amount to much of anything. But I should stop my yammerin' as well, since I am merely repeating ideas I breach in my review of My Week With Marilyn. In other words, you should stop reading this and head over to The Cinematheque where said review is now up and running.

Read my review of My Week With Marilyn at The Cinematheque.

My Quest to See the 1000 Greatest: #670 Thru #679

2011-12-06T12:39:00.003-05:00

Considering I am just a couple of films away from #700, I am a bit behind on writing about the films I am seeing. So in a frantic bid to catch-up, here is a look at the (almost) latest ten films in my Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films. These ten films were seen between Oct. 19 and Nov. 11. A complete look at my quest can be viewed HERE. To keep the catching-up going, the next batch of ten will be coming soon.

#670 - They Died With Their Boots On (1941)

(#926 on TSPDT) The great Tasmanian Devil swashbuckler Errol Flynn and the drop dead gorgeous damsel-not-so-in-distress Olivia de Havilland made eight films together - all of them under the Warner Brothers banner. The first seven were directed by Michael Curtiz. This one, the duo's final film together, was directed by Raoul Walsh. A rabidly inaccurate story of General George Armstrong Custer, played by the dashing Flynn of course, They Died With Their Boots On is still a solid typical adventure story of the times. The chemistry between Flynn and de Havilland is as good here as it is in any of the better films they did together (Captain Blood, Dodge City, The Adventures of Robin Hood) and it is fun to see them together onscreen - even if they never really got along off screen. Walsh was always a fun, though somewhat uneven director (the curse of working in the studio system), and this may not be him at his best (that would be his gangster films with Bogie in the 1930's) but it is indeed quite fun.

#671 - Lolita (1962)

(#530 on TSPDT) I am finally coming close to being a Kubrick completist (just Spartacus and his debut Fear and Desire are left on the unseen pile) and I am beginning to think that the man never made a bad movie, not even a mediocre or average one. Lolita, based on Nabokov of course, is no exception to that rule. Pure Kubrick, with its sharpened image, glaring medium shots, blatant audacity and bravura performances, Lolita is nothing shy of a masterpiece of subversive moviemaking. Granted, the subject matter - a sexually proactive twelve year old (Sue Lyon) and the older man she seduces (James Mason) - had to be cooled down for Hollywood (the book itself was quite controversial at the time considering how Lo is shown not as a victim, at least not wholly, but as an aggressive pursuer of Humbert Humbert) and Lyon, fifteen at the time, portrayed the character as a high schooler. But even with these artistic limitations, Kubrick hands us a masterstroke of sexual innuendo. All this and Peter Sellers, as the tenacious diddler Claire Quilty, handing in the most daring and unique performance of his already daring and unique career.

#672 - Halloween (1978)

(#291 on TSPDT) There was a time, back in the late 1970's and early 1980's, when John Carpenter was a master genre filmmaker. The director has lost much of that in more recent days (though his latest, The Ward, is edging toward a return to form) but once upon a time, this fervent cinephile was on top of his game - and Halloween was the top of that top. Many today would probably look at Carpenter's horror classic (I can call a film just 33 years old a classic, right?) and think it to be full of cliche's and slasher film typicalities - but they would be wrong, dead wrong. Seriously though, this surprisingly low key, rather bloodless horror movie (as opposed to the bloodletting of Rob Zombie's ugly remake), was the one that started the whole damned genre in the first place. Sure, perhaps Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came first, but it was Halloween that gave the genre all its tricks and tropes. It of course helps that Carpenter brought such a vast love and knowledge of cinema and its history to his film. To read more of my thoughts on the film, (or ramblings - you decide) please read "Some Good Old-Fashioned Halloween Fun w/ Michael Myers, John Carpenter and the Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis."

#673 - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

(#220 on TSPDT) Gotta admit it - not a fan of this movie. How it is so high on this list I do not know. It is even above its much superior genre-mate Halloween. A travesty if you ask me. Now the film is not horrible (there are several films on this list that are worse - see the final entry in this post for one example) but it certainly, to speak in the movie's redneck vernacular, ain't no winner either. Now I can forgive the bad acting, for the low budget almost necessitates such a thing, but really, this film is nothing more than 68 minutes of idiot kids riding around in a van and 14 minutes of a guy wearing a skin mask chasing down and killing these same said idiot kids. Perhaps my timetable is a bit off (but not by much) but seriously, this film has no heart, no soul, no anything. It is purely just a sick and twisted precursor to the torture porn of today. I will give it one thing though - the opening sequence and the climactic chase are both great. Sadly nothing in between ever matches the intensity of either.

#674 - The Innocents (1961)

(#428 on TSPDT) Since it was the end of October, I thought I would catch up on all those as-of-yet-unseen horror movies on the list. The two previous entries can attest to thus (as can a few of those on the last collection of ten) and this one, watched on Halloween night, is yet another. A psychological thriller playing out like a classic ghost story, Jack Clayton's modern retelling of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw is a moody, restless horror movie. Starring the fabulous Deborah Kerr as the new governess to a pair of young children at a stately and downright scary country estate, The Innocents has a creeping dread that builds and builds and builds until the final climactic powerhouse of an ending. Martin Scorsese calls this film one of the eleven scariest movies ever.

#675 - A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958)

(#985 on TSPDT) I came to Douglas Sirk rather late in life. I actually just saw my first Sirk earlier this year. This is now my fourth (my fifth and sixth to come within the next few weeks, he said with insider knowledge as he writes these words a bit on the late side). It may not be one of Sirk's more famous works of melodrama, but it still beautifully reeks of that Sirkian flair that gives his fifties work such style and panache. Some say that the work of Sirk is nothing more than tear-jerker drivel, and I suppose to a point, that may be true, but this kind of criticism itself is nothing more than a naive look at a very complicated, and quite subversive filmmaker. To read more on this film, check out my piece (elsewhere on this very site), entitled, "The Tragedy or War Meets the Tragedy of Love in Douglas Sirk's Melodramatic War Film, A Time to Love and a Time to Die."

#676 - New York, New York (1977)

(#884 on TSPDT) Scorsese. De Niro. Liza. The music of Kander and Ebb. In the midst of a string of gritty, urban monster movies (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, King of Comedy), Martin Scorsese handed us this classically styled musical. Meant to show the great director's love of classic Hollywood cinema, Marty's film (I can call you Marty, right?) is a tribute both to the tradition of the musical genre and to the director's beloved New York itself. Lavish and bold, with sets designed to have an artificial look to them (another way of sending tribute to old Hollywood), Scorsese's foray away from the ultra-realism of Taxi Driver, was a box office failure. Certainly not your typical Scorsese picture (the same can be said of the auteur's latest Hugo), the blatant undying love of Hollywood and cinema itself (again, like Hugo), a nostalgic look back at the films that influenced Scorsese as a child growing up in makes this one of the director's most personal projects. As for me - I quite enjoyed the whole thing. I would place this much higher on the list - perhaps in the top 300 or 350 even. A fun and quite gorgeous piece of moviemaking. My fifth favourite Scorsese.

#677 - Shoeshine (1946)

(#782 on TSPDT) Though I tend to gravitate toward the more colourful facets of cinema (Powell/Pressburger, Scorsese, the Sirkian melodramas of the 1950's, later Visconti, Kubrick) I will always have a soft spot for the Italian Neorealists. This particular one, by Vittorio De Sica, (his Bicycle Thieves graces my own personal top twenty) has moments of pure cinematic joy. - both in beauty and in sorrow. Based around the tragic lives of children (a strong and popular neorealist theme), Shoeshine is a powerful tale of juvenile prison life in the ugly world that was post WWII Italy. I would personally put this film quite a bit higher than the list does. Perhaps even in the top 200. A beautifully hungry looking film, with haunting (sorry for such a cliche'd term, but it is quite accurate) and unforgettable images. That is what movies are supposed to be, right?

#678 - Heaven Can Wait (1943)

(# on TSPDT) No, not the 1978 Warren Beatty film. That film is actually a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, which in turn was an adaptation of the play Heaven Can Wait - also not related to this film, which is based on a play called Birthday. Anyway, I digress. I have been on a bit of a Gene Tierney kick recently, so I figured I should take the opportunity to watch this Ernst Lubitsch directed work - one of five Tierney's on the list (Tobacco Road still to come). Considering the typical (well, typical for Lubitsch) kind of films the director made in the pre-code era - sexually charged, sophisticated comedies that showed a gleeful disdain for the staid real world around them; films like Trouble in Paradise, One Hour With You and Design for Living - Lubitsch's later works seem quite staid themselves. Still showing some of that famed "Lubitsch Touch" that helped make him the toast of the pre-code town in later films like Ninotchka and To Be Or Not To Be, one cannot help but think how much better a film like Heaven Can Wait would have been with the ribald sophistication of the pre-code mentality.

#679 - The Gleaners & I (2000)

(#829 on TSPDT) Ugh! God I hated this movie. It is nothing more than a bunch of people picking wheat and stealing potatoes and digging through garbage, with occasional shots of director Agnes Varda doing something ridiculous and/or pretentious. "Here I am holding a bundle of wheat. Here I am holding my camera. Here I am being a pretentious buffoon." That last statement may be made-up, but sadly enough the first two are actual quotes from Varda. Seriously, how ridiculous and boring can a film be? Especially considering how much I enjoyed some of the director's earlier works. Again, ugh!

The Cinematheque Reviews: Martin Scorsese's Hugo

2011-11-30T20:00:00.000-05:00

Best. 3D. Movie. Ever. Is this pure fanboy hyperbole or the real thing? Obviously I am going to say the latter, though the former does exist inside me at all times, ever ready to pounce. Seriously though, Martin Scorsese's Hugo is a damn fine motion picture. In some ways very un-Scorsese (PG rated feel-good family film) but in others (a paean to film preservation) the film is pure Marty indeed. Just to see Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon in 3D (or at least parts of it) is worth the price of admission - even if it is an inflated 3D price. So yes, Scorsese (and film history) fanboy or not, this is the best 3D movie ever made. Granted, I am not a big fan of 3D in the first place, so becoming my choice for best 3D is pretty easy really, but still, it is - so there. I would also boldly proclaim it one of the finest films of 2011. Whatever the case, you know the drill by now, as my review of said best 3D movie ever is currently up and running over at the review wing of this conglomerate, The Cinematheque. Go on over and check it out, as all the kids are saying.

Read my review of Hugo at The Cinematheque.

Anomalous Material Weekly Feature: 10 Best Classic Hollywood Tough Guys

2011-11-29T23:58:00.002-05:00

Here we are again true believers, with what is my eighteenth weekly 10 best feature for the fine folks over at Anomalous Material. For those of you not in the know, those same said fine folks have given me a (possibly foolish on their behalf) regular weekly gig as feature writer. It is a series of top ten lists on various cinematic subjects (and anyone who knows me can attest to how perfectly suited I am to such an endeavor - yes I am a list nerd). This week's feature takes us back to those halcyon days of classic Hollywood. A time when men were men and women wanted them. It was a time of tough guys and fast talkin' dames. With this list, we are going to focus on those tough guys. The fast talkin' dames will come in a future list - though there may be one of those fast talkin' dames sneaking their way onto this list. Check it out, as they say.

Read my feature article, "10 Best Classic Hollywood Tough Guys" at Anomalous Material.

Here is one of the most infamous shots of one of those aforementioned classic Hollywood tough guys. One story tells of how Mae Clark's ex-husband would go to show after show of The Public Enemy, and laugh hysterically every time Cagney shoves the grapefruit in Clark's kisser. The story may be somewhat apocryphal, but it is still a fun story anyway.

Criterion Critiques w/ Alex DeLarge

2011-11-29T23:39:00.000-05:00

What follows is part of a regular series of reviews on the always wonderful, and quite indispensable Criterion Collection, written by our special guest reviewer Alex DeLarge of the Korova Theatre.

12 ANGRY MEN (Sidney Lumet, 1957)
Released on Criterion Blu-ray 11/22/2011; Spine #591

Sidney Lumet makes a stunning directorial debut with this gritty, sweaty, emotionally charged drama about 12 jurors deciding the fate of an eighteen year old defendant charged with 1st degree murder. They carry the legal burden of deciding guilt or innocence but also understand a conviction would surely lead to the death sentence.

An exceptional cast of now legendary actors fall into character (we never even know their names, only juror number) and don’t miss a beat of dialogue or a camera cue…this film is nearly perfect in its direction. Most of the film takes place in the cramped juror’s quarters, 12 men held prisoner by their own passions and corrupt moralities. Lumet is able to focus his camera into these tight spaces to create immediacy and intimacy, to feel their intellectual and emotional turmoil as they debate the facts and presentation of the trial. This important duty is influenced by their deep-rooted prejudices and convictions, while Henry Fonda advocates for Justice and Reason and for all to consider not only evidence presented at trial…but their own set of facts!

I work in the local District Attorney’s Office and have experience in many trials including homicide cases so consider this: a jury is only supposed to consider evidence (both circumstantial and direct) and veracity of testimony presented at trial, not their own research and sympathies. Essentially, this group of disparate and desperate men voted for a jury nullification. Did they violate the Rule of Law and let a guilty man walk? Think about it.

Final Grade: (A+)

*************

About Alex: "To state things plainly is the function of journalism; Alex writes fugitive reviews, allusive, symbolic, full of imagery and allegory, and by leaving things out, he allows the reader the privilege of creating along with him." Alex can be found hidden deep within the dark confines of his home theatre watching films, organizing his blu-ray and dvd collection and updating his blogs. Please visit the Korova Theatre and Hammer & Thongs to see what’s on his mind.

Woody & Me: Through the Years

2011-11-28T23:57:00.003-05:00

The following is my contribution to The LAMBs in the Director's Chair #22: Woody Allen.

The first Woody Allen film I remember seeing was 1973's Sleeper. It would have been around 1978 or 79 that I saw it on TV. I would have been just eleven or twelve at the time, so needless to say I did not get many of the sexual or political jokes. The Orgasmatron went right over my head (kids were more naive in those days) but I do remember liking the giant chicken. I have of course gone back and rewatched the film, on several occasions, and now consider it to be one of Woody's best and funniest films.

My real attraction to the films of Allen Stewart Konigsberg (the name with which he was born back in 1935 Brooklyn) came around 1984 with the purchase of my very first VCR. (remember those?) I was seventeen and this VCR was the first major purchase I ever made with my own hard-earned money. I also got myself a membership at a local video store called Movie Merchants and began renting movies as if I were a young man with a great obsession. Of course this was very true, as this was the time I began to evolve into the obsessive cinephile I am today. This was to be the birth of my lifelong desire for everything cinema. The beginning of my obsession. But I digress.

Among the multitudes of titles (on video cassette long before the advent of DVD and Bluray!) that I rented those first few months of membership, were several Woody Allen films. The first among these, which should come as no surprise, was Annie Hall. Considered the director's finest work (it makes my top twenty favourite films of all-time), and a departure from his earlier slapstick comedies, Annie Hall is what a romantic comedy should be. Both edgy and wry, the film stars Woody as Alvy Singer, a typically neurotic writer, and Diane Keaton as his love interest, the titled gal herself, Annie Hall. The couple had been a couple offscreen as well (they had split up several years before Annie Hall was made, and remain friends to this day) and the character is actually named after Keaton, who had been born Diane "Annie" Hall.

The greatness behind the film, other than the adorable-as-hell performance from Ms. Keaton, is the direction of Mr. Allen himself. Influenced by Ingmar Bergman as much as Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin, Allen made his film as both comedy and drama. Tossing in multiple styles, including inner monologue subtitles, breaking the fourth wall, introducing insane asides, flashbacks, split-screens and even an animated segment, Allen's Annie Hall, winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1977 (and Best Director, Screenplay and Actress for Keaton), is what one could and should call a true masterpiece of cinema. This was also the time period where I first saw Love and Death (influenced by Russian literature), A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (Shakesperean comedy as Bergman remake), Zelig (an early mockumentary), Broadway Danny Rose (showing Allen's comedic upbringing) and Bananas (an early Chaplinesque slapstick).

The three Woody Allen films I saw in this initial flurry of filmwatching that most thrilled me though (aside from the aforementioned Annie Hall) were his ode to Bergman, the serious-minded drama Interiors, his take on Fellini's 8 1/2, Stardust Memories (a film that often gets forgotten when talking of Allen's quite prolific oeuvre) and the Woodman's homage to the city he loves so much, Manhattan. Using the music of Gershwin (how can you not love a Woody Allen soundtrack!?) and the most stunning of black and white cinematography by Gordon Willis, Allen's Manhattan makes the city itself the main character of his movie. A city that would play the most important part in many a Woody Allen motion picture, becomes the most important aspect of Manhattan. The following year I would rent and watch 1985's Purple Rose of Cairo. One of Allen's most enjoyable films, and one that has grown on me more and more with each successive viewing.

It was 1986 that Woody and I took our cinematic relationship to a whole other level. Up until then, I had only seen Woody on the small screen, but that year, my first year out of high school, we went big. Big screen that is. Hannah and Her Sisters (my third favourite Woody) would be my first Allen film seen in an actual cinema. Seen with my mom, aunt and uncle, at an AMC theater in town, the film was a blast, as they say. The rest of the fam wasn't all that thrilled by it (they never have been big fans of the Woodman), but I quite enjoyed my first theatrical Woody Allen experience. My cherry popping if you want to keep going with the cine-sexual relationship angle.

The following year would bring my second theatrical rendezvous with the Woodman (how's that for innuendo?). It would be Radio Days, and unlike the majority of Allen's films, the director would not appear on camera in this one, instead acting as narrator. Probably the most nostalgic of Allen's films, Radio Days is an ode to that romantic era of the director's childhood. A pair of dramatic works, September in 1987 and Another Woman in 1988, would follow Radio Days. These too would be sans Woody the actor. These would also be two films I would not see till much later (September in the late 1990's and Another Woman for the first time just earlier this year). Cut now to early 1989. It has been three years since Woody starred in one of his films. But this would soon end - in spades.

First would come the omnibus film New York Stories. A three part venture directed by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Allen. Scorsese's section, starring Nick Nolte as a crazed artist, is my favourite part of the film, and Coppola's part is a sentimental look at childhood in the limelight (obviously based on his daughter Sofia), but Woody's is of course the funniest. An absurdist look at the Oedipal complex, sprightly called Oedipus Wrecks, it is the story of a man with an overbearing mother. One day, during a magic act (Woody does love his magic), the mother vanishes, and Woody's smothered son feels free at last. Alas, the mother comes back as a giant floating head who continues to lovingly torment her son. Great Woody, but still just a short film. Later that same year would bring his real (semi)comeback.

Crimes and Misdemeanors is an intriguing blend of the dramatic and the comedic. Loosely based on Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Allen takes the idea of morality in murder and puts it into a very Allenesque realm. The director would come back to these themes fifteen years later in Match Point. After making the mostly forgotten Alice in 1990 (one of the few Allen films I have not seen), playing actor only opposite Bette Midler in Paul Mazursky's Scenes From a Mall, and directing the German Expressionist homage, Shadows and Fog (a film I would not catch on video until a few years later), the shit sort of hit the fan. Not to play into the whole tabloid aspect of the Woody/Mia/Soon Yi relationship, it was in 1992 that the story hit the newsstands, and would taint Allen's career to this day. I personally do not think Allen did anything illegal (immoral is a different story, but since Woody and Soon-Yi are still together today, nineteen years later...) but whether he did or not, the scandal still hangs heavy, though to a lesser degree now than then.

The film that came out in the midst of all this he said/she said nonsense was Husbands and Wives. It would be Mia Farrow's final film with her long time lover. It would also be Woody Allen's last truly great film for nearly two decades. After Husbands and Wives Allen would make Manhattan Murder Mystery. The film would star his former paramour Diane Keaton.   After this would come a succession of enjoyable but not great films. Bullets Over Broadway in 1994, Mighty Aphrodite in 1995, Everyone Says I Love You (a musical!) in 1996, Deconstructing Harry in 1997, Celebrity in 1998 and Sweet and Lowdown in 1999. Granted, these may not be Allen's golden age films, but they are still all quite good. At the turn of the millennium, this would no longer be true.

In 2000 came Small Time Crooks. A somewhat fun comedy but definitely lesser Woody Allen. But still, the worst was yet to come. The following year would bring the world The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. This is possibly the director's creative low point. Though, with followups such as Hollywood Ending, Anything Else and Melinda and Melinda, perhaps it is not. Still though, this five year period is not an era that will be remembered fondly in future studies of the filmmaker's career. I personally would place Anything Else at the bottom of any Woody Allen list.   But this lull would not last forever. In 2005, Woody would change in his usual New York skyline for one of Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. Setting his new film in London, Match Point played as not only a departure for the Manhattan-loving auteur, but also a comeback of sorts. Critically acclaimed for the first time this millennium, Allen's new film was a welcome return to form for the director - even if it was a strange new form. It was also the film that garnered Woody his sixteenth Screenplay Oscar nomination, untying him with Billy Wilder and giving him the record for the most nominations in the category.

Sadly though, this comeback would hit a glitch the following year when the rather horrendous Scoop was released. Giving Anything Else a run for its money as the worst Woody Allen, Scoop was Allen's second film with his young new muse, Scarlett Johansson. At least now the 71 year old old would be playing the father figure instead of the romantic lead. But luckily this glitch was as short-lived as the comeback before it, for, after the almost completely forgotten Cassandra's Dream (the other Woody I have never seen), 2008 would bring Allen's best film in over a decade, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Again starring the vapid Ms. Johansson, VCM would now take the traveling Allen from France to Spain. The film would win Penelope Cruz a Best Supporting Actress Oscar - a thing that has happened to several of Allen's ladies-in-waiting.

Next would bring another departure for Allen. Filming a screenplay that he had written back in 1976, and originally slated to star Zero Mostel, Whatever Works, now starring Larry David, was perhaps a failure in many people's eyes, but I am one of those select few who rather enjoyed this toss-off throwback to Woody's earlier days. Next came You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, but it is rather a mediocre work and I really have nothing much to say about it, for better or for worse. But Woody's next film would not be so mediocre. 2011 has brought us the director's finest work since the 1990's - Midnight in Paris. Back to the City of Lights, this is easily one of the best films of the year - it could even give Woody his second Best Director Oscar. 2012 will bring us a new film, tentatively titled Nero Fiddled, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Penelope Cruz, Ellen Page, Alec Baldwin, Greta Gerwig, Roberto Begnini and Allen himself. But that is another story for another day.

So here ends the story of my life and love affair with Woody Allen. Well, at least here it ends until the aforementioned Nero Fiddled hits theaters next year. I hope you had a good time reminiscing about my torrid cinematic affair with the Woodman.

My 100 Favourite Films (Today)

2011-11-27T10:00:00.002-05:00

The fine folks over at Anomalous Material, a place where I have a regular gig coming up with various 10 Best lists, have asked their stable of film writers to come up with their choices for the best and/or their favourite films. The results, including a master list as well as everyone's individual lists, will be out sometime in early 2012. We were told that it could be top 10, a top 25, a top 50, a top 100 or whatever. I of course, went with the top 100 - choosing to name my favourites, as opposed to what are supposed to be the best (the latter being an unwinnable argument maker, the former being more personal and therefore less arguable). I am not sure how set this list is (except for the top 14 or so), and therefore it could change tomorrow or the next day or the day after that (I am not easily satisfied). I also plan on making another top 100 after I finish My Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films, which again will probably bring some as-of-yet-unseen films into the fold and knock some of these out, but right here and right now, these are my picks for the top 100. So, without further ado, here are my 100 Favourite Films.

1. The Red Shoes (Powell/Pressburger, 48)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 68)
3. The Good the Bad and the Ugly (Leone, 66)
4. Psycho (Hitchcock, 60)
5. Citizen Kane (Welles, 41)
6. Sunrise (Murnau, 27)
7. The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 55)
8. Singin' in the Rain (Kelly/Donan, 52)
9. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 67)
10. Breathless (Godard, 60)
11. Touch of Evil (Welles, 58)
12. The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 39)
13. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 48)
14. The Searchers (Ford, 56)
15. Casablanca (Curtiz, 42)
16. City Lights (Chaplin, 31)
17. Annie Hall (Allen, 77)
18. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 76)
19. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 54)
20. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 58)
21. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 39)
22. King Kong (Cooper/Schoedsack, 33)
23. Star Wars (Lucas, 77)
24. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 94)
25. M. Hulot's Holiday (Tati, 53)
26. The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 57)
27. Goodfellas (Scorsese, 90)
28. Johnny Guitar (Ray, 54)
29. Chinatown (Polanski, 74)
30. High Noon (Zinnemann, 52)
31. The General (Keaton/Bruckman, 26)
32. Brazil (Gilliam, 85)
33. Freaks (Browning, 32)
34. The Third Man (Reed, 49)
35. Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, 44)
36. Blade Runner (Scott, 82)
37. Some Like It Hot (Wilder, 59)
38. The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell/Pressburger, 43)
39. Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich, 55)
40. 400 Blows (Truffaut, 59)
41. Rio Bravo (Hawks, 59)
42. House (Obayashi, 77)
43. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Weine, 20)
44. His Girl Friday (Hawks, 40)
45. The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 25)
46. Double Indemnity (Wilder, 44)
47. The Blue Angel (Von Sternberg, 30)
48. A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 71)
49. Make Way For Tomorrow (McCarey, 37)
50. Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 50)
51. Rear Window (Hitchcock, 54)
52. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 57)
53. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pasolini, 64)
54. The Last Laugh (Murnau, 24)
55. The Godfather Pts I & II (Coppola, 72/74)
56. The Kid (Chaplin, 21)
57. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 69)
58. A Canterbury Tale (Powell/Pressburger, 44)
59. La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 60)
60. Viridiana (Bunuel, 61)
61. Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 09)
62. Written on the Wind (Sirk, 56)
63. Cairo Station (Chahine, 58)
64. L'Avventura (Antonioni, 60)
65. On The Waterfront (Kazan, 54)
66. Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 01)
67. Pather Panchali (Ray, 55)
68. Pickup on South Street (Fuller, 53)
69. Rififi (Dassin, 55)
70. Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 68)
71. Rebel Without A Cause (Ray, 55)
72. The Big Sleep (Hawks, 46)
73. Voyage in Italy (Rossellini, 54)
74. Black Narcissus (Powell/Pressburger, 47)

75. Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 57)
76. The River Fuefuki (Kinoshita, 60)
77. Au hasard Balthazar (Bresson, 66)
78. Manhattan (Allen, 79)
79. Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 46)
80. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 80)
81. Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 57)

82. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 64)
83. Duck Soup (McCarey, 33)
84. The Wages of Fear (Clouzot, 53)
85. M (Lang, 31)
86. 8 1/2 (Fellini, 63)
87. In the Mood For Love (Wong, 00)
88. La Strada (Fellini, 54)
89. Nashville (Altman, 75)
90. Grand Illusion (Renoir, 37)
91. Week-End (Godard, 67)
92. Pickpocket (Bresson, 59)
93. Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette, 74)
94. Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 93)
95. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 25)
96. Senso (Visconti, 54)
97. Metropolis (Lang, 27)
98. The Phantom Carriage (Sjostrom, 21)
99. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Fassbinder, 72)
100. Vanishing Point (Sarafian, 71)

My 500th Post.....and a Happy Thanksgiving to You All

2011-11-24T11:36:00.001-05:00

It is Thanksgiving today and here I am online, babbling about how this is my 500th post on The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World, instead of doing what I am supposed to be doing - eating enough food to put me into a coma. Not to worry though, for anyone who knows me, knows full well that I will most certainly eat myself into a food coma at some point today.

But more on post number five hundred. This site came to life on September 14, 2009. Which means it took just over two years to get to this so-called posting milestone. Granted, this is much less a big deal and much more a lame excuse to babble on and pat myself on the back. So what I say, so what! I have written both high and low here. From (somewhat) insightful reviews of both new releases and classic cinema to Oscar talk (I am an Oscar nerd!) to blitherings and blatherings about whatever cinematic doodaddle comes to mind.

I am not sure how many people are out there reading this post, or the cinematic ramblings which occur regularly here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World (the statistics Blogger offers are never an accurate assessment), but I am going to ramble on anyway. I was born in the backseat of a Greyhound bus going down highway 41 afterall (those who have knowledge of The Allman Brothers should get that last joke). But I suppose it is about time to go and eat myself into that aforementioned food coma now, for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is about to end (yes, I may be a parade nerd too, but just this one parade each year), so I will sign off on this quite unnecessary post. Happy Thanksgiving to whomever may be out there listening. Post number 501 will most likely be of a bit more significance. Maybe.

In celebration of the holiday (and my 500th post I suppose), here is a shot from the end of a rather fun Thanksgiving(ish) motion picture. A film that starts out hilariously and keeps the hilarity up in full swing, before a sudden shift to great tragedy near the end - finally finishing on a sentimental but not saccharine ending. Enjoy.

The Cinematheque Reviews: A Dangerous Method

2011-11-23T21:46:00.000-05:00

Chewy Cronenbergian goodness. I actually use that term in my review of David Cronenberg's latest film, A Dangerous Method. I am quite proud of the term actually - even if I am not quite sure what it means. Whatever it means, it is how the film made me feel. The film is the story of the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and the woman who came between them. This description seems a bit more salacious than it probably needs to be, but then what appears to be a proper period piece at first, is given a serious Cronenbergian overhaul - a chewy Cronenbergian overhaul of goodness. But enough of that. My review of the film (originally seen at this year's Philadelphia Film Festival) is currently up and running over at The Cinematheque.

Read my review of A Dangerous Method at The Cinematheque.

There's A New Poll in Town: Name Your Favourite Lars von Trier

2011-11-23T16:14:00.000-05:00

It has been a few months since The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World has done a poll. Well the dry spell is over. In light of the recent release of Lars von Trier's eleventh feature film, Melancholia, you are asked to name your favourite film by the audacious Danish director. Be it Breaking the Waves or Dogville, Dancer in the Dark or Antichrist, The Idiots or Europa, The Element of Crime or Epidemic, Manderlay or The Boss of It All, or his latest, the aforementioned Melancholia, go on over to the sidebar of this very site (relatively near the top of said sidebar) and click in your vote. And remember, you must vote in the poll on the sidebar - votes left in the comments section will not be counted (though feel free to comment away). And for all you von Trier haters out there (and I know there are a lot of you), there is no choice for "none of the above" so take your hatred elsewhere (though I do encourage even the haters to make comments below). The poll will go on until shortly after the New Year, where upon the results will be announced.

The Cinematheque Reviews: Take Shelter

2011-11-21T21:12:00.001-05:00

When you want crazy, you can't go wrong with Michael Shannon. Take Shelter is yet more proof of this fact. I would love to see a (somewhat) surprise Best Actor Oscar nomination come his way in January. My review of this kinda batshitcrazy movie is now up and running over at The Cinematheque. I really have nothing more to say about this right now (yeah, I am not going to ramble) so why not check out my review.

Read my review of Take Shelter at The Cinematheque.

A Certain Kind of Cinema: Those Tough Guys & Fast Talkin' Dames and How Gender-Biased Attitudes Try To Tell Us What to Watch

2011-11-19T22:15:00.002-05:00

The lovely ladies over at The Scarlett Olive are looking for a few good men. Um, let me rephrase that. Katie and Hilary (the aforementioned lovely ladies) are hosting an event titled, "For the Boys Blogathon". Apparently there is a bit too much estrogen over at The Scarlett Olive (not my words!) so the film critic and blogging community have been cordially invited to participate in a manly kind of affair. In their words: "Write a blog (or podcast) regarding the masculine gender in film, genres that appeal to men, films in these genres, or a combination of any of the above. If you are male or female and disagree with this completely … write about that!" The following is my humble contribution to said blogathon.

Now I know plenty of women who go big for the dark environs of Film Noir and the bang bang bravado of the Gangster genre. Ladies who go gaga over Bogart and Mitchum and Robert Ryan - and for more than just their upper body strength and individual je ne sais quoi. In fact, three of the best and most well-known of the film writing community (male or female), the nimble and quick-witted Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun fame, the sharp and saucy Stacia over at She Blogged By Night and the bold and perceptive, and always willing to tell it as it should be Self-Styled Siren, with her encyclopedic knowledge of classic cinema, are all big fans of these very same, supposedly male-oriented genres, while at the same time managing to keep theier womanhood quite intact. They can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. Now I am going to stop myself there, because this line of thought could go quite awry and get me into a heap of hot water. Let's just say, that these talented and brilliant ladies are capable of enjoying, not just those cinematic things supposedly made for women (you know, Joan Crawford films and Musicals, to toss out the most obvious cliches) but also those things that others say are made for a man - even if they can still see, and call out, the inherent misogyny within them. Imagine that.

But yes, I suppose if one were to get down to brass tacks as it were, movies such as Scarface, White Heat, Dawn Patrol, Little Caesar, Captain Blood, The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Rififi, Kiss Me Deadly, Pickup on South Street, Shoot the Piano Player, A Fistful of Dollars, The Great Escape and Seven Samurai (to name just a very few), are made with a male audience in mind. Or at least society's gender-biased idea of what a male is. I, for example, enjoy all of the films just mentioned, while at the same time thoroughly enjoying such female-centric films as Meet Me in St. Louis, Mildred Pierce, All That Heaven Allows, Singin' in the Rain, The Heiress, Stella Dallas, Make Way For Tomorrow and The Red Shoes. That last one I even put at the top of my All-Time Favourites list - above more manly films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Psycho. Does this make me, as a red-blooded American male, a sissy? Okay, perhaps my dancing around while watching The Young Girls of Rochefort is a bit questionable, but overall, I do not think this gender bias should keep me from watching these so-called less-than-manly films.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that there may be movies made for men and there may be movies made for women, but this does not mean each is exclusive of one another. My wife can love the male-centric Taxi Driver and the female-centric An American in Paris, while equally disliking the male-centric Rififi and the female-centric Breakfast at Tiffany's. My wife and I can also love a film like Godard's Breathless (her second favourite film of all-time, my tenth) - a film that seems to fit into both categories, with Belmondo's Bogie-loving tough guy and Seberg's able-bodied modern woman. So, yes, it is quite silly to think only beer-swiggin', football-watchin' macho men can enjoy a gritty gangster film or a rootin'-tootin' western, and only a finger-sandwich-eating, Project Runway-watching proper lady can enjoy the sudsy melodramatic environs of Douglas Sirk or a pastel-painted Hollywood musical. In fact pretty much everything about that last sentence is quite silly. But then again, there is no denying that my wife and I may be in the minority when it comes to playing the sex-based genre crossover game. I won't bother getting into the whole Venus/Mars debate, but rightfully or wrongfully (and I don't think it is necessarily either) women go for one thing while men go for another.

But getting back to those tough guys and fast talkin' dames of the title, there is a certain kind of cinema that is more oft than not, the typical domain of the guy. Movies for guys. A man's cinema indeed. From the quick-witted pre-coders of the first years of sound cinema, throughout the gangster/noir riddled golden age of the thirties and forties, where men were men and women were put in their place (except in the screwball comedy where it was usually the other way around), to the bloody war films of the so-called greatest generation, tough guys and their equally tough (many times even tougher) ladies were making a splash in what one, through gender-biased societal niceties, would call movies for men. These movies, populated by tough guys such as Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, Bogart and Garfield and George Raft, Mitchum and Robert Ryan (can never leave those last two out), and those fast talkin' dames like Stanwyck and Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Una Merkel and Veronica Lake, Rosalind Russell and Carole Lombard, are definitely a group of films, a gang of films if you will, that make many a red-blooded American guy get all hot and bothered. And no, I do not mean that in any hidden-meaning homoerotic way - though there is that too, but that is a whole other story for whole other day.

But even in this certain kind of cinema, there is only a superficiality of male-centric stereotype. Noirs such as The Big Sleep, Gun Crazy, Detour, Out of the Past, The Killers and Double Indemnity have female characters that are as strong, if not stronger than any of the men around them. Yea, yea, I know, these are not the most upstanding women, but in the case of Stanwyck and MacMurray in Double Indemnity, wicked or not, it does have a certain feminism to it. Seriously though, the whole idea of these movies are for men and these are for women (the so-called weaker sex if you will - but that is just going to get me in trouble again - how about the fairer sex), is just a bunch of bunk. But then, marketing is marketing after all, and the majority vote rules. As an example (one that ties in marketing with the motion pictures), in the most recent issue of TCM's Now Playing magazine, there is an ad in the back that suggests gifts for the holidays. The "For Her" side has a Wizard of Oz snowglobe, a Grace Kelly/To Catch a Thief Barbie and an Audrey Hepburn/Breakfast at Tiffany's poster. The "For Him" side has a John Wayne wooden keepsake box set, a 2001 t-shirt and a James Bond/On Her Majesty's Secret Service poster. Personally I want the Oz snowglobe over the Duke boxset, but then we have already established my possible sissydom earlier.

So, in sum, I suppose even in those genres, those certain kinds of cinema, where the testosterone is flying - Paul Muni's monstrous Scarface ready to either strangle or screw his sister Ann Dvorak, Ralph Meeker's Mike Hammer shutting up his dames with the back of his hand, The Duke's arrogant posture against all of femininity in pretty much any of his films - there are women who love them; just as there are men (and not just the stereotypical gay archetype either) who are thrilled when Vicky Page pirouettes in her doomed Red Shoes, or Stanwyck's Stella Dallas nobly gives up her daughter, or Rock Hudson takes Jane Wyman in his autumnal arms and demands she does the so-called unthinkable. Gender roles be damned!! Now I think I'm going to go watch a double feature of The Dirty Dozen and Written on the Wind.

My Quest To See the 1000 Greatest: #660 Thru #669

2011-11-17T23:58:00.002-05:00

Here is a look at the latest ten films in my Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films. These ten films were seen between Oct. 8 and Oct. 18. A complete look at my quest can be viewed HERE.

#660 - Horror of Dracula (1958)

(#992 on TSPDT) Gaudy, garish and grandiose. This typically Grand Guignol Hammer Horror work from Terence Fisher was the first pairing of life-long friends Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as Dracula and Van Helsing respectively. Hammer was a low budget British studio well known for their rather cheesy works of horror and crime throughout the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, and this, one of the better ones I have seen (though I am far from an expert on either the genre or the studio), is delightfully cheesy. It is also cinematically stunning. From Fisher's camera, to the succulent set design, to the costumes, music and splattering blood (the quite iconic shot of Lee, his mouth dripping with blood, is priceless), Horror of Dracula, or just Dracula as it was called on its initial release, is one of the better horror films (a genre I tend to not see much of) on the list.

#661 - Land Without Bread (1932)

(#627 on TSPDT) A tiny little doc from Luis Bunuel about a small tribe of Spanish natives and their struggle for everyday survival. There are definitely fascinating parts to the film, and Bunuel's documentary style here is quite refreshing, and I actually liked it a good deal. A bit surprising to see this film on the list while others are not, but overall an intriguing story that deserves more than a bit of recognition. I guess that means I do not begrudge its insertion into the list all that much after all.

#662 - The Red Balloon (1956)

(#421 on TSPDT) A classic childhood favourite of many, this charming little French film about a boy and his balloon was a surprising uplift after the downer that was Bunuel's Land Without Bread (watch immediately prior to this). I actually did not expect to like the film all that much. I expected a more cloying, oversentimental doo-dad, but instead I got the perfect blend of nostalgia, sentiment and cinematic bravura. This film was the inspiration for Hou Hsiao-hsien's first foray into French film, Flight of the Red Balloon, and I can surely see its inspirational side.

#663 - The Terminator (1984)

(#264 on TSPDT) I still don't know how I came of age in the early 1980's without ever seeing this rather silly but wholly entertaining sci-fi action flick - for better or for worse, a seminal movie of those aforementioned 1980's. Oddly enough, I have seen the sequels, and the more recent prequel, so I suppose at some point I had to go back and search out the original. Iconic in many ways, this film by James Cameron, in the days before he became a megalomaniacial destroyer of cinema, was a blast to watch. Watching it for the first time in 2011, there was the added bonus of seeing how intensely eighties this film was. In fact it was so eighties that even though Michael Biehn's character came from the future, his hair was perfect eighties style.

#664 - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

(#898 on TSPDT) I wasn't sure what I was in for here, but lo and behold, it is something quite extraordinary. Done almost as Cinéma vérité, this fascinating little film is the story of, as one may very well ascertain from the title, a serial killer named Henry. The film opens with a series of quite disturbing (if one is disturbed by such) shots of bloody, slaughtered women in various arrays of carefully positioned death scenes. This quite creepy opening leads into a very matter-of-fact story of Henry as he temporarily settles down with a rather unhinged old prison buddy and his sister, who Henry dangerously becomes involved with. Michael Rooker's chilling performance takes an already tense film and shoots it into the stratosphere. Not for what one would call the faint-of-heart though.

#665 - Yeelen (1987)

(#830 on TSPDT) Egads, I was bored by this film. I am usually a fan of West African Cinema - Sembene and Mambety especially - but this film by Malian director Souleymane Cissé, is just a bore. Sadly though, just as much as this is not a great film, it is not a terrible film either, and therefore I really have nothing much to say about it. I can tell you that Yeelen is Fula for Brightness. I can tell you that this seemed like a poorly structured neo-Robert Flaherty experiment. I can tell you that I nearly fell asleep watching it - just waiting for something, anything to happen. Yes, nothing really happens in films like L'Avventura or Jeanne Dielmann, but still those films a fascinating to endure. This thing just is not. There are moments of visual beauty, but overall even these moments cannot save this film.

#666 - Rosemary's Baby (1968)

(#208 on TSPDT) When I had decided to watch this Polanski classic after hours on the big screen at the cinema, I desperately needed others to watch it with me. It is already creepy enough sitting alone late at night in the cinema, but when you add Satan and all his accouterments to the mix.....well, let's just say I wanted people around me. In the end though, the film was not nearly as creepy as I expected it to be. It certainly has that typical Polanski flair, which in and of itself is creepy, but never did I leap from my seat or even feel uncomfortable in said seat. This is not to say I did not thoroughly enjoy Rosemary's Baby - because I most certainly did. Polanski gives us a delectably fun ride into insanity and the underworld, and one would need to be crazy themselves not to enjoy every batshitcrazy minute of it. And yes, the number this makes on my list was completely on purpose.

#667 - The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

(#649 on TSPDT) I remember (barely) seeing some old episodes of the TV show when I was but a wee thing, and now I finally get to see the original film version. Starring the beautiful Ms. Gene Tierney as the widowed Mrs. Muir and the ruggedly dashing Rex Harrison as the titular ghost, this film is a supernatural romantic drama. Better than I expected it to be, Tierney, whom I always enjoy, is a determined yet somewhat unrealistic incurable romantic while Harrison is a gruff yet likable old sea captain-turned haunting spirit. The film tells the story - at times humourous, at times tragic - of how Mrs. Muir buys the dead old captain's house and the captain's attempts at scaring her out of said house. We also see the romance that breeds inside this relationship and the ultimate sacrifice one must give for eternal love. A very sad movie at times, but ultimately as incurably romantic as Mrs. Muir herself.

#668 - Night of the Demon (1957)

(#736 on TSPDT) I am usually a Jacques Tournier fan. Whether it be one of his ultra-stylized B-Horror like Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie, or a film noir such as Out of the Past, Tournier has always pleased. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for this 1957 snoozefest. Lacking the tension of his earlier films, Night of the Demon ends up being nothing more than the typical schlock horror that was prevalent at the time - but without even the campy silliness of those films. In other words, a bland, pedestrian fare from a director who has done much much much better. This is another film that has no business being on anyone's list of the 1000 greatest films.

#669 - Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (1950)

(#794 on TSPDT) Granted, the ending of this film is easily seen the proverbial mile away, but that just makes it more fun to watch. Enjoying thinking about how stupid Dana Andrews' novelist is allowing the circumstances of the film to unravel, knowing full well that the slightest miscalculation could send him to life behind bars or even the chair. I won't go into detail about said twisty plot, for it is fun to watch everything come together and tear apart as the film progresses - a thing director Fritz Lang enjoyed doing in his many American noir pictures of the 1940's and 1950's. Andrews will probably never be called a great actor, but in the roles he played throughout his earlier career (his later schlock B-pictures are, for the most part quite unremarkable), one cannot deny his everyman kind of persona shining through. Fun movie indeed.

Anomalous Material Weekly Feature: 10 Best Lars von Trier Films

2011-11-16T20:03:00.002-05:00

Here we are again true believers, with what is my seventeenth weekly 10 best feature for the fine folks over at Anomalous Material. For those of you not in the know, those same said fine folks have given me a (possibly foolish on their behalf) regular weekly gig as feature writer. It is a series of top ten lists on various cinematic subjects (and anyone who knows me can attest to how perfectly suited I am to such an endeavor - yes I am a list nerd). This week's feature coincides with the US release of Lars von Trier's Melancholia. I take a look back and rank my favourite Lars von Trier films. Some would say that a task such as this - one of the most divisive directors around - is quite an ugly task, but what the hell do they know!?

Read my feature article, "10 Best Lars von Trier Films" at Anomalous Material.

Here is an added bonus for all you true believers out there: A young LvT making the sign for what many of his detractors have called him over the years. I personally think of him as more of an imp.

The Cinematheque Reviews: J. Edgar + An Eastwood Top 10

2011-11-16T19:50:00.001-05:00

Clint Eastwood has always been a hit or miss kind of director for me. Some of his films I love (Unforgiven, Mystic River, Gran Torino), some I like (Million Dollar Baby, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Play Misty For Me), some I dislike (Invictus, Bridges of Madison County) and some I think are just terrible (Honkytonk Man, The Rookie). There are even those that I find hilariously bad (Bronco Billy, The Gauntlet). His films usually look good - a visual austerity that can rival early Coppola at times - but they are not always good. J. Edgar, the Oscar baity biopic of everyone's favourite cross-dressing FBI director, is one of those that look good but are not good. It's not bad though, just a sad kind of mediocre. My review of said mediocrity is now up and running over at The Cinematheque.

Read my review of J. Edgar at The Cinematheque.

I figured that this was a good time as any to compile a quickly put-together list of my favourite Clint Eastwood-directed movies. I do need to preface this list with the sad fact that I have never seen High Plains Drifter (yet!), so if that is one of your favourites and you are pissed it is not on my list, chill out. So without further ado.....My Ten Favourite Clint Eastwood- Directed Films.

1. Mystic River

2. Unforgiven

3. Flags of Our Fathers/Letters From Iwo Jima

4. Gran Torino

5. Play Misty For Me

6. The Outlaw Josey Wales

7. Pale Rider

8. Million Dollar Baby

9. Changeling

10. The Gauntlet - so bad, it's good!!

If I were to name my favourite Eastwood-acted film, that would have to be The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - hands down.

The Goal (For Now) Is 100.....

2011-11-15T10:59:00.000-05:00

Just a few hours ago, I received my 90th follower here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World. A milestone perhaps, but a minor one at best. As anyone who has ever constructed a best or favourites film list (I have, why haven't you!?) knows, is that the magic number is 100. So, with that in mind, my newest goal here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World, is to get that followers list up to that aforementioned century mark. And how does one do this you ask? Well that is where you, the fine readers, come into the picture.

Now many of you are already loyal and faithful readers, and dedicated followers too, but I am sure there are those out there yet to take the so-called plunge. For those of you who fall into this last category, all you need do is go on over to the sidebar of this site and click on that "JOIN THIS SITE" button. It may be one of the easiest things you will ever be asked to do. And if you know of any friends who might also like the cinematic ramblings that go on regularly here abouts, well, go ahead and send them this way. They too can help us reach that 100 Followers goal.

I would love to reach this goal by the end of the year. Love, love, love! This means that, counting today, we have 47 days to gain 10 new followers. That seems pretty doable if you ask me. But again, that is all up to you out there. So start a-clickin'. After we accomplish this goal, then we can think about 200 and 300 and 500 and even 1000+. The sky is the limit as they say. And just think, after you become a regular follower of me and The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World, then you too can read my reviews of new release movies as well as looks at classic films and all kinds of strange and unusual behaviour. All for the price of a mouse click.

So let's get to it people - the future awaits you. And you definitely want to do it before the Marx Brothers get you. How's that for some inspiration!?

Seberg - A Poem On Her Birthday

2011-11-13T14:10:00.000-05:00

An angel of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées

A killer, a maid, a reluctant gun moll
Her hair shorn for God and King and Jean-Luc

A delicate finger, gliding across once quivering lips
A creature of ravishing innocence, fair complextion

Gravitas in soulful, mourning eyes
Alive with the thrill of concluded death

This blessed child of Hollywood, Preminger's paramour
Turned toward the ancient eyes of Gaul

Blue jeans, milk shakes, thick red steaks
An American girl, gone to the wonders

A panther in a jaguar's body, a little girl lost
Lithe, she would purr with beatific ambiguity

Her look spoke with poetry, not prose
Her eyes open with the state of longing

Her cheeks, her breasts beneath hidden yellow
Heaving to the time of change, a rebirth

Lost in time, she spoke of voices
In the shadows of the bedrooms of kings

Hello sadness, her youth lost in a car
Heavenly tresses bound her to Earth

Mad men would condemn her
She could no longer live with her nerves

This angel of La plus belle avenue du monde
The chestnut trees wrap their arms about her

As saintly as her armoured maid of childhood
As born unto a star of despair, broken dreams

The flesh of her body, tender, hot to the touch
The flames of eternal lips, she stares at us

A messenger of the creation, she breathes
her tongue embroiled in the lies of truth

Desire has no meaning, no quarter
Faith in the vessel of behaviour

She would hold light to a candle
Dangle her eyes in frenzied apprehension

Her eyes, her touch, her chin, her toes
A striped dress of betrayal, sacrifice

A dalliance with a star, her director
Her legs rushing down her avenue

New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune

The voice of God, a sweet sad sigh
She stares into the camera, eyes wet

A look of immeasurable sadness
Gone is the toothy smirk of youth

Even in her own youth, faded dreams
She stares into the camera, lips drawn

A lost angel of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées

In Defense of Citizen Kane

2011-11-12T17:59:00.001-05:00

The following is my brief contribution to True Classics' The Great Citizen Kane Debate.

In 1952 Sight & Sound polled the world’s leading film critics to compile a list of the best films of all time. The magazine has repeated this poll every ten years, to show which films stand the test of time in the face of shifting critical opinion. Orson Welles' debut masterpiece did not appear on the initial 1952 list, but Citizen Kane did claim the top spot in 1962, and has held its position every decade ever since. And of course, this seemingly universal adoration for the film does not stop there. Topping poll after poll after poll over the past sixty years or so, the formidable Kane (a film as brazen as its director and its subject) is today considered by many to be a film without peers - the greatest film ever made. A bold statement indeed. Now the question we must ask ourselves here and now is, "Is Citizen Kane truly the greatest film ever made?"

I still remember when I first saw the great Kane. I was a seventeen year old high school senior and I had decided to sign up for a new elective our school was offering. It was a film class and among the films I got to see for the first time here (Psycho, Bonnie and Clyde, Lifeboat, Wait Until Dark) was Citizen Kane. The class was a full semester, and half of that time was spent on this one film alone. I remember when we first watched it - before any discussion on it - and how blown away I was by it. I was still just a novice, budding cinephile at the time, and had no real idea of film theory or the art of cinematography, so I was no expert, but damn did I love that movie. Once we began discussing the film, breaking it down scene by scene, going over the films that influenced it and those films influenced by it, it grew even greater in my esteem.

Now many critics and cinephiles over the years have placed Kane at the top of their list out of mere rote. Everyone says it is the greatest, so it must be. I have a good friend who says "Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made - no other answer is allowed." Of course this is all a bit ridiculous. First of all, to name the greatest film(s) is just an impossible thing to do. Everyone has different opinions of greatness. But at the same time, if you turn it around and name your favourite films, which is more personal and less canonical than naming the greatest, there are still those who would disagree with you. If we all had the same tastes this would be an awfully boring place to live. There are also those who, though they make sure to claim respect for the film itself, cannot claim to enjoying Kane at all. If a favourite film is one that you can watch over and over again, then yes, Citizen Kane is one of this critic's favourite films, even without taking into account its myriad of cinematic flourishes that could very well make the film then greatest ever made.

As far as its greatness goes, perhaps the idea of it being listed pretty much everywhere as the greatest film ever is a bit of an overkill, but there is really no denying its greatness - even for those who claim not to like it. Yes, the idea of it making groundbreaking strides in cinematography and art direction, his work in deep focus, is a bit of a misnomer. Welles, along with his DP Gregg Toland, were greatly influenced by the German Expressionism filmmaking going on throughout the 1920's and early 1930's. In fact Toland had worked on several of these films himself. But even if Welles was only doing what was already being done in European cinema and early American sound cinema, he was changing it and making it work in his own unique way. Creating his own Wellesian cinema that would in turn influence so many after him, like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Joel and Ethan Coen, Paul Thomas Anderson to name just a few. Welles would go on to make other great films, from The Magnificent Ambersons to The Lady From Shanghai, to Othello and Macbeth, Touch of Evil, The Trial and Chimes at Midnight - all of which also have that Wellesian style that was gleaned from past film history and transformed into his own bravura style.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that Citizen Kane is a great film. Personally I do not list it as the greatest, instead placing it in the number five spot of my all-time favourite list (behind just The Red Shoes, 2001, The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Psycho). But considering that among the thousands of different films I have seen, from the nearly 120 year history of cinema, to place at number five is a pretty big deal. And my love is not just a nostalgic look at the film - seen at the start of my obsession with the art of cinema - but just because it is a great film overall - no other answer is allowed. It was the first film I ever bought (on VHS - remember those!? and eventually on DVD and now the gorgeous new Bluray boxset) and will always be one that I can and will watch over and over and over again. For those who do not like the film, one can only blame a lack of taste. I am half kidding with that last line, for everyone has different tastes (as I state above), but in the case of Citizen Kane, perhaps those different tastes should be reevaluated. So that is my case. It is more of a love letter to Kane than an actual appraisal of the technical and artistic brilliance of the film (a gushing school girl love letter, not the critique of the knowledgeable film historian I usually try to portray), but it is my case. and I am sticking to it. It is my defense of Citizen Kane. End of story. Rosebud.

The Cinematheque Reviews: Anonymous

2011-11-11T15:27:00.000-05:00

When I went to see Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, it was at a local multiplex. Approximately two-thirds of the way through this somewhat insufferable, albeit with periodic glances of great fun, motion picture experience, I began to hear snoring coming from behind me. Lo and behold, about three rows back was a gentleman, head cocked back as if by spinal cord injury, and mouth agape, sawing enough wood to rebuild the Globe Theater after it was burned down (see how I tie everything in nicely with the subject at hand). Now normally this would bother me a great deal, but considering this obnoxious noise was no worse than what was going on up on the big screen, I just went about my business of watching the damn movie.

Okay, perhaps I am being a bit too harsh here. Emmerich, as silly and as ridiculous and as arrogant as he wants to be (only witless conspiracy theorists still hold to the story that Shakespeare was not really Shakespeare), has made yet another overblown spectacle of cinema, but it is not really as insufferable as I claim it to be. Rhys Ifans and Dame Redgrave do make it more than tolerable, and even some of Emmerich's normal pretensions work in the film's favour at times. And remember, this opinion is coming from a guy who actually enjoyed The Day After Tomorrow a surprisingly goodly amount. Anyway, by damning by faint praise appraisal of Anonymous is currently up and running over at The Cinematheque. Peruse if you so wish.

Read my review of Anonymous at The Cinematheque.

The Cinematheque Reviews: Lars von Trier's Melancholia

2011-11-09T18:23:00.000-05:00

Back in May, so much focus had been put on the stupid things that LvT said at Cannes - the seemingly anti-Semitic guffaws that the director meant as a silly joke that went way way awry, and got the Great Dane banned for life - that his new film, which incidentally took home the Best Actress award for Kirsten Dunst, had been lost in the mire of tabloid bullshit. Well, now here it is nearly a half a year later, and the director's eleventh feature, Melancholia, is finally getting its long-anticipated US release. As a member of the "misunderstood cinematic genius" camp that holds one side of the hill in the great divisive debate over the audacious auteur (the other side being held down by the "pretentious misogynistic asshole" camp), I am thrilled this quite stunning work of art is finally making its way to American soil (a place LvT has never stepped foot btw). When I saw it at this year's New York Festival, I was, as they say, blown away. It comes this close (picture of me holding my thumb and forefinger ever so close together) to being my choice for the best film of 2011 (sorry Lars, Mr. Malick edges you out) and will surely make many a top ten list come year's end - as well as I am sure, several worst lists. Anyway, I have already written pieces on my anticipation of the film, as well as my initial thoughts after the aforementioned NYFF screening, but now my actual review of said film is up and running over at The Cinematheque. Read it AND see the film, which will open this Friday in NY and LA, and subsequently widen its cinematic distribution swath over the next few months.

Read my review of Melancholia at The Cinematheque.

Not so coincidentally, my piece entitled "10 Best Lars von Trier Films" will be published soon over at Anomalous Material. Keep your eye out for it. And if you are still not convinced, just check out the three shots below. That Danish bastard sure can make a movie.

The Great Citizen Kane Debate, Coming Soon to a Blog Near You.

2011-11-04T18:09:00.000-04:00

Citizen Kane. Greatest film ever made or the most overrated? One can find rabid advocates on both sides of this debate. Now the fine folks over at True Classics have decided to help bring those rabid advocates out of the cyber-woodwork they have been hiding in (not that any cinephile needs a reason to talk incessantly about film). How will they do this, you ask? Well, with The Great Citizen Kane Debate, that's how. The object is simple as can be. Somewhere, or somewhen between now and November 13, simply post a piece, either defending the classic film or decrying it, at whichever website/blog you happen to be associated with. Send a link to said piece/post to those aforementioned fine folks over at True Classics before November 13. And you can even win a prize! Each entry will be judged on their individual merits and a winner will be announced at the end of the month. All the details and various sundry items can be found over at True Classics (in the links above). Hopefully this event will get some heated debating going on. As a grand defender of the greatness of this Wellesian Masterpiece (and yes, that did need to be capitalized!) I too plan to toss my hat in the ole ring. Hope to see you there.

The Tragedy of War Meets the Tragedy of Love in Douglas Sirk's Melodramatic War Film, A Time to Love and A Time to Die

2011-11-03T15:03:00.000-04:00

In the annals of film history, the name Douglas Sirk will go down as the man who raised the melodrama to new artistic heights in 1950's Hollywood. This of course is a perfectly reasonable epitaph to give the great auteur, for he did just that in films such as All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind and Magnificent Obsession, but it still sells the quite versatile director way too short.

Born Hans Detlef Sierck in Hamburg, Germany, the director would make a name for himself in 1930's German cinema before leaving in 1937 due to his political leanings and Jewish wife, and ending up in Hollywood USA with a brand new name and career. His first film in his adopted land was the decidedly anti-Nazi propaganda film Hitler's Madman, made for PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) but released by MGM in 1943. This work may not have the cinematic flair and melodramatic style that would come to identify a Douglas Sirk production in later years, but in its emotional bravura and use of conspicuous archetypes, it does have touches of the Sirkian method throughout. But it is a film Sirk would make in the following decade, in the midst of his Melodrama career highpoint, that would give the most realistic, yet with a stridently melodramatic style of course, look at the horrors that had happened to his homeland in the terrible years of World War II. This film would be A Time to Love and a Time to Die.

Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, A Time to Love and a Time to Die tells the story of Ernst Graeber, a German private on the Russian front, who is given a three week furlough only to come home and find most of his hometown destroyed by war and his parents missing. Played by John Gavin (best known as Sam Loomis, Marion Crane's lover in Psycho), Ernst is trapped inside a world gone mad. From old schoolmates who have become callous Nazis to endless military redtape in his attempts to find his parents to constant air raids and bombings, Ernst finds that life at home is not much better than the insanity he has seen in the heat of the frontlines. It is all mad as hell and as Ernst goes on and on he is driven further and further into a mindset that not only hates war but also his nation and its leaders for bringing this all upon themselves. And this is all shown through the bloody gauze of Sirkian melodrama, as the opening credits beautifully dance by as if in a romantic drama, leading almost immediately into a scene where the soldiers find a dead, black hand frozen and reaching out from its snowy grave.

What is most remarkable about this film is how the German people are portrayed not as the monstrosities they are in other films about World War II, but as just simply people. Sure, we get the psychopaths and party line creatures, as well we should (a young Klaus Kinski has a small part as a particularly sinister Gestapo brute), but we also get the average German citizen, both soldier and civilian, who want nothing more than their lives and the peace and their loved ones back. We get to see the horrors of war through the eyes of the German people, and these people are shown in the same light as Americans would be shown in contemporary war films - just trying to survive a world gone mad. To take this particular stance in Hollywood in 1958 (a time when anyone over the age of twenty could still remember the war) was a brave move on Sirk's and Universal International's behalves.

Similar in its political anti-war message to Kubrick's Paths of Glory, released the year prior, Sirk's film may not have the cinematic intensity of that film (what film does?) nor its bracing, dead-eyed stare that Kubrick does better than anyone else out there, but what he does show, and the way he shows it, gives the film a rabid emotionality that builds, crescendo like, to its inevitable tragic finale. A finale that you know is sure to come, as tragedies hit this film in nearly every conceivable way and in nearly every scene, but a tragedy that is no less powerful when it finally does come. Ernst does find love in the midst of this chaos, in the form of fellow refugee Elizabeth (played by German actress Liselotte Pulver, best known in the US as James Cagney's hot-to-trot secretary in the Billy Wilder comedy One, Two, Three), but it is merely a temporary respite from the ravages of war - a war that will eventually destroy nearly everything in its path.

Filmed in CinemaScope, A Time to Love and a Time to Die breathes with much the same audacious palette as Sirk's melodramas do, and its tragic spin is even greater than that of those films. Godard said of the film, "This, anyhow, is what enchants me about Sirk: this delirious mixture of medieval and modern, sentimentality and subtlety, tame compositions and frenzied CinemaScope." Though it does have its detractors, Sirk's cinema is indeed a thing that can enchant a person (I came to the director rather late in life - my first taste of Sirk, by way of Magnificent Obsession, came just this past year - and I grow more and more in love with his cinema with each subsequent work I view). And it enchants not just in its succulent cinematography, the director's sly use of symbolism and censor-baiting innuendo, and his delirious mixture of what M. Godard calls the medieval and the modern, but in the aspect of taking the real and the tragic and making it larger-than-life. Blowing it up figuratively when he could not do it literally.

A Time to Love and a Time to Die would end up being Sirk's penultimate feature film, as he would drop out of Hollywood after Imitation of Life in 1959, at the very peak of his career, and retire to Switzerland, making just a brief return stint to his native Germany in the mid seventies (just two quite obscure shorts would be the whole of this return). Sirk would die in Switzerland in 1987. Now thought of as a true auteur and an influence on many modern filmmakers including Todd Haynes, Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodovar, Lars von Trier and Wong Kar-wai, Sirk's cinema, once critically maligned, is a cinematic thing to behold. A Time to Love and a Time to Die may not be his greatest work (I still prefer the true melodramas) but as far as anti-war films go, it is one of the finest, and bravest, ever made. It is, as the title of this piece plainly states, where the Sirkian tragedy of war meets the Sirkian tragedy of love.

PFF 2011: Mathieu Amalric's On Tour

2011-11-02T18:21:00.000-04:00

I slipped into this screening because my dinner took too long and I missed the start of Chen Kaige's Sacrifice. This may have been a rather fortuitous last minute change of plans, for I have never been much of a fan of Kaige's work and its cheap theatrics, and On Tour, a film directed by and starring one of the finest actors working today, in France or elsewhere, Mathieu Amalric, was quite a refreshing surprise. Quite refreshing indeed.

Save for a brief opening that takes place in the states, Amalric's film is set entirely in France, but spoken in both English and French. It is the story of a misfit burlesque troupe touring the small port towns of France under the stern, but ultimately ineffectual leadership of Amalric's mustachioed and tragic has-been show promoter. Mostly acted by unknowns and actual burlesque performers, save for the aforementioned M. Amalric of course, the film has an air of improv to it - much in the same way as do the films of the late great John Cassavetes. The film, as is often the case with films directed by actors, is what one would call an actor's paradise, and even though much of the cast is filled with non-professionals, that descriptive still has some truth in it.

To pinpoint the Cassavetes factor even more, On Tour can be seen as the spiritual brethren of that director's 1976 masterpiece of despair, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and in turn, Amalric can be seen as an equally lost brother-in-arms to Ben Gazzara's strip club maestro in the film. Granted, there are times of dead space in the film, but that is an occupational hazard of someone trying to strip away the gloss of a film down to its Cassavetesesque bare theoretical bones. Overall, these times of dead space amount to very little when compared to the desperate and raw performances Amalric gets out of his troupe - and out of himself, in the finest performance of an already very fine career.

Now the sad part about this intriguing work is the fact that as of this writing it has no US distributor to speak of. On Tour, or Tournée as it is called in its native land, debuted way back at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival (where Amalric was awarded the Best Director prize) and was subsequently released throughout Europe, but as far as the US goes, it has played just twice - at the San Francisco Film Festival back in May and now at the Philly Fest. Whether it gets a US distributor and release is still debatable (the burlesque numbers are quite frank in their sexuality) but here's to hoping it does at some point in 2012.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T18:12:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween from Veronica Lake and The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.

Some Good Old-Fashioned Halloween Fun w/ Michael Myers, John Carpenter and the Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis

2011-10-30T19:28:00.006-04:00

The following is my contribution to The LAMBs in the Director's Chair #21: John Carpenter.

Although both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Canadian film Black Christmas precede it by four years, much claim can be staked on the proposition that John Carpenter's 1978 now-classic horror film, Halloween, was the starting point of the slasher genre that would erupt in the 1980's. Of course Carpenter himself admits to being greatly influenced by Hitchcock's Psycho, the true sui generis of the genre, when making Halloween, so who the hell knows from whence the genre truly came. What one does know for sure is that Carpenter's seminal slasher flick was a great, if not the greatest, influence on horror moviemaking lo these past thirty some years. For better and for worse, Halloween gave the genre, from the giddy, gory slasher films of the eighties to the torture porn obscenities of today, its tricks and tropes and foibles and flaws. It gave the Scream series its rulebook and Rob Zombie a career resurgence. And then there is that creepy ass music - but more on that later.

I actually sat down to watch the original Halloween for the first time just this past week (yeah yeah, I know) and though the low body count kind of surprised me (at least in comparison to the slew of hawkish, low budget disciples that followed, Carpenter's film is quite low on violence and gore) I must admit to at least a certain amount of creeped-out narrative tension - but such a thing is Carpenter's forte after all. The director's ability to surprise you with both what is around the corner and what is not, has always been a mainstay of his cinema - especially in his three greatest works, Assault on Precinct 13, The Thing and here in Halloween. More than the eventual pay-off, which is by no means a slouch, it is Carpenter's knack of making us wait in heart-pounding anticipation not just to the veritable breaking point, but beyond, until we think we are safe at least for the moment, and then - BANG!!

Much like contemporaries Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg, as well as more recent examples such as Richard Linklater, P.T. Anderson and Quentin Tarantino, Carpenter has always been a filmmaker greatly influenced by those who came before him. So much so that Pauline Kael even (unfairly) criticized him for such in her scathing review of Halloween, saying "Carpenter doesn't seem to have had any life outside the movies: one can trace almost every idea on the screen to directors such as Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and to the Val Lewton productions". It is in this homage making style that Carpenter has created his interesting, if not a bit uneven, oeuvre. To go back to his great triumvirate of the director's early years - after Assault on Precinct 13, his urban-decay take on Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo but before his graphic, paranoiac retooling of the Howard Hawks produced The Thing, came Halloween, his most Hitchcockian film, and therefore his film with the biggest, and most classically inspired BANG.

Not only does Carpenter name the master's Psycho as his biggest influence on Halloween (along with Night of the Living Dead, which incidentally was also an influence on the aforementioned Assault on Precinct 13) but he paid homage to that film in several other ways as well. One of these ways was the naming of Dr. Sam Loomis, the obsessed psychiatrist played by Donald Pleasence. Sam Loomis, as any fan of Psycho can tell you, is the name of Marian Crane's lover in the film. The most obvious homage though is the casting of Jamie Lee Curtis as the movie's final girl, Laurie Strode. Originally Carpenter had wanted to cast Anne Lockhart, daughter of June Lockhart, but due to scheduling conflicts she could not take the part. This particular scheduling conflict was particularly fortuitous, for when Carpenter found out that another actress interested in the part was the daughter of Janet Leigh - Marion Crane herself - he had to have her for the part. Starring in the short-lived TV version of Operation Petticoat at the time (the original film version coincidentally starred the actress's father Tony Curtis), the nineteen year old Curtis was the perfect pick for the film. What better homage than casting the daughter of the master's Scream Queen as his own Scream Queen?

Playing the chaste babysitter who lives, while her promiscuous friends are slaughtered (a trope that would become a cliche of the genre, as well the joke behind Wes Craven's Scream) Curtis is the terrorized victim who in turn must be saved by Pleasence's Dr. Loomis (and yes, feminists have taken note) from the man in the mask. Of course we all know that the man in the mask is actually Michael Myers, who at the age of six brutally murdered his teenage sister, and who has, fifteen years later, escaped from the mental hospital to come home and terrorize those oh so slutty teens of Haddonfield Illinois. On the subject of the virgin surviving while death comes to all those who have sex, Carpenter explains, "The one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She's the most sexually frustrated. She's the one that's killed him. Not because she's a virgin but because all that sexually repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy." Simple as that.

To make the terror all the more terrifying, Carpenter used P.O.V. shots when showing Michael stalking his prey. The opening scene, where the six year old Michael is watching his sister and her boyfriend before stabbing his sister to death post-coitus (the guy of course gets up and leaves after sex, and is thus spared the violent end), is done completely in the point of view of the psychopathic child. The ultimate stabbing is shown through the eyes of Michael's clown costume. These P.O.V. shots continue upon Michael's return home. We are put into the eyes of the killer and see what he sees (again, many are critical of this - stupidly claiming it breeds violence in children) and this makes it seem all that more terrifying. Of course the thing that makes it the scariest, in my not-so-humble opinion, is that damn music. Second in scariness only to The Exorcist's Tubular Bells, the film's music, composed by Carpenter himself, in rare 5/4 meter, is a simple yet haunting score. It is enough to bring chills up and down the spine of, not just this critic, but pretty much everyone out there.

In the end it is Carpenter's prowess as a filmmaker that makes Halloween work as well as it does. Beginning with his love of cinematic origins and history, and his ability to transform that love into his own work (this obvious Hitchcocko-Hawksian even sneaks in the original Thing From Another World as he has his characters watching said film on television) and continuing with the director's bravura stance on cinema (he brashly blows away a little pig-tailed girl in Assault on Precinct 13, so what is to stop him from doing pretty much anything to anyone in any movie), Carpenter created a genre masterpiece in his original Halloween. The film would go on to spawn seven sequels, as well as a remake and even a sequel to the remake, none of which were directed by Carpenter, and become, for better and for worse again, one of the most influential films ever made. Carpenter himself would continue with a later career that has yet to match his output of the seventies and early eighties (his most recent, 2011's classically-influenced The Ward, is definitely a step in the right direction though) but no matter what the future brings, his legacy will surely live on and on and on.

I have written about two other John Carpenter films recently. The first is the director's second feature, Assault on Precinct 13, published elsewhere on this blog. The second is a review of the director's latest work, his first picture in a decade, The Ward, published over at my review site, The Cinematheque.

The Cinematheque Reviews: The Rum Diary

2011-10-29T23:17:00.000-04:00

I wanted to like this movie. I really did. I like Johnny Depp, even in his lesser work. I like Hunter S. Thompson, or at least I like the image portrayed by HST. I really did want to like this movie. I really did. Well, you know how things tend to go. I think it was Mick Jagger who said, "You can't always get what you want." Well I did not. Unfortunately I never did get what I needed either. Drab and staid (granted the novel, Thompson's first, before he was the Hunter Thompson everyone knows and loves/hates, is quite bland as well) this Bruce Robinson directed, Johnny Depp pet project is nothing I ever wanted or needed. Too bad really. My review of this tired film is now up and running over at The Cinematheque. Needless to say, it is not the most positive review I have ever written.

Read my review of The Rum Diary at The Cinematheque.

As the below shot shows, despite its many flaws, the film is visually impressive. That's something, right?

The Cinematheque Reviews: The Three Musketeers

2011-10-29T21:21:00.001-04:00

I am going to begin this intro with a bang. I quite enjoyed the latest adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' swashbuckling novel, The Three Musketeers. Meanwhile, the vast majority of my critical compatriots have been calling the new Paul W. S. Anderson directed movie, one of the worst films of the year. In fact the only critic I have seen that shares my overall enthusiasm for this movie is Jaime N. Christley over at Slant Magazine. Otherwise, I am alone in a sea of.....well, you get the point. I like the movie while almost everyone else runs the gamut from mild disdain to outright hatred. Granted, it is not a great film, and it will not make my year-end Top Ten, but it is quite the enjoyable movie and very very fun - all to my own surprise mind you. My review of said film is now up and running over at The Cinematheque. Take a look when you can.

Read my review of The Three Musketeers at The Cinematheque.

Here is a look at some of the film's rather steampunkish design aesthetic. Milla Jovovich as Milady de Winter is another fine sight to see in this surprisingly enjoyable motion picture extravaganza, but I will leave her to the imagination (and/or your Googling talents or willingness to buy a ticket and go see the damn thing).

Anomalous Material Weekly Feature: 10 Best Movie Vampires

2011-10-28T16:00:00.002-04:00

Here we are again true believers, with what is my sixteenth weekly 10 best feature for the fine folks over at Anomalous Material. For those of you not in the know, those same said fine folks have given me a (possibly foolish on their behalf) regular weekly gig as feature writer. It is a series of top ten lists on various cinematic subjects (and anyone who knows me can attest to how perfectly suited I am to such an endeavor - yes I am a list nerd). This week's feature is a special treat for Halloween. To go along with the scary (or at least supposedly scary - it depends on your outlook I suppose) holiday, I have chosen my ten favourite movie vampires - along with a few runners-up and special mentions and what have you.

Read my feature article, "10 Best Movie Vampires" at Anomalous Material.

And if you are looking for a little vampire fun, Lonely Planet Travel Guide highly recommends the Titty Twister, nestled snugly between Mexico and Hell. Be careful of the floor show though - it's a killer.