Film Review: Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly

As Andrew Dominik's film opened, the credits interspersed with clips from the 2008 presidential election (election coverage that plays as background score throughout the entire film), in a way that is reminiscent of something Godard would attempt in his hey day, my hopes that Killing Them Softly, just the director's third film in a twelve year career, would live up to the rest of his short but rather spectacular oeuvre, was still in full and optimistic bloom.  My anticipation that this film would be able to match the intensity of his debut, Chopper, and/or the cinematic lyricism of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, was still quite intact, and I was still quite enthusiastic about the whole bloody affair.  After about a half hour of a rather ridiculous plot, and even more ridiculous dialogue - all made to show how much Dominik thinks he is Quentin Tarantino, and trust me, Andrew Dominik is no Tarantino - those aforementioned hopes were violently dashed upon the proverbial shore of the cinema wherein I sat and watched.

Now granted, the film is not terrible by any stretch, and it does pick up some once poster boy Brad Pitt finally comes on screen - which incidentally, is about forty minutes in - but the obvious attempt to recreate Tarantino's subtly stunning criminal dialogue from films like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, falls dismally flat in the hands of many in the cast.  I have not read the book upon which the film is based, George V. Higgins' Cogan's Trade, but I have heard nothing but good things about it and it's dialogue.  Why it fails here, one can only assume is the failings of Dominik's script.  The exception to these failings though, are hit men Pitt and James Gandolfini, both of whom somehow rise above the clunky, rather obvious chatter of the rest of the film.  If somehow Dominik could bottle the two scenes between these actors, and stretch that out to feature length, the director could very well have a goddamn masterpiece on his hands.  Sadly though, when Pitt and Gandolfini are not on the screen (Pitt gets more face time in the second half of the film, but Gandolfini has only these two scenes to rely on), the film spirals down into a crime epic wannabe.  Looks-wise, Dominik does a bang-up job (the film veritably seethes with the mood of impending death), and there is a murder scene (of whom, we shall remain quite tight-lipped here) that will figuratively blow you away, but alas, poor Dominik, we knew ye well.

And as far as those Pitt and Gandolfini moments go, it is kind of worth the price of admission just to see these.  I would say maybe just come in a good half hour in.  Sure, certain plot threads may not make any sense by missing the beginning, but really, many of them make no sense even seeing the beginning. One scene in particular, where a roomful of mobsters do nothing to stop a pair of obvious in-over-their-head wouldbe robbers, just makes no sense whatsoever.  But still, to watch Pitt and Gandolfini play off of each other is a damn fine time to be had by all.  Too bad this is the minority, not the majority, of the film.  Gandolfini gives a performance, though small as it may be, that is full of tragedy, and the harrowing look in his eyes portray a sadness that only a great actor such as he can pull off.  I doubt if it will happen, but a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination should rightfully be in his near future.  As for Pitt, the actor, often wrongfully overlooked as a great actor, gives yet another brilliant performance, this time as a hit man with scruples - well, at least some scruples, he is a hit man after all.  Yes, Ray Liotta, basically playing an older version of Henry Hill from Goodfellas (perhaps this is indeed a post witness protection Henry Hill), does a fine job here, and Ben Mendolsohn and Scoot McNairy pull off respectable performances, especially admirable considering the contrived Tarantino-wannabe dialogue they are forced to try and pull off.  But in the end, it is Pitt and Gandolfini who save the day.  Well, almost save the day.

Battle Royale #9: Battle of the Silent Queens

Welcome to the ninth Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.   It is an ongoing series that will pit two classic cinematic greats against each other - and you can vote for who is the greater by clicking your choice over in the poll at the top of the sidebar.

A long time ago, before movies could talk, or at least before they were willing to talk, there lived a time in cinema called the silent days.  Back in these days of yore, there lived two women who were considered the best of the best when it came to acting.  These queens of the silent days - this Mary Pickford and this Lillian Gish - were the end all and be all of this still young medium called the moving pictures - the flickers if you will.  Gish was called "The First Lady of American Cinema," and Pickford, "America's Sweetheart," and now here they are, nearly ninety years past their hey day, and placed in battle - or, more appropriately, placed in Battle Royale.

Mary Pickford, born Gladys Marie Smith in 1892, in Toronto, Canada (and still, to become America's Sweetheart), made her screen debut in 1909, in a Biograph short directed by D.W. Griffith.  She would spend a good majority of her career making films for Griffith, a man that would become one of her closest friends, and would later help form United Artists with Pickford, her then husband Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and good friend Charlie Chaplin.  At one point in 1919 and 1920, Pickford was quite possibly the most well known woman on the planet.  The supposed storybook marriage of Pickford and Fairbanks was what legends were made of, and helped give birth to the fan magazine.  Mary would move into the sound era, and become an Oscar winner for Best Actress in Coquette, in the second Academy Award ceremonies, but would soon retire from acting.  She appeared in her final film in 1933.  After retirement, Pickford would fall into alcoholism, eventually become a recluse, allowing only her stepson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and good friend Lillian Gish, visitation rights.  But still, her memory lives on as America's Sweetheart.  

Meanwhile, friend Lillian Gish, born just a year later, in Ohio, would make her screen debut in 1912.  It too was produced at Biograph, and it too was directed by D.W. Griffith, and she too would spend the majority of her silent career under the tutelage of Mr. Griffith.  She would go on to star in such films as The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms and Orphans of the Storm.  While Mary was the covergirl, Lillian was usually the more lauded for her acting prowess.  Gish, unlike friend Pickford, would keep going well into the sound era, including most notably, in one of the greatest films ever made, The Night of the Hunter, in 1955.   Gish's final film would be the 1987 film The Whales of August, also starring Bette Davis and Vincent Price.  Gish would live until the age of 99.

So there you have it ladies and germs.  Choose your favourite between these Silent Queens.  All you need do is to go on over to the poll, found conveniently near the top of the sidebar of this very same site, and click on who you think is the greater of these two great ladies.  And remember, you can comment all you wish (and please do comment - we can never have too many of those) but in order for your vote to be counted, you must vote in the actual poll.  After doing that, then you can come back over here and leave all your comments.  Who knows, maybe we will get some sort of lively cinematic discussion going.  And also please remember to tell everyone you know to get out the vote as well.  I would like to see us reach triple digits this time around.  Voting will go until midnight, EST, the night of Friday Dec 21st (just over two weeks from the starting gate).  The results will be announced the following day.  So get out there and vote vote vote.

My Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films: #980 Thru #999

Here is a look at the (almost) last twenty films in my Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films.  These twenty films were seen between Nov 23rd and Dec 3rd.  A complete look at my quest can be viewed HERE.

Well here we are ladies and germs.  The final batch of films in my quest.  Well, almost the final batch.  We go up to #999 here.  A post on the final film and final wrap up of what has occurred, and what will occur, will be coming up in a few days.  But I digress.  We have to get through the last twenty to even go where we want to go, so let us do just that.  First up we have a film from Luis Buñuel.  It is a film from his Spanish/Mexican period - as opposed to his later French work, which, for the most part, I am not a big fan.  El (#980), on the other hand, is a bracing drama that falls right in my favourite era of the auteur's.  Granted, it is probably one of the lesser ones from this period (Viridiana, Los Olvidados, Nazarin being the better), but it is still quite entertaining - in the ever so unique Buñuelian way of course.  Next up is Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March (#981).  How can you not have a great time watching Erich von Stroheim ply his trade - as both actor and director?  There is a lot of inherent sadness in the oeuvre of Herr Stroheim, not just from his writing, which does have a melancholy flare to it, but because of how most of his films were butchered by the studios.  Nonetheless, what does survive is mad genius kind of stuff.  Next up, we have peripheral Nouvelle vaguer Alain Resnais, and his semi-uncategorial 1980 film, Mon Oncle d'Amerique (#982).  A strange hybrid of reality and fiction, it has moments of the filmmaker's earlier genius, and both the premise and the process are intriguing, but overall, I would have to say it is most certainly no Hiroshima, Mon Amour, no Last Year at Marienbad.  Then we have Marguerite Duras' India Song (#983).  Vincent Canby said of the film, "no content and all style." Who am I to argue?  Which brings us to Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day (#984).  Being only moderately thrilled by the director's other "big" film, Yi-Yi, I did not expect to enjoy this thoroughly intriguing film as much as I did.

When I watched If... a few weeks back, I quite enjoyed the film.  Now seeing Lindsay Anderson's follow-up, O Lucky Man! (#985), again starring Malcolm McDowell, I had an even better time.  Fun fun fun indeed, but then it is almost always a fun fun fun time when you are watching Malcolm McDowell do his thing.  Next up is Peter Watkins' La Commune (Paris 1871) (#986).  Sure, it was somewhat intriguing, but overall, I do not see why it would be included in any sort of greatest films list - even when you spread that list out to include a thousand films.  But that brings us to a spot where we have three movies right in a row that this critic would call great - and that this critic will most assuredly include on his own top 1000 when he makes that early next year.  First of these three is Jean-Pierre Melville's gangster pic, Le Deuxième Souffle (#987).  If I were to compile a list of the best French gangster flicks (something I am indeed doing for one of my upcoming contributions to Anomalous Material), this would certainly be included - maybe even as high up as third or fourth.  And speaking of lists, this film now goes into the number two spot in my favourite Melville's, behind only Les Enfant Terribles.  Next of these three greats is Jean Cocteau's 1950 film, Orpheus (#988).  The second in his Orphic trilogy, this film is nearly as magical as Cocteau's earlier version of Beauty and the Beast.  I am not much of a fan of Cocteau's more experimental work (the first of said trilogy) but this film is, simply put, beautiful.  The third of this streak is Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (#989).  Italian film, especially from the 1950's and 1960's, is what I would call heaven on screen, so it should come as no surprise that I simply adored this film.  Visconti is one of my favourite directors (so why it took me this long to finally watch this film, I do not know) and this is now one of my favourite Visconti's.  Which means, it is time for another list.  Here are my favourite Visconti's from the list, of which nine of the auteur's fourteen films are included.

1) Death in Venice

2) Senso

3) Rocco and His Brothers

4) La Terra Trema

5) Ossessione

6) The Leopard

7) The Damned

8) Bellissima

9) Ludwig

Next up we have a rather lackluster film.  A film that is so mediocre, so middle-of-the-road, so...well I just don't get it.  It is called Marketa Lazarová (#990), and it is a film by Czech filmmaker Frantisek Vlácil.  Sure, it isn't a bad movie by any means, but it is just so bland, I am not sure why it is included on the list.  But enough of that, let us move on to the final ten films on the quest.  John Huston's The Misfits (#991), the final films of both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, is definitely a film that deserves inclusion on the list - and will end up making my own top 1000 next year.  It is my favourite Huston film (not that I have ever been an over abundant fan of the director's) and the performances of everyone - we also get Montgomery Clift during his personal downward spiral (Monroe famously called the actor in even worse shape than she was) and Eli Wallach doing his usual Eli Wallach best - are fantastic, but especially Marilyn.  The tragic actress, who never got the respect she deserved as a great actress, hands in her finest performance of her career.  The mood, the dialogue, the performances, the feel and look of the film are just nothing shy of spectacular.  

Next comes Days and Nights in the Forest (#992), from Indian master Satyajit Ray.  Ray is one of those directors who has always been hit and miss with me. Pather Panchali, the director's first film, and the first of his vaunted Apu Trilogy, is one of my all-time favourites, but others, such as The Music Room and Charulata (both also on the list) leave me rather cold.  This one, made in 1969, would be included on the hit, rather than the miss list.  Quite simple, but subversively intricate, it is Ray near the top of his form.  It will possibly make my top 1000 as well.  Next we have Kenji Mizoguchi's The Crucified Lovers (#993).  Mizoguchi is another one of those hit or missers with me, and this one ends up a bit closer to the miss than the hit column.  Then comes Jia Zhangke's 2000 film Platform (#994).  Gotta admit, I was not that impressed.  I remember when this first came out it was heralded by critics (still not sure why I did not see it then) but I just don't get it.  Not bad, but still.  Anyway, that brings us to a true classic of Hollywood cinema.  Frank "Name Before the Title" Capra's 1939 classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (#995).  Considering my love of both old Hollywood and Jimmy Stewart, and not to mention the ooh la la of Miss Jean Arthur, it is quite remarkable that it took this long into my life before finally seeing this one.  Granted, when I began this quest however many years ago (four was it?), this is one of three that I made sure to hold off on until near the end (the other two of which are still to come), but still, all the years before that, and still nothing.  Oh yeah, as for what I thought of the film upon finally seeing it?  Quite a lot actually.  Sure, it has some rather silly old fashioned ideas (part of the charm of old Hollywood if you ask me), but Capra's obvious love of his adopted country, makes for great and honest, and quite sincere cinema.  But moving on, next up is Fellini's Casanova (#996), by, of course, Mr. Federico Fellini.  Some of the maestro's later films tend not to live up to his earlier output.  Amarcord is one that does.  So is Casanova.  Oh yeah, and Donald Sutherland is quite superb.

Another one of those aforementioned three films I held off on until the end was Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis (#997).  I suppose I could bark out a bunch of synonyms for spectacular - gorgeous, resplendent, stunning, full of great pulchritude even - but let us just say it is one of the finest French films ever made (a top ten of French cinema?  Perhaps.) and leave it at that.  We still have a quest to complete here.  And speaking of that quest, we are getting ever so close to the completion of the damn thing.  Next up is Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (#998).  Say all ya want about Battleship Potemkin - it is a great film - but I seem to be a bigger fan of the Soviet's later works.  His intriguing semi-finished Que viva México, that stayed unreleased until 1979, his latter day Ivan the Terribles, and now, his brilliantly stylized Nevsky.  Which brings us to Bernardo Bertolucci's epic 1976 drama, 1900 (#999).  Appropriately epic-y but also very intimate, very personal.  I am not sure if it will make my own top 1000, but if not, it will be one of the last ones to be cut from contention.  And that brings us to number one thou....wait a minute, no it does not.  Well, at least not right now.  There is one final film to talk about - a film that I have added to not my top 1000, but my top 100 - but that will come in a few days.  In that post, we will look at that final film, as well as what the quest has been like for me, and what the future will bring (can we say book deal?).  All that in just a few short days...or maybe a week.  Whatever the case, I'll be back.

Film Review: Leos Carax' Holy Motors

It is not an easy task to try to describe Leos Carax' Holy Motors.  I suppose some would say it is not an easy task to watch Holy Motors either, or for that matter to understand the damn thing, but whether one "gets" what Carax, and his muse, actor Denis Lavant, are trying to do here - and I may be only partially sure myself - one cannot deny that there is a certain strangeness about the whole thing that makes it extremely difficult to ignore.  But then, I do live by the critical creed set forth by Jonas Mekas, who said, "It is not my business to tell you what it's about. My business is to get excited about it, to bring it to your attention. I am a raving maniac of the cinema."  So let us not even try to describe Carax' quite batshitcrazy film.  Instead, let me bring it to your attention, appropriately enough, as a raving maniac of the cinema.

Basically, to toss in just a bit of explanation, the film is about Oscar, played by the aforementioned M. Lavant, who is chauffeured about the streets of Paris, in a white stretch limo, getting out only to perform what what must assume are little movies, all done in various different costumes and make-up.  Never are we let in on why he is doing this, nor whom is paying him to do this, nor what any of these acts (called appointments by his limo driver/assistant) have to do with each other.  We are left wandering through a cinematic wasteland of unanswered, and possibly unanswerable, questions.  We see our intrepid actor become a a hunchbacked homeless woman begging along the seine, a dying man in what appears to be some sort of contrived deathbed melodrama, a gangster, the father of a teenage daughter (or is that part his actual reality?), and a monstrous madman (a certain Monsieur Merde, whom Lavant first played in Carax' segment of the 2008 omnibus film Tokyo!), running through the catacombs with a kidnapped model over his shoulder. 

Of course none of this so-called description of the plot, or what there is of one, manages to in any way properly explain just what the hell Carax had in mind while making Holy Motors, the director's  first feature film in thirteen years.  Perhaps it is an experiment in meta-fiction, where we are watching dreams inside dreams, all playing out as movies within movies.  With a definite Lynchian flare to much of the film, Carax pays homage to both modern and classic cinema.  There is an especially obvious nod to Franju's Eyes Without a Face, but one can see not only that film, but also the works of many others, from Feuillade to Buñuel to the aforementioned Mr. Lynch.  In this film, we see film itself, playing out in the strangest of cinematic self-love affairs, and no amount of description or explanation would make it work any better in any of our minds.  This is a film that needs not to be analyzed or intellectualized, but rather to be felt and experienced and fall head over heels into, just as real cinema, the kind that like this, can best be described (there's that word again) as cinema for cinema's sake, should be.  It is a film that was made by a raving maniac of the cinema, and in all the glory with which that entails, it should be nothing else.  Now go see what you think.

Battle Royale #8: Battle of Comic Mayhem (The Results)

It was a shellacking.  A runaway, a landslide if you will.  It was a beating.  It was a bombing.  It was a goddamn slaughter.  Yes ladies and germs, for the first time in Battle Royale history, we have ourselves a definite winner and a definite loser.  No more of these close races and photo finishes.  No more squeak victories or out and out ties.  This was an old fashioned thumping baby.  Much like when Ronald Reagan trounced poor Walter Mondale in the 1984 election, or when readers voted Jason Todd off the proverbial island of Gotham, the Brothers' Marx kicked the Three Stooges collective asses right down Hollywood Blvd. and right up Mulholland Dr..  Battered and bruised, even by typical Stooge standards (it's usually Moe, not someone from outside the family, that does the battering and the bruising) this Battle Royale, our eighth such rodeo, was downright brutal.

To make my rant official, here are the numbers.  The Marx Brothers won, hands down, with a margin of thirty-one votes - and there were only forty-five votes cast.  With a victory of 38 to 7, or, for the more statistically-minded among us, 84% to 16%, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and even Gummo, who was not in any of the movies but who are we to exclude him, are the victors of the eighth Battle Royale.  Meanwhile, Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, Joe and Curly-Joe, are left weeping in the aisles.  I figured this was going to be a Marxist victory from minute one, but I never saw such a shocking disparity coming.  I mean, that was even worse than the thumping Obama gave to that crazy rich white guy last month.  A real old school throwdown.  My one friend, a standing member of the Three Stooges fan club (guess who he voted for), said that cinephiles will always vote Marx over Stooge.  I suppose he was right - in spades.

What really gets my goat though (that's still a saying, right?) is the low overall voter turnout.  With just 45 votes cast in all, this was not one of the better turnouts (66 votes cast in the Kelly/Astaire Hollywood Hoofer bout stands as the record) - and with this rather low voter turnout, my hopes of this becoming some sort of big deal, maybe even getting into triple digits someday, are violently dashed upon the shores of....oh forget it.  You know what I mean, let's get out there and vote vote vote people.  And tell all your friends and enemies to vote vote vote as well.  And when will you get that chance to vote vote vote again, you ask?  Well, I'll tell ya.  In just a few days as Battle Royale #9 is announced right here at this very Bat Channel.  The opponents, you ask?  Well, you'll just have to wait and see on that one.  I can tell this though - it will include some silent cinema royalty for sure. 

Film Review: Robert Zemeckis' Flight

Normally, a film about alcoholism, or any addiction for that matter, must be careful as not to fall easy prey to the inherent cliché that comes with such awkward territory.  More often than not, this very thing will happen, and the film in question will end up as mere preachy, pedantic claptrap, worthy of not much more than one of those afterschool specials of yesteryear.  And to be honest, I would not have expected a filmmaker such as Robert Zemeckis, the man who gave us the ridiculously shallow chestnut dressed in inexplicable well-received and Oscary clothing, Forrest Gump, to be able to maneuver around such a pandering mine field as is the genre, and create something real, something human, but will wonders never cease, because with Flight, his sixteenth film, and first foray into live action in more than a decade, the director manages to not only do that very thing, but also is able to hand over his best damn film, though in a much different manner, since the rubbery brilliance that was Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Of course, considering many of the rather annoying films the director has made between then and now (Castaway, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol), it would not take much effort to be the best one, but even with that in mind, Zemeckis does a surprisingly good job with this one.  At times, and in certain moments, it almost appears as if this were a film directed by the likes of a Martin Scorsese or a Spike Lee.  But apparently It is indeed Bobby Zemeckis.  Then again, much of the well-deserved accolades must go to Zemeckis' star, Denzel Washington, who hands in his own best performance in many a year.

Washington's proud but emotionally-battered drunk is the type of character, just as is the genre of the film, that can more oft than not be played too broad, and therefore too unrealistic - too cliché if you will.  Washington treads this slippery slope with the kind of expertise the actor put into such performances as Pvt. Trip in Glory, Bleek Gilliam in Mo' Better Blues, Alonzo Harris in Training Day and the title characters in both Malcolm X and The Hurricane.  Here he plays a commercial pilot who heroically crash lands a plane that malfunctions, managing to save almost every soul on board.  It later comes out that he had both alcohol and cocaine in his system when the crash occurred.  The irony being that even though his condition was not the cause of the malfunction, Washington's pilot should not have been in the air under the influence, but at the same time he is heralded as the only pilot who could have successfully pulled off such a landing.  Pulling off their own high wire act, a high wire act such as this, especially inside a potential powder keg of cliché and emotional manipulation, both Zemeckis and Washington come off as doing the seemingly impossible as well.  Granted, that aforementioned emotional manipulation does rear its so-called ugly head now and again - especially in the needlessly tacked on last ten minutes or so - but it is mostly kept in bay by Washington's head-on performance and, believe it or not, Zemeckis' pin point direction.  Hats off to ya.

Film Review: Ben Affleck's Argo

From the opening 1970's era Warner Brothers logo, complete with age-appropriate scratches, to the quite tense, but awfully contrived climactic finish (from what I have read on the subject, the real story is far less exciting, so one supposes a bit of dramatic license is allowed, even preferred here), Ben Affleck's Argo shows itself as something out of time, perhaps even out of rhythm with what we perceive as a modern day action film.  This is not meant as a bust on the film at all (well, maybe that contrived jab) but rather giving it its due as something that plays out, not as some flashy, CGI-addled actioner of this ADD-diagnosed post-millennial period - something that replaces story with spectacle - but as something from a better time.  A better time in both cinema and society alike.  A time when the director, not the producer, was king - god even in some cases.

Argo is reminiscent of a director-driven time when the art that went up on the screen was more important than the dollars that went in the pocket.  Well, okay, the dollars have always been important, even from the beginnings of what we call cinema, but you know what I mean.  It was a time of artistic sensibilities that ran through cinema from the collapse of the old studio system and its tired production code in the early to mid sixties through the waning days of the director-god and the birth of the franchise film full of all its critic-proofing marketing, when the studios knew it took little effort to make a blockbuster, in the early eighties.  Much the same way as Tomas Alfredson did last year with the similarly set Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Affleck brings that feeling back in spades with Argo.  This is not only a film set in the latter days of this period (1979-80 to be precise) but it plays out as if were really made in that time as well.

As for the film itself, the acting is top notch - Affleck, a rather underrated actor as it is, gives one of his best performances - and the tension is, as they say, palpable.  Granted, the screenplay often gets a bit hokey, and as I mentioned earlier, the ending is quite contrived, but the way Affleck lets things play out, it seems to work, even over the hokier moments.  Affleck's directorial debut, the sadly overlooked Gone Baby Gone, really had no major problems to speak of.  In fact it was one of the best first films of its generation.  The actor/director seemed to have the same problems as he does in Argo, with his second film as a director, The Town.  There were moments in that film that shot shivers across the back of cinema, but there was an overabundant share of contrivance there as well - especially in the pandering finale that almost made this critic forget all the good things that abounded in the film.  Now the problems here are mere minor scratches compared to the ending of The Town, and as I said, a bit of dramatic license never hurt anyone.  The runway chase scene may have been a bit much, but otherwise this is a finely tuned machine that makes one long for the pre-franchise days of cinematic yore that were the seventies.  We at least get a taste of that here - and kudos should go to Mr. Affleck for making that so.

My Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films: #950 Thru #979

Here is a look at the latest thirty films in my Quest to See the 1000 Greatest Films.  These thirty films were seen between Oct. 17th and Nov. 23rd.  A complete look at my quest can be viewed HERE.

Jacques Becker's immensely enjoyable Casque d'Or (#950), featuring the always wonderful and always alluring Simone Signoret, is hands down one of the best French films of its day.  Becker was always an auteur with a kind of straight forward artistic sense, and that mood creates here a tense and quite enthralling tragic love story.  Next up on our quest is one of five Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart westerns on the list - and the third one for me personally (numbers four and five are coming up a little on further down this very page).  The 1950 classic, Winchester '73 (#951), was the first of this vaunted director/actor collaboration.  My favourite is still The Naked Spur, but all five are quite good, and this one is highlighted not only by yet another great performance from James Stewart (my favourite actor of all-time if you want the truth) but also from Shelly Winters, John McIntire and a rather slimy Dan Duryea - as well as a young Rock Hudson as an Indian.  Which brings us to another 1950 classic.  Jules Dassin's own 1950 classic, Night and the City (#952) - a noirish tale of a good-for-nothing con-man played with rugged chutzpah by one of the legendary tough guys of old Hollywood, Richard Widmark.  We also get to see Gene Tierney in a rather thankless role, but hey, at least we get to see Gene Tierney.  Next up is Federico Fellini's 1965 film, Juliet of the Spirits (#953).  When I first starting broadening my horizons and got into foreign film, Fellini was one of my earliest sojourns.  Over the years, his legend has fallen a bit in my mind.  I am still a fan of his (though my argument that perhaps I, Vitelloni is a better film than 8 1/2 tends to piss off some purists) but just not as strongly as twenty years ago.  As for this particular film, all I can really say is - it is not one of my favourites.

The next two films I know I must have seen as a kid (and many parts were vaguely familiar) but just to make sure, I watched them, or rather maybe rewatched them, for my quest.  They are Top Hat (#954) and Swing Time (#955).  So, in other words, I had myself an Astaire/Rogers double feature.  A Pretty snazzy one at that.  I have always been a sucker for an old fashioned musical, and the fluidity of Fred and Ginger on those collective dance floors makes that suckerdom all the more powerful.  Pure class baby, pure class.  And speaking of double features, I decided to clear the rest of the Mann/Stewart westerns out while I was at it.  1952's Bend of the River (#956) and 1954's The Far Country (#957) complete the set of five on my quest.  All five films are moody and acerbic, with many Freudian drippings.  I would say The Far Country is now my third favourite (after The Naked Spur and The Man from Laramie - the latter I saw in a double feature with Mann's non-Stewartian Man of the West at Film Forum a few years back for my birthday gift to myself) followed by Bend of the River and finally, the aforementioned Winchester '73.  All quite good, all deserving of inclusion here and all would easily make my own Top 50 Westerns list - a list that I will probably compile early next year sometime, right here on this very site.  But I digress.  Next up in the ole quest is Heimat (#958), a sixteenish houred German snoozefest.  Okay, it really wasn't that bad, but it sure ain't no Berlin Alexanderplatz - and that is a film I really am not all that fond of either, so...  But again, I digress.  Kenji Mizoguchi's Princess Yang Kwei Fei (#959) is a visually beautiful film.  Story-wise it somewhat lacks, but damn it looks good.  Then again, it is Mizoguchi (the equal to Ozu any day), so that visual beauty should go without saying.  Again, lesser Mizoguchi is still better than most.

Just two years ago, I could, and somewhat shamefully so I might add, claim that I had never seen a Douglas Sirk film.  Luckily this shameful lack of cinematic knowledge has since been remedied.  Now I consider myself a die hard Sirkophile, and proudly include the German-born, American auteur in my ten favourite directors.  The Tarnished Angels (#960) may not be Magnificent Obsession or All That Heaven Allows or Written on the Wind or my favourite, Imitation of Life (gee, I love a lot of Sirk films, don't I?), but it is a damn fine movie, and very Sirkian indeed.  Based on Faulkner's relatively overlooked novel Pylon, Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack (can we say Written on the Wind redux?) are all quite spectacular.  Have I mentioned how much I love Sirk?  I have?  Oh well, there it is again.  Next up is another film that deserves inclusion here, and will be included on my own top 1000 when I compile said list after completion of my quest in December.  That film is Jean-Pierre Melville's Les Enfants Terribles (#961).  Now sitting atop my favourite Melville's (knocking Le Samourai down to number two), this film, based on the writings of Cocteau, is just simply beautiful.  In both its moody visuals and its even moodier performances, the film is just gorgeous.  Enough gushing though, let us move on.  Roman Polanski's 1976 film, The Tenant (#962), seems a bit too much like the director is trying to recreate both Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby in one fell swoop.  I mean, it isn't a bad movie, and Polanski is fun to watch as an actor (especially in drag), but I wouldn't put it on my list.  Meanwhile we have Angel Face (#963), Otto Preminger doing Marlene Dietrich (or is that the other way around).  I tend to, of course, prefer Dietrich's work with von Sternberg, but this one is fun too.

Now up, is the last of the so-called experimental films on the list.  This one, Jean Cocteau's 1930 film, The Blood of the Poet (#964), which is less experimental than say Brakhage or Jacobs, and therefore much more tolerable to this noted experimental cinema hater.  Actually, this first of a trilogy based upon the Orpheus cycle (only two of the tree films are on the list), has more than its share of moments.  Granted, they are mostly surreal moments, and my tolerance for surrealism is not all that much higher than my aforementioned tolerance for experimental cinema, but still, there are some moments.  But that is all.  Which brings us to David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (#965).  Wow, I almost fell asleep just typing the title out.  I don't think I can go on about this one.  Yep, almost fell asleep again just thinking about it.  I mean really, how dreadfully boring do you have to be, to be David Lean's most boring film?  This is the man who made The Bridge on the River Kwai for crying out loud!  But we better move on before we all fall asleep thinking of this film.  Luckily, next up, we have a much much better film to keep us awake.  It is the 1971 action/gangster thriller Get Carter (#966).  It is not so much the film, nor Mike Hodges' direction, as it is the central performance of Michael Caine, that makes Get Carter as enjoyable as it most certainly is.  I dare ya to try and fall asleep during Get Carter, bitches!  Next we have another one of the longer list entries - Dekalog (#967).  Created as a ten part TV series by Polish auteur Krzystof Kieslowski, and meant to show the ten commandments (sort of) in filmic form, Dekalog (or Decalogue if you prefer), is some pretty powerful stuff.  Of course some segments are better than others, and I would say my favourites are parts five and six, both of which were expanded into full length features under the titles of A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love respectively. 

Now we come to one of the most fun films on the list, and a film that upon seeing it, was quickly inserted into my Favourite Films of All-Time list (the first film since seeing Seventh Heaven back in early September, that has been added to said list).   It is that legendary cult classic from Russ Meyer (and one of Quentin Tarantino's all-time faves - and possibly a film he may remake at some point), Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (#968).  Many may blow it off as mere camp and/or schlock - and perhaps it is indeed that - but it is so much more.  Well, at least inside my warped cranium it is so much more.  I mean, c'mon - hot, trampy girls kicking big time ass - what's not to love?  I am sure, QT had this movie in mind while he was filming Death Proof.  Like I said - fun.  ow budget as hell, but quite fun indeed.  Which brings us to another low budget auteur, though not one that goes in for the schlock of Meyer's work.  How's that for a segue?  Anyway, next we have that granddaddy of indie cinema, John Cassavetes and his penultimate film, Love Streams (#969). I like most of Cassavetes' films, including this one, but sometimes these films get on  my nerves, with the constant use of adlibbing and experimental acting techniques.  Sure, this can be fun at times, but after a while it just drags on and becomes annoying.  This style of improvisation works best in a film like Opening Night, but is bit annoying here.  Still though, I wouldn't kick this film out of bed for eating crackers as they say.  At one point (the list is updated every year) John Ford was the king of the list.  The latest update placed Fritz Lang at the top, with sixteen films on the list, one more than Ford (a real battle of the eye-patched auteurs), but that doesn't mean it isn't a daunting task to see all fifteen films by Ford.  But what a fun daunting task it most certainly is.  When I began my quest four years ago, I had already seen 425 films on the list (the annual updates did make my quest countdown fluctuate every now and then) and seven of those were John Ford films.  Well, now here we are eight films later and I have seen the final Ford film on the list - on my quest.  That film is the 1949 western (of course) She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (#970) - and I would call it one of the better Ford's I have seen.  And now, since I have checked the great Ford off the list, and since I do love making lists, this is the perfect time to rank these fifteen films (all of which I like to varying degrees) in order of preference - so here we go.

1) The Searchers (of course)
2) My Darling Clementine
3) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
4) Stagecoach
5) Seven Women
6) The Informer
7) The Quiet Man
8) She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
9) The Sun Shines Bright
10) Young Mr. Lincoln
11) The Grapes of Wrath
12) Rio Grande
13) How Green Was My Valley
14) Wagon Master
15) They Were Expendable

As a sidenote, I would include five non list Ford films onto this list.  The Iron Horse, The Lost Patrol, The Hurricane, Tobacco Road (which used to be on the list) and Mister Roberts all deserve inclusion.  The Lost Patrol and The Hurricane would make my top ten Ford films of all-time, knocking out The Sun Shines Bright and Young Mr. Lincoln.  Of course, considering Ford, when including his early silent shorts, has 140 films in his filmography, there are still over a hundred Ford films to be seen by yours truly.  Only time will tell on those.

According to the masters of The List (ie. the fine folks over at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?), said list includes a total of 493 films from North America and 409 films from Europe, leaving just a puny 98 films to represent the rest of the world.  So, with that being the case, next up are some rarities - a pair of Asian films.  The first, from Taiwan, is Hou Hsiao-hsien's A Time to Live and a Time to Die (#971) and the second, from Japan (which, along with India, I am guessing a good chunk of those aforementioned 98 come from), is Nagisa Oshima's The Ceremony (#972).  The former is what one would call a typical Hou film - dry and seemingly rigid, but with a fluidity that keeps it going - while the latter is a bracing, assertive piece of new wave modernism, that can be called typical Oshima.  The only difference being, that I tend to prefer typical Oshima over typical Hou.  I much prefer Hou's more recent fare (from Flowers of Shanghai on), so this one did not do much for me.  The Oshima though is right up there with the auteur's sixties and seventies fare, which fits right in with me, in opposition to my rather recent statement about Hou, preferring his earlier stuff rather than later.  For our next three films we travel back to that place with 409 films included - Europe.  In fact let us narrow it down even further and travel to France.  First we have Claude Chabrol's Le Boucher (#973), followed by Alain Resnais' Muriel (#974) and then Luis Buñuel's The Phantom of Liberty (#975).  Both Chabrol and Resnais are hit and miss with me, and both of these are a bit more miss than hit, and when it comes to Buñuel, give me his Spanish/Mexican period over his later French stuff any day.  Granted, none of these three films are what I would consider bad filmmaking, but none of them are films I would include in such a list as this either.  I do like the poster for the Buñuel though, as can certainly be ascertained by mere look.  Anyway, we have four more films to include in this penultimate batch of quest films - and, as has not been the case with these last three, they are all films I enjoyed thoroughly.

The great Howard Hawks once mad a film called Rio Bravo.  This 1959 classic western is one of my all-time favourite films.  Apparently the director liked it as well, since he kept going back to that same well.   Then again, maybe he did not like it and that is why he tried to remake it twice in the waning years of his long career.  The first of these remakes is our next film - El Dorado (#976).  The second remake, Rio Lobo, Hawks' final film, is not on the list, and being one of the director's worst films, nor should it be.  El Dorado though, is a film that surely deserves inclusion here.  Granted, it's no Rio Bravo, but then not many things are.  Incidentally, this is my next to last Hawks list film to see.  The last one, along with another list, this time of all eleven Hawks films on the list, will be coming up shortly.  But first we come to the final De Palma on the list.  De Palma is a filmmaker that I only just recently began getting into.  Now, as with seeing or re-seeing the films of Scorsese, Kubrick, Nick Ray and Powell/Pressburger, I have tried to watch as many of De Palma's films up on the big screen of the cinema my lovely wife and I run together.  With films like The Phantom of the Paradise, Dressed to Kill, his Scarface remake and my favourite, Blow Out (all four of which I just saw for the first time in the past year - and all of them on that aforementioned big screen), I could not help but start digging the guy I have always blown off as nothing more than a mere Hitchcock wannabe.  Carrie (#977) only adds to that newly found admiration.  Getting to see it on the big screen just added to that.  Next we have a film simply called If... (#978).  Made by Lindsay Anderson in 1968, and starring Malcolm McDowell as the rabble-rousing boarding school agitator Mick Travis, the film is a satiric look on English public schools and the then modern day society of the UK.  Quite intriguing this film most certainly is.  Strangely enough, it made me wish I had gone to boarding school.  Oh well.

Anyway, that brings us to the final film in this batch.  Hatari! (#979) is the final Howard Hawks film to be seen in my quest.  Of the eleven Hawks films on the list, I had already seen all but three.  This 1962 film, a loose retelling of the director's own 1939 film Only Angels Have Wings, is the story of an international group of wild game hunters, catching African animals for zoos.  It is both action-packed and quite funny - including John Wayne doing screwball comedy.  As far as Hawks goes - and I consider the great man to be one of the five best directors of all-time - this would probably land somewhere in the middle of the guy's oeuvre.  Considering said oeuvre has very few true duds, this assessment is pretty favourable.  Now since this is the last Hawks on the list, and since I already did it with John Ford above, here is a list of the eleven Hawks on the list, in order of preference - and, of course, there's not a bad apple in the bushel.

1) His Girl Friday
2) Rio Bravo
3) The Big Sleep
4) Bringing Up Baby
5) Only Angels Have Wings
6) To Have and Have Not
7) Red River
8) Scarface
9) Hatari!
10) Gentleman Prefer Blondes
11) El Dorado

The first three on this list can be found on my Favourite Films list.  The next two came really close to making that list.  As for the Hawks that are not on this list, I would include such films as The Dawn Patrol, The Criminal Code, Twentieth Century, Air Force, Land of the Pharaohs (yeah, that's right) and one of his mostly forgotten silents, Fig Leaves.  But that is something for another day - which will happen when I release my own Top 1000 early next year.  So that brings us to the end of this batch.  The next batch will include films #980 through #999, which will be followed by one final piece on the last film in My Quest (which will be Chaplin's Limelight, watched on that aforementioned big screen) and a final wrap up, as well as a look into what is next for me and my then completed quest.  Possibly a book.  Well, okay, definitely a book, but we'll talk about that later.  See ya on the flip side.

Film Review: Steven Spielberg's Lincoln

The aptly titled Lincoln, director Steven Spielberg's twenty-ninth feature film, is not a bio-pic so much as the story of a great man's tragic final months.  A great man accomplishing great things in the midst of the greatest of adversity.  Spielberg's film does not cover the early days of the man who would become our sixteenth president.  We do not see the deeds and actions that made the great man so great.  We do not see the tragedy of early lost love.  We do not see the growth of a boy into manhood.  We do not see the young Lincoln as lawyer or debater or resistant politician.  We do not see the first harrowing term that included the start of a war that would take more American lives than any other in history and the debilitating loss of a child in the dark night of the White House.  We do not see that man - that Abraham Lincoln.  What we first see is the man that was born out of these tragedies.  The Lincoln we get here is a man worn down by war and rhetoric and great great loss but also a man who has risen above such things, to fight the good fight, the fight others cannot fight, to become the legendary heroic figure we were all taught about in school.  What we get here is the Lincoln that has gone down in history as arguably - or possibly unarguably - the greatest president this great nation has ever seen.

What we also get here is one of the greatest performances of one of the greatest men, by one of the greatest actors working today.  Daniel Day-Lewis' brilliant, almost dead-ringer portrayal of the first Republican president (back in the day when it was the Republicans who wanted social change and equal rights for all, and the Democrats were the stalwart voice of intolerance - oh how things have changed) should not come as much of a surprise, considering all the virtuoso performances that line the actor's resumé like gold records (and a pair of gold Oscars) on the wall.  What does come as a bit of a surprise is the subtle grace with which Day-Lewis uses to portray the former president.  Known in recent years for more oft than not going well over the top in his portrayals (and this is not meant as a diss of any sort, for roles such as The Gangs of New York's Bill the Butcher or Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood would not have worked as well as they did otherwise) it is a more inconspicuous, more subtly suggestive performance that Day-Lewis hands in here.  A performance that is not so much Daniel Day-Lewis being a version of Daniel Day-Lewis (which he does so well) but a performance that makes us forget just who is behind that iconic beard and stovepipe hat.  A performance that gives us not an actor playing a president, but a performance that gives us the president himself.  A performance that is so penetrating as to make us forget Daniel Day-Lewis and make us see only Abraham Lincoln.  And also a performance that could very well win that oh so hidden portrayal a third to go with those aforementioned pair of past gold Oscars.

But it is not just Day-Lewis who brings it home daringly yet quietly.  Spielberg, and please pardon the reference to a different president, also speaks softly and carries a big stick here.   LIncoln is the director's most grounded film.  This critic has always been much more of a fan of Spielberg's so-called popcorn flicks than the director's more serious-minded fare.  Give me giddy excitement of Jaws or Raiders or Jurassic Park over the cloying, manipulative, heavy-handed likes of The Color Purple or last year's dreadfully-played War Horse any day.  Even something like the almost universally-beloved Schindler's List has its pandering faults.  In the director's more action-oriented hits, this directorial fault is overshadowed by the inherent swashbuckling aura, but in his more dramatic films, this fault stands out like a blinding beacon in the night.  Fortunately for we the viewers, and perhaps for Spielberg as well, that glaring fault line barely rears its ugly head in Lincoln.  Yes, the film ends about five minutes too late, as instead of closing on the president leaving the White House for his infamous date with destiny at Ford's Theater, the director drags it out to show weeping and screaming at his death.  I mean, I do not think anyone need say spoiler alert here, we all know how this story ends, there is no need to drag it out - but alas, poor Spielberg, he did it anyway.  Now granted, this five or six minute faux pas is but a minor criticism considering the 137 or so minutes that precede it is some of the best work Spielberg has done in years.  The fact that when the film eventually comes down to that historic House vote to end slavery, there is enough tension palpitating through the theater, even though we all know damn well how the vote ends (I mean, spoiler alert if I must, but yes, slavery is indeed abolished), to make one shudder in the very face of history being made.  That is how you direct a movie.

As for the rest of the film, and there is a surprising amount of time where Day-Lewis' fateful Commander-in-Chief is merely a peripheral figure in the guts of the film, the act of voting on and passing the 13th amendment to abolish slavery, it too is held aloft rather mightily.  Tommy Lee Jones as Republican Congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and sometimes adversary to President Lincoln, as well as the man who, second only to the president, was the most fervent guiding force in the abolishment of slavery, is dead-on in his performance as well - and probably headed toward his own Academy Award nomination.  Then we have Sally Field as First Lady, or Madame President as she snidely informs Representative Stevens of what she is to be called, Mary Todd Lincoln.  At first glance one could call her performance a bit in the over-the-top realm (a certain someone I know went as far as to compare said performance to the screechings of a howler monkey), especially when side-by-side with Day-Lewis' subtle nuances, but considering the history of one of the most flamboyant (and dare I say a bit insane) first ladies in history, such a portrayal hits the proverbial nail on its own proverbial head.  And I suppose we should tack her on for an Oscar nomination as well.  In the end though, the film comes down to how well  Spielberg has filmed it (saturated lighting, a smoothly moving camera and low-key editing give the film an almost seamless look and feel) and how well Day-Lewis has become Abraham Lincoln (and it too is seamless), and in these aspects, despite those last few minutes of audience pandering, Lincoln, though ultimately maybe not the masterpiece some are touting, is indeed a success.  A historic success.

Anomalous Material Feature: 10 Best James Bond Films

It has been quite a while (four and a half months for those keeping score at home), but here we are once again true believers, with my latest 10 best feature written 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 all kinds of various cinematic subjects - and anyone who knows me at all can surely attest to how perfectly suited I am to such an endeavor (yes I am a  list nerd).  This newest feature, my twenty-ninth such feature, is a special edition to coincide with the release of Skyfall, the twenty-third official James Bond film (twenty-fifth if you count the unofficial ones, and twenty-sixth if you add the fifties BBC version).  This time around we take a look at the ten best James Bond films, so here you go.

Read my feature article, "10 Best James Bond Films" at Anomalous Material.

Once you read my 10 Best list, you will see that one of these guys below, and I think you know which one, is my favourite - and that two of them do not even make an appearance on the list at all.   Of course you can always check out my review of the aforementioned twenty-third official Bond entry HERE, and also get a peek at my ranking of all twenty-three films.

Retro Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The following is part of a series where I bring back some of my "older" reviews (those written during my 2004-2011 tenure at the now mostly defunct The Cinematheque) and offer them up to a "newer" generation. With the release of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, here is a look back at a film that...well, let's just say it's not one of the director's best, which is made even more disappointing by the fact that the first three films in the series were some of the director's best.  Anyway, here it is.

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

When you have a film series as iconic as Indiana Jones, there is bound to be a sense of apprehension when it comes to the latest installment.   Put that together with the nineteen year gap since the last film and the idea of a sixty-five year old action-adventure hero bull-whipping his way around the Amazon rain forest, and no matter how giddy one may be at the mention of this long-awaited sequel-to-a-sequel-to-a-sequel - and some are quite giddy indeed - there is still quite the powerful sense of trepidation that creeps along the ole cerebral cortex.   Can Spielberg pull it off after all these years?   Can Harrison Ford do the same?   Will it be, like the second (or is it first?) trilogy of Star Wars films, nothing more than a ridiculed shadow of its true self?   Will they be able to get back that old-time movie magic one more time after such a long wait or will this be the death knell for the coolest archeology professor to ever strap on a whip and fedora?

I can tell you this for sure - I left the screening humming John Williams' iconic (there's that word again) theme music and am even doing it now, a day later, as I write these words.   What does that mean?   Well I suppose it means that old-time movie magic is still there, but unfortunately it seems rather old and tired this time around, almost as if no one - director and stars both - is really trying all that hard.   I suppose the humming is more nostalgia than zest for the new.    Granted, no one would rightfully expect the latest to be able to stand up to the original Raiders of the Lost Ark (renamed Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for DVD release) with its original bravura and Ford's Bogart meets Errol Flynn chutzpah - especially since neither Temple of Doom nor The Last Crusade could do so in their time (without a near twenty year gap) - but I suppose I was hoping for something a bit, I don't know, a bit more.

Perhaps, as I stated earlier, Crystal Skull is a bit on the tired side (though the sexagenarian Indy does still get around with quite the florid mix of machismo and aloofness) and sometimes feeling as if everyone is just phoning in their lines, this fourth (and last? - doubtful considering the obvious foreshadowing of a new Shia LeBeouf-helmed future franchise) Indiana Jones flick does have its moments.   Unfortunately these moments (an army ant feast du jour, LeBeouf and an army of CGI monkeys Tarzanning their way through the Amazon, a nuke-thumped refrigerator catapult) never give the kick one would hope for in such a movie.   The suspension of disbelief is there as always in the genre, but the danger we are meant to perceive for the characters is not.  

Ford, though aging quite Hollywood star-like, seems as if he just wants to go home to his waifish girlfriend and his trillion acre Wyoming ranch, while Karen Allen, whom the years have not been so good to, has no other purpose it would seem than to smile adoringly at the fedora-topped adventurer that got away and all the while Shia LeBeouf, who seems quite the dynamo when contrasted with the rest of the listless cast, is merely the triflist of sidekicks as Indy's heir apparent.   Then we have Cate Blanchett as the most mildly inoffensive (and quite unintimidating) villain Indy has yet to come up against.   Looking completely lost in her dominatrix bob and bondage and quipping in silly borscht-accented coyisms, one hopes her paycheck is substantial enough here to finance her in doing about a baker's dozen more I'm Not There's.

Much has been said of Spielberg's lack of soul as a filmmaker (much of it by this very critic) but this is the kind of mega-mastondonic movie where the auteur - and sans soul or not, Spielberg is surely one of - can shine his movie-making lights upon.   Where other filmmakers of his generation (Scorsese, Coppola, Cimino, Bogdanovich, Rafelson) studied Renoir and Chaplin, Welles and Griffith, Powell and Minnelli, Spielberg was busy building then blowing up toy trains in his basement and filming it all on his Super-8 camera.   Perhaps this doesn't make for a filmmaker capable of Raging Bull or The Godfather but it does make for quite the old-timey pulp genre smoke and mirrors illusionist that Spielberg has become.   Much like his vaunted Cecil B. DeMille, Spielberg is more showman than filmmaker, and it shows here.

Though he has done better (Jaws, the original Raiders, Jurassic Park, Minority Report, the oft-maligned and somewhat flawed War of the Worlds and even my own secret shame guilty pleasure 1941) and he has done quite worse (Always, the dreadful Hook and his dismantling of Kubrick's A.I.) I suppose, even with its flaws (some of them quite glaring) and that nagging sensation that the title sounds a bit too much like a never-completed Hardy Boys Mystery, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - the fourth installment in the series - manages to wallop a few popcorn punches during its 124 minute running time.   Too bad those punches seem pulled throughout.

[Originally published at The Cinematheque on 05/21/2008]

Battle Royale #8: Battle of Comic Mayhem

Welcome to the eighth Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.   It is an ongoing series that will pit two classic cinematic greats against each other - and you can vote for who is the greater by  clicking your choice over in the poll at the top of the sidebar.

Hey faithful readers and true believers, Battle Royale has returned with an all new no holds barred fantasy fisticuffs showdown.  This time around, instead of pitting just one against one, as we have in the first seven Battle Royale's, we are going three (or four) on three (or four, five or even six).  This time around, you are asked to choose between the two preeminent comedy teams of classic Hollywood.  Will your love for The Three Stooges win out or will your love for The Marx Brothers claim victory.  It is all up to you.  These are the two most famous (three or more member) comedy teams in classic movie history (sorry Monty Python gang, but we are going classic here and you are a bit too on the new side for such an honour) but these are also two comedy teams that, I believe, have very different fan bases.  While the Marx Brothers were usually more cerebral, the Stooges tended to go more for the gut - though the brothers' Marx had no problem going low either.  I myself have always been more of a Marx guy than a Stooge guy but don't let that influence your decision.  As if.  But I digress.

The Stooges began their career in 1925 as part of a vaudeville act known as Ted Healy and His Stooges.  This original act consisted of brothers Moe and Shemp Howard and fellow comic Larry Fine.  After Shemp's departure in 1932, younger brother Curly joined the group, and in 1934, the three comics broke free of Healy (apparently the relationship had always been rather tempestuous), renamed themselves The Three Stooges, and began a career all of their own.  In 1946, Curly suffered a stroke and Shemp was brought back in to replace him.  This was meant as just a temporary situation but after Curly died in 1950, big brother Shemp stayed on until his own death in 1955.  This brought aboard comic Joe Besser as Shemp's replacement, but this would only last four years before Besser was in turn replaced by Curly-Joe DeRita who stayed with the group until the end in 1971.  That was the year that Larry suffered a stroke.  Fellow comic Emil Sitka was asked to come aboard as a replacement, but these plans never came to fruition.  In 1975 Larry Fine passed away, followed by best friend Moe Howard a few months later.  But the Three Stooges will live in film history forever.

The Marx Brothers meanwhile began their stage career as teenagers way back in 1905.  Eventually all five brothers would be in the act - older brothers Leonard (Chico) and Arthur (Harpo), middle brother Julius (Groucho), and little brothers Milton (Gummo) and, once Gummo left for World War I, Herbert (Zeppo).  Gummo would never rejoin the act (he hated performing) and the other four brothers would move from stage to screen with the film The Cocoanuts in 1929.  Zeppo would only last for five films before he too quit (it's never any fun as the straight man in an act of insanity) and joined his brother Gummo in one of the most successful talent agencies in Hollywood history.  The apocryphal tale of Lana Turner being discovered at the counter of a drug store was hyped to the high hills by her agent Zeppo Marx.  Meanwhile, the remaining three brothers, Groucho, Harpo and Chico, would go on to add to their legendary status until they called it quits as an act after the dismal 1949 film Love Happy.  Groucho always considered their penultimate film, A Night in Casablanca, to be their final film, conveniently erasing the other one from his memory.  Groucho of course, went on to great success on that burgeoning medium known as television.  Chico would pass away in 1961, followed by Harpo in 1964.  Groucho would pass in 1977, with Gummo following a few months later.  Zeppo, the baby, would pass away in 1979.  But, like the Stooges above, The Marx Brothers will live forever in cinematic history.

So the decision is yours oh faithful readers and true believers.  The Three Stooges or The Marx Brothers.  All you need do is go on over to the poll (found conveniently near the top of the sidebar) and vote your collective little hearts out.  And please remember that one must go over to the poll to have one's vote counted.  You can babble away in the comments section all you want (and that is certainly something I encourage, as we never get enough feedback around these parts) but to have your vote count, you must click on your choice in the poll.  And also, please go and tell all your friends to vote as well.  Our biggest voter turnout since starting the Battle Royale series has been just 66 votes.  I know we can get that number to a cool one hundred before it is all said and done and the proverbial smoke does its proverbial clearing.  The voting period will last only until December 1st, so get out there and vote people.

Film Review: Cloud Atlas

I went into Cloud Atlas, co-directed by Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski, not sure what to expect.  On the one hand, Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run was one of the more intriguing films of the 1990's, and his oft-overlooked Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a film that deserves much more recognition than it initially received.  On the other hand, I never have gotten the allure of the Wachowski's Matrix series, and Tom Hanks is the kind of creature that just epitomizes middlebrow Hollywood.  As for the novel itself, written by David Mitchell and often referred to as unfilmable, I must admit to having never read it, but the premise sounds intriguing, and the potential to create a most strange and unusual motion picture epic is indeed ingrained inside this so-called unfilmable work.  Putting all this together, I had low expectations but high hopes going in.  Coming out, I was forced to resign myself to the sad fact that my hopes had been dashed even if my expectations were indeed met.  No, the film is not terrible by any means, but it is just as far from brilliant as it is from terrible.  Even with its inherent great potential, Cloud Atlas ends up being that aforementioned very epitome of middlebrow Hollywood.

The film, as is the book, is six stories in one.   Taking place through the ages, from the South Pacific of 1849 to Cambridge, England and Edinburgh, Scotland in 1936 to 1973 San Francisco to the modern day UK to Neo Seoul in the year 2144 to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii in a time called 106 winters after "The Fall" (identified as 2321), the filmmakers (Tykwer taking three stories and the Wachowski's taking the other three) shoot back and forth between these six tales with an unbridled ferocity that may leave many moviegoers clamoring for the lobby (I myself welcome the insanity of non-linear storytelling), and will only end up leaving those filmgoers with sturdier compositions (the back and forth settles down into a respectable non-linear sense about twenty minutes in) wanting the more that the unique premise had promised them.  To befuddle the non sturdy moviegoers even more, the main cast, which includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, James D'Arcy, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Wishaw, Keith David, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon and Hugo Weaving, all play multiple parts, sometimes of different genders and/or races.  The latter becoming a stick in the craw of many advocate groups, which is understandable because Hugo Weaving as a Korean man is even creepier than Hugo Weaving as an enormous Nurse Ratched character.  None of this though really gives or takes much to or from the film (and it should give a lot to it), as no matter how mind-blowing the three directors want to be - and I am sure they want to be greatly so - the end result is inevitably disappointment in what could have been and what should have been.