Daily Film Dose Feed

Fellini's Roma

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 21:47:00 +0000

Fellini’s episodic romp through the space and time of the eternal city at the time of its release might have felt like an indulgent recycling of his usual cinematic themes hung on a disorienting episodic documentary-like narrative. And yet with today’s eyes, in the context of Fellini’s body of work, it’s an essential part of his filmography, a visual essay of Fellini’s lifetime of experience with the city, told as a typically brilliant choreographed dance of motion, light, and music.

Fellini’s Roma (1972) dir. Federico Fellini
Starring: Peter Gonzales, Fiona Florence, Pia De Doses, Renato Giovannoli

By Alan Bacchus

During one of the sequences, in which we follow a camera crew around town photographing a hippie student rally, we watch a group of bystanders discuss with Fellini himself their desire for the director to depict Rome with a modern sensibility. Fellini candidly admits he can only make a film from his point of view with his own unique peculiarities. Thus Roma feels like his final chapter of self-reflection after his notable pictures La Dolce Vita and 8 ½ .

The opening chapter takes place in the pre-War 1938, depicts a teenaged Fellini arriving in Rome for the first time and observing the strange and wonderful characters in the tenement housing community of his family. The episode is anchored by a stunningly visual sequence of the community preparing for and indulging a group meal on the evening streets. It’s a sequence featuring a hundred or so actors and background players choreographed with the hypnotic, trance-inducing thrill only Fellini can create.

Two other mesmerizing sequences stand tall in Fellini canon. First, a journey underground into a subway construction project, wherein Fellini and his crew get a glimpse of the massive engineering project next to newly discovered artifacts from ancient Rome. When the crew discover a lost chamber they are forced to stop digging to investigate. Unveiled is a pristine room full of wall frescos which upon exposure to the exterior atmosphere degrades and fades never to be viewed in his former condition again. It’s an astonishing sequence.

A papal fashion show and an early brother sequence showcases Fellini’s indulgence in garish pomp, but his scenes of brilliantly choreographed movements recall the cinematic elegance of 8 ½. In particular the final sequence which follows a group of motorcyclists through the streets and roundabouts of the city is gorgeous and supremely cinematic.

Fellini’s Roma is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection

Best of 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 03:15:00 +0000

This year's Best of List includes familiar awards contenders, such as Moonlight and Manchester By the Sea, strange head scratchers such as Neighbors 2 and criminally unrepresented pictures such as Terence Davies' Sunset Song and Operation Avalanche. Unfortunately I couldn't lift one or more of these out of the pack to formulate a true 1-to-10 list of top films in descending order, so here they are alphabetically.

AGE OF SHADOWS (dir. Kim Jee Woon)

Kim Jee Woon (I Saw the Devil) directs this Untouchables/Inglorious Basterds-like spy thriller with the highest level of execution. Set in 1920’s Korea, at the time of Japanese occupation, the allegiance of a Korean officer, working for the Japanese is put to the test when he’s tempted by the resistance movement. Astonishing set pieces executed with high production value (and some of South Korea’s biggest stars) meet the bar of Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino.

GREEN ROOM (dir. Jeremy Saulnier)

After Blue Ruin, Green Room serves as the second half of an awesome one-two punch. As with the Blue Ruin Jeremy Saulnier constructs a terrifying predicament for his heroes, and orchestrates an intense adventure of escape within his pre-constructed scenario. In Blue Ruin it was the quid-pro-quo acts of revenge against two warring families, here it’s the more intimate and constrained scenario of a punk band under siege in a neo-nazi compound. Saulnier’s innate feel of realism puts the audience effectively in the moment-to-moment thrills of the characters.

JACKIE (dir. Pablo Lorrain)

The thrill of this picture is the unconventional stylistic take on a what probably seemed on paper a conventional script. As written by Noah Oppenheimer, the story of Jackie, tells like procedural events of Jackie Kennedy in the days after the JFK assassination. Some non-linear segments, flashforwards and flashbacks can give the appearance of an unconventional film, but everything we would need to see from this period of time we do see. For this reason, the film is thoroughly satisfying. But it’s Pablo Lorrain’s vision which elevates the material into something more than a good script. Lorrain’s work in recreating period detail and merging different media and archival footage elegantly in the Oscar nominated film No is applied directly to Jackie. The visual and auditory design of the film is stunning and transports the audience to 1963 with ease and grace.

LA LA LAND (dir. Damien Chazelle)

The familiar is made fresh from the hot Damien (Whiplash) Chazelle. The thrill of Whiplash was Chazelle’s claustrophobic intensity and laser-specific focus into the mind of his artist-alter ego. La La Land is the largest canvas he could possibly play on. Treading in the musical genre taking place over several years, against the backdrop of Hollywood, the music industry, and Los Angeles the city of dreams. The familiar ground is the artistic pressure of the Hollywood lifestyle. All About Eve, or A Star is Born seem more appropriate comparables than the traditional Hollywood musical. The anchor of the picture isn’t necessarily the musical set pieces, which admittedly still don’t ever match up to the best of Hollywood’s past. Gosling and Stone try their best, but they are no Rogers/Astaire, Garland/Rooney or Kelly/Caron. The picture succeeds because of the agonizing frustration which results from the strain on their idealized relationship and resonates on a level rarely achieved even by the best of Hollywood musical standards.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (dir. Kenneth Lonergan)

Tragic and devastating. Kenneth Lonergan’s original script, directed with working class humble honesty, puts his ordinary characters through the ringer. Weirdo Casey Affleck is perfectly cast as the unlikeable and reluctant social misfit forced into become surrogate father to his nephew, and in the process is forced to reconcile his own tragedies of his past. The heavy loaded drama admirably mixes in disarming comedy resulting in a perfect concoction of palatable tragedy.

MOONLIGHT (dir. Barry Jenkins)

Barry Jenkins’ already massively-celebrated impressionistic memoir of his own youth is as graceful and moving as proclaimed by most critics. Jenkins eschews narrative convention at the same time retooling familiar elements of coming age stories. Jenkins’ hero Chiron grows up in Miami amidst the temptation of drug lifestyle and frustrated by his mom’s own crack habit. An unlikely mentor arises in a drug dealer to become his surrogate father. The evolution of character from child to youth to adult immediate recalls Boyhood. The gentle approach to the often grim subject sparkles with inspiration and innovation in every frame, even when the Jenkins is forced to rely on those familiar coming of age tropes.

NEIGHBORS 2 (dir. Nicholas Stoller)

This delirious and inspired sequel to the 2014 hit film enriches the beautifully conceived characters of the first film. Seth Rogan and company already had perfect comedic concept to work with in the first film – an anxious couple with a new baby moves into a new house only to discover their neighbour is a raucous frat house. Here, the same characters are back, except the frat house is a sorority helmed by a trio of misfit students eager to create the same kind of college experience as their male counterparts. The chemistry of Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne carries through in this sequel, same with the valuable b-player presence of Ike Baronholtz and Carlo Gallo as their dufus best friends. The trio of Chloe Grace Moretz, Kersey Clemons and Beanie Feldstein make admirable comic adversaries, but this picture is Zac Efron’s whose comic chops blossom like never before.

OPERATION AVALANCHE (dir. Matt Johnson)

Matt Johnson’s scrappy fake moon landing movie bristles with low budget ingenuity. While the production tales of the filmmakers sneaking into the real NASA to film segments of the film under their own noses tends to lead the discussion of the picture, the film is an impressively complex arrangement of thriller-genre elements, deceptively clever character development and truly awesome combination of reenacted period detail and archival footage.

THE RED TURTLE (dir. Michael Dudok de Wit)

The story of a shipwrecked man on an South Pacific deserted island and the strange but life affirming relationships he forges while on the island. This French/Belgian Studio Ghibli-influenced animated weeper submits itself to the constraint of having no dialogue. The film elegantly lifts itself from the self-conscious to something magical and enchanting, however desperately the filmmakers strive for this effect. You have to give to the filmmaker for effective pulling the heartstrings of the audience so effortlessly.

SUNSET SONG (dir. Terence Davis)

The release of a Terence Davies film nowadays has the same of privileged anticipation we used to get from Terrence Malick. Despite claims in the media of Davies as the great living British filmmaker, he’s relatively unknown, even within cineaste circles. Sunset Song is Davies’ biggest film, based on the revered Scottish novel by Cedric Gibbons which depicted the 20 year journey of a lowly farm girl making a life for itself amid the hardships of rural working class life. For those familiar with the Davies-style, all the visual and narrative hallmarks of the master are in play and elevated to mythic cinematic heights. Comparisons to the work of John Ford are front and centre, but it’s no doubt a gorgeous Terence Davies picture furthering the already impressive body of work of the master.

Honourable mentions:

It was tough to exclude Hell or High Water, a crackjack heist thriller which deceptively turns into a thought-provoking and tragic family drama. Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals was a loony thriller playing in the David Lynch world of visceral violence and eccentric quirky humour. Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some, deceptively proclaimed to be a spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused only to reveal itself another type of metaphysical slacker comedy without a beginning, middle, or end. The morbid curiosity surrounding the story of Christine Chubbock, who committed suicide on camera in the 1970’s was enough to make Antonio Campos’ intense biopic Christine a guilty pleasure. Although barely released theatrically Karyn Kusuma’s The Invitation was an invigorating nail biting chamber drama. Clint Eastwood’s Sully, honoring the humble working class nature of the hero of the Miracle on the Hudson, was effective in its own clinical modesty. Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World adds even more flare to his already impressive filmography of stylish suburban shouting matches. And the new franchise starter, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them was surprisingly effective at transplanting the style, tone and thrill of the HP universe to 1920's New York.

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 18:11:00 +0000

'Dreams' is pure cinema, an intoxicating assembly of images, sound and thought-provoking existentialism that only cinema can provide. Kurosawa’s confidence in his ability to hold the audience’s attention through a series of narratively disconnected and peculiar episodes is remarkable.

Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990) dir. Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Akira Terao, Mitsunori Isaki, Chishū Ryū, Mieko Harada, Martin Scorsese

By Alan Bacchus

The last picture from Akira Kurosawa is an unlikely departure from the late career work of the master which often feature stories of big spectacle. Here the impressionistic anthology film or sorts tells eight deceptively simple stories derived from Mr. Kurosawa’s own dreams over the year. It’s a swan song no less remarkable than the heady epics of Ran or Kagemusha, and arguably better and more profound.

The first segment establishes its peculiarity, depicting Kurosawa as a child, who delinquently leaves his house to partake in an old Japanese legend, a wedding of foxes, in the forest. The boy watches the elegantly formal ceremony of marching forest-dwellers dressed in animal costumes parading through the forest. When he returns home he’s scolded by his mother, in such extreme fashion, the only way to boy may atone is either to commit suicide by knife or set off and beg forgiveness from the foxes.

Kurosawa’s Dreams mix the mystical, as above, and more direct overt commentaries on historical and political concerns. A derelict infantryman confronting the ghosts of dead WWII soldiers marching toward the infinite is arguably the centerpiece episode. Kurosawa exercises his skills with suspense, tension and some action, elegantly shot, evoking power and pathos with extraordinary simplicity. The third segment, The Blizzard, is also an impressive feat of tension and action depicting a mountaineering foursome battling a storm while being entranced by a mystical female guide. Kurosawa blatantly comments on the nuclear threat to Japan, the world and the intimate human experience with Mount Fuji in Red, a post-apocalyptic theme which recalls Kurosawa’s lesser-seen 1956 film I Live in Fear.

Each of the segments fits into the same concept – a simple predicament/story journey of Kurosawa’s cinematic alter ego, depending on the age, sometimes the same actor. The only disruptions to the majestic splendor of the experience is the handful of Western intrusions - Martin Scorsese, in particular, cast as Vincent Van Gogh, while a clever connection to another revered cinema master, feels unnecessarily shoehorned in; same with the overextended and now dated ILM special effects, perhaps pushed on Kurosawa by Hollywood champions George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

In the tradition of the best of anthology films, and even the best Twilight Zone or Night Gallery episodes, each segment is punctuated by something profound and thought-provoking that thematically connects to something greater than its whole. Dreams is no exception. Here we’re served up an ultimate cautionary tale of frailty of our planet, and the appreciation of the sanctity life itself. By the final episode you’ll yearn to cherish the pleasures of the simple, organic and authentic life.

Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection.

Short Cuts

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 20:48:00 +0000

Robert Altman’s deliriously-intricate LA mosaic is just about the last word in ensemble film. With effortless style, Altman’s observational approach to the collection of Raymond Carver writings used to inspire this film creates a uniquely disarming melodrama which starts out as a light satirical farce, then sharply turning into dead serious emotional powerhouse.

Short Cuts (1994) dir. Robert Altman
Starring: Tim Robbins, Anne Archer, Julianne Moore, Lily Tomlin, Fred Ward, Andie McDowell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Penn, Matthew Modine, Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher, Madeline Stowe, Lyle Lovett

By Alan Bacchus

The work put into plotting out the movements and crossovers of the two dozen characters which circle the city of Los Angeles in the 48 hours or so of this movie is mind-boggling. The core stories which carry most of the weight is Finnegan Family whose son is hit by a car and is hospitalized much to the distress of their parents (Andie MacDowell and Bruce Davison). Typifying the fine line between tragedy and comedy in the picture is Lyle Lovett’s character, as a baker who torments the couple through crank calls to their home phone for not picking up the birthday cake ordered for the child.

Secondly, there’s the trio of Fred Ward, Buck Henry and Huey Lewis who, while on a fishing trap discover a dead body floating in the water. Instead of calling it into the police, the men continue their vacation unfazed by the murder only to report it after the trip. Like the Finnegan predicament Altman deftly turns the grisly discovery into a situation darkly comedic. This segment famously turned up as a separate filmic adaption in Ray Lawrence’s 2006 drama Jindabyne. The two films, while based on the same source material, couldn’t be more dissimilar.

Other memorable characters such as Lily Tomlin as a waitress who’s ogled by the trio of fishermen, but also becomes the one who hits the Finnegan’s child with her car; Tim Robbins, who then appeared in many of Hollywood’s memorable films of the era, as an adulterer/policeman who takes his own self-absorbed jealously of his wife out on the family dog; and breakout newbie Julianne Moore and Matthew Modine as another bickering, philandering couple who distract themselves from their own malaise by partying and drinking heavily in their Hollywood Hills home.

Of course these snippets only scratch the surface of the intricate plot machinations which run its course over the picture’s breezy three-hour running time. Despite over 20 years between M.A.S.H. and Short Cuts Altman’s well-honed cinematic techniques still feel fresh and innovative. The observing style of Altman which famously uses overlapping dialogue tracks to move the audience’s point of view between characters and storylines becomes raison d’etre of the film. Same with the then-unfashionable zoom lenses which elegant complement the audio techniques.

What emerges organically from the stylized plotting, myriad of characters and overt production techniques is Altman’s cutting indictment of middle class triviality. By the time the imposition of the citywide Earthquake unifies his characters – an act of God famously recreated as a shower of frogs by Paul Thomas Anderson in Magnolia – we come to pity each of the characters and revile them for their self-absorption. But we’re saved from the bleakness of Anderson’s Magnolia, the audience of Short Cuts can always take pleasure in our superiority to the vacuum of Altman’s characters.

Short Cuts is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 20:39:00 +0000

For those new to 'McCabe and Mrs. Miller' it can be hard to relate to its reputation as the anti-Western that shook up the genre. Today, a non-traditional film like this would be common place, but in 1971, at the beginnings of the New Hollywood movement Altman’s shaggy Hippie Western was as strange an anomaly as could be.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) dir. Robert Altman
Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Keith Carradine, René Auberjonois, Shelley Duvall, Michael Murphy

By Alan Bacchus

Admittedly I only saw this film for the first time recently, despite being acutely aware of its importance in cinema history. Watching a Robert Altman film can be an intimidating proposal, especially for someone not lovingly attuned to his distinct style. The Player is an excellent film bar none. But Nashville and many of his other lauded films, for all their greatness, can be an acquired taste. But I also loved Vilmos Zsigmond, who arguably defined the look of the 1970’s with this film, and so I always wanted my first experience of McCabe and Mrs. Miller to be the best visual experience I could get. Having missed a few local Cinematheque screenings in town over the years, the opportunity came with the recent Criterion Collection release. Having unboxed the (usual) magnificently-designed burnt umbra-hued packaging, I finally got to devour all pleasures of the film.

It is still a film not-for-all tastes. Looking with the eyes of a 1970’s movie-goer you can see how radical and unconventional the picture was. Liner notes discuss Altman’s attraction to the Western Rockies setting, far away from the dusty locals of Monument Valley, there’s barely any gunfire in the film, very little bravado or heroism, and a foppish swindling hero who barely takes any stand at all. The genre convention Altman does revel in are the prostitutes and brothels which dominate the setting. While Peckinpah westerns portray prostitute in subservient positions of inferiority compared to the dominant males, Altman’s prostitutes feel like products of 60’s liberalism, feminist capitalists owning their bodies and exploiting the base desires of inferior men. The nude bathing scene for instance is typically Altman, and reminiscent of the hippie tone of M.A.S.H’s naughty sexual behavior.

Warren Beatty admirably turns in a consciously affable anti-heroic performance as the opportunistic gambler who stumbles into the North Western brothel town and becomes its primary business owner. He wears a marvelous fur coat in his introduction, engulfing him like a animal draped across his shoulders. But the most notable aspect of his performance was his mumbling and awkward indecisiveness, either purposefully mocking his own stardom or striving to achieve a Brando/Dean style of hero-attraction.

Julie Christie commands the screen with the most confidence. Her appearance is held back for dramatic purposes until 20-30mins into the film. As the Madame, Constance Miller, who partners up with Beatty to run the high class brothel Christie allure is at maximum effect. On the Criterion video extras Keith Carradine describes his sex scene cut out of the picture in order to preserve Christie’s hard-to-get unattainability. Miller is also a heroin user, but treated by Altman with a common sense reality, again, a product of film’s drug-friendly psychedelic era.

As mentioned, Altman admirably uses guns sparingly. There are very few gunshots in the film, but when they come, their impact is dramatic, in particular Keith Carradine’s death, a powerful confrontation between the easy-going Carradine and a deceptively psychotic youngster who seems to take advantage of the carefree passiveness of the town. The gunfights feel like violent encroachments of the genre conventions Altman was consciously avoiding. The final battle between the mining company assassins and the fleeing McCabe is also unheroic and unconventional but thrilling and tense.

And then there’s Vilmos Zsigmond who should take as much authorship of the film as Altman. His fog-filtered look is remarkably distinct it would influence cinematography for the rest of the decade and beyond. And has snow fall ever been depicted more effectively than here?

Lastly Leonard Cohen (rest in peace) who composed the memorable folk songs and help defined the tone of the film feels like just another piece of unconventionality which neatly ties this film together.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection

Sully

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Wed, 02 Nov 2016 15:50:00 +0000

The humble workmanlike nature of pilot Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger who flew the Miracle on the Hudson plane into the Hudson River in Jan 2009 sets the tone for Clint Eastwood’s no frills dissection of the events following the famed event. There’s no doubt this is a film about a hero, but Eastwood’s emotionally-detached approach plays against heighten state of action which belies other recent conservative-value hero films of late ('Deepwater Horizon', 'Captain Phillips', 'Lone Survivor', or even his own 'American Sniper'). 'Sully' is the best of these pictures.

Sully (2016) dir. Clint Eastwood
Starring: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Mike O’Malley, Anna Gunn

By Alan Bacchus

Years down the road after Mr. Eastwood has either passed on, or quit making movies (which is unlikely to ever happen), we might just look back on Sully as the quintessential Clint Eastwood movie. Sure Unforgiven, admirably contextualizes Clint’s history with the western genre, and sure he won another Oscar for the triumphant-then-tragic boxing story Million Dollar Baby, but arguably no other picture better captures the conservative politics of the famed director, the calm simplicity of Eastwood’s filmmaking method, and the introspective nature of the typical Eastwood hero wound up in a slick Hollywood package.

Arguably if this picture were made 25 years ago Clint Eastwood would have played Sully Sullenberger. Instead he casts the only person who could match his own tempered steel-eyed qualities of American conservatism, Tom Hanks. We first see Hanks in a sequence piloting his plane through Manhattan crashing it into the buildings in a ball of fire. Of course it’s a dream, signifying what could have happened to the US Airways plane if anyone else had piloted the aircraft that day, or, as we would learn later in the film, if he followed the instruction of the plane’s computer systems.

As scripted by Todd Komarnicki, the film takes a non-linear approach the events, immediately drawing us away from the drama of the actual flight. As reported by the media everyone in the world sees Sully as a hero (although humbly refused), with the exception of the airline and its insurance company. Eastwood spends most of his time after the landing, procedurally depicting the investigation of the incident and eventually attempting to twist Sully’s heroism around to recklessness and bad judgement. Sully learns about the computer’s simulations could have seen the plane landing safely at the nearby LaGuardia or Teterboro airports. Sully and his co-pilot Jeffrey Skiles (Eckhart) can only use gut instinct and Sully’s decades of experience to explain their reasons for landing in Hudson. Outwardly Sully stands by his gut but inwardly his self-doubt painfully eats away at his soul.

At stake is Sully’s career, as well as an awkwardly shoehorned website business venture which is threatened by the proceedings. But its Sully’s reputation and love of flying evocatively expressed through effectively-incorporated flashbacks which lands with us hardest.

Eastwood approach is clinical purposefully avoiding melodrama and anything resembling false drama or creative license. I don’t know if everything in the movie happened exactly as Eastwood portrays it, but we believe it does. Eastwood ends the picture with a ‘trial’ of sorts. It’s a hearing wherein the battle between the human factor and the computer factor is fought, but it’s essentially dramatized like a legal trial. Again Eastwood admirably avoids the milquetoast qualities of courtroom drama and quietly validates and vindicates Sully as satisfyingly triumphant as any other hero picture.

Christine

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 15:50:00 +0000

A horror film of a completely different kind, Rebecca Hall is mesmerizing in Antonio Campos’ sobering cinematic rendering of the true story or Christine Chubbock, a Sarasota FL news reporter who committed suicide on air in 1974. Campos lets the audience’s own morbid curiosity and fascination with death and violence create the unique and extremely uncomfortable psychological journey.

Christine (2016) dir. Antonio Campos
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Michael C. Hall, Tracey Letts

By Alan Bacchus

Christine admirably fit into the modus operandi of the Borderline Films collective of Antonio Campos (Simon Killer), Josh Mond (James White) and Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy Mae Marlene)- intensely focused character studies of psychologically damaged heroes of the American middle class. Campos focuses his lens on the once sensational, now vaguely remembered true story of Christine Chubbock.

While most of the other Borderline films, such as Campos’ previous Simon Killer, Campos admirably applies considerably less style to the Chubbock story. Anything less than quiet realism would have been seen as exploiting or romanticizing the tragic events. Even with a conventional visual approach, Campos has made Christine supremely cinematic.

Hall rarely leaves the screen, and thus we’re forced to go through the agonizing downward spiral from the promising and seemingly put-together local journalist to a depressed and lonely introvert highly susceptible to the pitfalls of being a career-woman in a ‘man’s world’. This is the 1970’s after all, and however absurd there is a thematic connection between the Sarasota TV news department and Anchorman’s San Diego scene. Watching Chubbock subtly play second fiddle to the uber-males in her office enlightens us to the bullseye Anchorman hit with its satirical spear.

Michael C. Hall fits the polyester suit well as the confident WXLT newsman, George Peter Ryan. As the object of Christine’s affection as well as the symbol of career goals, Hall’s performance subverts our expectations. A lesser depiction of the character could have seen Ryan solely as a bombastic masculine foil. Instead Hall, Campos and writer Craig Shilowich bury the sexism with an even more frustrating passive-aggressiveness.

I don’t know the exact details of the events, but Campos’ aesthetic precision creates a feeling of authenticity. The creative embellishment Campos’ does use is the near perfect selection of pop music tracks which populates the otherwise quiet soundtrack. Soft rock and candy-coded hits such as Laughing by the Guess Who, Everything I Own by Olivia Newton-John and other tracks from Sonny and Cher, Tommy James and John Denver, counterpoint the sobering drama unfolding.

Otherwise, the uncompromising attention to detail make it feels like everything happened just the way we see it. Campos assumes the audience knows the story and where it’s going, and he confidently uses this anticipation to build suspense and sustain tension. And when the tragic event does happen, it’s an electric hyper charged scene, punctuating an event and film never to forget.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Tue, 25 Oct 2016 19:49:00 +0000

Often regarded as revered Japanese master Kenji Mizoguchi’s first masterpiece, this pre-war picture personifies the poetic elegance of the ‘Mizoguchi-style’. An epic/tragic romance of a struggling actor and his supportive lover, Mizuguchi crafts a melodramatic love affair strained by the pressures of finance, class, family expectations and the demands of artistic life.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
Starring: Shôtarô Hanayagi, Kakuko Mori, Kôkichi Takada, Gonjurô Kawarazaki

By Alan Bacchus

Set in the late 1800’s, Kiku (Hanayagi) is the adopted son of a famous theatre actor Kikugoro – a man so revered he rules over his local company of actors like a despotic King Lear. Sadly, Kiku is a considerably lesser actor, who, because of his lineage, never receives the required criticism to improve, only jeers and giggles from behind his back. In a society so devoted to manners, the ridicule is excruciating for Kiku. Enter Otoku (Mori ) the wet nurse of his father’s new child, who courageously criticizes Kiku’s latest performance. Ironically he is smitten with Otoku’s candor as much as her beauty. They fall in love against the family wishes, eventually forcing Kiku to leave Tokyo and his family.

Kiku’s grand arc is the stuff great narrative drama. Think of the journeys of cinema’s greatest characters: Michael Corleone changing from an innocent kid reluctant to join the family business to a stone cold killer; T.E. Lawrence who starts out as an ambitious patriotic soldier on duty for his country to a near-mad zealot of the Arab peoples; or Charles Foster Kane, the idealistic newspaper baron, turned emotionally-inert egomaniac who longs for his lost childhood innocence. Mizoguchi’s compelling hero Kiku begins as a sad sack actor, belittled for his poor acting abilities, and dismissed in favour of his father’s new child by blood. In the second act, Kiku admirably turns the tables, estranging himself from his family embarking on a quest to achieve greatness in his art only to sell out his devoted wife and assimilate back into the arrogance of his father’s theatre, where he began.

The sublime Kakuko Mori doesn’t the let the prominence of Kiku’s character trump the importance and visibility of Otoku. The journey of Kiku is as much about Otoku’s honourable devotion to her husband. It’s a supremely tragic arc for her, capped off by the film’s moving climactic scene - on her deathbed with her family while Kiku parades his triumphant theatre troupe outside her window.

This is the stuff of great melodrama, but visualized with the highest level of cinematic/visual complexity. Mizoguchi was famous for his long takes, and in this picture there are number of hypnotic shots which elegantly and invisibly draw the viewer into the scenes. We can also point of Mizoguchi’s unique eye of composition, frequently placing his camera to frame in the corner of the room as the background instead of a flat wall. This enhanced depth of field predates the lauded Gregg Toland Hollywood pictures from ‘40/’41.

But it’s the emotional journey of poor Kiku and Otoku which makes this picture one of the greatest statements about the burden of artists and sacrifices required to succeed and be loved.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection

A Taste of Honey

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 18:22:00 +0000

One of the seminal British kitchen sink dramas of the 60’s, A Taste of Honey, resounds today on the strength of Rita Tushingham’s delightful screen debut and author Shelagh Delany’s taboo-confronting script which looks at interracial romance, homosexuality and teen pregnancy with delicate earthy realism.

A Taste of Honey (1962) dir. Tony Richardson
Starring: Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, Robert Stephens, Murray Melvin

By Alan Bacchus

Before Doctor Zhivago, The Knack… and a host of other British classics of the decade Rita Tushingham burst into our consciousness with her role of Jo, a plucky 17 year old burdened with an irresponsible and emotionally erratic mother Helen (Dora Bryan). With Guilietta Masina-like adorableness Jo wanders through the stone jungle of industrial Manchester with a kind of imperviousness to her lifelong working class plight.

When Jo meets Jimmy an attractive black transient sailor, a love affair ensues. As quickly as it came, it goes, leaving Jo alone and pregnant. Enter Geoffrey, a quiet design student, unstated homosexuality who provide Jo with the comfort she desperately needs. Jo's bratty mother re-enters the fray when her loathsome male companion abandons her. But the threesome of Geoffrey, Jo and Helen are an unmerry bunch, and bicker to the bitter end in the manner of the best British kitchen sink films.

With today's eyes it's not hard to marvel at the stark industrial beauty of Walter Lassally's black and white cinematography. Richardson, Lassally and his design team are careful to place Jo, Geoffrey and Jimmy in the exterior as much as possible allowing the iconic landscape of the city to blanket the characters.

But film resounds strongly today's for the topical themes of the socio-political issues above. While present and important to the motivations of the characters, the film is not about homosexuality or racism, as a heart-on-sleeve Stanley Kramer film might have been. Writer Delany treats her issues as matter of fact components of modern life.

A Taste of Honey is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection

Night Train to Munich

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 19:54:00 +0000

Carol Reed’s WWII espionage pot boiler confidently stands as tall as any of the celebrated Hitchcock war thrillers of the era. While this picture predates his more acclaimed post war pictures, The Third Man and Odd Man Out, it sizzles with the same kind of high stakes urgency.

Night Train to Munich (1940) dir. Carol Reed
Starring: Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison, Paul Henreid, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne

By Alan Bacchus

Carol Reed sets a crackerjack pace from the outset of this picture we can’t help be reminded of Michael Curtiz’s brilliant opening of Casablanca (perhaps it was an influence). Setting up the stakes, we meet Axel Bomasch, a Czech metalurgist highly sought-after by the Nazis who have just invaded Czechoslovakia, escaping the country via a tense airport rendez-vous. Unfortunately his daughter Anna (Margaret Lockwood) doesn’t make it in time and is thrown into a concentration camp. While imprisoned she plots escape with the help of a charming Czech prisoner Karl Marsen, played with maximum allure by Paul Henreid (again, predating Casablanca). Once out we realize Karl was a mole for the Nazis using Anna as bait to get to Bomasche the metalurgist.

Enter Rex Harrison, pre-foppish alcoholic days of Dr. Doolittle or My Fair Lady, a Brit super agent Dickie Randall who arranges for Anna to link up with her father in Britain. But Marsen is a deft match for Dickie and kidnaps both Anna and Bomasche in a U-boat, sending them back to Germany. Reed ratchets up the picture, putting a perilous rescue mission by Randall into effect. Posing as a Nazi SS officer Dickie infiltrates the Nazi elite in order to escort the father/daughter pair out of Germany via Train – hence the title of the movie.

The Hitchcock comparisons are clear, the mixture of tense action, cloak and dagger intrigue with coy sexual innuendos and wry British wit. And the globe trotting scope from the concentration camps of eastern Europe to Britain, to the taut train sequence and finally ending with its celebrated sky lift chase sequence in the Alps brings to mind the exotic and familiar locales of Hitchcocks’ Sabateur (Statue of Liberty), North By Northwest (Mount Rushmore) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (Royal Albert Hall).

Reed’s sexual subtext is delicious. A number of references are made to the romantic competitiveness of Henreid and Harrison’s characters. Anna’s attraction to Marsen is clear, and its through his seduction of her which gets her into the mess she’s in. After Dickie Randall, posing the SS officer, enters the sphere, he blantantly claims the best way to get Anna to reveal her father’s secrets is through her bed. The scene of Harrison and Lockwood pretending to be intimate is glorious stuff. Of course, despite the ruse Randall does try to get in her pants (when in Rome!) and her denial of him punctuated by failed champagne pop at the end of the scene makes for a not-so-subtle metaphor.
We tend to forget how good Carol Reed was as a director and certainly the works of this picture, The Third Man and Odd Man Out, Carol Reed did espionage thrillers every bit as good as the Master of Suspense.

****

Night Train to Munich is available from the Criterion Collection

Woman in the Dunes

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 14:28:00 +0000

'Woman in the Dunes', the third film from Japanese provocateur Hiroshi Teshigahara, is an indefinable film for genre and full of glorious Japanese strangeness, a captivating two-hander about a man imprisoned in a sand dune with a woman with no means of escape. Both a thriller, and meditative art film - "Knife in the Water" meets "L'Avventura"- the film also has the distinction of receiving a Best Director Oscar nomination – then a rare feat for a foreign language film.

Woman in the Dunes (1964) dir Hiroshi Teshigahara
Starring: Eiji Okada, Kyôko Kishida

By Alan Bacchus

The film begins with Niki Jumpei, an entomologist catching bugs in the desert. He misses his bus home, and he asks a group of labourers for a place to stay for the night. Niki is brought to a one shack home located a deep sandpit in the desert. A kind young lady is the housekeeper and she is polite and accommodating. But in the morning when it’s time to leave, Niki can’t escape, the ladder which brought him down is gone. The men are gone as well, and the inclined slopes of sand which surround him are impossible to climb. The woman reveals that she and, therefore, him are victims of an act of criminal torture and blackmail to sift and extricate sand from the pit to the labourers that kidnapped them in exchange for food and water and thus, their lives.

Niki has trouble believing such a ridiculous notion. A battle of attrition ensues between Niki and his captors. And as the days go by he realizes the gravity of his situation and accepts his dilemma. As the weeks and months go by, Niki starts looking at the woman differently. He gazes at her naked sleeping body and unexpectedly, a carnal attraction is born. Not out of love, but mutual desperation.

The film masterfully uses symbolism to convey the ideas of fate and destiny. In the opening scenes Teshigahara teases us with metaphorical close-ups of the bugs. Niki captures them, and pins them to his miniature diorama of cardboard and sand. Later when Niki is imprisoned in the dunes we realize the sad significance and irony of his predicament. Niki, himself, is imprisoned, exactly like his bugs, on display to his captors.

Woman in the Dunes immediately strikes the viewers as a modern parable of the Greek story of Sisyphus, the prisoner who was tasked with rolling a boulder up a steep hill only to have it continually roll down to the bottom. Or maybe it’s the guinea pig cage metaphor, which the animal runs and runs on the spinning wheel without going anywhere. Niki's task is a similar unconquerable act of frustration.

Structurally Woman in the Dunes suffers from some overindulgence common in lengthy Asian films. At the 1hr 40mins mark, the film appears to rise to its climax, when Niki escapes his prison via a handmade rope. It's a masterful sequence of method and procedure. Niki escapes and after a lengthy chase he's caught again and lowered back down into the pit. At almost the 2-hour length it seemed like the natural point to end the film, but in fact, the film continues on for another 45mins which arguably is less intriguing than the beginning.

Teshigahara also leaves many essential plot elements unclear. In the myth, it was Zeus’ punishment for Sisyphus’ betrayal of him. What did Niki do to deserve such maddening servitude? Who are the villagers and why do they need the sand, when itseems so abundant around them? Do they torture Niki and the woman because they are sadistic? And who exactly is the woman in the dunes? Is she there voluntarily? I didn't require these questions answered to enjoy the film, but they were continually in my mind.

Woman in the Dunes is a film of texture, subtext, metaphors. Because of the parallel with Sisyphus, it should be viewed more as a fable – like Grimm Fairy tales - than a structurally coherent genre film. It’s visual storytelling at its best. Teshigahara’s images construct the conundrum with a multitude of closeups of moving sand, naked body parts and intercutting of all these elements creates a uniquely erotic and frightful experience. Enjoy.

Woman in the Dunes is available on Blu-Ray and DVD via the Criterion Collection

Night and Fog

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 14:33:00 +0000

Despite numerous other documentaries on the subject, as a masterwork of craft and technique, Alain Renais’ landmark Night and Fog still evokes the mind-boggling obscenity of the Holocaust with maximum impact. Renais forces us to witness the horror and digest those horrible images which, once seen, never leave one’s mind. While the breadth of Claude Lanzmann’s work is missing from Night and Fog, Renais’ vision in documenting the Holocaust is close to being the first and final word on the subject.

Night and Fog (1955) dir. Alain Renais
Documentary

By Alan Bacchus

Night and Fog became one of first and most notable films to document the Holocaust on film. Alain Renais, known mostly as a French New-Waver, began as a documentary filmmaker and despite his influence on cinema, Night and Fog might be his most lasting and influential work. While Claude Lanzmann’s landmark Shoah documentary, at 9+ hours, is the most comprehensive and earth-shattering, in its scant 32mins running time Renais just scratches the surface of the tragedy and yet succinctly conveys the hideous contradictions and mind-boggling atrocities of the Nazis.

Renais takes a chronological approach to his narrative, starting with pre-War fascist hysteria, including familiar images from the Nuremberg rallies and other Reifenstahl footage and moves through the war years of 1939 and 1945 and the now familiar chain of events which led to the murder of millions. Renais employs then-famous French actor Michel Boquet to voice writer Jean Cayrol’s written narration with a distinct angered frustration. Of the archive of images and film at filmmaker’s disposal Renais opts for an anecdotal approach as opposed to a conventional ‘story.’ As such contradictions emerge from his astute arrangement of image and sound.

Hanns Eisler’s antithetical and serene score compliments the serenity of the modern colour footage of the vacated death camps rotting away untouched. Obscene details and observations of the genocide are listed off without traditional narrative connection. The painstakingly detailed prisoners logs of the Nazis and the consistent cursive handwriting of the guards who kept the journals drill into our brains the absurdity of their record-keeping process through this endeavor. The now-familiar photographs of the mounds of shoes, eye glasses, hats and even women’s hair stockpiled in a barn convey the scope of death which occurred.

Perhaps most disturbing images occur near the end, and it’s not the graphic horrors of bodies, or the emaciated survivors rescued after the War, but the rolls of cloth made from human hair or paper made from human skin – images presented to us without explanation but effectively represent the incomprehensibility of the tragedy.

Night and Fog is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection

Here Comes Mr. Jordan

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 19:51:00 +0000

Alexander Hall’s thoroughly delightful ‘heavenly’ comedy, a Capra-esque tale of a deceased boxer who’s given a second chance at life by his angel/mentor Mr. Jordan by being able to inhabit the bodies of other recently deceased persons, is perhaps most famous for its notable remake as Warren Beatty’s ‘Heaven Can Wait’. But as produced under the studio system (Columbia), Mr. Jordan represents that unmistakable pre-war Hollywood magical combination of swift screwball comedy, dry black humour and high concept fantasy.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) dir. Alexander Hall
Starring: Robert Montgomery, Claude Rains, Evelyn Keyes, Rita Johnson

By Alan Bacchus

Robert Montgomery is perhaps the most unlikely actor to play a boxing contender, and yet this is how he’s established in the opening moments of the film. In fact, he’s not only a boxer, but an amateur pilot and saxophone player who carries his sax around everywhere he goes. This strange eccentricity is what attracts us to Joe Pendleton, a likeable hero who tragically dies in a plane accident. When his spirit is resurrected by an angel, he’s given a second chance to go back to the physical world instead of the heavenly one. But Joe’s body has been cremated by his manager Pop Corkle. Thus, here comes Mr. Jordan (Rains), a heavenly fixer of sorts who steps in to offer Joe the option of inhabiting the body of deceased business man Bruce Farnsworth, recently murdered in his home by his wife and business colleague.

Strange it is to title a film based on a minor character who is not the lead, but it’s testament to Claude Rains’ marvelous turn as the amiable angel. Rains’ soothing indistinctly accented bourgeois demeanor elevates his performance and his character to level of Montgomery’s. Rains had even yet to play his most famous role (in Casablanca), but perhaps Mr. Jordan is the finest demonstration of his unique character-acting skills.

As written by the original playwright and it’s screen adapters (Sidney Buchman and Seton Miller), the plotting of Pendleton’s new lot in life is as eccentric as the main character. They take care to make clear to the audience the rules of their interaction. Joe looks like Farnsworth to the other characters, but to the audience it’s Joe/Montgomery. Joe can talk to Mr. Jordan, but no one else can see him. Mr. Jordan can move Joe to another body when he likes, but it’s has to be recently deceased (and of course, there must be a body).

The screwball plotting is centred around Joe’s confused manager Corkle, who becomes privy to Pendleton and Jordan’s ploys. Corkle just can’t wrap his head around the body switching and he spends most of the film is a state of heightened delirium.

The underlying at the heart of this picture is fate and the romance of the soul even when one leaves the body. Farnsworth’s story of redemption, thanks to Pendleton’s engineering, from nefarious investor to righteous man of the people, is the stuff of the Capra’s social-conscious pictures (You Can’t Take it With You, Meet John Doe, It’s a Wonderful Life). This arc nicely dovetails from the romantic story of Joe’s attraction to Miss Logan (Keyes) one of Farnsworth’s financial victims. Even though Joe’s interactions of Logan would be short-lived, they would prove not to be fleeting, when the fate of the attraction transcends the physical body of Farnsworth and the pair meet in the future within Joe’s newly selected body.

The production value of the picture, as expected, meets the level of quality of a major studio picture. We can even pick out some inventive deep focus photography from cinematographer Joseph Walker. The design of the Farnsworth house where much of the action takes place is designed with a polished grandeur which befits the heavenly story. There’s even a terrific boxing sequence, which may have even influenced the look of some of Scorsese’s Raging Bull’s fight sequences.

'Here Comes Mr. Jordan' is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection

The Naked Island

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 20:57:00 +0000

Two lowly Japanese farmers repetitively climbing an intense incline slope from the seaside shore to the top of a mountain to water their measly crops is the signature image of Kaneto Shindô’s social realist experimental film. Shindô observes his characters' backbreaking work with the same kind of salt of the earth honour as in the Soviet propaganda films if the 1920’s. Shindô’s cinematic eye triumphs over his self-imposed dialogue-free obstruction to achieve a woefully tragic slice of Japanese peasant life.

The Naked Island (1960) dir. Kaneto Shindô
Starring: Nobuko Otowa, Taiji Tonoyama, Shinji Tanaka

By Alan Bacchus

Dramatic aerial camerawork in the opening shots establish the geography of the tiny island inhabited by the family of four who serve as Shindo’s subjects of labour-torture. For fans of Mikhail Kalatozov we can’t help but compare the openings of ‘Naked Island’ with ‘I Am Cuba’ or ‘The Letter Never Sent’. The melancholy, unheroic music brings us to the centerpiece sequence which introduces the laborious task of the mother and father of the family, who start the task at sea level collecting water in two wooden buckets, then strap said buckets to both ends of a long board, then perilously mount this board onto their backs to be brought up the side of the mountain with the pace of a snail.

Shindo seems to channel the thrill of the editing techniques pioneered by the post-revolutionary Russian filmmakers by intercutting the journey of these buckets of water with the watering process – crops planted in desert like soil with very little chance of surviving. Shindo plays out this sad yet beautiful pantomime of labour well past its natural running time to achieve the same kind of hypnotic repetitiveness as their Sisyphean tasks.

Why such dedication to such menial and backbreaking labour? Why not? Without overt proselytization of the Soviet propaganda films Shindo subtly and hypnotically ingrains his postwar socialist themes of the primitive Japanese lifestyle into our minds. Some compare the depiction of the crude, uninspired existence to the urbane Japanese life depicted by the more renowned works of Ozu at the time. There is no time for reflection or enjoyment of life here – a theme exemplified by the mealtime scenes wherein we see the kids and parents eating in haste their measly noodle bowls as quick as possible so they may go back to their fruitless labour.

Shindo eventually explores other aspects of the family’s lives. Occasional title cards tell of changes in season, though we barely see a progression in the family lifestyle or wealth. Trips to the market to sell their wares further the pitiful tragedy of their lives. A single fish caught by the perky younger child is sold by the mom for a few dollars.

While the film is a consciously austere affair, there’s a strong feeling of impending doom, which fuels the palpable tension which carries through the picture. Shindo punctuates the hill climbing sequence with a fallen barrel which spills the mother’s precious water. This results in a brutal outburst from the father who slaps his wife with impudence. It’s a shocking and unexpected moment of emotion which stays with us the entire film. The next moment of emotional expression comes at the end, a strangely manipulative sequence which doesn’t quite fit the aesthetic philosophy of narrative minimalist before it. But an accident which threatens the life of the older child creates a sense of urgency which satisfactorily pushes the film to an powerful, though tragic conclusion.

Shindo’s stunning black and white anamorphic cinematography is poetically beautiful and starkly contrasts the grim tragedy never leaves the lives of Shindo’s sad subjects.

The Naked Island is available from the Criterion Collection

In a Lonely Place

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:33:00 +0000

As a Hollywood screenwriter burdened with a hair trigger temper and seemingly psychopathic predilection to violence, Humphrey Bogart delivers one of his great late-career performances. 'In a Lonely Place' marries the mysterious tension of the unknown in Hitchcock’s 'Suspicion' and 'Shadow of Doubt' with director Nicholas Ray’s interest in brooding and damaged enigmatic characters.

In a Lonely Place (1950) dir. Nicholas Ray
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Art Smith, Martha Stewart, Frank Lovejoy

By Alan Bacchus

The central idea of this picture is a straight out of Hitchcock’s playbook, an attraction of the story’s hero, Dixon Steele (Bogart) to his lovely single (and blonde) neighbour is threatened by a looming investigation to a murder of another lookalike ingénue who may or may not have been murdered by Steele. The opening scenes establish Bogart as a suave yet strangely anti-social screenwriter seemingly courting a coat check girl at dinner who has read the novel on which Dixon’s next screenplay will be based. He takes her back to his apartment complex as research. Is Dixon putting the moves on her, is he taking advantage of his position of power? Ray cleverly keeps us in the dark for much of these scenes, carrying this simmering tension throughout the whole picture.

When the girl turns up dead the next day Dixon becomes a suspect. Enter Dixon’s old pal Brub Nicolai (Lovejoy) who is a police detective in the case. Strangely, despite Nicolai’s involvement in the case, their social friendship continues, perhaps in an effort to sniff out more evidence. Meanwhile Dixon courts a neighbour, Laurel Gray (Grahame) in his complex who is serving as his alibi that evening. Again, a strange relationship in light of the gruesome association the two have together, develops. Amidst these allegations is a lurid romantic melodrama of Dixon and Laurel, who seem linked mutually by their own solitude and murky pasts of relationship failure.

Gloria Grahame gradually takes over the picture when we begin to see the relationship through her eyes. As more information about Dixon’s violent past gets revealed the more she suspects him as the murderer. And yet, she still stands by him. Ray crafts a number of tense sequences along the way which reveal the danger Dixon poses to Gray. Bogart (also a producer of the film) moves effortlessly between the Hollywood cool of his Sam Spade or Rick Blaine roles to that of a menacing psychopath and later to an empathetic loner trying to find love and escape his demons.

As an early film in Nicholas Ray’s prolific career in the 50’s and 60’s, like They Live By Night and On Dangerous Ground, In a Lonely Place is fashioned as a classic post-war noir. And yet, as much as the mystery surrounding Dixon’s involvement in the murder creates most of the suspense, it’s Bogart’s internal demons and issues with anger management which carries film. Ray and his writer Edmund North and Andrew Solt are crystal clear with their point of view and disregard any temptation to deal with the investigative/procedural details of the case. Ray takes the road less traveled and examines the pathology of violence from the internal perspective of Dixon himself.

In the end the mystery of who murdered the coat check girl is answered without fanfare. Ray saves his climax for Dixon and Grahame melodramatic reconciliation as psychologically tortured lovers.

In a Lonely Place is available on Blu-Ray through the Criterion Collection.

***½

Strike up the Band

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 16:15:00 +0000

Mickey Rooney is an electrifying dynamo in this foot-tapping, often astonishing musical which helps cement for me why the pre-war period was the absolute creative peak of Hollywood. This Rooney/Garland vehicle, the second of many musical pairings charts the journey of the young teenage pair to make something of their fledgling big band. The magic of the Busby Berkeley choreography matched with Rooney’s electrifying performance, as singer/dancer/actor /musician and Judy Garland’s youthful energy gives this film a pulse rarely seen in movies today.

Strike Up the Band (1940) dir. Busby Berkeley
Starring: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland

By Alan Bacchus

The story here is uncomplicated, in fact, now a cinematic cliché to some. “Let’s put on a show!” is the inspiration of Jimmy Connors (Rooney) a high school dreamer who desires to form a big band of his own and become a success. His muse is Mary Holden (Garland), his best pal with a golden voice. While Jimmy and Mary beg the teachers, the principal and local businessmen around town to give him a shot, Jimmy is oblivious to Mary’s devoted attraction to him. It’s a superficial treatment of a love story, but when chewed up by Rooney’s supremely engaging presence as a comedic actor it’s comic gold.

Strike Up the Band was one of four Rooney/Garland musicals directed by Busby Berkeley – the legendary choreographer/director known for his dizzyingly geometric staging. Band showcases Berkeley at his best - essentially a film comprised of a series of immaculately staged musical sequences filled in by the ‘put on a show’ and romantic chase plotting. The first sequence, La Conga, is a marvel, a whirling dervish of a sequence which begins quietly with a single accordion then gradually gains momentum through the rhythmic intensity of a full percussive orchestra. There’s almost no dancing in the sequence until Garland stops singing and joins a gymnasium of teenagers in a series of chorus lines shimmying to the conga shuffle.

The second major set piece is Mickey Rooney’s crowning achievement, ‘The Drummer Boy sequence’ a big band musical piece led by Rooney himself on the skins pounding away at the drums with energetic flare. Again, there’s almost no dancing or geometric choreography, but Berkeley’s camerawork and sharp editing (from Ben Lewis) matches the energy of Rooney’s performance. As a fan of Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash I can’t help but an influence in the crafting of this sequence.

The third major sequence is the raucous finale, Rooney’s grand swan song performance after winning the Chicago Big Bang competition. This time Rooney, like his drumming, takes an energetic, if not lovably sloppy, turn as conductor of the band. Rooney foppish hair flying, arms waving with glee and his energetic smile is infectious and inspiring. Berkeley combines all the talents of all the performers and segments the sequence with elements of the Conga sequence, the Drummer Boy sequence and Berkeley’s trademark flare with group choreography. It sends the picture out with a bang like only old Hollywood could.

Strike Up the Band exemplifies the pre-war peak of Hollywood, a dream making machine firing on all cylinders, achieving a rare kind of cinematic perfection.

****

Only Angels Have Wings

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 20:08:00 +0000

The exotic lands of South America provide the location for one of the big adventure films of Hollywood’s most famous year (1939). Cary Grant as an adventure-seeking enigmatic airline pilot running mail into dangerous regions of an unnamed town in the Andes established his Hollywood star status as a true leading man, game for comedy, romance and adventure. Howard Hawks’ recurring themes of male comraderie and his knack for wordy rhythmic dialogue elevate this straight-ahead actioner into something memorable and resonant.

Only Angels Have Wings (1939) dir. Howard Hawks
Starring: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth

By Alan Bacchus

Cary Grant is in full movie-star mode from the opening introduction of this picture. His swagger competes with John Wayne’s classic turn in Ford’s Stagecoach made the same year, and the cool under pressure demeanor of Humphrey Bogart’s memorable pre-war noir/crime roles. We might even track his wide brim hat, saggy pistol at his hip and belt of bullets as an influencer to Indiana Jones’ character design.

But we first meet Grant’s character (Geoff Carter) through the eyes of Bonnie Lee (Arthur) a sultry blond American musician who has stopped over in Barranca South America, a port of calls for ‘banana boats’, and who falls in love with the freewheeling lifestyle of the pilots of Barranca airlines, owned and operated by Carter himself. While not top notch pilots, Barranca seems to be a refuge for rejects of other airlines, a hodgepodge of drunks, weirdoes and headcases united only by their love of high-risk flying. Without getting paid much the ragtag group of men, which include “Kid” Dabb, “Sparks” Reynolds, “Gent” Shelton, “Dutchy” Van Ruyter and “Tex” Gordon , fly around dangerous flying routes to deliver mail and other supplies throughout the region.

Hawks takes us through a week in the daily lives of these men and their high stakes missions of peril. Other than the awkward presence of Lee, disturbing the peace is the death of one of their mates after a risky flight through inclement weather and later the return of Bat McPherson, a cowardly traitor whose piloting failure saw one Carter’s former employees killed in a shameful act of betrayal. McPherson’s journey to redemption is so compelling it threatens to steal Carter and Lee’s scenes. There’s some plotting about a government contract at stake which could make the fledging airline solvent, but in hindsight it feels like script fodder for Hawks’ true desires to wring as much drama, romance and tension from Carter and Lee’s relationship and create energetic suspenseful action sequences.

The film’s aerial photography has been renowned since its release, and winning its own Oscar for best special effects. A combination of real location filming, process studio photography and model work create these sequences. With today’s eyes these sequences don’t the match fireworks of the character work built by Hawks, his actors and the screenwriter Jules Furthman. Lee just can’t understand the lack of empathy and mourning for the death of Joe, the young pilot who dies early on, nor can she understand the lack of commitment Carter gives to their coy relationship. “No looking ahead, no tomorrows, just today” is Carter’s mantra. But Lee tries her best to crack. But Grant, in top notch, enigmatic form will not budge.

The film’s most memorable scene is the finale, when Carter finally admits his love for Lee and is confronted to make a commitment to be with her, until another frantic call for help comes through the radio breaking up their climactic moment. As Carter breaks back into hero mode, he leaves Lee’s question un-answered leading to a delightfully ambiguous ending for the audience.

Only Angels Have Wings is available via the Criterion Collection.

***

Over the Edge

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 15:53:00 +0000

A sublime time capsule of the era, Over the Edge, exists as a rarely-seen cult classic, plugging nihilistic punk-like anger into the conventions of a teen rebel movie. Based on an actual incident in which the teenagers of a dreary Midwestern town unite and use anarchic violence to take over their school, director Jonathan Kaplan and his team create an angst-fueled ride of adolescent rebellion. The soundtrack featuring Cheap Trick, The Ramones, Van Halen and the Cars, exemplifies the pitch perfect American suburban flavor of this film.

Over the Edge (1979) dir. Jonathan Kaplan
Starring: Michael Eric Kramer, Matt Dillon, Pamela Ludwig, Vincent Spano, Tom Fergus

By Alan Bacchus

Most articles about this film cite Matt Dillon’s screen debut, as a tough 13 year old whose murder incites the violent actions in the finale of the film. There’s also the acknowledged influence on Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, as well as the noted influence on Kurt Cobain’s youth. Despite a low budget and inexperienced cast of young people the film survives the ravages of time and emerges as a unique time capsule of the period.

Kaplan gives power to his young characters, who experience intolerance from their adult superiors, parents, cops and teachers. Like the influential teen rebel films of the 50’s and 60’s, violence and gang culture features prominently, and here a strong punk attitude is infused. If anything the picture feels like an R-rated precursor to the Spielberg-influenced kids vs. adults genre of the 80’s, but before the commercialization of the genre.

Over the Edge rings authentic and its credibility earned through the honest performances of the newbie teenage cast. Matt Dillon is a clear star. His confidence and screen presence is palpable, a performance which likely led to being cast in three S.E. Hinton films in the 80’s (The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Tex).

But the hero of the picture is Michael Eric Kramer’s ‘Carl’ character, a smaller kid, who gets beat up by a group of troublemakers who at the beginning of the film disrupt the authorities by firing a bb gun at a police car from an over pass. This action seems to be the last straw in a series of increasing malevolent behavior of young people experiencing cabin fever of the gated suburban neighbourhood.

Where in any other film Carl’s beating might incite some kind of journey for revenge or reconciliation, the event barely phases Carl. Kaplan wonderfully depicts Carl’s daily grind activities, from school, to partying, to scoring with the local girls, with the same kind of lazy naturalism as Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, or more recently David Robert Mitchell’s Myth of the American Sleepover.

Plotting is kept a minimum, but a key point is when the local businessman close the kids’ local rec centre while a wealthy business investor recces the area for a new land development. Put off by their disregard the kids respond by amplifying their malfeasance, leading to the film's centre-piece sequence, a violent siege of their high school.

We can pull a number of memorable compositions from this film which could serve as representative images of the era, including the sobering but memorable final image of the group of kids being sent away from the town (presumably to prison) on a school bus.

***½

Sorcerer

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:53:00 +0000

What a strange and wonderful picture, a thrilling remake of Clouzot’s Wages of Fear, made with the documentary-like realism which embodied most of Friedkin’s films. At a cost of nearly $22m of 1977 dollars, Sorcerer exemplifies the hubris of those celebrated 70’s mavricks who at the beginning of the decade shook up the studio system with the New Hollywood movement then through a series of expensive flops saw the end of the progressive scene at the onset of the 1980’s. Sorcerer survives magnificently over time as one of Friedkin’s best films, now revered by cineastes around.

Sorcerer (1977) dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, Amidou

By Alan Bacchus

There’s no doubt this picture was a challenge to audiences from the outset. The opening 25mins featured the actions of four separate, seemingly unrelated characters from four different countries around the world. There’s an assassination of a wealthy man by an unassuming Mexican hitman; an Arab terrorist who blows up an Israeli building; a French businessman desperately trying to backtrack on some kind of fraudulent business deal gone bad; and a gangland driver caught in the crossfire of a mob-related war in New Jersey. Each of these sequences, plotted out with maximum intrigue and mystery, directed like four different films, figures only as preamble to the story of these same four men who seek refuge in an unnamed desolate South American village.

It isn’t until the midpoint of the film when the foursome, receive the assignment of driving two trucks filled with highly sensitive dynamite, across the treacherous rain forest with the mission to blow up a damaged oil refinery. It’s easy to see the patience of the audience tested through this lengthy set up, however mysterious and intriguing. It’s easy to see American audiences alienated by the strange company of international actors (with the exception of Roy Scheider) playing these gruff refugees. And it’s easy to see American audiences put off by Tangerine Dream’s strange electronic music score, one the first of its kind in a mainstream American film.

The second half of the picture is an undeniable masterclass of sustain tension and action filmmaking as Friedkin crafts a series of thrilling sequences from the preparation sequences before setting off on the journey to the half dozen action set pieces expertly staged and executed with thrilling realism. The expert hands of editors Bud Smith and Robert K. Lampert deserves much of this credit. I’d argue the picture as being a masterclass exercise in montage editing. While the audacious execution of the famous bridge sequences is bold in its glorious wideshots of the trucks swinging perilously over the river, the expert editing of Friedkin’s carefully curated close-ups amplify the terror to Hitchcock levels of suspense.

The competition sequence early on where we see the various villages vying for the lucrative job of driving the trucks, with today’s eyes, looks like guidebook of montage filmmaking used by action filmmakers in the 1980’s and beyond. In fact much of the picture is cut with the same rhythm of montage editing, creating an elegant kind of flow commonplace in most of today’s commercial action films.

Thus, Sorcerer feels years ahead of its time, working on another level of cinema yet to be imitated, borrowed, and even lampooned (see montage sequences in The Evil Dead). Thankfully Sorcerer is now celebrated and Friedkin deservingly vindicated.

****

Southern Comfort

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 18:49:00 +0000

Walter Hill’s Cajun siege picture, for a long time barely registering on the cultural radar, for cinephiles now sits nicely in the highly influential late 70’s-early 80’s period of Hill’s filmography. At once a retelling of the wolfpack themed pictures Hill nearly perfected around this time ('Alien', 'The Warriors', 'The Long Riders'), but also sharp allegory to American foreign policy, 'Southern Comfort', like all of Hill’s films resonates on multiple levels – historical and social commentary, cinematic legacy and a good old fashioned movie thrills.

Southern Comfort (1981) dir. Walter Hill
Starring: Keith Carradine, Powers Booth, Fred Ward, T.K. Carter, Peter Coyote

By Alan Bacchus

Southern Comfort comes at the end of a unique period in the Walter Hill’s career, the 70’s cinematic mentality of character-based genre films with a socio-political conscience. After penning a number of early 70’s thrillers, including Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway and after his directorial debut in 1975’s Hard Times, Walter Hill engaged in an impressive run of four films from 1978 to 1981, The Driver, The Warriors, Alien (only written and produced) and Southern Comfort. Each of these pictures influential and memorable in their own ways, but with Southern Comfort unfortunately left off the radar.

In the Shout Factory Blu-Ray special features Hill is self-analytical enough to admit Southern Comfort retells the same story he’s written into many of his other pictures, a pack hunting group of soldiers playing cat and mouse with a largely unseen enemy in a claustrophobic isolating environment. It’s easy to see how the basic elements of Alien and The Warriors get transplanted into Southern Comfort. And yet Hill and his picture exemplifies why this kind of cinematic recycling is essential to the audience’s enjoyment of the film.

Hill’s grey-shaded heroes are comprised of National Guardsmen on a weekend training mission, with each character fitting their archetypal requirement: Peter Coyote as the commanding leader who is killed off early by the gun of a Cajun local; Keith Carradine as the ‘everyman’ who comes to take the lead for the group once the formal chain of command falls apart; Fred Ward and Lewis Smith as the antagonizing brats whose kill-or-be-killed superiority attitude comes at odds with the humane/moralistic side of the group; and T.K. Carter and Franklyn Seales, black men who feel out of place in the often racist white power struggle at play.

Instead of the gang-infested streets of New York or the dark metallic confines of a space ship, Hill’s alien environment here are the swamps of the Louisiana Bayou. Immersive realism is the visual palette employed, Hill’s actors trudge through the muck and water for the entire film, presumably beaten down by the arduous Lousiana heat as well. DP Andrew Laszo and the film’s production designers aid in creating a palette of muted browns and greens, rich compositions framed from the hanging branches of bayou cypress trees down to the eerie still waters of the swamp itself.

It’s a familiar journey and escalation of events which begins with a standard military exercise and quickly turns into real-world battle both internal and external to the group. Hill at times relies too heavily on these archetypal relationships to push the conflict. But Hill’s expertly assembled group of players feels like a who’s who of 1980’s character actors admirably chews every line delivered with gusto. The film also has the misfortune of sitting in the shadow of Deliverance (1972) and First Blood (1982), two superior elemental thrillers made with even greater authenticity and more intense cat and mouse action.

But Hill’s intense third act finale, wherein survivors Carradine and Booth find refuge in a Cajun township and engage in one last fight for survival, is a marvel of visual storytelling and one of the best technically-crafted sequences in his filmography. Ry Cooder’s thumping zydeco jiggy creates a pulsing musical rhythm against which Hill creates his thrilling final confrontation. The scene is influenced from the best of the Western genre sundown showdowns of heroes and villains, and edited with the same Peckinpah-influenced montage style pace of editing Hill would repeat in many of his films. By the time Keith Carradine blows away the terrifically-mustached Sonny Landham at the end our fingers are nails-deep into our armchairs with tension.

***½

Sweetie

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 20:30:00 +0000

Sweetie, the title character of Jane Campion’s idiosyncratic and typically Aussie -quirky first feature, is the house guest from hell, the firebrand bi-polar sister of Kay who shows up unwanted at Kay and her boyfriend's door thus disrupting her attempt at a regular life of independence from her thoroughly messed up family. Strange but inspired, Sweetie admirably showed the signs of a director with a unique voice and laid the thematic sign posts for Campion's future works.

Sweetie (1989) dir. Jane Campion
Starring: Genevieve Lemon, Karen Colston, Tom Lycos, Dorothy Barry

By Alan Bacchus

Director Jane Campion replaces a precise, forward-moving narrative, a plot which can't be summarized sufficiently in a neat paragraph, with a meandering series of set pieces that sketch out the portrait of Kay and Sweetie’s kooky family. In between the odd comic framing and wackiness, there’s a danger brewing in Sweetie, a violent streak that we sense will erupt in an impending tragedy.

While not the lead, Sweetie earns the status of title character for Lemon’s commanding performance as a bottle full of energy. Her chubby body type and rock and roll attitude and attire threatened to overwhelm everything else. But Campion is smart to bring Sweetie in at the beginning of the second act, concentrating on establishing Kay’s own set of peculiar idiosyncrasies and inhibitions.
It’s a decent start to her career, though the reliance on the show-offy wide angle lenses would later be discarded as a visual tool. Her subsequent films are certainly more rich, textured and emotionally engaging than the off-centre framing and perspective-shifting compositions.

The film’s closest cousin is clearly Holy Smoke, the 1999 Kate Winslet/Harvey Keitel film, which told the story of a cult de-programmer who combats the sexual persuasions of Kate Winslet. We can see striking similarities in the characterizations of the affable family members in both films, as well as the skewed sense of Aussie wit, a funny bone that is conspicuously missing from most of Campion’s other films. Like Holy Smoke, when the action switches from the city to the outback, things get even weirder. We don’t see anything comparable to a crying Harvey Keitel wandering the desert in lipstick and a dress, but Kay’s boyfriend Louis, her off-the-wall father and her mentally-challenged brother are weird enough, not excluding that David Lynch-worthy cowboy dance sequence.

Other connections to Campion’s other work are clearly her female hero Kay and the emotionally damaged Sweetie. Of course, there’s some sex, not the salacious graphic variety of The Piano, but it’s a strong theme that drives much of the conflict.

***

Blackhat

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:17:00 +0000

It’s impossible not to watch a Michael Mann film these days without the context of his previous work in mind. Because virtually each and every one of Mann’s films connect so intimately with one another in theme, character and tone. Blackhat is no exception, a crackerjack procedure crime picture about a different kind of thief, tracking a different kind of criminal essentially retelling the cat and mouse chase antics of obsessive cops and robbers on ultra-grey sides of good and evil as in Mann’s previous films.

Blackhat (2015) dir. Michael Mann
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Wei Tang, Viola Davis, Leehom Wang, Ritchie Coster

By Alan Bacchus

The moment we see Chris Hemsworth’s character, Nick Hathaway, introduced in a jail cell, smugly chewing gum, sporting a tight white t-shirt, with slick-backed hair, we instantly connect this to Brian Cox’s memorable version of Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter. This is both part of the thrill of the auteur theory and essential to the legacy of cinema. We’re essentially watching Michael Mann remake the same film over and over again.

While the South Asian locales are stunningly beautiful, fresh, mysterious and exotic, Blackhat is missing the gravitas and urgency of his more renowned masterpieces The Insider and Heat. The film is also burdened with the ugly ‘video’ look which has permeated his high-def phase in his career after he abandoned 35mm film in Collateral. When HD was in its infancy we could marvel at the crispness of the digital image and its ability to capture Los Angeles dusk so beautifully. We could also forgive some of the choppy action which does not hold up as well as good old fashioned film. While the rest of the world has moved on and improved action in the digital world, Mann still seems stuck on choppy video action. In short, there’s a distinct 30fps/home video look to Mann’s action sequences.

Sadly, this glaringly visual deficiency is enough to cloud one’s enjoyment and engagement in the picture. The story holds up and provides the same kind of intense cat and mouse chase plotting we all want to see. After two major hacks, one a Hong Kong nuclear facility and two, a stock exchange heist, the Chinese authorities seek to use Nick Hathaway (Hemsworth) , a prisoned hacker whose original code was used in the computer virus, to help trace the crime to its perpetrator. It doesn’t take long for Mann’s crack team to form, which includes Chinese federal cop Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang), his techie sister Chen Lien (Tang Wei), and American FBI agent Carol Barrett (Viola Davis).

From here it’s a skillfully realized procedural investigation which brings the team to a number of locations across the globe, Chicago, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Kuala Lampur and Jakarta. Mann’s lensing of the locales are often stunning, opting for much of the exterior shooting to occur during the same hour of dusk as Collateral. Three or four taut action sequences arrive quickly and shock us with its firm punctuation of violence. While Heat masterfully built its tension slowly before thekey action set pieces, in Blackhat, action erupts without warning, and often only lasting a few minutes or seconds, an effect which leaves the viewer on edge and uncomfortable for much of the picture.

A wonky love story doesn’t quite work, but the attention to the softer side of Hemsworth’s character is a notable and welcomed difference than Mann’s other cold-hearted heroes from previous works. And a number of sharp story turns keep up a healthy feeling of unpredictability. But like the admirable qualities of Miami Vice and Public Enemies, the work is tarnished by the conspicuous choice of Mann’s garish 30fps video look. All critics have pointed out these visual deficiencies, and yet Mann continues to go back to this look – even when these pictures have proved to be not-successful financially. But we all must take the good with the bad with these auteur pictures and at the end of Mann's career even a minor picture like this will have a valued place at the table.

***

The Gold Rush

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 20:41:00 +0000

The second of Chaplin’s feature films (after 1921’s 'The Kid') loses nothing over time, easily gliding past all technical innovations (sound, colour, widescreen, 3D). And with Chaplin’s natural gifts as a filmmaker and performer, he crafts a hilarious adventure epic with heartbreaking emotional sentimentality.

The Gold Rush (1925) dir. Charles Chaplin
Starring: Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Georgia Hale

By Alan Bacchus

In this adventure the Tramp finds himself traversing the Rocky Mountains to join the throngs of treasure seekers during the Klondike Gold Rush. The first set piece occurs when the Tramp seeks shelter from a storm in a small shack along with a fellow prospector and a wanted fugitive. The physical hijinks include the famous storm sequence, which has the Tramp being blown throughout the cabin. The sequence ends with the fugitive killed and the prospector knocked unconscious without any memory of the location of his gold cache.

The next stop on Chaplin’s journey is the prospecting town, where he has given up prospecting and instead tries to find any kind of work. His next gig has him house sitting a cabin, where he falls in love with a local comely gal. The miscommunication of affection between the two is agonizing for us. At one point the Tramp gets a date with the gal on New Year's Eve, but he gets stood up when she attends a local dance instead. The result is earth-shatteringly emotional and heartbreaking.

As perfect and effective as his performance is, Chaplin the director tantalizes us with some bravura cinematic sequences and stunning visual compositions. The Tramp’s entrance into the dance hall for instance, looking at the hundreds of frolicking youth dancing in the barn, is stunningly composed with Chaplin in the centre framed underneath the support beams of the building (see still above).

The dancing sequence features some of Chaplin’s best physical comedy, which can overshadow his directorial skills in choreographing scenes of a massive scale, specifically the final tilting house sequence that shows Chaplin’s panache with spectacle and grandeur.

Three of the most famous scenes in all of cinema include; the dancing of the buns, wherein Chaplin entertains his female guests by sticking his two forks in pieces of bread and dancing a jig to entertain them; Tramp serving and eating his boots for dinner; and the rambunctious frozen Tramp sequence, which has the fugitive throwing a frozen solid Tramp around the room like a pole.

But it’s Chaplin's innate precision with his emotions that makes him a genius. His remarkable simplicity of movement and performance, moving us from extremes of laughter to heartbreaking pity and lasering in on his own core emotions, is a gift only a handful of filmmakers could ever match.

****

The Gold Rush is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

The Hunger

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 18:09:00 +0000

Overwhelmingly beautiful but cold, Tony Scott’s The Hunger, once dismissed back in the day, now resounds as a seminal film of the vampire genre. Consciously aloof, Scott seemed to be striving for what Ridley Scott strove for in his early days, expressive, moody and supremely visual tone pieces. For better or worse Scott would never make a film this again, quickly moving into the Bruckheimer brand of cinema.

The Hunger (1983) dir. Tony Scott
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, David Bowie

By Alan Bacchus

The over-stylization and attention to the same kind of extreme nourish visual details and design of big brother Ridley's Blade Runner, is immediately apparent in the opening scene which cuts three different scenes together in montage. The scene which plays without sound and marred by some strangely abrupt and hokey editing is both incoherent and magical in its experimental form.

The opening scene establishes the characters of Miriam (Deneuve) and John (Bowie) a couple who stalk another couple at a Bauhaus concert. Once at home, their deception reveals itself as a feast of Miriam and John, both vampires quenching their thirst for blood. At the same, we watch Susan Sarandon playing Doctor Sarah Roberts conducting strange aging experiments on a laboratory monkey.

The first half of the picture plays out the last days of Bowie’s character. When hungry, the vampires in this story age in rapidity, and for Bowie, who after a century of life now finds pause in fulfilling his appetite. Being aware of the study of Sarandon’s character on aging might John find a cure to his ailment? The film’s most haunting scene features Bowie who approaches and attempts to confess to Dr. Sarah his own ailment, but is blown off as a nut. Scott stunningly intercuts Sarah’s hospital experiments with Bowie rapid aging over the course of the day who patiently waits outside her office. It’s arguably the most emotional scene of Scott’s career, one which resounds even more due to Bowie’s recent death.

The second half plays out the relationship of Miriam and Sarah. After John dies from the incapacitation of age, Miriam seeks out a new partner. Miriam gives into the coy attraction with Dr. Sarah, an affair consummated with one of the more famous set pieces in the film, a lengthy love scene between Deneuve and Sarandon, shot with the kind of sensual flare which would become a hallmark of Scott’s career.

The second half of the film doesn’t match the haunting and tragic power of the scenes with David Bowie. The third act seems forced to resolve itself with an unsatisfying and arbitrary action scene, albeit intense and eye popping.

It would be hard to find a more stunning film made at that in terms of pure cinematography and lighting. If the 1980’s were a dead zone decade of cinema, I'd argue the decade as being the unrivaled peak of colour cinematography. It seems as if colour film had finally matured and caught up to the richness and textures of B&W film in its heyday. And few films of the decade reached the level of visual splendor achieved by The Hunger.

***½

52 Pick Up

noreply@blogger.com (Alan Bacchus) — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 14:40:00 +0000

This underseen Elmore Leonard-penned project about a prominent LA industrialist blackmailed for his infidelity cruises through the seedy LA crime underworld in the same way Chinatown and other LA-based noir films before it. But as a time capsule of the decade, for better or worse, it’s also burdened with the vulgarities of 1980’s cinema.

52 Pick Up (1986) dir. John Frankenheimer
Starring: Roy Scheider, Ann-Margaret, John Glover, Vanity, Kelly Preston

By Alan Bacchus

By the 1980’s John Frankenheimer, once a tower of cinema in the 1960’s, was making irrelevant action/thrillers, leaving little to be remembered or cherished in the vain of Manchurian Candidate, Birdman of Alcatraz or Seconds. Working under the banner of Cannon Films/Golan Globus, Frankenheimer and writer Elmore Leonard feel constrained by the exploitative excessiveness of the era.

Roy Scheider, who feels utterly essential to this role, plays Harry Mitchell a wealthy business man, married to Ann-Margaret an LA political candidate. Frankenheimer’s camera cleverly lingers on and idealizes the couple privileged lifestyle and extravagant home. But a tryst with a local stripper catches the attention of a trio seedy blackmailers who kidnap Harry’s mistress (Kelly Preston) and ransom her off for a $100,000 ($105k to be exact) price tag. A series of bad decisions by Harry results in a spiral downward into a rabbit hole of danger and jeopardy. Unable to go the authorities Harry reacts and plots his own way out of his slippery predicament.

Elmore Leonard’s script, based on his novel, boasts most of the hallmarks of his classic works – small time gangsters meeting high-class unsuspecting victims, quid-pro-quo nourish plotting cleverly set up and paid off, and memorable characters on both sides of the law. Leonard’s sense of humour unfortunately feels lost in the uncompromising grisliness of Harry’s journey.

The effortlessly useable character actor John Glover plays the wily ringleader with verve. And the Clarence Williams III Bobby Shy is downright nasty as a murderous henchmen. Leonard and Frankenheimer situate his villains in the porn underworld of Los Angeles, which works both on the level of pure cinematic titillation and exploitation but also a sharp critique of the strange dichotomy slickness/grossness of Los Angeles.

Nudity is rampant and women are frequently terrorized, abused, strangled, raped and killed with little pause or reflection by the filmmakers. Exploitation of women is taken for granted in the picture, but looking back 30 years hence its possible to view such behavior in the way Paul Verhoven’s Robocop or Brian De Palma’s Body Double are viewed today as a hyper-violent genre satires.

Frankenheimer's sure hand behind the camera means robust production values and sharp direction and editing and rich cinematography. 80’s design and iconography can now seem in throwback movies of today such as Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive.

***