Dir. Nimród Antal
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, 7/8/2010, 7:30

[Warning: CONTAINS SPOILERS!]

Predators doesn’t waste any time getting straight into the action. Though it does not begin en media res, it surely begins “in the middle of things.” The film opens on a free falling Adrien Brody who, after waking from unconsciousness, pounds at the beeping, glowing, Iron Man-esque medallion on his chest in hopes that it will release his parachute. It does, but just barely, as the camo-clad Brody tears through thick canopy, landing with a bassy thud on the jungle floor. The film’s title card flashes across the screen: “PREDATORS.”

For those of you who are fans of the original film, you may very well enjoy this picture. It is not nearly as fleshed out in terms of plot development, as the first film. But it does deliver on plenty of key conventions of the first film. There are various scenes of violence among and between the predators and the heavily-equipped group of human badasses constantly shifting the roles of predators and prey. Predators also takes advantage of Alan Silvestri’s percussive score from the original installment, while introducing original music by John Debney that slides in seamlessly along side it. If you were able to stomach Predator 2 (1990), you should adore this latest installment, though the plot development of this sequel doesn’t even live up to the oft-denigrated first sequel.

The gang, or what’s left of them

Brody scurries to his feet, no worse for wear, after his fall. Another body soon follows, landing with a similarly hard thud, introducing the sniper rifle-toting Isabelle, played by Alice Braga. We are quickly introduced to the rest of the motley band of killers: Russian military man Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov), a throwback to Bill Duke’s Mac with his minigun and a heavy trigger finger; Danny Trejo double-fists twin Heckler & Koch MP5K’s as Cuchillo, the Mexican cartel enforcer; Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali) is a member of a Sierra Leone death squad and favors an AKS-47; the suit-wearing Yakuza, Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien), relies on the more compact Baretta; and, finally, when the bullets and pulse blasts star ripping through air and flesh alike, the death row inmate Stans unsheathes his prison shank?

Then there is Edwin, played by Topher Grace. Edwin, who claims to be a doctor, is introduced, stuck in a tree and screaming for someone to help him. He is not one of the calm, cool killers that comprise the rest of the gang. Instead, he is whiny, helpless, and unarmed. Surely there is more to Edwin than meets the eye. This is no spoiler, as anyone who knows anything about film and/or character development should be immediately suspicious of a character like Edwin. Brody’s character Royce spells it out in the first few minutes of the film when he tells Isabella that Edwin doesn’t belong.

Edwin is one of the big flaws of this film. He works as little more than a plot device, his naïveté luring the other members of the group into dangerous situations and providing a few moments of comedic levity. Of course there is a none-too-surprising revelation at the climax that shifts spectators’ understandings of Edwin. But, without revealing too much, I must simply say there is no reason for Edwin to be in this film. His plot progressing role as an initiator of danger could just have easily been serviced by the many traps laid by the predators, as it does in other parts of the film, and the minimally-armed Stans, is already positioned as a possible—even superior—comedic outlet. Edwin’s character twist near the film’s end is anticlimactic, anything but surprising, and too ephemeral to earn a place in this script.

You don’t need bulging muscles if you sport a big enough gun.

Brody, on the other hand, works well as the trim, but convincing American-born mercenary Royce. I was skeptical of the wiry actor’s abilities to fill a hard body action hero role. But Brody put on a few pounds, a hulking gun, and a jaded demeanor to transform into a fitting successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch. Predator fans will also be pleased with the addition of a new species of predator that avoids the rather hokey quality of the Alien/Predator hybrid created at the end of Alien vs. Predator (2004) as well as a dog-like creature the predators use to flush out their prey.

The film is not void of entertainment, though clearly there are major flaws in the forms of underdeveloped plot and characters. I hesitate to recommend this movie to the general pool of filmgoers, but fans of the franchise as well as violence-seeking, teenaged boys and girls will probably enjoy it.

One of Predators’ new predators and his dog.

Time for the weekly roundup of Weird Wednesday, Terror Tuesday, special events and outstanding new releases that you will not want to miss this week. Only the best selections here, aiming to ensure you see at least one great film every day.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 7/5, 7/6, and 7/7
Alamo Ritz – CROPSEY
Like a real-life Blair Witch Project, this documentary focuses on an urban legend about a boogeyman-esque escaped psychopath who kidnapped and murdered children. Unlike Blair Witch, there genuinely was a mentally disturbed man who was arrested for the deaths of three children, all of whom had mental disabilities themselves. The problem was, this man was convicted without much in the way of conclusive evidence, so the filmmakers explore the case that was made against the suspect and the mysterious Willowbrook campus, an abandoned mental institution where many of the crimes, and satanic rituals, were supposed to have taken place. All sounds too crazy to be true. Isn’t it?

Tuesday 7/6, 7:00pm
The Paramount – Douglas Sirk Double Feature: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS and IMITATION OF LIFE
At first glance, these Technicolor confections from Douglas Sirk might seem outdated; the participation of such 50s luminaries as Rock Hudson and Sandra Dee certainly won’t ease those concerns. And yet, with each generation, these films continue to gain a strong fan following among film scholars and moviegoers alike. Why? Sirk was a master of the melodrama, a genre of storytelling that will never age as long people have the capacity to cry a little. The women in these films are confronted with problems that may sound like the stuff of daytime soaps, but Sirk and his crew elevate the material through their ingenious use of lighting and framing, isolating these characters both literally and visually. The Paramount will be handing out free Kleenex tissues for a reason.

Wednesday 7/7, 11:55pm
Alamo Ritz – Weird Wednesday: GONE WITH THE POPE
Frequent attendees of Weird Wednesday will probably remember the trailer for MASSACRE MAFIA STYLE. Well, the director of that film made another, which was once thought lost. The Alamo has found it, though, and director Duke Mitchell’s can now be seen by an audience! We saw the trailer for it last week, and it looks like a lot of fun. With a premise that features a con man who kidnaps the pope and demands one dollar from every single Catholic in the world, how can you go wrong?

Friday 7/2-Thursday 7/8
Regal Arbor – I AM LOVE
Starring the striking Tilda Swinton and featuring the music of one of the great contemporary composers John Adams, this film promises to be a real treat for two of the five senses. I think the trailer gets that point across.

What makes a horrible film?

So, this is Austin Cinephile, a place for the collection of essays about cinema love, not cinema hate. Negatively isn’t exactly what we’re aiming for. That said, love and hate are often intimately intertwined (just ask my ex-wife), and one cannot experience one without the other. Daniel once wrote, in his now-famous Lord Love a Duck review, that “You’ve got to constantly watch bad cinema in order to truly understand good cinema.” This is an important thing to keep in mind.

Further, great cinema is a pursuit, an adventure that is often wrought with mediocrities along the way. We must all see bad film as the plague that it is, and be able to move past it in order to find the gems of the screen.

This week, we explore what characteristics, energies, and events lead to uninspiring cinema.

Daniel

What makes a movie horrible? The absence of ambition! Lack of soul! Uninspired participation! A movie is bad if the people involved are not wholly committed to the cinema as an institution which must constantly be built up and torn down. A movie is rotten if the actors are concerned with themselves and their performances, if the producers are trying to make a derivative work, or if the director hasn’t seen any Renoir films.

Reject bad cinema. Discredit those who espouse the virtue of a film that is anything less than brilliant. The creative spirit should be embraced above all else. Encourage experimentation and expression. Shun mediocrity.

The effect of a horrible film is emptiness. There is no list of techniques for a bad or good film. Only ideas! Only heart! Bad cinema takes us nowhere, it contributes nothing, and it should be stomped out.

Michael

I can’t say I’m pleased with this prompt. The question is just so large and nonspecific that to attempt to answer it would result in answers just as unwieldy, over generalized, and surely dull. A horrible movie is a movie with a bad script? With bad acting? Poor direction? Dull cinematography? Horrible sound? All of the above? As film critics it is our job to examine cinema, to assess what works and what doesn’t. But this job is executed on a film-by-film basis. What works in one film might fail horribly in another and vise versa. There are no steadfast rules for what makes a great film or a horrible one. That is the beauty of cinema. There is a near infinite number of techniques for all aspects of the production process just waiting to be arranged in interesting and effective ways. And maybe therein lies my broad, overgeneralized, nondescript answer. Good movies are those that utilize the tools of cinema, employing them in effective ways and with inspiring results. Horrible films do not do this. They either underuse their tools or apply them in uncreative ways.

Steph

My roommate and I recently watched (me for the third time, her for the first) New Moon. During our viewing, I realized that I am the Paula Abdul of film critics. I want to award way too many points for effort, and it’s difficult for me to write off a film as “horrible” if I can find even just one or two elements I enjoyed. I wouldn’t call New Moon horrible, for example, because I think its cinematography has some really lovely moments, some of its supporting actors are quite good (Michael Sheen’s role gets better every time I watch it), and Alexandre Desplat’s score is sublime. Unsurprisingly, then, if I were to make a list of films I consider horrible, it would be a relatively short list.

However, for the purpose of this exercise, I want to focus on a very subjective element of film viewing that often affects our opinions more than I think we realize: our expectations. It is nearly impossible to watch a film without them. Perhaps you’ve read the novel the filmmaker is adapting; perhaps you read a review or heard two people talking about it on the subway; perhaps you’re familiar with one of the actors or the director. Even a knowledge of the cinematic calendar (brainless blockbusters in the summer, award-bait in the winter) can influence your expectations as you walk into that cool, dark space.

I often have a hard time judging movies to be terrible if they exceed my low expectations. A few years ago a co-worker of mine at the independent video store where I work recommended that I see a film called Dedication. Mandy Moore featured prominently on the DVD cover, and since it had gone straight to DVD, I didn’t have high hopes. However, I was pleasantly surprised by Billy Crudup’s performance and some of the unusually phrased dialogue, and I found myself liking the film more than it probably deserved, objectively speaking.

Of course, the inverse of my expectation hypothesis also holds true. If my high expectations for a film are disappointed, my opinion is often harsher than the film deserves. I was so unexpectedly delighted by Iron Man that I went eagerly into the theater for its sequel. I suppose what I saw was adequate. Robert Downey Jr. seemed to be having fun, and he’s a magnetic enough presence that I wasn’t bored. But I wanted fireworks and instead I got noise, and I left the theater discontented and glad I hadn’t paid for my ticket.

Are audience expectations and the extent to which they influence our opinions fair? Perhaps not. Filmmaking is a complicated art. A film is created and shaped by so many different people that writing off an entire film as terrible seems simplistic. And yet terrible films exist, and they are sometimes produced by brilliant filmmakers. Instead of being dismayed, maybe we should be relieved. Perfection is a lot to expect of anyone, and if we can forgive our filmmakers their flops, perhaps we can also let ourselves off the hook every now and again.

Stephen

In general, a horrible film is one in which art is entirely sacrificed at the altar of commerce. Consider the most recent target of critical vitriol: the action-romantic comedy. Films such as The Bounty Hunter, Killers, and Knight and Day are not bad simply because the dialogue is pedestrian, the actors uninterested and uninteresting, and the directing nonexistent, but because the very genre and its structure seem to be the calculated result of audience testing and demographic polling.

It is as if we now have films written, directed, and produced by the marketing departments of the major studios, scattershot contrivances with a few explosions here and some supposedly witty repartee there, meant to be enjoyed by men and women of all ages. This is the cynical mood prevailing in the film industry today. No one can afford to make a film for a specific audience, to take a risk on a film that seems unmarketable to all but a few select groups of moviegoers. Thus, we are given horrible films, films that please everyone but challenge and inspire no one.

However, only a naif would argue that the filmmaking process must always and only be motivated by aesthetics; the film industry has been carefully balanced between beauty and greed since its earliest days. Attention must be paid to those horrible films that exist on the other end of the spectrum from profit-driven drivel, which result from the failure of executives and producers to step in and stop an enthusiastic but misguided director from running a film into the ground. We call these films self-indulgent. For a recent example, one need look no further than Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, which played like an inside joke between the director, Tilda Swinton, and about three other people. Here, Jarmusch tried to sell a meandering film with no narrative thrust and what can only be called character anti-development by tossing in some faux-philosophical notions and a few meditation scenes. I, for one, wasn’t buying it.

Of course, this brings us to the one advantage self-indulgence has over commercial indifference. My co-writer Daniel Metz happened to love The Limits of Control; all the things that did not work for me worked quite well for him. Therefore, I would argue that, while an agreement can usually be made about horrible mainstream schlock, self-indulgent films are often treasured by some and hated by others. I loved Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, but pretty much everyone else said it was self-indulgent rubbish. This points to the ultimate difficulty of this week’s question: if a few people swear by an artistically ambitious film and defend it all costs, does that automatically exclude it from being as “horrible” as those commercial films? All I know is this: Daniel thought The Limits of Control was one of the ten best films of last year, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t horrible.

Time for the weekly roundup of Weird Wednesday, Terror Tuesday, special events and outstanding new releases that you will not want to miss this week. Only the best selections here, aiming to ensure you see at least one great film every day.

Saturday-Sunday 6/26-6/27, 12:00pm
Alamo Ritz – ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS
Daniel and Stephen recently enjoyed this 1960 Italian masterpiece in a course we took at the University of Texas. Operatic is a word often used to describe this nearly three-hour-long epic melodrama about a family who leaves poverty-stricken Southern Italy behind to seek prosperity in bustling Milan. However, as the brothers each begin to go their separate ways in order to fulfill their individual desires, the family bond is strained, a recurring theme among postwar Italian films of which this is one of the absolute best.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday 6/28,6/29, and 6/30, 7:00pm
Alamo Ritz – TRASH HUMPERS
If the name Harmony Korine means anything to you, or if you’ve seen the posters for this film in the Alamo lobbies, chances are you are already in line to see this strange and unique bit of cinema. I’ve seen the trailer and honestly can’t tell you what the film is about. Maybe you can tell me:

Tuesday 6/29, 9:30pm
Alamo Ritz – Terror Tuesday: PSYCHO II
Ok, so this second volume of the Psycho saga is not as good as Hitchcock’s original, but then there are maybe only four or five films that are. Nevertheless, Psycho II is an amazing film in its own right, helped immensely by the return of motel proprietor Norman Bates and, more importantly, of the actor who originated the character, Anthony Perkins. I can pretty much guarantee you that, if you find yourself watching a movie with Anthony Perkins in it, you are in the right place (I mean, have you seen Pretty Poison or Play It As It Lays?). If you haven’t seen this before because you remember what The Omen II or The Exorcist II was like, I think you’ll be in for a really happy surprise this time around.

Wednesday 6/30, 9:30pm, NEW RELEASE OF THE WEEK
Alamo Ritz – FINAL FLESH w/ Vernon Chatman in person
Vernon Chatman, one of the people responsible for Wonder Showzen, discovered four porn studios that make custom films specifically tailored to the customer’s kinky desires. He took this opportunity to convince these studios to produce scripts of his that really are not pornographic films at all, but interesting thought experiments delivered by actors and filmmakers who would seemingly be ill-equipped talent-wise for this kind of concept, which is the very reason why the films accomplish their goal in the end. Should be an intriguing night at the cinema, and Chatman himself will be there to answer the many questions that are sure to arise.

Wednesday-Thursday 6/30-7/1, CLASSIC RELEASE OF THE WEEK
The Paramount – Double Feature: FREAKS and THE DEVIL-DOLL
If you haven’t seen Freaks, boy are you in for it. You might think, oh it’s a film from 1932, how crazy can it be? Well, I’ll tell you: it’s crazier than anything that could possibly be released by anyone anywhere today, and it was released by MGM! If you’ve ever been hesitant to declare the 1930s as the Golden Age of Hollywood, this film will surely convince you. Every frame is surreal, and most are admittedly exploitative. Considering that you can stay and see The Devil-Doll for free, which features esteemed actor Lionel Barrymore as a human-shrinking maniac, only sweetens the deal. People walking past the Paramount this week are going to wonder what all that shrieking is about!

Friday 6/25-Thursday 7/1
wide – CYRUS
The Duplass Brothers are back with this film, utilizing more star power than all of their previous films combined. John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, and Marisa Tomei have combined their celebrity energies (which, when put all together, add up to about one A-List star) to try and put the Duplass’s uniquely morose and nihilistic mumblecore style on the map. Though Austin Cinephile will lament the absence of this year’s best actress Greta Gerwig, as far as Daniel is concerned, anything that draws attention away from Andrew Bujalski is a good thing.

Friday 6/25-Thursday 7/1
Regal Arbor – JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK
It’s finally here. This documentary about the ever-present comedienne Joan Rivers, which has been making loudly positive noise at festivals around the globe, seems like a knockout: the trailer alone has had audiences rolling in the aisles and forgetting what movie they were actually in the theater to see. Rivers has certainly played a self-destroying part in de-emphasizing her comic chops over the years, basically agreeing to do every red carpet show and TV Guide Channel special they invite her to do. But as this film will prove, the lady is not only a riot onstage but a deeply thoughtful and introspective human being. I can’t say what this film will do for her career, but for her public persona it should do wonders.

Friday 6/25-Thursday 7/1
Regal Arbor – SOLITARY MAN
The second must-see indie film of the week is this rich character study starring Michael Douglas in maybe the best role I’ve ever seen him play. A once prominent New York car dealer, so prominent that he was once featured in Fortune and Forbes (a car dealer!), Douglas has since been convicted of graft and fraud, which resulted in his dealerships being taken from him and his marriage ending in divorce. Following this life disaster, Douglas attempts to pick up the pieces, using his undeniable charisma to sleep with every woman he meets and to sweet talk his way back into the business. Will this sleazeball ever learn? You’ll have to check out this surprisingly well-made film to find out.

Increasingly, the discourse surrounding Pixar films suggests that they truly are “family” movies, in that they contain something for the kids and something for the adults in the audience. To a certain extent, this has been true of films like Finding Nemo and Up, which featured heroes for both the younger and older moviegoers. While the kids could associate with the young fish Nemo or the boy scout Russell, their parents might see themselves in Nemo’s worried father Marlin or Russell’s cranky neighbor Mr. Fredrickson. However, at the end of each of these films, the underlying depths of emotion provided by these older characters ultimately intersected with the more light-hearted elements directed toward children, resulting in undeniably happy conclusions. This is not the case with Toy Story 3, which actually has two concrete endings. For the kids, the film provides one of Pixar’s patently moving finales, but for the adults, the film actually ends a few scenes earlier, in an unusually stark, wholly genuine display of friendship and mortality.

The story of the film is known by anyone who has managed to get to a recent film early enough to see the trailers. Andy, the owner of Woody, Buzz, and the other toys, is shipping off to college, so what is to become of his toys? By the time they end up at a daycare named Sunnydale, allusions to the feelings of abandonment and isolation that humans encounter as they enter old age are flying at full force. The toys, at least in terms of their relationship with Andy, have hit what we generously describe as their “golden years,” and there is some debate among them as to how to handle it. While most of the toys see the daycare as a second life rather than being put out to pasture, Woody, always the most loyal toy to Andy, is unwilling to move on and desperate to make his way back to his old friend.

The sadness and desperation of old age is represented by this lovable stuffed bear. Believe it.

Thus, the film belongs to Woody, and his conflict is simple: as he enters the last years of his life (even toys have to go sometime), with whom does he want to spend his remaining days? The general thrust of the series thus far has always been the toys’ efforts to remain with Andy at all costs, but as Woody realizes over the course of this film, the bond he has formed with his fellow toys has grown stronger than any other, even the one he shares with Andy. So, in that “grown-up ending” I just mentioned, the toys find themselves facing incineration at a local landfill, and they lock hands with one another in an overwhelmingly poignant acknowledgment of the love they feel for one another. If it has come to this, at least they have one another. Although the toys ultimately escape their fate, to the delight of the kids in the audience, the adults, who are all too aware of their own mortality, know that a similar moment will eventually come for them, and the scene leaves them hoping that, when it does, they will have a few friends there with them.

I will admit that I wasn’t expecting the third film of this franchise to rival the thematic explorations of recent Pixar films like Ratatouille and Wall-E, so I must also happily admit that I was wrong to worry. Along with such inspired storytelling, the Pixar animation team shows no signs of stopping in its continued evolution of cinematic style. I came away from this film believing that there are a few people working at Pixar who could direct a feature-length live-action film tomorrow if they wanted to. The film combines the kind of adventurous camera movements associated with animation with the familiar elements of classical Hollywood style to a more successful extent than ever before, and I think it may be only a matter of time before one of these Pixar directors is considered for some of Hollywood’s many directing awards. The latest technology has allowed for a greater sense of depth than ever before, thanks not only to the new 3-D craze but also to remarkable advances in light and shadow capabilities. So this is what they meant when they started worrying about human actors being replaced.

I'm gonna miss these guys.

Next up for Pixar, reportedly, is a sequel to Cars, and I can think of no better praise for Toy Story 3 than to say that I’m going to give Pixar the benefit of the doubt and plan on Cars 2 being another masterpiece. Cars is almost universally considered to be Pixar’s weakest film, so one wonders why they would want to make a sequel. One theory could be that, every five or six years, Pixar needs to take a storytelling break and just toss out a fun little movie about talking cars. But this is a company who has left the disappointments of A Bug’s Life and Monsters Inc. far behind them (only for Pixar could those films be considered disappointments, by the way), and I can’t help but think that, somehow, they have a truly great idea for the continued adventures of those obnoxious cars.

Here are some related titles you might be interested in:

I am hard on the Summer months when maybe I shouldn’t be. Yes, it is the worst part of the year cinematically, with the possible exception of Spring. The saving grace of the March-to-May period is that the tiny independents that premiered during the Winter in New York or at film festivals make their way down to the rest of the country. By June, however, the bulk of this product is off the shelves, and what we’ve got left are the kind of movies that, put simply, bum me out.

But, there are some saving graces to this desert of cinema. Last summer, we had a number of good pictures come to Austin in the summer: The Girlfriend Experience, Julie & Julia, (500) Days of Summer, Away We Go, District 9, and Whatever Works were all much appreciated respites from the storm of last year’s Land of the Lost, Year One, Transformers 2, etc. The first such recess, this year’s The Girlfriend Experience if you will, was released this past weekend: Please Give.

Please Give is an excellent movie, the kind of thoughtful and insightful picture that Woody Allen used to (and still does) make. It’s subject, the lives of three and a half-generations of women in bourgie (yes, that is the right spelling) New York city, is an unusual one for the cinema, and one that pays off in spades; the characters in this picture are masterfully drawn and performed.

Mother and daughter in picture-perfect New York

One major part of this equation is the stand-out performances by everyone involved. Ensemble cast members Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Rebecca Hall, Ann Morgan Guilbert, Sarah Steele, and Oliver Platt are real people, going through difficult times and sometimes making bad choices.

I find it hard to single people out for this film, but I must acknowledge first of all the work of Rebecca Hall: another reference to the king nebbish, as Hall was the Vicky in Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I’ve been a fan of Hall’s since I saw her in that picture. At the time, my assessment of the film was solely about her:

“All credit belongs to the girl playing Vicky, an actress named Rebecca Hall. The second to last scene of the film, where she gives in to her adulterous but overwhelming desire to be with the artist Bardem, is a great and true acting tour-de-force, one of the best moments in any Woody Allen film, up there with the opening of Manhattan and the play-ending of Annie Hall.”

Just thinking of this scene gives me shivers...

Hall represents something that is really impressive: the modern girl next door. She is not the Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon, or Kirsten Dunst-type, but instead something much more realistic and charmingly banal. Hall conjures up the spirit of actual women with her extra-fair (maybe even pale) skin and natural features. Her facial expressions and vocal patterns are highly controlled yet come off as unimpressive and effortless.

That is what makes the ending of Vicky Cristina Barcelona so great. When Hall is shivering and ultimately capitulates to Bardem’s Latin-Lover seduction, it is unbelievably believable. She is woman and female desire in that exchange, and I consider that scene to be one of the greatest in cinema, period, and it is 100% thanks to her (although I’m sure Woody’s marvelous direction had something to do with it).

In this film, Hall literally plays the girl next door to the couple of Keener and Platt, and she does it in a homely and humble style. Her skin here is almost pasty, and her clothing bland. Her character shines, however, with a twinkle that can only come from inner-spirit. She is truly a gem, and I hope she continues rising. She could be our next Meryl Streep.

Some of the many women of this picture

As I said, everyone else is great. The women all stand out as unique and precious beings, including the confused teenager Sarah Steele and the lonely and flawed geriatric Ann Morgan Guilbert. Catherine Keener, as always is a dream, and I anticipate Austin Cinephile will someday give her a lifetime achievement award for most underrated actress. Here, she plays guilt so well it is a surprise she is a Gentile.

That gets me to the theme of this picture, Guilt. Every character in this film is wracked with it. The film is about how guilt is such an overwhelming concern in modern New York/life, from the transvestite bums on the sidewalk to the fear of breast cancer, from single-life to infidelity, and so many shades of gray in between. Never has this subject been dealt with so exhaustively on celluloid, nor done with so much bravery. It will make you reassess how you live your life and what factors influence your choices.

And finally, I must praise director Nicole Holofcener, whose work I am unfamiliar with thus far but I now want to seek out. She is a master of the contemplative two-shot medium close-up, framing couples, friends, relatives and acquaintances with judgment and reflection. Her mise-en-scène is terrific, especially in the various shots and set-ups of the boutique thrift store that Platt and Keener run. Her costuming and make-up is outstanding and convincingly realistic, too, in the same way as Hall’s performance.

An example of the very strong two-shots by Holofcener

I insist you see this picture, which is going to be probably the best film of June, although we’ll see how Cyrus holds up next week. In a month of Prince of Persias and Knight and Days, we should be thankful for these diamonds in the rough.

Here are some related titles you might be interested in:

Time for the weekly roundup of Weird Wednesday, Terror Tuesday, special events and outstanding new releases that you will not want to miss this week. Only the best selections here, aiming to ensure you see at least one great film every day.

Sunday 6/20 and Wednesday 6/23, various times
Alamo Ritz – IT CAME FROM KUCHAR
Daniel has already written about this documentary that focuses on underground filmmaking brothers George and Mike Kuchar. If you are unfamiliar with their campy genre films, this doc will serve as a fine introduction, although it sounds like you may have trouble finding their work once hooked.

Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday 6/20,6/21, and 6/23, various times
Alamo Ritz – AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE
The title is pretty self explanatory. This documentary is all about exploitation films, the kind that are usually featured at the Ritz every Wednesday night for Weird Wednesday. So if you are an frequent attendee of that weekly series, or have wondered what it’s all about, this will be a good chance to do a little extracurricular learning. And learning never hurt nobody.

Wednesday 6/23, 8:00pm, CLASSIC RELEASE OF THE WEEK
The Paramount – WINGS
No, this is not the 90’s sitcom starring Steven Wright and Thomas Haden Church. This is the very first winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, a staggering silent film about a love triangle involving a girl and two World War I fighter pilots. When you think about the fact that they hadn’t even really figured out talking pictures yet, the amazing aerial dogfight footage is even more impressive. This screening will feature a live performance of an original score by Austin Cinephile’s favorite local silent-film accompanist Graham Reynolds. You won’t get many more chances to see this on the big screen, don’t miss it!

Friday 6/18-Thursday 6/24
wide – TOY STORY 3D
The first two Toy Story films were among the greatest animated films of all time, as were most of Pixar’s first ten feature-length films. Here is number eleven, and from what I’ve heard, this is no sloppily done sequel looking to cash in on some familiar characters. Andy is now all grown up and has no need for his toys, which means it may be time for him, and us, to say farewell to Woody, Buzz, and the gang for the last time. Thus, the real reason for those 3-D glasses; no one can see me crying.

Friday 6/18-Thursday 6/24, NEW RELEASE PICK OF THE WEEK
Regal Arbor – SWEETGRASS
Do awful summer movies like The A-Team and The Prince of Persia have you down in the dumps? Well, this weekend, independent cinema is going to provide you with a few reasons to smile. The first is this breathtaking documentary, which is currently the best new film I have seen all year. The film follows two cowboys as they herd a big flock of sheep through a gorgeous series of mountains and streams in what will prove to be (Spoiler Alert!) the last of these journeys for the foreseeable future. The power of the documentary is such that you will mourn the loss of this tradition even though you were just introduced to it an hour and a half ago. There are no talking head interviews or cute animated sequences: just two cowboys, some sheep, and the countryside. It really is a rare cinematic breath of fresh air, and I think we could all use some of that.

Friday 6/18-Thursday 6/24
Regal Arbor – SOLITARY MAN
The second must-see indie film of the week is this rich character study starring Michael Douglas in maybe the best role I’ve ever seen him play. A once prominent New York car dealer, so prominent that he was once featured in Fortune and Forbes (a car dealer!), Douglas has since been convicted of graft and fraud, which resulted in his dealerships being taken from him and his marriage ending in divorce. Following this life disaster, Douglas attempts to pick up the pieces, using his undeniable charisma to sleep with every woman he meets and to sweet talk his way back into the business. Will this sleazeball ever learn? You’ll have to check out this surprisingly well-made film to find out.

On Sunday at the Ritz, Christopher Lloyd arrived at the Alamo Ritz in a DeLorean to kick off a day-long marathon of the Back to the Future trilogy. Like most aging, disinterested guests, Lloyd did not have much to contribute to the experience beyond an interesting anecdote or two, but it was certainly enjoyable for fans of the films like me to see Doc Brown in the flesh. More enlightening was the experience of watching these films one after another, which I had never done before. The most interesting observation I come away with from the back-to-back-to-back screenings of the films concerned the increasingly conflicting balance between the unique temporal possibilities of the films and their narrative ambitions.

The first film, from 1985, is without a doubt the finest of the series. The brief moments of exposition littered throughout the first half of the film continue to pay off again and again during the second half, and the film’s entire achievement cannot be fully comprehended on one viewing, which in my opinion elevates this piece of pop filmmaking to a genuine work of art. Michael J. Fox deservedly emerged as a potential movie star after his pitch-perfect performance as the bewildered young time traveler with whom we are expected to relate, and Lloyd’s manic Doc Brown makes the obligatory sci-fi explanation monologues much more fun than they have a right to be. Beyond these characters, the support work rises to the occasion as well, particularly Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson, who essentially play the same characters with three different personalities, and Thomas F. Wilson, who gifted us with one of the great nasties of the cinema, Biff Tannen.

The icon by which all bullies are measured.

The film proves to be so exhilarating in its narrative inventiveness that, by the end of the film, many find themselves desperate for a continuation of the story. Having seen Marty McFly and the Doc use their time machine to explore the past, audiences naturally want to see them explore the future. Thus, the second film. In addition to the often humorous representation of future Hill Valley, the second film folds the plot of the first film into the characters’ second visit to past Hill Valley, which, among other exciting opportunities, allows Wilson to portray many different variations on Biff. Director/writer Bob Zemeckis proved with the first film that he could handle a narrative built on space/time paradoxes with the kind of panache that prevents such stories from becoming leaden or difficult to follow. With the second film, he may have bitten off more than he can chew, but Part II nevertheless retains much of the freshness of the original film.

The third film, though, was an inexplicable diversion from the time-traveling chaos of the first two films. Arguably, the filmmakers recognized that, by the end of the second film, the story was becoming almost untenable in its constant back-and-forths through time and confrontations between characters and themselves from other time periods, so they decided to slow things down a bit and strand our heroes in a particular moment in history for the duration of the film, the Wild West of the lat 19th century. This decision, as has often been said, turns the film series into what seems to be a pitch for a continuing episodic television show (Chris Lloyd, in his Q & A session, often referred to the films as episodes). “Join Marty McFly and Doc Brown as they hop through time on their way home,” Part III seems to say. The film seems so forcibly separated from the first two that it seems more appropriate to drop the Part III from the title and replace it with some kind of subtitle. Thus, the third film proves to be nothing more than an interesting genre piece, where many of the tropes from the first two films are repeated albeit in the Old West.

It's definitely better than The Wild Wild West.

Those tropes bring me back to my original point about the balance between the narrative structure and the themes of nostalgia that perforate the films. While the films increasingly seem to present themselves as episodic, and the narrative is certainly continuous in that Marty is basically swept away at the beginning of the first film and remains caught in a series of time crises that don’t let up until the end of the third film, the films ultimately do not play well in marathon form. These films love nothing more than to quote themselves. How many times does Marty say “heavy,” or confront Biff in a bar, or wake up in a bed next to someone he thinks is his present-day mother but isn’t? If you watched Part II a couple years after Part I, which likely would have been the case in the late 1980s when they were released, you would see these tropes not as overly repetitive but as warm remembrances of that original film that you fell in love with. Watching Part II ten minutes after Part I, however, makes these recurring elements seem like nothing more than lazy, uninspired screenwriting.

Where have I seen this before?

The Back to the Future trilogy is all about taking trips through vast spaces of time, and revisiting memories from a moviegoing experience that occurred four years ago can, in a sense, instill in the moviegoer similar feelings of journeying into the past. Ten minutes, on the other hand, is just a walk in the space/time park.

Here are some related titles you might be interested in:

What do you think about the auteur theory?

Although the auteur theory (the belief that the director is the “author” of a film and the critical stance associated with it) is out of fashion within the academic and certain enthusiast circles, it is still the most dominant method of understanding film production and organization currently employed by moviegoers. More often than not, a question like, “What films do you like?” results in a list of filmmakers (directors) rather than genres, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, or any other classification. Further, video stores, newspaper listings, and most other modes of extra-industrial film promotion uses a film’s director as a primary classification marker. Most film reviews, likewise, rely exclusively on a reading of the director’s assumed role in film construction.

While we try not to lean too much on the director’s ivory tower. We attempt to acknowledge the role of editors, cinematographers, screenwriters, producers, and actors/stars in film production. That said, we are certainly guilty of auterist criticism at times. For instance, we recently published a list of our favorite “auteur films.” We also classify/identify films by director in our under-poster text.

This week, we probe our assumptions about the auteur theory and see if we can explain/excuse our behavior.

Michael

This is a tricky question. What do you think of the auteur theory? We here at Austin Cinephile have already declared our love for auteur cinema. But, this question speaks not only to auteurs and their films, but rather to the auteur theory conceptually established by François Truffaut, applied by the other Cahiers du Cinéma critics, and then organized into a theoretical framework and cinematic hierarchy by Andrew Sarris in his essay “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962” (which he later expanded into the book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968).

Sarris' groundbreaking book that introduced America to the auteur theory

Sarris’s application of the auteur theory praises directors that are well versed in all aspects of film production and who have distinct visual and thematic styles. This initial essay received backlash from famed New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, who, in her retaliatory essay “Circles and Squares,” belittles the theory from a number of approaches, not least of which arguing that praising a director’s unchanging style is to praise her/his decline. While many of Kael’s claims are sound and convincing, and while there are surely reasons to reject the auteur theory—particularly Sarris’s application of it—in this regard, Kael misinterprets the point of analyzing and enjoying an auteur’s signature. To seek out an auteur’s signature traits is not solely an act of repetition recognition. Rather it is an attempt, on the one hand, to bask in the familiarity of the auteur’s touch, and, on the other, relish the alteration—and thus the evolution—of that filmmaker’s style.

So, let me conclude with these thoughts. While I tend to use directors as a convenient categorical device, I acknowledge that not all directors are auteurs and that in some instances a film’s auteur may not be the film’s director. Films are a collaborative art, but some filmmaker’s visions and wills are so strong that they are able to harness that collaborative force, shaping it into a recurring cinematic signature. I like the signatures of directors like Woody Allen, David Cronenberg, Akira Kurosawa, and Sergio Leone. I find myself drawn to these auteur filmmakers, knowing that not all of their films are gems and also that there are great films made by filmmakers that are not auteurs. Ultimately, though, the draw of the auteur is the appeal of a unique filmic style, something that is not typical fare. And, while I tend towards auteurs that are good filmmakers in my book (acknowledging that not all auteurs are “good” filmmakers), it is the deviation from that greater cinematic norm that keeps me coming back, even if that deviation falls within a recurring stream of that auteur’s signature. Ultimately, these auteurs that I admire are great filmmakers. Their unique touches are just proof of their original approaches to cinema.

Stephen

I have always struggled with the concept of the auteur theory. Even as a teenage film buff, when the occasional debate would arise over the “A Film by…” phrase that often appears at the beginning for a Scorsese or Tarantino movie, I felt that there were too many other names in the opening credits (and even more in the closing credits) to designate any one person as the author of the film. Now that I have spent time studying with Tom Schatz, whose book Genius of the System points out that the classical Hollywood studio system produced masterpieces of cinema that were “co-authored” by directors, moguls, producers, and crew members galore, I remain resolute in my belief that the concept of the auteur is suspect as a credible theory and more useful as a point of reference and conversation for film lovers.

The literature of the auteur theory often focuses on the vague idea of artistic “vision.” Hitchcock is labeled an auteur because his vision is supposedly apparent from film to film. The auteur theorist would argue that one who is familiar with Hitchcock’s work could easily pick one of his films out of a lineup simply by recognizing certain camera angles, narrative elements, or character traits that the director seems to favor. For me, though, those familiar names in the credits are also important to note. What would so many of Hitchcock’s great films be without the music of Bernard Hermann or the graphics work of Saul Bass? (One need only have seen Frenzy at the Paramount last week to see how a limp score and ordinary opening credit sequence can fail to inspire the viewer in the opening minutes.) Would Scorsese’s Raging Bull or Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction be the revolutionary films they are without the directors’ frequent editing partners Thelma Schoonmaker and Sally Menke working alongside them? Would we have grown tired of looking at a new Woody Allen film every year if not for the revolving door of talented cinematographers that worked on his films, varying the visual appeal of each one?

Saul Bass' iconic title sequence for Hitchcock's PSYCHO

Certainly, I cannot argue that it is important for any work of art to have a firm vision guiding the artistic process to its conclusion, especially in filmmaking where hundreds of people can generate thousands of ideas, and that, for the most part, this initial guiding vision comes from the director. However, I also cannot believe that any finished film is “by” any one person, nor can I agree that a filmmaker’s recurring signature was entirely his or hers to begin with.

It seems that I agree with Pauline Kael’s counter-argument from “Circles and Squares” more than Michael does when it comes to supporting new and original ideas from filmmakers instead of hoping for repeated ones. I’m not sure Scorsese would want his career defined in terms of evolution but instead as a series of attempts to breach unfamiliar cinematic territory and make films that cannot be easily compared. A film like Casino met with several critical shrugs not because it was a bad film but because it seemed like just another Goodfellas, with its Rolling Stones songs and adventurous cameras. When talking about a filmmaker who made a film like Raging Bull a mere four years after making a film like Taxi Driver, familiarity can be a bit of a let-down.

Daniel

My partners have done a very fine job of highlighting the key points and counterarguments associated with the auteur theory and its application, so I will not waste my time in discussing them. Instead, I will try to provide some balanced ideas.

1. Auteur theory works for auteur films. I certainly am not the first person to think of films with this classification system, but I want to put it forward as a very usable plan: there are auteur films and genre films, and we should apply different lenses and critical stances to them. For genre films, we should study the construction of tropes and how certain films deviate from them.

For auteur films, we should consider, as Stephen and Michael have implied, how the film speaks to a filmmaker’s body of work/life’s artistic message. Seeing, for instance, Woody Allen’s constant retelling of a failed relationship with a frigid intellectual and the variations on it help us to understand what poor Woody has been trying to say all these years. The way that changes over the years or in different situations can tell us a good deal about that particular filmmaker’s evolution or style.

2. An auteur cannot make a bad film. This is something that I think is attributed to Truffaut himself. A filmmaker who is able to convey his personal philosophy through both influence on story/scenario and visual style is only capable of producing great works. As such, if we acknowledge that a filmmaker is an auteur (a designation we can determine after seeing the control she or he has over the cinema in just a single work), we must always view their work from the perspective that it is the outcome of a creative artist who is trying to express herself/himself, and necessarily give it higher critical attention and consideration.

3. A director is not the only filmmaker who can be an auteur. While director is the most frequent and most apparent auteur in contemporary and historic cinema, it is not the only job that should be seen as author. There are other positions that can overwhelm the production to the extent of control. Actors can often achieve this; my example here is the Marx Brothers, who are firmly in control of the anarchy that is their thirteen films. Producers can be auteurs, as was Roger Corman. Screenwriters, like Charlie Kaufman, can also take over a film.

The same can be said, although less often, about other roles, and often films can be dually or multi-authored, as the case in films like His Girl Friday (Ben Hecht and Howard Hawks) or Contempt (Godard and Brigitte Bardot)

Who's in control of this frame, Bardot or Godard?

We should look for creativity and brilliance in all aspects of the cinema, and celebrate them. Because we find authorship from a single source within a text does not mean we cannot see other sources of influence and control.

This rough and tumble quickie is really good. Directed by the husband and wife time of Beverly and Fred Sebastian, who pleased me very much with their ‘Gator Bait, this picture’s got it all: women, women, women. But also crime, hippies, cars, guns, and did I mention women?

The film starts out with one of my favorite title tropes, organizing the cast by their character groups. So the first title card read: “Hitchhikers,” followed by “Victims” and “Others.” I think this adds a great level of narrative coherence/realism, and also democratizes the actors who clearly don’t command much name recognition anyway.

From this title sequence we are introduced to the sweet sounds of Danny Cohen, the composer/performer of all kinds of wonderful songs for the film (according to IMDB, he’s got no other credits to his name…). He did three or four great numbers for the picture, songs that actually comment on the narrative. The music is a sort of bluegrassy-country-rock style that features great instrumentation and wonderful vocal harmonies. I really mean it that the songs are top-notch, and I’m still singing some of them in my head.

And thus the story opens up. Meet blonde ingenue Maggie, played by Misty Rowe. She’s knocked up and abandoned, so she thumbs it out west. On the way, she gets tricked and robbed by a black-haired sinister bitch, I think named Diana and played by Linda Avery. Avery’s Diana (and, I’m guessing, Avery’s Linda) has the kind of thick Long Island accent that makes you wish oil spills happened up north instead of down in Louisiana.

Misty Rowe from this period, looking very earthy-crunchy-granola

So, broke and bumped, Maggie relies on the kindness of strangers to get around. In the process, she flirts with prostitution and gets raped in a van. This is a kind of a brutal turn of events, but I guess it reflects Weird Wednesday host Lars’ predilection towards movies with rape scenes.

Anyway, after the rape she gets busted for stealing milk from a grocery store (how tragic!) but makes a getaway with a long haired patriarch, a sort of mix between Charles Manson and the guru from that Rainbrow Bridge movie. She ends up on his commune/harem, where a group of misfit babes are hanging around in shacks with little electricity and littler clothes.

Guess who’s there? That bitch who stole Maggie’s cash. That won’t stand, she figures, so they have a cat fight which results in, you guessed it, a miscarriage! Straight on the heels of the marvelously subversive Student Nurses, The Hitchhikers also features a semi-graphic medical scene involving the non-birth of a baby. This time, though, it is sadder.

That reminds me, this sequence broke what I consider to be a cardinal rule of filmmaking: after a miscarriage scene, don’t cutaway to a closeup of a stewing pot. That sends the wrong message.

Now about fifty minutes into the picture, the titular hitchhiking scheme can get underway. It seems that this cult of ladies and their ringleader are involved in a shake-down racket involving their thumbs and some creative gesturing. The girls lure drivers with their smiles, gams, and bosoms and when the helpless men pull over and offer the pretty girls a ride…BAM! There’s Timothy Leary with his pistol.

This little swindle is a great devious plan, wonderfully playing on the culture’s fears of hitching and of young people. It also allows for a very funny montage where Mr. Personality teaches Maggie how do the different grifting techniques associated with their scheme. The only thing better than watching suckers get robbed is watching someone learn to do it. It’s like that Bresson film Pickpocket, only, well, with more nudity.

I can't find any images from The Hitchhikers, so here's one from Pickpocket

Speaking of nudity, there is a healthy amount in this film. More worth noting, however, is the outfit Maggie insists on wearing throughout the bulk of act 2. Outfit might be too generous a term for this piece of white lace with a hole at the top, tied together around the waist with a rope. I’m not sure what she was trying to prove, but she sure presented a lot of evidence.

All good things must come to an end, and sadly the ending of this picture dragged. There is a crazy late-night romp that results in a car getting smashed and a bunch of people getting beer on their clothes, and then a final bus-driving montage. Eh, it’s making me sleepy just to write about it. Suffice it to say, the film was fat around the edges, especially for a film that so masterfully captured the essence of some weird shit going on.

Here are some related titles you might be interested in: