December 2009

December 2009

* Paranormal Activity|||||5
Two Lovers (Gray, 2009)|||||8.5

I felt like I was watching a film from the 70s a number of times. Pace and scene styling was superb. Then there's that club scene where we spend a few moments in the beginning watching a random breakdancer, and it felt like a first real revival of that venerable old movie tradition of getting to see a full nightclub act to preface scenes set in nightclubs.

Anyway, a perfectly molded look at adulthood, its predictability, and the errant factors that are romance and Leonard's weird psychology and biology.

And Isabella Rossellini's final shot = fucking killer!

* Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009)|||||9

I think I'll still take Death Proof, thick with trauma & tragedy, over Inglourious Basterds, lithe with scrutiny of history and war, but it's neck-and-neck.

The Ghost Ship (Robson, 1943)|||||7

Finely, finely drawn portrait of masculine self-image and the complex network of authority and obedience, empowerment and self-subordination it takes to withhold one's masculine place. Equal to Beau Travail in its evocation of a masculine order, with a wonderful treatment of Captain Stone as not just a crazy man, but a man slowly going crazy from the falsity that is his power over and separation from the social harum-scarum. In this way, this film communicated what There Will Be Blood should have, albeit without TWBB's speciously topical choices of institutional orders... and yet, it still manages to be more politically charged than that film even makes an effort for. But despite it excellence, The Ghost Ship is still a bit very stilted and unconvincing. It's good this film takes place in the specially neutered and cloistered social order of a ship, because I am much more convinced by the representation of men as a bunch of randy bulls instead of the complacent herded cows this film personifies the Marine employed. Mark Robson is capable of great mise en scene, but his camera and visualization of whole scenes is clunky. This film also has some awful transitions that fail to unite the mood and emotions that run through the film. Russell Wade is also kind of wooden. Richard Dix gets increasingly better as the film goes on. The good override the bad, though, and the plot developments that take place on land just goes to show the minute attention the Lewton co. gave to story and real-world logic.

Fool for Love (Altman, 1985)|||||9

A stunner. Every single bit of it, from the magnificent performances to Altman's counterintuitively liberated sense of visual possibility from working with a stage-bound play adaptation, is absolutely enchanting, in that dark and weird way of an Altman film. It never seems acknowledged enough: Altman may be an American studio filmmaker, albeit a "rogue" one, but he is totally into the weird and the arcane, and Fool for Love is one of his weirdest (haven't read Sam Sheperd's play, but now I'll only be able to see it as existential theater of the absurd, even if it isn't). He even out-Lynches Lynch here, making images of small-town America and the West a place of repressed nightmares, with the same sort of prop-world fantasticalness but with Altman's style and sense of nuance and nebulous behavior placing it firmly in a strange but undeniably real world. Altman's flashbacks that continually flux between accurateness and inaccurateness, reality and fantasy (literally at one point) are one of the more genuinely novel things I've seen in a long time.

Avatar (Cameron, 2009)|||||5.5

There's been criticisms that the film is too cliched and derivative, and then defenses citing the aptness in using archetypal story and mythic history to retrofit for both post-Post-colonial times and state-of-the-art visual technology. This works well to characterize the film's odd, unsuccessful attempt to marry classical storytelling (for him, the blockbuster film) and its capably shamanic sway over popular culture with its pioneering cinematic vision, where the presence of a camera seems completely beside the point to the illimitability of the CGI medium. Keeping with the repertoire of the shaman, it practically seems to regard itself as oral history at work, making the film's alternatingly admirable and puerile revisionist social parable seem perfectly at home. But how really can the sweeping parabolic aggrandizements and moral romanticism of a lovingly fervent oral storyteller persevere when the storyteller - the camera - is so impossibly naturalistic?
Of course, this is a problem with any CGI-fest, from a CGI animated film to the camera-inoperable tricks of a Peter Jackson movie, but I guess what makes it so artistically detrimental here is Cameron's not-inelegant but more than a little repetitive, pre-patterned directing. It's either the variation of close-ups that make up an intimate dialogue scene, his admittedly sturdy handling of action sequences, or the overly, breathlessly omnipresent handling of his more fantastic CGI sequences. Between, there is little pauses and variegation. The film has a rushed pace, too invested in its traditional screenwriting to properly justify its overwhelming intentions of aesthetic immersion, as Children of Men does. Despite very impressive 3-D immersion and the incredible textures Cameron captures in order to make Avatar such an eye-popping and sumptuous work (and I do mean it, the shots utilizing the reflection off plexiglass shielding were especially impressive), the film would be more than a little flat. The moments of tragedy and awful destruction were the moments where the film's theoretical intentions of immersion-realism were the most fit to be used (to put it nauseatingly, "Genocidal imperialism = real life") and so were the best, most effective scenes.

To bag on Cameron for not being artsy enough isn't really new. But I am trying to find a more forgiving, novel way of looking at what every detractor pretty much has (and has rightly, IMO) been getting at: Cameron's directing and the film's shopworn screenplay are no where near as interesting or worthwhile as the FX and the visual textures it creates. Instead of just saying that, how about blame the very idea of taking a shopworn tried-and-true screenplay (complete with voice-overs and propulsive, discreditably cosmetic ellipses of time) and then rendering the "simple power" of its story ineffectual by mundane directing the sheer non-virtue of its technological preoccupation. It's downfall is in its groundbreaking virtual verisimilitude... despite that being the best thing about the movie. How does that sound? Pretentiously paradoxical? Eh, I try.
Thus, its visuals should have been more "theatrical" (i.e. wielded more a sense of cinema's artifice). As it is, sure we have the artifice found in its grandiose environment and those shots floating above and aside those seed-jellyfish spirits, but again, that's the camera - aka our, the audience's, surrogate eye and mental palette - being "too powerful to be true," too limitlessly "neutral" to actually be the minds of the audience being story-told - which is why the bits of tragedy are the best parts, because it finally asks us to mourn for the aliens, instead of just gawk at their world. 3-D ashes work much like Schindler's List's red coat - visual gimmickry and a drippy symbolic sentiment, but manipulative storytelling embracing its storytelling emotional pedantry. Avatar's "verite" immersion is hollow. It should've gone all-out formally rigid, Children of Men-style. Or better yet, Barry Lyndon-style. That film would've really gotten 3-D textures to linger. ... Also, it must be said, this movie was waaaay way to long.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death (Hancock, 1971)|||||6.5

A beautiful and often genuinely unnerving gothic horror film. Really rich filmmaking here. It doesn't amount to much beyond its horror trappings, which it gets too caught up in near the end, and its screenplay is the sort of pretentious that leads it into thinking having a character point at a family relic and say, "That's history," is fleshed out enough when it's a little half-baked... but nonetheless, this film has almost the soul-stirring low-fi schlockiness of Carnival of Souls. But while that film was assured and charged by 60s modern-art gung-ho, this one is a bit logy with 70s bootstrap filmmaking and realism.

Mirrors (Aja, 2008)|||||3

I realized the problem with modern horror movies when I was watching Mirrors and came a scene set in a monastery, and this monastery had all the atmosphere and character of a movie set. I suppose if the movie was making a comment on stultifying moral hygienics and the sterility of Catholic nunnery in modern times, but I just made that up and it is clearly not the case.

Mirrors is pretty lame aside from some sturdy suspense set-ups and good old-fashioned dramatic kitsch, like separated parents coming together through a concerted effort to paint over cursed mirrors. Aja is amping the gore up to 11 as usual, but his story warrants none of it so that its gratuitousness feels extra cheap.

Eggshells (Hooper, 1969)|||||4.5

Although filled with numerous highly intricate set pieces and sequences of abstract artistic brio, its utter plotlessness, rambling puerile hippie dialogue that leads to no discernible arc in any regards, and, as a result of both of those things, the film's nigh incomprehensibility, render this frequently audacious film a merely narratively-challenged, often mindless, at times intolerable piece of avant-garde hogwash.

* Shutter (Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom, 2004)|||||3.5

It tries to tell a provocative story and speak to something or other theoretics about picture-taking... I guess. But Shutter has such a tin ear for so many aspects of good moviemaking and storytelling, it's hard to feel the film has any thoughts in its head at all. It hurts watching ineptitude at times. It has no sense of pacing, build-up, character development, etc. - it's just a string of slick scares that aren't scary. It's like Hollywood didn't even have to remake it because this movie already is exactly like a bad Hollywood supernatural horror flick.

Paranormal Activity (Pell, 2007)|||||5

Oh, well that was better than I expected it to be. It's more written and character-driven than I thought it would be (I knew nothing about the plot going in), and despite being gimmicky, it's not all that gimmicky.

I really liked the way the camera was used - a nosy and troublesome toy being constantly moved around by the insensitive Micah, that soon becomes a 2nd demon to the frazzled Katie. Also, there was something about the staging and framing of the between-bedroom scenes of plot development that suggested there was thought put into where the camera was placed and how it interacted with the characters. Nothing to go crazy about, but Pell doesn't seem like a talentless buffoon behind the camera, as is common with up-and-coming hopeful horror film directors. And he seems to work well with actors, because I thought the performances were excellent and naturalistic.

It's also a slim, nicely paced film, the rigid structure working very strategically to create its effect of a creeping disease and its portrayal of Katie as someone getting increasingly fed up with living in fear. Her protestations when she's outside on the bench - the subtle venom and resentment in her voice - was probably the scariest bit for me.

On the con side, it's a limited film, both stylistically and content-wise, the screenplay nothing to write home about (oh, it's either a GHOST or a DEMON - wow, that's some in-depth demonology right there) and the scares more than a bit labored.

November 2009

November 2009

* Holiday (Cukor, 1938)|||||8.5

* A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim, 2003)|||||8

* Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (Raimi, 1987)|||||7

* 3 Women (Altman, 1977)|||||8.5

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans (Herzog, 2009)|||||6.5

The film is pretty silly (albeit self-consciously so - that doesn't excuse it, though) and, despite a moment every now and then, is pretty flat by Herzog's standards. Not much consistent transcendence in the filmmaking, and the goofy amphibian trip sequences only distract from that occasional almost-there moment of oddball beauty. It's a clever piece of absurdity, intentionally light as a feather and tonally aimed to shoot some arrows through the criminal world and the police world. Cage is... hammy, but not disastrously so, as a bad lieutenant who accepts his weaknesses with pragmatism and a refreshing lack of principles, rather than with tormentedness or rage, ego or megalomania. The film makes a smart statement on how the "bad" and the "good" can get along, coexist, as long as the need to exploit and victimize is subverted by our realizing the simple advantages of just playing your cards right for the humble, pleasure-seeking comfort of all (and that includes stepping back and watching your own girlfriend prostitute herself when the time calls for it). It is a karmic, non-deluded amorality and principle of the Pleasure Dome (Pleasure is for all, and can be found communally) Herzog promotes as a possible alternative to conventional morality and conventional business, which are vindictive, self-aggrandizing, out-to-destroy, and out to make the more people sad rather than the most people happy - the most people happy being what Herzog's protagonist achieves in the film in his unthinking way, rolling with the punches and accepting of all possible circumstances. Herzog reenvisions a contemporary Sodom and Gomorrah as a place that can be a Good, that can worship the graven idols of money and drugs but still be generous to our fellows - that can in fact be giving as long as it is not built on the pure drive of the Alpha impulse, and instead built on the tearing down of that impulse, which causes such grievances as a family being massacred and an uptight police officer refusing to do our mild-mannered protagonist a solid and excuse some traffic tickets. The protagonist's acceptance of his girlfriend's newfound sobriety (but, rest assured, not his own) is one of the more touching notes of the film. The daunting self-respect of morality and immorality are feasted upon by the hardassed and powered, and no one's content under the grip of hardasses.

* Dumplings (Chan, 2004)|||||8.5

Beautiful, subversive, and eccentric. There is much social/political/socio-economic textures there to sift through, which I'd love to see an extensive analysis of. My one problem, so to speak, with the film is: I feel as if I wanted more of a sense of where the film's opinions lay on certain things, considering how strongly cooked the subject matter is with the whiff of abortion, stem cell usage, and matters of women's rights. At the end, I felt like it was too much about the individual characters and their particular moralities/immoralities, with a heavy hand falling upon the wealthy Mrs. Li without the leniency I wanted. The film takes the leap into punchy moral fable that I did not entirely want as wholeheartedly as the film takes it... but thankfully the film also doesn't lose sight of its oddball social realism: the sight near the end of Auntie Mei (played to the tee by an outrageous tight-capris-clad Bai Ling) disappearing in a sort of time warp - in the streets of mainland China, dressed in anachronistic peasant-wear and carrying water pails - is one of my favorite things in the movie.

Dancer in the Dark (Von Trier, 2000)|||||8

Antichrist (Von Trier, 2009)|||||7

An unbelievably blunt and candid film, with complete divestment of all burdensome demons on its mind (no matter how graphically non-genitalia-friendly). It's much like Kurosawa's Pulse, in the sense it's an almost inconsiderately philosophical horror film that takes on vast, infinite matters with the matter-of-fact eye fit to their semi-ironic allegorical approach. But while Pulse is a gentle film made by a gentleman, Antichrist is pretty much the opposite... it is an angry, moody, fatalistic, and emotionally erratic asshole of a film, made by an angry, moody, fatalistic, and emotionally erratic filmmaker (who may or may not be an asshole... he probably is. In any case, this is a compliment to the film.)

Antichrist is a resigned, shit-hitting-the-fan look at how cruel nature wins out over all things, and it paints a relationship between the two character - the film's only characters - such that the actions taken in the notorious final act do not seem so much evidence pointing towards a narrow-minded [I'll say it: misogynistic] fact - "Men are this, women are SPOILERCRAZYSPOILER" - but instead communicate the idea that what we are seeing is roles being fallen into because - seemingly - of a rich, terrible historical tradition (and a belief in the demiurges we have conceived, to account for the poisoned conditions of humanity). In that sense, the film's use of the coined term "gynocide" is very apt, equating gendered persecution as pretty much the same cloth as every other "-cide," evil, or purity-made-grotesque.

The bluntness of the film is what I really admire, much in the same way Kurosawa's bluntness about his very different concerns in his film makes me admire that film. Antichrist should be required finger-wagging formative viewing for all carefree, growing boys AND girls (or just boys, might be the point). The ways and attitudes with which you hold yourself to and use to determine how to treat those around you - e.g. your women - is only a thin line away from becoming the bloody Crusades, genocidal regimes, the sadomasochism of witch-hunting, and the psychosexual domination of psychoanalysis, as is embodied by the Dafoe character, whose treatment of his wife seems as overbearing as age-old treatments of female hysteria.

On the con side, there were too many large chunks of Antichrist where it felt rote and shapeless, such that the film kind of drifts off at intervals into a quagmire of its not always pointed realms of allegorical mysticism and opaque metaphors, all while not being terribly stimulating in terms of craft. Whenever it did get itself into gear, the images were consistently hypnotizing and beautiful, but also kind of flat, instead of communicative and potent, like they are in Von Trier's more vibrant films. Part of it may be how the film pretty much works with two people, talking and walking around a forest, while other Von Trier's other films have a large cast of characters with which to create dynamic interactions and the choreography of blocking actors with camera movement. The latter is more impressive and engaging, while Antichrist comes off more than a bit as if on autopilot.

District 9 (Blomkamp, 2009) ||||| 4

* The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974) |||||7.5
"The Black Cat" (Gordon, 2006) (Masters of Horror, Season 2) (TV Series)|||||**1/2

Rouge (Kwan, 1987) |||||6

* Sisters (De Palma, 1973)||||| 7.5

October 2009

October 2009

* Retribution (Kurosawa, 2006)     7.5

* The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986)     6.5

Repo!  The Genetic Opera (Lynn Bousman, 2008)     4

Where the Wild Things Are (Jonze, 2009)     7

* Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Lee Wallace, 1982)     5

* The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)     7

* Pulse (Kurosawa, 2001)     8

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (Pittman, 1987)     5

Prom Night II is admirable in many ways - it treats assorted subject matter with a sobriety and respect for viewer's moral intelligence that is the opposite of what a cheesy slasher sequel is supposed to offer, it is thoroughly unpredictable in that it follows a subversive logic informed by a latent (unachieved) goal of really digging at skewed moral environments, it thus gives us some very intriguing perspectives on high school, family, and Christian perversions and weaknesses, and it has imagination and inspired audacity that elevates it over the normal 80s horror junk - but, unfortunately, junk it pretty much is... in the kindest sense possible.  The film, despite everything, is just completely unsuccessful. Much more grim and serious than you expect it to be, which leads to some good stuff, but it's a matter of watching a film strive towards being provocative and heady and suggestive and unique, with so many small elements that are subtle and superb, only pretty much nothing comes together because it doesn't have that much of a sense of what it really wants to communicate. I felt many times like the movie wanted to make some subversive point with a number of scenes, but everything is so underdeveloped, with a fatal lack of cohesion, which makes the film just a long series of "WTF?  Uh... okay..."s instead of "WTF, oh yeah!"s. The performances, special effects work, and occasional character work are surprisingly good, though, and there's a great girl's locker room scene in there (for a number of reasons). Director Pittman has some good ideas, but you can tell the film gets lazier when it gets campier.

Trick 'r Treat (Dougherty, 2008)     5

* Cure (Kurosawa, 1997)     9

The Stepfather (Ruben, 1987)     6

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978)     7.5

Mystics in Bali (Djalil, 1981)     2.5

Bad Timing (Roeg, 1981)     6.5

* I, Madman (Takacs, 1989)     4.5

* Evil Dead Trap (Ikeda, 1988)     5

* Deranged (Gillen & Ormsby, 1974)     4.5

September 2009

September 2009

Blow Out (De Palma, 1981) 8

Sally is a great character.

One Missed Call (Valette, 2008) 2

Hot damn that was crappy.
It's almost awe-inspiring in its uselessness. Did I just watch an actual movie, really? Did they actually spend time, money, and physical and mental effort, to make this? Was this more like a paid vacation for the actors considering they're working with nothing? It's kind of fascinating, really.

* Audition (Miike, 1999) 8

W.R. - Mysteries of the Organism (Makavejev, 1971) 8

* Dead & Buried (Sherman, 1981) 5.5

* Pumpkinhead (Winston, 1988) 5

(500) Days of Summer (Webb, 2009) 5

(500) Days of Summer is a movie made entirely out of musings and good points. And it's a movie that thinks movies can be made out of musings and the cleverness of its points. That's why the film is told in bits and pieces, because of its strong belief in its vision of a film built entirely of its writer-director's probably-somewhere-out-there-in-list-form series of musings and good points, lucid observations, and clever cinematic renderings of love neurosis.

There's the scene in the film where Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a breakdown in a company meeting and gets on a soapbox about greeting cards. It's one of those in-your-face points the film has to make, and by god it makes sure to make it. But in making itself (or its character) so pedantically shout out this mildly revealing and I'd thought already pretty obvious epiphany, it just made me uncomfortable. I thought, "Everyone knows this. Everyone knows greeting cards are bullshit. So the fact that it has to make this point so pivotal must mean that this movie is yelling at someone who apparently doesn't get it enough..." Followed immediately by: "I hope it's not me. I get it, you're smarter than me, movie!"

The film, Webb, his screenplay and the film's whole slickly-packaged DNA as a quirky, edgy concept picture is driven by its unbearable omniscience. Not that it necessarily gives all the answers - the film pleasantly surprises with its down-to-earth subverting of clean-cut romantic conventions - but yet, when it comes to considering all the questions, the film seems to suggest all the answers are out there to be quickly figured out. The film becomes a bit po-faced and didactic when, in its query-response structure (its happy-time/sad-time, fantasy/reality, dialectical jumping in time), it's practically giving an answer a mere moment after any possibly challenging, and possibly challengingly upsetting, question is posed.

The ultimate message is admirable: a romance film all about the folly of romantics in a world that fosters and encourages the lighting of flames beneath asses and the will to get moving again -- then, the resultant growth and the cornucopias of opportunity. The film is mostly likable, slickly romantic, and, thankfully, often truly perceptive, with a good knack for melancholy to get you in the right mood. All much, much too slickly packaged, but if you have a great postmodern idea that you know'll be a hit with the audiences (plus with the way-too-appealing Joshua Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in the leads), what can you do? Pump up the indie rock.

One Missed Call (Miike, 2003) 7

Silent Hill (Gans, 2006) 4

The Legend of Hell House (Hough, 1973) 5.5

Exte (Sono, 2007) 5

Exte has the usual Sono attributes going for it, despite it being the Japanese genre auteur's obligatory send-up of J-horror, a la what Miike was going for with One Missed Call. Sono has a knack for appealing cuteness (that is, idiosyncratic cuteness), his drama is genuine and candidly shot, and his vision - his commitment to genre and sensory thrills that address an eccentric and personality-filled, adult and abusive world - is intact here. But I just don't think Sono's my guy. This film is way scattershot, often obnoxious, and I enjoyed the film much more when it was being whimsical to when it was being a horror film with a plot. As a horror film, it's redundant; got tired of the cops and the main antagonist really quickly. Chiaki Kuriyama and her hip-hop roommate are very appealing here, though.

Portrait of Jason (Clarke, 1967) 5.5

An hour and forty-five minute interview with a 60s-living, black, gay man, one-time hustler, now aspiring nightclub owner and performer. It is lively subject matter, with a jovial subject who knows how to entertain with stories, and it's also a knowingly intrusive probe into the man's life, as we see his tales go from anecdotal to deeply personal, as he gets progressively drunker (and soon even breaks out a joint) as the evening progresses. The B&W camera captures Jason lounging, pacing, and generally inhabiting a rather neutral living-room-type space as he speaks to the camera and is given short, prodding directions from Clarke and co., behind the camera and never on screen, as they occasionally zoom in inscrutably on his face and then go to momentary blackness (but with the audio recording device still taping) as they switch the celluloid that Jason's vocal self-offering clearly surpasses in surely a number of ways, including both duration and honesty. The film is often engaging, due to the subject laying all his cards on the table with touching genuineness, but ultimately, the work is a monotonous exercise that, at some points, begins to smack of injudiciousness, not only in running time but in how freely and without guidance Clarke and her associates let this man bare his soul in service of their austere little exercise - although likely intentional, for the rather clinical regard towards Jason coming from behind the camera seems equal measure familiarity and acceptance, as it is cold analysis.

* Dark Water (Nakata, 2002) 5.5

Halloween II (Zombie, 2009) 5

Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001) 8

I feel like Denis making a film here with a relatively chugging plot and narrative variety did her a great service. The separate plot threads that give her different locations and character behaviors to work with provoked nice and varied style from her, which keeps it from achieving the certain monotony of her two other films I've seen, Beau Travail and Friday Night - elliptical mood pieces that fling narrative drive wayside for the building of mood.

It's an ingeniously structured film, too. It weaves romantic-scientific waywardness not just with its two central couples but with close attention to a slew of supporting characters and even bit characters. It ends on a gentle and ambivalent note that, similar to Redacted, ends up being the perfect way to end the film and left me with a positive final impression. It's a very romantic film... even with the demented Cat People-like plot point involving Gallo's enforced onanistic lifestyle (which, looked at as concession made to having any relationship with his fresh-faced new wife, is still a bit romantic). I'm surprised no other vampire movie's had thought this element up sooner. And is there another horror film (per se) out there that makes zero attempt to scare or be horror-y like this one?

Redacted (De Palma, 2008) 5

Redacted gets off to a good start by not making any sense. The video diary suddenly segues into a glossy documentary. Thus we have a camera inside a car it has no reason to be in. Then it segues into an Iraqi news segment. It's a barrage of media without any throughline, and its level opaqueness makes it fascinating. But when the film starts to systematically construct the moments that lead to the film's central event, the film's proud indelicateness just becomes that: rote and indelicate. There's worth to be had from strong and unaffected characterizations, such as the two main offending soldiers, and likewise from a strong and unsoftened plot. But De Palma's staging just gets more and more uninteresting as it goes along, culminating in a scene of atrocity that comes off more contrived than upsetting. The film regains itself a bit towards the end with more interestingly associative use of mixed media, then a final scene - the one back in the US - that I found really worked and was a perfect, expertly ambivalent way to finish the film.

* Ju-on: The Grudge (Shimizu, 2003) 4.5

August 2009

August 2009

* The Awful Truth (McCarey, 1937)     7.5

* The Leopard Man (Tourneur, 1943)     9

* Carnival of Souls (Harvey, 1962)     8.5

* I Walked With a Zombie (Tourneur, 1943)     9

Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Tarantino, 2003)     7

Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino, 2009)     8.5

Inglourious Basterds is a vibrant and sensitive resurrection of old-fashioned filmmaking.  It recalls the day when films could move slowly, replete with full-blooded dialogue scenes, as long as they were taut with drama and emotions. Inglousious Basterds is actually Tarantino's most traditional film, classical Hollywood entertainment in all its theatrical and steadied beats. Mixed in, though, is Tarantino's meta concerns and, now, thankfully, a regard for history that is educated, strongly researched, and deals seriously with war, its mechanics (witness the Hans Landa character's playing of the field), and its repercussions (seen in the tragic failed romance-made-in-cinema-heaven of Shosanna and Fredrik Zoller)  - critically, with a sense of distance, and with a straightforward and clearheaded refusal to exploit (even the big death of You-Who-Watched-the-Film-Know-Who is dark and burdened instead of a glorious ahistorical shenanigan).  

Finally, Tarantino's Godard-channeling is finally clicking, since Tarantino and his staccato beats choreographed to human movement are now backgrounded by the most politically loaded and genuinely rarefied symbols he's utilized yet - period pomp, officers in full raiment, old foreign movie posters, etc.

* The Village (Shyamalan, 2004)     5

* Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1993)     8

Pulp Fiction is really good. It's not loud or over-the-top - it's quiet and atmospheric, and without being dry. Tarantino's directing is unobtrusive, observant. Very soulful, too, with his use of music. We can sit and listen to Marcellus methodically lay out instructions to Butch because he makes it so Rhames' voice seems to croon to the accompanying beat. I thought I'd have a sour reaction to his screenplay and dialogue here, but it's pretty consistently evocative and poetic.
Now does the film and its vignette nature and its evocations have much of a "thematic center"? I'm having problems pinpointing its ultimate moral and philosophical intentions. If Tarantino didn't write and direct human behavior and a textured world so well, Pulp Fiction would be too high concept for me to like very much or find much meaning in. "Deconstruction, yay!" of course, and, like I said, the dialogue never isn't flirting with social and emotional quandaries (the Mia-Vincent exchanges surprised me - the Somoan never put a finger on her feet, it seems!), but the film is undoubtedly set on "confection" mode.

* Opera (Argento, 1987)     6.5

Opera is a ridiculously awesome platter of Argento goods. Of course, it's no where nearing profound, it's dramatically non-existent and typically (of Argento) dry, the subtext or meta-commentary on high art and sadomasochism is pretty basic, etc. etcetera... but Argento sure knows how to make a freaky, exciting, sweeping, and most importantly visually witty film.  And it doesn't disappoint with the funky opening credit sequence, surely one of Argento's funkiest in a career of groovy and funky opening credit sequences.

You Can Count On Me (Lonergan, 2000)     8

* "Cigarette Burns" (Carpenter, 2007) (Masters of Horror, Season 1) (TV Series)     ****

* "Dance of the Dead" (Hooper, 2007) (Masters of Horror, Season 1) (TV Series)     ***

* Lifeforce (Hooper, 1985)     5.5

Vampires (Carpenter, 1998)     4.5

Notre Musique (Godard, 2001)     6.5

Strange Circus (Sono, 2002)     6

* "Dreams in the Witch House" (Gordon, 2007) (Masters of Horror, Season 1) (TV Series)     ***

* Assault on Precinct 13 (Carpenter, 1977)     8.5

"The Damned Thing" (Hooper, 2008) (Masters of Horror, Season 2) (TV Series)     *1/2

"The Washingtonians" (Medak, 2008) (Masters of Horror, Season 2) (TV Series)     ***

"Pro-Life" (Carpenter, 2008) (Masters of Horror, Season 2) (TV Series)     * (out of 5)

Made in U.S.A. (Godard, 1966)     6

July 2009

July 2009

[REC]  (Balaguero/Plaza, 2007)     4.5

Not bad and better than I expected. It successfully becomes more intense as it goes along, and the climax is excellently atmospheric and despairing. The religious angle that is brought in all of sudden at the end is a bit too obligatory of Catholixploitation, and is ultimately rather simplistic oogie-boogie backstory, but the quasi-mysticism provides undeniable atmospherics and it offers the viewer a somewhat evocative little tale of religion's rose-colored exploitation of facts morphing into terrifying science, with the final menace being a specter of disconcerting biological, anatomical decay.

The Tenant (Polanski, 1976)     7.5

Not as visually eloquent and crisply dynamic in expressing visual ideas as Rosemary's Baby, but it is much more expansive thematically, with much to intimate about the selfsameness of experience - the experience here being alienation due to the pressures and hypocrisy of apartment-dwelling life. It reminded me a bit of Inland Empire, both being about psychotic emanations of shared emotional existences under specific circumstances (Inland Empire: method acting, The Tenant: apartment living, both: Polishness).  Well, by "Polishness," I really mean "foreignness," which I suppose only The Tenant is particularly about.

Eaten Alive (Hooper, 1977)     6

* Spontaneous Combustion (Hooper, 1990)     5.5

Escape from L.A. (Carpenter, 1996)     5.5

Brüno (Clark, 2009)     4.5

Good for what it is: an outrageous stunt film with, just barely, the rhetorical purposes of making gayness prominent in a piece of mainstream entertainment, as well as a cornucopia of other topical stuff like [talking penises, and] absurdist mock peace talks... all of it surely weak and little-researched (it takes a while to realize these films, Borat and Brüno, are actually not trying to be like classical documentaries - their "mockumentary" status is weak in a way because they're more like mocku-"diary films"), but strengthened by the sheer novelty and daring-do of Baron Cohen's schtick.

* Scream (Craven, 1996)     4.5

* Death Proof (Tarantino, 2007)     9.5

* Tobe Hooper's Night Terrors (Hooper, 1993)     6

* Dead-Alive (Braindead) (Jackson, 1991)     8

The Sentinel (Winner, 1977)     3

The Sentinel is occasionally beguiling - Chris Sarandon's sturdy but two-sided, ultimately prosecutable lover; the moment where Cristina Raines insists a book is inscribed in Latin when it's not - but this is quite the woefully misguided film, that only deals with its rather implicative religious tale in the manner a cheesy horror movie would. And this is undoubtedly a cheesy horror movie. It's quite the representation of holy callings, and what exactly is it's correlation between its innerly troubled super model heroine and the gauntlet she's forced to take up?  Sexual trauma as sure enough conditioning for the life of monastic diligence? SPOILER The final shot of this beauty Cristina Raines relegated to a habit and the suddenly weathered skin of the cloistered does ring with sort of tragedy.

* The Fog (Carpenter, 1980)     5.5

A beautiful-looking and strikingly photographed film, that boasts the creepiness desired by Carpenter who aimed to create simply an old-fashioned ghost story. But it's perhaps too modest for its own good, its small-scale, slasher film approach and prop-costume, smoke machine aesthetic being inadequate for its story about a town damned by its ancestors, and not matching up to the smarts it occasionally possesses. The film ultimately comes off feeling rinky-dink and frivolous, especially considering Carpenter's film in its original print ran so short, the opening campfire scene (a good scene, though) and the autopsy room walking-dead scare (a bad scene) were shot after initial wrap in order to pad out the running time.

* Escape from New York (Carpenter, 1981)     6.5

June 2009

June 2009

Ghosts of Mars (Carpenter, 2001)     5

Oh, this wasn't so bad. I thought the material ranged from not bad to fantastic: the characters, the screenplay, plot developments, dialogue, etc. I found it, actually, very dense and intelligent in its comic-book sociology. I was struck by how comprehensively Carpenter both adopted old Hollywood Western story elements with implicit deconstructivist commentary, but simultaneously never disfavors or pacifies the survivalist pragmatism of its cop/criminal characters, nor makes them any less than likable, as is the practice in the old-fashioned Hollywood action films of yore.

Carpenter takes this pragmatism and satisfactorily splays it, so as not to just be about "brave vs. cowardly" or "good vs. bad" as is conventional in the classical Western of pre-progressivist era. Now, Carpenter mixes in the push of societal shifts (the film takes place in a mankind under a new matriarchal order), modern urban upbringing, and the nitty-gritty of what gets a pure survivalist through the day (which includes here, most interestingly, the good and bad of recreational drug use). It was great seeing faces like Jason Statham and Clea Duvall playing characters not glamorized or de-glamorized, instead ones that would usually be played by anonymous background actors. I was really struck by the Ice Cube-Henstridge interplay, too.

But, despite that, in the end, this is definitely not an improvement on Assault on Precinct 13, which also offers an open look at criminality and which this film is practically a remake. Carpenter's directing has always been characterized by its flat beats and mechanical, no-less-than (or, arguably, more-than) efficient style, but before it was in service of really careful sequencing and often lovely mise en scene. Here, his cinematic vocabulary seems to have disappeared and he's speaking like a thorough layman. The film has its formal idiosyncrasy, though. The rhythm of the film and its use of dissolves is particularly effective. It's too bad Carpenter was content with the film's cheap-looking production design and villain costuming, which go a long way in sinking the film. I think the film is very competent. It's just Carpenter sets his visual standards so freaking low here for some reason.

Friday Night (Denis, 2002)     8
Martyrs (Laugier, 2008)     6
* Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick, 1987)     9
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Mungiu, 2007)     7
* Prince of Darkness (Carpenter, 1987)     5.5
The Ruins (Smith, 2008)     5.5
Brief Crossing (Breillat, 2001)     7
The Game (Fincher, 1997)     6
Beau travail (Denis, 1999)     8
Claire Denis' technique isn't quite as polished as I like to see in my films - in fact, I'd call it almost sloppy at times - but deliberateness and authorial command definitely come through, with stunning elegance at numerous times, even if Denis' style of impromptu visualization leads to too many moments utilizing the grace of a slowly crawling camera to little effect. I wasn't with the film beat by beat - as a story told with explicit fragmentation and a willful avoidance of continuity and clarity, I can't help but feel we don't understand the two central characters as much as we should. But it's a preferred trade-in for what the film does so elliptically evoke concerning the legionnaire life, environment, and what it nurtures. This thoroughly expressionistic but finely detailed sketching of masculine regimentation is even more impressive and daring knowing a woman is behind the camera.

About the last scene, while it's certainly very affecting, I can't help but wish there was some context given to it, which might lend it a certified reality. I find I need to think of it as a moment that actually happens and not just as a fantasy scene if I want to appreciate it fully. As something that happened, it means he could dance. As a fantasy scene, it's inexplicable and just something Denis would throw in mid-filming when she found out her lead actor could dance.

UP (Docter, 2009)     7

Bram Stoker's Dracula (Coppola, 1992)     6

Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell would have been an achievement much in the same way Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula is, if Raimi had made Drag Me To Hell, you know, better. The two films even have similar slam-bang openings and shock, tactile title cards (which never fail).

As Raimi wishes to throwback to certain old-school schlock, Dracula also takes a classical-type story burdened with lots of codings and de-codes them using overt artificial style, Coppola throwbacking majorly to silent film aesthetic and storytelling beats.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is an uneven film that gets increasingly tiresome once Helsing and the men start actively seeking out Dracula, leading to a very weak climactic act, but there's too many great moments here to completely dismiss, especially in the first half of the film. The number of gleefully bizarre moments only Coppola's capable of is unbeatable, such as the extravagant visual feast that is Harker's first entrance into Dracula's castle and the shot of the spectacularly made-up Giant Bat form of Dracula moping out of sight when Mira catches him in the garden with Lucy, complete with a practically slapstick iris out. The characterization of the Lucy character takes on a particular poignance, her chipper and giving personality seemingly irrepressible even as all her vitality is slowly being sucked from her - perhaps Coppola's way to undermine our expectations that the vapid sex kitten is always easily susceptible to the draining of inner character, as the whole film serves to re-evaluate the Victorian era and its gentrified sexual mores, drained of the true, potent, and certainly blasphemous passion that Dracula embodies.

Fight Club (Fincher, 1999)     8
Se7en (Fincher, 1995)     5.5
* The Funhouse (Hooper, 1981)     7
Beyond Therapy (Altman, 1987)     7

Yeah, Altman lyricism is just too irresistible for me, even if the film makes very little in the way of concluding, transcendent statements and this film probably shows off the worst of Altman's tendency for puerile caricature. There's too much silliness here to make the film work dramatically, but if that final scene (starting with the hilarious "shoot em up") doesn't tie things up nicer than I'd expected. Glenda Jackson is fantastic and hilarious.

May 2009

May 2009

Star Trek (Abrams, 2009) 7

Drag Me To Hell (Raimi, 2009) 5

Orca (Anderson, 1977) 3.5

Recommended Reviews: Film Freak Central on Orca

Snatch (Ritchie, 2000) 4

Sleeper (Allen, 1973) 6.5

Love and Death (Allen, 1975) 6

Adventureland (Mottola, 2009) 6

Body Bags (Carpenter & Hooper, 1993) (TV) 4

Irreversible (Noé, 2002) 5.5

The Piano (Campion, 1993) 9

Best demystification of hoop skirts ever.

Shocker (Craven, 1989) 3.5

Wes Craven is the showman of the horror auteurs. He's modish and trendy and he shows it in his horror films. He's also a goofball, though, and a sucker for novelty, and that shows most explicitly in Shocker. Mitch Pileggi, a face known to any X-Files fan, tries valiantly to be the next Freddy Krueger, rolling off one-liners in mid-slaughter. It would all be just dull if the film didn't benefit from Craven's dream logic-inspired, sight gag-inclined knack at inanity. The otherworldly presence of the dead girlfriend, who seems to appear with the alternating and counter-productive purposes of either assisting, turning on, or fruitlessly freaking the hell out the film's hero, is one of the film's stranger plot elements, in a film full of strange plot elements. This includes the entire high school football team helping out foil the killer's plot, and a lecherous psychopath body-jumping into a six-year-old girl. Amusing, but pointless.

Splinter (Wilkins, 2008) 5.5

JLG/JLG (Godard, 199 ) 6.5

Nouvelle Vague (Godard, 1990) 7.5

Passion (2nd) (Godard, 1985) 7

* War of the Worlds (Spielberg, 2005) 4.5

April 2009

April 2009

The Midnight Meat Train (Kitamura, 2008)     4.5

Passion (Godard, 1982)     7

Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle, 2008)     3

* Images (Altman, 1972)     7.5

Sauve qui peut (la vie) (Godard, 1980)     7.5

The Apartment Complex (Hooper, 1999)     4

Tarnation (Caouette, 2003)     5.5

* Tobe Hooper's Night Terrors (Hooper, 1993)     5.5

March 2009

March 2009

Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Argento, 1971)     6.5
* The Wicker Man (Hardy, 1973)     8.5
Smiley Face (fullscreen) (Araki, 2007)     4
* Quantum of Solace (Forster, 2007)     3.5
Saw IV (Bousman, 2007)     1.5
Tobe Hooper's Night Terrors (Hooper, 1993)     5
Sexy Beast (Glazer, 2000)     8
Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa, 2009)     7
License to Live (Kurosawa, 1998)     7.5
Eyes of the Spider (Kurosawa, 1998)     n/a
Serpent's Path (Kurosawa, 1998)     7.5
A Scanner Darkly (Linklater, 2006)     5.5
Stuck (Gordon, 2008)     8
South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (Parker & Stone, 1999)     5
Week End (Godard, 1967)     7.5

February 2009

February 2009

Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Godard, 1967) 7
Coraline (Selick, 2009) 7
* Night of the Demon (Tourneur, 1957) 8.5
Milk (Van Sant, 2008) 7
Friday the 13th (Nispel, 2009) 2.5
Oh my God so fucking dull.
If this remake is of any conceivable use, it'll be making non-fans realize what relative (or absolute, if they really come around...) joys the 80s Friday flicks were. The 80s Friday's were stupid slashers, but they were eccentric stupid slasher films, where part of the fun was their lampoon of an eclectic set of stereotypes and caricatures.
Gran Torino (Eastwood, 2008) 6.5
* Night and Fog (Resnais, 1955) 8.5
Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964) 8
Culloden (Watkins, 1964) (TV) 9
Wendy and Lucy (Reichardt, 2009) 7.5
Contempt (Godard, 1963) 7.5
Emma (McGrath, 1996) 5.5
Zack and Miri Make a Porno (Smith, 2008) 3.5
First Kevin Smith film, so I wasn't expecting anything nor was I expecting nothing.  Likeable enough, I guess, but I did start feeling hostile towards the film once the ridiculous "Three months later..." card went up and the film completely gives in to irrepressible formula.
* Re-Animator (Gordon, 1986) 6
Vivre se vie (Godard, 1962) 8

January 2009

JANUARY 2009

* Birth (Glazer, 2004) 8.5
The Uninvited (Guard Brothers, 2009) 2.5
spoilers
Bleergghh. Bleeeergghh. That's the sound of me feeling physically ill while I watched this endlessly irritating, endlessly imbecilic movie. I'm usually very forgiving towards remakes, but just thinking about the artistry of A Tale of Two Sisters compared to this laughably cliched and awkward and visionless remake did make me want to puke. Throughout, I squirmed in my seat, groaned audibly, slapped my palm against my forehead, and broke into a drool of imitated braindeadedness, without fear of disrupting the movie-goers around me, mocking the film left and right.

That said, it does offer its own interesting spin on the big twist of the original. Its version of events is much more mean-spirited and psychologically subversive than Two Sisters', and actually gives the film some thematic cause for being such a sexed-up, teeny-bopper, American make-over of the more sober, adult Korean film. While that film dealt with budding biology through the mind of a main protagonist struggling to achieve a sort of adulthood and maturity, this remake consistently peddles and presents sex and sexuality with the attitude of a giggling school girl, through the eyes of a main protagonist wanting to cling to a childhood purity threatened by a wanton and whorish new stepmother. When the remake's secret is let out of the bag and the film reveals its message as some sort of variation on the old covenant "Get some nookie or let's go kooky," then it just all makes sense the film sexifies teen-star Emily Browning to such an extent it seems only possible in her dreams. Might there be some implicit critique made by the film, that all the overwrought CW shows and grotesque tween celebrity scene and Emily Browning in two-pieces are nightmare manifestations of the repressed psyche of bourgeoisie American youth? That if all teeny-boppers are as vapid as what this film hawks to them, then all youths in question are as subject to delusion and possible psychosis as the flittery, ill-"educated" young woman of this picture? Nah. There's much too much audience-protagonist identification throughout, instead of much-needed meta-irony.

* Breathless (Godard, 1960) 8.5
The Killers (Siodmak, 1946) 6.5
The Dunwich Horror (Haller, 1970) 5
aka Gidget Goes Date-Rape... For, Like, a Whole Week Straight. The serious issue that is date-rape aside, Daniel Haller's Sandra Dee-starring early 70s psychedalia horror-flick The Dunwich Horror is weird and amusing enough to make me appreciate it on some level. Likely the level that can imagine going whole hog with a really strung-out chick one smoky Woodstock night on the dewy green as Canned Heat played in the background. Poor Sandra Dee. This film is not good to her, or any of its women characters in general.

The film is not good, persay, but I for one appreciated its stylistic pretention. It's an example of a director, Haller, who was previously an art designer and now taking a turn as director. It is readily apparent: he has a great eye, a very lofty sense of style, and generally a great "art designer" sense of directing - but he can't quite get us to take it all seriously when he has to put his artsiness in the context of a story, and when no restraint is shown in cinematography so conceptualized it just seems made for a trip-out instead of a serious film. If this movie were made with the intelligent design behind Flaming Creatures or a Guy Maddin film, Haller would've been a genius. But in reality, this is just a very silly horror movie.

Die, Monster, Die! (Haller, 1975) 4
Snow Angels (Gordon Green, 2008) 7
Young and Innocent (Hitchcock, 1937) 6.5
Kung Fu Panda (Osborne, 2008) 5
* Little Otik (Svankmajer, 2000) 7
* Happy Feet (Miller, 2006) 9
The Haunted Strangler (Day, 1948) 5.5
The Beast Must Die (Annett, 1974) 4
* Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951) 7.5
Strangers on a Train is the first Hitchcock in a long time that I've come away feeling a bit underwhelmed (although, of course, it's not as if I have been watching what I assume are his least interesting works). It is surely an excellent piece of filmmaking, but I feel Shadow of a Doubt is a much more poignant picture about deviant personality lashing out against certain uglinesses of pompous normalcy. Strangers certainly has a lot of visual wit and biting undercurrents, but I think it is finally a case of Hitchcock's rigorous constructions and narrative tightness piling too thickly and overcoming subtextual insight. Even the much-touted merry-go-round finale seemed less "evocative imagery" than just a plot device (even though it is, of course, to some degree, visual evocation - I'd be fooling myself if I thought "Let's set the climactic fight on a merry-go-round!" was completely arbitary or completely a thin gimmick).
* School of Rock (Linklater, 2003) 6
* Dead-Alive (aka Braindead) (Jackson, 1992) 8.5
Dust Devil (Stanley, 1992) 4
The Saddest Music in the World (Maddin, 2003) 7
My first Guy Maddin flick. Maddin uncannily recreates the "silent film" look, and it's not just for cute aesthetic experimentation. The use of the silent movie look mixed with his non-sanitized characters, sensibility, and really wacky and inspired story really works with its theme on the irresponsible mixing-and-matching of emotionality (sadness and nostalgia and sociological representations) with the petty, insensitive, bawdy drama and business the main characters take part in. But on the con side, I also found Maddin's filmmaking generally rather ostentatious and indelicate. While his images are often striking and delicate, his editing and conceptualization is a bit flashy and frenetic. The film should have milked the competition and musical sequences more. Instead it was too plot-driven and a bit overly jokey.
Valkyrie (Singer, 2008) 5
The Crazies (Romero, 1973) 6.5
Paranoid Park (Van Sant, 2007) 8
* Disturbia (Caruso, 2007) 4
* Enchanted (Lima, 2007) 4.5