April 2013

April 2013

'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen (Snow, 1974)|||||7
The Lords of Salem (Zombie, 2012)|||||5
Print Generation (Murphy, 1974)|||||++
Britton, South Dakota (short) (Renwick, 2004)|||||+
Back in the Saddle Again (short) (Stark, 1997)|||||+
Fire of Waters (short) (Brakhage, 1965)|||||+
The Women (Cukor, 1939)|||||6
* "Masters of Horror: Sick Girl" (TV) (McKee, 2006)|||||++ / 6.5
Adam's Rib (Cukor, 1949)|||||7
* Daughters of the Dust (Dash, 1991)|||||5.5
Evil Dead (Alvarez, 2013)|||||4
If you don't think about comparing it to the original Evil Dead, this is a pretty neat, stylish horror film. Talk about messing with a tried-and-true (or not tried-and-true, depending on how you feel about it...) formula, though: it takes The Evil Dead and gives it a story, characters, character arcs, thematic underpinnings, emotional peaks and narrative waves (all of these aforementioned things not very good, to the surprise of no one), and forgoes conventional slasher film thrills for more "high concept" devices to lead to the gore and grue.  Very middlebrow for a sick and nasty throwback horror film.
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Durkin, 2011)|||||5.5
Detour (Ulmer, 1945)|||||7
Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969)|||||6
Pat and Mike (Cukor, 1952)|||||6
* The Dark (Cardos, 1979)|||||7
There is something magical about this movie.
Dusty and Sweets McGee (Mutrux, 1971)|||||5.5
Easy Rider (Benning, 2012)|||||7
La Roue (Gance, 1923)|||||7
There's actually a lot to dislike about this legendary epic silent melodrama, clearly indicative of a peak artistic point in cinema (when uninhibited visual expressionism with the pure cinematic image was the cultural order of the day).  It's a sprawling soap opera, thus morally scattered - it's often sensationalistic, thus exploitative of the hurtling psychologies and manias and dramas that rush at you with the typical silent cinema artwork's sound and fury.  But silent cinema has that grasp of the grand and mythic and the beautiful moment that it mines out of the story, which, when appearing, fully justify the at-times very tiresome cinematic-melodramatic thunder: long minutes can be spent on the joyous dance of a character.  A whole set piece can be centered on a laughing man.  It - meaning "pure cinema" - is quite moving.  The final hour of the film, which wraps up three previous hours of train crashes, destructive feelings, and aching hearts, winds down to a destitute man in his destitute house with his destitute daughter, simply living together, both actively trying to relinquish and discount their previous lives of intense strife with unadorned but content, happy but sad peace.  The four hour film, thus, ends on a high point.