TOP 10 OF AUGUST

1. The New World (Malick)
2. Baby Doll (Kazan)
3. A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan)
4. Nashville (Altman)
5. A Wedding (Altman)
6. The Funhouse (Hooper)
7. The Masque of the Red Death (Corman)
8. The White Ribbon (Haneke)
9. Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul)
10. Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (Altman)

HM: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper)

August 2010

August 2010

* The Pianist (Polanski, 2002)|||||6.5
* Munich (Spielberg, 2005)|||||6
The White Ribbon (Haneke, 2009)|||||8
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (Harlin, 1988)|||||4
Lottery Ticket (White, 2010)|||||3
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (Russell, 1987)|||||4
Giant (Stevens, 1956)|||||7
* A Wedding (Altman, 1978)|||||8.5
The New World (Malick, 2005)|||||9
* Tropical Malady (Weerasathakul, 2004)|||||8

Certainly a wondrous, open-hearted movie whose spell over people is completely justified. I still find it uneven - it's not a very tight film, it prides itself in cinematographic imprecision too often (a sort of shapeless visual pretension that often dogs Claire Denis films), and it feels like a lot of shots are thrown in there without form or sustained impact. I think Weerasathakul definitely stepped it up in Syndromes and a Century with much more controlled and carefully orchestrated cinematography. But these really are all nitpicks for a quite magical film.

My favorite aspect of the film is how our point of identification remains the rough, experienced soldier character, yet how - in the second half explicitly, but even the first half - the unassuming boy he falls for is the teasing, unaccountably cunning and careful-footed figure of mystery (Ed Gonzalez perceptively calls out the boy's hand-licking as vaguely "condescending"). The soldier's earnest hunt for him in the 2nd half follows perfectly organically, and the moody 2nd half I didn't care for before (and still have my qualms with...) really effectively elevates their relationship to the mystic and all-natural.

* Nashville (Altman, 1975)|||||8.5
* Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (Altman, 1976)|||||7.5

Very likely to be considered one of Altman's less immediately impressive and affecting films, and for legitimate reasons, but it's still a strong and indelibly atmospheric work. Its commentary is a bit thudding and on-the-nose, its humor often broad, without the expected amount of Altman's off-kilter strangeness and seizing ambiguity to elevate the material.

Too many characters seemed uninvolved in the thematic fabric. Nashville has many caricatures, but it made each surprise us with extreme moments of pathos; this doesn't do that. Things were too clear cut, like making Annie Oakley the lonely humanist in the troupe. Also, this employs Nashville's flat, documentary-like directing, but Nashville had much more varied and malleable environments to cover, as opposed to the campground of this set.

A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II (Sholder, 1985)|||||3
* A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984)|||||5.5
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948)|||||8
* The Masque of the Red Death (Corman, 1964)|||||8
* The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)|||||7
* The Funhouse (Hooper, 1981)|||||8
A Town Called Panic (Aubier & Patar, 2009)|||||6.5
* Match Point (Allen, 2005)|||||7
Doubt (Shanley, 2008)|||||6.5

Uncanny. Who knew Doubt would turn out to be The X-Files: I Want to Believe without the genre trappings... and resultant, 2008 the year of contemplating the plight of the pedophile! Thematically, they're practically twins, with the Catholic Church the stuffy institution instead of the FBI. Doubt is of course the more implicating (the Roman Catholic Orthodoxy as topical as it is) and even-handed film, with no miracle of retribution allowed to either the deluded, rationalizing, ultimately culpable priest or the dying, oppressive, morally naive order.

I liked and respected Doubt very much, even though, especially after reading reviews, I can see how the austerity of the stage is far more appropriate for this than the theatrical, visual melodrama of film. What would be enticing ambiguity on stage is distracting fishing-for-clues in routine medium close-up. The film makes the material seem evasive and intent on tricking the viewer. I think it was Walter Chaw that aptly criticized it as devolving into a "whodunnit" by the end.

A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan, 1951)|||||8.5

Young filmmakers should just drop everything and adapt a Tennessee Williams play.

Baby Doll (Kazan, 1956)|||||8.5
Despicable Me (Coffin & Renaud, 2010)|||||5

What Punch-Drunk Love does for love, this does for parenthood, only, for this film, that isn't a compliment.

Don't Look Up (Chan, 2009)|||||4

July 2010

July 2010

Parasomnia (Malone, 2008)|||||2.5
The Naked Kiss (Fuller, 1966)|||||8
Inception (Nolan, 2010)|||||6

Chicken Soup for the Corporate Spy's Soul. Slick, grandiose pablum.

The movie has heart, and if anything, soulless it is not. On the surface, it's a very competent, well-thought-out thriller/mind-bender; underneath, it has the virtue of Nolan's ambition and audaciousness, and he has succeeded in big blockbuster action movie-making that has genuine passion, soul, and a need to communicate an emotional story. The film reveals itself in the end to be filled with a refreshing anti-cynicism, where we get corporate shenanigans that can actually morph into personal, positive odysseys for all involved. Are anyone's nasty energy industry take-overs panning out or not? Is it all peachy because the goodness-of-life has been affirmed so mind-blowingly for even the entrepreneurs? The film effectively circumvents those quandaries. This is movie-fantasy, where the illusions and the romances of such are all that matters. If it lacks in practical considerations - such as the nitty-gritty of dream technology, the ethical history of such, or any relevant social or political worldviews held by itself or its A-team roster of vaguely self-involved dream frolickers and science mercenaries - it's because it's one of those metaphoric emotional-journey films first and foremost. If it is one ultimately devoted to a complete cipher of a main character, one without any apparent principles outside of a Love-of-My-Life complex, then that is the fable Nolan visions. If any social prerogative is evident, it is that it is the most privileged and most comfortable who get to dream for recreation (we just have to hope their dreams leave them happy enough that they don't fuck us little people over). There is little doubt DiCaprio's reunion with his children is a moment to warm the heart, but it is all in spite of the fact he and his wife had it all coming, shooting up on subsidized dream vacations and turning a blind eye (and still turning a blind eye...) to the unethical power this technology harnesses. Anyway, while Nolan's thesis is often simplistic, it is also often provocative: dreams and ideas implanted can both build prisons and "build nations." Its deeming "nation-building" at its most monumental when it sprouts from the mere personal catharsis of a lovelorn man or an anguished son is a combination of intriguing, beguiling, and naive - and the film would be perceptive if it actually had a sense of its naivete.

Thematic content aside, before the often thrilling last half (that is, the whole "Heist"), the movie plays out like a feature-length montage, which is no compliment considering my very low opinion of the all-too-common cinematic shorthand that is the montage sequence. I get it that sometimes that's what the film is going for - disjointed narrative for a film about dreams - but Nolan's anemic screenwriting seems to think the only way to create circulation is fragmentation - not of textures and narrative idiosyncrasy, but of banal exposition, thus serving only to make more and more incredulous a story already teetering on the cliff of credulity. The "planning" chunk exists off an unbearable over-dependence on exceedingly pithy discursive on dream logistics that would - in a different, less prosaic context - be tolerable, if it weren't exacerbated more so when mixed with the film's endless, endless non-scenes! Making it even worse, did Zimmer's violins have to be gnawing away underneath the entire film, like Eye of the Tiger during a Rocky training sequence? Is this the only way Nolan can weave together a movie?

Some final straws: Nolan's script is laden with schmaltz and circumlocution poured liberally over the dialogue; the unadorned action movie antics are well compared to a James Bond flick and take away from the strong imagery often achieved (in its show-offy, dazzle-inclined way, anyway), and as a result we get a premise, which is more suited for the magical realism genre, burdened by literalism. Think along the lines of a bungled treatment of the premise to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Cotillard's character's psychology could've been fascinating and deeply unsettling but it's written away into accessibility. The ending is less ambiguous as it is revealing of the film's dependence on external, very impersonal symbols, as well as its commitment to the puzzle, instead of on its half-convincing attempts to conjure an emotional core or its half-baked attempts to apply a cogent real-world context to its dream spy story. Recommended Reviews: Big Other on Inception

* Inferno (Argento, 1980)|||||5.5
* Suspiria (Argento, 1977)|||||7.5

I've always been critical of Suspiria, agreeing with many detractors about that rubber stamp on its forehead proclaiming "STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE." Its fairy-tale simpleness, a children's tale nightmare, made it easy to condescend to, as it even lacks the knowingly loaded softcore-isms of giallo/Eurotrash tradition, which mix a knowingly fraudulent concoction of low culture titillation and damningly universal psycho-sexual mimicry-cum-analysis.

But Suspiria may have considerable credibility as the often-cited Argento masterpiece (although that mantel may, for myself, still go to Tenebre, after my most recent, somewhat disappointed viewing of Deep Red), undermining my long held dismissals. It stands strong as a spectacular and consistently stunning film, with, I'd say, just as equal a study on perception and experience as Deep Red, without that film's opportunistic distractions and shaky moral (non-)center. At least Suspiria, in spite of all the still-extant flaws, one can see as building a thin but at least concentrated and purified picture of petty little girls and fascistic, entitled, hypocritical administrators/witches, building it carefully instead of haphazardly, with an eye for awe-inspiring horror instead of mere uncontextualized masochism, which Deep Red suffers from.

* The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)|||||7
Small Soldiers (Dante, 1998)|||||6
Monster House (Kenan, 2006)|||||7.5
Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)|||||8.5
* The Brave Little Toaster (Rees, 1987)|||||8
* Maniac (Lustig, 1980)|||||5

Maniac has got a handful of things going on for it, I'll give it that. Lustig's not the hack filmmaker - he's got a knack for powerful editing rhythms (the doomed foreplay of the first scene's hooker), lush and potent imagery (e.g. the modeling session, the female photographer's walls of imagery), and the film has a number of elegant (sometimes even stunning) tracking shots that jar with the seediness around them (like those patterned shots of Spinell returning to his apartment). But while it's a skilled (you get the feeling Lustig is schooled in horror and the masters, with one sequence a clear homage to the dark street stalking in Cat People) and atmospheric approximating of the mind of a maniac, it's an exploitation picture through and through, one that's ultimately unfailingly sensationalistic and morbid and high on victim-fear. The movie does a lot of interesting things, things that suggest the film as more darkly comic than just an abject exercise in fear-preying (Fernando Croce of Cinepassion calls the film's odd fog-filled climax a sly "trompe l'oeill"), but its ends do not live up to its very capable means.

Toy Story 3 (Unkrich, 2010)|||||7.5

June 2010

June 2010

* Killer Klowns From Outer Space (Chiodo, 1988)|||||4
Make Way For Tomorrow (McCarey, 1937)|||||8.5
<--- Blubbering fool.
Southern Comfort (Hill, 1981)|||||7
Showgirls (Verhoeven, 1995)|||||8
Alice in Wonderland (Burton, 2010)|||||3.5
* The Beyond (Fulci, 1981)|||||5
* Deep Red (Argento, 1975)|||||7.5
* Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003)|||||6
* Tobe Hooper's Night Terrors (Hooper, 1993)|||||6
* Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa, 2009)|||||7.5
* Habit (Fessenden, 1997)|||||8.5
* Wendigo (Fessenden, 2000)|||||8.5
In the Cut (Campion, 2003)|||||7

The lurid serial killer story is really ho-hum, sub-mass market paperback material, and is dislodged from the character study working through it. The film is too soaked in imagery, and the hyper-dreaminess taken on for the climax only works to take us completely out of the mind and will of our protagonist. Nevertheless, if there's anything I uniformly love about Campion's films, it's that her female protagonists are meticulously written and thought out as to be so indistinguishable from men.

Tourist Trap (Schmoeller, 1979)|||||4.5
Quills (Kaufman, 2000)|||||5.5
* Day of the Dead (Romero, 1985)|||||8.5
* Monkey Shines (Romero, 1988)|||||5.5

Monkey Shines is an intriguing and risky film, with odd, perverse psychology being rooted at and a knowing cheekiness in support of that (Fernando Croce: it's a film "expressed in satirical Hitchcockisms"), but ultimately, I don't think it's too successful. It's a little stiff, a little dry, and that psychological study is a little simplistic sometimes.

* Land of the Dead (Romero, 2005)|||||5.5
* Battle Royale (Fukasaku, 2000)||||88.5
The Princess and the Frog (Clements & Musker, 2009)|||||5.5

May 2010

May 2010

The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel, 1962)|||||7.5
Medea Goes to Jail (Perry, 2009)|||||3
Survival of the Dead (Romero, 2010)|||||5.5

Recommended Reviews: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Survival of the Dead

Satyricon (Fellini, 1969)|||||7.5
Poltergeist III (Sherman, 1988)|||||4
Moon (Jones, 2009)|||||7
Poltergeist II (Gibson, 1986)|||||3
The Science of Sleep (Gondry, 2006)|||||7

The Science of Sleep isn't as heart-achingly sentimental as 'Eternal Sunshine,' but they're very much sister films in that they both explore aspects of ephemeral relationships.

SPOILERS: Didn't expect 'Science' to be quite so bitter, though - I was thoroughly expecting a happy ending. I must have been blinded by the whimsy, though, because, thinking back, the signs all point to the ending we get. It's quite a rug-pulling film. In the first half, we think the match is made before it begins. But then the film's truth-telling comes out: if a match is too made, you can't just be friends. Friends aren't lovers. If you're dancing around each other like you're thinking it's too convenient to be adult or exciting, someone's gonna grow out of the other.

The final tantrum works too well, an uncomfortable summation of what can't exist in a fine-lined platonic relationship.

Very effective film. Shortcomings are there, gave it a 7, but won't go into those since critics already have had at it. They really didn't like this movie very much, and even my most insightful and sensitive pet online critics really hate on the self-indulgence. Perhaps it hits too close to home for too many people. Many reviews insist that Stephane is made "an intentionally unlikable" protagonist or whatnot, but in doing so they seem to ignore the bleak implications. There is concerted effort to dissociate with Stephane by focusing on all his craziness, but the final truths the film is telling in no way necessitate you being a Stephane man-child.

Memories of Murder (Bong, 2003)|||||7

Broadly played but still intelligent, a bit too "cop movie" but still nuanced with its characters. Very Zodiac - rich in cultural detail and implicit commentary, in this case dealing with political upheaval, small town complacence, and big establishmentarian impotence. Loved the small town cops and their banter. A careful mix of endearing qualities and [dumb] corruption, the bad cop's fate is a brilliant touch and a perfect encapsulation of the power and weakness wrestling within our appointed strong arms.

But, the film felt too ridden by style for style's sake, and a greater point doesn't quite come through all the bombast and conventional action movie antics. The ending proves quite haunting, though, and finally lands the punch deserved by the film's deft balance of farce and palpably dark emotions.

I got the feeling that it's a paen to the cop, in spite of the overt evidence otherwise. Even if they deserve their ridicule, the film is most beguiling when forced to tolerate their dumb humanity. It's an ode to grunts. Odd, but their dimwittedness provokes more sympathy than distaste, and their corruption is more symptom of that than the other way around. The smooth-handed suspect calls them out for their corruption, yet by that point we're as convinced as the detectives are that this guy is totally the killer and, in the finale, we understand what a frustrating, consistently demeaning and ball-busting job it is.

The House of Mirth (Davies, 2000)|||||9
Intolerable Cruelty (Coen Brothers, 2003)|||||5.5
Wise Blood (Huston, 1979)|||||6
Splice (Natali, 2010)|||||6

The first third or so threatens the same generic craft of the typical Hollywood genre flick, but as the film enters its increasingly demented, lonely-barn-set second half, Natali finally starts getting into it, enlivening the proceedings with some dripping family gothic. Natali, the up-and-coming master of the laboriously, naifly over-visualized concept film, at least isn't entirely vapid with his drama (although not that it's brilliant drama, either), and it shows in how knowingly he pushes buttons, then how willing he is to mute it all with wryness and tonal good sense, in follow-up moments that both ground and self-analyze, whether it is in the visuals or the riotous drama involved (example: the treatment of the aftermath of Brody's paternal transgression). The film is an energetic, not-at-all somber sci-fi-horror parable involving Polley and Brody playing science wunderkinds and power couple, a delightful Macbeth/Lady Macbeth variation (or Frankenstein/Lady Frankenstein, more accurately) that Natali thankfully gives much color and black dramedy.

* E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982)|||||6

April 2010

April 2010

All That Jazz (Fosse, 1979)|||||8.5
* Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002)|||||4.5
Hausu (Obayashi, 1977)|||||6.5
The Color Purple (Spielberg, 1985)|||||5.5
The Prowler (Losey, 1951)|||||8
White Dog (Fuller, 1982)|||||7
Boom (Losey, 1968)|||||8
* The Man Who Wasn't There (Coen, 2001)|||||7
King & Country (Losey 64)|||||8
Modesty Blaise (Losey, 1966)|||||4.5

Has there ever been so unsuccessful a film as Modesty Blaise? It just keeps on failing and shooting itself in the foot. I think I'm a big Losey fan by this point - he's an artsy, pretentious guy with too many ideas in his head. In this film, though, it's like, ease the hell up with the cinematic pontification - this type of material needs some sense of commercial narrativity to work and indulging in incessant musical juxtoposition is not going to engage the viewer! And I can appreciate his playing Continental iconoclasm with another culture, but those were some of the worst Arabs ever put to film.

Blind Date (Losey, 1959)|||||7.5

Blind Date was a textured, thinking-human's crime-mystery film, Losey's class-oriented concerns and stormy visual intensity figuring heavily into the subtext, but if it didn't have one of the most ludicrous premises ever. Losey's on his A-game, but again, the film shows his way of occasionally veering into very overripe melodrama.

March 2010

March 2010

Time Without Pity (Losey, 1957)|||||7.5
Eva (Losey, 1962)|||||8.5
* Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983)|||||7.5
The Sleeping Tiger (Losey, 1954)|||||8
* An American Werewolf in London (Landis, 1981)|||||8
M (Losey, 1951)|||||6.5