October 2010

October 2010

The Equinox: A Journey Into the Supernatural (Woods et al., 1970)|||||3.5
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Murnau, 1922)|||||8
New Nightmare (Craven, 1994)|||||5
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (Lord & Miller, 2009)|||||5.5
* Planet of the Vampires (Bava, 1965)|||||5.5
Rabid Dogs (Bava, 1974)|||||5
* Tales from the Hood (Cundieff, 1995)|||||5
* Night Tide (Harrington, 1961)|||||5.5
Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (Blackburn, 1973)|||||6
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (Six, 2010)|||||4
Stupid and mostly shoddy, but it at least approaches fulfilling its provocative premise with the needed poignancy and sense of the ordeal.
The Plague of the Zombies (Gilling, 1966)|||||5.5
Bigger Than Life (Ray, 1956)|||||8.5
Joins The Prowler as a 50s film that slow-burns through a seemingly prosaic set-up but eventually blows up to mind-blowing allegorical proportions.
* "The Damned Thing" (Hooper, 2006) (Masters of Horror, Season 2) (TV Series)|||||2.5
* "Dance of the Dead" (Hooper, 2005) (Masters of Horror, Season 1) (TV Series)|||||5
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (Hickox, 1992)|||||4
Hellbound: Hellraiser (Randel, 1988)|||||4.5
Too bad director Tony Randel only went on to an Amityville sequel and Power Rangers episodes, because he does shockingly A-class work here.* Martin (Romero, 1977)|||||8.5
The House That Dripped Blood (Duffell, 1971)|||||4
The Wizard of Gore (Lewis, 1970)|||||4
The Social Network (Fincher, 2010)|||||8

TOP 10 OF SEPTEMBER

1. Johnny Guitar
2. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
3. The Thin Red Line
4. Cries and Whispers
5. Eyes Wide Shut
6. Empire of the Sun
7. Ponyo
8. We Own the Night
9. It's Alive III: Island of the Alive
10. Cowards Bend the Knee

September 2010

September 2010

We Own the Night (Gray, 2007)|||||7.5
Ponyo (Miyazaki, 2009)|||||8
Trick or Treat (Smith, 1986)|||||4
Cowards Bend the Knee (Maddin, 2003)|||||7
Blood Feast (Lewis, 1963)|||||3
* It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (Cohen, 1987)|||||7
Machete (Rodriguez & Maniquis, 2010)|||||5
Fred: The Movie (Weiner, 2010) (TV)|||||2.5
A Perfect Couple (Altman, 1979)|||||7
The Town (Affleck, 2010)|||||7
* Hellraiser (Barker, 1987)|||||5
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (Talalay, 1991)|||||4
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999)|||||8
* It Lives Again (Cohen, 1978)|||||6
Empire of the Sun (Spielberg, 1987)|||||8
* Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954)|||||9

Munich is erudite and well-informed and exquisitely political and all, but Johnny Guitar - now that's an anti-prejudice, anti-violence/retaliation film. Such a lovely film.

Tomb of Ligeia (Corman, 1964)|||||6
Village of the Damned (Carpenter, 1995)|||||4
Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010)|||||5.5

*spoilers* Shutter Island equates the institutional man's (the "institutional man" being any man belonging to an institution... "America" for most and most generally) greatest nightmares - as law men, as psychologists, as ideologues and activists, as "men of violence" - with the world's grandest, most maniacal, human-devouring conspiracy, as if conspiracy is what has to exist for the world's greatest atrocities to occur. And as imperturbable as grand conspiracy and great atrocity is, the mind may only be able to cope with it through madness that is less intrinsic to a mind but contrived by both events and the manipulations of cunning minds who doctor and engineer sanity to their wishing. Shutter Island's use of genre tropes - the grizzled cop, the conspiracy games, the tormenting ghosts - is a sly acknowledgment of genre diversions - like cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, heroes and madmen - as indulgences of a temporary madness, one that is impotent to effect the "true fantasies" of genocide and high-level machinations. DiCaprio's reformed Uncle Sam's boy may wish to excavate truth and recover order, but ultimately his lofty desires are just smoke and mirrors, and relegated to role-play for a delusional mind. "In hopes to convince you how impossible it is!" one character exclaims to him late in the film. Perhaps, but how far off is any a disturbed mind's concoctions from the real world? Scorsese and the screenwriter stack it high the fact that DiCaprio's character is in fact a sufferer of true delusions, but the tableau of the film is clear: that all these terrible things - from political obfuscation to great wars to mad housewives - are all but possible, and they're all such mad fantasies (or should have stayed so), both the true and hallucinated. A welcome ambiguity in the final coda suggests some men (and women) - often the violent kind - simply do rule the world, and that, out of those who don't, the madmen have got the right idea.

That said, I didn't like the film very much. Having style does not a great film make, and Shutter Island's highly flamboyant style is often diverting, but often not much more than distraction and hollow playfulness (I will admit, though, Scorsese's bombastic use of an appropriated score is a pleasure, and reminds me how anemic film scoring can be nowadays). Scorsese's anti-continuity tricks and hallucinogenic optical illusions were less expressive as they were contrived. The performances are uniformly fine, with DiCaprio the weak link, not because he is bad, which he isn't, but because he's terribly miscast. He plays it either too big or too small, likely in the need to step up to a role he's not fit for, when everyone around him is fitted perfectly. (Michelle Williams again proves herself one of the most capable young actors in Hollywood.) The film is bloated and overlong, its primary narrative and tonal approach being rather condescending-to-genre-film B-movie silliness, an approach that failed entirely to engage me at much emotional level. Rather than letting any of its thick ruminations sink in, the film is contented fucking with audience's heads and to merely amuse; amuse and dazzle with lurid shocks and flashy cinematography. The traces of poignancy that Scorsese no doubt does sense in the material he ultimately fails to respect. The film feels coldly planned and plotted, and its convoluted approach becomes tiresome and uninspired, and stinks of a complacence with the insinuating notion of "genre film mediocrity."

The Thin Red Line (Malick, 1998)|||||8.5

The Thin Red Line is a superb and audacious mix of meander and tense extended battle sequences; certainly one of the most powerful depictions of the sheer meaningless of everything in combat. Jim Caviezel's Florence Nightingale of Kentucky boy WWII soldiers is a great character.

* McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)|||||9

"Destroy all the myths of heroism," Altman claims was his goal with McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Business power and the way of the gun Altman successfully fixes to the top of the food chain.

Wolfen (Wadleigh, 1981)|||||6.5
Cries and Whispers (Bergman, 1972)|||||8.5

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