Seconds: John Frankenheimer

John Frankenheimer's Seconds is a film that I am finding quite difficult to describe. I've thought of dozens of ways that I could begin this review, but none of them seem to work. Why? The simple reason is that it has been a long, long time since a film has stunned me so thoroughly. Seconds is one of those films that takes you so violently by surprise that it lingers in the back of your mind like a festering wound. In the past few days it has invaded my dreams, permeated my waking moments, and forced me to radically re-examine my thoughts concerning the evolution of cinema. Here is a film so ahead of its time that it resembles an impossible evolutionary jump akin to a single-celled amoeba sprouting a pair of opposable thumbs. It predicts the works of Philip K. Dick, imagining a world controlled by unseen, inescapable forces. Its depiction of bodily modifications are disturbing and nearly proto-Cronenbergian. It asks questions concerning personal identity, existential angst, and the definitions of happiness and freedom years before they would become the norm in science-fiction cinema. It all starts with Arthur Hamilton, a middle-aged businessman experiencing a mid-life crisis who gets a phone call from Charlie Evans, a friend long thought dead. It turns out that Charlie had become a client of a mysterious organization known as the "Company" which seeks to help unhappy businessmen escape from their dull lives. They do so by faking their clients' deaths with a modified cadaver, giving them radical plastic surgery, and providing them false ID's so they can literally start a new life. Essentially, the "Company" runs a Witness-Protection-Program for the rich and bored. After much hesitation, Arthur agrees to be given a new identity. His plastic surgery transforms him into an entirely new man (played by Rock Hudson in the performance of his career). He begins a new life in Malibu where he pretends to be an artist. But Arthur begins to regret his choice and wants to go back to his old life. Unfortunately, the "Company" can't and won't let that happen. There are several reasons why Seconds is a magnificent film, but I want to focus on three. First, the story is marvelously original and engrossing. Second, Hudson's performance should be the thing of legend. I say that it should be a thing of legend because the film was widely ignored by audiences who were too used to seeing Hudson in Sirkian melodramas. And third, Frankenheimer practically invented a new cinematic vocabulary with Seconds. The film is dominated by claustrophobic close-ups and unsteady cameras. In a way, it predicts the rise of the Steadicam. All of these things make Seconds a great movie. It deserves...no...NEEDS to be seen.

10/10

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?: William Klein

I've said it before and I can and will say it again: William Klein should have made short films. He was a marvelous photographer with an eye for vicious, cutting satire. His ideas were new and fresh and stunning to behold. But he couldn’t properly pace a film to save his life. Take his 1966 film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? Parts of it are flawlessly brilliant. The film is the story of Polly Maggoo, a 20-year-old model from Brooklyn who arrives in Paris for a fashion show where the women all wear bent aluminum sheets that make them resemble tin cans as envisioned by cheap sci-fi films from the 1950s. Despite the ludicrous outfits (which are so sharp that they make the models bleed) the show is a hit. Polly Maggoo becomes such a big sensation that men propose to her in the middle of the street. She soon finds herself the subject of an incredibly invasive television profile that seeks to capture who she truly is. Add that to the fact that a prince from a nearby country in the Soviet bloc falls in love and tries to marry her and you have a young woman who simply cannot escape the limelight. As I said, the film has moments of transcendent genius, such as the opening fashion show and a sequence where the prince comes to Paris and tries to carry out his diplomatic duties with a sense of pomp and circumstance despite the fact that nobody cares about his country anymore. The cinematography is almost Kubrickian in its attention to detail, shot composition, and meticulous beauty. But Klein simply didn’t have enough ideas to fill a movie at over 100 minutes. The film dizzily staggers from one whimsical set piece to another almost at random. It gets to a point where Klein’s satire gets obscured by his reliance on bizarre special effects, idiosyncratic editing, and pointless philosophizing. I would still heartily recommend the film, though. It remains a true jewel of post-French New Wave cinema. I just wish that Klein could have at least answered the film’s eponymous question. Or...maybe the fact that he didn’t was the point all along...

6/10

Confidentially Yours: François Truffaut

Legendary French New Wave director François Truffaut's last film, Confidentially Yours, wants to be a film noir so badly that it can taste it. It was based on the novel The Long Saturday Night by Charles Williams, a beloved American author of hard-boiled crime fiction. It follows Claude Massoulier, an estate agent accused or murdering his wife's lover. Things look even worse for Claude when his wife ALSO turns up murdered! With the entire country on the look-out for him, he enlists the aid of his secretary, Barbara Becker, to investigate the case and clear his name. It's an interesting twist on an old film noir standard: the man on the run and the woman who loves him. But unfortunately, as with most of the other times when Truffaut tried to explicitly emulate one of his favorite genres or filmmakers, the end result falls flat. There's no chemistry between Claude and Becker. Considering that the two are supposed to be in love, their cold, sterile performances smack of the uncanny valley. Truffaut valiantly mimics classic film noir cinematography, even shooting the entire film in black-and-white. But the film lacks the sense of despair and moral ambiguity that act as the life blood of real film noir. So the cinematography, while very pretty, seems unnecessary. The central mystery of the film isn't even that interesting. I found myself bored and unimpressed during the denouement. It's always unfortunate when a great director ends his career with a mediocre or sub-par film. I like to think that Truffaut had more film projects in mind when he tragically died of a brain tumor the year after Confidentially Yours was released. But such is life.

5/10

Death Rides a Horse: Giulio Petroni

As much as I truly love spaghetti Westerns, after a while they start to blend together. Oh, I don't mean the towering masterpieces of the genre like the Dollars Trilogy or The Great Silence (1968). I'm talking about all of the lesser spaghetti Westerns, the ones made by directors like Sergio Sollima, Tonino Valerii, and Enzo G. Castellari. They might not have the professionalism of Leone or the cynicism of Corbucci, but they still get the job done in the end. But they rely much more heavily on cliches and stock characters. Such is the case with Giulio Petroni's Death Rides a Horse. Now, I know that many consider it blasphemy to insult this film. It's a favorite of Quentin Tarantino and was frequently homaged in his films. But that doesn't change the fact that it still is quite generic. You have a standard revenge plot provided by John Phillip Law as Bill Meceita, a young man who witnessed the savage murder of his family at the hands of criminals while still a child. Now that he's grown up, he has set out to bring justice to those men. He tags along with Ryan, a gunfighter played by Lee Van Cleef who just finished a 15 year prison term and is also out for revenge. Even though they travel together, their plotlines are largely separate until the very end, continuing the tradition of spaghetti Westerns that frantically juggle two stories. This was a technique largely seen in Zapata Westerns which dealt with the Mexican Revolution of 1913. Zapata Westerns frequently featured two protagonists: an ignorant Mexican and a European/American who was heavily involved in the revolution. But whereas Zapata Westerns could get away with having two protagonists since it allowed them to explore different sides of their central conflict, in Death Rides a Horse it seems unnecessary. Don't misunderstand me, though. Death Rides a Horse is still a good film. It has a fun mix of stylization and brutal violence. I just wish that it would have stuck with one protagonist and storyline.

7/10

Céline and Julie Go Boating: Jacques Rivette

I can't honestly say that I'm a fan of Jacques Rivette. Out of all the members of the French New Wave, I connect the least with his work. I may not enjoy the works of Éric Rohmer or Jacques Demy, but I can at least appreciate their artistry or get a general sense of what they were trying to accomplish. But not so with Rivette. I find his films to be absent-minded works of whimsy that are ultimately quite shallow. Céline and Julie Go Boating has done nothing to change this perception. Here is a film so caught up in its own quirkiness that it fails to engage any audience that isn't comprised of astute film scholars or those who had already decided ahead of time that they would like it. The film starts off promising enough. Two young Parisian women, Céline and Julie, strike up an uncanny friendship after a bizarre incident with a lost scarf. They then start to swap identities. Céline impersonates Julie for a date with one of the latter's childhood sweethearts. Julie auditions in Céline's place for a role in a cabaret. But after about an hour and a half of identity-swapping hijinks, the film makes a bizarre turn towards the metaphysical. The two women get snared in a murder mystery that occurs in a strange house. Whenever they enter the house, the crime and the events immediately preceding it repeat as if caught in some space-time continuum flux. Even worse, whenever they leave the house, they immediately forget everything that they had seen. And so we are forced to watch the same events in the house 2-3 times while Céline and Julie look on and make crude and crass commentary like an unfunny version of The Muppet's Statler and Waldorf. The film, which stretches over three hours in length, overstays its welcome. It honestly feels like a child with ADHD directed it since it can't focus on anything longer than 5-10 minutes. Films of such length need an overall focus or they implode under their own weight. I guess it's a mercy that Céline and Julie Go Boating had almost no weight to begin with.

4/10

Diary of a Lost Girl: G.W. Pabst

Louise Brooks had one of those screen presences that instantly illuminated the screen even if she was just standing in a corner doing nothing. When she entered the frame, all eyes would jolt towards her. Considering that her heyday was in the silent era, she became a coveted, priceless commodity for directors. She made several films, but the two that tower above all of the others were made with G.W. Pabst. The first was the iconic Pandora’s Box (1928). The other was the tragic Diary of a Lost Girl. The story of Thymian Henning (Brooks), the ingenue daughter of a well-to-do pharmacist, Diary of a Lost Girl is one of the great pieces of silent social commentary that takes on a fresh sting when considered within the modern context of the 2012 United States Presidential election wherein many established women’s rights have come under attack. The film follows as Thymian is seduced by a corrupt gentleman who impregnates her and abandons her. Since Thymian refuses to reveal the man who knocked her up to her family, they send her away to a reformatory to hide her from the rest of the world and, more importantly, polite society. Of course the reformatory is a hell-hole, but she eventually escapes. But since her family has practically disowned her, she becomes a prostitute. While the film does have a happy ending wherein Thymian becomes staggeringly wealthy, its greatest moments involve her horrific suffering. Of course Brooks’ performance is absolutely stunning as a poor girl who is discarded by society when she becomes an “inconvenience.” But even more stunning is that almost 80 years after its release the world is perhaps no closer to ending the cultural systems that allowed Thymian’s story to occur in the first place.

8/10

A Tale of the Wind: Joris Ivens, Marceline Loridan

It may sound strange, but I get a weird kind of amusement out of telling my fellow film buffs that I didn’t “get” a certain film. Their reactions are priceless. Some of them stretch their faces in exasperation and breathlessly ask, “How could you NOT get it?!” Others will regard me with a belittling smugness as they giggle and bask in their own superiority. I’ve even had one or two film buffs straight up call me an uneducated idiot for not appreciating the right films by the right directors. So what if I don’t like the films of Antonioni or Kiarostami? And what if I think that Jean Luc-Godard hasn’t made a single decent or watchable film since Weekend? The point is that a film’s artistic or intellectual value is as subjective as its so-called “quality.” Why am I pointing all of this out? It’s because I’ve recently watched A Tale of the Wind by the legendary (at least among art historians) director Joris Ivens. It’s a very personal film that follows the ancient filmmaker’s efforts to travel to China and “film the wind.” But the film is not so much a narrative as it is a dream-like collage of images, memories, and events from Ivens’ life. We see footage from the Peking opera, historical footage of the Chinese fighting the Japanese in World War Two that Ivens filmed, and a bizarre extended sequence where he enters the world of Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902). Even though this might draw the wrath and disdain from my fellow film buffs, I didn’t like this film. Oh, I thought that several parts of it were stunning and beautiful. A series of scenes of Ivens taking a film crew into the Gobi Desert took my breath away. But I don’t feel like the film comes together as a cohesive whole. My intellectual friends would chime in and say, “That’s the point! It’s not supposed to have a cohesive narrative!” But I don’t mean to say that the film’s narrative doesn’t work. Instead, I don’t feel like the film works. I’ve seen other abstract and experimental films that abandoned narrative that I quite enjoy. I love the works of Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and Jem Cohen. I get something from their films. But A Tale of the Wind left me feeling sterile and unsatisfied. Still...the Gobi Desert scenes were very pretty...

5/10

J.D.’s Revenge: Arthur Marks

Blaxploitation is one of my favorite guilty cinematic pleasures. I had thought that after several years that I had seen all of the great blaxploitation films. And, at the very least, if I hadn't seen one of them, then I had at least heard of it. But one of the greatest joys a film lover can experience is being proven wrong. Such was the case when I was introduced to Arthur Marks' J.D.'s Revenge. The film, which follows a young black college student in New Orleans named Isaac Hendrix who is possessed by the spirit of J.D. Walker, a hustler from the 40s wrongfully accused of murder, is easily one of the most entertaining and fascinating examples of the genre. Many blaxploitation films suffer from wandering narratives. Who can forget the seemingly endless driving scenes in Gordon Parks, Jr.'s Super Fly (1972)? But J.D.'s Revenge has a tightly focused, well-acted narrative. Glynn Turman's performance as Isaac is truly spectacular. He begins the film as a well-to-do young black man making the way up the social ladder. He plays on his college football team, constantly studies to become a lawyer, and has a healthy relationship with his wife. But as Isaac slowly begins to succumb to the controlling power of Walker's spirit, he begins to transform into the kind of stereotype that many white people held concerning black people. He starts to dress like an old time pimp, begins to order people around with vicious snarls, and attacks those who offend him. He wanders the streets of New Orleans in a daze, sometimes stopping at a church run by Elijah Bliss, a reverend with a belly full of fire and a suspiciously hefty checkbook. It turns out that the good reverend may just have the connections that Walker needs to finally get his eponymous revenge. But can Walker's spirit be avenged and put to rest before he destroys Isaac's life, relationship, and future? Offering a fascinating glimpse into 70s black culture, J.D.'s Revenge is a film that no blaxploitation aficionado should miss.

8/10

Shallow Grave: Danny Boyle

Off a nondescript street in an equally nondescript neighborhood of Edinburgh stands an unassuming brownstone flat harboring three particularly nasty tenets. The first, David, is a mousy-looking chartered accountant sporting a Clark Kent combover and a pair of garish brown glasses. The second, Juliet, is a stern, no-nonsense doctor who seems to have stolen her hairdo and demeanor from a 1980s female news anchor. And finally, the third is Alex, a grating, immature, irresponsible reporter with a massive ego outsized only by his gargantuan mouth. The three would have probably hated each other if not for one common interest: causing misery in other human beings. When they aren’t working or keeping their split-pea soup green and Tweety Bird yellow furniture and decor immaculately clean, the three emotionally and psychologically abuse the unfortunate souls who answer their add for a fourth tenet.

But soon they run out of awkward Gingers, Goths, and Geeks to harass. So they finally accept a clean-cut, well dressed man named Hugo as their fourth tenet. Everything seems fine...at least until the next day when they discover him completely naked, sprawled out over his bed, and stone-cold dead from a drug overdose. And next to their freshly deceased flatmate they find a suitcase stuffed to the brim with more money than they had ever laid eyes on.

Such is the situation in which the main characters of Danny Boyle’s directorial debut Shallow Grave find themselves. Two years before he would stun the world with Trainspotting (1996), a true cinematic triumph that would later be named one of the Top Ten Greatest British Films of All Time by the British Film Institute, Boyle released this remarkable, yet little remembered, title. Part crime thriller, part black comedy, Shallow Grave is a magnificent synthesis of style, mood, and storytelling.

The idea of a group of friends accidentally discovering a suitcase full of somebody else’s money was already an overused stereotype before Boyle began this film. But Boyle introduces two distinct variations for this scenario which set it apart from other stories of its kind. First, usually when a group of people find a “suitcase full of money” they initially want to do the right thing but are dissuaded by a corrupt member of their party. In Shallow Grave, Boyle asks the question of what would happen if the people who found it were already out-right, unapologetic bastards. It doesn’t take long for the three to decide to keep the money and not inform the authorities about Hugo’s death. So they almost immediately set out on the obligatory spending sprees that accompany such tales.

Well, to be more specific, Juliet and Alex start to throw money around like crazy. David, on the other hand, refrains from and even rebukes their frivolous behavior, wisely (and correctly) assuming that the money didn’t belong to Hugo. But there is a greater motivation for David’s cautious behavior. Quite simply, he begins to grow a conscience. Usually it’s the other way around in these stories: a harming individual or influence eventually corrupts the otherwise decent members of the group who find the money, eventually turning them against each other. The reason for David’s sudden development has to do with Boyle’s second variation on this story: the presence of an unwanted body.

Naturally Hugo has to disappear in order for them to keep the money. But the question quickly becomes how will they do it. The disposal of bodies has long been one of the most difficult problems for the average movie character. Some hide them under floorboards, some in swamps, and some even feed them to pigs! But David, Juliet, and Alex fancy themselves smarter than the average criminal and decide that the best thing to do is to saw off his hands and feet, burn them, bash his face with a hammer beyond recognition, destroy his teeth, and bury what’s left in the woods. Unfortunately, after drawing straws, it is up for David to do the butchering. It is at this point that the film takes on a completely different tone.

Up until then, the entire film had reveled in the techniques that would come to define Boyle’s direction in the coming decades: highly kinetic editing, a break-neck speed, and ecstatically energetic acting. But after David’s midnight meat run, the mood and atmosphere of the film shift. David slowly begins to lose his mind, locking himself in their attic to protect the money. A pair of gangsters hot on the trail of the money begin to interrogate and dispatch people connected with the money’s disappearance in increasingly shocking and brutal manners. Juliet begins to realize that they might be in trouble and starts to move about as if in a daze. And Alex, whereas before he was just an asshole, begins to sink into illusions of grandeur wherein he is a genius and completely untouchable by both the law and whoever might be wanting the money back.

Of course, Alex’s delusions are violently ended when the two gangsters somehow track the money to their flat and attack them. Miraculously, David manages to dispatch both of them when they try to access the attic. Afterwards, they have two more dead bodies to dispose of. But they have bigger problems. David’s paranoia has driven him insane, Juliet is so terrified that she buys plane tickets to Brazil, and Alex’s arrogant bravado has come crashing down, leaving him a frightened fraction of the man he once was. To their combined horror, things get even worse when the police manage to discover all three bodies and come to their flat asking suspicious questions. Perhaps inevitably it leads to an unfortunate incident in their flat involving a particularly large kitchen knife...

Though its central story may be too familiar for some, Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave is nonetheless an astonishingly powerful thriller. Most films are unable to survive a mood shift as severe and pronounced as the one central to Shallow Grave. But where other films choke, Shallow Grave succeeds with a ferocious intensity. Many fresh filmmakers make the mistake of sacrificing story for style. But with this film Boyle proved himself not only as a master stylist, but as a supreme storyteller as well. Truly, it was the dawn of one of Britain’s greatest and most talented modern filmmakers.

9/10

Last Chants for a Slow Dance: Jon Jost

Somewhere along a desolate highway in Western Montana where the scorched grass burns brown and cotton-ball clouds dissolve into an endless ocean of white, a decrepit old pick-up truck speeds along. The driver, a shifty, uneasy man named Tom Bates fidgets and cackles a rapid, kookaburra laugh. “I mean, what you ever get the feeling that everything was just, just going by you like WHOOSH -- just going by, it’s all, all too fast. You can’t, can’t see anything,” he philosophizes to a lanky hitch-hiking hippie sitting in the passenger seat. “I guess, well I guess what I got to do is sort through some of this shit, y’know, just get some of this shit outta my life,” he continues as his passenger sits in solemn silence. Indeed, Tom Bates is a man with a lot of shit in his life. He has no job, no money, a wife he keeps running away from, and two kids (soon to be three) he doesn’t want. And the worst part is that he is either incapable or unwilling to realize or admit that all of these problems are his fault. He is the nightmare of a living, breathing hamartia; an Aristotelian tragic hero devoid of anagnorisis. He is unapologetic in all he does: when he screams at his wife, when he wastes what little money he has on cheap drinks, and even when he cruelly throws the hippie out of his truck when he begins to suspect that he might be “a queer.” He feels cheated by life, yet has no idea that he stacked his own deck against him.

Such are the ways of Tom Bates, the character around which Jon Jost’s Last Chants for a Slow Dance revolves. One of the neglected treasures of the early American independent film scene, it is, to use Jonathan Rosenbaum’s words, a “chilling portrait of an embittered, misogynistic lumpen proletarian.” Made for about $2,000 and shot on dusty, faded 16mm film stock, the film looks like the remnants of overexposed home movies. It embodies the lulling sense of fatigue brought on by days of endless driving with no radio or air conditioning. And yet there was not a single moment of Last Chants for a Slow Dance that didn’t leave me completely enthralled.

Jost constructs his film through the use of two primary techniques. First, he routinely utilizes long takes where the characters are either partially or completely obscured. Consider the opening scene in the truck with the hippie hitch-hiker. The third shot of this sequence is a medium close-up of Tom Bates and the hippie framed by the front windshield. The camera first focuses on Tom. Since up to this point the hippie hasn’t said a word, the audiences is shocked when the camera pans left to reveal his presence. Then, the camera pans further left to profile the hippie. All the while, Tom continues to rattle on from off-camera. Then, after a time, the camera pans right to frame both characters one last time. This whole unbroken shot is roughly six minutes long. Not only is it aesthetically fascinating, but it is a technical marvel. Considering that Jost only had two grand to film with, it is very doubtful that he had an expensive camera that could be fixed on the top of the engine. So this raises two possibilities. One, that Jost managed to cobble together a system of pulleys and ropes which not only held the camera in place but panned it back and forth to perfectly profile the characters. Two, that somebody was literally tied to the front of the truck and worked the camera while on a busy freeway. I honestly can’t decide which would be more practical.

The second technique that Jost extensively utilizes is the montage. As Tom stumbles from confrontation to confrontation, the film dissolves into sequences of rapid, quick cuts set to country music written, played, and sung by Jost. When I say country music, I don’t mean the polished, glittery Nashville tripe that usually floods the radio-waves. This is authentic country music, the kind Townes Van Zandt crooned to empty bar rooms in Austin, the kind borne from picking on a guitar or banjo on a rocking chair on a front porch, the kind that paints pictures of misery, despondence, and exhaustion. The music evokes the tedium that rules Tom’s life.

The combination of the long take and montage skew the audience’s senses of temporality. On this subject, Noël Carroll wrote, “Jost’s strength in this film is his ability to portray the experience of time of the lumpenproietariat who is outside the regimented rhythm of work and sleep, who lives without directions, schedules, and goals.” And indeed, Tom seems drifts in and out of time. One minute, he is flirting with a woman at a bar. In the next, we see Tom sitting on the bed in her apartment in his underwear making a phone call to his wife, alternating between begging her to take him back and screaming obscenities at her. The woman from the bar, having heard the whole conversation, asks him who he was talking to. Without missing a beat or batting an eye, he responds in a terse monotone, “It’s something ‘bout a job.” The woman, obviously amazed that Tom would lie so blatantly to her face, continues, “You always yell at people who are about to employ you?” “Yeah.” Not buying it, she says, “You didn’t mention anything about a wife last night.” “I don’t remember being asked about a wife, last night.” It isn’t long before Tom begins to yell again.

If Jon Jost’s direction was the stuff of genius, then Tom Blair’s performance as Tom Bates was the stuff of legend. He encapsulated the kind of brutal, honest naturalism that John Cassavetes spent decades trying to coax out of actors like Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk. Blair manages to change emotions from one extreme to another with a swiftness that would have seemed robotic or artificial from another, lesser actor. The fact that these violent mood swings are almost always captured in unbroken long takes gives him an almost sinister presence that spreads unease over the audience. We slowly become morbidly curious of just how far gone Tom Bates might really be.

Jon Jost’s Last Chants for a Slow Dance is a fascinating film which seems to stylistically predict the works of Béla Tarr and Jim Jarmusch. Without relying on the over-abused metaphor of the Death of the American Dream, suffice it to say that Jost’s film is a scathing rebuke of traditional American machismo and individualism. Tom Bates is no John Wayne, no Clint Eastwood, no Marlboro Man. He inhabits two wastelands: the plains of Montana and the killing fields of his inner psyche. Is it any wonder that the film ends in violence? Jost wisely realized that Tom Bates’ story could not end any other way.

8/10

Soul Surfer: Sean McNamara

I feel bad for Sean McNamara's Soul Surfer. On the one hand, it's the beautiful, inspirational story of Bethany Hamilton, a real-life girl who at the age of thirteen lost her left arm in a shark attack yet persevered and went on to become a champion professional surfer. It also is one of the few professional Hollywood films with an overt, positive Christian message. It has some great acting, particularly on the part of Helen Hunt, AnnaSophia Robb, and the always fantastic Dennis Quaid. But for everything that Soul Surfer has going for it, I can't get over the fact that it has the single worst shark effect since Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009). When Bethany eventually gets attacked, the scene isn't tragic, but inappropriately hysterical. And this speaks to the film's overall problem: despite having its heart in the right place and a phenomenal story, Soul Surfer is simply a poorly made film. I guess I should have expected as much from McNamara, director of other such classics as 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain (1998) and Bratz: The Movie (2007). The screenplay is a mess, the cinematography and editing seem like they were taken out of an early 2000s music video, and it introduces a villain character in the form of a rival surfer. That last part really bugs me. Does a film about a girl who becomes a champion surfer after losing an arm really need a villain? Wouldn't the film's true antagonist be her doubts, fears, and struggle to overcome her new-found disability? I dunno. Soul Surfer seems to sway between trying too hard, not trying enough, and not even trying in the first place. And yes, that last part was in reference to the utterly abysmal shark effect.

5/10

And Everything Is Going Fine: Steven Soderbergh

It takes a special kind of person to keep a large audience captivated with nothing but the power of his words. For almost 30 years, monologist Spalding Gray would do just that. Armed with nothing more than a desk, chair, notepad, glass of water, and perhaps a record player, Gray would captivate audiences with stories about his life. Oh, his life wasn't anything particularly extraordinary, although he did travel to Southeast Asia to do research for a screenplay which would eventually become the film The Killing Fields (1984). Instead, he managed to draw audiences in with stories about everyday life. His mild yet utterly hypnotic voice and delivery transformed his one-man performances into dissections of the human condition and American society. Six years after Gray's death, director Steven Soderbergh released And Everything is Going Fine, a loving and heartfelt documentary that examined his life and career. Cobbled together from footage of interviews and performances, And Everything is Going Fine paints a picture of a true American original. Sometimes funny, occasionally sad, but never boring, Gray comes across as a man struggling to come to terms with society, family, and his own life. He expresses his horror at learning that his wife was pregnant, desperately demanding for her to "Get rid of it." He recounts an uncomfortable sexual encounter with a gay man in his younger years that required no small amount of bravery to discuss in front of a large audience. He reveals that once when he was a child, he accidentally gave himself a third-degree burn and was refused medical treatment by his mother, a devout Christian Scientist. At the end of it all, Gray appears to be a man who has seen much in his life and has obsessively thought about every single second of it. Gray's life is an affirmation of Harvey Pekar's mantra: "Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff." And every second of And Everything is Going Fine proves it.

7/10

The Organizer: Mario Monicelli

I have seen quite a few European films about workers' strikes and revolutions. After a while, certain patterns start to emerge. One of the major patterns is that usually when a film depicts a repressed group of workers, individuals within said group are rarely characterized. There may be one, two, or three characters who get names, back stories, and emotions, but these are almost always the stoic leaders of the movement who can't be bothered by anything that isn't directly related to the advancement of the proletariat cause. And I guess that fits the ideology of socialist movements which emphasize unity and discourage individuality. But for this very reason many of these strike films seem emotionally sterile. Even films by the early Soviet masters like Eisenstein and Pudovkin seem strangely detached from their subjects. That isn't a criticism, of course. But then I see Mario Monicelli's The Organizer and my opinions on the European strike film are completely changed. The film follows the struggles of the workers at a Turin textile factory at the turn of the last century. When an old man loses a hand in an accident, the workers decide that they have had enough with the inhumanly long hours and poor safety conditions. They try to appeal to the owner, but are casually ignored. But then a drifter arrives and by chance overhears their plight at a union meeting. The man turns out to be Professor Sinigaglia, an expert in organizing strikes. He gives the community a second wind which gives them the courage to stage a real strike. From there, the story becomes predictably formulaic. They strike, the owners hire thugs, and it becomes clear that all roads will eventually lead to a final confrontation between the classes. But The Organizer is unlike any European strike film I have ever seen. Instead of transforming the oppressed workers into a faceless mass, Monicelli goes out of his way to characterize as many characters as possible. Professor Sinigaglia, for example, is a timid, albeit driven man who remains a perpetual outsider among the workers. The workers are full of characters that we grow to love. When they suffer, we feel more emotion for them and their plight because we know them. Monicelli's approach may not be ideologically accurate with its characterizations, but the result is a movie that has done more to endear me towards the plight of the working class than any Soviet film.

9/10

Meek’s Cutoff: Kelly Reichardt

When I was a young boy, one of my first experiences with computers was with the legendary title Oregon Trail where you controlled a family of pioneers moving West in the 1800s. It was an addictive little game, in no small part because of a particularly entertaining minigame where you got to go "hunting" and kill a large amount of wild animals. But while I fondly remember playing Oregon Trail for years as a child, I don't think that I ever beat the game more than two or three times. I would never get much farther than Colorado before I either got attacked by Indians, died of thirst, or collapsed from dysentery. And so it was for many real pioneers who risked everything to travel West for a new life. Perhaps better than any other film that I have ever seen, Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff captures what it must have been like to brave the Oregon Trail. The film is a loose reconstruction of a real-life incident on the Oregon Trail in 1845, in which frontier guide Stephen Meek led a wagon train through a dangerous piece of territory which resulted in accidents and the deaths of several of their party. It is told primarily through the perspective of the party's women, delegated to the back of the train where they can only hear soft snatches of conversation from the flustered and frustrated menfolk. It has been a long time since I have seen a movie use diegetic sound to such great effect. It harkens back to other classic films where the interplay between the image and the audio was of equal importance such as Fritz Lang's M (1931), Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979), and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974). Reichardt perfectly captures the harsh, bleak, and empty world of the Oregon Trail with breathtaking cinematography ruled by a steady, restrained hand. It is a nearly flawless film. In the future, when I hear people complain that Americans can't make movies anymore, all I need to do is point to Meek's Cutoff.

9/10

Reichardt's direction is nothing short of a revelation.

One, Two, Three: Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three is one of those truly special comedies like His Girl Friday (1940) and Sullivan's Travels (1941) which somehow manages to cram about 240 pages of dialogue into a running time of around an hour and a half. In other words, the actors speak loud, energetically, and fast! Thankfully, the lines that the actors of One, Two, Three have to deliver are some of the funniest and most entertaining in the entire Wilder filmography. Considering that this is the man that also brought us Some Like It Hot (1959), this is quite a claim. But it is not unjustified. One, Two, Three is deliriously hysterical. The film stars James Cagney in one of his last performances as C.R. "Mac" MacNamara, a powerful executive in the Coca-Cola Company. MacNamara is head of the West Berlin office and is in charge of brokering a deal which would allow Coca-Cola to be sold in the Soviet Union. But things are complicated when MacNamara is ordered by the head of the company, W.P. Hazeltine, to take care of his firecracker of a daughter, Scarlett, during her trip to Berlin. Desperate to be promoted to the head of Western European Coca-Cola Operations in London, MacNamara reluctantly agrees. What he couldn't have expected was that Scarlett would run away and get married to a young, enthusiastic Communist from East Berlin. What ensues is a level of madness and confusion unseen since the Golden Age of Screwball Comedies. One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is its biting social commentary on Post-War Germany. The satire is thick enough to cut with a set of titanium kitchen knives. The sheer audacity of some of the humor and characterizations are dumbfounding even to this day. Quite simply, it is a film that needs to be seen to be believed.

9/10

Papillon: Franklin J. Schaffner

I noticed something about 10 minutes into Franklin J. Schaffner's Papillon, a fictionalized account of the life of Henri Charrière, a Frenchman who had been convicted of murdering a pimp and sentenced to a long term at the hellish Devil's Island prison. I noticed that the film was unafraid of silence and long periods of inaction. That might not sound very interesting, but keep in mind that Papillon was a big Hollywood production that starred two of the biggest stars in the world: Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen. I know it's cliche to bemoan modern Hollywood fare as shallow, hyperactive, and derivative. But after watching Papillon the differences between the Hollywood of the 70s and the Hollywood of the 21st century were too grating to ignore. The film clocks in at about 2 1/2 hours, roughly one minute longer than the more recent Hollywood film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009). And yet, despite its slower pace and stronger emphasis on silence, I found Papillon to be infinitely more engaging and enjoyable. In fact, it was so engrossing that the two and a half hours flew by before I knew it. The point I'm trying to make is that Papillon is proof that great writing, phenomenal acting, and an emphasis on character development is all a Hollywood production needs to be in order for it to capture and enthrall its audience. There are action sequences, of course, usually in the form of Charrière's repeated attempts to escape the island. But despite their quality, the scenes that I remember most fondly had nothing to do with cliff-diving, shooting, and thrilling escapes. Instead, I think of the scene when Charrière is forced into solitary confinement for several months and slowly begins to lose his mind. I think of the scenes where Charrière and his best friend Louis Dega, the infamous French counterfeiter played by Dustin Hoffman, concoct new escape plans. I remember a late and shocking betrayal by the last person you would expect when Charrière DOES eventually escape. These are the scenes that captured my attention. These are the moments that made Papillon more captivating than anything Michael Bay or Brett Ratner have ever made.

7/10

She’s Gotta Have It: Spike Lee

As a new-found New Yorker for almost seven months, I feel I should have a greater appreciation for the works of Spike Lee. After all, the man is almost single-handedly responsible for establishing Brooklyn within the international film circuit as one of the crown jewels of New York City. Spike Lee is to Brooklyn as Woody Allen is to Manhattan. His first full length film, She's Gotta Have It, brought Brooklyn to the cinema's attention. It is an honest and loving ode to one of the most culturally diverse areas in all of the United States. It has all the flair and vigor of an aspiring young filmmaker desperate to make a name for himself. It follows the torrential love-life of Nola Darling, a woman who's attitudes towards sex would make Jerry Falwell spin in his grave. She courts three young black men: the well-to-do and clean-cut Jamie Overstreet, the narcassitic model Greer Childs, and the immature and unfortunately named Mars Blackmon. Lee takes pleasure in reversing traditional gender roles with Nola taking the place of a Brooklyn Casanova and her three suitors as the jealous harem. Each character is given a literal voice by having them each take turns to address the camera about their relationships in a documentary manner. In fact, Lee switches back and forth between more realistic cinéma vérité-esque techniques and moments of hyper-stylization. It is a fascinating film that heralded the arrival of one of modern cinema's greatest and most controversial talents.

8/10

The Slumber Party Massacre: Amy Holden Jones

When I was a young boy, my mom and dad would take me to the local Blockbuster. As soon as they arrived, they would drift towards the new releases and drama sections where they would inevitably pick out a handful of movies that I was most certainly not allowed to watch with them. But I didn't care. A trip to Blockbuster meant a trip to the horror section, and that was good enough for me. Oh, I would never be allowed to watch any of the movies that filled those special shelves. For me, the covers were all the entertainment that I needed. This was back when horror movies had awesome, provocative, and sexy covers of half-naked women covered in blood cowering before monstrous killers and unspeakable demonic creatures reached their rotted hands towards naive, impressionable youth. And of all of the box covers that fascinated me, Amy Holden Jones' The Slumber Party Massacre was my favorite. It was the first box cover that I would visit whenever we went to Blockbuster. It became a kind of unholy pilgrimage that I looked forward to a little more than a boy my age probably should have. So imagine my delight when Netflix announced that this film had become available for streaming on their site! I turned off the lights, put on some headphones, and watched this artifact from my youth. Oh, the film itself is terrible. If somebody were to distill and concentrate the essence of the slasher film, The Slumber Party Massacre is what would be produced. It doesn't have a plot so much as a parade of cliches strung together via brutal and bloody death scenes. Tons of random nudity? Check. A plethora of attractive, young female victims? Check. False jump scares? There are a ton of them. A Final Girl? It's got you covered. Perhaps the most amusing thing about this film was that it was actually written by prominent feminist Rita Mae Brown as a humorous critique of the slasher genre. So imagine her surprise when the studio New World Pictures bought her script and decided to change it into a straight slasher film? Anyhow, you might notice a low score at the end of this review. That's because despite my nostalgia I am forced to be impartial towards the films that I see. The Slumber Party Massacre is by no means a good film. But then again, it wasn't exactly made with the intention of being showcased in the same theater as the works of Bergman and Antonioni. So, despite my low score, know that this film remains a treasured part of my childhood...even though I didn't see it until I was almost 23.

4/10

Godzilla vs. Monster Zero: Ishirō Honda

No, I don't care that Godzilla vs. Monster Zero was the only film in the Japanese Godzilla franchise's history to have an American in a leading role. I don't care that it was the first Godzilla film to feature space invaders. And I don't care that it was also the last Godzilla film to feature the legendary Tokusatsu team of director Ishirō Honda, screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa, and special effects director Eiji Tsuburaya. Godzilla vs. Monster Zero is a bad, bad, bad film. I make no secret of my disdain for the films that followed the original Godzilla (1954). To me, they bastardized one of the most powerful and skillfully crafted Japanese movies of all time. The original Godzilla was so much more than just a monster movie; it was a shocking expose of post-war Japanese fears concerning nuclear destruction and foreign occupation. In my opinion, the Godzilla franchise is akin to making Rick Blaine into a campy James Bond after the end of Casablanca (1942). But that isn't the reason for my distaste towards Godzilla vs. Monster Zero. I can appreciate wanting to watch giant monsters beat the crap out of each other. I am an avid King Kong fan and I hold a special place in my heart for the Gamera series. But even by Tokusatsu standards, Godzilla vs. Monster Zero is a bad film. It involves a race of aliens from the mysterious Planet X located right behind Jupiter which tricks mankind into sending them Godzilla and Rodan so they can use them to fight off an apparent attack from King Ghidorah. Unfortunately, they end up using Godzilla, Rodan, and King Ghidorah to subjugate earth so they can conquer it. Everything about this movie is terrible. The acting is abysmal. The cinematography gives all of the actors a yellowish tinge which makes them all appear to suffer from jaundice. And the worst part? Godzilla, Rodan, and King Ghidorah are only in the film for what must amount to only five minutes of actual screen time. If I'm going to watch a cheesy giant monster movie, then I want to see some GIANT MONSTERS! I should not be checking my watch every few minutes wondering when the men in rubber suits actually show up.

3/10

I Was a Male War Bride: Howard Hawks

Peter Wollen once wrote that most of director Howard Hawks' films could be reduced to two genres: the adventure drama and the crazy comedy. He went on to explain that Hawks' comedies usually centered around domineering women and the emasculation of men. The films Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940) immediately spring to mind as examples of these tropes. However, perhaps the single greatest example of the traditional "Hawksian" comedy is I Was a Male War Bride. Based on a true story, the film follows American Lieutenant Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan) and French Army Captain Henri Rochard (Cary Grant) as they struggle to marry and move to the United States after the end of the Second World War. Due to the incredible American bureaucracy, the couple are forced to marry three times: civil, Army and church. Afterwards, they are repeatedly thwarted in their attempts to get Henri aboard the ship that will take him to his new country. See, the United States had passed a War Bride Act that facilitated the transportation of new European wives to America. However, the problem was that the Act only mentioned wives. It didn't say anything about husbands. The film that comes most immediately to mind when watching I Was a Male War Bride is Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985), another movie which depicted a world that was crippled by a preposterously complex and unwavering bureaucracy. But whereas Brazil ended tragically, I Was a Male War Bride ends with Cary Grant dressing in drag to infiltrate a ship full of European women. The film isn't as polished or focuses as some of Hawks' more infamous comedies. For one thing, Hawks seemed uncomfortable with dressing a male character in drag without reiterating several dozen times that it was the only way he could get to America. As a result, there are too many scenes where Grant and Sheridan confront confused and bemused Army personnel about their situation. But regardless, I Was a Male War Bride is absolutely charming. It isn't Howard Hawks at his best. But even "average" Hawks is well worth the watch.

7/10

Cinema Paradiso: Giuseppe Tornatore

Despite my consuming love for films, there are times when I feel burnt out over the cinema. Every now and then, I feel like I've seen everything there is to see on the silver screen. I start to see movies not as stories but as conglomerations of over-used tropes and stereotypes. In times like these, I turn to films like Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso. Tornatore's ode to old movie theaters and the cinema culture of the 40s and 50s in Italy remind me why I love film in the first place. Such films rejuvenate me and make me want to throw myself once more into the realm of nitrate. The film is told largely in flashback from the point of view of famous director Salvatore Di Vita who returns to his hometown of Giancaldo, Sicily after a 30 year absence. The reason for his return was that his old friend and father figure, Alfredo, has died. Alfredo was the movie projector at Giancaldo's theater entitled Cinema Paradiso. After a tragic fire left Alfredo blind, he taught young Salvatore how to project movies. But one day Alfredo encourages Salvatore to leave their small town, never look back, and pursue his destiny. The heart and soul of this film are the scenes that depict what going to the movies was like over half a century ago for the people of Sicily. Going to the movies was more akin to a party with people yelling at the screen, drinking, making love, and even dying in their seats. Tornatore stated upon the initial release of Cinema Paradiso that the film was eulogizing this practice of movie-going. One could be forgiven for missing this because Cinema Paradiso is more than just a film about people going to the movies. Instead, it is about the power of the movies to connect people from all different walks of life. The film itself gets a bit tedious near the end with a fairly contrived sub-plot of a doomed love affair. But everything else in Cinema Paradiso is pitch perfect,

9/10

The Delinquents: Robert Altman

One of the most common attributes shared by the pioneers of the Hollywood New Wave was that most of their first movies were terrible. Martin Scorsese's first two films, Who's That Knocking on My Door? (1967) and Boxcar Bertha (1972), were unfortunate bumps in his career. The less said about Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13 (1963), the better. So imagine my surprise when Robert Altman's first film, The Delinquents, was actually decent. Well, not so much decent as watchable. It's actually quite a funny film when viewed within the context of Altman's career. Altman would go on to become one of the most iconoclastic and anti-authoritarian directors to ever grace Hollywood. And yet The Delinquents is a film that portrays the evils of drinking and hanging out with a bad crowd. It even has a sombre epilogue read by a deep-voiced man who espouses the virtues of civic duty and religious morals. But the film itself is about a young couple, Scotty White and Janice Wilson, who are kept apart by Janice's overbearing parents. Along the way, they end up going to a party with a bunch of tough guys. They leave when one of them makes inappropriate advances to Janice. However, right after they leave the party is busted by the cops. Convinced that Scotty ratted them out, the gang goes looking for Scotty's blood. I have to admit that The Delinquents was much better than I thought it was going to be. You can even get a sense of the birth of Altman's love of crowd scenes with multiple lines of dialogue going on at the same time. There's even a scene where the gang forces Scotty to drink an entire bottle of Scotch in one sitting that is surprisingly well executed. But the film is still far from being good. However, it speaks to Altman's abilities that it wasn't much, much worse.

5/10

Certified Copy: Abbas Kiarostami

I have to say that I am very surprised that Mr. Abbas Kiarostami has finally made a film that I can tolerate. That doesn't mean that I like it. It's just that the thought of watching it again doesn't make me want to shove bamboo under my fingernails. The film in question is Certified Copy, a bizarre reflection on love, relationships, and the nature of art. The 'plot,' if you can even call it that, concerns a budding [?] relationship between a British writer and a French antiques dealer. A good 80-90% of the film is comprised solely of these two characters talking...and talking...and talking...and driving...and talking WHILE driving. These are all standard stylistic tropes within Kiarostami's work. But for the life of me, I can't figure out why he keeps recycling them. After Taste of Cherry (1997), his film which controversially won the Palme d'Or, one would think that Kiarostami had gotten all of the intimate conversations between two people in the front seats of a car out of his system. But no! At least thirty minutes of this film is, again, between the two main characters talking while driving in the countryside. The film supposedly contains some kind of meta-commentary on the nature of art authenticity, but I simply did not get it. Roger Ebert's review of the film attempts to decode Kiarostami's unusual subliminal machinations, but even then the explanation seems forced and hollow. So, for all of my problems with this film, why do I say that it is the sole Kiarostami film that I wouldn't be opposed to seeing a second time? It's the acting. Oh, the acting in this film is positively superb. The two lead actors, Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, give positively stunning performances. This speaks to one of my biggest problems with Kiarostami's films: his actors and actresses always seem like they are sleepwalking. Kiarostami's trademark conversations and arguments were always delivered in a bleak, weary monotone reminiscent of Robert Bresson. But while Bresson used the blank performances of his actors in an attempt to invent a purely cinematic language of acting, Kiarostami had no real justification for the acting techniques of his performers. Binoche and Shimell's performances are like jolts of electricity into this mediocre film. So, at least Kiarostami has upped his game in at least one area. Who knows? In a few decades Kiarostami might actually make a film that I like!

6/10

The Monster of Piedras Blancas: Irvin Berwick

I feel like I should give Irvin Berwick's The Monster of Piedras Blancas the benefit of the doubt. After all, I had a very hard time finding a copy of it. When I finally did find a copy, I was dismayed to discover that it was in very poor quality. It looked like somebody had draped a cotton sheet over the screen. But then again, I had a very similar experience with Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel (1962). The only copy I could find of that film was an old VHS in my college library that was old, faded, and had blurry white subtitles that had an annoying habit of becoming illegible by disappearing into the background. And yet, to this day, The Exterminating Angel may, in fact, be my all-time favorite Buñuel film. So, on second thought, maybe I shouldn't give The Monster of Piedras Blancas any special consideration. The film is an abysmal horror story about, gasp, a monster that lives in Piedras Blancas. It's a typical small, coastal town with a lighthouse. I do wonder where precisely this town is located, though. The only Piedras Blancas that I could find information about was located in northern Spain, yet everyone in this community speaks English. Oh well, whatever...anyhow, this monster is apparently a sea creature that lives in a cave near the lighthouse. For the past several years, the monster has been placated by the lighthouse keeper who periodically left food for him. But as fate would have it, one day the lighthouse keeper isn't able to give the monster its food, and it goes on a rampaging killing spree. Now, I watched this film because a good friend told me that it was ground-breaking for its realistic depictions of gore. But the gore was actually limited to a couple of scenes with (very fake looking) severed human heads. The monster usually manifests itself as a giant hand that reaches for victims from off the side of the screen. We only see the entire monster a few times in the film. And even then, the monster costume is terrible. When your monster makes the creature from Roger Corman's Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) look realistic, you know that you have problems. So, even if this film was ground-breaking for its use of gore, that doesn't mean that it's a good one.

4/10