A Touch of Sin: Jia Zhangke

Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin is a tetraptych of frustration, anxiety, and ultimately, violence. Each of the four sections examines violence in modern day China from a different perspective: 1) Violence as protest/justice, 2) Violence as emotional catharsis, 3) Violence as self-defense, 4) Violence as escape. Each section is also dominated by their own symbols: 1) Fruit, 2) Meat/Animals for the Slaughter, 3) Snakes, 4) Buddha. The film was criticized for having a "weak" screenplay. But I disagree. The screenplay accomplished exactly what it set out to do: create a stifling atmosphere where the characters' actions can be seen not just as natural, but as inevitable conclusions given their environments and societal pressures. I'm willing to bet that the last section is the part where people began to grow tired of the screenplay. And to an extent, that is understandable. It is slower, more gradually paced, and less visceral than the other three segments. But the point of the fourth segment is that it is an inverted romance story where the two potential lovers are doomed by the forces of nascent Chinese capitalism. The young man is repulsed by the young woman when he learns that she became a prostitute so she could support her infant child. As he is shuffled from job to job, we understand the parallels between the two: they must surrender their lives and livelihoods to survive. He must sell his labor. She must sell her body. And though we only see the young man commit suicide, it isn't hard to imagine her following suit soon afterwards.

10/10

Oldboy: Park Chan-Wook

[Revisit Review]

This time around, I found Park Chan-Wook's storytelling to be a bit lacking in his 2003 film Oldboy. Don't get me wrong: it's a fantastic movie that seems to have been constructed around a menageries of emotional apexes. It's stylish, creative, and wholly original. The central concept alone of a man being imprisoned for 15 years for reasons he doesn't understand is one of the most ingenious in the last two decades of the cinema. So the film's narrative hiccups can be easily overlooked. Oldboy is just one more reminder that during the 2000s South Korean cinema reached new heights of quality that made Hollywood seem populated by rank amateurs.

9/10

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?: Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry's Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? is about as pure a personal project as I have ever seen: a hand-drawn animated documentary covering a series of philosophical interviews with Noam Chomsky made during breaks in the production schedules of his other films. Overall, it's a good primer on various philosophical topics and etymology. Such concepts as the Ship of Theseus paradox and the Great Leap Forward of human evolution are touched upon just long enough for the audience to "ooh" and "ahh." The last 20 minutes or so where Gondry goes into Chomsky’s life and his views on the Holocaust seem more like a formality than a natural extension of the previous interviews. Still, there is decent, if not particularly invigorating for those already familiar with the subjects they discourse on, food for thought here. The true appeal here is Gondry's idiosyncratic animation. And that is well worth the ticket price.

7/10

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance: Park Chan-wook

[Revisit Review]

Park Chan-wook knows how to play his spectators like puppets. He knows exactly how he wants his audience to feel in every single scene. And what's more, he knows how to achieve it. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance isn't just, in my opinion, Chan-wook's best film, but it's also the best Asian film of the 2000s. While there is an incredible amount of violence, I think most audiences will miss the fact that by and large most of it is depicted off-screen. Why? Because it feels so real that you don't notice the violence's visual obstruction. The film’s only failing is that it doesn’t achieve Park’s stated goal of proving that revenge is futile. Because here, revenge TOTALLY succeeds. So this is less of a cautionary tale than a very grandiose version of the Death Wish plot formula.

10/10

We Are the Best!: Lukas Moodysson

Lukas Moodysson's We Are the Best! might very well be the best punk movie made since Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984). It perfectly captures the essence of the punk movement: screwing the system, playing as loud as you want, and being yourself. The film follows three misfits as they form the "best punk band" ever. Though much screen time is divided between the original two founders of the band, most of the film is told through the eyes of Bobo. So the film is essentially a coming-of-age story with her involvement in the band a kind of metaphor for establishing her own identity as a teenager and a nascent young woman. However the film is somewhat waylaid in the second half by a love triangle between Bobo and the other founder of the band, her best friend Klara. I understand that the boyfriend subplot went along with the film’s theme of growing up, but it didn’t mesh very well with the overall storyline about becoming a band.

7/10

Big Eyes: Tim Burton

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/big-eyes-review/45775.

8/10

Into the Woods: Rob Marshall

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/into-the-woods-review/45746.

5/10

Tsotsi: Gavin Hood

[Revisit Review]

I had two revelations re-watching Gavin Hood's Tsotsi. First, I couldn't believe that I had never noticed before that literally the only white character in the entire film was the senior police detective. Second, it was that this was an unusually quiet film. Violence is quiet: a man gets stabbed in a subway in silence; a friend is assaulted in a club and the music and background noise drops out. For Tsotsi, violence is the only means of communication that he fully understands. He makes his neighbor feed the baby at gunpoint because he doesn't know that he could just ask her to. Presley Chweneyagae's performance is stunning in its quiet, restrained intensity. The last five minutes of the film alone should have netted him an Oscar.

9/10

Ida: Paweł Pawlikowski

So, I finally got around to seeing Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida (2013). What a monstrously disappointing film. It doesn't have a single original thought. Instead, it counterfeits themes that have been milked ad infinitum by other, better European filmmakers (and a few American ones, too): distrust towards the Church, a recognition of the horrors of Europe's past without outright condemning them (or offering ways they could be made up for), the importance of sexual discovery (oh wait, make that HETERONORMATIVE sexual discovery) as a rite of self passage as if asexuals and sex-repulsed people didn't exist, and a stoic resignation towards the future. It isn't brave enough to emulate Luis Buñuel's anti-clericalism, bold enough for Tarr's nihilism, or intelligent enough for Bergman's introspection. Worst of all, it makes no attempt to establish its own identity.

6/10

Satan Met a Lady: William Dieterle

Never let it be said that Hollywood never made crappy movies back in the 30s and 40s, even when they used big stars, big directors, and big talent. Have I said that before in another review? I don't care. William Dieterle's Satan Met a Lady is such a powerful example that I will risk repeating myself. So what's wrong with the film? It tries to turn Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon into a screwball comedy. And, oh, how they fail. Warren William does his damndest to be charming as not-Sam-Spade and make the material work as a comedy, but he was doomed to fail. William treats almost every other line in the film like a punch-line, even when there's no joke (thankfully Dieterle had the good sense to treat the scene where not-Sam-Spade finds his partner’s body with a bit of emotional weight and seriousness). Not that anybody else in the film does much better...everybody DEVOURS scenery like they're trying to invent Hollywood campiness almost two decades before John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953). This film is forced smiles and pained laughter for 74 minutes.

4/10

The Maltese Falcon: Roy Del Ruth

It's bizarre to see the pre-John Huston adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. I've now seen both prior adaptations of the film and I have to say that Roy Del Ruth's The Maltese Falcon is easily the better of the two. The film does a fine job giving the cliffnotes version of the book's plot and characterizations, even matching some of Hammett's original dialogue line for line. Though it's about 20 minutes shorter than Huston's version, nothing really feels excluded or rushed. But what the film gains in brevity it loses in atmosphere and tone. Ricardo Cortez is less Sam Spade than Nick Charles; he acts with a smug insouciance as if life is just one big game and only he has the full set of instructions. It's not a bad adaptation, just a mediocre one lacking the heart and soul of Hammett's novel.

6/10

Three Colors: Red: Krzysztof Kieślowski

[Revisit Review]

Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: Red carves itself out a comfortable middle ground between the overwhelming atmospherics of Three Colors: Blue (1993) and the fastidious plotting of Three Colors: White (1994). The latter film feels more like a lost installment of Kieślowski's The Decalogue than an actual film made to be experienced in theaters. The story is sweet and effective, the cinematography stunning, and there are images in this film that feel included solely because they are beautiful or striking in and of themselves. And whatta ending!

Side note: how much do you want to bet that Stephen Killian was going to be a character in a film that Kieślowski never got around to making before he died?

8/10

Evil Angels: Fred Schepisi

The most fascinating character in Fred Schepisi's Evil Angels is Australia itself: the people who gossiped until a personal family tragedy was transformed into a national travesty. The Azaria Chamberlain murder case became a media circus and the film seems to argue that Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton's wrongful conviction was a kind of manifestation of the will of the Australian people who mistrusted her, her family, and her religion. Brief vignettes of Australians from all walks of life discussing the case (and usually adamant in their condemnation of Lindy) are interspersed throughout the film. And then there is, of course, Meryl Streep's rightfully legendary performance as Lindy. Streep's performance was one of purposeful emotional restraint in the face of incredible pressure and familial tragedy. The role would have crushed a lesser actress. And while everyone remembers Streep's performance, I believe it is important not to overlook Sam Neill’s turn as her husband Michael Chamberlain. It is my humble opinion that he more than matched Streep's performance.

8/10

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: Peter Jackson

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-review/45340.

7/10

Holiday: Lee Man-hee

It isn’t a requisite to like a protagonist for a film to be great. They can be a bastard. But as long as they're an interesting bastard, we can go along with them. Such is the case with Heo Wuk, the protagonist of Lee Man-hee's Holiday. He’s not a good person. He steals from his friends to finance his girlfriend's abortion and then cheats on her while she is having the operation. But we can get a grasp on his volatile emotions. They don’t excuse his terrible actions, but they do explain them. This film was original made in 1968 but was only released in 2005 because of censorship. It was immediately heralded as a masterpiece. But I disagree. The film is too languid, too morose to be more properly devastating. Many of the shots are curiously over-exposed and washed out. A lot of shots are curiously over-exposed. But I wonder if that was just due to the quality of the copy of the print that I watched (which is somewhat unlikely considering the fact that I watched it on the official youtube channel of the Korean Film Archive). It’s so damn tempting to declare censored, lost, or restored films misplaced classics. But we must guard ourselves against labeling them as such when they might not actually deserve it. And, unfortunately, I think this is one such case.

6/10

The Ten Commandments: Cecil B. DeMille

Do not let the name fool you. Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923) is actually two films, not one. The first is a brilliant tour de force of early Hollywood epic film-making that tells the story of Moses and the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt. It's big, lavish, and jaw-dropping in scale. Alas, it only lasts for the first 40 minutes or so. If the film had ended there and then, it would have easily been one of the best silent films of DeMille's career. In fact, I would confidently say that these 40 minutes are better than his later 1956 remake of the film. But it doesn't stop there. The plot then jumps forward several thousand years to a preachy, stiltedly melodramatic story about two brothers, one who follows the Ten Commandments and another who doesn't (and is subsequently killed). I can't begin to explain how jarring this shift is. It's almost like if somebody took the Normandy landing sequences from Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) and tacked them onto the front end of William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). It positively kills the entire film despite the fact that the second part has its merits, such as its moral that living the love of God is more important than blind, Puritanical obedience to His laws.

6/10

Identification Marks: None: Jerzy Skolimowski

In a way, Jerzy Skolimowski's Identification Marks: None feels like a spiritual companion piece to Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962). Both films follow a disillusioned young person as they kill time and fruitlessly busy themselves while awaiting a deadline. Cléo waited for a cancer diagnosis. The protagonist of Skolimowski's film waits for the time he is to report to the military to officially answer his draft summons. The protagonist is identified (no pun on the title intended) as an observer early on as we are treated to scenes where he exists on the periphery of events; he walks past a street fight, he drifts through a club where a group of men play darts and dance, and the audience experiences a curious first-person sequence where he is examined by a draft board. Identification Marks: None has a heightened awareness of the mundane and minutia and understands how such things can consume and preoccupy people undergoing stressful waiting periods. At times it almost develops a stream-of-consciousness approach to the narrative. This was an ambitious feature length film debut for a young director, and it shows.

8/10

Through a Glass Darkly: Ingmar Bergman

[Revisit Review]

I'm honestly considering starting an official exploration of what I like to call "Family Horror." And by that, I don't mean horror films geared towards families. I mean films where horrific things seem to spring from the anxieties and fears of a family unit. These manifestations can be many things: ghosts (The Shining [1980]), monsters (The Babadook [2014]), and in the case of Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly (1961), mental illness. I don't think Bergman set out to make a horror film here, but many passages are nevertheless downright terrifying. Karin's first visit to the attic where she hears voices through a crack in the wallpaper is particularly unnerving. I was also fascinated by how, in its own weird way, the film has a kind of happy ending with the father reconciling with the son. Well, it's as happy an ending inasmuch as any Bergman film that wasn't an explicit comedy could end happily.

9/10

Exodus: Gods and Kings: Ridley Scott

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/exodus-gods-and-kings-review/45198.

5/10

Three Colors: White: Krzysztof Kieślowski

[Revisit Review]

Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: White is a fine film, but I don't think it holds up alongside Three Colors: Blue. Watching the latter, I felt like I was having a transcendental experience whereby I was being revealed some kind of great truth. Three Colors: White feels more pedestrian in comparison. I thought long and hard about why this was, and I think I figured it out: Blue was more focused on character while White was more focused on Plot with a capital "p." Blue had more freedom to explore emotions, build atmosphere, and orient the audience into a different state of mind. White is too busy getting from plot point 'a' to plot point 'b' for it to have time for many of these essential diversions.

7/10

Police Story: Jackie Chan

After years of only hearing Jackie Chan speak English, it was really interesting to hear his original Cantonese performance in Police Story (1985). Something that frequently gets lost in Chan’s dubbed performances is how damn intimidating he can be when speaking Cantonese. Thinking back, I'm not sure if I have ever actually heard Jackie Chan sound angry or intimidating in an English performance. For me, this is one of the main reasons why I think subtitles are superior to dubs: these subtleties in performances are frequently lost in voice-overs. I don't have anything against people who prefer dubs, but my personal preference will always be for subtitles. Anyhow, I actually thought a long time about what score to give this film. I think the humor was a bit much for me. There are many prolonged slapstick sequences. And while some of them may work (particularly one where Chan does an impromptu Michael Jackson impression after accidentally stepping in animal feces), most them go on far too long for my taste. But then I read somewhere that Chan himself didn't "get" the humor in the Rush Hour movies. And then I had an epiphany: because humor is relative, it isn't right to give a foreign film a lower score just because I don't personally appreciate all of the humor. Police Story is a much beloved film in China for its ability to blend Chan's stunt-work (which, coincidentally, is easily some of the best of his career) with comedy. So maybe I might not think that the comedy always works. I might think that it drags on too much. But that’s just me not “getting” it.

9/10

Young Törless: Volker Schlöndorff

[Revisit Review]

Volker Schlöndorff's Young Törless takes place in a world where cruelty has become an academic exercise. It's shocking how quickly the students (and Törless) dehumanize Basini and decide that he deserves whatever is coming to him. The scene where Törless leaves Basini as he is being tortured and cries out for him is key to understanding the film: Törless is a sociopathic watcher, permanently disengaged from the proceedings. If he shows emotions at an injustice, it isn’t because he is against said injustice, but because he can’t make sense out of the nature of the behavior. It's a curiously oblique yet effective examination of the pre-World War Two German mindset.

9/10

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin: Liu Chia-Liang

[Revisit Review]

I recently joked on twitter that Liu Chia-Liang's The 36th Chamber of Shaolin was the Citizen Kane of kung fu movies. And in many ways, it is. Not only was it massively influential (and mercilessly imitated), it flowed with the same energetic vibrancy and displayed the same surety of storytelling that defined other watershed genre films. Indeed, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is to the kung fu film what Seven Samurai (1954) was to the samurai film and Star Wars (1977) was to the modern sci-fi film. In addition to my aforementioned tweet, upon re-watching The 36th Chamber of Shaolin I wrote a short essay on how the film can be seen as a metaphor for Buddhism with regards to the mythical origins of the Lotus Sūtra. It can be read here: http://filmsfoodandfandom.tumblr.com/post/104824709421/one-of-the-most-interesting-things-to-me-about-the.

10/10

Trop tôt/Trop tard: Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub

Full disclosure: the subtitles on my copy didn’t begin until the six minute mark. So I missed the narration from the much celebrated opening scene. 

Films should be judged primarily on how they achieve their stated goals whether they be to entertain, provoke, inspire, or teach. This is difficult to surmise with experimental films like Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's Trop tôt/Trop tard. The long shots seem to suggest that the French countryside exists in a time outside of time, in a sense explaining why they were “too early, too late” in their revolutions. The opening shot in particular seems to speak to the futile nature of these revolutions in that they keep going around and around in circles without getting anywhere. The film as a whole succeeds in re-setting the mind to a slower, more contemplative pace. But I think it loses its focus and becomes more of an essay on seeing than a Marxist tract. Jonathan Rosenbaum describes it as a “landscape film.” So that confuses the purpose of the narration even further. Is it to provide context? A bittersweet commentary? I don’t think this is a bad movie, just a confused, misdirected one.

6/10

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise: Hiroyuki Yamaga

Toshio Okada, the former president of Gainax, expressed dissatisfaction with the screenplay for Hiroyuki Yamaga's Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise. And I would have to agree; the screenplay is all over the place. There aren’t really rising or falling actions. Things just happen. This, of course, would be fine if the film wasn't an introspective character study. But the film is a coming of age story and there are multiple montages of him training and preparing for his space flight. So the audience's expectations for a more straight-forward narrative are foiled by plot threads that are introduced and just fade away (like the terrorist bombings) and characters who die off-screen. This is a real shame because Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise is admirably ambitious. It addresses an idea that I can’t say I’ve ever really seen before in a film, animated or otherwise: the battle between scientific pragmatism and scientific idealism. The animation is nothing short of stunning; some of the backgrounds are so realistic that I literally thought they were real-life sets with animated cels projected on top of them. But before this review can end, I must address the elephant in the room: the attempted rape scene. To be fair, it is actually telegraphed. But it still doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of the character and its resolution promotes this weird narrative about how women are saintly if they forgive their attackers. After that scene, the protagonist is practically unredeemable, at least in the eyes of the audience.

6/10

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: Terry Jones

[Revisit Review]

When it's at its best, Terry Jones' Monty Python's The Meaning of Life contains some of the crème de la crème of what is arguably the most influential and innovative comedic troupe of modern history. The Crimson Permanent Assurance, "Every Sperm is Sacred," Mr. Creosote, and Graham Chapman's execution via a pack of naked women are damn near comedic perfection. But, alas, there are parts of the film that simply aren't as good. I wouldn't go so far as to say that any of the segments failed, but some of them definitely overstayed their welcome, such as the tiger costume sketch, Conversational Philosophy, and the surrealist "Find the Fish."

8/10

Tusk: Kevin Smith

[Spoilers Ahead]

The scene where Michael Parks and Justin Long battle to the death in life-like walrus suits made of what I assume to be human skin should have been the comedic climax of Kevin Smith's Tusk. Most of the film was an audacious blend of horror and humor, charting a hapless podcaster who gets abducted by an insane Canadian and transformed via plastic surgery into a human walrus. I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever seen a film take a stupid concept so damned seriously. It’s not just that they’re playing this concept straight; it’s treated like a bona fide horror film with many moments of genuine terror (most notably the scene where Parks reveals for the first time that he doesn't need a wheelchair). One scene with Génesis Rodríguez where she confesses to having an affair with Long's best friend via one long close-up plays out like it was ripped straight from a New French Extremity film. But the film in large part ruins itself with the Johnny Depp character, an eccentric ex-cop from Quebec who has spent years hunting Parks. His over-the-top performance ruins the film's joke by revealing that the film itself is aware of it. I wish Smith had gone the Team America: World Police (2004) route and played the entire film straight in spite of its absurd concept. If he had done that, Tusk would probably have been an instant cult classic. I still enjoyed it, though. I just wish that I could have enjoyed it more, y'know?

6/10

A Man's Neck: Julien Duvivier

There are great intentions at work in Julien Duvivier's A Man's Neck. A moody detective thriller, it focuses on beloved French detective Inspector Maigret's quest to locate and capture a nihilistic killer who murdered a rich woman and framed a small-time crook for it. There's one sequence that was particularly excellent: when Maigret and his colleagues force the fall-guy to revisit the crime scene and re-enact the murder himself. But the film lacks a coherency of creative vision. While the first third is a solid detective story, the film falls victim to parades of static scenes where small to large groups of people stand around in small rooms and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about the crime, the killer, his motives, etc, etc, etc. Partway through the film it shifts to the killer's perspective. A Czech medical student named Radek (played by the excellent Valéry Inkijinoff), he is a standard combination of misanthropic, Raskolnikov-esque qualities. He doesn't kill because he wants money or needs to fulfill some fetishistic urge; he kills because he hates people and society and wants to make them suffer. One potentially interesting sequence takes place near the end of the film where Radek takes a group of people he is extorting on a weird night out on the town before demanding that one of them has sex with him. I understand that Duvivier was using these scenes to demonstrate the steady crumbling of Radek's self-constructed sense of insouciance towards his actions. But they just come out feeling odd and misguided.

5/10

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

[Revisit Review]

Not having a budget was the best thing that could have happened to Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones' Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I simply couldn't imagine it without the coconut shells or the sudden ending. The jokes in the film aren't just phenomenal and endlessly quotable, they contain some of the best comedic timing ever captured on film. I know some of my film school brethren prefer Terry Jones' Monty Python's The Life of Brian as the "best" Monty Python movie. But for me, picking anything other than The Holy Grail is unthinkable.

10/10

Three Colors: Blue: Krzysztof Kieślowski

[Revisit Review]

Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: Blue is still one of the most powerful and devastating depictions of grief, loss, and the road to recovery that I have ever seen. But even if I muted the film and completely ignored the story, the craftsmanship would amaze me every time I watched it. The cinematography? Breath-taking. The acting? Heart-breaking. I love how during moments of extreme emotion, the screen cuts to black for a few seconds as an orchestra sting plays. It’s like the audience is taking a moment alongside Julie to gather their thoughts and emotions. And, of course, there are the colors.

9/10

That Night's Wife: Yasujirō Ozu

It’s almost weird to see a Yasujirō Ozu film with such a mobile camera. That Night's Wife has dolly shots (most of which move primarily along a single axis, usually from left to right or from right to left) and zooms. I even spied one interesting transition where a shot that zoomed in on a closed door quick-faded to a shot of a person knocking on it from the other side while zooming out. That’s an almost Dada flourish by Ozu’s standards. I was also pleasantly surprised to find his trademark pillow shots on display. Anyhow, the first half is essentially a crime thriller about a criminal on the run from the police after robbing an office for money to pay for his deathly ill daughter's medical treatment. The second half is a quiet domestic drama where a snooping undercover cop is held hostage by the criminal's wife for the night so that she and her husband can stand vigil over their daughter for the night since the doctor said that if she survives until the morning she will make a complete recovery. Watching the film, I was fascinated by how Ozu's visual language and the physical performances of the actors managed to tell the story without dialogue. Now I'm developing a weird suspicion that the advent of sound had an adverse effect on his work since it forced his films to slow down enough to accommodate dialogue, thereby diluting his ability to be a purely visual storyteller. I'll have to investigate further...

7/10

Panique: Julien Duvivier

I don't know if it will be possible for me to discuss Julien Duvivier's Panique without comparing it to Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire (1989), its remake. It has been over a year since I saw Monsieur Hire, but I seem to remember it being very different from Panique. I never got the feeling that Leconte's Hire was a bad or strange person; he was just an isolated voyeur. But there is definitely something...strange...about Duvivier's Hire. He is also more explicitly coded as an "other" within the community because of his Jewish background. I seem to remember Leconte's Hire being more passive, but Duvivier's Hire seems to get a weird pleasure from toying with the woman's boyfriend and the police. Also, the impact of Duvivier's Hire's betrayal has less of an impact because we watch the villains calculate and execute the double-cross whereas it practically came out of nowhere in Monsieur Hire. That's not to say that the ending of Panique isn't powerful. The last third of the film seems to evoke Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), another film where an innocent man is hounded and destroyed by a community with a lynch-mob mentality. The concluding scenes of Panique are downright electric, aided in no small part by Nicolas Hayer’s brilliant cinematography which easily matches the crème de la crème of Hollywood. His interiors and dialogue scenes are moody and dark and the crowd scenes vibrate with captivating energy. One of these days I'll have to re-watch this film back-to-back with Monsieur Hire so that I can confirm (or disprove) my observations about how they are different.

8/10
--------------------
I later revisited this film during my coverage of the 2016 New York Film Festival. Here's the link to my review. I still award this film an 8/10 rating.

http://theretroset.com/2016-new-york-film-festival/

The Lucky Texan: Robert N. Bradbury

The best thing that can be said about Robert N. Bradbury's The Lucky Texan is that it isn't terrible. It's not very good, but at least the cinematography is watchable and the plot doesn't screech to a halt every few minutes. Of course, it still isn't very good. There are a lot of parts that are downright laughable: a duo of assay officials begin to vocally plot ripping off John Wayne and stealing his gold claim seconds after he leaves the frame like they were on a theatrical stage; the townsfolk immediately suspect Wayne of killing his partner even though a) he had previously cleared his partner's name after some local thugs tried to frame him for crimes, and b) he was literally in the middle of a crowd when the murder took place; for some reason Bradbury earnestly thinks putting George "Gabby" Hayes in a dress is hilarious. But, again, at the very least I could see what was going on.

4/10

St. Vincent: Theodore Melfi

You can smell the film school on this one. That’s not a bad thing, of course. But Theodore Melfi’s St. Vincent has all of the hallmarks of a first-time feature-length director trying to distinguish themselves. It may not be as idiosyncratic as Bottle Rocket or as personal as Who’s That Knocking on My Door (at least I think), but here is a film with a distinct vision helmed by a director who wants to get it across. The most remarkable and noticeable part of the film is how it doesn’t villainize any of its characters. Each character has flaws and at least one moment where they prove themselves to have some kind of decency. The bookies hounding Bill Murray leave him alone after he has a stroke, the boy’s father seems to actually want to be a part of his son’s life and not gain custody just to spit his ex-wife, and the priests at the school are revealed to actually care about the children. The two most cliched characters are Bill Murray and Naomi Watts as the Russian prostitute. And while Murray does gain some kind of redemption, it is not the candy-coated about-face of personality and character that plague so many Hollywood movies. He is a bastard through and through. And the film ends with the suggestion that, while he may not be able to be good, maybe he can be less of a bastard in spite of himself. The most remarkable sequence in the film was when Murray took the kid to a nursing home where he impersonated a doctor in order to flirt with a patient suffering from either Alzheimer’s or dementia. At first we think that it is just another scam to get money or to take advantage of somebody. But it slowly dawns on the audience that this woman is his wife. And most impressively, the film doesn’t explicitly tell us that until maybe the last third of the film. It was all communicated visually and through Murray’s performance. Melfi understands characters and if there is one thing that can sum up his directorial style it is that he seeks to explore the humanity behind the archetypes.

7/10

Victim: Basil Dearden

[Revisit Review]

The problem with films that try and address a social problem or ill is that it is nearly impossible to do so without veering into the realm of melodrama or blunt-force moralization. Basil Dearden's Victim is no exception; more than once the audience is presented with what amount to bullet points about why laws against homosexuality are wrong. And yet the film is still a vital piece of cinematic history, being the first English language film to use the word "homosexual." In an age when homosexuality was still illegal in England, Victim was nothing less than a ground-breaking film. So, considering the time period and culture in which it was made, the film's flaws can be forgiven. It also helps that even today when "blackmail" laws have been repealed, Victim succeeds as a taut, masterfully controlled thriller.

9/10

Umberto D.: Vittorio De Sica

[Revisit Review]

The first time I ever saw Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D. was when I was first getting into film in a serious manner. If I remember correctly, I watched it either because it was one of Roger Ebert's Great Movies or because it was on the Criterion Collection. I can't remember which one in particular. But I can remember that it was one of the defining experiences of my time as a fledgling cinephile. And several years later, I still find it an incredibly moving film, but for slightly different reasons. The first time I saw it, I admired it for its humanity and for the simple power of its ending. But this time I was amazed by the sparseness and economy of its visual language. The frequent low-angle long shots in the apartment impressed me the most of all. But I was also surprised by how little dialogue the film contains. So much of the story is expressed purely through the use of images. I am thrilled that I finally got around to re-watching this film. I am already looking forward to my next viewing.

9/10

The House Is Black: Forough Farrokhzad

[Revisit Review]

One of the most interesting things about Forough Farrokhzad's The House is Black is how happy many of the lepers seem. Of course, they are frequently shown in pain and agony. And the movie has no illusions about the nature of the plight. But many scenes show them laughing, smiling, singing, and even playing. It provides an odd juxtaposition between the images and the morose, gloomy poetry that serves as narration. But that makes one wonder...who is she referring to in the poetry? The lepers? Or the narrator herself?

9/10

Horrible Bosses 2: Sean Anders

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-horrible-bosses-2/44556.

8/10

Big Deal on Madonna Street: Mario Monicelli

[Revisit Review]

Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street has the characters of a heist thriller, the complexity and spontaneity of a screwball comedy, and the warmth of a Commedia all'italiana. Its comedic ingenuity is staggering. I love how they introduced the members of the gang one by one as they kept trying to find a scapegoat to take one of their friend's jail-time. I love the little gags like the Donald Duck aprons on the orphanage employees. And I adore both the result of the heist and the way the media reacted to it. Almost none of this comedy feels derived from another source. It's just the result of excellent writing, direction, and acting.

9/10

The Babadook: Jennifer Kent

The best horror films are rarely just about monsters or things that are scary. Instead, they use their creatures and demons and beasties as a platform through which to examine ideas and themes. John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) may be most well-known as a pivotal development in the slasher genre, but at its core is an idea that is very, very real for many people: the idea of being alone and pursued by some unstoppable force that wants to hurt you. There's a reason why after people saw Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) they became scared of open water and not just sharks. Jennifer Kent's The Babadook may on its surface be a story about a single mother and her son who are tormented by an evil spirit. But it's actually about something much deeper. Two things, actually. First, it's the fear that there might be something seriously, medically wrong with your child's head. Second, it's the fear that you might be a bad parent. The eponymous Babadook can easily be read as a manifestation of the mother's anxieties and stresses concerning her role as caretaker of a rambunctious son whose imagination is so powerful and disruptive that he might actually be schizophrenic. It is this focus on parental anxiety that makes The Babadook a magnificent companion piece to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Even the mother's eventual breakdown matches that of Jack Torrance...to a certain point, of course.

9/10

L'Équipage: Anatole Litvak

I can't stand love triangles. They're a cheap way to produce drama and tension. But there are films that have done them decently. Anatole Litvak's L'Équipage is one of them. The story of a World War One aviator named Jean who unknowingly begins an affair with the wife of his co-pilot named Maury, L'Équipage is emotional and powerful. It is also a fantastic technical feat. Litvak's camera is incredibly mobile even in tight interiors. For a 1935 sound film, there are none of the glaring passages of dead silence that plagued so many of its contemporaries. The film features fascinating narrative ellipses. We never see Jean meet Maury's wife. They begin the film having known each other for only twenty-four hours, yet they are already madly in love. Neither do we see Jean and Maury's first mission together. Instead we watch the rest of their squadron try to distract and busy themselves as they fly a potentially suicidal mission. In a way, this seems to predict similar scenes in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939). But the most interesting aspect of L'Équipage is Maury's wife Denise, who was perhaps best described as "almost wraith-like...an intriguing variant on the classic femme fatale, a naive woman of passion who appears oblivious to the havoc she causes." But I disagree. I think she knows exactly what kind of havoc she is causing. She just doesn't care. She wants what she wants and to hell with everybody else. I haven't hated a character so much in quite a long time...

8/10

Vampyr: Carl Theodor Dreyer

[Revisit Review]

Despite its linear story, the events in Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr seem to take place out of order. Characters are only properly identified and introduced after they have had much screen time; they linger in strange environments that they have been led to for seemingly no reason; the idea of a vampire is only introduced at about the half-way mark of the film's run-time. It’s like a lucid dream that you keep losing track of and have to periodically refocus and replay back up to the point where your mind slipped. The imagery is damn near unparalleled in its ability to disquiet and discomfort. As rudimentary as the special effect is, the living, disembodied shadows that populate the sets galvanize me with a sickening loathing and dread that I rarely feel in horror films. I'm still not sure I understand why happens in Vampyr. And I doubt that I will understand it even if I watch it another 3 times. I will simply just get lost in the imagery, much like how Peter Bogdanovich claimed to have watched Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) "four of five times before [he] noticed the story."

9/10

The Scarlet Pimpernel: Harold Young

I know it’s petty, but I will never, ever, ever be able to take The Scarlet Pimpernel seriously. First, the name sounds too much like “The Scarlet Pimple.” That’s partially unfair because the character is named after a flower. But the main reason why is because the character represents a toxic perspective on class relations. The character is widely considered to be the first “superhero” because it originated the “hero with a secret identity” idea. But here’s the thing, Baroness Orczy, the character’s creator, was a racist, colonialist, and firm supporter of the superiority of the “upper classes.” So here we have a character who by his very nature is designed to save goodly aristocrats from the savage mob. The blood-shed of the French Revolution was inexcusable, but to pretend that the French aristocracy were innocent victims here is so absurd that even Ayn Rand would call bullshit. But I'm rambling. Despite the fact that I find the idea of The Scarlet Pimpernel problematic, I can't let that affect my judgment of Harold Young's film adaptation of him. For what it's worth, The Scarlet Pimpernel is a fine 1930s adventure film. Leslie Howard is wonderful as the eponymous hero and Merle Oberon glitters as his wife despite the fact that she has a very basic and generic role.

7/10

Le Grand Jeu: Jacques Feyder

Well! This film was disappointing. Jacques Feyder's Le Grand Jeu is to Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937) as John Brahm's The Brasher Doubloon (1947) is to Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944). It might have all of the bits and pieces that define the Poetic Realism film movement, but they are arranged so haphazardly and poorly that the film collapses in on itself. The film is woefully directionless, meandering for most of its run-time until around the 55 minute mark when the protagonist meets the woman who will captivate him and ultimately spell his doom. Their relationship is rushed to the point of parody, going from their first drunken fling to full-fledged spousal abuse in the span of a couple of minutes. Subplots are picked up and dropped at random (what was up with Clément subplot about getting left behind by the legion?). I had a difficult time following the plot of this film even when I had the wikipedia plot summary sitting in front of me! It is undeniably beautiful. Documentary-like exteriors and chiaroscuro interiors give the world of North Africa a kind of alien veneer. But I was too confused by the story to fully appreciate any of it.

5/10

Horrible Bosses: Seth Gordon

[Spoilers Ahead]

I love a good black comedy. The key word being: "good." They seem to come around so rarely. So I was thrilled to discover Seth Gordon's Horrible Bosses. I was shocked by how little the film relied on shock or cringe humor. Instead, much of the humor comes from the protagonists getting into increasingly terrible situations via their own stupidity and incompetence. I knew that this would be more than just an average comedy when Kevin Spacey shot and killed Colin Farrell. That is the kind of twist that you would find in an Ealing Studios comedy like Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) or The Ladykillers (1955). I love movies like these where things get so hopeless that they actually begin to work themselves out in spite of the protagonist's idiocy. It reminds me of the kind of film that Murder Party (2007) should have been. Of course, the actors are given plenty of room to stretch their comedic and improvisations talents. Charlie Day is at the top of his game and Kevin Spacey damn near steals the show as Jason Bateman's greedy, sociopathic boss. On a side note, the film is actually kind of illuminating in how it demonstrates how little society cares about men getting sexually harassed and raped. That may not have been the film's intention, but it's still food for thought.

7/10

Interstellar: Christopher Nolan

[Spoilers Ahead]

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar epitomizes the strengths and weaknesses of his most recent output. On the one hand, it is dazzlingly beautiful with images that are nothing short of awe-inspiring. It plays with ideas that simply have not been experimented with yet by other mainstream filmmakers. The fifth-dimensional tesseract may be the most visually resplendent and thought-provoking set-piece of his entire career. And yet it slogs through its almost 3-hour run-time. I'm not exactly sure how, but Interstellar is simultaneously under-plotted and over-plotted. Additionally, much of the interior cinematography is too cramped and over-relies on medium shots and close-ups. The result is that there are times when we don't have a clear indication of where certain characters are in relation to each other. The most egregious example is a scene where Matthew McConaughey and Matt Damon go for a walk on an ice planet. It appears that they walk just a few yards away from the base-camp. But when Damon tries to kill McConaughey, it takes Anne Hathaway almost a minute to fly the spaceship to their location. Once she finds McConaughey, Damon somehow teleports back to the base-camp and steals one of the spaceships. Maybe there is an explanation for how this happened. But it wasn't readily apparent. And I paid close attention.

8/10

The Goddess: Wu Yonggang

[Revisit Review]

Wu Yonggang's The Goddess was the fifth movie I ever reviewed on my first film blog Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear. Even back then I was sensitive to its tremendous emotional power. The Goddess may be set in early 20th century China, but its story is universal. This is underscored in the way that most of the principle characters don't have actual names. The protagonist is an unnamed woman. The domineering man is known as "the boss." This makes them more than just characters; they are archetypes. And unlike many films which try to mimic such techniques, The Goddess has the earnestness to achieve it without seeming cheesy, campy, or forced.

9/10

Rome, Open City: Roberto Rossellini

[Revisit Review]

Don Pietro Pellegrini is one of the most noble and heroic priests in the history of cinema. Not particularly warm or loving, he is nonetheless a man of overflowing faith and compassion. Even after the Nazis torture one of his friends to death and order his execution, he bursts into tears after he curses them. Why? I'd like to think it was because he remembered that they, too, are children of God. Aldo Fabrizi's performance is gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. There is never a moment when we question his sincerity or conviction.

9/10

Girls in Uniform: Leontine Sagan

Leontine Sagan's Girls in Uniform is a film that succeeds on several different levels. First, it's a fantastic school drama about a student body oppressed by a tyrannical headmistress. Second, it's a landmark in LGBTQ+ cinema in its unabashed portrayal of lesbian characters (one kiss between a much beloved teacher and one of her students remains somewhat shocking even today for its frankness concerning homosexual affections between a minor and a grown woman). I suppose that these attractions could be rationalized as a psychological coping mechanism for the girls when faced with the harsh, restrictive school environment. After all, the girls all fall for the one teacher who treats them with any kind of kindness (although by today's standards she would still be seen as unduly stern). But the intensity of their romantic feelings seems to argue against that. Finally, Girls in Uniform is fascinating as a prediction of the rise of Nazism. One scene in particular where all of the students line up in their uniforms and bow before an imposing, shrouded visiting princess is uncanny in its proto-fascist implications.

9/10

Juliet of the Spirits: Federico Fellini

[Revisit Review]

Federico Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits works best as a series of delirious images: a seance of shadow-shrouded faces, a red portable pavilion on a beach, rows of veiled nuns giving young girls in white papery wings, a girl in white tied to fiery bars of metal. In a way, the film is a companion piece to his earlier film La Dolce Vita (1960): both center on essentially passive protagonists who are paraded through a menagerie of upper class grotesqueries while on a skewed journey of self-discovery. Her fantasies seem more immediate and real than the bizarre things and people she actually encounters. For me, the best part of the film is the last act where her fantasies and memories of nuns and martyrs begin to bleed into her everyday life.

9/10