How to Train Your Dragon 2: Dean DeBlois

[Spoilers Ahead]

A lot of love went into Dean DeBlois' How to Train Your Dragon 2. I can see it in the scene where Hiccup meets the mysterious dragon rider in a crystal cave lit with nothing but fire from the mouths of dragons. I can see it in the relationships between Hiccup and Astrid and Stoick and Valka; they tried their best to depict them as human beings who support and encourage each other instead of as static exponents in the equation of movie romance. I can see it in the movie's willingness to kill Stoick, a move which seems more like an earnest attempt to approach and contend with feelings of loss and grief than a mere moment of emotional manipulation. I view Stoick's death in the same way that I viewed Hiccup losing his leg in the first film: honest. Yes, a lot of love went into this film. Its greatest moments are its most intimate, perhaps the greatest being when Stoick confronts Valka for the first time after learning that she is alive. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is labored with a tired plot about a generic warlord who wants to build an army of mind-controlled dragons. This narrative is passably entertaining, yet it fails to live up to the greatness of its quieter moments. I wish that DeBlois and his tireless animators could have been given the freedom to make a smaller scale film that focused exclusively on Hiccup's family. As it stands, How to Train Your Dragon 2 is almost Miyazaki-esque in its focus on quiet moments and emotional honesty. But whereas Miyazaki could match intense introspection with grandiose action and not lose any of his mystique and otherworldly allure, How to Train Your Dragon 2 stumbles with a generic "save the world from the Big Bad" plot. Hopefully in the future they will be able to find a better balance.

7/10

Horse Feathers: Norman Z. McLeod

Norman Z. McLeod's Horse Feathers sees the madcap comedy antics of the Marx Brothers moments before their boiling point. The very next year they would release their undisputed masterpiece Duck Soup (1933) (a picture which Hollywood would spend the rest of their cinematic careers punishing them for). Horse Feathers sees them working out the last of the kinks that plagued their earlier films. The jokes flow more naturally, the bits are more spontaneous, and there are few (if any) scenes where the brothers recite quips back and forth to each other for several minutes in a single static shot. Perhaps more than in any other pre-Duck Soup film, the brothers are in almost constant movement: climbing over tables, jumping onto women, tinkering with ridiculous props, and playing their trademark instruments (Groucho even has a scene where he plays the guitar!). It's a shame that large chunks of the film have been lost. But their absence fails to ruin a marvelous comedy.

8/10

Crimson Gold: Jafar Panahi

Over and over again, I’ve found that Iranian films tend to operate within their own parameters of time. They take their own leisurely time to tell their stories, eschewing frenetic pacing for more reserved narrative developments. They can be challenging for American viewers like myself who are more used to films which are driven almost entirely by their stories. Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold is one such film. It is more concerned with a character than a story: an overweight, mentally scarred war veteran who makes a living delivering pizzas on the streets of Tehran. The film is book-ended by a sequence where he attempts to rob a jewelry store, shoots the manager, and commits suicide. The rest of Crimson Gold is devoted to exploring the previous few days of his life. Jonathan Rosenbaum rhapsodized the film as a stirring condemnation of class dynamics. Indeed, he writes that the man's interactions with the wealthier sections of Tehran are what drive him to his murderous crime. But I'm not so sure I agree with Mr. Rosenbaum. Panahi's protagonist is a cypher; a mostly mute witness to the society in which he lives. Things happen to him, such as being prevented from completing a delivery because of a police blockade and being invited into a wealthy customer's apartment after his dates abandon him, but we are never given a clear indication that these things are what inspire him to robbery. The only obvious inspiration for his actions is a sequence where he is humiliated by the owner of that jewelry store while searching for a present for his wife. But that only takes up a short amount of the film's running time. The rest is just a series of odd and unfortunate events. It is only by the nature of the Kuleshov Effect that we assume that they are related to his crime. Crimson Gold presents an effect stripped of a reasonable causality.

6/10

Wyatt Earp: Lawrence Kasdan

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I was really hoping to like this film. I've always had a soft spot for epic Westerns and Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp seemed like the perfect film to scratch that particular itch. A sprawling 3-hour biography of Wyatt Earp, it features a plethora of great actors like Gene Hackman, Dennis Quaid, Bill Pullman, and Kevin Costner. It's also heart-breakingly beautiful, featuring cinematography from Owen Roizman that is nothing short of stunning. And yet Wyatt Earp fails miserably. For starters, Kevin Costner delivers a woefully wooden performance. I know that Costner is a perennial punching bag when it comes to bad acting, but the man is capable of great performances. His turn as Wyatt Earp isn't one of them. Also, for such a long film Earp remains puzzlingly enigmatic, his motivations never becoming clear. This isn't a deliberate creative decision like Brad Pitt's off-kilter performance as Jesse James in Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). We never understand Earp as a character because his character is never properly developed. Much of the film is spent trying to emotionally validate Earp's various romantic pursuits. And unforgivably, the film does almost nothing to develop the friendship between Earp and Doc Holliday, played by Dennis Quaid in a career-defining performance that is mostly wasted. They only have a handful of scenes together and we never quite understand how or why Holliday becomes so fanatically attached to Earp. Wyatt Earp is too long and unfocused for it to leave any lasting impact. And what a shame, too. It's such a pretty film.

5/10

That’s My Boy: Sean Anders

Brace yourself, for what I'm about to say may be the hardest thing you will ever be asked to believe: Sean Anders' That's My Boy may, in fact, be the single worst film Adam Sandler has ever starred in. In recent years, Sandler has made a number of wretchedly unfunny and mean-spirited comedies. But That's My Boy takes the cake because it revolves around a single fundamental idea: a young child being raped by his teacher is the greatest thing that could ever happen to him. After 13-year-old Donny Berger is caught having sex with his grade school teacher, he becomes an overnight celebrity and the object of intense adoration and envy. Never mind that the teacher seduced him and that it qualifies as statutory rape. Never mind the fact that Donny gets the teacher pregnant. Never mind the fact that the teenage Donny has to raise a young child. Donny is a hero. I could describe the rest of this miserable movie that gleefully treats vomit, sperm, and incest as the height of comedic potential. But no. I won't. Pardon my language, but FUCK this movie. I wish that somebody would remake the first ten minutes of this film but replace Donny with a 13-year-old girl and his teacher with a middle-aged man. Let's see how funny it would be then. That's My Boy is the most despicable manifestation of rape culture that I have seen slither its way out of Hollywood in years.

0/10

Nothing But Trouble: Dan Aykroyd

[Spoilers Ahead]

Y'know, I kinda liked Dan Aykroyd's Nothing But Trouble (1991) in spite of itself. It tries to galvanize the formula that made Ghostbusters (1984), another one of Aykroyd's projects, work: spontaneous comedy mixed with high production value special effects. It follows a couple of New York city slickers as they accidentally get captured by representatives of Valkenvania, a nightmarish village of scrap metal and grotesque inhabitants who are in the business of kidnapping and killing visitors. The make-up effects that transform Aykroyd into the centenarian ruler of the town, Reeve Alvin Valkenheiser, are impressive. And his multitude of fun-house gadgets used to torture and torment his "guests" are delightful to behold. I particularly liked his roller-coaster execution machine lovingly named "Mr. Bonestripper." But there are too many nagging plot holes. For one, we are never given a reasonable explanation for why Valkenvania is in the murder business. We learn that they torment people from the financial industry as revenge for the duplicity of a con artist who ruined their town with a phony business investment in the coal mining industry. Fair enough, but what about everyone else that they capture and murder? A revelation near the end that nearby law enforcement agencies are in on Valkenvania's actions is even more bewildering. How do they know? Why do they support it? What do they get out of it? Nothing But Trouble isn't a good movie. But I can't dismiss it as a terrible one, either. It tried something new and failed. I wish more directors had Aykroyd's nerve.

5/10

Land of the Lost: Brad Silberling

Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost is one of those mercilessly annoying comedies where the actors just don't know when to shut up. The film maybe only has about 50 minutes of plot: two scientists and a tour guide discover a method of warping through time and space to a strange dimension inhabited by dinosaurs and world-conquering lizard men. The rest of its run-time is devoted to half-hearted mugging. This isn't a film about characters; it's a revue for the comedic personae of Will Ferrel (the overacting, wide-eyed man-child) and Danny McBride (the repugnant and crude wanna-be Lothario). The only actor who comes through this film with the slightest modicum of dignity is Anna Friel. And even she has to suffer the twin indignities of being repeatedly molested and having to act like she actually finds Ferrel attractive as both a scientist and a lover. The film's effects are terrible, the comedy is even worse, and it besmirches the memory of a classic television franchise.

3/10

Mommie Dearest: Frank Perry

The fact that Frank Perry’s Mommie Dearest, a biographical film about actress Joan Crawford and her abusive relationship with her two adopted children, won six Razzie Awards including the honorary award for the worst film of the 80s is nothing short of criminal. At the time critics dismissed this frank and terrifying portrayal of mental illness and child abuse as a piece of camp cinema. But that isn’t fair. It is actually an extremely well-written and well-acted examination of a handful of broken lives. The film seems to argue that Crawford was always a bit mentally unbalanced what with her obsessive compulsive desire for cleanliness. But as she aged and Hollywood began to abandon her, her compulsions evolved into full-fledged mental illnesses (an idea backed up by recent research which suggests that Crawford may have suffered from undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder). And more often than not her two children were the outlet for her uncontrollable rages and neuroses. I am fascinated by the critics who wrote that the film was too depressing or morose for it to be any good. Most of these same critics would give films like Schindler's List (1993) glowing reviews despite the fact that they would emotionally devastate their audiences in a similar way. If people can sit through Schindler's List and take it seriously, they can do the same for Mommie Dearest, a film which stands to this day as one of the most horrifying and honest portrayals of child abuse in cinematic history.

9/10

12 Years a Slave: Steve McQueen

I knew that eventually I would have to watch Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, but I still dreaded it. One of my personality quirks is that I have difficulty dealing with stories involving slavery. But I managed to watch it anyhow. It wasn't easy. The film was so powerful and devastating that I had to pause it several times so I could take my mind off the narrative for an hour or so. Even then I was emotionally annihilated by the film's ending. I am grateful that I never had to watch it in a movie theater where I would have been unable to stop the film periodically for breaks. So what do I have to say about the film? Well, for one, I found the scenes that took place before Solomon Northup was sold to Edwin Epps to be the most frightening. Having seen so many other slavery films, I knew what to expect at Epps’ plantation. But at William Ford’s plantation I had no idea what would happen. The film is also Kubrickian in its detachment from the emotions of its protagonist. Solomon largely serves as a stoic, silent witness to a parade of horrors and nightmares. Truth be told, the scenes involving Solomon's anguish over being kidnapped, sold into slavery, and kept from his family affected me the least. The moments that were burned into my brain were the two hanging scenes, Patsey's humiliation at the hands of Epps' wife, and the climactic scene where Solomon is forced to whip Patsey.

9/10

BloodRayne: Uwe Boll

Ben Kingsley, why do you keep doing this to yourself? Why do you keep appearing in abysmal movies like Uwe Boll's BloodRayne, a loose adaptation of the Terminal Reality video game franchise about a half-human/half-vampire named Rayne who seeks to destroy a Vampire King responsible for murdering her mother? Did you not know that Boll has a reputation as one of the world's worst modern filmmakers? Could you not tell from the script that it would feel like it's made up of seemingly random chunks of plot devices and violence from a much larger, more coherent film? Did you not realize that the final product would play like its own porn parody with most of the porn taken out? I guess you couldn't have known that the gory special effects would have all of the subtlety and realism of an Andreas Schnaas film or that you would be forced to wear one of the worst hairpieces imaginable. But come on, Mr. Kingsley! This is beneath you! You were in Gandhi (1982) and Schindler's List (1993) for crying out loud!

2/10

White Chicks: Keenen Ivory Wayans

Some bad movies are an adventure. Others are merely boring. Keenen Ivory Wayans' White Chicks is neither of these. This "film" about two inept African-American cops who go undercover impersonating young white socialites in the Hamptons is an endurance test. In a sense it's almost admirable in how there isn't a single moment of this "film" that isn't either painfully unfunny and/or physically nauseating. And you know what the kicker is? The thing that perhaps bothered me the most about White Chicks wasn't its unfunny humor, its racially prejudiced depictions of both whites and blacks, and its gross sexism. No, it was the fact that the "film" actually believed that the white woman prosthetics plastered onto the main actors were convincing. Of course, there are a few obligatory scenes where friends of the impersonated socialites gape at the officers and try to figure out what's "different" about them. But their inevitable conclusions are always something stupid like a new hairdo. Within the world of White Chicks those prosthetics are perfect disguises. And let me tell you...they are among the most revoltingly hideous pieces of makeup that I have ever encountered in any "film." And yet, again, this "film" expects us to buy into their perfection. Why? Because White Chicks is an idiotic film made by idiotic people featuring idiotic characters made for idiotic audiences. And, no, I'm not saying that only idiots can enjoy White Chicks. But what I am saying is that White Chicks was made by deliberately aiming at the lowest common denominator because it doesn't expect anything more from its audience. Screw you. I won't be insulted like this.

1/10

Cool as Ice: David Kellogg

David Kellogg's Cool as Ice isn't so much a movie as it is a ninety minute music video with bits and pieces of plot haphazardly stuffed into the cracks between musical numbers. This is hardly surprising considering Kellogg's career as a music video director. And to his credit, Cool as Ice has a fresh, energetic visual style that ensures that the film is never boring. But everything else about the film fails miserably. Vanilla Ice is laughable as an actor, the dialogue is cringe-worthy, and Ice's few musical numbers are painfully dated (although, to give credit where credit's due, the man is a good dancer). The bad-boy meets good-girl storyline is diluted with a bizarre side-plot involving corrupt police officers, the Witness Protection Program, and a kidnapping. The only explanation for its addition that I can think of is that Kellogg must have realized that he only had about thirty minutes worth of "story" so he hurriedly tried to raise the dramatic stakes and give Ice a chance to be a hero. The result is that Cool as Ice feels less like a single motion picture and more like two movies Frankenstein-ed together: a terrible crime thriller and an even worse musical.

4/10

Hudson Hawk: Michael Lehmann

The greatest sin Michael Lehmann's Hudson Hawk committed was that it bit off more than it could chew. In trying to think of how to describe the film, the word "much" comes too mind: the comedy is too much, the surprisingly labyrinthine plot (for a Hollywood blockbuster, anyway) is too much, and several of the performances are... too much. The film, about an eccentric American burglar played by Bruce Willis who is forced to help steal mechanical parts to an ancient alchemy device designed by Da Vinci, has some sincere heart (Willis is extraordinarily charismatic), some genuine laughter (slapstick humor isn't for everyone, though...), and some gripping excitement (the ambulance chase scene was one of the best action sequences Willis did during the 90s). But the film is just too much. Halfway into the film I couldn't keep track of who was controlling and betraying who. Was the evil married business couple who wanted to destabilize the world's economy working with or AGAINST the CIA and the Vatican's counter-espionage agency? I think that the film would have worked better without the CIA subplot. As it stands, Hudson Hawk isn't a travesty, but a miscalculation. There are some interesting ideas and concepts being used in this film. But, again, it's just too much.

4/10

Disaster Movie: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

At around the twenty minute mark of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's Disaster Movie, I realized that the majority of the film had been devoted to a High School Musical "spoof." And doesn't that just sum up the collected works of Friedberg and Seltzer? Their "spoofs" don't spoof anything; they are parades of tiresome, unoriginal references that become horrifically dated within months of being released. I had no hopes for Disaster Movie after seeing their previous film Meet the Spartans (2008), a work that literally made me physically ill. Imagine my surprise when I dreamed of it nostalgically while watching this film. At least Meet the Spartans was a spoof of one film and had some semblance of a plot structure. Disaster Movie just goes on and on and on and on and on with one awful "spoof" sequence after another. This isn't a movie; it's a punishment.

1/10

Meet the Spartans: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

Three times. I laughed three times during Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's Meet the Spartans, a "spoof" of Zack Snyder's 300 (2007). And each time I felt dirty afterwards. (In case you're wondering...the scenes that made me laugh involved child abuse.) Barely clocking in at over an hour, it is about 3 hours too long. Not only are the jokes horrible (they repeat a bit about a panel of television show judges three times), they rarely have anything to do with the movie they are spoofing. Even worse, they spoof scenes from 300 out of order! Every single second of Meet the Spartans hurt. One scene involving "Paris Hilton" and her hump literally made me physically ill. I can say without a hint of exaggeration that Meet the Spartans is one of the single worst films that I have ever watched in my entire life. And I do not say that lightly.

1/10

Dracula: Tod Browning, Karl Freund

[Revisit Review]

Because of Bela Lugosi's performance, the stunning production values, Karl Freund's cinematography, and its multitude of lines that have become legendary parts of pop culture, Tod Browning's Dracula is indispensable. And yet, I found the film surprisingly underwhelming. First off, the film should have been silent. The narrative's clunky storytelling would have benefited from the use of intertitles instead of the pained dialogue which, Lugosi aside, is either monotone or dreadfully over-melodramatic. Here's a question: why does the film keep Renfield around after Lugosi gets to London? He contributes nothing to the plot and his intrusions into the scenes only serve to further hobble the film's storytelling by drawing them out. After traveling to London, Dracula never calls on him for aid ever again. So why does the film insist on his importance?

8/10

Splendid Outing: Soo-yong Kim

Soo-yong Kim's Splendid Outing hit me like a stick of dynamite. The film haunted my thoughts for days after I watched it. I could not get it out of my head. I earnestly believe that if it was given a proper restoration and promotion here in the States, it would be heralded as a triumph of world cinema. A feminist parable masquerading as a horror film (or perhaps the other way around), Splendid Outing tells the story of Gong Do-hui, a high-powered business executive and women's rights icon who is mistaken for the runaway wife of a rural fisherman by a group of hired thugs, kidnapped, and trapped on a distant island, and brutally beaten and raped by her "husband." The husband slobbers about as a barely coherent drunk with psychotic, sadistic tendencies. Her new "daughter" is a cripple who is quick to scream and cry (and incite her father's wrath upon Gong) whenever she feels neglected. But if the father is too stupid to notice that Gong isn't his missing wife,  the daughter almost certainly knows within an instant that Gong isn't her real mother. After several failed attempts, Gong manages to escape from the island after a year and return to the mainland. However, she discovers that the police have mistaken another dead woman for her. She also finds that she has been forgotten by the company that she once worked for. Indeed, one of the most painful moments of the film is when we realize that the company probably deliberately forgot about her because she was a woman who had the audacity to hold power over her male co-workers. With her children long since moved away and an unwanted baby in her belly, Gong kills herself while screaming her name one last time. And yet, this isn't the end of the film. I won't give away the ending, but it transforms an already exhaustive parable into an uneasy glance into the internalized masochism that perhaps infects many feminists. Another underlying theme in Splendid Outing is the complicity of many women in destructive patriarchal societies. A group of women kidnap Gong, the crippled daughter and her grandmother either encourage or deliberately provoke the husband's abusive behavior, and when she returns to the mainland she discovers that her feminist group has been hijacked by a woman who promotes a faith-based pro-life agenda. I can't remember the last time a film so violently shook me to my core. Splendid Outing is a nightmarish Korean response to Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Woman in the Dunes (1964). But whereas that film depicts its protagonist's imprisonment in an exploitative society as an accidental twist of fate, Splendid Outing argues that such imprisonment not only can happen, but does happen to millions upon millions of women all over the world.

9/10

Les Visiteurs du Soir: Marcel Carné

Until his dying day, director Marcel Carné insisted that his film Les Visiteurs du Soir, a romantic fantasy wherein two of Satan's envoys try to spread chaos in 1485 France, was not an allegory for Nazi-occupied France. But, of course, since the film was made in 1942 during the Occupation, it has come to be seen as the very thing that Carné so vehemently denied. Well, I for one believe Carné. The film serves no allegorical function because it is a film of surfaces bereft of any depth. It is a romantic fantasy plain and simple. The story centers on the love affair between one of the devil's envoys and the daughter of a powerful baron engaged to be married to a callous warlord. When they declare their love for each other, Satan himself (played with scene-chewing glee by Jules Berry who is easily the best part of the film) comes to earth to break them apart. But, this being a fairy tale, love wins out in the end. It's just too bad that the film lacks the sense of joy and wonder that makes fantasy so appealing as a genre. Les Visiteurs du Soir is a hollow movie that lacks the immediacy and energy that galvanized the similar fantasy films of Jean Cocteau. Both films feature clever practical special effects. But whereas the effects in a film like Beauty and the Beast (1946) seem like extensions of its fairy tale universe, the effects in Les Visiteurs du Soir progressively seem more and more like interruptions in its tepid romantic melodrama.

6/10

Double Indemnity: Billy Wilder

[Revisit Review]

Yes, yes, well all remember how Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity is a trademark of the film noir genre. Its cinematography, its screenplay, Barbara Stanwyck's turn as one of the greatest femme fatale to ever grace the screen...We remember all of it. But during my third viewing of the film, I was amazed at just how much genuine tension I felt during the Edward G. Robinson scenes. In particular, the moments when he comes to Fred MacMurray's apartment and Stanwyck hides behind his door and when Porter Hall visits his office are incredible. That's the true mark of excellent craftsmanship: when something is still suspenseful and thrilling even when you know what's going to happen.

10/10

Edge of Tomorrow: Doug Liman

When I went into the theater to watch Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, I was totally prepared for a mash-up of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day (1993). What I wasn't prepared for was how much fun it would be. Edge of Tomorrow is a genuinely entertaining sci-fi film with a fair share of dark humor that manages to also be rather thought-provoking. Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's light novel All You Need Is Kill, the film follows US Major William Cage as he is forced to relive the same disastrous day over and over again where he takes part in mankind's final doomed attempt to destroy an invading race of aliens known as Mimics. I won't spoil the mystery concerning why he is stuck in a temporal loop, but I will say that the explanation was surprisingly fresh and original. Cage's transformation from unwilling soldier to super-warrior extraordinaire was delightful to witness. Indeed, the film takes as much joy in exploring the consequences of countlessly reliving the same day over and over again as the aforementioned Groundhog Day. And since Cage's day resets whenever he dies...well, let's just say that it is a situation ripe for comedy. While I was disappointed in the film's over-reliance on CGI both for its futuristic technology and for the design of the Mimics, I did appreciate how all of the military gear looked used and dirty instead of sterile and new.

8/10

The Woman in the Dunes: Hiroshi Teshigahara

[Revisit Review]

Has there ever been a more tactile film than Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Woman in the Dunes? To watch it is to feel the coarse sand scrap against your skin, to feel the merciless sun chap your flesh, to feel your lips crack with thirst. Perhaps this comes from Teshigahara's background as a ikebana artist; maybe the mastery of another art form gave him fresh insight on how to utilize the cinematic medium in new and daring ways? We've seen similar cases before: Jean Cocteau came to the cinema as a poet, Samuel Fuller a newspaperman, Stanley Kubrick a photographer, Bob Fosse a choreographer. Whatever the case, it is no exaggeration to say that there had never been a film before like The Woman in the Dunes. It is equal parts existentialist metaphor and post-modernist nightmare.

9/10

Baby Doll: Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan's Baby Doll is an unpleasant film about unpleasant people. In fact, it’s one of the most unpleasant films that I have seen in quite some time. It follows the tumultuous love triangle between the middle aged cotton gin-owner Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden), his bubble-headed 19 year old wife Baby Doll Meighan (Carroll Baker), and Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach), the owner of the town's most modern cotton-gin which he (correctly) suspects was burned down by Archie. This is a film soaked in sexual violence: Silva alternatively seduces and terrorizes Baby Doll and Archie is just one bottle of whiskey away from forcing himself upon her (she has made him swear not to touch her until her 20th birthday). There is so much shouting and screaming that by the end of the film I had a headache. And it's not just the film's story that stinks; Baby Doll has some of the most atrocious sound mixing that I have ever encountered in a mainstream Hollywood film. Random lines are frequently muffled, poorly recorded, or completely unintelligible. More than once I had to rewind the film and re-listen to a snatch of dialogue because I literally couldn't understand what they were saying. Even worse, sometimes the sound quality will vary multiple times within a single take. This gives the impression that a lot of the dialogue was dubbed in post. If that's the case, then they did an atrocious job.

4/10

Adieu Philippine: Jacques Rozier

Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine never got the attention or admiration it deserved as one of the key films of the French New Wave. Almost impossible to find, the film (and Rozier's reputation) have floundered while its contemporaries have become enshrined as masterpieces of world cinema. And this just isn't fair. Adieu Philippine combines the visual flamboyance of early Godard with the honest human drama that propelled the work of Truffaut. It manages to be a movie about a teenage love triangle that doesn't feel sappy or artificial. Though they are young and foolish, Rozier's subjects aren't the vapidly self-absorbed teens that polluted so many of Godard's films with esoteric monologues about philosophical baby-babble and half-smoked cigarettes. They feel like actual people young enough to make mistakes yet old enough to realize how foolish they are. Here is a film full of the energy and excitement of youth. Beautifully shot, the city of Paris and the beaches of Corsica have rarely looked so vibrant and inviting. Adieu Philippine achieves almost everything Godard set out to do with Breathless (1960) intellectually and artistically. And Rozier did it without heavily relying on a single editing gimmick, too.

8/10

The Tall Target: Anthony Mann

We all know that president-elect Abraham Lincoln wasn't assassinated in Baltimore while en route to the White House. This is a basic fact of history. So it seems odd that Anthony Mann's film The Tall Target would bill itself as a suspense thriller about a New York Police Sergeant named John Kennedy (Dick Powell) who must race aboard a night-train to Baltimore to stop a secret cabal from killing Honest Abe. We know he will succeed. But oddly enough, The Tall Target is one of the most effective suspense thrillers of its era. In my opinion, it rivals anything Alfred Hitchcock did during the 50s. This is a film where atmosphere is more important than plot. Oh, it helps that the narrative is interesting enough, what with its double agents, suspicious characters, and plot twists. But...Well...Okay, what I'm about to say may not be the most astute observation, but it's the only way that I can think of to describe the atmosphere of the film: it feels like an old-school point-and-click adventure game. I'm serious. It reminds me of those 90s adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, only it takes place on a midnight train. Each room and hallway seems like it occupies its own spatial void apart from the rest of the train. I feel like if Kennedy had tried to open the train windows, he would have discovered that nothing exists beyond them because nothing had been programmed there. The film has Key Items (like a gun with fake bullets) which can be used to solve Puzzles (who is trying to kill Kennedy?) which then unlock Cut Scenes (the double agent reveals himself). Certain characters will only help you if you have the right Key Item (the young boy and a coin) and others seem to be programmed to give automatic responses to questions (a brother and sister bound for their home in "Georgia"). You get the feeling that when Kennedy enters an empty room, everybody else on the train and all of the other compartments cease to exist until he uses the right Action Command. But I digress. The Tall Target is absolutely excellent. I have two small quibbles with the film, however. First, Powell just isn’t very charismatic. When something bizarre happens to him, he tends to look confused as if he can’t locate the source of a mysterious odor. And second, the film is rather glaringly uneven. The first half of the film is all shadows and intrigue. But by the second half, almost all of the puzzle's pieces are laid out on the table. As a result, the second half plays like a more traditional suspense film. But the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. And besides, I can't say that I've ever seen a film that used Abraham Lincoln as a MacGuffin before.

8/10

Twentieth Century: Howard Hawks

Much like William Keighley's The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), our enjoyment of Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century depends on us loving the irascible old man at the center of the narrative who selfishly manipulates people for his own purposes. And like The Man Who Came to Dinner, Hawks' film fails to convince us that he is anything other than a nasty, unlikable, despicable human being. One of the earliest of screwball comedies, Twentieth Century follows Broadway impresario Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) as he transforms lingerie model Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) into a superstar. But after three years Mildred, now renamed "Lily Garland," leaves him because of his domineering control over her life and day-to-day affairs. Time passes and Lily becomes a Hollywood star and Oscar a penniless bum on the run from creditors. But by chance they both board a train going from Chicago to New York. And wily ol' Oscar sees one last chance to reclaim Lily...and his fortunes. We don't immediately hate Oscar Jaffe. For the first 30 minutes or so he seems like a (passably) decent and kind control freak who just happens to be shackled to a fiery temper. But then he becomes unpleasant, then obnoxious, then hateful. He starts to abuse people mentally and emotionally. Only in a screwball comedy can a character as mean-spirited and detestable pass for a genuine hero on the basis of their abilities to scheme, manipulate, dominate, and fast-talk. But I'm not buying it. But that hardly matters. By the last third of the film Barrymore and Lombard (who seems to be warming up for her deliciously grandiose turn in My Man Godfrey [1936]) get into a contest to see who can out-overact the other. The razor-sharp dialogue, so crucial to the screwball formula, loses its finesse in their over-the-top histrionics. All screwball comedies get loud and chaotic at some point. But we only enjoy these moments when we care about the characters. And Mr. Oscar Jaffe is too repugnant to care about.

5/10

Culloden: Peter Watkins

Produced on a short budget with an all-amateur cast, Peter Walkins' Culloden, a docudrama on the 1764 Battle of Culloden wherein the British Army annihilated the forces of Charles Edward Stuart and put an end to the Scottish Jacobite rising of 1745, is one of the most powerful, horrifying, and gripping historical documentaries that I have ever witnessed. It represents a bold step forward in the development of cinematic historiography: instead of objective analyses and recreations, the film mimics modern TV war reporting from a "man-on-the-streets" perspective. Coming in at just under 70 minutes, Culloden's dense exploration of the men involved in the battle, their backgrounds, their actions, and their fates could have easily filled a documentary twice its length. Watkins' ubiquitous use of hand-held cameras gave the proceedings an energy and urgency that at times was almost painful to withstand. I have to give credit to the BBC for producing a documentary like this one which so readily condemns the actions of their past governments and armed forces. This film shook me to my core. It wouldn't leave my thoughts for days after I watched it.

9/10

The Roaring Twenties: Raoul Walsh

Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties isn't just  a great gangster film, it's a parable of love, loss, and redemption. Many of its features have become so iconic that they have become the stuff of second-rate parody: a curt, authoritative voice-over that comments on the action like it was a newsreel, Humphrey Bogart as the cynical rogue, James Cagney as the fast-talking smart guy always looking for an angle, the rags-to-riches-to-rags gangster narrative, and a stern condemnation of crime masquerading as justification for cramming the screen with as much violence as possible (although this was also typical of many other gangster films of the era). For a film that covers so much narrative ground, it clips along with an astonishing speed. The film never feels tedious or drawn out. But it never feels rushed or hurried, either. But it's not just the story that makes The Roaring Twenties so great. Walsh and cinematographer Ernest Haller keep the screen packed with clever framings and compositions. When Haller's camera starts to move, such as during the police depot robbery scene and the final tracking shot of Cagney in the street, the film jolts alive with electricity.

9/10

The Old Jar Craftsman: Choi Ha-won

Choi Ha-won's The Old Jar Craftsman is a luscious, beautiful film that succeeds because of its extreme emotional histrionics, not in spite of them. Based on a short story by Hwang Soon-won, it is more allegory by way of its human characters than merely a fictional tale set in a specific time and place. It reminds me of Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) in this regard. The film is about an elderly potter who one day discovers a young woman almost frozen to death in a forest. He saves her life and they eventually marry and have a son. But one day a young man enters their lives...the same young man whom the potter's wife tried to kill herself for. He has been searching for her for seven years and wants her back. He psychologically torments the woman until she runs away with him, abandoning her husband and young son. The potter despairs, has his son adopted by a wealthy family, and kills himself by diving into his kiln. Years later, his grown son visits his father's grave where he discovers that his mother has wasted away prostrating herself there for forgiveness. The two tearfully reconcile. Three things truly make The Old Jar Craftsman shine. First is You Young-gil's cinematography which makes the Korean countryside spring to life in dazzling color and beauty. The second is Hwang Hae's turn as the elderly potter. He is portrayed as a well-meaning innocent for most of the film. Watch how he refuses to sexually assault her when he first rescues her (although the scene where he rubs her frozen body to restore body heat is highly erotic). When he screams that his missing wife deserves to die, we realize that it is the incomprehensible grief talking and not some deep-seated misogyny. For this is a man for whom violence is incomprehensible. The third excellent part of The Old Jar Craftsman is the prolonged sequence where the potter's wife is psychologically tortured by her missing lover. The way Ha-won uses sound to denote psychological torment seems to predict Zhang Yimou's use of the sound of a foot massager in Raise the Red Lantern (1991).

8/10

Neighbors: Nicholas Stoller

I've found that generally (not always, but generally) if a comedy begins with a painfully awkward sex scene it's going to be a bumpy ride. Nicholas Stoller's Neighbors is one of those films. Uneven and full of plot holes, Neighbors is what happens when you allow too much improvisation without enforcing enough structure on your film's narrative. Following a struggle between a young married couple who recently had their first child and an, let's be frank here, evil fraternity that moves in next door, Neighbors is too awkward to be funny and too predictable to be entertaining. I can count off the plot points in my sleep: the young couple tries to ask them to keep their noise down at night while still seeming "cool," the fraternity promises to do so but doesn't, the young couple calls the cops, the fraternity declares war and attacks a house with an infant in it, and so on and so forth. So many of the plot points are so arbitrary that they border on the offensively stupid. The cops refuse to answer any of the couple's 911 calls after their first report (what?), all of the street's residents apparently refuse to help the young couple while they are being attacked and home invaded because the fraternity members are "nice" to them (WHAT?), the fraternity which at one point has to sell home-made dildos to afford fixing their basement can suddenly afford enough marijuana to turn their house into a massive hot-box (WHAT?!), and the dean of the fraternity's college refuses to step in unless there's bad press despite the fact that the young couple has told them that their newborn child has been threatened (screw you). Much of the acting is decent, however. The chemistry between Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, the young couple, is sweet and charming. Zac Efron and Dave Franco, the fraternity's leaders, have such impeccable comedic timing together that I earnestly hope that they will get another movie together soon. But the film is just not strong or funny enough. It's a mess. And even worse, as I mentioned before, it's a predictable mess. And a predictable comedy is a worthless one.

5/10

Amazon Women on the Moon: Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis, Robert K. Weiss

Let's keep things mercifully simple: the spoof anthology film Amazon Women on the Moon isn't that good because most of its sketches just aren't very funny. Many of the skits blur the line between the subjective (television) and the objective (the audience). In fact, the whole premise of the film is that it is meant to replicate the experience of watching a terrible late-night sci-fi movie (the eponymous schlock-fi abomination mentioned in the title) that keeps breaking down and has to be replaced with commercials while the television station tries to fix it. There are other skits that continue this theme: an elderly Jewish man is teleported into television programs via a broken remote control, a 9-to-5 schmuck gets "reviewed" by a pair of Siskel & Ebert stand-ins, and an erotic video turns violent when a jealous boyfriend storms in on the actress and begins threatening the hapless viewer. But again, most of them aren't that funny. Too many of the sketches go on for far too long. Another spoof anthology film directed by John Landis, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), kept its sketches short and sweet (the obvious exception being the ruthlessly entertaining A Fistful of Yen segment). In fact, the sketch where a young man gets an "interactive" theater ticket accomplished in just a few minutes what Amazon Women on the Moon spent almost an hour and a half trying to do. Although I will admit two things about Amazon Women on the Moon. First, the "Blacks Without Soul" segments starring David Alan Grier and B.B. King were magnificent. Second, the Russ Meyer cameo came so far out of left field that I can't help but applaud.

5/10