Dear White People: Justin Simien

I believe that the primary reason that Justin Simien's Dear White People works is that it refuses to make any one character totally sympathetic. Just when it seems like one character is in the right, they turn around and do something offensive or stupid. A prime example is when Sam White (Tessa Thompson) kicks the racist frat boys out of her cafeteria. It's a triumphant moment...right up until she also kicks out the quite, nerdy, and gay Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams). We're shocked and offended when Troy Fairbanks' (Brandon P. Bell) white girlfriend tries to seduce him while cooing over his "big black cock"...right up until we learn that he was the one who wanted her to do it. This dichotomy between being "right" and being "wrong" is what drives the film and leads to many of its most shocking (and rewarding) surprises. If I had to single out one thing to recommend about Dear White People, it would be its screenplay. But everything in this film works: the acting, the cinematography, the pacing, the editing, and so on and so forth.

9/10

Fast & Furious: Justin Lin

Justin Lin's Fast & Furious isn't a movie; it's a video game with live-action cut scenes. There's a scene early on where Vin Diesel charges his car at a tumbling, exploding gasoline tanker that was so preposterous and so shoddily animated that I actually felt embarrassed for everyone involved with the film. It doesn't help that by this point the series' emphasis on honor, brotherhood, and loyalty has grown paper thin. Fast & Furious is, in a word, tedious. How many times is the Law going to welcome Paul Walker back into its ranks after he screws up and helps the villains? Diesel feels like he's on autopilot, the subplot about his girlfriend being a secret agent and getting killed felt unnecessarily perfunctory, and the climactic action scene was too cluttered, too dark, too chaotic, and too poorly animated to be effective.

5/10

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: Justin Lin

If nothing else, Justin Lin's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift teaches an important lesson about race scenes: never set your climactic race between two dark-colored cars at night. There are two reasons. First, the darkness will make the race hard to follow and understand. Second, you won't be able to tell the two cars apart. But other than that, Tokyo Drift is a decent action movie. Lucas Black has all of Paul Walker's charisma and a bit more acting skill. The race scenes didn't abuse CGI like in John Singleton's 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) (at least as far as I could tell). Lin does a good job with not pandering to Japanese stereotypes despite the setting, although he does indulge himself a bit with the Yakuza characters. I do find it "funny" how Black immediately falls in with the only black character in Japan and falls in love with the only English-speaking gaijin. But I suppose this continues with the series' theme of reusing the same stock characters over and over again: the stoic white lead, the street-smart black sidekick, the aloof (read: "wooden") and "exotic" romantic interest involved with the villain. But with the exception of the climactic race, Tokyo Drift doesn't do anything necessarily wrong. I'm eager to see where Lin takes this series next.

6/10

2 Fast 2 Furious: John Singleton

I probably would have given John Singleton's 2 Fast 2 Furious a higher rating if it wasn't so blatant in its ripping off of Rob Cohen's The Fast and the Furious. More than just being a sequel, much of it feels like a straight-up retread of the original movie: Paul Walker goes undercover to take down thieves by posing as an illegal street racer. But the chemistry between Walker and his new partner Tyrese Gibson was sturdy enough to carry the film between its impressive action scenes. Well, the action scenes were mostly impressive. Some of them, particularly the first street racing scene, overused CGI to the point where it felt like we were watching a video game cutscene. But when the action scenes in this film work, they really work. The "scramble" was pure visual poetry. The image of a smoking car jutting out the back of a yacht was delightful. And the sight of a car getting crushed beneath the wheels of a 16-wheeler is one that I won't be forgetting anytime soon.

6/10

The Fast and the Furious: Rob Cohen

[Revisit Review]

The actors in Rob Cohen's The Fast and the Furious get by with more charisma than actual acting talent. Both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are rather wooden (with the latter delivering most of his lines like he's trying to emote for a high-school play), but they manage to carry their roles competently enough. The action sequences were much more arresting than I remembered them to be. The scene near the end where Diesel & Co. try and rescue a compatriot from a shotgun-wielding truck-driver was downright poetic. And I never get tired of watching cars drive beneath 16-wheelers.

7/10

Here Comes the Groom: Frank Capra

I don't think that Frank Capra's Here Comes the Groom could get made these days. Not because it's particularly offensive or racist or anything, but because its main narrative is kind of skeezy. It focuses on a newspaper reporter played by Bing Crosby who, in an attempt to woo back his once fiancee, adopts two French war orphans and brings them home to the States. After being told that he has only a few days to become legally married before the US government removes the children from his care and returns them to France, Crosby begins to use every trick in the book to manipulate her into marrying him. Of course, this is difficult considering that she has already accepted a marriage proposal from another, more wealthy suitor. Part of Crosby's plan is getting the children emotionally attached to her and vice versa. Listen, I totally understand that in the context of this movie Crosby is a nice, warm-hearted guy. He really does mean well. But this plot still feels gross. It doesn't help that the musical numbers are some of the most jarring and perfunctory that I have encountered in quite some time. None of them cleanly transition from the non-musical scenes. Therefore, each one of them arrives with a resounding, uncomfortable thud. Still, it was nice seeing Louis Armstrong pop up for a bit in one of the first musical numbers. But what was up with the prolonged opera sequence near the beginning? Did it really have to go on for so long?

5/10

Home: Tim Johnson

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-home/53168.

2/10

Get Hard: Etan Cohen

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-get-hard/53139.

3/10

Bwana Devil: Arch Oboler

Arch Oboler’s Bwana Devil is woefully incompetent. And it’s not just woefully incompetent, it’s stunningly racist. And it’s not just stunning racist, it’s boring. This is a film where the White Man must save native Africans from vicious man-eating lions. Of course, first the half-naked African warriors must be literally reduced to tears by the beasts they have literally been trained their entire lives to hunt. I am stunned by how awful this film is. Their night shots aren’t even day-for-night; they’re day-for-day. It incorporates stock footage in ways that would make Roger Corman cringe. There are even moments where the actors perform in front of rear projections of said stock footage. The perfunctory love story doesn’t start until an hour in. Nothing about this film works. It’s bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD.

1/10

Doomed to Die: William Nigh

William Nigh's Doomed to Die was the first Mr. Wong film that I have ever seen. But having seen it, I'm not entirely sure that it even was a Mr. Wong film: the titular character gets barely any screen time. He doesn't even get a proper dramatic entrance. Instead, in his first scene he just sorta wanders onscreen. There really isn't anything remarkable about Doomed to Die. There's a lackluster murder mystery plot and boring, run-of-the-mill cinematography. I was pleasantly surprised by Boris Karloff's performance as Mr. Wong, though. Considering that the film was made in 1940, I was fully expecting the character to be a Fu Manchu-esque grotesquerie. But Karloff brought a lot of quiet dignity to the role. He brought so much quiet dignity that you had to really squint and pay attention or else you'd forget that his character was in the movie in the first place.

5/10

A Girl in Every Port: Howard Hawks

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/03/23/b-rolls-howard-hawks-a-girl-in-every-port-1928/.

7/10

Algie, the Miner: Harry Schenck, Edward Warren, Alice Guy-Blaché

Although there may have been two other directors, Algie, the Miner saw Alice Guy-Blaché at the height of her abilities as a filmmaker and as a practitioner of standard Hollywood film grammar. The film tells the story of a foppish man played by Billy Quirk who is given an ultimatum: in order to marry the woman he loves, he must prove himself a man in one year's time. And how would American men in the early 20th century prove their manliness? Go West, of course! So he becomes a miner, abandons his more "girly" mannerisms, saves his employer and friend from alcoholism, becomes a "man," and claims his bride. Gone are the frigid tableaux that dominated Guy-Blaché's earlier films. Although many scenes are done with static shots, there is a good smattering of editing between medium and long shots as well as camera pans. It helps that Quirk gave a funny (yet dated) performance.

The Magician's Alms: Alice Guy-Blaché

In my opinion, Alice Guy-Blaché's The Magician's Alms is one of her best shorts. First off, it features some of her best jump cuts: a magician makes a table, feast, waiter, and cigar appear for a homeless beggar. My favorite jump cut was when he made the aforementioned waiter appear from a tiny doll that he placed on the ground. But what really sold me on this particular short was its moral. After the magician gives the beggar a meal, new clothes, and his youth back, he tests the man by appearing to him as a beggar himself. When he refuses to give alms to the magician, he removes his disguise and takes back all of the gifts he had given him. By including a moral, Guy-Blaché elevated it from a mere spectacle film.

Turn of the Century Surgery: Alice Guy-Blaché

I'm honestly not entirely sure if Alice Guy-Blaché's Turn of the Century Surgery was meant to be a comedy or not. It's a short about a couple of surgeons who chop off a patient's right arm and leg and then re-attach two new ones. First off, they reattach the new limbs with what I assume to be glue. This might be comedic, but considering the title, this may have been sincere speculative science-fiction. But, the first thing that the patient does when he is re-awakened is dance about like a flapper. Maybe the joke was that they re-attached the wrong limbs (maybe the limbs of a female dancer?). But again, this might just be speculative sci-fi. But the biggest clue as to whether or not this film is a comedy is the giant sign looming in the background that says in French and English: "Please Do Not Cry." The jump edits that transition between the actor playing the patient and a large dummy used during the surgery scenes aren't very smooth, but Guy-Blaché gets points for effort.

The Race for the Sausage: Alice Guy-Blaché

Alice Guy-Blaché's The Race for the Sausage might be the pinnacle of the "chase film," that short-lived genre of movies from the very early 20th century that balanced narrative storytelling with delirious spectacle. Perhaps the best known example of the genre is Edwin S. Porter's How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (1904). But Guy-Blaché blows that film out of the water with this madcap story of a pooch who pilfers a string of sausages and leads a group of townsfolk on a chase. Unlike the aforementioned Porter film, the interconnected segments of people running in and out of frame do more than just provide the spectacle of people running. Each segment is also a set-up for slapstick. One segment has them smashing over a street-vendor's wares, another has them disrupting a peasant woman with a cart of animals, another has them running through a nice house, and so on and so forth. There's even a running gag that provides a darkly sinister undercurrent to the film: a woman with a baby carriage gets pulled into the chase and knocked over multiple times. And how does that sub-plot end? With the baby carriage getting run over by a train.

The Bricklayers: Alice Guy-Blaché

In just under two minutes, Alice Guy-Blaché manages to predict the likes of the Keystone Cops, Buster Keaton, and the Three Stooges with her 1905 short Les Maçons, translated as "The Bricklayers." Basically, two cops keep interrupting with a group of bricklayers at a construction site and wacky hijinks ensue. The slapstick here, while primitive, is still oddly effective in its timing. In the second half we get two different slapstick bits going on simultaneously as one cop flounders on the ground while the other pursues the bricklayers on their scaffolding. But the best part is when the skinny cop climbs to the top of a ladder only for it to fall backwards. The actor managed to flip the ladder around mid-fall so that he would land on top of it instead of beneath it. Then he dismounts with an impressive somersault. As I said, it isn't hard to see parallels between this moment and the later work of Buster Keaton, particularly the film Cops (1922).

The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ: Alice Guy-Blaché

For a pre-Griffith, pre-DeMille historical epic, Alice Guy-Blaché's The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ is impressive. Considering that it was made in 1906, the wide variety of sets, costumes, and onscreen performers is nothing short of remarkable. I counted two segments where camera pans were utilized, perhaps the most noteworthy being during Climbing Golgotha where the camera slowly pans left to track Jesus ascending to his execution spot as he climbs the hill. Even more incredible is the fact that I think that the scene was shot on-location and outdoors. The logistics of organizing the multitude of extras and the camera equipment must have been nothing short of Herculean. Guy-Blaché also uses fade-ins during scenes with angels, such as during The Sleep of Jesus where a choir of heavenly hosts appears and serenades the baby Jesus. The jump cuts from Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902) spring to mind in comparison. But I can only imagine that executing a successful fade-in or fade-out was more difficult. What's more, they weren't there just for the sake of spectacle; they were genuine narrative devices. The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ represents an early use of special effects to veer away from what Tom Gunning referred to as the Cinema of Attractions.

Cannibal Apocalypse: Antonio Margheriti

Every square is a rectangle. But not every rectangle is a square. Likewise, every zombie is a cannibal. But every cannibal isn’t a zombie. The monsters in Antonio Margheriti's Cannibal Apocalypse are referred to as cannibals, but they're really zombies. They eat human flesh and whomever they bite turns into one of them. I suspect they were only called cannibals because the studio wanted to cash in on the cannibal craze. Anyhow, Cannibal Apocalypse is short on coherency but long on style. One of the more interesting aspects is the groovy soundtrack which provides odd, disquieting counterpoints to the gruesome goings-on of the plot. Some of the acting is rather solid. There's a wonderful scene early on where the protagonist tries to negotiate with an old veteran buddy who has become unhinged and barricaded himself in a mall. But for the most part Cannibal Apocalypse is forgettable.

5/10

I Confess: Alfred Hitchcock

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/03/17/b-rolls-alfred-hitchcocks-i-confess-1953/.

8/10

The Man from Planet X: Edgar G. Ulmer

Edgar G. Ulmer's The Man from Planet X is a triumph of style over substance. Lord knows there isn't much substance in this film. Ostensibly an alien invasion film (and not just that, but one of those charming films that only really seemed to exist in the 1950s where a single alien arriving in a single spaceship is expected to secure the entire planet earth, subjugate all of humanity, and lay the groundwork for an invasion), it veers into odd Invasion of the Body Snatchers territory in the last act where the unseen foe starts to capture and control members of a community isolated from the outside world. But what the film does have going for it is a solid atmosphere and excellent cinematography courtesy of John L. Russell. The Moors where much of the action takes place are dark, foggy, and ominous. There’s a fantastic shot early in the film in an observatory where the entire screen goes black for a few seconds. It's just a shame that Mr. Ulmer couldn't get a better script to work with.

6/10

Alice: Jan Švankmajer

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/the-film-canon-alice-1988/52385.

9/10

Faust: Jan Švankmajer

I think the thing that I admire most about Jan Švankmajer's Faust is that I haven't figured all of it out. It is a film of endless layers, bottomless complexities. Why the scenes with the impish marionette? Why are marionettes so extensively used in the first place?  What's with all of the seemingly random asides involving bystanders? If I watched this movie a dozen times, there would still probably be nooks and crannies left for me to discover. But unlike most deliberately complex and opaque films, I honestly believe that everything in Faust was put there for a reason. I don't think that he just threw random objects and images at the screen. The centerpiece of the film, in my opinion, was the scene where Faust summoned Mephistopheles with a magic circle. The editing blew my mind. The only magic circle scene that rivals it was the night of temptation in Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out (1968).

9/10

They Were Expendable: John Ford

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/03/10/b-rolls-they-were-expendable-1945/.

8/10

Little Otik: Jan Švankmajer

I never thought that a movie would ever turn me off of food as a concept. Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) came close, but the scenes involving food were mercifully few. Jan Švankmajer's Little Otik, on the other hand, assaults the audience with almost nonstop scenes of disgusting food being eaten, chewed, slurped, and cooked. One scene where a young girl bends over her plate and sucks the yolk from her egg almost made me physically nauseous. But it's appropriate, I suppose. After all, this is a movie about consumption. More specifically, an infant made of wood that can't stop eating. I suppose that the film could be interpreted as a metaphor for the anxieties and stresses of parenthood. But I think Švankmajer was more concerned with the motif of eating and consumption. Švankmajer's use of stop-motion animation was down-played in this film, giving me a chance to evaluate his visual language with greater scrutiny. His use of quick, extreme close-ups and sudden camera movements seem to emulate a child's enthusiasm for a new toy or curio. How appropriate, considering the source material.

8/10

Assigned to Danger: Budd Boetticher

Alright, so, I'm starting this review literally less than a minute after I finished watching Budd Boetticher's Assigned to Danger. And I realize that even now I still hardly have any idea what in the hell I just watched. Something about a bank heist gone wrong? An insurance investigator? A wounded gangster holding up in a building with his abused wife? And for some reason the insurance investigator just happens to stumble upon them and manages to defeat them? Am I getting that right? Oh! And what about that part where the untrained (at least I have every reason to believe he was untrained) insurance investigator manages to successfully remove a bullet without the proper medical tools and without killing the patient? What was up with that? Bleagh...these early, nitty-gritty Boetticher movies are beginning to run together...

4/10

Tank Girl: Rachel Talalay

You know what the bitch of it is? There are things about Rachel Talalay's Tank Girl that I actually like. Well, there's one thing: Malcolm McDowell. As silly and preposterous as his character and performance are, he can be legitimately terrifying. There is one scene in particular that really dazzled me where he makes a disgraced general walk across a floor of broken glass before he can humiliate and execute him. Plus I loved his "tube that gets smaller and smaller" torture technique. The animated sequences which homage the original comics aren't half bad, either. It's just the rest of the film that is a chaotic, poorly executed mess. It aims to be an anarchic blending of genres, but the devil-may-care comedy REALLY doesn’t mix with scenes where the heroine is threatened with gang rape. None of the scenes that are supposed to be sexy feel sexy; they feel skeezy and unclean. This is probably due to the fact that many of these "sexy" scenes include the eponymous Tank Girl's best friend, a prepubescent girl, as a bystander.

2/10

Unfinished Business: Ken Scott

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-unfinished-business/51910.

3/10

Last Action Hero: John McTiernan

One of the best criticisms I've heard of John McTiernan's Last Action Hero was that it felt like a 2+ hour Saturday Night Live sketch. And that's only partially true. The first 30-40 minutes feel like an extended SNL sketch. And quite frankly, they are the weakest. They rely on approximately one joke: action movies are CRAZY, yo! But once the second act gets rolling it develops its own identity and becomes a surprisingly well-crafted action movie. The scene involving Schwarzenegger and a corpse, a nerve gas bomb, a funeral, and a crane holds up to this day. But what really shocked me was how cynical and intense the film could get. Charles Dance gives an astounding performance and his "experiment" to see if the real world works like the movie one is legitimately chilling. The line where Schwarzenegger admits that he's never really talked to a woman before does more to deconstruct the action movie protagonist stereotype than anything else in the movie. Is Last Action Hero perfect? No. But there are enough good things about it for me to consider it a quality movie.

7/10