Feeling Good: Pierre Étaix

I...honestly and truly don't know what to make of Pierre Étaix's Feeling Good. It was originally supposed to be a section in his anthology film As Long As You've Got Your Health (1966) but was cut out and re-edited as its own short. But it makes almost no sense. The first five or so minutes are some decent slapstick about Étaix trying to go camping, but then he's arrested and relocated into what I can only describe as a cross between a concentration camp and a Oakie settlement circa the Dust Bowl. Is Étaix trying to make some kind of statement about how everyday society is so regimented that it's practically like living in a prison? I'm not sure. But the crying shame is that this second part of the film simply isn't funny.

As Long as You’ve Got Your Health: Pierre Étaix

Pierre Étaix's As Long as You've Got Your Health was deliberately divided into four short films. So the fairest way that I can think to review the film is to look at all four parts individually.

Insomnia

A man tries to fight his insomnia by reading a vampire novel. But the novel begins to bleed into real life as he starts to jump at simple things like his wife shifting positions in bed. It's a sweet, gentle segment that gets credit for not having the kind of twist ending that I thought it was going for.

The Movies

Étaix goes to the movies and after a series of unfortunate events gets pulled into the world of a never-ending commercial. I'm still not sure how he ended up in the commercial, but I don't care considering the shtick in the first part of this sequence wasn't very inspired. But the actual commercial segment contains some of the best slapstick and visual gags in all of Étaix's oeuvre. 

As Long As You've Got Your Health

At first a kind of rally against industrialization, this segment has some of the most bold and ambitious effects I've ever seen in a quasi-silent comedy. I loved the bits about the clock hands malfunctioning and the music notes falling off the sheet because of the vibrations from street construction. Then it becomes a low-key Orwellian nightmare as all of the inhabitants of the besieged city try to keep themselves from going insane by either perpetually smiling or seeking the advice of an increasingly beleaguered doctor.

Into the Woods No More

I don't have much to say about this one. It's the weakest of the four segments and can basically be boiled down to a handful of characters mince about the countryside for a while.

The overall film is not more than the sum of its parts. But the good parts more than make up for the lackluster ones.

7/10

1941: Steven Spielberg

Allow me to make something abundantly clear about Steven Spielberg's 1941: most of the visual humor and set-pieces involving things getting blown up work. The opening sequence spoofing Jaws (1975) where a night-swimmer gets trapped on the periscope of a Japanese sub was ingenious. The image of a Ferris Wheel rolling into the California Bay was striking and effective. The scene where a lone bomb from a B-52 disrupts a speech being given about how Japanese bombers will never reach California worked. It all worked. What didn't work were the smaller scale scenes involving individual characters acting weird, crazy, and over-the-top. Why? Because all of the principal characters know they're in a comedy. And nothing wrecks a comedy faster than characters who are in on the joke. The only exception that I can think of are the Marx Brothers movies. And even then only the Brothers themselves were in on the gag. This film also needed at least one less sub-plot. It's two-and-a-half hour run-time is exhaustive, especially for a comedy. Lengthy run-times are alright for action films and dramas, but comedies are much more stamina-draining for both filmmakers and audiences.

5/10

The Suitor: Pierre Étaix

Much like his earlier short film Rupture (1961) and his later masterpiece Yo Yo (1965), Pierre Étaix's The Suitor follows a somewhat aloof aristocrat vying against everyday annoyances and some internal discontent. In this case, Étaix plays the eponymous Suitor, a wealthy young man who decides that he needs to find a wife. The only problem is that he has had almost no interaction with the opposite sex outside of his family. So he struggles to enter and navigate the dating scene with...varying results. Although the film features a single plot, it is highly episodic in nature: he will center entire sequences around certain characters or sets for prolonged comedic routines. And, truth be told, this formula eventually becomes taxing. Not all of the sequences are equally thrilling. There's one in particular involving the Suitor escorting an inebriated woman back to her apartment that went on for far too long.

7/10

Runoff: Kimberly Levin

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-runoff/58811.

8/10

Max: Boaz Yakin

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-max/58762.

4/10

Donovan's Brain: Felix E. Feist

Felix E. Feist's Donovan's Brain was a braver film than I think most people would give it credit for. The reason? Its entire success centers almost solely on the ability of one actor to portray multiple characters with nothing but varying usages of body language and vocal intonation. Here that burden is carried by Lew Ayres, a scientist who gets possessed by a megalomaniac brain in his laboratory taken from a recently deceased business tycoon. And despite the fact that Ayres keeps tricking me into thinking that he's actually Jack Lemmon, he does a fantastic job. It helps that Donovan's Brain boasts a legitimately engrossing screenplay and fantastically moody cinematography courtesy of Joseph F. Biroc. This is one of those rare 1950s sci-fi flicks that didn't succumb to the ludicrousness of its central plot or to hammy special effects. Donovan's Brain legitimately works both as sci-fi and as horror.

7/10

The Lost Boys: Joel Schumacher

I came to Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys rather circuitously. I have spent several summers living with my aunt and grandmother in Santa Cruz where the film was shot. Without even realizing it I had familiarized myself with several of the landmarks that were featured prominently in the film. The one exception would have to be the comic book shop which actually became the place that I first started getting into comics. They were happy to tell me that they were featured in the film. Now, several years later, I have finally seen the film and can confirm that they have every right to be proud of being featured in it. The special effects are excellent. The humor is surprisingly organic—stealing holy water from a church, having the experts on evil creatures be comic book nerds, using squirt guns full of holy water mixed with garlic against vampires. The only weak point of the movie is the central love story which is ridiculously weak and tepid. But it's not like we came to this film to see a love story anyway, right?

7/10

Surf Nazis Must Die: Peter George

I am convinced that the only reason Peter George's Surf Nazis Must Die has survived as a "cult classic" is its title. And it's a perfect title, isn't it? First, there's the absurd juxtaposition of the terms "surf" and "Nazis." Follow that up with the command that they "must die" and you have a dynamic, brain-snatching title that is sure to stick with people regardless of whether or not they actually see it. But while Surf Nazis Must Die certainly contains Nazis, surfing, and dying, the final product is so banal and lifeless that afterwards the title will be the only thing that viewers will remember. The film feels like the boring bits of about a dozen Z-grade drive-in pictures chopped up and randomly glued back together by a blind macaque. Scenes start and stop and start and stop with little attention paid to how they transition between each other or build a narrative. It's essentially a 90 minute stag reel of surfing footage and dirty teenagers sneering at each other. The film's diegetic universe doesn't make any sense, either. Apparently a catastrophic earthquake so devastated California that roving gangs of Nazis were able to seize power. And yet apparently enough of society remained that social services like nursing homes and small businesses could still operate. But I'm clearly giving this film more thought than any of its makers did.

1/10

A Woman’s Face: George Cukor

To read this review, go to: http://www.theblackmaria.org/2015/06/23/b-roll-george-cukors-a-womans-face-1941/.

8/10

When Strangers Marry: William Castle

What a delightful discovery! I never would have imagined that William Castle, the master of gimmicks and ridiculous horror films, could have directed such a moody, tense, and wonderfully atmospheric thriller as When Strangers Marry. The film, which centers on a young wife who begins to suspect that her husband might be a murderer, incredibly outshines Suspicion (1941), an earlier film with a similar plot directed by none other than Alfred Hitchcock. There are a handful of magnificent sequences that I can only imagine would have made the Master of Suspense green with envy: the suspected husband flummoxing a sideshow carny who boasts that he can guess anyone's profession with only three guesses; a couple on the run being forced to share a cramped cab with a screaming infant; a hallucinogenic scene where the wife is plagued with visions of people calling her husband a murderer while traveling down a darkened tunnel at night. It reminds me of another early noir with a run-time that barely exceeded 60 minutes: Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). Both made up for their low-budget production short-comings with excellent performances, hyper-stylized sequences reflecting their characters' inner paranoia, and a crackerjack script. Where When Strangers Marry falters is that it gives away its major twist with an unfortunate bit of casting. The moment this character appears you know that he's up to no good. They should have invested in a more milquetoast actor. I bet Elisha Cook, Jr. would have been perfect.

8/10

The Devil-Doll: Tod Browning

Tod Browning's The Devil-Doll has one of those delightfully absurd scenarios that could only occur in the pulpiest of sci-fi/horror fever-dreams: a Parisian banker uses people he has shrunken to only a few inches in height with a mysterious chemical formula to get revenge on his one-time colleagues who framed him for robbery and murder seventeen years earlier. The banker, Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore), dresses in drag to pose as an elderly female toymaker who ingratiates herself into the homes of his enemies where his servants carry out his grisly commands. The special effects—mostly limited to double-exposures and forced perspective accompanied by over-sized sets and props—are curiously less effective than similar effects in King Kong, released three years earlier. But what saves the film is Barrymore's performance. At times deliciously over-the-top, at times horrifying (note the death glare he gives his enemies as his servants get ready to strike, Barrymore is able to inject an admittedly silly role with genuine pathos. Nowhere is this more apparent than the heart-breaking scene near the end where he confronts his long-lost daughter...while posing as someone else. The Devil-Doll also reveals a curious contradiction implicit within the boundaries of the Motion Picture Production Code: criminals who lie and cheat and steal can get away unpunished as long as the only people he hurts are worse criminals.

7/10

Eden: Mia Hansen-Løve

Mia Hansen-Løve's Eden was literally the hardest film I have had to watch in quite some time. It wasn't because it was shocking or uncomfortable. It was because it was a boring, poorly-constructed piece of miscalculated rubbish. I can understand what Hansen-Løve was going for: an examination of the 90s French techno scene that was just as enamored with the atmosphere and zeitgeist of the era as the musicians who helped pioneer the actual music. It was supposed to be a calm, reflective piece. In short, it tried to be equal parts documentary, drama, and drug film. Yet it trying to do all three, it became none of them. This isn't a film that moves, it meanders. And while many directors are able to pull this kind of meditative anti-plotting off, Hansen-Løve isn't one of them...yet.

3/10

Inside Out: Pete Docter

Pete Docter's Inside Out marks a return to the fastidious creativity and courage that made PIXAR a house-hold name. Beautifully animated, thought-provoking, and unapologetically willing to test the limits of their audience's emotions, Inside Out is the best film PIXAR has put out since 2010 with Toy Story 3 (2010). And yet, I was largely disappointed with the third act. There was way too much slapstick comedic relief during moments that should have been tense with dramatic weight. The anthropomorphic interpretations of Riley's emotions work as characters because they're metaphorical. But in the last act they use Tex Avery-esque logic to overcome challenges (e.g. using hundreds of clones of Riley's ideal boyfriend to create a human bridge) that the entire metaphorical underpinning of the story becomes confused, cluttered, and nearly lost.

7/10

Jurassic World: Colin Trevorrow

It would be so easy to say that my reasons for not loving Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World stemmed solely from my hatred CGI effects, ESPECIALLY in a franchise known for having some of the best practical effects in cinematic history. But really, my dislike of the film comes from the fact that the characters, with the notable exception of Bryce Dallas Howard, were either bland, forgettable, or annoying. Chris Pratt was underwhelming and ultimately useless, the two boys deserved to get eaten by dinosaurs because of their stupidity, and the people running the park and its security were laughably incompetent, even for a narrative centered around nature punishing mankind for its hubris. Still, I would be lying if I didn't say that the ending fight between the T. Rex, Blue, and Indominus didn't make me almost teary-eyed with joy.

6/10

Dogtooth: Yorgos Lanthimos

I think the key scene to understanding Yorgos Lanthimos's Dogtooth is a scene near the end where the eldest daughter (Angeliki Papoulia) begins re-enacting a dance scene from Adrian Lyne's Flashdance (1983) during a performance in honor of her father's birthday. On the surface it's just another in a long line of bizarre images and sequences; Buñuelian surrealism through the lens of Theo Angelopoulos (and not just because they're both Greek—Lanthimos shares Angelopoulos' favor of long, static takes and glacial pacing). But then it hit me: at not point has this young woman ever seen the film, let alone heard of it. The only exposure she has had to anything outside her deliberately isolated and insulated family were two VHS tapes of Jaws (1975) and Rocky IV (1985). So why, or more appropriately how, Flashdance? My theory is that the eldest daughter is, like a medium, beginning to channel the world outside her family's enclosure. This would compliment the interpretation that Dogtooth is about arrested development and the anxieties that accompany young people as they move out on their own for the first time. But I suspect that limiting Dogtooth to such simplistic comparisons would miss the point. It is more than just an allegory; it is a strange, bizarre riddle of a film designed to intrigue and shock audiences. The only interpretations possible are the ones people bring with them from the very beginning.

7/10

The Wolfpack: Crystal Moselle

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-the-wolfpack/57993.

7/10

Hot Fuzz: Edgar Wright

[Revisit Review]

Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz was and is a miracle of comedic filmmaking. It has one of the most ruthlessly sharp and well-constructed screenplays this side of Robert Smith’s for Irving Pichel’s Quicksand! (1950): not a line is wasted or unnecessary. The use of editing to highlight comedic scenes—fast-paced, dramatic cutting for absurdly mundane activities like filling out paperwork—is magnificent. Just like his previous endeavor Shaun of the Dead (2004) which doubled as a gut-busting comedy and a truly chilling zombie horror film, Hot Fuzz works in its own right as both a mystery thriller and an action cop movie. Wright understands that the best parodies, satires, and tributes can stand on their own merits as representations of the things they’re lampooning. This is a lesson most modern filmmakers have woefully missed.

9/10

Zombeavers: Jordan Rubin

I wish that filmmakers would figure out that deliberately, ironically obnoxious characters are STILL obnoxious. They seem to be popular in horror films that intentionally emulate low-budget, cheesy B-movies. But unlike Eli Craig's Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010) where the annoying characters were balanced by sympathetic ones and Kevin Smith's Tusk (2014) where they stopped being obnoxious when things began to get real, the obnoxious characters in Jordan Rubin's Zombeavers STAY obnoxious the entire time. They were so unpleasant that I had a hard time getting into the irreverent tone of the film and enjoying it for what it was: a light-hearted, goofy tribute to terrible horrible movies. But at least the practical creature effects were really nice!

(Oh, and don't think I missed the dolly zoom tribute to Jaws [1975]. Nice touch.)

4/10

Set Fire to the Stars: Andy Goddard

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-set-fire-to-the-stars/57554.

7/10

Blood on the Moon: Robert Wise

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/06/09/b-roll-robert-wises-blood-on-the-moon-1948/.

6/10

Happy Anniversary: Jean-Claude Carrière, Pierre Étaix

Even though Jean-Claude Carrière and Pierre Étaix's Happy Anniversary has more sets, more props, more characters, and more locations, I still feel like more happened in their first collaboration Rupture (1961). Perhaps the action became decentralized due to its greater scope? Whatever the reason, this madcap tale of one man's repeatedly thwarted attempts to get home in time for an anniversary dinner with his wife is delightful and charming. I can understand why it won an Academy Award for Best Short Film. If anything, it demonstrates Étaix's growth as a filmmaker and points the way towards his full-length feature films.

The Gold Ghost: Buster Keaton, Charles Lamont

The Gold Ghost was not an easy or pleasant film to watch. It was Buster Keaton's first directorial effort with sound cinema and it showed. The plot was formulaic and uninspired: a weak, foppish young man Goes West to try and make a name for himself in order to woo the heart of a woman he loves. The film is so mediocre that it makes Algie, the Miner (1912), a ten minute short film partially directed by Alice Guy-Blaché which essentially told the same basic story, look like D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916). Most of the jokes are reworkings of earlier Keaton gags. But unlike Grand Slam Opera (1936) where he adapted old gags to actually utilize sound technology, the gags here are almost the same as they would have been without sound. It always hurts to see your idols fall.

Rupture: Jean-Claude Carrière, Pierre Étaix

Rupture takes a simple idea—a spurned lover trying to write a break-up letter whose things keep breaking on him—and wrings every single bit of comedy imaginable out of it. It is, in a word, bliss. This is precision slapstick the likes of which only the French comedians like Jacques Tati and René Clair truly excelled at (although Chaplin came damn close with Modern Times [1936]). What would be a better term for this? "Surgical Slapstick?" I'll have to think on it...But anyhow, my favorite part is the hokey sound effects which were created and dubbed in by Étaix after filming had concluded. They are so wild and over-the-top that they almost reach surrealistic heights.

Million Dollar Legs: Edward F. Cline

Having seen Edward F. Cline’s Million Dollar Legs, I can’t help but feel that it is the first part in a triptych of Dadaist Hollywood comedies—the subsequent parts being Leo McCarey’s Duck Soup (1933) and H. C. Potter’s Hellzapoppin’ (1941). All three films are deliberately scatterbrained, surrealistic, and nonsensical. But of the three, Million Dollar Legs is perhaps the most consciously “silly.” It was so silly, in fact, that it took me about fifteen minutes to acclimate myself with its humor. More than once the humor veered between “silly” and “stupid.” But there were enough gags that worked (the discovery of all of Klopstokia’s athletes, for instance) that I was able to forgive the ones that didn’t. Plus, I never though that W. C. Fields would work so well in a supporting role. But here he honestly gives one of his best performances, in my opinion. I’ve always felt that Fields was a comedian best enjoyed in small doses. I’ve always preferred his short films to his features. And Million Dollar Legs finds a nice balance between over- and under-using him.

7/10

Hungry Hearts: Saverio Costanzo

To read this review, go to: http://theyoungfolks.com/review/movie-review-hungry-hearts/56935.

9/10

Our Daily Bread: King Vidor

King Vidor was one of those directors that I had always heard of but had never exactly watched. I'd seen his "important" films: the silent masterpieces The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928). But I had remained largely ignorant of his sound films. And yet, it is perhaps in his sound films that Vidor left the greatest impression both as a director and as an auteur. So his 1934 film Our Daily Bread marked the first time that I truly "met" Mr. Vidor. Unapologetically enthusiastic, centering on can-do protagonists, and concerned with individualist triumph over adversity, Out Daily Bread was an unexpected treat. In a strange way, the film is essentially the story of an American Communist farming commune. And yet Vidor managed to mask this fact by insistently focusing on the struggles of a single protagonist. It's Communism by way of Individualism. A strange idea...but Vidor makes it work.

7/10

The Whispering Chorus: Cecil B. DeMille

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/06/02/b-roll-cecil-b-demille-the-whispering-chorus-1918/.

7/10