Asparagus: Suzan Pitt

Just saw Suzan Pitt's ASPARAGUS (1979). Stunning, gorgeous, and oh so unsettling; feminism strained through a sifter of nightmare logic; vegetarian paraphilia as envisioned by Monty Python animators tripping on peyote.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 9, 2018

What does it all mean? No idea. You tell me. As defiantly esoteric as David Lynch's ERASERHEAD (1977) with which it was apparently paired on the midnight movie circuit for years. One day I hope to see this pairing myself on the big screen.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 9, 2018

The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun: Djibril Diop Mambéty

Watching Djibril Diop Mambéty's THE LITTLE GIRL WHO SOLD THE SUN (1999). I'm largely ignorant of his work, so I'm looking forward to checking it out!

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 2, 2018

Wow, this little girl went with the corrupt police officer to the station SPECIFICALLY to humiliate him in front of his superior and to free the "thief."

Absolute legend.

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 2, 2018

Get it girl!! pic.twitter.com/v439wdmjiM

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 2, 2018

Absolute. Legend. pic.twitter.com/mInIc87ijw

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 2, 2018

Positively superb. Even if you strip away the political allegory of Senegal shrugging off the burdens of colonialism--and you shouldn't--the film still works as a beautiful folk tale/children's story. Reminds me of Jafar Panahi's THE WHILE BALLOON (1995).

— Nathanael Hood (@NateHood257) June 2, 2018

The Troubled Troubadour: Forest Ian Etsler, Sébastien Simon

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/115811/slamdance-2018-review-the-troubled-troubadour/.

Wrong Again: Leo McCarey

Leo McCarey's Wrong Again is second only to James Parrott's Two Tars as the funniest Laurel and Hardy short I've ever seen. I laughed the entire time through it, and so did all the children in the theater that I watched it with. It's one of the most fiendishly clever set-ups for slapstick I've ever encountered: Laurel and Hardy mistake a horse for a stolen painting (don't ask) and try to return it to its owner with disastrous results, the worst being a hilarious segment where they try to put the horse on a grand piano (more than anything, this scene made the kids shriek with laughter). Masterful silent comedy. There's no other way to describe it.

Sure-Mike!: Fred Guiol

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/an-afternoon-at-the-silent-clowns-film-series/.

La Maison en Petits Cubes: Kunio Katō

Well, I've been emotionally compromised. Movies like Kunio Katō's La Maison en Petits Cubes remind us that you don't need much time to leave an emotional impact that'll last a lifetime. With just twelve minutes, this simple little heartfelt film has rocked me to the core. It's a story so simple it makes me mad that I hadn't thought of it: a man living in a house he has to build higher and higher to escape rising sea levels relives memories of his past when he scuba dives to the submerged floors. Genius. I was worried that the film wouldn't have a decent way to end itself, and I was right...to an extent. The ending is fine, but it highlights how this is a strange kind of story where an ending is perfunctory; there's only an ending because every story has to end at some point. I'm not sure how else this film could have ended without betraying its own tone and wistfulness. It's all the stuff before the ending that makes this a quiet, miniaturized masterpiece.

Women at War: Jean Negulesco

To read some VERY brief thoughts on this well-meaning but condescending film, go here: http://theretroset.com/jingo-unchained-howard-hawks-air-force/?utm_content=buffer3ceb1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

Jammin' the Blues: Gjon Mili

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/jammin-the-blues-and-some-other-stuff/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Jammin%27%20the%20Blues%20(and%20some%20other%20stuff).

10/10

I Won't Play: Crane Wilbur

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/jammin-the-blues-and-some-other-stuff/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Jammin%27%20the%20Blues%20(and%20some%20other%20stuff).

Une femme coquette: Jean-Luc Godard

It's always fun to see the earliest works of great directors, even if they're barely above the levels of amateur home movies. Based on Guy de Maupassant's short story Le Signe, Jean-Luc Godard's Une femme coquette sees a young woman cheat on her boyfriend because...she wanted to see if she could cheat on her boyfriend. This story is both deliciously French and deliciously existentialist, so it makes a good match for the future Swedish auteur. There truly isn't that much to say about the film other than it exists. There isn't anything really interesting about it formally or artistically. It's just the first attempt of a great filmmaker to make a film. I will give it this, though: it's more coherent than 90% of everything he's made since Weekend (1967).

F****** Bunnies: Teemu Niukkanen

For a film with exactly two jokes, Teemu Niukkanen's new short F****** Bunnies isn't half bad. The first joke makes up the entire film: a group of polygamous, Satan-worshipping sex maniacs move next door to a respectable Finnish couple. The Satan worshipers are led by Maki, an invariably polite patriarch who could be mistaken for Ned Flanders if not for the face paint. Of course, they end up teaching the straight-laced Finnish couple how to be kind and accepting. We've all seen variations of this joke before. But it's still done well enough to make us not care. The second joke is a punchline regarding Maki's insatiable appetite for carrots. It's admittedly a bit of a dud.

Neck and Neck: Shaun Clark

I can say with complete, unhesitating certainty that I have never in my life seen a Shakespearean adaptation quite like Shaun Clark's Neck and Neck. Boiling down the Bard's classic tragedy Othello to its barest components, the film tells the central story in about 5 minutes. Using expressive animation, title cards, and brief real-life footage of a human mouth, the film makes the Moor's internal anxieties external in a colorful, shocking phantasm. It sounds simple. But its effect is anything but.

Wasp: Andrea Arnold

Suddenly American Honey (2016) makes a lot more sense. At times it seems like Andrea Arnold's debut short film Wasp is a pre-make of her later, nearly 3-hour road epic: it starts with a mother figure struggling to feed and take care of children; eventually the mother figure abandons the children in order to find fulfillment or personal happiness; everything ends with a sing-along. Even the cinematography seems the same, utilizing close-ups to chop-up scenes into individual parts like a Cubist montage. Wasp is a great film, devastating in its depiction of poverty and strained motherhood while ultimately happy and hopeful.

Ménilmontant: Dimitri Kirsanoff

The first time I watched Dimitri Kirsanoff's Ménilmontant, I had no idea what was going on. I was so confused that immediately afterwards I literally re-watched the film just so I could try and understand what had happened. After two viewings I can say that, while I can follow the first half relatively well--two sisters lose their parents to a double homicide, move to the city, and become engaged in a love triangle--the second half absolutely loses me. I don't know if a third or fourth viewing will help, either. Ménilmontant is an odd duck from a technical standpoint: it combines montage with visual impressionism, high melodrama with expressionist editing that frequently seems more concerned with disorientation than suturing a scene together.

The Man Who Killed God: Noe

It's funny...but I feel like I learned more about Brazil, its culture, and its racial politics watching Noe's The Man Who Killed God than I did during an entire college course on Brazilian cinema. Though only about 15 minutes, the film is incredibly dense with creativity and anger. My one complaint is that during scenes where white people are killed en masse by Native Brazilians, the hand-held camera moved too fast to see what was going on. I think that might have been at least in part a tactic to cover up the fact that they weren't shooting real guns. Regardless, The Man Who Killed God is one of the best short films I've seen in ages.

A Burlesque on Carmen: Charlie Chaplin

So, there are apparently two versions of Charlie Chaplin's A Burlesque on Carmen: his original 20 minute-ish cut and the 40 minute-ish cut by the studio which forced in extra, superfluous footage to make it longer. Mercifully I managed to find a reconstructed copy of the original 20-minute-ish cut. And yet...I still didn't particularly like it. The film lampoons Cecil B. DeMille's Carmen (1915), his adaptation of the Bizet opera. Chaplin reconstructs many of DeMille's scenes and compositions with admirable accuracy, particularly the opening beach shots and the scenes where the Romani smugglers hold a door closed against enemy soldiers. But the first half of the film feels contrived and bloated. It's only in the last third or so where the film comes to life with on-point fight choreography and gags. The scene where he battles against one of his old soldier compatriots after defecting to the Romani marks the high point of the film. But it comes too late.

The Musketeers of Pig Alley: D. W. Griffith

Many of the elements that would come to define the gangster movie can be found here in D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley, the film widely considered to be the first of its genre: the shocking, sudden violence; men driven by machismo motives concerning power and respect (notice the one scene where a man gets shooed away from the chair of one of the more powerful hoods); a nearly Shakespearean plot of chance, fate, and redemption. The middle part drags a bit, though--it's comprised mostly of large people walking menacingly in back alleys.

The Adventures of Dollie: D. W. Griffith, G. W. Bitzer

It's largely all here: many of the thematic elements that would come to dominate director D.W. Griffith's career can be found in this, his first film The Adventures of Dollie. His woeful presentation of race (evil Romani kidnap a white child) is matched only by his preoccupation with women in danger from beastly/sub-human men (the woman in this case is a baby girl, but still...). His framing and pictorial compositions are about as rudimentary as they can get, but I have to admire his ability to cram so much story into so little time.

His Trust: D. W. Griffith

I have a hard time believing that so much happened in the 14-minute run-time of D.W. Griffith's His Trust. More happened in this one-reel film than I've seen in many blockbusters. It's basically an entire Civil War drama: a Confederate man goes off to war, trusts his home and family to an elderly slave, dies, has his mansion and property raided and destroyed by Yankees, and has his trust vindicated by the elderly slave who rescues his wife and daughter, saves his prized saber from the conflagration, and even dutifully sleeps outside while the wife and daughter sleep in a paltry shelter. And yes, the film is horribly racist: the elderly slave is in blackface (as are all of the black characters), he is unquestionably subservient (one uncomfortable scene involves the daughter riding him on his back like a mule), and all of the "black" extras act like performers in a minstrel show. But Griffith's ambition is stunning. He juggles full battle scenes, hordes of extras, and decent sized sets. It's a marvel to behold, if also an uncomfortable one.

Those Awful Hats: D. W. Griffith

Well here's a delightful and unexpected surprise: a short comedy film by D.W. Griffith that is actually funny! Those Awful Hats is a roughly two minute short that deals with a common problem experienced by early movie-goers: women with absurdly large hats. In the film a group of people are at a cinema watching a movie (and I'll be damned if I can figure out how Griffith managed to depict the film screen that dominates the upper left-hand corner of the frame which was obviously added in post). When a group of ladies with gigantic hats enter, a massive crane lowers from the ceiling and plucks one woman's hat off before returning to snatch a second be-hatted woman whole. It's an impressive effect and I'm curious to see how Griffith pulled it off.