The River Fuefuki: Keisuke Kinoshita

Keisuke Kinoshita's The River Fuefuki is a worm's-eye view of the turbulent Sengoku Era of Japanese history, a period of almost constant warfare that lasted over a hundred years. It follows one family of farmers as generation after generation of their young men and women are chewed up and spat back out by the military machinations of savage warlords. Perhaps the most memorable element of The River Fuefuki is its bizarre cinematography: largely shot in black and white, it features bold swaths of vibrant color literally painted onto the frames. Sometimes entire scenes are shot through bold color filters, turning the whole screen green, blue, etc, etc. The hyper-artificiality of the cinematography makes the film seem like a fable. The film's commentaries on human nature are ruthless. Perhaps the most memorable character is Sozo (played with astonishing charisma by Kôshirô Matsumoto), a young man who despises his life as a farmer and, ignoring the pleas of his family, becomes a samurai. Sozo's transformation from a bitter young man to a raving monster who callously forces his siblings into the war effort (and their eventual deaths) is remarkable. I also love how the young men are basically brainwashed into thinking that the local warlord family, the Takedas, actually have their best interests at heart. "The Takedas are our benefactors" is a statement at once outrageous, horrific, and sobering. How appropriate for such an outrageous, horrific, and sobering film.

[Side note: the ending where the old woman tries to get her children to return home from their military unit during their death march to the temple hit me with an unexpected amount of emotion.]

8/10

Night of the Living Dead: George A. Romero

[Revisit Review]

It was fascinating the revisit the nascence of the modern zombie genre once again. Here are some of my collected thoughts:

-Before Barbra gets to the farmhouse, Night of the Living Dead looks and feels like a AIP-schlockfest. But the cinematography gets noticeably more competent, moody, and claustrophobic once the survivors get trapped in the house.
-One of the film's faults is that Romero doesn't exactly seem to know what his zombies are capable of. In the beginning they demonstrate rudimentary problem-solving skills (the first zombie smashing in the window to Barbra's car). Later they are mindless automatons.
-The government conscripting rednecks to fight the zombie horde is simultaneously the film's most insane and believable plot twist.
-Important plot details such as Johnny smashing his head on a tombstone and Ben getting trapped outside the farmhouse by Harry after the failed attempt to get the truck going happen so fast that they are easily missed if you don't pay attention.

9/10

Cat People: Jacques Tourneur

[Revisit Review]

There was always a scene of dialogue in Jacques Tourneur's Cat People that struck me as unnecessary and superfluous. It was the scene where Oliver Reed confesses to Alice Moore that he was flummoxed by his marital difficulties with Irena Dubrovna. He explains that he didn't know how to react because he "had never been unhappy before." But this time around, that conversation hit me a different way. See, this is a few scenes before Oliver and Alice confess their love for each other and Oliver confronts Irena with desires for a divorce. Then it hit me: Irena was always a means to an end for Oliver. She made him happy. But as soon as she became a liability, he wanted to get rid of her. I began to think of Irena not as a hapless victim, but as a tragic hero. Her magical powers were her ethnic identity which she surrendered to live in the West, much like her ancestors when confronted with the "civilizing" sword of King John of Serbia and Christendom (note the scene near the end where Oliver and Alice use an impromptu cross to keep Irene from attacking them). And then I realized the kicker: Irene was totally within her right to be suspicious and jealous of Alice. Stalking her before she officially hooked up with Oliver was perhaps a bit too much, but after her break-up I sympathized with her anger and fury towards the people who used her up and threw her away like a ball of trash. In addition to being a psychological fable of repressed female sexuality, Cat People can be viewed as a metaphor for how the West exploits and abandons ethnic "others."

10/10

The Seventh Seal: Ingmar Bergman

[Revisit Review]

If the cinema is a language of images, then The Seventh Seal is one of Ingmar Bergman's most distinguished and valuable films. Very few of his other works would be so visually captivating. His conjuring of a chess game between a knight and the embodiment of Death and the danse macabre that concludes the film catapulted him, and art cinema in general, into immortality. And yet the film is very uneven. The general gloom, doom, and apocalyptic atmosphere are broken up one too many times by sunny scenes involving the family of actors. I can understand their value to the narrative. But Bergman failed to seamlessly transition them into the overall story without spoiling the film's tone.

8/10

I Walked with a Zombie: Jacques Tourneur

[Revisit Review]
[Spoilers Ahead]

I Walked with a Zombie is a film that I didn't fully appreciate the first time that I saw it. If I remembered correctly, I dismissed it as rather dour and lifeless. Oh, how foolish I was...Today the film strikes me as a near-masterpiece of atmospheric horror. There aren't any jump scares (that I can think of). Instead, the entire film works to create a universe of dread, mystery, and suspicion. My favorite image in the film is of the Carre-Four standing watch at the crossroads leading to the houmfort. It's a perfectly conjured image of terror. But my favorite moment is when Mrs. Rand reveals herself to be the voice inside the shack at the houmfort. It isn't a scary moment, but it's a perfectly calculated one that pulls the rug out from under you and makes you truly wonder if anybody in the film is who they say are.

8/10

A Town of Love and Hope: Nagisa Ôshima

A Town of Love and Hope was the debut feature-length film of director Nagisa Ôshima, a man who would establish himself as one of the greatest iconoclasts and political subversives in all of world cinema. The film is a parable on class differences in Japanese society, a theme that would reoccur with frequency throughout his career. It focuses on two romantic relationships. The first is between an impoverished junior high student named Masao who sells his handicapped sister's pigeons for money (they always escape and return home, providing him with a slow yet inexhaustible source of income) and Kyoko, the rich daughter of an electronics manufacturer. The second is between Masao's teacher Akiyama and Kyoko's older brother Yuji. Akiyama-sensei and Kyoko try to convince Yuji and their father to give Masao a desperately needed job, but they refuse when they discover Masao's pigeon-selling scheme. Ôshima's thesis in this film seems to be that the wealthy are incapable of understanding what the poor have to do to survive. And if they are capable, they are simply unwilling. Watch how Yuji callously dismisses Kyoko and seems genuinely shocked when Akiyama-sensei tries to leave him after betraying her trust and, more crucially, her student. The film's ending is one that stayed with me for days afterwards. Another one of Yuji's sisters confronts him on the roof of their house with a rifle and one of Masao's pigeons. She asks if he has the guts to kill Masao's pigeon, a creature that will help fund his poor family. Remember, Yuji will never see Masao or his family again. It will cost him literally nothing to let it go. So, of course, he shoots it.

7/10

Hatari!: Howard Hawks

In the auteur circles of film criticism, Howard Hawks' Hatari! is one of the most frequently referenced films of that great Hollywood master whenever his career is discussed. In the tradition of Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Red River (1948), and Rio Bravo (1959), Hatari! is a textbook example of Hawks' macho pictures that focus on groups of professional men working in dangerous professions. This time around the profession is catching wild animals in Africa to sell to zoos. John Wayne heads up a group of expatriates from all over the world who literally risk life and limb daily to capture these magnificent beasts. Incredibly, the scenes where Wayne and his men capture wild animals were real. These were shot first on location in Africa. It was only after all of this footage was captured that Hawks had frequent collaborator Leigh Brackett write up a script which connected these scenes together. Perhaps more than any of Hawks' other macho pictures, Hatari! concerns itself with its characters' lifestyles and the daily minutiae of their lives. This is both the film's biggest weakness and greatest strength. The decentralized plot leads to a punishing run time that clocks in at over 2 1/2 hours. But whereas a normal film would have been crippled by such length, Hatari! manages to sustain it. This is a film about Life on the Hunt; the empty moments in-between captures where the hunters wait for their next assignment and bide their time the best they can. The film also features Wayne at his most charismatic. Watch the scene where he kisses Elsa Martinelli's character despite her face being covered in cream. As he wipes the cream off his nose and smiles, it becomes immediately apparent why Wayne is one of the true immortals of the cinema.

7/10

Noah: Darren Aronofsky

I never would have pegged Noah as an action hero. But Darren Aronofsky makes several other intriguing changes to the biblical account of Noah and the Great Flood in his film Noah. The film represents this odd combination of high fantasy and post-apocalyptic thrillers. Indeed, the humans and their towns of skeletal ironworks look like a society rebuilt after the bombs have dropped. But I digress. The film had some striking imagery and some inspired sequences, particularly a two-minute Creation montage told from the perspective of evolutionary creationism. The rapid editing in these sequences remind us that, yes, Aronofsky was the same man who directed REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000). I also like Aronofsky's technique of framing characters in the middle of the frame as black silhouettes. Most of the computer generated effects (i.e. the animals) are sub-par. The birds were the only animals that I felt looked real. And even then the computer trickery became painfully apparent during shots where there were hundreds of birds onscreen at once. Curiously, the last third of the film takes place on the ark after the Flood has swallowed the earth. During this section, Noah becomes an outright tyrant at odds with his family. He even tries to kill his new-born granddaughters because he honestly believes that God only meant for him and his family to survive long enough so that they could guarantee the survival of the rest of His creatures. Noah is a different kind of bible film. I can't say that I've ever seen anything like it stylistically or psychologically.

7/10

Murder by Contract: Irving Lerner

I agree with both Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Rosenbaum in their celebration of Irving Lerner's Murder by Contract as a triumph. The film is an existentialist masterpiece that I earnestly believe fits right alongside of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment as a penetrating glimpse into the mind of a murderer who believes themselves to be either above or outside of the law. The film's protagonist is Claude, a disaffected man who one day decides to become a contract killer. After rising through the ranks of the underworld, he is assigned to kill a woman in Los Angeles. And for the first time Claude is uneasy with his orders: he hesitates killing women because he views them as less "predictable" as men. This late era film noir is dripping with effortless style and magnificently embodies the aesthetic of the "cool." The restrained camerawork, the isolated electric guitar soundtrack, Vince Edwards' insouciant performance as Claude, and the film's frequent passive passages that focus on Claude biding his time, exercising, and waiting either for his next assignment or for the right moment to strike, make Murder by Contract unlike any other American film of its era. One last thought: when Claude's mob handlers in Los Angeles mock him by calling him "Superman," are they referring to the superhero or to the Nietzschean ideal? Or maybe, just maybe, are they calling him both?

9/10

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Marc Webb

[Spoilers Ahead]

There was no reason for Harry Osborn or the Green Goblin to be in Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He was included for one reason: to kill Gwen Stacy. At some point the filmmakers looked to each other and said, “Gwen needs to die.” So in comes Harry. It was unnecessary. The film would have worked perfectly if it had just focused on the relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy and their fight against Electro. I am bamboozled by the negative outcry against Jamie Foxx's Electro because I honestly think that he is the most compelling and frightening Marvel villain since Dr. Octopus. He felt like an actual THREAT and not just an over-hyped Monster of the Week. His character arc was brilliant, he was sympathetic, and his Times Square debut was easily the best part of the film. I loved how Peter and Gwen worked together to defeat him near the end of the film. If Peter’s whole arc was centered on him coming to terms with risking the people he cares for by being Spider-Man, then ending with Gwen's acceptance of the risks and, most crucially, Spider-Man accepting Gwen’s acceptance of the risks, would have been poignant and meaningful. The first Spider-Man film was about how a hero copes with death. This film SHOULD have been about how a hero copes with LIFE. Gwen's fridging and Osborn's inclusion in this film annoyed me greatly. First, it added to an already dreadfully over-long running time. Second, it was an addition of pointless cruelty to a film that had already been intense and emotional. Many of the film's best moments are the quiet ones where Peter and Gwen talk about their relationship. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are incredibly charismatic and their romantic scenes are charming and effective. But I would expect nothing less from the director of 500 Days of Summer (2009). I've also heard people complain that this was more of a romantic soap opera than a straight-up superhero film. To which I respond, "Uh...that's kind of the point with Spider-Man." There are great parts of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. But overall the film is too cluttered, too long, and too cruel. I know that Gwen Stacy dying is almost as important to Spider-Man canon as Uncle Ben dying. But a fridging is a fridging.

6/10

Moonrise: Frank Borzage

By 1948, Frank Borzage, that old master of Hollywood, that unapologetic romanticist whose work triumphed during the Twenties and Thirties, had fallen by the wayside. The man who had won the very first Academy Award for Directing in 1927 was now struggling to secure projects. Perhaps Borzage’s brand of earnest melodrama turned sour in the mouths of a generation who had struggled through the hell of World War Two. As the years marched on, war-time idealism melted into nihilistic cynicism. This was no longer a time when a director who concluded an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms with doves and church bells could flourish. And yet, as his career began to crumble, Borzage managed to release one more true masterpiece; a film that reconciled his passion for lovers facing adversity with the nightmare psychoses consuming America ego. That film was Moonrise.

The opening few minutes of Moonrise set the tone for the rest of the film. It begins with the execution by hanging of a man accused of murder. The proceedings are shown via shadows that seem chiseled onto the wall behind the gallows. As the hangmen pulls the lever, smash cut to the crib of a newborn. A grim outline of a toy doll literally hangs over the bedsheets as the criminal’s infant son, Danny Hawkins, wails and wails. Jump cut to Danny as a schoolboy forced to endure the taunts of his classmates. “Danny Hawkins dad was hanged! Danny Hawkins dad was hanged,” they chant as their ringleader Jerry Sykes wraps his hands about his throat and pretends to choke himself to death. Another cut, another few years pass. Danny’s torment continues. And finally, one night as Jerry beats him senseless, two things break: Danny’s mind and Jerry’s skull.

Those who know Borzage purely by reputation as a romanticist may be shocked by the jagged, neo-expressionist visual grammar used in these scenes: extreme shadowplay, stilted frame compositions, and high-contrast chiaroscuro lighting. But Borzage had been using such techniques for decades, having first picked them up from his contemporary F.W. Murnau while they were both working at Fox in the 1920s. Though Borzage’s films were rich in sentimentality, they demonstrated acute stylistic acumen. As the film continues, Borzage continues to reveal bold stylistic techniques. One of the most apparent is his consistent use of crossfades between charged images: a young woman wringing her hands in church into an old woman’s hands knitting; a paranoid man’s face into a raccoon. Indeed, Moonrise is not a film that can simply be watched passively. It demands to be watched, not merely observed.

From Danny’s desperate act of murder, the film charts his mental decimation, emotional reconstruction, and psychological reconciliation with his actions. A few kind souls help in his rehabilitation. The first is Mose, a retired brakeman who lives in self-imposed isolation in the woods with his hounds and guitar. Played with great dignity by Rex Ingram, Mose may be a kindly old Black Man who helps the White Protagonist, but instead of solving Danny’s problems, he helps force him to confront them.

But the other is sweet Gilly Johnson, a schoolteacher who quickly forms the other half of Borzage’s romantic universe. It is here that we find the major difference between Moonrise and many of Borzage’s other films: the forces that seek to tear the lovers apart. Often these forces are external ones such as World War One in A Farewell to Arms (1932), the sinking of a lavish ocean liner in History Is Made at Night (1937), or the rise of Nazism in The Mortal Storm (1940). But in Moonrise the adversity springs from Danny’s tortured mind. It manifests itself physically, such as an early scene where traumatic flashbacks cause him to crash a car while she was in the passenger seat, and  mentally. During a coon-hunt with Mose he has a minor breakdown while shaking a raccoon out of a tree. Borzage cuts to a pile of logs next to a cabin...a pile suspiciously similar to the one where Danny murdered his tormentor. Does Danny project himself on the raccoon? If so, then what does it say about his desperate attempts to capture it?

Danny’s internal dilemma of coming to terms with a forced act of violence takes on new meaning when evaluated in the context of post-World War Two American society. One of the cornerstones of film noir were protagonists who were damaged, either physically or mentally, by their time in the armed forces. If we consider Danny’s psychoses as allegorical, then Moonrise becomes more than just a dark melodrama; it enters the realm of bona-fide film noir. Consider Danny as America: haunted by the specter of a violent tragedy (Danny’s father’s hanging/World War Two), the protagonist is goaded into violence (murder/World War Two) by an incessant attacker (Jerry Sykes/the Axis) that leaves him broken, beaten, and bruised.

Of course, this is merely one possible reading. While it isn’t absurd to believe that Borzage may have deliberately made such comparisons, there is no doubt that at the end of the day his primary concern in Moonrise was Danny Hawkins and Gilly Johnson. Their love is no panacea, but it offers hope that Danny can rebuild his life. And therein is Borzage’s secret: the belief that despite everything the world may throw at you, love can be a force for salvation and goodness. His romanticism does not deny the world, it burns in spite of it.

9/10

An American in Paris: Vincente Minnelli

[Revisit Review]

Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris is one of my favorite feel-good movies. Just watching it is enough to put me in a rapturous mood. The sets, the costumes, the songs, the dancing! Half the fun of watching the film is simply marveling at how easy Gene Kelly et al. makes it seem. Even watching him wake up and get his apartment in order at the beginning of the film (in reality, the film's first dance number) is stunning in its casual fluency. I was surprised to find how much the film's central love-rectangle plot annoyed me this time around. It strains the pace of the film a bit. But it hardly seems to matter. 'S wonderful!

9/10

Three Stars: Lutz Hachmeister

Lutz Hachmeister's Three Stars isn't so much a documentary as it is a 90-minute advertisement for the Michelin Guide. They try to hide this by focusing on nine world-class chefs with varying Michelin star ratings, but instead of probing, they promote. They mention briefly two major flaws with the Michelin Guide: that it has been accused of Classism for only promoting restaurants out of the price range for the vast majority of consumers and that it has led to the nervous breakdowns and suicides of chefs fearful of losing their ratings. This first problem is hand-waved away by the smiling head of the Michelin organization with claims that they are making a concerted effort to promote more economically "friendly" restaurants. If this documentary had focused even briefly on some of these "affirmative action" eateries, it might have saved the film. But they don't. And they treat the fact that a European chef literally killed himself because of the ratings with a few clips of newsreel. There’s a line in Three Stars where an interviewee admits that people whose careers have been made by the Michelin guide will never bad mouth it. Is a similar thing going on with the makers of this film? Although I have to give the film kudos for including multiple interviews with Japanese chefs who outright condemn the guide as pointless.

5/10

Harold and Maude: Hal Ashby

[Revisit Review]
[Spoilers Ahead]

Yes, yes, the suicide scenes in Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude are the film's most memorable moments. But as I re-watched the film, I found myself more captivated this time around by the softer, quieter moments: Harold and Maude watching a flock of seagulls on a beach, Maude reciting poetry of her own invention but forgetting that she had written it, and Harold walking away from a cliff-side while playing the banjo. Harold and Maude could have been a mindless exercise in gallows humor, but there is an earnest humanism coursing beneath its surface. Re-watching the film also left me with a lingering question that eluded me during my first viewing: did Maude kill herself in spite of Harold or because of Harold?

9/10

Happy Feet: George Miller

[Revisit Review]

Yes folks, George Miller's Happy Feet is still as silly and ridiculous as I remembered it to be. The female penguins have cleavage and hourglass feather patterns, racial stereotypes abound, and the film climaxes with a line so absurd that it made me laugh for the first (and only) time while watching it: "I don't want to live in a world without penguins!!" The environmental message was cliched, the characters were uninspired, and the music was sapped of its creativity and emotion. The only brilliant moment in the film was its depiction of zoos as numbed purgatories wherein the occupants become docile zombies.

5/10

Blood for Dracula: Paul Morrissey

[Revisit Review]

I think Paul Morrissey's Blood for Dracula is a superior film to his other erotic European horror film Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), mainly because it doesn't try as hard to be a horror film. Blood for Dracula is essentially a very graphic, very macabre drawing-room melodrama. Whereas Flesh for Frankenstein had shocking, gore-fueled jump scares scattered throughout, the moments of carnage in Blood for Dracula (with the exception of the last few minutes) are focused around the pathetic convulsions of Count Dracula's body after drinking non-virgin blood. Indeed, these are the best moments of the film. Aided in no small part by Claudio Gizzi's score and Luigi Kuveiller's cinematography, Udo Kier somehow manages to make Count Dracula both a pathetic and sympathetic character. It's also interesting how the film positions the film's "hero" who kills Count Dracula as a misogynistic rapist. His Marxist sympathies also add a symbolic undertone of Old World aristocracy versus New World politics to the proceedings; the secular versus the perversely mystical. Some of the acting is stilted and occasionally the European accents are too thick to understand (particularly from poor old Vittorio De Sica). It may not be a good "film," but it's a thoroughly worthwhile experience.

7/10

Flesh for Frankenstein: Paul Morrissey

[Revisit Review]

Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein could very well have been a masterpiece of 70's horror if it had featured more than two actors who could actually act. The film features a ingenious twist on the Frankenstein mythos courtesy of screenwriter Tonino Guerra of Blowup (1966) and Amarcord (1973) fame. The film's visual beauty is mesmerizing. Luigi Kuveiller's cinematography is agonizingly beautiful and stands triumphantly beside his work in such films as Avanti! (1972) and Deep Red (1975). Indeed, the image from this film that lingers the most in my mind isn't one of the graphic gore effects or sex scenes. Instead, it's of the camera tracking along an impossibly lengthy dinner table to reveal a deranged family sitting apart from each other at opposite ends. But alas, most of the acting is flat and monotone. Udo Kier and Monique van Vooren are fine as the incestuous Baron and Baroness von Frankenstein. But almost everyone else is laughably incompetent. The worst is the actor who plays the aspiring monk who unwillingly becomes part of the Frankensteins' scientific blasphemies. Honestly, he seems to channel Tommy Wiseau (or is it the other way around?). I've heard that the film is supposed to be a dark parody of the Frankenstein sub-genre. If that's the case, then it could be argued that the wooden acting is supposed to be some kind of metaphor for the revived corpses that are so essential to the story. But I don't think so. If anything, the bad acting isn't indicative of an artistic decision, but of European actors unable to communicate with their American director.

6/10

The Bank Dick: Edward F. Cline

[Revisit Review]

One of the single most insightful observations ever made about W. C. Fields came courtesy of Roger Ebert: "[He] is the most improbable star in the first century of the movies." His individual works are wildly disparate in terms of quality. But when viewed as part of a whole, that being the totality of Fields' career and cinematic persona, they are fascinating. The Bank Dick, arguably his best work, is a solid film despite the fact that it is easily outclassed by many other comedies of its day. There are a number of ingenious moments: Fields being carried around like a stereotypical Oriental king on the shoulders of four underlings while posing as a film director, Fields running into a room and punching a con artist through a bank window in one swift movement, and an extended chase sequence near the end wherein Fields remains the utmost (albeit beleaguered) embodiment of polite courtesy despite a) the fact that he is being held at gunpoint by a bank robber, and b) the fact that the car he is driving is literally falling apart in his hands. The Bank Dick is a good comedy, but not necessarily a great one. But this brings me to perhaps the second most insightful observation ever made about W. C. Fields, also courtesy of Roger Ebert: "There is not a single Fields film that "must" be seen in order to qualify as a literate movie lover, and yet if you are not eventually familiar with Fields you are not a movie lover at all." With that in mind, The Bank Dick is indispensable.

7/10

Spellbound: Alfred Hitchcock

[Revisit Review]

While re-watching Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, my sister (who had never seen the film before) mentioned how much Dr. Constance Petersen reminded her of Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Both were young female professionals in male-dominated fields who become intimately involved with a mentally disturbed man. The romantic angle in The Silence of the Lambs was of course merely suggested, but in Spellbound it was very blatant. After all, this is a Hitchcock film where people fall in love when the music tells them to. But I immensely enjoyed Spellbound. George Barnes' rich cinematography adds sinister textures to a film diving into fractured minds and psyches. I would love to read a feminist evaluation of the film, particularly concerning how all of the male medical professionals claim to know more about Dr. Petersen than she knows about herself. I was disappointed with how the film handled the infamous dream sequences designed by Dalí. I hate how they were broken up with cuts back to reality and drowned out with dull narration courtesy of Gregory Peck. But, of course, this was Selznick's fault, not Hitchcock's.

8/10

Ministry of Fear: Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear is a competent war-time noir rich with the paranoia and intrigue that so characterized Lang's early work in America. Based on a novel by Graham Greene, the film follows a man released from a mental institution who accidentally walks into the middle of a Nazi spy ring. Whereas Hitchcock would have taken this premise of a wrongly accused man (one of his favorites, coincidentally) and made the film into an audience-pleasing thriller, Lang opted for a more moody examination of fate and duplicity. It's no accident that doors are such a common symbol throughout the film: Lang creates a universe full of little secluded pocket worlds that shield men and women who aren't who they say they are. I have to admit that it was a little strange to see the protagonist actually end up with the romantic lead. In a Hitchcock film we know from the very beginning that they will end up together. But Ministry of Fear goes to such pains to emphasize how nobody is who they appear to be (the stalker who turns out to be from Scotland Yard, the blind man who definitely ISN'T blind, and even the protagonist who we fear might have an unreliable point-of-view because of his incarceration, etc, etc). I understand that this storybook romance (complete with a perfunctory epilogue of them discussing marriage plans) was probably a concession to Hollywood from Lang. But it still doesn't mesh with the rest of the film.

7/10

Castle of Owls: Eiichi Kudō

If I remember one thing about Eiichi Kudō's Castle of Owls (itself an unlikely event because I fully expect to forget about this film in a couple of days), it will be that I didn't realize that there were two different protagonists until an hour into the film. And even then, I only came to that realization after stopping the film and seeking out a plot summary online because I was so lost as to what was going on. From what I can gather, the film is about two rival ninja. One swears vengeance on Toyotomi Hideyoshi for the murder of his family and the destruction of his clan. The other enters the employ of Hideyoshi, abandoning his clan for self-advancement. And along the way the revenge-bound ninja falls in love with a kunoichi. I will say that I enjoyed the plot twist wherein the first ninja finally confronts Hideyoshi only to find that he is a senile, bed-ridden old man. Disgusted, the ninja cannot bring himself to kill such a pathetic creature. When Castle of Owls ended, I couldn't help but feel cheated. I tried so hard to follow what was going on. I enjoyed much of the cinematography, particularly scenes where characters are swallowed up in torrents of rain. But to what avail? Castle of Owls may have been pretty to look at, but it left me scratching my head and wondering what in the world I had just finished watching.

6/10

Draft Day: Ivan Reitman

Here are the most important criteria for a sports film: people who have never heard of the sport before in their lives can a) understand, b) follow, and c) enjoy it. Before watching Ivan Reitman's Draft Day, I knew practically nothing about that yearly event wherein professional football teams compete to hire rookie players. But that didn't hamper my ability to enjoy the film at all. Indeed, Draft Day contains such a tightly constructed script that even people who have never seen a game of American football can appreciate what is going on. One of the major criticisms I've heard about the film is that it mythologizes professional football. To which I say: and didn't Rocky (1976) mythologize boxing? Now, I'm not saying that Draft Day is a film on par with Rocky. But my point remains. Kevin Costner is excellent as Sonny Weaver, Jr., the beleaguered General Manager of the Cleveland Browns. Costner has aged brilliantly into this role wherein his acting abilities are stretched further than they have been in years (to magnificent effect). Jennifer Garner is equally brilliant as Ali Parker, his girlfriend and salary cap manager for the Browns. Parker is the kind of boss that we all wish we could have had during terrible jobs. I particularly love the scene where she chews out a high-ranking employee for verbally assaulting an intern ("Don't you dare ever talk to an intern that way again"). In fact, the whole film could be used as a blueprint for how to be an effective leader. Watch the scene where Sonny confronts the aforementioned intern after unknowingly destroying his laptop in a fit of rage. The film's editing may seem distracting to some, what with it mimicking of the razzle-dazzle techniques used by major television networks during game broadcasts. But I found these techniques (split-screen conversations, screen wipes, and characters walking into and through adjacent parts of the split-screen) to be a charming method of keeping the film's energy level up. After all, this film is mostly comprised of people talking about sports statistics.

8/10

Hangmen Also Die!: Fritz Lang

[Revisit Review]

Funny story...Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! was the eleventh film that I ever reviewed for my first film blog Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear. I decided to re-watch it so I could have some context for my upcoming review of Lang's Ministry of Fear (1944), another one of his war-time American pictures about Nazism. And I was shocked to discover that Hangmen Also Die! didn't hold up at all. Now I find the film painfully bloated and overlong. Many scenes contain great immediacy and power, particularly those involving the Gestapo interrogating Czechoslovakian citizens and members of the Underground Resistance. If the film had focused solely on these (and been only around 90 minutes) then this film would have been sensational. But too much time is given over to Reinhard Heydrich's assassin, the family that hides him, and the 400 civilians arrested and sentenced to death during the ensuing investigation. As such, the film fails to cohere into a concrete whole.

6/10

Ten Wanted Men: H. Bruce Humberstone

Howard Hawks once said that a good movie has "three good scenes and no bad scenes." H. Bruce Humberstone's Ten Wanted Men, a Western about a corrupt rancher who hires a group of villainous gunfighters to harass and exterminate the rival Stewart family, may be a minor film, but it fits Mr. Hawks' criteria. In this case, there is one good sequence, one good idea, and one good scene that makes Ten Wanted Men pass the bar. The sequence is a fantastic gun battle where the remnants of the Stewart family hole up in a house and the gunfighters lay siege upon them. The idea is that after killing the corrupt rancher the heroes have to mop up the rest of the gunfighters who are laying waste to a nearby town. After all, the gunfighters have no loyalty to the dead rancher. Why would they suddenly leave when he dies once they have been paid? Wouldn't they stay in town where they could spend their ill-gotten gains? Who's going to stop them? After all, they're still armed and dangerous. The good scene takes place during the aforementioned siege. The evil rancher reveals that he has the sheriff's wife hostage and makes her beg them to surrender. The men almost do...right until one of the women they're fighting with marches out into the No Man's Land, confronts the wife, and knocks some sense into her. She doesn't even care that she will be taken prisoner as a result. She just does it. Bad. Ass.

7/10

The Grand Budapest Hotel: Wes Anderson

For a time, Wes Anderson has been a director at odds with himself. After such early successes as Rushmore (1998) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), he has spent almost a decade trying to catch the same kind of lightning in a bottle. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) was the obvious exception, but that was a marriage of Anderson and Roald Dahl. The Grand Budapest Hotel, on the other hand, is a triumphant return to form for one of America's most idiosyncratic filmmakers. And, yes, the film is heavily influenced by the writings of Stefan Zweig. But whereas Fantastic Mr. Fox could not have existed without Dahl, I could totally believe that The Grand Budapest Hotel sprang fully-formed from Anderson's forehead. As a film critic, I am constantly searching for films that tell stories that I have never experienced before. Not only does The Grand Budapest Hotel contain such a story, it presents it in a manner that is downright unprecedented. The film contains a plot so complex that I dare not try and summarize it here in any great detail. But here is the big picture: it follows a refuge named Zero Moustafa who gets employment in the film's eponymous hotel situated in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka located in the Alps. He develops a deep friendship with the hotel's concierge Gustave. Their relationship is tested when Zero breaks him out of jail after he was framed for killing a wealthy old woman. The film glides from genre to genre without hitting any turbulence. Indeed, if you were to ask me when the film transitioned from a comedy-of-manners to a murder mystery to a faux-espionage thriller, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I have heard Anderson's films described as living dollhouses, and I am unsure if that description has ever been more apropos. In this film, every character, every prop, and every background is meticulously framed like an animated daguerreotype. Whenever I watch an Anderson film, my eyeballs are kept occupied; they flit all over the full length and breadth of the screen soaking in every detail. And while in some of his later films this style has merely been distracting, in The Grand Budapest Hotel it is perfectly matched with the story. If I say one thing about the film, let it be this: it represents a perfect marriage of Anderson's form and content.

9/10

Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Captain America: The First Avenger was my favorite film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase One, mostly because it featured a hero who felt the most like a superhero. Now that I have seen Anthony and Joe Russo's Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I think it will be safe to assume that this will be my favorite film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Two. Loosely based on Ed Brubaker's Winter Soldier storyline from his run on the Captain America comics, the film sees the return of Steve Rogers' past friend and ally Bucky Barnes as a brainwashed super-assassin who works for the sinister terrorist organization HYDRA. Two of my favorite things about the film are the depictions of Black Widow and Nick Fury. Unlike her previous role in The Avengers (2012), Black Widow is actually portrayed as a CHARACTER with FLAWS and MOTIVATIONS. She actually makes MISTAKES, unlike her Whedon doppelgänger who was essentially a cardboard action figure who existed to role her eyes at the silly boys in costumes and look flawless even during an alien invasion of New York City. Nick Fury also seems like a wizened old master spy with ghosts and skeletons in his closet. In most of the other Marvel films he was in, Nick Fury came off more like Samuel L. Jackson with an eye-patch. And here is one of the film's greatest strengths: its characterizations. I adored Chris Evans' Steve Rogers. Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson was a joy to behold. Sebastian Stan managed to make Bucky seem like a tortured character without coming across as unnecessarily melodramatic or emo (haircut notwithstanding). And for the first time in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I enjoyed watching Black Widow. Throw in some fantastic fight scenes (particularly the early mission where SHIELD confronts Batroc the Leaper and his host of pirates...even if the camerawork and editing was a tad bit too shaky and erratic at times), and you have a magnificent superhero film.

8/10

Laura: Otto Preminger

[Revisit Review]

The moment where Otto Preminger's Laura goes from being a good murder mystery to a great one is the scene where Laura, the victim whose murder has set the film in motion, suddenly re-materializes. Suddenly Mark McPherson, the New York City police detective investigating her death, has the ultimate weapon: the supposed murder victim herself. It's a twist so brilliant that if it had occurred in a film released a few decades later it might have been heralded as a masterpiece of meta-fiction. After all, how absurd is the idea of a murder victim tagging along on their own murder investigation? Roger Ebert wisely pointed out that most of Laura consists of people standing around in rooms talking to McPherson. What keeps the film from growing tedious is how each character is dirty, rotten liar in their own fashion. But not everyone is good at it. I've heard complaints that Dana Andrews performance as McPherson was too flat and monotone. But I find that Andrews' performance was so lifeless that it transforms the detective into a caricature in his own right.

9/10

The Tall T: Budd Boetticher

Originally published at Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear in 2010.

The Tall T is a film that many will probably never see. It’s not because it isn’t a great film or a particularly rare one. The reason that many will probably never see it is because everything about it seems like a stereotypical Western. In a genre that has been milked as dry as the Western, some would argue even to the point that it is impossible to say anything new with it, few would probably want to take the time to watch such an unassuming film. It stars one of the great cowboys of the silver screen, Randolph Scott, in the lead role. But he doesn’t have the star power that actors like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, or Henry Fonda maintain to this day. To many, Scott’s image on the movie poster or DVD case for The Tall T probably wouldn’t seem any different than any other B-movie actor that inundated the Western genre. The story seems too familiar. Scott must save the damsel in distress being held for ransom from a gang of outlaws. How many times have we encountered that story? And finally, the name itself, The Tall T, doesn’t really do anything to grab a potential viewer’s imagination. It doesn’t have any nostalgic romanticism that titles like High Noon or Stagecoach. But perhaps all of these things are what makes The Tall T such a good film. It doesn’t insist upon itself. It knows the rules of the game and is content to play by them. By doing so, The Tall T transforms itself into one of the purest concentrations of Western cinema ever committed to celluloid.

It’s starts of simply enough. Pat Brennan (Randolph), a tough old cowboy, rides into a stagecoach way station to get some water for his journey into town. It’s obvious that he knows the station manager and his young son. The boy can hardly wait to see him and begs him to let him water his horse. Brennan and the station manager pass jokes good naturedly and the boy asks him to bring him some candy from town. The old cowpoke agrees. Despite his tough-as-leather exterior, he has a soft spot in his heart for the boy. He promises to bring him some on his way back.

After he gets into town, he loses his horse in a bet. Forced to return back to the station in foot, we get a comical scene of him walking down a desert road wearing the very saddle that he rode into town on. In fact, the entire film so far has a friendly tone, much like John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). It’s clear that he would rather not wear the saddle, but he takes it in stride. Just another day as a cowboy…

Thankfully, he isn’t forced to walk the whole way back to the station. He is picked up by his friend Rintoon, a stagecoach driver, who was transporting newlyweds Willard and Doretta Mims. Willard initially refuses to let him on board, but Doretta convinces him to change his mind. As Brennan joins Rintoon at the front of the stage coach, he jokes that this would be the first time he’d been on a honeymoon.

But the jokes end as soon as they return to the station. They are held up by a band of thieves led by Frank Usher. One of them, a heartless killer named Chink, kills Rintoon. It turns out that they were trying to ambush another coach. Nevertheless, they get ready to kill Brennan and the Mims. It’s obvious that they mean business seeing as how they murdered the station manager and his son and threw their bodies down the same well that the boy had used to water Brennan’s horse.

But perhaps I am telling too much about the plot. The rest of the movie transpires in a predictable fashion. The husband cowardly offers his wife for a ransom, is killed after delivering their demands to her father, Brennan and Doretta fall in love, and they manage to outsmart and kill the three bandits. As I said, the plot is pretty standard Western fare. It’s how the director, Budd Boetticher, commands all the different elements of the story and characters together that makes The Tall T such a powerful film. In the incredible three part documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), Scorsese explains, “Budd Boetticher explored the bare essentials of the genre. His style was as simple as his impassive heroes; deceptively simple. The archetypes of the genre were distilled to the point of abstraction…The choreography of basic human passions was his forte. In the seven Westerns he made with Randolph Scott, Boetticher always gave precedence to character over action.”

To truly understand what Scorsese means, one need only to examine the most important relationship in the film. It is not the one between Brennan and Doretta, but between Usher and Brennan. Scorsese explains, “In the power play, the hero and the villain were complimentary figures. They shared the same loneliness, the same dreams, and the same ethical code. Somehow, the gentleman and the desperado were fascinated by each other.” The scene where they talk over a campfire about their hopes and aspirations brings to mind the famous coffee shop scene with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro from Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). Both men are obviously impressed by each other. They admire each others’ skills and abilities. Usher obviously respects Brennan more than his own trigger happy men. Brennan realizes that not only is Usher not a simple criminal, but he is someone who may have turned out like him if life hadn’t dealt him harder breaks. But they leave with the knowledge that they could not be partners or friends and that they will eventually have to destroy each other.

Under Boetticher’s direction, even simple cliché’s take on deeper meanings. One of the great unspoken rules of the West is that you never shoot a man in the back. As an undiluted Western, the characters comply with the rule. Well, at least Brennan does. While Chink is content to shoot Mr. Mims in the back when he flees back to town, Brennan warns him before shooting him so that he has a chance to turn around and fire back. This code is so important to Brennan and so intrinsic to his character that he even lets Usher go after killing his two men because it would mean shooting him as he fled. It was only after Usher returns for the ransom money that Brennan can kill him and ride into the sun with Doretta. Instead of merely pertaining to cinematic traditions, the act of not shooting Usher in the back proves the integrity of Brennan’s character.

While some Westerns play to the balconies with epic gun battles, over the top villains, and fantastic set pieces, The Tall T is content with remaining a simple film. It is a story of tough men and an even tougher environment. It is a story where the villains are as honorable as the heroes, at least in their own way. It is a story that has been told since the first cowboy drove his first herd of cattle. While it is an old story, The Tall T is one of its best incarnations. Where other Westerns would run ahead and burn out, The Tall T just keeps rolling on from one town to the next, happy to enjoy the scenery and wondering what is behind that sunset after all.

7/10

Hopscotch: Ronald Neame

[Revisit Review]

For years now, I've stared at the Criterion DVD of Ronald Neame's Hopscotch that sits on my shelf. And for years, this has led to the exact same thought: "I know that I've watched this film before, but I literally can't remember anything about it except for a brief shot of an airplane taking off." Remembering that at some point I had paid good money for it, I decided to refresh my memory and re-watch it. The film, about an ex-CIA agent (played by Walter Matthau) who leads the department on a wild goose chase across America and Europe over a soon-to-be-published "memoir," was surprisingly enjoyable. I wonder why I didn't remember it more. I particularly enjoyed the 3-way dynamic between Matthau, his KGB counterpart played by Herbert Lom, and his one-time protégé Sam Waterston. These men approach the world of international espionage with good humor and even better manners, sharing drinks at information exchanges and demonstrating authentic respect for each other. In a sense, they seem ripped from an Ernst Lubitsch film. Additionally, it's nice to see an espionage thriller that a) doesn't take itself too seriously, and b) has a happy ending.

7/10

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance: Kenji Misumi

Kenji Misumi's Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance is a deliriously entertaining film borne from a realm of pure imagination. Blood sprays like crimson geysers, limbs fly like debris, and each death is treated like a spectacle straight out of a musical or a production of Shakespeare. Based on the manga series by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, the film follows a wrongfully disgraced samurai named Ogami Ittō who travels the countryside with his infant son seeking vengeance on those who murdered his wife and framed him for heinous crimes against the shogun. He keeps his son is a baby-carriage equipped with several hidden weapons. Did the Japanese even have baby-carriages in this time period, let alone armored ones? It doesn't matter. Admirably, the film's internal logic concerning honor and people's willingness to die and/or kill for others is remarkably consistent. For instance, Ogami is framed for crimes against the shogun when his personal emblem was discovered in a shrine made by Ogami in honor of the people he had executed. Later, Ogami manages to escape an ambush by donning clothes with that same emblem on it. As such, the attackers can't assault him without assaulting the shogun. See what I mean? This kind of consistency is indicative of a well-crafted screenplay and the combined talents of many skilled writers and creators. Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance isn't just a great action film; it's a smart one.

9/10

Out of the Past: Jacques Tourneur

[This will be my inaugural Revisit Review. These will be a series of very brief reviews where I revisit films that I have seen before.]

I agree with Roger Ebert that Out of the Past is one of the best encapsulations of what makes film noir great: exquisite cinematography, brooding characters doomed before the film even begins, an elliptical narrative that bounces from the present to the past, and wonderful acting by one of the titans of the genre, Robert Mitchum. And yet, I can't help feel that the film is slightly over-rated. I know I will make no friends with this assertion, but as I re-watched Out of the Past, I found myself agreeing with my original assessment of the film from when I first watched it years and years ago. The film is too long to sustain itself. If the film had ended shortly after Mitchum's first major flashback, then I feel that Out of the Past would have been a masterpiece. Additionally, I can't figure out Jane Greer's motivation. She's obviously the femme fatale, so within the realm of film noir she exists to betray and be destroyed. But why does she return to Kirk Douglas? Why does she try to kill Robert Mitchum? She's an enigma. In a film where character motivations are so important, that simply isn't good enough. Don't get me wrong: Out of the Past is a very good film. But I feel that maybe it has been oversold over the years.

8/10

Thor: The Dark World: Alan Taylor

 

My issues with Alan Taylor's Thor: The Dark World are tempered somewhat by the fact that overall, the film is an enjoyable experience. The film clips along at a stunningly brisk pace. When the movie ended, I could have sworn that it was nearly 2 1/2 hours long. Imagine my surprise when the run-time turned out to be 112 minutes. But unlike most films that feel longer than they really are, I wasn't bored by Thor: The Dark World. It felt like a 2 1/2 hour film because it had enough plot for a 2 1/2 hour film. Honestly, I think that it had more plot than The Avengers (2012) and the first Thor film combined. Here's what I think happened: Marvel Comics had probably wanted to adapt Walt Simonson's Malekith the Accursed storyline from his legendary run on Thor, but, remembering that they had turned all of the inhabitants of Norse mythology into space aliens in the first Thor movie, transformed the legendary Dark Elves of Svartalfheim into creatures from before the birth of the universe who seek a powerful weapon known as Aether which accidentally bonded to Dr. Jane Foster. It's a far cry from the Casket of Ancient Winters unleashing a new ice age upon the earth, but I suppose it'll do for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I mentioned that I have issues with the film. The biggest one is that it demonstrates a tendency to repeat exposition. The Dark Elves back-story was recounted twice and I could swear that the film explained the whole "every 5,000 years the Nine Worlds align and the fabric of space-time becomes unstable" at least three times. Exposition should only be provided ONCE. If you have to explain back-story more than once for the sake of uninformed characters, you have failed as a screenwriter. It makes sense within the world of the film, but not for the audiences in the world of the movie theater. But the special effects are effective (MUCH more so than the video-game visuals of the first Thor film), the dialogue funny, the characters endearing, and the story gripping. The fight scene between Thor and Malekith where they jump through different dimensions and Mjolnir struggles (and fails) to keep up is one of the best in all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

7/10

The 47 Ronin: Part 2: Kenji Mizoguchi

If my dislike for the first part of Kenji Mizoguchi's adaptation of The 47 Ronin had to do with its frustrating narrative tactics, my outright hatred for the second part has to do with how it forced him to betray his values. In The 47 Ronin: Part 2, we see one of the screen's greatest feminists abandon his values to praise men who destroy themselves despite the pleadings of their women. In this film, the famous attack on Kira's estate happens relatively early and most of the narrative focuses on how the 47 ronin cheerfully awaiting the order to commit mass seppuku; Ōishi and his men are all laughter and smiles right up to the moment where they kill themselves. If the first film had propaganda undertones, this second film has propaganda overtones. The message is clear: Japanese men should willingly and happily destroy themselves in the name of honor (read: Imperial Japan). There is a sizable subplot where one of the doomed samurai's bride-to-be dresses as a man and tries to become an apprentice to Ōishi so she can be near him. We are then treated to a prolonged scene where Ōishi downright laughs at her devotion, chastises her for being self-centered and trying to distract her groom from his duty, and calls in the aforementioned groom who then denies ever having seen her...to her face. And you know what the bitch of it is? Ōishi and the samurai are treated as having acted appropriately. The woman is only redeemed at the end when she commits seppuku at the same time as her lover. THIS from the man who gave us Osaka Elegy (1938). THIS from the man who gave us The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939). THIS from a man who spent almost an entire career condemning a society which dehumanized women, crumpled them up, and threw them in a wastebasket when no longer needed. Listen...I can forgive Mizoguchi for making this film. After all, it came out months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was forced to make the kinds of films that the government demanded. I can't hold this film against him any more than I can hold The Most Beautiful (1944) against Akira Kurosawa. But I can condemn the film as a repugnant piece of trash unworthy of one of the cinema's greatest artists.

5/10

Kelly’s Heroes: Brian G. Hutton

I like to imagine that Donald Sutherland's strung-out Sergeant Oddball from Brian G. Hutton's Kelly's Heroes was the in-universe father to Donald Sutherland's devil-may-care Capt. Hawkeye Pierce from Robert Altman's M*A*S*H* (1970). That doesn't really have anything to do with my thoughts on Kelly's Heroes...I just wanted to preserve that observation for posterity. So what do I think of the film? Well, I think that Kelly's Heroes, a war comedy about a group of soldiers from the 35th Infantry Division who go AWOL to steal 14,000 gold bars from a German-controlled bank while behind enemy lines in France, is entertaining enough to make the audience forget that technically all of the characters are war criminals. After all, isn't what they were doing technically looting? Well, anyway, Kelly's Heroes is enjoyable enough. It has a wonderful sense of spectacle. Scenes like Sergeant Oddball and his three Sherman tanks invading and destroying a German camp from inside a train tunnel to the sounds of laid-back music make me yearn for the days when action scenes weren't slaves to shaky-cams and CGI. There is a visceral excitement to watching a building explode into a fireball and a tank running straight through a farm-house that can't be duplicated with computers. Additionally, the film seems to predict the historically anachronistic soundtracks of Quentin Tarantino films by several decades. I never would have thought that World War Two and hippie music could have meshed together so well. But a few bars of "Burning Bridges" was enough to make me a convert.

7/10

Memories of Underdevelopment: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

In many ways, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment can be read as a companion piece to Glauber Rocha's Entranced Earth (1967). Both are films by Latin American leftists that came out during times of extreme political upheaval within their respective countries. Both films are highly metaphorical and examine the frustrated aspirations of their countries' revolutionary movements via the lives of disaffected young men trying to make sense of where their lives (and by extension the lives of their nations) went wrong. Memories of Underdevelopment follows a rich businessman-turned-writer named Sergio who spends his days utterly bored. His family owns an apartment building which manages to completely finance his lavish lifestyle. As one boring day passes to another, he reflects on the many changes that have taken place in Cuba. In particular, he meditates on such crucial events as the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Missile Crisis. He ponders life in an "underdeveloped" country that has lost sight of its revolutionary aspirations. The film is extremely self-reflexive and intellectually challenging; if a viewer is not intimately familiar with Cuban history from the era when the film was made, Memories of Underdevelopment will seem an enigma. But Alea's stylistic approach which combines newsreel footage, introspective narration, non-linear storytelling, and academic discussion will make the film fascinating even to those ignorant of Cuba's sociopolitical background circa the 1960s.

7/10

The 47 Ronin: Part 1: Kenji Mizoguchi

Different does not mean good. Breaking with convention does not guarantee brilliance. Kenji Mizoguchi's adaptation of the legendary tale of the 47 ronin may be bold in its stylistic execution, but it ultimately flounders and fails to engage either as a story or a film. Instead of emphasizing physical violence, Mizoguchi focuses almost entirely on the emotional turmoil of his characters. He uses narrative ellipses to jump over scenes that most storytellers would consider crucial: the seppuku of Daimyo Asano, the dissolution of his House in Akō, and almost a year's worth of floundering about in brothels on the part of his head chamberlain Ōishi Yoshio. Most poignantly, the film ends with Ōishi's wife and younger children leaving him in shame for not overtly seeking revenge for his daimyo's death. The film contains some of Mizoguchi's most powerful long takes: the aforementioned scene where Ōishi's family leaves him, the opening sequence where Asano assaults Kira Yoshinaka, an almost bird's-eye view of Asano entering the courtyard where he will slice his belly open while one of his retainers sobs outside the entrance, and a lone samurai wandering dejected through Asano's home in Akō when news of his death first arrives. Extended long takes are also used for heavily emotional moments such as when one of Asano's retainers begs an official on his hands and knees to spare his lord's life. Mizoguchi's refusal to include close-ups helps create a heavily theatrical cinematic grammar. And yet, Mizoguchi is too indulgent in his cerebral machinations. Audiences unfamiliar with the story of the 47 ronin will be confused and disoriented by the narrative. The Japanese may have known that Ōishi was acting a drunken craven in order to deceive Kira's spies, but his motivations are never confirmed and barely hinted at by Mizoguchi. Yes, the film was made for war-time Japanese audiences who knew the story inside and out, but in an adaptation that is focused on the emotions and inner turmoil of the characters, context is desperately needed. Otherwise the characters are enigmas whose decisions are confusing and inexplicable. And that is what The 47 Ronin: Part 1 is: inexplicable. Even though it is almost two hours, it feels like it is only half a film. Whereas the narrative ellipses and deliberate pacing should have made the film feel introspective and thought-provoking, it ends up feeling unfinished and dull.

6/10

Yoso: Teinosuke Kinugasa

The few scant reviews that I could find of Teinosuke Kinugasa's Yoso framed the story, a fictionalized retelling of the relationship between the real life Empress Kōken (reigned 749–758 AD) and a Buddhist monk named Dōkyō, as a tragic love story. But I think that the film is best read as (and was perhaps originally intended to be) a Buddhist parable. The film establishes Dōkyō as a righteous Buddhist monk bestowed with immense magical powers after completing a rigorous 10-year training program. He sets out to use his powers to help people and preserve life. For a while, he does so: he heals a sick man and literally brings a dead thief back to life. Word of his power gets out and the royal court recruits him to heal their sickly Empress Kōken. He does so and for a time he serves as a righteous adviser who helps weed out crooked politicians and potential usurpers. He is depicted as helping restore dignity, honor, and benevolence to the Nara court. But when he begins to return the Empress' affections, he loses his powers, she dies, and he is murdered by evil politicians. The Buddhist undertone is clear: he strayed from the Noble Eightfold Path (in particular the vow of chastity covered under the division of samyak-karmānta, or Right Action). Kinugasa's deliberate, moody direction helped keep the film's proceedings from flourishing out into the realm of melodrama. Additionally, Hiroshi Imai's stark black-and-white cinematography helps give the film an atmosphere of the mythic. I've long harbored the belief that the Japanese were more suited to widescreen filmmaking than their American and European counterparts. Imai's brilliant cinematic compositions in Yoso have served to help reinforce that idea.

8/10

The Old Dark House: James Whale

In the wastes of Wales lies a dilapidated old mansion harboring a family of grotesqueries. A gaunt old man named Horace Femm shares the house with his vicious zealot of a sister named Rebecca. Upstairs lives their invalid father of 102 years. Elsewhere another brother named Saul, an insane pyromaniac, is kept behind lock and key. And finally there is Morgan (Boris Karloff), their mute butler who resembles a lycanthrope trapped in mid-transformation. To their decaying estate comes a group of travels trapped in a terrible storm one unfortunate night. And here is where the action begins in James Whale's The Old Dark House, a magnificent early 30s horror film that ranks among the director's very best. I was fascinated with how little actually happens in The Old Dark House. Much of the run-time is spent diving into the psyches of the individuals trapped overnight in the house. My favorite is the boisterous Sir William Porterhouse (played with much heartiness by Charles Laughton), a businessman whose exterior behavior masks insecurities and mental scars as jagged as any in the mansion's woodwork. The film is also magnificent to simply look at; Arthur Edeson's twisted, chiaroscuro cinematography is as fresh, striking, and bold today as it was in the 30s. Of course, the performances by the various members of the Femm family are as warped and macabre as any produced from this era of horror cinema: Karloff's Morgan is a sympathetic beast, Eva Moore's Rebecca is deliciously nasty, Elspeth Dudgeon's gender-bending performance as Sir Roderick Femme, the family's ancient patriarch, is bone-chilling and unnerving, and Brember Wills damn near steals the whole movie in the last 15 minutes as the alternatively sane[ish] and maniacal Saul. The scene where he smashes one of the guests over the head with a chair and proceeds to light the house on fire is one that will forever remain lodged in my mind...and nightmares.

8/10

Muppets Most Wanted: James Bobin

James Bobin's Muppets Most Wanted is a vastly superior film to The Muppets (2011) if only by the virtue of the fact that the film is actually about the Muppets. Muppets Most Wanted is the Muppets film that I have been waiting for for years: smart, funny, inventive, touching, and full of great musical numbers (except for one bizarre duet between Miss Piggy and Celine Deon that leaves the audience wondering if the filmmakers accidentally forgot to edit in a crucial punchline). The film is a send-up of the Muppets caper films of the early 80s: the Muppets embark on a world-wide tour after Kermit is kidnapped and replaced by Constantine, the world's most dangerous frog, who uses their shows as distractions while he and his subordinate, the "Lemur," rob Europe's greatest museums and vaults in an attempt to find hidden clues about how to steal the crown jewels of Great Britain. The various subplots are genuinely delightful: Kermit's attempts to escape from a prison in Siberia where he is mistaken for Constantine, the Muppets realizing that Kermit was what kept the show from collapsing into itself, and Sam Eagle teaming up with his European counterpart, Jean Pierre Napoleon, to catch Constantine (seriously, could we just have a movie of these two running around America and Europe?). The film's tongue-in-cheek (or is it mole-on-cheek?) nature helps keep its self-referential parodies from collapsing in on themselves. I've heard that some people thought that there were too many musical numbers. But if all of the musical numbers are excellent (barring the aforementioned Deon duet), what's the problem? I was a bit bothered by the film's use of CGI during sequences where Constantine danced around and used martial arts on hapless prison guards. After all, the Muppets are one of the last bastions of traditional special effects in all of Hollywood. But Bobin said in an interview that "if we are doing CG compositing...we always have puppeteers perform it. We never go down the road of having a full CG character, which you could easily do. It feels that the joy of this movie is the Muppets exist. They're real; you can touch them." And if that's the case, then I can forgive the film for that.

8/10

Million Dollar Mermaid: Mervyn LeRoy

Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman may have been one of the most fascinating women of the early 20th century. After overcoming a disability which left her legs weak as a child, she went on to become one of the first women to attempt swimming the English Channel, became a star of stage and screen, and helped popularize the one-piece bathing suit for women. It seemed predictable that Hollywood would one day make a film based on her life. But what I couldn't have predicted was that the ensuing film, Mervyn LeRoy's Million Dollar Mermaid, would essentially make Kellerman a supporting character in her own story. Here's the film's main problem: it takes a very interesting story about a woman overcoming a disability to become a super-star and a force for social progress and makes it a vapid love story. Kellerman's relationship and eventual marriage to James Sullivan, her American promoter, dominates most of the film. The scenes that actually focus on Kellerman, her life in Australia before traveling to Europe and America and the lavish synchronized swimming sequences (one of which I could swear I saw when I was a young child at my grandmother's house in rural Georgia), are fantastic. But the romantic side-plot turns a very fascinating, ground-breaking woman into a wistful puppy desperate for approval and affection. Perhaps the most nauseating moment is near the end when she is accidentally injured during a disastrous accident during a film shoot where she suffers a potentially career-ending spinal hematoma. And, incredibly, the film suggests that it was James who gave Annette the agency to recover. The reconciliation of their relationship at this point is treated as the film's emotional climax. What is this? A silent melodrama starring Mary Pickford? I might be more forgiving of the film's decision to frame Annette's life as a romantic melodrama if it wasn't for the fact that as a character James Sullivan is so boring that whenever he's onscreen (which makes up a considerable chunk of the film's run-time) almost all of the energy and enthusiasm is sucked away. So as a tribute to Annette Kellerman, the film is a failure. And as a piece of entertainment, it is also a failure.

5/10