The Changeling: Peter Medak

Do you want to know my definition of a good scary movie? If I'm watching it in the dark and I have to pause it and go turn on my lights, it's a good scary movie. Peter Medak's The Changeling isn't the most subtle of horror films. Any ambiguity concerning whether or not the house is actually haunted is obliterated mere minutes into the run-time. There's an absurd moment where a victim is chased by a possessed wheelchair. And yet, The Changeling is still effective. I love a good slow-burn horror film. And to its credit, The Changeling does take its time to create atmosphere and develop George C. Scott's character. This film is just as much a touching examination of grief as it is a haunted house thriller. Medak and his cinematographer John Coquillon demonstrate excellent control over the use of space with regards to architecture and character framing. The haunted house feels spacious and empty...and somehow occupied by an unknowable something that hovers juuuuust off-screen. And hey, there are few things in this world more frightening than a dead child's disembodied voice.

7/10

Invisible Ghost: Joseph H. Lewis

The only notable thing about Joseph H. Lewis' Invisible Ghost is its wonderful set-up: a heart-broken man goes into homicidal somnambulist sprees whenever he sees the ghost of his beloved wife. The twist is that his wife isn't actually dead; she was merely brain-damaged in an accident and now lives in his basement (without his knowledge, of course), being secretly cared for by one of her husband's servants. Every now and then she manages to escape and wander off. And each time she does, her husband commits another murder...of course, there is no real explanation for why he becomes hypnotized by her image. But when has a massive plot hole stopped a D-grade horror film from getting made? The pity is that I think that a competent director could make a decent film from this plot. Maybe Hitchcock or De Palma? Or perhaps Buñuel or Jodorowsky? Regardless, Lewis was none of these. In time he would become a damn fine director in his own right, directing two of the seminal works of the film noir genre: Gun Crazy (1950) and The Big Combo (1955). And there are aspirations towards art in Invisible Ghost: a clever camera set-up here, a tragic close-up on Bela Lugosi there. But it's not enough to pull Invisible Ghost out of the gutter.

3/10

Charulata: Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray's Charulata is a tragedy in three parts. That isn't to say that it's divided into three acts or scenes, but rather that it follows three different interconnected storylines that all inevitably succumb to bitter tragedy. Charu is a lonely housewife who wiles away her days in seclusion reading, dreaming, and spying on her neighbors. Bhupati, her husband, is so blinded by optimism concerning politics and his newspaper that he is oblivious to being robbed blind by his brother and to the fact that Charu has fallen madly in love with his cousin Amal. And Amal? An unmotivated slacker fresh from university, he realizes that he must leave their house and abandon any hope for happiness just when he finds purpose in life in both his writing and in his affections towards Charu. There is much to love about Charulata: its gentle yet devastating examination of its characters' emotions, a wonderful song sequence a little past the one hour mark that is unlike almost anything I have ever seen in the cinema of Satyajit Ray, the wonderful swing set scene where Charu first discovers her love for Amal, and the virtuosity of Subrata Mitra's cinematography.

8/10

Millennium Actress: Satoshi Kon

Satoshi Kon's Millennium Actress is a dazzling triumph of both form and function. As a piece of animation, it is breath-taking. As a story, it is heart-felt and devastating. And as a narrative, it takes bold risks and experiments with techniques that I have never encountered before. Where to start? The loving tributes to Japanese cinema, in particular the lives of Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine as well as classic Japanese films (most notably Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood)? Kon's seamless integrations of present-tense characters in past-tense flashbacks? The evocative art that breathes life to several different eras of history? The palpable sense of yearning on the part of the eponymous actress as she spends her life searching for a man she loves but barely knows, perpetually just out of reach like he was the Holy Grail and she the Knights of King Arthur? To watch Millennium Actress is to experience it. Joyful, melancholy, tragic, and funny, Millennium Actress is essential.

9/10

The Book of Life: Jorge Gutierrez

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/the-book-of-life-review/42182.

4/10

Gone Girl: David Fincher

To read my article on this film, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/amy-dunnes-one-mistake/42094.

8/10

Wolf Creek: Greg McLean

I hate Greg McLean's Wolf Creek. But it's not because of its violence or its treatment of women. First off, the film isn't even that gory or bloody. Critics who claim that it was some kind of abomination need to brush up on their video nasties. And yes, its female characters were treated in a despicable manner. But that's par for the course for this kind of movie. I hate Wolf Creek because it's boring, predictable, and worst of all, not scary. More and more I've found that when I am frustrated by a character's incompetence and stupidity in a horror film my suspension of disbelief is retarded, thereby preventing me from feeling scared or emotionally invested in the story. In other words, bad writing serves to remind me that I'm watching a movie. And the best horror films make you forget that. But not Wolf Creek. There was never a moment where I wasn't aware that I was watching a movie entitled Wolf Creek. Not even the film's impressive cinematography of the antediluvian Australian Outback could distract me from that.

4/10

Redes: Fred Zinnemann, Emilio Gómez Muriel

Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gómez Muriel's Redes never manages to completely emotionally engage its audience beyond the usual narrative short-hand familiar to films produced and sponsored by progressive/socialist/communist governments of the early 20th century: injustices are carried out against the honest, hard-working poor, someone dies, a community struggles to fight back. I suspect this is due in large part to the film's run-time which barely makes it over 60 minutes. But what sets Redes apart is its technical brilliance. A precursor to Italian neorealism liberally peppered with Soviet-esque montage sequences, Redes is a triumph of the moving image. There are several sequences which stick in my mind: a sombre funeral for a child that takes place immediately after his father was denied a loan for hospital bills by his employer; groups of fishermen merrily pulling in schools of fish after months of empty nets; the assembled fishermen slowly and deliberately rowing to the shore of the town after agreeing to organize and fight back against their exploiters. The fact that a film like this was made in 1936 is nothing short of astonishing.

9/10

Oliver!: Carol Reed

I'm not sure if Carol Reed's Oliver! will ever get the fair shake it deserves from the critical establishment because it beat out Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for Best Picture. And yes, that's complete nonsense. But if you go into Oliver! with an open mind, you will find a delightful (if somewhat bloated) musical. I need to use this film in the future as a litmus test to see if I am medically capable of still feeling joy. The film departs from the stark drama of David Lean's 1948 adaptation for something more akin to Mary Poppins (1964) of all things: this is a grinning London where even the chimney sweeps sing, dance, and smile with impossible white teeth. But the best part of the film is the opening of the second act entitled "Who Will Buy?" It has nothing to do with the story, but it's one of the film's best songs and helps re-energize the proceedings after the intermission. One of the main reasons why it's so brilliant is that it temporarily smashes the illusion of storybook cheerfulness to reveal that the lower classes are beaten down and weary; their cheerful demeanor is a facade that helps protect themselves from the vagaries and cruelties of the world.

7/10

Inside: Julien Maury, Alexandre Bustillo

I hate the fact that I have to give Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's Inside a low score. Despite its problems, I actually liked it. From a technical standpoint, the film is stunning. The color palette is striking, the cinematography memorable, and the gore effects both brutal and unforgettable (many people thought they were too over-the-top, but considering that this is a horror movie about childbirth, one of the most violent, gory, and gruesome facets of the human experience, I was alright with it). I particularly liked how one bathroom where a large portion of the film takes place in starts off sterile and clean but progressively gets more bloody and disgusting as the film continues. But where Inside falters is its screenplay. While the plot twists about who-kills-who can be surprising (poor Mom!!), every attack and murder is bluntly telegraphed. A friend shows up in the middle of the night. Of course, he has to die. There is a friendly cat who rubs up next to the killer. Of course, it has to die. Cops show up. Of course, they have to die (despite the fact that they are trained to deal with people like the killer). But the film also makes the fatal mistake of making its characters artificially stupid. Let me give you an example. Near the end of the film, a policeman reaches the besieged young woman holed up in her second-story bathroom. The killer turns off the power, plunging them into darkness. The cop then tells this critically injured pregnant woman to stay where she is while he goes into the dimly lit basement to fix the fusebox and turn on the lights. Here's an idea: forget the lights [he has a working flashlight and a gun], get the pregnant woman, get out of the house, and call down an army on that killer. I was so angered by the artificially incompetent characters that I couldn't fully enjoy the film. And was the CGI baby really necessary?

6/10

Amores Perros: Alejandro González Iñárritu

I take issue with anyone who calls Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros the Mexican Pulp Fiction. Both films may have heightened, aestheticized violence, non-linear narratives, and multiple point-of-view characters that we follow, but they are very different films. First, Amores Perros deals with two genres that Pulp Fiction completely ignored: horror and tragedy. The horror comes into play during the sub-plot about the super-model's dog that gets stuck beneath the floorboards of her apartment. The tragedy comes from the story of the not-quite-retired hit-man. If Pulp Fiction was a wild, stylish, irreverent ode to American pop culture, then Amores Perros is a disturbing glance into the reality of life in Mexico City through the distorted lens of genre conventions. Of course, the stories aren't generic. The super-model story leaves one with the same sense of uncomfortable queasiness and fear that Roman Polanski's earlier films excelled at creating. The story of the two friends who enter the illegal world of dog-fighting is visceral, brutal, and heart-breaking. And the story of the hit-man? Well, that might be the closest Amores Perros gets to being unoriginal. But Emilio Echevarría delivers such an incredible, heart-felt performance that it retroactively makes all other similar stories feel like the imitations instead of the originals. A phone message he leaves to his estranged daughter near the end manages to be the emotional highlight of a film that is apparently made up entirely OF emotional highlights.

10/10

The Desert Archipelago: Katsu Kanai

In my review for Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), I said that if a director uses crappy film stock, crappy actors, makes crappy framing decisions, their film doesn't become ironically good. Their film becomes crappy. I fully believe that Katsu Kanai intended for his film The Desert Archipelago to be provocative and polemical. To this end, he uses inflammatory imagery (a man pregnant with a baby that is born and grows up attached to his back), controversial dialogue, and the most irritating, aggravating soundtrack that I have encountered since Sam Raimi's Crimewave (1985). Seriously, if I hear one more nun laughing I might hurt somebody. But this film is so enigmatic and esoteric that I have difficulty believing that much of it had any point other than to shock and disturb. But to what purpose? To what ends? The film is stark, harsh, and even occasionally beautiful. But it is first and foremost annoying and irritating. Only Kanai's technical competence as a filmmaker keeps me from giving this film a terrible score.

6/10

Utu: Geoff Murphy

For a film intended to tell a particular story, Geoff Murphy's Utu does a poor job transitioning between its various narrative threads. In one shot it will focus on one group of characters and then with a single edit jump to another with barely an establishing shot to tell them apart. It reached a certain point where I couldn't tell the various characters apart and couldn't keep track of their motives. Quite simply, this is a surprisingly difficult film to follow. Even worse, it shoehorns in an unnecessary love story between a young British officer and a Māori woman which makes no thematic sense with regard to the rest of the film. The only part of the film that I truly enjoyed was watching one of the white settlers whose wife had been murdered by the Māori construct an increasingly absurd quadruple-barreled shotgun.

6/10

Dracula Untold: Gary Shore

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/dracula-untold-review/41590.

3/10

Trouble Every Day: Claire Denis

I can't say that I've ever seen eroticism and horror combined successfully before. And having seen Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day...I still can't say it. But then again, Trouble Every Day isn't really a "horror film." Mostly it's just a film that uses the aesthetic trappings of the genre to tell a story where terrible and grisly things happen to unfortunate people. But that's the problem: I'm not sure what Denis was trying to accomplish with the film. Is it a film condemning sexual hysteria? Monogamy? Deviancy? Is it trying to scare? Well, Denis' elliptical narrative obscures any chance for the audience to become engaged on the visceral level necessary for truly effective horror. Is it simply an aesthetic exercise? Well, Agnès Godard's cinematography is too damn dark, too damn obscured, and too damn sterile for it to be an appealing piece of film-making from a craftsmanship point of view. The only truly disturbing things in this movie are the soul-shattering screeches of the victims while they are being raped and mutilated. After that, the gore and guts just seems passé.

6/10

The Dam Busters: Michael Anderson

I've seen plenty of whodunits before, but Michael Anderson's The Dam Busters may be one of the first howdoits that I've ever encountered. The film is a fascinating look into the nature of scientific problem-solving, a kind of engineer procedural. The first 3/4 of The Dam Busters is devoted to the creation of the "bouncing bomb," the planning of Operation Chastise, and the training of the pilots who will fly the mission. Cinematographer Erwin Hillier gives the entire film a crisp, clean look with starkly defined shadows that don't swallow or overwhelm the actors or sets. Michael Redgrave's performance as Barnes Wallis is stoic and steady, reliable and oddly endearing considering how restrained it is. The last thirty minutes which feature the actual mission are some of the most kinetic and visually exciting of all 50s British cinema. After watching it, I clearly understood why George Lucas modeled the ending of Star Wars (1977) off it. But I also understood why Lucas was so eager to step up his special effects game. The effects in The Dam Busters vary in quality from convincing models to laughable composite shots, particularly involving the bouncing bomb detonations against the dams.

7/10

Horror of Dracula: Terence Fisher

[Revisit Review]

While I think that Terence Fisher's earlier Hammer Horror film The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) was a better movie, Horror of Dracula is still a solid entertainment. The film has very little exposition, particularly in the first half. But because of this, it relies heavily on the audience already being familiar with the story of Dracula. This, however, allows for fascinating plot twists such as the revelation that Jonathan Harker is a vampire hunter and that he traveled to Dracula's castle at the beginning of the film to kill him. The film even does without the traditional sequence where Harker is unsuccessfully warned away by superstitious villagers. The color scheme is breathtaking, particularly in its use of deep reds and greens juxtaposed with the ancient, washed out buildings that make up most of the sets.

8/10

The Cruel Sea: Charles Frend

They should have taken Captain Benjamin Willard's advice and never got off the boat. Whenever Charles Frend's The Cruel Sea does take its characters ashore, the film grinds to a jolting halt. I suppose I can understand why the off-shore scenes were necessary: they had to establish civilian characters that the protagonists could develop relationships with so that the scenes where they were in danger on the high seas would have extra weight. But neither Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot (1981) nor Kathryn Bigelow's K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) needed to go ashore to develop their characters' back-stories. But despite these interruptions, The Cruel Sea is a starkly effective film that is concerned with characters first and foremost. There are impressive action sequences such as the sinking of their ship and an attack on a U-boat submerged beneath a group of stranded Allied sailors that forces them to kill their brothers-in-arms with depth charges. But they never overwhelm the human element of the story. One of my favorite parts of the film was Frend's use of non-diegetic sound to highlight the mental anguish and trauma experienced by the sailors, particularly one sequence where the captain is haunted by the sound of dying sailors trapped within a sinking ship.

8/10

The Railway Children: Lionel Jeffries

While I don't think that Lionel Jeffries' The Railway Children is a very good movie, I will admit that it grew on me. It's episodic narrative structure (no doubt adopted from the original novel) makes it feel more like a number of television episodes that had been edited together than a traditional movie, if that makes any sense. But it's difficult to root for the eponymous young child protagonists. Their move to the English countryside was necessitated by the ruination of the father and their family's fortune. There is much talk about them being "poor," but they exist in that strange netherworld of having-just-enough to not be a have-not but not-having-enough to be well-off that only really exists in children’s movies and crappy 90s comedies. So there isn't any true conflict other than the wrongful arrest and imprisonment of their father. So their escapades in helping an escaped Russian prisoner, giving a local townsman a proper birthday party, and saving a train from crashing into a damaged bit of track seems unnecessarily sweet and saccharine. The Railway Children is ever so pleasant. Perfectly, properly pleasant. It's decent fare for children, but I fear that many adults will find it to be a bit much for them. I mentioned that the film did grow on me. That is largely due to Jeffries' sharp eye for human behavior and his tendency to fill the film with adorable little moments like when the aforementioned birthday townsman comes home and sees a brand new pram next to the front door. He glances over at his wife and whispers, "You're, uh, you're not..." And the weary look she gives him is absolutely priceless. Side note: can you believe that Sally Thomsett was TWENTY when she made this film? Now THAT is a great performance!

6/10

Annabelle: John R. Leonetti

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/annabelle-review/41076.

4/10

Perfect Blue: Satoshi Kon

[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]

Allow me to get my one big criticism of Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue out of the way first: I think that the ending was too abrupt and too neat. It lacks any hint of irony or self-awareness that might suggest that it was just a hallucination. It's too earnest. But enough about that. Perfect Blue is a brilliant film with one of the most effective rape scenes that I have ever encountered in the cinema. It is effective precisely because it is deliberately simulated: the protagonist has to act out a rape scene for an acting job which forces her to retake certain shots over and over again with her "assaulter" straddled awkwardly on top of her in between takes. The rape might be fake, but that hardly seems to matter as her screeches go on and on and on. In that moment we realize that she is being raped by society; she is forced to debase herself emotionally and physically all in the pursuit of "legitimacy" as an actress. I'd be curious to read an examination of how the film utilizes the technique of doubling: the production the protagonist performs in queerly mimics her real life situation vis-à-vis a murderous stalker and her deteriorating mental state; it is revealed that there are two mentally unstable villains involved in a folie à deux; the protagonist is at war with her true identity and her identity as a former pop idol. There aren't many films that could warrant an entire book's worth of academic evaluation. But Perfect Blue is one of them.

9/10

Waltz with Bashir: Ari Folman

So here's a seemingly impossible question: can a movie act as cultural catharsis? Peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981) was a fiction, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) a recreation, but Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008)? It is neither, both, and more. An animated documentary, the film is a stunning, visceral meditation on the nature of memory, warfare, and the lengths the human mind will go to protect itself from trauma. It contains scenes that would have been impossible (or irresponsible) to recreate in live-action: a pack of undead dogs hunting the soldier that murdered them during a military operation, a man laying on the stomach of an impossible large woman in the middle of a sea, a partially insane soldier literally dancing with his weapon in the middle of a live sniper zone, fireballs of yellow arching slowly 'cross the sky of a war-torn city. Making this documentary animated was a bold choice. And indeed, by animating it the entire film becomes a reconstructive facsimile, much like images and events which emerge and rearrange themselves from the depths of human memory.

10/10

Shaun of the Dead: Edgar Wright

[Revisit Review]

I don't know if Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead will ever get the critical admiration or recognition it deserves. Oh sure, it has been hailed as one of the best British comedies of the last few decades. But that's just the point: people think of it as a comedy. Shaun of the Dead demonstrates one of the most remarkable syntheses of genres that I have ever encountered. Here is a film that cloaks itself in the trappings of genre films in order to transcend them. I have long believed that one of the hardest things to accomplish is to successfully blend comedy and tragedy. But Shaun of the Dead doesn't just mix comedy and tragedy; it adds horror as well. How many films can truly say that they are funny, tragic, and scary? The Evil Dead trilogy comes to mind, but its deliberate tongue-and-cheek nature is so overbearing that it never achieves tragedy. Shaun of the Dead might literally be in a league of its own.

10/10

A Fistful of Dollars: Sergio Leone

[Revisit Review]

After a murky and muddled second act and a first that more or less counterfeits Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars finally comes together in the third to forge its own identity: bloody, nihilistic, operatic. The massacre of the Baxter family and the final confrontation between the Man With No Name and the Rojos where he secretly dons a steel chest-plate are so brilliant and ingenious that they almost surpass Kurosawa's original. But Yojimbo has the benefit of originality, a superior cinematic storyteller (although Leone would develop into a master himself later in his career), and, perhaps most notably, no day-for-night cinematography!!

7/10

The Equalizer: Antoine Fuqua

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/the-equalizer-review/40671.

6/10

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: Nick Park, Steve Box

Let's be totally, brutally honest for a moment: Wallace & Gromit just aren't meant for feature length films. 30 minute short films are the best format for their adventures. Nick Park and Steve Box's Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is proof of this. The film has moments of wild invention, unbridled joy, stunning creativity, and an honestly shocking plot twist that legitimately caught me off guard (the true identity of the Were-Rabbit). But the plot is simply stretched too thin. I'll give you an example: a bit where a smarmy British hunter interrupts a public debate or discussion with plans to exterminate the were-rabbit (which is then ignored by the townsfolk and Lady Campanula "Totty" Tottington) is repeated three or four times. Once is fine. Twice is stretching it. Any more than three is simply bad screenwriting. And I do think that a bad screenplay is to blame here. Park and Box's storytelling skills are excellent...when there is a story to tell.

6/10

Ghost in the Shell: Mamoru Oshii

The scenes that impressed me the most in Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell were the quiet scenes bereft of action where the film meditated on the scenery and the atmosphere that embodied the Japan of the future: Motoko Kusanagi's silent trek through the immigrant sector of Tokyo, Motoko scuba diving in the bay, the glassy eyes of female secretaries who pour through untold amounts of information thanks to cybernetic enhancements like mechanical hands. To me, these echoes of a possible future are the most captivating part of the film. The central story about a brainwashing hacker/A.I. was fascinating. And the frequent philosophical discussions about the nature of reality and what it means to be human were engrossing despite the fact that they would have ruined the pacing of any other film. But in my opinion, Ghost in the Shell is best appreciated and enjoyed as an experience that lulls you into a fantasy equal parts daydream and nightmare.

9/10

---

In March 2017 I got to review a new Blu-ray release of the film. I downgraded the film from a 9 to an 8. The storytelling problems really got my goat this time around. Here's my article:

http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/movie-reviews-ghost-in-the-shell-march-14-2017/

The Parson's Widow: Carl Theodor Dreyer

If Jonathan Rosenbaum is right and The Parson's Widow was the "first artistic success among [Carl Theodor Dreyer's] early silent pictures," then it is nevertheless a minor one. There is nothing extraordinary about the cinematography. The performances are capable, but pedestrian. All of the drama in the film comes from the slow, eventual revelations concerning the characters' psychology and motivations: is the eponymous widow a witch or just an old woman, was the new parson bewitched or was he just a lazy bum, does the widow have some ulterior motive in marrying the parson or is she just lonely? However, the first act of the film crawls by at such a glacial pace that it almost put me to sleep. By the time the third act arrived complete with all of the story's major twists and turns, I was damn near emotionally exhausted. Dreyer's later silent films like The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) would be more evenly balanced from a pacing standpoint.

7/10

Fantastic Planet: René Laloux

[Revisit Review]

Watching René Laloux's Fantastic Planet is like stepping into a head-space both alien and intimately familiar. The designs are creative and original and the world that the characters inhabit exudes that odd feeling of being both crowded and empty that characterizes the work of Jean Giraud. Even though the Draags are essentially blue-skinned humanoids, they are one of the single most alien races ever committed to screen. Here is a film that I am already looking forward to watching again sometime in the future.

9/10

Akira: Katsuhiro Otomo

[Revisit Review]

Akira is a fine movie, but its incredible animation and production values are undermined by an uneven script and unfocused storytelling. The film feels like the first and last hour of a 5-hour television miniseries. Here are my three suggestions for how Akira could have been a better film.

1) Get rid of all of the city politician subplots. Colonel Shikishima can still declare martial law because that's important to the story.

2) Get rid of Kaori. She has no impact on the plot and exists solely to provide man-angst for Tetsuo by getting attacked, sexually assaulted, and killed.

3) Tone down Kaneda's antics at wooing Kei. These scenes feel like they were ghost-written by Rumiko Takahashi. There's nothing wrong with a bit of comedic relief, but these scenes almost ruin the serious and intense atmosphere and tone of the film.

8/10

A Walk Among the Tombstones: Scott Frank

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/a-walk-among-the-tombstones-review/40249.

7/10

8 Million Ways to Die: Hal Ashby

Wait, wait, wait...this movie has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes? That doesn't make any sense. Hal Ashby's 8 Million Ways to Die isn't just a good crime thriller, it's a smart one. More and more I've begun to believe that the American crime films of the 1980s emulated the crass materialism of the decade as a means of cultural exorcism. And much like Scarface (1983), 8 Million Ways to Die is a film obsessed with appearances and extreme displays of conspicuous consumption. This hardly comes as a surprise considering that both films were written by Oliver Stone. But whereas Brian De Palma and Al Pacino swung for the fences with over-the-top violence and performances in Scarface, Ashby's film is more constrained and interested in the psychology of its main character, alcoholic ex-Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy Matt Scudder. There are still a number of intense action scenes, including an excellent yet brief car chase where Scudder drives a car with busted tires. But the best scene is a tense stand-off near the end of the film where Scudder starts to destroy a stockpile of drugs he stole from a drug dealer when said drug dealer refuses to cooperate while exchanging them for a hooker he has hostage. A gunfight ensues, but it is overshadowed by the chorus of screaming, hollering, and threatening that proceeds it as Scudder almost nonchalantly starts to burn the packages of cocaine while one of the drug dealer's thugs (who has his hand duct-taped to a shotgun duct-taped to the hooker's neck) struggles to decide what to do. Andy Garcia is absolutely mesmerizing as the drug dealer Angel Moldonado. We get the sense that he may never have been as wealthy as Scarface, but he would have had the good sense (i.e. sanity) to survive longer than he did...if he had been smart enough not to kill one of his subordinates right in front of Scudder.

8/10

Kiki’s Delivery Service: Hayao Miyazaki

Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service is a film that I earnestly wish every little girl could see. Here is a film about growing up and the need that every young woman feels to get out on her own, start her own life, and carve out a place for herself in the world. It alternatively funny and tragic, exciting and paced. It grapples with such devastating problems as depression, the inevitable loss that everyone feels when they finally start to grow up and have to say goodbye to the world (and friends) of their childhood, and personal independence. There are times when Kiki is lost and doesn't know what to do, occasionally spurning the attentions of genuinely well-intentioned peers for seemingly arbitrary reasons. But therein lies the beauty and truth of Kiki's Delivery Service: growing up doesn't make much sense in the first place. My only problem with the film is that the ending sequence with Kiki saving her friend from falling from the blimp seemed like a cheap cop-out ending intended to solve all of her complex problems in one fell swoop (pun maybe intended). Little girls won't be given a similar magical opportunity to hand-wave all of their emotional problem away. So why should Kiki? And yes, I know...I know...the ending is symbolic and argues that love and the friendship of others is the key to finding one's way in life. But did we really need a gigantic action scene to drive that point home? Oh well...at the very least it didn't hurt the film.

8/10

Porco Rosso: Hayao Miyazaki

I have never felt that any of Hayao Miyazaki's films were bad, but Porco Rosso may be his only film that underwhelmed me. Miyazaki's themes and imagery surrounding flight and the futility of armed struggle are on full display. But not much of the film felt like a Miyazaki movie. There are three exceptions. The first is an early scene where the eponymous bounty hunter rescues a class of schoolgirls from a group of sky pirates. The juxtaposition of the dangerous action, the schoolgirls' gleeful refusal to take their kidnapping seriously, and the seemingly unspoken shared knowledge between the schoolgirls, the pirates, and Porco Rosso that no matter what happens the children will not be harmed was something that could have only come from Miyazaki's mind. The second exception was a sequence where a group of women of all ages come together to build an airplane in the absence of their male family members. It's charming, but it would ultimately be out-done by a similar scene involving the denizens of Irontown in Princess Mononoke (1997). Finally, a scene where Porco Rosso witnesses his slain pilot friends from World War One ascend into the sky to join an endless contrail of dead planes was one of the most fantastic pieces of visual imagery that Miyazaki has ever committed to celluloid. Howard Hawks once said, "A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes." And Porco Rosso is just that: a good movie. But it isn't a great one. It lacks a certain je ne sais quoi that keeps it from reaching the same heights as Miyazaki's other films. I hope one day I can figure out what it is.

7/10

Ceddo: Ousmane Sembène

Ousmane Sembène's Ceddo is a film of rhetoric and debate, of decorum and pageantry. The film is about the religious struggles that take place when an African king orders the persecution of the pagan "ceddo," or "common people," after converting to Islam. The ceddo abduct the king's daughter in protest, sparking a conflict that will leave many dead and wipe away an entire culture. The bulk of the movie is comprised of lengthy debates where representatives of the king, the local Muslim imam, and the ceddo argue either for their freedom or for their supremacy. There isn't anything inherently cinematic about prolonged conversations, but the viewer must keep in mind that this is an African film by an African filmmaker utilizing African sensibilities. If Western audiences can patiently sit through all 7+ hours of Béla Tarr's Sátántangó (1994), then they can engage Ceddo on its own terms despite the inevitable fatigue most viewers will feel watching it. The film is also a curious examination of the impact of the Western world in African society. Two of the most memorable characters are a white Christian missionary who dreams of filling his empty pews with converts and a slave trader who happily trades guns and ammunition to whoever brings him fresh slaves. One of the most striking elements of the film is the use of modern African-American spirituals during scenes where new slaves are bound and branded, seemingly predicting the future of the African diaspora.

8/10

The Wind Rises: Hayao Miyazaki

Perhaps the story of Jiro Horikoshi and his creation of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter can never be divorced from the controversy surrounding its use during World War Two and the use of slave labor to produce them. But I believe that Hayao Miyazaki was fully aware of this when he made The Wind Rises, a stirring, melancholy film that is easily the great master's best film since Spirited Away (2001). The central theme, if one can be picked out, would be the need of the individual to follow their bliss despite the world around them. Whether or not the historical Horikoshi really only wanted to create "beautiful airplanes" is irrelevant. Miyazaki's Horikoshi was a dreamer who lived to see his creation be turned into an instrument of warfare and destruction like Alfred Nobel and Mikhail Kalashnikov. Thinking back on this film, I realize that perhaps it may have been just as much about Miyazaki as it was Horikoshi. Considering how flight plays such a central role in Miyazaki's films and how uneasy his fame as one of the world's greatest animators makes him, it isn't difficult to equate the airplane industry with the animation industry.

9/10

Loulou: Maurice Pialat

I'm not entirely sure what I think about Maurice Pialat's Loulou. On the one hand, the central performances courtesy of Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu are excellent and the two share a remarkable on-screen chemistry. But the characters are one-dimensional and flat. I also didn't feel that Pialat effectively addressed his central story element: a bourgeois woman who abandons her marriage and prosperity for an intensely sexual relationship with an unemployed slacker. If Pialat was trying to make a statement about sexual need, then he shouldn’t have used strawman characters like the woman’s husband who was obsessive and abusive. That gives her a REASON to cheat. A more proper statement against the bourgeoisie would be if he was the PERFECT husband. Any woman, regardless of class, would try to escape an abusive spouse. So his indictment of the upper-class lifestyle falls flat. Still, for what it's worth, the acting was great.

6/10

The Puppetmaster: Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Unlike his earlier film A City of Sadness (1989) which I felt diluted its message concerning the White Terror through its oblique narrative methods, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Puppetmaster successfully examines the trials and tribulations of the Taiwanese people in the early 20th century by primarily focusing on a linear biographical narrative. The eponymous puppetmaster on whom the film is based, Li Tian-lu, even makes occasional documentary appearances to recount experiences in his life. As hypnotic and beautiful as Hsien's cinematography and mise-en-scène are, they can be challenging to watch for extended periods of time. So these touches of documentary filmmaking help keep The Puppetmaster fresh and engaging during its 2 1/2 hour run-time. But truthfully, I can't see myself running to revisit this film any time soon in the future. It is a wonderful work of art and I am genuinely glad to have watched it. But I found its slow pacing exhausting both physically and mentally.

9/10

Four Weddings and a Funeral: Mike Newell

[Revisit Review]

My favorite part of Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral was the eponymous funeral. Sounds strange, doesn't it? The film is a brilliant comedy that helped launch Hugh Grant's career.  It is jam packed with brilliant situational gags and sharp dialogue. But the funeral is still my favorite scene. See, I've always believed in something called "dramatic relief," the opposite of "comedic relief" where serious dramas are occasionally interrupted by comedy to help lighten the mood. I find that comedies that successfully utilize dramatic relief take on a more bittersweet tone that makes the laughter more joyful and the overall experience more memorable. And the aforementioned funeral is one of the single greatest pieces of dramatic relief that I have ever encountered.

8/10

Princess Mononoke: Hayao Miyazaki

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to:

http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/the-film-canon-princess-mononoke-1997/39879.

10/10

Open Your Eyes: Alejandro Amenábar

[Spoilers Ahead]

One of the fastest ways for a movie to win me over is to surprise me. One of the fastest ways for a movie to lose me is to focus on an unlikeable protagonist. And Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes centers on a spoiled, self-centered playboy that women inexplicably fall in love with. But, thankfully, Open Your Eyes is ceaselessly surprising. Here's the moment when I knew that I loved it: when the protagonist discovers that everything is going right in his life because he is living in an artificially-induced dream that fulfills his wildest fantasies. But, in a twist that would make Philip K. Dick jealous, the dream becomes a nightmare. That is a diabolically ingenious set-up for a movie. And Open Your Eyes doesn't disappoint.

9/10

Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster: Jun Fukuda

[Revisit Review]

Jun Fukuda's Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster was so forgettable that I didn't realize that I had already seen the film twice before until I checked my official movie records. Godzilla is in full theme park mascot mode in this film, giving coy finger gestures to human bystanders and taunting his giant lobster adversary with one of his claws after ripping it off. This isn't a film about kaiju, if that makes any sense. It's about the boring humans who get a worm's-eye view of the mayhem. That's par for the course in kaiju films, but you could have practically removed all of the kaiju from this film and still have had a coherent plot. Well...maybe not during the last 20-30 minutes. But during the first hour or so, the kaiju are rolled out as giant pieces of scenery who practically do nothing to advance the plot. This is a film about bumbling criminals who just so happen to come across Godzilla. And, quite frankly, neither the characters nor their motivations are interesting enough to make me care about them...or the film.

5/10

A City of Sadness: Hou Hsiao-hsien

Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness isn't really about a story or the characters that populate it. Instead, it's a film about a pervading atmosphere of gloom, doom, and the inescapability of fate. It was the first Taiwanese film to openly address the KMT White Terror of the late 1940s. Therein lies its greatest strength and greatest weakness. Because it was the first film of its kind, its place as a classic of world cinema was assured. And Hsiao-hsien's trademark pacing, elliptical editing, and tightly controlled, mostly static frame compositions gave it a Taiwanese identity all of its own. But I wonder if Hsiao-hsien's decision to deal with the White Terror obliquely via the story of a family far removed from the immediate violence was the best decision considering its subject matter. There are occasional smatterings of political talk, but for the most part the White Terror is some kind of distant cataclysm that mostly only indirectly effects the family. The White Terror was a brutal military crackdown where 10,000-30,000 civilians were massacred during an uprising known as the 228 Incident. It was a Crime Against Humanity, plain and simple. But A City of Sadness, for all of its beauty, for all of its stylistic inventiveness, makes it seem like it was only a minor incident that effected only a handful of people.

7/10

Keeper of Promises: Anselmo Duarte

Anselmo Duarte's Keeper of Promises is a film that could only have been birthed from the cultural and religious melting pot of Brazil, though its themes and ideas are universal: simple piety versus domineering dogma, faith versus doubt, and the nearly uncontrollable societal urge to bend individuals to the will of movements or organized groups. A simple landowner named Zé do Burro has promised to carry a cross from his home to the Saint Bárbara Church in Salvador, Bahia in return for the saint interceding and saving the life of his beloved donkey. But when he reaches the end of his long journey, the priest at the church rebukes and denies him because he technically made the vow to the Catholic saint to a Candomblé orisha. Dismissed as a follower of witchcraft, Zé tries to reconcile his promise to the saint with a church that considers him a heretic. He is quickly seized upon as a revolutionary leader by Marxists, a living saint by the peasants, and a hero by actual practitioners of Candomblé. But Zé wants none of it. He just wants to deliver his cross. Not only is Keeper of Promises a fascinating and thought-provoking drama, there is something inherently cinematic about the image of a lone man walking the streets of a modern city with a cross on his back. Quite simply, it is unforgettable.

10/10

Mother and Son: Aleksandr Sokurov

Aleksandr Sokurov's Mother and Son is a film of breathtaking, elegiac beauty. It occupies the same detached head-space inhabited by other such dream-like films as Marketa Lazarová (1967), The Mirror (1975), and Eraserhead (1977). To watch Mother and Son is to be lulled into a feverish stupor. The cinematography is deliriously gorgeous, using distorted lenses, mirrors, and sheets of glass to blur, distort, and contract the frame into harsh, one-dimensional images. The film follows the final quiet moments of an elderly mother's life as she is cared for by her son. One long stretch of the film is comprised of him carrying her in his arms to her eventual deathbed, stopping on the sides of various roads to reminisce. The distorted landscapes which comprise so much of the film highlight and identify the emotional states of the characters: shallow, empty, and barren in that particular way that only an autumn afternoon mere minutes before a thunderstorm can be. The last third of the film will be the most polarizing for viewers. Having left his mother for a "walk," the son stumbles through a large assortment of landscapes and lonely environs in near total silence. In the last few minutes he crawls next to his mother's corpse and weeps. Some will see this as one of the most perfect depictions of grief ever put on film. Others will see it as self-indulgent and pretentious. Truth be told, I can see a bit of sense in both arguments.

8/10

Blue Velvet: David Lynch

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/the-film-canon-blue-velvet-1986/39460.

9/10

Thunderball: Terence Young

Let me make something clear: Terence Young's Thunderball doesn't really work. But I still admire it. The film doesn't work for a couple of reasons. First, it's too long. It was the first Bond movie to be over two hours in length. And, quite frankly, it doesn't have the steam to last its full run-time. The film's excitement is hobbled by a strange sense of tedium as they stretch the narrative out. Second, Connery's performance as Bond is...underwhelming. Truth be told, he seemed really tired. There were a few scenes where his charisma poked through, but overall he seemed weary and burnt out. But here's why I kind of liked Thunderball: any filmmaker that decides to set most of the major action scenes in their new movie underwater has balls of steel. Shooting this film must have been a nightmare. And, in my humble opinion, the underwater scenes were pretty damn good. I was shocked to find that most reviewers found them to be tedious and unintelligible. I couldn't disagree more. I thought that the scenes above the water were boring and repetitive.

6/10

The Spy Who Loved Me: Lewis Gilbert

Lewis Gilbert's The Spy Who Loved Me is at its best when it's at its silliest: a snow ski chase scene capped off with parachuting off the side of a mountain, a silent and unstoppable assassin with steel teeth, an underwater villain fortress complete with orange jump-suited minions, a car that can instantly transform into a workable submarine, and elaborate death traps involving a trick elevator and a very hungry shark. However, it is dragged down by the tepid love story between James Bond and Anya Amasova. That's not to say that she isn't a great character. In fact, I wish that Bond had had more Bond Girls that could so easily outfight, out-think, and out-maneuver him (not to mention that she helps foster a theme of international cooperation, one that is almost entirely absent from the espionage genre). But the first hour of the film dominated by their love story screeches the narrative to a sudden halt. Basically, The Spy Who Loved Me only truly comes alive whenever there is a large body of water involved. Oh, and the Atlantis and Liparus are easily two of the most creative, striking, and memorable set pieces in the history of the franchise. They alone make the film worth a watch.

7/10

Smokey and the Bandit: Hal Needham

Let me get a very minor but aggravating nitpick out of the way before I explain what I thought about Hal Needham's Smokey and the Bandit: the ADR work was absolutely ATROCIOUS. Alright, now that I have that out of my system...what did I think of the film? Well, I thought it was a lot of fun. I must admit that I was slightly underwhelmed by it, though. Knowing Needham's reputation as a director and stuntman, I expected Smokey and the Bandit to be a mile-a-minute chase movie crammed full of outrageous stunts. Well, the film certainly contains a lot of chases. And there is some great stunt-work. But the film is not afraid to slow things down (metaphorically, of course) and give its characters, Burt Reynolds and Sally Field in particular, room to breathe and develop. My favorite part of the movie was all of the random people who go out of their way to help the Bandit and thwart the police officers chasing them. It speaks to a delightful "brotherhood-of-the-road," a common consciousness that transcends class, race, and gender all in the pursuit of sticking it to the Man. Brings a tear to my eye, really.

7/10

Women in Love: Ken Russell

Bleagh. Bllearrruuughhh. I'm sorry, but Ken Russell's Women in Love was one of the toughest sits I've experienced in quite some time. Te film has all of the boring dreariness of Merchant Ivory with none of the coherency! There was hardly a moment of the film where I knew what was going on or why. Instead, the film seems a conglomeration of non sequiturs which may have made sense within the original D. H. Lawrence novel, but not here. Why was there a scene where one of the female protagonists played chicken with a herd of cows? What was the significance of the drowned couple? Where did the speech about the proper way to eat a fig come from? What was the point of the naked wrestling scene? Why the sudden interest in the German sculptor during the trip to the Alps? Things just sort of happen in Women in Love. There is practically no structure or cohesive story to speak of. And considering that the film's final scenes seem to imply that they are the denouement of some great emotional construction, this indicates shoddy craftsmanship and filmmaking.

3/10