Curse of the Swamp Creature: Larry Buchanan

Larry Buchanan's Curse of the Swamp Creature is one of the most weepingly hilarious, unapologetically atrocious movies I've ever seen. Not a thing about the movie works: there is atrocious day-for-night shooting; laughable costumes that would be rejected from Party City; horribly racist “voodoo natives” whom I think were literally picked up off the streets of a nearby city (how many witchcraft shamans wear T-shirts and blue jeans?); ADR the likes of which makes one yearn for the sophisticated touch of Vic Savage's The Creeping Terror (1964); performances so wooden you could use them to build a log cabin (Jeff Alexander's turn as Dr. Simond Trent deserves to go down in history as one of the great bad movie performances); a nonsensical, meandering story; and stock footage of alligators feeding on Dr. Trent's victims that are integrated into the film with all the skill and nuance of a palsied lumberjack (I love how in scenes where the bodies are first thrown into the reptile-infested water you can see that it is so obviously a swimming pool).

1/10

The Double Life of Véronique: Krzysztof Kieślowski

[Revisit Review]

At the risk of repeating sentiments expressed in past reviews, the films of Krzysztof Kieślowski leave me with a transcendent sense of awe that makes me feel at once small and vastly significant within the universe. I still believe that his masterpiece is Three Colors: Blue (1993). But if I had to pick a runner-up it would be The Double Life of Véronique. Unlike with Three Colors: Blue where I identified with the imagery and the story, the story in this film leaves me feeling a tad cold. But the heart-achingly, heart-breakingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful camerawork and cinematography more than make up for any narrative shortfalls. The sequences where Weronika performs an impromptu sing-along with a men's choir and where Alexandre Fabbri puts on a puppet show are two which stand out to me as being among the greatest in all recent European cinema. They infected my brain years ago when I first watched the movie and experiencing them again today was nothing short of glorious.

9/10

'Neath the Arizona Skies: Harry L. Fraser

I honestly can’t remember the last time I had so much trouble following such a bad movie. I can’t believe that a film with barely an hour-long run-time had such a complicated, confusing, and cluttered plot. Harry L. Fraser's 'Neath the Arizona Skies was somehow over-plotted for a Poverty Row Western. I don't know if I should be impressed by their ambition or ashamed that they failed so spectacularly. It doesn't help that the film features one of the most annoying child characters that I've ever encountered: a young Indian girl that has the unusual talent of doing or saying the worst possible thing at the worst possible time. The most egregious example? Walking out of a closet and asking John Wayne if she can stop hiding yet while he was still talking with half a dozen kidnappers who wanted her blood. I suppose it is interesting that this time around Wayne has to save an Indian girl from a bunch of murderous white kidnappers. It's like bizarro-The Searchers (1956).

3/10

Project Moon Base: Richard Talmadge

For all of its faults, I can't hate Richard Talmadge's Project Moon Base. The film has ambition, dammit! Maybe it had a lot to do with the input of Robert A. Heinlein, but the film was a breath of fresh air from the morass of 50s low-budget sci-fi films. There are scenes aboard an orbiting space-station where crew-members walk and sit on the walls, floor, and ceiling (sometimes in the same shot) that are absolutely brilliant for their time. Including so many prominent women of power in a 50s B-movie couldn't have been an easy task, but I applaud the film for following through with it. But for all of its effort, it is still bogged down by the problems and prejudices that plagued so many of its contemporaries: cheap model effects; lengthy scenes of static exposition; and the main female protagonist is essentially shooed to a corner in the last act. But again, the film gets major points for trying. Side note: it's nice to see that in the future we've invented bras that keep breasts sharp and pointy as rockets even while they undergo multiple G's during spaceflight take-offs.

5/10

The Mad Monster: Sam Newfield

How? How could a movie about a mad scientist using a werewolf to kill his enemies be so BORING? Sam Newfield's The Mad Monster is a disappointing slog not just because of the vapid execution of its plot, but because the film clearly had some talented people working on it. The sets are pleasantly creepy and atmospheric (it's just too bad that there were maybe only two of them). The cinematography was also surprisingly decent by Poverty Row standards. One early sequence where the mad scientist has an argument with the ghostly specters of four of his contemporaries was rather impressive considering the technological limitations of the time. Tragically, the rest of the film can't compete. The pacing is all over the place, the characters are woefully stock, and all of the performances are nauseatingly wooden.

3/10

Pigs and Battleships: Shohei Imamura

[Revisit Review]

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/the-film-canon-pigs-and-battleships-1961/46767.

9/10

She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum: Keisuke Kinoshita

Keisuke Kinoshita's She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum is a pastoral film in both tone and technique. There are long sequences of people slowly walking through pretty, outdoor backgrounds while quiet, introspective music noodles on and on. But it falls into a common trap of many pastoral films: one begins to wonder if these sequences were included not because the artist meant for them to mean something, but because they needed to pad the film out. Watching it, I didn't feel myself awakened to some enigmatic, esoteric truth the way the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr do. I was instead bored by the outdoor sequences and frustrated by the overly melodramatic plot. Can anyone tell me why the villagers and townsfolk were so needlessly cruel to the teenage couple? I know they were cousins, but I was under the impression that cousins shacking up and getting married wasn't much of a big deal in Japan. So why was it here? The oval-shaped masks over the lengthy flashback sequences lost their meaning and beauty after the first hour of their use. It just felt unnecessary, much like the rest of this film.

6/10

Day of Wrath: Carl Theodor Dreyer

[Revisit Review]

If I remember correctly, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath may have been the first art house film I ever saw. Watching it on a programming block on a classic movie channel that featured films from the Criterion Collection, I thought that it was directed by that dour Swede Ingmar Bergman that I had heard so much about. At the time, I had no idea who Dreyer was. And I certainly didn't know that the film would stay in my mind for years afterwards. I have literally seen thousands of films and only a few have truly stayed with me over the years. Day of Wrath is one of them. Why is that? Because it may have been my first art house film? Possibly. But rewatching it I was captivated by the central conflict in the first act vis-à-vis Herlof's Marte and the religious authorities. It’s about people trapped in an idealogical quandary: the Church literally can’t understand why the witch doesn’t want to save her soul; the Witch literally can’t understand why the Church doesn’t realize that she doesn’t care and that she just doesn’t want to die. Years after seeing it for the first time, Dreyer is no longer a stranger to me. Now I can position the film clearly within the body of Dreyer's other works. And I've noticed something...curious: the film is practically a companion piece to The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Both are about women who are destroyed by hyper-conservative, theocratic societies for supposedly channeling supernatural power. And furthermore, Day of Wrath and The Passion of Joan of Arc might represent the second and third entries in an unofficial trilogy that began with The Parson's Widow (1920) that examine the role of supposedly magic women in feudal European society. I'll have to look into this further...

9/10

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla: Jun Fukuda

While occasionally visually inventive, Jun Fukuda's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla is a disappointing retread of past Godzilla movies. The main villain is a palette-swapped version of Godzilla and the supporting hero kaiju was clearly originally supposed to be Mothra (it lives on an island and can only be summoned by the singing of a female priest). There are too many human supporting characters, King Caesar's design looked (unintentionally) shabby, and Godzilla turning himself into a magnet is one of the most laughable super-powered ass-pulls since Superman used a kiss to wipe Lois Lane's memory. The fight scenes are the film's strongest point. Watching Mechagodzilla utilize weaponry in two different directions simultaneously while fighting Godzilla and King Caesar was perhaps the most entertaining part of the film. But the story just wasn't up to par. This movie felt like a holding pattern. And by the way...did the Simians, another extraterrestrial race hell-bent on conquering earth who disguise themselves as humans but are actually animals (Space Hunter Nebula M Aliens, anyone??), know about the Okinawan prophecies or did the prophecies predict the Simian invasion? That confused me to no end.

6/10

Godzilla vs. Megalon: Jun Fukuda

[Revisit Review]

This movie didn't hurt half as much as I thought it would. I had already seen Jun Fukuda's Godzilla vs. Megalon twice before, but both times were the hackneyed English-language versions shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000. So I tracked down a copy of the film's original Japanese release so I could give it a fair review. Godzilla vs. Megalon still isn't very good: Godzilla is essentially a supporting character to some elementary school child's OC; the undersea aliens look like bargain-bin Hercules impersonators; and everything feels phoned in and rushed except for the inevitable Jet Jaguar/Godzilla vs. Megalon/Gigan fight and the opening scene where the undersea aliens drain a lake. I hated watching Godzilla, the King of the Monsters, job for Jet Jaguar and act like some Super Sentai instead of a kaiju.

3/10

Godzilla vs. Gigan: Jun Fukuda

Jun Fukuda's Godzilla vs. Gigan is everything that I wanted in a kaiju movie. There's a unity of narrative and tone that's so rare in the Godzilla franchise sequels: there are none of the bizarre plot cul-de-sacs or divergences that so plague kaiju films; there is no abrupt humor elbowed into the scary parts; and there is a surprisingly decent balance between the screen-time given to the human characters and the kaiju. In fact, and I can't believe I'm actually going to say this, but I really dug the human characters. The protagonist is a bit grating at times, but he's generally affable. And I loved the hippie dude and the kung fu writer’s agent. The kaiju look fantastic, too. Gigan has one of my favorite kaiju designs ever put to film. The enemy kaiju are legitimately terrifying; their initial rampage of Tokyo and their industrial district brawl with Godzilla and Anguirus are, respectfully, one of the best destruction sequences of the Shōwa era and one of the best kaiju fights that I've ever seen. Some people may think that there was too much fighting. But in my opinion, as long as the fights are well-choreographed and gripping (which they are in this film), complaining about too much fighting in a kaiju film is like complaining about too much singing in a musical. The genre conventions of the kaiju film deserve to be treated with as much respect as any other established genre. And Godzilla vs. Gigan does the most amount of justice to them in any kaiju film that I have seen since the original Godzilla (1954). Side note: I'm not sure why, but having Godzilla and Anguirus communicate via speech bubbles didn't piss me off nearly as much as I thought it would. In fact, it didn't piss me off at all. And considering my hatred for almost everything deliberately kitsch and cheesy in the kaiju genre, that is quite exceptional.

9/10

Taken 3: Olivier Megaton

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/taken-3-review/46368.

5/10

Taken 2: Olivier Megaton

There are certain things that I'm willing to accept in the name of suspension of disbelief. Liam Neeson as a nigh unstoppable killing machine? Sure. His daughter, a young woman who hasn't even gotten her driver's license yet, managing to successfully pull off a high-speed car chase in the crowded streets of Istanbul? Okie-dokie. Neeson using the sound of grenade explosions to triangulate his location in a massive city? You got it. But the idea that his wife and daughter would travel to Istanbul and surprise Neeson with a vacation...after having the DAUGHTER BEING KIDNAPPED BY EVIL EUROPEANS IN THE LAST FILM...is just too much to take. And sane person would never return to Europe under any circumstances if they lived the events of the first film. That being said, I did enjoy the scenes where Neeson had to work together with his daughter to free himself and locate his missing wife. These two characters had a great dynamic and if the film had focused primarily on them, I would have liked the film immensely. But these good parts are vastly overshadowed by shoddily edited action scenes, generic action movie dialogue, and cliched story beats.

4/10

The Kid with a Bike: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Realism is one of the hardest things to get right in movies. It is even harder to do realism in a manner that isn’t pretentiously aware and full of itself as being realistic. The Dardenne Brothers are the masters of seemingly effortless realism. Their film The Kid with a Bike differs greatly from much of their other work: it utilizes music, a brighter color palette, and is influenced by fairy tales. And yet it is also a film of quiet restraint. And it's this quiet restraint that makes the film so powerful. Thomas Doret is excellent as Cyril, a 12-year-old boy who is abandoned by his father and only gradually comes to accept the fact that he has been abandoned. His character arc is absolutely fascinating and believable. By the time the film's remarkable conclusion is reached, we genuinely believe that Cyril has been changed for the better. I do wish, however, that the story's fairy tale elements had been emphasized a bit more.

7/10

All Monsters Attack: Ishirō Honda

Now that I think about it, Ishirō Honda's All Monsters Attack may have the greatest runtime-to-kaiju-footage ratio that I've ever seen in a Japanese Godzilla movie. And yet, it is easily the worst Godzilla film I have ever seen. So I don't want to hear any more belly-aching from people who claim that Gareth Edwards' Godzilla (2014) sucked because you didn't see much of the titular kaiju. Let it be forever known that kaiju screentime does not equal cinematic quality. I hated this movie. I hated how they made an annoying, bratty child the protagonist (what is this, a Gamera movie?). I hated how the use of stock footage was the norm and not the exception. I hated how they neutered Godzilla; how they made Minilla talk; how they officially converted kaiju into children's mascots; how they broke up the occasional interesting fight scene with scenes of the kid fighting some of the most laughably ineffectual yakuza members ever put on screen. I hated all of it. Well, that's not entirely true. I did enjoy watching Gabara Sith-Lightning Minilla. And Gabara had a pretty cool design (we need more hairy kaiju). But All Monsters Attack was miserable. I can't believe it was directed by the man who gave us Godzilla in the first place.

1/10

Destroy All Monsters: Ishirō Honda

Ishirō Honda's Destroy All Monsters was a dream come true: most of Toho's kaiju roster join together for what can only truly be described as an orgy of destruction. The film had a much bigger budget than the other Godzilla sequels of the time, and it shows. All of the special effects are outstanding: the costumes look great (even Minilla looks alright), the fight scenes are excellent (especially the King Ghidorah free-for-all), the models used for the various wrecked cities and science/military bases are well constructed (even if they all become strangely depopulated whenever the kaiju show up), and the spaceships and UFOs used by the ubiquitous human/alien bystanders all look fantastic. It was also interesting to see an instance where humans and kaiju legitimately had to work together to defeat a common threat...and succeeded. It's usually one or the other who ends up on top. The scenes focusing on the human characters drag on too long, much as they always do in kaiju films. But whenever the men in rubber suits show up it's pure cinematic magic.

8/10

Son of Godzilla: Jun Fukuda

Pardon me, but I have a quick question: if you are a group of scientists operating in a world where Godzilla and other gigantic monsters run amok, why would you conduct your highly radioactive experiments on an island that you know for a fact is populated by giant praying mantises? Such questions of basic logic have never been very high priorities in the Godzilla franchise. But this quandary from Jun Fukuda's Son of Godzilla bothered me more than usual. But regardless, Son of Godzilla ended up being much less painful than I originally thought it would be. Yes, Minilla was a terrible idea. Even worse was the transformation of a great iconic monster into the role of hapless babysitter-cum-parent. But with the exception of the Godzilla and Minilla suits, the special effects in this film were surprisingly good. Some of the process shots that juxtaposed the humans with the kaiju were actually pretty good. Though basic in concept and design, the Kamacuras and Kumonga costumes (puppets??) looked fantastic and genuinely frightening. The climactic battle where Godzilla, Minilla, and Kumonga fight in a snow-storm may easily be the best fight scene from this era of Godzilla movies; and certainly it is the most visually arresting one.

6/10

Sabotage: Alfred Hitchcock

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/the-film-canon-sabotage-1936/46022.

8/10

A Touch of Sin: Jia Zhangke

Jia Zhangke's A Touch of Sin is a tetraptych of frustration, anxiety, and ultimately, violence. Each of the four sections examines violence in modern day China from a different perspective: 1) Violence as protest/justice, 2) Violence as emotional catharsis, 3) Violence as self-defense, 4) Violence as escape. Each section is also dominated by their own symbols: 1) Fruit, 2) Meat/Animals for the Slaughter, 3) Snakes, 4) Buddha. The film was criticized for having a "weak" screenplay. But I disagree. The screenplay accomplished exactly what it set out to do: create a stifling atmosphere where the characters' actions can be seen not just as natural, but as inevitable conclusions given their environments and societal pressures. I'm willing to bet that the last section is the part where people began to grow tired of the screenplay. And to an extent, that is understandable. It is slower, more gradually paced, and less visceral than the other three segments. But the point of the fourth segment is that it is an inverted romance story where the two potential lovers are doomed by the forces of nascent Chinese capitalism. The young man is repulsed by the young woman when he learns that she became a prostitute so she could support her infant child. As he is shuffled from job to job, we understand the parallels between the two: they must surrender their lives and livelihoods to survive. He must sell his labor. She must sell her body. And though we only see the young man commit suicide, it isn't hard to imagine her following suit soon afterwards.

10/10

Oldboy: Park Chan-Wook

[Revisit Review]

This time around, I found Park Chan-Wook's storytelling to be a bit lacking in his 2003 film Oldboy. Don't get me wrong: it's a fantastic movie that seems to have been constructed around a menageries of emotional apexes. It's stylish, creative, and wholly original. The central concept alone of a man being imprisoned for 15 years for reasons he doesn't understand is one of the most ingenious in the last two decades of the cinema. So the film's narrative hiccups can be easily overlooked. Oldboy is just one more reminder that during the 2000s South Korean cinema reached new heights of quality that made Hollywood seem populated by rank amateurs.

9/10

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?: Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry's Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? is about as pure a personal project as I have ever seen: a hand-drawn animated documentary covering a series of philosophical interviews with Noam Chomsky made during breaks in the production schedules of his other films. Overall, it's a good primer on various philosophical topics and etymology. Such concepts as the Ship of Theseus paradox and the Great Leap Forward of human evolution are touched upon just long enough for the audience to "ooh" and "ahh." The last 20 minutes or so where Gondry goes into Chomsky’s life and his views on the Holocaust seem more like a formality than a natural extension of the previous interviews. Still, there is decent, if not particularly invigorating for those already familiar with the subjects they discourse on, food for thought here. The true appeal here is Gondry's idiosyncratic animation. And that is well worth the ticket price.

7/10

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance: Park Chan-wook

[Revisit Review]

Park Chan-wook knows how to play his spectators like puppets. He knows exactly how he wants his audience to feel in every single scene. And what's more, he knows how to achieve it. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance isn't just, in my opinion, Chan-wook's best film, but it's also the best Asian film of the 2000s. While there is an incredible amount of violence, I think most audiences will miss the fact that by and large most of it is depicted off-screen. Why? Because it feels so real that you don't notice the violence's visual obstruction. The film’s only failing is that it doesn’t achieve Park’s stated goal of proving that revenge is futile. Because here, revenge TOTALLY succeeds. So this is less of a cautionary tale than a very grandiose version of the Death Wish plot formula.

10/10

We Are the Best!: Lukas Moodysson

Lukas Moodysson's We Are the Best! might very well be the best punk movie made since Alex Cox's Repo Man (1984). It perfectly captures the essence of the punk movement: screwing the system, playing as loud as you want, and being yourself. The film follows three misfits as they form the "best punk band" ever. Though much screen time is divided between the original two founders of the band, most of the film is told through the eyes of Bobo. So the film is essentially a coming-of-age story with her involvement in the band a kind of metaphor for establishing her own identity as a teenager and a nascent young woman. However the film is somewhat waylaid in the second half by a love triangle between Bobo and the other founder of the band, her best friend Klara. I understand that the boyfriend subplot went along with the film’s theme of growing up, but it didn’t mesh very well with the overall storyline about becoming a band.

7/10

Big Eyes: Tim Burton

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/big-eyes-review/45775.

8/10

Into the Woods: Rob Marshall

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/into-the-woods-review/45746.

5/10

Tsotsi: Gavin Hood

[Revisit Review]

I had two revelations re-watching Gavin Hood's Tsotsi. First, I couldn't believe that I had never noticed before that literally the only white character in the entire film was the senior police detective. Second, it was that this was an unusually quiet film. Violence is quiet: a man gets stabbed in a subway in silence; a friend is assaulted in a club and the music and background noise drops out. For Tsotsi, violence is the only means of communication that he fully understands. He makes his neighbor feed the baby at gunpoint because he doesn't know that he could just ask her to. Presley Chweneyagae's performance is stunning in its quiet, restrained intensity. The last five minutes of the film alone should have netted him an Oscar.

9/10

Ida: Paweł Pawlikowski

So, I finally got around to seeing Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida (2013). What a monstrously disappointing film. It doesn't have a single original thought. Instead, it counterfeits themes that have been milked ad infinitum by other, better European filmmakers (and a few American ones, too): distrust towards the Church, a recognition of the horrors of Europe's past without outright condemning them (or offering ways they could be made up for), the importance of sexual discovery (oh wait, make that HETERONORMATIVE sexual discovery) as a rite of self passage as if asexuals and sex-repulsed people didn't exist, and a stoic resignation towards the future. It isn't brave enough to emulate Luis Buñuel's anti-clericalism, bold enough for Tarr's nihilism, or intelligent enough for Bergman's introspection. Worst of all, it makes no attempt to establish its own identity.

6/10

Satan Met a Lady: William Dieterle

Never let it be said that Hollywood never made crappy movies back in the 30s and 40s, even when they used big stars, big directors, and big talent. Have I said that before in another review? I don't care. William Dieterle's Satan Met a Lady is such a powerful example that I will risk repeating myself. So what's wrong with the film? It tries to turn Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon into a screwball comedy. And, oh, how they fail. Warren William does his damndest to be charming as not-Sam-Spade and make the material work as a comedy, but he was doomed to fail. William treats almost every other line in the film like a punch-line, even when there's no joke (thankfully Dieterle had the good sense to treat the scene where not-Sam-Spade finds his partner’s body with a bit of emotional weight and seriousness). Not that anybody else in the film does much better...everybody DEVOURS scenery like they're trying to invent Hollywood campiness almost two decades before John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953). This film is forced smiles and pained laughter for 74 minutes.

4/10

The Maltese Falcon: Roy Del Ruth

It's bizarre to see the pre-John Huston adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. I've now seen both prior adaptations of the film and I have to say that Roy Del Ruth's The Maltese Falcon is easily the better of the two. The film does a fine job giving the cliffnotes version of the book's plot and characterizations, even matching some of Hammett's original dialogue line for line. Though it's about 20 minutes shorter than Huston's version, nothing really feels excluded or rushed. But what the film gains in brevity it loses in atmosphere and tone. Ricardo Cortez is less Sam Spade than Nick Charles; he acts with a smug insouciance as if life is just one big game and only he has the full set of instructions. It's not a bad adaptation, just a mediocre one lacking the heart and soul of Hammett's novel.

6/10

Three Colors: Red: Krzysztof Kieślowski

[Revisit Review]

Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: Red carves itself out a comfortable middle ground between the overwhelming atmospherics of Three Colors: Blue (1993) and the fastidious plotting of Three Colors: White (1994). The latter film feels more like a lost installment of Kieślowski's The Decalogue than an actual film made to be experienced in theaters. The story is sweet and effective, the cinematography stunning, and there are images in this film that feel included solely because they are beautiful or striking in and of themselves. And whatta ending!

Side note: how much do you want to bet that Stephen Killian was going to be a character in a film that Kieślowski never got around to making before he died?

8/10

Evil Angels: Fred Schepisi

The most fascinating character in Fred Schepisi's Evil Angels is Australia itself: the people who gossiped until a personal family tragedy was transformed into a national travesty. The Azaria Chamberlain murder case became a media circus and the film seems to argue that Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton's wrongful conviction was a kind of manifestation of the will of the Australian people who mistrusted her, her family, and her religion. Brief vignettes of Australians from all walks of life discussing the case (and usually adamant in their condemnation of Lindy) are interspersed throughout the film. And then there is, of course, Meryl Streep's rightfully legendary performance as Lindy. Streep's performance was one of purposeful emotional restraint in the face of incredible pressure and familial tragedy. The role would have crushed a lesser actress. And while everyone remembers Streep's performance, I believe it is important not to overlook Sam Neill’s turn as her husband Michael Chamberlain. It is my humble opinion that he more than matched Streep's performance.

8/10

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: Peter Jackson

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-review/45340.

7/10

Holiday: Lee Man-hee

It isn’t a requisite to like a protagonist for a film to be great. They can be a bastard. But as long as they're an interesting bastard, we can go along with them. Such is the case with Heo Wuk, the protagonist of Lee Man-hee's Holiday. He’s not a good person. He steals from his friends to finance his girlfriend's abortion and then cheats on her while she is having the operation. But we can get a grasp on his volatile emotions. They don’t excuse his terrible actions, but they do explain them. This film was original made in 1968 but was only released in 2005 because of censorship. It was immediately heralded as a masterpiece. But I disagree. The film is too languid, too morose to be more properly devastating. Many of the shots are curiously over-exposed and washed out. A lot of shots are curiously over-exposed. But I wonder if that was just due to the quality of the copy of the print that I watched (which is somewhat unlikely considering the fact that I watched it on the official youtube channel of the Korean Film Archive). It’s so damn tempting to declare censored, lost, or restored films misplaced classics. But we must guard ourselves against labeling them as such when they might not actually deserve it. And, unfortunately, I think this is one such case.

6/10

The Ten Commandments: Cecil B. DeMille

Do not let the name fool you. Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923) is actually two films, not one. The first is a brilliant tour de force of early Hollywood epic film-making that tells the story of Moses and the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt. It's big, lavish, and jaw-dropping in scale. Alas, it only lasts for the first 40 minutes or so. If the film had ended there and then, it would have easily been one of the best silent films of DeMille's career. In fact, I would confidently say that these 40 minutes are better than his later 1956 remake of the film. But it doesn't stop there. The plot then jumps forward several thousand years to a preachy, stiltedly melodramatic story about two brothers, one who follows the Ten Commandments and another who doesn't (and is subsequently killed). I can't begin to explain how jarring this shift is. It's almost like if somebody took the Normandy landing sequences from Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) and tacked them onto the front end of William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). It positively kills the entire film despite the fact that the second part has its merits, such as its moral that living the love of God is more important than blind, Puritanical obedience to His laws.

6/10

Identification Marks: None: Jerzy Skolimowski

In a way, Jerzy Skolimowski's Identification Marks: None feels like a spiritual companion piece to Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962). Both films follow a disillusioned young person as they kill time and fruitlessly busy themselves while awaiting a deadline. Cléo waited for a cancer diagnosis. The protagonist of Skolimowski's film waits for the time he is to report to the military to officially answer his draft summons. The protagonist is identified (no pun on the title intended) as an observer early on as we are treated to scenes where he exists on the periphery of events; he walks past a street fight, he drifts through a club where a group of men play darts and dance, and the audience experiences a curious first-person sequence where he is examined by a draft board. Identification Marks: None has a heightened awareness of the mundane and minutia and understands how such things can consume and preoccupy people undergoing stressful waiting periods. At times it almost develops a stream-of-consciousness approach to the narrative. This was an ambitious feature length film debut for a young director, and it shows.

8/10

Through a Glass Darkly: Ingmar Bergman

[Revisit Review]

I'm honestly considering starting an official exploration of what I like to call "Family Horror." And by that, I don't mean horror films geared towards families. I mean films where horrific things seem to spring from the anxieties and fears of a family unit. These manifestations can be many things: ghosts (The Shining [1980]), monsters (The Babadook [2014]), and in the case of Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly (1961), mental illness. I don't think Bergman set out to make a horror film here, but many passages are nevertheless downright terrifying. Karin's first visit to the attic where she hears voices through a crack in the wallpaper is particularly unnerving. I was also fascinated by how, in its own weird way, the film has a kind of happy ending with the father reconciling with the son. Well, it's as happy an ending inasmuch as any Bergman film that wasn't an explicit comedy could end happily.

9/10

Exodus: Gods and Kings: Ridley Scott

To read this review, go to: http://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/exodus-gods-and-kings-review/45198.

5/10

Three Colors: White: Krzysztof Kieślowski

[Revisit Review]

Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: White is a fine film, but I don't think it holds up alongside Three Colors: Blue. Watching the latter, I felt like I was having a transcendental experience whereby I was being revealed some kind of great truth. Three Colors: White feels more pedestrian in comparison. I thought long and hard about why this was, and I think I figured it out: Blue was more focused on character while White was more focused on Plot with a capital "p." Blue had more freedom to explore emotions, build atmosphere, and orient the audience into a different state of mind. White is too busy getting from plot point 'a' to plot point 'b' for it to have time for many of these essential diversions.

7/10

Police Story: Jackie Chan

After years of only hearing Jackie Chan speak English, it was really interesting to hear his original Cantonese performance in Police Story (1985). Something that frequently gets lost in Chan’s dubbed performances is how damn intimidating he can be when speaking Cantonese. Thinking back, I'm not sure if I have ever actually heard Jackie Chan sound angry or intimidating in an English performance. For me, this is one of the main reasons why I think subtitles are superior to dubs: these subtleties in performances are frequently lost in voice-overs. I don't have anything against people who prefer dubs, but my personal preference will always be for subtitles. Anyhow, I actually thought a long time about what score to give this film. I think the humor was a bit much for me. There are many prolonged slapstick sequences. And while some of them may work (particularly one where Chan does an impromptu Michael Jackson impression after accidentally stepping in animal feces), most them go on far too long for my taste. But then I read somewhere that Chan himself didn't "get" the humor in the Rush Hour movies. And then I had an epiphany: because humor is relative, it isn't right to give a foreign film a lower score just because I don't personally appreciate all of the humor. Police Story is a much beloved film in China for its ability to blend Chan's stunt-work (which, coincidentally, is easily some of the best of his career) with comedy. So maybe I might not think that the comedy always works. I might think that it drags on too much. But that’s just me not “getting” it.

9/10

Young Törless: Volker Schlöndorff

[Revisit Review]

Volker Schlöndorff's Young Törless takes place in a world where cruelty has become an academic exercise. It's shocking how quickly the students (and Törless) dehumanize Basini and decide that he deserves whatever is coming to him. The scene where Törless leaves Basini as he is being tortured and cries out for him is key to understanding the film: Törless is a sociopathic watcher, permanently disengaged from the proceedings. If he shows emotions at an injustice, it isn’t because he is against said injustice, but because he can’t make sense out of the nature of the behavior. It's a curiously oblique yet effective examination of the pre-World War Two German mindset.

9/10

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin: Liu Chia-Liang

[Revisit Review]

I recently joked on twitter that Liu Chia-Liang's The 36th Chamber of Shaolin was the Citizen Kane of kung fu movies. And in many ways, it is. Not only was it massively influential (and mercilessly imitated), it flowed with the same energetic vibrancy and displayed the same surety of storytelling that defined other watershed genre films. Indeed, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is to the kung fu film what Seven Samurai (1954) was to the samurai film and Star Wars (1977) was to the modern sci-fi film. In addition to my aforementioned tweet, upon re-watching The 36th Chamber of Shaolin I wrote a short essay on how the film can be seen as a metaphor for Buddhism with regards to the mythical origins of the Lotus Sūtra. It can be read here: http://filmsfoodandfandom.tumblr.com/post/104824709421/one-of-the-most-interesting-things-to-me-about-the.

10/10

Trop tôt/Trop tard: Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub

Full disclosure: the subtitles on my copy didn’t begin until the six minute mark. So I missed the narration from the much celebrated opening scene. 

Films should be judged primarily on how they achieve their stated goals whether they be to entertain, provoke, inspire, or teach. This is difficult to surmise with experimental films like Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's Trop tôt/Trop tard. The long shots seem to suggest that the French countryside exists in a time outside of time, in a sense explaining why they were “too early, too late” in their revolutions. The opening shot in particular seems to speak to the futile nature of these revolutions in that they keep going around and around in circles without getting anywhere. The film as a whole succeeds in re-setting the mind to a slower, more contemplative pace. But I think it loses its focus and becomes more of an essay on seeing than a Marxist tract. Jonathan Rosenbaum describes it as a “landscape film.” So that confuses the purpose of the narration even further. Is it to provide context? A bittersweet commentary? I don’t think this is a bad movie, just a confused, misdirected one.

6/10

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise: Hiroyuki Yamaga

Toshio Okada, the former president of Gainax, expressed dissatisfaction with the screenplay for Hiroyuki Yamaga's Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise. And I would have to agree; the screenplay is all over the place. There aren’t really rising or falling actions. Things just happen. This, of course, would be fine if the film wasn't an introspective character study. But the film is a coming of age story and there are multiple montages of him training and preparing for his space flight. So the audience's expectations for a more straight-forward narrative are foiled by plot threads that are introduced and just fade away (like the terrorist bombings) and characters who die off-screen. This is a real shame because Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise is admirably ambitious. It addresses an idea that I can’t say I’ve ever really seen before in a film, animated or otherwise: the battle between scientific pragmatism and scientific idealism. The animation is nothing short of stunning; some of the backgrounds are so realistic that I literally thought they were real-life sets with animated cels projected on top of them. But before this review can end, I must address the elephant in the room: the attempted rape scene. To be fair, it is actually telegraphed. But it still doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of the character and its resolution promotes this weird narrative about how women are saintly if they forgive their attackers. After that scene, the protagonist is practically unredeemable, at least in the eyes of the audience.

6/10

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: Terry Jones

[Revisit Review]

When it's at its best, Terry Jones' Monty Python's The Meaning of Life contains some of the crème de la crème of what is arguably the most influential and innovative comedic troupe of modern history. The Crimson Permanent Assurance, "Every Sperm is Sacred," Mr. Creosote, and Graham Chapman's execution via a pack of naked women are damn near comedic perfection. But, alas, there are parts of the film that simply aren't as good. I wouldn't go so far as to say that any of the segments failed, but some of them definitely overstayed their welcome, such as the tiger costume sketch, Conversational Philosophy, and the surrealist "Find the Fish."

8/10

Tusk: Kevin Smith

[Spoilers Ahead]

The scene where Michael Parks and Justin Long battle to the death in life-like walrus suits made of what I assume to be human skin should have been the comedic climax of Kevin Smith's Tusk. Most of the film was an audacious blend of horror and humor, charting a hapless podcaster who gets abducted by an insane Canadian and transformed via plastic surgery into a human walrus. I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever seen a film take a stupid concept so damned seriously. It’s not just that they’re playing this concept straight; it’s treated like a bona fide horror film with many moments of genuine terror (most notably the scene where Parks reveals for the first time that he doesn't need a wheelchair). One scene with Génesis Rodríguez where she confesses to having an affair with Long's best friend via one long close-up plays out like it was ripped straight from a New French Extremity film. But the film in large part ruins itself with the Johnny Depp character, an eccentric ex-cop from Quebec who has spent years hunting Parks. His over-the-top performance ruins the film's joke by revealing that the film itself is aware of it. I wish Smith had gone the Team America: World Police (2004) route and played the entire film straight in spite of its absurd concept. If he had done that, Tusk would probably have been an instant cult classic. I still enjoyed it, though. I just wish that I could have enjoyed it more, y'know?

6/10

A Man's Neck: Julien Duvivier

There are great intentions at work in Julien Duvivier's A Man's Neck. A moody detective thriller, it focuses on beloved French detective Inspector Maigret's quest to locate and capture a nihilistic killer who murdered a rich woman and framed a small-time crook for it. There's one sequence that was particularly excellent: when Maigret and his colleagues force the fall-guy to revisit the crime scene and re-enact the murder himself. But the film lacks a coherency of creative vision. While the first third is a solid detective story, the film falls victim to parades of static scenes where small to large groups of people stand around in small rooms and talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about the crime, the killer, his motives, etc, etc, etc. Partway through the film it shifts to the killer's perspective. A Czech medical student named Radek (played by the excellent Valéry Inkijinoff), he is a standard combination of misanthropic, Raskolnikov-esque qualities. He doesn't kill because he wants money or needs to fulfill some fetishistic urge; he kills because he hates people and society and wants to make them suffer. One potentially interesting sequence takes place near the end of the film where Radek takes a group of people he is extorting on a weird night out on the town before demanding that one of them has sex with him. I understand that Duvivier was using these scenes to demonstrate the steady crumbling of Radek's self-constructed sense of insouciance towards his actions. But they just come out feeling odd and misguided.

5/10

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

[Revisit Review]

Not having a budget was the best thing that could have happened to Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones' Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I simply couldn't imagine it without the coconut shells or the sudden ending. The jokes in the film aren't just phenomenal and endlessly quotable, they contain some of the best comedic timing ever captured on film. I know some of my film school brethren prefer Terry Jones' Monty Python's The Life of Brian as the "best" Monty Python movie. But for me, picking anything other than The Holy Grail is unthinkable.

10/10

Three Colors: Blue: Krzysztof Kieślowski

[Revisit Review]

Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors: Blue is still one of the most powerful and devastating depictions of grief, loss, and the road to recovery that I have ever seen. But even if I muted the film and completely ignored the story, the craftsmanship would amaze me every time I watched it. The cinematography? Breath-taking. The acting? Heart-breaking. I love how during moments of extreme emotion, the screen cuts to black for a few seconds as an orchestra sting plays. It’s like the audience is taking a moment alongside Julie to gather their thoughts and emotions. And, of course, there are the colors.

9/10

That Night's Wife: Yasujirō Ozu

It’s almost weird to see a Yasujirō Ozu film with such a mobile camera. That Night's Wife has dolly shots (most of which move primarily along a single axis, usually from left to right or from right to left) and zooms. I even spied one interesting transition where a shot that zoomed in on a closed door quick-faded to a shot of a person knocking on it from the other side while zooming out. That’s an almost Dada flourish by Ozu’s standards. I was also pleasantly surprised to find his trademark pillow shots on display. Anyhow, the first half is essentially a crime thriller about a criminal on the run from the police after robbing an office for money to pay for his deathly ill daughter's medical treatment. The second half is a quiet domestic drama where a snooping undercover cop is held hostage by the criminal's wife for the night so that she and her husband can stand vigil over their daughter for the night since the doctor said that if she survives until the morning she will make a complete recovery. Watching the film, I was fascinated by how Ozu's visual language and the physical performances of the actors managed to tell the story without dialogue. Now I'm developing a weird suspicion that the advent of sound had an adverse effect on his work since it forced his films to slow down enough to accommodate dialogue, thereby diluting his ability to be a purely visual storyteller. I'll have to investigate further...

7/10

Panique: Julien Duvivier

I don't know if it will be possible for me to discuss Julien Duvivier's Panique without comparing it to Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire (1989), its remake. It has been over a year since I saw Monsieur Hire, but I seem to remember it being very different from Panique. I never got the feeling that Leconte's Hire was a bad or strange person; he was just an isolated voyeur. But there is definitely something...strange...about Duvivier's Hire. He is also more explicitly coded as an "other" within the community because of his Jewish background. I seem to remember Leconte's Hire being more passive, but Duvivier's Hire seems to get a weird pleasure from toying with the woman's boyfriend and the police. Also, the impact of Duvivier's Hire's betrayal has less of an impact because we watch the villains calculate and execute the double-cross whereas it practically came out of nowhere in Monsieur Hire. That's not to say that the ending of Panique isn't powerful. The last third of the film seems to evoke Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), another film where an innocent man is hounded and destroyed by a community with a lynch-mob mentality. The concluding scenes of Panique are downright electric, aided in no small part by Nicolas Hayer’s brilliant cinematography which easily matches the crème de la crème of Hollywood. His interiors and dialogue scenes are moody and dark and the crowd scenes vibrate with captivating energy. One of these days I'll have to re-watch this film back-to-back with Monsieur Hire so that I can confirm (or disprove) my observations about how they are different.

8/10
--------------------
I later revisited this film during my coverage of the 2016 New York Film Festival. Here's the link to my review. I still award this film an 8/10 rating.

http://theretroset.com/2016-new-york-film-festival/