Children of a Lesser God: Randa Haines

No.  Just, no.  I don't believe this film for a second.  On the surface, Children of a Lesser God seems like a probable story: James Leeds is a new teacher at a school for the deaf in New England who falls in love with Sarah Norman, an angry young deaf woman who is completely isolated from the world.  By reaching out to her, he penetrates her self-imposed world of silence and teaches her how to love.  But, I repeat: I'm not buying it.  The love between James and Sarah is completely disingenuous.  After only seeing her for a few minutes, James is positive that Sarah is one of the smartest, most beautiful women he's ever met.  How does he know this?  He hasn't even spoken to her.  Why is he interested in her?  The film spends a great deal of time with developing their relationship, but completely forgets that for there to be a reaction there must be a catalyst.  One minute, they hate each other.  The other, they're in love.  The drama in this movie totally contrived and manufactured.  It turns out that James is also a ground-breaking teacher who can get through to rebellious deaf teens with the power of song and dance.  William Hurt, who plays James, cannot pull off the character.  Hurt, who on a good day sounds like he's on a Vicodin drip, is not energetic, not enthusiastic enough to sell his role as a cool, hip, rebellious teacher who sticks it to the man.  It's a real shame, because there's a good movie in here somewhere.  But this isn't it.

5/10

Cimarron: Anthony Mann

It always bothered me that the original Cimarron by Wesley Ruggles is virtually unknown to most moviegoers.  After all, it was the third film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture and the first of only three Westerns to do so.  So I approached Anthony Mann's 1960 remake very cautiously, afraid that it would spoil the legacy of a film that I treasure.  Much to my surprise, not only did Mann's film do justice to the original, it may very well have surpassed it.  The film is quite simply epic in both scale and emotion.  At its center is Yancy and Sabra Cravat, a couple who participate in the 1893 Oklahoma Land Rush.  As they set up their homestead, it becomes more and more apparent that Yancy is not meant for the quiet life.  He is the embodiment of American wanderlust, of the national spirit of adventure and exploration.  Unfortunately, that spirit is so powerful that it leads to him abandoning his family several times to explore the rest of the continent and engage in every major event in American history for decades.  It tears Sabra apart: she loves him, but she can't make herself forgive him for his trespasses.  In a sense, the film is a metaphor for America's westward expansion: it was brash, bold, daring, foolish, and uncaring about who it hurt.  Of great note is the film's treatment of minorities, particularly of Native Americans.  The original film, while progressive for its day in many ways, still contains the trademark Hollywood racism of the late 20s, early 30s.  But despite its more sensitive treatment, the film is still merciless in its depiction of how American settlers deceived and cheated the Native Americans.  But in hindsight, the film's racial politics are an afterthought.  What's truly important is that Cimarron is a fantastic film of love, loss, discovery, and courage.

9/10

Port of Shadows: Marcel Carné

It was 1938.  World War Two was getting ready to explode all over Europe.  In time, Jean Gabin would be transformed by the conflict.  His face would harden, his demeanor would sadden, and he would gain an authoritative command over his scenes.  But here in Port of Shadows, we see a Gabin willing to dream, to hope.  Gabin plays Jean, an army deserter who stumbles into a seaside town, weary of life.  There, he discovers like minded people with their own dark pasts and gloomy dispositions.  He finds some small measure of love and happiness in a woman who inhabits that shadowy town.  But as with many films of the poetic realism genre, fate has other plans for him.  The film is magnificently shot and tragic.  As with many French films of the era, it relies heavily on dialogue, not action, to move the plot along.  The film savors its dialogue and takes great pleasure in hearing its characters talk.  It is leisurely paced to a point where many modern viewers may grow impatient with it.  But it deserves watching as much as any other great film from its era.  Just don't expect the fog to lift anytime soon...

7/10

Tepepa: Giulio Petroni

One of the most widely recycled stories for spaghetti Westerns was that of the revolutionary fighting a corrupt government or general.  Many times, such as in Sergio Leone's phenomenal A Fistful of Dynamite, the revolutionary would be accompanied by a European who helps him organize his forces and take power.  Then, once he gains that power, he betrays the European and becomes just as corrupt as the people he just replaced.  Tepepa is one of those films.  It follows an English doctor who travels to Mexico to kill a famed revolutionary named Tepepa.  I paid close attention to this film, yet for the life of me I have no idea why he wants Tepepa dead.  Anyway...after witnessing how Tepepa helps the people of Mexico and fights the evil local generals (one of whom is played by a bloated Orson Welles) he joins his side.  Then, once they win, he discovers that Tepepa is a cruel womanizer and opportunist.  Now, the doctor must decide whether to stay with Tepepa after all or complete his original mission.  My main problem with this film is that it's too long.  Well over two hours, it doesn't have the stylistic flair or operatic sweep of Leone's spaghetti Westerns.  It simply isn't a strong enough film to carry its own weight.  But still, as a genre picture, it accomplishes it modus operandi: lots of action, lots of violence, lots of blood.

6/10

Jesse James: Henry King

Jesse James came from the time in American history where you could glorify men like Jesse James without a hint of irony.  He was a folk hero, plain and simple.  Oh...he was a villain...but he only attacked people who deserved it, like the greedy railroad.  A character in the film even states that he was a criminal, but they couldn't help but love him.  He wasn't a psychotic killer, but an American Robin Hood who fought for the people.  This solid early Western by Henry King purports to tell the story of Jesse James' life, his entry into the world of crime, his life as an outlaw, and his death at the hands of a traitor.  Of course, the film treats fact and history more as a blueprint than a story guide.  Sure, the acting can get hammy and downright laughable at times...but that's part of its charm.  It has such a wide-eyed earnestness and innocence that is downright intoxicating.  Other, better films would be made based on the story of Jesse James.  But that's alright.  This Jesse James feels right at home with a bag of popcorn and a soft, preferably reclining, chair.

7/10

The Ballad of Narayama: Keisuke Kinoshita

It's an old story that has become infamous in Japanese culture: in times of famine or great need, the elderly would be deposited on the top of mountains and left to die. This practice, know as ubasute, was carried out when people reached a certain age.  In The Ballad of Narayama, that age is 70 years old.  Old Orin is 69, and she witnesses the chaos that consumes her village due to famine and hunger.   She treats the practice as her solemn duty, as an inevitable part of her village's circle of life.  Director Keisuke Kinoshita tries to paint Orin as a selfless martyr.  However, he never focuses on Orin long enough for us to truly become attached to her.  Many scenes have to do with her son's new marriage after the death of his first wife.  In one prolonged sequence, a family is punished for trying to steal food by the entire village.  These scenes add atmosphere, but they detract from the human drama that Kinoshita was so desperately trying to invoke.  Also, the film's cinematography is often too dark or muddied to make out what is going on.  There's a difference between chiaroscuro lighting and turning off all of your set's lights.  The film would later be remade in 1983 by Shohei Imamura.  The remade version would go on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.  This version, however, would never have won that award.  It simply isn't good enough.

6/10

Dead Man: Jim Jarmusch

Somewhere, in another universe cloaked by cigarette smoke and broken dreams of Bohemian Americana lies the mindscape of director Jim Jarmusch.  Where most directors seek to study the world and portray it accurately onscreen, Jarmusch uses his camera as a weapon of polarization.  His is a world of 16mm film stock and cheap lenses.  His films are like portals into a dimension almost like our own, but somehow slightly out of balance.  In Dead Man, Jarmusch resurrects the Spirit of the Old West with an infusion of poetry, post-Modernism, and peyote.  Johnny Depp plays William Blake, an accountant from Ohio who moves out West to take a job that he discovers has already been filled.  A bottle of whiskey leads to retired prostitute and a confrontation with her regular beau.  Before Blake can fully take stock of the situation, he is trapped in a room with two dead bodies.  He goes on the run from the authorities who blame him for their murders.  He is rescued by a Native American who believes him to be the reincarnation of the poet William Blake.  They flee from the police and bounty hunters only to embark on a killing spree, a drug-fueled vision quest, and a burial at sea.  I am reminded of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now in how it depicts a journey to an unknown destination as a metaphor for the destruction of society and civilization.  But this is a journey that Blake cannot return from, even if he stays on the boat.  In the end, he trudges towards his own doom, unaware that he's been a dead man since he first got off the train from Ohio.

Hey check it out! I wrote about this film professionally over here: theretroset.com/dead-man-tells-quite-a-tale/

9/10

A Room with a View: James Ivory

All Miss Lucy Honeychurch and her older, spinster cousin Charlotte Bartlett want on their trip to Italy is just a room with a decent view.  We know this because they literally spend the first fifteen minutes of the film talking about it.  And then, once the plot kicks off, this point is not brought up again until the very last shot.  Herein lies the problem that I have with many British period dramas, particularly those by Merchant/Ivory: so much of what is placed before the audience is either unimportant or irrelevant to the story that is occurring.  Let me give you another example.  During one scene about 2/3 of the way in, a group of young men take a bath in a secluded lake.  They dance and chase each other around stark naked for about five minutes before they remember that they are in a film that is supposed to be telling a story.  I wouldn't mind if this film was meant to be a snapshot of Edwardian culture.  But it isn't.  It's a coming of age tale about Lucy and how she meets true love in Italy, abandons it because polite society doesn't approve, gets engaged to a foppish and unromantic man, and then, at the very end breaks the engagement off and literally rushes into the arms of her beloved.  Maybe I'm being a bit too unfair.  The film is not without a measure of wit and humor.  The performances are stellar from every member of the cast, as is usual with such films where all the direction they need to is stand upright, look pretty in their suits and gowns, and speak clearly in droll English accents.  I just wish that they would get on with the movie and stop complaining about details like their damned view!

6/10

Dillinger is Dead: Marco Ferreri

I think that I have a pretty good idea of why this film is so beloved in art house circles.  Marco Ferreri's film Dillinger is Dead is an examination of that old favorite topic of European cinematic iconoclasts: upper class ennui.  Glauco is an industrial designer who lives an empty life.  So, one night, he goes home, cooks himself a fancy dinner, watches some home movies, and shoots his wife in the head with a pistol.  I have literally just described the entire plot of the film for you.  And, yes, I can imagine that Glauco's emptiness would be a selling point for the European film bourgeois.  After all, he DOES spend just as much time murdering his wife as he does painting the gun he uses red with white polka dots.  So, for those who want to try and discover some intense, ironic inner meaning to this film, they probably won't be disappointed.  The casual viewer will be repelled by this film, finding it obtuse, opaque, and deliberately boring.  I have a certain patience with this type of film that has been developed through countless hours of watching such films.  And yet, I have to say, at the end of the day, watching Dillinger is Dead isn't going to make my life any richer.

3/10 (Ranking for the average viewer)
8/10 (Ranking for the art house crowd)

Goodbye, Mr. Chips: Sam Wood

Goodbye, Mr. Chips is as softly sweet an ode to teachers and the untold numbers of students that they touch that has ever been made.  It is a story of personal discovery and self-sacrifice.  When Mr. Chipping first joined the staff at Brookfield Public School in 1870, he was ceremoniously tormented and disrespected by his students.  As the years went on, this reserved, yet entirely well-meaning young man realizes that the key to success with his students, and his personal life, is love and mutual respect.  He soon becomes a beloved icon of the school, teaching generations of students.  He finds love in a young woman whom he marries.  But she dies in childbirth along with their only child.  So he recommits his energies to his students, whom he regards as his own children.  As with many British films made in the World War Two era, there is the ever present gloom of war on the horizon.  Here, it is in the shape of the First World War which claims the lives of many of Mr. Chips' former pupils and friends.  The similarities between their wartime trials and the future ones to be faced by Great Britain are startling, particularly in a scene where the school is bombed.  But as with a surprising number of British wartime films, there is a melancholy cry for peace and mutual respect by including a German character who is not only sympathetic, but beloved by the audience.  Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a sweet little film, one as kind and earnest as the very man at its center.

7/10

In Which We Serve: Noël Coward, David Lean

David Lean was a film-maker who could work on two scales: an intense, personal one and a grand, sweeping, operatic one.  He would direct some of the most sincere and beloved dramas to ever grace England, such as Brief Encounter and Hobson's Choice.  But later in his career, he was instrumental in the development of the historical epic with The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago.  Here, in his first film, David Lean proves that he would soon become a mastery of both methods of film-making.  In Which We Serve is based off the true exploits of Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, captain of the destroyer HMS Kelly which was destroyed during the Battle of Crete.  The film starts with a montage of the ship being built by sturdy, patriotic English workers that would feel more at home in a Soviet film.  It goes on to feature intense battle footage as the ship wages war against German destroyers, supply ships, and bombers.  The ship is eventually hit so hard that it begins to sink.  The captain gives the order to abandon ship.  Once in the water, the film shifts its focus on a group of survivors clinging to a life-raft.  It flashes back to their lives back home and the forces and decisions that led to their entry into the Navy.  Each of these sections is heart-warming and emotional in a way that feels oddly non-contrived, especially considering that this film was essentially a piece of propaganda.  As the film explores their ship's past and the lives of its crew, a picture of the British Navy emerges: one that is simultaneously immensely humanistic and daring.  The human drama is not lost to the fire of cannon and machine gun.  With In Which We Serve, David Lean announced himself as one of the best new talents of British cinema.

8/10

Hollow Triumph: Steve Sekely

One of Hitchcock's most beloved plots was that of the mistaken man: an innocent character mistaken for a criminal and chased by the law and/or the criminal underworld.  In Hollow Triumph, we witness a fascinating reversal of this trope: a guilty man forcefully assumes the identity of an innocent man.  John Muller is a two-bit hoodlum released from prison who foolishly decides to rob a casino owned by the mafia.  The job goes sour, all of his accomplices were killed, and he goes on the run.  He encounters a man named Dr. Bartok, a psychologist who could serve as his twin.  The only problem is that he has a large scar on the side of his face.  So Muller kills Bartok and cuts a similar scar into his own face.  The only problem is that he accidentally cuts into the wrong side!  And soon, Muller discovers that Dr. Bartok may have had worse enemies than he could have ever possibly imagined.  Hollow Triumph is a fairly unremarkable noir despite its novel concept.  The only thing that propels it from the pits of mediocrity is its incredibly downbeat and cynical ending that rivals some of the best that the genre has to offer.  In fact, it's eerily similar to the ending of the French classic Pepe le Moko.  But while Pepe le Moko was a masterpiece of poetic realism, Hollow Triumph will forever be lost in the shuffle with countless other noir, waiting for its time in the spotlight.

6/10

The Blair Witch Project: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez

The Blair Witch Project is one of those films that has become so intrinsically ingrained into our cultural consciousness that it has basically become a parody of itself.  The phrase "Blair Witch" is in itself a punchline used to describe hokey, shaky cam horror films and the found footage genre.  But it's important to remember WHY it became so well known in the first place: it was a genuinely haunting and effective horror film.  This film about three documentary film-makers who travel into the New England forest to shoot a film about the fabled "Blair Witch" is a masterpiece of low-budget, high concept film-making.  It was made for only a few thousand dollars, was filmed with hand-held cameras, and was filmed in such a way that it drove the actors to their physical and emotional limits in real life.  The Blair Witch Project is just one in a long line of films that prove that the horror genre is the best entry point for wannabe film-makers who have extremely limited resources: The Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead 1 + 2, Paranormal Activity, etc, etc.  The reason is that in a horror film, what you DON'T see is more frightening than what you DO see.  So even a film like The Blair Witch Project where you never see what's actually lurking in the woods works amazing wonders.  It was not the first found footage horror film, nor will it be the last.  But it remains to this day the most effective.

10/10

This Gun for Hire: Frank Tuttle

This Gun for Hire starts out as a promising tale of crime and redemption that ultimately gets distracted and sidetracked into mediocrity.  At its core is Raven (Alan Ladd), a hardened hit man who is betrayed by his employer after carrying out a job.  On the run from the police, he encounters Ellen Graham (Veronica Lake), a young singer and magician.  The two pair up to find the man who hired and betrayed Raven.  The best scenes examine Raven's methods (he mercilessly guns down innocent witnesses to his hits) and motives (he was constantly abused as a child to the point where he killed his aunt).  However, this is all discarded once it is revealed that Raven's betrayer is manufacturing chemical weapons for...wait for it...the Imperial Japanese in World War Two.  Suddenly, finding his betrayer is not about justice and redemption, but about wartime patriotism.  I almost expected Lake to start advertising war bonds during one of her two musical routines (which are nonetheless terrific).  Of great interest is Raven's left wrist which was permanently disfigured after breaking it.  This is utilized as a source of tension in crowd scenes where the police are examining peoples' left wrists.  But it is largely used as an afterthought when a more competent director like Hitchcock or Huston would have taken an almost perverse delight in exploiting such a plot point.  All in all, This Gun for Hire is a disappointment, not a monumental one, but a disappointment nonetheless.

6/10

A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness: Seijun Suzuki

After being fired from Nikkatsu Studios after the release of his masterpiece Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki only managed to release one film during the 70s.  And what a strange, bizarre little film it is.  Much like many of Suzuki's later films, A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness is a pastiche of different genres and storytelling/editing techniques, resulting in a cinematic concoction that can only be described as Suzuki-esque.  It follows Reiko, a model who is groomed into a golf professional in order to promote a company's new line of sporting wear.  However, one night she is involved in an accidental hit-and-run with a sour neighbor who resents Reiko's success.  She blackmails Reiko with the possibility of going to the press and creating a scandal.  She systematically psychologically tortures Reiko, shearing her hair off and throwing lavish, destructive parties in her house.  But to say that this is a pure psychological drama would be incorrect.  It is also part sports film as Suzuki pays great and close attention to Reiko's training and development into a pro golfer.  Combine about a half dozen subplots involving local children, managers, and agents, and you have one of the most enigmatic films that Suzuki ever created.

6/10

The Accidental Tourist: Lawrence Kasdan

The Accidental Tourist is a film of insurmountable loss and the hungry desire to find solace in companionship.  It has humor, but isn't a comedy.  It has sorrow, but isn't a tragedy.  It is a steadfast reflection of life in all of its many incarnations.  Macon Leary spends his days cramped into airplanes and cheap hotels all over the world.  He writes travel guides for the smart traveler.  But he seems oddly detached from the world.  This is because one year ago, his 12 year old son was murdered by a robber during a stick-up.  Macon drifts away from his wife to discover Muriel Pritchett, a local dog trainer, who fills a gaping hole in his life.  Does he love her?  Maybe.  But Macon desperately needs her to help return his life to some form of normalcy.  This is a soft, warm film of human relationships that serve as shields against the ravages of life.  It takes its time, working slowly, yet surely, developing it characters.  Yet somehow, watching it isn't a tedious or tiring experience.  We see ourselves in Macon's shoes.  We have all felt indescribable pain.  If we are lucky, we find our own Muriel Pritchett to help us face the day again.

8/10

The Man in Grey: Leslie Arliss

British period dramas, particularly those from the Caroline to the Edwardian era, have never been my cup of tea.  However, I was surprised to find Leslie Arliss' The Man in Grey to be a delightfully demur affair.  As with many films of its ilk. it surrounds the issue of social status and family.  The film follows Hesther and Clarissa, two well-to-do women of the Regency period and their various affairs and amorous exploits.  As time goes by, they will go from being friends to rivals and finally to bitter enemies.  The film is framed with a clumsy narrative device that positions it as a flashback recounted by the characters descendents during World War Two.  It sets the mood and tone of the film, but generally seems unnecessary as it contributes nothing to the actual storyline.  Again, as with most like-minded films, there are strong performances by all of the actors and actresses.  While I have yet to see a film to convert me into an avid fan of English period dramas, The Man in Grey distinguishes itself as one of the more enjoyable experiences that I have had with the genre.

7/10

The Big Knife: Robert Aldrich

The Big Knife is one of the most violent film noir that I have ever seen.  Despite this, there is no actually physical violence anywhere inside the film.  The violence is that of wordplay and insinuation, of people toying with each others' lives and futures.  Charlie Castle is a massively successful Hollywood actor who wants to quit the business.  This is partly fueled by his desire to protect his relationship with his wife Marion.  The two of them have had a tumultuous past, having been separated three times in two years.  However, Stanley Shriner Hoff, his studio boss, is desperate to keep him.  He resorts to blackmail and even threatens to murder a young starlet who knows too much.  Most, if not all, of the action takes place inside Charlie's living room and in different rooms of his house.  And yet the film never feels small or constrained.  The performances are bombastic and intense to a point where they can be difficult to watch.  Not that it matters.  The Big Knife is an acerbic and devastating glance into the destructive industry of Hollywood at its worst.

8/10

The Young One: Luis Buñuel

Right before Luis Buñuel returned from his long sojourn into the bowels of low budget Mexican cinema to his rightful place as surrealist filmmaker supreme, he released The Young One.  This film is more in line with his earlier masterpiece Los Olvidados, a crushing Neorealist examination of children living in poverty.  The Young One follows Traver, a young black jazz musician on the run after a woman falsely accused him of rape.  He makes it to a small island inhabited by Miller, a curmudgeonly sour racist living with the young daughter of his deceased business partner.  As with many early films dealing with racism, The Young One pits Traver and Miller against each other in a battle of wills.  But Buñuel is interested in more than just race.  He turns a keen eye to Evvie, the young girl, who is molested by Miller.  Buñuel seems to portray Miller as an archetypal "bad" person with Traver being his symbolic opposite.  The film is gratingly unnerving.  Buñuel always knew how to make his audiences squirm ever since his first film Un Chien Andalou with its famous eyeball-incision scene.  Both Traver and Miller embody a stifling energy that feels like it might burst out and explode at any second.  Indeed, this was the first step towards Buñuel cinematic reincarnation.

8/10

The Chase: Arthur Penn

The Chase is one of the most misleading titles that I have ever come across in my cinematic wonderings.  There isn't a chase in the entire film.  Yes, there is a young convict who escapes from prison (played by a dashing Robert Redford before he was famous).  And, yes, a nearby town tries to capture him.  But this film isn't about that pursuit...it's about the town itself.  Arthur Penn's film is an examination of a Southern town in the mid-60s, still mired in the racism and sexism that ruled the area for so long.  More particularly, Penn's film is about what happens when this small town is given an excuse to fly its real colors.  The possibility of an escaped convict (who is later charged with murdering a local) gives the old, bored elite to go around under the pretense of mob justice.  They break into the town jail where they brutally assault the sheriff (played by Marlon Brando in a soft, yet surprisingly effective performance) and interrogate a black prisoner at gunpoint.  The local teens, drunk off youth and dancing, see it all as a big game, rolling into crime scenes and disrupting the investigation.  It all leads to a chilling sequence in a junkyard where the entire town corners the convict.  Their insanity is a powder keg that (literally) explodes, claiming innocent lives in the process.  It's a bit too long for its own good, however.  If it had been about half an hour shorter it might have been remembered as a better film.  But as it stands, The Chase is a great film and a devastating look into a society, and director, in a state of transition.

7/10

Terror at the Opera: Dario Argento

By 1987, Dario Argento had already established his reputation as one of the best directors of Italian giallo, or gruesome horror films.  He had a way of elevating the horror slasher into fine art, as evidenced by The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and the magnificent Suspiria.  His films were technicolor nightmares where murder victims were canvases for elaborate and horrifying acts of violence.  In Terror at the Opera, Argento reminds the world of his technical and visceral mastery over the horror film.  The film follows a young opera singer named Betty who is thrust into the limelight after the star of her show was hit by a car.  However, her debut is TOO good, as it gains the attention of a maniac killer.  Like a murderous Phantom of the Opera, he kills members of the production.  However, in the film's most gruesome twist, he frequently does so after tying Betty up and placing razors under her eyelids, forcing her to keep them open and watch his terrible work.  The film is technically stunning with some of the most inventive and imaginative camerawork this side of a Sam Raimi film.  The only problem is that the killer, when revealed, doesn't really mention his motivation.  If he did, it was drowned out by screaming and/or the soundtrack.  Also, the ending seems like it was transplanted from an entirely different film, killing the atmosphere that Argento worked so hard to create.  Still, Terror at the Opera is one of Argento's finest works and essential viewing for gore-hungry horror-hounds.

8/10

Mickey One: Arthur Penn

Arthur Penn was known for helming films that were uncomfortably realistic.  The Miracle Worker stripped the Helen Keller/Anne Sullivan story of its romanticism and examined the incredible battle of wills at its center.  The Left Handed Gun and The Missouri Breaks were violent, revisionist Westerns that didn't play out the way that audiences were used to.  And his masterpiece, Bonnie and Clyde, sparked a film revolution with its gritty, realistic violence.  So for the life of me, I can't figure out why he directed Mickey One.  The plot in a nutshell is as follows: a stand-up comedian, played by Warren Beatty, skips town after incurring the wrath of a member of the mafia.  He adopts a new identity and starts to rebuild his reputation as a comic.  But, as fate would have it, he soon is forced to perform and audition for the same gangsters that he was trying to escape in the first place.  The entire film feels uncomfortable and jittery.  Penn utilized harsh, expressionist black-and-white cinematography that would feel more at home in a Hitchcock, Huston, or Welles film.  The plot takes several detours for various flights of whimsy, such as the exploits of a street artist referred to as...wait for it...The Artist.  Mickey One is an unfocused, wannabe thriller that can't figure out that it has been cued off stage.

5/10

Secret Beyond the Door: Fritz Lang

Secret Beyond the Door is just one of a number of mediocre film noir directed by Fritz Lang in the late 40s before he rediscovered his latent talent in the 50s with such masterpieces as The Big Heat.  The film is an updated interpretation of the Bluebeard fairytale wherein a young woman discovers that her new husband has habitually married and murdered several other women in the past.  On the surface it seems like a competent psychological thriller.  However, Lang makes several crucial mistakes that result in a flawed end product.  The first is that he provides his main character with an insistent voice-over narration that has a nasty habit of ruining a scene's tension.  Alfred Hitchcock knew that silence can be the greatest weapon in scaring an audience, so many of his greatest scenes have an absence of dialogue and noise.  Lang should have mimicked old Hitch instead of lining the film with his protagonist's constant commentary.  The second mistake is that the ending is one of the most contrived that I have ever seen in a Lang film.  Yes, at the time Lang was at the mercy of the Hayes Code.  But the ending is so sappy, so unbelievable that it feels like an entirely different director shot and added it to the film.  Thankfully, Lang would later learn that a happy ending doesn't always have to be a sugar-coated one...

6/10

The Missouri Breaks: Arthur Penn

Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks is a strange little Western.  At its heart are two characters, Tom Logan and Robert E. Lee Clayton, played by Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando respectively.  Tom Logan is a down on his luck cattle rustler who's good friend has just been hanged by Braxton, a local land baron.  So he concocts a bizarre plan of revenge: buy up an adjacent ranch to Braxton's property, gain his trust, and then rustler his herd.  Why he doesn't go in with guns a-blazing to take care of the elderly man, we'll never know.  Instead, he spends weeks putting up a facade of starting up a ranch along with his criminal accomplices.  Braxton catches wise and hires Clayton, an infamous "regulator," to get rid of them.  And again, instead of murdering all of Logan's men, which we learn he is quite capable of doing, he toys with them, buddies up with them, and let's them know that he's wise to them.  Of course, Brando steals the entire film with his over-the-top performance.  Clayton sports a dandy wardrobe, perfume, Irish accent, and a powerful 1859 Creedmoor rifle.  To say he is flamboyant is an understatement.  But herein lies this film's ultimate problem: Penn has no idea what to do with him.  By the mid-70s, Brando was notorious for being difficult to work with and prone to not paying attention to the script.  Great directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Bernardo Bertolucci miraculously managed to channel his pathos into some of the most iconic performances of all time.  However, Penn seems content to let Brando wander around the film, muttering as he pleases and making a general fool out of himself.  One wonders what might have been if The Missouri Breaks had a director who could control Brando.  But as it stands, The Missouri Breaks is a shadow of what could have been a classic.

6/10

The Woman in the Rumor: Kenji Mizoguchi

For the life of me, I can't figure out what Kenji Mizoguchi was trying to accomplish with this film.  The Woman in the Rumor is one of a number of Mizoguchi's films revolving around the lives of geisha and their daily toils and troubles.  However, Mizoguchi would always have a central message to these films: geisha are exploited, geisha are viewed as expendable by Japanese society, geisha are akin to disposable toys for men, etc, etc.  In The Woman in the Rumor, there is no concise central message, nor is the lack of one a meaningful interpretation.  The film follows a young woman who tried to commit suicide when her lover left her after he discovered that her mother ran a geisha house.  She comes to live in the geisha house that she despises only to slowly warm up to it.  As fate would have it, she falls in love with her mother's lover, a young doctor.  But the mother finds out and the daughter leaves the doctor so she can be happy.  I suppose that Mizoguchi was trying to emphasize the idea of filial piety being perverted to an extreme by their environment, but both characters are happy at the end of the film.  One would then think that Mizoguchi was trying to portray the geisha community and lifestyle as self-affirming and wholesome.  But here's the rub: several times in the film, including the very end, he makes heavy-handed statements about how exploitative the geisha industry is and how it destroys people.  In the end, The Woman in the Rumor is a frustrating, aggravating work that ultimately doesn't have the same stylistic grace or subtle emotional impact as his other films made in the 50s.

5/10

The Miracle Worker: Arthur Penn

It's a story that every American schoolchild knows well: Helen Keller, a young deafblind girl, is taught to understand the world and overcome her disabilities through the constant work of Anne Sullivan.  At first, Helen is opposed to learning anything.  But a miracle at a water pump opens her eyes (metaphorically) to the unseen universe.  The story is so commonplace that it has become a cliche.  However, Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker transcends these to present the story in a way that feels fresh and original.  There are three real reasons why this story works.  The first two are Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan and Patty Duke as Anne Frank.  Both had honed their performances through the crucible of the Broadway stage, perfecting them until they became second nature.  The third reason why the film works is Arthur Penn's direction.  The man knew that the heart of the story was the relationship between the two women, so he frequently stands back, rejects exploitative camera work and editing, and lets the two actresses ACT.  The scene where the two of them battle over a meal is so authentic, so real that it almost transcends acting into an uncanny valley of reality.  The film can be exhausting to watch.  But ultimately, it is worth it.

8/10

The Left Handed Gun: Arthur Penn

In the Sixties, Arthur Penn would forever change the face of American cinema with his seminal Bonnie and Clyde.  However, before he kicked off the Hollywood New Wave, he began with The Left Handed Gun, his first film.  Just as Bonnie and Clyde looked squarely into the face of real violence and crime, The Left Handed Gun defied conventional Westerns by depicting a revisionist portrait of Billy the Kidd.  The film paints him as a crazed gunman hellbent for revenge after a group of corrupt businessmen murder his friend.  He hunts down and kills all four of them, sacrificing his sanity, his friends, and the lives of countless others.  After killing the first two men, a general amnesty is declared by a local general.  However, the amnesty will be null and void if Billy kills the other two men, potentially throwing the entire region back into war.  Of course, Billy can't control himself.  At the end of the day, he's just another gunman who's number is up.  The film isn't as polished as Penn's later work, but it announces the arrival of a bold new filmmaker who wasn't afraid to break rules and the hearts of Romanticists.

6/10

Attack of the Crab Monsters: Roger Corman

Don't get me wrong...I love Roger Corman's work probably more than any movie buff should.  I admired his work so much that I actually held a blogathon specifically to appreciate his films.  But sometimes, even Corman's charm can't redeem one of his films.  Attack of the Crab Monsters is one of these films.  It sounds like the perfect set-up for classic Corman schlock: a group of scientists are trapped on an island full of giant crabs that had been mutated by nuclear radiation. Even better, the crabs gain the intelligence of those they attack and consume, allowing them to talk and taunt their captives!  But this film can't live up to the promises of its title and insane subject matter.  It has two primary flaws.  First, I estimate that about 1/3 of the film is stock footage and padding of people wandering the island and snorkeling.  These scenes don't add atmosphere or a sense of dread...they just serve to lengthen the film.  The second major problem is that Corman must have lit the film with a 20 watt light bulb.  Another good third of the film takes place in sets that are so dark that you literally can't see what's going on.  And I don't mean that in a positive way.  Corman isn't toying with what we can and can't see.  Instead, many of the scenes are filled with an opaque darkness that completely blot out the audience's vision.  Oh, the rest of the film is entertaining if you love B-movies and monster flicks.  The crabs costumes are pretty decent and threatening.  But it isn't worth the incoherence of a plodding film that you can barely see.

4/10

Crime Wave: André De Toth

Now HERE'S a film that should be taught in film classes to audiences of wide-eyed young film-makers.  Crime Wave is a marvelous film and an exercise of cinematic simplicity.  Notice, I didn't use the word minimalism.  The two words are not the same.  Crime Wave, clocking in at only 73 minutes, is one of the leanest and tightest crime films that I have ever witnessed.  Not a line nor a shot is wasted as director André De Toth dives into this dark world of crime.  Steve Lacey is a reformed ex-con who wants nothing more than to live out the rest of his days quietly with his wife.  However, a bunch of his old "associates" force him back into the life after one of them is mortally wounded in a gas station stick-up and comes to his home for medical aid.  After he dies, Lacey calls his parole officer who notifies the police.  The police are determined to somehow pin the murder, and the robbery, on Lacey.  "Once a crook, always a crook," is their logic.  But Lacey's parole officer manages to get him released after he is wrongfully arrested.  However, things are even further complicated when two other crooks force him at gunpoint to participate in a bank robbery.  If he doesn't comply, they will kill his wife.  Crime Wave's plot is hard to summarize because it contains so little fluff.  Indeed, the only way to really discuss the film is to give a play-by-play of the entire thing.  I have tried to give the shortest description of the plot here.  And still, I feel like I've only described a fraction of the story.  Crime Wave is both a nail-biting thriller and a devastating film noir that proves that sometimes life just won't let you walk away from your past.

9/10

Them!: Gordon Douglas

Among B-movie aficionados, Them! is legendary.  It was one of the very first films to feature monsters that were mutated by nuclear radiation, even beating out Godzilla by a matter of months.  In addition, it helped kick off the "big bug" genre of monster movies.  This is amplified by a title so simple, so catchy, and so memorable that it becomes immediately endearing to all who hear about it.  Them! is the story of mutated giant ants who terrorize the Western United States.  When they are discovered by scientists and the military, they had already given birth to two queens who had flown off to start new nests.  The race is on to find them and destroy them before they spread and possibly wipe out the human race.  The film wisely doesn't show the insects until about a third of the way into the film, instead letting the audience see their carnage and hear their insidious chirping.  The ant special effects are cheesy, but believable enough that they are threatening.  However, the film does suffer that one great bane of monster flicks, pulp films, and B-movies: poor pacing.  At certain points the film grinds to an unforgivable halt as the science is patiently explained to the audience and as the military plans on how they are going to destroy the invaders.  Still, pacing problems aside, Them! is still an entertaining flick.  Even if the film is one day forgotten, the impact of its giant ants will be felt forever in the film industry.

6/10

Caravaggio: Derek Jarman

Roger Ebert once wisely wrote, "No good film is boring. All bad films are boring."  To the casual viewer, Derek Jarman's Caravaggio might seem incredibly dull and plodding.  This biography of Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio follows his life and development as an les enfant terrible of the art world.  But we see very little of his life or development. Instead, we witness him painting masterpieces, engage in love triangles, and see him consort with models and holy men.  These scenes create a kind of negative space from which we discern his life and growth.  The is more an exercise in tone and color, of light and shadow, than of plot.  But to those willing to apply themselves and give it a chance, Caravaggio is hypnotically enchanting.  Every shot emulates the paintings and style of Caravaggio's work so that they represent a series of breathing still life.  Caravaggio is heart-breakingly beautiful.  Indeed, it ranks with the likes of Days of Heaven and The Magnificent Ambersons as one of the most beautiful films ever made.  But beauty by itself, while admirable, is not enough to solidify a film as a timeless masterpiece.  It is its emotion, its passion, and its quiet stillness which transforms Caravaggio into a film worthy of its namesake.

10/10

The Abominable Dr. Phibes: Robert Fuest

There's something to be said about a beautiful death scene.  Whether by illness or accident, we are fascinated by the idea of death.  Even more so, we bare a macabre interest in murders: their techniques, their perpetrators, their victims.  Horror and pulp films turned scenes of carnage and murder into works of art.  In all of pulp cinema, few films have had such beautiful and bizarre death scenes as The Abominable Dr. Phibes.  Anton Phibes was an accomplished doctor and organist before his wife was killed in a car accident.  Twisted, both mentally and physically, by the same accident, Phibes believes that the surgeons and doctors who tried to save her life on the operating table murdered her.  So he goes about killing nine doctors, nurses, and surgeons.  His techniques are based off the Ten Plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament.  One is mauled to death by bats, another has his head crushed by a frog mask.  This film is the height of camp with the grand poo-baa of pulp Vincent Price as Dr. Phibes.  Realistically, the murders make no sense.  One nurse is covered with vegetable oil in her sleep and then completely devoured by about 20 locusts in the course of a few minutes.  But it doesn't matter.  This is an exercise in over-the-top spectacle.  Who cares if it isn't possible...it's just so damn fascinating.

8/10

Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur)

Jacques Tourneur was one of the very first directors who realized that in horror films, what you DON'T see is more terrifying than what you DO see.  His greatest and most influential film, Cat People, basically pioneered this concept.  Here, in Night of the Demon, Tourneur reaffirms that universal truth concerning fear.  The film follows an American psychologist as he travels to England to investigate a suspected Satanic cult.  A die-hard skeptic, he refuses to believe that ghosts, demons, and curses exist...at least until he becomes marked for death by the very cult that he investigates.  Night of the Demon is a fabulous film and a landmark horror movie.  However, it does suffer from post-production meddling by the studio who shoehorned in two scenes that actually showed the titular demon.  Originally, Tourneur didn't want to show it.  My problem isn't that they show the monster.  After all, many films that flirt with the idea of whether or not the supernatural exists end with a shot revealing the monster: The Blair Witch Project, The Exorcist, and, more recently, Paranormal Activity.  My problem is that they show the creature only about five minutes into the film, completely erasing the suspense and destroying the ambiguity that Tourneur wanted to invoke.  However, I'd be lying by saying that I wish that they kept the monster out.  The final scene where the demon kills the head of the cult is genuinely one of the most chilling things that I have ever seen in a horror film.  Still, Tourneur does succeed by injecting the film with a grim dread and fear that became his trademark and made him one of the most important horror directors of all time.

8/10

Cannibal Ferox: Umberto Lenzi

I'm not entirely sure if I should take this film seriously or not...usually I can figure that out within 15-20 minutes of the beginning.  Did the creators of Cannibal Ferox intend for this to be a real thriller or just a schlocky film for gory fun?  As a real thriller, it fails completely.  It's story about a group of students who travel to the Amazon (which has mysteriously teleported to Paraguay) to discover whether or not cannibalism is real or not is completely contrived an unbelievable.  There's no build-up or tension, either.  There are just scenes with gore and scenes without gore.  If the film-makers wanted to make a fun exploitation film, why did they insist on killing so many real animals on-screen?  I can appreciate gore for gore's sake.  But REAL gore, REAL killing crosses the line from exploitation to snuff.  I can't condone or support the killing of real animals in a film, but I can sympathize with it in films that are trying to unnerve and scare.  Cannibal Ferox doesn't seem to be trying to scare anybody, though.  It's just killing for the sake of killing.  But that's exploitation cinema, I guess.  If judged from an exploitative standpoint, the film is deftly crafted and entertaining in a way that makes my superego shudder.  Viscerally, it's thrilling.  But in every other respect, it seems pointless and meaningless.

5/10

The Blue Dahlia: George Marshall

Raymond Chandler's work defined film noir: it's look, it's tone, even it's characters.  When his novels and stories weren't being adapted to the big screen, he wrote some of the greatest noir screenplays to ever grace Hollywood: Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train.  The Blue Dahlia is another Chandler-scripted film noir that has come to be considered a minor classic of the genre.  The plot is probably Chandler's most confusing and labyrinthine this side of The Big Sleep.  It involves Navy pilot Lieutenant Commander Johnny Morrison, a veteran coming home from the Pacific Front to find his wife is cheating on him.  He leaves her and runs off with another woman who happens to be...get ready for this...his wife's boyfriend's estranged wife.  Things are made even worse when Morrison's wife is found murdered.  And so, Morrison becomes entangled in a opaque web of lies, murder, and cheating spouses that all seem to involve the Blue Dahlia night club.  It would be wrong to punish this film for the complexity of its plot.  After all, The Big Sleep was so confusing that even Chandler famously couldn't explain all of its plot twists.  But The Big Sleep benefited from a magnificent cast including Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  The Blue Dahlia has it's share of fine actors, too: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Doris Dowling.  But none of them have the same sparkle or chemistry as the cast in The Big Sleep.  The Blue Dahlia is a fine film...maybe even a great one.  But it just doesn't have the same kick or sinister undertones as The Big Sleep, an ultimately superior film that was released mere months after The Blue Dahlia.

7/10

Captain America: The First Avenger: Joe Johnston

So how DO you make a movie intended for international audiences about a character who is literally the embodiment of American patriotism?  The answer, as Captain America: The First Avenger proves, is VERY CAREFULLY.  First, make it so that Steve Rogers, the mild-mannered weakling who becomes Captain America through a Super Soldier project, never once mentions that he's fighting for America or the American way.  Instead, make his motivation the fact that he hates bullies and feels that he needs to pull his own weight.  Then, for your German and sensitive European viewers, rarely mention the Nazis and make the villains of your World War Two period drama a mysterious cult-like organization bent on world domination.  And most importantly, don't make the film about America winning the war.  Make it a film about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of tyranny, oppression, or, more realistically, bullies.  Because this is a modern superhero film that isn't directed by Christopher Nolan, make sure that the last third of the film descends into a crazy, over-the-top action sequence with CGI out the wazoo.  Insert headstrong love interest who eventually falls for your everyman and a supporting cast made up of European and ethnic stereotypes who weren't in the comics and...VOILA!  Instant superhero movie.  But most importantly...don't worry if its rough around the edges or the ending is too abrupt.  After all...it's really just a two-hour set-up for The Avengers, anyway.

7/10

Where the Sidewalk Ends: Otto Preminger

Since the definition of the term, critics and audiences have struggled to find a decisive way to define what constitutes film noir.  However, there are certain tropes that are more prominent than others.  One of the most important is the conflicted protagonist.  Film noir are full of dark, brooding leads who struggle in vain to escape some past sin.  Police Detective Dixon is one of these men.  He's a loose cannon who's prone to attacking and beating suspects.  However, at his heart he wants to do what's right.  Notice, I didn't say he was a good man...he just hates people who do evil.  When he is officially threatened with demotion if he keeps up his antics, he tries to reform.  However, during a private interrogation, a suspect attacks him, forcing him to fight back.  He accidentally kills the other man who happened to be a war veteran with a silver plate in his head.  Here's the problem: he dumps the body in the river instead of coming clean out of fear of losing his job.  However, this leads to an innocent man getting pinned for the murder.  Now he must find a way to clear his name without revealing his own guilt.  A fascinating film, it seems to follow the outline of classical tragedy more than your run-of-the-mill detective/film noir stock.  The kicker is that Dixon knows that he's trapped...but he wants to make sure that he takes one last hood down with him.  Who says if you have to fall, you have to fall alone?

8/10

Funny Games: Michael Haneke

Even though it has practically no blood or gore, Funny Games is one of the most violent and disturbing films that I have ever seen.  It's a nauseatingly disturbing and sickening film that simultaneously revels in violence and deconstructs it.  Simply put, two young men, Paul and Peter, capture a wealthy German family and proceed to torture and kill them.  This isn't a snuff film, mind you.  Paul and Peter move with the civility of Hannibal Lector as they toy with their victims.  As I said, there is almost no blood or gore.  In fact, almost all of the violence takes place off-screen.  But it is the implication of violence, the disturbing knowledge of what might, what is, and what has happened that makes Funny Games so difficult to watch.  I could go on about how director Michael Haneke breaks the fourth wall and deliberately side-steps cinematic conventions.  But I am more fascinated by this film's sheer visceral power.  Ten minutes of this film does more to scare and unnerve than almost any slasher or mainstream horror film of the last two decades.  I have seen thousands of films.  Many of them were bloody, violent, disturbing, and even perverse.  Yet Funny Games sits comfortably near the top of all of them in terms of terror.  THAT is worthy of admiration.  Not bad for a European art film director, eh?

9/10

The Proud Valley: Pen Tennyson

The Proud Valley is a film with noble intentions that ultimately falls flat in its execution.  The film stars early African American actor and civil rights titan Paul Robeson as a black West Virginian coal miner who goes to Wales searching for work.  Along the way, he joins and helps organize a men's choir and takes part in union negotiations after an accident kills several miners.  When they go back to work, he and a number of other miners get trapped in yet ANOTHER accident wherein he sacrifices his life to let the others escape.  Here's the film's ultimate problem: it has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be.  Three plot elements are especially prominent: singing, civil rights, and mining.  The three themes are stitched together like Frankenstein's monster so that they don't mix together.  Essentially, John Ford did this film correctly with How Green Was My Valley? one year later, sans the civil rights subtext.  While the film has problems, Robeson's performance shines through.  In fact, Robeson later revealed that of all of his films, The Proud Valley was his favorite.  Too bad the rest of the film couldn't keep up with him.

6/10

Take Aim at the Police Van: Seijun Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki was always one of Japan's most idiosyncratic film-makers.  Although he mostly worked in the crime/yakuza genre, he was a tireless innovator and experimenter of film technique.  He became so radical that his 1967 masterpiece Branded to Kill got him fired from his film studio and blacklisted for ten years.  Here in Take Aim at the Police Van, Suzuki hadn't yet come into his role as a gleeful cinematic iconoclast.  But the film is still distinctly Suzuki-esque.  The film is about a policeman who is suspended for six months after a prison van that he guarded was ambushed and its prisoners killed.  He descends into Japan's criminal underworld to discover a prostitution ring and criminals who will stop at nothing to keep it a secret.  The film is more restrained both stylistically and energetically than Suzuki's later work, but it still packs a punch.  The gorgeous black and white cinematography brings the criminal underworld to stunning life.  The plot can get confusing, but not from a lack of good storytelling.  Instead, it becomes so detailed that it loses itself in its own storyline, much like the classic The Big Sleep.  But Suzuki fills the film with enough life that it is captivating despite its convoluted plot.

7/10

If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death: Gianfranco Parolini

If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death is one of those rare movies that isn't technically very good, yet still remains thoroughly entertaining.  The first official movie in the Sartana series, it establishes many of its titular character's famous tropes: his use of James Bond-esque gadgets, his only wearing black, and his practice of only killing people who deserve it.  The film itself can be seen as a bastardization of Yojimbo in that Sartana finds himself in the middle of a rivalry between two competing gangs and invents ways to play them off against each other.  Of course, by "playing them off against each other" I really mean that he gets them to kill each other.  The film has such an absurdly high body count that they should have depopulated the main town three times over.  There's a plot about some stolen gold, corrupt politicians, and a Mexican general...but it doesn't make much sense.  The plot exists to shove as many flesh sacks in front of the camera so they can be mowed down.  But in a strange way, it works.  The film is definitely a guilty pleasure.  It doesn't make any of the fatal mistakes that many other Spaghetti Westerns fall prey to like horrible cinematography, plodding pacing, and nearly incomprehensible plots.  In a bizarre way, it has a certain charm to it.  After all, it did inspire its own official series and a legion of unofficial knockoffs.

6/10

Gion Festival Music: Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi's films have a way of creeping up on you.  At first, they seem slow and steady...not boring, mind you...but calm and collected.  Mizoguchi takes time to develop his characters, endearing them to us.  And then, by the 2/3 mark, he unleashes emotional hell, stunning the audience with acts of cruelty and unkindness that arise not out of violence, but from the evils of a corrupted world.  In Gion Festival Music, Mizoguchi turns his camera once again to one of his favorite subjects: geisha.  We meet young Eiko, no older than 16 years old.  She wants to become a maiko, or apprentice geisha, so she can pay back her dead mother's debt.  She becomes the maiko and close friend of veteran geisha Miyoharu.  However, when one of their clients tries to rape Eiko, they are thrown out on the street for embarrassing their would-be rapist.  According to geisha code, a geisha must always submit.  So by fending off her client's attempted rape, SHE is the one to commit an unforgivable sin.  Once on the street, Eiko must prostitute herself to support the two of them.  In the end, they realize that they have each other, and that is all that matters.  The ending is reminiscent of My Love Burns, one of Mizoguchi's towering masterpieces where women who have been dejected by the world seek solace in each other.  While Gion Festival Music does not rise to the heights of his greatest works, it remains a powerful film that demonstrates why Mizoguchi is considered one of the godfathers of Japanese cinema.

7/10

Why Change Your Wife?: Cecil B. DeMille

Some silent films are able to captivate and awe audiences after nearly a century of life.  Cecil B. DeMille's Why Change Your Wife? is not one of these films.  This tired tale of marital strife is neither engaging nor entertaining to watch.  I can sum up the entire plot in one sentence: a married couple becomes complacent, breaks up, marries other people, regrets it, and gets back together.  A good film can take such a plot and make it engrossing and entertaining.  But this film drags, sputters, and stalls at every given opportunity.  It is full of the most bothersome padding as the characters meander between sets and marriages.  It doesn't help that the action comes to a complete stop periodically for ridiculously verbose title cards.  These cards, which sometimes contain a full paragraph of text, add nothing to the story and narration, but mainly serve to provide "witticisms" on the action.  It doesn't help that the story is incredibly misogynistic by today's standards.  According to DeMille, it is the woman's responsibility to keep their marriage fresh by being "exciting" and to remember that men want to marry "sweethearts" and not nagging "wives."  Still, the film is a time capsule of early 20th century fashion which may be of some value to cultural anthropologists.  But the regular film-goer will find it contrived and ultimately pointless.  DeMille made other, greater silent films from this era.  I would encourage my readers to seek them out and let this one slip away.

4/10

The Great Escape: John Sturges

The story has become legendary: a group of American/British/European POWs in World War Two mount a daring escape from an "unescapable" prison.  67 escape.  Only 3 make it.  The actors have become titans in American cinematic history: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson.  When combined with the talents of director John Sturges, they created one of the great action/adventure films that has stood the test of time.  Despite its nearly three hour run-time, The Great Escape moves so swiftly and expertly that we barely notice the passing of time, much like that other great 3-hour action/adventure epic, The Seven Samurai.  Everything is streamlined for maximum efficiency in this film.  Nary a shot is wasted.  The major characters all have nicknames that designate their mechanical purpose in the escape: "The Tunnel King," "The Forger," "The Manufacturer."  There is little character development that is not intrinsically tied to their role in the escape.  Of course, only the first half can be considered historically accurate.  Once Steve McQueen starts to ride his motorcycle over the German countryside, we can rightfully assume that creative and artistic license has been fully taken.  But the film is an engrossing, entertaining ride that is a relic of an era long past: when action/adventure films focused more on plot and characters than action and gore and you didn't have to censor or remove anything when you aired it on television.

8/10

The Cloud-Capped Star: Ritwik Ghatak

Beautiful Neeta lives in a Calcutta slum with her family after being displaced from East Pakistan by the Partition of India.  She once had hopes and dreams of going to a university, but she abandoned them when her greedy family demanded that she work to support them.  Her lazy brother spends all day practicing singing in the vain hopes that he might one day become a star.  Her mother and father lounge around all day, complaining that their children don't work hard enough and don't bring home enough money for them to spend.  It is in this harsh environment that director Ritwik Ghatak set the film that would ultimately become known as his masterpiece.  It is a devastating exploration of self-sacrifice.  As Neeta struggles to support her family as their only bread-winner, she loses her fiancee, then her job, and finally her health as tuberculosis begins to ravage her body.  Ritwik utilized incredible mise en scène to demonstrate Neeta's isolation and hopelessness.  Of great note is the expressionist sound design wherein Ritwik would use odd and non-diegetic sound effects to highlight the emotional impact of certain scenes.  The film is bold and tragic as it careens towards its famous ending where Neeta flings herself at her brother and yells out in defiance, "Brother, I want to live!"

8/10

Twins of Evil: John Hough

If memory serves me correctly, this is the first official Hammer Horror film that I have ever seen.  Twins of Evil takes place during the great witchhunts of central Europe when thousands of people were wrongfully executed for witchcraft and the dark arts.  Maria and Frieda, two recently orphaned twin teenagers, move to central Europe to live with their uncle Gustav Weil (played by Hammer regular Peter Cushing).  Weil is the leader of a group of Puritans who periodically spirit away single women in order to burn them for witchcraft.  However, he is periodically thwarted by the evil Count Karnstein, a local aristocrat who indulges in Satanic rites.  During one of his blood offerings, he resurrects a vampress who turns him into a vampire.  Frieda, resentful of her uncle's rule, runs off to be with him and is also turned into a vampire.  Now, the local village must stop Karnstein and Frieda in their reign of terror and from framing innocent Maria for crimes she did not commit.  Being a Hammer film, it is not a subtle film.  The blood runs quicker and more red, the women are more pale-skinned, and the evil puritans are more sinister and foreboding.  This could have easily been a work of kitsch, but director John Hough is so confident in the story that we believe it and feel thrilled to be along for the ride.

7/10