American Pop: Ralph Bakshi

“I had this dream that animation could be the medium of the people...if Disney worked for the middle class, I was gonna work for the kids in the street.” - Ralph Bakshi

Somewhere in New York City, a skinny young man with hair as yellow as corn weaves in and out of a nerve-frayed punk wasteland. He carries a bag of narcotics which will soon pulsate through the veins of a generation of alienated musicians. It is the 1980s and everyone he meets seems bleary-eyed, sick, and apathetic. However, as he struts down the streets, he hears a sound which catches his attention: an Orthodox Jew singing a hymn. The young man stops, turns, adjusts his sunglasses to get a better look. Something stirs deep inside him and he begins to pulsate in time with the singing. As he walks away to meet his customers, the young man can’t shake the odd rhythm.

This young man is Pete Bolinski. And though he doesn’t know it, he has just reunited with a heritage that he didn’t even realize was his birthright. It is a heritage of culture and religion, of traditions lost in the shuffle of war and tragedy. It is a heritage of several generations of young men who in seeking to find their place in American society helped forge it. But most of all, it is a heritage of music; a heritage of American pop.

Audacious in scope and staggering in ambition, Ralph Bakshi’s American Pop is one of the great iconoclastic animator’s most indomitable films. The film manages to chart nearly 90 years of history in approximately the same number of minutes, creating a lush tapestry of emotion and drama that attempts nothing less than a summation of 20th century American popular music.

Most sources claim that American Pop follows four generations of the Bolinski family. But actually, it covers five. The first is Rabbi Jaacov Bolinski, the victim of a late 1890s pogrom in Tzarist Russia. As his community is attacked by Cossacks, Rabbi Jaacov forces his wife and ten-year-old son, Zalmie, to flee as he stays behind to finish his interrupted prayer and protect the Torah. The scene of Jaacov’s death, his family’s flight, and the ghetto’s destruction is set to the sounds of a Ukrainian religious chant. This haunting music is like a kaddish for the Bolinskis as they mourn the loss of their old lives, their old ways, their old songs. As a nation of immigrants, American culture and music was borne not on its own shores, but from the tattered remnants of the Old Countries. In this way, Rabbi Jaacov Bolinski and his martyred songs are just as important as his descendants.

Zalmie and his mother eventually take up residence in New York City’s Lower East Side. While Mrs. Molinski slaves away in the garment-district, Zalmie finds work handing out chorus slips at burlesque houses. His talents as a singer are quickly discovered by the other performers. After Mrs. Molinski is killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company holocaust, Zalmie becomes a full-time performer specializing in “juveniles,” or roles that take advantage of his angelic voice. But after receiving a vicious throat wound during World War One, he abandons the stage and falls in with mobsters so he can support his new wife and child, Benny.

As a teenager, Benny throws himself into the world of music and becomes a jazz piano virtuoso. And yet, there is something...off...about Benny. I suspect that today he would be diagnosed with either autism or Asperger’s. Painfully shy and rigidly introverted, he doesn’t even scream or cry when he watches his mother get accidentally killed by a bomb intended for Zalmie. He just silently watches and continues playing the piano. He eventually marries the daughter of Zalmie’s mob boss and impregnates her. But it’s easy to suspect that if the marriage hadn’t been arranged, Benny would have lived a life of self-imposed celibacy. Despite Zalmie’s objections, Benny enlists to fight in World War Two. In one of the truly transcendent moments of Bakshi’s career, Benny discovers a piano in a bombed out building in Nazi Germany. As he begins to play As Time Goes By, a Nazi soldier emerges from the rubble and takes aim at him. Benny pauses for just a moment before playing the first few bars of Lili Marleen. The Nazi, overcome with emotion, closes his eyes. For a few short seconds they partake in a communion of beauty and joy. “Danke.” Gunshots. A blood-stained piano.

Cut to years later and Zalmie’s son, Tony, is a spaced-out pressure cooker of anger and fear who steals his stepfather’s car and goes on a cross-country roadtrip. During one stop in Kansas, he finds a moment of peace with a beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed waitress. We suspect that this tryst will be one of the last times that anything will truly make sense in his life. For Tony is so uptight that he seems doomed to self-destruction.

Once in San Francisco, Tony joins a six-piece rock group as a harmonica player. Visions of Haight-Ashbury, heroin, and rock ‘n’ roll coalesce into the mother of all bad trips that leaves his lover, the lead singer of the band (an amalgam of Grace Slick and Janis Joplin), dead of an overdose and himself stranded in New York City with a familiar-looking blonde-haired young boy. Perhaps realizing that his continued presence will only serve to doom his son, Tony abandons the boy (after taking his acoustic guitar to pawn for drug money).

The boy eventually becomes a man: Pete Bolinski, drug-dealer extraordinaire for the New York punk scene. Just as Zalmie before him, Pete is a stranger in a strange land, forced to hustle for survival on the mean streets of NYC. And just like his fathers before him, he is destined for a career and future in American pop. One day he forces one of his clients to record one of his songs or he will cut off their supply. The band reluctantly agrees. The rest...is history.

American Pop saw the height of Bakshi’s talents both as a storyteller and an animator. The rotoscoping techniques that Bakshi experimented with in Wizards (1977) and The Lord of the Rings (1978) reach new levels of beauty and magnificence in American Pop.  By rotoscoping his characters (and historical footage from classic movies like The Public Enemy [1931] and Stormy Weather [1943]), the film exudes an aura of authenticity, almost like an animated documentary. Unlike his earlier films like Heavy Traffic (1973) and Coonskin (1975) where characters were represented as extreme racial caricatures, Bakshi and his animators took great pains to detail every nook and cranny of their subjects. Some might find this technique repellant, but I think it highlights a facet of Bakshi’s work that has gone criminally under-appreciated and under-examined: his warm humanism.

As I see more and more of Bakshi’s films, the more and more I’ve come to view him as a cinematic humanist of the same caliber as Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson. Yes, Bakshi exploits crude stereotypes. He is provocative, but very rarely towards individuals. Bakshi’s crosshairs are always pointed at corrupt societies, manipulators, liars, con men, and sell-outs. His characters wear the grotesque labels of racism, homophobia, misogyny, and hatred as badges of honor, transforming them into weapons with which to annihilate the ignorant. Here in American Pop, Bakshi refuses to simplify his characters. They are fat, misshapen, ugly, scared, and transcendentally beautiful.

Some might say that American Pop is a tragedy that mourns the destructive influence of American society on the marginalized. But I think Bakshi had other ideas. Notice how, despite everything that the five generations of Bolinskis lose, they always have the music. It is an inexplicable bond that connects them together through the fires of war and the march of time. It is something that can never be broken, defined, or explained. It is the fire of the pogroms, the crowded seats of vaudeville halls, the bleary-eyed piano players, the human debris of the Lost Generation, and the punks with nothing to lose. It is American Pop.

9/10

The Horse Soldiers: John Ford

I can’t stand people who claim that John Wayne couldn’t act. There is a scene in John Ford's The Horse Soldiers that I wish I could carry around in my pocket just so I can pull it out and show it to people who bad-mouth his acting abilities. The film is about a Union cavalry brigade led by Colonel John Marlowe (Wayne) who are tasked with heading behind Confederate lines in order to destroy a crucial railroad. At one point, they are forced to bring along a short-tempered Confederate belle named Miss Hannah Hunter who accidentally heard their secret plans. The special scene involves Hannah and John as they recover from a battle against Confederate soldiers in Vicksburg. It’s a simple scene: it starts with Wayne nursing his pain at a bar. Hannah chastises him for being rude to the local doctors. Wayne then delivers a heart-breaking monologue about the death of his wife and how it led to his hatred and mistrust of doctors. It’s about two-and-a-half minutes long. No edits. No fancy frame compositions. The camera barely moves. It’s just Wayne acting his heart out in one long single take. The rest of the film, while competent in its own right, pales in comparison to this one scene. It saves the movie and makes it something truly special.

7/10

Missing in Action: Joseph Zito

I didn't know it was possible that you could water down a movie like George P. Cosmatos' Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). But Joseph Zito's Missing in Action proved me wrong. Apparently based on the story treatment that would eventually become the aforementioned Rambo sequel, Missing in Action follows an American ex-POW who goes back into Vietnam after the conclusion of the war to rescue fellow POWs. In Rambo: First Blood Part II, the American officer was played by Sylvester Stallone, an actor who could bring a sense of authenticity to even the most overblown and over-the-top material ("Do we get to win this time?"). In Missing in Action, the American officer is played by Chuck Norris, a man who, while extremely skilled at martial arts, is only a mediocre actor. To be honest, his character, Colonel James Braddock, is rather bland despite being inexplicably invincible to bullets. Early scenes where he is forced to interact with an evil North Vietnamese general played by James Hong are satisfyingly effective. Hong knows how to play a good villain, a fact which reflects both on his talents as an actor and on Hollywood's shameful reliance on him for "evil Chinamen" stereotypes. But the film delivers exactly what it advertises: patriotic chest-thumping, gigantic explosions, and, of course, Chuck Norris.

5/10

Born to Kill: Robert Wise

The key to great tragedy is anagnorisis; the "hero's sudden awareness of a real situation, the realisation of things as they stood." In film noir, perhaps the most introspective genre of American cinema, the protagonists would frequently find themselves in such a situation. One of the very best examples that I can think of is contained in the last third of Robert Wise's Born to Kill. The first film noir by the acclaimed director, Born to Kill follows the doomed romance and destruction of Helen Brent (Claire Trevor), an ice-hearted socialite, and Sam Wilde (Lawrence Tierney), a two-bit crook who flies into murderous jealous rages. The two meet completely by accident as they flee Reno, Nevada for different reasons: Helen just finalized a divorce and Sam unknowingly had murdered her neighbor (his cheating girlfriend) and her lover. Though they fall in love, they are forced to maintain a facade of respectability by getting engaged with and marrying other people. It's quite chilling to see these two characters manipulate, abuse, and use other people, even their own friends and family, to suit their greedy desires. Trevor is one of the most subtly diabolical femme fatales this side of Bette Davis. Tierney is more a violent force of irrational anger than a man. However, when Sam's sins are discovered by the police, Helen realizes that she has isolated herself from everyone she cared for. This is the anagnorisis I was referring to earlier. As she desperately tries to find someone she can rely on to protect her from Sam, both she and the audience realize that she is doomed to a fate of her own design. The film also has two very fascinating supporting characters. The first, Albert Arnett, is a private eye hired to investigate Sam. At first, he seems like a foppish, eccentric dandy of a detective. But his charming exterior is merely a thin disguise for a shrewd extortioner. The second is Marty, Sam's ever-faithful friend who seems a little too eager to please him. Are those homosexual undertones I sense? Knowing Robert Wise, I might not be wrong. Either way, Albert and Marty add to the intrigue and tragedy of Born to Kill instead of grinding the plot to a halt like so many other film noir supporting characters.

8/10

Four Friends: Arthur Penn

Arthur Penn's Four Friends recalls another one of his films about teenagers lost in the cultural miasma of 1960s America: Alice's Restaurant (1969). Both films follow young men who try and make sense of a society that is quickly devouring itself. Alice's Restaurant may have a more authentic portrayal of 60s culture due to it actually being made in 1969. But Four Friends is much more introspective and personal than I remember Alice's Restaurant being. Four Friends is actually more focused on one character: Yugoslavian-born Danilo Prozor. After coming to America at the age of 12, he finds himself torn between his old country and his new home. These feelings are exacerbated by his three best friends: the timid, overweight David, the handsome Tom, and the (obnoxiously) free-spirited Georgia. To say Georgia is eccentric is an understatement. We see here a character in full maniac-pixie-dream-girl mode, imagining herself as the reincarnation of Isadora Duncan, dressing outrageously even for the era, and trying her damnedest to alienate everyone around her. Of course, the other three friends are inexplicably in love with her. The film then watches as the four friends fall in and out of love, in and out of jobs, and in and out of touch with each other. It's a bittersweet film about nostalgia and regret that, in my opinion, surpasses Alice's Restaurant.

7/10

Romper Stomper: Geoffrey Wright

Two films immediately come to mind when I think about Geoffrey Wright's Romper Stomper: Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Kevin MacDonald's The Last King of Scotland (2006). Both films are about human monsters: Alex DeLarge and Idi Amin, respectively. Both films use these characters as a springboard to examine the nature of evil and the depths to which mankind can fall. However, there is a massive difference in how these films approach their monsters. A Clockwork Orange is told from Alex's point of view. The Last King of Scotland invented a fictional secondary character through which we view Idi Amin. This effectively made Idi Amin a supporting character in his own film. Unfortunately, Romper Stomper makes the same mistake. At its center is Hando (Russell Crowe), the leader of a neo-Nazi group in Footscray, Victoria, Australia. While his fellow neo-Nazis are heavily implied to be in the group primarily for the sense of community, he sees the struggle for White Supremacy with total seriousness. He truly believes that non-white races need to be exterminated. Hando is truly terrifying to behold. Every second he is on screen is electrifying. However, instead of focusing on Hando, the film mostly focuses on Gabrielle, a drug-addicted teenager who joins their gang after fleeing from her sexually-abusive father. For a while, the film doesn't truly focus on a "main character," instead documenting the gang's exploits as they go to parties and attack local Vietnamese-Australians. However, after an impressive sequence where an all-out war breaks out between the skinheads and the Vietnamese-Australians (which leaves several of their number dead), Romper Stomper becomes Gabrielle's film. Hando, who had largely dominated the first half of the film, gets pushed to the side. In my opinion, Wright should have either kept the film's narrative focus on the group's dynamics or on Gabrielle from the very start. Or at the very least Wright shouldn't have made Hando, the most fascinating part of the film, a side character in the last half. This is what keeps Romper Stomper, an otherwise incredibly powerful film, from reaching true greatness.

6/10

Heavy Traffic: Ralph Bakshi

It's tempting to regard Ralph Bakshi's first three films as a kind of trilogy. All three involve social misanthropes trying to survive in New York City during the turbulent 60s and 70s. They featured Bakshi's adult-oriented take on animation which saw characters with simple designs juxtaposed with real-life footage and documentary-like audio. The first, Fritz the Cat (1972), was a savage attack on the 60s counter-culture. The third, Coonskin (1975), was a vicious examination on inner city black culture. Heavy Traffic, on the other hand, doesn't really have a political agenda (although several scenes can be politically interpreted). It simply follows the bizarre fantasies of a young cartoonist named Michael Corleone: his strained family life, his inability to get laid, his eventual relationship with a black bartender named Carole, the possibility of starting a life of crime, his father's messy relations with the mafia, etc, etc. Like Fritz the Cat and Coonskin, Heavy Traffic is full of lurid, grotesque, and extremely graphic depictions of nudity, sex, and violence. And yet, by examining these topics with such honesty and earnestness, Bakshi's work adopts a strange but undeniable humanism. I personally think that the film suffers because of its more free-form narrative techniques. Fritz the Cat and Coonskin were so focused that they hit like ballistic missiles. But Heavy Traffic is still an enjoyable and thought-provoking film by one of animation's greatest iconoclasts.

7/10

Dead Reckoning: John Cromwell

For the past few days I've tried to figure out how to properly express my feelings towards John Cromwell's Dead Reckoning. Overall, it's a fairly mediocre film noir with decent performances by Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott. But something about the film was making my brain itch. Then it hit me: Dead Reckoning copies many character traits and plot points from John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941). Hear me out: after his best friend is mysteriously murdered, Humphrey Bogart dives into a world of deception and violence to bring his killer to justice. During his investigation he keeps running into a beautiful femme fatale who may or may not have something to do with his best friend's death. He then learns the terrible truth behind the femme fatale's relationship to the murder. The film ends with him sacrificing her love in the name of his higher ideals concerning justice. Only whereas The Maltese Falcon involves private eyes, Dead Reckoning centers on two American paratroopers (one played by Bogart) who are called to Washington in order to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross for their actions in World War Two. However, Bogart's friend runs away before he can receive his awards. Bogart follows him to a small town where he finds him burned to death in a car. It turns out he was involved in a scandalous relationship with a rich man and his oh-so-beautiful wife. I will admit that it was fascinating to see The Maltese Falcon's San Francisco replaced with Dead Reckoning's more nondescript small city as a hotbed of vice and murder. After all, the idea of small-town America being corrupted in the post-war years would become one of the most important themes of film noir. But the film is just going through the motions. Everything that Dead Reckoning does was done ten times better in The Maltese Falcon. I know that it isn't fair to base an opinion of one film on how it compares with a classic. But in this case, the comparison summarizes my odd dissatisfaction with Dead Reckoning.

6/10

Two Flags West: Robert Wise

In Two Flags West, director Robert Wise transforms a rather average story about Confederate POWs joining the US cavalry in exchange for clemency into a surprisingly effective psychological study of two stubborn, patriotic men. The first is Col. Clay Tucker, the commanding officer of a group of captured members of the Confederate 5th Georgia Cavalry. With his men sick and dying in a Yankee prison, he is faced with a devastating choice: stick to his principles as a Confederate and let his men die or change sides, fight for the Union on the frontier, and give his men a fighting chance at survival and, perhaps, escape. With great reluctance, he convinces his men to accept the Union's offer. The second main character is Major Henry Kenniston, the commander of Fort Thorn, New Mexico, the home of the Union 3rd Cavalry and the destination for the newly galvanized Confederates. Kenniston, while patriotic, is furious being sent to the frontier after he was wounded earlier in the war. He is also plagued with feelings of confused lust and protectionism towards Elena, the widow of his brother. Elena is desperate to leave the Fort and travel West to be with her family, but Kenniston refuses, feeling it is his duty to protect her. Elena is one of the film's most tragic characters, essentially being used as a pawn in the power schemes of both Tucker and Kenniston. But the true meat of the movie is in the relationship between Tucker and Kenniston. They engage in a truly fascinating duel of military intrigue. Kenniston knows that he can't trust Tucker and that he and his men will try to escape as soon as they can. And Tucker knows that Kenniston knows that he can't be trusted. And yet he tries to gain Kenniston's trust, a task which he knows may very well be impossible. His dilemma is exacerbated when he is approached by a Confederate spy and told that they will soon have a chance to escape. I enjoyed Two Flags West. It has plenty of intrigue, action, and a surprising amount of insight concerning Union abuses towards Native Americans and Confederate prisoners.

7/10

Marketa Lazarová: František Vláčil

Held by native critics and publicists as the single greatest Czech film of all time, František Vláčil's Marketa Lazarová isn't so much a movie as a cinematic experience that transports the viewer into a different mindset. In this sense, the film shares the stage with such other brain-bending masterpieces as Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Béla Tarr's Sátántangó (1994). These films cannot be approached just through an analysis of their narratives. Trying to describe Marketa Lazarová to someone who hasn't seen it by merely summarizing its plot would be like trying to describe a painting by Van Gogh or Monet to a blind person by only telling them its subject (i.e. a boat, a field, a starry night). This is a film of moods, textures, and atmospheres; of stark, snowy landscapes, barren fortress walls of stone, and mud made with water and mud. It is a mediation on the nature of mankind, of the struggle between Paganism and Christianity, and of righteousness born of hypocrisy versus evil forged from honest self-indulgence. The film essentially follows the feud between two families during the Middle Ages. The first is a band of pagan robber knights who prey on the weak. The second family is headed by a feudal lord who used to rape and steal but has since converted to Christianity and attempted to earnestly reform himself. Along the way young men are massacred, fortresses are attacked, and a young daughter of the Christian feudal lord is kidnapped, raped, and forced to marry one of her father's enemies. This is a film that scholars could devote entire careers towards studying. But I was fascinated by the aforementioned struggle between whether or not well-intended hypocrisy is better than wickedness that is true to one's basic instincts. Yes, the Christian feudal lord is a hypocrite. But it was the pagans that drew first blood and essentially forced the local king's hand in quelling their violent activities. But in the end, Marketa Lazarová isn't about answers. In fact, I'm not even sure if it's about questions. It simply is.

10/10

The Missing: Ron Howard

In Ron Howard's The Missing, Tommy Lee Jones plays Samuel Jones, a frontiersman who years ago ran out on his family to "go native" by joining a local Indian tribe. Some time later, he returns weary, wind-scarred, and destitute to the home of his grown-up daughter Maggie Gilkeson. Of course, he is no longer the Samuel Jones that she knew. Now he is known as "Chaa-duu-ba-its-iidan," a term which roughly translates to "shit-for-luck." And really, has there ever been any other better way to characterize the persona that Jones has developed over the years? Jones has one of those faces to which sadness, resignation, and inevitable tragedy seem permanently etched. His best roles are frequently ones where he plays tired, stubborn old men helplessly out of their element (The Fugitive [1993], Space Cowboys [2000], No Country for Old Men [2007], In the Valley of Elah [2007]). I doubt any other actor could have brought as much pain and pathos to the role of "shit-for-luck." And it's a good thing, too. The Missing is a film with several glaring problems that is only saved through the power of its main performances. The plot, although adapted from a Thomas Eidson novel, seems largely inspired by John Ford's The Searchers (1956). After Maggie (magnificently played by Cate Blanchett) rejects Samuel for leaving her family, her eldest daughter is kidnapped by a band of murderous Apache led by a grotesque racist caricature of a villain named Pesh-Chidin. Pesh-Chidin, while played by an authentic Native Canadian actor (Eric Schweig), nonetheless makes The Searchers' Scar seem politically correct in comparison. Anyhow, Pesh-Chidin's band of Apache have been stealing local young women to be sold into prostitution in Mexico. So Samuel, Maggie, and her youngest daughter Dot (played by Jenna Boyd in the film's third astonishing performance) set out to rescue her and kill Pesh-Chidin. As I said before, The Missing has major issues concerning harmful stereotypes and somewhat cliched plot devices. Its views on the possible legitimacy of Native American magic is suspect as well. One moment it is dismissed as superstitious hogwash and the next it is responsible for nearly killing Maggie. But the film is rescued by its central performances. And chief among those is ol' "shit-for-luck" himself: Tommy Lee Jones.

7/10

Wreck-It Ralph: Rich Moore

Rich Moore's Wreck-It Ralph is a charming, legitimately heart-warming film that unfortunately misses the mark and falls flat on its face. The first half hour and last twenty minutes of Wreck-It Ralph is a sheer joy. However, everything in between collapses in on itself as the eponymous Wreck-It Ralph becomes a secondary supporting character in his own film. Here's the basic idea of the film: in a world where video game characters come to life and socialize after their arcade has been closed à la Toy Story, Wreck-It Ralph, the villain of a classic arcade game, decides that he has had enough of being a Bad Guy and sets out to become a Good Guy. To do this, he invades other video games in the hopes of earning a hero's medal. This is a great concept that lends itself to some truly breath-taking animation, some impressive character arcs, and numerous video game celebrity cameos. However, the film is hijacked by an annoying little "glitch" named Vanellope von Schweetz (voiced by the egregiously miscast Sarah Silverman) when Ralph wonders into a new racer called Sugar Rush. The film then becomes about HER quest to be accepted by the other racers. Ralph just tags along for the ride. I'm not saying that Vanellope didn't have a place in the film's story. It's just that the film is named after RALPH. It should be about RALPH. I went to this movie because I was interested in RALPH'S story. Wreck-It Ralph is a film in desperate need of a round of script re-writes. It's a shame, really. This film had so much potential.

6/10

Monsieur Hire: Patrice Leconte

Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire is proof that a film's ending can elevate it from merely being 'good' to being 'great.' The final five minutes add a layer of heart-breaking emotional intensity and depth that literally left me speechless. Until then the film's plot seemed rather straight-forward. It concerns the eponymous Monsieur Hire, a voyeuristic tailor who lives in self-imposed isolation. His odd behavior has made him a pariah to his neighbors, but Hire doesn't care. He spends his nights spying on his neighbor, a beautiful young woman named Alice. When she catches him in the act, Hire confesses his love for her. He promises to take Alice away from her abusive, small-time gangster boyfriend to his little home in Switzerland. All of this goes on in the midst of a police investigation of the murder of another young woman. Hire is accused by his neighbors of being the culprit, not necessarily because they have proof against him, but because their dislike of him has evolved into a sinister hatred. We begin to believe that the community sees this murder as the perfect opportunity to rid themselves of this strange, quiet tailor. These two plot threads, Hire and Alice's relationship and the murder investigation, might seem only tangentially related, but in the last five minutes they become inseparably linked. Monsieur Hire is a beautiful little film that relishes the subtle nuances of its characters and the mysteries of human behavior. At first it may seem like the film is a simple stylistic indulgence on the part of its director. But I urge you to pay close attention and wait until the end. Believe me when I say that it is worth it.

9/10

Panic in the Streets: Elia Kazan

In his seminal essay Notes on Film Noir, Paul Schrader classified Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets as a Phase Three film noir; a film which focuses on self-destructive characters pushed to the limits by society. But after watching the film, I have to disagree. Panic in the Streets is obviously a Phase Two film noir; a film that strives for utmost realism and usually focuses on police procedurals and other forms of investigations. Not only is Panic in the Streets a Phase Two film noir, it's one of the best. During what should have been a routine autopsy of a murdered illegal immigrant, traces of pneumonic plague, a form of bubonic plague (more commonly known as the Black Death), are found in his blood. Realizing that he could be an index case for a full-blown plague, U.S. Public Health Service officer Clinton Reed and police captain Tom Warren must dive into the criminal underworld of New Orleans to discover where he came from and if he had infected anybody else. Panic in the Streets is an early triumph by Kazan. His trademark realism brings the alleys, dives, and seedy docks of New Orleans to life. But my favorite part of the film is Kazan's use of long takes that frame his characters against the harsh, uninviting world of the New Orleans criminal underground. The scene where the "index patient" is murdered is one of the most brilliant tracking shots I have ever seen, following the sick victim over busy train tracks, abandoned buildings, and desolate roads. This shot belongs in the tracking shot Hall of Fame right next to the Copacabana nightclub scene in Goodfellas (1990) and the opening of Touch of Evil (1958). A dark, thrilling wonder of a film, Panic in the Streets is an under-appreciated treasure.

8/10

The Ballad of Little Jo: Maggie Greenwald

In the American Western, there seem to be only three kinds of women: schoolmarms, hookers, and cowgirls. The schoolmarm, representing the encroachment of civilization in the savage West, is atypical of her harsh surroundings; a stranger in a strange land bringing culture and knowledge to the brutal and ignorant. The hooker, on the other hand, is an extension of the frontier itself. While they may get gussied up in French perfume and fancy finery, they are nevertheless an embodiment of lawlessness and exploitation; of disease and carnal commerce. And then there is the cowgirl. Donning the etiquette, manners, and iconography of her masculine counterparts, she is frequently framed as the object of desire and fetishization for a stalwart male hero; an untamed filly that must be broken in for a role of domesticity (or at the very least lassoed into a traditional heterosexual relationship).

These three women all have established spaces with the fictionalized world of the Old West that sustain and provide for them: the schoolhouse for the schoolmarm, the saloon for the hooker, and the ranch for the cowgirl. Though very different, they all play crucial societal roles.

But the mythology of the Old West is just that: a mythology. Not every woman who braved the Western frontier had a place carved out for them by society. Many had to improvise their own role. Those that did were faced with more than just the hostility of the unknown, uncontrollable wilderness. These women had to contend with an insidious, institutionalized misogyny that was ready and more than willing to prey on those who didn’t stay “in their place.”

Josephine Monaghan was one such woman. The true story of her life seems more of fiction than fact: after being disowned by her parents for having a child out of wedlock, she moved to Idaho and became a successful rancher for 30 years, all the while masquerading so successfully as a man that her true identity was only discovered upon her death. How did she manage such an illusion for so long? How did nobody find out? And why did she feel like she needed to dress as a man?

Maggie Greenwald’s The Ballad of Little Jo attempts to address these mysteries by charting Jo’s years of exile. The film begins with young Josephine traveling alone on a road on her way West. Immediately she is beset upon by men who view her as sexual prey. After escaping from a group of soldiers who try to rape her (after an older man that she thought was her friend attempted to sell her), she cuts her hair, scars her face, trades her skirts for pants, and becomes ‘Jo.’ Notice the scene where Josephine buys a set of men’s clothes. The shop-keeper, an old lady, scowls, “It’s against the law to dress improper to your sex.” This, of course, happens right after a muddy, terrified, and disheveled young woman bursts into her store asking if she’s seen two soldiers. She doesn’t say it out loud, but the look in the shop-keeper’s eyes reveal that she has put two and two together: this poor young woman was sexually assaulted. And yet, when she tries to buy men’s clothes to prevent future attacks, the shop-keeper chastises her. Herein we discover one of the most unsettling yet vital truths about the Old West: to act outside of one’s societal role is inexcusable. If Josephine must be raped, then so be it. Better for her to get sexually assaulted as a woman than for her to pretend to be a man.

Eventually Jo arrives at Ruby City, a crude mining camp populated by filthy workers searching for gems and gold. There are few, if any women. If there are wives, sisters, and daughters, then we do not see them. Periodically a traveling band of prostitutes come by and all of the men dutifully take their turn. Little Jo, having already been accepted as a man, is viciously mocked for refusing one of the prostitute’s advances. “Little Jo, I think you should reconsider. A man can get diseases he don’t do it regular,” one of them wisely explains. It’s not enough that Little Jo looks, acts, and talks like a man. Jo must go through the motions expected of a man to be accepted as one.

But still Jo refuses. Suddenly Jo is looked upon by the other men with a confused curiosity and a growing resentment. So after learning the basics of frontier life from Percy, an exiled Englishman who nurses a grudge against the female sex, Jo spends five years as a shepherd tending the flock of a man named Frank Badger. Periodically spending months without human contact, Badger worries that Jo might go crazy. But Jo assures Badger that the loneliness “suits me.”

After saving enough money, Jo purchases a homestead way out yonder where her only neighbor is Badger. But one day while visiting Ruby City, Jo encounters Badger and a group of men lynching a ‘Chinaman’ for trying to “take our jobs.” After saving him, Badger and the others force Jo to employ him as a housekeeper so he won’t simply wander to another town and take a job away from another honest white man. Jo refuses, but eventually relents, adopting the ‘Chinaman,’ whose name is revealed to be Tinman Wong. At first, Tinman seems to be mentally slow and stupid. But after just three days, he reveals that he knows Jo’s secret. But Tinman explains that he has a secret, too: he is only pretending to be stupid. After 15 years of inhuman treatment while working on the railroad, Tinman, whose real name is ‘Tien Ma,’ learned that the best way to survive was to keep his head down and play the part of the stupid ‘Chinaman.’

The two strike up a passionate love affair, living a kind of role-reversed life where Jo is the masculine bread-winner and Tinman the feminine home-maker and cook. Both living in a society that affords them no place, Jo and Tinman find sanctuary in both their little homestead and in each other. It is here that Greenwald’s genius as a director and a social commentator truly emerges. Take one scene where Jo longingly stares at Tinman while he bathes. The visual grammar of the scene is directly reminiscent of the traditional male gaze. Later, during a scene where Jo and Tinman cuddle together in bed after making love, they share a fascinating conversation that seems to summarize both the film and Greenwald’s artistic intent:

Tinman: [Regarding a picture of Jo before she got pregnant] Who is this society girl?
Jo: It’s me. Can you imagine?
Tinman: I like you much better as you are.
Jo: Why?
Tinman: This white girl would never do this with me.

Looking back over what I’ve written so far, I’ve noticed that I’ve skipped over much of the film’s plot: Jo’s tragic friendship with Percy, Jo’s relationship with a family of homesteaders, an Eastern corporation’s attempts to buy out all of the local land via terrorism and groups of men in white masks, and even Jo’s inevitable death and discovery. But the plot is secondary in importance to the character of Little Jo. The film is not necessarily concerned with what happened to Josephine Monaghan when she moved out West, but instead with why and how they happened. How did a refined, educated high society woman survive for 30 years on the Idaho frontier? Why did Josephine become Jo? How did she manage to deceive everyone for decades? Why were the men so easily duped?

I like Roger Ebert’s theory that the men of Ruby City were fooled into thinking Little Jo was a man because on some sub-conscious level they chose to believe it. As he wrote: “So ingrained was the notion that only men could do "men's work," Greenwald says, that if a woman could ride and rope and run a ranch, she was accepted as a man even in the face of other evidence.” How ironic. Could it be that the very societal forces that damned Josephine in the first place were in part responsible for the success of her transformation into Jo? Perhaps. Perhaps not. All that’s clear is that the Old West was no place for a woman who wasn’t a schoolmarm, a hooker, or a cowgirl. Make of that what you will.

8/10

The Captive City: Robert Wise

Let me be blunt: Robert Wise's The Captive City feels like a watered down version of Phil Karlson's The Phenix City Story (1955). Both films are about medium-sized, post-World War Two American towns that fall into the clutches of organized crime. When intrepid individuals try to expose the corruption, they quickly discover that the criminal operation goes deeper than they could have possibly imagined. In both films the city's police are under the gangster's payroll. And in both films, innocent people are brutally murdered in an attempt to prevent justice from being done. These plots actually remind me a great deal of Westerns: an idealistic hero stands up against evil criminals who keep God-fearing townsfolk in a state of terror. But The Phenix City Story is simply the better film. The Captive City chugs along without the same energy, falling into a narrative pattern that is repeated ad nauseam: newspaper editor Jim Austin provokes the forces of mob boss Murray Sirak, Sirak's men threaten him to stop snooping, Jim ignores them, Jim provokes them, etc, etc, etc. I will give credit where credit is due: cinematographer Lee Garmes manages to turn the seemingly innocent town into a web of deceit and lies, even in the bright daytime. That takes talent. I just wish this film had a bit more pep and intensity to it.

6/10

War of the Satellites: Roger Corman

In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first man-made, artificial satellite into orbit. This satellite, Sputnik 1, sparked a panic in Cold War America over Soviet technological superiority. While Americans watched the sky with wonder and horror, Roger Corman saw something else: another popular trend that could make him a quick buck. And lo and behold, 8 months later Corman released War of the Satellites, a film where a mysterious alien race repeatedly thwarts mankind's attempts at interstellar travel. When a brave group of scientists and astronauts dare to confront and rebel against the alien race's warnings, their leader is murdered and replaced with an alien imposter tasked with stopping them...by any means necessary. This film is part The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and part Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), only with a fraction of the budget. Much like any other Corman film, half the fun in watching War of the Satellites is spotting all of the tricks and short-cuts he used to trick the audience into thinking they were watching a much better film. My two favorites: the early United Nations scenes featuring a whopping 10 (give or take about 10) delegates representing the entire world and a chase scene near the end that I could swear was filmed by making the actors run down the same hallway 3-5 times. War of the Satellites is not technically a good film, but it is a fascinating glimpse into the paranoid fantasies of late 50s America.

5/10

The Body Snatcher: Robert Wise

While a rather minor work, Robert Wise's The Body Snatcher is widely remembered for being the last time that horror legends Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi would share the screen together. Karloff is in top form as John Gray, a sinister cabman who steals freshly buried bodies from cemeteries to sell to unscrupulous surgeons for dissection and study. As can be expected from these kinds of movies, eventually Gray resorts to murder in order to fill his, ahem, quota. The scenes where he threatens to blackmail the surgeons are tense and gripping, thoroughly displaying Karloff's talents for playing wicked yet sickeningly suave and intelligent characters. Unfortunately, Wise makes the mistake of framing the film from the point of view of the surgeons, relegating Karloff as a mere supporting character. As such, the film meanders and loses momentum after the supposed main plot (an operation on a paralyzed little girl) is suddenly resolved approximately halfway through the overall running time. It is only afterwards that the grave-robbing becomes the film's central plot element. But still, the film is dark, spooky, and satisfactorily atmospheric. A word, though, on Lugosi's role: he plays a dim-witted man who idiotically tries to extort Gray after discovering how he manages to obtain fresh 'specimens.' Gray then easily deceives and murders him. I'm not sure if Lugosi had already developed his crippling drug addiction when The Body Snatcher was filmed. But his performance seems...addled. The scene of Karloff killing his colleague and rival of so many years is, in hindsight, disturbing and tragically prophetic.

6/10

Cat People II: The Curse of the Cat People: Robert Wise, Gunther von Fritsch

Cat People (1942) by Jacques Tourneur was a low, low budget horror film that, despite its title, subverted expectations by not actually featuring any people dressed in cat costumes. In fact, Cat People was one of the first films that truly took advantage of the fact that what we don't see is much more terrifying than what we do see. It was a ground-breaking horror film that made a killing at the box office. So, of course, a sequel was inevitable. Just two years later, The Curse of the Cat People was released. Much like the first film, it also subverted expectations. Instead of being a traditional horror film, it played with the idea of horror itself by diving into the mind of one very sad, very lonely, and very imaginative little girl. The Curse of the Cat People doesn't even have any true "scare" moments like the bus that seemingly materialized out of nowhere in Cat People! Here's the plot: after the strange events of the first film, Oliver Reed has married his former co-worker Alice Moore and fathered a six-year-old daughter named Amy. Amy is extremely shy and introverted. After being shunned by her classmates, Amy is approached by an imaginary friend that resembles Irena, Oliver's first wife who died in Cat People. They quickly become best friends. However, when Oliver discovers the supposed identity of her new friend and punishes her, the fragile world that she has constructed comes crumbling down...with potentially deadly results. The Curse of the Cat People is a psychological smorgasbord, challenging the audience with questions over what is and what isn't real. There are moments in this film that make the heart weep with beauty: when Amy discovers Irena in the yard singing counterpoint to a group of Christmas carolers, Irena's Christmas gift, Amy's snow-covered body during her climactic flight from reality, when Amy is told the story of the Headless Horseman by the old actress living in the "haunted" house down the street, etc, etc...The Curse of the Cat People is a strange, magnificent, eery, and mesmerizing film that manages to surpass the original in almost every manner imaginable.

9/10

Robot Monster: Phil Tucker

Aw, I can't attack this movie. Despite the fact that it is hilariously incompetent and terrible, I just can't get myself to hate it. It's too adorable! Radios that spit clouds of bubbles, random stock footage of reptiles fighting, a monster costume consisting of a skull, an ape suit, and a helmet...these things are all too endearing! Yes, from every conceivable measure of quality Phil Tucker's Robot Monster, a film where a race of aliens kill off all but eight humans with a "Calcinator Death Ray" and are forced to kill the survivors bare-handed, is absolutely dreadful. The human survivors act like idiots, the alien tasked with killing the remaining humans is woefully incompetent, and the special effects are, well, "special." But the film is so earnest in what it's trying to accomplish. It honestly tries to make in-depth, sweeping statements on freewill and the nature of humanity. If fails, of course. But you get the sense that the filmmakers were actually trying. This film is awful, but that makes it no less delightful to watch.

3/10 (Actual quality score)
8/10 (So-bad-it's-good score)

Big Jake: George Sherman

George Sherman's Big Jake is about as pure a John Wayne vehicle as has ever existed. When a vicious gang of outlaws kidnap a young boy known as Little Jake, his estranged grandfather, Big Jake McCandles, sets out to rescue him and bring the villains to justice...frontier justice. Big Jake is competent enough as a Western, mixing a great performance by Wayne, gritty action, and a satisfactory story concerning family and redemption. But the film didn't leave a very big impression on me otherwise. I am writing this review sixteen days after watching the film (don't judge me, I've had graduate school finals) and I am having a difficult time recalling anything other than the general plot outline. I have seen other Wayne vehicles that have left incredible impressions on me after only one viewing. It's been months since I first watched John Farrow's Hondo (1953), but I remember that film quite vividly, particularly the scene where Wayne broke an untamed horse. I remember the sheer brutality of the violence in Howard Hawk's El Dorado (1966), the high-spirited humor and massive fist-fight in Andrew V. McLaglen's McLintock! (1963), and even Wayne's brief yet extraordinarily powerful cameo as the war-weary Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in How the West Was Won (1962). Yet, for the life of me, I cannot remember much of Big Jake. But that's probably my fault. I'll give this film another look one day. But for now, I'll just give it a passing grade and call it a day.

6/10

The Mark of Zorro: Fred Niblo, Theodore Reed

It's said that Fred Niblo's The Mark of Zorro was the film that Bruce Wayne's parents took him to see the night they were murdered. After watching it, I can understand why. The Mark of Zorro is a swash-buckling adventure of the highest order. For a silent film made in 1920, it holds up remarkably well with kinetic action and editing, a gripping plot, and a fantastic performance by Douglas Fairbanks as the foppish playboy-by-day, masked-avenger-by-night Zorro. There is so much joy emanating from Fairbanks that it is easy to see why he was one of Hollywood's first superstars. Based on the original 1919 story "The Curse of Capistrano" which first introduced the character, The Mark of Zorro follows Don Diego Vega, the son of a rich ranchero in 19th century Spanish California, as he fights against the forces of tyranny and oppression as Señor Zorro. I'm not sure if the film actually explains why this wealthy aristocrat suddenly becomes a champion of the people, but it hardly seems to matter. This film is pure enthusiasm and action. There's a great scene at the beginning where a bar full of bad guys gets repeatedly faked out by the sudden entrance of people who they think might be Zorro. It builds up so much tension that when Zorro finally does appears, it is an explosion of relief that cements itself as one of the great cinematic character entrances. And it's all uphill from there!

8/10

The Hellcats: Robert F. Slatzer

Robert F. Slatzer's The Hellcats has all the energy and excitement of a Coleman Francis film on Quaalude. And is it any wonder considering the fact that it was produced by Anthony Cardoza, the man who also produced all of Francis' films? Regardless, The Hellcats is one of the most boring outlaw biker films that I have ever sat through. The film supposedly follows the wife of a murdered cop and his brother going undercover to infiltrate the drug-dealing biker gang, the eponymous Hellcats, responsible for his death. At least, that's what I think this film is about. The film is so unfocused (both figuratively and literally in some of the later scenes) that it meanders in and out of lucidity and coherence. At least half of this film has to be comprised of stock footage of bikers riding on the highway and partying. Like so many of Cardoza's films, The Hellcats is an endurance test. It drains you physically to the point of delirium.

3/10

The Long Gray Line: John Ford

There's a certain term that gets thrown around a lot whenever directors like Yasujirō Ozu are discussed: mono no aware. It's a Japanese phrase that literally translates to "the pathos of things" but is used to refer to a sense of the "impermanence of things." In other words, it refers to the idea that all things are transient; that nothing is permanent; that all things must come to an end. Mono no aware can be difficult to properly depict, if it can in fact be depicted at all. And yet, one of the finest examples of mono no aware that I have ever seen is John Ford's The Long Gray Line. The film tells the true story of Marty Maher, an Irish immigrant who worked his way up from a waiter to non-commissioned officer at West Point during the first half of the Twentieth century. It charts nothing less than his adult life, depicting his early struggles against racial prejudice, his marriage to Mary O'Donnell, the loss of his first (and only) child, and his rise to becoming one of West Point's most beloved figures. The entire film has a thick sheen of melancholy and gentle resignation that only an older director could properly portray. Make no mistake, The Long Gray Line is John Ford at the peak of his creative powers as a director and filmmaker. Subtle, understated, heart-breaking, and filled with Ford's trademark light, wistful humor, The Long Gray Line evokes a sadness and joy that most filmmakers only dream of.

8/10

55 Days at Peking: Nicholas Ray, Andrew Marton, Guy Green

During the 60s, many members of cinema's directorial old guard tried their hand at massive historical epics. Anthony Mann directed three of the best examples of the genre with Cimarron (1960), El Cid (1961) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). David Lean revolutionized the epic film with the masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962). And finally, we have Hollywood iconoclast Nicholas Ray who directed 55 Days at Peking, a historical reconstruction of the Siege of the International Legations during the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. Unfortunately, Ray collapsed halfway through and the film had to be completed by other directors. But enough of his influence shines through the finished result that it can safely be classified as a Nicholas Ray film. Key to his films was the idea of a stranger in a strange land; outsiders who try and penetrate established cultures and societies. In 55 Days at Peking, there are two groups of outsiders. First, there are the armed forces representing the International Legations fighting against the Chinese rebels. Second, within those armed forces is a detachment of American marines led by Maj. Matt Lewis (Charlton Heston) who look upon the colonization of China by foreign powers with thinly veiled disgust and cynicism. The historical legitimacy of these dynamics might be suspect, but they were mere plot fodder that helped Ray tell the kind of story that he wanted. 55 Days at Peking is epic film-making on a satisfyingly gigantic scale. The battle scenes are brutal and magnificent. The Chinese characters, while unfortunately heavily coded with traditional Hollywood stereotypes, are actually sympathetic in their plight to rid themselves of outsiders who want to suck the life-blood of their culture. 55 Days at Peking has all the markings of a classic: high drama, high stakes, high excitement, and high emotions.

9/10

Big Bad Mama II: Jim Wynorski

Jim Wynorski's Big Bad Mama II is a sequel to the first movie by Steve Carver in the same way that Evil Dead II (1987) is a sequel to The Evil Dead (1981): it isn't so much a sequel as a glorified remake. Angie Dickinson is back as Wilma McClatchie, a 1930s outlaw on the run with her two nubile daughters. This time around, the plot is a little more developed than it was in the first movie. Instead of just going on a crime spree, the McClatchie's focus their criminal activities on the wicked land baron running for governor who was responsible for the death of Wilma's husband. Like in the first movie, they eventually meet up with two traveling companions. But instead of them being two small-time crooks (like in the first movie), they are, respectively, a newspaper reporter who transforms them into folk heroes in the media and the governor's son that they originally kidnapped for ransom but later chose to join them in their crime spree. I've read many reviews that claimed that Big Bad Mama II is worse than the first film. But I disagree. The film's characters are much more three-dimensional than they were in the first film. The daughters have actual personalities whereas in the first film they only really existed to get naked for the audience and to provide cheap narrative drama by getting pregnant. I will admit that the film does suffer from a distinct lack of William Shatner's suave gambler from the first movie. But otherwise, Big Bad Mama II is simply a better film. And, no, I don't care if the director would later go on to direct Syfy original movies. Even broken clocks are right twice a day.

7/10

Big Bad Mama: Steve Carver

Four years after making Bloody Mama (1970), one of his last great directorial efforts, Roger Corman produced Steve Carver's Big Bad Mama (1974), another film about a family of outlaws led by a murderous matriarch set against the backdrop of the Great Depression. But whereas Bloody Mama was about a mother and her sons, Big Bad Mama is about a mother and her two teenage, nubile daughters. After her lover dies, Wilma McClatchie takes her children on a whirlwind tour of 1932 Texas, stealing, robbing, and extorting their way to riches. Along the way they meet up with a fiendish bank robber named Fred (who ends up impregnating one of the girls), and a refined gambler played by William Shatner. Together, they decide to kidnap and ransom the daughter of a millionaire as a last ditch effort to make it to easy street. But of course, things don't go as planned. Big Bad Mama is nowhere near as entertaining as Bloody Mama despite an absolutely fantastic performance by Shatner. The film doesn't miss a single opportunity to get the young girls out of their clothes. In fact, the single-mindedness with which it exploits the girls makes one wonder if Russ Meyer didn't ghost-direct the film. It doesn't help that the girls are two-dimensional characters lacking any sort of emotional depth. But even more unforgivably, the film just isn't that interesting. Oh, it's a decent enough distraction with lots of action and mayhem. But it doesn't have the charm or staying power of Corman's earlier film.

6/10

The Big Gundown: Sergio Sollima

In the annals of Spaghetti Western history, three of the most legendary figures are the 3 Sergio's. They are, respectively, Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, and Sergio Sollima. The three of them directed many of the most famous and influential films of the genre. While I have seen more than my fair share of films by Leone and Corbucci, until recently I had yet to see one directed by Sollima. Now, after watching The Big Gundown, I can claim otherwise. The Big Gundown essentially tracks the cat-and-mouse game between famous lawman John Corbett (Lee Van Cleef) and Cuchillo Sanchez, a Mexican peasant accused of raping a killing a 12-year-old girl. It's clear that Sollima was trying to make some kind of statement about how mankind chooses their own destiny in the quasi-philosophical discussions between the two characters. Why must Cuchillo run from the law? Why must Corbett chase him? In a way, the revelation near the end that Cuchillo is innocent damages what could have been one of the most intellectually astute films of the Spaghetti Western genre. But while it begins and ends like a traditional Western, the fascinating middle section more than justifies Sollima's reputation as one of the 3 Sergio's.

7/10

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: Shinji Sōmai

What ever is a girl to do? One day Izumi Hoshi is just an ordinary Japanese schoolgirl and the next she's the leader of her late father's yakuza clan. What's worse, rival clans are starting to attack the few remaining gangsters under her command! Will this young woman manage to keep her clan alive against the sinister, diabolical machinations of the Japanese criminal underworld? Based on the novel of the same name by prolific Japanese author Jirō Akagawa, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun is both a milestone of Japanese cinema and a daring dissection of the gangster/yakuza genre. Director Shinji Sōmai injects this bizarre story with an ever more bizarre sense of dream-like detachment. Foregoing traditional methods of narrative storytelling favored both abroad in the West and by his Japanese filmmaking predecessors, Sōmai utilizes unusual frame compositions that exploit extreme long shots, esoteric blocking, and an unwillingness to make Izumi the center of visual attention. In addition, Sōmai favors sparse editing, instead using one or two long, unbroken takes capture an entire scene. My favorite example was when Izumi bandages up one of her gangsters, comforts him in a moment of emotional turmoil, and then is forced to watch while he is savagely gunned down seconds later by rival yakuza. There is also a fantastic scene where a yakuza crime-boss interrogates Izumi for the location of a stash of heroin by making her stand in place on top of a live land mine for hours. Both culturally iconoclastic and stylistically courageous, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun is one of the true classics of 80s Japanese cinema.

8/10

The Seven Magnificent Gladiators: Claudio Fragasso, Bruno Mattei

After the success of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), many imitators tried to capitalize on the film's formula. Some, like John Sturges The Magnificent Seven (1960), are more well known. Others, like Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei's The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, are much more obscure. Set in Ancient Greece (which somehow is already covered with destroyed ruins), the film follows a group of villagers who set out to find a man capable of wielding a sword of power that will enable him to kill an immortal bandit that has terrorized them for years. They eventually find the prophesied hero in the form of Han (Lou Ferrigno), a barbarian warrior who recruits six other fighters. The film is a surprisingly clean and non-graphic offering from the filmmakers responsible for such violent pieces of exploitation like Porno Holocaust (1981) and Zombi 3 (1988). And yet, the film is easily one of their most enjoyable and entertaining. The characterizations are fun (particularly Ferrigno as Han and Sybil Danning as Julia, a conniving, money-hungry female gladiator), the fight scenes compelling, and, remarkably, the film never gets boring or tedious. However, the film does have one major problem: the characters have 5-second memories. I can't count the number of times that the protagonists conveniently forget that they are on the run from a power-mad emperor or that the immortal bandit might come back after they fight him off but fail to kill him. These are all clearly transparent ploys on the part of the directors to inject the film with more action beats and fight scenes. And I can't help but feel disappointed by how unceremoniously several of the gladiators are killed off. But The Seven Magnificent Gladiators is still reasonably enjoyable.

5/10

Planet of the Apes III: Escape from the Planet of the Apes: Don Taylor

Don Taylor's Escape from the Planet of the Apes is both a good sequel to Planet of the Apes (1968) and an excellent stand-alone film. It's an almost ingenious solution to the problem of how Hollywood could make another Planet of the Apes film after the eponymous planet was annihilated at the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970): set it in earth's past. Of course, the film isn't a strict prequel because it follows three chimpanzee scientists who managed to escape from the fiery cataclysm from the last film. Stunned by the sight of a world ruled by men, the three chimpanzees, Cornelius, Zira, and Dr. Milo (the former two of which had appeared in the first two films), are captured and put into a zoo for further study. After Dr. Milo is accidentally killed by a gorilla in an adjacent cage, Cornelius and Zira reveal that they are from a future where mankind destroyed itself and apes came to rule the earth. Fearful of that possible future, government agents decide to exterminate them and their unborn child. I'm simplifying the plot, of course. But the plot is so well executed that it could legitimately work as a stand-alone film. I'm not kidding. If you showed somebody just this film and none of the other Planet of the Apes movies they would still have an enjoyable, rewarding experience. The screenplay by Paul Dehn brings a much more focused philosophical and scientific punch than Beneath the Planet of the Apes and confronts some truly fascinating ethical dilemmas. I know that some people may be disappointed that the film only has a handful of talking apes, but I still believe that Escape from the Planet of the Apes is both a worthy and entertaining follow-up to one of the most important sci-fi classics of the 60s.

7/10

Planet of the Apes II: Beneath the Planet of the Apes: Ted Post

As you may have noticed, I am labeling Ted Post's Beneath the Planet of the Apes as Planet of the Apes II: Beneath the Planet of the Apes. I am doing this because it makes it easier to organize the review in the bookmark column. But enough administrative jibber-jabber, what did I think of Beneath the Planet of the Apes? In short: I thought it was a good sequel but a mediocre stand-alone film. After the first film, a second spacecraft from the past crash-lands on the planet where apes evolved from men. The only survivor, an astronaut named John Brent, goes exploring to try and discover the whereabouts of George Taylor and the rest of his crew. Along the way, he meets Taylor's lover, the mute Nova, and discovers that he disappeared after the appearance of a wall of fire in the Forbidden Zone. Together they dutifully revisit the locations and characters of the first film in their search. Eventually, they stumble upon a group of mutated telepathic humans who worship an atomic bomb in the ancient remains of a New York City subway station. There they find Taylor, try to escape the mutants, and end up detonating the bomb (killing all life on earth) when an invading force of apes led by the gorilla General Ursus and the orangutan Dr. Zaius break into the station. Most of my problems concerning the film can be summarized in the character of John Brent. Why does he exist? Why is he necessary? I can understand wanting to replace Charlton Heston's character with another lead played by a much cheaper actor for the sequels. But his character is killed off at the end of the film! I know that Heston originally didn't want to reprise his role. But that still doesn't explain why they went through all the trouble of establishing a brand new lead if they were always planning to kill him off! Couldn't they have made an established character the primary lead? Imagine this: Dr. Zaius tricks General Ursus into exploring the Forbidden Zone in the hopes of finding more humans. Once he sees the General and his men ransack the station and kill the mutants, he realizes that his species is doomed to the same violent oblivion as the original humans. So, he either a) activates the bomb, freeing the apes from a pointless future, or b), activates the bomb after sending the mutants to their shelters so they can reclaim the earth and work for a peaceful future, having learned their lesson after two nuclear apocalypses. Or maybe he could have found a way to make the apes and humans accept each other! But that's neither here nor there. Beneath the Planet of the Apes is a good film...but it could have been even better.

6/10

Planet of the Apes: Franklin J. Schaffner

Recently, I decided to do a retrospective of the original Planet of the Apes series. I had already seen Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes, but I had never gotten around to seeing its four sequels. So, in order to properly judge them, I decided to re-watch the film that started it all. The story of a group of astronauts led by George Taylor (Charlton Heston) who crash land on a planet ruled by apes after traveling almost 2,000 years into the future, the film has become a cultural touchstone and one of the most important sci-fi films of the 60s. Now, I had already seen the film once before when I was younger. But at the time I only saw it as a piece of Hollywood entertainment and was unable to appreciate its artistic merit. During this second viewing, I was blown away by the power and nuance of Leon Shamroy's anamorphic cinematography. The first 25 minutes where the astronauts explore the Forbidden Zone are heart-breakingly beautiful and prove that CGI will never match the magnificence of on-location shooting. The ape make-up and costumes still hold their ground against modern special effects. While much of the film's philosophical underpinnings seem forced, over-bearing, and quaint by today's standards, I can't imagine how a late 60s audience raised on benign, cheaply-made creature features would have reacted to a sci-fi film with such intellectual depth. In short, Planet of the Apes is even better than I remembered. Onwards to the rest of the series!

9/10

Sudden Fear: David Miller

David Miller's Sudden Fear is a tragic film noir misstep with honorable artistic intentions but a clumsy, fumbled execution. The film follows Myra Hudson, a wealthy Broadway playwright, as she marries Lester Blaine, a struggling actor, and discovers that he is plotting to murder her and inherit her vast fortune. Miller tries to wrench out every iota of psychological tension within this story, diving deep into Hudson's mind as she tries to cope with the discovery of the plot against her life. And the last 15 minutes or so are an excellent exercise in tension as she stalks Blaine on the night he has planned to do her in. However, despite all of this, the film trips over its own two feet in the character development department. At the beginning of the film, Myra is a strong, independent woman. However, after Blaine publicly humiliates and insults her after she fires him from one of her plays, she seems to instantly fall in love with him. And even more, he seems to genuinely love her, too. Then, once he discovers that he is destined to inherit her money, he seemingly transmogrifies into a would-be murderer. These developments are so jarring and sudden that they are impossible to believe. I know that in Hollywood films people fall in love almost instantaneously, but in Sudden Fear it seems even more unnatural and forced than usual. These aren't living, breathing characters; they're automatons who have been programmed to act out a traditional film noir narrative.

5/10

Razorback: Russell Mulcahy

Before he reached the big-time with Highlander (1986), director Russell Mulcahy was making films in his native Australia. One of these was Razorback, a "nature gone wild" movie about a giant wild boar (i.e. "razorback") that stalks the Outback, killing and eating humans. The film follows two men who swear to kill the elusive yet deadly razorback: Jake Cullen, an Australian hunter who was powerless to stop the beast from killing and eating his grandson, and Carl Winters, a Canadian whose wife, an investigative journalist, was attacked by Australians and abandoned to the mercy of the razorback. Spoiler: she gets eaten, too. Together, Jake and Carl wage war against the monster. But can they kill it without becoming pig food? Razorback has a solid plot, but it is occasionally muddied by Mulcahy's stylistic flourishes. As he got his start as a music video director, many sequences feel like they were shot for MTV instead of the silver screen. Mulcahy fails to blend horror and the bombastic stylization of late 80s media with the success that Sam Raimi had with the Evil Dead series. But Razorback is still a moderately entertaining, if somewhat flawed, monster flick.

6/10

Dead of Winter: Arthur Penn

I've always had a love of soft-spoken, restrained villains who don't wear their treachery on their sleeves. In Arthur Penn's Dead of Winter, we are confronted with Dr. Joseph Lewis, a villain who at first seems so genuine, kind, and gentle that the eventual revelation of his wickedness can only be met with incredulity. After botching an experimental therapy treatment that led to the death of his patient, he lures an actress named Katie McGovern to his isolated, snowy estate under the pretense of having her star in a movie. However, his true motivations are much more insidious: he intends to use Katie as blackmail bait against the party responsible for his patient's death since she looks almost identical to her. Unfortunately, this plan will eventually result in Katie's death. When Katie discovers the scheme, she must formulate a plan to escape from the terrible yet polite Dr. Lewis. My favorite scene in this film was when Katie managed to summon two policemen to Dr. Lewis' house only for him to convince them that she was a violent mental patient. There is some real horror in the idea of being falsely accused of mental illness. After all, who are the authorities going to believe? The doctor or the disheveled, crazed-looking woman? Overall, I liked this film. It was one of the few thrillers that I have seen recently that actually, y'know, thrilled me.

7/10

The Moment of Truth: Francesco Rosi

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "Bull fighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honour." Francesco Rosi's magnificent The Moment of Truth is a glimpse into that world where beauty meets carnage and death is a constant companion. Disgusted by the possibility of inheriting his father's life as a poor country farmer, Miguel Romero 'Miguelín' leaves his home and journeys to the city where he takes up bullfighting as a means to quickly make money. Perhaps spurred on by thoughts of living a life of poverty, Miguel becomes a veritable over-night sensation with his extreme bravery and cool composure in the face of danger. But Miguel quickly comes to the realization that a life of fast success may not be worth the price demanded of bullfighters by the very nature of their bloody sport. Though the structure of the film's story is anything but revolutionary, Rosi injects a sense of energy and immediacy into it with the use of post-neorealist sensibilities and techniques: the bullfighting rings become universes unto themselves, crowded Catholic processions become mass waves of humanity, and each bull is transformed into a myth-like behemoth. And yet, Rosi refuses to shy away from the gore and brutality of the sport, lingering on the shivering bodies of bulls as the last few pints of blood spill from their necks and how their motionless bodies are dragged away through puddles of their own gore. The Moment of Truth is a film that exists midway between realism and fantastical imagination, much like the terrible sport of bullfighting itself.

8/10