How to Train Your Dragon 2: Dean DeBlois

[Spoilers Ahead]

A lot of love went into Dean DeBlois' How to Train Your Dragon 2. I can see it in the scene where Hiccup meets the mysterious dragon rider in a crystal cave lit with nothing but fire from the mouths of dragons. I can see it in the relationships between Hiccup and Astrid and Stoick and Valka; they tried their best to depict them as human beings who support and encourage each other instead of as static exponents in the equation of movie romance. I can see it in the movie's willingness to kill Stoick, a move which seems more like an earnest attempt to approach and contend with feelings of loss and grief than a mere moment of emotional manipulation. I view Stoick's death in the same way that I viewed Hiccup losing his leg in the first film: honest. Yes, a lot of love went into this film. Its greatest moments are its most intimate, perhaps the greatest being when Stoick confronts Valka for the first time after learning that she is alive. Unfortunately, the rest of the film is labored with a tired plot about a generic warlord who wants to build an army of mind-controlled dragons. This narrative is passably entertaining, yet it fails to live up to the greatness of its quieter moments. I wish that DeBlois and his tireless animators could have been given the freedom to make a smaller scale film that focused exclusively on Hiccup's family. As it stands, How to Train Your Dragon 2 is almost Miyazaki-esque in its focus on quiet moments and emotional honesty. But whereas Miyazaki could match intense introspection with grandiose action and not lose any of his mystique and otherworldly allure, How to Train Your Dragon 2 stumbles with a generic "save the world from the Big Bad" plot. Hopefully in the future they will be able to find a better balance.

7/10

Horse Feathers: Norman Z. McLeod

Norman Z. McLeod's Horse Feathers sees the madcap comedy antics of the Marx Brothers moments before their boiling point. The very next year they would release their undisputed masterpiece Duck Soup (1933) (a picture which Hollywood would spend the rest of their cinematic careers punishing them for). Horse Feathers sees them working out the last of the kinks that plagued their earlier films. The jokes flow more naturally, the bits are more spontaneous, and there are few (if any) scenes where the brothers recite quips back and forth to each other for several minutes in a single static shot. Perhaps more than in any other pre-Duck Soup film, the brothers are in almost constant movement: climbing over tables, jumping onto women, tinkering with ridiculous props, and playing their trademark instruments (Groucho even has a scene where he plays the guitar!). It's a shame that large chunks of the film have been lost. But their absence fails to ruin a marvelous comedy.

8/10

Crimson Gold: Jafar Panahi

Over and over again, I’ve found that Iranian films tend to operate within their own parameters of time. They take their own leisurely time to tell their stories, eschewing frenetic pacing for more reserved narrative developments. They can be challenging for American viewers like myself who are more used to films which are driven almost entirely by their stories. Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold is one such film. It is more concerned with a character than a story: an overweight, mentally scarred war veteran who makes a living delivering pizzas on the streets of Tehran. The film is book-ended by a sequence where he attempts to rob a jewelry store, shoots the manager, and commits suicide. The rest of Crimson Gold is devoted to exploring the previous few days of his life. Jonathan Rosenbaum rhapsodized the film as a stirring condemnation of class dynamics. Indeed, he writes that the man's interactions with the wealthier sections of Tehran are what drive him to his murderous crime. But I'm not so sure I agree with Mr. Rosenbaum. Panahi's protagonist is a cypher; a mostly mute witness to the society in which he lives. Things happen to him, such as being prevented from completing a delivery because of a police blockade and being invited into a wealthy customer's apartment after his dates abandon him, but we are never given a clear indication that these things are what inspire him to robbery. The only obvious inspiration for his actions is a sequence where he is humiliated by the owner of that jewelry store while searching for a present for his wife. But that only takes up a short amount of the film's running time. The rest is just a series of odd and unfortunate events. It is only by the nature of the Kuleshov Effect that we assume that they are related to his crime. Crimson Gold presents an effect stripped of a reasonable causality.

6/10

Wyatt Earp: Lawrence Kasdan

Dammit, dammit, dammit. I was really hoping to like this film. I've always had a soft spot for epic Westerns and Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp seemed like the perfect film to scratch that particular itch. A sprawling 3-hour biography of Wyatt Earp, it features a plethora of great actors like Gene Hackman, Dennis Quaid, Bill Pullman, and Kevin Costner. It's also heart-breakingly beautiful, featuring cinematography from Owen Roizman that is nothing short of stunning. And yet Wyatt Earp fails miserably. For starters, Kevin Costner delivers a woefully wooden performance. I know that Costner is a perennial punching bag when it comes to bad acting, but the man is capable of great performances. His turn as Wyatt Earp isn't one of them. Also, for such a long film Earp remains puzzlingly enigmatic, his motivations never becoming clear. This isn't a deliberate creative decision like Brad Pitt's off-kilter performance as Jesse James in Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). We never understand Earp as a character because his character is never properly developed. Much of the film is spent trying to emotionally validate Earp's various romantic pursuits. And unforgivably, the film does almost nothing to develop the friendship between Earp and Doc Holliday, played by Dennis Quaid in a career-defining performance that is mostly wasted. They only have a handful of scenes together and we never quite understand how or why Holliday becomes so fanatically attached to Earp. Wyatt Earp is too long and unfocused for it to leave any lasting impact. And what a shame, too. It's such a pretty film.

5/10

That’s My Boy: Sean Anders

Brace yourself, for what I'm about to say may be the hardest thing you will ever be asked to believe: Sean Anders' That's My Boy may, in fact, be the single worst film Adam Sandler has ever starred in. In recent years, Sandler has made a number of wretchedly unfunny and mean-spirited comedies. But That's My Boy takes the cake because it revolves around a single fundamental idea: a young child being raped by his teacher is the greatest thing that could ever happen to him. After 13-year-old Donny Berger is caught having sex with his grade school teacher, he becomes an overnight celebrity and the object of intense adoration and envy. Never mind that the teacher seduced him and that it qualifies as statutory rape. Never mind the fact that Donny gets the teacher pregnant. Never mind the fact that the teenage Donny has to raise a young child. Donny is a hero. I could describe the rest of this miserable movie that gleefully treats vomit, sperm, and incest as the height of comedic potential. But no. I won't. Pardon my language, but FUCK this movie. I wish that somebody would remake the first ten minutes of this film but replace Donny with a 13-year-old girl and his teacher with a middle-aged man. Let's see how funny it would be then. That's My Boy is the most despicable manifestation of rape culture that I have seen slither its way out of Hollywood in years.

0/10

Nothing But Trouble: Dan Aykroyd

[Spoilers Ahead]

Y'know, I kinda liked Dan Aykroyd's Nothing But Trouble (1991) in spite of itself. It tries to galvanize the formula that made Ghostbusters (1984), another one of Aykroyd's projects, work: spontaneous comedy mixed with high production value special effects. It follows a couple of New York city slickers as they accidentally get captured by representatives of Valkenvania, a nightmarish village of scrap metal and grotesque inhabitants who are in the business of kidnapping and killing visitors. The make-up effects that transform Aykroyd into the centenarian ruler of the town, Reeve Alvin Valkenheiser, are impressive. And his multitude of fun-house gadgets used to torture and torment his "guests" are delightful to behold. I particularly liked his roller-coaster execution machine lovingly named "Mr. Bonestripper." But there are too many nagging plot holes. For one, we are never given a reasonable explanation for why Valkenvania is in the murder business. We learn that they torment people from the financial industry as revenge for the duplicity of a con artist who ruined their town with a phony business investment in the coal mining industry. Fair enough, but what about everyone else that they capture and murder? A revelation near the end that nearby law enforcement agencies are in on Valkenvania's actions is even more bewildering. How do they know? Why do they support it? What do they get out of it? Nothing But Trouble isn't a good movie. But I can't dismiss it as a terrible one, either. It tried something new and failed. I wish more directors had Aykroyd's nerve.

5/10

Land of the Lost: Brad Silberling

Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost is one of those mercilessly annoying comedies where the actors just don't know when to shut up. The film maybe only has about 50 minutes of plot: two scientists and a tour guide discover a method of warping through time and space to a strange dimension inhabited by dinosaurs and world-conquering lizard men. The rest of its run-time is devoted to half-hearted mugging. This isn't a film about characters; it's a revue for the comedic personae of Will Ferrel (the overacting, wide-eyed man-child) and Danny McBride (the repugnant and crude wanna-be Lothario). The only actor who comes through this film with the slightest modicum of dignity is Anna Friel. And even she has to suffer the twin indignities of being repeatedly molested and having to act like she actually finds Ferrel attractive as both a scientist and a lover. The film's effects are terrible, the comedy is even worse, and it besmirches the memory of a classic television franchise.

3/10

Mommie Dearest: Frank Perry

The fact that Frank Perry’s Mommie Dearest, a biographical film about actress Joan Crawford and her abusive relationship with her two adopted children, won six Razzie Awards including the honorary award for the worst film of the 80s is nothing short of criminal. At the time critics dismissed this frank and terrifying portrayal of mental illness and child abuse as a piece of camp cinema. But that isn’t fair. It is actually an extremely well-written and well-acted examination of a handful of broken lives. The film seems to argue that Crawford was always a bit mentally unbalanced what with her obsessive compulsive desire for cleanliness. But as she aged and Hollywood began to abandon her, her compulsions evolved into full-fledged mental illnesses (an idea backed up by recent research which suggests that Crawford may have suffered from undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder). And more often than not her two children were the outlet for her uncontrollable rages and neuroses. I am fascinated by the critics who wrote that the film was too depressing or morose for it to be any good. Most of these same critics would give films like Schindler's List (1993) glowing reviews despite the fact that they would emotionally devastate their audiences in a similar way. If people can sit through Schindler's List and take it seriously, they can do the same for Mommie Dearest, a film which stands to this day as one of the most horrifying and honest portrayals of child abuse in cinematic history.

9/10

12 Years a Slave: Steve McQueen

I knew that eventually I would have to watch Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, but I still dreaded it. One of my personality quirks is that I have difficulty dealing with stories involving slavery. But I managed to watch it anyhow. It wasn't easy. The film was so powerful and devastating that I had to pause it several times so I could take my mind off the narrative for an hour or so. Even then I was emotionally annihilated by the film's ending. I am grateful that I never had to watch it in a movie theater where I would have been unable to stop the film periodically for breaks. So what do I have to say about the film? Well, for one, I found the scenes that took place before Solomon Northup was sold to Edwin Epps to be the most frightening. Having seen so many other slavery films, I knew what to expect at Epps’ plantation. But at William Ford’s plantation I had no idea what would happen. The film is also Kubrickian in its detachment from the emotions of its protagonist. Solomon largely serves as a stoic, silent witness to a parade of horrors and nightmares. Truth be told, the scenes involving Solomon's anguish over being kidnapped, sold into slavery, and kept from his family affected me the least. The moments that were burned into my brain were the two hanging scenes, Patsey's humiliation at the hands of Epps' wife, and the climactic scene where Solomon is forced to whip Patsey.

9/10

BloodRayne: Uwe Boll

Ben Kingsley, why do you keep doing this to yourself? Why do you keep appearing in abysmal movies like Uwe Boll's BloodRayne, a loose adaptation of the Terminal Reality video game franchise about a half-human/half-vampire named Rayne who seeks to destroy a Vampire King responsible for murdering her mother? Did you not know that Boll has a reputation as one of the world's worst modern filmmakers? Could you not tell from the script that it would feel like it's made up of seemingly random chunks of plot devices and violence from a much larger, more coherent film? Did you not realize that the final product would play like its own porn parody with most of the porn taken out? I guess you couldn't have known that the gory special effects would have all of the subtlety and realism of an Andreas Schnaas film or that you would be forced to wear one of the worst hairpieces imaginable. But come on, Mr. Kingsley! This is beneath you! You were in Gandhi (1982) and Schindler's List (1993) for crying out loud!

2/10

White Chicks: Keenen Ivory Wayans

Some bad movies are an adventure. Others are merely boring. Keenen Ivory Wayans' White Chicks is neither of these. This "film" about two inept African-American cops who go undercover impersonating young white socialites in the Hamptons is an endurance test. In a sense it's almost admirable in how there isn't a single moment of this "film" that isn't either painfully unfunny and/or physically nauseating. And you know what the kicker is? The thing that perhaps bothered me the most about White Chicks wasn't its unfunny humor, its racially prejudiced depictions of both whites and blacks, and its gross sexism. No, it was the fact that the "film" actually believed that the white woman prosthetics plastered onto the main actors were convincing. Of course, there are a few obligatory scenes where friends of the impersonated socialites gape at the officers and try to figure out what's "different" about them. But their inevitable conclusions are always something stupid like a new hairdo. Within the world of White Chicks those prosthetics are perfect disguises. And let me tell you...they are among the most revoltingly hideous pieces of makeup that I have ever encountered in any "film." And yet, again, this "film" expects us to buy into their perfection. Why? Because White Chicks is an idiotic film made by idiotic people featuring idiotic characters made for idiotic audiences. And, no, I'm not saying that only idiots can enjoy White Chicks. But what I am saying is that White Chicks was made by deliberately aiming at the lowest common denominator because it doesn't expect anything more from its audience. Screw you. I won't be insulted like this.

1/10

Cool as Ice: David Kellogg

David Kellogg's Cool as Ice isn't so much a movie as it is a ninety minute music video with bits and pieces of plot haphazardly stuffed into the cracks between musical numbers. This is hardly surprising considering Kellogg's career as a music video director. And to his credit, Cool as Ice has a fresh, energetic visual style that ensures that the film is never boring. But everything else about the film fails miserably. Vanilla Ice is laughable as an actor, the dialogue is cringe-worthy, and Ice's few musical numbers are painfully dated (although, to give credit where credit's due, the man is a good dancer). The bad-boy meets good-girl storyline is diluted with a bizarre side-plot involving corrupt police officers, the Witness Protection Program, and a kidnapping. The only explanation for its addition that I can think of is that Kellogg must have realized that he only had about thirty minutes worth of "story" so he hurriedly tried to raise the dramatic stakes and give Ice a chance to be a hero. The result is that Cool as Ice feels less like a single motion picture and more like two movies Frankenstein-ed together: a terrible crime thriller and an even worse musical.

4/10

Hudson Hawk: Michael Lehmann

The greatest sin Michael Lehmann's Hudson Hawk committed was that it bit off more than it could chew. In trying to think of how to describe the film, the word "much" comes too mind: the comedy is too much, the surprisingly labyrinthine plot (for a Hollywood blockbuster, anyway) is too much, and several of the performances are... too much. The film, about an eccentric American burglar played by Bruce Willis who is forced to help steal mechanical parts to an ancient alchemy device designed by Da Vinci, has some sincere heart (Willis is extraordinarily charismatic), some genuine laughter (slapstick humor isn't for everyone, though...), and some gripping excitement (the ambulance chase scene was one of the best action sequences Willis did during the 90s). But the film is just too much. Halfway into the film I couldn't keep track of who was controlling and betraying who. Was the evil married business couple who wanted to destabilize the world's economy working with or AGAINST the CIA and the Vatican's counter-espionage agency? I think that the film would have worked better without the CIA subplot. As it stands, Hudson Hawk isn't a travesty, but a miscalculation. There are some interesting ideas and concepts being used in this film. But, again, it's just too much.

4/10

Disaster Movie: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

At around the twenty minute mark of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's Disaster Movie, I realized that the majority of the film had been devoted to a High School Musical "spoof." And doesn't that just sum up the collected works of Friedberg and Seltzer? Their "spoofs" don't spoof anything; they are parades of tiresome, unoriginal references that become horrifically dated within months of being released. I had no hopes for Disaster Movie after seeing their previous film Meet the Spartans (2008), a work that literally made me physically ill. Imagine my surprise when I dreamed of it nostalgically while watching this film. At least Meet the Spartans was a spoof of one film and had some semblance of a plot structure. Disaster Movie just goes on and on and on and on and on with one awful "spoof" sequence after another. This isn't a movie; it's a punishment.

1/10

Meet the Spartans: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer

Three times. I laughed three times during Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer's Meet the Spartans, a "spoof" of Zack Snyder's 300 (2007). And each time I felt dirty afterwards. (In case you're wondering...the scenes that made me laugh involved child abuse.) Barely clocking in at over an hour, it is about 3 hours too long. Not only are the jokes horrible (they repeat a bit about a panel of television show judges three times), they rarely have anything to do with the movie they are spoofing. Even worse, they spoof scenes from 300 out of order! Every single second of Meet the Spartans hurt. One scene involving "Paris Hilton" and her hump literally made me physically ill. I can say without a hint of exaggeration that Meet the Spartans is one of the single worst films that I have ever watched in my entire life. And I do not say that lightly.

1/10

Dracula: Tod Browning, Karl Freund

[Revisit Review]

Because of Bela Lugosi's performance, the stunning production values, Karl Freund's cinematography, and its multitude of lines that have become legendary parts of pop culture, Tod Browning's Dracula is indispensable. And yet, I found the film surprisingly underwhelming. First off, the film should have been silent. The narrative's clunky storytelling would have benefited from the use of intertitles instead of the pained dialogue which, Lugosi aside, is either monotone or dreadfully over-melodramatic. Here's a question: why does the film keep Renfield around after Lugosi gets to London? He contributes nothing to the plot and his intrusions into the scenes only serve to further hobble the film's storytelling by drawing them out. After traveling to London, Dracula never calls on him for aid ever again. So why does the film insist on his importance?

8/10

Splendid Outing: Soo-yong Kim

Soo-yong Kim's Splendid Outing hit me like a stick of dynamite. The film haunted my thoughts for days after I watched it. I could not get it out of my head. I earnestly believe that if it was given a proper restoration and promotion here in the States, it would be heralded as a triumph of world cinema. A feminist parable masquerading as a horror film (or perhaps the other way around), Splendid Outing tells the story of Gong Do-hui, a high-powered business executive and women's rights icon who is mistaken for the runaway wife of a rural fisherman by a group of hired thugs, kidnapped, and trapped on a distant island, and brutally beaten and raped by her "husband." The husband slobbers about as a barely coherent drunk with psychotic, sadistic tendencies. Her new "daughter" is a cripple who is quick to scream and cry (and incite her father's wrath upon Gong) whenever she feels neglected. But if the father is too stupid to notice that Gong isn't his missing wife,  the daughter almost certainly knows within an instant that Gong isn't her real mother. After several failed attempts, Gong manages to escape from the island after a year and return to the mainland. However, she discovers that the police have mistaken another dead woman for her. She also finds that she has been forgotten by the company that she once worked for. Indeed, one of the most painful moments of the film is when we realize that the company probably deliberately forgot about her because she was a woman who had the audacity to hold power over her male co-workers. With her children long since moved away and an unwanted baby in her belly, Gong kills herself while screaming her name one last time. And yet, this isn't the end of the film. I won't give away the ending, but it transforms an already exhaustive parable into an uneasy glance into the internalized masochism that perhaps infects many feminists. Another underlying theme in Splendid Outing is the complicity of many women in destructive patriarchal societies. A group of women kidnap Gong, the crippled daughter and her grandmother either encourage or deliberately provoke the husband's abusive behavior, and when she returns to the mainland she discovers that her feminist group has been hijacked by a woman who promotes a faith-based pro-life agenda. I can't remember the last time a film so violently shook me to my core. Splendid Outing is a nightmarish Korean response to Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Woman in the Dunes (1964). But whereas that film depicts its protagonist's imprisonment in an exploitative society as an accidental twist of fate, Splendid Outing argues that such imprisonment not only can happen, but does happen to millions upon millions of women all over the world.

9/10

Les Visiteurs du Soir: Marcel Carné

Until his dying day, director Marcel Carné insisted that his film Les Visiteurs du Soir, a romantic fantasy wherein two of Satan's envoys try to spread chaos in 1485 France, was not an allegory for Nazi-occupied France. But, of course, since the film was made in 1942 during the Occupation, it has come to be seen as the very thing that Carné so vehemently denied. Well, I for one believe Carné. The film serves no allegorical function because it is a film of surfaces bereft of any depth. It is a romantic fantasy plain and simple. The story centers on the love affair between one of the devil's envoys and the daughter of a powerful baron engaged to be married to a callous warlord. When they declare their love for each other, Satan himself (played with scene-chewing glee by Jules Berry who is easily the best part of the film) comes to earth to break them apart. But, this being a fairy tale, love wins out in the end. It's just too bad that the film lacks the sense of joy and wonder that makes fantasy so appealing as a genre. Les Visiteurs du Soir is a hollow movie that lacks the immediacy and energy that galvanized the similar fantasy films of Jean Cocteau. Both films feature clever practical special effects. But whereas the effects in a film like Beauty and the Beast (1946) seem like extensions of its fairy tale universe, the effects in Les Visiteurs du Soir progressively seem more and more like interruptions in its tepid romantic melodrama.

6/10

Double Indemnity: Billy Wilder

[Revisit Review]

Yes, yes, well all remember how Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity is a trademark of the film noir genre. Its cinematography, its screenplay, Barbara Stanwyck's turn as one of the greatest femme fatale to ever grace the screen...We remember all of it. But during my third viewing of the film, I was amazed at just how much genuine tension I felt during the Edward G. Robinson scenes. In particular, the moments when he comes to Fred MacMurray's apartment and Stanwyck hides behind his door and when Porter Hall visits his office are incredible. That's the true mark of excellent craftsmanship: when something is still suspenseful and thrilling even when you know what's going to happen.

10/10

Edge of Tomorrow: Doug Liman

When I went into the theater to watch Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, I was totally prepared for a mash-up of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day (1993). What I wasn't prepared for was how much fun it would be. Edge of Tomorrow is a genuinely entertaining sci-fi film with a fair share of dark humor that manages to also be rather thought-provoking. Based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka's light novel All You Need Is Kill, the film follows US Major William Cage as he is forced to relive the same disastrous day over and over again where he takes part in mankind's final doomed attempt to destroy an invading race of aliens known as Mimics. I won't spoil the mystery concerning why he is stuck in a temporal loop, but I will say that the explanation was surprisingly fresh and original. Cage's transformation from unwilling soldier to super-warrior extraordinaire was delightful to witness. Indeed, the film takes as much joy in exploring the consequences of countlessly reliving the same day over and over again as the aforementioned Groundhog Day. And since Cage's day resets whenever he dies...well, let's just say that it is a situation ripe for comedy. While I was disappointed in the film's over-reliance on CGI both for its futuristic technology and for the design of the Mimics, I did appreciate how all of the military gear looked used and dirty instead of sterile and new.

8/10

The Woman in the Dunes: Hiroshi Teshigahara

[Revisit Review]

Has there ever been a more tactile film than Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Woman in the Dunes? To watch it is to feel the coarse sand scrap against your skin, to feel the merciless sun chap your flesh, to feel your lips crack with thirst. Perhaps this comes from Teshigahara's background as a ikebana artist; maybe the mastery of another art form gave him fresh insight on how to utilize the cinematic medium in new and daring ways? We've seen similar cases before: Jean Cocteau came to the cinema as a poet, Samuel Fuller a newspaperman, Stanley Kubrick a photographer, Bob Fosse a choreographer. Whatever the case, it is no exaggeration to say that there had never been a film before like The Woman in the Dunes. It is equal parts existentialist metaphor and post-modernist nightmare.

9/10

Baby Doll: Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan's Baby Doll is an unpleasant film about unpleasant people. In fact, it’s one of the most unpleasant films that I have seen in quite some time. It follows the tumultuous love triangle between the middle aged cotton gin-owner Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden), his bubble-headed 19 year old wife Baby Doll Meighan (Carroll Baker), and Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach), the owner of the town's most modern cotton-gin which he (correctly) suspects was burned down by Archie. This is a film soaked in sexual violence: Silva alternatively seduces and terrorizes Baby Doll and Archie is just one bottle of whiskey away from forcing himself upon her (she has made him swear not to touch her until her 20th birthday). There is so much shouting and screaming that by the end of the film I had a headache. And it's not just the film's story that stinks; Baby Doll has some of the most atrocious sound mixing that I have ever encountered in a mainstream Hollywood film. Random lines are frequently muffled, poorly recorded, or completely unintelligible. More than once I had to rewind the film and re-listen to a snatch of dialogue because I literally couldn't understand what they were saying. Even worse, sometimes the sound quality will vary multiple times within a single take. This gives the impression that a lot of the dialogue was dubbed in post. If that's the case, then they did an atrocious job.

4/10

Adieu Philippine: Jacques Rozier

Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine never got the attention or admiration it deserved as one of the key films of the French New Wave. Almost impossible to find, the film (and Rozier's reputation) have floundered while its contemporaries have become enshrined as masterpieces of world cinema. And this just isn't fair. Adieu Philippine combines the visual flamboyance of early Godard with the honest human drama that propelled the work of Truffaut. It manages to be a movie about a teenage love triangle that doesn't feel sappy or artificial. Though they are young and foolish, Rozier's subjects aren't the vapidly self-absorbed teens that polluted so many of Godard's films with esoteric monologues about philosophical baby-babble and half-smoked cigarettes. They feel like actual people young enough to make mistakes yet old enough to realize how foolish they are. Here is a film full of the energy and excitement of youth. Beautifully shot, the city of Paris and the beaches of Corsica have rarely looked so vibrant and inviting. Adieu Philippine achieves almost everything Godard set out to do with Breathless (1960) intellectually and artistically. And Rozier did it without heavily relying on a single editing gimmick, too.

8/10

The Tall Target: Anthony Mann

We all know that president-elect Abraham Lincoln wasn't assassinated in Baltimore while en route to the White House. This is a basic fact of history. So it seems odd that Anthony Mann's film The Tall Target would bill itself as a suspense thriller about a New York Police Sergeant named John Kennedy (Dick Powell) who must race aboard a night-train to Baltimore to stop a secret cabal from killing Honest Abe. We know he will succeed. But oddly enough, The Tall Target is one of the most effective suspense thrillers of its era. In my opinion, it rivals anything Alfred Hitchcock did during the 50s. This is a film where atmosphere is more important than plot. Oh, it helps that the narrative is interesting enough, what with its double agents, suspicious characters, and plot twists. But...Well...Okay, what I'm about to say may not be the most astute observation, but it's the only way that I can think of to describe the atmosphere of the film: it feels like an old-school point-and-click adventure game. I'm serious. It reminds me of those 90s adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, only it takes place on a midnight train. Each room and hallway seems like it occupies its own spatial void apart from the rest of the train. I feel like if Kennedy had tried to open the train windows, he would have discovered that nothing exists beyond them because nothing had been programmed there. The film has Key Items (like a gun with fake bullets) which can be used to solve Puzzles (who is trying to kill Kennedy?) which then unlock Cut Scenes (the double agent reveals himself). Certain characters will only help you if you have the right Key Item (the young boy and a coin) and others seem to be programmed to give automatic responses to questions (a brother and sister bound for their home in "Georgia"). You get the feeling that when Kennedy enters an empty room, everybody else on the train and all of the other compartments cease to exist until he uses the right Action Command. But I digress. The Tall Target is absolutely excellent. I have two small quibbles with the film, however. First, Powell just isn’t very charismatic. When something bizarre happens to him, he tends to look confused as if he can’t locate the source of a mysterious odor. And second, the film is rather glaringly uneven. The first half of the film is all shadows and intrigue. But by the second half, almost all of the puzzle's pieces are laid out on the table. As a result, the second half plays like a more traditional suspense film. But the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. And besides, I can't say that I've ever seen a film that used Abraham Lincoln as a MacGuffin before.

8/10

Twentieth Century: Howard Hawks

Much like William Keighley's The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), our enjoyment of Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century depends on us loving the irascible old man at the center of the narrative who selfishly manipulates people for his own purposes. And like The Man Who Came to Dinner, Hawks' film fails to convince us that he is anything other than a nasty, unlikable, despicable human being. One of the earliest of screwball comedies, Twentieth Century follows Broadway impresario Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) as he transforms lingerie model Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) into a superstar. But after three years Mildred, now renamed "Lily Garland," leaves him because of his domineering control over her life and day-to-day affairs. Time passes and Lily becomes a Hollywood star and Oscar a penniless bum on the run from creditors. But by chance they both board a train going from Chicago to New York. And wily ol' Oscar sees one last chance to reclaim Lily...and his fortunes. We don't immediately hate Oscar Jaffe. For the first 30 minutes or so he seems like a (passably) decent and kind control freak who just happens to be shackled to a fiery temper. But then he becomes unpleasant, then obnoxious, then hateful. He starts to abuse people mentally and emotionally. Only in a screwball comedy can a character as mean-spirited and detestable pass for a genuine hero on the basis of their abilities to scheme, manipulate, dominate, and fast-talk. But I'm not buying it. But that hardly matters. By the last third of the film Barrymore and Lombard (who seems to be warming up for her deliciously grandiose turn in My Man Godfrey [1936]) get into a contest to see who can out-overact the other. The razor-sharp dialogue, so crucial to the screwball formula, loses its finesse in their over-the-top histrionics. All screwball comedies get loud and chaotic at some point. But we only enjoy these moments when we care about the characters. And Mr. Oscar Jaffe is too repugnant to care about.

5/10

Culloden: Peter Watkins

Produced on a short budget with an all-amateur cast, Peter Walkins' Culloden, a docudrama on the 1764 Battle of Culloden wherein the British Army annihilated the forces of Charles Edward Stuart and put an end to the Scottish Jacobite rising of 1745, is one of the most powerful, horrifying, and gripping historical documentaries that I have ever witnessed. It represents a bold step forward in the development of cinematic historiography: instead of objective analyses and recreations, the film mimics modern TV war reporting from a "man-on-the-streets" perspective. Coming in at just under 70 minutes, Culloden's dense exploration of the men involved in the battle, their backgrounds, their actions, and their fates could have easily filled a documentary twice its length. Watkins' ubiquitous use of hand-held cameras gave the proceedings an energy and urgency that at times was almost painful to withstand. I have to give credit to the BBC for producing a documentary like this one which so readily condemns the actions of their past governments and armed forces. This film shook me to my core. It wouldn't leave my thoughts for days after I watched it.

9/10

The Roaring Twenties: Raoul Walsh

Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties isn't just  a great gangster film, it's a parable of love, loss, and redemption. Many of its features have become so iconic that they have become the stuff of second-rate parody: a curt, authoritative voice-over that comments on the action like it was a newsreel, Humphrey Bogart as the cynical rogue, James Cagney as the fast-talking smart guy always looking for an angle, the rags-to-riches-to-rags gangster narrative, and a stern condemnation of crime masquerading as justification for cramming the screen with as much violence as possible (although this was also typical of many other gangster films of the era). For a film that covers so much narrative ground, it clips along with an astonishing speed. The film never feels tedious or drawn out. But it never feels rushed or hurried, either. But it's not just the story that makes The Roaring Twenties so great. Walsh and cinematographer Ernest Haller keep the screen packed with clever framings and compositions. When Haller's camera starts to move, such as during the police depot robbery scene and the final tracking shot of Cagney in the street, the film jolts alive with electricity.

9/10

The Old Jar Craftsman: Choi Ha-won

Choi Ha-won's The Old Jar Craftsman is a luscious, beautiful film that succeeds because of its extreme emotional histrionics, not in spite of them. Based on a short story by Hwang Soon-won, it is more allegory by way of its human characters than merely a fictional tale set in a specific time and place. It reminds me of Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) in this regard. The film is about an elderly potter who one day discovers a young woman almost frozen to death in a forest. He saves her life and they eventually marry and have a son. But one day a young man enters their lives...the same young man whom the potter's wife tried to kill herself for. He has been searching for her for seven years and wants her back. He psychologically torments the woman until she runs away with him, abandoning her husband and young son. The potter despairs, has his son adopted by a wealthy family, and kills himself by diving into his kiln. Years later, his grown son visits his father's grave where he discovers that his mother has wasted away prostrating herself there for forgiveness. The two tearfully reconcile. Three things truly make The Old Jar Craftsman shine. First is You Young-gil's cinematography which makes the Korean countryside spring to life in dazzling color and beauty. The second is Hwang Hae's turn as the elderly potter. He is portrayed as a well-meaning innocent for most of the film. Watch how he refuses to sexually assault her when he first rescues her (although the scene where he rubs her frozen body to restore body heat is highly erotic). When he screams that his missing wife deserves to die, we realize that it is the incomprehensible grief talking and not some deep-seated misogyny. For this is a man for whom violence is incomprehensible. The third excellent part of The Old Jar Craftsman is the prolonged sequence where the potter's wife is psychologically tortured by her missing lover. The way Ha-won uses sound to denote psychological torment seems to predict Zhang Yimou's use of the sound of a foot massager in Raise the Red Lantern (1991).

8/10

Neighbors: Nicholas Stoller

I've found that generally (not always, but generally) if a comedy begins with a painfully awkward sex scene it's going to be a bumpy ride. Nicholas Stoller's Neighbors is one of those films. Uneven and full of plot holes, Neighbors is what happens when you allow too much improvisation without enforcing enough structure on your film's narrative. Following a struggle between a young married couple who recently had their first child and an, let's be frank here, evil fraternity that moves in next door, Neighbors is too awkward to be funny and too predictable to be entertaining. I can count off the plot points in my sleep: the young couple tries to ask them to keep their noise down at night while still seeming "cool," the fraternity promises to do so but doesn't, the young couple calls the cops, the fraternity declares war and attacks a house with an infant in it, and so on and so forth. So many of the plot points are so arbitrary that they border on the offensively stupid. The cops refuse to answer any of the couple's 911 calls after their first report (what?), all of the street's residents apparently refuse to help the young couple while they are being attacked and home invaded because the fraternity members are "nice" to them (WHAT?), the fraternity which at one point has to sell home-made dildos to afford fixing their basement can suddenly afford enough marijuana to turn their house into a massive hot-box (WHAT?!), and the dean of the fraternity's college refuses to step in unless there's bad press despite the fact that the young couple has told them that their newborn child has been threatened (screw you). Much of the acting is decent, however. The chemistry between Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, the young couple, is sweet and charming. Zac Efron and Dave Franco, the fraternity's leaders, have such impeccable comedic timing together that I earnestly hope that they will get another movie together soon. But the film is just not strong or funny enough. It's a mess. And even worse, as I mentioned before, it's a predictable mess. And a predictable comedy is a worthless one.

5/10

Amazon Women on the Moon: Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis, Robert K. Weiss

Let's keep things mercifully simple: the spoof anthology film Amazon Women on the Moon isn't that good because most of its sketches just aren't very funny. Many of the skits blur the line between the subjective (television) and the objective (the audience). In fact, the whole premise of the film is that it is meant to replicate the experience of watching a terrible late-night sci-fi movie (the eponymous schlock-fi abomination mentioned in the title) that keeps breaking down and has to be replaced with commercials while the television station tries to fix it. There are other skits that continue this theme: an elderly Jewish man is teleported into television programs via a broken remote control, a 9-to-5 schmuck gets "reviewed" by a pair of Siskel & Ebert stand-ins, and an erotic video turns violent when a jealous boyfriend storms in on the actress and begins threatening the hapless viewer. But again, most of them aren't that funny. Too many of the sketches go on for far too long. Another spoof anthology film directed by John Landis, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), kept its sketches short and sweet (the obvious exception being the ruthlessly entertaining A Fistful of Yen segment). In fact, the sketch where a young man gets an "interactive" theater ticket accomplished in just a few minutes what Amazon Women on the Moon spent almost an hour and a half trying to do. Although I will admit two things about Amazon Women on the Moon. First, the "Blacks Without Soul" segments starring David Alan Grier and B.B. King were magnificent. Second, the Russ Meyer cameo came so far out of left field that I can't help but applaud.

5/10

The Doll: Ernst Lubitsch

In a tight black room, a svelt young man gently removes the lid from a chest. Placing it upside-down on the table, a verdant field sprinkled with flowers and split by a wandering road is revealed. Reaching into the chest, the young man pulls out a number of figurines and models which he assembles on the lid: a dollhouse, paper trees, a sky, and finally two dolls. With a cut, we are transported inside a life-size reconstruction of the tableau. From the dollhouse door the two dolls emerge as humans: a stringy youth who tumbles down the curved road into a pond and his plump caretaker who pulls him out with an umbrella. From this opening begins Ernst Lubitsch’s The Doll, a fantastical romantic comedy that seems more at home in the realm of postwar German Expressionism than with his later genial American productions. Never has Lubitsch’s artifice been so pronounced. And never has he been more joyfully delightful.

The Doll follows Lancelot, the effete youth from the opening sequence, who schemes to marry a life-like doll in order to placate his uncle, the Baron of Chanterelle, who is desperate for an heir. The local doll-maker Hilarius constructs him a mechanical replica of his high-spirited daughter Ossi that is capable of actions as complex as autonomous dancing. But Hilarius’ careless young assistant accidentally breaks it. To spare the boy her father’s wrath, the real Ossi takes the doll’s place. And so begins her strange and wonderful journey through villages, castles, and monasteries; to parties, suppers, and even a wedding. She dutifully keeps up the illusion (breaking now and then to flirt and dance with others while Lancelot’s attention is diverted) until one night the sight of a mouse causes her to scream. Ossi’s secret is revealed to Lancelot. But another revelation is due for the young man: she has fallen in love with him.

Here is a story that can only inhabit the realm of fairy tales. To tell it, Lubitsch creates a diegetic world of playful artificiality: sets of hyperbolic caricature (the sun has a face and carriages are drawn by men in horse costumes), serendipitous coincidences (Hilarius literally drops from the sky at the end to give his blessing to the newly married couple), and just a touch of white magic (Hilarius’ hair literally stands on end and turns white when he learns of his daughter’s deception).

As so many historians have pointed out, The Doll was released mere months before the debut of Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). While they both feature similar themes concerning people being physically controlled by forces outside of their own will, what is most astounding is how similar their visual language is. But where one film covets shadows and gloom, the other cherishes bright, open spaces and jubilation. If The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the nightmare of German Expressionism, The Doll is its daydream.

But one of the key elements of The Doll’s success was the casting of Ossi Oswalda as Hilarius’ daughter, the eponymous doll. Trained as a ballet dancer, Ossi made her screen debut in Lubitsch’s Shoe Palace Pinkus in 1916. From there she would go on to become one of Germany’s great silent film stars, appearing in numerous comedies (many of which were also helmed by Lubitsch). Film historians Hans-Michael Bock and Tim Bergfelder described her as having a “cinematic alter ego of a hyperactive, coquettish, spoilt Lolita whose anarchic antics caused havoc amid the films’ sedate and ordered Prussian surroundings, but who invariably got tamed in time for the happy end.” In some of her earlier films, Ossi’s persona bordered on the childishly petulant and infantile.

But she hit the right balance in The Doll: playful without being irresponsible, flirtatious without seeming puerile, and just kind enough that we can believe that she is a woman who would actually volunteer to act like a doll. The genius in Ossi’s performance is that we never get the sense that she isn’t in control of her situation. She could easily escape her predicament, but she chooses not to. At first it’s because it’s an adventure and she’s just having too much fun playing along. But then, unexpectedly, her feelings evolve into love.

The Doll was made during a period of explosive creativity for Lubitsch. In just a few years he would direct, in addition to a number of straight dramas, a group of excellent romantic comedies that pushed the boundaries of gender norms and sexual ethics. Three of the best were also collaborations with Ossi. I Don’t Want to Be a Man (1918) featured her as a woman who cross-dresses to escape the boring life and societal expectations of a young lady. The Oyster Princess (1919) saw her as a bratty American heiress whose father “buys” her a prince to marry. And finally, The Wild Cat (1921) saw her at her most anarchic as the leader of a group of mountain bandits who falls in love with a lothario lieutenant assigned to a nearby border fortress.

Along with The Doll, these films were stylistically audacious and featured tightly knit endings where Ossi was neatly paired off with the character she was most meant to be with (don’t let her affections for the lieutenant in The Wild Cat fool you). But the romantic intrigue in The Doll is the most convincing by merit of the film’s deliberate evocation of the fairy tale.

A closing word, then, about the Lubitsch Touch. The elusive Touch is a much discussed je ne sais quoi that permeates Lubitsch’s work. Nobody can seem to agree just what the Touch is. But it exists. And I see it displayed in a marvelous scene near the end of The Doll. When Lancelot takes Ossi to the monastery where he has been staying, he leaves her in the dining room with a group of gluttonous monks. They peer over at her and she begins to dance. The monks gleefully join her until their abbot comes in and chases them away. Close-up on the abbot’s face. Cut to a close-up on Ossi’s bare ankles. We fear the worst. But then he positions himself next to her and begins to mimic her movements. It wasn’t sex he wanted, but to join in the dance.

9/10

Godzilla Raids Again: Motoyoshi Oda

Kaiju effects just look better in black and white, don't they? I guess that when you're working with two primary colors, it's easier to buy into the illusion of giant monsters. In any case, Motoyoshi Oda's Godzilla Raids Again was the sequel to the original Godzilla film. Only this time there are two giant monsters destroying Japan, not just one. And I have to give the film credit, the new kaiju named Anguirus had a pretty cool design. Also, the fights between him and Godzilla were genuinely impressive. Unlike later kaiju fights that look slow and obscenely over-rehearsed (a practical necessity, I suppose, when the actors can't really see out of the suits), the kaiju fights in Godzilla Raids Again are so fast and energetic that the filmmakers must have sped up the film while shooting. If you ever really pay attention to how lizards move (I live in Florida, don't judge me) you'll notice that they are extremely fast and jerky. And the kaiju in this film move that way, too. The climactic fight scene at Osaka Castle was absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, after it was done the movie realized that it still had about 30 minutes left to burn. So it shoehorns in a subplot about pilots trying to trap Godzilla under an avalanche of ice and snow. It's a nice sequence, but there is too much of a lull between it and the Osaka Castle fight. It makes the last third of the film feel tacked on. Don't get me wrong, I liked how they showed humanity reacting to the aftermath of a kaiju attack. But they didn't transition between plot points smoothly enough for it to truly be effective.

6/10

The Wildcat: Ernst Lubitsch

For good melodrama to work, the audience has to emphasize with the characters. Ernst Lubitsch's The Wildcat is a wildly inventive romantic comedy that hurts itself by forgetting this important rule. The film follows the romantic entanglements of the occupants of a military border fortress and the eponymous "wildcat," the de facto leader of a group of bandits named Rischka. There is some impress visual gymnastics involved in Lubitsch's lampooning of military life: the foolhardy commander sending out an armed force to defeat the bandits of which around 70% of the troops are musicians, a bandit wedding where the participants treat the proceedings with all of the reserved pomp of a royal ceremony, and the ubiquitous use of outrageous camera masks which seem to lampoon the works of D.W. Griffith. But where the film fails is in its unrepentantly repugnant male lead, Lieutenant Alexis. He impenitently abandons a literal army of bastard children and their mothers to their fates before becoming the toast of the border fortress. Every woman who meets him falls madly in love with him. And here's the kicker: we are never explained why he is so attractive. He never has to woo anybody, either. He just goes about with a smarmy grin as everything falls into his lap. There is no charisma to his character. So when Rischka, an anarchic spirit of liberation, falls so madly in love with him that she desires marriage, we can't help but feel it is unaccountably inexplicable. So the tragic moments where Rischka must abandon her beloved ring hollow. This film apes the mechanics of melodrama without capturing a bit of its pathos. Still, the film's visuals are unique enough to warrant a viewing...and even subsequent admiration.

7/10

The Oyster Princess: Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch's The Oyster Princess is a sweet and silly story about love, wealth, and mistaken identities. By 1919, the year it was released, Lubitsch had begun to develop his own visual style of storytelling seeped in sophistication. Eventually this would come to be known as the "Lubitsch Touch." The film follows an almost love triangle between a spoiled American heiress, a down-on-his-luck prince, and his long-suffering friend/assistant. The assistant, ordered to vet the heiress, ends up marrying her under the assumed identity of the prince. And from there things go humorously awry. There are two very interesting things about The Oyster Princess. First is Lubitsch's aforementioned visual style. He portrays the household of the American heiress like a mechanized factory: lines of servants robotically carry out commands, the mansion is much too big for its few inhabitants, and everything is mercilessly sterile. I read one observation online that astutely compared a scene where the heiress is bathed by several maids to an automated assembly line. This leads to the second area of interest in The Oyster Princess: the portrayal of Americans. Lubitsch's Old World sensibilities perhaps made it impossible for him to resist poking fun at the New World nouveau riche. At times it is almost impossible to tell whether he is being light-hearted or genuinely malicious towards his American characters. I'm still not sure. Perhaps both. Remember, The Oyster Princess was made one year after America helped defeat Germany in World War One. You make the call.

7/10

I Don’t Want to Be a Man: Ernst Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch's I Don't Want to Be a Man is a film ripe for scholastic rediscovery: it is a subtly subversive gender-bender about a young woman who poses as a man in order to live a more libertine life but falls in love with her caretaker. That the caretaker is male is not surprising. That they share a "same-sex" kiss is shocking (for the year it was released, I mean). That the film and its characters don't seem to pass judgment on the "same-sex" couple is downright stunning. The humor in their relationship comes less from their gender hijinks and more from the fact that a free-spirited young woman and an uptight, prissy man fall in love. And then, after getting fabulously drunk, the two are accidentally deposited in the other person's house by their carriage-driver. Honestly, the film could have worked perfectly fine without the last minute reveal of the young woman's gender. But though the film is potentially fascinating for historians, I fear that it would try the patience of modern viewers. Setting aside the obviously ludicrous moral that men have a harsher lot in life than women, Ossi Oswalda plays the part of the female lead so childishly that it borders on infantilism. The way she responds to and provokes people in the first third of the film is akin to a toddler knocking over their baby bottle just to get a reaction from their mother. Although this does lead to one funny scene where she throws treats from her second-story window into the outstretched mouths of nearly a dozen young suitors, their faces wide and expectant like seals begging for fish from their trainers.

6/10

Godzilla 17: Godzilla vs. Biollante: Kazuki Ōmori

[Spoilers Ahead]

Movies should always err on the side of brevity. Better to risk being too short than being too long. This is not just an observation for the benefit of the audience, but for the filmmakers themselves. Take Kazuki Ōmori's Godzilla vs. Biollante, the second Heisei-era Godzilla film and direct sequel to Koji Hashimoto's The Return of Godzilla (1984). Based on a story by Shinichiro Kobayashi, a dentist who moonlighted as a science-fiction writer, the film was a brave departure from other Godzilla movies by featuring a story that aspired to nothing less than poetry: a heart-broken scientist accidentally creates a giant rose-monster named Biollante after combining Godzilla DNA with genetic material from roses and his murdered daughter. He had been trying to make a radiation-consuming bacteria that could kill Godzilla if and when He ever returned. The film ends with Godzilla defeating Biollante after a second giant fight. As Godzilla returns to the oceans, Biollante disintegrates into spores which form a giant rose in outer space. If the film had just focused on the Godzilla vs. Biollante plot, it could have been one of the greatest modern Godzilla films. But after Godzilla defeats Biollante after their first fight, the film repeats the third act of The Return of Godzilla almost verbatim: humanity fights back with a flying spaceship which is eventually destroyed, Godzilla annihilates a city (this time wrecking Osaka instead of Tokyo), and scientists manage to trick Godzilla into walking into a giant trap designed to either kill or incapacitate him. Only this time the last-minute gambit fails. It is only then that Biollante returns in a more powerful form. I will admit that the effects in this film far outstrip the ones in The Return of Godzilla. Biollante's second form is an especially impressive creation that might rank as the finest piece of practical kaiju costuming ever captured on film. Additionally, the scale models that the kaiju demolish look more like actual buildings and vehicles than the obviously cardboard cut-outs of The Return of Godzilla. But the film ultimately bites off more plot than it can chew. Despite its excellent human drama and outstanding effects, the film is just too long and beleaguered for its own good.

6/10

Meyer from Berlin: Ernst Lubitsch

Ignoring its rampant antisemitism, Ernst Lubitsch's Meyer from Berlin is not a very good film. It is, in a word, quaint. Much of the humor is dry and depends on dialogue and not body language. One of the main reasons why the silent comedies of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd are still so fresh and entertaining almost 100 years later is that physical comedy is universal. But Meyer from Berlin relies too much on what the characters are saying instead of what they are doing. For silent cinema, that is a death knell. The film itself follows a Jewish Berliner named Sally Meyer (played by director Lubitsch) who fakes an illness to his wife so he can be "prescribed" a trip to the Alps "for his health." While there, Sally immediately starts to romantically pursue a young woman. Their courtship climaxes with a nearly disastrous climb to the top of Mount Watzmann. Visually, the film is plain and unimpressive. Unlike some of his other silent films, Meyer from Berlin merely looks like a movie serial that managed to snag a half-way decent shooting location in the Bavarian Alps.

5/10

Days and Nights in the Forest: Satyajit Ray

There are people much more intelligent and qualified than me who can expound on how Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest demonstrates the literary technique of the carnivalesque. I am not sure I fully grasp the theory myself. So I can only speak on my own personal experience with this film by Bengali cinema's greatest master. The film follows four friends from varying social classes of Indian society who seek to escape into the countryside for a vacation. Their quest for societal detachment becomes a journey of self-discovery as each friend is forced to confront their own anxieties, fears, and desires. The film seems like a distant precursor to Joseph Vasquez's Hangin' with the Homeboys (1991), another film about four friends from different walks of life who seek escape from their daily lives via a brief Bacchanalian respite. Both films skillfully portray their main characters as complex, three-dimensional people who seem genuinely alive in a way that many movie characters don't. As always, Ray's work here is paced and measured. Some might be tempted to describe the film as "slow." But I was never bored with the film. There are many great directors whom I admire greatly whose work can occasionally be a chore to sit through; Dreyer and Bresson immediately come to mind. But Ray never taxes my attention span or my ability to stay awake. I hope that one day I can figure out why.

7/10

Godzilla 16: The Return of Godzilla: Koji Hashimoto

Perhaps I was too quick to write off all of the sequels to Ishirō Honda's Godzilla (1954). Until now, all of the sequels that I had seen were from the Shōwa era. But with Koji Hashimoto's The Return of Godzilla I have entered the Heisei era. And, to be honest, I was much more impressed. A direct sequel to only the very first Godzilla film, The Return of Godzilla sees the King of Monsters return to his roots as a destructive, uncontrollable force of nature. At first I was bothered by how many of the miniatures (especially the gigantic cities that Godzilla destroys with such great delight) looked more like deliberate scale replicas and not earnest attempts at facsimile. But then I was struck by an idea: maybe that was the point. The original Godzilla tried to make the effects as realistic as possible because they were actually trying to create the illusion that a giant monster was destroying Japan. The other Shōwa era films (at least, the ones I have seen) seemed to care little about creating any kind of genuine illusion of scale. Everything was just a pretense to spotlight men in rubber suits beating the crap out of each other in long shots swallowed in mercilessly diffused lighting. But if I am not mistaken, in The Return of Godzilla there were attempts to create scale (see all of the process shots of actual actors fleeing from burning buildings and Godzilla's footsteps) combined with an emphasis on artifice. I am eager to see if this trend continues in the other Heisei era films. If so, then it may force me to completely revamp the way I review kaiju films. After all, in Hollywood musicals deliberate artifice is seen as a virtue. Therefore, if there is a kaiju aesthetic, it must be discovered, defined, and delineated when reviewing kaiju films. The film itself was fine. The whole idea of controlling Godzilla with magnetism was a bit of a stretch, but I guess it was better than getting aliens to mind control him for the umpteenth time. The subplot about the Soviet and American nuclear missiles accidentally reviving Godzilla after he was defeated was a nice touch. It seems to argue that mankind, not kaiju, will always be its own worst enemy.

6/10

Godzilla: Gareth Edwards

If I take one thing away from Gareth Edwards' Godzilla, it will be a scene where a group of soldiers perform a HALO jump into the ruins of San Francisco. As they plummet towards a cauldron of smoke and flame, gas canisters release ribbons of red smoke behind them, marking their descents like a dozen small trickles of blood. It's a scene that feels -- dare I say it? -- Herzogian in its primal power and blasphemous beauty. If the entire film had managed to live up to this scene, then it could have ranked as one of the greatest monster movies of all time. There are fleeting moments of unabashed greatness in Godzilla: when the King of Monsters finally reveals Himself in all of His glory before bellowing His immortal roar, when he gets into a roar-fight with one of the MUTOs, when our stomachs twist in anticipation when His tail begins to glow blue, and generally any of the scenes where we get a worm's-eye view of the kaiju fighting. Gareth wisely films most of these scenes from the perspectives of people unfortunate enough to be trapped on the ground. By doing so, he truly drives home the feeling that these are forces of nature which mankind can only witness. I love how Godzilla is generally shown to be unperturbed by humanity; He doesn't go out of His way to destroy things, but if a skyscraper gets in His way or a battleship gets stuck on His tail, oh well...My problem with the film is that it is bogged down with many of the same problems that plague most American kaiju/disaster films: cookie-cutter characters invariably drawn into tired subplots about family members in danger, an odd fetishization of the military (there was a reason why it took a scientist, not a soldier, to destroy Godzilla in his debut film), and an over-reliance on human characters coincidentally running into people they know in gigantic, chaotic crowd scenes whenever the plot needs to get moving again. But as a kaiju film, Godzilla delivers the goods where it counts. Hail to the King, baby.

7/10

The Tourist: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

[Spoilers Ahead]

For most of its run-time, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Tourist is a vapid, if pretty, spy-thriller/comedy/romance flick about a poor sap played by Johnny Depp who, while on vacation in Europe, is pulled into an espionage cat-and-mouse game thanks to the actions of a beautiful spy played by Angelina Jolie. Their romantic chemistry is...passable at best, but usually awkward. Then at the end of the film there is a twist that complete squanders what little good will I had for the film: it turns out Depp's character was actually the alter-ego of a master spy who just so happens to be Jolie's on-again/off-again lover. This makes no sense because the film violates one of the most important rules involving plot twists: the characters involved forget about the twist when they are by themselves. We are repeatedly shown Depp being a frightened, ineffectual, and stupid character when literally nobody else is around him. You could argue that he was doing so on the off chance that he was under surveillance. But the film makes it clear when he is being spied on and when he is not being spied on. The character might not know this, but the audience does. And plot twists should service the audience first, the characters second. If the audience were informed that literally every move he made was under surveillance, we could buy this twist. But the international authorities are repeatedly portrayed as so laughably incompetent that they can't watch somebody without being painfully obvious to their quarry. So we have too many scenes where both the audience and Depp know that he is not being watched wherein he still acts like a moron. As a result, the twist is forced and ridiculous.

5/10

Confessions of an Opium Eater: Albert Zugsmith

A procession of extended "Oriental" dance sequences betray Albert Zugsmith's Confessions of an Opium Eater for what it is: sleaze. But if sleaze were an art form, Confessions of an Opium Eater would have its own exhibit. One film that springs to mind when I think about it is that great accidental masterpiece: Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (1945), an almost no-budget noir that created a macrocosm of fear, anxiety, dread, and doom. Both films hide their budgets with clever camera tricks, over-the-top performances, and an aesthetic where the style truly becomes the substance. Loosely, loosely, loosely based on Thomas De Quincey's novel of the same name, the film follows Vincent Price as Gilbert de Quincey, a man who gets pulled into a tong war in nineteenth-century San Francisco concerning opium and the human trafficking of "brides" from China. The entire film feels like a fever dream. The performances (with perhaps the ironic exception of Price's) all feel slightly "off." Many of the actors and actresses behave like they are wind-up robots, particularly during a bombastic opening scene where Chinese women are literally thrown from ship to ship outside of San Francisco. The streets, back alleys, secret passages, and tunnels that spider their way throughout Chinatown take on a sinister, labyrinthine life of their own. Rooms seem to materialize in places they don't belong. One bizarre scene involving a drowned woman asks the audience to believe that the gangsters either have an underground dungeon adjacent to a harbor divided only by a sheet of glass or a ground level dungeon adjacent to a massive water tank. The centerpiece of the film is an exquisite 5-minute slow-motion sequence where Price has to escape from a group of murderers while high on opium. Again, spatial logic is violated when Price jumps through a window in what we thought to be an underground opium den only to reveal that they were on the top floor of a giant building.

8/10

Bellissima: Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti's Bellissima is many things, but it is not a comedy. I'm not sure if it's a satire, either. I say this because I have seen both words used repeatedly to describe this film about a maniacal mother who go to great lengths to make her 5-year-old daughter stand out during auditions for a film role. If this is a comedy, then why are there so many shots of the child alone and crying? If it is a satire, why does it feel more like a condemnation of the mother than of the industry she traumatizes her child over? I certainly felt fury during the justifiably famous scene where the mother watches a room full of executives laugh at her daughter's disastrous screen test. But I slowly felt my anger redirect itself from the cruel executives towards the mother forcing her daughter to WATCH the executives mock footage of her crying and shrieking for the screen test to end. Bellissima is a wildly uneven film. If it had focused its energies on depicting the mother as a monster, it might have been better. But it can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be light-hearted, serious, funny, or tragic. Of course, a great film can be all of these things simultaneously. But Bellissima isn't one of them. This incongruity doesn't seem deliberate, it seems the natural result of a film with no clear destination in mind.

6/10