César: Marcel Pagnol

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/marcel-pagnols-the-marseille-trilogy/.

7/10

Fanny: Marc Allégret

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/marcel-pagnols-the-marseille-trilogy/.

7/10

Marius: Alexander Korda

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/marcel-pagnols-the-marseille-trilogy/.

8/10

Les Affamés: Robin Aubert

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/film/110224/movie-review-les-affames/.

5/10

Certain Women: Kelly Reichardt

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-certain-women/.

7/10

Sid and Nancy: Alex Cox

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-sid-nancy/.

8/10

Exodus: Otto Preminger

The following is an unpublishing opinion piece I wrote over a year ago for a site which declined to run it. Thinking back, I think they made the right choice. Man...I was full of beans back then, wasn't I? Honestly, I don't think I can agree with everything I wrote back then. But here it is.

I have a difficult time processing my emotions over Otto Preminger’s Exodus, a sweeping 3½ hour epic about the foundation and partitioning of Israel in the late 1940s. On the one hand, it’s a tremendous cinematic achievement, stunning in scope and effusive with beauty. Featuring a screenplay by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, it unapologetically tries to maintain some semblance of objectivity towards one of the most contentious issues in post-World War Two global politics. Preminger brings his trademark distance towards his characters and their actions, frequently capturing them in medium-long and long shots with minimal edits. And although the cetacean girth of the production necessitated many scenes of lengthy exposition captured with more traditional shot-reverse-shot editing, 2, 3, and 4+ shots dominate much of the film.

Even more impressively Preminger strives to bring a three-dimensional nature to his characters—a difficult task considering many of them are by their very Zionist natures fanatics in one way or another. There is Ari Ben Canaan (Paul Newman), a Haganah rebel who orchestrates a massive smuggling operation of displaced Jews into Mandate Palestine. Though capable of coldness and even calculated cruelty, a portrait eventually emerges of a man desperate for peaceful pluralism between Jews and Palestinian Arabs. There is Dov Landau (Sal Mineo), a traumatized ex-Auschwitz sonderkommando seeking salvation in terrorist violence. There is Taha (John Derek), mukhtar of an Arab village near Ari’s kibbutz who risks life and limb to help his Jewish friends in the face of an Islamic mandate to kill every Jew in Palestine. Each are rich, complex characters that defy easy categorization as “good” or “bad.”

And that’s the problem. For me, at least.

Putting aside politics, the fact remains that many of the characters in Exodus are literal terrorists. And, incredibly, the film does nothing to criticize them. Despite his sympathetic backstory, Dov damns himself by carrying out the 1946 King David Hotel bombing, an attack that killed 91 innocent people. Yes, the hotel was being used to house the central offices of the British Mandatory authorities of Palestine. Yes, the attack was quickly condemned by Ari and other Zionists who sought peace via diplomatic means. But Dov is never depicted as a monster. Indeed, he gets heroic treatment later in the film when he becomes instrumental in executing the 1947 Acre Prison break which freed 28 Zionist insurgents. By the end of the film, we are expected to empathize with him as he mourns the murder of his love interest Karen Hansen (Jill Haworth).

And what of Ari’s uncle Akiva (David Opatoshu)? As one of the leaders of the Irgun, an underground network of Zionist terrorists, he should be treated as the most evil man in the film. Yet Ari goes out of his way to rescue him from British authorities after the King David bombing—which he designed and afterwards celebrated. When he is killed during his rescue, it is treated as a tragic scene of loss. Again, we are supposed to feel Ari’s pain in the loss of his uncle…but not over the deaths of 91 innocent people.

I don’t want to get into an argument about the legitimacy of Israel. That isn’t what this article is about. I’m concerned with whether or not the cinema can or should be objective when dealing with objectively evil people. Terrorism is evil. Therefore, terrorists must be evil. Yet Dov and Akiva are seen as heroes in Exodus—perhaps a bit misguided in their methods, but heroes nonetheless. It would be one thing if they were treated with some sense of moral ambiguity. But outside Ari’s feeble attempts to convince Akiva not to hurt innocent people, their terrorism exists in a vacuum, hardly challenged, barely chastised. We never even see the aftermath of their terrorism; their victims go undepicted as nothing more than a body count in news reports.

Imagine something with me. Imagine if, in the months following 9/11, the Taliban had released a movie like Exodus with British Palestine swapped with the United States and themselves with the Zionists. Imagine if one of the suicide bombers who flew one of the jets into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon miraculously survived and escaped back to Afghanistan. Imagine if one of the big emotional climaxes of the film occurred when he discovered that his wife had died during his absence. Then imagine if the film treated Osama bin Laden’s death as a great tragic moment, his relatives clutching his lifeless body as the orchestra score swelled.

I’m not trying to equate Zionism with Al-Qaeda, I’m just trying to make a point. Just because America might be allies with Israel and enemies with Al-Qaeda doesn’t mean that we can glibly accept one form of terrorism over another. Or does it? After all, wasn’t America’s revolution against Britain an act of terrorism in itself? Or what about members of the French Underground fighting back against Nazis in World War Two? Where do we draw the line between justifiable and condemnable acts of organized murder? They say that the victors write the history books. But in case anyone hasn’t noticed, the battle between Israel and Palestine hasn’t let up since the 40s when Exodus was set.

One interpretation of Exodus is that the film takes a humanist approach, recognizing each characters’ capacity for good and evil while refusing to make judgments for their actions. But I don’t buy that. Exodus is a political story based on a political novel by an author with a clear political motivation. It obviously argues for the legitimacy of the Zionist cause. In my mind, the film’s refusal to condemn equals a tacit approval. It’s a shame that 91 people died at the King David Hotel. But hey, at least it got the British out of Israel.

This kind of thinking I find repugnant and downright irresponsible. Objectivity should be a tool to make the audience question things: ideals, people, events. But there’s no questioning anything in Exodus—the Zionists are in the right. So it’s unwillingness to condemn Dov and Akiva comes across as zealous and even sociopathic. I don’t care that Dov’s heart was broken by Karen’s death—he deserves to suffer as greatly as the families of his 91 victims (although it shouldn’t have come at the expense of another innocent bystander). I don’t care about Ari’s agony over Akiva’s death. Akiva deserves to burn for all the misery and suffering he caused.

Maybe that seems harsh. But I grew up in the 9/11 era. I remember seeing the effects of terrorism first-hand on the news and in the faces of my horrified schoolmates. And all I could think of watching Exodus were the friends and families of the 91 people killed in the King David Hotel. I wish the film had done the same, even for just a moment.

At the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, Fox Searchlight Pictures bought the worldwide rights to Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation (2016) for $17.5 million, the most ever paid for a film at Sundance. The film is a period drama about the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion where dozens of escaped slaves killed 55-65 white men, women, and children. I wonder how this film will treat its subject matter. After all, Nat Turner and his compatriots had every right to escape and fight back against the society that enslaved them. Their owners had it coming. But did their wives? Their children? Historical records say that Turner’s followers were indiscriminate in their killing of white people. So what of white bystanders? It’s difficult to say.

Was Turner’s rebellion more justified than the Irgun resistance? Can the evils they fought against be quantified and compared? I’m not sure. I wonder if I’m setting myself up as a hypocrite with this article for when that film inevitably comes out. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Three Lives and Only One Death: Raúl Ruiz

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/mubi-hidden-gem-three-lives-and-only-one-death/.

8/10

Love Torn in a Dream: Raúl Ruiz

If there's one film Raúl Ruiz's Love Torn in a Dream reminds me of, it's Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978). Both films see the various excesses of their respective directors cranked up to such absurd levels that they collapse in on themselves: A Wedding has something like two dozen primary characters all with their own storylines crammed into a gasping two hour run-time; Love Torn in a Dream takes its meta-narrative involving nine concurrent, overlapping storylines to such extremes that after a time we give up trying to figure out what's going on or what Ruiz is trying to say. At some point you can't help but feel that Ruiz is pulling the wool over our eyes and simply trying to prove how much more clever he is than us.

4/10

Elizabeth Blue: Vincent Sabella

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/108321/movie-review-elizabeth-blue/.

5/10

Thirst Street: Nathan Silver

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/107895/movie-review-thirst-street/.

5/10

Unrest: Jennifer Brea

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/108649/movie-review-unrest/.

7/10

El futuro perfecto: Nele Wohlatz

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/108681/movie-review-el-futuro-perfecto/.

7/10

Kong: Skull Island: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Screw the haters. Jordan Vogt-Robert's Kong: Skull Island was great. It was big-budget adventure filmmaking done absolutely right: loud, fast-paced, exciting, and visually resplendent. It' so good to see more and more big-budget blockbusters embrace color for color's sake. And some of the shots in Kong: Skull Island were jaw-dropping in their simple beauty. Yes, there were too many characters, some of the emotional moments were fumbled, and the screenplay itself could have used some serious tinkering, but it delivered the goods in the best way possible. It was also great to see the film embrace the traditional Kong mythos without feeling like they had to completely remake the original, sort of like Peter Jackson's King Kong (2005). Also, the acting was incredible. I could watch a whole movie of Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman trying to out-intimidate each other. And that one scene where John C. Reilly almost starts sobbing while thinking about eating a hotdog and drinking a beer on opening day at Wrigley Field? Perfect.

8/10

The LEGO Batman Movie: Chris McKay

Chris McKay's The LEGO Batman Movie was positively adorable. It's not as groundbreaking as Christopher Miller and Phil Lord' The Lego Movie (2014), and it did fumble some of its emotional scenes--particularly the one where Batman trapped Alfred, Robin, and Batgirl and sent them to a "burrito stand"--but it's still a solidly entertaining, thoroughly funny piece of madness. As a comic book fan I loved all the ridiculous references to all of the character's bizarre continuity, especially his villains. Plus, Rosario Dawson as Barbara Gordon was a casting choice I never would have imagined, but one that somehow works perfectly.

7/10

Abundant Acreage Availabe: Angus MacLachlan

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/abundant-acreage/.

8/10

The Limehouse Golem: Juan Carlos Medina

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/107576/movie-review-the-limehouse-golem/.

5/10

When Knighthood Was in Flower: Robert G. Vignola

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/marion-davies-and-the-studio-you-probably-never-heard-of/?utm_content=buffer7791a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

6/10

Beauty's Worth: Robert G. Vignola

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/marion-davies-and-the-studio-you-probably-never-heard-of/?utm_content=buffer7791a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

5/10

The Bride's Play: George Terwilliger

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/marion-davies-and-the-studio-you-probably-never-heard-of/?utm_content=buffer7791a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

6/10

La Poison: Sacha Guitry

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-la-poison/.

7/10

Moana: Robert J. Flaherty

To read this review, go to: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-beautiful-lies-of-robert-j-flaherty-s-moana-with-sound?utm_content=buffer2ac09&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

8/10

Man of Aran: Robert J. Flaherty

You'd think that for one of Robert Flaherty's first docudrama sound films, the most interesting thing about it would be its use of sound. But no, the sound adds little to the overall effect of the film. What truly struck me was Flaherty's stumbling attempts at a kind of montage. There's one sequence in particular where the fishermen try and catch a giant shark that's as ambitious in its cutting as the early experiments by Soviet montage directors. Of course, it's not very good. There's little apparent rhyme to the cutting and matching other than the sense that there needs to be cutting and matching in a montage. Other than that, the film rather pales in comparison with Flaherty's other docudramas. There are some beautiful shots of the local landscapes, but it simply isn't as compelling as his other films.

6/10

Wrong Again: Leo McCarey

Leo McCarey's Wrong Again is second only to James Parrott's Two Tars as the funniest Laurel and Hardy short I've ever seen. I laughed the entire time through it, and so did all the children in the theater that I watched it with. It's one of the most fiendishly clever set-ups for slapstick I've ever encountered: Laurel and Hardy mistake a horse for a stolen painting (don't ask) and try to return it to its owner with disastrous results, the worst being a hilarious segment where they try to put the horse on a grand piano (more than anything, this scene made the kids shriek with laughter). Masterful silent comedy. There's no other way to describe it.

L'Avventura: Michelangelo Antonioni

[Revisit Review]

The first time I saw Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura, it was when I was a college student first getting into movies. I saw it on youtube, split up into 15 parts so it would get spotted by copyright claimants. At the time, I absolutely hated it. Now, 7-8 years later, I decided to give it another try, this time on the big screen. Well, after seeing it at the Metrograph in Manhattan's Chinatown, I can say that my active dislike of the film has been downgraded to passive indifference. I get what it's trying to say and accomplish. I just don't like it. But who knows? Maybe I'll wait another 7-8 years, watch it again, and fall in love.

Le Testament du docteur Cordelier: Jean Renoir

So, why exactly did Jean-Luc Godard say Jean Renoir's made-for-TV movie Le Testament du docteur Cordelier was one of the 6 best French films since the Liberation? Or that it was the third best film of 1961? Renoir's adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is rather blasé stuff: the directing is none too inspired; it isn't very stylistically interesting; and perhaps most crucially, Renoir's faithfulness to the more lurid aspects of Stevenson's novel prevents him from fully engaging in his trademark humanism and floating detachment. But as a cheap piece of pulp, it's not without its merits, particularly Jean-Louis Barrault's enthusiastically wonky performance as the dastardly Hyde stand-in Opale. But it's not "best French film" material.

6/10

Gremlins: Joe Dante

Man...the 80s must've been wild. Just look at Joe Dante's Gremlins: the film is a slasher movie made for children. I wish I was kidding. It might disguise itself at first as a charming kid's movie about a boy and his monster, but then those monsters multiply and become demonic Looney Tunes who steal, torture, maim, and straight-up murder people! But seriously, I adore this film for all its anarchic zaniness, inventiveness, and willingness to be downright nasty and gory despite being a movie for children. I mean, the main villain gets dissolved into a gooey skeleton! Try pulling that off today! I also love how, much like John Carpenter, Dante uses his camera as much to obscure the objects of his terror as he does to reveal them. Just watch how cleverly he hides the eponymous Gremlins from the camera once they transform for what feels like ages. A+ filmmaking, folks.

8/10

Meantime: Mike Leigh

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/criterion-discovery-meantime/.

8/10

Savage Dog: Jess V. Johnson

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/savage-dog-scratches-action-itch/.

6/10

The Dark Tower: Nikolaj Arcel

Why bother making a Dark Tower movie if you're not going to bother making it about Stephen King's The Dark Tower series? Seriously! I don't understand the logic behind Nikolaj Arcel's new movie: it has the characters of The Dark Tower, the settings of The Dark Tower, and even some of the conflicts of The Dark Tower. And yet it's not The Dark Tower. It's practically a brand new story that has nothing to do with the beloved novels. It'd be one thing if the movie was in any way compelling, but other than the inspired casting of Matthew McConaughey as Walter o'Dim, there really isn't much about this film that's worth watching. The action scenes are dull, Roland is bizarrely uncompelling--I blame the fact that he gets maybe 30-40 minutes of screentime in the whole damn thing, and the portrayal of o'Dim is so off the mark that it's almost not him. I can't imagine o'Dim, or should I say Randall Flagg, ever being at the helm of a giant technological science center. On the other hand, I can totally buy him wearing an apron as he casually cooks chicken in the house of one of his soon-to-be victims.

4/10

Spider-Man: Homecoming: Jon Watts

Now see, here's a Marvel movie where the nonstop succession of quips and pop culture references actually makes sense within the film itself. I didn't buy any of forced humor in, say, Scott Derrickson's Doctor Strange (2016). But the kind of tacky pop-culture lingo of the Marvel Cinematic Universe lends itself perfectly to Jon Watts' Spider-Man: Homecoming, a thoroughly delightful film that's easily one of the best of the franchise so far. Even though I was quite fond of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films, I have to admit that Homecoming is perhaps the best Spider-Man film since the first two Raimi ones. It's a great blend of small-scale action set-pieces--loved the Washington Monument bit--and endearing humor. Tom Holland is fine as Peter Parker, but he gets overshadowed by Michael Keaton as the Vulture. I'm not sure if I'm sold on the idea of Spider-Man being in Iron Man's pocket, but it makes sense in this particular universe.

8/10

Person to Person: Dustin Guy Defa

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/person-to-person/.

5/10

Chilly Scenes of Winter: Joan Micklin Silver

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/is-chilly-scenes-of-winter-dated-or-just-downright-creepy/.

5/10

Police Academy: Hugh Wilson

Why are we so drawn to the Police Academy movies despite the fact that they're not that particularly good and the funny is juvenile at best, stupid at worst? I think it has to do with the characterizations. In just 96 minutes director Hugh Wilson introduces us to a small army of distinct characters all with their own character arcs, personalities, and quirks. And it helps that many of them are genuinely endearing and charming: the super-strong and quiet Moses Hightower (Bubba Smith); the mousey Cadet Laverne Hooks (Marion Ramsey); and gun-fanatic Eugene Tackleberry (David Graf), a character who, in hindsight, is a lot less adorable given today's political climate. I guess we can forgive a lot if we love the characters enough. And for all its failings, Police Academy delivers in that regard.

6/10

Zombie Bloodbath: Todd Sheets

Shot on VHS for $30,000 with a cast of "735 zombies," Todd Sheets' Zombie Bloodbath is a chaotic, nonsensical, ugly, poorly acted, even more poorly edited masterpiece of shot-on-video cinema. I loved every stupid, stupid minute of this film that feels more like a car crash than an actual movie. Consider the opening sequence: a zombie invasion hits a nuclear power plant, ripping and tearing apart the helpless staff. Much of this ramshackle intro which feels like a summary montage of itself consists primarily of close-up footage of actors getting their faces slathered with what I assumed to be potentially lethal amounts of ketchup, mayonnaise, and what appeared to be egg whites. Things get even stupider from there are a band of survivors--led by a grandpa who looks (and presumably runs) like Dave Thomas of Wendy's fame--who get picked off one-by-one. It's gloriously ridiculous. And yet, there are occasional moments of genuine ambition, particularly one legitimately beautiful sequence where the camera pans over a crowd of zombies jutting their hands through an iron grating. In short, see this movie, preferably in a theater with a group of camp-loving maniacs like myself.

The Richest Girl in the World: William A. Seiter

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/unscrewing-the-screwball-smart-woman-and-the-richest-girl-in-the-world/.

6/10

Smart Woman: Gregory La Cava

To read this review, go to: http://theretroset.com/unscrewing-the-screwball-smart-woman-and-the-richest-girl-in-the-world/.

4/10

Killing Ground: Damien Power

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/107126/movie-review-killing-ground/.

4/10

Who the Fuck is That Guy?: Drew Stone

To read this review, go to: https://www.theyoungfolks.com/review/107132/movie-review-who-the-fk-is-that-guy/.

7/10

Dog Day Afternoon: Sidney Lumet

[Revisit Review]

Seeing Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon on a big screen was a revelatory experience: you could feel the heat, feel the sweat on the characters' brows, feel the panic and and stress felt by the characters. Al Pacino's swagger becomes animalistic on a big screen; John Cazale's stillness becomes statuesque. Also, any opportunity to see this film is worth it: it's one of the most humanistic thrillers ever. Each character feels like an actual person, so we actually care about them. We care about them so much we barely notice that most of the third act takes place on the telephone: it never loses its impact as gripping cinema.

9/10

Logan: James Mangold

James Mangold’s Logan isn’t just a dark superhero film because Wolverine drops f-bombs and gruesomely kills people. It isn’t just dark because it features scenes of children being tortured and murdered, of innocent people getting butchered, or for the cataclysmic gore of its fight scenes. It’s dark because it espouses a cynical, weary worldview. It’s dark because it addresses topics like aging and death, mental illness and the soul-destroying impact of watching loved ones wither away and forget you. Logan is the kind of mature superhero film I’ve been waiting for—the characters are moving, the story gripping, the fight scenes extraordinary (although some of the CGI—particularly a scene involving horses on a freeway with obviously digital 16-wheelers—is grating). This is the rare film that earns its pessimism. And I hope we get more superhero films like it.

8/10

Dunkirk: Christopher Nolan

To read my thoughts on this movie, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/watching-dunkirk-with-autism/.

9/10

Town in a Lake: Jet Leyco

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/new-york-asian-film-festival-2017-japan-southeast-asia-south-korea-sampler/.

3/10

Saving Sally: Avid Liongoren

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/new-york-asian-film-festival-2017-japan-southeast-asia-south-korea-sampler/.

5/10

The Truth Beneath: Lee Kyoung-mi

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/new-york-asian-film-festival-2017-japan-southeast-asia-south-korea-sampler/.

8/10

Split: Kook-Hee Choi

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/new-york-asian-film-festival-2017-japan-southeast-asia-south-korea-sampler/.

5/10

Suffering of Ninko: Norihiro Niwatsukino

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/new-york-asian-film-festival-2017-japan-southeast-asia-south-korea-sampler/.

8/10

Japanese Girls Never Die: Daigo Matsui

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/new-york-asian-film-festival-2017-japan-southeast-asia-south-korea-sampler/.

4/10

Happiness: SABU

To read this review, go to: http://www.audienceseverywhere.net/new-york-asian-film-festival-2017-japan-southeast-asia-south-korea-sampler/.

7/10

The House of Seven Corpses: Paul Harrison

If you took just the first 15 minutes and the last 10 of Paul Harrison's The House of Seven Corpses, you'd have a damn fine horror film. The premise is wonderful: a film crew shooting a schlocky horror film in a haunted mansion accidentally awaken a zombie who kills them off in ways that re-enact the grisly ends of the original inhabitants. The premise is just the right blend of hokey camp and intriguing high-concept that one can't help but be interested. The cinematography is moody and disorienting in its languidness. The mansion itself is a great set. And some of the performances--especially a world-weary Richard Burton-esque character actor--are inspired. But none of this can save the film from one undeniable fact: the vast majority is boring and not scary. Most of the film doesn't even have a pretense of dread or suspense. It's just empty provocation without any emotional or psychological weight. Here's one film I wish would get a remake--I want somebody to do this story justice.

5/10