August: Osage County (John Wells, USA, 2013, 121
min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
The key to successfully adapting playwright Tracy Letts’
work to film is full commitment to the sleaziness of the material, as
demonstrated in William Friedkin’s memorably lurid adaptations of Bug (2006) and Killer Joe (2011). August:
Osage County certainly leaves plenty of room for over-the-top
melodrama, as the material touches on everything from parental abuse to incest
to underage sex, but the filmmakers were determined to turn this trashy
material into an award-winning prestige film, and the competing agendas of the
script and the direction produce a confused product. This tale of the world’s most dysfunctional
family reunion is intermittently enjoyable as a showcase for its impressive
ensemble cast, though the supporting players are too often steamrolled by Meryl
Streep’s over-the-top mugging as the family’s pill-popping matriarch. C+
Blue Jasmine
(Woody Allen, USA, 2013, 98 min.)
Viewed on Itunes First Viewing
Woody Allen lost his skill for capturing realistic human
behavior decades ago, so he’s hardly the ideal writer-director for a character
study revolving around class distinctions.
It’s no surprise that Allen seems to have no idea how modern working-class
people behave, but his treatment of the wealthy characters here is almost equally
broad and stereotypical. While the
film’s insight into current social issues is limited, the script does have a
surprisingly elegant and smartly employed flashback structure, and the
fantastic cast manages to make most of their characters vivid even if they
aren’t entirely believable. Cate
Blanchett is fantastic as a woman struggling to maintain her socialite
lifestyle after her Bernie Madoff-like husband (Alec Baldwin) is arrested. B-
City of Women (Federico
Fellini, Italy, 1980, 140 min.)
Viewed on Itunes Second Viewing
Federico Fellini was one of the cinema’s great sensualists,
to the point that it’s honestly kind of a shame that he didn’t devote the
latter half of his career to making pornography. Like most of the director’s post-8 ½ (1963) films, City of Women is a loosely-scripted, visually spectacular, and
extremely overlong collection of dreams revolving around a theme, which in this
case is male chauvinism. While the film
makes some half-hearted attempts to satirize its lothario protagonist’s
(Marcello Mastroianni) outdated attitudes toward the opposite sex, it is
ultimately much more convincing (and frankly far more enjoyable) during the
moments when Fellini indulges in outrageous setpieces that allow him to flaunt
his most absurd masturbatory fantasies.
A climactic sequence in which Mastroianni is waited on by adoring female
servants while ogling the cartoonishly voluptuous body of Donatella Damiani
tops even the famous harem sequence of 8
½ as a combination of goofy humor and genuine sexiness. But while a few of the individual scenes impress,
the film as a whole is a tedious slog. C+
Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallee, USA, 2013, 117 min.)
Viewed on DVD First Viewing
The details of this true story are so fascinating and
complex that it’s all the more a shame that the broad outlines feel engineered
for maximum viewer uplift. Ron Woodruff
(played here by Matthew McConaughey, in a fantastic performance) was given
thirty days to live after receiving an AIDS diagnosis in the mid-80s, but
managed to live another seven years thanks to imported medicines not approved
by the FDA. With the help of an
HIV-positive transgender woman (Jared Leto) and a sympathetic doctor (Jennifer
Garner, in a thankless role), Woodruff sets up a “buyers club” where he
distributes the effective but illegal drugs to other AIDS victims. This underground economy and its political
ramifications are compelling, but the focus of the film is largely on
Woodruff’s predictable (and unconvincingly speedy) softening of his initially
conservative attitudes. C+
Days of Being Wild
(Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong, 1990, 94 min.)
Viewed on Netflix Second Viewing
Wong Kar-wai was still finding his style in 1990, and his
second feature is limited by isolated moments of generic melodrama and one
particularly out of place burst of gangster movie violence. The film as a whole doesn’t hold up in
comparison to In the Mood for Love
(2000), a later Wong film that was also set in the 1960s and similarly
concerned with frustrated romanticism, but the many moments that do work feel
remarkably assured and inventive for an early work. Many of Wong’s stylistic trademarks are here,
and while they aren’t as fully developed as they would be even by the time of Chungking Express (1994) there is still
a welcome sense of discovery and playfulness to the way that they are employed
here. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle
gives the film a distinctive green color palette, and makes the sweatiness of
the film’s summer setting palpable, allowing the viewer to identify with the
anger of the protagonist (Leslie Cheung).
The film is mainly concerned with
Cheung’s simultaneous romantic flings with a shop girl (Maggie Cheung) and a
dancer (Carina Lau), but it’s the strange asides (poetic dialogue in the
voiceover narrations, actions being glimpsed from odd angles) that linger in
the mind. Indeed the most mesmerizing
moment might actually be the baffling final scene, which simply watches a
previously unseen character (Tony Leung) as he silently gets ready for a night
on the town. The scene was ostensibly
meant to lead into a sequel that was never produced, but in hindsight it feels oddly
like a preview of great things to come, and the announcement that the greatest
director of his generation has arrived. B
eXistenZ (David
Cronenberg, Canada, 1999, 97 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First Viewing
David Cronenberg returns to Videodrome (1983) territory with this surreal nightmare, except
this time he’s substituted virtual reality for television and VHS. Security guard Jude Law is sucked into a
complicated game run by superstar designer Jennifer Jason Leigh. Unfortunately Cronenberg is in too much of a hurry
to let his freak flag fly, and he rushes quickly past setting up the premise to
get to the outrageous stuff: bone guns
that fire teeth, disgusting meals made of half-dead mutant animals, “game pods”
that look like umbilical cords. It gets
silly pretty quickly, especially since Cronenberg seems to have a limited
understanding of what makes video games appealing. It’s simply hard to imagine anyone enjoying
the game within the movie, or even to discern what its goal might be. C
The Grand Budapest
Hotel (Wes Anderson, USA, 2014, 100 min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
For a film that was obviously meticulously storyboarded and
choreographed, The Grand Budapest Hotel
is remarkably light on its feet, and I doubt that a funnier movie will be
released this year. Wes Anderson is
often criticized for repeating himself, but here his familiar diorama aesthetic
has been sharpened and refined to such a perfect sheen that viewers may feel
like applauding at regular intervals.
The plot is too deliriously complicated to sum up in a quick paragraph,
but suffice to say it follows the adventures of a classy hotel concierge (Ralph
Fiennes, never better) and his favorite lobby boy (impressive newcomer Tony
Revolori) in 1930s Europe. The film
breathlessly incorporates elements of adventure films, spy capers, heist films,
suspense, and even the prison break genre, and handles it all with a humor and
grace that make a good argument for Anderson as the sharpest filmmaker of his
generation. At many times the film
favorably recalls such classics of cinematic opulence as Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (1943) and Powell and
Pressburger’s The Life and Death of
Colonel Blimp (1943), but the sense of humor unmistakably belongs to
Anderson himself. The film may not have
the emotional resonance of Rushmore
(1998) or The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
– the thinly developed romance that the lobby boy has with Saoirse Ronan’s
character feels mostly like a plot device, for example – but the epilogue
alluding to the encroaching influence of fascism has a certain melancholic
power. The outstanding supporting cast,
a combination of Anderson regulars like Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Jeff Goldblum,
Bill Murray, Edward Norton, and Willem Dafoe, and ringers like Mathieu Amalric,
F. Murray Abraham, Jude Law, and Tom Wilkinson is exceptional, and the film is
simply a delight. A-
Her (Spike Jonze,
USA, 2013, 126 min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
In Spike Jonze’s fourth feature film, Joaquin Phoenix plays
a man who develops an intimate relationship with a Siri-like operating system
(voiced by Scarlett Johansson). Jonze
wrote the script himself this time out, and while it’s tempting to imagine the
more biting and conceptually bold film that his frequent collaborator Charlie
Kaufmann might have made from the same premise, there are clear advantages to
Jonze’s gentler approach. For example, a
heartbreaking scene where the operating system attempts to make physical
contact with Phoenix through a sex surrogate might have stood out less and been
less effective in a more satirical film.
Phoenix’s raw nerve performance is very affecting, and Johansson finds
the perfect balance between warm, human sexiness and cold computerized precision. The film is also subtly visually impressive,
with Jonze making smart use of contemporary Shanghai location shooting to
create a futuristic city on a budget. B
High Anxiety (Mel
Brooks, USA, 1977, 94 min.)
Viewed on Blu-Ray First Viewing
The cinema of Alfred Hitchcock gets the full Mel Brooks
treatment in this silly spoof.
Unfortunately Brooks doesn’t quite nail the tricky mixture of reverent
homage and crude parody that made Young
Frankenstein (1974) so enjoyable.
The earlier film took great pains to capture the smallest stylistic
details of its target, but even major aspects of High Anxiety, such as the casting of schlubby Brooks as the
protagonist, don’t feel true to Hitchcock.
C
History of the World, Part I (Mel Brooks, USA, 1981, 92 min.)
Viewed on Blu-Ray Second Viewing
Though History of the
World, Part I doesn’t have the legacy of The Producers (1967), Blazing
Saddles (1974) or Young Frankenstein,
it is Mel Brooks’ most ambitious and interesting film. The sketch film structure, which purports to
tell the history of man from caveman times through the French Revolution, is an
ideal fit for Brooks’ vaudevillian sensibilities, and the variety show format
largely makes up for the hit-and-miss nature of the jokes. The bits that do work are among Brooks’
finest, with a hilariously tasteless Spanish Inquisition musical number
standing out as a particular highlight. B
Knightriders
(George Romero, USA, 1981, 146 min.)
Viewed on YouTube First Viewing
George Romero took a break from the horror genre with this
bizarre drama about a travelling Renaissance Fair where the knights joust on
motorcycles rather than horseback. The
writer-director evidently intended the ragtag troupe’s unusual act to be a
stand-in for his own independently made projects – which makes this in some
ways the Romero equivalent of John Cassavetes’ Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) – but the allegory is a little
too goofy for its own good. Ultimately
the film is almost excessively personal, sacrificing any sense of shape or
pacing in favor of a drifting succession of scenes in which the Knightriders
have run-ins with local authorities, squabble over the prospect of being
sponsored by a slick agency that wants to control their image, and struggle to
maintain their artistic purity in front of drunken audiences. The film is a mess, but its shagginess
sometimes works to its advantage, with the rambling non-narrative allowing
plenty of room for slice of life scenes that make the group’s camaraderie feel
convincing and touching. Ed Harris (in
his first lead role) is almost frighteningly committed in his role as the
Renaissance Fair’s stern King, and legendary makeup artist Tom Savini has a
surprisingly strong acting turn as the more pragmatic challenger to the
throne. B-
Rancho Notorious
(Fritz Lang, USA, 1952, 89 min.)
Viewed on Watch TCM First Viewing
Fritz Lang’s authorial stamp is scarcely present in this
kitschy low-budget western, set in an outlaw hideout run by Marlene
Dietrich. The peace is broken when
Arthur Kennedy shows up looking for the man who murdered his fiancée. Though the recurring theme song promises a
tale of “hate, murder and revenge” those feelings aren’t remotely as vivid here
as they are in the films where Lang was more than just a hired hand. C+
Red Hook Summer (Spike
Lee, USA, 2012, 121 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First
Viewing
Seemingly created for the sole purpose of challenging She Hate Me (2004) for the title of
“least focused Spike Lee joint,” this wild jumble of half-formed ideas is
another of the sometimes-great director’s features to suggest that he should
avoid writing original screenplays and instead focus on making high-quality
documentaries. Though ostensibly the story of a young, comfortably
middle-class boy from Atlanta (Jules Brown) spending a summer in Brooklyn with
his poor, fiery preacher grandfather (Clarke Peters), the film is really an
outlet for Lee to comment randomly on religion, class, race, gentrification,
technology, single parenthood, the U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, Do the Right Thing (1989), hip hop, gang
life, generational gaps, the stock market, the New York Knicks, and seemingly
anything else that came to his mind while he and James McBride were working on
the screenplay. The film’s crazy
ambition to fit it all in is sometimes invigorating, but it quickly becomes
clear that Lee hasn’t thought through what he wants to say about any of these
topics. It doesn’t help that the
director chose to shoot the film in a deliberately amateurish way, his ugly
digital footage being overlaid with non-stop blaring music. Peters, a veteran of The Wire and Treme,
sometimes manages to corral the film’s energy with the sheer magnitude of his
volcanic performance, but he outclasses the rest of the cast to a distracting
degree. C
RoboCop (Jose
Pedihla, USA, 2014, 117 min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
Jose Pedihla’s remake of Paul Verhoeven’s popular 1987
action-satire hybrid makes some promising early attempts at contemporary social
commentary, but ultimately focuses so much of its energy on being a dark origin
story that it winds up feeling like just another generic action franchise
reboot. The opening scene makes some
enticing allusions to drone warfare, the U.S. occupations of Afghanistan and
Iraq, and Fox News, but the script never really follows through with these
inquiries, and instead spends an interminable amount of time simply watching
the hero (Joel Kinnaman) adjust to his new cyborg body. By the time the film has reached its
protracted “get to the helipad” shootout finale, it feels like we could be
watching literally any action movie of the last three decades. D
Rust and Bone
(Jacques Audiard, France, 2012, 120 min.)
Viewed on DVD First Viewing
A street fighter (Matthias Schoenaerts) develops a sexual
relationship with a paraplegic killer whale trainer (Marion Cotillard) in this
macho (and muddled) drama from Jacques Audiard, director of the vastly superior
A Prophet (2010). The plot promises action, melodrama, and
general cult movie craziness, but Audiard inexplicably stages the film as a
muted, “realistic” character study, and the clash of story and tone produces
results that are equally awkward and dull.
C
Steamboat Bill Jr.
(Charles Reisner, USA, 1928, 58 min.)
Viewed on Netflix Second Viewing
This nautical-themed silent comedy is one of Buster Keaton’s
less funny vehicles, but it’s still worth seeing for the stunningly executed
cyclone finale. The climax, nominally
directed by Charles Reisner but obviously choreographed by Keaton himself, is a
marvel of primitive special effects and daring stunt work. It features the best version of Keaton’s most
well-known stunt, in which he is nearly crushed by the falling front of a
house, but the sequence as a whole is so incredible that it’s debatable whether
that’s even the most impressive moment. B-
Ulzana’s Raid
(Robert Aldrich, USA, 1972, 103 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First Viewing
It’s hard to believe that a western this stodgy,
old-fashioned, and openly racist could’ve been released in the era of post-Wild Bunch (1969) anti-westerns, and
it’s especially disheartening to see something this square from Robert Aldrich,
director of the marvelously insouciant Kiss
Me Deadly (1955) and the delightfully insane What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). D
Wild at Heart (David
Lynch, USA, 1990, 125 min.)
Viewed on YouTube Third Viewing
Full Review at Joyless Creatures
Where Dune (1984)
is an example of what can go wrong when highly idiosyncratic artist David Lynch
is hampered by studio interference, Wild
at Heart shows how disastrous the results can be when the director,
suddenly flush from the success of Blue
Velvet (1986), has the power to put whatever half-formed ideas he can come
up with on the screen. Though
purportedly the tale of a rockabilly couple (Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern) on
the run from a vindictive maternal figure (Dianne Ladd), the film is really an
excuse for Lynch to fulfill whatever violent or sexual whims he couldn’t get
past the censors on the simultaneously produced Twin Peaks TV series. While
Lynch has had great success in other films with sadistic violent content, the
staging of most of that material here is surprisingly pedestrian, as if the
director thought he could make up for an uncharacteristic dearth of intensely
personal details by simply amping up the graphic viscera and nudity. Jokey post-modern references to old Elvis
musicals and The Wizard of Oz (1939)
take the place of Lynch’s usual highly distinctive brand of surrealism, and
Lynch doesn’t have the wit or insight to make ironic detachment work for
him. C-
The Wind Rises
(Hayao Miyazaki, Japan, 2013, 126 min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
For what will allegedly be his swan song, the great animator
Hayao Miyazaki returns to his lifelong passion for flight with a fictionalized
biography of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of aircrafts that Japan used in
WWII. Though Miyazaki invented most of
the details of Horikoshi’s private life, the film still feels awkwardly
hamstrung by biopic conventions, and goes almost completely off the rails
during a dull stretch where the hero tends to an ailing wife. Structural issues are only part of the
problem with the script, which constantly raises questions about Japan’s
militaristic history only to shrug these issues off in favor of gentle
ruminations about the wonder of flight.
One wonders why Miyazaki gets in to social commentary at all if he’s
going to swerve away from it, or why he chose the biopic form if he was going
to alter so many details of his protagonist’s life (and only come up with a
relatively generic personal story at that).
While this may be Miyazaki’s most problematic film overall, it at least
boasts the charming handmade aesthetic that has always been Studio Ghibli’s
signature. The animation is unfailingly
gorgeous, and the sound design, which includes engine noises that are clearly
being made by people’s mouths, boasts the kind of simple inventiveness that too
many animated films seem to lack. C+
The Wolf Man
(George Waggner, USA, 1941, 70 min.)
Viewed on Netflix Second Viewing
The Wolf Man has
never had the same iconic or allegorical resonance as Dracula (1931) or Frankenstein
(1931), but it still benefits from the timeless production values and
streamlined storytelling of the classic Universal horror house style. Jack Pierce’s makeup effects remain
impressive to this day, and the fog-drenched wood sequences are wonderful showcases
for Joseph Valentine’s black and white cinematography and Jack Otterson’s art
direction. In many ways this is shallow
box-office fodder, but it comes from an era when audiences could rely on generic
blockbusters to be executed with style. B-
