Angel Face (Otto
Preminger, USA, 1952, 91 min.)
Viewed on DVD First Viewing
In many respects, Angle
Face is a standard issue film noir.
A gruff male protagonist (Robert Mitchum, laconic as ever) is ensnared
in the duplicitous schemes of an icy femme fatale (Jean Simmons) against a
shadowy black-and-white backdrop. The
broad outlines are strictly generic, but the tropes of the genre have rarely
been executed as fluidly as they are under the exacting direction of Otto
Preminger, who brings an amazingly visceral charge to the pivotal car wreck
sequences. B
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
Richard Linklater’s grand experiment was filmed gradually
over a period of twelve years, allowing viewers the unique experience of
watching the protagonist (Ellar Coltrane) age before our eyes for real. The film wisely avoids conventionally
dramatic “coming of age” moments and instead largely focuses on the kinds of
low-key personal interactions that tend to stick in one’s mind years later. The sweep of a fictional character’s
childhood has never been so convincingly captured on film before, and the most
prominent supporting players (Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei
Linklater) are so vividly realized that it’s not hard to imagine equally satisfying alternate edits titled Fatherhood,
Motherhood, or Girlhood. There are a few
pacing issues in the last hour, as the film piles on a few too many climaxes
(even though the one that Linklater ultimately lands on is just about perfect),
but the overall experience is so distinct that the handful of rough edges are
forgivable. A-
The Clock
(Christian Marclay, UK, 2010, 1440 min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
Christian Marclay’s mammoth art installation deserves credit
simply for its insane level of ambition and ingenuity. The project is a 24-hour montage of various
clips from films and television, meticulously edited together in “real time” so
that the movie can function as an actual clock.
Nearly every clip contains some sort of indication of time, and if a
character says that it’s 11:15, it is actually 11:15; if a clock in the
background of the next shot says that’s it’s 11:16, that is also the time in
real life. Judging from the three hours
of this that I saw (roughly 2:00pm-5:00 pm), I’m not convinced that there’s any
point to the experiment beyond gimmickry, but it’s a damned impressive gimmick,
and never less than watchable. The range
of sources is mesmerizing, drawing on everything from Harold Lloyd’s classic
silent comedy Safety Last! (1923) to
Tsai Ming-liang’s minimal arthouse film What
Time Is It There? (2001) and everything in between. (Marclay is evidently also a big X-Files fan – I counted at least three
appearances by Mulder and Scully, and I only caught 1/8th of the
project). I’m not going to grade this
since I only saw a portion of it, but suffice to say that it’s a must see if it
comes to a museum in your area.
The Conjuring
(James Wan, USA, 2013, 112 min.)
Viewed on DVD First Viewing
This atmospheric horror film tells a fairly generic
possessed house tale, but refreshingly achieves its effects through old-school
creeping dread rather than graphic violence or “found footage” gimmickry. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been seen in
countless other ghost films, but the finesse on display is rare in the
genre. Director James Wan has certainly
come a long way since Saw
(2004). B-
Dawn of the Planet of
the Apes (Matt Reeves, USA, 2014, 130 min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
The latest installment of the long-running Planet of the
Apes franchise is the most impressive since the 1968 original. The filmmakers manage to wring an impressive
amount of excitement and poignancy out of what would seem to be an inherently
silly premise. For a movie that
prominently features gun-toting, horse-riding simians, this is surprisingly
emotionally grounded and politically nuanced.
The plot revolves around the tension between the hyper-intelligent apes
that rule the film’s future Earth and a small band of humans who need resources
on the apes’ land. A series of
misunderstandings cause the tenuous alliance between the two groups to shatter,
leading to an all-out war. Exceptional
CGI work and terrific performances (from the likes of Jason Clarke, Gary
Oldman, and Andy Serkis) make the scenario feel convincing, and the screenplay allows
even the warmongers understandable and sympathetic motivations. Like all modern blockbusters, the film
overstays its welcome a bit, but in this case the overlength is the result of
an excess of ambition. B+
Dead Man (Jim
Jarmusch, USA, 1995, 121 min.)
Viewed on DVD Sixth or Seventh Viewing
Full Review at Joyless Creatures
Possibly the greatest film of the 1990s, Jim Jarmusch’s
psychedelic western is one of the rare works of art that can legitimately be called poetic, visionary and profound.
The film’s warped vision of the Old West is disconcertingly detailed and
vivid, like a continuous hallucination that allows the viewer to see the
reality of the weird old America for the first time. After taking a bullet to the chest, a meek Cleveland-born
accountant (Johnny Depp) is cared for by a jovial Native American (Gary Farmer),
who becomes his tour guide through an otherworldly, yet frighteningly convincing
western countryside. In an extraordinary
ensemble cast that also includes Crispin Glover, John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne,
Billy Bob Thornton, Iggy Pop, Jared Harris, Alfred Molina, and Robert Mitchum,
it’s Farmer’s character who is allowed the greatest amount of charisma and
dignity. This may be the only western in
history that presumes a Native American audience – there are even un-subtitled
jokes made at the white protagonist’s expense – and that fair treatment of
cinema’s most misrepresented race may be the film’s most unique aspect. A
The Emperor’s New
Groove (Mark Dindal, USA, 2000, 78 min.)
Viewed on Netflix First Viewing
Though the title would seem to allude to the fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes, this Disney
film sets itself apart from most of the studio’s animated works by being an
original story, told in a (mostly) non-musical style. Even the traditional sappy ballad (this time
courtesy of Sting) is thankfully confined to the end credits, and seems
incongruous in this fun and fast paced comedy.
The titular Emperor, an 18-year-old egomaniac, is transformed into a
llama after a botched magical assassination attempt. The Emperor is forced to learn humility when
the only person willing to help him is a kindly village leader whose land is
threatened by the Empire’s plans to pave over it and add a swimming pool. Thankfully the film doesn't lay its obvious
moral on too thick, and instead concentrates its energy on goofy humor, vivid
action sequences, and cool hieroglyphic-style animation. It’s lightweight and inconsequential but also
a lot of fun. B
God Told Me To (Larry
Cohen, USA, 1976, 91 min.)
Viewed on DVD First Viewing
Shlock peddler Larry Cohen’s outré police procedural finds
people all over New York City inexplicably going on killing sprees that they
calmly insist are the handiwork of God.
Cohen’s enjoyably grungy style has as much in common with George
Kuchar’s perverse no-budget experimental home movies as it does with classic
Roger Corman exploitation flicks, and he makes great use of grimy pre-Giuliani
New York location shooting.
Unfortunately he seems less interested in exploiting the social satire
inherent in the premise than in slowly turning the plot into an incoherent soup
of sci-fi, Blaxploitation, and crime movie elements. C+
Guardians of the
Galaxy (James Gunn, USA, 2014, 121 min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
Yet another in the endless parade of Marvel movies, though
this one distinguishes itself by being an old-fashioned space adventure (like a
wittier, funkier version of the original Star
Wars films) rather than another superhero origin story. The film’s occasional attempts at pathos
don’t quite come off – the pacing is too hectic and the plot is too convoluted
for the stakes to ever be entirely clear – but thankfully co-writer/director
James Gunn mostly sticks to broad comedy and zippy action, making this one of
the more fun action blockbusters of recent memory. B-
Metropolis (Fritz
Lang, Germany, 1927, 153 min.)
Viewed on Netflix Latest
of Many Viewings
Full Review at Joyless Creatures
Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s unwieldy epic is the most
influential science-fiction film ever made.
Every subsequent futuristic city in cinema history owes an unmistakable
debt to this film’s brilliant set designs, and the excellent model and matte
painting work remains impressive to this day.
The script’s confused ideology (a peculiar jumble of Christianity,
Communism, Capitalism, and paranoid German Expressionism) seems oddly
appropriate for a film that’s all about the terrors and pleasures of the modern
city. The plotting is clunky and
episodic, but Lang’s formal mastery assures that the many expensive set pieces
are unforgettable. Ultimately this is
more scatterbrained and less intense than Lang’s best films, but it’s still an
indispensable piece of film history and a highly entertaining example of
silent-era blockbuster filmmaking. A-
The Purge (James
DeMonaco, USA, 2013, 85 min.)
Viewed on DVD First Viewing
Last year’s surprise horror sensation brings a dystopian
twist to the home invasion subgenre. In
the near future, crime and unemployment are down in the United States due to a
new holiday called the Purge, wherein all crime (including murder) is legal for
a 12-hour period. The premise is
absurdly implausible on all levels, though it’s not hard to imagine someone
like George Romero or John Carpenter making it work in their ‘70s and ‘80s
heydays by exploiting the plot’s satirical potential. Unfortunately writer-director James DeMonaco
maintains a deadly serious tone that prevents the outlandish scenario from
being as fun as it could be, and his lead villain (Rhys Wakefield) is too busy
underlining (and italicizing and highlighting) the movie’s themes to actually
be menacing. The film’s willingness to
deal with issues like class disparity is admirable and distinctive, but it’s
hard to imagine them being addressed in a more clumsy or less nuanced way. C+
The Purge: Anarchy (James DeMonaco, USA, 2014, 103
min.)
Viewed Theatrically First Viewing
James DeMonaco’s quickie sequel to his surprise horror hit
is more ambitious, imaginative, and action-packed than the original, which
makes it all the more disappointing that it’s even more heavy-handed and
illogical than the original. The
scenario offers non-stop opportunities for entertaining high camp, but DeMonaco
treats everything with a grim solemnity that suggests that he thinks he’s
teaching the audience valuable lessons about institutionalized violence and
classism. Even a climactic sequence
where the ragtag group of heroes is rescued from a Most Dangerous Game situation by a neo-Black Panther group doesn’t
feel nearly as fun as it ought to, because the filmmakers don’t seem to have a
clue how ridiculous this all is. C
Raise the Red Lantern
(Zhang Yimou, China, 1991, 125 min.)
Viewed on DVD First Viewing
Zhang Yimou’s third film pushes his early style to its
ultimate extreme, juxtaposing flamboyantly vivid color with a grim narrative of
oppression. Gong Li stars as a young
woman who becomes the fourth wife of a wealthy man (Ma Jingwu, pointedly only
filmed from a distance or at odd angles).
Though she initially enjoys the pampered treatment that she receives,
Gong gradually becomes stifled by both her husband’s inscrutable house rules
and by the in-fighting amongst her sister wives. Whether the film was truly intended as a
veiled critique of Chinese authoritarianism (as many claim but Zhang denies),
it was clearly made by filmmakers with a deep personal understanding of life in
a totalitarian society. The story isn’t
as gripping as in Zhang’s previous film, Ju
Dou (1990), but the filmmaking is undeniably masterful, and the tragic
ending is hard to shake. B+
