A version of the Jekyll and Hyde story in which Hyde is not just the id unleashed but also a wholly separate being. It would be a very chilling movie if it were not made as a deadpan black comedy, and a very funny one at that.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Tartan DVD
27 Feb 2005 10:59 AM | Submit Comment
Cool special effects, sappy-moment-filled character development, and more cool special effects. I’m glad I live in New England.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: TBS Broadcast
27 Feb 2005 10:03 AM | Submit Comment
An intense psychological horror film that puts me in mind of Polanski’s Repulsion and The Tenant. It could also be a female version of Kubrick’s The Shining.
Features incredibly beautiful cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond and an effectively eerie non-traditional score by John Williams. Yes, THAT John Williams.
I’m gonna have nightmares tonight.
by Matt Bailey | Source: MGM DVD
26 Feb 2005 9:40 PM | Submit Comment
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen this, but it’s still one of the funniest pictures ever made.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Sony Pictures DVD
22 Feb 2005 9:21 PM | Submit Comment
Agnès Varda’s new triptych on the nature of photography comprises three documentaries made over a forty-year span. Ydessa, the Bears, and etc. concerns an exhibit of early photo-portraits of people with teddy bears (along with their obtuse connections to the Holocaust) and the rather creepy woman who curated it; Ulysse revisits a photograph that Varda took in the mid-1950s and the lives of its subjects; and Saluts les Cubains is a charmingly dated celebration of the Cuban Revolution on its tenth anniversary, an animated film composed of hundreds of still photographs of Cuban life and culture (featuring Beny Moré, Wilfredo Lam, and, of course, Fidel). Each film meditates on the strange power of photographs and the emotions and memories they provoke. And as with her celebrated documentary, The Gleaners and I, Varda provides an intimate and inviting commentary, sharing her own thoughts and reminiscences like a trusted, if idiosyncratic, confidant.
It is also interesting to note that she has had the same adorable, short-cropped haircut for the last half-century.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Cine Tamaris 35mm print
22 Feb 2005 12:59 AM | Submit Comment
Although the final third is a bit messy, the rest of the film pulses with violent energy, and Birol Ünel’s astounding lead performance makes it all but unmissable.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: 35mm print
21 Feb 2005 10:44 PM | Submit Comment
Ponder for a moment the millions of dollars spent on this film and the large number of people who thought it would be a good idea.
by Matt Bailey | Source: MGM DVD
21 Feb 2005 10:02 PM | Comments (1)
This should be a great film for all the prosperous assets it bears so flawlessly: the prosthetic effects are arguably the best in any horror film ever made; its location (in the moors of rural England) contributes enormously to the alienation of the primary American backpacker, and this theme is cleverly persistent when he becomes a werewolf; it has a great score; and the film has aged decently (I would also attribute this strength to Rick Baker’s special effects). But it is virtually every other aspect of the film that director John Landis renders improperly, infusing his brand of mediocre comedy liberally. The soundtrack (comprised entirely of songs with “Moon” in the title) is ridiculous and mocking, and the dialogue is cohesively hammy. I do like this film, very much, but watching it I realize the concept’s immense potential and variably poor execution.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Cable Television
20 Feb 2005 2:02 PM | Submit Comment
Jean-Pierre Leaud’s funny, fresh-faced protagonist still resonates, but the women of the Marx and Coca-Cola generation are unappealingly presented as cool creatures who can’t be bothered with entertaining a thought in those pretty little heads of theirs.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: 35MM print
20 Feb 2005 1:10 PM | Submit Comment
Full review forthcoming.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Fox Studio Classics DVD
19 Feb 2005 10:10 PM | Submit Comment
With the exception of Humphrey Bogart’s star-making performance, this movie is Dullsville. Leslie Howard is such a drip it’s a wonder anyone fell for him back in the day.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
19 Feb 2005 1:04 AM | Submit Comment
Jonathan Demme’s update of The Manchurian Candidate aptly shifts the Frankenheimer thriller from the Cold War to the War on Terror: the National Guard stalks through every crowded space, cable news offers dizzying graphics and sound-bite platitudes, and US foreign policy is dictated by a shadowy corporation with some friends in very high places. But although the film keenly satirizes some of the pomp and paranoia of post-9/11 America, its impact is somewhat lessened with some underbaked psychedelic hallucinations (featuring exotic Arab women with tomatoes) and a creepy, incestuous mother-son relationship lifted wholesale from one of the later Psycho sequels. And the film’s resolution, with a studio backlot blue sky and a hasty roll of the credits, seems grafted onto the end of the film in place of something more pessimistic (and credible). One wonders whether the filmmakers themselves have any faith in the likelihood of such a happy ending.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Paramount Pictures DVD
18 Feb 2005 11:50 PM | Submit Comment
Some (more) thoughts on The Passion of Joan of Arc:
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Criterion Collection DVD
17 Feb 2005 1:19 AM | Submit Comment
Charles Coburn gets an Oscar for losing his pants. High hilarity.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Sony Pictures DVD
16 Feb 2005 12:15 AM | Submit Comment
The Rosetta Stone of “Fifth Generation” filmmaking, Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth initiates a new aesthetic of formal and ideological ambiguity in Chinese cinema. The unwavering idealism of the Communist soldier is contrasted with the hopeless situation of the peasant girl against the impassive grey-yellow landscape of Northern China.
With its emphasis on regional culture and ritual, the contrapuntal use of sound and music, and cinematographer Zhang Yimou’s flattened, symmetrical compositions and vibrant colors, the film bears a passing resemblance to the work of Sergei Paradjanov. But the film’s political and humanist concerns place the individual characters within the broader context of modern Chinese history, even as the expansive landscapes of the film’s title resist this assimilation.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Fox Lorber VHS
15 Feb 2005 11:52 PM | Submit Comment
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any man stepping into the role of Mr. Darcy has some awfully big shoes to fill. Martin Henderson is no Colin Firth, and the colorful, frothy musical numbers don’t quite make up for the dulling of Jane Austen’s sharp wit, but those looking for a fun, escapist comedy will probably do far better here than with Hitch or The Wedding Date.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: 35MM print
15 Feb 2005 9:51 PM | Submit Comment
“I must say that I’m amazed, after having seen the black-and-white film (#12) last night, at the labor that went into it. It is incredible that I had enough energy to do it. Most of my mind was pushed aside into some sort of theoretical sorting of the pieces, mainly on the basis that I have described: First, I collected the pieces out of old catalogues and books and whatever; then made up file cards of all possible combinations of them; then, I spent maybe a few months trying to sort the cards into logical order. A script was made for that. All the script and the pieces were made for a film at least four times as long. There were wonderful masks and things cut out. Like when the dog pushes the scene away at the end of the film, instead of the title “end” what is really there is a transparent screen that has a candle burning behind it on which a cat fight begins—shadow forms of cats fighting. Then, all sorts of complicated effects; I had held these off. The radiations were to begin at this point. Then Noah’s Ark appears. There were beautiful scratchboard drawings, probably the finest drawings I ever made—really pretty. Maybe 200 were made for that one scene. Then there’s a graveyard scene, when the dead are all raised again. What actually happens at the end of the film is everybody’s put in a teacup, because all kinds of horrible monsters came out of the graveyard, like animals that folded into one another. Then everyone gets thrown in a teacup, which is made out of a head, and stirred up. This is the Trip to Heaven and the Return, then the Noah’s Ark, then The Raising of the Dead, and finally the Stirring of Everyone in a Teacup. It was to be in four parts. The script was made up for the whole works on the basis of sorting pieces. It was exhaustingly long in its original form.”
Harry Smith, quoted by P. Adams Sitney
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 16mm Print
13 Feb 2005 11:22 PM | Comments (1)
Some passing thoughts as this film has already been covered by most of our writers: yes, it’s better than both Crouching Tiger and Hero; the ample displays of the titular daggers’ elaborate aerodynamics compete with the wire fu that should distinguish the film; and it’s easily among the best of the past year’s generally unremarkable library of films.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Sony Pictures Classics 35mm print
13 Feb 2005 9:45 PM | Submit Comment
A nice, sturdy, melodramatic vehicle for Ginger Rogers, who won the Oscar for best actress. Though I expected more from her performance (some tears at least), it did prove that she was not just a pretty face, a great dancer, and a gifted comedienne. The literate script by Dalton Trumbo helped, too.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Turner Classic Movies broadcast
13 Feb 2005 8:18 PM | Submit Comment
Yeah, it’s stupid. But it’s damn funny. “Stop looking at me swan!”
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Universal Studios DVD
13 Feb 2005 3:23 PM | Submit Comment
Though Cagney gets top billing, the real star of this picture is his character’s mother, a real tough cookie. Every boy should have a mother who knows how to lose the cops when they’re tailing her and who will offer to “take care” of the guy your wife ran off with while you were in the joint.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
12 Feb 2005 11:30 PM | Submit Comment
This overlooked horror offering from Universal was released nearly six years before Lon Chaney Jr.’s The Wolf Man made the figure of the werewolf an iconic monster, and holds up remarkably well in a head to head comparison with the classic. Chaney, of course, outperforms Henry Hull in portraying a man beset by a nasty case of lycanthropy. But in terms of plot, pacing, special effects, and overall horror atmosphere, Werewolf of London holds its own.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Universal Studios DVD
12 Feb 2005 6:40 PM | Submit Comment
Of the three archetypal gangster films of the early 1930s, Little Caesar might be the least. Scarface is an opera of sex and violence, The Public Enemy is hard-bitten and shocking. In Little Caesar though, we never learn what Rico’s racket really is. Is he just muscle?
Another flaw in the film is the potato-faced Glenda Farrell. She seems to serve no purpose other than as a nag, pushing her boyfriend Joe to compromise his safety for the sake of what is “right.” In comparison with the smoldering Ann Dvorak of Scarface… well… there is no comparison.
These flaws don’t detract too much from the power of the film, though. Edward G. Robinson’s characterization of Rico as a tacky, flashy hoodlum set the standard for all portrayals of petty gangsters to come and the movie fairly crackles with energy thanks to the fluid direction of Mervyn LeRoy.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
11 Feb 2005 11:23 PM | Submit Comment
I’ve been trying for days to come up with something interesting to say about this movie. I’ve finally come to the realization that there isn’t anything interesting to say about this movie because it’s not an interesting movie. One guy is Jewish, handsome, wealthy, intelligent, and a gifted athlete and another guy is Christian, not as handsome, not as wealthy, about as intelligent, and about as gifted. They go to the Olympics and win. Yay.
This won the Oscar for Best Picture over Reds, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Atlantic City. Now, I haven’t seen all of those movies, but I’m pretty sure at least one of them wuz robbed.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
11 Feb 2005 4:51 PM | Submit Comment
Odd offering from Hitchcock surprisingly incorporates no murder, no mystery, and no suspense, contenting itself to tell a comedic tale about the marital troubles of a contentious young couple. It seems that a technicality has rendered their marriage moot, necessitating a second ceremony. Trouble is, Mr. Smith, played by Robert Montgomery, isn’t forthcoming with the requisite proposal, and Mrs. Smith, Carole Lombard, refuses to spend another night with her beau until they are properly wed.
A ridiculous premise, to be sure, and one that certainly won’t resonate much with younger audiences today. But if you can get past the foolishness of the story, you’ll find some fun battle-of-the-sexes sparring, and some memorable moments of mirth, particularly scenes involving Robert Montgomery’s desperate leading man making a fool of himself in hopes of winning back his beloved.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
10 Feb 2005 11:55 PM | Submit Comment
Shut up! Ryan Gosling is totally hot.
by Matt Bailey | Source: New Line DVD
10 Feb 2005 10:31 PM | Comments (4)
There have been countless films throughout the years featuring loveable losers who, during the course of the movie, gain a measure of confidence about themselves, learn some truth about existence, and find themselves the better for having endured the trials that the story put them through. Napoleon Dynamite, by contrast, features a loveable loser who doesn’t think himself a loser, doesn’t doubt for a second that he is great, and shrugs off all challenges and setbacks as nothing more than the collective foolishness of a world that doesn’t get it. At the end of the story, Napoleon is much the same, going about his business with an unflappable and admirable confidence in himself.
One of the most unassumingly funny films I’ve seen in years, Napoleon Dynamite succeeds because it is content to let its great title character simply exist in his own world, without forcing him toward any monumental revelations or insight. For the length of the film, Napoleon just is, and it is a delight to watch him.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Twentieth Century Fox DVD
09 Feb 2005 1:57 AM | Submit Comment
Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s documentary not only provides probing insight into the daily lives of the children raised in Calcutta’s red light district, but it is also a testament to the transformative power of art. Briski, a London-born photographer, initially traveled to India to chronicle the lives of women in the brothels, but wound up forming more lasting bonds with their children. She began teaching the young kids photography, which opened their lives up to surprising new possibilities.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: 35mm print
08 Feb 2005 3:47 PM | Submit Comment
So-so biopic bolstered by a pitch-perfect performance by Jamie Foxx. Charles’ music also gives it jolts of energy, but the bulk of the movie feels formulaic and overlong.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: 35MM print
08 Feb 2005 3:36 PM | Submit Comment
Perfect.
by Matt Bailey | Source: New Line Cinema 35mm print
06 Feb 2005 6:08 PM | Submit Comment
In comparison to the technologies that foster animated films in the current decade, Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s production of Akira is both laborious and extensive. The film seems dated in this regard, but watching it again after having seen The Incredibles (a great film, and although animated somehow antithetical to Akira’s more scrupulous production) some of the film’s remaining aesthetics become apparent: namely, the score made of voices in rhythmic chanting and what sound like primal instruments, or the way the taillights of motorcycles flare—as they would in celluloid—as they streak accross the composition. Though interpretation of this film is fleeting (although its central theme of nuclear warfare’s inhumanity is, however, quite explicit), it is a cohesive and energetic visual spectacle.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Pioneer DVD
05 Feb 2005 1:33 PM | Submit Comment
Although it lacks the bite of one of its obvious influences, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, writer-director Paul Weitz has crafted an enjoyable comedy that gently pokes fun at the soullessness of American corporate culture. Topher Grace is an appealing comic lead, but he’s no match for Dennis Quaid, who lately seems to improve with every film he appears in.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: 35mm print
02 Feb 2005 4:31 PM | Submit Comment
The DVD cover is a lying bastard. The movie was almost 20 minutes longer than the cover said it was. It’s still a damn good movie, though.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
01 Feb 2005 8:22 AM | Comments (1)
