Read my entry from the last time I watched it.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Turner Classic Movies broadcast
31 Aug 2005 11:20 PM | Submit Comment
Even Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan can’t fan away the stink you get when you combine Fritz Lang with Clifford Odets.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
29 Aug 2005 11:06 PM | Submit Comment
This movie went from mildly amusing to annoying, due to the stunning lack of political awareness coming from just about every teller of this joke. The joke itself ultimately reveals the lines that society still refuses to cross, even as the seventy-five different tellers of “The Aristocrats” believe that they are being wild and profane beyond compare. Sarah Silverman, in one of the only inspired tellings, includes child rape and a family member with Down’s Syndrome in the set-up, and yet even she refuses to cross the line into notions of inter-racial sex or an entire Down’s Syndrome family fornicating (her one handicapped family member is never put into a sexual situation).
This joke is appealing because its uninspired premise and unfunny punchline creates bookends between which a safe little place is created for comedians who want to seem shocking, but aren’t. On the other hand, the structure of the joke allows a forum from which tellers can refuse to be held accountable for the content of their material. If any one of these comedians was called out on the larger ramifications of what they are saying, they could simply respond, “but it’s the Arisocrats. The point of the joke is to say whatever.” The most tell tale sign of how unshocking this joke truly is can be found in the cast list. I’ve never thought of Paul Reiser, Hank Azaria, or Jason Alexander as particularly boundary pushing in their brand of humor, and yet they shine while breaking down the complexities of their set-ups, then beam at the blushes they expect to induce from delivery.
In a moving moment, Gilbert Gottfried goes for broke at a Hugh Hefner roast, breaking into The Aristocrats after several failed jokes about trying to catch a connecting flight at the Empire State Building on September 11th. The roast was held in New York City just a few weeks after 9/11, so Gottfried’s initial material had clearly come too soon. Gottfried’s solution was to tell an extended version of The Aristocrats, and to have the comedians who were there describe the catharsis of Gottfried taking the joke to more and more ridiculous places, just to keep the release going, indicates how transcendent the moment was, even if the joke which caused the moment remains a dud.
by Jason Woloski | Source: THINKFilm 35mm print
28 Aug 2005 2:28 PM | Submit Comment
Wes Craven’s voice used to be so original. In films such as Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, he questioned the ideologies from which nuclear family life was built by throwing his protagonists into situations that forced them to fight back, kill, cry a lot, and finally become antagonists as unsavory as the evils they were fighting. Skip ahead to 2005: the one-two punch of Cursed and Red Eye confirms Craven’s current fears as involving scripts with plausible third acts. Most frustrating of all, Red Eye displayed some real potential during it’s opening minutes, when it seemed that the McAdams character’s neuroses might have turned Red Eye into the first ever suspense film built around the societally pervasive habit of excessive people pleasing. A “people-pleasing suspense film.” Now that’s a tagline.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Dreamworks 35mm print
28 Aug 2005 1:09 PM | Submit Comment
A strange and beatuiful film; a romantic fantasia with roots in Murnau, Cocteau, and Borzage and which presages the work of Marcel Carné.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Universal Pictures DVD
27 Aug 2005 8:14 PM | Submit Comment
Nominally a Joan Crawford vehicle, the real star of the film is Sydney Greenstreet. As Sheriff Titus Semple, he is a 300-pound ball of tightly-wound menace. Yet another character actor who deserved an armful of Oscars yet never got one.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Turner Classic Movies broadcast
27 Aug 2005 2:59 PM | Submit Comment
Everything in this movie looks great—the sets, the costumes, the cinematography—except the extremely cheap CGI effects.
I’m not a Gilliam fanboy, so you’re not going to get an argument out of me concerning how this movie fits into his ouevre, but I was entertained.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Dimension Films 35mm print
26 Aug 2005 10:53 PM | Submit Comment
A childhood favorite, I’m surprised by how likeable this movie remains today, despite it’s being built on obviously racist, blue collar fears of Japanese culture and economic resurgence, two direct references to World War Two, repeated shots at Japanese cuisine and tradition, and a simplistic framing device built from the overstated idea that American=arrogant and lazy, but proud / Japanese=hardworking and serious, but efficient. Michael Keaton is a charmer, hoodwinking roomfuls of characters in the film, as well as this viewer in the process.
Gung Ho is just one of many examples of how America’s preoccupation with Japanese advancement got so quickly out of hand in the 70s, 80s, and early 1990s. Mr. Baseball is another seemingly innocent Hollywood comedy that aggressively questions how a specific cultural instituation sacred to the U.S. could possibly be adopted, loved, and evolved by another country. Like Gung Ho before it, the Americans in Mr. Baseball must learn how to think and work hard, while the Japanese must learn to relax and take chances, before everyone can just get along.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Paramount DVD
25 Aug 2005 11:39 PM | Comments (1)
Leave it to Ron Howard to make his version of a bad ass, coke-fueled newsroom drama by replacing coke with Coca-Cola. If Michael Keaton doesn’t watch it, he’s going to become a Coca-Cola head.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Universal VHS
25 Aug 2005 10:57 PM | Submit Comment
A very funny, smart comedy. Unfortunately, because this movie tanked, we were subjected to Fever Pitch, an example of the Farrelly’s compromising their taste and interests by resorting to an ineffective (and most importantly, unfunny) romantic storyline about an obsessed Boston Red Sox fan.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Cable Television
23 Aug 2005 11:29 AM | Submit Comment
A strange movie. Eastwood’s stone-face serves him well in the seduction scenes, as his blank expression masks obvious (and appropriate to the moment) feelings of fear and titillation. Yet the moviemakers still manage to waste Eastwood’s performance by proposing that once the external conflict of catching the S & M killer is resolved, Eastwood’s own S & M obsessions can be swept under the carpet and forgotten about. I don’t understand this, as the selling point of Tightrope – at least on the rental box and early in the film – was that Eastwood’s personal struggles with sex fetishes would be just as difficult to resolve as a serial killer on the loose. Granted, this idea didn’t seem to fit with the traditional Eastwood mold of manliness, but hell, it’s why I rented this movie in the first place.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Warner VHS
22 Aug 2005 11:41 PM | Submit Comment
First off, I consider the original Chocolate Factory an excellent film; it’s very cleverly subversive, and it’s aged well. Second, Tim Burton is an immensely creative figure – perhaps even the most singular creative force in contemporary Hollywood – and it’s shameful that his recent films (three of them remakes) seem to announce the demise of his creative prowess—even the trailer for The Corpse Bride is unavoidably evocative of The Nightmare Before Christmas. These films are purely capitalist exercises, and successful ones at that. There may be merits to the improvements Burton’s apes bear in prosthetic makeup or special effects, for example, but Burton’s characteristics are diminished when his vision is applied to pre-existing films. They may be formidably profitable films, but Burton’s recent works do not contain an image as succinctly poetic as almost any scene in Edward Scissorhands.
That said, this is an excellent film, one I’ll relent to contrast to its predecessor.
Burton has a tendency to reveal his characters’ backgrounds via poetic, rigidly composed flashbacks (Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, et al), and that doesn’t work so well here, but Depp’s Willy Wonka – his rapport of indifference with the children flocking him – is a truly idiosyncratic character. His products intend to promote happiness or love (chocolate, he notes approvingly, contains endorphins that elicit a feeling of fondness or love), they are his gifts to the world, yet he is a socially-maligned recluse, one humorously incapable of interacting with anyone other than the diminutive oompa-loompas that populate his gigantic factory. And these little people – characterized by Deep Roy and voiced by Danny Elfman – are another treat in this endearingly and cohesively odd film.
Jason’s thoughts | Matt’s thoughts
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 35mm print
22 Aug 2005 12:36 PM | Submit Comment
This has the most cardboard Bond girl I’ve seen, yet that weakness is supplemented by Jaws’ frightful, glimmering smile.
Full review | The Genealogy of James Bond
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: AMC
22 Aug 2005 12:07 PM | Comments (1)
I’m not particularly enthusiastic for Madonna’s music, and I have no investment in the exploits that celebrity seems to impose. Nonetheless, I was captivated by this film, for the most part, on a lazy afternoon. Its vérité filmmaking and high-contrast black & white photography, although borrowed elements from dozens of older and better documentary profiles, at least make this blatant exercise in narcissism look beautiful.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Bravo
22 Aug 2005 12:02 PM | Submit Comment
Not as funny as Wedding Crashers, but perhaps more grounded in reality. Of course, any movie is instantly improved by a choreographed dance sequence, and this one is no exception.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Universal Pictures 25mm print
21 Aug 2005 1:13 PM | Submit Comment
Murray’s Don Johnston inhabits a series of Tauruses with a CD on the stereo that always starts on a different song, flying and driving around an indeterminate, possibly Northeastern region in search of past loves, past wrongs, and possible presents. Various forms of poverty, prosperity, love, death, and domesticity present themselves and are greeted by Murray’s character with the slightest of shrugs, smirks, frowns, stares, and tears.
I like David Edelstein’s comment in Slate that this film makes great use of Murray’s still amateurish acting abilities. This is a film about insufficiency on so many levels, a film not of hipster indifference, but of a certain effete inability to react. Murray’s face here embodies limitation and an unwillingness to change. On the other hand, the women of his past represent various permutations of Johnston’s (or Jarmusch’s) own American Nightmare, a small sampling of unappealing economic and social strata from somewhere out in the Great Sprawl. It is an odyssey parallel to that of William Blake’s great Western (mind) expansion in Dead Man, and one nearly as dire and unforgiving of the national landscape.
Ultimately, this is precisely the type of film that Jarmusch does best — and one that I have a very hard time commenting upon. It’s a grab-bag of archetypes tossed into a viper’s nest of free association, a combination so available for both social commentary and individual reflection that one could hardly call it “minimalist.”
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Focus Features 35mm Print
18 Aug 2005 11:35 PM | Comments (1)
Herzog has been making great documentaries for years now, so it’s no wonder that Grizzly Man is excellent. It is, however, one of his very best non-fiction films, and not simply because it is one of his most accessible. Indeed, it is among the most generous documentaries I have ever seen — to its subject and its audience. It allows for both the comedy and pathos to emerge from Timothy Treadwell’s bizarre, hypnotic soliloquies, as it balances both the brutality and cuteness of nature.
And almost offhandedly, it is also very much a filmmaker’s film, with its close attention to the minute ontology of the image and the histrionics of everyday life. At a time when one is inclined to question the future and worth of cinema, it is nothing short of thrilling to witness Herzog’s passionate empathy for his subject’s desire to change the world (and himself) through film.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Lion’s Gate 35mm print
18 Aug 2005 10:56 PM | Submit Comment
This IFC-produced documentary is filled with former employees and aficionados of the Z channel, a Los Angeles based pay channel during the 1980s. To observe Alexander Payne (who sports his Z channel T-shirt) and Quentin Tarantino (who demonstrates a hostile enthusiasm for Claude Chabrol’s work) relay their affection for the channel’s programming – which earned a now legendary reputation for airing director’s cuts of Heaven’s Gate, 1900, and Once Upon a Time in America – is infectuous, and also depressive since no cable channel seems to rival the unprecedented quality of Z channel in its prime. The success in locating this niche audience is attributed to the channel’s late programmer, Jerry Harvey; I was less engaged by his tragic story than by the robust, Euro-centric library of films that Harvey located and aired. This film’s doubled the length of my video store grocery list.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: DVD screener
17 Aug 2005 10:03 AM | Comments (1)
Errol Morris meets the Maysles in Stillwater, Minnesota. These paperboys vary from well-adjusted and happy to angry, insecure, and desperate to make the American Dream happen before the age of fifteen.
Essentially this is a film about fathers, and the ways in which a father’s presence or absence shapes and deforms sons just trying to cope.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Palm Pictures DVD
17 Aug 2005 1:41 AM | Submit Comment
The voice-over debate regarding whether or not Bruce Lee could beat a Kodiak bear, two Polars bears, or Luke Skywalker with lightsaber and full Jedi powers is sure to make every pop culture geek’s neck hair stand on end with glee.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Palm Pictures DVD
17 Aug 2005 1:20 AM | Submit Comment
This is pretty much the sexiest movie ever made, which is strange as it is also an allegory of fascism. And a clever one, too: it’s easy to be seduced by Storaro’s insanely overwrought camerawork and miss the intelligence of the film’s social, sexual, and political subtext. Trintignant’s refering to Stefania Sandrelli as very “bed and kitchen” is the funniest piece of Leftist misogyny ever.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Paramount Pictures 35mm print
16 Aug 2005 12:52 PM | Submit Comment
A movie in which Ginger Rogers rolls off a Gertrude Stein joke and in which Eric Blore makes co-star Edward Everett Horton look like a paragon of masculinity? Fantastic!
by Matt Bailey | Source: Turner Classic Movies broadcast
15 Aug 2005 9:54 PM | Submit Comment
Inexplicable wonders await you at the center of this quickie Monogram flick starring the immortal Béla Lugosi as both an urbane professor of criminology and a murderous soup kitchen proprietor. The story goes something like this: Lugosi spends his evenings in the Bowery serving piping hot victuals to the seedy underbelly of New York City, while casually observing his guests in hopes of spotting notorious criminals on the run from the fuzz. His plan is to take said illicit fellows into his confidence and use their abilities to help him unburden the greasy burg of cash, jewels, and anything else he can think of.
Meanwhile, Lugosi’s henchman, a man known only as Doc, spends his days puttering around the dingy cellar of the soup kitchen, employing a mysterious liquid substance to reanimate the numerous victims of Lugosi’s diabolical machinations; quietly, and unobservedly, creating an army of angry characters that may or may not be zombies. Though the unexpected ending featuring a hale and hearty young man in the throes of premarital bliss might lead you to suspect otherwise, the bulk of those who cross Lugosi, and end up as Doc’s creations, are souls long dead, a point of fact that Lugosi, to his horror, discovers upon venturing into Doc’s demented domain.
One of the shortest and strangest horror films I’ve yet to come across, Bowery at Midnight shows that you don’t need a long running time, gruesome special effects, or gratuitous nudity to craft effective, memorable, and intoxicating horror. All you need is the Bowery and Béla Lugosi.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Platinum Disc Corporation DVD
15 Aug 2005 8:12 PM | Submit Comment
Like all good documentaries about pop musicians (Imagine and Meeting People Is Easy jump to mind), Don’t Look Back reveals its subject to be both a mesmerizing personality and an intolerable asshole. Pennebaker’s document of Dylan’s ‘65 tour of the UK features lots of footage of Bob smoking, gazing absently out of car windows, making snarky comments about Donovan, and antagonizing journalists. It also showcases several jaw-dropping (and dead silence-inducing) performances of some of his contemporary hits.
What is probably most interesting about this film, however, is that there was a time when a man could become hugely famous singing (and talking) incisively about civil rights, social justice, and war. Simpler times, I guess.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Docurama DVD
15 Aug 2005 4:50 PM | Submit Comment
My friend Chris, who has just contributed to the meaty symposium on Jarmusch over at Reverse Shot, has made the nice point that this film neatly disproves the old film criticism chestnut that no Westerns are possible after Unforgiven. Certainly as long as our politcians continue to exploit the mythology of the Western in their rhetoric, the cinema will have plenty of opportunities to revise the form.
Jarmusch’s take is characteristically meandering and sardonic, with Robby Müller’s floating, shimmering camerawork, a catalog of witty cameos, and one of the most beautiful modern film-scores I know. As in a number of Jarmusch’s films, there are allegorical elements that at first seem to smack you in the face with obviousness, only to recede into the formless tableau of the narrative. I have never been fully convinced by the incorporation of William Blake into the film’s text, but it is nonetheless a rife point of association, particularly in this context.
It should also be noted that Dead Man contains one of the more interesting depictions of Native Americans in recent film, emphasizing details of culture and language that usually fall by the wayside. The film remains fully cognizant of a certain tendency to exoticize these characters, and even occasionally embraces this romanticization, but this serves to preserve the protagonist’s naïve, bewildered encounter in a way that is refreshingly unironic. This is a tack that Malick has taken, but it is not one that is immediately expected of Jarmusch.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Buena Vista DVD
15 Aug 2005 4:32 PM | Submit Comment
by Matt Bailey | Source: MGM DVD
14 Aug 2005 10:10 PM | Submit Comment
Robert Altman’s immaculately photographed film may be diminished by the multiple classics that bookend it, but I’m at a loss as to why this isn’t regarded as one of his best films. If M*A*S*H is foremost a demonstration of Atman’s rejection of industry filmmaking, then The Long Goodbye displays that interest in a more refined form, and much more confidently. And it’s got an uncredited Arnold Schwarzenegger.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: The Sundance Channel
14 Aug 2005 8:30 PM | Comments (1)
Episodes 1-6. Thoughts forthcoming.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: MGM DVD
14 Aug 2005 8:20 PM | Submit Comment
What a strage and magnificent film. Those clothes! That makeup! That score! Those handbags!
What a bizarre performance by Bette Davis. Impossible to think she could have won the Oscar over Ingrid Bergman’s performance for Gaslight, or even Barbara Stanwyck, who was also nominated for Double Indemnity, but what a coup for oddball performances if she had.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
14 Aug 2005 5:53 PM | Submit Comment
Steve Martin’s screenwriting is usually much better than this. The glaring problem here is that Martin contradicts himself by repeatedly commenting on how flaky Los Angeles life is, only to place his character in a series of fantastical, flaky, and unironic, sequences of his own. In fairness to Martin, I have a feeling that it’s director Mick Jackson’s mishandling of the script which caused such a choppy, confused finished product. The contradictions were clearly written on the page, but Jackson has emphasized them past subtlty.
Also, if you’re into retro fashion – namely neon and spandex – don’t miss this movie.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Artisan DVD
12 Aug 2005 4:33 PM | Comments (1)
There are some really howlingly funny moments of histrionic acting in this utterly forgettable early talkie.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Turner Classic Movies broadcast
12 Aug 2005 2:25 AM | Submit Comment
I have to admit, I’m with Eddie Izzard on this one – I just don’t get the joke (or, more accurately, find it very funny). That said, watching the glee with which the comics tell and re-tell it makes it almost worth the price of admission, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never look at Bob Saget in the same way again.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: ThinkFilm 35mm print
10 Aug 2005 11:49 AM | Submit Comment
Shakespearian transplants are inherently maligned as they compromise, if not entirely remove, the source dialect. That said, this is still a great film.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: MGM VHS
08 Aug 2005 12:05 PM | Submit Comment
Bill Murray continues his trend of masterful deadpan turns, apparently determined to keep delivering his performance from Rushmore until he gets his Oscar. It’s like he’s on strike from mugging, unless he’s doing it off-camera in Garfield.
by Matt Bailey | Source: Focus Features 35mm print
06 Aug 2005 10:49 PM | Submit Comment
Does anyone else find it strange that the members of the so-called “Comedy Mafia,” – Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, the Wilsons, Ben Stiller, and Jack Black – actually have to defend themselves against participation in such a group? The media is really running with the word “mafia” here. After all, even if these actors have formed an alliance, what’s the worst that can happen? They’ll make some funny movies together. It’s not like things are going to escalate into Steve Martin getting whacked or Woody Allen starting an East vs West Coast war against them.
By the way, Anchorman is extremely funny. The glass case of emotion is just one of many highlights.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Dreamworks DVD
05 Aug 2005 1:47 PM | Comments (1)
Neil Labute’s prior In the Company of Men I consider to be among the quintessential independent films of the 1990’s; it was made on a shoestring budget, and its script and acting are superlative. (In an OFCS poll a while ago, I ranked Aaron Eckhart’s Chad among film’s most vile villains.)
This is Labute’s sophomore film, and it plays like a textbook sequel. There is no body count to exceed, but Your Friends & Neighbors is decidedly more populated and much, much fouler than its predecessor. Labute’s aesthetic – one of employing shock, offence, and taboos almost exclusively through dialogue – is much like that of Tod Solondz, but Labute is the provocateur I prefer. A shame he hasn’t employed this aesthetic as effectively in any one of his subsequent films.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: IFC
03 Aug 2005 12:25 PM | Submit Comment
This film is sort of like the Pink Flamingos of hetetonormative romantic comedies: repulsive and endearing in equal measures, with two protagonists who would certainly be bad guys if they weren’t surrounded by such a reprehensible group of WASPs, homosexuals, and whatever Will Ferrell is. The film is fascinatingly bizarre for its range of puritanical and offensive impulses, but thanks to the right mix of irony and sincerity from Vaughn and Wilson, the film mostly succeeds in having it both ways. Our heroes are allowed to be both awful and good-natured with impunity. Isn’t that what everybody wants?
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: New Line 35mm print
02 Aug 2005 12:31 PM | Comments (1)
They simply don’t make movies like this anymore. Or perhaps they never did. Frankenheimer’s characteristically jerky editing and James Wong Howe’s precisely confusing camerawork make for a thoroughly gut-wrenching experience. And though Rock Hudson never really impresses me, he nonetheless makes the potentially outlandish premise believable.
Also, there’s a nifty title sequence by some guy named Bass.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Cable Television Broadcast
02 Aug 2005 12:06 PM | Submit Comment
Looking for Richard is Al Pacino masturbating for one hour and fifty-two minutes.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: IFC
01 Aug 2005 9:43 AM | Submit Comment
It’s rare that I’m actively embarrassed for the actors onscreen, largely because I figure they make a lot more money than I do, but there’s an instance here when Diane Lane and her sisters are forced to burst into a “spontaneous” rendition of The Partridge Family theme song, and I found myself having to cover my eyes in shame. Fortunately, John Cusack was not in this scene, so I can at least retain a modicum of respect for him.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: Warner Bros 35mm print
01 Aug 2005 9:30 AM | Submit Comment
