Experimental masterwork or trite formal exercise? Paranoid propaganda for heteronormativity or deft navigation of homosociality and the perverse? Nietzsche or Freud?
Whatever your own answers, Rope is nonetheless a singularly disquieting film, taking many of the director’s familiar themes and maneuvers well beyond the comfort zone and straight into the audience’s conscience. More than in almost any of his other films, Hitchcock turns murder into a guilty pleasure, asking the viewer to root for the villains right up until Stewart’s last, moralistic (and rather unconvincing) monologue.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Universal DVD
30 Jan 2006 2:48 PM | Submit Comment
A few years from now, I might be able to appreciate this film for its witty, incisive portrayal of a quarterlife crisis, but right now, it feels a little too much like a reality TV show. Inspired performances, spot-on dialogue, and a brilliant ending make it stand out from similar offerings, and I’m now quite curious about writer-director Andrew Bujalski’s follow-up film, Mutual Appreciation.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: Fox Lorber DVD
30 Jan 2006 11:12 AM | Submit Comment
I return to this film every so often mostly because I’m intrigued by the Vietnam War sub-text that seems to pop up in Peckinpah films. However, in regards to what exactly makes the film exceptional, I’ll defer to Michael Mann’s comments:
“No other picture captures the poignancy of ‘the last of’, a fin-de-siË£¨e sense of the West, of ageing, of the pathos of twilight.”
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Warner Brothers Special Edition DVD
29 Jan 2006 3:36 PM | Submit Comment
Looking back on films such as L’avventura, L’eclisse, and The Passenger, it’s almost shocking to witness how engaging and natural these films feel compared to Antonioni’s latest efforts, such as The Dangerous Thread of Things.
I’m not sure what to make of the fact that – other than 3 other guys who were just ahead of me in line that were roughly the same age as me – I was the youngest person in the audience last night by about 20 years.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Sony Pictures Classics 35mm Print
29 Jan 2006 2:24 PM | Submit Comment
There are strong parallels between this and Malick’s Days of Heaven, foremost the fluctuating relationship between a woman and two men. In the earlier film, this is not a paramount concentration, but incidental, as with every other scene in the film (a summer wheat harvest, a locust storm, or a massive brush fire). Days of Heaven is a meandering and, significantly, coherent assembly of the fleeting emotions, settings, and images that inhabit the lives of the four characters depicted therein. The same can not be attributed to The New World. For one, there is a tangible sympathy for Pocohantas; she is essential instead of incidental, rendering the film’s kaleidoscope of natural images – this is Malick’s chief strength – a cantilever designed to support her utility as an icon of imperialism.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: 35mm print
29 Jan 2006 2:11 PM | Submit Comment
I usually don’t focus much on plot details, but there was one moment in Herzog’s doc that had me a bit puzzled. After Dorrington has built the White Diamond and acknowledged the previous accident that still preoccupies his thoughts, Herzog and Dorrington get into a mild argument regarding the testing of the helium-balloon to ensure its safety. Herzog mentions that it would be irresponsible of him to allow his employee (his cinematographer) to fly with Dorrington without ensuring the balloon’s safety. This makes sense, but I’m not quite sure why Herzog has to be involved in the testing, and why Dorrington can’t just test the airship’s ability himself (which I believe is Dorrington’s suggestion). I believe Herzog mentions something about having someone around that can handle the camera, as if the flight would be a waste without footage, but then little, if any, footage is used from this initial flight. So why exactly does Herzog have to accompany Dorrington on this initial flight, other than to increase the stakes involved in the scenario for the film’s audience?
Other than that slight plot oddity, Herzog’s doc is a sublime exploration of both the Amazon jungle’s canopy, as well as all of Herzog’s lifelong thematic fascinations. By the time Dorrington’s geographical journey ends, we realize his flight is far more meaningful as a personal spiritual quest for forgiveness.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Wellspring DVD
29 Jan 2006 2:03 PM | Comments (2)
Ang Lee’s work has always been a little too middle-of-the-road for my taste, but I like Brokeback Mountain’s quiet tone and gentle pace a lot.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
29 Jan 2006 10:40 AM | Submit Comment
The trailer led me into thinking this would offer far more fast-paced action, so I was pleasantly surprised. Stephen Gaghan gives the strands of his plot a lot of time and space and even a slowish pace at times to develop nicely. Nothing particularly new here, but it works effectively.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
29 Jan 2006 10:36 AM | Submit Comment
Dickens is the greatest English novelist, but there is a lot in his novels that pose a problem for modern readers: the high degree of coincidence in the plot; the sudden revelations of family secrets that tidy up things at the end and elevate the hero into the middle class; and the mawkish sentimentality in his portrayal of his virginal heroines. Polanski’s film (or rather, to give credit where credit is due, Ronald Harwood’s screenplay has got round this by simply eliminating it. So, gone is Oliver’s half-brother Monks and that whole batch of family secrets; and gone too is Rose Maylie and a huge section of the plot. It’s a pretty intelligent solution to adapting Oliver Twist for today, but the problem is that what’s left – Oliver’s childhood in the workhouse, and then his adventures among the criminal underclass in London – is so lacking in any passion. It’s safe, careful, respectable filmmaking, totally missing out on the comic and/or dramatic force and the social outrage that Dickens brought to the original. Why did Polanski direct this in the first place?
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
29 Jan 2006 10:29 AM | Submit Comment
An astonishing film, which would easily have made my list of the best of last year had I gotten off my ass and seen it time.
I’ve already angered more than one person by describing this as the film that Magnolia wants to be when it grows up, but such a comparison doesn’t really convey the variety, the wit, the pathos, and the sheer exuberance of Desplechin’s film. Burgeoning with characters, non sequiturs, flights of fancy (and tragedy), and plenty of tentative, uncondescending wisdom, Kings and Queen is smarter, gentler, far more shocking, and far less whiny than Anderson’s melodrama mash-up.
Highest recommendation.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Wellspring DVD
27 Jan 2006 11:53 AM | Submit Comment
No, the other one.
Essentially the same film as the Jim Carrey vehicle currently in theaters, except with wider ties, broader racial stereotypes, George Segal (a paltry consolation), and a cameo by a foul-mouthed, drunken Ed McMahon.
Absolutely no need to see both. Or even either.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Columbia Tristar DVD
27 Jan 2006 11:38 AM | Submit Comment
Bill Cosby receives a back massage with a pair of vibrators in this film. You read me correctly.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Cable TV
25 Jan 2006 11:47 AM | Submit Comment
As a Jim Carrey vehicle intended to spoof semi-recent corporate scandals (Enron, ImClone, and WorldCom execs are thanked by name in the credits), this is neither as irritating nor as clever as it might have been. Still, especially in its first half, it’s a fairly funny movie (if you can take Carrey) that refrains from taking its plot contrivances or moralisms too seriously. And there isn’t a Wilson in sight.
If one really needs to see a film that takes up this subject for yuk-fodder, Spike Lee’s She Hate Mefar more interesting, intelligent, and idiosyncratic.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Columbia/Tristar 35mm Print
23 Jan 2006 4:51 PM | Comments (3)
This is so far my favourite of the “lesser” Val Lewtons. The Greek setting seems rather bizarre, the details of plague infection/non-infection quite unbelievable, and the sudden introduction of the woman-afraid-of-being-buried-alive-and-then-getting-buried-alive plot simply unbalanced. But the huis clos setting works very effectively, and the effects of shadow and light in some scenes are as great as in I Walked With A Zombie.
by Ian Johnston | Source: Warner DVD
23 Jan 2006 11:58 AM | Submit Comment
Asquith’s success with this adaptation is in not trying to open out Wilde’s play, in understanding the irony and knowing artificiality of the whole enterprise and letting the actors play on that in their very self-aware way. In its own way, the film hardly puts a step wrong (one exception: the cutaway reaction shots to the butler during Gwendolin and Cicely’s “duel” in the garden – very bad!).
by Ian Johnston | Source: Criterion DVD
23 Jan 2006 11:52 AM | Submit Comment
I was somehow under the impression that this was more of an oppositional film than it turned out to be. Some critics have read a deep critique of the Stalinist state here along the lines of “absence is presence”, i.e. because we don’t know the fate of Lapshin subsequent to the main setting of 1935 we should read the worst. But Ivan Lapshin doesn’t seem so far from an upright Soviet hero, the handsome defeater of vile criminal elements even if he misses out on the girl. In fact the dominant tone set by the present-day frame narrator’s voice-over is one of nostalgia. For all that, German gives a superb evocation of a provincial town of the time, the cold, the mud, the cramped living conditions; and the warmth, vitality, and idealism of the people of the day.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
23 Jan 2006 11:46 AM | Submit Comment
Once in a while I waste some time at work by playing ridiculously easy on-line games via Orbitz advertisements that pop up on the ESPN website that I surf at least once a day. Occasionally I have to play the computer and I always wonder why it’s so easy to beat the technological beast. Obviously, the answer is related to marketing purposes, but logically the computer should clean my clock every time, especially since these games (beach volleyball, shuffleboard, pool) usually just have to do with angles and speed, hence the calculation should be relatively simple for a computer. Yet, the computer always makes “human” mistakes, which usually guarantee my victory so that I can feel more confident about my own abilities as a human who is able to vanquish the machine in a close match-up (and hence play the game and surf the website longer).
In Jayanti’s documentary, Garry Kasparov spends so much time worrying about a chess move (and a chess mistake) that his computer opponent, Deep Blue, makes that he is convinced is far too human, that he forgets that he is in the midst of making a rather crucial human error. Kasparov is so flustered by the move that he was unprepared for that his ego takes a huge blow, which he cannot recover from. His weakness is then exploited by his opponents – the IBM team – who become fully aware of just how rattled Garry has become. Kasparov is then forced to admit defeat, even though he could easily have forced a draw. Somehow you get the sense that a draw wouldn’t satisfy Kasparov once the “human” move comes into play.
Interestingly, throughout the doc, Kasparov and his team keep making references to entities (computers, corporations, governments) no longer behaving rationally and acting more like humans. What they never seem to grasp is that all these entities are actually manifestations of human behavior and that these entities are simply in the early stages of development. What also becomes clear is that ego makes Kasparov continually view himself as a single man battling an entire system. However, such a perspective becomes weakened when Kasparov is humbled by his old rival Anatoli Karpov long after communism has been discarded in Russia. Yet Kasparov still naively craves a rematch with Deep Blue. Kasparov seems to think he can stay ahead of the advancement of computer technology, which has already rendered Deep Blue obsolete. Kasparov’s determination, knowledge, and passion are impressive, but he seems to forget that the IBM programmers equal him in these characteristics, though their fields of expertise differ. He doesn’t seem to understand it’s a game that he will always be destined to lose eventually simply because he is human.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: ThinkFilm DVD
23 Jan 2006 11:23 AM | Submit Comment
Do you have hot chocolate?
Yep.
Is it hot?
Yep.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: IFC
20 Jan 2006 9:13 AM | Comments (1)
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: TCM
20 Jan 2006 9:11 AM | Submit Comment
Aside from being the subject of one of the most hilariously absurd academic lectures I’ve ever attended (Lee Edelman’s “Rear Window’s Glasshole,” later published in Out-Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film, ed. Ellis Hanson, Duke University Press), this is also a fine little treatise on love, marriage, and perspective. It’s characteristically framed (even by the director himself) as Hitchcock’s movie about the movies, but specifically it’s a movie about the movies versus the theater — Jimmy Stewart’s Jeff starts out at the theater (physical presence, a fixed, wide perspective, and the suggestion of activity behind and beyond the “stage”), but when that’s not good enough, he moves beyond the proscenium arch and into close-up with his trusty zoom lens.
In addition to the cinema vs. theater comparison, we also have fantasy vs. real-life, the former always being more appealing and exotic, as evident in the scenes in which Grace Kelly tosses all kinds of sex at a crippled, disengaged Stewart. Here, the two stars are cast perfectly: the ever-ingenuous Jimmy Stewart turning in another invisible performance as “the audience,” and Grace Kelly lending teeth (and some other parts) to a role that elsewhere (in To Catch a Thief, for example) is far more superficial.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: The Masterpiece Collection: Universal Pictures DVD
19 Jan 2006 2:51 PM | Comments (2)
I spent approximately ten minutes watching this film thinking it was Ran, and the remainder wishing it was.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: FMC
18 Jan 2006 1:17 PM | Submit Comment
One of the most unrelentingly grim movies I’ve ever seen in my life, and yet my energy didn’t really begin to flag until about 6 1/2 hours in (and I blame this partially on the MoMA’s strict no-food policy). It also marks one of the closest times I’ve come to walking out of a theatre (those who have seen the film should have no trouble earmarking the scene I was reacting to), but I’m glad I stayed, as I found it to be one of the most transfixing and unusual viewing experiences I’ve ever had.
by Beth Gilligan | Source: 35mm print
17 Jan 2006 11:09 AM | Comments (2)
After seeing Malick’s new film, I’m especially conscious of the sensitivity with which he portrays young love here — especially in its decline. The film’s final pair of shots has Holly briefly glancing at Kit with amusement, affection, melancholy, and finally distraction, as she absently gazes out of the window of the plane toward the sun and a sublime, infinite cloudscape.
Love is strange. Let’s hope that young son of a lawyer understands.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
16 Jan 2006 11:41 PM | Comments (5)
I started to compliment Allen with the thought that at least this was better than Melinda & Melinda and everything else he’s done in the past five years or so. Then I decided that even with that kind of backhanded compliment this film was irritating and still a disappointment. Predictable, far too reminiscent of Crimes & Misdemeanors (not even one of my favorite Allen films), and misogynistic. Do we have to keep having it pounded into our heads that Woody Allen has severe issues with conception? Poor ScarJo’s character turns on a dime into a whiny and needy woman all because of pregnancy, while at the start of the film she seemed to at least have a femme fatale’s sense of self reliance and self preservation. Yes, how disturbing that sometimes fate blows the right way for the wrong people. That’s why the wealthy apparently get away with murder and amazing real estate.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
15 Jan 2006 8:13 PM | Comments (1)
It’s almost easy to ignore the gun in the Stall household. That is one of the images that sticks in my mind, a few days after finally seeing this film. While Tom races…well, hobbles home, believing the mob are heading toward his family, his wife goes in the closet and readies the shotgun. The camera follows and holds on it after it is placed on a table as the family realizes they are safe, at least from Ed Harris and his cronies. Watching the son linger and pick up the gun I felt queasy, and much more so as the film progressed. I’m not sure if the history is so much national as it is familial and intimate, but at the same time I see how (at least in this film) fathers appear to pass down an inherent talent at being brutal, and how so many American families accept a gun in their homes, if not perpetuating violence then expecting it at their door.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
15 Jan 2006 7:57 PM | Submit Comment
Almost each of Hayao Miyazaki’s films contain their own universe and mythology, and each is governed by either natural or spiritual laws that humans often speciously attempt to control. Of his films that I have seen, my favorite is his least expansive but nonetheless wildly imaginative film.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: TCM
13 Jan 2006 11:56 AM | Submit Comment
Maybe I’m being lazy, but I wonder what, if anything, this film actually has to say about violence, its nature, and its “history.” Even though I liked Million Dollar Baby less, I think that film has more provocative things to say on the subject — or at least on the subject of real (vs. movie) violence.
But then, the characters in Cronenberg’s film are what really interests me, far more than any grand allegorical schema. Indeed the film is much more interesting as a romance than as a treatise (or a “Western”).
And, boy, is it nice to see a 90-minute film for a change.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: New Line 35mm Print
12 Jan 2006 1:00 PM | Submit Comment
Aleksei German doesn’t quite escape the traditions of the Great Patriotic War genre, but the framing war scenes are nicely underplayed and there’s a good feel for the turmoil of life behind the lines.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
12 Jan 2006 12:40 PM | Submit Comment
A black absurdist comedy on the bureaucracy crumbling away in a literally collapsing building. Something of a Georgian Britannia Hospital, though Eldar Shengelaya is more whimsical and lacks Lindsay Anderson’s bile.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
12 Jan 2006 12:35 PM | Submit Comment
I saw this only one time before, a good 20 years ago, and I’m surprised that – apart from a couple of striking images of the Stalin-surrogate character – I remember absolutely nothing else. It made a bit of an impact in its day, but this time round seems to me to be bloated, meandering, and unwieldy, with good ideas expended in the indulgences of dull, extended fantasy sequences. The only other film I’ve seen by Tengiz Abuladze, The Plea, is far superior.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
12 Jan 2006 12:30 PM | Submit Comment
Giorgi Shengelaya has an interesting premise for this film: a young composer wandering innocently around turn-of-the-century Georgia to collect recordings of local music unwittingly leads to the eradication of the remnants of the local revolt against Russian rule. Unfortunately Shengelaya’s direction at times borders on the inept, with examples of poorly-devised mise-en-scene and under- or un-directed acting. It’s a pity that the bulk of the film never measures up to the effective final shots of the film, as we revisit the now-empty sites of the film’s story to a swelling Mahler soundtrack.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
12 Jan 2006 12:23 PM | Submit Comment
I still can’t stand the Vincent Cassel Euro-Rap dance, even if his brother is some famous French rapper. Seriously, what was the thinking behind this sequence?
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Warner Brothers DVD
11 Jan 2006 3:06 PM | Submit Comment
Whenever I’m about 75% recovered from a sickness that has caused me to miss work, I usually find a need to watch this film. It usually provides a good test of whether or not I’m still nauseous. Not because it’s of particularly poor quality, but just because it uses so many color filters and relies so heavily upon the color red at times that it allows me to gauge whether I’m still feverish, etc. Plus it’s still fairly smooth fun and doesn’t rely on a great deal of camera movements. Then I start watching a steady series of slick Hollywood heist-flicks throughout the day. It’s a routine – don’t knock it.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Warner Brothers DVD
11 Jan 2006 3:02 PM | Submit Comment
Laughter during the penultimate killings in this film confirmed my suspicions of its true subversion of the crime genre. And as a genre piece it’s a pitch-perfect mechanism. Many sequences are, in description, ridiculous (for measure, a role-playing sex scene, and another at the foot of a stairwell), but they’re staged so clinically (every gunshot wound rendered in fresh prosthesis, every threat delivered with some experienced drawl) the joke is sold, only every time I laughed my guilt was encouraged. This is a masterpiece of subversion, and among my favorite films from the past year.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: New Line Cinema 35mm print
10 Jan 2006 10:53 AM | Submit Comment
Amazing. I have to see it again.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
09 Jan 2006 3:17 PM | Submit Comment
I admit it, I have a soft spot in my heart for this one. Yes, the pretentious dialogue can grate at times, and the Melrose-Place-My-Sharona atmosphere forever traps the picture in 1994. But it’s hard to resist the allure of an idealism-crushing coming-of-age flick, and the part of me that shall forever remain a naive teenager still wants to be long-shanked Ethan Hawke living the tormented artist life and making eyes at Winona Ryder.
(It should also be mentioned that the performance of Ben Stiller (who also directs) offers further evidence that he is the king of acting awkward.)
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: MCA Home Video DVD
09 Jan 2006 11:40 AM | Submit Comment
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: IFC
09 Jan 2006 10:24 AM | Submit Comment
I imagine I would have appreciated Eli Roth’s sophomore effort much more had its brutal second half not been promoted so shamelessly in its marketing. The film hinges on the revelation of a seedy dungeon in which a trio of backpackers is summarily dismembered inside; because these bloody contents are known prior to seeing the film, viewers are partially analogous with the European businessmen that pay a hefty sum to torment and murder young travelers—and Americans fetch the highest price.
I relent to proffer any further adjectives of dismissal of its hedonistic contents (but here’re some if that’s what you’re looking for), but Hostel possesses some narrative flaws as a horror film. Specifically, I don’t buy the violent actions of Jay Hernandez’s character Paxton at the end—I think he should be much more frantic to remove himself from any equation of violence or anything that would implicate him in the horror he’s experienced. And the death of the dungeon’s sole female victim (at least, the only one I could discern) reinforces the charges of misogyny given liberally to this film. Finally — and unlike Roth’s debut, Cabin Fever — Hostel storms forward with little discretion and little suspense. The goal is to get to the sex and bloodletting, and neither is adequately established.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Lions Gate Films 35mm Print
09 Jan 2006 10:15 AM | Comments (1)
An absolutely beautiful assembly of photographs and seemingly found footage that can be lauded – although it is ostensibly nonfiction – for Jonathan Caouette’s performance.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Sundance Channel
09 Jan 2006 9:42 AM | Submit Comment
Morgan Spurlock’s exhibition is only slightly easier for me to digest than any one of Michael Moore’s. This is as much a star vehicle as it is a persuasive indictment of McDonald’s menu.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Sundance Channel
09 Jan 2006 9:40 AM | Submit Comment
It’s hard to make any definitive statements on The Plea – the first of Tengiz Abuladze’s Georgian trilogy, of which Repentance is the most well-known – on only a single viewing. Shot in beautiful, dazzling black-and-white widescreen, there’s almost no diegetic dialogue as such; instead the soundtrack is composed of readings of the poetry of Georgian Vazha Pshavela. There is a central story of a primitive struggle between Georgian villagers and Moslem sheep rustlers which devolves into a round of revenge killings, but the film’s frame is oblique, evocative and abstract. One that needs returning to, in order to make sense of it over and above the compelling imagery.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
08 Jan 2006 5:23 AM | Submit Comment
Paradjanov’s last completed film, co-directed with Dodo Abashidze, leaves me with a sense that his filmmaking had settled too much into a system of rather static illustrations of extra-cinematic fine arts imagery. As facinating as the insights into Armenian, Georgian, Turkish etc culture are, in the end the film doesn’t breathe enough for me.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
08 Jan 2006 5:10 AM | Comments (4)
More than in Paradjanov’s subsequent films, Shadows gives expression to a baroque, uncontrollable talent, a frenetic and exciting clash of contrasting styles. There’s a mix of natural settings; blatant studio sets whose artifice there is no attempt to hide (for example, the scenes in the shepherds’ hut, with the illogically open door and the fake raging elements outside); religious imagery; variations in colouration, sometimes intense, sometimes washed out; static shots varying with extreme expressionistic movement/images. Again unlike the later films, there’s more of a conventional novel-like story, though the dazzling style and overlay of traditional music raise it to a mythic level.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
08 Jan 2006 5:02 AM | Submit Comment
Jimmy Wang Yu pits his one-armed hero against Kam Kong, who here sports the titular weapon (part-yo yo, part-beekeeper headgear, part-decapitation instrument) and an enormous set of eyebrows. The purity of this film is inspiring: there is only the most economical of exposition, allowing the majority of the film’s 80 minutes to focus on increasingly lengthy action sequences. Here, Wang Yu excels, not only with the wit of his camera movement and editing, but with the almost abstract physicality of his actors (you try doing all that jumping with one arm tucked into your sweater).
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Cable Television Broadcast
07 Jan 2006 4:12 PM | Comments (1)
OK, in all honesty, I’ve never had the stomach to watch this film in its entirety, but I’ve caught the last half an hour on television a number of times, so I feel justified in calling it one of the worst Hollywood films of the still-youthful ’00s. Woo turns in one or two inspired action moves and a couple of good explosions, but the script is so hilariously bad (“I invented a machine that can predict the future!”) that these little touches can’t improve it. Add to this:
• Affleck, still trying to graduate from his Mallrats date-rapist persona to Hollywood hunk (see also Bounce),
• Uma, who is so hopelessly gangly that it’s a wonder that this is the same person who kicked such an absurd amount of ass in Kill Bill,
• the star-chemistry equivalent of orange juice and toothpaste,
• and one CGI dove,
and you have a recipe for a highly amusing movie.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Cable Television Broadcast
07 Jan 2006 3:55 PM | Comments (1)
It’s worth it to watch this film carefully to find the precise moment when J. J. Gittes changes from being a smarmy private dick with a band-aid on his nose to the coolest character ever. I’m pretty sure it happens at the moment when, having beaten the crap out of Claude Mulvihill outside of the retirement home, he dusts off his fedora and places it firmly on his head.
This film (compounded by a chill wind in New York this week) always makes me want to move to Los Angeles.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Cable Television Broadcast
07 Jan 2006 3:41 PM | Submit Comment
Nothing beats a straightforward horror title. If you sit down to watch Attack of the Giant Leeches you know you’re going to see some giant leeches, and you know they’re going to attack people. Awesome. Too few movies today allow themselves to be such pure, inane entertainment, and that is a shame.
True, the leeches here are obviously human beings draped in black Hefty bags, but when they rise up from their underwater cave to claim another victim, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of joy that someone actually bothered to make this movie.
And when the leeches are’t attacking, we still have plenty of entertainment fodder, including a bar full of superstitious locals, an ill-fated boating excursion, a cheatin’ wife and her rifle-toting husband, and talk of radiation, dynamite, and the ethical considerations of disturbing a government-protected nature preserve.
Sitting down to view this black and white treat with my family over the recent holiday vacation, I looked around the room at one point and realized that we were all riveted to the screen; everyone laughing at the leeches, the bad dialogue, and the dimly lit sets. In short, everyone was having fun. What more can you ask for?
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: DVD
07 Jan 2006 2:01 PM | Submit Comment
In terms of the decision to display the act of killing another human being, I couldn’t have watched two more different films than Spielberg’s Munich and Eli Roth’s Hostel. I don’t think I was tense during a single moment during Roth’s film. I simply just had to wait for the next scene of gore to commence after having watched the long male fantasy that begins the film. Roth appears to have some thoughts of Eastern European economics after the fall of communism, youthful-American arrogance, and global resentment of the USA, but his film just isn’t all that terrifying apart from a conversation between Jay Hernandez and Peter Hoffman.
I can sum up my distaste for Roth’s methods by describing one scene. As Paxton and Kana attempt to get away from their abductors, they run into the same group of children that continue to commit crime throughout the film. They get away by giving the children gum. The gangsters who are following them are not so lucky and suffer a most gruesome fate. Yet, Roth’s techniques obviously want the audience to cheer at the actions of the children, no matter how revolting. Unfortunately, I simply had to wonder if an identical audience reaction would be possibly if the children took the same action upon our protagonists, since it seems obvious that the children have no moral code. Perhaps Roth’s point is that the true horror of this situation is that these children are not governed by morality in these countries. If so, this point would be better conveyed if Roth showed the consequences of the childrens’ actions within the same frame. Instead, the harm that they cause is relegated to its own frames, apart from the children’s blows, thus allowing the audience some relief since the actions and consequences are separated through editing.
Roth could some day make a meaningful horror movie, since his scenarios are always so interesting. Unfortunately, this film isn’t the horror masterpiece that it has been hyped up to be.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Lions Gate Films 35mm Print
07 Jan 2006 2:30 AM | Comments (4)
Considering Spielberg’s reputation as a sentimental filmmaker, I had an awful feeling this would end up like a morally-contrived, overly-simplistic, cartoon. Thankfully I was wrong and my fascination with Spielberg’s recent career continues. If you can get past Spielberg’s reliance upon children – it is fairly heavy-handed in this instance – and Tony Kushner’s verbose script, which feels desperate to be important at times, the film is rather reasonable in its treatment of the subject matter. Kaminski’s cinematography is superb, with an unnerving brightness that often obscures rather than illuminates the events that transpire, as if the clarity these events are meant to create is futile. The scene involving the conversation between Avner and Abad al-Chir on the Cyprus hotel balcony was especially impressive in its equitable treatment of its characters, as Spielberg’s humanistic viewpoint provided complication rather than simplification.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Universal Pictures 35mm Print
07 Jan 2006 2:05 AM | Submit Comment
It is astonishing (and encouraging to b-horror movie fans out there) that this 80-minute, made-with-a-digital-video-camera, low-budget flick made its way into a sizeable number of theatres nationwide. I say astonishing, not because the film does not deserve to be seen, but because I find it hard to imagine that any movie moguls wading through the awkward, stilted-dialogue-rich opening scenes would have had enough interest to continue screening the picture and to actually consider distributing it.
But I suppose that’s why trailers were invented. And low budget or not, Open Water has one of the simplest, most effective trailers I’ve seen in awhile: Two people floating in the middle of the ocean, nary a glimpse of boat or land, shark fins gliding ominously through the waves. That’s it. Two people in the water. No masked killer lurking in the shadows, no prolonged torture scenes, no gratuitous violence. Just isolation, and a creeping dread of the briny deep.
As the story begins, we meet the vacationing couple, endure their idiotic conversations, and follow them out for some scuba diving. Bad dialogue aside, these opening scenes move along at a brisk enough pace, and serve to efficiently get our heroes off dry land and into the wide ocean. Soon enough, the pair is separated from their boat and cast adrift on the high seas. Then the movie takes off.
Idiotic banter becomes realistic bickering, as the lovers attempt to downplay the seriousness of their predicament by arguing over irrelevant details. A boat is glimpsed on the horizon and they convince themselves it’s only a matter of time before they’re picked up again. Hours pass and the slow, suffocating squeeze of despair takes hold. Daylight fades. The cold grows. The shark fins circle. And through it all, an intimate camera, hovering halfway above the sloshing waves, brings us face to face with the primal human fear of the unfathomable ocean, convincingly proving that cinematic success depends, not on money or technical wizardry, but on a simple, relatable, and horrifying premise.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Lions Gate Home Entertainment DVD
06 Jan 2006 3:02 PM | Submit Comment
Though one is impatient to get to all the stabbing, cross-dressing, and bird-mania, the first half of this film is also rich with detail, fine performances, prototypical Hitchcockian suspense, and an unnervingly normal Phoenix, Arizona. And of course it goes without saying that Janet Leigh’s onscreen presence — stalking around in pointy brassieres, making bird-gestures, and flirting with the pencil-necked, coprophobic Perkins — is one of cinema’s most deliciously perverse pleasures.
It’s also fascinating to watch the number of times in this film that Hitchcock exploits one of his favorite devices: the manipulation of different points of view.
The archetypal breakdown: Marion at the car dealership; a shot from her point of view of the policeman watching her from across the street; cut back to a medium closeup of Marion looking back. The lack of the policeman’s POV is what is disquieting here, and this same type of point of view editing is used throughout, from Marion’s glances in the rearview mirror to her sister’s approach to the house and to “Mrs. Bates” in the fruit cellar. This is, I think, what Zizek calls the “Hitchcockian blot,” and is a textbook device of the horror-movie idiom.
Also, keep your eyes peeled for a cameo by TV’s Ted Knight at the very end.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Universal DVD
06 Jan 2006 12:58 PM | Submit Comment
A rip-roaring high seas adventure based on the writings of Jack London, The Legend of Sea Wolf is the tale of a self-styled gentleman named Humphrey Van Weyden who one day finds himself shanghaied by the most notorious captain in all of the seven seas: Wolf Larsen.
Known for the harsh treatment he incessantly doles out to his crew, his seemingly endless seal hunting expeditions, and his lifelong feud with his brother, Death Larsen, Wolf is not a man to be trifled with.
As Van Weyden finds his sea legs, however, and rises above his initial post as scullery slave, Wolf takes a shine to the young man, approving of both his doughtiness and his educated mind. It seems that, at heart, Wolf is an intellectual, and is glad to finally have a man aboard with whom he can converse.
Aside from witnessing young Van Weyden’s evolution into a man of worth, and Wolf’s metamorphosis from uncaring captain to man of letters, we are afforded an assortment of terrific adventure movie moments, including an attempted mutiny, a whale hunt, and a late night sea battle.
Although the overarching narrative is a bit hazy (exactly why all this is happening is a mystery), the film’s breakneck pace and colorful maritime characters (including an inexplicable appearance by the lovely Barbara Bach as a castaway) assure constant entertainment.
by Thomas Scalzo | Source: VHS
05 Jan 2006 12:35 PM | Submit Comment
Over half of this film looks like the same haphazardly-edited chase sequence run in a loop, which is not to say it’s not, at least, a moderately suspenseful enterprise.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Sundance Channel
04 Jan 2006 9:06 AM | Submit Comment
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Sundance Channel
04 Jan 2006 9:01 AM | Submit Comment
Saw this again. Yes, I am a nerd. And now I have the persistent sound of birds chirping in my head.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: New Line Cinema 35mm Print
03 Jan 2006 11:58 AM | Submit Comment
Creepy…even a chuckling audience that had obviously seen the film before sat quietly while those crows gathered on the monkey bars. Nature aside the mother/daughter relationships in this film are so very bizarre and layered – Melanie with a lack of Mother, Lydia as the Mother who won’t let go, the flock of Mothers staring at Melanie as the harbinger of doom, the doubling of Melanie and Lydia, and all those screaming children running to their Mothers. Not to sound repetitive since many have mentioned it, but the soundtrack is incredible – I want to turn the image off when I get my hands on the DVD and only leave the audio track on, especially the last scene in the house as they wait for the birds in the living room.
by Jenny Jediny | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
02 Jan 2006 10:13 PM | Submit Comment
Why not come straight out and say it: this is a bad movie. A good 90 minutes too long, and a sign of the real limitations of Peter Jackson as a director. This is a man so proud of his special effects – and they are very good – that he has to show them to us again, and again, and again… The story’s there to support the CGI rather than the other way around. And as a Kiwi I’m unhappy with the way this “success” of the NZ film industry, the pride of the nation, is turning the country into cheap location and SFX outsourcing for Hollywood.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
02 Jan 2006 8:55 PM | Submit Comment
This is, I think, Andrei Konchalovsky-Mikhalkov’s first film and of middling interest, principally for its setting in what I guess is now Kirghizstan. But ideologically it’s the kind of film that will never be made again: an attack on the sexist/classist inequalities of ethnic minority culture; my sympathies are all the way with the Party ideologue hero. Interestingly, the basis narrative set-up is close that of Yellow Earth – I wonder if Chen Kaige ever saw it.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 16mm print
02 Jan 2006 8:45 PM | Comments (2)
A beautiful, rather gothic film. Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery are so perfectly bizarre here — they almost look like aliens. Connery delivers what is probably his most complex performance, translating the unmitigated sexual energy of Bond into something quite sinister. But as perverse as this film is, I find it curiously touching. This is probably thanks to Hedren’s performance, which (like in The Birds) manages to elicit pathos with almost no understanding of her motivations.
Also, that horse scene is just incredible. Not shower-scene incredible, but close.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Universal DVD
02 Jan 2006 2:36 PM | Comments (1)
A rare “whodunit” from Hitchcock, brilliantly playing off the director’s fascination with theatricality. Herbert Marshall is wonderfully supercilious as the author-hero, Sir John, and the film concludes with some nice quotation from E. A. Dupont’s Variety.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Studio Canal DVD
02 Jan 2006 2:16 PM | Submit Comment
A second viewing of this film confirms it as one of my favorites of the year — not that repeated viewings reveal any new clues. The film rests on the most evanescent of bases, and its only aim seems to be to convey a single and very specific mood. This is another way of saying that this film is not for everyone. It’s also to say that film is largely what you make of it. For example, I’m interested in the fact that the entire film seems to take place in upstate New York, and I find the race/class elements resonant. Resonant of what, I don’t know.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Focus Features Screener DVD
02 Jan 2006 2:08 PM | Submit Comment
The fact that a good 50% of this film is maddeningly conventional makes the distinctly Hitchcockian scenes (the restaurant, the taxidermist, the Royal Albert Hall) that much more disturbing. Doris Day and that whistling brat are pretty annoying, but Jimmy Stewart is brilliant as the wide-eyed American tourist. I haven’t seen the original in a few years, but I think this film is a slight improvement, at least the major set-pieces are better.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Universal DVD
02 Jan 2006 2:00 PM | Submit Comment
One of these.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Tartan Video DVD
02 Jan 2006 1:52 PM | Submit Comment
Prepare to be amazed: I have never read a Harry Potter book and only saw this, my first Harry Potter movie, last week.
And I was entertained. But it’s astounding how inept a director Chris Columbus is — at least for this type of film.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Warner Bros. DVD
02 Jan 2006 1:49 PM | Submit Comment
I will admit that I enjoyed this just the tiniest little bit. It is exactly what it seems to be, even if that’s only a sappy, bubble-headed dramedy. And it’s nice to see that both Coach and Paul Schneider are getting some work.
The deaf, gay, interracial couple, however, is hilariously idiotic.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 20th Century Fox Screener DVD
02 Jan 2006 1:46 PM | Submit Comment
Two facts for those who’ve seen this film: the turtle referred to as a gopher is actually a gopher turtle. And the couple who boast a jar of sand that grows is correct, only it’s gypsum, which responds to changes in humidity.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: MGM DVD
02 Jan 2006 1:03 PM | Submit Comment
Perhaps it’s because I had just finished watching the efficient Dial M for Murder the night before, but it seems clear to me that Hitchcock stretched Torn Curtain past the point of suspense and wandered well into the territory of laborious. There is about 20-30 minutes that could have easily been cut out of the film without losing anything significant. Instead I’m subjected to completely superfluous characters, such as the bafflingly irritating Countess who constantly wails about her US Sponsors, and the annoyingly stern lady on the bus. If the Countess is supposed to be a tragic character designed to capture our sympathies, she is a total failure, since Lila Kedrova’s acting is hilariously poor at times.
More concerning is Hitchcock attempting to create far too many suspense sequences, especially towards the end during the escape. The scene in the post office seems to highlight the frustrating waiting times created by bureaucracy rather than create any sense of tension at the possibility of being caught. Even worse is Paul Newman being forced to yell “fire!” in a crowded theatre in order to evade the authorities.
by Chiranjit Goswami | Source: Universal “The Masterpiece Collection” DVD
01 Jan 2006 1:09 PM | Submit Comment