bobt145 Reviews

A Night Full of Rain (1978)

Gripping

[9/10 · 24 June 2011]

A review of a young couple's life, in flashbacks, from the beginning in Italy to San Francisco and back, in love, in denial, in the struggle to come to terms with life itself.

Lina Wertmueller's direction dives right to the heart of the angst of love, its feeling of closeness and its opposite feeling of being unable to fully connect, an impossible dream of emotional need clashing with the physical isolation of each.

Candice Bergen and Giancarlo Giannini are particularly magnificent in the violent, extended fight on the night full of endless rain.

Their friends, often seen as groups of faces, provide a Greek chorus of comment, detached and occasionally mocking.

This is yet another terrific reason to keep the VHS player working!

The Tree of Life (2011)

Caution: The Big Bite

[8/10 · 6 June 2011]

In a film that takes its viewers from The Big Bang to the future, "The Tree of Life" achieves much of the poetry of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," awakens a sense of wonderment in the patient viewer, yet leaves us wondering about what it says of human interaction.

Perhaps Malick has simply taken too large a bite for one film.

It is certainly a bold effort. And that, in and of itself, is something to appreciate. Very few attempts at such universal themes as meaning, spirituality, our place in time, have been made in the last 25 years.

The O'Brien family of Waco, Texas is the human focus of the film. Their home is in the shade of a magnificent, arching tree of amazing size. You may have never seen one like it.

The tree serves as the frame of "The Tree..." Intercut between family dialog and children's play, Malick gives us reminding gazes at its trunk, its largest branches and the sky above it. It is as if the tree is a cosmic umbrella, an always present frame for the scurrying below.

It is Malick's reminder that humans then and now are not the end-all of creation, not the reason, not even reason in the sense of Descartes. We are just a microscopically small part of the amazing Universe.

If we're lucky, we'll find our own meaning along the way and have our memories to define the journey.

Don't see "The Tree..." if you want plot or resolution. This will be a polarizing movie. I would say all but ten percent st the showing I attended didn't like it. As one other visitor to the Men's Room afterward said, "That stunk." He was not a thrill seeking, attention challenged man. He was older, of the type who has seen hundreds of good movies. Yet, he just didn't get it.

I can't decide whether some of the negative reaction is isolated to just the family story. Malick might have done it differently. removed a disturbing sense of violence in the father, Brad Pitt. Perhaps made the mother more substantial, less intuitive. But isn't that what mother's are? He was certainly telling us that the details didn't matter, as if their sum, no matter what specifics, would always spell lives only important to their immediate memories.

Not sure. Still thinking about it. And that is the aspect of the film I liked most.

Last Train Home (2009)

Difficult Passages

[9/10 · 22 April 2011]

A modern train glides smoothly over a ravine bridge against a framed backdrop of snow-covered peaks and deep valleys.

It is a breathtakingly scenic surprise that sharply contrasts with the passengers crammed into the train, exhausted, heading home for a day or two after a week's wait at the city train station.

Lixin Fan's film of three consecutive New Year's migrations provides startling insight into modern China and the devastation that recent industrialization has wrecked upon a country once steeped in family-centered culture.

A young girl offers prayers for her grandfather. He has raised her and she doesn't really know much at all about her parents.

They have spent her lifetime in Guangzhou's factories making jeans for the world and sending money back home in hopes their children (they also have a younger son) will receive a strong education and rise above the menial factory work.

It is an aching portrait of modern China that should be seen.

The Glass Key (1942)

Very dark, even unexplainable

[6/10 · 15 April 2011]

(possible spoilers)

As I nodded in and out of consciousness, one word kept going through my groggy head.

"Why?" I thought. "Why?"

As I started to wrap my mind around the concept, it hit me like a ton of bricks and I was out like a light again.

In the recesses of my throbbing skull, there were voices, voices that had the answers.

Alan Ladd puts up with a pounding from William Bendix because he knows it will get him in a hospital bed with a good looking nurse?

Veronica Lake is using Brian Donlevy because she thinks he's gonna win something, but what? An election? Control of the eighth ward? Some Cliff's Notes for this thing?

Oh I like a lot of the material, taken as isolated scenes. Ladd dangling from a window, the search for a shooter in Donlevy's office that never gets explained, the scene where Ladd makes out with the publisher's wife in the living room causing the publisher to blow his brains out upstairs.

Well, maybe those aren't the ones I liked. The room is spinning and I'm fading out again. Damn, where's that envelope of magic script writer powder when you really need it?

An Affair to Remember (1957)

Nostalgic, even in 1957

[9/10 · 11 April 2011]

This marvelous romance transports us back to a different time, when passions were just as they are now, but repressed, if with difficulty.

Deborah Kerr is magnificent, keeping her control, yet radiating her inner feelings in unmistakable glances, pauses and such. Cary Grant, yes, who could possibly imagine themselves as Cary Grant, not even himself.

It is a proper romantic comedy, but it is set in the time of Elvis, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Bill Haley. "An Affair to Remember" teeters precariously on the brink of sentiment and soapsuds, yet pulls back from those traps every time.

We will never know why a ship sailing from England to New York City stops at the French Riviera. Perhaps to view the films for that year at Cannes. "Friendly Persuasion" takes the Palme d'or, but the jury prizes are shared by Andrzej Wajda's gritty "Kanal" and Ingmar Bergman's classic, "The Seventh Seal." It is as if we are crossing from a time of then to a time of now.

"An Affair" was one of the last of its mannered kind, a film that could both hold belief and hold off the coarser, more open world that had already claimed its foothold.

Restrepo (2010)

Stop and Think About It

[8/10 · 6 January 2011]

It's a strange way to fight, without ever seeing the people you're shooting at and who are shooting at you.

The strongest aspect about this viewpoint documentary is its lack of an opinionated narration. The filmmakers--who deserve commendations of their own for putting themselves in the line of fire for 15 months--let the soldiers and their activities tell the story, the firefights, patrols, attempts to communicate with the Afghans, mundane chores.

And they let the viewer judge for meaning.

It isn't possible, however, to truly capture a year and three months in 90 minutes. I did find it curious that so much interview footage was cut. If you see it on DVD, don't miss the interviews shown under special features. Perhaps the director-cameramen wanted to keep the ratio heavier on footage than interviews.

In one omitted interview, the unit Captain admits that he thought he was responsible for losing even one soldier. He also mentions that one of those killed was the unit Sergeant Major's son. There should have been some way to weave this into the story.

Another soldier says he hates the terms "you did what you had to do" because he doesn't think he really had to do it. Says he doesn't think God will greet him with a playful punch to the shoulder and say "you did what you had to do." It's powerful stuff, the included and the omitted footage. For the most part we fight now with volunteers. The mix of soldiers is a bit different than it was when there was a draft, but "Restrepo" shows that American forces still bring a wide range of backgrounds and reactions.

And it shows that most are still so young that we are still sending kids to do the jobs old men ask them to do. They are brave, fearful, obscene, committed for the wrong reasons, committed for right reasons, and committed for no reason at all.

It's a powerful view.

Black Swan (2010)

Swan Diva

[5/10 · 17 December 2010]

Natalie Portman's performance in "Black Swan" reminded me a bit of Isabelle Huppert's magnificent job in Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher." The self-destructive parallel's between the two roles, coming from opposite directions (Black and White Swan?) are startling.

What's also startling is the effect of both overall movies.

I would never recommend the Haneke film. Why would you want to obsess over a woman who's sado-masochism ranges from breaking glass in a young girl's coat pocket to hysterical sex on a men's room floor.

With Portman, why would you want to watch, even in horrific fascination, this obsessive creature with such a masochistic core. She literally hurts herself repeatedly and succumbs to the fingering of the ballet director in seconds after rejecting him at first.

There's one scene where Portman is in a tub of water. She immerses herself. The Baptism reference is obvious. From underwater, she sees blood dripping into the tub, first from her rival whose face appears, then from a cut on her own hand.

She has lived her frigid, ultra-disciplined live as a slave to her craft for so long, when faced with success and the demands of a manipulative director, she begins to go mad.

I can think of only a couple of viewpoints from which one would appreciate this study. Either as someone who sadistically enjoys seeing her unravel or from the viewpoint of someone who identifies with her masochism.

As I can't come up with either viewpoint, my only question is 'Why would anyone want to watch this all-encompassing pain?' Huppert won best actress at Cannes, Portman will win at the Academy, but that still doesn't answer the question.

Still Life (2006)

Don't See the Trailer First

[8/10 · 24 November 2010]

Jia Zhang-ke has given us a marvelous capsule of China rarely seen on film.

His searching husband and wife cross paths looking for their respective mates after years at the only moments the story could have been told.

Before the Three Gorges Dam, none of the metaphoric, yet very real destruction of the old towns would have been taking place and three months later they would all be under water.

The cinematography allows us to slowly absorb the beauty of the spot on the Yangtze River where the dam is being constructed, while the stark lives of demolition workers play out in contrast.

The new China is a runaway engine of modern economy and it is tossing countless lives aside with its speed.

These aren't views shown in the films of the previous generation of Chinese directors. Made recently enough to have a direct connection to today, we see a country where cell phones bring the same changes to the people who use them as they have here. We hear and feel the influx of popular music in a land where traditional music is so beautiful.

And most of all, we see how the people affected by the future flooding survive, bouncing sometimes numbly from home to shelter as they are evicted from locations with 2,000 years of history.

This is a personal film for the director and that too says a lot about the strides the Chinese society has taken since the days of Chairman Mao and even Tiananmen Square.

Ever since I figured out the plot line of "The Sixth Sense" after five minutes because of giveaways in the trailer, I have resisted them. If I'm in a theater, fine. But I don't go looking for them.

DO NOT see the trailer before the film. Three of the very best and most surprising scene are given away in a short, 50-second promo.

But do see the film. Very good.

Hereafter (2010)

If we are Here now, we need an After

[9/10 · 22 October 2010]

On the way home from seeing this terrific movie, I stopped at a light, a few cars in front waiting to turn right. Around us, the sun had just set, a full white moon was high and the reflections of brake lights bounced off gas stations and car dealerships.

What an amazing world we live in. There is so much in the five miles between my house and the theater where I saw the movie that I could never experience it all. Moments arrive and disappear and the the people shift, move, appear and disappear.

I think most of us need some kind of assurance that it all goes on forever, that our open windows aren't just blacked over and sealed at death.

Clint Eastwood has made a quiet, reflective, thoughtful film on this condition, this need for forever. It's not a flashy paranormal probe of ghosts and goblins, spirits and such.

Taking three central lives we see our need for a hereafter from a French woman who has experienced something before being revived, from a twin boy who has lost his brother and from a lonely man who seems able to capture something from beyond this life. Or perhaps he just captures something from those who come to him.

Cecile De France is stunning as a television reporter who touches her own death and returns. Frankie (or is it George) McLaren is good as the young boy. And Matt Damon's restrained performance is a revelation.

Eastwood has the assured hand that allows long segments in French with English subtitles and a juncture with two disasters and such a touchy-feely subject, and yet it works. Quietly. Thoughtfully.

He also has the good sense to let us draw our own conclusions.

Park Row (1952)

Park Row Gets the Fuller Brush

[8/10 · 21 October 2010]

Sam Fuller was a newspaperman in his younger days. This is his love letter to his earlier craft, with a full dose of Fuller filmmaking prowess.

I doubt that Fuller was ever well-budgeted. He made do, and boy did he.

The office of the paper is a tight web of cubicles (that are torn down at one point) that cast dark shadows and patches of light. Fuller allows his camera to capture repeated black and white shadow portraits of the characters, their emotion forming the full frame of a shot.

At other points, the camera tours the tiny den as characters move through it as if it were dancing a marvelous ballet Outside is a square, statues of Benjamin Franklin and Horace Greeley and a narrow street allegedly populated by newspapers.

This is all Fuller has to work with, but he makes it work so that even though your subconscious is saying, well, that doesn't look quite realistic, your movie viewing buys in and ignores the tells, absorbing the essence of the scene. Terrific film craft, more than just cinematography.

Can't argue the storyline is up to the filmmaking, but there are touches that Fuller sprinkles throughout that are marvelous.

The newly found paper buys its paper from the butcher. On the floor is a box of unsorted type. It took me back to junior high school in upstate New York, where for a marking period, we had print shop and learned to sort our type and grab it to compose a line in a hand-held device.

There's Otto Morgenthaler, a character borrowed from history, who actually did invent the linotype machine and first use it at the New York Tribune, which is referred to as a competing paper in the film.

The statue of Benjamin Franklin is still there, at the end of Park Row. At one time, the street held The New York World in the Pulitzer Building, Greeley's New York Tribune, The New York Times at #41, the Mail and Express, the Recorder, the Morning Advertiser, and the only other survivor, The Daily News at #25.

In the story, set in 1880s, AP is referred to. The concentration of papers eventually led to the Associated Press, located on Park Row, but that wasn't until 1900.

In the next decade, the landscape was dramatically altered with the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. It not only cast its shadow over Park Row, but also caused some of its buildings to be demolished for ramp space to the bridge.

Why were the newspapers all there? Strangely, it's never mentioned in the film. Park Row is right around the corner from City Hall, the NYC Police Headquarters and the financial district. That's a pretty good nexus for news.

This one doesn't pop up very often. If you find it, watch and enjoy.

(My ratings are usually to the next highest star. In this case, about 7.5)

The Social Network (2010)

Anti-social networking

[9/10 · 12 October 2010]

David Fincher does a marvelous job of telling a complicated tale, pulling us in and riveting our attention. he has a history of that.

It is curious that so-called "social" networking began in such an anti-social stew of class distinction, intellectual arrogance and sophomoric personal viewpoints.

Jesse Eisenberg is excellent as the creator of Facebook. However, the amazing role in the film is that of the elitist Winklevoss twins. I don't like to read too much about a movie before I dive into the audience, so I had no clue that one actor, Armie Hammer, played both roles.

Seen side-by-side in numerous scenes, there was even a thought in the back of my mind that the twins were close, but not really close enough. What a performance. A supporting Oscar nomination will hopefully follow.

Distractions: the glamorization of the party scene at Harvard--I have my doubts. Perhaps it was just a way of emphasizing the fantasy that the computer guys were hoping to obtain? ...and the abrupt ending.

It was almost as if a studio exec had said, well, not bad, but we're looking for a two-hour run time. And so...slice, stop, rolling credit explanation as to outcomes. A more natural ending would have been appreciated.

But the anti-social nature of the networking is laid out brilliantly, through the Mason of the Harvard undergrads, to the coed user-consumer wannabes, to the don't care attitude of the Dean, to the use and discard context of many of the relationships.

In the context of the suicide death of a Rutgers undergrad a few weeks ago after social network bullying, this film accurately tells of our times and directly questions its values.

The Best of Youth (2003)

Magnifico!

[10/10 · 22 September 2010]

Just when I thought I had seen anything worthy of ten stars, I discovered "The Best of Youth" and found another.

What a magnificent film! As a starter recommendation, it may be the best expression of positive humanity in film. Marco Tullio Giordana lets his characters breathe softly, their inner thoughts often washing across their faces like sunshine coming out from behind a slow moving cloud.

Yes, we get some Italian dramatics, such as Rosselini or Visconti offered, but those points take a secondary role to the quieter moments.

A hospitalized young girl unable to speak from the fear of electroshock treatments. Another young girl radically committed to change, helping cleanup the mud in Florence, taking her ideology beyond her family to the Red Brigades.

And characters such as Matteo, burdened with himself, unable to express his thoughts, turning from has family's outreached hands.

The knit of personal likes and dislikes, music, travel, art woven through in a fabric that says "I am alive and life is beautiful."

Take the six hours challenge. Find the DVD. Watch Part I and certainly you'll watch Part II and long for more.

The American (2010)

Two Pros, One Priest

[8/10 · 3 September 2010]

It is not clear who George Clooney works for. We know the face and name, but not the registry.

Here is a carefully paced film whose tension isn't released. There are no explosions, no police pursuits. The only opposition to Clooney's professional killer are other professional killers, of unknown origin and number.

The mood is pervasive quiet. The weapons all have suppressors and make the same sound as a well-built car door closing.

In the mix are a priest who befriends Clooney in a remote Italian town. Some morality is introduced. We find the priest has fathered a son, a mechanic to whom Clooney is sent for parts.

Our second professional is Violante Placido. She--if we could believe it--is a prostitute. You will never meet a working girl as beautiful as this. They don't exist, even on Park Avenue.

Clooney falls for her and his edges soften. His guard doesn't drop, not even with her alone, but we see the hardened loner with other thoughts. Think "Leon: The Professional" without the loudness and explosions, with a woman instead of the young girl.

This movie is all about pace and tension. And a tell. Pay attention to names and who says them.

While not a classic, it's a very enjoyable theater evening in a remarkably dry year.

Syndromes and a Century (2006)

Symmetry, Support and Sainthood

[7/10 · 2 September 2010]

If only this dream sequence of a film came with a frame, a few moments of lucid guidance. A narrator, even for a brief opening and perhaps an explanatory note on the shift from rural Thailand to urban?

Without a background prep course, we are left wandering.

We are told by reviewers that this is a film about "Joe's" parents, his memories. Oh? Where? Not in the film. Not unless some lengthy Thai passage wasn't translated.

Please, Apichatpong, just a hint and the help of structure. It wouldn't have harmed the feel, the mood, the effect, in any way.

Are the two contrasting sections of the film, rural to urban, concurrent or a gap in time?

Some scenes, disassociated as they may be, are marvelous. The industrial process room, with a snakelike suction tube that would have done Dali proud. The steam, the fumes, whatever the smoky substance, swirling amid the machinery, I could smell the metal in the air.

We are also told by other reviewers that it's one of the Four Best films of the past decade in one poll and THE best in a poll of critics associated with the prestigious Toronto Film Festival.

Really? You can't be serious.

What it truly is? A film of beauty, of quiet, of sly humor, reflection, and a soundtrack of subdued accompaniment that seems to invite introspection in the viewer.

That's not all that bad, if you ask me. But we need a Sherpa beyond the simple edits.

If you do some research you'll find that the film was prohibited from exhibition in Thailand. Four scenes the censors thought objectionable, including a long, yet somewhat passive kiss and the sight of a monk playing guitar.

Strange, these moral critiques coming from country that for decades allowed its capital to become the brothel of the world.

I fear some of the reviews are thus political. And certainly I can't support censorship. But let's get a grip on the difference between support for the filmmaker and sainthood.

Saratoga Trunk (1945)

So much Ingrid, so beautiful

[9/10 · 6 August 2010]

I'll leave it to one of the ladies to give us judgment on Gary Cooper's charm.

For me, this is Ingrid Bergman at her absolute best. Shot just after Casablanca, the screenplay and Sam Wood's common sense choose to focus on Ingrid in every scene but the brief, although well done, train wreck and brawl.

She is radiant, sly, coquettish, warm, reactive, piercing, soft, hard. Most of all, she is desirable. A woman for all time, for all women.

And she is strong. Melting for a brief second, gathering her resolve and forging ahead with her plans and schemes.

The Edna Ferber novel has enough truth to provide a reasonable story line for Ingrid to carry along single handedly. Cooper and Jerry Austin as Cupidon are excellent. Florence Bates gets too little time, too late as a matron with claws.

And French, yes, bless them, they allowed Ingrid to speak French, which she did so beautifully.

The current 6.2 Yahoo rating is laughable. "Saratoga Trunk" may not be a "Casablanca" or "Notorious" but it is far better than this lowly rating. See for yourself.

Inception (2010)

A Question of Balance

[9/10 · 20 July 2010]

"Inception" is a terrific mix of think and thought.

Christopher Nolan has made story paramount and beefed up as many action scenes as possible. Somewhat neglected in that mix is the role of character.

If you loved "The Matrix" than this is for you, in spades.

By using dream within a dream story lines, we see the same people doing different things at the same time. It's not all that challenging to keep track of four or five levels at a time, especially if you accept the premise that time flows more rapidly the deeper you get.

Five minutes in real time is an hour on level one and the bottom level can consume a lifetime.

For me, the fabulous sets and the intricacies of the dream structure had me riveted to the action. But I did long for some character development, a nuance that wasn't related to that person's dream story.

The choice of Ellen Page is particularly questionable. She doesn't seem to have the depth of expression of even an ordinary actor and as one of only two women featured, should be better.

But there are some fabulous effects. Roped bodies moved as a weightless pile through corridors and elevators. A falling bus on the second level that takes forever to hit the water into which it eventually plunges.

The planting of seeds isn't some new concept. The next time you thirst for a drink you've never tasted, think advertising and you've come up with your own seed.

If you ask why such a good rating, with so many detractions, well, it's really an 8-and-a-half and it is damn good at what it does.

The Killer (1989)

Mindless action, dog-eared dialog

[4/10 · 15 July 2010]

If we are to believe a horde of posters, The Killer is one of the best flicks of all-time. Certainly one of the best "action" movies.

Not for me. Not by a long shot.

Woo discovers the exploding bullet blood spray and proceeds to weave a story around some 200 such explosions. For some unexplained reason, our protagonist values the lives of children and women, but not adult males. What happens to the children who grow up to be adult males?

His characters are resolute, one dimensional clichés who come up with some of the most trite dialog existent outside of Ed Wood films.

Two relationships, with his work procurer and the cop who's after him, turn into loudly proclaimed "best friend" exchanges. Each willing to sacrifice their body to help the other, because they admire the protagonist and because they are "men of their word."

Huh?

The aerial ballet of trigger-happy opponents foreshadows Yimou Zhang and Ang Lee, but lacks any of their graceful touches. It's just bodies launched for no explainable reason.

The most telling factoid about The Killer: 120 deaths, by count. It wouldn't have been the same if only 107 had died.

Sure it's escapist folderol, but there are so many better ways to spend movie time. I would also object to the inclusion by many of "Leon: The Professional" as a comparable film. Leon is so superior to this claptrap as to belong in a different medium.

The overly loud score may be the best aspect of The Killer. If there is a best aspect.

Changing Lanes (2002)

Gripping!! Moral!

[9/10 · 6 June 2010]

I'm guessing this film has long since found its way to the cheap DVD bins for maybe $4 or $5.

If you find it there, grab it. This is a terrific film.

The film is about choices, the kind that real people face everyday in a tough city like New York. Which is absolutely a very tough city.

The choices from Samuel L. Jackson's point of view are about meeting the standard, not having that next drink, showing his family he is worth having back.

The choices for Ben Affleck revolve around ethics, partnership, revenge and the Manhattan moral world that requires things done because they must be done. He's a lawyer, but had this film been shot more recently, he surely would have worked for a securities trading firm.

The pair collides---on the FDR---and the test, gripping, paced, pressured from both sides, begins.

It's not a car chase, but rather an emotional ride that reveals levels the film doesn't seem to outwardly promise. It's a shame. The 6.5 currently displayed at IMDb means so many serious film viewers won't try it. And you should.

The Last Wave (1977)

An undiscovered gem

[8/10 · 18 May 2010]

In 1977, I doubt if audiences were as open to a film like this as they might be today. Assaulted in the 1970s with such fare as "Rosemary's Baby" it would have been natural to reject this without giving it a chance.

Thankfully, DVDs are forever.

Weir creates a film of foreign concepts, foreign to us but at home to an Aboringine still in touch with tribal ways.

Hail stones the size of bricks arrive out of a clear blue sky. Muddy rain falls on Sydney. The sky is filled with rainbows and strange southern lights in the middle of the day.

If you surrender yourself to the Aborigine concept of dream time, it makes perfect sense. What is surprising is to find that an Australian (Richard Chamberlain) has been forecast as part of this end of cycle.

Weir used real tribal people and gave them a kind of supervisory approval for the script to be as authentic as possible.

If you let your mind absorb the film without defense systems, it packs a worthwhile punch.

Man Bites Dog (1992)

Repulsive, revealing

[3/10 · 23 March 2010]

Count me as one who read the hype and watched, waiting for some measure of redemption.

Artistic? No more than a daybreak or taking out the garbage. Less, because of its impact.

I didn't find it redeeming. The voyeuristic time I spent watching it--I did give up, not finishing with about 20 minutes left--sits heavily on my mind. I feel shamed, dirty, questioning my own character for having sat through so much, the senseless killings, the sexless rape, the immorality of proponent and film crew and their self-inflicted distance from their actions.

"Man Bites Dog" can tell us a lot about ourselves. Are we willing to sift these images of senseless violence in our consciousness? Are we the kind of human being that will gawk at the carnage of a roadside accident? I've always turned my eyes away from such scenes in real life. Et vous? There's much made of the moral questions involving the film crew. How deeply does media affect events? How complicit are the eyes and hands of the media in the unfolding of events? The tone of the film is far darker than necessary to find those answers. For better insights into those questions, I suggest Marshall McLuhan or "Dog Day Afternoon".

The film preceded "reality television" by a few years, perhaps foreshadowing its success. It's a shame, such a waste of time, such a bankrupt preoccupation with trivial violence and actions.

If those are your preferences, I suggest a straight advance to chainsaw films. Why clutter your vision with supposed moral questions?

Triumph of the Will (1935)

Forewarned, ignored

[8/10 · 20 March 2010]

This was 1935. Long before Austria, Poland and France.

How could a generation of Americans, British and the people of the other allied countries not get it? This didn't frighten the crap out of our parents and grandparents? Why? Leni Riefenstahl provides a poetic cinema portrait of a repugnant troll who has mesmerized a nation.

At the end of the film, Rudolf Hess says Adolf is Germany, the Party is Germany, Adolf is the Party! Riefenstahl laid it out perfectly, with breathtaking composition and angles. The music? Move over Soussa, this makes you want to march forever.

Hundreds of thousands assembled, youths with shovels, enough military formations marching to shame West Point and the Naval Academy, unisoned response from the masses....yet we didn't get it.

The Trial (1962)

All of us

[10 January 2010]

We are all Joseph K.

Not asking to be here, we are judged by others unfit to judge. These judgments direct and channel our entire lives. If you've escaped from their effects, then you simply haven't understood the charge.

The charge against us is life. Our existence confirms our guilt.

The Advocate (Orson Welles) cowers under his blankets or bellows for others to cower before him. He offers assurance of compassion, yet has no ability to affect Anthony Perkins' guilt or innocence.

He is as helpless as the accused, although he gets some snuggle time for his efforts.

The sets, the photography, the dark shadows and intermittent steams of light create and amplify the surrealistic message of the story. Using rooms that are undersized and floor angles, brief glimpses of parts of people, Welles is up to his best stuff.

It is the film we would expect from the director of Citizen Kane.

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

If you got this far, See It!

[10/10 · 18 December 2009]

This is one of the best films of the year, but judging by the comments here, it's also one of the most under-appreciated and misunderstood.

I loved it. To the horde of naysayers, I simply want to shout from the rooftops, "This is a film dammit, not an exercise in some mysterious media, and it's a damn good one." There. That feels better.

Nicolas Cage finds his inner demons and let's them out to play in his role as the drug addicted cop. He's more than believable as a coke snorting, crack rock smoking fiend who thinks nothing of squeezing people, good guys and bad alike. And by the way, the bizarre mannerisms...yup, that's what drugs will do for you. To my mind, he nailed it! Take one small mannerism, the way he snorts a small pinch of coke from the back of his hand, a flurry of movement, and voilà, an observer would never know. It's inventive Cage and it's priceless. And you won't find many in the real drug world as good at it.

The supporting cast is excellent, although I must admit I did forget Val Kilmer was even it at times.

The texture, the interwoven story lines, the camera work. All superb. It's a Tarrantino film with a Herzog touch. Ask yourself, how many interrogation rooms have you seen on television and in movies? Any of them have windows with traffic outside? Probably not. Good touch and the film has dozens of them.

As for the iguanas and dancing mobster. These are apparitions folks. You know, born of the effects of all those drugs on the brain. They are not symbolic. They are not misguided touches of the bizarre (well, maybe they are a bit). They are the demons of a drug soaked mind and of course they are all of of proportion. That's what demons do! Very entertaining. You want more? Read a book.

Brothers (I) (2009)

Guilt and Forgiveness

[9/10 · 4 December 2009]

Two brothers, one returning from prison, one heading as a Marine to Afghanistan.

This film is apparently a remake of a Danish film that had the same story line.

But it didn't have Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal! Maguire reaches into the darkest corners of his soul to flesh out the good brother, the Marine, who returns from Afghanistan with a staggering burden of guilt.

Gyllenhaal is amazing, transforming an angry, unsure ex-con into a believable figure of redemption, slowly growing before our eyes as the story unfolds.

Natalie Portman is excellent and look for Carey Mulligan's four minutes of screen time.

This is not an anti-war film except in the sense that any film that shows war either glorifies it unrealistically or jars us into questioning, if it is realistic. The scenes in Afghanistan seem authentic. The tortures are not so so graphic as some of the other reviews imply. They will cause you to wince, but its good film making, not microscopic detail.

I want to search out Susanne Bier's 2005 film "Broedre"--it can't lessen the impact of this one, however.

An Education (2009)

Nominations Please!

[9/10 · 1 December 2009]

This is a coming out party of sorts for Carey Mulligan, who artfully plays a teenage girl swept away by the worldliness of a much older man, and for Lone Scherfig, the Danish director who sought out the rights to make the film.

I had expected a much rougher time of it. Young girl, cad of a man, forceful sex, cast aside victim, but that's not at all what we get here.

We get an insightful story, even romantic at times, about the power people have over each other, even in such a chronological mismatch as David and Jenny.

I don't think there's been a better pick-up line since Bacall invited Bogey by asking if he knew how to whistle. In a pouring London rain, the classic car pulls up next to the drenched schoolgirl and its driver leans over and asks if he can give her cello a ride. I understand, he says, that you wouldn't get in a car with a man you don't know, but I'm a music fan and I would like to see that cello stay dry. And, I'll drive along slowly and you can walk beside the car (in the downpour). Oh yes, here's some money so that you're protected from my simply driving off with the cello.

Strangely enough, that's apparently far more sophisticated and elegant than the original offer that lured Lynn Barber into the Wilson driven by the older man of her memoirs, upon which this is based.

It sets the scene and soon young Jenn is swept away by concerts, restaurants and all the sophisticated things a teenage girl headed to Oxford is yearning to experience.

There are naive victims here. Her parents, who acquiesce to Danny's charms even more completely than their daughter. As Jack, the father, Alfered Molina is marvelous as an ordinary working stiff who is scared stiff of restaurants because he wouldn't know how to order and who allows his daughter to be taken out from under his nose because he too is so impressed by charm and show and sophistication.

Peter Sarsgaard may not get much credit for this role, bad guys seldom do, but his portrayal gives us more than a glimpse at how much the power the young girl has over him.

He turns out to be more than a cad but that's for you to discover.

Carey Mulligan lights up the screen. Audrey Hepburn, yes there's a good comparison. She allows just enough nuance of naivete to convince us that she's really just an extraordinarily good looking schoolgirl, rather than the accomplished actress in her early 20s that she is.

And through her performance, we see the duality of the relationship, what drives David to pursue her despite what appears to be months without more than a peck on the cheek. Not exactly the stuff most old man-naive girl stories are made of. And we see her responding to his attention, his charm through a series of scenes, at Oxford, in Paris, at the upscale apartment of two of David's friends.

For some reason I expected a rougher film. Surprise, the romance doesn't even lead to on-screen nudity. What? True.

Scherfig gives us a film with such finely tuned nuances that I'm sure it will be worth a second viewing and more.