The Same-Ol’ Same-Ol’ just isn’t
cutting it like it used to.
Man does not live by
exploding robots, zooming cars and buckets of blood alone!
I needed cinema that exercised
me; and gave me real stuff to chew on later.
[Because I’ve been very
down lately—and maybe as a counteragent to all “ze zerious zinema,” as
art-direction in today’s post, I’m using
wonderful two-page splash-pages and title pages from a variety of comic books,
with many from the pencil of Jack “King” Kirby.
Giving credit where credit
is due, the majority of these images are from the highly recommended sites,
Diversions of the Groovy Kind or The Secret Sun. Thanks!]
Meanwhile, lots of flicks
by “big” name “important” directors, as well! Compared to previous months,
several more “contemporary” pictures than usual, with more than a handful seen
in an actual theater!
Then a bunch of weirdo
foreign flicks so I’ll look cool…
(Films Listed in
Order Screened)
Zero Dark Thirty (2012; Kathryn Bigelow) What a way to
start the year! Maximum bummer in effect! Reviewed HERE (although I forgot to
mention in my review that I still prefer—and recommend—Paul Greenglass’ United 93 (2006) in my post-9/11 feel-bad sweepstakes movies).
Interested in my Basque heritage, I think I’m more
familiar than most with Orgo’s
political background, which helped in my enjoyment of this neo-documentary
about the 1973 assassination of Franco’s prime minister in Spain. Otherwise,
viewers would be very confused, and possibly feel sympathy for the fascist
target of the Basque terrorists, especially since some of the freedom-fighters
are such disgruntled fanatics. (“Orgo” is Italian—the film’s language—for “ogre,”
which was the nickname of the prime minister and the name of the mission, “Operation:
Ogre.”)
Compared to his previous film, 1970’s very political but
more “action-packed” Burn! or his
masterpiece The Battle of Algiers, Orgo is quite measured in its pacing; but
while the last film of agitprop maestro Pontecorvo shows his age, it doesn’t
reduce his venom.
Eddie Murphy: Raw (1987; Robert Townsend) Laughed my
ass off! Nuff said. Sole criteria filled.
More than “mere” spoof: a genuine steampunk-in-space
opera combined with political satire—I felt like I was watching a young Paul
Verhoeven in action, with its mad combo of sick, gross often politically
incorrect political humor and well-executed on a limited budget effects work.
An Australian-Germany-Icelandic co-production, with a
largely unknown cast (the most recognizable face is Udo Kier as the Moon-Fuhrer),
Iron Sky is highly recommended; and a film I need to see again so I can comment
on it more thoroughly. It deserves a more in-depth look!
Meanwhile, at the fab Atomic Anxiety, HERE’s the write-up that first grabbed my attention.
Fight Club (1999; David Fincher) Longer article forthcoming,
I’ve got too much to say about this very misunderstood flick (and not in the
way you might think), but in the meantime, read THIS.
Superb flick, and next time you watch it, consider how
both crime fiction authors Donald Westlake (Richard Stark) and James Ellroy
have used elements from this flick in their works: from the newspaperman’s
direct storytelling, to the “crime as business” theme, to even the title!
(Ellroy calls his trilogy about organized crime in America influencing politics
and vice versa “Underworld USA,” starting with the excellent American Tabloid
(1995) and ending with the superb Blood’s a Rover in 2009).
I’ve also previously commented about Sam Fuller’s Underworld U.S.A. HERE.
To Be or Not To Be (1942; Ernst Lubitsch) A messy,
fascinating comedy that’s really only mildly amusing to me. Not my cup of tea,
but I can see how a dark comedy about a Jewish theater group undercover in
Nazi-occupied Poland, starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard, could develop a
cult…
With Post Mortem,
Larrain points accusatory fingers at both the bourgeois civil servants who
turned a blind eye to the military’s vicious actions, as well as the left-wing
intelligentsia who took the middle class/ bourgeoisie for granted, and
essentially encouraged them to turn their backs on their neighbors out of a
psychic jealousy and envy. Not as grotesque as Larrain’s previous screed
against Chile’s 9/11, Tony Manero, Post Mortem is almost angrier.
You want to know what not to do when the revolution happens? Watch this.
Meanwhile, I cannot wait to see his upcoming No, about the ad campaign behind the
referendum to hold free elections.
Slap Shot (1977; George Roy Hill) A classic American
film, more resonant in today’s dog-eat-dog economics than it was in ’77. For
me, a tie with The Bad News Bears
(1976) for Best Sports Movie Ever (but in everyone’s
top five, natch). Fast-paced and furious, the laughs are non-stop in this
breathless movie.
Released a couple of months before Star Wars,
all of Slap Shot’s good lessons about being a man in the contemporary USA were
wiped away by Lucas’ sloppy Joseph Campbellian brainwashing. Sigh…
Watched because I knew screening this film again would
be like jumping into the hot tub with some old friends. Ahhhhhh...
But about the halfway mark, I became exhausted. And passed out, sleeping for
about 15 minutes, during most of the Kylie M. sequence. Really enjoyed the last
20 minutes, though—but also didn’t feel like I missed that much. Loved what I saw, though; am completely perplexed, yes; but
have a weird story to tell. Worthwhile overall.
Long Weekend (1978; Colin Eggleston) Not available on
any standard home-viewing format, so snoop around the intertubes and watch this
movie NOW!
A new fave: A film where every scene builds the
tension, right from the very first frame. I bet watching this in a theater
would be unbearable.
Another addition into the Feel Bad subgenre, after a
certain point, you hate the main characters as much as nature does. It is as if
Michael Haneke and Edward Albee joined forces to work on a remake of William
Girdler’s The Day of the Animals
(1977)—where the humans are the worst, constantly sniping at each other, and
treating Nature like a garbage can—until, you know, animals attack…
Moody and stylish, with an incredible audio montage of
animal and night sounds, Long Weekend
also delivers plenty of scares. Really one of the best horror films I’ve seen
in a long time, and a flick I intend to watch again.
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” The Twilight Zone (1963;
Richard Donner; written by Richard Matheson) reviewed HERE.
Johnny Hamlet (1968; Enzo G. Castellari) On the other
hand, this adaptation of the Melancholy Dane points out the worst aspects of
the play—and compounds them by having our Prince routinely saved deus ex
machine-style by a grinning gaucho idiot. Watch the first ten minutes for a
cool dream sequence, then a cool beach shootout, and finally a cool gravedigger
scene (in a cave—WTF?!?), but the rest was a drag. And I really wanted this
Hamlet to die at the end!
Amour (2012; Michael Haneke) Haneke is motherfuckin’ PUNK
ROCK.
Best movie of the year.
Can’t wait for the Amour
action figures.
Reviewed HERE (at the very end).
A fascinating but infuriating documentary about
Hollywood liberals “saving” a film student from war-shattered Iraq. The H’wood
people think they’re doing a good deed, but soon their expectations of
gratitude forthcoming are lost: it’s obvious that Muthana, the student from
Iraq, is an utter and complete shit.
Personally, I think the filmmakers’ comparison of
their experience with the “quagmire” of Muthana (an Arab slacker version of
Belushi’s “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave”) to that of the US govt’s outrageous
invasion of the region as egotistical and self-aggrandizing. Maybe these people
deserved to have Muthana dumped on
them. The H’wood Krowd didn’t save a med student or student radical: They were
expecting “grateful refugee,” and instead got “dumb-ass, self-centered frat
boy.”
For me the elephant in the room is that the kid is a film student—and not necessarily a
bright one: when asked during his scholarship interview what his favorite film
is, he replies “The Sixth Sense”—which might not be enough to reject him
outright for some—but then the knucklehead cannot even articulate and explain why this film is his personal choice. [Cue
Nelson Muntz laugh]
Dutchman (1966; Anthony Harvey) reviewed HERE (towards
the end, sort of).
Melodramatic and heavy-handed, the film succeeds
because of its fast pace, vicious dialog (especially passengers to their
spouses), and the utterly ferocious perfs by then newcomers Martin Sheen
(babyfaced!) and Tony Musante (with some wild
sideburns)—both of whom received “introducing” credits at the beginning of the
film.
Of course, for folks look for a taste of The Big Apple
from The Bad Old Days, this is a must-see.
The Shining (1980; Stanley Kubrick) reviewed HERE
Breezy pic that hides a serious core; anchored by star
George Peppard’s suaveness. He’s a white-trash former marine, who just wants to
be left alone. Peppard’s PI PJ knows he’s no genius, but he’s savvy enough to
suss most things out, and tough enough to take the inevitable clobbering (there’s
a far-out scene with PJ getting stomped
in a gay bar).
Co-star Gayle Hunnicut is a va-va-va-voom femme fatale,
and villain Raymond Burr channels Orson Welles poorly but with enough campy
gravitas. While largely shot on the Universal Studios lot, there are often some
delicious location photography in NYC’s more sordid nabes circa 1967-68: man, DUMBO
looked awful!
Thanks to Toestubber for gifting me this flick!
Red Hook Summer (2012; Spike Lee) Midpoint switcheroo
really changes the film’s dynamics and turns a mediocre if pleasant “coming of
age” story into a tragic life lesson. Spike Lee continues to be an iconoclastic
localist, telling unique, even disturbing tales of the borough of his birth
(Go, Brooklyn!).
Naturalistic performances really ground the movie
(especially a magnificent Clarke Peters—Right On, Detective Lester Freeman!),
which, since it’s a Lee “joint,” has many, many themes and subjects tossed into
the mix.
Spike’s flicks have never been streamlined; why should
this one be? Red Hook Summer is
especially recommended for fans of Lee’s movies, and those interested in life
in Brooklyn’s lower-income projects.
Perfectly programmed entertainment—so perfect it could
have been computed by HAL 9000. And therefore, dishonest. Really, who is this
for? What could have been a brilliant, genuine piece about “kids splitting the
scene,” something that children could love for decades; instead feels like
something made to make their parents nostalgic.
Fluffy and delicious as cotton-candy, and just as
forgettable.
I’ll admit to having problems with nearly all of
Anderson’s film (except The Royal
Tennenbaums), so I am not his target audience.
All the
President’s Men (1976; Alan J. Pakula) Just absolute, unstoppable genius
filmmaking, deserving of all its accolades.
Spooky and grim,
this is the third part of Pakula’s self-proclaimed “Paranoia Trilogy,” which also
includes his Klute (1971) and The Parallax View (see below).
That said, the
totally FUBAR thing about this film is that it tells us all about the dirty
tricks that one certain political party keeps using again and again—the “ratfucking”
covered in All the President’s Men—and
yet nothing is or has been done about it. It’s even gotten worse!
Jeez, I wouldn’t
be surprised if this movie drove Reagan to deregulate the media markets so his
friends could control it on purpose.
The Parallax View (1974; Alan J. Pakula) is beyond
paranoid: they are out to get
you in this metaphoric thriller about the political insanity strangling the land
at the time, when figures from both left (the Kennedys, MLK and Malcolm X) and
right (Wallace, George Lincoln Rockwell) were getting killed by “lone gunmen.” This picture
is a fever dream reaction to the baaaaaaaaad
juju in the air then.
An absolute must-see (and one I own), The Parallax View is a tricky and subversive
film: Pakula presents star Warren Beatty succeeding in standard action
scenarios (barroom brawl; car chase) early in the film; making us think his
chances of success are even greater than we’d think, and then the director
pulls out the rug in all sorts of nasty ways… Meanwhile, cinematographer Gordon
Willis earns his keep making sunshine seem murky and threatening, and the
editing structure keeps things twitchy by the subliminal extraction of single select frames at moments of seeming calm. Director/producer
Pakula wouldn’t have been able to make such a polished, subtle and mature a
film as All the President’s Men two
years later if he had not gotten this cri
de coeur out of his system.
In a lot of ways, The Parallax View reminds me of They Live (1988) (which I saw
first): Both present proto-shlubs discovering the hidden world “behind the scenes”
of the secret and deadly true controllers of the world.
Fans of underwater electric boats will be in heaven,
however; Bigelow gets the viewer as grimy as the submariners: you can smell the
funk. That said, the flick could be trimmed by 20 minutes, sometimes it tends
to plod. People expecting “Indiana Jones & The Secret Soviet Submarine
Squad” will be very disappointed. Watched as part of the whole Bigelow media-storm
before the Oscars…
Lord Love a Duck (1966; George Axelrod) Whew, this
stone-cold sui generis flip-out of a movie deserves its own post: forthcoming,
I promise! Baaaak!
With The
Warriors, Hill is at the top of his game artistically, philosophically and
technically. Another of his early “Urban Existentials,” this film is purer
than, say, The Driver, because The Warriors is more classical—it might
as well be taking place 3,000 years in the past or the future.
It’s a theme Hill returns to routinely, but because
the kids can only use their fists (and wits); they are forced to remain noble
savages. All of which is complemented by the fantastic NYC location
photography. I find The Warriors to be always exciting.
CONTRARIAN STATEMENT regarding The Warriors: If Cyrus had
succeeded in taking over the city, how many days—hours?—would it take before we
had a whole Jim Jones/Kim Il Jung work-camp bloodbath scenario going down?
Sheeeeeeeeeeit, Luther probably did us all a favor.
What Me Be Am Reading in January 2013 (in order of
books read):
Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema? By J. Hoberman
Feynman by Jim Ottaviana and Leyland Myrick (an illustrated
graphic novel biography of the late Nobel-prize winning physicist)
“Two Concepts of Liberty” by Isaiah Berlin
33⅓: “20 Jazz Funk Greats” by Drew Daniel
After the annoyances of the Holidays were over, I
needed some serious and heavy brain food: lots of theory and criticism and
political philosophy. Yum!
I needed it all: Hoberman’s superfantastic views on
film (We Love Uncle J.!); Richard Feyman’s iconoclasm is on a cellular level—he
should be everyone’s hero; Berlin’s pragmatic political views (from 1958) are a
nice change of pace from the utopian neocon idealism and Randian selfishness
that has nearly destroyed the country; and who doesn’t love Throbbing Gristle?
(Not only that, Daniel’s mega-essay is written in a crystal brilliance that
perfectly captures an “industrial” fan’s mindset at a certain age, at a certain
time.)
If I may quote the motto of fanzine Murder Can Be Fun: “Read Hard or Die!”
That said, I apologize for the gaps in publication—
In addition to my concentrating more on my book,
production here has also been
slow due to massive depression.
Honestly, I don’t remember
being this down in years.
Is this what normal people
feel like?
The finger of blame wants
to be pointed, but I don’t want to do that; it would feel immature and
counterproductive.
Was it the Checkered Demon
that said, “I don’t mind waiting, but sometimes I get tired of smiling”?
If not, then it was me.
No comments:
Post a Comment