Alright, here is part one of what you’ve missed. Lots more to write. I was especially wordy, I think with this one. Took me a while to write. I guess what I’m saying is don’t expect the next one too soon after this one.

Yesterday I cleared out my room for the first time in oh, forever. It looks a lot better now. I threw out a lot a don’t need anymore. About 8-9 years of magazines. That was tramatic. At least it made room for another bookshelf. Yeah! Let the madness continue!

Josh is coming soon. I’ll leave you with this:

(March 27)

——House on Telegraph Hill (1951)——

I like this movie a lot because it manages to come up with a really great idea for a film noir (Nazi concentration camp survivor takes the place of her dead friend to get in with a rich family in San Francisco) and twists that idea so that the story goes in a direction that you were never expecting. You would expect someone in the family would be trying to kill her because they found out that she wasn’t who she said she was, right? Instead, no one knows by the film’s end who she is except for one character and she TOLD him who she was. Our main character actually walks unknowingly into someone else’s drama and her sudden appearance just makes things harder on the person trying to take over.

The rest is pretty classic film noir stuff, nothing exception other than the initial idea, but the whole thing ties together extremely well and makes for one entertaining viewing. Of all of the Fox Film Noir disks they have produced this is definitely one of my favorites.

(SEE)

——Inside Man (2006)——

Although the plot twist of Spike Lee’s newest film is apparent early to anyone who has ever seen a film with a plot twist before, the fun with this film is more in the ride, watching great actors do some great work. I love Clive Owen. I really wish he spent more of this movie outside of a mask. The voice is enough though. If there is anyone who can demand authority as a bank robber who has planned the perfect crime, it is him. Denzel Washington also has a great character, not particularly deeply written, but he still manages to make the most of it filling in gaps present in his character. The film manages to reference Dog Day Afternoon but it is no where near as good as that film. Still, it’s fun. See it.

(SEE)

(March 28)

——Girl Boss Guerilla (1972)——

This was my second voyage into the world of the Pinky Violence Collection, that glorious collection of Japanese girl gang movies, and while Girl Boss Guerilla doesn’t have the classic timeless feeling of the sublime Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless to Confess this is one of those examples where the sum of the parts is actually greater than the whole. The plot is about a biker girl gang (the Red Helmets) from Tokyo going to Kyoto on vacation and because they are tight on money they just happen to take over the dominate girl gang there. Expect lots of delicious chick fights. Not everyone is happy about the transition. First there is the girl who got her ass kicked. Then there is the yakuza counterpart that doesn’t like the shift in the status quo.

That yakuza gang is where the movie doesn’t quite work for me. These girls are all so freakin’ badass. They never lose a fight. Then the guys come in and bust them up like they are a bunch of little kids playing gangster. Even at the end they have to get their revenge through STDs and a car bomb. Weak. I much prefer the samurai sword carrying girls of Delinquent Girl Boss. But anyways.

When there isn’t some man around to kick their ass, these girls are pretty badass. The film is shot really well too. Any fan of exploitation filmmaking will squeal with glee at some of the compositions, especially the opening shots of the girls on their bikes. The one weakness here is the plot that suffers from being episodic and not building to any sort of satisfactory climax. Oh well. Still an entertaining ride.

(SEE)

——Heavenly Creatures (1994)——

Peter Jackson, director of small low budget splatter films in his native New Zealand, got the job for the Lord of the Rings trilogy based a lot on this film, which really put him on the map as a creative personality. It also at the same time launched Kate Winslet’s career, helping her get cast in a little film called Titanic. He somehow did this by telling a story of two girls who become homicidal friends in the Fifties instead of focusing on exploding zombie heads. Not that there is anything wrong with exploding zombie heads. They just don’t seem to get the attention of those folks with all of the money.

These two social outcast, overly imaginative schoolgirls find each other and quickly form a bond over a shared fantasy world that only the two of them can understand. Their bond is so tight that it seems that they become almost of one mind, and that bond becomes so intense that their parents begin to worry about it (especially in that it might mean they are lesbians in the taboo Fifties). When the parents finally plan to pry them apart they plan a murder that shocked the nation and got them separated for life.

Heavenly Creatures didn’t knock my socks off, but it is a very fun and addictive film. The two girls seem to contain an unlimited amount of enthusiasm when they are together. You can definitely see how the world might see Peter Jackson a little bit differently after directing this film.

(SEE)

——42nd Street (1933)——

This was my first Busby Berkeley musical but already I was able to see a pattern that is supposed to be apparent in all of his oft-parodied musicals. The film starts out as a funny, if unmemorable screwball comedy about a show trying to get of the ground to become a hit. 42nd Street, probably the most classic of those plotlines, involves the lead twisting her ankle at the last minute of an already chaotic show in rehearsals, only for an unknown member of the chorus line to take the stage at the last minute and pull off the role fantastically. But while amusing (and featuring quite a bit of risque dialogue) the film really doesn’t take off until we get to the last half hour of the film directed by Berkeley.

In his segments something happens that we have not been prepared for by anything that has happened previously. None of the rehearsals give us any indication of the scope and scale of the musical routines that are actually in the show. How could they? We’re suppose to believe that all of this is happening on a theater stage, and yet no stage in the world could hold the staging that Berkeley comes up with. Suddenly we’ve jumped to film world, where cuts and camera angles allow things to happen on the screen that could never actually happen on the stage. Another thing becomes apparent and that is how proficient Berkeley is with his camera. The shots are composed better, the cinematography is photographed better, the people look better. Perhaps his most famous shot is in this film, where Berkeley’s camera goes between the legs of numerous girls twisting in formation until we finally come across the two main actors resting on their elbows smiling for the camera. It’s an amazingly beautiful shot, accentuated by Warner’s excellent job on the DVD. At the very least you have to see the last section of this film, because if you haven’t seen one of Busby Berkeley’s before you don’t know what you’ve been missing.

(MUST SEE)

——The Hustler (1961)——

Shot in widescreen black and white, starring Paul Newman, the Hustler becomes the ultimate pool movie precisely for the reason that it really isn’t about playing pool at all. Fast Eddie is technically a superior pool player to Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats, so why is it that he can’t beat him the first time they play each other? It’s as the great George C. Scott tells him: “You’ve got no character.” That’s what the Hustler is about. As talented as Fast Eddie is, he’s really just a hustler, a nobody. He has the impatience that comes with early talent, letting his emotions get in the way of actual success.

What’s really interesting about this movie though is about how the girl in the movie gets almost equal screen time as the men. After Eddie loses to Fats he drifts off and meets Piper Laurie (who is so fantastic in this movie that it makes you wonder why she never did anything as big before or since) in a train station as a fellow alcoholic waiting for the bar down the street to open. The two seem to pull each other out of their own respective ruts, that is until George C. Scott finds him and agrees to sponsor another shot at Fats. Scott cares nothing about Newman himself, only about seeing him beat Gleason, so he brings him back into the world while poisoning his relationship with Laurie.

The ending is one of those mixed bags, a tragic victory if you will, that helps the movie transcend just being a movie about a pool player. Having seen The Color of Money I can agree that the sequel to The Hustler lacks any of the punch the original had for not having that dynamic ending. While modern Hollywood films (and even The Color of Money) seem to be more plot driven, this is one startling exception where the film is much more about character. Even George C. Scott’s character seems to know that.

(MUST SEE)

(March 31)

——A History of Violence (2005)——

Hey, it is time for this week’s Cronenberg review! This is the most subtle, graphically, of all of the films I’ve seen of his and yet it still remains just as startling, maybe even more so because of the more intimate context of the violence. Viggo Mortensen does some amazing acting here, much more powerful than anything in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as Tom Stall, the small town diner owner whose heroic killing of two murderous robbers brings on the unwanted attention of some Philadelphia mobsters who think he is someone else. The second viewing only allows you more time to take in this very focused and nuanced performance. After you know all of the twists and turns in the narrative you can see how Viggo was playing the character we know at the end from the very first frame of the film.

Beyond telling you how great the acting is I really don’t want to tell you much more about the plot of the film, because it is better you go into the film knowing as little as possible. I will say that the wordless dinner table sequence that ends the film is just perfection. So much is said with looks and expressions that no words could have been chosen to make the scene any better. If you need any proof that Viggo was denied that Oscar, you need only look at his eyes at the end of the film. If you are anything like me you’ll go “holy crap, now that’s a way to end a movie!”

(MUST SEE)

——Jarhead (2005)——

I’m still puzzled by Jarhead’s lack of yearend critical acclaim. It is as if the film disappeared or fell off of the edge of the world after it initially was released. You just don’t hear about it at all. When I first saw the film opening weekend I immediately fell in love with its offbeat humor and had decided that it was one of the very best war films about the actual experience of being a soldier. After the lack of critical attention I wondered if I perhaps put too much of myself into the film. I watched Jarhead again, however, after it came out on DVD and I stand by my initial assessment of the film. Only in a war film where the soldier never gets to fire a shot can you really understand what it is like to be a soldier.

Jake Gyllenhaal is our main Jarhead, Swoff, who, we find out, regrets joining the Marines almost instantly after enlisting. He’ll try anything to get out of it, that is until he is selected for sniper training and takes instantly to the rifle as if he were born to use it. Then the first Gulf War starts and he is shipped off to the deserts of Saudi Arabia to spend more than 200 days in the sand waiting and hydrating. While touching upon some war movie cliches about boot camp and life with a bunch of horny testosterone filled killing machines the movie also finds time to really dig into what makes these guys tick and how politics and military bureaucracy kills the modern day fighting soldier.

War does funny things to men. I’m reminded of two scenes in particular. One is before the war starts and the guys are still in boot. They are watching the Ride of the Valkeries scene in Apocalypse Now on the big screen and are reacting to seeing the Vietnamese dies by missile fire in a way that combines seeing your favorite football team score the last minute winning touchdown in the Superbowl with having a mind-blowing orgasm. This is the ultimate rush for these guys, which helps you understand the second scene I was thinking of. For a sniper the ultimate war experience need only be firing that one perfect shot. The pink mist shot. After doing a whole lot of nothing for a long time and watching the war go on from the sidelines Swoff and his spotting partner (played by Peter Sarsgaard) finally get their shot, so to speak. They line up the perfect shot on a general in a tower on an airfield and get approval to take the shot when a bigwig bursts in telling them that they’ve just called in an airstrike to take out the whole complex. Sarsgaard argues with him, pleading with him to just let them take the shot since in the whole scheme of things it doesn’t really matter either way if the whole place is going to be blown up. When he is denied his request he freaks out and attacks the officer. He’s taken away from them the only thing that means anything to them. It’s a startling scene, haunting, that takes the film to another place it wouldn’t have otherwise made it to. The whole film is filled with these moments.

(MUST SEE)

(April 1)

——The Squid and the Whale (2005)——

One of my favorite films of last year, The Squid and the Whale manages to invite you into a world like all of the best novels do, less preoccupied by plot and flashy endings than developing complex, real, and emotional characters. The four leads, parents, Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, and their two sons, Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, all carry a series of layers in them that is not always instantly available at the start of the film but will be by the end. This is a story about divorce, pure and simple, about how things got to that point, about how people change over time and deal with life, and how the children deal with the breakup, in this case by choosing sides in their parents war.

The Squid and the Whale is definitely a very cryptic title for a movie, and its meaning isn’t really revealed until the final fifteen minutes of the film. There is a literal meaning for it but the metaphor is much more interesting. The squid and the whale are two almost mythical beasts locked in a seemingly eternal struggle, appearing to a child much in the same way two parents facing a separation must appear to them. It is so frightening that you can only see them through the slits in your interlocked fingers covering your eyes.

Jesse Eisenberg in this case is the one looking through his fingers. He idolizes his dad and his early accomplishments as a writer so much so that he thinks his mother’s recent success as a writer in her own right has caused his parents divorce. He wants so much to be his dad that he regurgitates his father’s ideas on books to other people without having actually read those books himself. He lets slip that he thinks Kafka’s Metamorphosis is “Kafka-esq”. He plagiarizes a Pink Floyd song for a school talent show because he thinks it was something that he could have written, so that the fact that he didn’t actually write it doesn’t matter. He hates his mom without ever actually seeing things from her perspective. It is only after slowly realizing what a dink his father is (played superbly by Jeff Daniels) that he begins to remember that he has always been closer to his mother (again, played superbly by Laura Linney).

The Squid and the Whale is all about catching moments and behaviors, of observing without necessarily judging. Despite their comic nature they feel very real. You probably know someone like them. You might actually have been or you are them. Despite its surprisingly short length you get a lot out of it.

(MUST SEE)

(April 2)

——Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)——

A daughter of a dukedom runs off to marry an Italian opera singer beneath her station only to get herself shunned from the family, and when her husband dies, penniless. The son of that daughter watches his mother struggle to raise him and watches repeatedly as his relatives ignore her as if she never existed. The only thing that keeps her sane is the idea that it is remotely possible that her son might become duke one day, that is in the very unlikely situation that all eight of his other relations should die first without producing another heir.

So is the setup for Kind Hearts and Coronets. The entire story is told in flashback as Louis writes his memoirs of his life leading up to his becoming duke, all from the prison cell he spends his last night in before going to the gallows for murder. He writes of his humble beginnings with his mother, of the girl he was in love with and loved him, but laughed at him when he mentioned he might one day be duke. And finally he gets to the point in his life when he makes up his mind to kill his entire family out of revenge for them not letting his mother be buried in the family crypt. Despite these grim circumstances the story is actually a black comedy, helped out by the fact that all eight of the family members are played by Alec Guinness in deliciously deadpan seriousness, and yet all are killed in delightful and absurdly obtuse ways. For instance, Lady Agatha is killed after an arrow (shot by Louis) pierces her hot air balloon, plummeting her to her death. The general is done in by exploding caviar. The admiral…well, he somehow manages to do himself in.

Amid all of the delightful British murder is a love triangle between Louis, his boyhood crush, and the widow of one of his victims whom he decides would make a much better wife of a duke than his crush would. All of the roles are played amazing well, from Dennis Price as Louis to, of course, Alec Guinness as the D’Ascoyne family, and even to both female leads who bring a presence to their performances that make you remember them long after they have disappeared off-screen. I’m tempted to also write about the twist of the ending, but it is too delightful for me to ruin here.

(MUST SEE)