Three films a day

#56, 4/29 – Black Book (2006) (tofw)

I feel an odd connection, even if it’s not always a positive one, to directors whose films I grew up watching. I have very little positive to say about Adrian Lyne, for instance, but I still feel some sort of obligation to see his movies because he’s one of the directors who made an impression on me in the 80s. Similarly with Paul Verhoeven I make a point to see what he’s done. I tend to be very forgiving about his movies ever since he became slightly legendary in my teen mind with unstoppable Flesh + Blood, the nearly perfect marriage of absolute nonsense, pure adventure, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. And after that, Verhoeven had his little run of reasonably entertaining, if somewhat ridiculous, Hollywood hits. You know them. Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct. That’s a pretty good run for a Hollywood director and I remember making a point to see each of them. After that, things got perhaps a bit patchy for Verhoeven, though his adaptation of Starship Troopers was every bit as entertaining and ridiculous as Flesh+Blood or Robocop.

I think he’s returned to form. Black Book, which reunites Verhoeven with Gerard Soeteman (a writer he’d last worked with on… Flesh + Blood and someone who’d collaborated with Verhoeven on another film about the Dutch Resistance some thirty years ago), is every bit what I expected. Yes, it’s both entertaining and somewhat ridiculous and I’m happy I saw it.

On a completely superficial note: Carice van Houten? So very pretty.

#55, 4/22 – Vacancy (2007) (tofw)

I have no shame in saying I really enjoyed Vacancy, despite going in expecting very little from it. It is, after all, a thriller (and with horror elements, no less) and as I’ve said way too often, I find most thrillers kinda dull. But Vacancy worked for me. I found it strangely entertaining and riveting and involving, much like I did The Descent and The Host, which makes me wonder if I’m just in the right frame of mind to see a certain kind of thriller/adventure these days. Of course, it could well just be that each of those movies is enjoyable for what it is (and they are all very different) and it’s dumb luck that I’ve seen them all in the last couple of months.

#54, 4/21 – Punishment Park (1971) (dvd)

A couple weeks ago I skimmed through my Netflix recommendations to find something potentially interesting to watch over the weekend. The film I found most interesting was Punishment Park, whose synopsis read:

As the Vietnam War escalates, massive public protest against the conflict surges in America. To control the leftist threat, a civilian tribunal passes sentence on groups of dissidents: hippies, draft dodgers, pacifists. Made to play a game resembling “Capture the Flag” in a remote desert while being hunted by the forces of law and order, the prisoners must fight for their lives in this searing pseudo-documentary from filmmaker Peter Watkins.

And all I can say after seeing it is Wow. It may well be my favorite speculative fiction film yet. And not just because 35+ years after its initial release, it seems awfully prescient. I just find it powerful. Unsubtle, perhaps, but a strong, thoroughly unsettling piece of work made by a committed cast and crew. It’s a poster child for what I love about independent film.

#53, 4/20 – Purple Noon (1960) (dvd)

I like this film adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley better than the more famous 1999 version and I think that comes down to my fascination with Alain Delon.

#52, 4/19 – Anarchism in America (1983) (dvd)

On a Saturday morning in, hmmm, December probably, I was taking the el home from the pub and skimming through an Utne Reader. I was just getting back into the movie-watching habit at the time, so I looked through their movie reviews with great interest. I ended up adding three DVDs to my rental queue that day: Anarchism in America, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, and Breasts. I find it kind of funny, truth be told, that it’s taken me four months to get to even one of them and the other two are way, way down on my list (though I do reshuffle my queues with great regularity).

A fascinating—if not entirely satisfying—documentary created in 1981, the film gives a primer on, well, Anarchism... in America. There are clips of Emma Goldman, Sacco & Vanzetti , Murray Bookchin and Karl Hess, among others.

Truthfully, it’s Hess who interests me the most. Probably because I like learning about the alignment shifts certain people made in the 60s and 70s and Hess’s case is one of the more interesting. It’s not every day that someone who used to work with Goldwater ends up an anti-statist. Though, when listening to Hess in this film, I almost have to wonder why it didn’t happen more often.

#51, 4/18 – My Life to Live (1962) (dvd)

It really is getting more and more difficult for me to write about Godard and I’m not sure why that is. I have appreciated his work since the time I experienced one of his films—I caught of his Pierrot Le Fou and Alphaville, in that order, on the same day in early 2001—but I’ve never been very good at expressing what I find interesting about it. And I can’t seem to conjure up any coherent thoughts at all about My Life to Live other than it’s my favorite Godard film-watching experience since I saw Band of Outsiders in early 2005.

I have at least two more Godard movies coming to me in the near future. I wonder if I’ll be able to say anything cogent about them.

#50, 4/17 – Klute (1971) (vod)

Since I’m a fan of Alan Pakula (thanks, in large part to The Parallax View but I have a very soft spot for The Sterile Cuckoo), the early careers of Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, and 70s American cinema, it is quite a surprise that it’s taken me this long to finally see Klute. I actually first tried to watch this movie in 1991, but only now in 2007 have I seen past the 20th minute. There are a number of silly reasons why it’s taken me so long, but most of them require much too much effort to explain. The simple version is this, though: I was cursed.

Anyway, ignoring all that, I think Klute’s a pretty well-done character study/thriller (in that order), with excellent performances throughout. Fonda’s Bree Daniel reminds me a little of Kartin Cartlidge’s later portrayal of Claire Dolan for some reason. I’m sure I could find parallels, beyond the characters’ shared profession (and the brief phone booth scene which probably is what reminded me of Kerrigan’s film in the first place), but I’m drawing a blank at the moment.

I’m also somewhat taken with some of the decisions made about the story. Namely, I was surprised not by how many characters mentioned at some point in this movie died but by how few of them died on-screen. Although there are clear storytelling reasons for why they framed the film the way they did, I’m not entirely sure screenwriters today would have put the story together in this same fashion. And it’s choices like these which fascinate me. (You know, I think I said something similar about The Exorcist but I’m too lazy to look it up.)

#49, 4/15 – ABBA: The Movie (1977) (dvd)

Pop music is a lot of things, most of them wonderful. The celebrity which comes with pop music stardom is a lot of things, many of them ridiculous. And the superstardom that comes to the rarest of pop groups is simply absurd.

In the late 70s, especially in Australia, ABBA were bigger than Santa Claus, and somewhat deservedly so. I mean, those four were a perfect storm: Two wonderfully talented songwriters (Benny and Bjorn), a powerful mezzo-soprano (Frida) and an equally wonderful soprano (Agnetha) all together in this fun-loving, charismatic Scandinavian package. What’s not to love? On top of that, their singles are among the most immediate, memorable, and engaging pieces of pop a person could ever wish for. The melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and production values of songs like “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, “Waterloo”, “S.O.S”, “When I Kissed the Teacher”, “Take a Chance on Me”, “Mamma Mia”, and “Fernando” are simply immaculate.

But, like I said, superstardom is absurd. And ABBA the movie seems to understand that. From quietly noting that the group had their share of “Money Money Money” to the absolutely hilarious and unsubtle dream sequence for “The Name of the Game” (my favorite of their singles, by the way), ABBA The Movie tried to show what was so silly about the mania surrounding ABBA. As one little girl is shown saying in one of the film’s many interview snippets: “There’s nothing really special about them. They’re only human beings! Except their music, that’s what’s special.”

I wouldn’t consider it a great movie, but the stuff built around pop superstars rarely seems to be. Oh, but there are highlights for me all the same. Especially the performance for the cheeky, unreleased song “Get On the Carousel”.

#48, 4/16 – Le Petit Soldat (1963) (dvd)

One night I found myself in the midst of a fun conversation with a French cinephile and eventually, inevitably I suppose, we got to the subject of favorite directors. When Godard came up the person I was talking to smiled and said “I admire Jean-Luc but he’s a bit of an intellectual clown”. I can’t say I disagree.

And sometimes, at least from the spectator’s standpoint, the clown misfires. Le Petit Soldat was a very difficult movie for me to get into because it felt muddled. Very muddled. Chronologically, it’s Godard’s second completed feature, the film he did right after À bout de souffle, but its subject matter (the French occupation of Algeria) saw it banned for a few years and thus I think it’s his fourth feature film to see release. As a finished product, it doesn’t really come off. At least it doesn’t for me. But I admire the attempt (which is probably more important) and I give him credit for exploring this thorny political issue when he did. Like one of his characters says: “Asking questions is more important than finding answers.” And, as I’ve said all too often, probably, I think the great directors are always asking. Always.

Regardless of what I may think of it as a viewing experience, there is one thing I cannot take away from Le Petit Soldat. It was Godard’s first collaboration with the talented, gorgeous Anna Karina. That fact’s worth a full star upgrade (from 2.5 to 3.5, if only Netflix had half stars!) in and of itself.

#47, 4/15 – The Fountain (2006) (nqpdd)

I knew almost nothing about The Fountain going in. Really, I didn’t even know it was directed by Darren Aronofsky. All I knew was Rachel Weisz (whose very presence has gotten me to see a lot of movies) and Hugh Jackman were involved. And that was enough.

You have no idea how happy I am that this movie was only an hour and a half long.

I wanted to like The Fountain. I tried to like The Fountain.

I couldn’t stand The Fountain.

Aronofsky let many of the things which gave me pause about his first two feature films (one of which I rather liked) rise to the fore. Everything grated on me. The score. The repetition. And of course, the story itself, which I didn’t like at all. That I actually managed to sit through the whole affair despite a voice inside me shouting “just! stop! the movie!” is a testament to… something. What, I don’t know. I guess I kept hoping there would be some little thing about it which would overcome all the things I didn’t appreciate. There wasn’t.

Oh, I think Jackman and Weisz and Ellen Burstyn (who was my favorite thing about Requiem for a Dream) all give it a good go. And it is visually impressive, as Aronofsky’s films tend to be. But that script. Oh my god, I hate that script. You could have put every one of my favorite actors in this movie (yes, even Sarah Polley) and I would still have thought it just short of unbearable.

I know there are plenty of people who love it. And I’m not trying to put down other people’s tastes or anything like that. I just didn’t find a connection with it. I tried. I failed. So be it and on to the next.

I should say one more thing, though. My local movie buddy and I have spoken about Aronofsky’s filmmaking before and I know she doesn’t care for it. I was on the fence until this morning. No longer.

#46, 4/14 – Shooter (2007) (tofw)

Bob Lee Swagger. Sure sounds like the name of a would-be presidential assassin to me.

Anyway, Shooter is a simple film which reminded me of the mid-80s one-heavily-armed-man-making-all-the-difference movies. Yes, I mean First Blood. Well, I can’t remember anything specific about that film or its blockbuster first sequel, but the overall feel seemed familiar to me. At times Shooter also seemed to nick ideas from the 70s one-not-so-heavily-armed-man-trapped-by-a-conspiracy movies, like The Parallax View, but before too long it hopped right back on its favored course. It was an action movie at heart and it never forgot that.

I think it’s a decent piece of escapism, really. Things blow up. People get shot. Justice is served. All that. Not my cup of tea, usually, but I’ll watch Mark Wahlberg do anything on screen. Except rap.

Considering it was directed by Antonie Fuqua (who has been on my “avoid if you can” list since King Awful Arthur), it’s almost shocking that I didn’t hate it. And as a movie lover I have to wonder if they cast Ned Beatty in his role because he could basically just spend the whole film cribbing from his famous soliloquy in Network.

#45, 4/8 – Crank (2006) (nqpdd)

I’ll give Crank credit for trying but ultimately I came out of it pretty much as I feared I might: unimpressed. To me, it felt like D.O.A reimagined into a Speed-type action movie. And while that’s a synopsis which would definitely get me interested in seeing something, I thought the end result was just pretty average. Average action, average humor, average everything else. It felt like a movie I’d seen on HBO a million times before, and that’s not a compliment. Not even the presence of Jason Statham or Amy Smart or the brief appearance of Francis Capra could get me fired up about what I was seeing. I wanted to like it and it didn’t do anything to make me hate it but I’m going to forget about it pretty much as soon as I finish this sentence.

#44, 4/7 – The Knack… and how to get it (1965) (dvd)

Dizzying, really. I watched it twice and I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it. While I can, um, sort of see how it won the Palme D’Or at Cannes (funnily enough, it’s the film which won the prize the year after The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and there are parts of it which are classic Richard Lester and quite enjoyable (the whole bed sequence, for instance), I’m not particularly fond of the elements which come off to me as somewhat misogynistic.

#43, 4/6 – Layer Cake (2004) (dvd)

Yeah, I liked Casino Royale so much I decided to go back into Daniel Craig’s catalog and take a look at a movie I purposefully avoided when it came out. And since Craig is a likable guy and Michael Gambon is a likable guy and, well, the whole cast is infused with likable actors, really. So it’s a likable British gangster romp. What else is there to say? I liked it more than the last such film I bothered to watch, Sexy Beast (thankfully). I’m pretty much of the opinion that I only need to see one gangster film from Britain every two or three years (and I’m also of the opinion that Croupier is tops of the genre), so this booster shot will do me for a while.

#42, 4/5 – The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) (dvd)

What a beautiful looking film.

I always find it somewhat ironic when the first thing I say about a “musical” (yes, my use of scare quotes is intentional) is about how it looks. But if Busby Berkeley taught us one thing, it’s that memorable visual design enhances a musical immensely. I suppose maybe it complements the singing by indicating in another way that we’ve stepped into a world where things work a little differently. I mean, when the car repair shops in a port town look anything other than drab and depressing, you know you’re in the midst of otherness.

So, back to the scare quotes. Strict classification usually bores me to tears and it’s hardly ever important. And yet here I’m about to do it. Why? Because when I started watching this movie I was thoroughly disoriented for a while and I spent some time trying to figure out why. It turns out it was down to genre expectations. When I put the movie in, I was expecting a musical. And I didn’t get one.

Although some would see this as my being persnickety (something I do have a tendency to be) and others may misread this as a put down (it isn’t), I don’t think The Umbrellas of Cherbourg really counts as a musical film. Yes. I just said a movie in which every line of dialog is sung isn’t a musical. I’m not splitting hairs here, though. The formal differences between this and a film musical, like The Sound of Music, are plenty big. Since The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is all sung, some call it a pop opera, but that didn’t quite fit either, in my opinion. The best explanation I stumbled across came from Peter Kemp’s wonderful take on the film:

For starters, although its creator, punnily and poetically, defines his work’s special nature as ‘un film en chantè’, as in a film that is done in song, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg isn’t truly a filmusical, let alone a celluloid opera, popera or even poperetta. The entirely-sung-through plotline of Demy’s tale of the brolly-selling shopgirl and the garage mechanic in a seaport town is performed essentially as recitative, except for a few, longer, more melodically soaring stretches of composer Michel Legrand’s major ‘lovers’ motif, (which, in English, became an Oscar nominated, chart-busting hit, called ‘I Will Wait For You’).
So, most of what we hear on the soundtrack is the equivalent not of arias or of highlighted, tuneful ditties but a jazzily scored mesh of the ‘in-between’ bits that lead up, and into, and on from, those ‘bigger’ routines in operas and musicals. The movie sings its bitter-sweet, modestly scaled story via a distinctive potpourri of often quite matter-of-fact, mundane musicalized conversations, bringing it closer to a plaintively pitched, neo-realist daytime-soap. Such a strategy, in absolutely no way, diminishes or trivializes the unique status of the film, which significantly refuses to elevate itself to the loftily resonant realm of the tragic.

In the very next sentence, Kemp nails the appeal of the film for me: “Instead, it’s simply (or not-so-simply) sad.”

It’s a beautifully-rendered (both visually and narratively) small, sad story. It’s not grandly tragic. It’s everyday life. And it’s fantastic.

I love when people use all of cinema’s best qualities to make something which would not have quite the same effect on another medium. And I think The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is exactly one of those kinds of movies.