Map of the Human Heart

Saw Map of the Human Heart, a strange twisty film. Based on the title I was not going in with high hopes, but the film surprised me. It followed a half-white-half-Inuit boy who was taken from his tribe by an English cartographer to Canada in order to treat his (the boy's) tuberculosis. There the boy falls in some kind of pre-pubescent love with a half-indian girl. She has a heart condition and he steals her chest x-rays. The film is using unusual symbols here but the meaning, I think, is clear. From there we flash forward in time and spend most of the rest of the film on a love triangle between the protagonist, the girl, and the English cartographer.

The film had a strange, clumsy quality to it. Things just seemed to happen. The acting was flat and weirdly delicate. The film's symbols are laid out but not connected in a way I understood. We see many maps, anatomical diagrams, and that chest x-ray, folded like a butterfly. The characters struggle with societal and internal racism, their relationship colored by the girl's ability to pass for white and the protagonist's inability to do so. Lots going on. I think I may have missed some of the point of this film. At one point we see the cartographer's office. There's a manikin in a cupboard covered with maps. This suggests a far more whimsical or sinister film. Very strange.

The film comes off as kind of clumsy, like a made-for-TV movie. Everything is kind of obviously shown to us. A cruel nun is introduced shrilly teaching about hell, the protagonist boy is introduced giggling and smiling. Later the film becomes surprisingly complex, interweaving heavy concepts of race and identity and nationalism with a knotty plot that keeps unfolding. There's film-poetry flights of fancy and that weird acting.

I don't know what to make of this film. It was certainly unlike most other films I've seen but I don't know that I liked it. Very inconsistent but maybe worth a look. A rare curiosity.

Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple

Saw Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple, sequel to "Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto". We now find the protagonist, Musashi, a great warrior. He's very skilled but, to ascend higher up the hierarchy of needs, he must develop his humanity. He has a reputation of vicious ruthlessness. To help him master his emotions, he encounters a courtesan and two female characters from the previous films. All of this is kind of set-dressing for the big fight scenes.

The fight scenes are soul of this film. We open with one and close with another. Character progression is shown when, in the second big fight, Musashi uses his wits to overcome his enemy and, ultimately, embraces compassion. The rest of the film is neat and complex, but I feel the fights are the real interest of the filmmakers.

There's also some weirdness with the courtesan. She lives in some compound surrounded by creepy identical little girls in red kimonos who speak in a mannered, falsetto voice, and robotically move about the place. They feel like they're form another, much stranger film and they've somehow broken into this one.

There's also a young samurai warrior who shows up. He spends most of his time bemusedly observing fights and making arch comments. In this way he acts as a sort of Greek chorus, pointing out the important bits and dropping plot when needed. Because he's so arch and knowledgeable, I expect he'll also inevitably be the final boss fight for our hero to become a true man/warrior/cool guy.

A City of Sadness

Saw A City of Sadness. I did not understand it. It followed four brothers living in Taiwan during the tumultuous period after WW2. Japan has surrendered the island to China but the people are restless and want independance. This is my understanding anyway. I don't know the history of Taiwan and according to a quick scan of wikipedia, discussion of this period was (is?) actively suppressed. At any rate in this film there's much upheaval.

The four brothers are used to explore different parts of the Taiwanese subjugation. One gets involved in organized crime, the other remains a small businessman. One brother is deaf and a photographer. This is a clever concept and suggests great depths that I'm not seeing here. As a photographer, he understands the importance of images - what is included in frame and off. In this film we often cut away just before the final gunshot or before the confrontation turns ugly. Sometimes we jump to one of the brothers being brought to a hospital but other times we cut to the rest of the family peacefully eating. The lack of definite answers forces us to guess and infer the proceedings which is very true to what I imagine a post-war chaos would feel like. It is frustrating however and makes the film feel unfinished or censored to me.

I did not understand it however since it deals intimately with a time and place I know nothing about. The symbolic cleverness of the photographer and the excellent visuals lead me to believe that this is a serious, well-thought-out film but lacking even a cursory understanding of the period its commenting on, I'm left sort of in the dark. An interesting film nonetheless.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad!

Saw The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad! a goofy, genial comedy from Leslie Nielsen's tv show. This film is low-stakes, goofball comedy. It has the sweet old-fashioned word-play, sex jokes, and slapstick. It contains many a gag that's perfectly gif-sized. The absolute best gag I thought was when Leslie "refreshes" a stoolie's memory with a few 20s and then, becoming suddenly absentminded, get his memory "refreshed" in kind. Delicious. The rest of the film left me a tad cold because (as I say) it has no stakes and of course because I am fundamentally humorless. The best unintentional gag is the prominent bit-part played by up-and-coming athlete-cum-actor OJ Simpson! The 80s were a wacky time!

The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey

Saw The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey, a film about a band of medieval villagers who follow a young boy's visions into a hole in the earth which brings them to modern New Zealand. I assumed it was going to be a comedy, full of culture clashes and confused medieval dudes reacting to billboards and punks and so on. It is that sort of, but it takes itself way more seriously than I'd thought. There's moments when the medieval dudes react with horror to cars of course, but we're always looking over the shoulders of the protagonists. The cars are indeed frightening.

It feels like a Tarkovsky film, full of abstract visions and tight close-ups. The film itself has a wild, medieval feel, focusing on timeless parts of our society and on dreams and visions. I may be taking it more seriously that I'm supposed to but I thought it was tremendously moving for its premise. It also has Tarkovsky's deep ambiguity. The ending especially casts the whole film in doubt, muddying both what happened in the film and what the film is trying to achieve. Very interesting!

Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto

Saw Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, the first in a trilogy of samurai films about this guy becoming a super-cool samurai. The film starts with the protagonist (who is at this point known as Takezo) hungering for glory in the nearby wars. He runs off with his friend to join them but arrives too late. The friend runs off with some shady battle-field corpse-looting woman and her daughter. Our hero returns to his village where he is hunted down like a dog, being suspected of being a deserter or something. The bulk of the film takes place here, with Takezo living like an animal, stealing food and beating up random people he comes across, to save himself from being turned in. We start in these mean surroundings to provide contrast for the alter films, when the noble greatness of samurai-hood happens.

The film was sort of confusing. It's short on explanations and often jumps forwards in time without any helpful "3 years later" subtitle. It is seemingly always a sweltering summer. A character who we met earlier is now in the imperial palace. How has this happened? Some of my confusion is also cultural. It's unclear to me why a kindly monk turns torturer at one point. There's a harsh, didactic feel to much of the proceedings that I think is just due to the nature of epic tales like this. We're meant to see some tough guy get humbled, achieve enlightenment, become a man. How can we convey that this is important if it's not counterintuitive and hard-won? Like many already-adult-becomes-man stories, I found this a bit dour, but it's enjoyable in its self-serious solemnity anyway.

The Wedding March

Saw The Wedding March, a silent film from the 20s about the prince of an impoverished aristocracy who falls in love with a musician's daughter. Unfortunately, his family intends to marry him off to a wealthy businessman's daughter. C'est la vie. It was fairly slow and uninteresting to me, save for a few things I'll point out here. Silent films in general are slower I think. Their establishing shots are fade-ins/fade-outs. Their characters say words, the words appear, and then they finish saying words. I had to re-caffeinate myself mid-way through.

The interesting bits: There's a color sequence part-way through that must have been a special-effects extravaganza for the time. The colors are nowhere near Gone With The Wind of course, but you can differentiate red from grey, which is nice. Interesting to see what real people in the 20 looked like. Also interesting is the use of medieval knights as a symbol for cold, unfeeling political intrigue. Nowadays we regard knights as romantic figures, saving princesses and nobly loving from afar. Back then though, I suppose the reality was a bit fresher in people's minds. Maybe, I dunno.

Anyway, this movie was homework for me. The story is not uninteresting but it drags on forever and the ultimate message (marry the person you love, dumb dumb) is so done to death. As I say, it's not without merit, and there's some interesting bits near the end, but it was not worth the slog for me. Too late in the day for this stuffy, dreary stuff.

Hot Shots! Part Deux

Saw Hot Shots! Part Deux, another wacky action-comedy, this time a parody of the later Rambo films. The first Hot Shots(!) film focussed more on air-force-specific gags, along with the slapstick and gross-out gags. This film doubles-down on the goofy humor, making use of a literal rubber chicken and a lisping Saddam Hussein. It's a very full-throated comedy. Because the stakes are so low, there's not much drama at all and there's basically never any doubt that the heroes will win in the end. As a consequence, it's pretty goofy but fairly insubstantial.

I'm not a huge fan of comedy. I prefer melodrama to gags. This one didn't overcome my internal comedy-shield, but if you like the goofy, no-stakes comedies of the 80s/90s, you'll like this.

Momo

Saw Momo, a kid's film about a little homeless girl who befriends an entire sleepy village. She spends her time playing elaborate games with the other children and fixing people's problems in slightly mystical ways (she makes a bird sing again by sitting quietly by it, for instance.) Disaster strikes when men in grey suits from the Time Bank begin demanding efficiency and faster results. Everyone is rushing madly about and it's up to the semi-mystical Momo to fix it again.

The film is cute and whimsical. There's some great pre-CGI special effects on display and some nice sinister business on behalf of the grey suit guys. The film is most comfortable being cute however, and we spend a lot of time watching Momo and the other characters simper at each other. It's a very nice film however and could be some family's little-known, secret favorite.

The film is sort of confusing in parts however. It was produced by Italian filmmakers but the characters are all speaking German. The original book was in German (and written by the same guy who wrote Neverending Story which this film feels very similar to.) Momo herself lives in a cave next to some Colosseum-like ruins. She comes off like a sort of Oracle of Delphi, fixing people's problems and giving life advice. Later on there's a turtle called Cassiopeia. This feels very Italian, however the men in grey suits feel much more German, with their grim efficiency and shaved heads. To confuse matters further, much of the written words in the film are in English. Also (though this may only be my copy) there's a framing story of a guy on a train being told this story by one of the characters which gets completely forgotten once the film ends. Odd.

This is an interesting film. It's message is simple but good and it's fantastical and creative. Go see it!

Lady Snowblood

Saw Lady Snowblood, a Japanese revenge drama about a woman who is hunting for the four gangsters who killed her mother. It's also very clearly the inspiration for Kill Bill. It's extremely theatrical and pretty to look at. Every death is marked with spraying gallons of glistening red paint, usually spraying the titular Lady across the face or something. There's flashbacks to her brutal training regimen with a harsh old master. There's a lot of Kill Bill reference spotting to be done.

This film is very visually splendid. There's not a lot going on emotionally or philosophically, apart from some grim meditations on the nature of revenge. Mostly it's just a badass woman killing a bunch of dudes. It's all in good fun and leads to a satisfying denouement. The image of pristine white snow stained with blood is recurrent, beautiful, and obvious. This film is great, kick-ass fun!

The Navigator

Saw The Navigator, a Buster Keaton silent film. It was alright however it did sort of put me to sleep. In this one Buster Keaton is a pampered, rich idiot who sets sail on an abandoned boat after his girlfriend dumps him. The girlfriend is also a rich idiot and is also aboard for fairly thin reasons. They do their best to take care of themselves and lots of comic mischief ensues.

The film was deeply frustrating at parts. We watch them be comically unable to boil an egg, for example. It's very silly but I found myself getting really annoyed at their blithering attempts to do very simple tasks. Later on cannibals get involved (ugh.)

It's not a bad film, just very old and dusty. It has not aged as well as some of Keaton's better work. Either that or I'm just grumpier now. Either way, I didn't like this much.

Hot Shots!

Saw Hot Shots! a film which, as its exclamation point promises, is indeed a comedy. This one is a spoof specifically of Top Gun and more generally of the US Air Force. I haven't actually seen Top Gun yet, so I don't know if any of the silliness was references but the film powers along with admirable gusto, throwing in everything and the kitchen sink to make us laugh. The opening sequence has the loner anti-hero being pulled out of retirement which he's spending with some native americans, smoking a helium peace-pipe. It's not very socially conscious or indeed even clever, but it's silly and funny enough.

The film is fairly harmless. Native american-sploitation aside, most of the humor is fairly tame, preferring nonsense over topical humor. There's a scene where some men are marching in formation out the window. In the next, they're kicking their legs like rockettes. It's whoopie-cushion-level humor. Funny, yes, but in a broad, Reader's Digest sort of way. I feel like this is the sort of film Air Force families would really love.

From Up on Poppy Hill

Saw From Up on Poppy Hill, a diabolically wholesome film from Studio Ghibli. This is directed by Goro Miyazaki, the son of the more famous Miyazaki. It follows a hard-working, earnest young girl who must cook and clean for her family's houseful of boarders. Not satisfied with this burden of housework, the budding Cinderella also takes on the Herculean effort of cleaning up her high-school's clubhouse. This clubhouse is gloriously busy and messy. Different clubs sit cheek-by-jowl, like different races in a fantasy world, each specialized and intensely inward-focused, stacks of mysterious documents and objects stacked around them. The clubhouse is this film's equivalent to the beautiful bathhouse in Spirited Away. There's a sense of accreted and secret systems and arrangements, all chaotically arranged, but arranged in a working order nonetheless. The clubhouse alone makes this film worth a watch!

But anyway, this girl decides to clean the clubhouse after dramatically meeting the boy who runs the student newspaper. The film is set in the 60s, so he's mimeographing his articles, and he too is a serious, sincere little boy. These two sincere, wholesome kids try to save the clubhouse from demolition while trying to get home in time to make dinner (or write, as the case may be.) It's so so wholesome. It's also set in the 60s for a nice, nostalgic feel. No cell phones and drugs, only fish and telegrams.

I really liked the film. The gender politics leaves a bit to be desired. The girl basically tries to save this clubhouse through the power of a really good spring cleaning. The boy is earnest and great and everything as well, but he spends most of his time writing articles advertising her efforts. As their relationship grows (and of course they have a relationship) we get into some tricky situations that required me to remind myself that both the past and Japan are foreign countries; they do things differently there. This is a minor bum note in an orchestrated assault on your heartstrings. There are some great scenes and of course that glorious clubhouse. Good stuff!

Chopper

Saw Chopper, a film that opens with the assertion that this is not a biography of Mark 'Chopper' Read, a famous Australian criminal. It's a nervy little film. Darkly lit but vibrant with neon and sodium lights. Often the characters are light in garish colors, popping out from the dark backgrounds like garish cartoons. Mark himself is played likeably, with an open demeanor that hides a sinister joviality. We are shown scenes from his perspective and according to his version of events. We are told that he's lying by other characters. It's not clear if he knows that he's lying or if he's really just delusional.

The film is kind of a hagiography on the surface. If you look closer, you can see hints of unreliability in Mark, our narrator. He's a strange guy, one moment coldly gunning someone down and then, as they're bleeding out, will profusely apologise. In his moments of regret he seems sincere, like a likeable guy, but then later he's getting offended for not getting credit for the crime. It throws the whole story into doubt. He's only been convicted one time, but is this because he's such a master criminal or because he's a complete bullshit artist?

The film is cleverly post-modern, making us doubt our own eyes as we see events unfold. The protagonist is supposed to be loveable but comes off as kind of a jerk. I would definitely not get along with him, for what it's worth. An interesting film.

El

Saw El, a film by the great surrealist Luis Bunuel. In the last review I asked for hysterics and symbolism and with this film the film gods have smiled upon me. Yes, this is an intense psycho-drama about a man and a wife. The man is rich and important, fighting an eternal war with the government to reclaim his ancestral home. His wife is an angel of a woman, but the man has deep insecurities and a jealous mind. He imagines her pleasantries and politeness to be wanton flirting. He imagines her slightest protest to be a cruel condemnation of his personality. This being a Bunuel, this starts off as pretty squabbles and mounts into extreme, unbelievable hysterics. Great stuff!

The film illustrates two of Bunuel's great interests: the hypocrisy of the so-called respectable class, and the use of sexual deviation which exposes it. In this case the sexual deviation is a deep-rooted insecurity. In a bit of hilarious symbolism, the husband's tie gets subtly shorter and shorter throughout the film! Throughout the film, the husband makes unreasonable demands of the wife. She must be charming, but not too charming, she must be beautiful, but only for him. Similarly, we get no indication that the land he's fighting for actually belongs to him. He may just feel entitled to it, as he feels entitled to controlling his wife's every movement.

In addition to being the vehicle for some some fine hysterics, this film is all too depressingly realistic. The wife turns many times to her upper-crust friends, but they are all too willing to believe that she's a flirt than to believe that one of their own has emotional problems. It's maddening at times to watch, but I believe the situation. Sad to imagine that this surrealist psychodrama may be some women's lives. Great film anyway though!

Blades of Glory

Saw Blades of Glory, a comedy about figure-skating. Will Ferrell and that guy from Napoleon Dynamite play two rival figure-skaters who must pair up to skate together for the gold. It really only has one joke: gay people. That's it. That's the joke. It's not offensive, just kind of stale. I was actually kept sort of interested by wondering if the film would ever commit and actually have them smooch or something. There is one cannon gay couple, but they're relegated to the background, their relationship winked at and alluded to. Kind of lame.

This film feels like a throwback to the big-budget comedies of the 80s, when they would cram every comic standing nearby into some cameo and finish it up with a big, feel-good song at the end. It's sort of refreshingly unpretentious, but then I am a pretentious man. I like me my histrionics and symbolism and there isn't much here. Eh.

Runaway Train

Saw Runaway Train, a strange sort of action film about two convicts who escape from prison in Alaska and jump on a train whose conductor (by bizarre coincidence) has a heart attack. Now, trapped on an out-of-control train, the convicts must do what they can to survive. This film works a hell of a lot better than it should. The premise alone is fairly far-fetched. All of the characters are supposed to be super-macho tough-guys so all of the acting is broad as hell and usually delivered through bared teeth. It's also fairly racist (black characters do not come off looking good.) But somehow it all comes together for a couple of amazing scenes.

The film contains a couple of great, swooning, evocative scenes of the train endlessly speeding through the Alaskan wilds. These scenes are a chilly reprieve from the goofy, self-serious acting. We follow the train in a far-off helicopter shot, as it speeds along, silent and dangerous, the cause of so much trouble at the main office and maybe (somehow, impossibly) also the ticket to freedom for the two convicts. This doesn't 100% make up for all of the surrounding bullshit, but this is a fascinating, fascinating mess.

One of the convicts is this beautiful animal type, always raving about how it's him, against the world. He would settle down and hold a steady job if he possibly could but he, man, he is just too free. This is a trope I kind of hate, but I dig it here. Maybe I'm just in the right mood. I kept trying to draw some parallel between the convict and the train, both uncontrollable, both probably doomed.

This is not my favorite film, but I'll be recommending it to people. I've never heard of it before but it's got some great (and some really dumb) stuff inside of it. Such an interesting film.

Candy

Saw Candy, a fairly depressing drug film about Dan and Candy, a young couple in love. He a poet, she a painter. They spend their days mumbling into each other's faces, nose-tips touching. They do a bit of heroine on the side, but they are so very happy and so very in love. As an acoustic guitar plays, a title card fades in saying 'heaven.' Already we can see the 'earth' and eventual 'hell' title cards incoming. This will not end well.

As with many drug-related tragedies, the film is full of heartbreak. Dignity compromised and lines crossed, chances at redemption missed or purposely blown. The only question is if it will end in death or despondency. The film is interesting and effective. It largely avoids dream sequences or those camera tricks that you see to convey that drugs are happening. It's shot naturalistically for the most part, showing the characters' trips from the outside. These kids are young and in love, they're hurting no one, but of course their life is unsustainable. Eventually they'll get evicted. Eventually the money will dry up.

A powerfully sad film. I wouldn't really recommend it as it is a tremendous bummer. It's better than your average misery porn, so if you have some kind of interest in seeing junkies self-destruct, you should check it out.

The Wind

Saw The Wind, a 1920s silent western drama about a woman who is sent off to work for her sort-of brother (they were raised together, but they'r not related) out in some desert where it's always blowing with gale-speed winds. The wind is strong and constant, blowing sand everywhere and making (we must assume) an eerie howling noise. The protagonist lady hates this but tries to make the best of it. This is the thematic mood of the whole film: an unearthly, hostile land which is barren and harsh. Since the protagonist is female, and since this is that sort of a film, love is a vector for further harsh necessities. People do not fall in love here, so much as they are blown together and cling tight.

The film is in essentially two halves, the first spent with her friend's family (and the second... kind of a spoiler.) I think this first half is the stronger one though. The wife of the sort-of brother is played by this terrifying woman who slaughters cattle and glares at the protagonist, both contemptuous and jealous of her dainty, big-city ways and missish dislike of the sand and wind. There's some comic relief in the form of a pair of ranchers who are always after the protagonist's love, but anything can be stopped at a moment's notice by a door blowing open, or by a cyclone stirring up.

There's a couple of great, hallucinogenic dream sequences, where the wind is portrayed as a white horse, bucking and racing through the stormy sky. It's beautiful and interesting. I wasn't floored by this film, but it's definitely worth a look if you can stand silent films. The version I saw (linked above) was scored by some live band who felt the need to scream and bang drums and make mouth noises at random times. They did a good job, but sometimes I got very grumpy with them.

Black Dynamite

Saw Black Dynamite, a hilarious throwback to 70s-era blaxploitation films. This film perfectly captures the self-serious cheesiness of those films, the scowling protagonist is some impossibly cool and badass dude, the women are all sexy bombshells, the secondary characters are all pimps. The whole thing seems to be filmed through a smoked glass filter. It's hilariously on-the-nose.

They break the fourth wall a few times, just to let us know that they're in on the joke, but it's otherwise played straight enough that someone might mistake it for just a particularly crazy blaxploitation film. The ending get sufficiently nuts to fix that however.

I enjoyed it. It's a funny, crazy film that is maybe celebrating something embarrassing (blaxploitation) but is also maybe owning and recontextualizing that thing. It's interesting as a cultural artifact and also pretty funny. Which is nice.

O-bi, o-ba, The End of Civilisation

Saw O-bi, o-ba, The End of Civilisation, a dismal Polish sci-fi. The idea is that nuclear holocaust has driven everyone into a giant fallout shelter where they'll hunker until a magnificent vessel called "The Ark" comes to save them all. It's unclear if this vessel will be a spaceship, or if it will transport them to somewhere on earth that's still safe, or indeed, if this Ark even exists. In the meantime, we follow a sort-of-policeman as he visits the more militaristic and crazy part of the miserable bunker-dwelling society. There's suicidal engineers and rich weirdos, a librarian who has disposed of all books except for those detailing who was at fault for the nuclear war.

The society and inner workings of the shelter are interesting, but there's a palpable sense of doom in the air. What with the name of the ship, The Ark, and the impending slow destruction by radiation, there are obvious religious overtones to the whole thing. The ending in particular seems very pointed about how we as a society hamstring our own salvation (salvation here meaning survival or ascension into heaven or utopia or whatever) The ending is also kind of a departure from the depressing realism of nuclear winter and is sort of an a-tonal flight of fancy.

So the film is fairly miserable. It's an existentialist allegory for our current lives. The protagonist tries to find some way to survive in this doomed world, or perhaps if not to survive than to do something meaningful. The film is interesting to look at (although, of course, also depressing. Cracked tile and fluorescent lights are 90% of the decor) and the protagonist's actions are interesting to follow, but it's kind of grim going.

Welcome to Woop Woop

Saw Welcome to Woop Woop (thanks, John!) It was a fairly wild film about an attractive dude who gets trapped in an incestuous, cult-like small town in the Australian outback. The film is a shaggy-dog comedy. It reminded me a lot of Nothing But Trouble. This film is similarly enthusiastically and boldly different and also unfortunately not very good. This also sort of feels like Wake In Fright. It similarly depicts small-town Australia as being brutal and anarchic, ruled by tin-pot despots and populated by giggling weirdos. It's all in good fun, if not in good taste.

Anyway, the film is alright. It's fairly wholesome, almost sweet in a way. It does have an extended sex scene in the beginning however, so not family-friendly, just ugly and friendly, like a loveable dog with a skin disease.

The townspeople in the film are kept docile by continual Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. This film seems to be a poke in the eye of all of that self-satisfied pap. One of the most interesting thing about the film to me is the backstory of trying to get Julie Andrews' and everyone's permission to use the music. Apparently the director of this film also filmed Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and they were able to leverage the goodwill of the Hollywood gays to get their way. I feel that that story would be interesting to hear.

The Enforcer

Saw The Enforcer (thanks, Paul!) It was a 1950s crime film where Bogart as to protect the star witness on the night before the big case that will put away the crime kingpin forever. While he's doing this he also relives the entire case up until that point. It's mostly a crime procedural rendered a bit murkier than usual due to flashbacks within flashbacks as Bogart remembers suspects remembering their crimes. We only ever get three layers deep thankfully, but it's sometimes unclear where we are in the story.

The story itself is fun, standard crime drama. There's not many dames, but a lot of toughs and heavies and one guy wearing a zoot-suit! We also get to hear Bogart act hilariously confused at the phrases "a hit" and "a contract" and other oh-so-impenetrable gangster slang. It's a silly moment in an otherwise grim film.

The story has surprisingly few twists and turns. I suppose the non-linearity of the story was supposed to be twisty and turny enough but once the plot is actually revealed, it's very straightforward. Then again, gangster pictures are not mysteries. The fun isn't in solving a puzzle but in catching the bad guy. The protagonists even spend a few minutes openly wishing they could just run in guns blazing and dispense some vigilante justice. This is kind of surprising for a film from the 50s. Vigilante justice is only needed if the law is corrupt or broken in some way. Doesn't sound like something a cop would long for.

Anyway, a good little noir.

Smilla's Sense of Snow

Saw Smilla's Sense of Snow (thanks, Basil!) It was an unusual sort of mystery. The film starts out with an Inuit spear-fisher being killed by a comet. The comet kicks off an avalanche of white snow which consumes and obliterates the Inuit man. We then jump to the protagonist, an Inuit snow researcher, discovering that a young boy who lived in her apartment building has died, apparently accidentally. Since this is a mystery and all, things are not as they seem and she investigates, eventually uncovering and solving a complex mystery.

The film goes to some strange places. The motive of the Bad Guys is a little strange. It's a high-concept idea that falls into an otherwise fairly grounded film. There's an extended sequence on a boat which I loved even as it was kind of a-tonal. I really liked the industrial look of the boat however; the sodium lights and rocking piers, the icy water.

This is also a really chilly film. The film is set in Greenland in the winter. Everything outdoors is caked with snow. The characters are all fairly high-class folks, so even their homes have a spare, minimalist quality. There's also lots of giant windows letting in chilly light and the protagonist wears thick knitted turtlenecks under polar-fleece coats. She is also cold in an emotional sense, always hostilely aggressive, furiously rebuffing any kindness. The opening sequence seems to suggest that ice and snow are hostile forces, destroying her heritage, but she studies snow, loves it, seemingly lives it. Snow and ice are potent symbols which I can't quite decipher. It's very evocative however.

This was an interesting film. It sort of falls apart in the end which is a pity because it has a lot else going for it. I loved the chilliness of the film, of the characters, of the plot. I liked the tough protagonist and her unreasoning quest to uncover the mystery. Once we get aboard the boat, things get a little half-baked, but I greatly enjoyed it up until then.

Murderball

Saw Murderball, a sports documentary about quadriplegic rugby. We follow the American team and the Canadian team. It quickly dispenses with the main characters' handicaps. They all came from fairly active lives or were born with neurological diseases. They don't want pity, just respect. Once this is done, we get to the close ups and jump cuts and slow motion which is the bread and butter of sports docs. It was really interesting.

The teammates are really driven people, people for whom sports is their whole life. Their disabilities are terrible blows. One guy when he gets back from the physical therapy center is looking at his room, beautifully retrofitted with arm-rails on the toilet and a lowered bed, and says "this sucks." His family defends the new modifications but he clarifies "no, that's all great but I'm still in this chair." What can you say? It does suck. But then, soon he's moving about in a "murderball" chair and smiling. His injury is a setback, but it's not death. It's not the end.

This is a film about and for tough guys who need to find new ways to live, both in the sense of navigating the world and, higher the hierarchy of needs, how to continue to compete in physical combat, how to keep fighting the world. I have to say I think they're confusing compassion for pity sometimes, and that for all their fighter spirit, I probably wouldn't enjoy having a beer with them (in fact, directly due to their fighter spirit.) But they're all a lot stronger than me and are finding new ways of being. An interesting film.

Rebecca

Saw Rebecca, a Hitchcock film about an extremely rich widower, Mr DeWinters, who falls in love with a working girl (and this the 40s, so think governess or maid.) The rich man brings her back to the family home which is swarming with butlers, where everything is a museum to the memory of the previous lady of the house, the titular Rebecca. The poor working girl is terribly intimidated by everyone waiting on her and reacting with arch surprize whenever her wishes differ from those of the Late Mrs DeWinters. When she gets her own coffee the butlers scurry over and tidy up the coffee pot, moving the handle microscopically to be more parallel to the edge of the table.

I knew a rough outline of the plot going in and expected to be frustrated with the protagonist girl. It's testament to Hitchcock's skill that you can understand her intimidation and awkwardness. It's one thing to be served, it's another to be judged or to feel that you're being judged by means of that service. Her husband actually comes off the worst. She's a fish out of water and he tosses her to the piranhas. He does nothing to help, only urging her to be more clumsy and genuine. Rolling over, of course, does not impress the servants.

Being a Hitchcock, this is a great film. The protagonist is so in the shadow of the Late MRs DeWinters that she is not even named. The credits read "Mrs. DeWinters" no first or maiden name. Even in the structure of the film, she does not have her own independent identity. The film has some twists and turns to keep it exciting but the small-world drama of a sweet girl vs a hostile and snooty world, which is always trying to humiliate her, is much more interesting. Such a good film!

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Saw Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, the Will Ferrell film where he's an anchor in the 70s. The film is mostly a vehicle for Will & company's improv so the characters are kind of inconsistent but they're almost always funny which is what counts here. The plot is that a female news anchor joins a station run by a boy's club run by Will. The film comes from 2004 and is, in it's own way, fairly progressive. The sexism of the anchors is present but condemned. The female anchor gets few punchlines but the ones she gets she nails.

I kind of don't like Will Ferrell. His characters are always fairly grating so I associate his face with Ron Burgundy, Ricky Bobby, and Mugatu. I'm sure he's a wonderful person himself, but he's always playing these people I would hate to be around. It's silly but there it is: I can't distinguish fact from fiction.

Anyway, the film is dumb fun. There's lots of quotable lines, shouted for maximum hilarity, and silly sight gags. It wasn't one of my favorites, but I am a joyless scold, so what do you expect?

The Man Who Cried

Saw The Man Who Cried, a film about a Eastern European girl whose father leaves for America just as the Nazis are gaining power. Soon her village is overridden and she must flee through Europe, her name changed, her language forgotten, hunting for some way to America and her father. This is a morbid, dark sort of film. The girl is played by Christina Ricci of Addams Family fame and also stars Johnny Depp. There's a lot of sullen stares and meaningful sidelong glances. The sets are free of decoration, featuring blank walls and wooden panelling, the costumes are all shades of black and brown. The pallet is so muted, it feels like a Tim Burton claymation film. The focus is squarely on the characters to the point of having no establishing shots, only close-ups of actors speaking solo or in pairs.

It's very stylish and pretty to look at but (as usual with stylish films,) the story itself is not amazing. The slow, morbid quality of the film prevents it from having a very intricate plot, or dealing with great detail with anything. The film is focussed on the iconic pathos of the girl hunting for her father. When the Germans invade and we only get a change in the background characters. The protagonists seem largely unphased by the bombings and raids.

The protagonist girl works in an opera company for a while so perhaps this is supposed to be operatic and overblown. This is fine but it is a touch tacky to treat WW2 with self-conscious melodrama. It actually spends much more time sympathizing with the gypsies that were caught up in the concentration camps than it does sympathizing with the Jews. It's not a great film, but it's very pretty. A sort of look-book for Eastern European vampires.

Double Dare

Saw Double Dare, a documentary about stunt women in Hollywood, about two stuntwomen in particular: Zoe Bell and Jeannie Epper. Jeannie is an aging stuntwoman who used do the stunts on Wonder Woman in the 70s. If she were a man, would be now transitioning into the role of stunt-coordinator but in the backwards, socially conscious but socially regressive land of Hollywood, she's just out of work. Zoe is now fairly well-known from Tarantino's Kill Bill and Death Proof but at the time of filming here is an up-and-coming hopeful. You want her to succeed though. She's got an absolutely winning personality, always smiling and laughing, even after breaking her bones. The thesis of this film essentially is that both of these women are awesome.

In addition to just enjoyably hanging out with these two awesome ladies, the film is also about sexism in stunt-land. In one scene Jeannie is on an awards committee for a stunt-person's award show. She asks if maybe some of the categories could be separated by gender (best fight by a woman, for instance.) The room blows up, some men accusing her of giving out participation trophies and others deferring to the terrible sexism of Hollywood which of course they are completely powerless before and completely separate from. I mean, I'm coming to this meeting from the outside, with half of a documentary behind me, but this seems really stupid and gross.

There are a few tangential scenes like that (there's a hilarious but off-topic bit with a headshot photographer who is also an actor, but is getting out of the acting game before he becomes "too famous". Riiiight.) but for the most part, we just get to hang out with Zoe and Jeannie and their awesome families, listening to old men talk about how great Jeannie was, how great Zoe will be. It's not a very meaty film, but the two ladies are so much fun! There are worse ways to spend 90 minutes.

The Time To Live And The Time To Die

Saw The Time To Live And The Time To Die, a melancholy little coming-of-age story about a Taiwanese boy and his family during the 50s. Being that this is the 50s and Taiwan, there's hints of Communism entering into full swing but this is a child's-eye view of the world and thus socio-political upheavals are not the point of the film. The film has a peaceful, rich atmosphere. The town they live in looks extremely real, with trash in the streets, people lounging about. It's not dirty, just warts-and-all believable. This is very different from most Chinese and Japanese films I've seen, which are usually unnaturally polished and plasticky. A far cry from this simple and humble depiction of an actual town.

Like many coming-of-age films, this has a wistful and nostalgic feeling of loss about it. The protagonist has kind of a wild youth, running with gangs of boys and starting turf wars. As he gets older and must take on more responsibilities, he turns away from his "family" the gang and towards his own family, symbolically passing the torch to the next generation.

I liked this film although it did bum me out. It's got tons of atmosphere and some great subtle acting. Of course when it's time to get sad, we get really sad but in earned, well-observed ways. A sweet, intimate little film.

Check It

Saw Check It (thanks, Nina!) It was the film about the gay gang in D.C. It was very emotional. The kids in the film are in a gang, so they do things that gang-members do, like rob stores and jump rival gang-members. They have not had easy lives and, lacking an infrastructure of parents and family, they have trouble making appointments, trouble controlling their anger. Many of them are involved in prostitution. There's heartbreaking scenes where they talk about their bad tricks.

The film follows one social worker as he tries to get them into real careers. There's another tear-jerker at the end when he's publicly thanked by the gang members. Many of the kids want to get into fashion. One starts getting into boxing but just sort of stops after a while and we hear that the guy who was going to sponsor him in fights had to close his gym and now lives out of a car. These are the would-be saviors of these kids? It's heartbreaking that that's the best they've got.

This film is very complex. The kids in it are poor, black, and gay. These forces interact with each other in complex ways. I think this will be a kind of Rorschach film. If you wanted to, you could see worthless, indolent youth, spiraling further into violence and sex. You could also see bullied kids fighting back at the whole world. I don't have any easy feelings about this film. I feel like they should try to make it in fashion, in boxing, that they should stick with school and avoid prostitution, but that's easy for me to say isn't it? If I were in their shoes I'd probably be dead by now. These kids are tough and fabulous, but they shouldn't have to be.

Belladonna of Sadness

Saw Belladonna of Sadness (thanks Lea and Ian!) It was a beautifully animated film about a woman in vaguely medieval times who is raped on her wedding night. After some further misfortunes, she makes a bargain with supernatural forces for power and revenge. The film comes from the 70s and has some amazing psychedelic sequences, especially relating to the supernatural creatures. The nature of the power she buys is traditional witchery: aphrodisiacs and potions to prevent pregnancy. There's a coda to the film which was apparently added on in a re-release tying this female empowerment to the ensuing French revolution (it's not clear exactly where this film takes place however.)

The film is seriously beautiful however. There's a lot of slow pans over still images, lending the film a static, timeless, fairy-tale-like quality. This is mixed with some frankly erotic animations of orgies, people flowing into each other, combining with and transforming into giant phalluses and vaginas. It's noteworthy that the creature the protagonist makes a deal with resembles a penis almost from the first moment he's on screen.

I dug this film. It's stillness makes it drag a bit near the end, but I think it earns its slowness and its pauses. It's the sort of film that can put you to sleep or entrance you and it rewards entrancement. A very pretty film.

Kopps

Saw Kopps, a fairly goofy Swedish comedy about a group of small-town cops who spend their days messing around, bickering like children, and eating hotdog waffles. One day a pretty lady from HQ comes by to tell them their station will be shut down on account of no crime. So, the cops stage heists and try to convince everyone that gangs are coming into town.

The premise is funny and there's several outrageous scenes. One of the cops is an action-movie fan and spends a lot of tense moments quoting Scarface. He's probably the funnest character (also the star of this gif) The others are funny mostly in their ineptitude and their non-cop-like behavior. The film has a low-key style, often using lazy whistling on the soundtrack and deriving humor more from situations than from gags.

I can't really recommend it. It's completely inoffensive and sweet but I didn't think it was particularly funny. It's kind of nothing.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes

Saw Stanley Kubrick's Boxes a documentary about the many boxes of research materials Stanley Kubrick left upon his death. The filmmaker examines the contents of the boxes and turns the film into a Citizen Kane-style hagiography for Kubrick. I was under the impression this film would detail Kubrick's failed Holocaust documentary but (although it's brought up) it's not the focus. Kubrick's perfectionism is.

The film is short and kind of meandering, concluding at last that Kubrick's perfectionism was the thing that kept others in awe of him, enabling his triumphs but also isolating him in his fortress of photographs and paper. Despite being only 45 minutes long, we take a detour to interview a man who wrote a crank letter to Kubrick about what changes were needed for 2001: A Space Odyssey to be a great film. The documentary is an interesting little look into Kubrick's life. It's a bit overly full of people shaking their heads at his peculiarities but I suppose the peculiarities make the man in this case.

The Great Happiness Space

Saw The Great Happiness Space, a documentary about a Japanese host club, a sort of gentlewoman's club where women can go to buy overpriced drinks for the hot guys who work there. In return, these "hosts" sit with the women and listen to them and laugh with them and sometimes also have sex with them. Many of the women who frequent these clubs are themselves prostitutes and are kind of addicted to these clubs, their prostitution sometimes caused by their debts to these clubs. It's a very interesting and alarming viscous cycle of purchasing professional affection. The hosts for their part are fairly attractive (they all have this uniform, Goblin King in a business suit, sort of look) but the pretense of actual affection is paper-thin. They talk of how they manipulate the women to form emotional bonds with them, how they pressure them to buy drinks.

Whereas these women sell their bodies, the men are mostly selling their emotions. One host talks of losing himself in his role, becoming confused as to the boundary of reality and fantasy. One of the women tells the camera that she is, for real, no kidding, in love with one of the hosts, that she wants to give him all of her money and to die for him. The host waves this off, accusing her of trying to manipulate him. She is devious, he tells us. He hates her.

The film is fascinating. It starts off making the Host club seem kind of sexy and glamorous but slowly peels back layer after layer of the artifice, revealing the ugly manipulation underneath and then revealing the common, human need for companionship under that. One host is moved to (perhaps drunken) tears as he talks about how they all, the men and the women, only want to be loved, how money both enables and distorts these relationships. Several times the hosts talk about their jobs in terms of "healing," as though they were doctors or therapists. One of the hosts is chastised by the owner for feeling guilty for manipulating the women. "You think this is a psychiatric institute? Never forget, this is your job."

A Canterbury Tale

Saw A Canterbury Tale, a Powell and Pressburger propaganda film set in WW2 England. It follows two soldiers and a female home-front conscript who are stuck in Kent but who each need to get to Canterbury. While in Kent, they learn about local history and reveal their own pasts to each other and to the colorful townsfolk. To keep them in Kent, the film throws a mad glue-thrower in their way, a mysterious figure who sneaks around at night throwing glue in women's hair. I believe the vague filthiness of this nocturnal emission is in keeping with the original bawdy spirit of the Canterbury Tales, and this makes me happy.

I claim the film is a propaganda film, although they never get very pointed about the evil Germans or the terrible cost of protecting the country. They do however talk at some great length about the grand history of Britain and show, in the closing moments of the film, the pitiful results of the blitz in Canterbury. It's very effective stuff. Very frequently the film has the glorious past and the violent present day collide. The opening shot of the film is of a medieval lord releasing a falcon into the air. Mid-air it transforms into a bomber plane and, bam, we're in modern times.

Half of the film is concerned with solving the mystery of the glue attacks however and I was fairly confused about how this connected to pilgrimages or Chaucer. It's never explained in a very concrete way which I thought was very cool. The film plays its symbolism quite heavy most of the time. It's established that each of the protagonists want to get to Canterbury and one of them remarks "why we're pilgrims in our own way too!" Well duh. That the final connection to the glue attacks is left slightly mysterious is confusing and interesting. There's a subtle, complicated connection but it's not played up for once. Very interesting film.

Cool Runnings

Saw Cool Runnings, the up-beat and winning Disney film about a Jamaican Olympic bobsled team. I understand this film is fairly beloved and it's not hard to see why. It's very sweet, very kind. No characters are truly evil except perhaps for the racist Olympics officials, but they're not really in the film. There's also a group of rival bobsledders but their insults aren't so much about race as experience. The film tries to give a sort of universal message about being different and embracing your own difference which is broader than race. There are a few mentions of race but they feel sort of tacked on, in the shadow of the protagonists' various personal struggles. I feel this is not a white-wash however since in real life apparently the actual JAmaican bobsled team was welcomed by the other sled teams.

Speaking of racism, the film contains a fair amount of benign racism (I'm not sure that's the right term.) The film portrays Jamaica as a land of sunny, smiling people who are perpetually wryly smiling and knowingly laughing. It is impossible to imagine murder, for instance, in this land of happiness. The protagonists all behave more like ebullient children. They approach bobsledding with ramshackle whimsy and wander around the Olympic village with wide-eyed wonder. They are the heros of the picture and I felt affection for them, but it's the children in the audience who are meant to identify with them, not the adults.

Anyway, like I say, this is a sweet film. I genuinely rooted for the protagonists, even as I was aware of the sudden tonal shifts that indicated that here, now, was the Big Competition or the Big Moment That Changed This Character's Life Forever. It's a children's film and as such is kind of obvious at parts, but it's pieces are well-made and well put together. It's a good emotion-manipulating engine. It works well.

Easy A

Saw Easy A, a fairly silly re-imagining of The Scarlet Letter in a high school setting. In this film, the protagonist tells a lie about hooking up with a College Boy to explain why she blew off her friend's camping trip. This small lie balloons into an elaborate network of lies and soon the whole school thinks she's like, such a slut. The film is snappily written and the protagonist keeps ducking her head down and letting off these quiet, clever references so you feel like you're her cool sophisticated friend, chuckling along with her, for being aware of Sylvia Plath and so on. It's winning and cute.

The film has many references to John Hughes films and it's trying hard to match the same easy, cleverness of those films but without the sincerity that John Hughes sometimes brings. However without this strong element of sincerity, the film sort of becomes a snark-fest. I find it hard to re-insert myself into the high school mindset (where hookups and who's secretly pining for who is so important) when the characters are talking and interacting like 40 year old adults. Also, after an indignant wardrobe change, dressing like adults.

I thought the film was pleasant. It's queasily awkward at parts but only during a few wildly self-affirming scenes (but those always make me uncomfortable.) It also has a fairly on-the-nose message about rumors and social ostracization which is nice but, of course, sort of un-subtle. The protagonist's actions and choices are interesting. The film tries to give her a happy ending but of course the real end of highschool rumors are when you go to college and start life over (and then again, later, when you get a job) not by one spectacular song and dance followed by a heartfelt confession. I suppose the film didn't want to stretch out to college though.

A cute little film.

My Scientology Movie

Saw My Scientology Movie, a Louis Theroux documentary about the notoriously bizarre and secretive Church of Scientology. He of course doesn't get any church members to relax their guard around media personalities, but he does have prominent ex-member Marty Rathbun to help him out and, funnily enough, the documentary becomes much more revealing about Marty than it is about Scientology. Scientology has been covered before by many people. South Park did an episode about their sci-fi-tinged creation myth, and many news crews have done filler pieces about the it. Like those, this one also has the requisite (but endlessly entertaining) shouty Scientologist-baiting, the examination of the razor-wire ringing their compound.

But Marty remains the most interesting part of the film for me. At one point Louis ironically calls him a "disgruntled apostate", over-enunciating the words for maximum humor, but Marty turns sour "Why would you call me what the church calls me?" and "I'm not disgruntled. I don't even care." This sudden, unexpected churlishness suggests that he hasn't really moved on. It (and other, later scenes) suggests he's still fighting against the church not purely out of altruism, but out of some sense of shame or embarrassment.

Don't get me wrong, I completely approve of Marty's actions. The church of Scientology is very very very creepy. I'm just intrigued by Marty's guarded demeanor and motives. I don't think he's being sinister, it's just hard for him to open up about his feelings. At one point he lashes out at Louis, asking why he asks the same questions over and over. Is he looking for inconsistencies? Marty is an embattled guy with a dark history inside the church. He's a very interesting subject. The Scientology stuff is interesting too, especially the stuff on the character of the current pontifex, David Miscavige. He would be a yet more fascinating subject but, alas, he has enough money and power to avoid cameras for now.

Local Hero

Saw Local Hero, a genial sort of early 80s comedy about a slick, big-city, oil businessman who must travel to a small Scottish village to seal the deal. Obviously, he'll become beguiled by the simple humility of these simple fisher-folk and learn that there's more to life than oil and money. I could see this coming after about ten minutes of the film, and indeed, the film doesn't have a lot in it that's shocking or surprising. However, it's still not bad. There's comedy but very little of it is in a setup/punchline format. There's not gags so much as wry observations and cute, humorous situations.

The film is also unexpectedly pretty. I was anticipating some lantern-lit scene of dancing accompanied by the mandatory accordion and fiddle to act as shorthand for the warmth of the fisher village. There is that, but there's also Brian Eno-esque synthesizer music playing while the protagonist marvels at the northern lights. Also, I was gratified to see it's not a day and night beguiling, but a subtle and believable change. There's also some excellent and hilarious business involving the protagonist's boss, back in the home office, being bedevilled by a new-age psychologist.

I wouldn't say that this film is one of my favorites by any means, but it's very wholesome and friendly. It's the sort of film you'd be able to watch with your parents. It's not particularly surprising or revelatory. It has a few moments of interesting camera work but for the most part it's one of those fine, friendly films which are either fondly forgotten or become family favorites.

Rat Race

Saw Rat Race, an ensemble comedy in the vein of Cannonball Run or It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The idea here is that eccentric gamblers set a prize of two million dollars for the first person to get to a certain city and bet on the outcome of the race. The film is completely sketch-based. One minute we're seeing Rowan Atkinson clown around with Newman, then we're off to see Cuba Gooding Jr interact with a busload of Lucile Ball impersonators. It's mostly a dumb good time.

The film was mostly forgettable. Only a very few of the scenes made me smile at all. The gamblers finding ever-more bizarre things to bet on was usually good. I also enjoyed the Lucies. Seth Green gets into some whimsical hijinks involving a hot air balloon and cows. That was pretty awful. Also John Lovitz (whom I adore) has a fairly tedious and well-telegraphed run-in with WW2 veterans (while he's dressed as Hitler (of course.))

It's completely brainless and kind of gross. I enjoyed the film more or less but it's not without some obvious flaws. A lot of the characters are not given any characterization at all beyond a costume and the skits are sometimes fairly dire, relying on frantic oompah music to carry the scene. Worst of all though, and what makes this film almost unwatchable to modern audiences, is the early 2000s feel-good "comedy" music which is prominently featured. Yes, both Who Let the Dogs Out and Smash Mouth's All Star make appearances. Both. These songs have become such cliches that they'd need to be used ironically nowadays, but they're used sincerely here, the cast bobbing along to the music and smiling as the closing credits roll. It's so guileless.

So, not a very good movie. I enjoyed it more or less, but I think it's best used as an object of scorn now, fit for drunken parties and snide commentary. Ah well, that's fun too.

Escape Plan

Saw Escape Plan (Thanks John!) It was a fairly silly prison break film staring Sylvester Stallone as an escape-artist who gets incarcerated in various prisons and then pulls of elaborate escapes to show their security holes. One day he's sent to some kind of crypto-Guantanamo which is, like, the most secure prison ever. The inmates are kept in clear plastic cubes arranged in hexagonal patterns. The whole thing is ludicrous. Anyway he teams up with Arnold Schwarzenegger to bust out of this fortress.

On the outside, there's a cool blonde woman who is maybe Sylvester's girlfriend, maybe his ex? The film is kinda hazy on that point, but there's also a black tech-guy who they refer to as a "techno-thug" which seems a little demeaning. This techno-thug apparently spends his time assembling cubes out of little cubes on his computer. The ways of tech-thuggery are indeed mysterious. Unfortunately, we don't see very much of these two, focusing instead on Sylvester in prison.

The film is definitely not my cup of tea, but it's not outright terrible. There's many hilariously stupid Rube Goldberg machines constructed to help them escape, and more formalized macho pasturing than a wrestling contest but at least it was sort of coherent and well-shot. The antagonist is this interestingly dainty bureaucrat type who fidgets with his tie and collects butterflies. I liked the idea of a non-threatening book-keeper being the CEO of the prison colony, but instead we get him swanning about like Severus Snape, only with a higher-pitched voice. They pair him up with British heavy Vinnie Jones, but even so, they don't seem Guantanamo-level scary.

Speaking of, this is a privately owned prison in the film, holding international terrorists and baddies (who, it should be noted, are indistinguishable from generic prison-dudes in any other film.) It seems odd to me, if this prison is so badass, that they allow them to wander around, that they have a cafeteria. What about the black hoods and stress positions? There's some water-boarding I think, but I feel like this prison could have been way more dehumanizing. Then again, Sylvester may not have been able to get out of that situation, so I guess we have to swallow this.

Not a terrible film, but not a very good one.

Brewster McCloud

Saw Brewster McCloud, a film by Robert Altman. This film was a very self-consciously and purposefully strange film. The film opens with the MGM lion roaring in silence while a narrator mumbles "I forgot the opening line..." We then see a weirdo in a fright-wig lecture us about birds. The story (once it gets going) is about a series of murders that have hit the town. Each time someone is murdered, they're found covered in bird shit. The title character, Brewster, is trying to build a flying machine and is aided by a mysterious woman who has giant scars on her shoulder-blades exactly like an angel whose wings had been cut off. There's also a girl who masturbates while Brewster does chin-ups and a cop from the east coast who is dispatched.

This is a comedy, essentially. It's got the spacey, slightly dry Altman feel to it however. There are no setup/punchline gags as such, but it's absurd and silly. There's also themes throughout (birds particularly) which might cause some to mistake the comedy for some deep message. I think these themes are meant to be more evocative and teasing, not so much a repeated lesson as a running gag. It's a mostly silly film.

Birds haunt this film and their capacity for flight is envied, but they're not depicted as angelic creatures, pure and noble, but as angry, almost contemptuous, shitting animals, flying above us. It's not so much that the birds are enviable as that humans are so repulsive. It's an interesting twist on the trope of the idealistic dreamer. Brewster seems pure and untouchable but we sympathize with his quest for flight because of how stupid and ugly the humans are.

It's a fun movie overall however. Ugliness and stupidity are good sources for humor and although this film won't make anyone (I think) guffaw with laughter, it made me smile. And that's worth something.

Religulous

Saw Religulous, Bill Maher's anti-religious documentary. Bill lays out what I take to be his basic thesis in the very beginning of the film: that religion is a generally dangerous force which is allowing us to ignore current problems and thus prolongs these current problems. Okay, interesting idea. Let's see how he defends it. First we are treated t some early Maher stand up, then Maher talks his mother for a while, then we head to the Trucker's Ministry where Bill shouts at a bunch of truckers that they believe a bunch of nonsense. It slowly becomes clear that Bill is not looking to convince or convert anyone to his point of view, but is trying to give words and arguments and images to people who already agree with him.

The film is entertaining however. Bill is a funny guy and has a vast collection of hokey old bible story cartoons to draw from. He interviews fascinating weirdos and gets a few priests and scientists to talk to (although, admittedly, it's sometimes Bill that does the majority of the talking.) He also engages in some fourth-wall breaking jokes. At one point an Imam interrupts an interview to respond to a text. On-screen cations tell us his response is "Kill Maher lol :)" Clearly it's not, but now can I trust any of his captions? Soon after this, a pair of guys speaking another language insult Bill as a comedian or so the captions tell us. If imdb is to be trusted, they are actually filmed saying small snippets of conversation ("our boss gave us five minutes" for instance.) The interviews are also heavily edited, flipping to a new angle sometimes as the interviewee just responds "yes" or "no." I don't know of course that any creative editing took place, but it looks bad Bill and your hilarious caption-games don't help your credibility.

He also sometimes picks on some pretty pathetic worshipers. He goes to a biblical-themed park and asks theological questions of the guy who plays Jesus in the passion play, expecting some religious actor to be able to instantly defend his own beliefs. After this he hangs around the gift shop posing theological paradoxes to the park patrons. Earlier in the film he asks some soft-spoken guy to defend his belief in miracles. The guy gives an example of a neat coincidence which he thinks of as a miracle and Bill just roars with laughter, doubling up and stomping his feet. This is kind of shitty behavior. I'm sure Bill believes that the multiplication rules that he was taught work correctly, but can he explain to me why they work correctly? He might be able to puzzle it out on his feet or he could just look it up, of course, but so could actor-Jesus or the park patrons look up the official answers to his theological problems.

The film is entertaining. It's very preachy and aggressive however and is not actually interested in the answers to the questions it puts forth so much as it is interested in arguing for or against various political agendas. Some of the targets I have some sympathy for but others are televangelists and ex-gay ministers and other gross people. It's a fun film and its stances I generally agree with (religious institutions are mostly corrupt. Religious extremism is of course an evil) but I get the feeling that I'm not learning anything as I watch it. It's just sort of bias-confirming.

Easy Rider

Saw Easy Rider, a difficult film that I feel encapsulates the spirit of 1969 (I didn't live through this era of course, so I have no real idea of what I'm talking about but anyway) The plot follows these two guys as they travel across the country from LA to New Orleans, trying to get to Mardi Gras. They are nomadic, cowboy-like, sleeping outdoors and always on the go. Along the way, they see various sedentary life styles, but this is not for them. They drive through a hippie commune which is idyllic in an outdoorsy, kindergarten-ish kind of way. They also drive through a Louisiana town populated only by giggling girls and fat scowling men. At one point a character explains that what people don't like about them is that they are too free (obviously) but is this "freedom" a quest for self-fulfillment? Or is it just empty hedonism?

The two protagonists seem to embody these two approaches to "freedom." One is stoic and introverted, enjoying the austere but relaxed atmosphere of the commune. The other is carefree and ebullient but recognises the extreme responsibility that the commune represents. He wants to get on to the exciting chaos of Mardi Gras. But the film is sly: at the very beginning there's a farm that they admire. Could it be that this respectable simplicity is what they're after but that they are also, ironically, speeding away from?

I found this dilemma to be a bit tiresome. I am one of those bought and sold people that they talk about so derisively. I feel that if I were brave (or perhaps stupid) enough, I would spend most of my time playing games, watching movies, and maybe reading but then how would I pay rent? Anyway this feels kind of vegetable to me. I feel if I'm not goaded to it, I won't achieve anything. However this is not a tragedy perhaps.

In addition to the preoccupations of the story, the film has a very interesting visual style. Scene transitions are done by flicking back and forth for a few cuts before proceeding with the new scene. The colors are also very strange (or the Nevada desert really does just look like that) There's also a sequence near the end that's very neat. Also the soundtrack is great. An interesting film in general. I thought I wouldn't like it but I did more or less. Not my favorite film but it deserves the praise it gets.

I Love You, Man

Saw I Love You Man, a very cute bromantic comedy. The idea is this dude is getting married but has no male friends. The bride's wine-swilling friends dub this as "weird" and indeed, he does need a best man, so the groom goes off in search of a male friend. This is a premise that is in serious danger of becoming homoerotic (as opposed to homo-just-good-friends-actually,) so the film does its best to defuse the situation by making jokes at the long-suffering protagonist's expense about him looking for a "boy friend" and running into gay people who he has to turn down. By making him likeable and having him suffer under the misunderstandings of other characters, we are forced to understand lest we too become intolerant and cruel. It's a nice device they use.

I don't know first-hand of course, but I understand masculinity is kind of a fragile thing. Men are not allowed to dress or act in certain ways, not allowed to enjoy (or admit to enjoying) certain music or shows, not allowed to drink alcohol that doesn't taste like paint thinner, etc etc. How straight guys become friends and stay friends is beyond me. I feel like they have to thread the needle of publicly liking each other without falling into appearing to love each other. How exhausting. So this film is refreshing. I honestly would have preferred a gay romance, but this is important, I feel, for society as a whole to see (including women, by the way. Society as a whole polices these mores, not just straight men.)

Anyway (now that I've talked about the thing that I actually wanted to talk about which is not this film...) the film itself is a fun, silly romp. The bride is not (as I feared) some shrew or nag, but an almost cartoonishly likeable and affable woman. This film is not really about her, so she's not given a real character. She's the nice girlfriend who, alas, is not a dude-friend. There's also an explicitly gay brother who they include to provide more look-see-this-is-not-gay messaging and who is some kind of socially-acceptable, straight-acting ghoul who oh-so-relatably spurns the advances of other gay men. Bleh. I wish he weren't quite so outrageous. It would have been interesting if he interpreted his brother's friend-hunt as a secret coming-out. The politics would be way trickier but much more provocative.

Face/Off

Saw Face/Off, a fairly ridiculous movie by John Woo. It's one of his first Hollywood films and tries to do that Chinese thing of super-shmaltzy melodrama. The opening shows the protagonist, in some kind of filial-love-induced perpetual swoon, at a carnival that is shot entirely in slow motion and soft-focus. It's the happiest happy that has ever happied. Later, disaster strikes and it's the saddest sad that has ever been. The film is is great fun, but it's unclear if it's in on the joke.

The plot is that an FBI agent must find a bomb that a criminal mastermind has hidden in the city but the mastermind is in a coma, so the agent goes to a secret clinic where they transplant the criminal's face onto the FBI agent's face. This is insane but only the first of many insanities, so okay. Later on there's a magnetic-shoed prison and many boffo shootouts. There's kind of a half-hearted and embarrassing theme of identity where in order to infiltrate the gang the FBI agent must become the criminal, in a way, compromising his morals and beating up cops. It's fairly weak however and could be used as evidence that John Woo doesn't have a sense of humor about this film.

Either way though, this is a great bad movie, in the vein of Con Air. Also the criminal (and later face-swapped FBI agent) is played by Nicholas Cage in full-throated crazy-face mode. The FBI agent (later face-swapped criminal) is John Travolta who puts in a game showing although of course he can't hold a candle to Cage. The plot is ridiculous but that's part of the fun. Thank heavens it wasn't some dour meditation on violence and masculinity. It may have been serious but feels more like a send-up to me.

Resolution

Saw Resolution, an interesting cross-genre horror film. It's very very light on the scares, opting for slow tension and eerie spookery instead. The idea is that this skinny guy handcuffs his junkie friend to a pipe in his house (ala Black Snake Moan) to detox cold-turkey. They engage in some Judd Apatow-style banter. The junkie, I feel, was written for Seth Rogan or somebody. Anyway, the skinny guy begins finding mysterious video tapes (ala Cache or Sinister) depicting murders, weird video tapes, even creepy email attachments. There's also the junkie friend's dealers and some sinister Native dudes. It quickly becomes apparent that this is not just about the detox.

The film is satisfyingly resolved, but never quite nails down what the monster is. It's a very interesting twist for a film that always seems about to fall into cliche. All of the elements of the film I feel I've seen before. The grainy VHS tapes, the bro-y banter, the mysterious maybe-ghosts-maybe-monsters. I feel like the film started out as a comedy-horror and then went in a post-modern direction once the writer realized he didn't have an ending (ala Adaptation.)

So I feel this was kind of a weak film. It was too wishy-washy for my taste. It goes in an interesting direction in the end but I feel it would have been better if it made a harder choice about what kind of film it was starting out to be. I imagine he writer coming up with fumes and polishing the resultant turd. The movie is not terrible but I feel like everything interesting about it has been done before and better. Sometimes an interesting film can be built out of old parts but, for me, this film didn't do that. It is worth a look though.

The Art of the Steal

Saw The Art of the Steal, a documentary about a large and extremely valuable ($25-$40 billion) art collection collected by the childless Dr Albert Barnes. He desired to have the art stay in one place and be used for teaching purposes. The collection contains important and beautiful paintings by every impressionist artist you know of and is apparently capable of moving people to tears. In his will, he stipulated that this work not be moved, sold, or loaned, that it was to stay in his foundation/school forever. This does not happen.

The film emphasizes that this is a school, even using what appears to be a chalkboard to flash up interstitial titles. This collection is meant to guide the gifted few, not to be let open for any idiot to gawk at, or for rich snobs to pose and drink martinis before. The political forces at work begin to dismantle this school however, as leadership changes hands and people die and we become more and more removed from the man Barnes himself.

I have trouble really caring about Barnes' intent for his collection. He seems like an unpleasant man. Why should these great paintings be kept in a private institution? Why not put them in a state museum? Almost everyone interviewed is on the Barnes side of things, wanting the collection to remain in place. They talk about his intent for his own property and, yes that matters, but surely cultural treasures such as these are more important than one man's desires, right? Clearly, I don't see their point of view, however the film still works well as a simple portrayal of a fight against city hall. Barnes' neighbors and a gang of passionate artists defend the collection against a well-organized group of grainy photographs of smiling billionaires.

The protagonists (the artists and neighbors) make their case in a very legalistic way: Barnes wanted his collection preserved - it is being scattered. I admit that when I die, I would like my property to be distributed exactly as my will states, however this man has no surviving family. This is a moving film, but I have a difficult time feeling a lot of sympathy for the ghost of an art-collector. Let the world see the art, even the idiots. Perhaps it will help them in some way?

Spartacus

Saw Spartacus, the epic Kubrick film about a Roman slave uprising and, more broadly, about the desire for freedom. This film came out in 1960 but I think it's an early entry in the series of films which deal with the inscrutable male protagonist who lusts for freedom and sincerity. Rollerball is the most obvious example of this that comes to my mind, but I believe Cool Hand Luke, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Last Tango in Paris, and Easy Rider all fall into this category. Those films all came out in the late 60s/early 70s however so this one is a bit ahead of the curve. Anyway, there's an interest in the earthy and sincere. Children and old couples are focussed on. The enthusiastic but ragtag slave army is shown in contrast to the well-paid but organized Empire.

So the antagonists are of course the decadent Roman patricians. The first example of them we see are visiting noblemen and women who request to see the two most handsome slaves fight to the death. This mix of sex and death casts them as vapid but also over-cultured, decadent, in contrast to the sincere protagonist who delights in the simple pleasures of bread and family. The chief antagonist is even suggested to be bisexual, so great is his depravity. This treatment of homosexuality (as a shorthand for moral bankruptcy) sucks of course and I wish directors would stop doing it (so take note, 1960s: you're on notice.)

I feel this film either reflected or predicted a lot of zeitgeist in the 60s. Very early in the film, a voiceover brings up the eventual eradication of slavery thousands of years later (which must come as a relief to these folks) and of course freedom is the central preoccupation of the film. Meanwhile the 60s were a time of great expansion of civil liberties and the US of course models itself off of the great Roman Republics, even incorporating Fasces into its iconography. At one point Spartacus snaps one of these fasces in two, which is pretty pointed symbolism.

The film itself is quite long (~4 hrs) but entertaining and interesting. I had to take a break halfway through but everyone's performance is solid. Kubrick creates these magnificently artificial composed shots that rest a tad uneasily up against all the sincerity-worship, but they are pleasing to the eye nonetheless. A bit of a slog, but overall quite good.

Liar Liar

Saw Liar Liar, the Jim Carrey film where he plays a lawyer who, because of a moppet-fuelled wish, cannot lie for 24 hours. IT was a sweet sort of film although it annoyed me, alas. I think I've just become too old and cranky and joyless to enjoy Jim Carrey's schtick anymore. He spends most of the film shrieking and flapping his arms and having some kind of intense mental breakdown but the judge will not grant him a continuance (which I guess is a delay in the proceedings.) Surely if a lawyer shows up in court rolling his eyes and gutturally moaning when asked what his case is, the court would wait until another lawyer could be found. In this oddly cruel world however, the case proceeds like normal.

Anyway, when we're not occupied with this exhibition of the failure of mental health services in the US, the film is continuing the story of Jim's relationship with his ex-wife and their son. I have to imagine the relationship was extremely taxing on that poor woman. She's got herself a new boyfriend but he's too nice and kind of lame. So, traditional values triumph by the end of the film and the cycle of abuse continues.

I'm being really mean here but this is the internal dialogue I kept up to amuse myself through the film and to avoid feeling intense embarrassment by proxy. The film is not bad. It's a bit dated (it's treatment of women leaves something to be desired) but keeps the zany musical cues coming and and Jim Carrey delivers on the writhing and shrieking. There's a scene in the post-credits out-takes where one actress jokingly calls him an overactor and Jim reacts with grace, laughing and mugging and saying "Oh no! They're onto me!" I bear no grudges, I just didn't like this film. What can I say? Too old and cranky.

Samurai Cop

Saw Samurai Cop (thanks, John!) It was a gloriously terrible film about a young renegade cop (the one they call "Samurai") who is drought in to shut down a dangerous gang of Japanese guys. Although the film is called Samurai cop, most of the fight scenes are like that one in Indiana Jones where this guy come brandishing a sword (a katana usually, in this film) and is just shot. The film came out in '89 but has the grainy godawful look of 70s grindhouse schlock. cigarette burns, stressed filmstock and clumsy pacing are everywhere. It's hilarious.

The protagonist is this guy with a pretty nice body and a gigantic wig of long, luxurious hair. He aggressively hits on every woman he comes across and we are treated to sex scenes which linger for minutes on end. The women, of course, are totally into him as well. At one point some woman just grabs his junk and they have a frank discussion about the state of his genitals. The film feels like it's just the plot scenes from a porn flick. I half-suspect there's a dead-serious actually-just-porn version of this film that was filmed alongside this one.

This is clearly a cheaply made film. Several times sound clips are repeated, particularly good shots are looped. The effect is like being in a cheap room that someone tried to spruce up by adding mirrors. Characters eerily refer to future events as though they've already occurred. At one point Samurai Cop is in a film editing studio, prompting all kinds of questions. Are we watching Samurai Cop edit this, his own film?

This is a party film. It requires company while watching. There are many protracted sex scenes however, so proceed with caution, but wow, this is on a whole nother level. There's so many cheap jokes to be made. It's astounding.

Moneyball

Saw Moneyball, a docudrama about an early application of statistical analysis to baseball. It follows the general manager of the Oakland A's as he makes a bet on statistics which is both long-shot and (of course) pretty safe. He teams up with a fat, dainty econ major and shake up the game a bit.

This film follows the rich tradition of sports films, using a crescendo of nervy violins and fast cuts to build tension to a fever pitch, so that the final fumble or triumphant catch is all the more stirring. We are also treated to a bit of drama surrounding the protagonist's divorced wife and their daughter who is adorable and exists only to give the protagonist someone to not let down. Unfortunately, all of the math is left off screen. I suppose I could look it up, but I could also look up the marital status of the protagonist as well. Unfortunately the math is what I was most interested in, but okay, the general public is hysterically bored by math. Okay.

The film is very effective, building emotional stakes for the characters and tugging along the audience's feelings with adorable children and slow motion. The script has apparently been touched a bit by Aaron Sorkin and his trademark rat-a-tat-tat dialogue shows up here and there. I also liked Philip Seymour Hoffman's minor role as a coach. He uses his bulk effectively, slouching like a tired and circumspect man. I confess I have no interest in sports so I feel like I'm not getting the entire emotional wallop that I'm supposed to but even so, it was a good solid film.

Encounters at the End of the World

Saw Encounters at the End of the World, a documentary by Herzog about researchers and just people in general who live on the south pole. Herzog explains that he's eager to go to this remote place. He has a fascination with nature, and its supreme indifference to us. An enthusiastic fan of science in general, he visits lots of scientists and asks them utterly bizarre questions such "do penguins ever go insane?" To be fair however, the scientists give as good as they get, telling strange stories of linguistics and physics, the beginning of life and the universe. We meet a plumber who claims to be descended from Mayan royalty. He holds up his hands as proof.

The scientists are great oddballs but we also get to see Herzog indulge some of his almost spiritual obsession with nature. He shows underwater footage shot by scuba divers and plays unearthly choral songs over it. The divers refer to the area beneath the ice as "the cathedral" we hear, and the world down there is vast, strange, filled with perfectly still creatures, slowly moving about in supercooled water. Most impressive are the utterly alien noises that seals apparently make underwater. (have a listen, it's crazy!)

We also hear Herzog shake his head at modern civilization. Calling the yoga studios at the base camp "abominations" and wryly interviewing a cafeteria worker who mans the Frosty Boy ice cream machine. Again and again the scientists beat the drum of global warming. Many of them have given up entirely. Herzog tells us that most of them think that mankind is already doomed.

Indeed, in spite of the beauty of the south pole and the alien inhabitants, the scientists and people are the real stars. Each is a free-spirit or oddball and quite proud of that fact. Herzog seems delighted to display them.

Charulata

Saw Charulata, a Satyajit Ray film from the 60s. The titular character, Charulata, is the neglected wife of a rich man who spends his time as the editor of a political newspaper. He is aware of her loneliness, but does not realize how deep it runs. He invites a literature-professor cousin to come stay with them, to entertain Charulata. Sure enough, he comes like a breath of fresh air, smiling and whistling, and singing a song about cuckoos (indeed.) Charulata's husband, the editor, has laid the seeds of his own betrayal but then again, it was he who neglected her first.

This was a very literary film. Dryly believable events are reflected off of the main characters and magnified into personal disasters. The cinematography reflects this as wide-angle shots suddenly zoom in to intimate close-ups. In contrast to this, the editor is always focused on the abstract and geopolitical. The bookcase in his room has many more books than Charulata's but hers are much more well-worn.

The film is a domestic drama. It deals with romance and the central eventual affair in an distant way. This being the 60s, they couldn't have Charulata smooching with the other man, so the film plays it coy, never quite defining what their relationship is or what it's becoming. To label it as an affair (as I've done here) is to remove the intrigue from the film. It's really much more complex than that. An interesting film.

The Full Monty

Saw The Full Monty, the male stripper film from the 90s. The film opens in Sheffield which was apparently a dying, once-great steel-town at the time. The protagonist and his friends are out of work ex-steel workers who have no jobs and decide to try their hand at stripping. This might be a pointed bit of social commentary about exploitation but the audience seems to be other Sheffield-ians, so nothing doing there I think. There's some male body-positivity thrown in however, and they kindly throw a bone to the gays in audience, which is nice.

The film is funny in a sort For Better or Worse, dramedy kind of way. I think it was originally a play. Most of the film takes place in fixed locations with, of course, a big dance number at the end. The draw of the play would then be the same as the draw to their big finale strip show: will they or won't they go Full Monty?

I generally liked the film. It's not as sexy as what I take to be the modern update, Magic Mike (I haven't actually seen Magic Mike yet, so please roll your eyes if I'm wrong) but it's cute and sweet. This is sort of mirrored in the protagonists, who are not professions and are attractive in a believable, guy next door, warts-and-all kind of way. The final show has an almost community-center feel to it. It's cute. It's not hilarious and it's not super-sexy, but it's comfy and good.

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

Saw The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (thanks, Nina!) It was a documentary about the sprawling White family, a group of mostly women who are in and out of jail and rehab. The men of the family are all either young enough to still be in highschool, in jail, or dead. They are described as fierce, free, and independent although of course for folks who are so very free they do spend a lot of time under the thumb of state authority and of course they're mostly on welfare. Their only claim to fame is their long-dead patriarch who was incongruously famous for tap-dancing to country music. This comes up once or twice but mostly acts as a sort of hook to pull you into this family.

The film mostly follows the White family, lionizing them or allowing them to boastfully lionize themselves. The birth and subsequent confiscation of a baby serves as a frame for the film, although the Whites and exactly how very free they are is the true subject of this film. I kept thinking to myself that if I were born into this family, I would surely be dead by now. They are violent, addicted to drugs, and spend most of their time carrying out intricately interlocking schemes of revenge. They seemed like a southern sort of Addams Family; violent, intensely interested in spirituality, intense.

They frankly repulsed me. Make no mistake, this repulsion on my part is solely an indictment of me. They are human beings with addictions and vices the same as any of us. A younger version of me would have said that their way of life is dying out but now I'm not so sure. Their way of life is overtly hostile to my own. This window into their lives is interesting, but I am very glad they're stuck in Boone County, West Virginia.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Saw Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, an extremely post-modern film about (as far as I can tell from the film) a rambling novel written as if it were an autobiography that interrupts itself, runs backwards and forwards in time, comments on the writing of the book and all manner of narrative goofiness. In the spirit of this, the film itself follows the actors playing the lead roles, the behind-the-scenes drama of filming, re-filming, and rewriting the movie, even explaining (in voice-over) that an extended version of this scene will be available on the DVD. This is a film after my own heart.

The film is extremely messy. It's hard to parse what the film is about, however one character is a film buff and seems to spell out in one scene what the point of it all is, but of course they're just a character in the film, so who knows. Perhaps their explanation is ironically skewed for comic effect. The point (if we are to take their word for it) is that life is messy and difficult but that our futile efforts to combat this are noble and should be praised. A neat little message from a messy film.

Although the theme of the film resonated with me, the execution did not. I found it a tad dry and restrained for a comedy. Then again these high-wire self-referential films often have to be a bit dry in order to not confuse the audience (cf. Charlie Kaufman's work) so perhaps it's forgivable. It was sort of a slog at parts though. The last scenes, which happen during the credits, are almost the most fun. The two main actors just sit and joke with each other. Their chumminess is a bit contrived, but they are amiable and likable.

Street Fight

Saw Street Fight, an extremely dramatic look at the Newark mayoral race of 2004 between incumbent Sharpe James and Corey Booker, both black democrats. The film mostly follows the Booker camp, not by choice apparently, but because any attempt to film James is instantly shut down by city police. From the start, Booker is the underdog. Rumors of corruption swirl around Mayor James and without any means of access, those rumors are left unchallenged. As the race draws closer and tightens, things get dirty. Booker's blackness is called into question. He's accused of being gay and (for some reason) Jewish. The tension mounts incredibly as the election draws to a close.

The documentary is fascinating, providing a literally street-level view of the Booker campaign. I wish we could have seen the other side. Was Booker's team tearing down James signs as the James team was Booker's? It's extremely frustrating at parts but, you know, this is how the sausage is made even in the relatively small-potatoes race for Mayor. The aftermath, after the film ends, is a comforting epilogue to the whole thing.

The Asphalt Jungle

Saw The Asphalt Jungle, a heist noir. It's a fairly straightforward film. The plan is laid out, the troops assembled, the heist, then the tricky aftermath for the denouement. This film comes to us from the 50s and is interesting in how it humanizes its characters. The most fascinating character is the rich guy who's bankrolling the operation. He's struggling financially and the actor who plays him does an excellent job of subtly stuttering and wincing, belying his confident exterior. Well done.

This film comes to us from the 50s, a time of deep law and order, and yet the protagonists are fairly likable. They're a far cry from the gleeful psychopaths and foreign agents of the 40s noirs. Then again, the ringleader of the gang is German - surely this is a significant thing for the 50s, when memories of WW2 must have been quite fresh. The ringleader is a kind of gentleman, very clever and always talking about his love for beautiful ladies. Maybe in the 50s this was meant to indicate complete sexual depravity, but to me today it just seemed humanizing and kind of sympathetic. There's also a fairly moving speech near the end of the film from the Police Commissioner to a gang of hostile press agents about the necessity of having cops and the terrible evils in this world. There's a tension here between sympathy for the bad guys and condemnation of their actions.

This was not a super-exciting film. The sympathetic bad guys are fairly straight-laced and genteel. Very polite, but not very exciting. The films simultaneous sympathy and condemnation suggests a subversive underbelly, kept in check either by McCarthyism or by the Production Code. Unfortunately, I only really picked up on this by the end of the film and anyway lack the context to tell what's really shocking about it. I should see this film again.