Foolish Wives (1922)

Saw Foolish Wives (1922), a black and white silent film about a dastardly con artist posing as a disgraced Russian aristocrat along with his two female "cousins" who are of dubious relation to him.  The story kicks into gear to follow their latest caper: fleecing a naïve young wife of an American ambassador.

The film is a sort of wicked wish-fulfillment thing.  We follow the con artist as he cons (artistically) around Monte Carlos.  He gleefully gets away with most of what he attempts and only really gets any consequences at the end of the film.  I'm reminded of that quote from John Berger: "You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.” Similarly, I think we're meant to kind of guiltily enjoy this depiction of wickedness even as the film condemns it in the end.  It's nominally about the naïve young wife learning a thing or two about the world and what's best for her, but we spend so much time watching the con artist smirk and grin at his own wickedness, it feels a little weird.

The ending is a lot of fun.  It builds to a great crescendo of violence and chaos which is a treat to behold.  Getting there is a hair tedious and I had to pause it many times to get food or drink or something to keep me from falling asleep.  I have this weakness with silent films: they put me to sleep for some reason.  Anyway, this is an interesting film.  A bit overlong, but perhaps worth it for the ending.

House of Gucci (2021)

Saw House of Gucci (2021), a somewhat parodic and somewhat histrionic film about the Gucci fashion brand.  It's mostly about political and financial shenanigans pulled in beautiful mansions, penthouses, and cavernous marble restaurants.  The most central character is Patricia Gucci who marries into the family with nakedly avaricious intent.  The film follows her rise to power in spite of her gawky husband who just wants to be rich and unimportant.  Because she is a woman in the 60s, she must seduce and flatter and beg him to do what she deems to be the financially sounds thing to do.  This flattery and seduction however hides her true power and soon her creation gets away from her.

Contrast her struggle with the more broadly comical character of Paulo, the other son of the Gucci empire.  Whereas Patricia has talent and brains, she lacks direct opportunity.  Paulo has the opportunity but lacks the talent and the brains (as his father repeats twice in the film: "You're an idiot... but you're my idiot...") Patricia's husband has the opportunity but recognizes that he lacks the talent to run a global fashion empire.  There's a theme of talent vs opportunity here.

Anyway, it's a fairly fun film.  Much of it is a sort of high-style Godfather, with shady deals and shadowy financial problems that are sort of resolved off-screen.  I didn't find it very funny, but I'm not much of a laugher lately.  Paulo's malapropisms are funny and Patricia gets in some lines that are downright iconic ("In the name of the Father, the Son, and the House of Gucci" = I am dead.) The chilly fancy atmosphere is really the star of the show however.

She (1935)

Saw She (1935), a sort of Jules Verne or Edgar Rice Burroughs twist on Snow White.  It follows an English expedition into deepest Russia (or something, they're not very specific) to search for the fountain of youth, said by an ailing professor to be embodied in a flame of "pure radiation".  This pure radiation is to be found in an inexplicably warm, prehistory-evoking cave populated by brutish primitives.  The Snow White element comes in later along with the titular "She!" (always said looking into the distance: "She!") who is a vain and jealous queen of the cave-people.

Exciting stuff, but very campy.  It's interesting for the art deco design of the caves and statuary.  The performances feature broad and no-longer acceptable impressions of primitive tribes, dancing about fires and chanting and sacrificing our heroes and so on.  Of course there's a conventionally attractive damsel and some speechifying about eternal youth etc.  Some of the cave men wore some truly daring loin-clothes (someone call Lady Gaga!)

The film is decently silly and campy.  It's about the sort of thing you'd see on late-night movie shows.  It's not horrible or overly boring, just very dated and badly aged.  Ironic, considering the themes of eternal youth and all.

The Age Of Innocence (1993)

Saw The Age Of Innocence (1993), a sumptuous period film about a lawyer in 1800s New York who gets caught in a love triangle.  Should he settle down with his fiancé who is very sweet but seemingly nothing else, or should he jump ship and take up with the countess who is scandalous and penniless but who he connects with better on a human level?  This being a work of fiction, it is clear what the right choice is, but the deck is stacked with respectability and comfort and friends and family who want to ensure a smooth household.

The film is gorgeous.  It's set in period drawing rooms lavished with oil paintings and populated by characters swaddled in stiff, regal clothing.  Scenes gently fade in and out.  Even when the film wants to convey intense emotion, it does so with a focused pinhole shot, spot-lighting one of the character's eyes or something.  It's very old-fashioned, very classy.  Keeping with the aura of class and restraint, it is a little too slow and a little too quiet at times.  It's like having a meal at one of those restaurants that uses a square foot of white ceramic to serve you a small piece of pate.  The feelings are intense, but very buried under restrained performances and dialogue which gently hints and suggests what it means to say.

I was hoping for a little more hysterics and melodrama, but it's more restrained than that.  It reminds me of Titanic, but without a flashy ship-wreck scene in the climax, of course.  It wound up being mostly terribly sad in the end, showing how a desire for conformity and respectability damages all of us alike, but at the same time not throwing the fancy upper-class folks under the bus too much.

I didn't like the film as much as I'd hoped.  It was a little too restrained and period for my taste and the acting was so understated I had to sort of work to continue to care about the characters, but it was very classy, very fancy.  It felt like the sort of thing you'd claim to want to watch to impress your parents or your in-laws.  Like a visit to Granny's house, it's kind of old and pokey, but resonant and nice too.

The Boys in the Band (2020)

Saw The Boys in the Band (2020), a fairly emotional drama about a big gay birthday party in 1970s New York.  The film deals with the struggles of homosexuals of the time: being honest with ones self, with the world, not only about being gay but about what your sexuality means specifically for you.  In modern times, now that society is a bit more accepting of gay folks, the themes are a little less life-and-death (although, of course, there's still much progress to be made) but I feel this makes the film almost more relevant.  Now that we can talk about this stuff a little openly, we can really think about it.

The central point of the film is a little dated however: the idea is that we've got to be unabashed and proud, that we've can't take on society's ideas of respectability and of what relationships aught to look like, we've just got to be who we are.  Like, yes that's very true, but we know we know.  It bears repeating though.

Anyway, the film is was decent.  I'm glad I watched it alone because it contains a lot of stagey very sincere emotion.  It was a little melodramatic and self-important, but I guess it fits with the delightfully queeny, swishy characters.  I liked the film more or less, but it was awkward for me to watch.

The Batman (2022)

Saw The Batman (2022), the Robert Pattinson batman movie.  It was alright.  I enjoyed the dark, dismal obsessiveness of the film.  I liked seeing the central mystery of the Riddler's plot play out, Batman always just one step behind him.  There's a fair amount of silliness to the movie as well, and I enjoyed some of the silliness (a giant gothic mansion at the top of a sky-scraper) but I did not so much enjoy other bits of silliness (why does an illegal drug have a mascot?)

This time Batman is up against the Riddler.  As Batman media likes to do, they establish that the two of them (Batman and Riddler) are similarly obsessive and driven, willing to employ violence to meet their goals.  The Riddler in this film is portrayed as being some kind of anonymous 4chan shit-poster, livestreaming his threats as gouts of heart emojis flutter beneath.  There are uncomfortable parallels to real life, where online mobs are sometimes stirred up to the point where a lone gunman takes action (or besieges a capitol.)

It's been pointed out before that the Batman of the Nolan films is a right-wing Batman: he's wealthy and powerful, taking justice into his own hands, and trying to solve the problems of poverty and crime with his fists.  His enemies are psychopaths and terrorists who are enabled by a corrupt system of courts and by a prison/mental hospital that seems to be a revolving door.

This film's treatment of the character is more apolitical, focusing more on morbid solitude, dark rooms, a slowly emerging serial killer.  It's more of an action/horror movie than an action/thriller.  In the beginning of the film, Batman saves a man from a gang.  After beating up the gang members, Batman turns to the victim who cowers, saying "Please don't hurt me!"  Batman is trying to save the city of Gotham, but he's doing it very badly.  The confrontation with the Riddler mirrors his own realization of the flaws in his approach.

The film is okay all-in-all.  I like Batman movies generally, and this one delivered on morbid, dark cityscapes and had a compelling villain.  I think it's not one of the more popular films however and it definitely has some silliness to it, so I understand why someone wouldn't like it.  It's also about 3 hours long.  It also stars poor Robert Pattinson who may never shake the contempt heaped upon him for his involvement in the Twilight films.  Poor devil, he is also made to brood and skulk and act like a muscular Kurt Cobain when not in his Batman outfit.  I think this is one of those films where you get what you put into it.  If you expect a clumsy disaster, you'll see pieces of that.  If you expect a decent film, you'll see pieces of that instead.  It's subjective.

42 Street (1933)

Saw 42 Street (1933), a Busby Berkeley film about a stage production which is the last chance for almost everyone involved.  The director is destitute and sick with some non-specific ailment, the leading lady is the lover of the idiot financier who is backing the production and the millionaire producers are also somehow depending on this productions success.

The film is kind of old and pokey.  In an attempt to appeal to all audiences, it involves many plot threads which intersect and tie together in complex ways.  The most main character I suppose is this young newcomer who guilelessly "gosh"-es and "gee whiz"-es her way into the show (and thence to stardom, of course.)  The film is full of funny one-liners which take a little forensics to understand now-a-days.  There's many other little plates that are spinning: the director and the leading lady are all major players whose stories barely intersect.  In an effort to appeal to all audiences, the film has many hooks to grab on to.

The film also builds to truly impressive Busby Berkeley dance sequence.  If you've ever seen old-timey video of hundreds of chorus girls in a circle making complex geometric designs with their legs or diving into a swimming pool or whatever, that's due to this guy Busby Berkeley.  This one ends with a 5 minute climax of this stuff which is actually very impressive.  The rest of the film was a little slow however (and I think I've seen it before, but I have no record of this.)

Finally, although the film was made in the 30s, you can still kind of tell that the director guy is supposed to be gay.  He has no love interest and no interest in the actresses and show-girls at all.  At one point, at his lowest, he asks his stage director to come home with him ("I'm lonely.") A flattering portrayal it ain't, but I'll take what I can get from the 30s.

So, the film is not that phenomenal.  The last five minutes or so are great, but getting there is work.  If you've seen one of the many show-biz films about a production coming together under impossible odds, you've more-or-less seen this one.  It has bits that still work and sparkle today, but mostly it's faded too much for me.

Lancelot du Lac (1974)

Saw Lancelot du Lac (1974), a fairly grim film about the doomed romance between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere of the Arthurian court.  It is uncharacteristically violent, opening with some very obviously fake but very bloody beheadings and hangings and so on, but the film has a strong, 70s-ish lo-fi aesthetic, focusing on deep forests and lovely green trees.  This preoccupation with scenery leads to some almost perverse choices however.  At one point there's a climactic joust that is shot almost entirely from the waist down.  We see pounding horse hooves and the dust and horse shit on the track, but we don't see cheering crowds, we don't see the faces of the combatants.  It's the most removed and chilly treatment of a joust you'll ever see.  It's a very strange and counter-intuitive way to shoot the scene.

The whole film is like that in a way.  Major plot points occur off-screen, only revealed by dialogue post-facto.  All of the characters deliver their lines woodenly, calmly informing each other of court scheming, or making frank assertions about honor and love.  It gives the film a deliberate, ritualistic, almost frustrating cadence which seems in contrast to the sudden violence in the start of the film.  The slow, measured tone is perhaps fitting for the subject matter however.

The themes of the film revolve around duty vs love, honor vs happiness, the doomed central romance.  Lancelot is recognized as the greatest of all of the knights, and he strives for greater perfection, but his strength destroys itself.  By refusing to let his honor falter and by being unable to give up Guinevere, Lancelot destroys himself.

I gotta say also that Guinevere comes off fairly badly in this film.  She talks about how delighted she is to betray King Arthur and, in one scene, while she is bathing in preparation for a tryst with Lancelot, she is shown languidly admiring herself in a mirror.  The film does not shy away from implicating Guinevere in Lance's downfall which I think cheapens it a bit.

Edit to add: this film is also very in-line with the interests of 1970s films: the strong protagonist struggling against the expectations society.  Contrast Lancelot with the villain, Mordred, who uses guile and lackeys to accomplish his goals, whereas Lancelot is stoic, self-motivated, and does not feel the need to explain himself.

All in all a kind of frustrating film.  The central story is familiar and delivered with some art-house flair but (alas) also with some art-house austerity.  This is not a film for casual viewing.  It's slow and a bit demanding.