The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a nice little coming of age film about a boy who is just starting high school.  He has no friends and his high school is played up as one of those movie-places where letterman-jacket-clad jocks are always hazing the freshmen.  His life begins looking up when he meets a to-cool-to-be-popular brother and sister who introduce him to cool music and Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The film reminded me of Silver Linings Playbook in as much as it's a fairly fluffy film which is not afraid to delve into some darker psychological waters.  In particular, there's a freakout sequence near the end of the film which I adored.  The film leading up to that point is fairly standard attractive teen melodrama (which I greatly enjoyed since I have a fondness for melodrama) but the ending tips into sublime psychodrama (which is the drama that I like best of all!)

The film is very slickly shot but with some elements of subtle story-telling.  We get the sense that something is wrong with the main character, that he has some troubled past, but we don't get to know exactly what's eating him until far into the film.  But he drops little clues here and there that presage the ending and help explain why he's such a non-entity in most of the film.

I liked the film alright.  It felt like a slightly updated John Huges film, with sweetness and sincerity that feels a hair manufactured, but which is nonetheless.  Unlike John Huges however, this film is shot in a more modern, cozy way, with handheld cameras lending an air of intimacy and close-up shots galore.  It's not the most trenchant film, but as teen fare goes, you could do worse.

Kes (1969)

Saw Kes, a sort of sad film about a little boy who lives in a Yorkshire mining town with his single mother and drunken older brother.  He is bullied by his brother, bullied by teachers, bullied by other kids.  Things change a bit however when he starts training a kestrel.

The film starts off with the brother bullying the main character boy, signaling that this will not be a happy movie.  The small town is not a slum, but everyone is visibly struggling and worn out by the struggle.  At one point the boy buys some meat to feed the bird and in the background you can hear a screaming match going on.  That's just life here.  Similarly at school the teachers are indiscriminately cruel, not so much arbiters of justice as terrible ogres to be avoided at all cost.

The kestrel symbolizes the main character's soul: his desire for something more and his bright personality, not yet worn down by his harsh life, but already beginning to be subdued.  The bird is what he aspires to be like and, in one scene where he talks to his classmates about the bird hunting, the bird makes him unique and fascinating and splendid.  Of course we viewers know that it's hard to maintain any of that in the slums.

The main character is fairly young but acts with great naturalism, apparently improvising a lot of his dialogue.  The film is shot almost entirely via hidden camera, which gives the film a grainy look.  Often the corners of the shot are cut off, making everything feel cramped and dim.  In contrast, the scenes of nature are shot more conventionally, giving them the feeling of comparative light and space and beauty.

The film is relatively dismal, but not without its moments of tenderness and happiness.  It's the sort of film you show to teenagers to inspire them and to try to get them to be empathetic.

The Golden Door (2006)

Saw The Golden Door, a very narrowly focused film about an Italian family immigrating to America in the 1920s.  The film opens following a small family and, as they proceed through immigration, it widens into a broader look at specifically what went down in Ellis Island back then.  The film employs elements of magical realism which are at first jarring but become lyrical at the end.

Combined with this trip across the Atlantic, there is a budding romance developing between the patriarch of the family and another immigrant woman.  The film uses this relationship as a mirror for the excitement and anxieties of immigration.  On the one hand, they strongly desire to immigrate, but are they fit enough?  Are they worthy?  These questions are reasonable for a relationship but less so for immigration.  At one point, one of the immigrants berates the officers, demanding who they think they are, to judge ones worth?  This contrast is brought to a peak in a scene where "brides" must be identified by their American "grooms" in a highly ritualized, government sanctioned ceremony overseen by a disinterested bureaucrat.

Early in the film, we spend a lot of time in the nearly medieval squalor of rural Italy, but the latter half of the film involves a lot of scenes of bureaucratic cruelty.  The film has a spare, floating quality to it, featuring long silences and sudden tonal shifts.  I found the film engrossing, although it was a bit of a downer.  It feels like a glimpse into another time, another world, one which still exists to some extent.

My Life as a Dog

Saw My Life as a Dog, a sweet coming of age film about a little boy who is sent to live in a remote town with his uncle's family due to his mother's poor health.  In this new remote town, he makes friends and has fun, haunted and troubled by his mother's illness and the chaos it brings to his life.  He deals with the sweet and the bitter, trying to resolve them in his mind.

The film is one of those coming of age films that are sweet and melancholy, acknowledging the pain in the protagonist's life, but stridently dusting him off and hustling him on to new adventures.  We ruminate, but we don't mope.  The child's view of the world is accepting but uncertain.  Is this the way things are?  Or just how they happen to be?

I enjoyed the film okay.  It didn't make a huge impression on me, but it's a serious and kindly film.  You could watch it with your parents if you wanted.

Entranced Earth (1967)

Saw Entranced Earth (1967), a political film about a power struggle in the fictional South-American country of Eldorado.  The hegemony as personified by a media mogul is squaring off against a populist democratic leader.  The protagonist is a poet who works for the media mogul but backs the populist.  The film starts off by giving the ending away: that the populist candidate wins, but immediately calls in the army to quell dissent and to disperse crowds.  He is as bankrupt as the media mogul.

The film has the feel of a Goddard film: lots of high-falutin' talk about the people and the masses and socialism and religion and democracy etc etc and lots of men in suits smoking and talking.  Also like Goddard, the film is full of little stylistic flourishes.  Several times people talk directly to the camera, clips of future events are dropped in early, or fantasies are spliced in as reality.  There's a long sequence at the end where a politician is crowned with a pope hat, laughing and laughing.

The film is aiming at political unrest and discontent.  It's even-handed in that everyone comes off looking somewhat bad.  The central protagonist wants what's best for the people and the country, but he is an intellectual idealist, and even he is revealed to be somewhat bankrupt, when he threatens a peasant who is asking that his land be returned to him.  The film gives away that this is going to be a downer in the opening scene, where the populist leader starts calcifying into yet another dictator.  It feels true to life, but also cynical, bitter, rabble-rousing.

I didn't really dig this film (just like a Goddard film!)  It was a little dreary and frustrating to watch and, frankly, if I want to see depressing failures of the political process, I need look no further than recent headlines.  There's plenty enough to be depressed about.  I frankly could use a more up-beat, optimistic take on democracy.  My general feeling is too pessimistic already, leading me to embrace a kind of not-very-productive isolation.  Enough already.

The Witches (2020)

Saw The Witches (2020), an adaptation of the Roald Dahl story which follows a young boy and his grandmother battling a secret society of witches who plot to transform all children everywhere into mice.  I wanted to see this film because I had fond memories of the 90s adaptation and wanted to see how this film's deep south setting would inform and inflect the film.  I guess I had forgotten however and deeply strange and paranoid the premise of the film is.  The final result is mostly harmless kiddy fare, but there are barely-hidden undercurrents which play uncomfortably in these modern, conspiracy-haunted times.

The chief protagonist, the Grand High Witch, is played extremely broadly as a CGI cartoon evil monster, hissing and belching out her lines.  We are told that witches such as she are not human at all but demons in female form.  The witches appear to be wealthy, single, white, and bent on destroying humanity for seemingly no reason.  In the 90s, I think this may have already had unfortunate associations, however in modern days, as the political right associates more and more with godliness, they cast their political enemies as satanic, demonic, child predators.  Although the film is (I guess) trying to be a fun little romp, it felt deeply sad and depressing to see this lovely, sensible grandmother earnestly telling her wide-eyed grandson about demons in female form.

The film is directed by Robert Zemeckis who is known for interesting visual effects (Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and for what it's worth the setting is used to great effect.  The trees and beaches and the hotel itself looks just gorgeous and the main characters are well-drawn.  The film opens with a sequence showing the grandmother melting her grandson's trauma and welcoming him into her life.  To me, this magic is far more impressive than merely turning someone into a mouse, and the witches themselves and their magic feels like a paranoid delusion taken too seriously by comparison.  They (the witches) are wacky and cartoony, neither scary nor amusing, but sort of off-putting and strange, like a nightmare someone else had.  I didn't like one.

Love Streams (1984)

Saw Love Streams (1984), a film I started off hating but which grew on me as it went on.  It revolves around a brother/sister duo, Robert and Sarah, who both have complex relationships to love and sex.  Robert is a creep who buys a whole house-full of prostitutes for a weekend.  He drunkenly steals a lounge singer's car and flirts with the singer's mother.  He's a hideous drunk from the depths of the 70s.  Sarah meanwhile is a woman with a big heart who is pathetically obsessed with her ex-husband and daughter who she seems to have smothered with affection and neediness and who she is lost without.

The film opens with Robert boozing and whoring and working his shaggy charms on ladies, and I thought this was going to be a another one of those films that lionizes this pickup-artist, celebrating him with faint condemnation, ala The Wolf of Wall Street or Scarface.  The film takes a turn however, showing Robert abandoning a newly discovered biological son to go whoring and stumbling down hotel hallways, stumbling into walls.  He's an alcoholic and probably a sexaholic as well.

Similarly, Sarah is played by Gena Rowlands, at first appearing to be a somewhat controlling woman who is hurt by a messy divorce but ultimately descending into a reprise of her character in A Woman Under the Influence.  She relies upon all of the men in her life, including taxi drivers and bellhops, to take care of her, using their squashy sensibility to balance her obsessions and manias.  

The film is fascinatingly strange.  It starts out as a standard 70s lionization of independence and excess but contains wild stylistic choices and plot points.  It feels like a satire that was taken seriously.  There's lines that are goofy one their faces but which are delivered with great seriousness, brittle and sincere.  I wouldn't recommend the film as a crowd pleaser; it's very complex and strange.  I enjoyed the film for its strangeness however, for what it made me think.  There's a scene where a pit bull turns into a nude man.  Seeing this, Robert erupts into gales of laughter, shouting "who the fuck are you?" and that's amazing and strange and delightful.