Cess Pool Cinema:
NA
The Banal, the Blah, the Banausic:
NA
Astounding Cinema:
8. The Trigger Effect (1996) Dir. David Koepp - US
7. Trust the Man (2006) Dir. Bart Freundlich - US
6. The Life of Emile Zola (1936) Dir. William Dieterle - US
5. Five Easy Pieces (1970) Dir. Bob Rafelson - US
4. He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (2002) Dir. Laetitia Colombani - France
3. Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) Dir. Robert Wise - US
2. They Live (1988) Dir. John Carpenter - US
1. Dancer In the Dark (2000) Dir. Lars Von Trier - Denmark
Theatrical Releases:
4. Into Temptation (2009) Dir. Patrick Coyle - US 4/10
3. Halloween II (2009) Dir. Rob Zombie - US 4/10
2. Cold Souls (2009) Dir. Sophie Barthes - US 6/10
1. Lorna's Silence (2008) Dir. Jean & Luc Dardenne - Belgium 10/10
In an effortless stroke of luck, I didn't happen to watch any mediocre or shitty films from the last week! Too bad theatrical releases like Halloween II and Into Temptation had to be so awful. I also had some issues with Cold Souls, but I may be biased due to a distrust of Paul Giamatti's abilities as far as screen presence go. It's sometimes difficult to be motivated to review films you found mediocre, hence my lack of review on this film.
You may be more familiar with the name of David Koepp as a screenwriter---he's penned several high profile Hollywood projects over the last several years, including the last Indiana Jones installment, Angels & Demons (2009) and War of the Worlds (2005)----not to forget early 90's films he also wrote, Jurassic Park (1993) and Death Becomes Her (19920. He has also directed several of his own films, those being The Trigger Effect (1996), Stir of Echoes (1999), Secret Window (2004), and Ghost Town (2008). Now, I think Stir of Echoes may be his best directorial effort, and I have been meaning to sit down and watch his feature debut, The Trigger Effect, for some time, especially since discovering it was inspired by one of my favorite episodes of "The Twilight Zone," an obvious piece of social commentary, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street." Examining modern passive aggressive tendencies towards race and classism, the film's first half is excellent, but kind of falters in the second half, concluding with a weak ending. Focusing on a well-to-do suburban couple played by Elisabeth Shue and Kyle MacLachlan (who would have been fresh of the embarrassing Showgirls, 1995) the film opens with an excellent and tense little scene in a movie theater involving and incident with an African American character played by Richard T. Jones---who doesn't appear again until the last portion of the film, which seems nearly pointless by this time in the narrative. The night of the cinema, all of the electricity goes out and stays out for several days without explanation, causing, as you can imagine, a fast paced breakdown of civilization. While Shue & MacLachlan stay in their neighborhood, the film is the most effective. An old friend of MacLachlan's drops by, played by Dermot Mulroney, who is clearly more working class and has some sexual tension with Shue. When a burglar of their house is shot and killed by a neighbor (the burglar turns out to be Jack Noseworthy), the bickering trio decides to leave the city for a safer destination. It is when they leave on the highway that the film falls apart and loses most of its credibility---however, it's an excellent little piece of cinema and the three leads fuel the tension and the sometimes meandering narrative.
Julianne Moore is one of my favorite actresses out there. (Imagine how I felt when she did a movie with Sigourney Weaver! Sacre Bleu!) Her director/partner Bart Freundlich often uses Moore in his projects, and their greatest collaboration will perhaps always be The Myth of Fingerprints (1997). Their followup project, World Traveler (2001), was a bit of a dud, so I was interested to see how their third time round would work in what appeared to be a frothy relationship comedy. Moore is excellent as a somewhat well known actress married to David Duchovny, a couple whose main problem seems to be that Duchovny wants sex all the time and Moore is never in the mood (in retrospect, watching this after Duchovny's little sex rehab stint in 2008 makes this ironic to the nth degree). While I believed most of their predicaments, except for the very end, it is the relationship of Billy Crudup, playing Moore's brother and his longtime girlfriend, Maggie Gyllenhaal that falls completely flat. While both actors are good, their characters are clearly incompatible, and nothing changes enough for them to warrant any eventual reconciliation. While I think Freundlich's film is a tad inconsquential, and by the end, pure fantasy, I enjoyed all the main characters and their predicaments. It's worth a watch.
Ahhh, The Life of Emile Zola (1936), one of those early Best Picture winners that no one talks about anymore, along with its lead actor, Paul Muni's Oscar nominated performance. While I'm not certain how much it deserved to win (it was up against 9 other films, including the much hailed Lost Horizon) the subject matter I found fascinating. It's too bad that French writer Emile Zola seems to have fallen out of popularity and critical discussion. I have made it a priority to finally sit down and read Nana. While anyone that knows me knows how I despise English speaking films depicting non-English speaking people, my initial interest in this film was for two of its supporting actresses, Gloria Holden (most famous for Dracula's Daughter, reviewed in a previous post) and Gale Sondergaard, the Oscar winning, Minnesota born actress, who I discuss in posts concerning The Spider Woman (1944) and The Climax (1944). Both women are particularly inconsequential here, especially Holden as Zola's wife (who I kept thinking was supposed to be his sister, so what does that tell you?). Most of the hubub around the actors focused on Muni and the Best Supporting Actor winning performance from Joseph Schildkraut as the wrongly imprisoned French soldier. Clearly a sensationalized, Hollywood account, if you're a fan of the earlier talkies, this film is at least engaging---and you might get curious enough to look up the real facts about a historical figure or two.
Oh Jack Nicholson. Remember when he was young and considered good looking enough to be the male lead? No? Well, it was a long time ago. And in his first Oscar nominated performance in Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces from 1970, he still seemed evil and creepy. Though he puts in a good
performance, the film revolves around Nicholson working in the oil rigs after leaving his upper class piano playing family----and actually, now that I think of it, Francis Ford Coppola's new film, Tetro, has A LOT of similarities to Five Easy Pieces. But for the life of me, I just didn't buy Nicholson as an ex-piano playing savant. The real standout of the film is Karen Black as Nicholson's head over heels numbskull girlfriend. (Speaking of Karen Black, check her out in this recent music video from a band called Cass McComb). Receiving word that his father is in ill health, Nicholson returns to his family (and along the way we get snippets of a young Fannie Flagg--she wrote "Fried Green Tomatoes"--Toni Basil, who sang "Mickey" and a sallow looking Sally Struthers, who has an icky sex scene with Nicholson). Reuniting with his strange sister played by Lois Smith (remember Helen Hunt's strange mom in Twister, 1996?) Nicholson falls in love with the piano playing Susan Anspach, a woman staying at the family house and about to be married to a relative. Anspach, looking like Toni Collette, actually sleeps with Nicholson, causing him enough personal turmoil to turn this into one of those kitchen sink dramas in the vein of all those 50's and 60's Brit films like Look Back In Anger (1958) with Richard Burton. I recommend this as required viewing for any cinephile---a lot of themes Rafelson touches on are constantly expounded upon in the work of later auteurs, in particular, Coppola and Wes Anderson.
Oh Audrey Tautou---though I love Jean Pierre Jeunet and French actresses in general, I never quite fell into the Audrey craze. I much prefer the diabolical darkness of an Isabelle Huppert, or the comic genius of Catherine Frot, or the bitchy sex kitten-now-aged cougar of Catherine Deneuve. Audrey's persona is like that of a Sandra Dee or a Doris Day---so sweet and cute. While I don't hate that, it's just not my bag. Which is why I so thoroughly enjoyed He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (2002), just a year after Amelie, in which Tautou happens to be sugary and sweet---but laced with arsenic. Playing a disillusioned young painter obsessed with a successful cardiologist that doesn't share the same affections, Tautou systematically ruins his profession, his marriage and his life in order to win his affections. Even the cute narrative style turns itself into a dangerously serious narrative, especially when Tautou manages to send the cardiologist an actual harpooned human heart. The cardiologist's (French star Samuel Le Bihan) wife happens to be played by another celebrated French actress, Isabelle Carre. Strangely, Isabelle Carre would go on to star in another excellent Gallic film with a narrative similar to this, but to even more dark and dangerous efect, called Anna M (2007), in which Carre stars as an unbalanced young woman dangerously obsessed with a physician. I smell a thesis paper about French values.
This week's Shelley Winters pic (I believe I am in the middle of seeing all of her major films) happened to be an excellent film noir directed by master filmmaker Robert Wise called Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Also starring Robert Ryan, Harry Belafonte and Ed Begley, the film revolves around a dangerous bank heist put together by Begley. However, tensions rise when Robert Ryan turns out to be a disgusting racist and Belafonte, refreshingly, won't tolerate his bullshit. Beyond Winters, I was tickled pink to see Gloria Grahame (who gets one truly icky scene with Robert Ryan) and a little known actress named Kim Hamilton as Belafonte's ex-wife. The gorgeous Hamilton happened to be in The Leech Woman (1960), as well as having a bit part in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) but trust me, no matter what your orientation, you'll remember a face as beautiful as hers. Of course, nothing goes as planned in Odds Against Tomorrow, but film noir always had one thing going for it---not shying away from the darker side of human nature and how they really behave.
My number two selection should really be tied with number one. I forget how good a director John Carpenter used to be. He has some serious misfires, but when he's good, he's really, really good. They Live (1988) --- which I hear is in the works to be remade---stars WWF wrestler "Rowdy" Rod Piper as working grunt who stumbles upon a pair of sunglasses that reveal the upper class yuppies to be aliens trying to take over the Earth as well as subliminal messages in nearly every magazine and billboard urging us to conform and obey, was surprisingly thrilling and enjoyable. And Mr. Piper, who I was sure would annoy me to no end, does play a dopey character, but he does kick some tight ass which includes a pretty good prolonged fight scene with character actor Keith David. I doubt a remake will have the same balance of cheese and believability as this fun little romp and I doubt anyone could spout the line "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum" to as great effect as Rowdy Rod Piper.
My number one selection is a hats off to Lars Von Trier with his Palm D'or winning 2000 film, Dancer In The Dark. Knowing I would most likely be made uncomfortable and reduced to tears as I often am with Von Trier's work (Breaking the Waves, 1996, Dogville, 2003) I knew I was in for a tearjerker, which perhaps is why I put off watching this for so long. I can see why some would be put off by this, especially if you don't care for Bjork's music, but she does give us a devastating and heartbreaking performance as a 1960's Czech immigrant who is slowly going blind and trying to save up money for a surgery that would correct the hereditary disease she has passed on to her son. Catherine Deneuve stars as her best friend and co-worker, generously looking out for her friend at work as her vision fails, and also a local production Bjork has been cast as the lead in of The Sound of Music. David Morse happens to be our antagonist, a pathetic excuse of a man, charged with taking advantage of our blind heroine. Dancer In The Dark was jarring and moving with several cameos from Joel Grey, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgaard and Paprika Steen adding gravitas to those in the know, but nearly every scene towards the tragic ending that involve Bjork and Deneuve, or Bjork and the kind prison guard played by Siobhan Fallon had me balling like a baby. Thus, I'm glad I watched it alone. I am scheduled to see Von Trier's latest gift of tortuous cinema the opening night of this year's Toronto Film Festival, AntiChrist, though I'm certain it won't move me quite as much as this film did.
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