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Movies/TV I saw last month...

Ashes and Diamonds (1958)—I think I might have been a little lost coming in for the third movie in a trilogy without seeing the others, plus it's also the first picture I've seen by director and co-writer Andrzej Wajda  Dense and complex, acutely observed, following various players in Poland on the day World War II ended and the next day, an interesting mix of the dread of Nazis and another kind of dread of the Russians.
Attack of the 50 Foot Cheerleader (2012)—Gallant cheerleader vs. Goofus cheerleader. Who will win? Because actually this movie has two 50-foot cheerleaders. In fairness, only Goofus cheerleader actually attacks anything.
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)— Comical. The hands—watch for the hands. What they had money for. IMDb description: "When an abused socialite grows to giant size because of an alien encounter and an aborted murder attempt, she goes after her cheating husband with revenge on her mind."
Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995)—Just a little bit bigger and just a little bit sillier than Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (above).
Ballast (2008)—Nicely done indie with a sharply observed story about a fractured family attempting to make it through crisis in the Mississippi Delta area. Directed and written by Lance Hammer, who seems to otherwise have only to his name some special effects credits on Batman & Robin, Batman Forever, and Practical Magic. Have seen none of them, but Ballast is definitely recommended.
Children of Men (2006)—Can really hit its stride, usually in terms of the action. There's a great ambush scene early, for example. But I wasn't convinced the premise was thought through enough—the reach of this picture far exceeds its grasp. Then again, taking on the depiction of a world more than a decade down the road from the end of all human fertility tends to beggar imagination in the first place.



The 400 Blows (1959)—Lovely, as always.
Frownland (2007)—The unkind term is "mumblecore." This has some interesting points but too often becomes opaque of intent. "Pathetic existence" does not automatically equate to "black comedy."
The Gingerbread Man (1998)
Gomorrah (2008)—"Martin Scorsese Presents" this reasonably good Italian gangster picture, set in modern-day Italy. Features interweaving stories and cruelty.
Grace of My Heart (1996)—I love this movie because it's so in love with so many species of '60s pop music. Also some very nice casting: Bridget Fonda (pitch-perfect as a hung-up teen mag idol), Peter Fonda (as a wacked-out California guru), Bruce Davison (too often underrated), Richard Schiff, and John Turtorro (maybe never better, and he's always good), among others.
Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004)—Full-of-itself celebration of the awesome-cool circumstances of the Patty Hearst kidnapping and subsequent events involving her. More into myth-making than exploring what actually happened. Cool guitar soundtrack, though repetitious.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)—I understand this was the first movie until that point, going back to before Birth of a Nation, to never once move the camera. It also has very long takes and very little happens. It is oddly mesmerizing, if you go in for this kind of thing as I sometimes do. I haven't looked up the literature yet to see if it's a common issue, but I must say on first look that I found a wonderful 190 or so minutes marred by an ill-advised plot development (in a movie that has almost no "plot," I thought). I liked this enough that I expect I will go back to it again someday, long running time and all, and maybe that plot point will actually deepen it. It's good enough most of the time I'm willing to give it that much benefit of the doubt.
Looney Tunes—"The Abominable Snow Rabbit" (1961), "Ali Baba Bunny" (1957), "The Bear's Tale" (1940, terrific mash-up of Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood), "Bewitched Bunny" (1954), "Buccaneer Bunny" (1948), "Bugs' Bonnets" (1956), "14 Carrot Rabbit" (1952), "Hollywood Daffy" (1946), "Mouse and Garden" (1960), "Oily Hare" (1952), "Paying the Piper" (1949), "A Pest in the House" (1947), "Porky's Poor Fish" (1940), "A Star Is Bored" (1956), "Stupor Duck" (1956), "The Stupor Salesman" (1948), "The Super Snooper" (1952), "Swallow the Leader" (1949), "Transylvania 6-5000" (1963, it appears anything after 1961 latest sees a real drop off in quality at every level, they feel like egregious padding of the box), "The Up-Standing Sitter" (1948), "You Were Never Duckier" (1948)
The Mother and the Whore (1973)
My Life as a Dog (1985)—I remembered this as better. And I spent most of my time watching it thinking it was about to become better.
No Country for Old Men (2007)—Others have said it before me, but I will repeat them: in a second viewing the extreme turns of violence prove to be less distracting and it's easier to see what a fine picture this is—nearly pure cinema in many long passages with no dialogue, just immaculately conceived and blocked and shot action and reaction, piling atop one another in an intensely insane feedback loop. Seeing it within a day or two of seeing Touch of Evil (below) threw up some interesting connections—both are essentially border tales, crossing back and forth between Mexico and America, they are heightened tales explicitly addressing "decaying society," and incidentally they both have some particularly good motel scenes. No Country for Old Men suffers a little from a post-superhero tendency toward larger-than-life characters who can do anything—Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, who is nigh perfect) is a super-villain if ever one existed, and the coin-flipping trope is just silly. But blame where it belongs, a lot of that came from Cormac McCarthy's original novel. The Coens wisely sidestepped other of its problems, such as some slight tendency to maunder about greater generations of the past. This grabs hold and does not let go for every minute of its two hours. Inspirational line: "You don't have to do this." End times, baby. End times.
Poltergeist (1982)
Q (1982)—Here there be dragons, literally. Inhabiting New York. And only one person figures it out. Also: Michael Moriarity in full grip of the Method style of acting, David Carradine sleepwalking through another one, and Candy Clark almost unrecognizable.
Silent Running (1972)—Heavily dependent on the performance of Bruce Dern, which unfortunately is not great. The premise is a little strained too. But it's a movie with an outsize impact. Among other things, it looks like a key source for the Wall-E droid.
Strange Invaders (1983)—What did I just see? Halliwell's 2008 quotes Richard Jameson of the "Seattle Weekly": "Isn't so much a spoof of '50s sci-fi formulae as it is a running commentary on styles of cultural awareness." Worth a look.
Touch of Evil (1958)—Masterpiece.
A Trip to the Moon (1902)— Must-see classic by cinema pioneer Georges Melies. Charming, antiquated (check the formalwear), weird, and it's less than 13 minutes. Here's a nice version.
Triumph of the Will (1935)—What appears at first to be mostly a lot of parade footage (expertly shot and framed) gradually turns into something really quite chilling and extraordinary as it focuses on the closing ceremonies of the Nazi convention that it documents from 1934 in Nuremberg. Then it becomes almost unholy in a very strange way, albeit likely dependent on my (our) historical vantage. If you and I were there, we might well have been chanting "Sieg Heil" ourselves, but that's just a matter of human psychology. That's what makes it so chilling, especially when the light, glancing mentions of racial purity come up. Is it OK to say it reminded me of the 2004 Republican convention?
V for Vendetta (2005)—Boring (that double-bladed putdown), with not nearly as much to say as it appears to think.
Village of the Giants (1965)—I enjoyed this campy exercise quite a bit, which features Beau Bridges, Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon, the Beau Brummels, and Ron Howard playing a dopey kid with a chemistry set. All the hep teens in town call him "Genius." They seem to spend most of their time focused on finding way-out places to dance, like mud in a rainstorm. How are you going to keep a formula that turns them into giants away from them? That's right, you can't. I guess the title is a play on Village of the Damned?
The Virgin Spring (1960)—Efficient period piece by Ingmar Bergman retelling a folk story about a proud and foolish princess who is defiled and murdered. Some interesting business about Christians and heathens, moral angst, etc. All good, no more pretentious than it needs to be, and very clear what it's about. This is also the inspiration for Last House on the Left. Worth seeing.
Weeds (s5, 2009)—I was perfectly ready to sit through this season and formally give the series up. It's true that the first three are likely all that's essential. But they are very essential, and mastermind Jenji Kohan is so good at juggling various TV-inflected balls—sitcom rules of the road, outlandish dramedy developments (with narrative arcs that cohere in spite of that), a spectacularly good core cast, surprising guests (Alanis Morissette?!), lots of style, and a refreshing view of marijuana culture—well, I just signed on for another season, God help me.

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Movies/TV I saw last month...

The Act of Killing (2012)—As sickening as you could want, and thus on some level a kind of porn—I fear we are entering Faces of Death territory with this documentary, which carries the imprimatur of executive producer credits for Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, among others (and one of its three co-directors going by ANONYMOUS). It's brave and complex, yes, that's very true, inviting the hit men and murderers of the death squads operating in the service of the Indonesian government in the '60s and after to reenact their crimes for the film. It's amazing and appalling that they do—"documentary gold," as someone once said in another context. But the heart of what's most sickening about The Act of Killing is that it's too late now. These monsters are old men, and have lived long full lives. Also—and I know this will sound like complaining that the portions are too small at the restaurant where the food is not good—the subtitles on the DVD that Netflix is circulating are of the ridiculous variety I thought was extinct now, too small in the first place, and way too often allowed to get lost in the background. Maybe I'd like it better if I understood what people were saying, but I think I got the gist, so maybe I'd like it less.
The Amityville Horror (1979)
Another Year (2010)
Before Midnight (2013)—Worthy entry to what is now a very impressive trilogy. I still find the first movie to be the weakest, because necessarily the most callow, but in the broad scope I think all three now certainly rank together as one of the great epic romances in all movies. This one has some of the fearsome dynamics of Certified Copy, even as it continues to probe the realities and pressure points of a very convincing love story. Are they going to take it out again in 2022? Wow, can you imagine? An American 56 Up (below)!
The Class (2008)—I was pleasantly surprised by this 2008 Cannes winner directed and co-written by French director Laurent Cantet. It stars novelist and former teacher Francois Begaudeau playing himself, based on a book he wrote about his experiences teaching in a Parisian school. The students are of mixed ethnicities, classes, and income levels, and citizenship status among their parents is not always clear. Begaudeau teaches language arts classes for high school freshmen and sophomores. They can involve a lot of managing volatile classroom atmospheres, but more often it is about nagging shy adolescents to learn, trying to guide them into the skills of teaching themselves. The classroom scenes felt immediate and real and so did much of the film, which basically covers an academic year beginning to end, episodically, almost documentary style.



Easy Rider (1969)—A lot more psychedelic experimental than I remembered, but then I always forget it was co-written and directed by Dennis Hopper. It's really a blueprint for a type of soundtrack movie that has since become ubiquitous (looking at you, Goodfellas) and for that alone it's a big deal. It's also dated and can be a cringe-fest in places, but I still like the punch of the finale. Nearly as brutal that way as Night of the Living Dead.
Fellini Satyricon (1969)—Gorgeous to look at, unnervingly so in multiple places, but how much it has to tell us about Roman times and ways is I think signaled by the fact that "Fellini" is included in the title. Have a Fellini time!
56 Up (2012)—Yes, great. This latest edition stands with the rest, at least on my first look. Truly one of cinema's monuments. Start here.
Gertrud (1964)—Severe and austere, Carl Dreyer's last film is as always concerned with transgressions of the flesh and of the immortal soul, this time involving adultery explicitly. Somewhat abstracted perhaps, but the realities and the costs of human behavior are no less familiar and no less dear than in any other of his films.
Gravity (2013)—I liked this quite a bit. It has a wonderful use of 3D, the best I think I've seen, a wonderful sense for effects, and a terrific premise, conceptually taking one or two brief scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey and spinning them out for 90-odd minutes in truly spectacular fashion. It is flawed in some ways. It tries to be a movie about coming home when all it needs to be is a movie about coming down to earth. My friend and fellow traveler Steven Rubio made an interesting case for Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, for the importance of the roles being played by familiar stars, and I'm almost convinced. But I think the built-in personas ultimately came with too much baggage for me—I like something about Bullock, I don't like something about Clooney, so split the difference. I suspect nobodies would have worked better, as they did in 2001. Still, I think anyone would agree that director Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Children of Men) has put together something special again with this. Recommended—in fact, don't miss it in 3D if you can. Inspirational line (from Bullock): "I hate space."
Her (2013)—This struck me as a reasonably conventional romantic comedy, and as a fan of the genre I liked it very much overall. High praise for the performances of Amy Adams (yet again) and Joaquin Phoenix (also yet again). The near-future vision of Los Angeles alienation is as convincing as anything I've seen since They Live, the ways the exteriors are populated with isolated individuals wearing earpieces strolling and murmuring. But conceptually I have to say it's no better or more interesting than three or four of the Black Mirror episodes (which is by way of recommending Black Mirror). Director and writer Spike Jonze has worked in the past with Charlie Kaufman on Adaptation. (2002) and Being John Malkovich (1999), and even without Kaufman Her suffers from some of the precious fancies of those movies, as with the ridiculous job that we are intended to believe our hero, Theodore Twombly (Phoenix), holds. Or the overthought production design in general, the muted palette and fastidious costumes. But definitely worth a look.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)—Skillful—because the Coens are always skillful—rendering of a lost soul, but ultimately underwhelming to me because I'm not sure I understand what it's doing in the middle of a 1960s Greenwich Village period piece. Oscar Isaac as the title character, a singer / songwriter out of the school of Jack Johnson who is at loose ends in his life, reminded me a lot of Mark Ruffalo's Terry Prescott in You Can Count on Me (who, recall, had suffered a similar recent trauma), which is hardly a bad thing—but, again, advances it in history considerably beyond early-'60s downtown Manhattan. By design or not (pretty sure I saw some "light" cigarettes in there, as intentional a time shift perhaps as the Santana in A Serious Man, which is the better movie)—as a statement about "authenticity" or not—it's phony. The tell is the smug surprise at the end.
Lenny (1974)
Looney Tunes—"A-Haunting We Will Go" (1966, again, these later Speedy Gonzales just not that good), "The Aristo-Cat" (1943), "Cannery Woe" (1961), "Cat Feud" (1958, there are too few of these involving the love affair between the brutish bulldog Marc Anthony and the adorable kitty Pussyfoot, one of my favorite), "Chili Weather" (1963), "Conrad the Sailor" (1942), "Go Fly a Kit" (1957), "Dough Ray Me-ow" (1948), "Kiddin' the Kitten" (1952), "Kiss Me Cat" (1953), "A Message to Gracias" (1964), "Mexican Boarders" (1962), "The Night Watchman" (1938), "Nuts and Volts" (1964), "Pancho's Hideaway" (1964), "A Peck o' Trouble" (1953), "The Pied Piper of Guadalupe" (1961), "Pizzicato Pussycat" (1955), "The Sour Puss" (1940), "The Unexpected Pest" (1956), "The Wild Chase" (1965, particularly lame)
The Lords of Salem (2012)—Surprisingly excellent, this joint from director and writer Rob Zombie is not so much scary but rather out of that controlled frenzy Lovecraft / Argento strain of goth, ancient things, immutabilities, so on so forth. Set in Salem, Mass., but with a cool inexplicable talk-radio story and a single-woman jock in the foreground. It's modern and ancient at once, that winning combo. The witches were real, maybe needless to say. Lots of great touches every step of the way.
Masculin Feminin (1966)—Good one.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)—Masterpiece.
Mean Streets (1973)—Normally I pay attention to the coiling windup of the narrative in this one, but I've seen it enough now that other things are becoming more apparent, such as how much this owes explicitly to French New Wave movies by Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut. It's just razor sharp.
Metropolis (1927)—Even in a very poor public domain print with random (and repetitious) public domain classical music serving as score, I certainly see some impressive images go flashing by through the haze and shadow of the film decay, but the execrable print is a continual distraction. Therefore, next up: the Moroder version and the more recent restored version, adding additional footage that was discovered in a print in Brazil circa 2009. In the stacks. On the way. In the future.
Modern Times (1936)
My Darling Clementine (1946)—Starting to think Henry Fonda was the best actor that ever worked with John Ford, but I know that's more likely me being passive aggressive about John Wayne. But damn, man: Fort Apache, The Grapes of Wrath, and Young Mr. Lincoln. Two of those are in my top-5 list for Ford, and My Darling Clementine is #1.
Nashville (1975)
Nebraska (2013)—I liked this a lot. It has familiar elements for director Alexander Payne—the lure of the road, the estrangements from family, the arcs of self-destruction—but they fit nicely into the glove of today's bad times in Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska, shot in black and white. It reminded me a little bit of The Last Picture Show, but with vastly more humor, and harsher human wreckage. The screenplay by Bob Nelson is excellent, and it's got a very nice cast, headed up by Bruce Dern with a wonderful assortment of supporting characters, and a story that's both very sad and very funny. Recommended.
No (2012)—Not bad, not bad. I thought Chilean director Pablo Larrain's Tony Manero was more interesting, if not necessarily the better movie. This story of the 1988 Pinochet referendum in Chile comes with all kinds of built-in advantages, not least the upbeat story. Gale Garcia Bernal, Latin America's Jean-Pierre Leaud, is a welcome presence as always. The Mad Men plotline, involving two people in one ad agency working on opposing sides, is not only ridiculous, but "not true." And other points of importance have also been exposed as "not true," including the existence in reality at all of the main character, Rene Saavedra (Bernal). Well, nobody's perfect. Truthiness on display, at multiple levels.
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)—I always seem to have lots of Bob Dylan dreams after I see this.
Philomena (2013)—I know this is Oscar-bait of the most rank type, with a role written for a star to distort at will, but I still enjoyed it. I thought Judi Dench and Steve Coogan had some good anti-chemistry working, for one thing, and the story with clear heroes and villains is satisfying enough, which probably says something about my own disinclinations toward organized religion.
Short Cuts (1993)—So big there is always more to see in it, despite flaws, one of those. There's a scene between Jack Lemmon and Bruce Davison in a hospital that is both devastating and a real tour de force of movie performance. The thread with Jennifer Jason Leigh as the home-based phone sex worker gets more creepy every time.
Silent Light (2007)—Set in the Mennonite community of northern Mexico (and using the language / dialect Plautdietsch, also known as Mennonite Low German), Mexican director and writer Carlos Reygadas's molecular-slow meditation on an adulterous affair has many gorgeous frames, but proceeds so slowly that it feels like the thread continually eludes one. I was also distracted by the obvious Ordet references. I think it's not really about Mexico, or Mennonites, or adultery either, or even Ordet, but something rather much larger, which ultimately makes it rewarding. But it's a bit of work to get there.
Slap Shot (1977)—Nice Paul Newman vehicle, reuniting him with director George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting) for a comic sports movie about a failing minor league hockey team in a failing town in the '70s, victims of stagflation. The picture features a silver-haired silver-tongued devil Newman as an aging player/coach, the sheriff from Twin Peaks (Michael Ontkean) as the team's best player and a hockey purist, and the Hanson brothers, two of whom are actually played by brothers, who sneak in and take over the movie as surely as they do hockey games. At first they seem to be nerds beyond redemption, but when they get the chance to play they prove they understand the fundamentals, certainly for that day and age in case it has changed, which didn't have much to do with hockey. Their rowdy episodes of shouting alone, scene to scene, are brilliantly improvised moments and often very funny. The whole picture has a surprising headlong momentum. Worth a look.
The Sopranos (s6, 2006-2007)—I was spotty on everything so I started from the beginning and slow-walked this one in once I knew it was really finished in 2007. Partly I didn't want it to be over and partly, as a result of times with and without cable-TV, I had missed most of this very long last season and significant parts of others and wanted to see it all in order. The Sopranos always had a lot of problems to contend with— perhaps most notably, being yet another Italian mafia gangsters story, plus all the natural aimlessness, mechanical swells, and character invulnerabilities of series television. Some tendency toward art film pretensions, arguably. Middlebrow entertainment for the NPR middle class, OK, maybe. Yet I think all that was overcome, from the first minute of the first show to the last minute of the last, by its many virtues. It's a great sprawling story with great sprawling characters and complexity, with much of substance about good and evil and human frailty, a nonpareil cast headed by the amazing James Gandolfini, and for a bonus almost always great surprises on the soundtrack. Every episode made me tense and ill even as it went straight to the familiar heart of the American Dream over and over again. Maybe the biggest surprise? Especially in the first two seasons, it has one of the absolute best depictions of psychotherapy anywhere, ever—the kind you and I get, when our health insurance covers it.
3 Women (1977)—This is more or less director and writer Robert Altman's flier at a portentous European art film and as such he does a pretty good job of it, creating a very unsettling character in Pinky (Sissy Spacek) and by and large maintaining an air of ominous atmospherics in the California desert. But he's Robert Altman and he can't seem to help hitting broad warm notes, as in the tragic vacuous chattering of Millie (Shelley Duvall), who can never get her skirts all the way into the car and has a recipe for every occasion and never says die. She'll get along. This gives it a folksy charm that I like too, but I'm not sure it fits well with the tony air of cinema also going on here. Well, I suppose maybe it's not supposed to.
Trouble the Water (2008)—Interesting indie documentary with a compelling air of urgency. It includes footage shot in New Orleans as Katrina hit, before and after, with some scenes and stories of horrific privations and perils, such as people trapped in their attics as the water rose. And an aspiring hip-hop artist, Black Kold Madina (Kimberly Roberts), who shot some of the most affecting footage here and brings a lot of spirit and pathos to the project. Worth seeing.
12 Years a Slave (2013)—I had many worries about this, based on the unpleasant subject matter, the unpleasant Oscar-bait status, and the fact that I was so unimpressed with director Steve McQueen's universally beloved Hunger that I did not even bother with his only slightly less universally beloved follow-up, Shame. For all that, I have to say this is undeniable, a fine picture, well done, as brutal as last year's Django Unchained on the realities of slavery, but infinitely more true to the soul, with gravitas and foundational power in our shared history. The joke is that this is a movie about one slave who got away the same way Schindler's List is a movie about 600 Jews who didn't die. In this case, I have to say, by the time I reached it, I was grateful for the feel-good ending. Recommended.
Wagon Master (1950)—Good stuff, though I did notice, watching it on a double bill with My Darling Clementine (above), that a certain narrative resolution was virtually identical between the two, a cowardly turn of character by a bad guy once overpowered. What the hell, if it ain't broke don't fix it. In other news: "Yes, we'll gather at the river, / The beautiful, beautiful river."

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Movies/TV I saw last month...

American Hustle (2013)—I like Goodfellas and Boogie Nights too, so happy for the reverberations encountered here, plus the script has some nifty turns and twists. But I thought this one basically lived and died by its performances, which were uneven to say the least. Amy Adams is the best, just naturally working the role and the narrative. Christian Bale is doing one of those showy "stretch" roles but he's good. Bradley Cooper—was he still playing Silver Linings Playbook? Did he not know it was another movie? Jennifer Lawrence induced cringes constantly, though in fairness the role was conceived and written too poorly for anyone to salvage it probably. A disappointment though not without its pleasures. By definition, any movie with a disco scene and "I Feel Love" can't be all bad.
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)—I understand there are legitimate problems here as the director of this three-hour French film about adolescents and lesbians, Abdellatif Kechiche, is a man, and the woman who wrote the graphic novel on which it's based, Julie March, is complaining that he got it wrong. More: The title is not so much misleading as it is beside the point—the original, The Life of Adele - Chapters 1 & 2, is better and has the merit of being accurate and straightforward. I don't care about the production design (though it's very handsome and blue). It is also too long and the places to cut it are obvious (rhymes with "hex scenes"). But the performance by Adele Exarchopoulos as Adele is undeniable—she goes places here I did not know it was possible to go, and everybody else is pretty well keeping up. Flawed, but definitely worth seeing.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)—The most amazing part of this movie may be that it never looks old or feels stale, or hasn't yet. And it always finds a way to be devastating. This time the last conversation between Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway), Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty), and Bonnie's mother (Mabel Cavitt) really hit me. Her mother's loathing is palpable. Plus Gene Wilder!
Captain Phillips (2013)—Largely empty and unsatisfying exercise that somehow manages to not have its cake and not eat it too. Tom Hanks is fine in the title role. It's a decent script. Director Paul Greengrass (United 93, the second and third Bourne movies) is efficient and plainly in his comfort zone. The problem is basically the usual mess around "based on true events" pictures, where the excesses are pinned on either "it's true!" or "it's fictionalized!," where everybody knows what's going to happen because they already know what did happen, kind of, and where the occasion is ripe for hagiography. Thus, by the numbers, our humanized captain of the boat, our not entirely humanized Middle Eastern terrorist pirates, and our brutally efficient military. It's not hard to pick out the cues for good guys and bad guys, but it's not always easy to understand them.
Charade (1963)—Maybe a little on the slight side but fun to see. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are pros as much as anything else, and they are ably supported by the likes of James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Walter Matthau, plus it's a pretty neat pseudo-Hitchcock story of intrigue and double-dealing with a Paris setting. Directed by Stanley Donen (Singin' in the Rain, The Pajama Game). Good date movie.



Directed by John Ford (2006)—I don't know what else to do about John Ford worship except look at it, and this love letter from Peter Bogdanovich is a fine place to go for that. I never saw the 1971 original, which aired on TV, but this restored version adds later interviews with Maureen O'Hara, Clint Eastwood, and others, reediting original interviews with John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, and Ford himself, among others, plus there's voiceover narration by Orson Welles. Them's big names, pardner. The regard they all have for Ford (including Ford) is positively bracing, even more so a snippet of a conversation between Ford and Katharine Hepburn, recorded without their knowledge. I don't love Ford as much as any of these people—he sounds like a first-rate asshole, for one thing—but man, their appreciation is fierce.
Double Indemnity (1944)—Masterpiece.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)—As far as I've seen, the Apatow comedies always have a certain level of affable charm. Steve Carell's I'm-just-barely-fitting-in shtick works all right with the conceit here, and it's loose enough to sort of bear its own puppy-dog clownishness. But does it add up? Let me put it this way: I'm only a little sorry I took the time to look.
Goldfinger (1964)—I'm not much for James Bond, but yeah, this is good stuff. My first time seeing it front to back, I believe. I understand the Sean Connery mystique more now, and I like that it's surprisingly comical. Naming a major character Pussy Galore, and having everyone address her constantly by her first name, is the kind of stroke that alone would make this. Pussy's adorable squad of minions is another nice touch. Nothing is the least bit believable but that's not the appeal of Bond anyway, right? Right?
Klute (1971)—It's hard to make a thriller work when there's virtually no chemistry between the principals, and even harder when you also have something incoherent to say about the sexual revolution. Nonetheless it's fun to see an unbearably smug Jane Fonda up against Donald Sutherland, mixing it up in the prime of their delicious youths. Great look and feel all around, e.g., the cars, the grain of the film stock, the music.
Looney Tunes—"Booby Hatched" (1944, in a whole disc devoted to director Frank Tashlin, mostly from the '30s), "The Case of the Stuttering Pig" (1937), "Cat-Tails for Two" (1953, I'm going to need a lot of help with Speedy Gonzalez, and the unpretty stereotypes, from the '50s, are not helping), "Cracked Ice" (1938), "Here Today, Gone Tamale" (1959), "I Got Plenty of Mutton" (1944), "Knighty Knight Bugs" (1958), "Little Beau Porky" (1936), "Little Pancho Vanilla" (1938), "Mexicali Shmoes" (1959), "Now That Summer Is Gone" (1938), "Plane Daffy" (1944), "Porky in the North Woods" (1936), "Porky's Poultry Plant" (1936), "Porky's Railroad" (1937), "Porky the Fireman" (1938), "Puss N' Booty" (1943), "Rabbit Romeo" (1957), "The Stupid Cupid" (1944), "Tabasco Road" (1957), "Tortilla Flaps" (1958), "West of the Pesos" (1960), "You're An Education" (1938)
Masculin Feminin (1966)—This one from director and writer Jean-Luc Godard came to me highly recommended by more than one person, and it does seem to me to be about the best I can hope for from a director I struggle with. I like the black and white, I like the way Chantal Goya injects a certain pristine European pop aesthetic into it so naturally, and Jean-Pierre Leaud is Jean-Pierre Leaud, icon and implicit argument always for the sanctity of cinema. I like the way it is so densely and willfully layered with competing sensations, the layers of explicit manipulation: image, language, printed words, music, motion, any of which can strike with blunt force. And I like the way it is organized like a thesis, with 15 more or less numbered parts. I have a feeling it only gets better too.
Midnight Cowboy (1969)—A pleasure to see this again. Dustin Hoffman's performance is as skilled as it is ostentatious, but it's Jon Voight's (and 1960s New York's) movie anyway, a tremendously effective story of how big city modern values wear you down, eat you up, and digest you, a fine companion piece with Rosemary's Baby and Taxi Driver. The transformation of Joe Buck is an unholy sight to behold, beginning to end. In some scenes Voight plays it purely with his nervous eyes. I might complain a little of director John Schlesinger's gauzy swirling allusive approach, but no, I think it works well against the concrete realities it depicts. Count me among those who think it's the existential brutality, not the sex, that ultimately earned Midnight Cowboy its original X rating.
My Little Chickadee (1940)—All you need to know is W.C. Fields and Mae West, in pretty good form. From one of the weirdest and most wonderfully mismatched boxes I've seen, with Charade, Double Indemnity, and Pillow Talk (above and below).
Naked (1993)—Have been enamored of Mike Leigh pictures recently but I forgot how harsh this is. Opens on a rape and proceeds from there. Nobody to like, nothing to care for. Recommended, but with caution. I much prefer, for example, Happy-Go-Lucky and Another Year, and would say go to one or both of them first.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)—A lot of retail mythologizing of 1930s American South going on here: chain gangs, Robert Johnson, Babyface Nelson, radio shows and advertisements, etc. Does it add up? Thankfully no, although that also means it veers a bit between charming and annoying. I would imagine good as the backend of a double feature with Sullivan's Travels. And/or read the Homer. Though I have done neither.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)—I remember this as my favorite of the James Bonds I knew from my adolescence, mostly because of the skiing scenes. Not so much this time. Long (142 minutes), bloated, and tiresome.
Partner (1968)—I remain intrigued with the fascination in certain European circles for stories of doppelgangers, but I never connected with this third or so feature film from director Bernardo Bertolucci, which allegedly updates the Dostoevsky novel The Double to Italy and the anti-Vietnam '60s. I don't know the novel, but this film seemed to me more rudderless than otherwise, though Pierre Clementi's performance as a couple of lookalikes was impressive in moments.
Pet Shop Boys: A Life in Pop (2006)—A real pleasure to catch up with this. Although it's now going on eight years old and they have not really slowed yet, it effectively makes a case for the body of work at large that Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant have put together, clarifies a good many points about the enigmatic Lowe and what the Pet Shop Boys is and is not, and lets the music play for a glorious two and a half hours, covering everything up to approximately Fundamental. I have mostly steered clear of the videos, because I mostly steer clear of videos, so it was interesting to see and find out more about that side, and how it even affected their career (as with the "homoerotic" "Domino Dancing"). And I am dying to see Battleship Potemkin now with their soundtrack. Recommended.
Pillow Talk (1959)—Iconic. A favorite of mine I would hunt down on TV as a kid (among other things I was a fan of wholesome Doris Day). A classic story of the sexual revolution. "A dirty movie told clean," as someone said. Endlessly diverting still, more so in some ways, as in a now famous scene with Rock Hudson, in which, for perspective, a gay man is playing a straight actor who is playing a straight man who is pretending to be gay, by asking for recipes and such. All those great phone conversations in Mean Girls can trace their roots right back here. For fuck's sake see it.
Il Posto (1961)—A very quiet, very nice story of youth and early days catching on in a corporation with "a good job" and long-term security prospects. The message: What's Italian for "should auld acquaintance be forgot"?
The Searchers (1956)—I think among other things this might be the best use director John Ford ever made of Monument Valley, because the passes and detours and features were integrated so well into the story, as when Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) detours from the other two at one point and later reappears without his greatcoat, and only later do we find out an important plot point occurred there. The flaws are more rankling than ever—most (not all) of the hee haw moments—but there's a lot of good stuff too. A redemptive hee haw moment, for example: [sung slow] "Gone again, skip to my Lou / Gone again, skip to my Lou / Gone again, skip to my Lou / Skip to my Lou, my darling."
Seconds (1966)—Still trying a little bit to figure out what I saw here. Occasionally murky (not to say incoherent), once the outlandish science fiction premise settles into harness it goes to unexpected, weird, dark, and often disturbing places. Director John Frankenheimer's sense of bombast from early TV dramatic productions serves him well. Nothing about this should work (starting with Rock Hudson) but I came away from it with a sense of dread that did not leave me for the rest of that day.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)—Episodic, with a weak narrative frame. But seeing it a second time in one year those points almost started to seem like strengths, enabling the picture to open up against the amazing landscape of Monument Valley shot in color. That director John Ford and crew were more or less lucky enough to catch an electrical storm while they were shooting, and took full advantage of it, is plainly the reason to see this picture. But it's also an interesting cast of characters mixing it up too. John Wayne, again, shows a capacity to be tremendously affecting.
The Simpsons (s6, 1994-1995)—In full command and reliably very funny—sometimes, all by myself, I am laughing very hard, rewinding to catch the timing again or do the freeze frames thing, etc. It's showing more range too, with more musical numbers than I remember from before, and one episode ("'Round Springfield") that almost made me cry, with Lisa (Yeardley Smith singing it too, sounds like) effectively covering Carole King's "Jazzman." The relationship between Homer and Bart (or between Homer and Ned Flanders) is just absurdly sick—I like that the show never strays far from brute cartoon force in many small but significant ways (e.g., the Itchy & Scratchy cartoons that frequently show up). Minor characters are steadily being rounded out. Really, it's all just remarkable at this point.
Splendor in the Grass (1961)—It's interesting how many big hothouse American productions of the late '50s and early '60s were focused on crack-ups of various kinds, usually headed up by Method acolytes such as James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Paul Newman. Here Natalie Wood, only about 22 but already ubiquitous from years as a child performer, gets the nervous breakdown honors and she does all right, though it's not really in her range. If Pillow Talk (above) is a comedy of the sexual revolution I guess this must be one of its tragedies. The mental institution was my clue. By which I mean no, I never quite connected with it. Warren Beatty, however, is just great in his first performance. Directed by Elia Kazan and written by William Inge (Bus Stop, Picnic).
Superbad (2007)—Some funny turns here, notably Jonah Hill, but overall feels more like an unexceptional pro forma teen comedy than a self-aware unexceptional pro forma teen comedy, which I believe they want us to believe it is. But I don't.
There Was a Father (1942)—It's possible that the circumstances of seeing this colored my experience: alone in a strange city, winter solstice Sunday evening, scratchy print, and a cathedral of cinema feeling to the venue. This is a real beauty and already one of my favorites by director and co-writer Yasujiro Ozu, with Tokyo Story and Late Spring. Ozu perennial Chishu Ryu plays a widowed father and former high school teacher attempting to do the right thing by his son. It is a tremendously complicated and beautiful relationship, propelled by profoundly realized beats of years passing, redeemed constantly by the affection between them. Essential.

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Movies/TV I saw last month...

A.K.A. Doc Pomus (2012)—An efficient and predictably wonderful documentary about the amazing Doc Pomus, author of Elvis Presley's "Little Sister" and approximately one million more great songs you already know and love ("A Teenager in Love," "This Magic Moment," "Save the Last Dance for Me"). Lots of interesting people show up—Lieber & Stoller, Shawn Colvin, Dion, Dr. John, B.B. King, Lou Reed, more. Must-see.
Alexandra (2007)—First picture I've seen by director and writer Aleksandr Sokurov (Russian Ark probably the right place to start, oh well). Some very nicely realized moments, but I never connected with the story of an old woman traveling to a Chechen training camp to visit her grandson. It seemed at once fanciful and elaborately grim, which in this case was not good.
The Bigamist (1953)—An interesting noir/woman's picture cross-breed directed by Ida Lupino. Making a mountain of a molehill on the matter referenced in the title, but basically right, almost documentarian, on a common way it happens, and plenty of nice, weird moments along the way. Definitely worth seeing.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)—The bitter-saccharine adventures of Butch, Sundance, and Etta Place have become something like a reliable old friend for me at this point. Often schmaltzy but with a wonderful heart.



Dallas Buyers Club (2013)—And so to another fucking Oscar season. This reminded me of Argo, it reminded my friend of Erin Brockovich. It's standard true-story over the top, but with redeeming qualities, namely, Matthew McConaughey, who has suddenly become interesting, and a reasonably compelling story about AIDS in the '80s. Are there problems? Yes. Is it worth seeing? Oh definitely yes. Will it win an Oscar? Stop right there, please.
Damsels in Distress (2011)
Diner (1982)—I'm not sure I appreciated, the first time I saw this when it was new, the purity of its rock 'n' roll heart. It's impressive. Also the casting, in particular Mickey Rourke, who may never have looked better, even if it's just his usual mumbling JD hipster shtick.
Disappeared (s1, 2010)—Revisiting this ID channel true-crime chestnut, which I followed with some interest in the early seasons. Intriguing cases and lots of variations on the missing-person theme: sometimes a body is discovered, sometimes the living person is found, and sometimes they are just mysteries (the show may also not be telling us everything, of course). Based on talking-head interviews with family, loved ones, investigators, and others, mixed with reenactments and some documentary footage. Not quite as good as I remembered, but I also recall it got better.
Female (1933)—I like the way the main character—Allison Drake (Ruth Chatterton), a woman CEO of an automobile manufacturer—is so ably reduced and objectified even in the title, and sure enough, as titillating as it dallies with being, it's as conventional as can be. So a little silly but worth seeing.
JCVD (2008)—I wanted to like this more than I did because the premise seemed promising: Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Jean-Claude Van Damme, losing a legal battle for child custody, losing a lucrative role to Steven Seagal (who agreed to cut off his ponytail for it), and randomly swept up into a high-stakes hostage situation, complete with media saturation coverage. But you better talk to someone who appreciates action pictures. It looks to me like JCVD is attempting to eat his cake and have it too.
Knife in the Water (1962)—I'm still not much impressed with this. It has a lot of good elements but feels too derivative. Empty, and not in good ways.
Looney Tunes—"Barbary-Coast Bunny" (1956), "Birds Anonymous" (1957, 12-step parody!), "Draftee Daffy" (1945), "8 Ball Bunny" (1950, has nothing to do with eight balls), "Falling Hare" (1943), "Forward March Hare" (1953), "Gonzales' Tamales" (1957), "The Grey Hounded Hare" (1949), "A Gruesome Twosome" (1945), "Hurdy-Gurdy Hare" (1950), "An Itch in Time" (1943), "Knight-mare Hare" (1955), "Mississippi Hare" (1949), "No Barking" (1954), "Odor-able Kitty" (1944), "Operation: Rabbit" (1952), "Rabbit Hood" (1949), "Rabbit Punch" (1948), "Roman Legion-Hare" (1955), "Sahara Hare" (1955), "Southern Fried Rabbit" (1953, OK, here we go, after all those warnings, in this one Bugs Bunny acts the part of a Reconstruction Negro who pivots into Stepin Fetchit groveling, which definitely crosses lines, though when I consider the sophistication of these cartoons generally I have to think it's calculated on something like market research, which, I know, hardly makes it any better … it's kind of a shock actually), "Steal Wool" (1957), "To Beep or Not to Beep" (1963, Road Runner getting almost abstract this late), "To Hare Is Human" (1956), "Walky Talky Hawky" (1946)
Macbeth (1971)—I remember Roman Polanski's version of the Shakespeare "Scottish play" being over the top to a lunatic degree, but all these many years later I did not find it so at all, though it's definitely spirited. I like that Shakespeare's language is retained—I think it's a good version. Recommended.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)—It's fair to say that Warren Beatty is for me a net negative, as a starting point. Part of it could be my own meanness but he can be lazy and settle for glib. But he is so good in this, getting at the character of John McCabe with his many skills, flaws, and complications, you just have to give it to him. It's well-written too—lots of great points to this one. The snowstorm is amazing—the whole setting is, carved out of the wilderness the way the pioneers did it, except to make a movie. Perfect. Very nice piece about it recently at Wonders in the Dark.
Millions Like Us (1943)—British World War II propaganda picture built around the message the Internet has brought back, "Stay calm and carry on." The braid of stories is surprisingly effective and compelling, well done on many levels. Liked this one a lot and recommend.
Modern Times (1936)—I was out of sorts with movies (and many things) for much of November, which was definitively confirmed when I couldn't get 20 minutes into this. By the same token I knew the bad spell was better when I gobbled it up again a few weeks later. Love.
Momma's Man (2008)—Some interesting but wrong-headed ideas—the flirtation yet inability to deal with the Oedipal elements suggested by its title, and director and writer Azazel Jacobs's decision to cast his own (obviously unprofessional even if "Dad" Ken Jacobs has a sheet of credits at IMDb) parents?!, etc.—torpedo this story of a 30-year-old man who can't face life's responsibilities and manipulates his way back into the illusion of safety of his parents. In fairness, it's really good if you like to squirm in awkward embarrassment. Can I recommend Chuck and Buck instead?
The Office (s1, 2005)—I can understand why fans of the original British series did not like this—in many ways, it's a close copy, and just a copy. But there's more, as the eventual run would prove. It's very good at layering on American flavors of office politics (setting it in Scranton, Pennsylvania, is about perfect). Much of that is Steve Carell, who is scary when he is not funny, and sometimes both at once. Also: Amy Adams sighting.
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)—Mostly I enjoyed this because it brought back seeing it on first release. It's otherwise something of a mess, though not bad taking on the various outlandish concepts of the novel. Needless to say, perhaps, the novel is better. Start there.
Taxi Driver (1976)—Masterpiece.
Three on a Match (1932)—Three women making their way in the Depression. Not that trashy, but trashy enough. With Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, and Bette Davis. Humphrey Bogart in a small role. Worth a look.

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Movies/TV I saw last month...

Baby Face (1933)—The Netflix disc had two versions, a "prerelease" cut as well as the original theatrical release. Either way, it's a remarkable (and, yes, remarkably frank) tale of a Depression-era young woman bartering sexual favors to make her way to the top. The differences between the two versions are mostly matters of degree but the movie is worth looking at two times in a row. I would have to call it mild by today's standards, but surprisingly raw when it has a mind. Barbara Stanwyck (at 26) is terrific, no surprise, and John Wayne has a small role as a city slicker. Must-see for any number of reasons.
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)—Werner Herzog's gleeful take on Abel Ferrara's original from 1992 is pretty much up to the task, as tall an order as that is. I must say Harvey Keitel was better in the title role, and that Ferrara also had the better frame in the ongoing NLCS. But post-Katrina New Orleans will do, and though Nicolas Cage is not normally to my taste, he is nearly flawless here, inventing whole new twists on the foundations of the original. For example, when he attempts to be convivial and share a laugh with colleagues. It's intense, outrageous, nail-bite gripping, and perfectly wonderful, right down to the last scene. I love it.
Bitter Moon (1992)—This is much better in many small ways than I remembered. It revels so shamelessly in its own depravity it's like a geek show when all else fails. You never want to look away. But the misanthropy, no matter how perfectly and even exquisitely realized, is still pitched at toxic levels and too easily confused with narcissistic preening. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is narcissistic preening.
Black Swan (2010)—Bone-crunching aesthete Darren Aronofsky takes it to the ballet. The result is amazing, and gets better every time I see it.
The Body Snatcher (1945)—Lugosi is wasted in this Val Lewton production directed by Robert Wise, but Boris Karloff is remarkable as a thoroughly unlikable 19th-century Edinburgh lowlife. It's a solid creep show. Halliwell's calls this the best Val Lewton horror. I'm not sure about that but it was my Halloween selection this year (with one candidate for a better Lewton, I Walked With a Zombie, below).



The Damned (1969)—Netflix did not believe I would want to give even three stars (of their five) to this long meditation on Nazis and Europe and corruption, and in many ways that makes sense, as I generally tend toward impatience with high-flown flights of operatic fare (Ken Russell, for one). But I thought The Damned works pretty well. I'm not sure its mad lighting schemes (often red-tinted, of course) and the jiggering, vortiginous camera motion entirely add up, but I'm a sucker for anything that depicts Nazis as soulless corruptions of nature. And I like the way director Luchino Visconti deals in the rot. There's some pretty sick stuff here, so of course I'm going to say definitely worth seeing.
Death and the Maiden (1994)—I always expect to be a little disappointed with this and it wins me round again every time. Its realities are just murky enough to make it feel truly dangerous, but I also think it tips its hand in favor of our heroine Paulina Escobar (Sigourney Weaver, who is typically excellent and alone worth seeing for). Morality on a knife's edge, with all too real potential for viscera. Excellent.
Doubt (2008)—Showcase Oscar-bait for the redoubtable Meryl Streep and for Philip Seymour Hoffman too. They get it done, strutting and fretting their hours, etc., but ultimately to little effect, in a picture altogether too enamored of its own tricksiness. Always nice to see Amy Adams anyway.
Duel (1971)—Steven Spielberg's first feature, a TV movie—very nice. Totally senseless but that works in its favor. It's scary too, effectively turning a semi-truck into a monster.
Enter the Void (2009)—For some reason I was a little afraid to see this again, though I wanted to. After the first 30 or 40 minutes I let it play but left the living room and wandered around my apartment fooling with this or that. I noticed it's mostly a very quiet movie, but has three or four explosively loud scattered minutes, and many beautiful musical passages. Every time I stopped to look for a few minutes the sadness of it was overwhelming.
Fearless (1993)—Masterpiece.
Fireworks (1997)—I was a little disappointed with a revisit to this one by director and writer "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, which I remember enjoying when it was new. More recently I had liked both A Scene at the Sea (1991) and Sonatine (1993) by him—in fact, I like them both more. Fireworks is certainly the most downbeat of them, or perhaps it's just that he excluded the zany humorous passages. More than that, it feels self-consciously post-Tarantino, which is unfortunate.
Frantic (1988)—I really don't know how this '80s thriller by director and co-writer Roman Polanski entirely got away from me. I don't even remember hearing about it. Memory, how the ruck does it work. Probably it was Harrison Ford, and probably bad reviews, that kept me away, because, yeah, it's a whole lot of lackluster, maybe Polanski's weakest. Harrison Ford is a big part of the problem (as he is not in Blade Runner) but in the '80s what the box office wanted the box office got. Right here. For diehards only.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)—Oh lord, I loved this, it had me from the DVD menu screen. I was amazed when I looked up the date, I thought it was more in the neighborhood of 2009. Seems to me it's Kal Penn's show mostly, though John Cho is a fine foil. But Penn just inhabits Kumar, the brilliant mad man who attracts endless oddballs somehow into his bemused orbit, while all he wants is reefer and munchies. He plays it just right and some scenes—the guy who stands next to Kumar to take a leak while he is standing at a bush taking a leak—crack me up still remembering them.
I Walked With a Zombie (1943)—Pay no attention to the credits. Darby Jones as Carrefour is the star of this Val Lewton production directed by Jacques Tourneur, the image you come away with for the rest of your life. Must-see for that alone. My Halloween selection this year (with The Body Snatcher, above).
Kes (1969)—Very beautifully photographed crypto-D.H. Lawrence tale that ducks away too often into insulated coal mining regionalities for my taste. But the performance by the kid, David Bradley at 15, is amazing, and the story has ways of tugging as well. Worth seeing.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)—Some very nice bits here: Steve Carell and the Proust thing, Toni Collette's sad beautiful face, Greg Kinnear's distracted inspirational speaker shtick, his upbeat veneer rapidly wearing thin under stress. Some very nice bits but it also feels familiar and a little tired. They've been making movies about desperate upstarts like this for a long time now. Still, that said, may as well see this one too. It's got some very nice bits.
Looney Tunes—"Acrobatty Bunny" (1946), "Bye, Bye Bluebeard" (1949), "Claws for Alarm" (1954), "The CooCoo Nut Grove" (1936, some of these pre-WWII oldies are really charming, and yes, there are obnoxious stereotypes surfacing … they just look strange, e.g., bug-eyed barefoot grass-skirted African cannibals), "Daffy Duck and Egghead" (1938), "Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur" (1939), "Daffy Duck in Hollywood" (1938), "Daffy Duck Slept Here" (1948), "Duck! Rabbit, Duck!" (1953, third leg of the so-called "hunting trilogy" arriving late in this box), "An Egg Scramble" (1950), "The Film Fan" (1939), "Goofy Groceries" (1941), "Hare Do" (1949), "Hillbilly Hare" (1950), "Hollywood Capers" (1935), "The Honey-Mousers" (1956, strained parody of Jackie Gleason & crew), "I Haven't Got a Hat" (1935), "The Last Hungry Cat" (1961), "The Mouse That Jack Built" (1959, with Jack Benny & crew, and works pretty well this time), "Pigs in a Polka" (1943), "Pigs Is Pigs" (1954), "Porky and Teabiscuit" (1939), "Porky in Egypt" (1938), "Porky Pig's Feat" (1943), "Porky's Party" (1938), "Porky's Road Race" (1937), "Porky's Romance" (1937), "Rebel Rabbit" (1949), "Robin Hood Daffy" (1958), "Rocket Squad" (1956), "She Was an Acrobat's Daughter" (1937), "Speaking of the Weather" (1937), "Super-Rabbit" (1943), "Swooner Crooner" (1944), "Thugs With Dirty Mugs" (1939), "Waikiki Wabbit" (1943), "Wideo Wabbit" (1956), "The Windblown Hare" (1949), "The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos" (1937)
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)—Packed with character actors and charming. Love this one a lot.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)—Swoon.
Nashville (1975)—At this point it's a lot like hanging out with old pals.
The New World (2005)—Extended version stultifying. The endlessly tentative brushstroke editing strikes me as simply bad, a type of dithering, but I suppose it's all part of the tedious exalting air.
The Pianist (2002)—I think in many ways this might arguably be Roman Polanski's most autobiographical film because he lived through things very much like it in Poland as a young boy. It is icy cold etching the systematic brutalities of the occupying Nazi regime. It stands with Schindler's List as a great latter-day film about the Third Reich—and also with Tess (below) as one of the director's most epic works, with towering sweeps of vision. Yet as with Tess I like and am moved by The Pianist but remain somehow suspicious. Haven't put my finger on the problem(s) yet. But something feels similarly off in both.
Revolutionary Road (2008)—Well, bully for Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet for pulling it off, 10 long years later. But when I say this comes with "the Sam Mendes touch" I don't mean that as a good thing.
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)—Typically cold and chiseled exercise by director and writer Michael Haneke overlaying incoherent quivering hysteria about the alienations of modern life. TV newscasts are a recurring motif, etc. It probably actually does have 71 scenes and they probably are arranged intricately into some semblance of satisfying coherence. But you will have to work harder at it than I did and I think you may be taking your chances anyway.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)—A lot of wonderful texture here with an overly intrusive device (the TV game show frame) and a weird taste for a kind of sentimentalized brutality. I was hoping for more but expecting less, so all good, I guess. You've probably seen it anyway. If not, go ahead and keep skipping.
Tess (1979)—I was surprised how well this adaptation of a 19th-century British novel held up, how good the story is, how faithful the picture is to letting its story unwind organically, how beautiful it is, and of course the great performance of Nastassja Kinski. It's a remarkably quick near-three hours. Must-see. And yet, as with The Pianist (above), I also have reservations. Something there is about it feels a little hollow somehow.
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)—Oh it was great to see this one again. I think I saw it at a bleary drive-in the first and only other time. Jane Fonda is miscast—generally the whole thing is miscast, after Gig Young and Red Buttons. But it's so good at elaborating that American strain of bootstrapping, i.e., taken in by the wealthy for the sake of "freedom" and hopes of a sponsorship and maybe you'll get lucky, they'll make a movie or write a book about you too. The good old American way. Never more relevant than now in this present-day rising tide of McJobs and non-careers except by grotesque happenstance, etc. It touched a nerve. Seems more relevant than ever, and well done too.
Twilight Zone (s1, 1959-1960)—Jesus Christ, 36 episodes, count 'em, Oct. 2, 1959, to July 1, 1960. Now that's a TV season. A lot of dead spots, ideas that never get off the ground, or only sputter, and sort of a churchy air of self-congratulation not always merited. But it's the Twilight Zone, Jake, plenty of interesting ideas, some surprising performances, staging, production, and you just have to respect the work ethic. Some episodes, such as the manikins who come alive after hours, scared me silly once and are fun to revisit. Really, it's no wonder cable-TV makes marathons of it.
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
The Wire (s3, 2004)—All right then, starting to see how this is appreciated for a nicely conceived and executed narrative arc. I hear next season is even better, but that faceoff of destiny between Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell was legendary without even straining, dependent on foundations neatly established in the first two seasons. The "Hamsterdam" experiment, results, and debate in-show were fascinating too. LOTS of good stuff here.
The Wrestler (2008)—Arch wizard of bone-cracking Darren Aronofsky in his element, so not bad at all. Peachy role for Mickey Rourke too at this point.
Z (1969)—Handsomely mounted study of propped-up right-wing regime falling apart in Greece. I remember it as having much better music.
Zodiac (2007)—Excellent.

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Movies/TV I saw last month...

Annie Hall (1977)
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)—This seemed a very strange picture for director Sam Peckinpah, lighthearted and even resorting to fast-forward slapstick in places. It's loose and loopy and always engaging, but somewhat untethered. Jason Robards does everything he can to ground it in something you can hang onto, and almost succeeds. Worth seeing.
Bananas (1971)—Some really great bits I had all but forgotten. Laughing out loud, yes, it happened.
Le Boucher (1970)—Serial killer story by director and writer Claude Chabrol. I thought it had more of a handle on its late-'60s setting than "the criminal mindset," which anyway seemed as metaphorical as everything else here. Plenty of anomie to go around, but worth seeing.
Le Cercle Rouge (1970)—Most heist stories are pretty dull affairs for me, not so interested in these wheels within wheels battles of wits, let alone highly specific security/vault procedures (or jewels, or gold, or cash porn). But this shot at it by director and writer Jean-Pierre Melville looks great, almost antiseptically clean, deploying swaths of color with precision. The tone is deeply desolate. I have a feeling it wears well.
The Conformist (1970)—My first time seeing what is likely Bernardo Bertolucci's best-regarded picture. It's nicely put together, swirling and colorful and allusive, with a harrowing chase scene at the finish, and Jean-Louis Trintignant nearly perfect as a cipher. If it struck me as too plunged into the aesthetics and preoccupations of its time—paranoid and still brooding over the sins of fascism (not that there's anything wrong with that)—I have a feeling it's another one that improves.
Contempt (1963)


Eros + Massacre (1969)—Not sure what hit me with this epic of interiority by director and co-writer Yoshishige Yoshida. Weird, dense, multi-layered stories of free love and revolution and youth and regret in Japan of approximately 1916, 1923, and 1968, rendered in a hazy black and white that modulates constantly into shimmering grays. There's often a theatrical approach to the setups and executions of its narratives but it is willfully cinematic as well, harking consciously to Persona, for one. And it goes on for three and a half hours.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)—Currently my favorite dream movie.
Frenzy (1972)—My first look at this late Hitchcock, which certainly goes to some dark places (interested to a disquieting degree in how strangling a woman goes down, for example) while maintaining as brisk and convivial an air of British aplomb as has been seen in his pictures since perhaps the '30s, or make that Dial M for Murder. Weird, in a word.
The Future (2011)—Yes.
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)—Interesting treatment of the security state, rife with the (all too appropriate) paranoia of its times, with a policeman pursuing a novel way of exposing the corruption. It's Italian, by Elio Petri (who I don't otherwise know), but somehow feels Eastern bloc to me a little.
The Invisible Man (1933)—Somewhat strained in terms of its conception—an invisible guy running around barefoot and naked in wintry conditions is not a monster, I don't care how isolated the village is. There's got to be a good version of this playing more explicitly to the creep factor, yes? Without the distracting exteriors? Whatever its faults as a monster movie (as usual signaled in Universal by screaming women and unruly village mobs), the special effects are a delight and it's fun to see Claude Rains acting through the layers. He's pretty good!
Justified (s1, 2010)—Some nice Elmore Leonard turns here, thinking particularly of an episode with a retired football player. I'm not convinced yet that Timothy Olyphant is capable of carrying the load "week to week" (in my idea of the parlance), but watching some of these episodes stressed me out a little. That's not only a good thing but also as good a standard as any. Looking forward to the next.
Kwaidan (1964)—Long anthology of four horror pieces directed by Masaki Kobayashi, always fascinating, moody, bleak, gorgeous, and occasionally even scary. The longest, "Hoichi, the Earless," may be most effective, with its surprise horrific denouement, but I'm a little more partial to "The Woman in the Snow." And I love the way "In a Cup of Tea" is left a fragment. "Black Hair" has echoes of Mizoguchi's Ugetsu. All four are strange and beautiful. Good Halloween pick.
Looney Tunes—"Baby Bottleneck" (1946), "Back Alley Oproar" (1948), "Book Revue" (1946), "Bowery Bugs" (1949, the first disc in the third volume of this massive box opens with a long disclaimer speech from Whoopi Goldberg explaining why objectionable content has been retained in the cartoons—ethnic and other stereotyping mostly—so looking forward now to the "good stuff" and/or cringe-worthy?), "Case of the Missing Hare" (1942), "A Corny Concerto" (1943), "Duck Soup to Nuts" (1944), "Easter Yeggs" (1947), "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" (1946), "Hare Force" (1944), "A Hare Grows in Manhattan" (1947), "Hare Remover" (1946), "Hare Tonic" (1945), "Have You Got Any Castles?" (1938), "The Hep Cat" (1942), "Hollywood Steps Out" (1941), "Homeless Hare" (1950), "I Love to Singa" (1936), "Katnip Kollege" (1938, more evidence of the comic potential in the letter K), "Kitty Kornered" (1946), "Old Glory" (1939, egregious pandering), "One Froggy Evening" (1955), "Porky in Wackyland" (1938, black and white and freaky), "Rhapsody Rabbit" (1946), "Show Biz Bugs" (1957), "Snow Business" (1953), "Stage Door Cartoon" (1944), "The Three Little Bops" (1957, absolutely marvelous '50s modern, with Stan Freberg narrating), "Tweetie Pie" (1947), "The Wabbit Who Came to Supper" (1942), "What's Opera, Doc?" (1957, the classic), "You Ought to Be in Pictures" (1940, nice mix of animation and film, I like it particularly when a security guard gets a Mel Blanc voice).
Maison de France (2004)—German TV documentary about an early '80s operation by terrorist Carlos ("the Jackal"). Too treacly about the victim, too plainly in awe of the terrorist, and not that interesting. From the Criterion Carlos package.
Manon 70 (1968)—Sparkling '60s French sex farce with a gritty undertone, with Catherine Deneuve and various pouting males of all ages. Always interesting—kind of a wild ride actually. Reminded me often of the thread in Casino involving Sharon Stone.
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)—I've had some variety of response to this late John Ford, an all-out all-star assault, with John Wayne, James Stewart, and Lee Marvin (as a very bad man), plus Vera Miles. This was one of the times I loved it—really loved it. The John Wayne character, Tom Doniphon, is rich, layered, and complex. I still have to sort myself out one of these days about Wayne. I don't like him personally, he strikes me as a type of humorless swaggering lout that makes my skin crawl. But I am seeing better there's a good deal more to it.
Meet John Doe (1941)—You're never going to get out of a Frank Capra picture without corn, and this has more than its share, but nonetheless it's one I drift back to a lot. I love the mordant view it takes of politics, Sinclair Lewis going on Robert Penn Warren and bleaker, and all the main players—Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, even Walter Brennan—are fine. In fact, I kind of feel like going and lynching Edward Arnold right now.
Milk (2008)—Everything you would expect more or less. Director Gus Van Sant lobs all the easy ones, Sean Penn plays to the bleachers, and everybody goes home happy. Josh Brolin is the best thing about this and makes it worth seeing.
The Mummy (1932)—I admit I have been underwhelmed in the past, but last time through I liked it a lot. Some eye-popping amazing shots of Karloff, shivery maniacal laughter from a grad student driven insane by what he saw, another hypnotized white woman (popular in '30s horror), and a wonderful air of the damned weird.
Network (1976)
Phantom of the Opera (1943)—Another Universal horror with a good performance by Claude Rains with his face often obscured (see also The Invisible Man, an even more extreme case, above). This definitely has things going for it, not least a terrific story at its center, hence I'm sure the countless versions. But it's too often chintzy looking and soundstage-bound—I think it might be the technicolor exposing that, though I like the color a lot and there are a few isolated shots in the catacombs that are tremendous. Please don't count this against me, but I also happen to have seen the Webber version in a traveling stage show, making three versions I have seen now. So I'm no expert, but Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise still looks to me like the one to beat.
Rio Grande (1950)—Pretty good duster from John Ford (not that I'm qualified to talk about Westerns so casually and affectionately). Nice story with no particular point, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara fine together once again, and many nice touches. Probably too much singing.
Run Lola Run (1998)—Ja.
Solaris (1972)—Actually warming to this finally some, so soft-footed and airless, but when the thing comes into focus it can be impressive. So ambitious you almost don't notice.
A Star Is Born (1937)—I expected to be a little more captivated all around with this one. I liked the technicolor, and thought Janet Gaynor did all right, but I never believed the story, let alone cared about it, and Fredric March did not impress, though it might have been the ridiculous way his character was written.
This Island Earth (1955)—An old favorite. I love the mystery of receiving the interociter plans mixed up with the invoices in the mail. The zapping bolts of an attacking alien vessel (yes, a flying saucer) scratched and colored directly onto the film. The relentless way it moves randomly forward, never getting anywhere. Excellent (if undeniably cheesy and wooden).
Walkabout (1971)—Mysterious and powerful and worth seeing over and over. Jenny Agutter is amazing, among other things.
The Wolf Man (1941)—Found this a wee disappointing. Nice supporting cast, nice makeup, good monster, but I think Lon Chaney is just out of his range. Suddenly it's a Babbitt scene every time Larry Talbot is in the frame.

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Movies/TV I saw last month...

American Horror Story (s1, 2011)—The potluck stew of horror tropes does too quickly become tedious soap opera, but that's TV and maybe it was still worth the try? I appreciated the way Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton were so summarily dismissed, it often hits nice scary notes, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the second season is even better (or even worse). Not sure how soon I will finding that out, however.
Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
Badlands (1973)—Oh, yeah, I remember, this is why I like Terrence Malick. Though, now that serial killers and mass murderers and true crime generally have become popular, iconic, and ultimately formulaic, the way in which I appreciate it is hardly less complicated than my response to his more recent stuff, which I'm holding my tongue not to call overrated. But this is beautiful and shocking and haunting, in perfect strokes.
The Bad News Bears (1976)—I've always considered this among the "very good" baseball movies. I love how the losers really are losers. It's bleak if you think about it too much—thus, to me, a perfect family entertainment, because it's also genuinely uplifting. I'd also like to say it's a pleasure to see a 14-year-old Jackie Earle Haley.
Ball of Fire (1941)—I am not as enamored of Howard Hawks as some but there's no denying him, Barbara Stanwyck is fine as always, and what's not to like about a parody of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (with a few sly smacks at Capra as well)? Still, this never quite seems to spark the way one wishes it would.
Carlos the Jackal (2010)—The third part in no way salvaged the bloat of the first two, though to be sure it's attractive in many ways, not least the central performance by Edgar Ramirez. My recommendation: confine yourself to the second part, which is mostly the 1975 OPEC raid.
Carnival of Souls (1962)—Basically a kind of extended Twilight Zone episode complete with twist you see coming from miles, it's also creative, moody, and capable of unsettling imagery. Worth seeing.
Choke (2008)—I had some hopes for this Sam Rockwell vehicle, but it's awfully heavy-handed and obvious.
The Conjuring (2013)—Yeah, I thought this was a pretty fine haunted house picture, with some excellent shock cuts and images and just enough headlong momentum to ratchet the tension. I was never so scared I was sorry I went—the gold standard for horror—but I gasped a few times, and that's a few more times than I gasp at 95% of horror movies.
The Crow (1994)—Enjoyed a chance to look at this again though it is often a matter of surface over substance. Hard to judge what Brandon Lee might have been able to make of himself, and the editing tricksiness does not settle well. But he cuts a fine figure here and the Thrill Kill Kult cameo remains wonderful.



Don't Look Now (1973)—Excellent, a classic—worldly, creepy, mysterious.
Electra Glide in Blue (1973)—Was a little bit disappointed with this as I had the impression it was some kind of existential road movie in the vein of Vanishing Point or Two-Lane Blacktop. Instead it's sort of a trial run for CHiPs, directed by the producer of all those Chicago Roman Numeral albums with the same logo. Almost rousing on the bike chases, which are too few, and can be embarrassingly bad.
Enter the Void (2009)—Beautiful, disjointed, intoxicated on numerous levels, and infinitely sad. This is probably 40 minutes or more too long, but it casts such a spell I really don't care, and it only seems to get better.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)—I was happy to find all the pieces in this anthology of vignettes still lively and funny. Gene Hackman's performance as a doctor who falls in love with a sheep is near perfect. Woody Allen uses himself more judiciously and is funny and good. Definitely dated in places, but a total pleasure.
Frozen River (2008)—I am a sucker among other things for movies with exteriors that have snow on the ground. This is a solid and harrowing examination of underclass life along the USA/Canada/Mohawk reservation borders of upstate New York. It's marred by some silly plot points, but more often feels just dead-on. Worth seeing.
Gates of Heaven (1978)
Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)—I really loved director and writer Mike Leigh's version of the bubbling manic happy big city single girl story—Marlo Thomas and That Girl was perhaps oddly what registered for me, and then Liza Minnelli and Cabaret, and numerous other examples abound. Sally Hawkins gives a performance of a lifetime as a 35-year-old grade school teacher who is at once annoying as hell and a little something veering toward psychotic, yet also perfectly charming and likable and "normal," and always, always utterly mysterious. Mike Leigh's usual sense for character and scene are excellent again as well.
Hellraiser (1987)—Too often grotesque, not often scary enough, this seemed more a vein of fantasy and did not do much for me.
His Girl Friday (1940)—This is so inspired, and so good. Seems like it could be Cary Grant's best performance?
How Green Was My Valley (1941)—Welsh rather than Irish, and "colorful" in many self-conscious ways, I like how this goes right at its central labor issues. Many good stories packed in as well. A solid one from John Ford.
The Informer (1935)—Early John Ford and well constructed as always, but the Irish theme is a bit thick for me, not to say overwrought.
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)—I thought this was affecting and done well, though Robert Redford inevitably brings Hollywood sheen. But director Sydney Pollack establishes a potent sense for Rocky Mountains wilderness in the mid-19th century, finding yet another way in to the rhythms of the Western, the better to intensify his narrative at will with the horrors he has in store. Impressive.
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008)—A children's movie and too often looking and feeling it for my taste. Its heart is in the right place, but then that's true of all children's movies, isn't it?
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)—Sarcastic, campy, Dobie Gillis style gabfest that is occasionally funny. Jack Nicholson very good as advertised as a pain-craving dental patient.
Looney Tunes—"Ain't She Tweet" (1952, Tweety generally just too annoying for me, wish the cat would get him better and more often, though the song is growing on me), "All a Bir-r-r-rd" (1950), "Baby Buggy Bunny" (1954), "Bad Ol' Putty Tat" (1949), "A Bear for Punishment" (1951), "Beep, Beep" (1952, Road Runner might be the most pure comedy from these guys, and it's saying a lot, that so-called "popping-cork tongue noise" the Road Runner makes is itself a thing of pure comic beauty), "A Bird in a Guilty Cage" (1952), "Cheese Chasers" (1951, one of their brilliant conceptual exercises, with mice shunning cheese, cats mice, and dogs cats, and ending it on a perfect note), "The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall" (1942, surreal, inspired), "Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z" (1956), "Gift Wrapped" (1952), "Going! Going! Gosh!" (1952), "Guided Muscle" (1955), "Hyde and Hare" (1955), "Little Red Riding Rabbit" (1944), "Mouse Wreckers" (1948), "Rabbit Transit" (1947, it turns out there is a "trilogy" of Bugs Bunny cartoons with this theme and this is the third, typically for this box they are not grouped together or even in anything like order; all three are great but I think the second, "Tortoise Wins by a Hare," is the best), "Ready.. Set.. Zoom!" (1955), "Room and Bird" (1951), "Scrambled Aches" (1957), "Slick Hare" (1947), "Stop! Look! and Hasten!" (1954), "There They Go-Go-Go" (1956), "Tortoise Beats Hare" (1941, first of the tortoise/hare "trilogy"), "Tweet Tweet Tweety" (1951), "Whoa Be-Gone!" (1958), "Zipping Along" (1953), "Zoom and Bored" (1957).
The Love War (1970)—TV movie mumbo jumbo about aliens conducting a battle for conquering rights to the planet Earth, with Lloyd Bridges and Angie Dickinson. Not bad, though buoyed mostly by the bizarre star power.
Maniac (1934)—Found a cheap box of 10 "cult classic" public domain horror movies, for the most part a good collection. Prints are about as you would expect, but some good titles: White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, Carnival of Souls, interesting Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi roles. But Maniac and Piranha (below) are ever so slightly deceptive in that they are not the much more famous cult classic horror movies with those titles from 1980 and 1978, respectively, but something else entirely. This Maniac is a mostly incoherent 51-minute rumination on clinical insanity from 1934, with brief nudity. It's not clear which character is intended by the title. Of interest, perhaps, it's the source for the lyrics of the Husker Du song "How to Skin a Cat."
Mister Lonely (2007)—I don't know, I may have to revise my orientation to Harmony Korine after catching up with this, which I thought had a lot of good things going for it. He can be amazing with image and music—check that opening. And the idea of a community of celebrity impersonators is a nice one, though it might have been even more nice to see more done with it. Still, I counted a good handful of excellent passages here, including perhaps most notably the theatrical production staged within it.
Night of the Living Dead (1968)—Noticed this time how much the simple expedient of making the hero of this an African American injects an incredible amount of tension (remember, this was released in 1968). Especially with him in charge of the traumatized, catatonic white blonde girl whose boyfriend was one of the first victims of the zombies, hunkered down together in an abandoned farmhouse. The awareness of media in this picture is also sharp.
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)—I like the rough-hewn way that director Sam Peckinpah appears to throw together his pictures, and the star power clanking around here is mighty impressive too—James Coburn, Jason Robards, Slim Pickens, Rita Coolidge, Harry Dean Stanton, etc. I get a kick most of the time when Bob Dylan is in the frame. But it always feels to me like it's feeling around for something it can't quite get a handle on. "Aimless" is maybe the word I am looking for.
Piranha (1972)—This Piranha gets into some nice psycho mayhem territory late, after a lot of exotic but rather dull travelogue footage. No fish. "Piranha" is the nickname of the psycho.
Restraint (2008)—Gimmicky and belabored thriller. I thought I saw the ending coming, and thought it wasn't too bad and sort of redeemed it, but I had guessed wrong and the actual ending was quite bad and didn't redeem any of the foregoing nonsense. Featuring an eerie lookalike for Kristen Stewart in Teresa Palmer, though before Twilight, which kind of makes it even weirder.
Shotgun Stories (2007)—Downbeat story of a feud between two families in the South. Some good performances, notably Michael Shannon, but mostly feels like an empty exercise.
Stagecoach (1939)—The classic John Ford Western just seems to get better every time I see it. All the narrative lines are handled really skillfully and it's a great cast.
Star Trek: The Next Generation (s6, 1992-1993)—Unfortunately some drop in the general quality of the series—the general doldrums of a sixth season perhaps, but I suspect a shift in emphasis to Deep Space Nine, which would debut the following year, also has something to do with it. It still provides a lot of the usual reliable comforts, chipping in its piece to the history of ensemble cast television, with characters I like—my favorites always Worf, Data, and Picard, in that order, though I like them all, even Deanna Troi (not her mother, who thankfully does not appear in this season)—and a few interesting science fiction or whatever ideas. It looks creaky now, feels old, but must say I still enjoy a dip into it.
Steelyard Blues (1973)—This has some interest for Donald Sutherland's performance, scattered fragments from Jane Fonda, Howard Hesseman, Peter Boyle, and some others, and I like the raw semi-experimental feel for the way it is shot and put together. Never quite adds up, however.
Straw Dogs (1971)—More than anything I just find this hard to believe. It's certainly at pains to be brutal, the Sam Peckinpah touch, but feels pro forma, and rarely affecting—almost a parody.
THX 1138 (1971)—This was my first time seeing the early Lucas science fiction. It left me cold, though it was considerably more sophisticated than I ever would have guessed. Maybe it improves.
The Truman Show (1998)
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)—I knew (because how could you not?) that Daniel Day-Lewis had studied Henry Fonda's Abraham Lincoln closely, but no idea how much. In many ways, Day-Lewis was playing specifically and consciously off of many of Fonda's mannerisms as Lincoln. Which, somehow, only seems to enlarge both. In a year that also produced Stagecoach, John Ford evidently hitting on many cylinders.

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Movies/TV I saw last month...

American Horror Story (s1, 2011)—On the device front, I acquired a Kindle Fire (my first personal object truly dependent on infernal wi-fi) along with an Amazon Prime account, which is sort of switching up some viewing habits. Suddenly I can get through TV series a bit more efficiently (within the choices offered, of course, as the cost otherwise seems high to me). It's also a novelty so I'm looking at more things just to experience what it's like to look at things this way (weirdly, I find that looking at these screens from five inches is not bad at replicating a "big" experience—the HD may be helping that). At any rate, that's how I've happened to start on this ripe, rotting purple haunted house spiel set in Los Angeles with Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton. I remember it being hyped rather sky-high in some quarters. It reminds me of Natural Born Killers so far—many things thrown against many insane walls, and you get the sense they may not really know what they're doing. It's not very scary, that's one thing, and not always so funny either, though jury still out on that. It normalizes rather than goes all the way with a developmentally disabled character (a no-win situation on a TV show anyway, but the original impulse good horror instinct). It is sometimes unpleasant though not sure yet if that's in good or bad ways. Jessica Lange is clearly having a ball, ditto Denis O'Hare, but too it often seems to settle into pedestrian TV rhythms. I think my approach to TV series from now on will be more reporting in at the end of seasons as I reach them so I will probably have more to say about this next month.
The Bat (1959)—Not much to this killer-on-the-loose wheezer, including especially the inane twists and turns of the plot, but Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead are entertaining, and it has some effective points. I wouldn't call it ever scary, but occasionally diverting, and short.
Battlestar Galactica (s3, 2006-2007)— From the safety of my cloister, the way the last season ended I had expected something more along the lines of life on an occupied planet under Cylon rule, which sounded interesting. Instead, they got out of that with a virtual hop, skip, and jiggety-jig two-parter, and back to outer space and the emotional agonies. The usual long-term symptoms of TV dramatic series are now causing the usual problems—shallow allegorical characters distributed across an overarching concept who continually meet and re-meet (by coincidence!) and never die, except occasionally during sweeps months. Then they milk it till that cow goes dry (looking at you, Ellen Tigh thread). Much intermarriage and fraternizing and attendant anguish. As science fiction filmmaking I think it's a wash, with nice ideas and interestingly imposed limitations but also strange ways of shooting outer space (handheld, really? didn't you think about the, er, gravity? maybe there's something I don't know). And enough already with the high-speed for action. Sorry for the snark, it's just the seams for me are starting to show a little. The character studies are too often trite and convenient, doing little to move anything forward. I don't care who is or is not "really" a Cylon—I think that's beside the point. But the Cylons (both centurions and clones) remain such great and intriguing creations that it still keeps me predisposed to forgive. And I find the religious themes interesting, which surprises me too—one of the main things that keeps me going, in fact (albeit more and more on WTF-anyway levels). So few of these series find satisfying conclusions that I must remain skeptical. As I recall, the reviews were not particularly kind, but I'm in for the whole shebang.
Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (2012)—Solid documentary, seems to be talking to most of the right people, does a nice job of elevating Chris Bell to his rightful place, and otherwise gets out of the way. The stories are poignant and achingly sad, and the music is as beautiful as ever—more so.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)—Wow, director and co-screenwriter Sam Peckinpah achieves maximum velocity nihilism with one gruesome plot point (see title) and builds something utterly compelling out of it, with the critical help of Warren Oates as Bennie, a down-and-out lounge musician with a lot of sand. He reminded me a little of Robert Altman's Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, a sad sack loser putting everything into one last insane mission. Peckinpah ratchets that a few times and proceeds to sustain it from beginning to end. Amazing, really.
Carlos the Jackal (2010)—The first part seemed to be little more than an empty litany of terrorist actions, glamorized, and I was worried about what I was in for if it was going to be five hours of that. True, there is one amazing scene of high tension, but felt surrounded by a lot of puffery. Maybe this is my resentment about five-hour movies speaking. But the second part boasts an absolutely riveting first hour as it focuses on a single extremely high-stakes mission. Still have the third part to go, but feeling pretty sure that this self-consciously "big" entry from Olivier Assayas doesn't have to be as long as it is. Not to be confused with Che, directed by Steven Soderbergh.
Children of the Corn (1984)—Stacie Ponder of Final Girl held an all-day movie blogathon last month, The Corn-ening by name, in which she watched and reported on every installment in this franchise (some seven or eight pictures, including a reboot). Don't miss it. Then, also, lately I've been reading Son of Danse Macabre by Bryce Wilson of Things That Don't Suck. It's a fine, gabby, opinionated read (and an explicit bow to Stephen King, whose Danse Macabre, published in 1981, is an essential survey of horror). I've been enjoying it enormously, even as it has accelerated and deepened a recent fascination with horror. So I decided to take a look at the original Children of the Corn. Set in rural Nebraska, the premise is utterly opaque, something about corn fields and murdering fundamentalist children (reminds me more than anything else of a certain Star Trek episode with children). But it has a reasonable share of unsavory ideas, shock images, ominous passages, and a few scares, though more of the subtly disturbing variety (credit to Stephen King for much of what works). In general it was kind of a blast. Stacie Ponder says a couple of the sequels are pretty good too.
City Lights (1931)—Favorite.


The Devil Bat (1940)—This description from IMDb about covers it: "A mad scientist develops an aftershave lotion that causes his gigantic bats to kill anyone who wears it." But it has Lugosi, and at least one strikingly odd set, so maybe worth a look. Only 68 minutes.
Encounters at the End of the World (2007)—Werner Herzog at today's South Pole is almost inevitable when you think about his filmmaking career, particularly the documentaries, particularly the number of them in the past 10 or 15 years. So perhaps a little disappointing for being so flat and matter-of-fact. But many interesting characters (too often slightly too proud of themselves for having chosen to live there), a fair share of interesting science, and especially Herzog's tart, caustic observations on the modern condition definitely make it worthwhile.
The Evil Dead (1981)—Classic, way more scary than funny, unlike its sequels. Love the hell out of it now. Particularly enjoyed Tom Sullivan's makeup work this last time.
Frances Ha (2012)—Director Noah Baumbach and star-in-making Greta Gerwig collaborated on the screenplay for this black and white character study of youthful New York creatives in their natural environs. Mostly it works, and I swear, every time I see Gerwig she seems to get better—more funny, more cutting, more surprising. More powerful. Here she mixes up elements of Miranda July, Catherine Keener, and Diane Keaton (and a little bit of Mariel Hemingway, since the Manhattan sources for this are transparent, and at some angles she bears a resemblance, or maybe that's the film stock). It's a real kick when it's working. The way her pointless stories start and bloat, or the mock fighting, a great idea used perfectly—a weird bit of exuberant social interaction that turns naturally into an uncomfortable (and very funny) moment. Sometimes you may be looking through your fingers—Gerwig is particularly good at the awkward social moment.
The Ghost Ship (1943)—This Val Lewton production, sidelined for some 50 years by some legal dispute over ownership of the premise, is less ghost story and more mutiny on the high seas variation. But director Mark Robson brings the hush and the deep shadows and it's hardly bad as mood piece, though Lesser Lewton.
Ghost Town (2008)—Ricky Gervais vehicle, playing a reclusive dentist in Manhattan who is a bit of a jerk and suddenly able to interact with needy New York ghosts. Some laughs, some sweet moments, etc., the usual rom-com crapshoot. But it's my belief that Kristen Wiig's turn as a vain and superficial surgeon makes the whole thing definitely worth tracking down.
Goodfellas (1990)—Mesmerizing, as usual.
A Hard Day's Night (1964)—Lively and spirited and a blast of joy to see again, it also has many surprisingly long, quiet scenes. I love how it just assumes the garb of French New Wave.
House on Haunted Hill (1959)—Ingratiatingly silly exercise directed by William Castle that nonetheless finds its way to one or two nice scares. It's cheap and trying to be flashy too much of the time, but there's a good premise (stay the night, get big bucks), Vincent Price brings the usual, and the story more or less works out, unusual for some of these things. Nice weird cast too, including Elisha Cook Jr.
Ju-on: The Grudge (2002)—Basic haunted house story, but with a sort of Chekhovian twist that elevates it, this Japanese production (directed by Takashi Shimizu, who appears to own a franchise) relies on a deliberate pace, carefully deployed images, the occasional shock cut, and sound effects to make it work. It slows to a crawl at points, and caught me by surprise over and over. Often scary. A good one. (Also traveling, best I can tell, under the name Ju-on with a release date of 2004, as on Amazon Prime. Not to be confused with the American remake, called The Grudge, with Sarah Michelle Gellar.)
Kung Fu Panda (2008)—This struck me as tolerable, with some interesting visuals, but exceedingly slight and with an eye always on marketing considerations. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Lacombe, Lucien (1974)—I'm not sure why I had such trepidations about director Louis Malle's WWII tale of a raw misguided French country youth who falls in with Nazis, especially since I like Atlantic City so much, but I didn't have to worry. It's a great picture, with a sharp, interesting, and heartrending story.
The Last Man on Earth (1964)—A fascinating and obvious source for Night of the Living Dead, this is the first of three cracks at the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend (most recently the 2007 version with Will Smith), and the first I've seen of any of them. I don't know the novel either. This one's a TV movie, adding to general low budget woes. But I loved all the proto-zombie vampire scenes and I'm not about to complain about Vincent Price. Worth a look.
Living in Oblivion (1995)—There's a lot to love here, with great performances by Steve Buscemi, Peter Dinklage, Catherine Keener, James Le Gros (and more!), a bottomless puzzle-knot of a narrative that predates Run Lola Run, shifting between the soundstages of an indie movie and people's dreams and I don't know what-all, and feels pinpoint sharp on the frustrations and boredom and random wonders of making a movie. I love these kinds of things when they're done well (hate them when they're not), and this is one of the best.
Looney Tunes—Attempting to be systematic about getting through this massive box does threaten to become a chore sometimes. But the cartoons are always impressive on the level of pure technique even if I am not laughing out loud. And sometimes I am laughing out loud: "Awful Orphan" (1949), "Baton Bunny" (1959), "The Big Snooze" (1946), "A Broken Leghorn" (1959), "Broom-Stick Bunny" (1956), "Bugs and Thugs" (1954), "Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid" (1942), "Bugs Bunny Rides Again" (1948, starting to think I've spent most of my life underrating Yosemite Sam), "Bunker Hill Bunny" (1950), "Bunny Hugged" (1951), "Canary Row" (1950, have never cared for Tweety, there I said it), "Canned Feud" (1951), "Daffy Duck Hunt" (1949, a good one, with Daffy Duck's personality fuzzing at the edges), "Devil May Hare" (1954), "Don't Give Up the Sheep" (1953, starting to see how Wile E. Coyote is one of their best creations), "Early to Bet" (1951, a good one, all done with generic characters and a one-off [I think], the so-called Gambling Bug), "Feed the Kitty" (1952), "The Foghorn Leghorn" (1948, true confession: Foghorn Leghorn was my favorite Looney Tunes character as a kid), "For Scent-imental Reasons" (1949), "French Rarebit" (1951), "Frigid Hare" (1949), "Gorilla My Dreams" (1948), "Hair-Raising Hare" (1946), "The Hare-Brained Hypnotist" (1942, these early Bugs Bunny riffs, very interesting), "Hare Conditioned" (1945), "Haredevil Hare" (1948), "The Heckling Hare" (1941), "The Hypo-Chondri-Cat" (1950), "Kit for Cat" (1948), "Lumber Jerks" (1955), "Putty Tat Trouble" (1951), "Speedy Gonzales" (1955), "Tortoise Wins by a Hare" (1943, one of the best I saw this month because it is a unique place where immovable object and irresistible force meet, the familiar old fable on the one hand and the fact that Bugs Bunny never loses on the other, and the way that is resolved is nigh unto brilliant), "Tweety's S.O.S." (1951).
Manhattan (1979)
The Mirror (1975)
Nashville (1975)—I'm a city slicker out of suburbia, so maybe that's my bias, but I actually think this has a pretty good take on country music. I don't mind that Altman is patently suspicious of it because I am too, and Nashville is as good a place as any to go and be suspicious. The fact that Karen Black wrote very bad songs does not diminish the very good songs by Ronee Blakley, nor make the like-them-in-spite-of-myself novelties from Henry Gibson any less spot-on (e.g., "there's three reasons why"). And there is always a new thread or nuance of performance, every time I see it. This go-round, the incredibly acute prescience of the politics, which could well be distinguishing itself for me now only because we have made it this far into the future.
Pacific Rim (2013)—The "on paper" vision here—giant robots battling giant alien monsters from another dimension arriving via a rift under the sea, all of this directed by Guillermo del Toro—plays out pretty well for once. It's basically a lot of cardboard cutouts reciting words from the English language, but when the action starts, hold on. I confess to consuming a brownie beforehand. Recommend you sit close.
The Passenger (1975)—I had avoided all this time because generally I remain suspicious of Antonioni. But I thought this was actually pretty good once acclimated to the pace and all the narrative refractin'. Nicholson is carrying the load a good deal more than Maria Schneider, I would say, which may or may not be a screenplay problem. But arguably it is right in the heart of Nicholson's prime, and he is clearly up to it.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)—Yeah, love this one. This time noticed how it uses the Psycho strategy of an early-disappearing female lead another way. Instead of a fallen woman, the focus is a trio of innocents (albeit unwitting imperialists, if you want to look at it that way). And they are gone from the movie nearly as soon. And there's no psychiatrist to explain it at the end either. One of my favorites by Weir. Almost perfectly mysterious.
Reprise (2006)—Not sure how this wound up in my queue, but it's about what I expected sight unseen, more or less post-'90s film festival fodder, clipped and efficient and looking good. It's from Norway and directed by Joachim Trier, who also did Oslo, August 31st, which I never saw but heard good things about ... and which is now in my queue too. Reprise is handsomely mounted and has an affable way of deploying metaphor (however strained) and retiring into ambiguity. But it also had a certain witless presumption of privilege that annoyed.
Scenes From a Marriage (1973)—Theatrical release. Normally I like the full-on version, but looking at this again reminded me that it has its appeals too, notably making the entire thing more accessible in one go.
Straight Time (1978)—This is a nicely done examination of criminals and prison mentality with a riveting central performance by Dustin Hoffman. There's a lot of fireworks and outbursts of action but it always feels low-key and tempered, and it is often quite intense. Recommended.
The Sugarland Express (1974)—I used to love The Rockford Files but at some point I lost all interest in most car chase stories (The Road Warrior excepted, of course), especially those set in the South. So this was 0-2 going in. But the main role of Lou Jean, played at the absolute highest level of her career by Goldie Hawn, is uncanny, and the characters that materialize in support of her are complex and interesting, particularly watching them try to figure each other out. An underrated Steven Spielberg—I didn't know those existed.
The Tall T (1957)—Interesting Western based on an Elmore Leonard story, typically enough heartless when it wants to be. My first time seeing Randolph Scott, who cuts a memorable figure, though I can see there's potential there for hokum.
The Visitor (2007)—For some reason my first impulse is to complain about the flaws, but for whatever reason this turned out to be one of the most interesting movies I looked at all month. I was hanging on it all the way for what happened next. Richard Jenkins might play it a little too guarded. The story may ultimately have too many implausible elements, and leave out too much information. But there I go complaining. I think I want to see it again already.
White Zombie (1932)—I've seen this a few times now in recent years and it only seems to get stranger and more creepy. An early marker in the zombie subgenre, it gets there by way of obvious lifts from the Universal Dracula and Frankenstein movies, but manages to create something in that nexus of mesmerism and decaying body parts that still seems a little startling and new.
The Wire (s3, 2004)—Warming to this some—I certainly admire it, it's thought through conceptually to an impressive degree. And it does have interesting characters. But there's so much plot flashing by that I tend to get a little lost sometimes. Doing this the old-fashioned way too, with Netflix discs, because it would cost $15 on Amazon Prime. Does that make me cheap? It's more than half what I pay Netflix a month.
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)—Somehow I saw this when it was new, and I was impressed even then, but a follow-on dip into something else by director John Cassavetes (Husbands, maybe?) actually had the effect of repulsing me and effectively stilled my interest for a long time. So I still haven't seen much else by him, which I believe I may need to rectify soon. Because this is just great, maybe the best thing I saw all month—Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk are outstanding, and the way the story is told, in allusive, kinetic fits and starts, on a rich grainy color film stock, is just completely captivating. It's nimble and charming, but often painful too, and equally as often amazing, with breathtaking wide open emotional spaces.

Detail: seenery