DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog

SUNDANCE 2012: Where Do We Go Now?

2012-01-27T11:56:00.007-05:00

Where Do We Go Now (2012) dir. Nadine Labacki
Starring: Claude Baz Moussawbaa, Layla Hakim, Nadine Labaki, Yvonne Maalouf, Antoinette Noufaily, Julien Farhat

***½

By Alan Bacchus

When the peaceful cohabitation of Christians and Muslims in a small Lebanese town becomes threatened by bigger-picture political conflicts it takes a group of like-minded village women from both sides of the religious divide to stem the tide of violence.

The TIFF Audience Award winner from last year's festival slipped under everyone’s radar prior to its surprise win. But playing under the Spotlight Program here at Sundance it's a great chance for rediscovery. Indeed, it's a clever yet profound microcosm of those entrenched centuries-long religious conflicts that have been the cause of so many unnecessary wars. In this case it's Christians and Muslims, both living in a small Lebanese village, and though their churches sit side by side, they've lived peacefully for years. But when news of a newly sparked conflict in the outside world trickles in, Amale (Labaki), Takla (Moussawbaa), Afaf (Hakim), Yvonne (Maalouf) and Saydeh (Noufaily) band together to plug the leaks of information.

While the threats are dangerous, the methods of the women are comical, a duality in tone controlled masterfully by Labaki. The ruses range from burning newspapers, disrupting television reception, hiring a troupe of Russian showgirls to distract the men, and even holding a town meeting and serving hash-brownies for snacks.

Labaki also peppers some unexpected musical sequences into the narrative. Some proponents have latched onto these scenes and called the film a musical, but if anything they are so few and far between and not integral to the narrative that they are actually distracting.

The ingenuity to praise here is Labaki's artful ability to mix cinematic whimsy with the bleak backdrop of Middle Eastern politics. She populates her village with warmth and flavour – the kind we would see in those small town British comedies like Local Hero and Waking Ned Devine. And Labaki's trump card that she holds in her back pocket is the final scene, which explains the reason for the film's title. Just when we think the women have successfully solved their problem, one last choice to be made could set them back to the beginning. It's a delightful open-ended final frame, which speaks to the never-ending saga of the conflicts in that part of the world.

SUNDANCE 2012: The House I Live In

2012-01-26T12:04:00.000-05:00

The House I Live In (2012) dir. Eugene Jarecki
Documentary

**½

By Alan Bacchus

It's been over 40 years since the term 'War on Drugs' was coined by Richard Nixon, and the fight has still not been won. Very little has changed, and according to Eugene Jarecki and the participants in his film it's even worse now than it was then. Considering Jarecki's success with political films, such as Why We Fight and Reagan, one would think he would be capable of handling such a broad topic. Unfortunately, like the authorities who can't seem to make any headway in their struggle, such is the result of this film. With the greatest of intentions, Jarecki's film is just too broad and unfocused to make its point dramatically.

To tackle the War on Drugs, Jarecki starts off with one of the best personalities to share his experiences, David Simon, the former investigative journalist and creator of The Wire, the last word on crime on television. He provides the most articulate insights, specifically related to the police’s culpability and their internal incentive policies toward arrest stats.

Jarecki also finds some very poignant reflections from his former nanny, a black woman whose family succumbed to the damaging effects of drugs after Jarecki’s family moved away from the city. Jarecki also puts his camera in cop cars that patrol America's streets, the courtrooms that lay down the sentences and the jails that keep drug dealers locked up for life.

Including the policing incentives and the corporate prison industry, Jarecki's thesis hits a number of culprits, but none more damning than the judicial system, including the minimum sentences and the shameful bias against crack cocaine used by the urban poor vs. powdered cocaine used primarily by the middle- and upper-classes. As such, Jarecki claims the drug war is a class and race war in disguise, consciously targeting the poorest Americans.

In the final act Jarecki overextends himself by making specific comparisons to the Holocaust and its five stages of genocide – identification, ostracism, confiscation, concentration and annihilation. While the topic and themes are of grave importance, Jarecki's ambitiousness is his undoing, as he tries to cover all the bases without the sufficient connections to make a precise, powerful and effective statement.

SUNDANCE 2012: The Bones Brigade

2012-01-25T15:40:00.006-05:00

The Bones Brigade (2012) dir. Stacy Peralta
Documentary

***

By Alan Bacchus

Just how many documentaries can Stacy Peralta make about skateboarding? Well, there's plenty of material and stories within the sport to tell. This new picture serves as the ideal continuation of Dogtown and Z-Boys, Peralta's personal chronicling of the sport of skateboarding into the ‘80s and his move from athlete to entrepreneur as manager, mentor and sponsor of a new crop of skating kids, including megastar Tony Hawk.

After Peralta's Zephyr teammates split up in the late ‘70s, he was the only one able to monetize his talents and turn skateboarding into a career profession. Along with skateboard designer George Powell, Peralta formed one of the sport's most successful boarding enterprises, Powell-Peralta. After watching the negative effect of success on his friends, Peralta decided to form a new team of unknown but talented skaters from around the country to compete and promote themselves as professional athletes. From this came the Bones Brigade, which encompassed 40 or so members but featured a core group of five skaters that were influential to the sport in their own unique ways.

First, there's Tony Hawk, the Wayne Gretzky of skateboarding, who, because of his success, became intensely disliked by his competitors; Steve Cabellero, the small but talented acrobatic skater; Mike McGill, the inventor of the McTwist manoeuvre; Lance Mountain, the joker of the bunch, who became a celebrity after starring in Powell-Peralta's first skating video; and Rodney Mullan, the freestyle extraordinaire, whose skills with the board on the ground were unrivaled, but a guy who also suffered from the repression of his disapproving parents.

Peralta admirably tones down the cinematic language compared to his flashy technique in Dogtown and uses a more formal, restrained style reflective of his new position as mentor in this phase of his career, as well as his growing maturity as a filmmaker. Each of his interviews is shot in the same location – a well art-directed skateboard workshop with boards filling the frame from top to bottom. Again, the ingrained culture of self-documentation of skaters means there's a wealth of footage and stills to help visualize his story. Stills, video footage and super-8 footage are combined for a fun time capsule of ‘80s aesthetic.

The prevailing theme that emerges here is the sense of family that Peralta infuses in the kids, which manifests itself in their supremely innovative athletic feats. This contrasts sharply with the painful destruction of compatriots in Dogtown.

As in Dogtown, The Bones Brigade treads on self-aggrandizement, as Peralta himself is a key character in this story - he even interviews himself. But this time he adds the subtitle 'An Autobiography', which kind of prevents us from criticizing the film for any bias. But we should look at these films as personal filmmaking at its best, a superbly entertaining diary of sorts, with maximum flare, energy and exuberance in the prevailing art form of our generation. I also doubt that this is the end of the story, as there are two more decades of skateboarding to examine, something I will certainly welcome with open arms.

SUNDANCE 2012: Searching For Sugarman

2012-01-24T02:47:00.004-05:00

Searching For Sugarman (2012) dir. Malik Bendjelloul
Documentary

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Ever heard of the artist Rodriguez, a Detroit area folk singer from the early '70s? Didn't think so. After two unsuccessful albums he faded into obscurity. But to South Africans, through luck and circumstance, his albums became as popular as Elvis's, and part of the counterculture anthems that helped spark the anti-Apartheid movement. But no one knew anything about him other than that he was dead, a victim of a horrific on-stage suicide.

This is the starting point for Malik Bendjelloul's fascinating documentary about the myth and aura of this strange but immensely talented artist, who, according to the producers he worked with, was as talented and poetic as Bob Dylan.

Bendjelloul follows a pair of obsessed fans, who sleuth their way back in time in the hopes of shedding light on this decades-long mystery.

Bendjelloul establishes a teasing procedural narrative as the South Africans describe their analysis of the evidence available to them, including the album credits, the lyrics, the record label and the trail of money that would hopefully lead to answers.

The twists and reveals in this story are fascinating and help piece together a character of an artist whose integrity trumped his perceived failure. At the same time they give us a deafening history lesson in South African Apartheid.

Looking back there perhaps wasnt much of a mystery to tell, but the director expertly includes the point of view of the fans, who, with little knowledge and information, had to solve the case with determination, dedication and perseverance.

And what a pleasure to discover the music of Rodriguez, whose melodies and lyrics are as haunting and moving as described in the film. Searching For Sugarman is superb storytelling and a perfect example of the power of the documentary form.

SUNDANCE 2012: Father's Chair

2012-01-23T13:44:00.004-05:00

Father's Chair (2012) dir. Luciano Moura
Starring: Wagner Moura, Mariana Lima, Lima Duarte, Brás Antunes

***

By Alan Bacchus

Father’s Chair is a well intentioned family reconciliation drama in which a self-absorbed dictatorial father needs to embark on a life-changing road trip in order to find his missing son and find himself in the process. The real attraction here is seeing the fine Brazilian actor Wagner Moura (Elite Squad) at work. He's considered Brazil's most famous actor, and indeed he holds the picture down even when it threatens to over-indulge in its own self-importance.

Theo (Moura) is a middle- to upper-class workaholic who has recently separated from his wife and has become more angry and controlling of his son. He also has his own father issues having been estranged from his dad for most of his life. The shoe drops for Theo when his son receives a chair for his birthday from the mysterious grandfather. This sets Theo off into an angry rage, which causes his son to run away from home. Theo’s subsequent frantic search for his son takes him through the salt of the earth countryside and poverty stricken slums giving him an eye-opening and cathartic experience.

We can sympathize with Theo and the devastating fear of having a son go missing. Indeed, Moura plays out Theo's franticness with a strong sense of suspense and danger. Theo's road trip sleuthing unfortunately seems to come too easily for him. One step leads conveniently to another lead, resulting in a rather comfortable and conflict-free journey. We also know where this film is headed from the start, and Moura never deviates from its telegraphed trajectory.

By the end Theo learns the necessary lesson to be a better man with a predictable meeting of reconciliation. This film wears its heart on its sleeve, but just a bit too loudly and proudly to elevate itself over the conventionality of the melodramatic contrivances.

SUNDANCE 2012: Me @ the Zoo

2012-01-22T22:40:00.005-05:00

Me @ the Zoo (2012) dir. Chris Moukarbel, Valerie Veatch
Documentary

***

By Alan Bacchus

A decent cinematic essay about the YouTube effect, that is the new millennium speaker's corner of sorts, which has become the influential platform for online personal expression.
Few people have expressed themselves more dramatically than Chris Crocker, a celebrity-chasing Britney Spears addict, but also a repressed gay teen living in the bigoted hillbilly world of small town Tennessee. Being an outsider is an understatement for Crocker, who, with the creation of YouTube, found his mechanism for expression. His self-produced video rants have made him a sensation of sorts for the 15-minute famers that YouTube creates - specifically his Britney rant, which went viral in 2007.

Somehow Chris lasted longer than most, but as per Moukarbel and Veatch's thesis, he gets spit out and demolished just like his idol Britney Spears.

Using ample YouTube videos and other footage, Moukarbel and Veatch create a unique character study of Internet celebrity. Crocker comes off as a performer at heart but also deranged and delusional - the perfect personality for this kind of success.

But they also expose the fallacy of Internet stardom and the fact that people just don't want to pay for Crocker's act, which seems to work only in the confines of his own home. His failed attempt at a reality TV shows that his kind of fame comes from the creation of unaltered truth. While Crocker's YouTube success came from a place of honesty and passion, he was simply faking it for television.

Me @ the Zoo succeeds in telling the story of the YouTube phenomenon through the voice of one of its biggest stars in an effective and innovative manner.

SUNDANCE 2012: The Other Dream Team

2012-01-22T16:53:00.012-05:00

The Other Dream Team (2012) dir. Marius Markevicius
Documentary

****

By Alan Bacchus

The Other Dream Team is an unbelievably inspiring story of freedom and liberation from repression told through the triumph of the Lithuanian basketball team, which toiled under the Soviet regime before their bronze medal victory as a sovereign nation in the 1992 Olympics.

Sports has always made for great documentaries, the drama inherent in the competition, the visual spectacle of world class athletes, and the wealth of footage and coverage devoted to sporting events are a gold mine for filmmakers.

The Other Dream Team is no exception. But with the added gravitas of the political upheaval of the Iron Curtain and the deeply emotional human story at its heart, this picture becomes a truly epic and powerful piece of cinema.

Filmmaker Marius Markevicius charts a 50-year odyssey of the small Baltic country of 3 million people from pre-war prosperity to annexation and poverty under the Soviets to their violent revolution in 1991. All the while we learn about the country's mad obsession with basketball, which birthed superstars Sarunas Marciulionis and Arvydas Sabonis. The film charts their success in the Soviet league in the 80's to their courtship by the NBA and all the political and cultural conflicts they encountered.

Interviews with Marciulionis, Sabonis and other players confirm all the preconceived notions of poverty behind the Iron Curtain. But the biggest tragedy is not the absence of bread or blue jeans, but their lack of freedom to express their culture, language and identity as Lithuanians. Even the seasoned journalist Jim Lampley tears up when recounting the pain of these players during this period.

The players’ stories are so rich that Markevicius doesn't even get to the 1992 Olympics until the final act, which feels like a bonus track on a masterpiece album.

The coda to this story comes after the liberation of the country and the fall of Communism. But once we get embroiled in the drama of the Olympics it becomes a film within a film. The involvement of The Grateful Dead in funding the basketball team's trip to the Olympics is zany enough to make up its own documentary. Same with the awesome sight of other marginalized peoples competing under new flags (e.g., South Africa and Estonia). We're also treated to some astonishing footage of the US Dream Team demolishing opponents. But the dramatic climax to the picture comes in the form of a storybook matchup between the former Soviet Union and Lithuania, which is so emotional and moving it didn't leave a dry eye in the house.

The Other Dream Team is so powerful it transcends its sport, instead serving as the representation for our instinctual desire for freedom.

SUNDANCE 2012: The Pact

2012-01-22T01:40:00.006-05:00

The Pact (2012) dir. Nicholas McCarthy
Starring: Caity Lotz, Casper Van Dien, Haley Hudson, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Sam Ball, Agnes Bruckner

***

By Alan Bacchus

The Pact is a smart, well written and genuinely scary haunted house movie with equal parts B-movie pastiche and visceral horror movie thrills.

After her sister disappears inside her own house, Annie is forced to return to her childhood home to play surrogate parent to her 8-year-old daughter. It doesn't take long before she starts hearing things in the house. A creak in the floor, closet doors opening inexplicably, broken picture frames on the ground and maddening nightmares are the stuff of horror films 101. Yet director Nicholas McCarthy is so damned resourceful and creative within his tiny spaces, it's a marvel.

There's also a heavy hand at work directing his actors with blockhead subtlety, egregiously over-killed music stings and overly lit texture-less cinematography, which is so bright it reminds us of a soft core porno film. But hell, Casper Van Dien is in the picture, which means we can't watch it with too much seriousness. It takes a while to set up the story, but there's a strong backstory established that is weighted equally with a dangerous presence in the present.

However silly and obnoxious the performances get, McCarthy absolutely floors us with his stunning horror images and nail-biting set pieces. As bad as the film is good, there is some major genre talent in this guy's bones.

SUNDANCE 2012: Simon Killer

2012-01-22T01:28:00.007-05:00

Simon Killer (2012) dir Antonio Campos
Starring: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Michael Abiteboul, Constance Rousseau, Lila Salet, Solo

***

By Alan Bacchus

Just like with Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Simon Killer is a film I can admire for its intense devotion to examining a despicable character. But it’s a film I have no desire to watch again.

Here, Simon (Brady Corbet) is more Tom Ripley than Henry, a charming rogue we know only from the lies he's been telling. Simon is introduced arriving in Paris where he is subletting a friend's apartment. After a breakup with his girlfriend, presumably because of her infidelity, he's ready to relax in the city of lights. He's immediately drawn to the red light district where he meets a stripper, gets a lap dance and a little bit more off the meter, and eventually forms a genuine relationship with the girl. Unfortunately, it's not an equal give-and-take. When he's not reciting his 'canned answers' and anecdotes, he's loafing on the relationship, moving into the girl’s flat, using her money and having crazy, crazy sex.

Simon crosses the thin line of decency when he conspires to extort money from the girl’s clients. It's just the start of a long descent into the depths of despair and, eventually, violence.

Campos' directorial style is very conscious of itself, playing out many of the scenes using long, slow extended takes with untraditional coverage and trendy European-style compositions. His musical choices, which capture the hypnotic effect of Parisian club music and new wave pop, add more cinematic hipness.

But this is Brady Corbet's film as much as it is Campos'. Campos rarely takes his camera away from Corbet, who exhibits the kind of naive charm and creepiness he showed in Michael Haneke's American Funny Games.

While the title is a bit of a misnomer, it certainly casts doubt on the intentions of the character. Simon is clearly a despicable human being. But like a car crash, it’s something we just can't take our eyes off.

SUNDANCE 2012: Hello I Must Be Going

2012-01-21T02:43:00.006-05:00

Hello, I Must Be Going (2012) dir. Todd Louiso
Starring: Melanie Lynsky, Christopher Abbott, Blythe Danner, John Rubenstein

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Flashbacks to the invigorating experience of last year's Grand Jury Prize winner Like Crazy result from this finely crafted cinematic character study and treatise on love. It's a marvelous picture, which, despite the sense of a pending tragedy, doesn't sacrifice its sharp funny bone. It’s a real winner featuring an infectious performance from Melanie Lynsky.

Three months into divorce proceedings has left Amy Mynsky (Lynsky) a shell of a woman. Lounging around her parents' house in oversized sweats, out of shape and with a perpetual vacant expression on her face makes her ripe for a cinematic reincarnation. This comes in the form of Jeremy (Abbott), a nineteen-year-old actor invited to their home by her parents for a dinner party. After so much wallowing in self-pity the attraction from just a few glances across the table is palpable. And their quick movement to sexual consummation is intoxicating.

With love juices flowing it's a hardcore love affair full speed ahead. So what's the catch? The problem is that Amy's parents are in a courtship of their own with Jeremy's parents for a key business deal that could ensure the security of the family. As a mature woman with life experience this weighs heavily on Amy. For Jeremy, he wants to throw caution to the wind with the idealism of youth.

This is the core conflict that makes for such a fascinating love story. Two lovers at different stages in life in a different world destined to be with each other. But director Louiso's cold dose of honest reality transforms the rather melodramatic romcom-style plotting into a rock solid real-world scenario.

But this is Melanie Lynsky's film, and she owns our attention from start to finish. Despite spending much of the movie in the 'blahs', Lynsky is interminably infectious and we yearn for her to find solace and reconciliation with her troubles.

Louiso directs the film smartly with little interference to the actors, perhaps a modus operandi of his when one looks back at the performance he drew out of Philip Seymour Hoffman in Love Liza. This picture proves Louiso is a major talent and Lynsky is a full-fledged leading lady. Hello I Must Be Going is one of the best new films at this festival.

SUNDANCE 2012: This Must Be The Place

2012-01-21T02:24:00.004-05:00

This Must be the Place (2011) dir. Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Sean Penn, Judd Hirsch, Frances McDormand, Eve Hewson, Kerry Condon, Harry Dean Stanton

**

By Alan Bacchus

This Must Be the Place is a Cannes entry from last year from the director of Il Divo. Unfortunately, where there was much potential in that film to announce a cool new voice in cinema this awful, overly eclectic exercise in self-indulgence is a major disappointment.

Sean Penn is a former musician, Cheyenne, dressed in goth black, pale face powder, black mascara and lipstick, thus a spitting image of The Cure’s Robert Smith. Though he lives in a swank Irish mansion with a completely devoted wife (McDormand) something's eating him, as he spends his days wandering around Dublin speaking in whispers and meek tones.

When he meets an old Nazi hunter (Hirsch) who knew his estranged father he's inspired to embark on a quest to kill the former concentration camp comandante that tormented his father.

After a misleading and essentially useless first act set in Dublin the film settles into a kind of eccentric road movie. As such, we're never sufficiently grounded. Just as we get used to goth Sean Penn living in Ireland, for no apparent reason we're shifted to another inexplicable location – Utah.

But this seems to be the foundation of Sorrentino's comedy – unpredictability. The point of the picture seems to beat us with random quirkiness, cinematic stylishness and Sean Penn's wicked hair. Admittedly, the sight of Mr. Penn with Robert Smith-hair never really tires, but it's also not the basis for a movie.

The stylish excesses also rampant in Il Divo are almost insufferable here. Sorrentino throws in too many mismatched characters, quirks, locations, music and camera language.

The casting of McDormand as Penn's wife, a middle-class ex-hippie, is like oil and water. And considering this film takes place in Dublin and the American southwest, made by Italian filmmakers with music from David Byrne and Will Oldham, there are just too many mismatched puzzle pieces that don't fit together.

Kramer vs. Kramer

2012-01-20T04:14:00.008-05:00

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) dir. Robert Benton
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Justin Henry, Meryl Streep

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Anyone remember what the Best Picture Oscar winner was in 1979? It was Kramer vs. Kramer. Like Revolutionary Road, Benton’s film examines a domestic situation relatable to many couples. It’s the definitive film on divorce made at a time when more American couples were getting divorced than ever. The situational drama between the three family members still has first-person relevance and poignancy.

The opening of the film features the haunting and beautiful face of Meryl Streep as Joanna Kramer saying goodbye to her son, Billy (Justin Henry). For reasons not completely revealed to us Joanna is preparing to leave her husband and son. Dustin Hoffman plays Ted Kramer, a career driven ad exec whose working life moves too fast for him to notice his wife’s disillusionment. And so when Joanna suddenly announces to Ted that she’s leaving the family it’s a complete shock.

Instantly, Ted finds himself as a single dad having to raise his child and be a real parent for the first time. Hoffman and Henry form the heart of the film. It’s a tenuous relationship, as they both have to learn quickly how to support each other. A year-and-a-half later, just as Ted gets comfortable with his new life, Joanna returns wanting full custody of Billy. Ted takes Joanna to full divorce court to battle her.

Joanna Kramer has much in common with Kate Winslet’s character, April Wheeler, in Revolutionary Road. Both women have a sense of despair in their lives – an early midlife crisis and the realization that they don’t love their husbands. The emotion of their realization clouds their ability to make rational decisions. As a result, however extreme and heinous, we can believe how Joanna can do the unthinkable and leave her own son.

In the history of Hollywood Kramer vs. Kramer appears to fall in that category of middle-of-the-road conservative films that win over the riskier and arguably more memorable films of the year. Other great films from 1979 include Apocalypse Now, Manhattan, Alien and All that Jazz. Unlike any of those films, Kramer vs. Kramer is an intimate film, a small-scale drama anchored on two career defining and Oscar winning performances from Hoffman and Streep. No one can take anything away from Hoffman’s Oscar. His own real experiences helped shape his character, and according to the making-of documentary, Justin Henry’s performance as well. Hoffman’s hands-on involvement in the development and production of the film could have given him a co-director credit.

If anything, Benton lets Hoffman go over-the-top in that familiar Hoffman manner. However internal or method his process is, in some of the key scenes there is a falseness to his behaviour – specifically his reunification with Joanna over coffee. In this scene Hoffman explodes with a fury too hot and violent for a man who's supposed to have changed.

And so Kramer vs. Kramer suffers from some of the same “Hollywoodisms” as Revolutionary Road. However, unlike Road, Kramer vs. Kramer is the definitive film on this subject. Enjoy.

Kramer Vs. Kramer is available on DVD in Sony's 'Columbia Best Pictures Collection'.

Ship of Fools

2012-01-19T11:11:00.006-05:00

Ship of Fools (1965) dir. Stanley Kramer
Starring: Oskar Werner, Simone Signoret, George Segal, Lee Marvin, Jose Ferrer

***

By Alan Bacchus

There’s something about being on a boat that makes for good cinema. Perhaps it’s the seclusion from the public, the diversity of guests and characters, the theme of neutrality or even the vulnerability on the open seas. Stanley Kramer’s 1965 adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's novel is a big ol’ glossy Hollywood production – Grand Hotel on the seas – at times a cumbersome exercise in ensemble cinema, but also an oddly infectious piece of Hollywood melodrama.

It’s 1933 and a cruise ship departs from Veracruz, Mexico bound for Germany. On board are a varied group of intellectuals, political refugees, artists and romantics. Director Stanley Kramer takes us deep into the relationships and conflicts of a dozen passengers. For 28 days the ship exists as a microcosm of political and social conflicts.

With the threat of war on the horizon and in the midst of the Depression, the petty prejudices and chauvinisms contrast the state of superior nationalism in the world. Jose Ferrer's bombastic German businessman character heads an upper-class clique that alienates the Jewish guests and provides the obvious foreshadowing of the Holocaust. Simone Signoret plays an exiled Spanish socialist looking to kick her addiction to sleeping pills. She falls in love with the equally anguished ship's doctor, Wilhelm Schulman (Oskar Werner), and their sparks provide the most interesting subplot. Some stories don't stand the test of time though, specifically Lee Marvin's washed-up and racist ballplayer suffering from alcoholism, and George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley's relationship squabbles are the stuff you fast forward through.

The wonderful dwarf actor Michael Dunn gives the warmest performance as the humble gentleman outsider who introduces us to the characters and every once in a while addresses the camera to give his own personal comments on the events we see on screen.

At 150 minutes in duration it’s a long film, and like many epics of its era it does wear out its welcome. Where Ship of Fools doesn’t succeed is during the increased stakes and conflict in the final third. As the ship gets closer to its destination, the conversations continue at the same pace as before. The resolutions of the individual plotlines are satisfactory and provide adequate closure, but considering the early Nazi-era time period there was much more room for greater hindsight perspective.

Traffic

2012-01-18T10:01:00.005-05:00

Traffic (2000) dir. Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Michael Douglas, Benecio Del Toro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman, Erika Christensen, Topher Grace, Steven Bauer

****

By Alan Bacchus

Looking back on my favourite independent films of the late ‘90s/early 2000s, some survive well and others don’t (like Magnolia - ew). Despite many imitators, Traffic has lost none of its power since 2000. It’s a film about ideas, as fresh, innovative, thrilling and emotionally satisfying now as it was then.

At this time there was a whole lot of high-profile studio dreck making big noise. But it was mostly hot air – lots of tepid Hollywood product from big names like Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away, What Lies Beneath), Ridley Scott (Gladiator), Gus Van Sant (Finding Forrester), Robert Redford (Legend of Baggar Vance), Ron Howard (The Grinch Whole Stole Christmas) and other 'forgettable' studio product.

It was an astonishing year for Steven Soderbergh, who had two critical hits that year, including Erin Brochovich. He was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for both and won for Traffic.

Based on the British TV mini-series, Traffik (1989), Soderbergh’s opus captures the broad scope of the drug trafficking network in America, specifically the cartels in Mexico selling their wares in the United States. Arguably, much of the heavy lifting on this story was done by Simon Moore, who wrote the British series. Screenwriter Stephen Gaghan’s challenge was to transport it to America, bring it down to two-and-a-half hours and make it cinematic.

It’s a simple starting point to tell this broad story – three separate threads that converge with each other in the third act. There’s Benecio del Toro’s character, Javier Rodriguez, a soft-spoken Mexican cop, who, despite using dirty tactics, has a moral conviction at heart that will emerge throughout the picture. He’s our point of view into the Mexican cartel war, in this case the Obregon/Juarez cocaine kings, whose battle incites the action in the film.

There’s also the point of view of the DEA, including officers Montel Gordon (Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Guzman), affable undercover partners leading the case against the American distributor of the Obregon drugs, Carlos Ayala (Steven Bauer), who, following the arrest of a low-level pawn, uses him as an informant against Ayala.

And lastly there’s the government angle with Robert Wakefield (Douglas) as the Presidential-appointed drug czar, who, while navigating his way through the drug politics of the border, is also dealing with his daughter's own drug addiction.

While one of its more famous imitators, Crash, used the same gimmicky device but with a block head treatment of its sociopolitical issues, looking back Traffic feels as credible, honest and thought-provoking intellectually as it did 12 years ago. This is due to Steven Soderbergh's precise control of his tone. Many of his key turning points could have been embellished, but at all times we can feel the restraint on the reigns whenever the film threatens to spill over into melodrama.

Soderbergh continues his fascinating creative collaboration with composer Cliff Martinez, his go-to man for his serious films. Using quiet ambient tones, both synthesized and organic, a quiet intensity brews, keeping the drama to a whisper.

And despite the truncated screen time we come to love Soderbergh’s heroes, specifically the DEA agents whom we discover are in over their heads against the powerful, unstoppable force and deep pockets of the clandestine drug cartels. It’s the same with the rogue underachiever, Javier Rodriguez, who, after witnessing the horrors of the drug war at ground zero, engineers a remarkable and heroic stance against the hand that fed him.

Of the three storylines Michael Douglas’s feels the most on the nose, specifically the dramatic irony of his daughter’s addiction competing against his responsibility as drug policeman for the country as a whole. That said, it's one of Douglas's best late-career performances. And the only other false note to reference is Dennis Quaid’s obvious turn as the shady lawyer scheming against Ayala’s pregnant wife.

But these are minor blips in an otherwise perfect movie. It’s an 'important' film recognizable as a product of its time – just as All the President’s Men and its distilled conspiratory style was a product of its time.

Traffic is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. But as a note to readers, Soderbergh’s carefully crafted colour-coded cinematography doesn’t quite hold up on Blu-ray. It takes much fiddling with your contrast/brightness settings so as not to blow out the hot spots in most of the scenes.

The Sugarland Express

2012-01-17T10:35:00.010-05:00

The Sugarland Express (1974) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Goldie Hawn, William Atherton

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Pauline Kael famously remarked about The Sugarland Express that it was “…one of the best directorial debuts ever.” How prophetic Ms. Kael was at the time. Revisiting Steven Spielberg’s first theatrical feature now is still a wonderful experience. At only 27 years old and already with four years of extensive television directing experience and one of the best made-for-TV films ever made (Duel), Sugarland was a natural extension from Spielberg's previous work.

Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) visits her convicted husband, Clovis Poplin (William Atherton), in his pre-release correctional facility. Clovis has only four months before he is released, but Lou Jean threatens to leave him if he doesn’t escape from prison and help her reclaim their foster-homed child. Clovis does what he’s told and together they skillfully flee the premises unnoticed by the guards.

As soon as Lou Jean and Clovis are on the road the momentum starts to build. They quickly find themselves in a car chase with a state policeman, after which they kidnap the cop and steal his car. Now speeding away in a stolen cop car holding a cop hostage, the stakes are sufficiently raised to alert virtually every officer in the state.

Spielberg’s innate skills in producing order out of chaos are in full force. Much of the film takes place in one long convoy – the threesome in front with 200 cop cars behind them. It’s overkill to the nth degree, but hey, we’re in Texas and it's a comedy. Spielberg's instincts are impeccable in this regard. A relationship between hostage and hostage-taker develops, and much of the humour arises from the absurdity of this unusual relationship. Overnight, Lou-Jean, Clovis and officer Slide become 15-minute celebrities. Like the Bronco Chase, the citizens of the small towns they pass through surround them, touch them and throw gifts at them – a virtual Christ-like adulation. It’s refreshing to see how natural and organic Spielberg portrays old country Middle America.

The journey ends at the home where their child is in foster care. At this point, for the first time, Clovis and Lou Jean are forced to face the reality of their situation and come to grips with the decisions they’ve made. Spielberg is tougher on his characters in the end than he would be in later pictures. SPOILERS...Clovis is shot and killed and Lou Jean is sent to prison for five years. Spielberg cleverly manipulates his audience by emphasizing the care-free aspects and only freckles hints of their inevitable demise into the story. The tonal shift in the ending is not unnatural and is earned, the same way as in Bonnie and Clyde and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It’s fun to see Spielberg’s favorite cinematic trademarks developing right before our eyes – his use of overlapping dialogue, his confidence with crowds, big set pieces, and his love for quirky characters and natural dialogue. However, in the past 20 years he’s clearly lost this ear for dialogue, which is a shame. His cinematography looks much different than today, but his camera moves are all the same, tracking and craning to reveal his characters in the most innovative (and motivated) ways.

Most cinephiles have memorized shot-for-shot the early Spielberg classics, including Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and so there are no surprises when watching those films multiple times. That’s why The Sugarland Express is worth a visit, as it gives you a chance to rediscover a great filmmaker straight out of the womb and with a clean, unblemished slate.

Citizen Kane

2012-01-16T09:34:00.006-05:00

Citizen Kane (1941) dir. Orson Welles
Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Comongore, Anges Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloan, Erskine Sanford

****

By Alan Bacchus

Even heady proclamations like the ‘Greatest Film Ever Made’ cannot overstate how powerful this picture is. The story of a mercurial newspaper magnate who began his career as an idealistic entrepreneur raised with a silver spoon in his mouth who, over the course of his life, breaks down to an egomaniacal tyrant is like an insatiable addiction. Welles’ tale of American big business and the cult of personality which arises from unabated success has become as fundamental to cinema as The Odyssey is to classical literature.

The layers of complexity and intrigue entwines itself both inside and outside this work of art. Not only the technical advances of the film's production, but the thematic connections of character and the fallibility of great men, the analysis of genius is fascinating, and even more so when connecting the filmmaking author of the picture Orson Welles to his target of attack, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst - elements which converge like a perfect storm of culture, art, politics and the American dream. Citizen Kane is like a cockfight of monumental proportions.

The magnificent deep focus cinematography, the superlative transitions, the long take scene coverage, the time-compression editing and the structurally innovative narrative plotting are impossible not to miss. It’s a technical triumph, a stylistic landmark film, but we can’t look past some of the emotional moments which move us profoundly. One of the most striking scenes is the sequence which gets Kane to travel with his first wife by car to his mistress, Susan Alexander’s house. The sequence is built up to terrifying levels. We know where it’s going to go, outing Kane’s tryst with Alexander, which, as we know from the March of Times sequence broke up his marriage. But when Jim W. Geddes is revealed also in the house, we’re shocked into a stunned silence. The conversation in Alexander’s bedroom, which Kane, Geddes, Mrs. Kane and Alexander is the key turning point in the film and sends Kane on his descent into madness.

It's an arc as grandiose as the rise and fall of Michael Corleone, or Lawrence of Arabia. These characters, whether real or not, fascinate us because of what is kept hidden. Throughout the film we’re purposely kept a distance from Charles Foster Kane, his hubris and confident arrogance, acting like a impenetrable barrier to his inner turmoil. Welles’ restraint in keeping this from us is like a striptease of sorts – a theme foreshadowed in the opening montage where we get the public summary of his life. Through the film, the private summary of life is as beguiling and mysterious.

This is why the seemingly trite Rosebud maguffin works so well. It might feel like a wonky device used to drive the story. Until the last moment, the reveal of Rosebud ceases to be a maguffin, but an earth shatteringly profound revelation of Kane’s deep-rooted agony. In one image we get it. We get it all. Like Susan Alexander’s jigsaw puzzle metaphor, the piece which opens us up to Kane, however small and slight, the loss of his mother and the loss of childhood - a monumental tragedy worthy of the bible.

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2012-01-15T12:49:00.004-05:00

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) dir. Tomas Alfredsson
Starring: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Despite being completely dumbfounded by the murky-to-the-point-of-nauseating narrative obscurity of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the film stayed with me, lingering for weeks like an itch I couldn’t scratch before I was compelled to see it again. Tinker Tailor is kind of addictive – a puzzle likely never to be solved, but so utterly compelling we don’t need to understand everything.

Alfredson’s long lenses, which subliminally make us feel like we’re silently looking over the shoulders of his characters, allow him to feel the delicateness of all the proceedings. The Cold War spy games in this case mean finding a mole that may or may not be placed at the top of the British intelligence community – specifically the 'Circus', a subcommittee of nervous British spies headed by a very anxious man named Control (John Hurt).

Alfredson effortlessly moves us back and forth in time, to the point of complete temporal confusion. And by adding the possibility of tactics of counter-intelligence, that is false information planted by competing spies to sniff out double-agents, the machinations becomes dizzying.

The performances of the characters are so compelling, even though we may not get the details (or the big picture), the emotional stakes are real. Mark Strong, for instance, who seems to be playing the heavy in every picture these days, is given a very tender role and a relationship with another character that may or may not be homosexual. Same with the remarkable Benedict Cumberbatch, who, while committing everything to the cause of finding the mole, is forced to give up something so vital to life, and it’s devastating to watch.

Gary Oldman glues all these great actors together without doing much other than holding his poker face and staying calm. His ability to keep his emotions out of the conflict results in a performance that is icy cold but heroic at the same time.

The editing of this picture is also remarkable. Dino Jonsater assembles Alfredson’s luscious imagery like one slow moving montage scene. Jonsater is bold enough to cut an entire scene with one slow reaction shot of a character turning around and gazing curiously into the eyes of another.

This is the palette of the picture – snippets of glances, words, whispers and scenes, glimpses of the parts, never the whole, but with the main hero, George Smiley (Oldman), always a step ahead of the audience. I understand the conscious obscurity of the plotting will turn people off, but Tinker Tailor triumphs for its ability to create emotion and feeling from its profound themes of brotherhood and betrayal.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-14T13:50:00.004-05:00

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2010) dir. Niels Arden Oplev
Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Sven-Bertil Taube, Lena Endre, Peter Haber

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Since the discussion of the first Tattoo movie in relationship to the new film comes up all the time for me, why not repost my original review of the Niels Arden Oplev version. For the Fincher version, click HERE.

The success of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy books is widely known – a European phenomenon, which over this past year has finally broken in North America. All three films based on the three books, including The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, have already been shot, completed and released abroad to mega box office success. So, for once, North America has been left as the ‘last to know’ about these stories.

Not much has been made of the success of its North American theatrical release yet, but it’s an achievement. Considering the ‘in and out and get to the DVD release’ pattern of most films these days, its 13 weeks in release in a modest number of theatres is remarkable. Though it's only garnered a modest $7.3 million dollar take, the distributors and exhibiters seemed to have hit the sweet spot of its release – just enough theatres for it to maintain a solid word of mouth momentum and profitability, and a precedent for how smaller films can have lasting power in the cinema.

As for the movie, it’s just as remarkable. It’s a thrilling slice of Euro-pulp and a heavily plotted investigative, serial killer, feminist melodrama. Slick production value, salacious subject matter and an instantly iconic performance by Noomi Rapace make this the guilty pleasure of the year – a truly epic and inspired piece of airport trash.

Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a shamed investigative political journalist who has found himself sentenced to prison for apparently slandering a prominent politician publicly in his latest article. At his worst moment he receives a call from an even more prominent Swedish businessman, Henrik Vanger, who wants to hire Mikael to investigate the murder of his niece from 1966. With six months of freedom before having to serve his sentence and without a job, Mikael accepts the offer and soon becomes embroiled in a complex and sordid 40-year-old trail of family squabbles, neo-Nazism tendencies, gruesome sexual fetishes and grisly murder.

Meanwhile, a young 24-year-old tattooed and pierced goth chick, Lisbeth Salander (Noomie Rapace), the anti-social yet brilliant investigator who hacked into Blomkqvist’s computer on behalf of Vanger, is on her own path of adventure. Out of the blue she’s been told her guardianship (she's still being recognized as a youth) has been transferred to an especially slimy attorney. He turns out to be a masochist who subjects Lisbeth to humiliating sexual torture. That is, until she turns the tables and exacts some sweet revenge against him. After this escapade she joins up with Blomkvist to help solve the 40-year-old cold case.

This rather quick synopsis only scratches the surface of hair-raising peculiarities that make up this narrative. Particularly gruesome is the lengthy build-up to Lisbeth’s history. We don’t know much about her, but her physical appearance suggests a rebellious attitude and a hardened emotional exterior due to some trauma in the past. When the despicable court-appointed guardian enters her life her character is taken to the extreme. The actions of the guardian don’t make much sense logically, but it reinforces with severity Larsson’s pervasive theme of misogyny. The film successfully teases us with flashbacks to Lisbeth as a child and the death of her father via a lit match and some gasoline – a history we just might see fleshed out in The Girl Who Played With Fire.

As a serial killer genre film, director Oplev hits all the right buttons stylistically to entrap us in the complex web of evidence, back story, politics and the delightfully bad deeds of his killer. There’s a lot of procedural information thrown at us, but it’s expertly revealed like peeling the layers of an onion to provide maximum tension. If anything, the final reveals don’t quite elevate its shock value to anything higher than what we saw happen to Lisbeth at the beginning. And the rather sappy reunion that happens in the denouement is a tad too soft for this otherwise darkly cynical film.

Unfortunately, looking ahead to the other films, it appears the director Niels Arden Oplev directed only the first film and another director helmed the last two. In a few months we’ll see if the other two meet the expectations satisfied by Tattoo.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Alliance Films in Canada.

Hanover Street

2012-01-13T11:37:00.002-05:00

Hanover Street (1979) dir. Peter Hyams
Starring: Harrison Ford, Lesley-Anne Down, Christopher Plummer

**½

By Alan Bacchus

A young Harrison Ford in a romantic lead makes this obscure wartime romance an interesting discovery of the past. Peter Hyams, director of some decent ‘70s/’80s action thrillers (Narrow Margin, 2010, Capricorn One), directs this hopelessly tragic romantic war film channeling the sweeping epic qualities of David Lean, unfortunately, at times, with the heavy bluntness of Joe Wright.

Harrison Ford is an American pilot, David Hallerin, stationed in London in 1944. He catches the eye of a beautiful and well mannered erudite British gal, Margaret Sellinger (Lesley-Anne Down), and immediately develops an infatuation with her. An illicit romance starts, dramatized with gentle touches, heavy breathing and all the guilt that follows. Poor Margaret is actually in a happy marriage to a dull but well meaning bore of a man, Paul, played by Christopher Plummer.

Meanwhile, David continues to fly his bombing missions into France, becoming more belligerent and disillusioned about the danger his superiors are putting him in. Coincidentally, David and Paul meet on a secret mission inside Germany and are forced to work together for the cause without knowing their connection with each other. Love, courage and heroism collide with full-on heartbreaking tragedy and exhilaration so often featured in these sweeping epics.

The picture was shot right after Star Wars, so it’s fun to see a young and spry Harrison Ford with maximum charisma, rebellious confidence and foolhardy innocence. He looks damned fine in military garb and Lesley-Anne Down's big doey eyes are also irresistible, so it's not hard to sell us on this romance, which is thrown at us without much set-up other than the fact that they are the two most beautiful people in the room.

Peter Hyams’ trademark photographic look is pastoral beautification personified. His long lenses crush the edges of the frame squeezing out the periphery of the populated London streets to concentrate solely on his two lovers. The opening scene on the trolley where David and Margaret first meet is poorly written, but with such lovely compositions, Ford at his charismatic best and John Barry’s grand swooning score it sets the mood appropriately.

There’s not much on-screen chemistry that isn’t forced down our throats with these other cinematic embellishments. The age and relative obscurity for a Harrison Ford-led picture allow us to excuse contrivances I would normally pounce on.

The third act climax is reverse engineered without much nuance. Out of the blue David is assigned to pilot his lover’s husband on a dangerous mission into France. And for much of the journey they get to know each other without knowing they’re sleeping with the same woman. We see where it’s going a mile away, but Hyams manages to make it all exciting by dulling us to the outrageousness of it all - he even throws in a well choreographed chase scene (also a specialty of his).

Hyams certainly does not reach the mark of the David Lean-inspired romantic grandeur, but with top notch production values and a handsome and young Harrison Ford as an anchor, Hanover Street is rendered watchable. Enjoy.

Thief

2012-01-12T09:40:00.002-05:00

Thief (1981) dir. Michael Mann
Starring: James Caan, James Belushi, Tuesday Weld, Robert Prosky

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Some filmmakers take years to hone their style and aesthetic tastes. Others announce their vision right out of the gate. Such is the case with Thief, which instantly established Michael Mann’s unique, unmistakable viewpoint on the world. It also features one of James Caan’s best roles (including The Godfather) as a professional thief who yearns to establish a legitimate domestic life with a wife and child, but who instinctively gets pulled back into the world of crime.

The opening scene is riveting, establishing Frank (Caan) as a crackerjack jewel thief breaking into his next score and going through the elaborate procedure of cracking the safe. Frank’s use of heavy steel drills and welding equipment feels more like a tool and dye operation than the whimsical fun of say, a Jules Dassin picture, or other heist romps of the ‘70s, like The Brink’s Job or Dollars. This is part of Mann’s modus operandi for most of his career, depicting criminals as working class men albeit on the fringe of legitimate society.

After the heist, Frank connects with a new source, Leo (Prosky), who offers him a chance at more scores and more money. Frank’s instinct is to decline, preferring to work on his own. It’s a noble stance to take, but after reconnecting with his girlfriend, Jessie (Weld), with whom he wants to start a new life, including marriage and kids. With these prospects staring at him and with little money in his pockets he needs the scores and decides to go against his judgement.

Much of the second half of the film is prep for the big score, a diamond heist in an ultra-secure high-rise building. From the casing of the joint to purchasing the supplies and hiring the team, Mann makes the details of the preparation for the job as important as the actual theft.

Of course, as one would expect, there’s a double-cross threatening both Frank and his new family, which forces him to make some tough but pragmatic decisions about his family and his career in order to escape the web of criminal deceit he’s caught in.

Mann managed to create a resolute stone cold attitude to his world not present in other crime pictures before it – not even Sydney Lumet, William Friedkin or Don Siegel achieved this kind of realism. And combined with the precise but textured cinematography – glowing street lamps reflecting off rain-soaked Chicago streets would be a hallmark of Mann's later work too – it became a style Mann could call his own. Other than his rigorous attention to detail, the other thematic hallmark established in this picture is Mann’s characterization of thieves as identifiable men with many of the same domestic problems as the audience. One of the best scenes in the film is a long dialogue between Caan and Weld, lovers and life partners who are trying to figure out how to make their relationship work.

There’s also the electronic magnificence of the Tangerine Dream score, some of which dates the picture badly, but most of which sizzles with a feeling and tone unlike most other pictures of its kind. The synthesized sounds are diametrically opposed to all other styles of movie up until that (very short) period in Hollywood. Now with films like Tron: Legacy, Drive and Contagion, the electronic score might just make a comeback. But I don’t think any modern film would attempt to recreate the extremity of Tangerine Dream’s unorthodox sounds here.

Like any auteur’s work it’s fun to connect the themes, plotting, visualizations and tone of Thief to Mann’s other work, such as Heat, Manhunter and Miami Vice. The connections to Heat are the most direct. In fact, the narrative structure and building of characters in Thief seems like a trial work for the more expansive, epic and ambitious work of Heat.

As mentioned, as much as Thief was a showcase for the new American voice of Michael Mann, so it was for James Caan, who never really fulfilled the promise of The Godfather. Sure, Sonny Corleone was an iconic character that was impossible to forget, but look no further than Thief to find arguably Caan’s best work.

The Strawberry Blonde

2012-01-11T07:14:00.003-05:00

The Strawberry Blonde (1941) dir. Raoul Walsh
Starring: James Cagney, Olivia De Havilland, Rita Hayworth, Jack Carson, George Tobias and Alan Hale

****

By Greg Klymkiw

Casey would waltz with a strawberry blond,
And the Band played on,
He'd glide cross the floor with the girl he ador'd,
and the Band played on,
But his brain was so loaded it nearly exploded,
The poor girl would shake with alarm.
He'd ne'er leave the girl with the strawberry curls,
And the Band played on.
- Chorus, "The Band Played On" by Palmer & Ward, 1895

He was one of the original two-fisted, piss and vinegar Old Hollywood filmmakers - a man's man and then some - and yet, in spite of this reputation and a canon that included sprawling, dusty westerns, brutal gangster dramas and some of the most effective and affecting war propaganda, Raoul Walsh directed one of the most grandly entertaining, politically astute and decidedly progressive romantic comedies of the 1940s, one that placed women's roles and rights in a society controlled by men at the forefront of its narrative and thematic concerns while, at the same time focusing on a very different male figure, a regular guy from the wrong side of the tracks who is drawn to the surface attributes of both beauty and success, but discovers in himself something deeper.

The Strawberry Blonde is set against the backdrop of a simpler, gentler time in American history - the Gay 1890s - where every Manhattan street corner seemed equipped with a cheerful barbershop quartet crooning away to whomever would listen and when a man's biggest worry was what young lass he'd stroll through the park with on a Sunday afternoon. Life was sweet and an innocence and complacency gripped the towns and cities of America with the promise of new beginnings and sky's-the-limit opportunity.

Biff Grimes (James Cagney) is a working stiff with a dream. He wants to be a dentist. His pal from the old neighbourhood, the amiably smarmy Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson) wants wealth and power. What they both have their sights on is the flirty, charming, strawberry blonde of the picture's title, Virginia Brush (Rita Hayworth). In all things that SEEM to matter to Biff, Hugo wins and Biff loses, but in the process, Biff learns a few lessons in life when he ends up genuinely falling in love with Virginia's free-thinking, generous suffragette girlfriend Amy Lind (Olivia De Havilland) who has devoted much of her life to the profession of nursing.

On the surface, the movie is a grass-is-NOT-always-greener-on-the-other-side tale of love, friendship and what the true meaning of happiness is, but within the context of a shiny bauble, we get a story that, for its time was AHEAD of its time and in contemporary terms, is a drama for OUR time and frankly, universal enough to be for ALL time.

Walsh was a director imbued with such a strong sense of place and time. Film after film, characters moved through interior and exterior sets, backlots and locations endowed with meticulous attention to detail. Walsh played his characters thoughtfully and carefully, like chess pieces crafted from the ivory of Wooly Mammoth tusks and he moved them on sets as painstakingly rendered as the famed Staunton-crafted wooden boards. There are seldom false moments in a Walsh film and the reason for this is how he blocked his action with only the best actors - making sure that interior and exterior landscapes surrounding them were rooted in WHO they were as characters. To do this required scrupulous attention to every detail and he had the eye of a true Master. (In fact, one of Walsh's eyes was savagely extricated during a car accident when a jackrabbit jumped through an open window as he drove to the In Old Arizona set in the late 1920s. For most of his directing career he only had one eye, but WHAT an EYE!!!)

The Strawberry Blonde is a movie that pulsates with the life of a world that is both magical and real - so much so, that the visuals come close to conjuring actual smells. The spittoon-laden beer halls where Biff and his ne'er-do-well boozing Dad (Alan Hale) wind up in brawl after brawl practically reek with the stench of cheap tobacco smoke and draught-soaked floors. The barber shop where Biff hangs out with his master hair-stylist buddy Nick Pappalas (George Tobias) is so perfectly accoutered with the fixtures and implements of the trade that one's olfactories are gently pummelled with the aroma of pomades, lotions and talcum powder.

The gaslight illuminating the streets at night, the fresh leafy parks, the grocery-market-lined streets, the stuffy, oak-paneled boardrooms and offices of Hugo's construction empire, the gaudy, ornate nouveau-riche mansion Hugo lives in, the warmth of Biff's eventual hearth and home - all are teeming with sounds and sights that embrace all the characters in a world that's as bygone as it is familiar.

And the sounds!

Even in the 40s, this is a movie that delivers a richly layered soundtrack that rivals (if not downright trumps) the over-mixed, over-crowded digital aural blankets so prevalent in contemporary movies - but in glorious, delicious optical mono. And the music! Bands playing, tenors trilling; the movie is blessed with all this in addition to the almost continuous use of vocal and instrumental renderings of Palmer & Ward's insanely popular ditty of the period "The Band Played On" (which was re-popularized after the release of The Strawberry Blonde).

Walsh lays an incredibly rich tapestry before us. It's all that money could buy and then some - not surprising as The Strawberry Blonde was born out of the glory that was Warner Brothers studios. Walsh, began his career as an actor during the silent era and eventually moved into production. He worked as an assistant director to the legendary, groundbreaking D.W. Griffith - the height of Walsh's mentorship under cinema's first true master of cinematic narrative was assisting in the direction and co-editing the immortal Birth of a Nation. In addition to learning the ins and outs of narrative, editing and the use of the frame, Walsh even credited Griffith with his learning everything about techniques of production and production management - all contributors to Walsh's command of the film medium. In spite of this, Walsh was a contract director at the staid Paramount Pictures during the early sound period and his work here was perfunctory at best. However, when he moved to Warner Brothers, he positively exploded.

Walsh was one of those directors who thrived on collaborative relationships with people as brilliant as he was. Never surrounding himself with uninspiring yes-men, he worked in tandem with only the best artists and craftsmen. This aroused a spirit of artistry that was even greater than what he was naturally imbued with. At Warner Brothers, many of his best films were in collaboration with the visionary producer Hal B. Wallis (who would go on to produce Casablanca). Wallis was a showman par excellence and Walsh was a cinematic storyteller of the same order. They were formidable creative collaborators. Add to this that Walsh was always fixated on stories about "the little guy" or regular "Joes" against the backdrop of worlds bigger than they were, he and Wallis made ideal bedfellows - Wallis loved heroes, Walsh loved making all his characters bigger than life (yet in so doing, infusing them with a life force more real and sophisticated than most studio productions).

The Strawberry Blonde excels in this notion of making its little guy a hero. Biff is someone who wants more out of life than what's normally dealt to Joe-Blows, but he doesn't think, even for a second, that it will be handed to him. He works his butt off in matters of both his career and the heart. When he falls big-time for the coquette-ish Virginia, he's briefly afforded a taste of what he thinks would be Heaven-on-Earth, but as the film progresses, she has her sights set on bigger things and she not only breaks his heart, but eventually, her true colours are revealed. She's as exploitative and manipulative as Biff's "friend" Hugo. Virginia and Hugo become a match made in Heaven - or rather, Hell. Biff, on the other hand, is saddled with a fifth wheel in the romantic roundelay - though eventually, Amy offers the sort of love and support he needs - this is no mere infatuation as it was with Virginia, but deep and soulful. Even when Biff is offered a high-paying, high-ranking position with Hugo, he desperately wants to work hard and learn the business and experiences considerable frustration that his only job appears to be reading the morning papers and signing contracts he doesn't understand.

The character of Amy is beautifully rendered and way ahead of both the times of when the movie was made and certainly during the times in which the movie is set. She works as a nurse, and on the first double date twixt herself, Virginia, Biff and Hugo, she shows up adorned in her nurse uniform. Virginia - dolled up in all her finery - scolds Amy, but the fifth-wheel will have none of it. She's proud to be a working woman, a caregiver and intends to go straight to a nightshift at the hospital after a night on the town. She's also surprisingly and delightfully straightforward (modern, if you will) with respect to sexuality and in one of the best scenes in the movie, she shocks a horrified Biff with her modern frankness in matters of amore.

In contrast, Virginia is a gold-digging tease - all talk, no action - and unlike Amy, Virginia's talk is bubbly and empty-headed. Amy displays her own brand of froth, but her sex appeal comes from open-mindedness, intelligence, a keen wit, political savvy and overall, a deep, genuine sense of caring. Virginia chides Amy for being a suffragette, but she's unapologetic - Amy is a firm believer and fighter for the rights of women, but at the same time, she wants to make a place for herself in the world with a man - not as her ruler and/or protector, but in an equal partnership founded in love, mutual respect and making a better life for both of them and those around them.

One of the aspects of this tale that resonates in contemporary terms is the notion of how the rich exploit and deceive the poor. A turn in the tale has overtones of tragedy. Once Biff is duped into joining Hugo's company, he becomes the fall guy in an illegal development scam. Even here, though, Walsh focuses on the indomitability of the working guy and we see strife metamorphosize into strength and Biff's character is deepened in his resolve to get free of the shackles imposed upon him by the dishonesty and thievery of the "ruling" class.

All of this is played by an astounding all-star cast. As Cagney proved time and time again, he was more than just a movie tough guy. Certainly in Footlight Parade and Yankee Doodle Dandy, he was a spectacular song and dance man and here, he's a terrific, (though pugnacious) romantic leading man with a great sense of humour. Olivia De Havilland offers up a snappy, sexy leading lady, far removed from the whiny, helpless, long-suffering Melanie Wilkes in Gone With the Wind. Rita Hayworth is her super-sexy self, while Jack Carson, George Tobias and Alan Hale lend the sort of magnificent support as character actors that the Warners stable always offered up.

Not only was Walsh endowed with an eye to championing the rights of the impoverished (or, in the cases of some, at least understanding when impoverishment led to socially deviant behaviour), but he was, thanks to producer Wallis, given magnificent material to work with. Based on a popular play, this was the second of three screen versions of this tale. Its screenplay was provided by the brilliant Epstein twins, Julius and Phillip (Daughters Courageous, Four Wives, The Man Who Came To Dinner, Casablanca) and with the outstanding Raoul Walsh at the helm, Strawberry Blonde is a truly delightful and intelligent romantic comedy - one for the ages and beyond.

"Strawberry Blonde" is available through the on-demand Warner Archives. Better video retailers (like Toronto's Sunrise Records at Yonge and Dundas and My Movie Store at Dundas and Tomken) will also carry it.

Other great Raoul Walsh pictures that MUST NOT BE MISSED ARE:

White Heat, The Roaring Twenties, Objective, Burma!, High Sierra, Pursued, They Died with Their Boots On, They Drive by Night, Manpower and Gentleman Jim.

Rules of the Game

2012-01-10T10:07:00.005-05:00

Rules of the Game (1939) dir. Jean Renoir
Starring: Marcel Dario, Nora Gregor, Jean Renoir

****

By Alan Bacchus

Robert de la Chesnaye (to the Servant): “Please, will you end this farce?”
The Servant: “Which one?”

Generally cited in most international polls as one of the greatest films of all time, Rules of the Game has proven to be a major influence on the unique sub-genre of ensemble-chamber films and a major influence on Altman, Lars von Trier, Woody Allen, Denys Arcand, Luis Bunuel and many others. It’s a biting farce and critique of the social follies of upper-class French aristocrats.

A snobby French aristocrat, Robert de la Chesnaye, is planning a hunt at his country estate, and he invites not only his friends, but their husbands, wives, mistresses and lovers as well. In Renoir’s world, wives and mistresses are interchangeable. Husbands have mistresses, and their wives are mistresses to other men. Even the mistresses have other lovers. And everyone is invited to the party. The title is appropriate because Renoir’s upper-class twits have ‘rules’ to their social games, where everyone is supposed to accept their dalliances as such. But only the upper-class can be naïve enough to think their social superiority will immunize them against envy and greed. That’s how it starts, but of course we know the house of cards will eventually fall – it always does.

Renoir deftly juggles half a dozen plotlines and character relationships throughout the film. He uses pre-Citizen Kane deep-focus photography to show action and dialogue in the background and foreground. It was innovative then and is still fresh and exciting to watch today. After establishing all the characters and their relationships with each other, the film moves to another level with the famous hunting sequence. Renoir crafts the scene well, with a terrific montage of the killing of rabbits, pheasants and various other animals. The foreshadowing isn’t subtle, but it provides the film with a darkly comic edge.

In the evening during a stage masquerade show for the guests, the energy of the film is ramped up to another level. Jealous anger boils over causing a series of arguments and fights throughout the house. These scenes, which make up much of the second act, create one of cinema’s most famous set-pieces – a masterpiece of movement and choreography.

Unlike Kane, which begins with a bang and announces itself as a cinematic rule breaker with force, Rules of the Game is more subtle. At the outset it may not be an obvious masterpiece, but as Roger Ebert puts it, ‘You can't simply watch it, you have to absorb it.' By the end the characters get into your skin. And it's not just the follies of the rich, but every substrata of class as well – the wait-staff, servants and grounds keepers all watch and participate in the elaborate game.

The impending war, though not specifically referenced, provides another level of socio-political context. Renoir made the film prior to WWII and didn’t have the benefit of hindsight, which makes his achievement even more remarkable. With the war on their doorstep, the naiveté of the ruling class and the triteness of their ego-driven preoccupations are even more scathing.

Unfortunately, the result was a complete dismissal of the film by critics and the public when it was released, as well as being banned by the Vichy government for being unpatriotic. Like Citizen Kane, it wasn’t until the late ‘50s that Renoir's masterpiece could be appreciated as a film years and decades ahead of its time.

Rules of the Game is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

The Hudsucker Proxy

2012-01-09T10:05:00.002-05:00

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) dir Joel Coen
Starring: Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman

****

By Alan Bacchus

If there was a support group for fans of The Hudsucker Proxy, I’d be the first to join. For the longest time, Hudsucker was considered the Coens’ official ‘failure’, a big budget Joel Silver-produced critical and commercial bomb. Though Fargo has the praise, prestige and Oscar win attached to it, on a personal level The Hudsucker Proxy is my all-time favourite Coens film, and I’ve been taking flack for it for years.

The story is about Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), a down-on-his-luck college grad (Muncie College of Business Administration), who starts off in the mailroom of Hudsucker Industries and then instantly gets promoted to CEO in an attempt by Chairman of the Board, Sidney J, Mussburger (Paul Newman), to reduce the stock price for personal gain. But Norville isn’t the imbecile Mussburger thinks he is, and he in fact turns his simplistic idea of a round piece of plastic into the hula hoop phenomenon. Norville becomes the toast of the town, but then is brought down by a meddling newspaper reporter, Amy Archer, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh by way of Katherine Hepburn. At the worst moment of his life, Norville attempts to commit suicide by jumping off the 44th floor (not counting the Mezzanine) until a moment of divine intervention brings him back to life.

It was generally agreed at the time that Hudsucker was the most visually stunning American film in years and arguably the claim holds up today. There’s never a dull moment. From the opening shot we're reminded of Citizen Kane, a long tracking shot into a large building with lovely snow falling, a single light illuminated in the background. The city is clearly a model – like the opening push into the spinning globe in Casablanca - so, right away, we’re given the rules of the film – it’s an homage to the past and a fantasy film.

The opening sequence, which shows how Norville is hired by the company, is tremendous. More than just a virtuoso technical exercise, it establishes the themes of the film - karma, the circle, the clock and many of the metaphors that will be repeated in the film. There are so many details to be discovered in subsequent viewings, including Mussberger’s cigar (note how the length changes throughout the film), the contrasting devil and angel characters of Moses the Clock Man and Aloysius the Spy, as well as the half-dozen other virtuoso moments in the film, including the mail room sequence, the Hula Hoop sequence and the rousing finale.

Borrowing from the best Bogart, Hepburn, Grant, Bacall and Edward G. Robinson exchanges of the past, the dialogue zings along at lightning pace – gags are disguised in between lines and over top of other lines (think His Girl Friday meets Bringing Up Baby meets Mr. Deeds Goes to Town). It’s impossible to catch it all in one sitting. Todd McCarthy (Variety) described the film as esoteric, which is a cop-out criticism. Sure, the idea and influence is esoteric, and buffs may enjoy it on another level, but the themes are universal and inspiring. The story is remarkably tight, as not a scene, line of dialogue, character or prop is wasted. With Norville hanging in mid-air during the fight between Moses and Aloysius in the gears of the clock, it's a perfectly constructed climax and includes the most clever use of a man’s dentures. Adding ample support is Carter Burwell’s usually proficient score. It’s perhaps his best, a grand series of compositions - humorous, melancholy and epic all at once.

It may come as no surprise that the film was co-written by Sam Raimi, who blends his unappreciated comic touch with the Coen's style seamlessly. Of course, the Coens and the Raimis have a long history with each other, and I hope there will be more collaborations in the future.

The reputation of Hudsucker is growing with encouragement from bloggers and fanboys like me, so I think my support group would have a lot of members. But the hit we all took as fans over the years still stings, and we all need more comfort. The best you can do is watch and, hopefully, enjoy the film.

THE HUDSUCKER PROXY: Movie Trailer. Watch more top selected videos about: The Hudsucker Proxy, Charles Durning

Design For Living

2012-01-06T10:07:00.011-05:00

Design For Living (1932) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
Starring: Gary Cooper, Frederic Marsh, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton

****

By Alan Bacchus

Tom Chambers (Marsh) is a playwright, George Curtis (Cooper) is an artist, and in between these two libidinous best friends is Gilda Farrell (Hopkins), the third angle of a unique love triangle, which in the pre-code era resulted in a coy spin on our preconceived notions of male-female sexual relations.

The Criterion Collection has appropriately dug out this delicious farce directed by the master of romantic-sexual comedies, Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble in Paradise, Ninotochka), and written by the master of British wit, poise and the complexity of relationships, Noel Coward. What a team!

It’s so refreshing to watch how quickly these older movies get to the point. The opening scene features Gilda getting into a train car to Paris occupied by Tom and George. Both are sleeping against each other. A carefully framed close-up of Cooper’s hand on Marsh's might even suggest a homosexual relationship. They aren’t gay, but their proximity foreshadows just how closely they will be linked. There’s clearly an attraction between all three. Once in Paris, Gilda engages in a sexual relationship with both of them (separately).

When they find out that both of them have tasted the fruit of her loins, in order to save their friendship Gilda proposes they make a ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ to become platonic friends, professional colleagues critiquing each other’s work, but never sleeping with each other. These best laid plans go awry when, while Chambers is making it big in London, George genuinely falls for Gilda and starts up a real relationship with her. Of course, the tables switch again when Tom sleeps with Gilda after returning from London. The wildcard, which eventually causes the biggest rift, is Max Plunkett (Horton), a long-time admirer of Gilda, who manages to weasel in between the friends and steal her away. It would then take a full reconciliation of Tom and George and some social savvy to save Gilda from a dull marriage to the drab advertising man Plunkett.

As we all know, some of the sharpest and delightfully salacious sex comedies came from the pre-code, that is the brief time in the talking picture era when Hollywood could do whatever they wanted on screen – before the Hays Code (and then the Breen Code) spelled out in detail what was ‘acceptable’ to show on screen. That said, these pre-code films still exercised restraint and subtlety with their bawdy material. The word sex is mentioned on a couple of occasions in this picture, a word which immediately makes us turn our heads, especially coming out of the mouth of Miriam Hopkins, but everything is between the lines.

Gilda’s liberated view of sex can be seen as a pre-dated feminist ideal. It would be years before we would see a woman take control of and be frank about her sexual predilections. In Design For Living this comes in the form of the film’s best scene, the moment when Gilda confesses to both men that she has no problem sleeping with both of them. For the most part Gilda has this power through the film. I wonder if the Farrelly Brothers had seen Design For Living before making There’s Something About Mary, arguably an updated and grossly exaggerated version of the male obsession with women.

Coward provides a delightful witty and light tone for most of the film, but things get the most interesting when the film finds a very serious tone in the second half. While the sexual games make for fun repartee, we gradually start to feel the emotional weight of their mutual attraction to Gilda. Frederic Marsh has a great scene in which we see him break down when he discovers that George has broken the agreement and courted Gilda in his absence. The weight of Gilda’s forlorn love and the betrayal from his best friend is simply too much.

And for a film made in 1932 we’re also treated to a beautifully art decorated picture full of wondrous gothic/art deco imagery and pristine compositions and camera movement proving Lubistch’s mastery of the art form. In addition to the beautiful high definition imagery, one of the treasures of the disc is Lubitsch’s short film Clerk starring Charles Laughton, one part of the omnibus film If I Had a Million. Lubitsch’s superlative images and delirious visual techniques are a pure cinematic delight, all showcased in a matter of minutes.

Design For Living is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

The Guard

2012-01-05T09:19:00.002-05:00

The Guard (2011) dir. John Michael McDonagh
Starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, and Mark Strong

By Blair Stewart

***½

John Michael McDonagh's The Guard approaches the hoary old fish-out-of-water/mismatched buddy-cop genre and leaps nimbly over those critical bear traps as if it was a ballerina in the pub avoiding a snoring drunk. Brendan Gleeson, the Irish character actor of great repute and anamorphic girth, is the local Guarda (Gaelic for 'Cop'), none too perturbed about his work as long as it's not interrupting his casual whoring and chemical intake. As amusing as it would be to spend a few hours or so with the big ginger lug shirking duty, a great calamity befalls our Sergeant Gerry Boyle: he has to get off his ass when big city criminals – tailed by sedulous FBI big shot Wendell (Don Cheadle) – show up in County Galway.

On cue a corpse pops up in the area after the rumour of a boat carrying half a billion dollars in street value coke ("What street are you buying your cocaine on?" - Gerry) is on the way, and our anti-hero pairs with Wendell to take the piss out of the Yank while they slap down the bad guys. Said bad guys on the opposite end of the thin blue line (that Gerry crosses all the time with gusto) are a trio of enjoyably literate thugs played at descending levels of cynicism by Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and David Wilmot. Eventually, they'll all run into each other and wackiness will ensue.

Typically when faced with a plotline that could reasonably be described as an 'easygoing Lethal Weapon meets Local Hero with a dash of Western Ireland malarkey' I would attempt to pull a fire alarm or commit an act of self-harm, and yet McDonagh's film works for me. In the tailored role Gleeson is superbly entertaining as Gerry, his dopey grin taking the edge off of the small-town racism/tactlessness booming from his mouth. I can only count on two hands a cinematic character as enjoyable to watch as Gleeson's Gerry, somewhere between Tom Regan and Sanjuro on the right one. How much better Hollywood would be if Officer Gerry could pop into some earnest Oscar chaff to dress down the Sean Penns and Will Smiths in a cameo. I'd happily pay top dollar to see that. Don Cheadle's Southern accent slips a few times, but one of his strengths has been his ability to sell a reaction shot, and The Guard (which he helped produce, good on him) has a slew of those while Gleeson does his shtick.

As, unfortunately, most mainstream films (or even indie films, whether local or abroad) demonstrate, it is unwise to slavishly follow the formula of a genre completely. Where a tired formula can be improved upon is in individuality, as McDonagh trots out memorable oddballs from his neck of the woods – or his parents’ neck of the woods really; John and his brother Martin of Six Shooter/In Bruges fame grew up in London – to liven up the surroundings and by treating his audience with respect by making his oddballs witty, and thankfully, intelligent. The Guard earned its climax when I actually cared about what happened to Gerry and Wendell, something very few films succeed at.

If the disposable likes of Cowboys and Aliens depresses the hell out of you, and if you enjoy a filthy joke as much as the next guy, give this film a chance. After all, Ireland's economy needs the money.*

*Sorry, couldn't resist.

The Guard is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.

The Lost Wold: Jurassic Park

2012-01-04T09:22:00.007-05:00

The Lost World (1997) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard

***

By Alan Bacchus

Spielberg’s sequel to the thoroughly enjoyable and successful Jurassic Park at times feels like a shamelessly perfunctory and lazy exercise in tent-pole filmmaking using the bare minimum of creative energy to get more dinosaurs onto the screen. But Mr. Spielberg's superb flare for cliff-hanger and action filmmaking overachieves what was on the written page.

Arguably, Michael Crichton’s novel The Lost World was better than his first book. Sadly, the same inspiration was not put into the movie version. Barely anything from the book makes it to the screen with the exception of Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), who serves as the hero this time around.

But with Ian Malcolm as the protagonist, sadly his character loses all the edge from his unique presence in the first movie. Malcolm is so utterly dull and saccharine, it’s hard to believe it’s the same character from Jurassic Park. Presumably he’s still a slightly deranged mathematician (excuse me, chaotician), who had the best dialogue in the first film – specifically the great exchange about evolution and the metaphor of Hammond's manipulation of DNA being like a kid wielding his father’s gun – but there’s no sign of anything as intellectually challenging from Goldblum's mouth here.

There’s no doubt that the lack of involvement of Michael Crichton in the screenplay has something to do with this. David Koepp, whom Spielberg has gone back to on numerous occasions since (ahem, Crystal Skulls), has no desire to plug Crichton's scientific and technical proclivities into his screenplay.

The setup to get Malcolm to the island wouldn’t even pass muster in a B-movie. In the opening, years after the first Park incident, Malcolm is summoned to park impresario John Hammond’s house where he’s informed of 'Site B', another island full of dinosaurs where the abandoned dinos now run free from their cages. With almost no time to breathe Malcolm and his new cohorts are back on a boat to the South Pacific on their adventure.

Malcolm declares it a rescue mission to save his paleontologist girlfriend (Moore), who is already there. The group, including a journalist (Vaughn), a tech expert (Eddie Carr) and... shriek… Malcolm's young daughter, is soon being chased and nearly killed by rogue dinos. Things finally get interesting with the introduction of a second team sent in by the corporate douchebag, Peter Ludlow (Howard), who wants to bring the dinos back to civilization for his own zoo exhibit.

The most interesting character here is Roland Tembo, played by the great Pete Postlethwaite (who sadly died recently), a South African game hunter who is here for no other reason than to express his domination and shoot a T-Rex. Tembo is a great character because he exists within his world, neither good nor evil – a pragmatist and both friend and foe to all characters.

After the rough patches in the opening act, things kick into high gear when nightfall hits and those awesome T-Rex dinos start attacking. In fact, one of Spielberg’s best ever set pieces involves Eddie’s attempted rescue of Malcolm, his girlfriend and the journalist while they hang over the side of a cliff in their RV. The intensity of this sequence is elevated by John Williams’ magnificent action score. In fact, The Lost World is one of the last great scores by the master and one of the best he’s ever done for Spielberg.

I still don’t know what to think of the final sequence, which takes place in San Diego – a new environment in civilization. It plays like the King Kong scene in New York but without the emotional weight. The liberated T-Rex running wild curiously presents no threat to anyone, but the change of scenery indeed provides an unexpected twist in the story.

War Horse

2012-01-03T13:14:00.005-05:00

War Horse (2011) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Niels Arestrup

**½

By Alan Bacchus

This film certainly lived up to the expectations as an often stunning action/war film with some phenomenal production values recreating WWI warfare and lively horse action. But it also features heavy doses of syrupy Spielberg sentimentality that, in his later years, he keeps grabbing for and just never seems to reach. As with most of his post-1982 work, War Horse is admirable in some moments but not a complete winner.

John Ford's influence on this film is even more front and centre than in Spielberg’s other works. The opening act featuring the birth of the animal and his rearing as a plow horse on a quaint English farm feels like Ford nostalgia from The Quiet Man or How Green Was My Valley. Even the unique cinematography tries to capture the saturated look of early Technicolor. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work. The inconsistent lighting and background cloud cover seems to have been over-corrected, and on a few shots I even noticed the actors standing in front of green screen-generated cloudscapes. These opening scenes on the homestead set up the bond between man and horse, specifically Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a teenager who's smitten with the young stead, and the titular horse, named Joey by his master. The plotting of Albert's father (Mullan), who is penniless and desperately needs Joey to plow the field, is the schmaltzy, syrupy stuff mentioned before. Peter Mullan and Emily Watson, normally endearing personalities on screen, are rendered dull in the case of Mullan and overly deified in the case of Ms. Watson.

The film hits its gears in the second act when Joey is brought into WWI to fight in the British cavalry in a series of spectacular action scenes. Twists occur over the course of the journey, which allow us to see both sides of the battle and show the confounding tragic irony of the war as a conflict of wonky gentlemen fought by innocent and naive kids with nothing at stake except their lives.

The worst moments in the film are with the normally wonderful Niels Arestrup. Playing a Frenchman who speaks English, he comes into possession of the horse with his granddaughter. These scenes stop the film dead, but luckily the horse eventually moves on to new owners for the film’s rousing finale.

It's not news that Spielberg has lost his edge, and here, like in most of his films, the quieter moments are marked by a tin ear for dialogue. This is unlike some of his films, such as Close Encounters, ET, Jaws and The Sugarland Express, in which the actors spoke in natural rhythms no matter how outrageous the situation, and the humour contained a whimsical joie-de-vivre. Here, every gag is hit home with a sledgehammer of subtlety and stung by John Williams' forgettable music contributions. I know there's some loyalty here, but the aged John Williams and his turn-key orchestral arrangements have been so lacklustre over the past 15 years, I firmly believe he's pulling Steven down.

Despite rolling my eyes at the gushing sentimentality, Spielberg does engineer a satisfying and cathartic reunification at the end. It’s a moment drawn out to excess, but the scene is in keeping with the storybook tone of the rest of the film – a scene Spielberg earns dutifully. War Horse is no masterpiece, but at times it’s rousing, cinematic entertainment.

All the Real Girls

2012-01-02T09:00:00.003-05:00

All the Real Girls (2003) dir. David Gordon Green
Starring: Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride

****

By Alan Bacchus

This is one of the most truthful and honest stories about love. Co-written and directed by David Gordon Green, the 27-year-old sophomore director strips away the artificiality of Hollywood romance and manages to capture the awkwardness and painful realities of real life love. Nobody’s perfect, and there are no formulas or scripts for achieving happiness.

Paul (Paul Schneider, looking like a young John C. Reilly) and Noel (Zooey Deschanel) are two young people in the throws of new love. Though we’re only told after the fact, Paul was a former playboy with a bad reputation for loving and leaving his girlfriends. Noel, on the other hand, is a virgin and naïve to sex and relationships. The romance causes conflict with Noel’s brother, Tip, who happens to be Paul’s best friend. Despite this the relationship blossoms, though Paul chooses to delay sex because he’s actually in love with Noel and wants to treat her differently than his one-night stands. But just as things are going well, an act of infidelity causes a major rift. Suddenly everything is flipped around and both characters are thrown into the deep end of emotions and forced to tread water to survive. Both Noel and Paul make bad decisions and catching up to fix them complicates things even more. Over the course of the film complexities compound each other, and the question then becomes why can’t two people who truly love each other be together?

All the Real Girls is a different film than say, Garden State; it’s certainly not as accessible and requires patience to see the whole story through. Conflict begins about halfway through the film, and from that point on I guarantee you’ll be completely engrossed. Green sets the mood by capturing moments in time. He often enters scenes halfway through the conversation and enjoys watching and observing people doing the most banal of endeavours. Therefore, he’ll often shoot his characters with extremely long lenses as they fix a wheel or brush their hair or light a cigarette. This is how Green establishes the reality and eschews artificiality.

Green also de-romanticizes the environment. The film was shot in North Carolina, which was also the setting and location for Dawson’s Creek. In many ways All the Real Girls is the anti-Dawson’s, as there’s no grandiloquent pontificating or neat life-lessons learned. But Green is not subtle about his love for his characters. For example, the bowling alley scene is so simple and touching but also shamefully romantic. Though the film is beautifully shot with magic-hour light and bathed in golden browns and yellows, Green relishes the ugliness of the town. He spends more time looking at decayed rusty train tracks and dirty old cars than Dawson’s autumn leaves or peaceful rivers.

All the Real Girls threatens to be overly precious, a hallmark of mid-00's quirkiness. The film’s preciousness is summed up in the clown scene, which, looking back, is kind of brilliant and one of the best stand-alone scenes of American indie quirkiness. Enjoy.

Redbelt

2012-01-01T12:01:00.008-05:00

Redbelt (2008) dir. David Mamet
Starring: Chiwetal Ejiofor, Emily Mortimer, Tim Allen, Ricky Jay, Joe Mantagna

***½

By Alan Bacchus

One of the best films of 2008 was David Mamet’s Redbelt – part con film, part sports film. It’s always fascinating, evolving and unpredictable. Redbelt is a unique hybrid film combining Mamet’s fascination with mind games and deception with some traditional structure from the classic sports genre.

Though it’s not the first film to showcase Mixed Martial Arts as its central concept, it’s by far the best, and I doubt there will be any better. It turns out that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mamet and badass of the Chicago theatre scene has a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His dedication and passion to the sport translates on screen, as he delivers one of the best sports films in recent years, and in my opinion his best film as director.

It’s a fascinating set-up. Laura Black (Emily Mortimer) is an attorney who is driving erratically at night. She accidentally hits the car owned by Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is teaching a Jiu-Jitsu class in his studio. When she walks into the studio she’s on edge, and after a series of small events she accidentally grabs an off-duty police officer’s gun and shoots out Mike's store window.

Mike’s wife is angered because they now have to pay for the window with money they don’t have. This event, so accidental, is the beginning of a journey of survival for Mike. Along the way a Hollywood star and director ingratiate him into their world. But when things are looking up they easily crash down, which forces Mike to make decisions that challenge his personal ethics and beliefs about fighting and Jiu-Jitsu. Mamet is careful to drop this other shoe, and it all unfolds masterfully.

As expected, Mamet crafts some wonderful dialogue. It’s largely bereft of his showy profane-laden Glengarry Glen Ross style. At times, the actors deliver their lines in this familiar voice, but Mamet tailors his dialogue to the characters. Mike Terry is first a student of the discipline of Jiu-Jitsu and honourable and idealistic to the core. He is full of Sun Tzu-like philosophies, including, “A man distracted is a man defeated” and “There is no situation you could not escape from.” Ejiofor expresses these lines with honour, integrity and believability. But nice guys finish last, right? So we know his morals will get compromised somehow.

Mamet is also an expert at skewering Hollywood (Wag the Dog, State and Main), and there’s a running theme of the corruption of the art by the television industry, which has made MMA such a success. MMA owner Dana White has a feature interview on the DVD Special Features, and legendary fighter Randy Couture has a role. Yet, ironically Mamet is clear to show how sanctioned rules, fame and money easily and quickly corrupt the philosophy and grounded ideals of the art. This is the inner conflict for Mike. No one expounds or confesses these ideas in a speech. Instead, it’s subtly fed to us through background dialogue, nameless unimportant characters and throwaway lines. And so, after the problems compound on Mike and he’s forced to make his decision, we understand the weight of his choice.

Redbelt gets a little sloppy in the end as it wraps up its subplots. And the tone of the climax may divide some audiences. It moves closer to a genre film than we might expect based on the first half. However, in a movie about fighting it’s inevitable that it would come down to a fight in the end. But thank you David Mamet for not making the audience applaud. Redbelt is a great film. Enjoy.

1941

2011-12-31T09:11:00.004-05:00

1941 (1979) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Bobby Di Cicco, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Treat Williams, Toshiro Mifune, Nancy Allen,

**½

By Alan Bacchus

No one talks much about this picture these days, as it has been mostly forgotten by those who are old enough to have seen it when it was first released, and it's barely been seen by younger people. That said, with Steven Spielberg at the helm in the prime of his career - sandwiched between Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders of the Lost Ark - we can't dismiss this film entirely. It's a loud, grating and obnoxious film to be sure, but there's still some memorable moments and sequences to marvel at, as well as an unforgettable rousing score by John Williams.

Penned by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (Back to the Future), Spielberg takes inspiration from the true story of a false alarm of a Japanese attack on Los Angeles, which put the city on high alert for one terrifying night in 1941. In an attempt to move away from the dreamy, epic sci-fi existentialism of Close Encounters, 1941 became an over-produced slapstick comedy of epic proportions.

The converging stories involving the varied cast include Toshiro Mifune and Christopher Lee as Japanese and Nazi sub captains encroaching Los Angeles by sea, Tim Matheson as a failed pilot trying to bed Nancy Allen aboard a B17 bomber, Bobby Di Cicco trying to avoid a fight with the bully figure of Treat Williams, Ned Beatty as a civilian who has been entrusted with guarding a massive artillery gun on his front lawn and John Belushi as a trigger-happy pilot running amuck through everything.

Some of the more astounding set pieces include the destruction of L.A. Harbor, finishing with the awesome site of a Ferris wheel rolling off the pier. There's also a brilliantly choreographed airplane dog fight low over the streets of Hollywood, and one of Spielberg's best ever sequences in the USO dance sequence featuring Bobby Di Cicco dancing his way around Treat Williams for the love of his girl.

Between these sequences is a whole lot of screaming, explosions and massive destruction. Most of the fine cast is wasted with Spielberg's exaggerations. Other fine actors showing up with unheralded roles include Slim Pickens, Murray Hamilton and Lionel Stander.

Spielberg himself has acknowledged this as a massive failure but also as a learning ground for his more controlled, efficient and economical productions from Raiders on. Take everything with a grain of salt in this one, but cherish this for Spielberg’s confident hubris and impressive production values, however grotesque they may be.

Best of Cinema 2011

2011-12-30T13:50:00.010-05:00

It’s been a decent but not outstanding year for cinema. There was a lot of very good movies and few, if any, ‘great’ ones. And so, after compiling my 10 best list, it unfortunately results in a series of mostly dark and grisly films about death or other tragedies of some sort. Sorry.

As well, usually I separate my fiction films from documentaries to create two separate lists. But this year there were so many fantastic docs, three in particular that were so memorable, they needed to be included with the others. So here goes:

RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES

This independently produced documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, stayed with me for months. It still does. John Foy's procedural conspiracy film attempts to unravel the 20-year-old unsolved mystery of a series of tiles stamped onto the streets of dozens of cities across America, secret coded messages written with a unique artistic penmanship that can be attributed to only one person. Foy creates a magnificently suspenseful and engrossing investigative Sherlock Holmes-worthy mystery following three young men, equally obsessed, as they go about solving the case. He matches Errol Morris for his rigorousness and his ability to parse out information in a clear and dramatic way, but with a sharp sense of humour. This is pure cinematic storytelling at work.

TAKE SHELTER

As a second film, writer/director Jeff Nichols shows remarkable confidence with a story less easily definable than the ‘revenge’ drama of Shotgun Stories. Take Shelter is ambitious, complex and deceptive, the type of film M. Night Shymalan used to make.

I SAW THE DEVIL

A two-and-a-half hour tete-a-tete revenge film, Korean style. Jee-woon Kim takes influence from the Korean landmark genre thriller Old Boy. It’s so grisly, disturbing and relentlessly violent, but it’s something you can’t help but rubberneck your head around to watch.

THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH AUNT DIANE

You may know the story already – the strange case of a seemingly normal, well-adjusted middle-class mom travelling home from the cottage with her two young kids and three nieces. She inexplicably loses her sense of direction and starts speeding the wrong way on the highway before tragically killing eight people, including herself and all but one of her passengers. Under the careful direction of Liz Garbus, Aunt Diane resounds as a fascinating documentary so tragic and confounding it has haunted me ever since.

THE ARTIST

Sure, this isn't news now. And pretty soon French director Michel Hazanavicius's love letter to the silent film era will be over-hyped, but we can't deny that this is a remarkably entertaining film.

SHAME

McQueen's odyssey of a sex addict, while narratively sparse and controlled, is a triumph for its astonishing visceral and emotional power – a technically stylish and emotionally intense experience on par with Black Swan.

LIKE CRAZY

Pitch perfect anti-romance about a long distance relationship plays like Going the Distance made by Michael Winterbottom, presented with a pretension-free hip style from director Drake Doremus.

THE IDES OF MARCH

Don’t let this fascinating, thrilling and wholly thought-provoking new millennium political thriller fall through the cracks. It's a superb character study that ambitiously strives for an arc as grand as The Godfather. In almost half the running time, Clooney crafts a cynical tale of corruption and the effect of career ambition, jealousy and revenge on one’s moral conscience.

TYRANNOSAUR

Paddy Considine's directorial debut is a chronicle of the cycle of abuse in the grand tradition of great British kitchen sink dramas. It’s a deeply emotional story of two lost souls, victims of the cycle of abuse, who find solace with each other from their working class shitholes. But through Peter Mullan’s and Olivia Colman’s superlative performances and mutual chemistry, Considine succeeds in making us want to spend 90 minutes in the lives of these tortured characters.

PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY

Perhaps only Michael Apted's Up series could compare to the effect of Berlinger/Sinofsky's 15-years-in-the-making documentary. This third film surrounding the now famous West Memphis Three case is a triumph, a powerful compendium of all three films combining evidence compiled over the years, which ultimately brought justice to three men wrongly accused.

Honourable Mentions:

Drive - a unique creative collaboration between director Nicholas Winding Refn, Ryan Gosling and composer Cliff Martinez

Moneyball - a surprisingly accessible sports drama about the effect of the science of statistics on the sacred American game

Myth of the American Sleepover - think Dazed and Confused or American Graffiti as made by Gus Van Sant. An under-the-radar winner that signals a new voice in American indie cinema in David Robert Mitchell

Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil - a fun horror comedy with a wicked hook and two great comic performances from Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II - for someone who had given up on this series after the third episode, I was won back by this surprising final chapter, which manages to connect all the previous films for a satisfying and emotional conclusion

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within - this Brazilian cops and robbers action film, which aspires to have the same epic weight as Michael Mann's Heat, was the highest grossing domestic film of all time in Brazil

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Niels Arden Oplev's version of this story played like a solid David Fincher rip-off. Now we have the real thing, executed with cold, pulpy perfection and everything we wanted to see from this well put together cinematic collaboration

Senna - an uplifting turned tragic documentary about the life of world champion Formula One driver Ayton Senna, who died on the racetrack in 1994.

Bridesmaids - hands down the comedy of the year, featuring the supremely talented Kristin Wiig as both writer and actor.

Rocky IV

2011-12-29T13:21:00.005-05:00

Rocky IV (1985) dir. Sylvestor Stallone
Starring: Sylvestor Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Brigitte Nielsen, Talia Shire, Burt Young

***

By Alan Bacchus

Rocky IV has so much wrong with it, it’s an easy film to pick apart, chew up and spit out. But it makes it so difficult to do that when the film is so damned fun. Why is that?

First of all, the film is a huge cheat on the part of Stallone. There’s barely a film here, almost no story whatsoever. As usual, in the opening moments we see a flashback to the end of the previous Rocky film – Stallone coached by his former nemesis, Apollo Creed, fighting and defeating the snarling Clubber Lang (Mr. T).

Cut to Rocky Balboa, once a street-level hood who walked around in baggy, ill-fitting clothes on the streets of Philadelphia, now a multimillionaire living in a swanky mansion with a robotic waiter (nice try Sly, the household robots never did catch on). Rocky is now retired and so is Creed, who, like Rocky, has nothing to do but relax alone in his backyard swimming pool. But when Apollo hears about a champion Soviet boxer, Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), splashing himself all over American television he decides to take on the bulky blond for a comeback fight in the name of Cold War patriotism.

Despite Rocky’s protests that Apollo is too old, the show must goes on, and after a ridiculous and embarrassing musical sideshow introduction by James Brown, Creed gets his butt whipped and is actually killed in the ring. Rocky won’t stand for it and wants revenge against the evil Commies. Thus, he challenges Drago to a match in Russia on Christmas Day. Despite Adrian’s fears, Rocky has to do it because he’s a man and a fighter. And without the fight, he’s not a man.

Cue a series of musical montage scenes, which contrast the scientific training methods of Drago with the old fashioned organic method of training – push-ups, sit-ups, log lifting, snow shovelling and wooden cart pulling. The fight starts and Rocky wins and earns the respect of the Soviet people.

The film is a cheat because Stallone actually gets away without telling a story. He fast forwards through the most difficult part of writing and essentially crafts two fight scenes sandwiched between half a dozen montage scenes. One after another, we’re shown the same match-cut edited training sequences. Each piece of music is bigger and grander and more inspiring than the next. There’s ‘Burning Heart’ by Survivor, then ‘Hearts on Fire’ by John Cafferty, then ‘Man Against the World"’ by Survivor (again) and the appropriately titled ‘Training Montage’ by the film’s composer, Vince Di Cola.

But it all works beautifully. The montage scenes are crafted very well and shot and composed perfectly by Stallone. Even though it’s a glorified music video these scenes create great anticipatory energy. Stallone has earned his right to use the sequences. He was already at the fourth film in the series, each one as popular and successful as the one before it. So he’s just giving the audience what it wants. Sure it’s a sell-out to the spirit of the original film, and Stallone indeed would attempt to reboot the series – twice!

Rocky IV is disposable franchise filmmaking at its best, an invigorating guilty pleasure, impossible not to love, at least on some kind of juvenile level.

Jurassic Park

2011-12-28T14:38:00.004-05:00

Jurassic Park (1993) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Back in the day, this picture was considered a bit of a 'comeback' film. After nearly a decade of successful but tepid films from the hit maker, the headlong, thrill ride-style of filmmaking in Jurassic Park signalled a return of sorts to the late ‘70s/early ‘80s period of Spielberg’s career. That said, Jurassic Park feels a lot different than Jaws or Raiders. It has the mark of an older filmmaker, a family man with a little edge lost, but still a master of action, suspense and cliffhanger cinema.

With today's eyes, any soft spots, false notes, bad casting and sappy sentimentality are glossed over by Spielberg's remarkable adaptation of Michael Crichton's techno-action novel.

The novel was a terrific page-turner with a cleverly structured narrative written as a mysterious scientific puzzle of sorts before launching into a full-blown adventure story. The novel worked best in the set-up and less so with descriptive action. As co-writers, Crichton and Koepp did the best they could to retain as much of the scientific, historical and ethical diatribes of the novel with the need to satisfy the demand of tent pole/blockbuster entertainment.

Spielberg's film works essentially as a series of impeccably crafted set pieces. The opening sequence still dazzles with a group of park rangers trying to corral some unearthly beast inside a seemingly indestructible cage. Some critics at the time complained that he showed us his dinosaurs too early in the film. On the contrary, look closely and Spielberg is very clever with his reveals. While he does show off some of his dinos in full wide shots early on, it's the kinder, softer dinosaurs, like the gentle and graceful Brontosaurs. Yet, he conspicuously hides his menacing creatures until the midway point, including the famous T-Rex sequence.

Before then, Spielberg masterfully teases us with a brilliant first-half set-up. By the time the T-Rex reveals itself and attacks with full force, the scene is a confluence of layers and subplots - the fearless ignorance of Hammond, the sabotage of the clandestine corporate rival and the science lessons effortlessly supplied to us.

The scene is still remarkable, particularly the CG-rendered dinosaur, a technology still in its infancy. The CG dinos still look fantastic because of their placement against real live sets, actors and props as opposed to the overuse and reliance on CG in George Lucas's new Star Wars films.

For cinematography fans, the film is also significant for being Spielberg’s last collaboration with a cinematographer other than his current go-to man, Janusz Kaminsky. While I admire Kaminsky's work, there was something to be said about the varied lighting Spielberg received from working with a variety of cinematographers over the years (e.g., Allen Daviau, Mikael Salomon, Douglas Slocomb, Vilmos Zsigmond). Dean Cundey's work here is terrific, as he provides a significantly different look than Kaminsky's work in The Lost World. Cundey's bold colours and brilliant backlighting pop Spielberg's characters out of the frame better than Kaminsky could ever do.

Rick Carter's production design is deservedly celebrated. While the dinosaurs are wonderful, it's the details of his sets and props that put Jurassic Park in the relatable and believable world of today. The design of the park, from the gift shop toys to the detail on the ID badges of the employees, is all from Spielberg and Carter, who spared no expense in putting the audience into an identifiable situation.

Sure, Sam Neill and Laura Dern are mostly boring as the heroic duo, and the injection of the two children into the story still has me rolling my eyes. But the ability of Spielberg to ratchet up the tension and sustain a level of spine-tingling suspense from beginning to end is the stuff of cinema geniuses like Alfred Hitchcock.

Dumbo

2011-12-27T14:15:00.006-05:00

Dumbo (1942) dir. Various
Voices by: Sterling Holloway, Edward Brophy and James Baskett

****

By Alan Bacchus

The second last of the great 'Golden Age of Animation' Disney films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Bambi and Dumbo sparkle with a kind of cinema magic unlike any other films in history. The incredibly touching story of a ridiculed baby elephant with big ears born into a circus troupe who realizes his ears can make him fly and achieve unrivalled greatness and success resonates so strongly because of its universal message of marginalization and triumph over adversity.

The scant narrative with barely any dialogue and the artistry with movement, colour and music give this (and all Golden Age Disney films) the same kind of lyrical grace as a silent film. There isn't one credited director on Dumbo. Instead, Walt Disney created his films by assigning sequences to several animation directors who worked independently but with creative guidance from Disney himself. In today's environment, Walt Disney would have been credited as director, which makes it all so ironic that, other than the opening presentation, he doesn't even have a credit on the film.

This is one of the reasons why these Disney films feel so different and special compared to feature animation films today. Looking closely at the narrative, Dumbo is essentially a series of linked set pieces, like Fantasia but with a through line and narrative arc. Take the opening sequence, for example, during which the storks drop off the bundles of joy to the circus animals. The animation of the baby animals is impossibly cute, ending with the endearing sadness of poor Jumbo the elephant left without a newborn. The arrival of Dumbo from the late stork is its own sequence, as is the bounding preparation montage scene of the faceless humans building up the circus tents.

Of the minimal dialogue scenes, the female elephant colleagues of Dumbo's that act like a peanut gallery of sorts who bully and ridicule poor Dumbo are characterized as a group of snobby neighbourhood gossipers who resent Jumbo’s and Dumbo's assimilation with their group. Their comeuppance at the end when Dumbo shows off his ability to fly results in a truly awesome sequence. Dumbo and Timothy the mouse falling from the burning building without Dumbo's trusty magic feather is a tense sequence, climaxing when Dumbo's ears successfully pop out and help them glide overtop of the circus crowd and the awestruck elephant group.

And in between the traditional story, there's the remarkable 'parade of elephants' sequence, which sticks out like a psychedelic fantasy 25 years before people were dropping acid. Under anyone else's watch, the shear length of the sequence, which cuts into the third act of the film, might have threatened the forward flow of the film. But it's consistent with the episodic nature of all these Golden Age pictures and Uncle Walt's innate knowledge of what stimulates children's imaginations.

Remarkably, Dumbo is only a 63-minute movie and features a simplicity in both story and structure that is missing from today's 'family' pictures. Sadly, with America entering into WWII at the time, Dumbo was the penultimate picture of the pre-war period films. Bambi would be released a year later – arguably the best of the period. And, with the exception of the 'packaged features' (feature length compilations of Disney shorts), it wouldn't be until 1950's Cinderella that Disney would make another animated feature.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2011-12-25T08:13:00.003-05:00

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) dir. David Fincher
Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Stellan Skarsgaard, Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright

***½

By Alan Bacchus

I don't think we should consider this picture a remake of the original, but considering the close proximity of the Niels Arden Oplev version, let's call the Swedish version a trial run of sorts for this film adaptation. The fact is the first film was pretty good, a decent adaptation the novel visualized with a David Fincher-like style – a grisly crime procedural told with a slow-burning, cold tone and precise visual compositions. Well, now we have the real thing, the real David Fincher at the helm of the 'American version', a film not all that dissimilar from Oplev's but with the full and authentic Fincher experience.

Fans of the book (or the first movie) that feared the Americans would 'Hollywoodize' these universally loved 'Swedish' stories can relax. Fincher has dutifully honoured Stieg Larsson and his Swedish heritage by making this as Swedish as possible. Not only is the film set in Sweden, it was shot there and co-produced by Yellow Bird, the producers of the Swedish films. Other than the lead players, Fincher populates most of the supporting roles with real Swedes. Hell, even Robin Wright does a decent Swedish accent!

The story is the same with few changes from the original (note: I have not read the book). Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist for Millennium magazine who has recently been indicted for libel for a scathing article on a high profile financial tycoon. At this lowest moment of his life, he gets a call from Henrik Vanger, an even more powerful corporate tycoon who offers Mikael a job – to investigate the murder of his beloved niece, Harriet, who, after disappearing in 1965, has been tormented by her killer with flowers each year on his birthday.

Holed up in an icy cold estate up north, Mikael systematically goes through all the old evidence, but the most intriguing aspect of the case is the tempestuous Vanger family, one of whom must be the killer. Vanger's siblings, nieces and nephews are portrayed as a motley crew of spoiled aristocrats sequestered from regular working class life. Mikael's investigation hits its stride when he employs a goth super hacker and the person after whom the film is named – the tattooed girl, Lisbeth Salander. Though suffering from psychological damage from a life abused by men, she's created a stone cold kickass feminist attitude that allows her to get what she wants. By the end, the secrets of the case are revealed in traditional pot boiler plotting, including a dramatic confession by the killer at the end. But it's the tease of Salander's back story and Mikael's connection to the Vangers and his professional issues with the magazine that enrich the experience.

Noomi Rapace was a brilliant Lisbeth Salander, and Rooney Mara does a fine job keeping up with her. Her expressionless composure and physical attributes (piercings, tats, goth attire) create an imposing first impression, but Rooney adequately shows us the deep-rooted pain and fear from her years of emotional torture. Fincher plays out her character as I imagine Larsson had intended, as a superhero of sorts, not someone to replicate some kind of realist character portrait, but someone to root for and stimulate us like an aggressive martyr fueled by revenge. The back story of Salander, as mentioned, is perfectly teased to us, but by proxy Harriet Vanger's story we assume is also Lisbeth's.

Daniel Craig is curiously cast perhaps because he's a better looking version of Michael Nyqvist, the Swedish blonde with a poxy face who played Mikael in the original film. Craig embodies the intellectual and political savvy of Blomkvist with aplomb. He's not glorified with sexual allure like in the Bond films. Craig's attractiveness comes from his ability to analyze the minutiae of data and evidence.

As expected, Fincher plays out the procedural aspects of the story with a wicked sense of pace. Under the tough but moody sounds of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, he makes the 158-minute running time fly by without notice.

Unlike the first film, Fincher ambitiously extends the narrative beyond its natural ending for another 20 minutes to close off the plotting of Blomkvist's legal troubles and to some degree his relationship with Salander. It's a tightly plotted montage sequence, the kind that normally exists in the second act to compress time, and by all rights as a denouement it shouldn't be there. But this all works simply because of Larsson's intriguing pulp narrative, rich with multi-generational back stories and strong themes of feminism under Fincher's singular and unwavering vision and filmmaking skills.

The Lady Vanishes

2011-12-24T09:32:00.001-05:00

The Lady Vanishes (1938) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

A delicious early Hitchcock classic featuring all the familiar Hitchcock tropes – contained and precise choreographed action aboard a train, an ordinary female heroine inadvertently caught in a world of international espionage, a mysterious but high-priced maguffin and that dry British wit to ensure the film never takes itself too seriously.

Hitch places us conspicuously in a fake European country with the continent on the brink of war. A varied group of travellers includes a couple of British fops desperately trying to get updates on the cricket scores back home, an Italian magician, a suave British folk singer, a trio of sexually charged gals, and a host of inept locals. Before anyone steps on a train or anyone 'vanishes', we're introduced to our ensemble of characters stranded in a small town with only one hotel while snow is being cleared from the tracks. We're not even sure who the hero will be. Perhaps it’s the affable cricket fans, the musician, the old British Governess or the betrothed young woman at the end of her world tour of sowing her wild oats (Hitch is very coy but clear about this). This opening act is nothing but comedy, completely disarming us to where the journey will ultimately take us.

Once aboard the train, Hitch spends more time with Mrs. Froy, the Governess, and the bride-to-be, Iris. The shoe for this picture drops when Iris falls asleep in her train car only to wake up and find Froy missing, gone, vanished into thin air. The magician, who now sits across from her, claims he's never seen Froy. It’s the same with everyone else on the train. Is Iris crazy? The conveniently placed psychoanalyst on board thinks so. But just as she's about to accept her own insanity she finds an ally in Gilbert, the folk singer, who after finding a shred of evidence that Froy is real, becomes Iris’s sleuthing partner.

The entire second act plays out aboard the train, a frequent motif for Hitchcock and a device that serves to create claustrophobia and containment of the characters, as well as a metaphor for the intensity of the chase that ensues. Hitchcock remarkably shot all these train sequences within a 90-foot space with only one replica train car, meticulously storyboarding his shots, of course, to create an efficient production.

The film's most famous and celebrated scene comes midway in - a confrontation between Iris and Gilbert and one of the kidnapping suspects, during which the suspect attempts to poison the duo with drinks. Hitchcock squeezes out every drop of tension from the exchange by shooting the scene through the wine glasses placed mere inches away from the camera.

The film arguably loses its edge once the train comes to a stop and a gunfight ensues between the heroes at the clandestine political enemy faction. The Lady Vanishes works best in motion in the moments of confusion and mystery from Iris's point of view. Hitch not-so-subtly drops hints about the mystery along the way, unbeknownst to Iris, but very clear to the audience. We know that Froy's dropped eyeglasses, which are given a bold close-up, will pay off somewhere down the line, same with the Governess' handwritten name on the foggy window, or the very specific herbal tea she requests on the train, fun clues to trace back later on to prove Iris' sanity.

The Lady Vanishes, which was extremely popular in its day, was one of Hitchcock's last British films before he moved to Hollywood, and it marks the end of this pre-war espionage pictures, such as The 39 Steps and The Man Who Knew Too Much. His move to Hollywood and his work under David O. Selznick would be marked by significantly higher budgets and production values. But there's something more inspiring and vivacious in the production constraints through which Hitchcock crafted some of his best works. The Lady Vanishes exemplifies this unique period of his career.

The Lady Vanishes is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Carnage

2011-12-23T08:50:00.005-05:00

Carnage (2011) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz

****

By Greg Klymkiw

I had to see Carnage again to experience everything I missed the first time. It's the funniest movie of the year, so be prepared to laugh so hard that you too will need to see it a second time. Then, you'll probably want to see it a third time - just because it's so terrific.

The movie is also blessed with the distinction of being one of the best stage-to-screen adaptations ever committed to film. Based on Yasmina Reza's award-winning play "God of Carnage", the author could not have asked for a better director than the great Roman Polanski to guide its four characters through a mud-swamped, mustard-gas-infused battlefield of nasty sniping - not in Beirut, mind you, but within the upscale luxury of a lovely New York apartment.

So much of Reza's ferocious knee-slapping dialogue is worthy of that which pulsates through Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". Though overall the play/movie as a whole is not as dangerously devastating as Albee's classic four-hander, (nothing ever could/would be) Carnage is, as a movie, so much more honest and brilliant than, say, the fake nastiness of such overrated crap as Alan Ball's screenplay for American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes. With American Beauty and his loathsome screen adaptation of Revolutionary Road, the marginally talented Mendes specializes, it seems, in rendering drama that purports to expose all the raw nerve endings of human existence, but does so for those who only pretend they like the lower depths of domestic bile puked up on a platter - but really don't.

Carnage, on the other hand, expunges its smorgasbord of bilious goods with Polanski's trademark aplomb and sheer delicious, vicious glee. (There's even a great moment in the movie that comes close to the shock and hilarity of the now-famous Trelkovsky-in-the-park sequence in The Tenant.) This picture is possibly even more claustrophobic than all of Polanski's previous "apartment" pictures combined - though it's brilliantly bookended with (and scored by the wonderful Alexander Desplat) by two phenomenal exterior sequences. Other than those, though, we're smack dab in the living room, kitchen and hallway of an apartment.

Two relatively affluent 40-something couples meet over coffee and cobbler to discuss, in a civilized manner, the fisticuffs which broke out between their respective pre-teen sons. The conversation zig-zags between several topics, all related in some fashion to the initial offending action. However, once the coffee and cobbler is abandoned in favour of a bottle of scotch, the relative restraint gives way to a no-holds-barred, rock-em-sock-em, to-the-death cage match of verbal assaults and, much to everyone's surprise, an uncorking of everything that's wrong with both marriages.

The hosts of this afternoon meeting of minds are clearly the odd couple of the two. Michael (John C. Reilly) is a borderline boor who runs a successful wholesale firm that specializes in fixtures. His wife Penelope (Jodie Foster) is a pinched prig with a penchant for fine art catalogues and coffee table books and labours in her not-so successful career as an author (her latest book is about the suffering of Darfur). The guests of the host couple seem, on the surface, a perfect fit. Alan (Christoph Waltz) is a sleazy lawyer who represents dubious pharmaceutical companies and Nancy (Kate Winslet) is a chicly-attired trophy wife.

As the afternoon progresses, battle lines are drawn, re-drawn and the balance of power shifts ever so deftly from one side to the other. In no time, the blades come out. The eviscerations are at first levelled from hosts to guests and vice-versa, but when each respective husband and wife begin on each other, the nasty accusations and finger pointing become far more revelatory than any of the characters bargained for that day.

When Michael, the seemingly happy-go-lucky schlub opines, "We're born alone and we die alone," he quickly adds, "Does anyone want a little scotch?" Offering booze to quell a tense situation, is frankly akin to aiming a thermonuclear device at the Hoover Dam.

The cast is uniformly fine. Reilly plays on his goofy, hangdog appeal but brings a heretofore unexplored malevolence to his bag of thespian tricks. Jodie Foster delivers another trademark slender thread performance, but reveals a terrific sense of humour. Kate Winslet beguiles us with her full-figured beauty, but eventually lets rip with her fair share of verbal daggers. Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) proves again why he is one of the best actors working today - he careens from cutthroat to pathetically needy and everything in between.

Some critics who should know better (my familiar refrain), have admired the movie grudgingly, but toss it off as a "filmed play". Nothing could be further from the truth. Polanski is a master of enclosed spaces (Repulsion, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, etc.). His deft camera placement and movement is pure cinema. More importantly, he adheres to what ultimately makes the best big-screen adaptations of theatre - he refuses, by and large, to "open-up" the action.

This knee-jerk attempt by filmmakers to render their work more cinematic serves - more often than not - to dilute the power of the text and thus rendering it MORE lacking in the hallmarks of cinematic storytelling. (Let's NOT forget the moronic decision on the part of director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Ernest Lehman to "open up" the otherwise GREAT film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by shifting the locale briefly to a nearby roadside bar. The sequence sticks out like a sore thumb.)

Polanski refuses to take the easy way out. He throws us into the four walls of this apartment and forces us, for eighty minutes, to engage in the superb verbal jousts which, I must assert are plenty nasty and screamingly funny. Carnage is ultimately a class act all the way and once again, Roman Polanski proves he's one of the great living filmmakers.

Oh, and guess what? It's about adults.

"Carnage" is being released by Mongrel Media and will be seen in both mainstream cinemas and at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as the cherry on the sundae of a superb mini-retrospective of Polanski's claustrophobic masterworks.

City of Life and Death

2011-12-22T13:43:00.004-05:00

City of Life and Death (2009) dir. Lu Chuan
Starring: Ye Liu, Yuanyuan Gao, Hideo Nakaizumi, Wei Fan

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Lu Chuan’s massive dramatic recounting of the atrocious Nanking massacre will probably become a new benchmark in historical cinema. It’s an epic 2 hour and 15 minute black and white, violent, disturbing, shocking and heartbreaking experience that shows the atrocities of soldiers in war with maximum power and effectiveness.

To refresh your knowledge of history, prior to WWII China and Japan were at war with each other and in 1937 the Japanese conquered China’s then capital city, Nanking (or Nanjing). The battle resulted in the killing of 300,000 Chinese soldiers, and in the six weeks that followed tens of thousands of women were raped ritualistically in a massacre for sheer dehumanizing brutality on par with the holocaust.

This event is not widely known and certainly not in the public consciousness like the Holocaust, but Chuan’s dramatic cinematic record should change this. It’s a precise and painstakingly detailed account put to screen with seemingly no production expense spared.

Yu Cao’s breathtaking anamorphic B&W cinematography immediately puts us into a distinct world of cinematic integrity and realism. The opening 30 minutes recreates the last stand by the Chinese to hold the city. The battle scenes are as rough, noisy, intense and harrowing as anything put on screen. If the final battle scene in Saving Private Ryan was shot in B&W, it would have looked like this. With a history of realistically rendered war films behind it, and with Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers as benchmark precedents, it’s difficult to make cinematic war fresh. But by shifting his point of view between the Japanese and Chinese, Chuan manages to create a distinct omniscient view of battle. And between the frenetic handheld gunfire and explosions he takes time to pull out and frame some truly awesome compositions. The sight of hundreds of Japanese surrendering with their hands up in a church is the stuff of David Lean, and the awe of watching hundreds of soldiers gunned down to their deaths in a single wide shot is almost unparalleled.

For the second and third acts, Chuan shifts to the even more gruesome plight of the civilian refugees in the aftermath. We watch as the Japanese soldiers, seemingly left to their own devices and unmonitored by Japanese generals, sadistically corral and torture the women with a disturbingly organized system of ritualistic rape. From here Chuan moves from Saving Private Ryan to Schindler’s List. The cinematography is certainly a visual reminder of the effect, but the tone of random, inexplicable violence and genuine heroism and courage echoes Spielberg’s benchmark film as well.

Out of all this gruesomeness emerge a number of distinct and developed characters. Tang, who starts out as a representative of the Nazi party and who cowardly desires to save his own ass, goes through the greatest change, rising at the end of the film to become a selfless hero and courageous leader. And the sadistic Japanese leader is as cruel and vicious as Ralph Fiennes' summation of Nazi evil, Amon Goeth.

A film like City of Life and Death needs to be made as a matter of dramatic cinematic record. However, it demands more of its audience than Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan. The cinematic brutality on display can be sickening and an emotional beat down, but by providing us with an impeccably authored piece of art, Chuan accomplishes everything this film needs to be.

To Catch a Thief

2011-12-21T10:29:00.008-05:00

To Catch a Thief (1955) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, Jesse Royce Landis, John Williams

**

By Alan Bacchus

Alfred Hitchcock made over 60 films, so there’s bound to be a dud or two in there. Hitch making a heist film in 1955 in the middle of his greatest decade of work should have been a knock out of the park. Instead it’s one of his most sanitized un-Hitchcock-like films. All things considered, To Catch a Thief is weak.

Cary Grant plays John Robie, a suave playboy and former cat burglar living in the French Riviera under an assumed name. When another burglar starts knocking off rich ladies' jewellery in his neck of the woods Robie becomes the chief suspect. By necessity, and in part as a gamely challenge, Robie comes out of retirement and puts himself in the line of fire in order to catch the imposter thief.

Robie decides to case the jewellery collection of an older American woman who is vacationing with her daughter. The younger gal, Frances (Grace Kelly), develops a close relationship with Robie, first as innocent flirting and then revealing an attraction to his criminal burgling skills. With the help of Frances and her Lloyds of London insurance agent, Robie tracks down the elusive cat burglar in order to clear his own name.

Of course, this radical two-star rating is in context with the other Hitchcock classics. But the film is not without merit. Grace Kelly and Cary Grant could start fires together, so much so that Hitchcock shot their great seduction scene with a grand fireworks display in the background. Grace Kelly is stunning and obviously caught the eye of a certain Prince Rainier of Monaco – the rest is history...

A couple of car chase sequences are staged through the Cannes countryside, creatively shot entirely from a helicopter’s view. And every exterior location, shot in brilliant and bold widescreen Technicolor, is stunningly beautiful.

But it’s the lack of effort Hitch shows with his heist scenes that disappoint the most. A heist scene should be a showcase for Hitchcock’s best skills – stand-alone set pieces with a focus on action and suspense. The burglaries are shot with minimal, if any, tension and feature rudimentary shot selections.

1955 was also the year of Rififi, Jules Dassin’s masterpiece featuring the immaculately conceived and executed heist scene shot entirely in silence. Sadly, both films were released at the same time, thus we missed out on some creative one-upmanship.

Tora, Tora, Tora

2011-12-20T15:50:00.003-05:00

Tora, Tora, Tora (1970) dir. Richard Fleischer
Starring: So Yamamura, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore, Martin Balsam, Jason Robards, Tatsuya Mihashi, Joseph Cotton

****

By Alan Bacchus

What a terrific picture this is despite being considered a failure in its day, perhaps because of the concerted attempt to de-heroize the era and create a realistic portrait of war from both sides of the battle. If anything, the matter-of-fact modus operandi at play here reminds me of Paul Greengrass’s procedural approach to 9/11 in United 93. This picture is utterly believable and because of the hefty budget the production values are virtually invisible to its age.

The title, which Hollywood execs probably fought the filmmakers on, refers to the Japanese code word for the green light given to attack on that fateful day of December 7, 1941. Under the meticulous research efforts and strong adherence to historical credibility, Tora Tora Tora by proxy represents an antidote to the shameless tragedy-turned popcorn entertainment Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay version a few years ago.

Among other things, what separates Michael Bay from Richard Fleischer here is the fact that Fleischer and company believe wholeheartedly in the drama and power of the event, as opposed to manufactured character-based dramas injected into the story. Without the distraction of a brotherly battle between troops, a black cook who overcomes racial prejudice to become a hero on the day or a romantic dalliance between a pilot and a nurse, the riveting day-by-day, minute-by-minute details leading up to the attack is pure cinema, as tense and thrilling as any genre film can create.

The film goes back months before the attack to the planning stage from the Japanese point of view and the systematic piecing together of details by the Americans. If anything, the dual storylines feel like the cat and mouse chase in the Day of Jackal. In that picture, the Jackal and his pursuers begin far apart, but gradually become closer together as the picture goes along. Unfortunately, we can't fictionalize an ending in this case. In the magnificently staged action climax, a 45-minute long attack sequence, it's Hollywood destruction at its finest.

With that said, there is something missing in the emotional detachment. In United 93, it was the fine editing work that created a singular moment of pain and triumph felt by the audience in the very last frame. Of course, in this film WWII has just started for the United States, so closure would have been impossible without such Bruckheimer dramatic manufacturing.

The producers famously recruited Japanese directors Kinji Fukasaku (who would go on to direct Battle Royale in his older age) and Toshio Masuda to direct the Japanese sequences. This is more than a gimmick. Admirably, the Japanese side is humanized as much as possible. Sure the Imperial army and its commanders are certainly made out to be power-hungry strategists looking to expand their control of the ocean, but the rationale for the attack is sufficiently justified. And the doubt expressed by many of its leaders creates a powerful inner conflict from this opposing side.

The American side of the story focuses on the various generals, chiefs of staff and other officers piecing together the Japanese plan. Accurately, the attack is never portrayed as a true 'surprise' attack, nor is there any embellishment of conspiracy theories about the Americans' pre-conceived knowledge of the attack. Again, the filmmakers always land on the side of realism and the truth.

Sadly, Tora Tora Tora is rarely ever spoken of in terms of the great war films in history. Perhaps it’s because of lingering effects of the film's perceived failure and its budget overruns. But discard these notions and discover this terrific picture.

Tora Tora Tora is available on Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Revanche

2011-12-19T12:48:00.007-05:00

Revanche (2008) dir. Götz Spielmann
Starring: Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko, Andreas Lust, Ursula Strauss

****

By Alan Bacchus

Some spoilers below...

Götz Spielmann's Oscar nominated Revanche is an inspired masterpiece of a thriller, which doesn't really turn out to be a thriller in the end, but something more emotionally complex and profound than a mere genre film.

Alex and Tamara are lovers desperately trying to make a life together. First they have to get out of the sex traffic business. Tamara is a hooker/stripper working for an Eastern European gangster and Alex is the club’s hardened but ineffectual barkeep. Alex makes a plan to hold up a small town bank, grab the cash, pay off their debts and ride away into the sunset in freedom. Plans go wrong, of course, when the heist and their escape are interrupted by a humble cop, Robert.

Spielmann is clever to subvert our expectations, steering the movie in the direction of a lovers-on-the-run road movie in the first half before pulling the rug from under us and making a dramatic left turn to something deeper and more complex. The second half deals with the fallout from Alex/Tamara’s encounter with the cop, the details of which I won’t reveal here. Soon Alex finds himself alone hiding from the authorities in the home of his elderly grandfather and his kindly female neighbour, Susanne, who happens to be the wife of the cop who disrupted the heist.

The title Revanche means revenge in German, but it can also mean ‘second chance’ – the prevailing theme that dominates the rest of the film. Alex wrestles with the choice between his desire for revenge and his inability to commit to another act of violence, and whether his grandfather and the town will become his second chance at making a real honest life for himself.

After the heist, Spielmann disposes of the urban setting and the strip club, and we don't see the slimy pimp or club owner again. As such, it’s a greyer area of conflict. What was easily characterized as good vs. bad, hero vs. villain and protagonist vs. antagonist is much more difficult to identify with.

The relationship between Susanne and Alex is particularly intriguing. Alex appears to have contempt for Susanne a) because of her association with the cop that prevented the bank robbery and b) because of Susanne’s nosey small town congeniality, which threatens Alex’s grieving process. Then, out of the blue, Susanne seduces Alex. It’s a shock to us, but it’s an instinctual carnal attraction between desperate souls, not unlike Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton’s smouldering love affair in Monster’s Ball.

But Susanne’s agenda is more devious than Alex’s. Alex easily succumbs to passion, because well, he’s a man, and it doesn’t take much to seduce a man. For Susanne, it’s a desperate attempt to save her marriage by secretly conceiving a child even if it’s not her husband’s.

Spielmann sets a quiet tone with a trendy observational style, a languid easy-going pace and non-stylized though pristine visuals. Without overt violence or conflict he slowly simmers his situations and characters with internalized emotions. Like Hamlet, Alex, who desires revenge against Robert, is unable to make a decision and take action – a trait that is planted by Tamara’s pimp in a throwaway conversation early in the film. So we sense there’s a possibility of violence at every moment, whether it’s against Robert, Susanne or even himself. Spielmann’s repetitive use of the wood chopping is almost pornographic, suggesting that it’s either groundwork for its significance later in the movie or that at any time Alex, who is so wound up, could lose control, chop off a finger or lose a limb.

Revanche succeeds masterfully because Spielmann makes us love Alex, Susanne and Robert so much that we desperately want all of them to achieve their dreams and make good for themselves.

Revanche, nominated for a Foreign Language Oscar in 2009, also received the Criterion Collection treatment on Blu-ray, a format that renders Spielmann’s compositions sharply and immaculately.

Velvet Goldmine

2011-12-18T13:28:00.002-05:00

Velvet Goldmine (1997) dir. Todd Haynes
Starring: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, Eddie Izzard, Toni Collette

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Velvet Goldmine was a perceived failure in its day, but it’s a film that showed up on a lot of critics' Best of the Decade lists at the end of the ‘90s. Even I was dumbfounded by the preposterous indulgences of Haynes' love letter to glam rock. The mixture of fantasy and realism under the New Queer Cinema banner had me scratching my head. But there's much to admire in Haynes' ambitiousness and ability to recreate the feeling and tone of those ‘70s rock operas, all with a strong emotional character-based anchor.

The opening moments signal the epic-like ambition of Haynes – a scene set in the 1800s, visiting the gay author Oscar Wilde, who we're told was dropped from a UFO at birth, and in his childhood yearns to be a pop star. The reincarnated pop star we're meant to think he became is Brian Slade (Meyers), who in his youth grew up idolizing an out-of-control Iggy Pop-like rocker, Curt Wild (McGregor).

An audition with a star-making producer (Izzard) leads Slade to create a Ziggy Stardust-like alter ego through which to channel his audacious and overt bisexuality and hardcore lifestyle. The rocky journey of Slade and Wild are chronicled via a not-so-disguised Citizen Kane narrative set in 1984 featuring another fame-chaser, a smitten reporter (Bale) who investigated the rumoured fake-death of Slade years prior.

A strong theme of fame and obsession fuels Haynes' wild stylistic flourishes, which attempt to put us in a grandiose rock opera world like Quadrophenia and Phantom of the Paradise. That said, other than the trippy UFO/Oscar Wilde opening, most of everything we see on screen could have actually happened.

Haynes' loose narrative consists of short set pieces and montage scenes that hopscotch us through the ‘70s at a sharp pace, an energy which Haynes remarkably keeps up for almost two hours. Without a semblance of traditional movie coverage, everything we see on screen is a stimulus brimming with life. And great period music, both real and fake, merges perfectly to create visual and audio harmony.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' androgynous features and palpable screen presence should have been a star-making performance. Unfortunately, the failure of the film prevented this. Eddie Izzard's bombastic performance as the manager steals scenes, but it's Christian Bale we notice above all others. He could have blended into the background of the 'traditional' segments of the picture, but his aching internalized desires to be like Slade or Wild and inhabit their worlds carry more emotional weight than anything else. At the end, we get the film's most infamous scene – anal sex with Ewan McGregor on a rooftop. It's tastefully done, and we don't see much, but I think even the most bigoted homophobes might shed a tear for Bale's character, who in the most transcendental manner achieves his dream.

Looking back, Velvet Goldmine works so well because it takes the best of those ‘70s rock operas (none of them great films anyways), keeps the good stuff, throws out the bad and infuses itself with hopeful and passionate nostalgia.

Velvet Goldmine is available on Blu-ray from Alliance Films in Canada.

The Most Dangerous Man in America

2011-12-17T13:59:00.002-05:00

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009) dir. Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith
Documentary

***½

By Alan Bacchus

The spectre of Richard Nixon continues to produce more compelling stories and interesting characters than ever before. With this documentary the microscope zooms in on the story of Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers and its influence into activism in the ‘60s, the Vietnam War and the fall of Richard Nixon. It’s a film that successfully links itself to the other great Nixon/Vietnam era political films, such as Frost/Nixon, All the President’s Men, Nixon and The Fog of War.

In many ways Daniel Ellsberg symbolizes the best qualities of the zeitgeist of political activism in the ‘60s – a man who risked family, career and public reputation for the sake of the fundamental constitutional values, which, in his mind, appeared to be forsaken by the country's elected powers. Ehlich and Goldsmith's film serves as a cinematic memoir for Ellsberg, who reveals his motivations, regrets and the moment-by-moment emotions of the two-year period between the leaking of the papers and his ultimate exoneration.

To refresh... the Pentagon Papers was the notorious term for a top secret study prepared by the Department of Defence on U.S./Vietnam relations from 1947-1968. It was a study that revealed scathing lies from four presidents about the motivations, execution and escalation of the Vietnam War.

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a former political advisor to Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara and researcher with the Rand Corporation, leaked these details to the New York Times, the effect of which saw him arrested for espionage and caused the snowball effect of Watergate and Richard Nixon's eventual resignation.

Ellsberg is still alive and provides the narration and key interviews recounting this complex story. We learn about his Harvard education and recruitment into the exclusive political think tank, The Rand Corporation, where he made a name for himself with his ability to think outside the box. During this time his work drafting military risk strategies and decision-making theories helped influence Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara escalate the war in Vietnam. It wasn’t until he met his wife, an activist and protestor, that he awoke to the real-world effects of his work. And so, Ellsberg recounts the difficult moral conflict he found himself faced with. With this knowledge in his possession, did he have a moral obligation to disclose it for the greater good of the nation?

We learn about the connections he made with colleague Anthony Russo to steal the papers and covertly send them to the papers. When the news hit the streets we get to hear the first-hand reactions of Nixon, John Ehlichman and Henry Kissinger via Nixon's own White House wiretap tapes sounding off on the shit-storm fallout caused by the leak.

The uncomplicated tried and true documentary techniques are not flashy, but they effectively visualize the story. Talking heads are formally composed and artistic recreations borrowed from the Errol Morris or Man on Wire school of oblique close-ups do the job of visualizing what could not be shown by news footage or stock photos. Ultimately, the emotional power is in the voices and faces of the participants.

At 75, Ellsberg emerges as a hero and a champion for political activism and perhaps the original and most important whistle blower ever. His moral conflict is articulated best by one of the interviewees who discusses the need to have young people on the jury of his trial. Anyone at middle age would likely find disdain for what Ellsberg did, not because of ethical differences, but because of the fact that Ellsberg's actions would have revealed the cowardice of those ordinary men and women who wouldn't have had the guts to do the right thing. The decision to risk family and career for one’s morals is something few of us have had to face. And for those that have, even fewer have gone through with it.

Cul de Sac

2011-12-16T10:24:00.006-05:00

Cul de Sac (1966) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Donald Pleasance, Lionel Stander, Françoise Dorléac

**½

By Alan Bacchus

However inspired and influential Roman Polanski’s remarkable body of work in the '60s was, there are a few duds. Cul de Sac, hot off Polanski’s two previous films (Knife in the Water and Repulsion), the story of an American gangster holding a meek faux-bourgeois couple hostage in northern Britain might suggest another psychological drama of domestic terror. Unfortunately, there’s a strong injection of swinging '60s comedy, a unique haphazard kind of rambunctious madcap tone that doesn’t really translate well to today.

Think of the silliness of say Casino Royale or It’s a Mad Mad Mad World, a comedic randomness perhaps born from the psychedelic effects of the hallucinogenic drugs at the time. Ok, Cul de Sac is not Casino Royale by any means, but the uncontrolled zaniness is cut from the same cloth, a product of its time.

Like most of his famous pictures, Polanski keeps his production contained. Although in this case the environment of Cul de Sac is more in line with the open containment of his characters in Knife in the Water than walled in claustrophobic Catherine Deneuve’s apartment in Repulsion.

Lionel Stander plays Dickie, a grossly exaggerated American gangster injured from some kind of robbery, on the lam in a car with his partner, who is also injured. When the car breaks down he holes up in a castle, which happens to be inhabited by a young couple; George, a neurotic boob (Pleasance) and his sexually alluring French wife, Teresa (Dorleac). It's not your typical home invasion, as the three engage in numerous oddball activities and discussions. There's really only a hint of a threat from Dickie - partly due to Lionel Stander's gruff but high-pitched and affable voice.

There are a number of levels of theme and humour running through Polanski's surreal and often lunatic indulgences. The placement of these characters in the obscenely antiquated 11th century castle amid a near desolate part of Northern England perhaps forces the audience to reconcile the socio-political differences between three nations - France, America and England. The French (as played by Dorleac), flighty and flirty, America (Stander, pushy opportunists and movie heavies who like to get their own way, and the English (Pleasance), drunken dithering buffoons.

Polanski's superb visual eye is impressive, as always. The castle seems to be perpetually engulfed by ominous and beautifully photographed cumulus clouds in the sky and by an expansive beach tide on the ground, which has the power to isolate the castle entirely in water for large stretches of time.

The fun of Cul de Sac is finding connections across Polanski's body of work, like his penchant for wide-angle interior handheld camerawork placed mere inches away from his actors, as in Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby. The castle setting and the visual motifs of the changing tides remind us of his spectacular and often underappreciated work in his grisly version of Macbeth (1971).

Unfortunately, other than these connections there's not much to take home from Cul de Sac except for maybe Donald Pleasance's oddball performance, another kooky role from the always curious and off-kilter actor.

Cul de Sac is one of a number of Polanski films, including Chinatown, Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby, screened this month at TIFF Bell Lightbox, timed with the premiere of his latest, Carnage, next week.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2011-12-15T09:30:00.000-05:00

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) dir. Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and Colin Firth.

***

By Blair Stewart

Espionage writer John le Carré created one of fiction's finer bureaucrats in George Smiley, a grey splotch of a man you'd think nothing of challenging to a duel until you've found he's outwitted you out of all your bullets. Forcibly retired from the early 1960's spy trade due to circumstances similar to the plotline, le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy rebuffed the good-times fantasia of Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Spy work in Cold War-era Britain was lousy business-Agent 007 never had to take a red-eye flight to East Berlin in winter, and he likely would have snapped and killed a few of his superiors from paperwork-induced boredom in the 'Circus' (le Carré's affectionate term for the HQ of the British intelligence arm MI6). In bald contrast to Fleming's more well known creation, George Smiley isn't a very dapper or handsome gent, and yet he's the dog to pick in a fight between the two. Smiley is gifted in memory and anticipation, all sangfroid calm, and loaded with connections throughout the branches of government intelligence-he's a worthy adversary for the the KGB foil of the Circus, the Russian spymaster Karla who hovers just out of reach.

Less a remake of the original BBC serial of Sir Alec Guinness' career-best Smiley, Tomas Alfredson's new release is more so its own stuffed adaptation of the book, compacting the spycraft jargon and labyrinthine relationships into a concise narrative that nearly satisfied my inner "Tinker" fan. Based on what they've managed to retain from the book the script by Bridget O'Conner, Peter Straughan and Peter Morgan has similarities to a clown car with enough space to successfully fit a full troupe.

Gary Oldman stars while looking as anemic as he did in Bram Stoker's Dracula, his Smiley having been shuffled off to early retirement when the operation to out a Russian mole within the Circus by his boss Control (John Hurt) nosedived. Despite Smiley's suspicions about Control's failed trap that devastated his department he can't nose around further until the appearance of the prodigal field agent Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) on British soil confirms the Circus has indeed been compromised. Smiley enlists the help of other forcibly retired Circus staff (Kathy Burke, Stephen Graham) and his now-downtrodden former protege Peter Guiliam (Benedict Cumberbatch) to reveal who's the fink among the bureau's top brass: Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik), with Control once having suspected Smiley as well.

While successful in Scandinavian film for some time Tomas Alfredson came to light in the (English-speaking) mainstream with 2008's Let the Right One In, his superb take on the John Ajvide Lindqvist novel linking a forever-pubescent vampire in early 80's Stockholm with a sheltered boy in need of schoolyard protection. Alfredson was not only competent enough to hire the correct technicians to believably recreate and capture the fluorescent plastic dourness of Eighties state housing but he also communicated a sweetly-creepy sense of adolescent love/lust between the two leads. As a director Alfredson is capable of establishing le Carré's mood of Red Scare secrecy through his expansive framing and chilly Scandinavian colour palette (this is his second collaboration with DOP Hoyte van Hoytema) while making do with his cast of a Murderers' Row of English acting talent who mostly fit except for Graham and Mark Strong performing while appearing unintentionally hilarious in 70's threads and hair - no fault of their own, it was just a lousy decade for menswear. Oldman, despite seeming to speak all of three words in the first thirty minutes, is nearly equal to Guinness as Smiley, especially in scenes of contained fury when he's interogating the culprits of MI6's downfall.

Despite Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy being finely made adult entertainment that's pretty much catnip for year-end 'Best of' film lists a few problems emerge: while the script's inclusions of period music is damn fine (Julio Iglesias's "La Mer", Sammy Davis Jr.'s "The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World") the score by Alberto Iglesias is underwhelming, especially in comparison with the use of Danny Elfman's 'Wolf Suite Pt.1' for the film's first trailer. Another problem is the choice made by director Alfredson in several instances to extinguish suspense from the film, particularly in the climax, which is an admirable approach to an anti-Hollywood spy movie yet still left me dissatisfied, the audience has been patient for two hours, might as well give them something. Overlooking flaws with the adaptation there's still a great deal of quality in quantity with le Carré old-school espionage classic, a Smiley's People follow-up to Tinker by Alfredson would be most appreciated. Karla would approve of it.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens theatrically in Canada on Friday from EOne Films.

The Hangover Part II

2011-12-14T09:30:00.009-05:00

The Hangover Part II (2011) dir. Todd Phillips
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helm, Zach Galifinakis, Justin Bartha, Ken Jeong

***

By Alan Bacchus

Not only is this film ‘not that bad’, it’s actually a very funny and worthy successor to the original. Of course, I’m coming at this months after its near unanimous vilification by critics, yet it was a resounding box office success with audiences. So what gives?

What seems to be cited most often in the negative reviews is the template-like methodology this sequel places itself into. Beat-for-beat, The Hangover Part II repeats the formula of the first film, like déjà vu or perhaps a Groundhog Day time loop. Is it as fresh as the original? No. But while some saw this as shamelessly uncreative, I found this approach strangely appropriate, providing a level of comedy befitting the original film. Let’s remember, The Hangover was funny, but no masterpiece, certainly not sacred material, and thus ripe for the kind of repetitive comedy used in other movie franchises, such as James Bond, Austin Powers, Back to the Future and a half-century of situation comedies on television.

And to qualify the television reference, this film is by no means small screen material. There is some awesome cinematic comedy on display, appropriately pushing the boundaries of good taste and decency for comedic purposes. And it always stays on the right side of comedy.

The fact is, the ‘wolf pack’ in this picture – Phil, Stu and Alan, all losers incapable of holding their liquor and drugs and susceptible to the vices and temptations of man – are delightfully lovable. In the first film this trio made for a fun lampooning of the thin line between the feint veil of social maturity and the primal nature of our male desires. And here, the fact that the same thing happens to these guys again is a sad reminder or the failings of man.

Moving the situation over to Thailand appropriately ups the stakes. The exotic foreign location and xenophobic cross-culture fears of middle Americans adds a level of unpredictability that’s not present in the relative safety of Las Vegas. There's also ample room to exploit some fun ethnic stereotypes – all very lightly and fairly. Bringing back Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) as the fey Asian coke addict who finds himself embroiled in the wolf pack's journey is key to this.

The missing person in this film turns out to be Teddy, Stu's soon-to-be brother-in-law and his father-in-law's prized possession – a genius teenager destined to fulfil his father's dreams. And so, after they wake up from their substance-influenced amnesia night of hell with Teddy gone missing, Stu's life comes crashing down.

The monkey featured in the poster makes for some good ol’ 'simian' humour involving mimicking human behaviour, which historically always makes for good comedy. Phillips even engineers a truly fantastic car chase in the mix, racing a motorcycle through the streets of Bangkok.

Not all of the gags score, specifically Mike Tyson's appearance in the end and Paul Giamatti's casting as an American gangster. But the authentic locations and the genuine warmth and chemistry of the three actors make this picture highly watchable and undeserving of such critical lambasting. So just chill out and enjoy The Hangover Part II.

The Hangover Part II is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Warner Home Entertainment.

Chandu the Magician

2011-12-13T10:16:00.004-05:00

Chandu the Magician (1932) dir. William Cameron Menzies, Marcel Varnel
Starring: Edmund Lowe, Irene Ware, Bela Lugosi

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Chandu the Magician is a rare and near forgotten adventure film from the great period of early horror/adventure classics. The ‘30s was the era of King Kong, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and more. Chandu the Magician stands up well against all of these films for its production value, cinematic energy, exuberance and innovations in cinema that inspired the likes of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

Edward Lowe plays Frank Chandler, a British secret agent trained in the eastern mystics of “Yogi,” which has given him powers of hypnosis and mind control. After completing his training he’s told to “go forth with his youth and strength to conquer the evil that threatens mankind.” Chandler is assigned to combat the nefarious Egyptian megalomaniac, Ruxor (Bela Lugosi), who is seeking world domination. Ruxor has kidnapped Chandler’s brother-in-law and scientist, Robert Regent, who has developed a dangerous death ray with the ability to kill many people half-way around the world. Chandu encounters a series of spine-tingling adventures and daring escapes in order to save the world from destruction.

Chandu appears to be one of the main influences on Stephen Somers to make his version of The Mummy. In fact, I'd argue that this film was more influential than even the original 1932 The Mummy. Chandu’s three main protags – Chandler, his sister and the drunken comic relief, Biggles – form the same bumbling trio played by Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah.

Chandu is credited with two directors, Marcel Varnel, a stage director who directed the actors, and William Cameron Menzies, who was in charge of the technical design of the picture. Even by b-movie standards the acting is mostly atrocious, but with today’s eyes, Edmond Lowe’s mixture of British superiority and uber-seriousness is just too silly to criticize. It’s so much fun.

Menzies is the real star of the show and one of cinema’s most ambitious filmmakers. He was a director or co-director in the 1930s on pulpy films such as Chandu. Perhaps his crowning achievement is the British science-fiction masterpiece Things to Come – a cautionary tale of war, which spans 2000 years of history. In Chandu he sets the tone of adventure, mysticism and intrigue with a number of inspired sequences, which, unlike the acting, stands up against any of the films of its era, including King Kong. You just need to watch the opening sequence for evidence. It’s a wonderful shot that introduces us to Chandler’s Yogi training fortress. The shot starts with a miniature of the Yogi castle high atop a mountain (dramatically lit with noir-like texture by the great James Wong Howe), then seamlessly transitions to a tracking shot through the hallways of the lair. The sequence is capped with a wonderful showcase of Menzies’ fine superimposition photography demonstrating Chandler’s new mystical powers.

Chandu the Magician is a whole lot of pulpy goodness, a wonderful time capsule of the ambitiousness of early Hollywood to entertain its audiences and amaze them with new worlds, mad scientists, death rays, charming heroes and exotic villains.

Myth of the American Sleepover

2011-12-12T09:57:00.007-05:00

Myth of the American Sleepover (2011) dir. David Robert Mitchell
Starring: Claire Sloma, Marlon Morton and Amanda Bauer

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Another ensemble coming-of-age film involving a handful of high schoolers on their last day of summer experiencing the pains of love? But wait, with little fanfare outside of festival play and the Independent Spirit Awards, and almost no penetration into the mainstream consciousness, this picture is arguably the best high school movie produced in years. Just when you thought it was impossible to find a fresh way to tell a high school saga, writer/director David Robert Mitchell manages to find realism and truth in almost every frame of this picture.

We’re in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. It’s the last day of summer, and the film finds a number of lost, disaffected teens trying to reconcile their confused feelings of lost love and satisfy their sexual urges and social frustration. There’s Maggie (a remarkable debut for Clara Sloma), who in the opening scene ogles a shaggy-haired older boy poolside. Tagging along with her is her socially awkward and not as physically developed best friend. Together they pass on a girls’ sleepover with the cool crowd to chase after the boy at a lakeside cottage party. There’s also Claudia (Amanda Bauer), the new girl in town who does go to the sleepover but ends up attracting the host’s vacant zombie-like boyfriend.

Rob (Marlon Morton) attends a guys’ sleepover (not called a sleepover of course) but, not unlike Richard Dreyfuss’s character in American Graffiti, feels compelled to comb the streets of Detroit looking for a nameless blonde with whom he’s blindly become smitten.

Sadly, there’s one bad apple on this tree. It’s the plotting of one of the school graduates, who returns home after flunking out and now pines after a pair of twins from his year who are attending the University of Michigan. His journey to Ann Arbour and his idealistic attempt to barge into the girls’ dorm and convince them that he loves them is the stuff of John Hughes and all the imitators Mitchell seems to be trying to avoid.

But for the most part, the actions, attitudes and reactions of his characters to life’s most complicated situations feel more natural and honest than anything depicted in any John Hughes movie. While Linklater’s and Lucas’s high school opuses (Dazed and Confused and American Graffiti, respectively) anchored their films in raucous set pieces and nostalgic melancholy, Mitchell chooses a Gus Van Sant approach. There’s no self-awareness like from the Hughes imitators, and no raunchy lollygagging like in the Apatow approach. Mitchell’s characters exist in a vacuum of emotional disaffection, true to their immaturity, acting on instinct and completely unaware that they are indeed ‘coming of age.’

That said, even in the non-melodramatic progression of their individual journeys, the non-professional actors portraying these mundane lives are intoxicating and impossible not to fall in love with. Clara Sloma is decidedly un-Hollywood looking and has a palpable cinematic je ne sais quoi ‘screen presence,’ which could make her star. She has the best scene in the film – a drunken dance sequence during which Maggie impulsively jumps into a choreographed dance sequence in front of a group of stunned male teenagers. Of course, in any other hackneyed high school film she would have been verbally ridiculed or embarrassed somehow. Yet the boys in the film, like the audience, can only marvel at Maggie’s innate brilliance. David Robert Mitchell's film matches the quirky brilliance of Maggie's performance.

Myth of the American Sleepover was picked up by IFC Films after receiving acclaim at SXSW and is now available in sparkling High Definition on Netflix.

Freaks

2011-12-11T12:54:00.008-05:00

Freaks (1932) dir. Tod Browning
Starring: Harry Earles, Olga Baclanova, Wallace Ford

****

By Alan Bacchus

Tod Browning’s Freaks is a sublime piece of cinema. Despite the title and its cultish reputation, it's a wholly accessible film and simply one of the greatest films ever made.

Browning was light years ahead of his time. Upon the film’s release the parade of deformed and physically challenged actors that make up the main characters were dismissed as grotesque monsters people didn’t want to see on screen. And so for Browning it was art imitating life, as the film suffered from the same type of stigmata that afflicted these physically disabled persons.

But the fact is Freaks is both a terse and emotionally engaging melodrama on a trajectory that is wholly disturbing beyond the surface freakiness of the circus milieu.

The film opens with the introduction of a brand new circus act freakier than anything anyone has ever seen. Before we get to see the monstrosity, Browning brings us back into the past and into the unique subculture of circus life. It’s a vagabond lifestyle of living in trailers and being in constant flux and travel, but it’s also a microcosm of regular domestic life. There are all sorts of wonderful characters, including the half man/half lady, the Siamese twins, a legless man, the human torso, small headed women, pinheads, midgets and more.

While Browning revels is showing us the deformities of these people, at the heart is a deeply affecting romantic relationship between two midgets, Hans and his girlfriend. It’s a love that is tested by the greed and deceit of a conniving femme fatale trapeze artist named Cleopatra. When she hears of Hans' large inheritance, she seduces him with charm and affection, eventually resulting in marriage with the intention of killing him and eventually claiming his money.

Though his girlfriend and his friends can see through this deceit, Hans is blinded by the attention he never received from an able-bodied person. Harry Earles is so marvelous as the love-stricken midget, his sad face generates so much sympathy the action plays out like a classic Greek tragedy.

Eventually, Hans catches on and fights back against Cleopatra, tricking her into revealing her true intentions, which sparks an intense finale during which the freaks band together to exact revenge on the evil woman. And the link-up with the scene at the beginning of the film is astounding and easily one of the most shocking scenes I’ve seen in a film – a reveal that makes as much of an impact today as it did in 1932.

Whether conscious or not, it’s easy to see the influence of Freaks in the work of Tim Burton and David Lynch, specifically Edward Scissorhands and The Elephant Man. But it took more than 30 years, after Browning's work (Dracula) started replaying in revivals in the ‘60s, before there was a demand to revive Freaks and rediscover it as the masterpiece it is. Nonetheless, even to this day the film is shamefully categorized as a 'horror' film in video stores.

The Dead Zone

2011-12-10T12:56:00.007-05:00

The Dead Zone (1983) dir. David Cronenberg
Starring Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Martin Sheen

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

The Dead Zone was Cronenberg’s first venture into mainstream films. After a series of uniquely gruesome horror films (The Brood, Shivers, Scanners), in 1983 Cronenberg took on Stephen King’s bestseller.

Despite the auspicious pairing of King and Cronenberg, the film is more cerebral and brooding than the gorefest one might expect. Bloodletting is kept to a minimum, and instead the psychological impact of predicting someone’s own death keeps up the intensity.

Christopher Walken plays Johnny Smith (one of cinema’s lamest screen names), a school teacher with a good career and a burgeoning relationship with his girlfriend. Suddenly all that topples down when he’s involved in a near fatal car accident. He wakes up from a coma to discover that not only has he been under for five years and his girlfriend is remarried, he’s also developed an extra sensory perception. When Johnny physically touches someone he’s able to see their future, past and darkest secrets.

Johnny’s ability is more a curse than a gift. Not only does he see other people's secrets, he also experiences them. Therefore, his premonitions are painful and utterly frightening for him. Johnny knows he will never be the same person he was before – he will forever be exploited, abused and misunderstood. And he can never have a true relationship with another woman. The physical intimacy would be a little frightening for him.

So Johnny’s new life progresses toward a selfless act of sacrifice he chooses to make in order to save the world. The ending is tragic considering the investment the audience makes in this unique hero.

The Dead Zone features one of Christopher Walken’s definitive roles. His twitches, pauses and voice cadence are in peak form. And this is before he became a parody of himself, so it’s a job to see Walken in a serious role. Cronenberg gets great emotion and intensity from him in this film. Rumours have it that Cronenberg would actually fire a pistol during some of his lines to keep Walken on edge. Also, watch for Martin Sheen’s comically over-the-top performance as the southern Republican Senate candidate, Greg Stillson.

Cronenberg tells the story plainly without his trademark sex and flesh. It’s a simple progression of scenes and events that lead up to Johnny’s fateful decision at the end. If it means anything, apparently it’s Stephen King’s favourite adaptation of his novels. Enjoy.

The Four Feathers (1939)

2011-12-09T09:08:00.002-05:00

The Four Feathers (1939) dir. Zoltan Korda
Starring: John Clements, Ralph Richardson, June Duprez, C. Aubrey Smith

***

By Greg Klymkiw

I wonder if it's better, at least with some movies, to hold childhood memories dear and assume those same feelings of joy will NEVER be rekindled in adulthood. Zoltan Korda's celebrated 1939 film adaptation of A.E.W. Mason's turn-of-the-century Boys Own-styled novel of war and redemption during Britain's colonial struggles during the late 19th century in Egypt and Sudan, was a movie near and dear to my heart. Seeing it now, I can SEE why I loved it. I just don't FEEL it anymore.

Mason's book spawned numerous adaptations for the silver screen, and of those I've seen, I still believe it's the best. Don Sharp directed a low-budget version in the 70s with a great cast, but sub-par production value and Shekhar (Bandit Queen, Elizabeth) Kapur generated a dull, annoyingly revisionist version with the late Heath Ledger in 2002. What these subsequent versions lack, frankly, are the stunningly directed battle scenes of Korda's film (Sharp's were proficient, Kapur's a mess) and, surprisingly, the Kapur offers less food for thought in terms of the notions of imperialism and war.

It's a simple tale. Harry Faversham (John Clements) is descended from an upper-crust British family of war-mongers and against his better judgement, he follows in their footsteps. On the eve of Britain going to war with the Dervishes in Egypt and Sudan, he resigns his post. His three best friends, military men all, send him three feathers - signifying that they believe him to be a coward. His fiance, Ethne (June Duprez) and her father General Burroughs (C. Aubrey Smith) are disgusted with his decision. Ethne always loved Harry's best friend, Captain John Durrance (Ralph Richardson) anyway, so she also bestows Harry with a feather symbolizing his cowardice and breaks off her betrothal (a marriage of convenience to please her father who now has nothing but contempt for his son-in-law-to-be). Harry, is not a coward, however. Once the war begins in earnest, he secretly journeys to the middle east in disguise and sacrifices everything to rescue his three friends from the hands of the Dervishes.

This is, purely and simply, a great story! Great! As a movie, it would take a total bonehead to mess it up and Zoltan Korda (along with legendary producer Alexander Korda) render it with skill, production value and impeccable taste. So why, you might ask, does the movie not send me soaring to the same heights I ascended as a young boy? It's a reasonable question and one I find difficult to answer. Allow me to try.

The movie opens with an astounding battle montage that lays the historical groundwork for what follows. So far, so good. We're then introduced to Harry as a young man and get a sense of of his intelligent, sensitive, introspective nature - at odds with his family and those around him. Leaping ten years later, we find him on the cusp of marriage and war. When he resigns his commission, he makes it clear to both his superiors and fiance that his dream is to use his wealth to HELP people, not to engage in senseless war (especially this one which, is rooted in both vengeance and the maintenance of colonial exploitation). When the movie settles into Harry coming to the decision to assist his comrades and begin the long, dangerous journey into the Middle East, the movie begins to slow down - not so much due to pace, but because a number of interesting elements that have been introduced take a back seat to the proceedings.

Korda seems to settle into a weird auto-pilot here. We get all the basic plot details by rote, but with little passion. Oh, there's plenty of spirit infused in the surface action, but by abandoning the very interesting thematic and character-rooted ideas of a man struggling with the "values" of colonialism is precisely what drags the movie down. This theme is not one rooted in the same kind of revisionism applied to contemporary adaptations of period work, but is, in fact, anchored in both the source material and the first third of the screenplay. Even more odd, is that we don't adequately get a sense of how Harry's friendship with the three men is what pushes him forward. He pushes forward because the plot would have it so.

As a kid, this WAS good enough. Alas, as an adult, it's not - especially since the groundwork of some very interesting and ahead of its time notions of anti-colonialism are introduced, but dropped and/or just glanced upon. Plot takes over, but there are layers - already and consciously set-up - that are begging to be plumbed.

When the film shifts its focus to his old pal John and we're treated to an astounding night attack sequence upon the British by the Dervishes, the movie springs miraculously back to life. When Harry catches up to John and the arduous rescue sequence across the desert begins, the movie slows down again. This time, it's a similar problem. Korda hits all the plot points, but seldom rests long enough to explore the true resonance of the tale.

There are several more rescue and action scenes - including a battle sequence that is clearly one of the best ever committed to film, so this is not to say I was disappointed in seeing the movie again. On the contrary, it's still a fine story and there's enough by way of spectacular derring-do with a huge cast, great costumes and stunning technicolor photography. The problem, perhaps, is all mine - assuming it's possible to recreate childhood wonder with EVERY movie I loved as a kid.

It's not the movie's fault. Korda ultimately delivered what audiences at the time wanted. After all, the world was on the cusp of war with Hitler. Propaganda in all things war-related was starting to heat up.

Historically, in terms of the British film industry, this movie and subsequent British films thrived because of the Act of Parliament passed in 1927 which instituted a stringent exhibition quota that lasted for ten years and was responsible for developing a vibrant indigenous film industry in Britain. Sure, there were bombs and it also gave way to what was referred to as the "quota quickie" (low budget B-movies), but it helped the Korda family establish a great British studio and generate product that, while expensive and unable to recoup costs entirely in Britain, did so spectacularly in the international marketplace. It also gave rise to consistent output from the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and The Powell-Pressburger Archers' team.

The Four Feathers was beloved the world over - for decades. Certainly, as a child, it did what it was supposed to do and as an adult, it has plenty of great things going for it. It's a good movie. Don't mind me.

"The Four Feathers" is now available on a Criterion Blu-ray version. The source material seems to have needed quite a brush-up and, at the very least, the colour is spectacular. The uncompressed mono sound is a joy - proving once again that a great mono mix is as spectacular as anything. There's a bevy of decent extras in this package including an audio commentary by film historian Charles Drazin, a new video interview with David Korda, son of director Zoltán Korda, "A Day at Denham", a short film from 1939 featuring footage of Zoltán Korda on the set of "The Four Feathers", a trailer and an essay by Michael Sragow.

Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones

2011-12-08T09:02:00.008-05:00

Star Wars Episode 2 Attack of the Clones (2002) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson

*½

By Alan Bacchus

I can’t think of a worse piece of dreck foisted upon the pop culture annals with bigger hype and anticipation than Attack of the Clones, George Lucas’s second (or 5th depending on how you number these things) chapter in the Star Wars saga. A teenaged Anakin Skywalker struts his stuff as a Jedi-in-training caught up in a political power struggle in the galaxy far, far away, with strings pulled by some nefarious clandestine omni-being.

To give it credit, the story is plotted out sharply. Lucas’s desire to create a nebulous cloud of evil, pulling the strings on both the galactic Senate and the business-oriented Trade Federation, deepens the big picture world of Star Wars more than the first series ever did. In the first three pictures we knew only a few planets and only a few characters. And the movements of the characters themselves occupied a very short time span and were in contained spaces. Here, characters move and make decisions all around the galaxy involving complex plotting that surprisingly holds itself together.

With that said, Lucas’s tin ear for dialogue was never more off key. Everyone seems to be sleeping through this picture, especially Ewan McGregor, who looks exhausted at playing the increasingly useless character Obi Wan Kenobi. Take the opening dialogue scene introducing an older Anakin Skywalker to the audience. They’re riding an elevator up to Senator Amidala’s quarters bantering about their past battles with 'humorous' lines like, “I haven't felt you this tense since we fell into that nest of gundarks.” Unfortunately, McGregor just can’t fake the ridiculousness of the attempted comic exchange.

It’s also an uneventful debut for Hayden Christensen, who speaks in a whiney cadence from the back of his mouth and with a Marlon Brando mumble. The romantic exchanges offer the most laughable moments in the entire series, specifically Anakin’s lakeside confessions expressing his love for the softness of Padme’s skin. And the groundwork of Anakin’s future conversion to the Dark Side is laid with the grace of a jack hammer.

It was a bold move by Mr. Lucas to shoot the film digitally, one of the first major mainstream films to do so. For the most part it’s indistinguishable from film, offering us some remarkably pristine and robust imagery. That said, Lucas further demonstrated his disdain (or laziness) with physical production by shooting almost everything on a soundstage in front of a green screen. His hubris in thinking that his other baby, ILM, could render special effects, background landscape and everything else in the frame with a computer and pass it off as real is completely off base.

For example, there’s a shot early on during a running chase between Anakin and a mysterious assassin who tried to kill Amidala. We see Hayden Christensen running across the neon streaking cityscape dodging pedestrians in order to keep up with his assailant. Unfortunately, the crop lines around the actor’s body and the awkward and inconsistent motion of the actors within the space tell us this is not a real space, but a puzzle of separately shot elements cropped together on a computer. In the original films Lucas used motion controlled cameras to link elements together, an effect that still looks realistic today because he used real tangible objects shot with his camera.

Without the anchor of real objects in the frame (other than the actors), most of the action in this film is a swash of colours and light, which fails to stimulate us or at least move us emotionally. The final act, featuring the Jedi battle in the arena, is incomprehensible and over-produced. The only two scenes to keep from this entire film are Obi Wan’s fight with Jango Fett in the rain and the final double-Jedi match against Count Dooku. Both scenes are exciting because of the simplicity of the choreography in the Dooku battle and the real-life rain falling on the actors in the Obi Wan/Fett scene. Again, these are physical effects that the audience can innately feel are real.

I don’t think I’m off base to say it’s the tangibility of this new Star Wars world that is the greatest loss of the series.

Seven

2011-12-07T09:43:00.002-05:00

Seven (1995) dir. David Fincher
Starring: Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey, Gwenyth Paltrow

****

By Alan Bacchus

There’s no doubt that Alien 3 was a false start, which makes Seven David Fincher’s launching pad, a film which instantly brought forth Fincher’s now signature visual style – slow meditative character films buried inside stimulating visceral subject matter and controlled and precise visual aesthetics. Seven is still a masterpiece of the serial killer genre, one of the only films that can legitimately stand beside the gargantuan Silence of the Lambs.

At a glance the familiar hook of the Seven Deadly Sins might suggest something exploitative – a conceptual skeleton without much skin and bones on the outside. This is not the case. Seven is rich in character and theme, and those truly spine tingling impact moments the genre demands. In short, Seven has everything going for it.

At its core Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman make a dynamic duo. It’s a familiar introduction with Det. David Mills (Pitt), a hungry young newbie detective who purposely chooses the most vile police district in town to relocate to, and Det. Summerset (Freeman), a veteran who is literally days from retirement. Whether or not writer Andrew Kevin Walker purposely wrote in this played out cliché of the near-retired cop, it successfully disarms us to the calculated unconventionality of this film and the deeply cynical view on life presented to us.

Of course, there’s a serial killer in town named John Doe who’s been killing people using the motivations of the Seven Deadly Sins. Whenever the men seem to get a break in the case it only leads to where the killer wants them to go. As such, we don’t even realize it until the end that the journey of the film is the killer's, leading our heroes into a trap so grandiose and diabolical, even after several viewings.

The audience knows there’s going to be seven murders, and though we’re expecting them all one by one, we never feel any predictability in the journey. The first couple of murders are shot and edited with care showing the procedural duties of the cops. But as each new body appears Fincher doesn’t repeat himself and keeps the film moving at an increasingly aggressive pace.

A few key action set pieces are magnificently choreographed. Namely, a remarkable chase sequence through the killer's apartment building and a siege sequence into what the detectives suspect is the killer’s lair. Each of these sequences is driven by the quietly pulsing rhythms of Howard Shore’s underappreciated but amazing score. Fincher is not shy to rip off the feel and tone used by Shore in his Silence of the Lambs score, or his work on the great Cronenberg movies of the ‘80s. The sounds are remarkably simple, slow and brooding ambient pulses that feel like jolts of energy guiding the film toward some kind of fire and brimstone hell.

And indeed by the final act Fincher pays off his intriguing setup with ultimate panache. It’s easy to tease an audience with secrets unrevealed, but to pay off the anticipation without shameless exposition is difficult. Hell, even Freeman’s character Summerset explicitly remarks to Mills, “Don’t be surprised if his head pops open and he were the devil himself. If it turned out he were actually Satan, then that might live up to our expectations.”

The arrival of that delivery truck down the desolate sun-streaked road in the desert and the painstaking reveal of that box and what’s actually in it indeed lives up to our expectations. It’s a truly earth shattering cinematic moment and the final stamp on one of the best films of the ‘90s. It’s arguably the best film of Fincher’s career and one of the best of its genre.

Trainspotting

2011-12-06T09:37:00.008-05:00

Trainspotting (1995) dir. Danny Boyle
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Watching Trainspotting for the first time in the mid-‘90s on a big screen in the theatre was a great blood-pumping cinematic experience. Irvine Welsh’s incredibly frank episodic tale of 1980s heroin culture in Glasgow, Scotland under the ultra-hip flashy direction of Danny Boyle became an instant pop-culture sensation. At least it did for my generation. As a 20-year-old university student this film, as intended by the filmmakers, hit me squarely on the head. It didn’t take long before the walls of my student house were adorned with posters from the movie. The same goes for the soundtrack, which summarized 20 years of Brit-pop drug music in one perfectly curated CD.

Years later, the iconography of the film, the genuine warmth of the characters and the authentic underground British flavour feels just as it did 16 years ago. That said, the stylish flourishes show their age as victims of the cinematic hip Pulp Fiction-influenced era of pop culture self-awareness. This film might have been eaten alive in this day and age, but thankfully it was made in the 1990s when it felt fresh, original and innovative.

Boyle and his team – the same group of lads who made the wonderful Shallow Grave a couple years before (writer John Hodge, producer Andrew MacDonald and star Ewan McGregor) – execute Welsh’s novel as a series of impeccably crafted set pieces or vignettes fused together by McGregor’s verbose, proselytizing voiceover. Opening with a raucous street chase from the middle of the film signals a fetish of Boyle’s we’ll see in his later films (see the opening running chases in Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours). Then Boyle introduces us to his lead characters in Sam Peckinpah-fashion with cool freeze frames set to Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life.

As usual, Boyle’s camera rockets around the characters, which is fuel for a remarkably fast-paced 96 minutes that rarely slow down. The scant story centres on Renton (McGregor), a respectable heroin junkie who, instead of choosing the life journey expected of him, chooses heroin, a drug which he freely admits is like an orgasm times a thousand (“and you’re still nowhere near it”). Key to Renton’s journey are the positive and negative effects of his ‘so-called’ friends: Spud (Bremner), a ne’er-do-well who is just too naïve to make any hard decisions of his own; Sick Boy (Miller), the suave best friend and Sean Connery fan who seems to be in control of his addiction; Tommy (McKidd), the honest one of the bunch who doesn’t do the skag; and Begbie (Carlyle), an alcoholic Scottish hooligan exemplified. As Renton goes through the cycle of addiction and recovery, it becomes clear that his friends are the biggest hurdle to clean living. But the bonds are difficult to break without severing ties completely with his former life.

However, no ‘synopsis’ could do justice to the delirious and ambling nature of this dark slice of life. Boyle and company put the audience through the absolute dreck of Scottish seediness – far and away from any semblance of Old World charm. And miraculously, by exposing this darkest and ugliest part of oneself, Boyle brings out the most warm and honest working class humour we see on BBC Britcoms.

While the visual stylishness seems less inventive and invigorating all these years later, the humour and affable characters of Trainspotting are as fresh, delightful and endearing as they were then.

Sarah's Key

2011-12-05T09:37:00.009-05:00

Sarah’s Key (2011) dir. Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Starring: Kristin Scott Thomas, Mélusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Frédéric Pierrot, Aidan Quinn

**½

By Alan Bacchus

The despicable Vel' d'Hiv event in 1942, during which thousands of French Jews were rounded up by French police before they were sent off to concentration camps, is just the starting point for the big screen adaptation of Tatiana de Rosnay’s best-selling novel. The film version attempts to compress too much story, including not only the round up, but also the life journey of a child survivor and a present-day story about a journalist uncovering her personal connection to the girl’s story – all in a scant 107 minutes. As such, there’s a melodramatic feel to this powerful story, which is badly in need of a delicate touch to convey the complex internal conflict and sweeping, epic, cross-generational conflict.

Sarah Strazinsky is a 10-year-old girl subjected to the intense anti-Semitism of Nazi-Europe. In an instant her young life is plucked from her when her home is invaded and her family is rounded up. Sensing danger, she attempts a heroic act by hiding her younger brother in a bedroom closet and locking the door, promising to come back when she’s released.

Paquet-Brenner’s film does a terrific job of putting us in the child’s point of view, as the youngster desperately tries to find a way back to Paris and her home to release her brother. We can’t help but think how badly this reunion would turn out. And quietly, we as audience members are hoping a cinematic miracle will save us from the harsh realities of what would actually happen to that young boy.

Despite my reservations about the film as a whole, Paquet-Brenner gets the scene right, as Sarah uses her key (referenced in the title) to open the cupboard door weeks or months after leaving her brother there. Indeed, it's a real heartbreaker.

Where Pacquet-Brenner falters are in the events after this moment, which encompass the second half of the film. Framed by French-American journalist, Julia (Scott-Thomas), investigating the round up, Sarah’s life story and the personal connection with her husband’s family in the present, we learn about the harrowing journey of Sarah's escape from the concentration camp. Niels Arestrup delivers another strong humane performance as Sarah’s surrogate father, who takes her in and hides her from the Nazis. But as Julia makes a connection with Sarah’s new family in the present, the truth and lies become murky, revealing dark secrets that Sarah hid from her family. These secrets all stem from the trauma of her naïve decisions as a child during that traumatic event so many years ago.

There are some profound internal conflicts at the heart of Sarah’s character, as this one action affected everything she did later in life. Unfortunately, when seen only in dollops of flashbacks from scrapbooked photo albums collected and revealed later in the picture, the true gravity of a life never fulfilled is lost. Some of the key reveals in the film occur in the last 15 minutes and are handled with much haste. Paquet-Brenner resorts to a shamelessly overused scene, during which Sarah’s grandson in the present confronts his father who knows the family secrets. The clichéd ‘tattered old diary’ that has been hidden until now is brought out, a cheap and dirty melodramatic ploy that solves complex intergenerational problems much too simply.

This is the stuff three-hour plus movies are made of - and they're made by David Lean, Steven Spielberg or Anthony Minghella. Though I haven’t read the book, we can tell that the compression of events and material this dramatic can never been done justice without patience and cinematic due diligence.

Sarah’s Key is available on Blu-ray from TVA Films in Canada.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

2011-12-04T13:12:00.008-05:00

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010) dir. Jalmari Helander
Starring: Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila

***½

By Greg Klymkiw

While it is an indisputable truth that Jesus is the reason for the season. the eventual commercialization of Christmas inevitably yielded the fantasy figure of Santa Claus, the jolly, porcine dispenser of toys to children. Living with his equally corpulent wife, Mrs. Claus, a passel of dwarves and a herd of reindeer at the North Pole, Santa purportedly toils away in his workshop for the one day of the year when he can distribute the fruits of his labour into the greedy palms of children the world over. Is it any wonder how we all forget that Christmastime is to celebrate the birth of Our Lord Baby Jesus H. Christ?

In the movies, however, we have had numerous dramatic renderings of the true spirit of Christmas - tales of redemption and forgiveness like the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, Frank Capra's immortal It's a Wonderful Life and Phillip Borsos's One Magic Christmas, but fewer and far between are the Christmas movies that address the malevolence of the season celebrating Christ's Birth. There's the brilliant Joan Collins segment in the Amicus production of Tales From the Crypt, the Silent Night Deadly Night franchise and, perhaps greatest of all, that magnificent Canadian movie Black Christmas from Bob (Porky's) Clark.

And now, add Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale to your perennial Baby-Jesus-Worship viewings! This creepy, terrifying, darkly hilarious and dazzlingly directed bauble of Yuletide perversity takes us on a myth-infused journey to the northern border between Finland and Lapland where a crazed archeologist and an evil corporation have discovered and unearthed the resting place of the REAL Santa Claus. When Santa is finally freed from the purgatorial tomb, he runs amuck and indulges himself in a crazed killing spree - devouring all the local livestock before feeding upon both adults and children who do not subscribe to the basic tenet of Santa's philosophy of: "You better be Good!" A motley crew of local hunters and farmers, having lost their livelihood, embark upon an obsessive hunt for Santa. They capture him alive and hold him ransom to score a huge settlement from the Rare Exports corporation who, in turn, have nefarious plans of their own for world wide consumer domination. How can you go wrong if you control the REAL Santa?

There's always, however, a spanner in the works, and it soon appears that thousands of Claus-ian clones emerge from the icy pit in Lapland and embark upon a desperate hunt for their leader. These vicious creatures are powerful, ravenous and naked. Yes, naked! Thousands of old men with white beards traverse across the tundras of Finland with their saggy buttocks and floppy genitalia exposed to the bitter northern winds. For some, this might even be the ultimate wet dream, but I'll try not to think too hard about who they might be.

All cultures, of course, have their own indigenous versions of everyone's favourite gift-giver and this eventually led to the contemporary rendering of the Santa Claus we're all familiar with. Finland, however, absorbed in considerable wintery darkness for much of the year, insanely overflowing with rampant alcoholism and being the birthplace of the brilliant Kaurismäki filmmaking brothers, is one delightfully twisted country. It's no surprise, then, that the Finns' version of jolly old Saint Nick is utterly malevolent. As presented in this bizarre and supremely entertaining movie, Santa is one demonic mo-fo!!!

Directed with panache by the young Finnish director Jalmari Helander (and based on his truly insane short films), Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is one unique treat. It's a Christmas movie with scares, carnage and loads of laughs. Helander renders spectacular images in scene after scene and his filmmaking vocabulary is sophisticated as all get-out. In fact, some of his shots out-Spielberg Spielberg, and unlike the woeful, tin-eyed JJ Abrams (he of the loathsome Super-8), I'd put money on Helander eventually becoming the true heir apparent to the Steven Spielberg torch. Helander's imaginative mise-en-scène is especially brilliant as he stretches a modest budget (using stunning Norwegian locations) and renders a movie with all the glorious production value of a bonafide studio blockbuster. The difference here, is that it's not stupid, but blessed with intelligence and imagination.

While the movie is not suitable for very young children, it actually makes for superb family viewing if the kiddies are at least 10-years-old (and/or not whining sissy-pants). Anyone expecting a traditional splatter-fest will be disappointed, but I suspect even they will find merit in the movie. Most of all, Moms, Dads and their brave progeny can all delight in this dazzling, thrilling Christmas thriller filled with plenty of jolts, laughs, adventure and yes, even a sentimental streak that rivals that of the master of all things darkly wholesome, Steven Spielberg.

You have hereby been warned:

You better watch out,
you better not cry,
you better not pout,
I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town,
with razor-sharp big teeth,
a taste for human flesh,
he knows if you've been bad or good,
and he likes to eat kids fresh. Hey!

Or in the words of Tiny Tim: "God Bless us, everyone."

"Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale" is currently available in a superb Bluray and DVD from the Oscilloscope Pictures (and distributed in Canada via the visionary company VSC). I normally have little use for extra features, but this release is one of the few exceptions. It includes Helander's brilliant shorts and some truly informative and entertaining making-of docs.This is truly worth owning and cherishing - again and again!

Le Trou

2011-12-03T21:20:00.001-05:00

Le Trou (1949) dir, Jacques Becker
Starring: Marc Michel, Michel Constantin, Jean Keraudy, Philippe Leroy

****

By Alan Bacchus

Perhaps the granddaddy of all prison escape films? There’s been some great ones, including The Great Escape, Escape from Alcatraz, Papillon, A Man Escaped and Grand Illusion. Le Trou achieves a purity of its genre - distilling all other distracting elements, subplots and red herrings out of the picture without the sacrifice of some core themes of brotherhood, trust, camaraderie, loyalty and fear.

It’s a simple set-up as young Claude Gaspard enters a French prison after being charged for the attempted first degree murder of his wife. He’s a regular citizen in a prison of hardened lifers. His prison mates look upon him with suspicion because there's an escape afoot, a plot that will work only if everyone is in on the plan and working cohesively for the end goal. Can Claude be trusted? The men test him with questions about his crimes, how much he'll serve, what his appeal prospects are, etc., all to determine Claude's reliability under pressure and whether it's worth his while to stick it out all the way.

Becker has a great fascination with the process of the escape, and such is the appeal of the genre. The breaking of the ground is an extended sequence seen from a single shot pointed at the ground. When the men first try banging the steel bar against the ground it looks like a Herculean task to dig underneath. But through the shear length of the shot we get to not only see the progress made, but we also see a hole dug right before our eyes.

Becker’s use of real time is key to putting us right into the tension of the details of the operation and the importance of even the most minuscule of tasks. The creation of the periscope device is especially precise. We see the small mirror hidden in the baseboard, the breaking of the mirror into small pieces and finding the right shape of shard that is small and thin enough to fit onto a toothbrush, thus allowing them to poke it outside their peep hole and see down the length of the hallway.

The best escape films live and breath in these details. Which is why films like these are called procedurals. The procedure of action is just as important as the characters. And in fact, the characters are shaped by these actions. Becker knows the importance of the fact that a close-up of an object is just as important as a close-up of a face, with his camera moving with precision between these objects.

Le Trou is a little different than other escape pictures in that we don’t know where each step of the way will lead us. Each layer of their plan is revealed to the audience as the running time clips along. When the men are digging in their cell, we don’t know what is beneath them. Is it earth, another floor or a basement? Do the men know? Maybe, maybe not. The surprise at each corner of the story is thrilling and edge-of-your-seat drama.

The French have done these films better than anyone. I guess the opposite of the escape film is the heist picture, which is breaking into some place as opposed to breaking out. Jules Dassin’s classic Rififi makes a good companion piece. Like in Rififi, Becker uses silence as a strong builder of tension. The nighttime escape from the cell is played in pin-drop silence - no music with muted ambience and sound effects. Same with Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, a film which pairs the narrative down even scanter than in Becker’s film.

And with all the emphasis on procedural details, if you thought Le Trou was a style over substance, the final moments pay off in a profound emotional revelation between the men. Enjoy.

Cowboys and Aliens

2011-12-02T07:42:00.002-05:00

Cowboys and Aliens (2011) dir. Jon Favreau
Starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, with Paul Dano and Sam Rockwell wandering around looking kind of lost.

*

By Blair Stewart

To be honest with you good readers I have a soft-spot for westerns and sci-fi, snooty cinemaphile pretentiousness be damned. I know every note of Morricone's 'Ecstacy of Gold' score like it's a childhood pet, and there's isn't another film release I anticipated in adolescence more than "Alien 3" (I learned the disappointments of youthful hope on that Friday in '92, and a few years later with Eyes Wide Shut after I got into Kubrick in order to pick up arty broads, so lesson learned on 'anticipating' I suppose). Anyways, there are many ways one could make an enjoyable film concerning Cowboys and Aliens, certainly when you have $160 million to toss around like a big shot, but one method you shouldn't use is half-assed.

How I hate this film, oh lordy lordy let me count the ways.

Emerging from the chintzy-hole of other hacky cash-grabs executive producer Steven Spielberg with his fellow hydra heads of Brian Glazer and Ron Howard join forces with masters of episodic boilerplate prose Lindelof, Kurtzman and Orci to bring a forgettable graphic novel to the screen because, dammit, it was easy to sell to Universal. No doubt the post-pitch words ringing through the hallways of movie-studio purse strings were "You know, for kids!?" Most likely empty terms like 'dynamic storytelling' and 'emotional resonance' were used in the early press releases before cameras rolled. Jon Favreau then wandered in bewildered and feverish from being lost in the Alkali salt wastes and was coerced into signing on in return for some refreshing Evian, so here we are.

A Man with No Name named Jake (Daniel Craig, stage name Sir Pouty Lips McGillicutty) wakes up in the Arizona badlands of 1800-something-or-other with an iWatch from Centaurus welded to his wrist. He shoots some blaggards with fireballs he nicked from Street Fighter II's Ryu-'Hadouken!'-and is eventually dragged to jail in a one-horse town to face the wrath of cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford with sly comic timing for a dude who is always really high on-set, but otherwise lazy) for crossing paths with his weasel of a son Percy (Paul Dano, paying bills). Meanwhile, strange local woman Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde, who on her Wikipedia page states about herself being "really critical and analytical" hahahahahawhataboutthisfilmladyhahahaha?) appears when the story needs her to fill in exposition and cover plot potholes. Aliens show up, Indians show up, Daniel Craig does mescaline and nearly relives the utterly terrifying abduction sequence of D.B. Sweeney from 1993's "Fire in the Sky", shit done gets blown up good yessir, FIN, $160 million poorly spent.

Now how could I hate a film like this? It's supposed to fun and lightweight and all homagey to the John Fords and Ridley Scotts of their genres? Because it's average. It's average in scope, in imagination, in intention, its dialogue and mood and filming and pacing and entertainment and acting-average, average, average. The aliens themselves? Totally forgettable, and probably their concept was a rush-job like the rest of this film. The only thing that isn't average in "Cowboys and Aliens" is Craig and Wilde's performances, both of which are terrible, like most of their work. Let us just listen to the title alone: "Cowboys and Aliens". Couldn't even bother to come up with a nifty title like "Strange Rider" or "Deadcreek" or "Showdown at the E.T. Corral". Nope, "Cowboys and Aliens", from the studio that brought you 'Explosions and Tits', cue the lousy guitar solo, now stuff your face with some popcorn.

Riding home from the theater after watching this I discovered I had left my phone somewhere in Leicester Square and never found it. I blame this shitty film, which is now yours to own on BluRay, DVD and online from Netflix.

Roman Holiday

2011-12-01T09:28:00.007-05:00

Roman Holiday (1953) dir. William Wyler
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Eddie Albert

***

By Alan Bacchus

Like the breezy feeling of driving around the Roman Portico on a Vespa, such is the experience of watching Roman Holiday, the delightful romantic comedy and screen debut of Audrey Hepburn, as well as the accidental advertising campaign for Vespa scooters.

Miss Hepburn, in her first major screen role at the age of 24, plays Princess Ann, a royal from an unspecified country, likely patterned after the then youthful princess Elizabeth II, who was inaugurated as the Queen the year before. Ann has come to Rome on an official visit, which means endless days of bows, curtsies, pomp and ceremony. As she watches the vivacious energy of the common people in the streets, she desperately yearns to experience the city in that way. The night before she’s due to leave Rome she escapes from the room and lands herself in the middle of the city at night.

Sleepy-headed and thus out of sorts, she falls into the company of a handsome journalist, Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck), and winds up sleeping on his couch. The next morning, Joe and Princess Ann gallivant around the city riding Vespas, getting her hair done, sight-seeing, etc. Only Joe knows it’s actually the Princess and hides the fact that he’s a journalist in order to get an exclusive story. Even though they fall in love, the Princess’s royal duties prevent her from being with Joe. But not before Princess Ann admonishes her affection for him in a coy speech to the press in the film’s finale.

Roman Holiday feels like a template film for modern romantic comedies – specifically Notting Hill and virtually every romcom made by Garry Marshall. Despite being a royal of privilege and wealth, Hepburn’s character is written as a porcelain doll, unable to experience the real joys in life – only the fake, manufactured life of being a public figure to be gawked at like an ornament on a mantelpiece. Thus, the audience feels empowered to see the upper class in a position of superiority. But it’s really fairytale stuff, a reverse Cinderella/Pygmalion story, which isn’t all that original in the first place.

Conflict is kept to a minimum for the most part, as Joe is never really taken to task for his deception of Ann. There are also some laughable lapses in cinema logic – specifically the idea that the Princess can walk around Rome unnoticed; or even that by cutting her hair she would be rendered completely invisible. But there’s no such thing as common sense in cinema, as long as it fits into the formalized structure of the genre. And this screenplay is crafted to genre perfection.

The screenplay, written by then blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, who couldn’t take credit for the work, was originally packaged for Elizabeth Taylor and Cary Grant. When Hepburn replaced Taylor, Grant bowed out for fear of being upstaged by the meatier role and Hepburn’s innate onscreen charm. Peck admirably shares the screen and the starring credit, furthering his reputation as a Hollywood nice guy. Hepburn even won an Oscar for her work.

In 1953, the on-location setting was new and fresh, and even with today’s eyes Rome in the 1950s is rendered impossibly romantic. And with Peck and Hepburn searing the screen, it justly remains a classic today – a dreamy romantic comedy par excellence.

Gangs of New York

2011-11-30T08:52:00.005-05:00

Gangs of New York (2002) dir. Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Liam Neeson

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Gangs of New York divided audiences in 2002. It received 10 Oscar nominations in most of the major categories. Some critics called it the best film of the year. Many, like me, knowing the storied history of this ‘dream project’ for Scorsese, had high expectations and were disappointed with the result. Thus, the majority of people consider the film a rare Scorsese failure.

After a nine-year break I beg everyone to reconsider. This is a terrific picture!

Gangs opens with a pulsating introduction to the “Dead Rabbits” gang. Liam Neeson, an Irish priest, is preparing to go to battle. His little son follows him around watching him gather all his troops and warriors. Their battle tools are unsophisticated – knives, axes, hammers and other bludgeoning objects. As they walk through a series of underground fire-lit caves we still aren’t even sure when or where they are. Is it the Middle Ages? It’s only until after the camera pulls out from the bloody battleground that we realize it’s Manhattan in 1846.

The opening is backstory to the film, which takes place 16 years after this famous battle and finds the priest’s son, Amsterdam (Leonardo Di Caprio), returning home to find his father’s killer, the infamous Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis). Revenge doesn’t come easy though. Bill has become a de facto gang leader of the community, and with a new alliance with the city’s de facto politic leader, Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall (Jim Broadbent), he is now an untouchable.

The title is a bit of a misnomer. The film isn’t so much about gangs as it is about the city of New York. Gangs does what the best epic films do, weigh the big story equally with the small story.

The smaller story is about the evolving relationship of Bill the Butcher and Amsterdam Valone. Daniel Day-Lewis is phenomenal as Bill. His casting and performance in There Will Be Blood is clearly influenced by his work in Gangs of New York. Day-Lewis is so good that his performance was a detriment to my first experience with the film. His exaggerated mannerisms chew the scenery and suck all the attention of every scene onto him. Lost in the shuffle is a fine performance from Leonardo Di Caprio, who channels Hamlet-like qualities with his character’s indecisiveness. Like the Danish prince, Amsterdam wants to make a statement with Bill’s death. He says, “When you kill a king, you don't stab him in the dark. You kill him where the entire court can watch him die.” And so when Amsterdam becomes one of Bill's disciples, he finds himself admiring his enemy, complicating even further his indecision and blurring the line between hero and villain.

The bigger story is equally fascinating. During the Civil War, when the country was divided between North and South, New York was on its own – not neutral, but autonomous – like a separate colony within the country. And even within the city, everyone was autonomous, which is where the ‘gangs’ in the title comes from. Like the country itself, New York was constantly at war. So, Gangs is also about the birth of New York and its relationship with the rest of the country.

The finale, which takes place during the famous draft riots, is a great piece of writing – a scene that brings together the big story and the small story. Just as Amsterdam is about to face off with Bill, the riot starts and the federal police fight back. Amsterdam gets his revenge, but he’s alone with the man without the fanfare he once foresaw. Bill the Butcher, one of the great villains in screen history, dies with honour, neither a hero nor a villain. Enjoy.

Hannibal

2011-11-29T08:58:00.004-05:00

Hannibal (2001) dir. Ridley Scott
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Ray Liotta, Gary Oldman

***

By Alan Bacchus

I remember really digging this film when it first came out. Hannibal seemed like an unusual follow-up film for Sir Ridley Scott, whose career was resurrected after his success with Gladiator, which won the Best Picture Oscar. Even more peculiar was the Pulitzer Prize-winning working class scribe, David Mamet (with help from prolific Hollywood writer-for-hire Steven Zallian), who adapted the screenplay.

It still is a weirdly peculiar product from Hollywood. Clearly, Thomas Harris was lured by Hollywood to write another book featuring his Lambs protagonist, Clarice Starling, who was chasing after the escaped criminal Hannibal Lecter. While his two previous efforts, Lambs and Manhunter were brooding psychological and procedural police-cum-horror films, Hannibal was made into a comic book superhero with a kind of grotesqueness meant to better the atrocities and vileness of the Lambs with an over-the-top sense of black comedy.

Anthony Hopkins, more aged and a little stockier, doesn’t quite have the controlled physique, and thus quiet menace, of the 1991 film. And the inability of the producers (and not even the revered Ridley Scott!) to bring back Jodie Foster hurt its credibility. Julianne Moore is a good actress though, and she tries her best. But that Southern drawl accent never quite fits her, and Scott’s attempts to continue the exploration of her insecurities in the police force are peppered throughout, but they never manifest themselves in a substantially effective way.

Hannibal works best as a disposable but elegant B-thriller. The middle act is jumpstarted with the introduction of the film’s best character, played by Giancarlo Giannini, the broken-down and corrupt Italian police inspector who wants to claim the private ransom money. Driven with a great music pulse from Hans Zimmer, act 2 sails along at a brisk pace. Scott has always been a slower-paced director, but by cutting to characters in a number of locations and different characters in the US and Italy, he creates a heady momentum. And the inclusion of bombastic performances from Ray Liotta and Gary Oldman should be taken as black comedy.

If anything, the film suffers from the flaws that have plagued Sir Ridley in films past. Fans of his might welcome the application of his familiar baroque and extravagant visual design. Others, like me, who are well attuned to his body of work, may only see more long flowing drapes, smoke-filled atmosphere and overly decorated interiors. And the opening drug bust sequence is typical of his new methods of filming action scenes – a multi-camera simultaneous coverage approach, which results in a dull television look.

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within

2011-11-28T11:49:00.011-05:00

Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within (2011) dir. Jose Padilha
Starring: Wagner Moura, Irandhir Santos, Andre Ramiro, Pedro Van Held, Maria Ribeiro, Seu Jorge

***½

By Alan Bacchus

What happened to Elite Squad 1? I guess I’m not keeping up with my international genre cinema, but ES1 was one of Brazil’s most successful domestic films, a crackerjack cop thriller with comparisons to The Wire and Heat. Along comes Elite Squad 2, a film already released in Brazil, which has become the highest grossing domestic Brazilian film of all time.

The title refers to the special task force police militia established in the first film (which I haven't seen), and now run by the tough-as-nails Nascimento (Wagner Moura). The film opens four years in the past in the city’s most notorious prison where Nascimento commands the squad assigned to subdue a violent riot. Tasked as the negotiator is Fraga, Nascimento’s nemesis, whose desire to peacefully resolve the conflict runs counter to Nascimento’s corrupt bosses. The standoff goes horribly wrong, the fall-out being the loss of Nascimento’s job on the squad.

Most importantly, with many of the key gang members dead, a corrupt and clandestine movement within the police force itself takes over the reins of organized crime in the slums of Rio. Now more of a bureaucrat than an officer, Nascimento has to navigate a world even more treacherous than the street-level policing – the office and boardrooms of the new political corruption that has gripped the city.

Mondo muscular action is the attraction here. And Jose Padilha, whose previous work includes the acclaimed Bus 174 documentary, has all the panache of a seasoned action director. Guns are shot and framed like glorified phallic symbols, aggressive rock music scoring sounds just like something produced for a Jerry Bruckheimer or Tony Scott film and the men who hold these guns are as badass as you’ll find in any crime film.

Elite Squad 2 should not be characterized simply as a disposable action film. Comparisons to The Wire are more accurate than comparisons to Heat. Missing from ES2 is the elegant sense of grandeur present in Michael Mann’s work. Instead, Padilha substitutes style for a strong sense of realism, which legitimizes the film.

An interesting adjunct to this film is the manner in which it was produced and distributed. After the first film suffered from a leak prior to its release, it was primarily seen by illegal downloaders. For the second film the producers 'four-walled' it, which means they controlled the distribution and exhibition of the film. Instead of hiring a third-party company to distribute it, they booked the theatres themselves to ensure that no one other than the filmmakers had copies of the film. The result was a $65 million (US) domestic take.

It's one example of the new financing and distribution scenarios coming out of Brazil. Look for high-profile Brazilian films to come out in the near future on par with this immensely entertaining and robust action flick.

The Counting of the Damages

2011-11-27T18:41:00.002-05:00

The Counting of the Damages* "El Recuento de los Daños" (2009)
dir. by Ines de Oliveira Cezar
Starring: Eva Bianco and Santiago Gobernori

*½

By Blair Stewart

1. If you're making an exploration of family grief in present-day Argentina don't short-change your audience's intelligence with an unwieldy mass of head-shaking coincidences.

2. Only use a numerical chapter system in your film if each section either advances or diverges from the expectations of the previous chapter. See "Dogville" for a good example. Otherwise you might find yourself in a dark cinema praying for 'ocho' to become 'nueve'.

3. When the brother-in-law said he was an 'astrologer' was that supposed to be a joke? If so the script's sign is in Cancer.

4. Labourious non-action and detachment is a poor substitute for storytelling verve and emotional involvement.

5. I now have a better understanding of that whole 'la bronca' thing that ex-pats from Buenos Aires are always talking about.

6. You can only have so many shots of characters mournfully standing alongside waterways before one wishes for said characters to go for a swim.

7. It's nice to make a metaphor for the scars of the defunct military dicatorship but it also fills the audience with the desire to see Polanski's "Death and the Maiden" instead.

8. Whoever suggested the plinky-plonky piano score may in fact be a saboteur. Flush them out!

9. Is Argentina berefit of Zoloft?

10. As the end credit rolled I fought an immense desire to raise my arms aloft and shout out 'Pour Que?!?'.

*If you give yourself the albatross of a pretentious title you should expect the theme of a snarky review to be 'The Airing of the Grievances'.

The Killer Inside Me

2011-11-26T12:32:00.001-05:00

The Killer Inside Me (2010) dir. by Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba

**½

By Blair Stewart

And it was all just going so damn well before the ending. Arriving at the Berlinale after a controversial Sundance premiere, the prolific Michael Winterbottom's latest is a frank adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me with a 1950s small-town "aw shucks, ma'am" wacko-killer sheriff. If you feel resentment toward me for revealing that nugget of info or failing to include a 'spoiler warning' beforehand, I suggest you refrain from reading the title of the film, ok?

Central City, Texas is enjoying the post-war oil boom and the clean streets are patrolled by the chipper and handsome Casey Affleck as Deputy Lou Ford. If you're familiar with the younger Affleck's work from his debut in Gus Van Zant's To Die For to his Oscar-nominated Robert Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, you'll know the ease with which he can flick on a creepy switch, like a bug is going to crawl out of his throat at any moment. Good-ol' boy Lou gets mixed up with a connected prostitute played by Jessica Alba as one of the more improbable ladies of the night in American film history since Julia Roberts worked the streets.

Deals will go bad and folks will find themselves dead and Sheriff Lou will spin longer and longer yarns at the D.A. to stay out of the electric chair. As the film progresses Lou's sadism (and peculiar childhood activites, spanking fetish ahoy!) towards the women in his life is revealed, hence the controversy, which itself is a quaint idea in the age of Google search engines. Watching Lou's psyche being peeled back makes for hypnotic viewing, as Affleck's eyes have the right shade of ice to them when he needs it. Surrounding the sheriff is a cast of Kate Hudson, Ned Beatty, Elais Koteas and Bill Pullman doing their Southern twangs well as his potential victims if they hang around long enough.

I'm sure Winterbottom was amped up to direct The Killer Inside Me, as it has a certain appeal for a Brit with Thompson's singular pulp Tex-Mex setting. You can see that joy in the lovingly designed opening credits and the camera work of Marcel Zyskind, and for 98.5% of the film it works something nasty and slippery with a Lone Star bite, another Blood Simple was coming down the pike.

And then the ending happened.

While the final moments are true to Thompson's classic, the delivery by Winterbottom and John Curran's script is flubbed. The finale is intended as a cruel death's head joke, but it arrives with the bumbling execution of an audible fart on the soundtrack. Where I should have felt a punch in my gut, instead I had to make due with the Benny Hill theme song playing inside my own mind given the plot and character inconsistencies piling up. What a shame.

It's a missed shot at a classic, but if Winterbottom continues to churn out work he'll likely make up for this.

Three Colours Trilogy

2011-11-25T08:58:00.002-05:00

Three Colours: Blue, White, Red (1993/94) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irene Jacob, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Benoît Régent, Jean-Louis Trintignant

****

By Alan Bacchus

Blue, White and Red, the glorious trilogy of French films from legendary Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski, are essential viewing for lovers of international cinema. Using the three national colours of France, representing Equality, Liberty and Fraternity, Kieślowski created a thematically complex yet wholly accessible linked trilogy incomparable to any other series of films in cinema. Each is unique and self-contained, and there’s no particular order in which they need to be seen. The films freely weave themselves in and out of one another with grace.

Kieślowski specifically chose three different cinematographers to shoot his films, resulting in three distinct ‘looks’. Blue, as shot by Slawomir Idziak, is dark and brooding, using predominantly blues (of course), but also deep yellows and noirish grey shadows concealing much of his frames. White is the least stylistic with bright and traditionally composed imagery subordinate to the narrative. While Red is shot with a dreamy, romantic, effortless style, energetic and effervescent.

Blue, the darkest of the the three films is also the most intimate and contained. After a tragic car accident, Julie (Juliette Binoche) is left a grieving widow and dodging questions from the media about her late husband’s (a renowned composer) last unfinished concerto. Sequestering herself from the world and the emotional pain of her losses, she finds strange solace in a female companion of her husband’s.

Kieślowski represents Blue as Liberty by using the strange irony of her new friendship with the former illicit lover to free herself of her former life and become a new woman. In keeping with Julie’s internalized emotions, Kieślowski employs a distinctly abstract and impressionistic cinematic style. The deep blues and yellows absorb light and constrain his world in shadows and darkness. Unlike the complex plotting of Red, Blue is sparse, fuelled by mood, texture and the brooding emotions of its heroine. The result is intoxicating.

Usually billed as the ‘comedy’ of the three films, White is Kieślowski at his most affable, but also his most cruel. It features an unusual setup, including the supremely absurd opening scene, which shows the complete destruction of his lead character, Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a Polish immigrant who stands agape in a courtroom where his wife is divorcing him for his inability to consummate their marriage. What shame. The casting of Julie Delpy, normally portrayed as a sweet and innocent fanciful girl in other pictures, aids in disarming us to her cruelty and selfishness toward Karol.

After a series of other mishaps, Karol, at his lowest moment, meets another Polish ex-pat who asks Karol to kill him as a favour in exchange for money. Through this random association (a strong theme across all the films) we see Karol build his life and career back up to the point where he is wealthy and successful and finally ready to exact revenge on his ex-wife, who forsake him so many years ago.

Within this noirish black comedy set up Kieślowski presents a sharp political allegory to Poland’s post communist-era financial troubles with the rest of Europe. As an immigrant in a strange land, Karol’s inability to integrate into French society causes him to resort to underground illegal means to achieve his success, something which echoes the rise of Eastern European crime in the '90s and beyond. With nothing to lose, Karol exploits the tenets of the free market capitalist mentality to become a self-made entrepreneur fuelled by his deep-rooted desire to destroy his opponents – in this case, his equally diabolical (though gorgeous) ex-wife.

While it’s painful to even consider ranking these films, arguably Red is the standout picture, garnering Mr. Kieślowski two Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Portraying the theme of Fraternity, Kieślowski puts us in the shoes of Valentine (Irene Jacob), a model, who, while driving home after a photo shoot, accidentally hits a dog. Her compassion for the animal causes her to seek out her owner, thus sparking a remarkable, enlightening journey of discovery and reconciliation of her own inner anguish.

Red is the most romantic, hence the use of the colour of love prominently throughout. Yet, Kieślowski’s heroine never experiences love. We can feel it in the air, like God almighty moving his characters around like chess pieces on a board to be in a position to fall in love, or at least release themselves of their fates. Such is the happenstance meeting of Valentine and Kern, who spends his days listening in on his neighbour’s conversations. Kern’s emotional reconciliation is brought out by Valentine’s gentle innocence.

Again, Kieślowski uses coincidence and chance to express his themes of existence, love, repentance and forgiveness. Red is elliptical without being self-consciously clever. Kieślowski uses parallel narratives, which twist and turn within one another and even double back through the other films, connecting all three main characters as one form of human conscience and thus a glorious finale to this landmark series.

Three Colours Trilogy is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Sideways

2011-11-24T07:38:00.003-05:00

Sideways (2004) dir. Alexander Payne
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh

****

By Alan Bacchus

Sideways was a great success story. The modest comedy without any particular marketable hook other than great characters turned critics’ heads around in 2004 and garnered a well-deserved Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar as well as nominations in most of the major categories.

With years of hindsight, the film ages well and packs as much of an emotional punch as it did back then. At its heart it's a unique male buddy film – the term du jour would be a ‘bromantic comedy’. It follows two guys bonding on a week-long road trip in Napa Valley. Miles (Paul Giamatti) is a 40-something divorcee and struggling author. He has arranged a relaxing week of wine-tasting with his buddy Jack (Thomas Haden Church), who’s about to get married. Jack's agenda is for him and Miles to get laid – specifically Miles, whom he's desperate to see break out of his two-year long post-divorce depression.

Jack, as wingman, brokers a four-way date with a pair of attractive middle-agers and fellow wine connoisseurs, Maya and Stephanie (Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh). While Stephanie's and Jack’s libidos explode immediately, Miles’ courtship of Maya is carefully and slowly revealing his neurotic fears and painful regrets. But Jack’s heinous lies burden both relationships resulting in even more painful heartbreak.

Characters rule in Sideways, and each actor inhabits his or her skin with complete honesty. In some way or another we can all relate to their situations. For Miles, his internal pain is a lifelong pattern of failure – career failure and relationship failure. In addition to complete self-absorption, in order to replace his emptiness Miles obsesses about everything to do with wine. Jack, as the womanizing pick-up artist, is both the angel and the devil on his shoulder. While his philandering behaviour is completely reprehensible, his devotion to his best mate is admirable. It’s a classic male relationship, which Payne characterizes with perfection.

Payne has remarkable control of his tone, moving fluidly between sombre reflections on life to absurd comedy and all shades of grey in between. Aiding this is his modest camera work, unstylish and unassuming but hardly rudimentary. Perfect framing and camera placement, as well as subtle camera moves emphasize all the poignant and comic moments with pinpoint accuracy. Rolfe Kent’s music is equally unflashy but so important to Payne’s tone, a gentle mix of quirky and melancholy.

Based on the four films from Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor, they could be argued as one of the great writing duos in film comedy. With Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt and Sideways (as well as a marvellous segment in Paris Je T’Aime), this eight-year examination of ordinary middle class America and the variations of character neuroses reminds us of Woody Allen’s remarkable output from the late '70s to the late '80s.

Sideways is available on Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Identification of a Woman

2011-11-23T09:33:00.007-05:00

Identification of a Woman (1982) dir. Michaelangelo Antonioni
Starring: Tomas Milian, Daniela Silverio, Christine Boisson

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

The great Italian modernist master known for beguiling cinema teasers like L’Avventura and Blow Up was 72 when he made this film. It has the makings of a 70-year-old, waning in creativity but still virile enough to titillate us with healthy doses of graphic Italian sex and a disconnected storyline that fits into his career of narrative ambiguities.

There is a strong connection to Fellini’s 8½ here too, with Antonioni’s lead character, Niccolo, like Fellini’s Guido, at a creative impasse, wandering through various affairs trying to connect emotionally with a woman and find a new leading lady for his next film. But is this really what the film is about? At the beginning, Antonioni sets up a mystery of sorts. Early on, after courting a very sexual female socialite called Mavi, Niccolo is threatened by a man advising him to stay away from her. The threat both angers and intrigues Niccolo, who sets off on a journey with Mavi to uncover the identity of the jealous other man.

Midway through, Antonioni crafts his key set piece, a suspenseful chase of sorts in a fog-enshrouded stretch of highway. It’s a lengthy sequence that plays as a metaphor for the murky background of Mavi, as well as Antonioni’s fascination with oblique narratives and loose-ended storytelling.

This film is no exception. Shortly after the fog sequence Mavi inexplicably disappears herself – the victim of the threatening man, perhaps? As expected, Antonioni provides little explanation or closure in this regard. Nor do we require this from him. Antonioni paints a vivid portrait of Niccolo, his leading man, as a sexually liberated middle-aged man with the most confident and casual sex life I’ve seen on screen in a while.

It’s mildly hilarious watching Niccolo approach female strangers with such casual candor. In one scene with a young girl at a swimming pool the gal admits to him in a matter of seconds that her favourite sexual position is masturbation. And yet this admission doesn’t phase Niccolo, who coolly accepts the statement like he’s working on a research project on the female mind and soul. He doesn’t bed the girl from the swimming pool, but he does find gratification with Ida, a comparatively demure actress who is still sexually vivacious and confident. Oh, to be Italian.

This film was also ‘celebrated’ for its sexual explicitness, and indeed we're treated to some truly eye-popping sexual acts and body positions. It also feature some extraordinarily aggressive kissing, which, under Antonioni’s direction, seems to have actor Tomas Milan attacking his partner’s mouth like a feral animal. It’s a head turner for sure. But hey, it’s Italy!

Niccolo’s relationship with Ida plays out more conventionally than the brainteaser plotting of Mavi and the mystery man. By the end, a strong theme of man’s inability to connect with women – or at least Antonioni’s inability to connect with women - develops. And Niccolo’s rejection of Ida in the end resounds with quiet tragedy. That is until a truly bizarre finale (even for Antonioni) when he indulges in a loopy science fiction dream sequence featuring Niccolo blasting into space toward the sun in an asteroid-shaped spaceship. But hey, Antonioni was 72 when he made this. By this time, like Jean-Luc Godard in the present, his career had given him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted.

Identification of a Woman is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Fanny and Alexander

2011-11-22T09:52:00.003-05:00

Fanny and Alexander (1982) dir. Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Bertil Guve, Pernilla Allwin, Börje Ahlstedt

****

By Alan Bacchus

Oh, me of little faith. About an hour into this film I embarrassingly posted a Facebook message sarcastically asking when this film was going to get ‘good’. I humbly apologized publicly having been completely blown away by this picture from the moment I posted that note until the end of the film.

It’s the celebrated ‘final’ film of Bergman’s, although he would write screenplays and direct some notable television mini-series afterwards. This was the intention of the great Swedish master of cinema, to create an opus maximus of a very personal nature, essentially the story of his youth, his life in a theatrical family and the deep penetrating effect of Catholicism on his outlook on life. It ended up as a five-hour film released in its full length on Swedish television but a mere three hours in theatres.

While Bergman’s films have been marked by methodical and arguably slow exercises in emotional rigor, which is often unfriendly to lay audiences, Fanny and Alexander is a wholly accessible, truly haunting journey for its two main characters, Fanny and Alexander.

We meet them both as young impressionable children of a stage family, the Ekdahls. The opening act, an hour-long Christmas party during which we see the hedonistic extremes of the more drunken and libidinous family members, establishes their whimsy, flighty lifestyle. If anything the scene reminds us of Coppola’s wedding scene in The Godfather, another story about family set up with a similar scene of domestic reverie. But this is the first hour, which had me squirming in my seat. Without any forward movement in the narrative, the carefree decadence of the family felt indulgent and superfluous. But it’s all part of Bergman’s grand plan, setting up the eventual trough of despair experienced by the kids and their eventual triumphant resurrection by the end.

The shoe drops hard when Fanny’s and Alexander’s father dies during a performance. The anguish of the loss is depicted by Bergman in one magnificently shot scene from Alexander's eyes through the crack of a door. The scene shows his mother and grandmother grieving inconsolably – a point of view that typifies the filter on life and family in which Bergman frames his story. It also showcases his remarkable eye for composition, which remains as precise and controlled throughout all three hours of the film.

It doesn’t take long for the mother, Emilie, to move on when she announces her intention to remarry the local bishop, a hasty decision that doesn’t sit well with the family, but a decision to which she is completely devoted. Once in the care of the clergy, the kids find a most barbarous and cruel household, one in which they are commanded to leave all possessions behind in order to start anew and fresh like newly birthed infants. Things turn from bad to worse when Alexander stubbornly resists the Bishop’s authority thus infuriating the authority figure and creating an even deeper power struggle. Heinous acts of corporal punishment, such as caning and prison-like isolation, drive the kids and Emilie mad until the Ekdahls execute a glorious set-up and escape plan.

Knowing Bergman’s previous work, we have to expect the worse for these children, a brainwashing of sorts in the most cynical manner. Yet the finale, including the Bishop’s comeuppance, is so genuinely heartwarming and triumphant it could have been written in Hollywood.

Bergman’s infusion of fantastical elements, such as the Shakespearean-worthy ghostly haunting of Alexander and the ambiguous magical touches of the theatre troupe, set us in the world of magic realism. It also allows Bergman to craft a few moments of truly terrifying suspense. The most affecting comes at the end, in one of the most haunting shots in the history of cinema (yes!). After fully escaping the clutches of the maniacal Bishop, presumably safe and sound in the company of the theatre, Alexander's life would appear to be back to normal. But the return of the Bishop’s ghost, who pushes him to the ground announcing his ominous return, is truly haunting. This moment had me gasping with earth-shattering shock, an effect rare for me these days and a moment that reminded me of my reaction to, say, the rising corpse in the bathtub at the end of Diabolique. It’s that affecting.

Bergman’s masterful control of tone and imagery is evident, as are his artful cinematic tools, which in this picture come together arguably more cohesively than any of his previous films.

Fanny and Alexander is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Father's Day - Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011

2011-11-21T09:08:00.008-05:00

Father's Day (2011) dir. Astron-6
(Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney)
Starring: Conor Sweeney, Adam Brooks, Matt Kennedy, Brent Neale, Amy Groening, Meredith Sweeney, Kevin Anderson, Garret Hnatiuk, Mackenzie Murdoch, Lloyd Kaufman

****

By Greg Klymkiw

"Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind. toward some resolution which it may never find." - Robert Anderson from his play, I Never Sang For My Father

A father's love for his son is a special kind of love. As such, Dads the world over face that singular inevitability - that peculiar epoch in their collective lives, when they must chauffeur the apple of their eye from a police station, for the third time in a month, after said progeny has undergone questioning upon being found in a motel room with a dead man covered in blood, après le bonheur de la sodomie, only to return home after dropping said twink son on a street corner, so the aforementioned offspring of the light-in-the-loafer persuasion, can perform fellatio on old men for cash, whilst Dad sits forlornly in the domicile that once represented decent family values and stare at a framed photo of better times, until he succumbs to unexpected anal rape and as he weeps, face down and buttocks up, he is doused with gasoline and set on fire, then frenziedly tears into the street screaming, until collapsing in a charred heap in front of his returning son, who reacts with open-mouthed horror as the scent of old penis, wafts, ever so gently, from his delicate twink tonsils.

For most fathers, all of the above is, no doubt, a case of been-there-done-that - not unlike that inevitable fatherly attempt at understanding when Dad gently seeks some common ground with the fruits of his husbandly labours and offers: "Look son, I experimented when I was young, too."

So begins Father's Day - with the aforementioned, AND some delectable pre-credit butchery, an eye-popping opening credit sequence with images worthy of Jim Steranko and a series of flashbacks during an interrogation with a hard-boiled cop. This is the astounding feature film (the second completed feature this year) from the brilliant Winnipeg filmmaking collective Astron-6 (Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney) who have joined forces with the legendary Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz of Troma Entertainment to generate a film that is the ultimate evil bastard child sprung from the loins of a daisy chain twixt Guy Maddin, John Paizs, early David Cronenberg, Herschel Gordon Lewis and Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer.

Father's Day is a triumph! It happily combines the effects of asbestos-tinged drinking water in Winnipeg with the Bukkake splatter of the coolest artistic influences imaginable and yields one of the Ten Best Films of 2011.

It is the seed of depraved genius that's spawned Astron-6 and, of course, with the best work in Canadian film, it has been embraced by an entity outside of Canada - the glorious aforementioned sleaze-bucket uber-mensch nutters who gave the world The Toxic Avenger. This collective of five (not six) brilliant filmmakers (including the above named quartet and Steven Kosanski, the F/X wizard, writer and director of Astron-6's MANBORG) are part of a new breed of young Canadian filmmakers who have snubbed their noses at the government-funded bureaucracies that oft-eschew the sort of transgression that normally puts smaller indigenous cultural industries on the worldwide map (including its own - Canada only truly supports such work grudgingly once it's found acceptance elsewhere). In this sense, Astron-6 has been making films under the usual radar of mediocrity and steadfastly adhering to the fine Groucho Marx adage: "I refuse to join any club that would have someone like me for a member."

Imagine, if you will, any government-funded agency (especially a Canadian one), doling out taxpayer dollars to the following plot: Chris Fuchman (Mackenzie Murdoch), is a serial killer that specializes in targeting fathers for anal rape followed by further degradations, including torture, butchery and/or murder. Our madman, Fuchman (substitute :k" for "h" to pronounce name properly), turns out to be a demon from the deepest pits of hell and a ragtag team is recruited by a blind infirm Archbishop of the Catholic Church (Kevin Anderson) to fight this disgusting agent of Satan. An eyepatch-wearing tough guy (Adam Brooks), a young priest (Matthew Kennedy), the aforementioned twink male prostitute (Conor Sweeney) and hard-boiled dick (Brent Neale) and a jaw-droppingly gorgeous stripper (Amy Groening) follow the trail of this formidable foe whilst confronting all their own personal demons.

This frothy brew of vile delights includes some of the most graphic blood splattering, vicious ass-slamming violence, gratuitous nudity, skimpy attire for the ladies, 'natch (and our delectable twink), morality, evisceration, hunky lads, delicious babes, compassion, rape, fellatio, chainsaw action, wholesome content, cannibalism, hand-to-hand combat, gunplay, family values, sodomy, immolation and monsters. It's all delivered up with a cutting edge mise-en-scène that out-grindhouses Tarantino's Grindhouse and delivers thrills, scares and laughs all in equal measure.

The film's sense of humour, in spite, or perhaps because of the proper doses of scatology and juvenilia is not the typical low-brow gross-out humour one finds in so many contemporary comedies, but frankly, works on the level of satire, and as such, is of the highest order. It stylistically straddles the delicate borders great satire demands. Too many people who should know better, confuse spoof or parody with satire and certainly anyone going to see Father's Day expecting SCTV, Airplane or Blazing Saddles might be in for a rude awakening. Yes, it's just as funny as any of those classic mirth-makers, but the laughs cut deep and they're wrought, not from the typical shtick attached to spoofs, but like all great satire, derive from the entire creative team playing EVERYTHING straight. No matter how funny, absurd or outlandish the situations and dialogue are, one never senses that an annoying tongue is being drilled firmly in cheek. Astron-6 loves their material and, importantly loves their creative influences. Their target is not necessarily the STYLE of film they're rendering homage to, but rather, the hypocrisies and horrors that face humanity everyday - religion, repression, dysfunction - all wedged cleverly into the proceedings.

Clearly a great deal of the movie's power in terms of its straight-laced approach to outlandish goings-on is found in the performances - all of them are spot-on. Adam Brooks IS a stalwart hero and never does he veer from infusing his role from the virtues inherent in such roles. Hell, he could frankly be Canada's Jason Statham in conventional action movies if anyone bothered to make such movies in Canada on any regular basis. Conor Sweeney as Twink is a marvel. Not only does he play the conflicted gay street hustler "straight", he straddles that terrific balance between genuinely rendering a layered character, but also infusing his performance with melodramatic aplomb. Not only is this ideal for the character itself, but it's perfectly in keeping with the style of movie that is being lovingly celebrated. Anyone who reads my stuff regularly will know my mantra: Melodrama is not a dirty word - as an approach to drama, it's a legitimate genre. There is good melodrama and bad melodrama, like any other genre. End of story. No arguments. Luckily, the Astron-6 team has the joy of glorious melodrama hard-wired into their collective DNA and Sweeney's performance is especially indelible in this respect. Brent Neale as the hard-boiled cop is, quite simply, phenomenal. Will someone out there give this actor job after job after job? The camera loves him and he knows how to play to the camera. He is clearly at home with the straight-up and melodramatic aspects of his role and most importantly, he is imbued with the sort of smoulder that makes stars - he's handsome and intense.

Astoundingly, not a single actor in this film feels out of place. Whether they're emoting straight, slightly stilted, wildly melodramatic or, on occasion (given the genre), magnificently reeking of ham, this is ensemble acting at its absolute best.

The entire movie was made on a budget of $10,000 and once again, for all the initiatives out there to generate low-budget feature films, Father's Day did it cheaper (WAY CHEAPER) and better. The movie uses its budgetary constraints not as limitations, but as a method to exploit what can be so special about movies. The visual and makeup effects as well as the art direction ooze imagination and aesthetic brilliance and it's all captured through a lens that puts its peer level and even some big budget extravaganzas to shame. Imagination is truly the key to success with no-budget movies. The Father's Day cinematography is often garish and lurid, but delightfully and deliciously so - with first-rate lighting and excellent composition. The filmmakers and their entire team successfully render pure gold out of elements that in most low-budget films just looks cheap - or worse, blandly competent (like most low budget Canadian movies). It's total trash chic - trash art, if you must.

I attended this spectacular event in France many years ago called the FreakZone International Festival of Trash Cinema which celebrated some of the most amazing transgressive works I'd ever seen. When I expressed to the festival director that I was surprised at the level of cinematic artistry, he just smiled and said, "You North Americans have such a limited view of trash culture - for us, trash is not garbage, we use the word to describe work that is subversive." This was so refreshing. It felt like a veil had been lifted from over me and I realized what EXACTLY it was that I loved about no-budget cinema - as a filmmaker, a teacher, a critic and fan.

Making a movie for no money that is NOT subversive on every level is, frankly, just plain stupid. What's the point? And Father's Day is nothing if it's not subversive. Besides, I've seen too many young filmmakers with talent galore ruined by initiatives that purported to celebrate the virtues of no-or-low-budget filmmaking but then forced the artists to apply the idiotic expectations of "industry standards" - whatever that means, anyway. This has been especially acute in Canada, but to be fair, in other non-North American countries also, where bureaucrats make decisions and/or define the rules/parameters of filmmaking.

Father's Day and the entire canon of the Astron-6 team should be the ultimate template for filmmakers with no money to seize the day and make cool shit. That's what it should always be about. And in this case, it took the fortitude of the filmmakers, their genuinely transgressive gifts as artists AND an independent AMERICAN producer to ensure that they made the coolest shit of all.

What finally renders Father's Day special is just how transgressively intelligent it all is and yet, never turns its proverbial nose up at the straight-to-video-nasties of the 80s, the grindhouse cinema of the 60s and 70s and the weird, late night cable offerings of the early 90s. It works very much on the level of the things it loves best. This is real filmmaking - it entertains, it dazzles, it makes use of every cheap trick in the book to create MOVIE magic and finally, it's made by people who clearly care about film. They get to have their cake and eat it too by having as much fun making the movies as we have watching them.

Father's Day was unveiled at Toronto's premiere genre film event, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011 where it won several awards: the grand prize of Best Film, Most Original Film, Best Hero, Best Kills, Best Trailer and Best Poster - all voted on by the thousands of attendees of the festival. It will be released theatrically in early 2012 by Troma Entertainment and will be followed with the usual forays into home entertainment formats.

Gold Diggers of 1933

2011-11-20T12:47:00.006-05:00

Golddiggers of 1933 (1933) dir. Mervyn le Roy
Starring: Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Warren William, Ned Sparks, Guy Kibbee

***½

By Alan Bacchus

This film is the first of one of the most successful and beloved musical franchises in cinema – the Gold Diggers films, a series of musicals in the ‘30s portraying the predatory attitude of the poor against the rich with comedic fervour and eye-popping musical spectacles.

Busby Berkeley provides the staging and choreography of the musical sequences and the great Mervyn Le Roy (Wizard of Oz) directs this spectacular and topical comedic musical about men and women trying to 'put on a show'. Of course, this was the time of the Depression and the mixture of frenetic comic fever with Berkeley‘s distinct kaleidoscope-like visual spectacle makes all of these films classics beyond compare.

While intended for working class audiences, Le Roy’s execution of the theme of class struggle is just as biting and clever as, say, the sophisticated Renoir films from the same period. The first half of plotting finds poor musician and lyricist Brad Roberts (Dick Powell) struggling, like everyone, to make a living as an artist in bad economic times. But after hearing him play his own little ditties, bombastic stage producer Barney Hopkins hires him to write his next great musical. However, without the money to finance it, Brad miraculously and mysterious ‘finds’ the $15,000 needed to make it all happen.

After Brad is forced to perform in the musical, his identity is revealed as the heir to a rich and respected business family. When his father and brother find out, they arrive at the theatre to chastise him and bring him home. Enter Brad’s vivacious female dancers, who weave their sexual charisma around the stuck-up suits in the hopes of keeping Brad in the theatre and squeezing as much money out of them as possible.

Surprisingly, Le Roy cleverly switches our sympathy from Brad and his desire to buck his family legacy and live the honest life as an artist, to his brother Lawrence and father Fanuel, who, after being set up as the prototypical ‘30s upper class snobs, become putty in the hands of the women. In the case of Fanuel, the story reveals a forlorn love from his past, which his greed for money has tried to suppress.

Interspersed between the comic shenanigans are the scenes from Barney’s new show with the tone of each sequence cleverly reflecting the mood of the characters behind the scenes. As typical of the Berkeley style, his musical numbers are born from the stage-setting of the story, but are played and choreographed 100% for his expressive composition and dynamic moving camera.

In addition to the stunning dance sequences, as a pre-code film we can also appreciate the not-so-subtle suggestive subtext. Le Roy takes delight in showing us some rather salacious skin, including women undressing freely in front of men and the dancers overtly using their bodies to seduce men out of their money. We even get to see some stark naked bodies in silhouette in one of the dance sequences. The musical segment, ‘Petting in the Park’, is particularly naughty, dramatizing just what the title suggests – making out in Central Park

If anything, the film ends rather abruptly and leaves us hanging about the fate of Lawrence Roberts. But it’s not before we're supremely satisfied with the final ‘Forgotten Man’ sequence.

Water For Elephants

2011-11-19T13:44:00.004-05:00

Water For Elephants (2011) dir. Francis Lawrence
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Reece Witherspoon, Christophe Waltz

***

By Alan Bacchus

The film version of the beloved literary historical romance novel of the same title may not have been scorching box office success, but the handsome production values and meat and potatoes themes of moral decency and ethics are refreshingly old school.

For much of the film it's delightfully cinematic and vividly dramatized. In the present day, an old man is left standing in the rain as a modern circus wraps up its tents to move on to the next city. The manager brings him out of the cold, and over a bottle of gin whisky we learn about his connection to the circus of old – the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show.

Flashing back to the Depression-era 1930s, we see Robert Pattinson as Jacob, a Cornell veterinarian student, distraught over the death of his parents, run away from life and accidentally join up with the Benzini circus. His knowledge of animals impresses the charismatic though slightly deranged owner, August (Waltz), and he gets a job. Once on the road he becomes enlightened to the squalor in which the carnies exist and the heinous maltreatment of the performing animals.

Jacob ingratiates himself with the leading lady of the show, Marlena (Witherspoon), as they bond over the animals, and, of course, their mutual good looks result in an unspoken romantic connection. But Marlena also happens to be the boss’s wife, and so there’s clearly some danger afoot. The more dire the financial situation of the circus gets, the more cruelly the animals are treated, to a point where Jacob must stand up for himself, the animals and Marlena.

For the first half, the film coasts on the vivid depiction of the idiosyncratic circus life. Francis Lawrence, who created the visually striking worlds in Constantine and I am Legend, creates another beautiful cinematic spectacle. Large-scale epic sequences, such as the arrival of the train or the raising of the tents, are breathtaking - the stuff of David Lean and other great epics of the '60s.

Robert Pattison is handsome and adequate as our naïve entry point into the seedy travelling entertainment business. His romance with Reece Witherspoon doesn’t smoulder, and Christophe Waltz only piggybacks on his cruel performance in Inglourious Basterds. Therefore, as the visual awe subsides, we’re left with predictable narrative plotting backed by a mostly dull love story.

Despite the narrative deficiencies, Water for Elephants is one of the most visually pleasing movies of the year. Terrence Malick’s shadow is cast over this aesthetic. The Midwestern prairie locale recalls the awe in Malick’s depiction of wheat fields in Days of Heaven. And the train cars that feature prominently in the background of many of the scenes recall the epic staging of the arrival of the wheat shuckers to Sam Shepard’s farm in Days.

For good and bad (mostly bad) there’s also a strong '90s feel to this. The use of the bookended story in the present – the old person reflecting on the adventures of his life, lost loves and the unpredictable journey of life – reeks of Titanic and other schmaltz fare from writers like Ron Bass (Snow Falling on Cedars), Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) and Richard LaGravenese (Bridges of Madison County). In fact, the screenwriter here is none other than Mr. LaGravanese. Unfortunately, we live in different times, and this flavour doesn’t taste as sweet as it did back in those days. But Water for Elephants is still an admirable, under-appreciated, throwback film of sorts.

Water For Elephants is available on Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.