The Heiress

The Heiress (1949) dir. William Wyler
Starring: Olivia De Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson

***½

By Alan Bacchus

The story of a frumpy spinster and wealthy Heiress who is unlucky in love, finds her soulmate in a penniless gentleman and fights to keep him against the wishes of her controlling and oppressive father would seem like ripe material for a triumph of love over money. William Wyler’s adaptation of Augustus Goetz’s play, itself a refashioning of Henry James’ Washington Square, is one of the most unexpectedly cynical takes on romance in studio Hollywood.

It's the story of love from the angle of the courtship ritual, in this case the Victorian way – a brutal class system transported to America fits like a square peg in a round hole. Olivia De Havilland, one of the most radiant movie stars to ever grace our screens, plays the dowdy, shy and, believe it or not, unattractive spinster, Catherine Sloper. She's the heiress to a family fortune, but only if she can find a husband to marry. Her knight in shining armour appears to her at a party. He’s a polite gentleman, Mr. Townsend (Clift), who courts her while adhering to all the rules of the Victorian aristocracy. It’s a very specific procedure, articulated with precision by Wyler, consisting of dance while calling upon formal greetings and, most importantly, paternal approval.

Ralph Richardson plays the father, a successful and wealthy doctor with a very doubting eye. He’s characterized early as an oppressive figure with expectations that are too high, but in general he is disappointed in his daughter’s inability to fit into the social culture of his 'class'. While he can be a complete shit and disrespectful at times, we do feel he has his daughter’s best interests in mind. And so for much of the film he walks a fine line between being fatherly and being overprotective.

Montgomery Clift plays Townsend with his usual sympathy. He pours out his love for Catherine so quickly. It’s romantic and honourable until Catherine’s father starts poking holes in his character. And the judge of character was never more important as in this society, as it was tendered as currency back in these days.

Old man Sloper approaches his suspicions of Mr. Townsend like he’s diagnosing an illness. Through his conversations at tea and dinner and meetings with his family he slowly sands off the lustre of his charm and finds potentially nefarious motives.

But what it ultimately comes down to is his contempt for his own daughter, feeling that the only thing she has to offer is her money. By the midpoint, we’re kept in the dark about whether Townsend is genuine and whether the love between the two can surmount Sloper’s obstructions. Is Townsend a gold-digger? Or does he truly love her?

Admittedly, I expected up until the very end that studio Hollywood optimism would prevail, and so when the carpet is pulled out from under Catherine, it’s a sharp jolt to the audience as well. Wyler completes a dark and pessimistic character arc for Catherine, the stuff of great tragedy. Of course, if I had read Henry James, I wouldn’t have had this expectation. And so the ability of Wyler and Fox to tread such dark territory and fool me so easily is admirable.

Top Gun

Top Gun (1986) dir. Tony Scott
Starring: Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerrit, Michael Ironside

***

By Alan Bacchus

Despite being an ‘action film’, this immensely popular touchstone of pop culture cinema ironically succeeds not because of the action but because of the strange homoerotic machismo, which Quentin Tarantino famously articulated in the 1994 film Sleep With Me.

I (and probably QT) exaggerate for comedic effect, but the fact is Val Kilmer’s obscenely cocky and confrontational jarring with Tom Cruise is the heart and soul of this film – not the romance between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis’s Charlie character, which feels more like an arranged marriage pre-fabricated by the needs of the tentpole genre; certainly not the Reagan-era Cold War air battle that bookends the film; and certainly not Tom Cruise’s emotional journey from brazen yet vulnerable cocksure pilot harbouring a father complex to, well, the exact same character by the end of the film.

In the opening we see Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell flying manoeuvres in the Pacific Ocean against some Soviet MiG planes that are antagonizing their American rivals. His confidence and cockiness in the skies scares off the Russkies, but at the same time his friend Cougar suffers a nervous breakdown and quits the squad. The surly commander (James Tolkan) sends Maverick and his co-pilot Goose (Anthony Edwards) to ‘Top Gun’, the school for the top 1% of the pilots in the country.

At Top Gun, Maverick immediately discovers that Tom ‘Iceman’ Kozanski (Kilmer) is his rival, someone who, certainly in the battle for the coolest hair, wins outright. In the skies, Iceman’s skills are matched, but Maverick’s inability to play by the rules has him losing out every time. Meanwhile, Maverick has his cheesy pickup lines and sexual innuendos pointed at one of the school instructors, Charlie (McGillis), who is torn between being a tough but fair mentor and his smitten lover. After a tragic setback, Maverick threatens to quit, but he is talked back in by the Chief Instructor, Viper (Skerrit), to fight with Iceman against some more MiGs for the sake of the country.

In between all this are slow-motion, oiled up male bodies playing beach volleyball, cool blue-lit and silhouetted love scenes with tongue action, fast motorcycles, cool hair, Kenny Loggins and the muscle cars of the skies, the F14 fighters.

The dog fighting action is repetitive and actually quite dull. As mentioned, the attraction of this film is the pissing contest between Iceman and Maverick to see who is the ‘best of the best’. The whole movie is fuelled by this extreme egomaniacal competition, a strong allegory to the prevailing economic and social trends of the decade. Supporting the cockfight is the Greek Chorus of co-pilots, like the moustached and affable Goose, shamelessly portrayed as a wet blanket family man and the only one who wouldn’t take his shirt off in the volleyball game.

This film single-handedly birthed the Jerry Bruckheimer brand of macho filmmaking, which distinctly seems to rival Steven Spielberg’s classically romantic blockbuster filmmaking of the ‘80s. Tony Scott’s eye for slick and gorgeous cinematography looks better than ever on Blu-ray. Watch out for the bold, saturated colours popping out of the frame and the blacks crushed to annihilation into the screen.

Top Gun is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.

Life During Wartime

Life During Wartime (2010) dir. Todd Solondz
Starring: Shirley Henderson, Ciaran Hinds, Allison Janney and Paul Reubens

**½

By Blair Stewart

As we get older we may get a little softer, and to a degree you can say that about Todd Solondz. His ferocious one-two punch of Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness in the ‘90s received as many accolades as abuse for their subjects of human perversity and cruelty between the beltways of American cities.

Just behind the ugliness of his characters is the humanity; Solondz can make a child rapist or murderer seem unexpectedly and pathetically human using small details instead of monsters made of broad strokes. A sequel to 1998's Happiness, with returning roles given to different actors (like the abortion-themed quagmire of Palindromes), Life During Wartime is a duller blade than its predecessor with words like 'forgiveness' tossed about often. The film is also thankfully devoid of ejaculate if you're familiar with the original.

Once a down-to-earth family man and pedophile, Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker's best role in Happiness, now Ciaran Hinds) is released from prison and seeks his adult son, Billy, for a chat. His ex-wife, Trish (Allison Janney), has fled with the rest of the litter to the melanoma Jewish strongholds of Miami and her young Timmy is on the cusp of his Bar Mitzvah passage. While Timmy eeks out the meaning of becoming a man, Trish's dysfunctional sisters come back into the fold. Humanity's apologetic doormat, Joy (Shirley Henderson), flees her wayward husband, Allen (Michael K. Williams, or to you fans of The Wire: Omar!), and artist/writer/full-time crazy bitch, Helen, has left the East Coast to screw around in Hollywood. As Trish reaches out for affection from the leftover male side of the Weiner family from Welcome to the Dollhouse, Bill rolls into town. Lacerating humour ensues.

Having sat on Life During Wartime for a few days, my feelings of admiration for Solondz remain, and yet I fear he's bound to a similar fate as Kevin Smith's redundant universe. Both have travelled in circular patterns with their characters, returning to the same well for inspiration, and both provide signposts for us as we age and break down spectacularly. But Solondz has the talent to tell his stories in other categories and genres – Terry Zwigoff is a good example of a parallel talent over the past few decades. The world doesn't need a Solondz comic book popcorn-muncher, but it could use his take on the romantic comedy or the courtroom drama.

The camera of Ed Lachman (I'm Not There, The Limey, Ken Park) is sharper than in previous efforts from Solondz, and the writing and acting are strong with Hinds radiating a sweltering presence as the father figure and Janney chewing on the ironic deadpan gristle of her dialogue. But the spark of the new film from the writer/director has been withered by a decade of Internet porn and Vice Magazine.

The kindness more overtly shown to the players is appreciated, but one of the top American filmmakers of the ‘90s needs to leave his comfort zone.

Life During Wartime is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Attack the Block

Attack the Block (2011) dir. Joe Cornish
Starring: John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail, Nick Frost

***

By Alan Bacchus

Joe Cornish’s new cult-hit Attack the Block feels like a continuation of JJ Abrams’ penance to ‘80s children vs. adults cinema. While Super 8 was unabashedly a Spielberg romance, Attack the Block feels like a tougher Joe Dante movie – a foul-mouthed, gory monster movie full of British piss and vinegar, but with a winning attitude and a heart of gold.

With the concept alone we can envision the movie without ever seeing a frame of film – an alien invasion of beast-like feral creatures from the point of view of a group of inner city South London teens. Director Joe Cornish, co-writer of the upcoming Tin Tin, is a collaborator with Edgar Wright. Wright, in fact, serves as a producer and his genre-referencing British style is front and centre. Cornish assembles a strong group of fresh-faced and wholly authentic badass kids to play his heroes.

The leader of the bunch is Moses (Boyega), a brooding youngster cum anti-hero whom we first meet wearing a hoodie and facemask while mugging a terrified young nurse, Sam (Jodie Whitaker), who is on her way home from work. When Moses confidently hunts a strange creature, which we will learn is actually an alien from space, and kills it out of pure pleasure, he and his mates become the target of an invasion of these nasty Tasmanian devil-like creatures.

In between this very quick and simple set-up, there’s minimal exposition or explanations as to why they’re here. Cornish quickly moves between set pieces sequestered in the ‘block’, a British term for an apartment complex. The design of the creatures is refreshingly old school, a pure black beast with absolutely no detail visible other than the glowing eyes and teeth. That said, during some of the action, Cornish seems forced to cut around the animals to avoid exposing their special effects. As such, there’s an overly frenetic, often confusing visual aspect to the action.

There’s some strong serendipity to the timing of this movie. Released in the US right at the time when the London riots were occurring, Cornish seemed to have tapped into much of the anger felt by these socially-challenged, under-represented youth. The hoodlums, specifically Moses, are wonderfully drawn and characterized as full of bravado – youth who act and feel like they’re supposed to. This is the point of view from Sam, the nurse in the opening scene. Yet, once Moses is disarmed by the terror of the alien, Sam and the audience see him as a regular kid who is honest, decent and sincere.

The only familiar face in the film, Nick Frost, does a fun cameo. It’s a smaller role as a pot-smoking dealer growing marijuana in his apartment building. While not as obviously comedic as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, the presence of Frost provides a giggle whenever Cornish threatens to get too serious.

But this is a post-modern action movie at heart with the four kids against the odds. They use their streetwise guile to overcome an extreme and now familiar catastrophic event and become heroes of their broken-down community. Any lull in the narrative or repetition of action, which unfortunately sets in, is superseded by the strong, youthful enthusiasm and energy of this picture.

Léon Morin Priest

Léon Morin Priest (1961) dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Emmanuelle Riva, Irène Tunc

***

By Alan Bacchus

While the French New Wavers were running around Paris with their handheld cameras reinventing cinema, fellow French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville continued to make his classical Hollywood-influenced Euro-cool crime pictures, including films like Bob Le Flambour, Le Samurai and Le Deuxieme Souffle. Sandwiched into these stylish films is a remarkably gentle and quiet picture, Léon Morin Priest, featuring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a handsome priest who has a profound effect on a cynical widow in Nazi-occupied France.

Barny (Emmanuel Riva) is a recently widowed mother to a young daughter living like many of her girlfriends – scared witless for her family’s future in her Nazi-occupied village. With Jews being extricated from the village and her being half-Jewish, Barny needs to find a new identity. For women like her, the only option is conversion to the Catholic Church.

Walking into the Church she confesses for the first time at random to Léon Morin (Belmondo), a deeply thoughtful and impossibly handsome priest. As an atheist, Barny initially intends only to fake her way through the conversion process for the sake of her and her daughter. But given the combination of Jean-Pierre’s persuasiveness and attractiveness, Barny gradually becomes a true convert and by the end she is completely devoted to God.

The film begins and ends with a naughty and sexual tease of then New Wave heartthrob Jean-Paul Belmondo as a man-in-frock. Belmondo’s rugged and untraditionally handsome face, even with these heterosexual eyes, is the stuff of dreamy Hollywood. Imagine bad boy Steve McQueen wearing a frock and a reverse collar?

This is not The Thorn Birds though. Melville’s screenplay (based on Beatrix Beck’s novel) is one of the most devout and intellectually rigorous films about religion I’ve ever seen. The near two-hour running time is filled with numerous lengthy dialogue scenes between Barny and Morin discussing the contradictions and attractions of Christianity. At times overly intellectual and at other times spiritually stimulating, the film doesn’t quite hold us through its excessive 117-minute running time.

At the very least, this film is something to be cherished for its place in the filmography of one of France’s best filmmakers. It’s an elegant and heartfelt transition to something personal to Melville. The theme of the French resistance also connects well to Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969), as they are two films about the passionate fight for freedom. One is about guns and bloodshed, and the other, in this case, is about a spiritual awakening and liberation of the soul.

Léon Morin Priest is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

DEVI (The Goddess)

Devi aka The Goddess (1960) dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Sharmila Tagore, Soumitra Chatterjee, Chhabi Biswas, Karuna Banerjee, Purnendu Mukherjee and Arpan Chowdhury

****

By Greg Klymkiw

“I stopped going to Brahmo Samaj, [the congregation of men who believed in Brahman, the supreme spiritual foundation and sustainer of the universe], around the age of fourteen or fifteen. I don't believe in organized religion anyway. Religion can only be on a personal level.” – Satyajit Ray (1982 interview with Cineaste)

Great movies survive.

They survive because their truth is universal. Their compassion for humanity astonishes to degrees that are reverent, or even holy. Finally, they must weave every conceivable power of cinema’s vast arsenal of technique and artistry to create expression (narrative or otherwise) that can ultimately and only be realized by the medium of film.

Movies might well be the greatest artistic gift granted to man by whatever Supreme Intelligence has created him, and yet, like so much on this Earth that’s been taken for granted, cinema has been squandered in homage to the Golden Calf, or if you will, has turned Our Father’s House into a market.

Satyajit (The Apu Trilogy, The Music Room) Ray was a director who, on a very personal level (in spite of his occasional protestations to the contrary), infused his films with a truth that went far beyond the disposable cinematic baubles and trinkets that continue to flood the hearts and minds of our most impressionable.

Devi (The Goddess) is a film of consummate greatness. Its simple tale of blind faith springing from organized worship and leading the most vulnerable on a downward spiral into madness is surely a film as relevant now as it was in 1960. Upon its first release it was initially condemned in India for being anti-Hindu. If it’s anti-anything, it’s anti-ignorance and anti-superstition, but even this puts far too much weight upon the film having a political perspective rather than on moral and emotional turf – which ultimately is where it rests.

Set in a rural area of Bengal in 1860, the movie tells the story of a young married couple whose love and commitment to each other is beyond reproach. When Umaprasad (Soumitra Chatterjee) must leave his wife Doyamoyee (Sharmila Tagore) to finish his university education in Calcutta, she begs him to stay and questions his need to leave. Though he comes from a wealthy family, he seeks intellectual enlightenment in order to provide him with a good job so he does not have to rest on the laurels of mere birthright. Doya, so young and naïve, cannot comprehend his desire to leave her for any reason.

During a very moving and even romantic exchange, he informs her – not in a boastful way, but more as a matter of fact and with a touch of dashing humour that she is indeed endowed with an extremely intelligent husband. He is proud of this, as he is equally proud of how much his teachers value his intellect. He seeks to impress upon her that this is a trait that makes him a far more desirable husband for her – more than his money and more than his good looks. His intelligence is part and parcel of the very being that can love such a perfect woman as Doya.

When he leaves, however, things take a very bad turn. At first, Doya goes about her simple, charmed life in the same house they live in with Umaprasad’s father Kalikinkar (Chhabi Biswas), his brother Taraprasad (Purnendu Mukherjee) and sister-in-law Harasundari (Karuna Banerjee) and their sweet, almost angelic little boy Khoka (Arpan Chowdhury). She proves to be a magnificent in-law and aunt – a friend to her sister-in-law, a respectful servant to her father-in-law and a loving playmate for nephew Khoka. Alas, Doya’s father-in-law has a prophetic dream wherein it is revealed to him that Doya is the human incarnation of the Goddess Kali. While Kali is often viewed as a symbol of death, many Bengalis viewed her as a benevolent mother figure, which Doya’s father-in-law and those who live in this particular region of Bengal most certainly do.

This turns Doya’s life completely topsy-turvy – especially once she is forced to sit in the shrine to Kali whilst the denizens of the region pay homage to her and eventually expect her to grant mercies and miracles. In one sequence in particular, an old man brings his dying grandson to her threshold and pleads that she bestows upon him the ultimate resurrection.

Strangely, this sequence – so gut wrenching, suspenseful and yes, even touching on a spiritual level – had for me a similar power to the climactic moments of Carl Dreyer’s immortal classic of faith and madness Ordet (The Word) where a madman who believes he is Christ questions the faith of the devout and instead, places all the power of faith in that of a young girl to resurrect her dead mother. (This, by the way, would make for one truly amazing double-bill – the parallels are uncanny.)

Hell, as it were, breaks loose for Doya when those around her genuinely have immoveable faith in her lofty, hallowed position and eventually, it is up to her husband to attempt a rescue – using his powers of intellect over superstition to bring back the sweet young woman he married.

Where director Ray takes us on the rest of this journey and how he achieves this is exactly the reason why he is revered as one of cinema’s true, undisputed greats. There are moments of such exquisite truth with images so gorgeously composed and lit that the combination of this indelible pairing can and, indeed does evoke a series of emotional responses - so much so that you may find yourself weeping with a strange amalgam of sadness and joy. The manner in which Doya is lit at various points is especially evocative.

Ultimately, though, it is Ray’s humanity that prevails and seeps into every frame of this stunning picture.

This movie MUST be seen. To not experience Devi is to not acknowledge the magnitude of cinema as the premiere art form of our time.

It's a heart breaker!

On August 14 at the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) Bell Lightbox, Devi is being screened as part of the phenomenal Fellini Dream Double Bills series during the Fellini: Spectacular Obsessions exhibit. Selected by Deepa Mehta, the director of the Earth, Fire and Water trilogy, Devi plays with Federico Fellini’s utterly perfect and exquisite masterpiece Nights of Cabiria. Mehta’s reasoning behind this pairing is as follows: “I could give many reasons for the affinities between (and the greatness of) these films, but mostly it’s how both Fellini and Ray walk the difficult line between reality and the wondrous, and of course the compassion that pours out of them right into their characters.” Though someday I want to see Devi with the aforementioned Dreyer classic Ordet, I cannot in any way, shape or form quarrel with Mehta’s statement.

As a sidenote, I think it's important to mention a recent first feature from Indian (Kashmir) filmmaker Amir Bashir who, on the basis of "Autumn/Harud", which premiered last year at TIFF 2010, is clearly the most obvious heir apparent to Satyajit Ray. OPEN NOTE to Lightbox Topper Noah Cowan and/or Senior Programmer James Quandt: PLAY THIS MOVIE THEATRICALLY!!! It's, in my humble opinion, one of TIFF's most extraordinary discoveries and demands a proper playdate in Toronto. My original DFD coverage on "Autumn/Harud" can be found HERE and an extensive interview with the filmmaker at my Electric Sheep column is HERE.

My previously published Daily Film Dose review of Nights of Cabiria can be read HERE. My colleague Alan Bacchus's review of Ray's The Music Room can be read at HERE

The Hurricane

The Hurricane (1937) dir. John Ford
Starring: Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Mary Astor, C Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey

***½

By Alan Bacchus

This little-known, infrequently discussed John Ford picture features what might be the greatest action scene ever filmed. OK, Ben Hur might have it beat, but it certainly has the best action scene you’ve never seen or even heard about.

The scene occurs at the end of this rousing adventure story set in the South Pacific. It’s the colonial era, a passenger ship of British sailors and other imperialists arrives at the fictional Polynesian island of Manikoora to restock on supplies. It’s also the reunification of lovebirds Terangi (Jon Hall), the strong first mate, and Marama (Dorothy Lamour), the daughter of the Tahitian chief. It’s bliss Polynesian-style for everyone in the first act culminating with Terangi and Marama’s wedding – a raucous event filled with lavish drinking, celebration and dancing.

The fun ends when, while celebrating at a Tahitian bar, Terangi is coaxed into a bar fight with a racist white man who resents Terengi’s presence. Terengi is arrested, tried and sent to prison for six months. He is too lovesick to stay put and engages in numerous escape attempts, thus increasing his sentence from half a year to 16 years. The snowball effect of Terengi’s poor judgment in the bar is terrifying.

The journey of Terengi feeds into Ford’s strong themes of resistance, sympathy for the marginalization of people and the tyranny of the imperialist era. These issues fit easily into his body of work and perhaps his personal attachment to the political struggle of his Irish countrymen against their British occupiers.

Terengi is characterized as blindly heroic, accomplishing remarkable feats of strength and courage for the love of his wife. Ford uses this simple motivation brilliantly and increases the stakes and intensity over the course of the film. The time frame expands to encompass several years, which, after Terengi’s dramatic reunion with his wife and daughter he’s never seen, fully realizes the epic scope of this picture.

If the film ended here, we’d all be satisfied. But as the title suggests, The Hurricane ends with a massive Hurricane sequence – a storm of the century teased and foreshadowed to us from the beginning of the film. The sequence does not disappoint. Just as the couple are reunited, the storm hits their island, as if Terengi brought with him all the rage of his imperialist captors.

Of course there’s no computer effects here. Instead, the massive destruction is done in real time with real studio sets and brilliant miniature work. The wind effects alone are unbelievable. Ford blasts his actors and his sets with some of the most powerful wind machines ever used in cinema. Watching Terengi and his family clinging to the palm trees as they bend and sway like straw resisting the force of the wind is astonishing. Ford’s sound design is equally magnificent. The loud roars and whistles of the storm drone on consistently through the entire scene. On a television screen it’s intense. In a theatre in 1937 it would have been something else.

What fails the picture, unfortunately, is Jon Hall’s performance as Terengi, a white person fulfilling a Polynesian role while the rest of the film is populated with real Polynesians. It’s a shame, as Hall comes off as a Tarzan-like cheat on the audience. For the authenticity in all the technical aspects of the film, this cheat on casting is rather shameful. But then again, historical context and cinematic conventions of the time must be taken into consideration.

All things considered, The Hurricane is a remarkable piece of cinema, largely under-appreciated and ripe for rediscovery. A DVD exists somewhere, but it can be seen sporadically on TCM.

La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita (1960) dir. Federico Fellini
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Yvonne Furneaux, Anouk Aimee, Anita Ekberg, Alain Cuny, Walter Santesso, Magali Noel, Annibale Ninchi, Nico, Valeria Ciangottini, Alain Dijon and Lex Barker.

****

By Greg Klymkiw

It has been said that in death we all end up alone.

If we are alone in life, bereft of love, is existence itself then, not a living death?

For me, this is the central theme of La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini’s great classic of cinema – a film that never ceases to thrill, tantalize and finally, force its audience to look deep into a mirror and search for answers to questions about themselves. This is what makes for great movies that live beyond the ephemeral qualities far too many filmmakers and audiences prefer to settle for - especially in the current Dark Ages of cinema we find ourselves in. It’s the reason why the picture continues to live forever.

What makes La Dolce Vita especially great is that Fellini – as he was so often able to achieve – got to have his cake and eat it too. He created art that entertained AND challenged audiences the world over.

On its surface, La Dolce Vita is cool – cooler than cool, to be frank.

The title, translated from Italian into English means "The Good Life", or more appropriately, “The Sweet Life”. The movie plunges us headlong into a spectacular, decadent world of sex, sin and indulgence of the highest order. Against the backdrop of a swinging post-war Rome, the picture works its considerable magic beyond those surface details and Fellini delivers yet another magnificent entertainment that explores the eternal divide between men and women.

My poor daughter; she’s only ten years old and her Daddy has been showing her more Fellini movies than any ten year old has probably ever seen anytime, anywhere on God's good, green Earth. About halfway through La Dolce Vita – after an umpteenth sequence where Marcello Mastroianni indulges himself in the charms of yet another woman whilst his faithful girlfriend waits home alone by the phone, my daughter (who recently watched I Vitelloni, that great Fellini male layabout picture) turned to me with the sweetest straight face I will always remember and she said, “Dad, when I get older, remind me never to date Italian men.” I reminded her it wasn’t only Italian men who behaved this way. After all, had she not also recently seen Barry Levinson’s Diner? “Okay,” she added, “remind me not to date American men either.”

For those from Mars (and/or anyone who has NOT seen this movie), La Dolce Vita tells the episodic tale of Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), a journalist in Rome who covers the society and entertainment beat of a major tabloid newspaper. He spends most of his days and (especially) nights, hanging out in clubs, restaurants, cafes, piazzas and parties covering the lives of the rich and famous with his trusty photographer sidekick Paparazzo (Walter Santesso). (The word paparazzi, used to describe annoying news photographers came from the name of this character.)

Downright ignoring and/or paying lip service to his beautiful, sexy long-suffering live-in girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) whilst dallying with an endless parade of gorgeous women he’s writing about, Marcello is as much a celebrity as those he covers. Though he lacks the wealth his subjects are endowed with, he certainly wields considerable power.

It would seem that Marcello is living the sweet life to its fullest – at least on the surface.

It is, of course, the surface details of La Dolce Vita - both its cinematic style and content - that made it one of the biggest Italian films at the box office worldwide.

Of course, though, what audience would NOT be susceptible to the stunning form of one of the picture's ravishing stars, Anita Ekberg? As Sylvia, the Swedish screen sensation visiting Rome to make a movie, Ekberg squeezes her to-die-for curves into a series of fashionable outfits. Ekberg is style personified. From her spectacular entrance from within a private jet, posing willingly for hordes of slavering reporters to her gossamer movements round a huge luxury suite as she throws out delicious quips during a press conference and then, to her lithe, gazelle-like bounding up the endless St. Peter’s staircase until she and Marcello, who follows her avidly to the balcony, enjoy a quiet, magical, romantic interlude, perched in a holy nest towering above the Vatican.

It is the Ekberg sequences that everyone most remembers – possibly because they appear so early in the film and serve as the most sumptuously sexy introduction to Marcello’s world.

Granted, prior to Ekberg’s entrance we’re treated to the famous opening sequence of Jesus Christ in statue form being airlifted into Rome on a helicopter as Marcello and Paparazzo follow closely behind in their own whirlybird, snapping photos and hovering briefly over a bevy of bikini-clad beauties to try and get their phone numbers.

Following closely behind, we’re indulged with the ravishing beauty of Anouk Aimee as Maddalena, the bored heiress who whisks Marcello away from a nightclub, drives him through the streets of Rome in her swanky Cadillac, picks up a street whore, hires her to provide a dank, sleazy, water-flooded basement suite – a sordid love-nest, if you will, for a night of lovemaking with Marcello whilst the whore waits outside for the rest of the night - arguing with her pimp about how much room rent to charge the kinky couple.

To cap off the shenanigans we're further tantalized by Marcello’s gorgeous, heart-broken Earth Mother girlfriend Emma, writhing about from a dangerous overdose whereupon our duplicitous hero races her madly to the hospital professing his love to her all the way into the recovery room until he steps out to telephone Maddalena.

These stunning episodes not only provide insight into Marcello’s stylish rakishness, but also careen us to and fro within a veritable roller coaster ride of pure, unadulterated hedonism.

There’s no two ways about it, Marcello’s a cad, but we love him.

And seemingly, so does everyone.

By the time we get to the aforementioned Anita Ekberg sequences, it’s as if Fellini had structured the movie to luxuriate us in ever-more potent fixes of pure speed-ball-like abandon:

Jesus flying above Rome; screw it, not enough.

Gorgeous heiress banging our hero in a whore’s sleazy digs; nope, still not enough.

Lonely sex kitten girlfriend pumped on drugs and near death; uh, yeah, we still need more.

What act could possibly follow any of this?

Anita Ekberg, of course.

Fellini ups the ante on overindulgence to such a degree, that as an audience, we’re as hyped up as Marcello and those who populate this world.

As if this wasn’t enough, Fellini manages to get Ekberg to out-Ekberg Ekberg with MORE Ekberg. From airport to press conference to the Everest of Rome above the Vatican, he plunges us from the clouds of Heaven deep into the bowels of a party within the ancient walls of the Caracalla Baths. Here Marcello gets to dance arms around waist, cheek-to-cheek and chest to breast with La Ekberg until all Hell breaks magnificently loose with the arrival of the flamboyant Mephistophelean actor Frankie Stout (Alain Dijon). Marcello is banished to a table with Ekberg’s sloshed, thickheaded beefcake boyfriend Robert (played hilariously by the genuine B-movie idol Lex Barker, RKO’s Tarzan and star of numerous Euro-trash action pictures) while Frankie and Ekberg heat up the floor with a cha-cha to end all cha-chas.

Fellini continues topping himself. The next sequence of Ekberg-mania is cinema that has seldom been matched.

Can there be anything more sumptuous and breathtaking in Rome, nay – the world – than the Fountain of Trevi?

Yes, the Fountain of Trevi with Anita Ekberg in it.

I can assure you this beats any wet T-shirt contest you're likely to see.

As Fellini has incrementally hoisted us to dizzying heights, we are only one-third of the way through La Dolce Vita .

Where can the Maestro possibly take us from here?

We go where all tales of indulgence must go – down WITH redemption or down with NO redemption. Fellini forces us to hope (at times AGAINST hope) that Marcello will see the light or, at the very least, blow it big time and gain from his loss.

What we come back to is what I feel the central theme of our picture is – that if living life to the fullest is at the expense of love and to therefore live life alone, then how can life itself not ultimately be a living death?

For me, one of the fascinating ways in which Fellini tells Marcello’s story is by allowing us to fill the central character’s shoes and experience the seeming joy and style of this “sweet life”. For much of the film’s running time, we’re along for the ride – not just willingly, but as vicarious participants.

The magic Fellini conjures is subtle indeed. The whole business of getting the cake and eating it too plays a huge part in the proceedings. So often, great stories can work by indulging us in aberrant behaviour – glamorizing it to such a degree that we’re initially unable to see precisely what the protagonist’s real dilemma is. Not seeing the dilemma in the early going allows us to have some fun with the very thing that threatens to be the central character's potential downfall.

For Marcello, it eventually becomes – slowly and carefully – very obvious. He is surrounded by activity, enveloped by other people, the centre of attention of those he is reporting on, yet he is, in a sense, an island unto himself.

Marcello is, in spite of those around him, truly alone.

His real challenge is to break free of the shackles of excess in order to love. Alas, to love another and, in turn, accept their love, he must learn to love himself. On the mere surface, Marcello is all about self-gratification, but as the story progresses and Fellini places him at the centre of yet more sumptuous and indulgent sweet-life set pieces, we see a man struggling with the demons – not only of excess, but those ever-elusive opportunities to gratify the soul.

Even the roller coaster ride of Marcello’s relationship with Emma, the one constant person in his life willing to die for love of him, is a story element that keeps us with his journey. When he is annoyed and/or even disgusted with her, so too are we – and yet, we have the ability – one that Fellini bestows upon us by alternately keeping us in Marcello’s perspective and at arm’s length from it to see just how unconscionable and even wrongheaded he’s being. Most importantly, we begin to feel for Emma and understand her love and frustration. We see how brilliant and charming Marcello is also and a part of us craves for him to find peace.

Finally, what is especially poignant and tragic is that Marcello can only admit to both Emma and himself that he does love her when he is alone (or as in one great scene - seemingly alone) with her. Strangely, these are the few times in the movie when Marcello is truly NOT alone.

When Marcello is together with Emma in the presence of others, it's a different story altogether. When he brings her along to cover a Madonna-sighting which turns into a wild carnival of Catholic hysteria, he withdraws from Emma and she finds herself caught up in the craze of this "miracle". The miracle is, however, false. The two young children who have been put up to claiming they can see the Madonna by their fortune-seeking family, run to and fro - hundreds of the faithful following madly in their footsteps - even Emma, who begs God for Marcello to be with her exclusively and forever.

When Marcello seeks solace in his old friend Steiner (Alain Cuny) a man who has filled his own life with art, literature, culture and most importantly, a sense of home and family, Marcello sees a potential way of escape. Alas, further set pieces involving Steiner dash Marcello’s hopes.

During a vicious argument that eventually ensues between Marcello and Emma, Fellini once again proves that – in spite of his excesses as a stylist – he is ultimately a filmmaker endowed with considerable humanity. Though the bile rises and invective is hurled violently from both parties, we are placed squarely in front of humanity at its most raw and vulnerable.

The final sequences in this film are laden with excess, but they’re certainly no fun anymore. Nor is Marcello. After a pathetic failed attempt at instigating an orgy amongst an especially ragtag group of drunks (climaxing with Marcello riding on a woman's back horsey-style), the party goers (included here is a cameo from the iconic rock legend Nico) stumble out in the early morning onto the beach.

Caught in the nets of some fishermen is a dead sea creature - a strange cross between a stingray and coelacanth, its eyes still open and staring blankly into the heavens. It's the first of two images Marcello encounters on the beach which he bores his own gaze into.

This one is dead - surrounded by many, but finally, ultimately and unequivocally alone.

He then encounters, from a considerable distance across the sand and water, the angelic figure of Paola (Valeria Ciangottini), a pure, youthful young lady he met much earlier in the film - one of the few times when beauty and innocence seemed to touch him far deeper than surface fleshly desires. They look at each other - as if they can see into each others' eyes. The stunningly beautiful young woman, with her enigmatic smile, tries in vain to communicate with Marcello, but the wind drowns out her words and Marcello, his eyes at first bright, turn blank like the dead leviathan. He gives up, turns and joins his coterie of losers.

There is, however, hope in Paola's eyes - perhaps even the hope of a new generation.

Finally, though, Fellini offers no redemption for Marcello.

All that remains is the inevitability of a living death in a sweet life lived without love.

The sweet life, such as it is, proves sour, indeed.

A gorgeous restored film print of La Dolce Vita is being presented in Toronto at the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) Bell Lightbox as part of the phenomenal programme entitled “Fellini: Spectacular Obsessions”. The film screens August 13, August 28 and September 2. On August 28, there will be a special pairing of both film and food. Following the screening, moviegoers will feast on delectable morsels prepared by Executive Chef Jason Bangerter. The three-course Italian menu, inspired by La Dolce Vita, will be accompanied by Italian wine via sommelier Anthony Demas. While this seems like a perfectly good idea, I have to admit that a movie that so powerfully and provocatively explores the emptiness of decadence in a world without love might not best be served by bourgeois indulgence. Oh well, ‘tis to be expected, I suppose. It is Toronto, after all. That said, upon experiencing any great work of art, the last things I usually want to do are stuff my face and guzzle wine. But, hey! That’s my trip. You’re welcome to yours. La Dolce Vita is, frankly, a trip enough for this fella’.

The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose (1986) dir. Jean-Jacques Annaud
Starring: Sean Connery, Christian Slater, F. Murray Abraham, Michael Lonsdale, Ron Perlman

**½

By Alan Bacchus

This movie was kind of a big deal back in the day – a high-profile big screen adaptation of Umberto Eco’s celebrated 1980 book. It’s a medieval mystery linking biblical analysis, history, and medieval and literary studies under the blanket of a whodunit. In many ways it was an intellectual Da Vinci Code, as it involves a pair of monks solving historical puzzles and murders while avoiding the infamous Papal inquisition. Unfortunately, despite the acclaimed source material, it’s not much more than a disguised and disposable Sherlock Holmes story with little intellectual resonance.

Sean Connery plays a progressive and rebellious Benedictine monk, William of Baskerville, who is sent with his aide, Adso (Slater), to a Northern Italian monastery to participate in a theological conference. When they arrive they discover that a monk has recently died after falling from the top of a seminary. William is sharp and senses a cover-up from the shifty-eyed Abbott (Lonsdale). His application of sharp logic and deduction uncovers a plot to hide a library of outlawed books by the ultra-conservation monastic order.

Later to arrive is William’s rival Bernardo Gui (Abraham) of the Spanish Inquisition. You know those cloaked god-fearing despots who killed or imprisoned anyone that threatened the power of the Church. But with monks and priests dying left, right and centre, clearly there’s something in that library worth risking being burned at the stake for.

Connery seems perfectly cast. He has a naturally bald head, a commanding cinematic presence and a large amount of charisma. He plays a typical Sean Connery character, a whip-smart cocky leader who often goes against the grain, but is so superior to everyone around him that he’s practically ‘untouchable’ (pun intended). His dialogue consists of asking questions of his protégé, Adso, and then confidently stating the exact opposite to Adso’s answers.

The Name of the Rose works best as a 'semiotic' puzzler, an anthropological discipline which connects signs and other forms of communication across time and cultures. It’s a popular field in the present, popularized by the Dan Brown novels and dumbed down even more in the National Treasure series and even to some degree in the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, the discoveries and revelations made by William and Adso in the monastery never connect in a satisfying way to the present or to our understanding of religion as a whole.

The conflict with the Inquisition is frightening. It’s an organization that for hundreds of years held the Western world back from scientific progress. F. Murray Abraham is deliciously villainous as the nasty lead inquisitor, and the other monks, who because of their faith remain mostly silent, represent a creepy, malign presence in the opening scenes. James Horner’s sparse but effective score helps create a tone of dread.

The plotting of the narrative fits into the whodunit mold. Thankfully, the film mostly avoids the ‘Scooby Doo’ moment when in the third act the villain reveals himself and tells us exactly how he committed the crime. This doesn’t happen, but the filmmakers do resort to a rather shamefully explicit sequence of exposition telling and showing the audience what William has solved in his head.

By the end we are moved and barely even intellectually stimulated. Instead of a revered, enlightened novel, The Name of the Rose feels like disposable, airport paperback fiction.

The Name of the Rose is available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.

High and Low

High and Low (1963) dir. Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshiru Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Kyôko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi, Isao Kimura

****

By Alan Bacchus

This is my favourite Kurosawa film, without question. Perhaps I appreciate it so much because it falls outside the feudal period – a Samurai picture. Here, it’s the present, and Mr. Kurosawa executes the procedural crime thriller to end all procedurals. High and Low is more than just an exercise in style. Kurosawa expertly plugs distinctly Japanese themes of honour, pride and the class system that has been in existence since the feudal period into Ed McBain’s American crime novel (the original source material).

Toshiro Mifune plays Kingo Gondo, a ruthless businessman who is introduced along with his fellow company directors arranging pieces on a chess board of sorts to engineer a hostile takeover of their shoe company ‘National Shoes’. When Gondo doesn’t comply with the other directors’ demands his colleagues storm out of the house sowing the seeds of corporate warfare. Later that night, Gondo receives an anonymous phone call demanding a ransom for his kidnapped son. Coincidence?

That set-up would be dramatic enough, but Kurosawa twists the scenario to create an even more complex problem. Soon after Gondo agrees to pay up, his son shows up at the house, which means it was his friend, the son of Gondo’s limo driver, that was the kidnap victim. Now Gondo is put into an even tighter vice. The ransom money is enough to ruin him. Does he sacrifice this for another man? The ethical question is difficult enough, but as a business owner, what about the public opinion against Gondo if he doesn’t pay up?

Meanwhile, the cops are on the case – remarkably thorough and thoughtful cops, mind you. They’re cops that can sleuth out and analyze the details as good as anyone in CSI or a Michael Mann film, but remarkably decent human beings with impeccable bedside manner. The Chief Detective Tokura’s devotion to serving Gondo is as engaging as the procedural compilation of the evidence behind the crime.

This relationship is key to serving Kurosawa’s theme and defining this procedural genre he’s practically inventing. In the best genre films, we discover character and theme through action, in this case, the work assigned to Tokura. As Tokura and his team meticulously pour over every detail, however insignificant or minute, we come to appreciate the work ethic and pride he has for his job. Gondo echoes the same attitude when wrestling with the prospect of losing his job. For Tokura (and for much of Japanese society), he is defined by his work, the loss of which is worse than death.

The setting and location supports another key theme – class. For half of the picture we’re exclusively in Gondo’s magnificent house perched atop a hill in Tokyo, which looks down upon the rest of the town. It’s a literal representation of Gondo's superiority over the lower classes. The specific Japanese class definitions are expressed chiefly through Gondo’s relationship with the limo driver, who despite losing his son, is obliged by the nature of his job and position in society to feel sympathy for his employee before himself. It’s enlightening but truly sad to see the poor man grovel and plead for the money to save his son, a sacrifice we know is most painful.

This is the guts of this wonderfully rich and layered potboiler. And if there wasn’t enough depth on the page, Kurosawa’s cinematic instincts elevate the work even higher. I can’t think of another film that uses the widescreen frame better than High and Low. Shot in true anamorphic 2:35:1 ratio, Kurosawa populates the scenes by maximizing every inch of the frame. In almost every scene we see a dozen or more characters working or reacting to the events in play. Even in the opening scenes in Gondo’s contained hilltop house we see Tokura’s men dotted in the foreground and background. In the magnificent ‘evidence’ scene when Tokura solicits the results of the investigation there are more than 20 people in every shot, the effect of which supports the theme of work and provides terrific visual compositions. Even when there are 24 people or more, Kurosawa’s mise-en-scene knows how to draw our attention to his intended subject. He never needs to frame a close-up or reaction shot.

High and Low is available in magnificently pristine high definition Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. It was Kurosawa’s second last B&W film (before Red Beard) and was at the tail end of his remarkable association with Toshiro Mifune. It showcases a great filmmaker at the pinnacle of his career in absolute command of the medium, a film accessible to all audiences, Japanese or American, mainstream or art house.

High and Low is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Naked

Naked (1993) dir. Mike Leigh
Starring: David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Gina McKee

**½

Guest review by Blair Stewart

The international breakthrough for Mike Leigh, David Thewlis and British kitchen-sink drama, Naked took home the Best Director and Best Actor Prizes at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival with a bleak journey into London's lower-class depths.

Johnny (David Thewlis) is an embittered creation that steps out of the pages of a Malcolm Lowry screed as we join his stifling presence in post-Thatcher Britain. Stealing a car after drunk alley sex becomes a rape, Johnny flees Manchester for the big city to reunite with his ex, Louise (Lesley Sharp). After spurring Louise and seducing her skid row roommate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), Johnny stalks the back streets with a prophecy of doom and seeks release through pleasure and/or pain. He passes through encounters with various characters living on the fringe while the depraved landlord of Louise's flat lurks in the periphery of the story.

Sharp-witted and depressive, an idealist on a nihilistic jag, Johnny is the most memorable character either Thewlis or Leigh have been involved in during their careers. Leigh has even said it’s the great tragedy of Thewlis's career that he hasn't found a role on par with his role in Naked.

Suffering from headaches and mood swings, Johnny makes acquaintances with a lost Tourettic drifter played with relish by a young Ewen Bremner and a night-watchman Brian (Peter Wight) loafing through a steel and glass complex containing 'empty space'. Enjoy the following exchange between Johnny and Brian:

Johnny: And what is it what goes on in this post-modern gas chamber?
Brian: Nothing. It's empty.
Johnny: So what is it you guard, then?
Brian: Space.
Johnny: You're guarding space? That's stupid, isn't it? Because someone could break in there and steal all the fuckin' space and you wouldn't know it's gone, would you?
Brian: Good point.

Johnny wanders off in pursuit of various women for comfort before the skies darken, and after searching for it, he is beaten up twice by toughs. Meanwhile, Jeremy the landlord skulks into Louise's flat and ruthlessly exploits Sophie before many of the characters come crashing back home.

Although made by a former theatre/TV director and having a protagonist spot-on for an existential novella that might have hindered it in other hands, Naked’s success on the screen is due to the confidence of the actors’ time spent on improvisation and rehearsal before filming. Also benefiting the film is Dick Pope's lighting, capturing the zombified pale faces of Londoners in winter and the grey concrete of their uncompromising city. And of course, as mentioned, David Thewlis is excellent as that loud cock-eyed man you have likely avoided looking at on the subway while he's stared intensely at you.

I hadn't seen Naked in 10 years, and I loved it on my first viewing. But after watching it again certain issues arise. First, Jeremy is a lousy antagonist whose bouffant hair and tantrums I interpreted as commentary about the class disparity between his acceptable upper-class sadism and Johnny's invisible working-class instability. In hindsight, Jeremy doesn’t come across so much as a privileged, systemic monster, but as an unruly, spoiled child.

Another problem is the overwrought nature of the characters with the actors and script playing up the emptiness of their lives, the Armageddon of a generation saying "fuck it" and the creators trying too hard to capture that voice. There is nothing wrong with a film engaging the company of unpleasant humans, but after hearing many of Johnny's rants the movie often slips from truth into pretension.

These issues aside, Naked is worth seeing for the early ‘90s urban decay, the chemistry between the actors and the push it gave Mike Leigh towards the likes of the great Topsy-Turvy and Secrets and Lies. And if you would like to spend the night with one of God's angry children, give Travis Bickle a pass and eavesdrop on this lone British madman.

Naked is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (another opinion)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) dir. Rupert Wyatt
Starring: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto, Brian Cox, John Lithgow

***

By Alan Bacchus

Revolution is in the air – Apes revolution. It’s hard to believe this Apes franchise continues to fascinate people and have legs. The original film was high-concept science fiction at its best – metaphors for our own human frailties in the real world at present. The concept here, of course, is a future world turned upside-down, where apes have replaced man as the dominant species. Rupert Wyatt’s take on the series has him going back in time for an origin story, something we were first exposed to with 1972’s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, but with little resemblance other than the setting in the past. Here, the depth and complexity of the CG-enhanced Apes characters tips the scales past the uniformly cardboard human characters resulting in a surprisingly absorbing, exciting and fresh invigoration of this series.

Of course, the first film based on Pierre Boulle’s original novel was the best. Nothing will take away from the power of Charlton Heston’s discovery of apes riding horseback wrangling up human slaves, or the astonishing revelation of the Statue of Liberty lying collapsed on the beach at the end of the film. There are no moments or twists as such in this picture, and the film doesn’t need them. We know the story, we know where it leads and the thrill here is showing the tragic irony of hundreds of years of man’s blind arrogance playing with science, and the catharsis of having animals fight back against a lifetime of subjugation by their higher intelligence ‘superior beings’.

In this case, all the blame falls on James Franco’s character, Will Rodman, a biological scientist looking for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Of course, he’s experimenting on chimps and when one of them starts to exhibit signs of intelligence his superiors in the corporate office take notice and encourage it. But after the experiment fails and the chimps escape, they’re all put down with the exception of one cute little infant named Caesar (Serkis). Will brings up Caesar like a child in his home along with his Alzheimer’s-stricken father (Lithgow) and lovely girlfriend (Pinto).

The ethics of raising a chimp with humans never enters Will’s mind, but the subjugation of his animal instincts are offset with his broadening intelligence. All the while, this internal conflict simmers within Caesar. After an anger-fuelled attack on a neighbour, Caesar is forced to go to an animal shelter managed by a heartless and cruel Brian Cox and Tom Felton. Here, Caesar uses his intelligence to communicate with his fellow simian prisoners and plot escape, revenge and ultimately the takeover of the world.

Admittedly, the human characters are uniformly forgettable and sometimes laughable. Franco, in particular, should never have been in this film. It actually takes a special kind of actor to make pseudo-science and other expository stock dialogue sound believable. Franco’s lazy acting style, which works in comedy and other stoner-persona performances like Milk, is not a good fit here. In fact, he seems to be in the same funk as his Oscar hosting gig. Everyone else is a cardboard characterization in the extreme. Brian Cox and Tom Felton as the cruel animal shelter caretakers are low-grade comic book villains at best, and the money-grubbing corporate suits are similarly one-dimensional.

But the complexity of the ape characters more than makes up for these deficiencies. Andy Serkis, who by motion capture portrays Caesar from birth to his ascension as leader of the Ape revolution, is phenomenal. The technology has little to do with the performance. I bet if Serkis were put into the old make-up style of the original series, he’d give the same quality performance. The fact is we can see the development of intelligence in his delicate facial movements. As we see Caesar grow up in the company of Will, a prison of its own sorts, sequestered from his own kind, we can’t help but identify with him. The need to be free is a universal quality of all living species, but self-determination is distinctly human. And the discovery of this trait within Caesar occurs gradually and with subtlety. That said, it also helps that the apes actually look like apes. The Weta-Digital CG technology achieves this in spades.

Despite the shameful characterization of the animal shelter, these scenes sufficiently put us on the side of the apes and by the end we desperately want Caesar and his growing army of prisoners to throw some beatdowns on the humans. There’s very little action in the film until the third act, and even when the intensity is ramped up there’s more logic than we would expect from the big scenes.

And at the end of the day, Apes accomplishes its goal as a continuation of its high-concept antecedents. Without overwhelming proselytization, we can’t help but think twice about the effect of keeping animals as pets, or using them to experiment with in science, or as beasts of burden. And at the very least we will recognize the precariousness of our place in the bio-lifecycle of the planet.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) dir. Rupert Wyatt
Starring: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton, David Oyelowo, Tyler Labine and David Hewlett

*

By Greg Klymkiw

I have absolutely no knee-jerk prejudice against remakes, reboots, sequels or prequels as the number of good and/or even great ones is impressive. I do, however, have a problem with bad and/or mediocre and/or (worst of all) unnecessary movies - whatever they may be.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - save for the millions of dollars it will bamboozle out of moviegoers in its first week - has no real reason to exist.

The movie is about NOTHING.

It is rife with long, dull scenes that go nowhere.

The screenplay, such as it is, has not (I suspect) actually been written, but assembled with alphabet blocks by chimpanzees - not very bright ones at that. The chimps deserving the blame for their less than stellar work are Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver whose credits include - ahem - The Relic (a watchable monster movie), An Eye for An Eye (a watchable vigilante movie) and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (a watchable thriller). The accent here is clearly on "watchable" - an achievement not quite attained by Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Not only have these two simians delivered an inconsequential plot that's about nothing, but they've populated the landscape with the dullest roles imaginable. Oh, and if anyone thinks I'm merely picking on the writers - I am. They're also the producers of this thing.

Bottom line: This movie is not worthy of the Original Five. It'd be a tough act to follow. In contrast to the work generated by the writers (and I reiterate - producers) of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the collective writing talents behind the five original Planet of the Apes movies wrote screenplays for the likes of Frank Capra, George Stevens, David Lean, Martin Ritt, William Wyler, Sidney Lumet, Franco Zeffirelli, John Frankenheimer, Roger Corman and Martin Scorsese.

This alone should be enough to rest my case.

But I won't. Let the flagellation of Rise of the Planet of the Apes continue.

What a cast has been assembled to render this monkey house of purported characters.

Leading man James (127 Days) Franco sleepwalks through his part as a chemical manufacturing scientist who creates a drug meant to cure Alzheimer's that instead kills humans whilst creating a new super species of ape.

John Lithgow goes through the motions of delivering a professional by-the numbers performance as Franco's addled Dad who is briefly revived by Sonny-Jim's chemical discovery before he plunges into further madness and finally death.

Frieda Pinto parades her vacuous beauty about whilst exuding intellect as blank as an unformatted floppy disk in the role of Franco's zoo veterinarian girlfriend - a real stretch unless one believes veterinary colleges are in the business of graduating animal doctors with less intelligence than their patients.

Delivering exceptional work in spite of nothing resembling writing employed in the creation of his role as an animal shelter administrator, Brian Cox, one of the world's greatest living actors, might have actually benefited if something as unimaginative as a recognizable archetype might have been devised to allow for some virtuoso scenery-chewing.

Playing the least compelling corporate villain ever committed to celluloid, the non-entity that is David Oyewolo is so bland that not even good writing would have saved him as a pharmaceutical company baddie who - wait for it - is more interested in profits than science.

Then there are stellar supporting performances from actors playing scum-buckets so well that one wishes they either had a better movie to be in (like Tom Felton as the vile animal shelter attendant) or David Hewlett as Franco's nasty next door neighbour who hates monkeys and berates old men with Alzheimer's. He really should have been cast as the central corporate baddie instead of the aforementioned bland loser they DID cast.

And Lest We Forget - Andy Serkis, the somewhat overrated CGI body double who previously and famously aped (as it were) the character of Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Here he gets to play Franco's pet chimp Caesar who is more intelligent than Albert Einstein and leads a grand monkey revolt. Don't get me wrong, Serkis IS a good actor, but what he delivered for Jackson finally works as well as it does because the writing is great and the CGI is stunning. In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the non-writing, ho-hum direction and obvious CGI gives us so little to root for that the gymnastics of Serkis's apery is all for naught.

While a solid, simple plot can have considerable merit in providing a perfectly manufactured coat hanger to adorn with cool shit, this pathetic new sequel/prequel/remake/reboot or whatever the fuck it's supposed to be is so lacklustre that I struggled in vain whilst waiting for something - ANYTHING - of any consequence to happen.

It didn't.

In a nutshell, here's the plot - or rather, grocery list:

Scientist discovers miracle drug to cure Alzheimer's.

Said drug turns chimp into Super Chimp.

Alas, same drug kills scientist's Dad.

Scientist raises chimp as own child.

Girlfriend pops in and out of movie to smile stupidly.

Chimp gets into all manner of shenanigans.

Chimp bites finger off next door neighbour.

Chimp is incarcerated in animal shelter full of apes.

Chimp leads ape revolt on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge.

Chimp leads apes to freedom amongst ancient Redwood trees.

Next door neighbour - afflicted with deadly virus - casually goes to work as airline pilot, finger miraculously intact.

Spreads virus worldwide.

What, I ask you, is this movie actually ABOUT?

The original 1968 Arthur P. Jacobs production of Planet of the Apes was dazzlingly directed by the great Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton), superbly adapted by Michael (Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia) Wilson and Rod (The Twilight Zone) Serling from Pierre Boulle's brilliant novel "La planète des singes" and featuring a stellar cast that attacked their roles with relish.

And what roles they were! The makers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes might have thought to take their cues from the original source for the necessary inspiration. In addition to having a great square-jawed hero in the form of the cynical, no-nonsense astronaut Taylor (Charlton "GOD" Heston) the original movie boasted a terrific array of colourful supporting characters that great actors like Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans played to the hilt. The only thing the Rise team might have been influenced by was the role of Nova in the original, a staggeringly beautiful, but equally blank leading lady. Smartly, this character in the original was mute whereas this awful new reboot chooses to allow Freida Pinto to open her mouth - thus forcing the already leaden lines she's been given to thud to the floor with greater force than a body hitting the pavement from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Planet of the Apes was, still is and always will be a great picture. (Let's forget, however, that the moronic Tim Burton remake even exists. Though dreadful as it is, it's fucking Rembrandt compared to Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

The first time I saw Schaffner's Planet of the Apes was as a nine-year-old lad, sitting in the front row of Winnipeg's long-shuttered picture palace the Metropolitan Theatre (where Guy Maddin eventually shot Isabella Rossellini in the stunning My Dad is 100 Years Old). It was the first time I got gooseflesh in a movie. So profound was my experience that it was, indeed, the movie that compelled/condemned me to a life of servitude under the pleasurable shackles of motion pictures.

I have seen the picture well over 100 times since and most recently, watched it with my 10-year-old daughter during an Ape marathon prior to seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I was, in fact, really excited to see the new picture which, I suppose adds profoundly to my disappointment.

Schaffner's picture is a genuine classic. It holds up as powerfully as any great piece of superbly executed populist cinema should. Mysterious, thrilling, funny, intelligent, propulsive in all the right ways and a movie replete with thought-provoking thematic elements about religious fanaticism suppressing science and new ideas, the topsy-turvy look at humans fulfilling the role of "dumb beast", notions of time and time travel and the devastating effects of war, it's a picture that has not dated.

I always have maintained that its cinematic storytelling techniques are so classical and finely wrought and its technical virtuosity so ahead of its time that the movie could be released virtually untouched and I suspect it could/would be as big a hit NOW as it once was. Most tellingly to me was just how compelling the movie was for my little girl. She remained stapled into the chesterfield, her eyes transfixed upon my hi-def monitor and nary one bathroom break. The discussion we had about the movie afterwards centred on the IDEAS as much as it did about the story and how entertaining it was.

No similar discussion occurred after watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Because, frankly, it's really about NOTHING. The stakes for the characters in the original film were always tied to the issues it explored, whereas the stakes for all the characters in Rise are rooted in not much of anything - save for James Franco's selfish, whiny and somewhat unconvincing need to prove that his new drug will work.

As a kid in the years between 1968 and 1970 when the first sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes finally appeared, one of the things that haunted me - nay, OBSESSED me! - was a lingering question I had at the devastating ending to the first film. When Chuck Jesus H. Christ Heston rides deeper into the "Forbidden Zone" and discovers (thanks to the writing genius that was Rod Serling for coming up specifically with the ending) that he is NOT on another planet, but a nuclear-war-devastated Earth in the future, I was chomping at the bit to learn what our astronaut would find in the wasteland AFTER he discovers a half-buried Statue of Liberty in the sand.

What Heston finally discovered (along with James Franciscus, a new astronaut who follows a rescue-mission trajectory to the monkey planet) was a crumbling Manhattan beneath the desert populated by Doomsday-Bomb-worshipping mutants with telepathic powers who were about to be attacked by an army of war-thirsty gorillas.

Jesus Christ Almighty, indeed!

Just the plot alone as penned by veteran screenwriter Paul (Goldfinger, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Murder on the Orient Express) Dehn was original enough to keep one riveted. More than the plot, though, was that - AGAIN - the movie was actually ABOUT something.

Even though the picture is a tad perfunctorily directed by stalwart hack Ted (Hang 'em High, Magnum Force and the genuinely wonderful Go Tell The Spartans) Post, Dehn's superb screenplay challenged us with notions of blind militaristic rage (including a peace march as reflective of the Vietnam War, which could have - in parallel contrast - provided a backdrop to the new picture with respect to America's idiotic "War on Terror"), religious fundamentalism justifying war (from both the apes AND the humans) and most terrifyingly, the whole notion of peace through superior firepower.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes has no such ideas. Though it's set in contemporary times and could have explored terrorism, blind militarism, rising fascism/fundamentalism, the financial crisis, the oil crisis - any manner of issues facing the world today, it chooses Instead, to focus upon the corruption inherent in pharmaceutical companies, Alzheimer's disease and cruelty to animals. These issues are not without merit, but they're just there to serve the non-plot, almost as a necessary evil to be touched upon and dropped quickly in favour of dazzling CGI.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes appeared a year after Beneath the Planet of the Apes and even at the tender age of 12 I remember thinking, "What is this shit? A sequel? They blew up the fucking Earth!" (I had a salty tongue even back then.) When I saw the picture - as a kid and even now after umpteen viewings - I was dazzled.

The real star is again screenwriter Paul Dehn as opposed to actor-turned-competent director Don Taylor who, in fairness, DID direct a fine’ 70s version of The Island of Dr. Moreau with Burt Lancaster and the cult sci-fi classic The Final Countdown. But what a GREAT script! What first-rate sci-fi!!!

From a plot standpoint, Dehn delivered a perfectly plausible twist via a new character called Dr. Milo who, like Cornelius and Zira, was an ape scientist who defied the "law" of fundamentalism, resurrected and repaired Chuck Heston's spaceship and then all three simians of science followed a backwards trajectory just before the Earth is destroyed and wind up BACK in time. This was also a clearly fascinating way to utilize the notions of time and space and, in its own way, delve into quantum physics and the early postulations of parallel universe theory.

This third official Apes sequel delivered up clever satirical goods, explored issues of women's' rights (plus animal rights - far more effectively than Rise), immoral interrogation techniques and most importantly studied the world of fanaticism/militarism within higher levels of government bureaucracy and how THIS is where the true power often lies and where sick, corrupt values run rampant.

What it does here so magnificently is how it offers up a great villain in the form of a German-born scientist/political advisor (a la Henry Kissinger) played by the wonderful actor Eric Braeden (who had a hugely successful career as a soap opera TV star, but most notably appeared in the great ‘70s sci-fi thriller Collosus: The Forbin Project from screenwriter James Bridges and the underrated director Joseph Sargent). Braeden is such a nasty, vicious, homicidal government bureaucrat and his great performance and superb characterization thanks to Dehn's writing puts the lacklustre aforementioned villain in Rise to complete and utter shame.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, is as sharp a sequel as the third instalment - replete with great writing from Paul Dehn and the added bonus of thrilling direction from J. Lee Thompson, the man who gave us the brilliant, original, utterly chilling Cape Fear as well as some of the greatest action epics of all time like North West Frontier, Taras Bulba and The Guns of Navarone. This particular sequel tells us about the rise of Caesar, the ape child of Cornelius and Zira who leads the simians in revolt against their human oppressors.

Conquest is the film Rise of the Planet of the Apes most closely resembles, yet pales most mightily against. Conquest deals head on with the issue that plagued (and continues to plague) America most doggedly - that of slavery and, includes good dashes of America's susceptibility to right wing government rule. A thoroughly effective repellent performance from Don Murray as the fascist California governor racing to eventually become President of the United States (he and his minions always wear black-coloured uniforms hearkening to both Nazism and Italian Fascism) is so politically charged - not just for its time, but like all great classics, resonates in a contemporary context.

Rise has no such villain and virtually NO political context. I'll not speak too much about Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the fifth official sequel and perhaps the weakest entry in the series, but even still, in its exploration of the early beginnings of the fundamentalism that eventually grips even the apes, it makes the new film look so puny in comparison.

Rupert Wyatt is a dreadful director. The pace of Rise is herky-jerky and the final action set piece on the Golden Gate Bridge - which should be spectacular - is yet another madly constructed action scene from a director who couldn't helm action to save his life.

The worst element of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is in its over-reliance upon CGI. The effects are relatively effective, but they're not there to serve the story, but to merely serve themselves. The stunning makeup effects for the apes designed by John Chambers in the ‘60s blow ALL the CGI totally away. The makeup allows great actors - throughout the original Apes series to actually deliver real performances and, thanks to terrific writing, inject considerable life into the proceedings.

Rise from the Planet of the Apes is, in contrast, moviemaking at its most dreadful - bereft of ideas, good writing and direction from someone who has a vision and/or the virtuosity to create popular cinema of the highest order.

Perhaps the most disgusting thing about the new film is that it fails to acknowledge the author of the original novel and the screenwriters (primarily Paul Dehn and Serling) of the original series in the head credits.

This is ultimately a disgrace.

Do yourself a favour and either skip Rise of the Planet of the Apes or, if you feel you must see the picture at all, try to watch the original films first.

You'll see the difference!

Black Moon

Black Moon (1975) dir. Louis Malle
Starring: Cathryn Harrison, Therese Giehse, Alexandra Stewart, Joe Dallesandro

By Alan Bacchus

New to The Criterion Collection is this oddball film of monstrous proportions, part Alice in Wonderland allegory, part late-period Luis Bunuel surrealism. And it's a Louis Malle film I've never heard of. Giving a 'star rating' seems completely inappropriate in this case, employing a convention to a film that treats convention as poison. Black Moon is an unexplainable and unquantifiable piece of art that isn't meant to be enjoyed, understood or commented on - simply experienced.

The film opens up showing Malle's version of 'Alice' (named Lily here) driving down a rural highway observing some kind of near-future warfare going on. Then, while escaping the clutches of one of the soldiers, she sees a unicorn. While sleeping on the grass she then becomes fascinated with snakes and large millipedes crawling over her body. At one point she thinks a flower is talking to her in another language.

While wandering the landscape she stumbles upon a large country mansion inhabited by a dying matriarch who speaks an unknown language, two twin models with the same name as our hero, Lily, and a team of naked boys wearing only flip-flops running through the woods herding sheep.

The rest of the film takes place within these confines to no substantial effect other than to confuse and titillate us. Malle's purposeful spacial inconsistencies confuse us. Inexplicably, Lily has difficulty trying to reach a glass of milk on the counter, especially when disturbed by a talking baby pig lounging on the countertop. Random jump cuts create even more hallucinatory effects. If we can appreciate Malle's attempts to laugh at our expense we're free to laugh along with him.

To find other cinematic comparisons, in many ways this endeavour feels like a Kubrick journey. The '70s cinematography, near-future world and the distinct outsider point of view links up with sequences and tones in 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. We can also feel little bits of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom, that utterly strange yet riveting sexual, social and historical commentary on Nazism. Strange compositions inside the vast country mansion create some of the same eerie tension as the debaucherous aristocratic prison in Salo.

Malle establishes such a crazy world of inane gibberish we come to expect both everything and absolutely nothing to come of this venture. It's the equivalent of a nonsense poem. At one point the twin sister version of Lily attempts to nurse the strange old lady back to health by offering her breast to suckle. The film could cut to black at any second or a character could spontaneously combust into flames - anything is possible.

There might be some kind of social commentary going on, and indeed the extensive liner notes outline in detail one rationale of significance for this stuff. But sadly, none of it ever stuck with me.

No bother though. We are left with a stunning and lasting final image, the exterior ground of the mansion engulfed by turkeys and hens. Well, that's not exactly the 'last' image. After the turkeys we see a freeze-frame of Lily massaging her nipple preparing to suckle the unicorn. And that is probably the most laughably perfect ending for this zany slice of celluloid.

Black Moon is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.