Rules of the Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.