My movie habits, quantitatively, slowed down in April. I returned to work after a moderately long hiatus that gave me a ton of time to watch in March. And if you scroll below you'll see the insane consequences of having enough time off to plow through a Netflix queue at top speed. Just how much did I see in March? 34 films, an outstanding record. Naturally, April couldn't live up to such stratospheric standards, but the month did define itself with a special twist,
westerns--a fine quality to make up for what was lost in numbers!
Enter: The Budd Boetticher box set, a delightful series of films from the short period of Boetticher-Randolph Scott collaborations. Each one--from
The Tall T (1957) to
Ride Lonesome (1959)--was a jaw-dropping spectacle that spurred hours of conversations with my movie mate on the home front, and was proof positive of Boetticher's status on the level with John Ford and other A listers. Also during the month, I whipped through a short queue of G.W. Pabst pictures, and a smattering of new film and some much needed retrospectives.
I left town for one of those pretentious and indulgent trips to Europe for five days at the end of April, with intentions to catch some screenings abroad. Let's just say repeated doses of limoncello foiled those plans.
Dark City - (1998) - DVD
Seen: Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Here's a movie that I've been meaning to see for a whole decade. Yep, I think this one wins the award as the Most Pushed Aside For Unknown Reasons. Ebert ran it at his
Overlooked Film Festival in 2000 and it was also slated at the University of Colorado's annual Conference on World Affairs, starring Ebert's own "
Cinema Interruptus" in 1998. Having attended two years of the Cinema Interruptus program during my undergrad studies in Boulder and Denver, I was ecstatic to see the film, but...
But I never did! And I wish I hadn't done that, because I think after all these years of build-up it didn't have the kind of heft I thought it would. Crap. I really hate when that happens. Looking at the special effects in
Dark City, I can tell also that it would have impressed me more then, in the context of the technological times, than it ever could have now. Still, not a bad picture at all (especially the part about Rufus Sewell). Maybe in another few years I can take another look-see at it and it will reveal itself anew?
The 3 Penny Opera - (1931) - DVD
Seen: Thursday, April 2, 2009
I emailed my friend
Howie Movshovitz right after I finished watching G.W. Pabst's fantastic feature
The 3 Penny Opera, because his resemblance to lead character Mackie Messer (Rudolf Forster) is uncanny, and I had a goofy smile on my face through the entire picture anticipating my great email message where I would tell him so. (His response: "I'm just much older than you think. You didn't know I was born in Germany?")
It's kind of a strange scene to sit so contented through this movie about a gangster-murderer who terrorizes the town with his audacious power and the help of paid-off political connections. But looking at Howie/Mackie was only half of what distracted me from the direction of the story itself. The photography is sublime. As it is in the other handful of Pabst picture I've seen so far. More on Pabst below.
Two Lovers - (2009) - Film
Seen: Saturday, April 4, 2009
I adored this movie. I saw it in the theater alone. Not as the only one in the theater, but as a party of one, and I think that had some effect on how I received it. To sit alone with no distractions or nudges from friends made an already isolating picture even more so. The movie stewed inside me for hours and day after it was over. I wrote a small review about it on
Scarlett Cinema, but the part of the movie that still sits with me the most is its depiction of New York City. It's a true New York film with some astonishingly observant shots of the city. Take for instance the view of passing buildings from a car, not shown at street level, no sidewalk bustle is in sight, but we see the simple top third of a building, or the tip-top of a street lamp instead. It's a slight remix of the usual NYC street montages we are used to that adds to the film's tempered energy, beautifully.
The Class - (2008) - Film
Seen: Sunday, April 5, 2009
Like
Dangerous Minds only in French. Okay, it's not really like that at all, but it's nice to see the underprivileged school kids narrative in a setting outside of south central L.A. or the Bronx.
This reminds me of another French school-set picture that I love, a little gem from 2002,
To Be and To Have (
Être et avoir).
Ivan The Terrible, Part I - (1944) - Film (on 35mm!)
Seen: Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Film Center ran Sergei Eisenstein's two-part masterpiece
Ivan The Terrible on incredible 35mm prints, which, as far as I'm concerned, is the only way you're going to get me to watch these movies. Film school grads will eternally beat themselves up for not seeing this during their days at college, and indeed they should: it's a very difficult movie to watch without a structured context, take advantage of that while you've got it...
Ivan The Terrible, Part II - (1958) - Film (on 35mm!)
Seen: Wednesday, April 8, 2009
...Luckily, the audience was privy to a helpful introduction from critic Jonathan Rosenbaum before the second night's screening, Part II. This was my favorite of the two films, probably for its increased energy and emotion. Each one is beautifully composed, but the assaultive montage technique makes the experience feel more like a forced science experiment than a real exchange with the images. I understand Eisenstien's interest in montage and on paper it's miraculous (and upon deeper inspection, just plain confusing). In person, however, and I hate to sound either blunt or ignorant, it is boring.
The Last Laugh - (1924) - DVD
Seen: Friday, April 10, 2009
Best movie ever? When a puff of smoke can be so beautiful as to justify the existence of an entire movie, it just might be...
The Tall T - (1957) - DVD
Seen: Saturday, April 11, 2009
This movie is a miracle. A fantastic B western from Budd Boetticher. Here's a short bulleted list of thoughts taken from my movie notes:
- Wow, great big skies!
- Scott always has a smile on his face, and he sweats!
- Framing and general scenery reminds me of
Winchester 73; comedic moments remind me of Hawks and Sturges.
-
Woman: "I'm scared."
Scott: "Me too." Not often that the rustic male lead admits fear.
The Last Bolshevik - (1993) - DVD
Seen: Sunday, April 12, 2009
I guess it would have helped to see
Happiness before I watched Chris Marker's response to the film, his own
The Last Bolshevik. Mmm. Maybe more thoughts on this after I've done that.
Snow Angels - (2006) - DVD
Seen: Monday, April 13, 2009
I'm a big David Gordon Green fan. When
Snow Angles premiered at the Sundance Film Festival I was beside myself with grief that I couldn't see it. Patiently awaiting its wide theatrical release was a test of wills, and when it finally did arrive two years later for a brief run at the Landmark theater here in Chicago, by God if I understand the scheduling mishaps I encountered, but somehow I missed it. And on to the Netflix queue it went...
Maybe it was fate that the movie eluded me for as long as it did. When I saw it midway through the month of April, I felt horribly empty. Where was the signature quiet poetry of Green's compositions? Cinematographer Tim Orr was still on board. And I wonder, too, how this story about a broken couple with equally broken careers and relationships struck the director's fancy. It is so unlike any of his previous films, both in setting (many of Green's pictures are set in the south), and in tone. A sense of melancholy pervades all of Green's movies, but they are laced too with an ineffable comic touch. There's a sweetness to his pictures that I didn't get a taste of in
Snow Angels.
Setting these queries aside, to look at it simply as a movie, there is a listlessness to it. I haven't seen Lars von Trier's
Dancer in the Dark (2000), but from what the masses say, I think
Snow Angels follows a similarly dark docket of emotional cues from its story of un-redeeming quality. I get that line from people all the time, "You haven't seen it? Well, prepare to be depressed." They say it with a twist of glee in their voice, like it was a feat in itself to experience misery of the deepest human unhappiness. That's how I slightly feel about
Snow Angels, only I can't express any enthusiasm in having felt so terrible for its duration. Maybe using my mood is an unfair tool to assess the picture, but I'm really too bummed about it to say much else.
Decision at Sundown - (1957) - DVD
Seen: Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Randolph Scott is as debonair of a frontiersman as can be. He looks like the Marlboro man wearing a fitted leather jacket broken in to a smooth, body-hugging sheen. It's Scott's own version of body armor. He could be a knight in shining armor swooping into town to save his lady--the one who looks like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Melanie Griffith wearing red Technicolor lipstick--but he's a bit of an antagonist in this picture. That smile he charmed us with in
The Tall T is lessened. It opens with Bart Allison (Randolph Scott) tearing through town and breaking up a wedding in progress before he finally holes himself up in a stable, picking off the sheriff's men and plotting his escape. No introduction, no backstory. The story simply starts. There's never been so much urgency in a western picture! And Boetticher is a man who knows how to set up a shot. In one sequence, we see Bart leave the bar with his partner at a moderate pace; as they reach the background of the same running shot, a woman enters the foreground in a coach; the sheriff (and the camera) are atop the porch with a full view of it all--in one shot!
The Love of Jeanne Ney - (1928) - DVD
Seen: Friday, April 17, 2009
I'm afraid I wrote no notes on this movie to recall anything significant! I did watch it on the 17th, my mother's birthday though. Happy belated, ma!
Buchanan Rides Alone - (1958) - DVD
Seen: Saturday, April 18, 2009
Buchanan is a real doozy. Like,
Decision at Sundown, we get tossed right into the story. This time Scott rolls into a border town run by a band of brothers (literally) who run the city: one is mayor, the other a businessman, another chief of police. All of them have a hand in the town finances, in fact, that's an understatement, they're more like resident bandits. They shoot to kill but old Buchanan (Randolph Scott) doesn't seem to mind. He invites trouble, provokes it, and though you know it would be impossible for one man to stand against their mean, impenetrable forces, that's exactly what makes the show exciting. Because somehow he does.
Rocco and His Brothers (
Rocco e i suoi fratelli)- (1960) - DVD
Seen: Sunday, April 19, 2009
Compare this image with the photo at the top of this post and you'll glean that
Rocco was indeed a bit of Milan prep work I assigned myself before the big trip. That's
il Duomo in the heart of central Milan. And that's the unspeakably sexy Alain Delon atop the church roof embracing his woman. I want to be her. Really bad. Really, really bad. Anyway, I figured before Alitalia dropped me off in Milan, a city where I had never before been, I might give myself a fun activity and see how it looks on film.
It was a nice pursuit that got me amped up for the trip, and a nice companion to my Lonely Planet guide; seeing the city on film first gives me a connection to it, and as threadbare as that connection might be, it is still significant. And now that I've been to the city it will mean so much more to me when I see it again on film.
Hell, even glimpsing the still at left gets me. I've
been there. How could it be? I was there, I even sat on those stone ledges reserved for hot, tired tourists after scaling the hundreds of narrow steps to the top. In theory, my rear touched the same piece of stone as Alian Delon's. Never mind the decades of weather that have worn away his scattered skin cells that were shed there almost 50 years ago. So there are no traces of Delon's DNA left on my clothes or skin. So what? I was there. Alain was there. We were there. Not physically together, but in spirit I was there with him, even if I left my trench coat behind that day (the sun was too mighty for that), though it would have been better if our clothes coordinated, I think.
As I left Milan I was not sad. I knew I would be back, I
know I will be back. It's such a marvelously functional city. Energetic in its own manageable way, and friendly, which can be difficult to find in some Italian cities where residents have long ago grown weary of American tourists butchering or ignoring altogether their language. Almost always when traveling in Italy residents can spot me a mile away, as if I were wearing an arm band made of the U.S. flag.
In Florence I received eye rolls in response to my slow, albeit polite questions posed in at least semi-correct Italian. In Rome it was only slightly more of the same, but I did land upon an indignant waiter who insisted my friend and I repeat our order back to him in perfect Italian. He corrected our pronunciation as we went, an especially difficult task for my friend who had never before spoken a word of Italian aloud. I was spared with a little luck from having read through a "Italian in 10-Minutes a Day!" workbook in the preceding months before our pop quiz.
Venice is one of the friendlier cities I've encountered, and before I denounce myself by saying, "PK, you traveled there with a native Venetian!" How could it be hard to get around when you have a fluent tour guide? But even in my time separated from my pal on my first trip to the city, people were nice to me. Upon my second visit,
sans native Venetian friend, people still treated me well.
My only awkward moment occurred the night my girlfriend and I wandered into Harry's Bar for a famous (and infamously priced) peach Bellini. As the waiter strolled by I asked for
la lista (the menu) when I meant
il conto (the check). He jumped on that straight away and the rest of our minimal exchanges happened in English, of course. Even the moody clerks at the
vaporetti stands were alright. They gave me a hard stare as I sputtered out my request for two tickets on the water bus, sure, but they were not unfriendly. I surely don't have to tell you, then, that the young fellas running the boats were as sweet as honey to a couple of giddy American girls, do I?
To swing this back around to Milan, and thus
Rocco and His Brothers, and thus Alain Delon, let me quickly conclude that my treatment by the resident Milanese men was equally outstanding as it was from our playfully cute vaporetto drivers in Venice. Especially from those in a waiter's uniform. Once I was seated for dinner (
La cena per uno, per favore!) I am captive to them. How would I ever escape them, assuming I wanted to? I had to eat. An behold, the onslaught of complimentary drinks--a bottle when I requested a glass, limoncello and grappa to top things off--and for dessert a folded piece of paper with Gionata's number scribbled thereon.
I went home alone, rest assured, but if that Milanese man were the helplessly sweet faced Alain Delon a la
Rocco and His Brothers, the night would have played differently. Alain aside--we'll get back to him later as the official Delon Movie Marathon kicks up in the coming weeks--I'll offer a few thoughts on the movie,
Rocco e i suoi fratelli (I am additionally proud that this is a title I am able, in my silly broken Italian to translate correctly. Thank you very much!)
You know what? Strike that. This entry will have to suffice as a miniature travelogue instead. I hope you've enjoyed it.
Ride Lonesome - (1959) - DVD
Seen: Sunday, April 19, 2009
Spookiest image on film?
Favorite lines:Woman: "You don't seem like the kind of person to hunt a man for money."
Brigade (Randolph Scott): "I am."
Bruce McClure performance series - (2009) - Film
Seen: Friday, April 24, 2009
Williamsburg, Brooklyn-based experimental filmmaker Bruce McClure put on a show this night that might be the best, most exciting cinema experience I've ever had. I wrote up a little bit about it here, at
Scarlett Cinema.
Garage Days - (2002) - DVD
Seen: Saturday, April 25, 2009
This might be the worst movie I've ever seen. I could not watch it to its end!--a rarity. When a movie is bad I almost always push through to the final credits to say I've been there, done that. But the line of advice that kept repeating in my head as I sat dormant on the couch that night with plummeting levels of brain activity was, "I don't have time for this nonsense. My life it too short for this!"
I added it to my queue to catch up on director Alex Proyas's filmography. At the top of this post you saw
Dark City, one of Proyas's earlier films, and a highly praised one too (
Roger Ebert has been over the moon about it from the start). I thought it might be fun to see everything he has made, also figuring it would be a good balancing mechanism against the string of artier pictures flowing through my queue right now. From the disgrace of
Garage Days to
I, Robot (which should be coming along soon, just as soon as my addiction to
The Wire subsides. Could be awhile, I've just begun season 3 of 5), I committed to see them all. Damn. Another idea that works better on paper than in practice. And now I'm just frustrated at the lost time and money on the rental fee. I'm still going to watch
I, Robot--if it's as good as Ben Lyons says, it might be the movie redeemer of a lifetime!
---------------------------------------------
That's
17 movies for April. The May write-up is on the way!
I saw Michael Mann's latest film on opening night, and was thrilled, as I always am, by the iridescence of his imagery; the culmination of which came in the movie theater scene as Dillinger (Depp) watches W.S. Van Dyke's Manhattan Melodrama (1934), wherein Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy become sutured into Mann's modern day narrative. Stunning.
That the film opens with Groucho Marx as the new president of the university without any setup or explanation sets the tone for all that follows: total absurdity, in hilarious Marx fashion.
A companion screening of W.S. Van Dyke's gangster melodrama on the heels of Mann's Public Enemies, you know, just to be thorough (and to admire William Powell's dashing ways).
Orson Welles's big to-do this summer was Chimes at Midnight, a super-rare 35mm screening of the director's film made in the sixties in Spain, long after his fall from Hollywood grace (if you believe he was ever appreciated there at all), where he's cast as the bumbling and unrefined Falstaff--a man of good humor and appetite even in the most tragic life circumstances. He's sort of like Welles himself. Ebert has a nice paragraph on this in his 2006 review:
What a great documentary on the tribulations of two competing Donkey Kong gamers, each of such polarizing, yet true, archetypal character. Also, from someone who never made it past the first half of the first level in the Atari 2600 version of Donkey Kong, that the gaming competition exists at all is miraculous.
A movie we might classify under the genre title "French." It's cerebral without saying very much, and even if you don't grow tired of gazing at Alain Delon the story will have you dozing off before long.
Really had fun with this movie (despite the disheartening New Yorker review) and put up a short bit about it on Scarlett Cinema.
He outgrew his overalls, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a welcome addition to the screen as an adult actor; with Zooey Daschanel at his side (500) Days is the free spirit film of the summer. Their chemistry was cute, and I loved the film's framing of the city of LA. I didn't realize LA could look like a busy downtown, but apparently, it can.
Adored Ms. Ephron's delicious summer delight Julie & Julia. You can read my full song of praise at Scarlett Cinema.
The Darnennes's film La Promesse arrived in time to temper the overflowing joy of Julie & Julia and Beaches of Agnes, which is nice for the sake of emotional balance, I suppose, but then again, the dire life of a boy on the cut-throat streets of Paris who single-handedly tries to save an African immigrant from his father who plans to force her into prostitution was a tough pill to swallow amidst such glee. I think this is my third or fourth Dardennes picture. They employ a quite raw visual aesthetic that looks to me like a hybrid of Barbara Loden, Cassavetes, and old French noir.
The matron of French New Wave cinema, Agnes Varda, made the best movie of the summer (and maybe the year) with her Beaches of Agnes, a wise, playful reflection on both life's victories and pains. Read more of my thoughts on the film at Scarlett Cinema.
All this talk for years about John Ford's The Searchers (1956) as the standard-bearer of the Western genre and, lo and behold, I discover William Wyler's little-known The Big Country that gives the former a demanding run for its money. How had I not seen this before? How can wide-angle shots of the land go on forever in spite of the film frame? How? I loved it. Perhaps more thoughts later.
All aboard! Next stop: Depressing City, population: Paul Giamatti.
My Man is my new go-to movie on bored nights that need a quick injection of love and laughter. I've seen this at least five times now, but seeing Lombard and Powell together is always a new experience. And being in ear shot of Eugene Pallette's fatherly grumble is on its own winning.
So it's an allegory about apartheid starring aliens as the discarded members of South African society and the message is clear: segregation is bad. I totally agree, but I wish District 9 had something more politically substantial to say about that. And this one instance where, to avoid motion sickness, I was praying for a Steadycam. Alas...
Months of anticipation leading up to a film by a director I have historically disliked culminated the week before Inglourious Basterds's wide release: the blogosphere was all atwitter. Seriously, Twitter blew up with 140 character debates that made me lose my breath with excitement; J. Rosenbaum called it the "cinematic equivalent of Sarah Palin" and a Holocaust denial; even my bestie who's always been a QT fan gave it a big "meh." However, there is nothing that gets me in the theater quicker than controversy. I have to say, this is not only the first Tarantino picture that I liked, it's also the film that I believe will define the rest of his career; this really is his masterpiece. 
