Renoir Noir

6.5/10 – Jean Renoir fled France in 1940 and spent seven frustrating years in Hollywood making five American films. The Woman on the Beach was his final Hollywood project, usually classified as a film noir, though it feels more like a psychological drama with norish elements. It’s an interesting but flawed endeavor that struck me as being bizarrely edited or even unfinished. It’s only 71 minutes long, for one thing. I began to suspect that there must have been some longer original version that the studio chopped up over Renoir’s objections. Turns out that the story of its production was a little more complicated than that.

There was a lot riding on the project, as Renoir’s earlier Hollywood films hadn’t done that well by commercial standards. Though he had struggled within the confines of the studio system, he enjoyed being in Hollywood and wanted to stay, so he was determined to make a successful movie. The story had a lot of potential. Here’s Richard Brody’s description: “A Second World War veteran (Robert Ryan) who suffers from post-traumatic stress, including nightmares of a torpedoed and sinking ship and his own near-drowning, works as a Coast Guard officer in a small seaside community. In his lonely waterfront wanderings, he meets, amid ruins, a glossy and brooding woman (Joan Bennett). There’s an instant erotic spark between them, and she invites him to her cottage. There, he meets her husband (Charles Bickford), a formerly well-regarded painter who is now blind—and who possessively brings the young man into the household for company. But the brewing romance between the youngsters (not to spoil the plot) is troubled by an ugly element of backstory between husband and wife.”

Renoir got along well with Joan Bennett, who spoke fluent French, and enjoyed working on the film. He felt happy with the results. But in September 1946, the movie was given a preview at the University of Santa Barbra, and the crowd hated it. Evidently, Renoir hadn’t followed the conventions of the mystery genre to their liking. There’s conflicting information now about what happened next, whether studio bosses ordered extensive changes or Renoir himself was responsible. In a later interview with Francois Truffaut, he claimed, “I was the first to advise cut and changes.” Obviously, his previous experiences with producer Daryl Zanuck and Renoir’s own desire to succeed may have prompted him to revise the film in a way he thought would please the studio. In any case, he wound up re-shooting between one-third and one-half of the film and completely re-editing it. Nothing helped. It failed miserably at the box office and received harsh criticism when it was finally released a year later. Unfortunately, there is no known copy of his original version, nor any surviving footage of that attempt. So we are left to wonder what might have been.

Even in its “mutilated” form, the film still has fans. Some, like French director Jacques Rivette, consider it a masterpiece. And Brody calls it one of his favorite films. For him, The Woman on the Beach “has a dreadful, oneiric allure that bursts with a dark brilliance into an emotional and artistic apocalypse. It’s one of the great endings, one that foreshadows, remarkably, that of another noir classic, ‘Kiss Me Deadly,’ directed by Robert Aldrich, who was Renoir’s assistant director.” I thought it had some fascinating moments and some potential in the plot. The fact that the husband in this tense triangle is a famous painter is certainly interesting, considering Renoir’s own background. The acting is very good throughout, and some of the moody photography in the abandoned ship along the beach is wonderful. But the writing itself, at least in this version, feels clunky and somewhat predictable, despite whatever Freudian allusions may be offered. It’s worth watching, primarily because it’s Renoir. But it doesn’t come anywhere near his great masterpieces, or even excellent work like The River, which would turn out to be his next project and helped re-establish his reputation after his difficult Hollywood sojourn.

I’ll let Renoir have the last word on The Woman on the Beach:

“Although I don’t regret my American films, I know for a fact they don’t even come close to any ideal I have for my work . . . they represent seven years of unrealized works and unrealized hopes. And seven years of deceptions too . . .”

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

6.5/10 – Kill Your Darlings is a coming of age story about a young, somewhat awkward kid from New Jersey in his first year at Columbia University and the circle of friends he becomes involved with. They get into mischief, they have intense discussions, they’re exploring boundaries, exploring their sexuality, exploring their own self-identity, not unlike many young people going off to college for the first time. It just happens that the Jersey kid is Allen Ginsberg, and his friends include Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Interestingly, though, they’re not really the center of the story. That would be Lucien Carr, who dazzles the young Ginsberg with his literary knowledge, vibrant energy and desire to live life big. But Lucien is involved in an unhealthy relationship with an older man who’s part mentor, part lover, and part stalker. Things deteriorate until there is a murder that winds up involving everyone in this happy-crazy little circle. Based on real events, Kill Your Darlings does a good job of showing Ginsberg’s transformation from a shy, somewhat innocent kid into the young, more experienced and interesting man who would go on to become one of the most important poets of the 20th century. Though there’s plenty of potential for joking about Harry Potter playing Allen Ginsberg (Columbia=Hogwarts, Burroughs=Weasley, etc.), I thought Daniel Radcliffe was actually very good. He certainly nails the look of young Ginsberg, and he brings an Everyman quality to the role which makes it easy to like and relate to the poet, which I think is important. Dane DeHaan is mesmerizing as Lucien Carr, looking like a young David Bowie and definitely conveying the kind of charismatic intensity that would attract young impressionable poets to him. Ben Foster has a fun turn as Burroughs. There are some amusing scenes with the three of them, especially one at a jazz club when Ginsberg is super-wired on one of the multitudinous drug offerings that Burroughs carries around in his suitcase. The film never reaches any great heights, especially considering the subject matter. It’s a rather traditional Hollywood movie about the Beats, and it has the feel at times of a young adult novel, but that didn’t seem to bother me very much for some reason. I thought it was an interesting story and that it was told well and with care. It’s fun seeing Ginsberg & Co. in their youth, but it also brought a wry smile to my face as I thought about the excitement of that time in my own life, when the world seemed so fascinating and it was possible to start a literary revolution. Those dopey college kids actually managed to do it.

American Sniper (2014)

7/10 - There's a lot one could write about in discussing American Sniper. It's a much more interesting and complex film than many have made it out to be. First of all, I would say that it’s not really about the war in Iraq or sniper Chris Kyle, on whose autobiography the story is based. Yes, Clint Eastwood uses those specific elements to tell his tale, but it’s clear that his real objective is tackling much broader themes, such as the nature of violence and the effects of war on those who wage it. Richard Brody, from The New Yorker, says the film is “political in the highest sense of the word. [Eastwood] dramatizes the use and abuse of state power in the light of great philosophical ideas.” I think that’s what led to Bradley Cooper’s clumsy statement that the film “wasn’t political.” It’s actually a very political film, and an intriguing one, but it’s not specifically about the political aspects of the invasion of Iraq or the cultural politics surrounding the figure of Chris Kyle. It’s a film that should probably leave people on either side of the liberal-conservative spectrum somewhat uneasy in the end. If someone believes it’s just a patriotic movie about Kyle and our invasion of Iraq, then I think they are only seeing what they want to see.

Alex Trimble Young, in an interesting analysis in Salon, calls American Sniper a “revisionist western,” and it’s clear that Eastwood structured the film along these lines. Kyle was a modern-day cowboy (rodeo rider) from Texas who goes off to “the Wild West in the Old Middle East” to fight the “savages.” He sees himself as a gun-slinging lawman out to protect his men (and women) and his ideal of civilization. He faces another “bad” gunslinger (a sniper from Syria fighting for Al-Qaeda), and the climax of the movie comes in the form of a long-distance showdown between the two. Eastwood even references a famous shot from The Searchers early on in the movie to let us know what he’s doing. Young writes, “In the tradition of the greatest westerns… ‘American Sniper’ offers up its familiar western narrative not as a triumphalist myth but as a disturbing object for contemplation and critique. The film’s point of view cleaves to Kyle’s in such a way that it both immerses its viewers in his Manichaean worldview and, at crucial moments, alienates us from it. From the violence that is visually foregrounded in the now infamous ‘sheepdog’ scene until the shot that foreshadows Kyle’s murder, ‘American Sniper’ tells a story of a man who is unable to insulate his family or his homeland from the violence of the war he is fighting. Like John Wayne’s character, Ethan, in ‘The Searchers,’ his own character is under threat of being overtaken by the very savage violence he set out to quell.”

Some have complained that Kyle was a more problematic figure than how he's portrayed, but I think that’s missing the entire point of the film. Eastwood and screenwriter Jason Hall have obviously created a character based on Kyle that is purposefully seen as a kind of perfect soldier who sees everything in black and white, believes fervently in his mission, strives to protects his buddies and his homeland and does an excellent job with his ability as a marksman. Yet, in the end, what happens to this person? He has becomes something less than human, as his wife struggles to make him realize thoughout the film, and despite all of his valiant efforts, his fellow soldiers are killed or return home disfigured, maimed and/or totally disturbed. Even the most fervent believer, Eastwood shows us, is ultimately destroyed by the war and undone by violence. In one of the most powerfully symbolic scenes in the film, U.S. forces are literally constructing a wall to try and “contain the violence” in Sadr City, but their engineers keep getting picked off by the Syrian sniper. Kyle finally kills the bad guy responsible, but just as soon as he does, he and his men have to abandon their position as they are swarmed by many other “savages” and overcome by the natural environment of the land they have invaded in the form of a giant sandstorm. Kyle’s most cherished personal belongings, those items which most give him his identity, his rifle and his pocket Bible, end up buried under the sand. In the end, Kyle can’t even prevent the violence against himself, as he is killed not by the enemy abroad but by a fellow solider, a U.S. Marine, also from Texas, suffering from PTSD.

American Sniper is expertly filmed and well-directed. Bradley Cooper gives a great performance as Kyle, much of it silently and through body language, transforming from easy-going cowboy to a man intensely hunkered down in himself and trying to remain human. In one of the best scenes of the movie, he’s approached in an auto repair shop by a Marine whose life he saved earlier, but he’s so uncomfortable that he can’t even look the man in the eye or deal with the man’s gratitude. I thought about Cooper’s performance here in comparison to his role as the coiffure-obsessed man living with his mother in American Hustle, and I have a greater appreciation for his range as an actor.
Despite its grand ambitions and high level of craftsmanship, though, American Sniper never becomes the kind of great film it could have been. There’s a hesitation at the heart of the film that keeps Eastwood from pursuing some of the harder themes to their full conclusion. He lets up at the end just enough to keep the film from reaching another level. That same hesitation may also be responsible for opening the door to various kinds of cultural criticism. And maybe it’s just too soon to create a larger, more mythic story from what has happened to us and to the Iraqis because of our misguided invasion. The horrors have been great and continue even now. But American Sniper is not just some jingoistic exercise. As Brody concludes his own article, “Far from patriotic pomp, it’s a vision that sees past the still eye of the American self-image to the whirlwind.”

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

6/10 - I don’t know what to say about this one. Kingsman is a bizarre, over-the-top spoof on James Bond films that is very funny at times and fairly entertaining overall but not really my cup of tea. Colin Firth plays Harry Hart, a member of a super-secret spy organization that’s supposedly not associated with any nation but whose members are all British gentlemen. When one of their agents is killed, Harry recruits a disgruntled street kid who is the son of a former Kingman who died saving Harry’s life. Meanwhile, Samuel Jackson plays Valentine, a billionaire tech mogul who started out trying to stop climate change but has now decided that it’s too late and the only thing left to do is to kill most of humanity. I give the movie one star just for Jackson’s lisp. Colin Firth is surprisingly good in a tricky role, and I’m impressed to read that he did most of his own stunts, which is impressive given some of his action sequences. I wonder what distinguished one over-the-top film from another? I like some but don’t like others quite as much. This one just feels a little too oriented for 15-year old males - or females, who actually give it a higher rating on IMDB. It’s based on a comic book and feels like a video game at times, and I’m tired of both elements in cinema, so that may be part of why I couldn’t enjoy it fully, though I can still laugh at several of the scenes. Some will enjoy it much more than I did, I’m sure. If you liked the Kick Ass movies, this is the same director. For what it's worth, Alexandra gave it a 7. Bloody Colin Firth.

Mr. Turner (2014)

8/10 - One of the most beautifully filmed movies I’ve seen in a while and a thoughtful, searching portrayal of the artist J.M.W. Turner, thankfully free of the usual clichéd tropes of the Hollywood biopic. It also felt like the longest, slowest film I’ve seen in a long time, and after two and a half hours, I was grateful when it was over. I don’t recommend seeing this if you’re tired. But I wake up this morning realizing what a special film it was and how much I would like to experience it again on a big screen, to luxuriate in that lush, slow-moving world. Cinematographer Dick Pope has done a tremendous job of creating a film that looks and feels like a Turner painting at times yet also remains clearly and precisely etched when depicting the ordinary aspects of the artist’s life or his process of creating those amazing paintings. Pope's work on Mr. Turner has garnered him nominations from 12 different organizations and festivals, including an Oscar bid and a win at Cannes. Timothy Spall has also received numerous nominations and wins for his wonderful portrayal of Turner, though not from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which is too bad. Spall’s work inhabiting a complex, difficult man and making him feel so vividly real and human seems at another level compared to some of the Oscar nominees. He spent two years learning how to paint for this role and did intensive biographical and historical research, along with director Mike Leigh, to flesh out this character who was the son of a middle-class barber who rose to great fame as an artist only to endure misunderstanding and ridicule towards the end of his life as his works became less representational and closer to what would later be called Impressionism. Leigh abandons the normal narrative structure of a biographical film, which means there’s not much “drama” in the movie, but he gives us something much richer instead – long, unhurried stretches with an artist at work, in the quotidian moments of his life, or having to deal with ridiculous social conveniences of Victorian England, such as an interminable discussion of gooseberries between critic John Ruskin, his parents, and several artists. As Andrew O’Hehir said in his review of the film, “Viewers expecting a Harvey Weinstein-style period drama, or who go in consciously or unconsciously yearning for a three-act structure, are likely to find themselves bored and frustrated…. This is a richly detailed, wrenching and often upsetting story about a man who may not have been especially satisfying to others as a human being, but who spent every day reaching for the ineffable and ungraspable meanings behind observable events – or at least trying to see them, which may come to the same thing.” All I know is that I wake up today wishing I lived near the Tate Gallery, so I could go see Turner’s work. I’ll have to make do with a book from the library, I suppose.

Where Danger Lives (1950)

8/10 - Continuing with a series of Robert Mitchum noirs. His biographer calls Where Danger Lives “one of the darkest and most unrelenting examples of the film noir genre.” In this one, Mitchum plays a young doctor on the verge of great success, beloved by children and a pretty, understanding nurse. One night, as he’s about to go off duty, a suicide attempt gets rolled into the emergency room. She’s beautiful and mysterious! You can see the good doctor becoming entranced as he saves her life - while his devoted girlfriend nurse watches him during the procedure. But, come on, Bob, this dark-haired beauty just tried to kill herself! You don’t want to get mixed up with that! She’s also rich. With an abusive father. So, naturally, Mitch gets more and more involved, and you can only shake your head and say, "Bob, Bob, Bob... What are you doing?!" Then it turns out that her “father” is actually her husband! (Great smaller role for Claude Rains – I love Claude Rains). He tries to warn the young doctor that she’s crazy, and it’s so clear that there’s some seriously messed up stuff going on between this married couple. But Bob gets drunk – so torn up is he by this femme tres fatale. There’s a violent fight with Claude. Bob gets hit on the head with a fireplace poker. When he wakes up, Claude is dead and Bob has a major concussion. The woman says they have to run away to Mexico, and Bob, being groggy and not thinking clearly, agrees! So they start off on their dark journey to the border. Bob, being a doctor, realizes that his head injury is serious and that he could die at any moment! And everything is totally foggy and he can't think straight. It's like being trapped in a nightmare and not being able to wake up. He’s being chased by the police, hounded by a psychotic woman and making lots of bad decisions - because, he’s literally out of his mind. And it only gets worse...

The cinematography is by the great Nicolas Musuraca, who did Out of the Past, and the visuals are great throughout. (Mitchum said it was one of his many films “lit by matches.”) Real noir. The set-up of the concussion allows the director and cinematographer to get in some wonderfully surreal scenes. Very efficient directing by John Farrow, who was, evidently, a sick tyrant on the set – Mitchum’s agent “ran screaming at his throat” at one point, because he kept making Bob fall down a dangerous set of stairs instead of using a stunt man, and after several of these takes, Mitchum finally told Farrow to be fruitful and multiply, but not in those words. The screenplay, piling up one outlandishly extreme scenario after another, is actually by Charles Bennett, Hitchcock’s old screenwriter, who did The 39 Steps, Secret Agent, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Foreign Correspondent, etc. The only real drawback to the film is Faith Domergue, who plays the femme fatale. She does pretty well as a crazy woman, but I would like to have seen another actress in the role. Jane Greer, perhaps, who worked with Mitch on Out of the Past and The Big Steal. Or Gloria Grahame – that would’ve been interesting. All in all, it’s a classic noir, not one of the greatest but interesting and worth watching, with Robert Mitchum out of his head. Relentless is a good word. It gets on a roll, heading downhill fast to “the border” – the mystical line between love and hate, sanity and madness, and darkness and its even darker shadow.

Macao (1952)

8/10 - More Robert Mitchum noir. Mitch teams up again with Jane Russell in this 1952 film about American ex-pats who get entangled in a web of crime in Macao. Josef von Sternberg is credited as director, and it certainly bears some of his hallmark mysterious Asian exotica. I kept waiting (hoping) for Marlene Dietrich to show up, but no such luck. We do get Gloria Grahame, however, so at least there’s that. But Sternberg was fired by producer Howard Hughes during production and Nicholas Ray (Grahame’s husband at the time) finished directing the film, with Mitchum actually writing sections of the movie in an effort to string everything together. Despite some unevenness here and there, it’s a solid noir, with excellent camera work again by Harry J. Wild (who was also shot the previous Mitchum-Russell movie His Kind of Woman.) There’s a gorgeous chase scene at night through sampans docked in the harbor, so you have Mitchum and others maneuvering through lots of fishing nets while precariously balanced on dark water. Mitchum, Russell and the always reliable William Bendix disembark in Macao and immediately become involved with another American who runs the biggest casino on the island. As it turns out, someone’s a cop working undercover, and the plot twists around as different characters try to figure out who is who and who’s helping who and who’s going to wind up with who. (Okay, that last one is never really a mystery.) Mitchum and Russell once again have great chemistry – I wish they had done more films together. Macao was Sternberg’s first film since 1941’s interesting The Shanghai Gesture, and it would be his last Hollywood project. No one will mistake it for his early masterpieces with Marlene, nor will Macao ever be ranked among the greatest noirs, but it has a lot going for it.

His Kind of Woman (1951)

8.5/10 - Currently enjoying a streak of great Robert Mitchum noirs from the late 40s / early 50s, and it started with this one. His Kind of a Woman somehow manages to combine classic film noir elements, action, psychotic violence, and a healthy dose of comedy (though not of the Monty Python variety, as the back of the DVD weirdly claimed). Mitchum plays Dan Milner, a down-on-his-luck gambler who’s set up by high-level mobsters who then “offer” him a large sum of money to go down to an isolated resort in Mexico and wait for instructions on the job they want done. On the flight down, he encounters Jane Russell, the girlfriend of a famous actor – played deliriously by Vincent Price – who’s on a hunting trip at the lodge. The first half of the film has a languid, mysterious atmosphere as Mitchum waits around at the lodge, encountering a strange array of characters, including a sexually predatory Jim Backus (!), and trying to figure out what’s going on. What he doesn’t know is that he’s become involved in a scheme to get a major gangster (Raymond Burr) that’s been deported to Italy back into the United States. Mitchum and Russell sizzle together (they would be re-matched a year later in another great noir, Macao, and, according to the bonus feature, became lifelong friends), but Vincent Price almost steals the show as a hammy, fed-up actor who finally finds himself when he’s actually shooting at bad guys, quoting bits of Shakespeare along the way. The story’s a little convoluted, the product of Howard Hughes re-doing much of the film after the initial version by John Farrow (Mia’s father). The last section alone includes a particularly brutal beating scene (for 1951), a terrifying Nazi serum(!), shootouts, and a swashbuckling fight aboard a yacht, but it’s ultimately quite entertaining. The cinematographer, Harry J. Wild, was a noir veteran (Murder My Sweet, Cornered, The Big Steal) and does a great job with the shadows and angles, making the most of the elaborate Mexican resort set. The casting is terrific. Russell is stunning looking (that according to Alexandra, and I would not disagree) and a lot of fun on screen. Robert Mitchum is, well, just his bad-ass self. His Kind of Woman is a bit of an odd duck as a film noir, with the comic elements and over-elaborate plot twists, but it conjures up just enough of the existential angst before turning into something of a romp. I saw it alone the first time and enjoyed it so much I made Alexandra watch it, and it only got better the second time. Very entertaining.

Birdman (2014)

8/10 – Birdman begins with an epigraph by Raymond Carver set against a credit sequence taken from mid-1960s Jean-Luc Godard and a musical score that sounds like a Rashied Ali solo from late Coltrane (performed by a drummer who suddenly appears at times during the film), and then cuts to Michael Keaton meditating in his underwear while actually levitating in his dressing room, a washed-up actor who once played a superhero named Birdman (that regularly converses with him) and who is now trying to put on a Broadway version of Carver’s “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love” that includes a dream sequence with women wearing elk antlers and co-stars a snotty, preening method actor (Edward Norton) who demands to have a tanning bed in his dressing room because he’s "playing a redneck" and who reads Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges while sunning himself. And that’s the kind of film Birdman is. A frenetic mess of a movie. It veers wildly between dark humor, fantasy sequences, backstage Broadway dramedy, Hollywood satire, (interesting) commentary on social media, questions about the nature of art, and some good old fashioned, slightly twisted, existential crisis. It’s basically a Theatre of the Absurd piece about the conflicted mind of its protagonist as he faces life without meaning. The quick visual reference to Borges and Labyrinths is no accident. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki structured the film so that (in theory) it feels like one long take, and the camera’s multiple dizzying turns down the labyrinthine backstage hallways of the St. James Theatre replicate the complex, tortured mind of the protagonist as he tries to sort through his life as an actor, artist, celebrity, father, husband and overall human being. Luckily, it’s a crazy, often hilarious mental and spiritual crisis. I thought Birdman was one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a while, but it’s probably not for everyone. It’s a strange, gleefully over-the-top affair. Not perfect by any means, but crackling with energy. What seemed like a wild, sometimes bumpy roller-coaster ride for Alexandra and I will probably, for some, feel like a convoluted tale signifying nothing. Most likely you’ll know by the first scene which way it’s going to go for you. I hated Michael Keaton as Batman and never liked his other films (not that I bothered to watch many of them), but I thought he was very good in this. And the rest of the cast also excel. (The film just won the Screen Actors Guild’s highest award of Best Ensemble Acting.) Besides Norton’s terrific turn as the arrogant “pure” stage actor, Zack Galifianakis does great in a (thankfully) very different kind of role for him. I also liked Emma Stone as Keaton’s daughter. Some great writing throughout. Lubezki’s camera work is often beautiful, especially on the big screen. And the musical score – often just drums – is a refreshing change of pace from the Alexandre Desplat-ization of Hollywood. If you’re a Raymond Carver fan with a sense of humor, there’s the added pleasure of watching the frequently awful attempts to stage one of his greatest stories. (And a nice “Thank You” to Tess Gallagher at the end of the movie.) I should knock off a half-point for the disappointing ending, but I had such a fun time during the rest of the ride that I’ll cut it some slack. There’s an awful lot going on in Bridman, and not all of it works, but I look forward to re-watching it later to sift through the craziness. It was one of the most enjoyable cinematic experiences I’ve had in a while.

Boyhood (2014)

7/10 - Neither awe-struck nor terribly disappointed by Linklater’s Boyhood. I think of him as a maker of “small” films, ones that show little interest in dramatic structure (plot) but focus instead on gathering up the seemingly ordinary moments of life until they accumulate into a movie, sometimes with real emotional resonance. And Boyhood just seems like a bigger version of his “small” works. The technique of filming the same people over a period of 12 years may be ambitious, but the story itself and the way it plays out is very simple, in typical Linklater fashion. I wasn’t surprised to read that he conceived of Boyhood as a series of 10-15 minute short films done once a year for 12 years. That gives the movie some of its power, as we watch the four main characters literally transform over time, but it also accounts for Boyhood’s biggest shortcoming, since almost everyone else in the movie only appears in one “short film” and has no chance to develop. The most disappointing example comes in the story of the mother’s second marriage to a psychology professor who turns into an alcoholic. What should be a powerful episode in the film and in the lives of this family feels oddly distant and flat. This holds true for all of the relationships between the four members of the family with anyone outside of that core group. New husbands and wives, girlfriends, friends, colleagues, in-laws, they all seem like caricatures that the main characters play off of rather than real human beings, which makes the family we follow for almost three hours seem fairly narcissistic in the end. Of course, the movie centers on a boy’s life from age five to 18, and boys can be incredibly narcissistic at that age, but Boyhood ultimately feels like an emotionally colder film than it needs to be. A related problem is the length of the film. At 165 minutes, Boyhood is more than an hour longer than Linklater’s wonderful 1993 movie, Dazed and Confused, which was also a coming-of-age story, but one whose compressed time – the action takes place in a single day – benefits the director’s “small film” style more. Similarly, all of the movies in Linklater’s trilogy Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight were much shorter (Sunset clocks in at 80 minutes) and take place in a period of hours/days. I’m not sure the expansive nature of time – technical and narrative – in Boyhood serves Linklater’s style that well. Frankly, it just felt pretty slow at times. But the movie is interesting to watch for its technical feat (and some of its cinematography), there’s some good writing at times, and a few of the actors do quite well. Linklater was lucky to choose Ellar Coltrane to play his main character – how difficult to find someone at age 5 who will still be able to hold an audience’s attention at age 18. I liked the kid. And there are some beautiful and resonant “moments” that Linklater piles up in the course of the movie. One thing that did bother me about Boyhood is that it feels overly and inexplicably white. Having grown up in Texas in some of the same areas as this family, I found it bizarre that so few people of color appear in the film, especially since they are living in Houston and San Marcos most of the time. In my own boyhood, the classrooms, the school, the neighborhood, the church and the city I grew up in were quite mixed. It was infinitely more than a single scene of two Mexican-Americans working on a pipe outside of a house. That’s a strange portrayal of those parts of “Texas.” In the end, Boyhood is interesting for its cinematic achievement (though I don't know if it could or should be replicated), and a good film in many ways. But I prefer Dazed and Confused. I certainly prefer the music more. I’ll take the vapid rock and roll of Foghat over the precious and bland post-rock of Arcade Fire any day. But maybe that’s because Foghat was the music of my own boyhood.

Captain Blood (1935)

8.5/10 - The original (sound) swashbuckler. Errol Flynn's first major role. A film historian on the Bonus Feature called it the greatest debut by an actor in cinema history. Definitely has to be one of the best. His screen presence is incredible. And he and Olivia de Havilland have great chemistry together. Very enjoyable action-adventure. What a real "summer blockbuster" should be like.

The Hidden Fortress (1958)

9/10. I've been re-watching films I really liked that I've only seen once, as in this case, or haven't seen in many years. I think I liked this even more the second time. Terrific mixture of humor, action, adventure and something much deeper. Toshirô Mifune was such a bad ass. But a bad ass with incredible soul. And I may have finally realized that when all is said and done, Akira Kurosawa is my favorite director. I just love the way he constructs his films, the combination of many cinematic and literary elements, good stories, great characters, and amazing photography. Misa Uehara as Princess Yuki is wonderful, and the two clowns at the center of the film, Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara, are pretty amazing, giving us one of the funniest and most painful portrayals of human greed and stupidity ever put on film.

Simple Men (1992)

10/10. Re-watched this a few weeks ago for the first time in a few years. Was very pleased to see that it still holds up. In fact, if it's even possible, I appreciated it more than ever. It's such a well-constructed film that it just flows along at a perfect pace. Tremendous editing. Robert Burke and Bill Sage are terrific as brothers. The script is air-tight and full of so many classic sequences that you could pretty much put the entire screenplay under "Memorable Quotes." The best music of any Hal Hartley film. Michael Spiller's usual excellent cinematography. My one and only complaint is that I could have used even more Martin Donovan. In the old Desert Island scenario, this would very likely be with me. Has to be in my top 10 or 20 films.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

9/10. Alexandra had never seen Aguirre, so we finally watched it last night. I had forgotten how utterly stunning the opening sequence is. Wish I could see this one day on a big screen. I did remember, though, the devastating power of the final scene. What a delirious descent into the madness of trying to colonize another people and land. Kinski was certifiable, but what a presence. Though I had seen this several times, it was the first time I had heard Herzog's commentary on the film. It's almost as entertaining as the movie itself.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

7.5/10 - A dark, haunting film from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, who also did The Hurt Locker. I would disagree that it glorifies or justifies torture. One might argue that Bigelow and Boal could have incorporated some CIA and military voices objecting to the torture while it was going on, as was the case in reality, but focusing on the question of torture at all detracts from the film and what's it's trying to say. For a more thorough look at the issue, I recommend Andrew O'Hehir's review, which I'll post below. Strictly from a cinematic standpoint, I think Zero Dark Thirty is a very good film that has some problems that keep it from being great. On the positive side, it's an interesting story (despite knowing what's going to happen in the end), with a strong score by Alexandre Desplat (who else!) and some excellent acting, especially by Jessica Chastain (as Maya, a CIA operative), Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, James Ganolfini (as Leon Panetta) and Mark Duplass in a small role. As with The Hurt Locker, Bigelow seems intrigued by the work that certain kinds of people do. In this case, it's the work of intelligence agents, politicians and the military in the process of finding and killing Bin Laden. And, to some degree, the work of the terrorists. Unfortunately, the narrative arc feels pretty flat after a while. It's more or less about Maya's obsession with tracking down Bin Laden, even though we never really know why she's so obsessed. She spends most of the film trying to get people to believe her, which may have been the case in real life, but it's not portrayed in a very dynamic way in the film. I fault Boal's writing and Bigelow's directing for that. Granted, it's a difficult story to tell, partly because we already know the ending and partly because so many people were involved in so many parts of the world, but ironically, there's not much cinematic tension, despite all of the natural tension of the story itself. I would also say that the first part of the film, which is a pretty disturbing depiction of the torture used on one of the detainees, and the last part, the raid on Bin Laden's compound, both go on too long and feel more clunky than they should. I understand why Bigelow spends so much time in the first case, because the torture sets up the moral ambiguity of the entire film, but it doesn't translate into good cinema, with some mediocre dialog. In the last part, I'm sure the actual raid was probably chaotic, but, hey, we're watching a movie. Trying to "replicate" that chaos may make sense from an intellectual standpoint, but it's still cinema. Don't try to fake us out by pretending it's "real." It's not. A little editing, please. Also, while it may sound ironic in this case, a little more humor could've helped. There are a couple of very rare moments; the film could've used some more. Overall, though, Zero Dark Thirty, is a powerful film that asks some disturbing questions. To steal a line from O'Hehir, it "holds a dark mirror before us; if what we see when we stare into it looks distorted and monstrous, it should also look familiar."

Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937)

8/10. In true Hollywood weird, ethnically screwy fashion, Hungarian Jewish actor László Löwenstein (AKA Peter Lorre) played a mysterious Japanese figure named Mr. Moto in eight films between 1937-1939. Classic B movies that clock in at barely over an hour, with some wonderful black and white cinematography, interesting sets and fast-paced action. They are also considered the first martial arts films in the west, as Mr. Moto frequently employs his judo skills to fight the bad guys. (Yes, Peter Lorre was Bruce Lee before Bruce Lee.) Despite the awkward spectacle of Lorre playing Hollywood Japanese, I do enjoy watching him as an actor. One of the interesting aspects of the Moto films is that he's not a typical Hollywood hero - his motives are not always apparent, he seems to live in the grey zone between the good guys and the criminals, and he brutally kills people on occasion. This Moto film has a darker, more interesting story, some intense scenes, good writing, and a wicked sense of humor at times. Weird stuff, but I'm enjoying watching the series so far.

We're No Angels (1955)

8/10 - If you're tired of the usual Christmas movie fare, try Bogey and Peter Ustinov in this black(ish) comedy about three prisoners trying to escape Devil's Island at Christmastime. They start out planning to rob the store of a hapless merchant and wind up getting themselves involved in the man's family crises. The cast also includes Aldo Ray, Leo Carroll, Joan Bennett, and Basil Rathbone. Ustinov is terrific. Directed by Michael Curtiz. Some very funny writing. And just sentimental enough for Christmas. [FB]

Your Movie Sucks

I was reading David Denby's film reviews in this week's New Yorker and his opening line about Arthur (2011) caught my attention:

"Arthur," a remake of the sloshed "classic" from 1981, has so many things wrong with it that one can only stare at the screen in disbelief.

Ouch.

I was reminded of the famous opening line of Greil Marcus' 1970 Rolling Stone review of Bob Dylan's Self Portrait album:

"What is this shit?"

(It was an awful album. Though it had a few gems buried in the muck.)

Which got me thinking about Roger Ebert's book and ongoing web site section that collects his most brutal reviews: Your Movie Sucks. Critics always seem to save their most entertaining work for the least entertaining films. Here are a couple of excerpts from recent dogs:

"Battle: Los Angeles" is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. Its manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of its makers, who don't even try to make it more than senseless chaos. Here's a science-fiction film that's an insult to the words "science" and "fiction," and the hyphen in between them.

"The Green Hornet" is an almost unendurable demonstration of a movie with nothing to be about. Although it follows the rough storyline of previous versions of the title, it neglects the construction of a plot engine to pull us through. There are pointless dialogue scenes going nowhere much too slowly, and then pointless action scenes going everywhere much too quickly.

And now I am faced with this movie ("Atlas Shrugged"), the most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault. I suspect only someone very familiar with Rand’s 1957 novel could understand the film at all, and I doubt they will be happy with it. For the rest of us, it involves a series of business meetings in luxurious retro leather-and-brass board rooms and offices, and restaurants and bedrooms that look borrowed from a hotel no doubt known as the Robber Baron Arms. . . .

There are conversations in English after which I sometimes found myself asking, "What did they just say?" The dialogue seems to have been ripped throbbing with passion from the pages of Investors’ Business Daily.

There's also a special section called Ebert's Most Hated, which has a number of enjoyable reviews.

I hated this movie (North, from 1995). Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

I have to say, though, Ebert's never been as gleefully vicious in his reviews as others. He likes too many films, giving some pretty bad movies decent ratings. I mean, he awarded two stars to "Batman & Robin," the 1997 motion picture turd with George Clooney as Batman. Even the teenage boys at IMDB gave it a 3.5 rating.

I've been enjoying the reviews of Andrew O'Hehir at Salon for the last few months. He's a good writer. And he does get gleefully vicious:

"Your Highness" must have seemed like a great idea at the outset -- and by "the outset," I mean the six baked minutes it took co-writer and star Danny McBride to scribble the basic concept on the back of an unpaid invoice from the swimming-pool guy. That basic concept appears to be "Cheech & Chong make 'The Princess Bride,'" or perhaps "Beavis and Butt-head meet 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.'" Except, two things: Both of those concepts sound way funnier than this movie is in practice and, no, it shouldn't take six minutes to write that. I'm thinking there was a lot of giggling and high-fiving and talking in junior-high Shakespeare accents involved. . . .

Gingival surgery would be more fun than watching this brain-draining, spirit-sucking attempt at a stoner spoof, which combines the cutting edge of frat-boy wit, the excitement of a mid-'80s made-for-TV action flick and the authenticity of a Renaissance Faire held in an abandoned field behind a Courtyard by Marriott. A bus trip from Duluth to Sioux City would be more fun, and don't think I didn't do my research: That takes 13 hours and costs 96 bucks. . . .

For a few hours after having seen "Your Highness," I considered the possibility that it was the worst movie ever made. The image of McBride as the dim, smug and beefy Prince Thadeous, who begins the story as an irritating lardass loser and ends it as an even more irritating hero, was burned into my brain. . . .

Almost a full day of near-sobriety later, "Your Highness" no longer looks like the worst movie in history (although it might make the top 1 percent). . . . It's not a criminal act, exactly, that [Danny McBride] has dragged a once-promising director and several talented co-stars down the cannabis-scented rathole that is this epic, unwatchable disaster. I can only assume that his parents and friends and various other people genuinely enjoy his work as a writer and performer, and do not wish as fervently as I do that he would find some other occupation.

Anyone have a favorite brutal review?

Debating the "Director's Cut"

Jean-Luc Godard was forced by producer Carlo Ponti to add an opening sequence to Le Mépris (1963) in which Brigitte Bardot lies naked in bed. An argument against the "Director's Cut"?

From the Guardian: "Is a 'director's cut' ever a good idea?"

Is the director's cut just one big self-indulgence, or the chance for an auteur to get his vision across to the public untrammelled by the money men?

Elle E. Jones uses the release of a new version of Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show to discuss the history of the "director's cut" - it started in 1974, with Sam Peckinpaw's Wild Bunch - and some of the different points of view on the whole concept.

The comments following the article continue the discussion and are, for the most part, quite thoughtful, especially compared to most Comments sections.

Unlike most people, I actually prefer the original theatrical release of Blade Runner, though it was interesting to see Ridley Scott's "Final Cut." And after seeing the mess Francis Ford Coppola made of Apocalypse Now: Redux, I haven't exactly rushed out see a lot of Director's Cuts. But there are a few mentioned by people in the Comments section that I might check out. Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, for one.

I think it's great that technology now allows us to compare different versions of a film. On the other hand, the "Director's Cut" is being used more and more to justify yet another release of the same product, only in a bloated, inferior version. And in some cases, the original theatrical version is no longer available, which is not good. The original publication of Leaves of Grass may not be considered the best version of Whitman's classic, but it's crucial for scholarship that we can compare his short original to the later longer editions.

Also, why should the director always be the one to make the "final" authoritative cut? Motion pictures aren't the product of a single person as books are. They involve the artistic and technical efforts of many people. One reader suggested that there should be a "Screenwriter's Cut" that shows the original vision of the work before the arrogant, money-hungry director ruined it. Although made in jest, it's an interesting idea. I would also be intrigued to see a Cinematographer's Cut of certain films. Maybe Gregg Toland's "final" version of The Outlaw, which was directed by Howard Hughes. Or maybe an Actor's Cut. Humphrey Bogart's scenes were deleted from the 1931 comedy Women of All Nations. Why not put him back in the film? He's certainly more important at this point than the original movie.

Personally, I'm hoping some crass, money-grubbing Hollywood studio will do a trimmed-down Commercial Cut of Andy Warhol's Sleep.

"As we were saying yesterday..."

I see from my previous post that I promised to add new material to ZONE the weekend of August 1-2, 2009.

That didn't happen.

And despite a 20-month hiatus, I still don't have anything interesting to post!

But I may start putting up some short pieces now and then.

For now, a film recommendation: The Lincoln Lawyer. Matthew McConaghey finally lands a good role in this gritty, 1970s-flavored trial-mystery thing based on Michael Connelly's book. With Marisa Tomei. Directed by Brad Furman, who I didn't know before this.

Andrew O'Hehir, from Salon, my new favorite film critic, says this:

Furman's film has a funk 'n' soul late-'70s feeling with a dynamite soundtrack to match, as if it were a forgotten West Coast project from early in Martin Scorsese's career. . . . Furman fills up the movie with delicious supporting characters and a baked-L.A. vibe so strong you can almost smell the weed, smog and hot asphalt. . . . It's rare enough to see a Hollywood movie made with this much attention and personality, let alone one that balances comedy and darkness as well as this one does. Not everybody makes it out of "The Lincoln Lawyer" alive, but this is a colorful and generous entertainment, not a plunge into the abyss. If its charming, roguish and not-quite-depraved hero can be redeemed, there may be hope for the rest of us.

Read his full review.

Connelly's a very good writer, the real heir, in my eyes, to Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald. I'm glad to see one of his books and characters treated well by Hollywood. The last attempt (Blood Work) was a mixed bag.