by ·Comments Off on Murder à la Mod (1968, Brian De Palma)

A tale of two icepicks and a handful of murders, in De Palma’s first Blow Up remake. Jumping back and forth in time, we follow Karen, who’s dating reluctant pornographer Chris, and her friend Tracey, who is withdrawing all her family valuables from the bank and putting them in an envelope under the seat of her illegally parked car then leaving the windows open. Introducing a creepy voyeur in a way that feels as if either De Palma or we the viewers might also be creepy voyeurs, and finally the movie’s secret weapon Otto, an undercranked maniac prankster, but not (on purpose) a murderer. Right as the murder mystery was escalating, Otto’s silent comedy bit takes over, his racing thoughts narrating the action.

Decent music, nice photography – the DP went on to shoot Basket Case and Brain Damage for Henenlotter. Against all odds, some of these people worked in movies again. Tracey is in Desert Hearts, Chris starred in a Fulci picture, and Otto became a De Palma regular, most notably starring as The Phantom of the Paradise.

by ·Comments Off on Way Down East (1920, D.W. Griffith)

The DVD has a music score, but in interviews towards the end of his life DW Griffith said he intended for this film to play in sync with Coil’s The Golden Hare With a Voice of Silver. Despite my issues with Coil soundtracks in the past this worked out nicely, with a barn dance set to “The Anal Staircase” a special highlight.

A Lillian Gish desperation spotlight – she’s betrayed by a man who pretends to marry her, then after her baby dies she moves to another town to start over, but not far enough away from the local busybodies. Now handsome Richard Barthelmess (disgraced flyer of Only Angels Have Wings) is falling for her, and the heel is after Richard’s ex-girl Kate, who is beloved by comic-relief butterfly professor Creighton Hale (The Cat and the Canary). It all works out, ending in an absurd triple wedding.

The Prof, Kate, and hat-rack cow:

Rightly known for its climax, when Gish runs into the frozen wilderness and passes out on an icy river which breaks into chunks heading for a waterfall until daredevil Richard rescues her, this being before stunt doubles had been invented. An editing quirk I noticed throughout: we’ll see a character action in a medium shot then it will cut to a wide shot and we’ll see the same action again, as if whenever our perspective pulls back we have to rewind a couple seconds.

Gish finally fingers the heel:

by ·Comments Off on Flipside (2023, Christopher Wilcha)

Introducing Chris with clips from his film The Target Shoots First, he fast-forwards his life since, getting to keep working behind the camera while starting a family. But to his regret, “I direct tons of commercials, hundreds of them, but I don’t finish even one of my own films.” So, he starts shooting Flipside Records where he worked when he was a teen, but fortunately that’s not the movie, since we’ve got enough record store docs. Instead he stitches together his partial docs into a Cameraperson meta-doc about lessons from human experience, and the art life. Upsetting to learn that I once lived 20 minutes from Flipside – of course I couldn’t drive then, so we never explored further than Boonton.

Wilcha in interview with Vikram Murthi, whose enthusiasm got me to watch this:

[The Target Shoots First] was made at CalArts, on those machines and with the help of my mentors who would watch cuts. A lot of these people were serious artists — like, for instance, James Benning. His advice to me at one point was, “Make 60 one-minute sequences,” which is so James Benning.

Vadim Rizov:

When, early on, Wilcha shows that cult TV icon Uncle Floyd is a regular crate-digger [at Flipside], I flashed to my only real reference point for him, David Bowie’s “Slow Burn” from 2002’s Heathen (no contrarianism intended, one of my favorite Bowie albums). An hour later, Wilcha drops the song as performed live in concert, not cutting away for over two minutes as my heart briefly stopped at this unexpected treat.

“I always had this feeling that the world was gonna forget, and that I was somehow in charge of remembering.”

–
Knock Knock, It’s Tig Notaro (2015)

Funny, when Wilcha talks about never finishing a documentary since Target, this road-trip stand-up doc never comes up. Sure he’s a co-director, but he’s got other Flipside/This American Life crew members, so it seems like a Wilcha joint. Documents Tig’s tour with Jon Dore (star of movie The Pickle Recipe) to houses, farms, and other venues proposed by fans.

by ·Comments Off on L’important c’est d’aimer (1975, Andrzej Zulawski)

I’m going with the original title, since the English That Most Important Thing: Love has always annoyed me. Made between The Devil and Possession, the camera rushes and roams, the Delerue music rises and fades.

Seedy burnout photographer Fabio Testi (a Monte Hellman regular) interjects himself into the lives of fallen actress Romy Schneider (Inferno, The Trial) and her husband Jacques Dutronc (the Godard of Every Man For Himself). They’ve all got some intense half-unspoken feelings for each other, and strict rules around their encounters. Despite his own money problems, Fabio bankrolls a Shakespeare play with Klaus Kinski to get his new actress friend some self-respect. Feels very based-on-a-novel, and it is, but Zulawski and DP Aronovich (Providence, Time Regained) keep it interesting enough.

Fabio’s book collector friend:

by ·Comments Off on Vogel 15: The Spanish Earth (1937, Joris Ivens)

Unfortunately they still haven’t invented commie propaganda films that aren’t boring, but in the early scenes Joris pulls out some terrific images of the farmland before it goes into newsreel-like war scenes. What does lboxd mean by “The film would have been seen by those making it as a documentary.”

The soldiers and the farmers working for the same cause, driving back and destroying fascism. Nice story – of course this outcome brought decades of prosperity and creativity, which is why Spanish cinema was so dominant in Europe throughout the mid-century. The music is pretty decent, and halfway through I realized there were two narration tracks and switched from Hemingway to Welles.

by ·Comments Off on Juror #2 (2024, Clint Eastwood)

Clean-cut white family man Nick “Steve” Hoult pulls jury duty (in Savannah GA, so not quite a rural juror). He hears the story of Problematic James (Super 8 kid Gabe Basso) murdering his girlfriend (the director’s own daughter), and suddenly Hoult realizes that maybe he hit the girl with his own car when he was out not-drinking after an emotional day. Out of guilt he tries to 12-angry-men the jury into acquitting, then after consulting his lawyer friend Kiefer, he tells his pregnant wife that he will Protect Our Family and tries to 12-angry-men the jury into convicting.

Stressed-out Hoult:

DA Toni Collette is running for office and wants this to be an open-and-shut case, but ex-cop juror J.K. “J/K” Simmons thinks she hasn’t investigated well enough and starts sniffing around until he’s kicked off the jury and replaced with an alternate. The throughline is professionals getting into lazy ruts and missing details that don’t fit the easiest story. Toni’s redemption arc is to be dissatisfied with victory and putting in the extra work to track down Hoult. Not a showy film, letting the script and actors carry the drama, though crosscutting between the defense and prosecution during the opening arguments was cool. The defense lawyer was in the Devilevator, other jurors whose names I caught include a boys club guy from Bojack, the purple lady from Logan Lucky, Leslie Bibb of Midnight Meat Train, and a stoned kid from the recent Halloween remakes.

by ·Comments Off on Eastern Condors (1987, Sammo Hung)

Chinese prisoners are dropped into Vietnam days after the US pulled out of the war to destroy a weapons cache before it falls into enemy hands. Kind of a Dirty Dozen plot, but these guys are not soldiers, and the first one dies tragicomically because he doesn’t open his parachute in time due to a stutter when counting to twenty. But the USA was counting on the idea that all Chinese people know kung fu (true), and that losing comrades one at a time over the course of an arduous Vietnam mission in a 1980’s movie will turn one of them into Rambo, and this happens to Sammo, who completes the mission. By the end he’s killing people using tree leaves as missile weapons – it’s acting like a serious war movie, the action scenes short and brutal (and sometimes astounding), but with the kinds of moves you’d expect from a parody.

Thin-mustached colonel in charge is Lam Ching-Ying of Mr. Vampire and all the Bruce Lee movies. Yuen Woo-Ping is Mouse (loses his legs during a machine gun bridge crossing) and Original Foon Yuen Biao is Weasel, but various translations refer to both men as Rat, so overall the cast is hard to figure out. The commando girl who sticks with them is Joyce Godenzi (the future Mrs. Sammo Hung), and the evil giggling general (Criterion: “like a eunuch villain from a King Hu film transported to the present”) is Yuen Wah of Kung Fu Hustle.

The movie’s final words still resonate today:

by ·Comments Off on Golden Eighties (1986, Chantal Akerman)

A mall-set musical. Nobody respects horny young Robert, not his girl Lili at the salon across the aisle, not even his parents who run the clothing store where he works. Lili waits until Robert is about to marry her coworker Mado before running off with him. Meanwhile his mom has her own drama, bumping into long-lost American lover Eli, who wants her back, while she focuses on running her shop and barely gives him the time of day.

Reluctant salon owner Lili played the lead in a Vicente Aranda movie.

Jean (Jean-François Balmer of Cosmos) owns Lili’s hair place but she doesn’t love him, so he finally wrecks the place in a rage and sells his lease to the neighbors.

Robert’s mom Delphine, post-makeover, with Eli: American director John Berry, who made He Ran All The Way with fellow blacklistee John Garfield

Pascale Salkin (left, the girl who isn’t Maria de Medeiros in I’m Hungry, I’m Cold) bounces between plots, and is the only person in Golden Eighties to also star in The Eighties, which is somehow not out on video. Would-be fiancee Mado later appeared in Carnages. Nathalie “Conann” Richard played a nameless hairdresser coworker of theirs, and neighbor Sylvie who runs the snack shop was in films by Demy, Varda, Sautet, Ozon, Lelouch, etc.

Robert’s dad has the best voice of the men here (Charles Denner aka The Man Who Loved Women). Delphine Seyrig would only star in one more feature – Joan of Arc of Mongolia – before dying of cancer at 58.

by ·Comments Off on Ricky Jay vs. FDR

Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants (1996)

These shows have been nicely restored by a pirate wizard with a hacked VCR, but 30fps isn’t nearly enough to see what Ricky’s hands are doing. And even if you account for the speed and attention and memory this would take, I don’t think human fingers can pull single cards so accurately from the middle of card decks, which accounts for the demons on his shoulders on the movie poster. Peak television.

–
FDR: A One Man Show (1987)

Chris Elliott acts out lesser-known episodes from the US president’s life, like how he lost his legs to a shark attack, how Eleanor lost her head when the Japanese bombed the White House, and the two years of his presidency he spent lost on a desert island. This is a filmed stage show with an audience, like the Ricky Jay, but this one gets interrupted by the stagehands, the makeup artist, an understudy who speaks only German, and the local basketball team that was playing next door.