Bruce is a foreigner in an English-speaking airport, and between the camera focus and sense of humor, movie gets off to a very shaky start, and never quite gets going. Okay yes, he fights Chuck Norris at the Colosseum, and at least Chuck is fast, unlike every other unworthy opponent here. And a pretty cool villain in Uncle Wang, who Bruce is supposed to be helping out before he goes insane and knifes his own men.
In a Lynch mood, rounding up some pieces I hadn’t seen, or not lately.
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Fictitious Anacin Commercial (1967)
A one-minute lark, man in a rural jump-cut rocking chair (next to a bloody sack or dress) has a headache, the anacin gets him up dancing again. Big music, some weird slo-mo, and Jack Fisk is obviously the man.
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BlueBob Egg (2004)
Not gonna count this as a movie, it’s a single take of a dude in a mask getting arrested. No BlueBob music included. Web video from the old site?
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I Touch a Red Button (2011)
He certainly does touch a red button – that’s about all he does, more or less to the beat of a good Interpol song I don’t recognize, from when I lost track of them post-Antics. Animated character, just three or four frames, with manic camera blur. The title hangs above the little long-nosed button-smashing guy the entire time. Pretty great, honestly.
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Lamp (2003)
Making the colored based of a two-toned yellow and grey lamp
Discussed: lunch, coffee, pissing in the sink
There’s a score, a light beat.
“future home of Disc of Sorrow” sign is visible.
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Idem Paris (2013)
I’ve seen this before, endlessly watchable mini-doc of the men and machinery making a series of prints of one of Lynch’s artworks.
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Ant Head (2018)
Not the head of an ant, but a head covered in ants, scored by some good noise music. The head is composited onto a still background of power lines, the edges matted off so ants walking over the top side vanish into the background. At the end the image reverses and slowly zooms in, a little radio play monologue about Pete vs. the woodcutters. Based on a Thought Gang song that was based on a cancelled Twin Peaks video game sequel.
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The Spider and the Bee (2020)
A pretty long time to spend in a spider web, but the shadow of the lead characters (the spider wins) and the light off the web held my attention. Some light ambient music, and best of all is the sound effects, not just assigned to the creatures, but also the camera moves.
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David Lynch: The Art Life (2016, Barnes & Nguyen & Neergaard-Holm)
Nice little doc about Lynch’s history and art career, as told by the man himself. Got inspired to watch this after Lamp, which I still slightly prefer, though this is obvs valuable and got a standalone Criterion blu release, so what do I know. Sync sound is rare, swearing is common. Real Blue Velvet vibes when he talks about living three different lives at once during high school and tells a story of an upset naked woman walking down his street one night. Surprised to hear him say Philadelphia was really good for him. After The Alphabet, David got a day job at a printer – he likes printers (see Idem Paris) but hates day jobs – then won an AFI grant, made The Grandmother in their apartment, AFI people helped him get into an advanced filmmaking program in L.A. where he made Eraserhead.
Laura is Ghost and Mrs. Muir star Gene Tierney, and she is dead. Detective Dana Andrews (moving up from playing the mob guy in Ball of Fire) is the detective, inviting Laura’s friend Clifton Webb to join the investigation since he’s a writer who loves murder cases. Prickly gossip columnists make good movie characters. Our chief suspect is Laura’s fiancee Vincent Price, but Dana keeps up the heat (incl. some weird tactics: one time he gets everyone over to drink cheap whisky then dismisses them a minute later). Laura turns out to be alive, a friend of hers having been shotgunned in the face and presumed to be her, and at her still-alive party, jealous Webb is outed as the killer.
“Dames are always pulling a switch on you.” I like Andrews – he has an interesting face, but he underplays hard in this. He’s better than Dorothy Adams as Housekeeper Bessie, who must’ve improved by the time she appeared in The Killing, since I don’t remember anyone derailing that movie like this. It’s one of those perfect-looking 40’s films – besides all the great closeups and composed shots there’s such smooth camera movement.
The lost Rivette movie (besides the early shorts, and the extended version of Va Savoir, and a decent copy of L’Amour Fou) finally pieced together from a couple blu-rays and a youtube source.
Part 1 is Renoir flipping through his career. Extended clips are presented from each film, then an interview segment which may or may not relate to the movie, a different collaborator joining the conversation each time there’s a break. I should read a book on Renoir because now after listening to him shit on fine art for 90 minutes I’m curious about the influence of his fine-artist father.
“The word artistic was our enemy – we hated it.”
“I’m starting to think now that the main theme of a film isn’t terribly important.”
Very quotable movie, Renoir and the others dropping gold for hours.
“One of the ways of fighting against modern boredom is art … a work of art is not made to be looked at, it’s made to permeate living people, people in the street … that goes against all current practice, which is to create a monument, a sound-and-light spectacle.”
Part 2 opens with a montage of Michel Simon performances in Renoir movies, then Simon joins for an extremely casual cafe chat. At one point the film runs out and audio keeps recording while they change the reels.
Part 3 visits the chateau where Rules of the Game was filmed, Renoir and Marcel Dalio discussing the evolution of that film. They show the shot with Dalio beaming in front of the mechanical music machine, twice – Renoir says it’s the best shot of his career, and I’d agree. Besides the chateau, we spend most of our time in a screening room. Conversation turns from fate to revolutions, and we see extended scenes from La Marseillaise. They even discuss Le petit théâtre, which if release dates are to be believed, wasn’t even nearly out yet. Very little on the 1940’s and 50’s films – I would’ve gladly watched a couple more episodes.
Tying this up before part four comes out. Neo’s in limbo, aptly represented as a train station, having passed out using his matrix-powers in the real world. Morpheus and Trinity and the Oracle’s protector Seraph (Collin Chou with WKW glasses) visit Lambert for some interminable dialogue, cutting a deal to rescue him. But the dummies should’ve known not to trust a character named Bane, who gets reverse-matrixed, possessed by Agent Smith, and blinds Neo with a power cable (he can still see).
Movie is about 60% boring, and keeps trying to make us care about new characters, particularly the enthusiastic young Clayton Watson, a Neo fan who steps up during the climactic battle. But the Wachowskis are also good at creating touching human moments on the flimsiest of background and evidence. Carrie-Anne dies in a crash, and Neo gets the central AI to agree to reset the world if Neo can defeat the now thousands of Agent Smiths, which he does by simply absorbing them then exploding.
In 2003 we watched this, wanting it to rule, but it kinda sucked. In 2021, I am a serious auteurist cinephile who understands the unique artistry of the Wachowskis, rewatching with a corrected mindset, wanting it to rule, but it kinda sucks. The action certainly moves like a twice-as-big upgrade to the original, but the digital effects and music picks say otherwise.
Keanu dreams an extreme-bullet-time moto-leather-splosion intro, then he’s back with Larry, who always uses three words when one would suffice. Jada Pinkett Smith is a bigwig in a red coat. Humans live in caves, led by Harry Lennix, and worship Neo and Morpheus. Neo has hot sex with Trinity, then has to battle Oracle’s agent Serif before he’s allowed to visit her – those two are said to be programs, not human. At this point, Neo battles a playground full of Agent Smiths, who have been duplicating themselves.
There are too many new characters, and it’s very talky, but somehow Lambert Wilson and his wife Monica Bellucci are important – she opens a secret door behind a bookcase and shoots a guard with a silver bullet, then the albino twins turn into medusa-haired ghosts. The crazy car chase with the twins is just as crazy as I remember it, and Neo isn’t even there. This is all a quest to save the Keymaster, who all but admits he’s an NPC. Keymaster leads Neo to The Architect, who is of course a genteel bearded white man (c’mon Wachowskis). GW Bush appears when he says the phrase “varying grotesqueries.” “It was all another system of control” is very Adam Curtis. There’s talk of performing a full system reset, saving a few people after Zion is destroyed, but we’re distracted by the death and resurrection of Trinity. Chad Stahelski and Leigh Whannel both in the credits.
My WFH setup:
What I do at work:
Think I like this more now than I did when it came out. It was Phantom Menace Spring, and I wasn’t sure I enjoyed big-budget sci-fi spectacle anymore. Now I’m older and stupider, with fewer pretensions and hang-ups, and prefer a good flashy story over nonsense like this.
Opening noir scene is great. The Matrix 4 trailer is pounding white rabbit references into our heads, and I see those were present from the beginning. Neo’s side gig is selling $2k minidiscs to cyberpunks, and in straight life he’s Thomas Anderson… Thom Andersen… is that anything? It’s a verbose movie, and there’s a religious feel to the dialogue after he meets Trinity at a White Zombie nightclub. Forgot that it’s AI tech using humans as batteries, not aliens. The reflections in this are so good – in glasses, doorknobs, etc.
We know the five leads (Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, Agent Smith, and turncoat Joe Pantoliano), who else was on the team? The main guy in the ship is Tank: Marcus “son of Tommy” Chong, of a Mario Van Peebles movie. His brother Dozer (killed with a cheesy energy weapon) is Anthony Ray Parker, of Dead Air, a movie about a radio DJ on the air during a zombie invasion, from the year after Pontypool. Very blonde badass Switch was Belinda McClory. Apoc, I dunno who he is, I’m just upset it wasn’t spelled Epoch. Matt “Mouse” Doran died almost immediately but has the most impressive filmography, in a Lucas and a Malick, also a gangster Macbeth. The Oracle was Gloria Foster, who did respectable work throughout the 60’s. And Keanu’s stunt double went on to direct John Wick.
Since I’ve watched In The Earth, why not catch up with the last Wheatley feature I’m keen to watch. Warehouse deal of cash for rifles goes wrong when the hired help have history and start attacking each other. They’re uncontrollable, and violence escalates, and soon everyone’s been shot in the shoulder, then in the leg, and they spend the second half crawling around after each other. There’s a little bit of who’s-double-crossing-who and who’s-got-the-money and can-they-escape but mostly we’ve got an hourlong gunfight, which is something a director with real visual/editing flair could have a field day with. Wheatley isn’t that director, so I’m not clear why he’d make an all-action movie, but spatial sense is pretty good and the performances kept me awake.
Copley, shortly before getting set on fire:
Arms dealers are District 9 star Sharlto Copley in a blue suit, capable guy (a bad shot) Armie Hammer, tough ex-panther Babou Ceesay, temperamental flunky Jack Reynor.
The Buyers:
Michael Smiley and Cillian Murphy are buying, with Brie Larson, druggie fuckup Sam Riley. Also each group has another flunky whose name I didn’t catch, and three new guys appear but don’t live long enough to matter.
Back in theaters for this one. I love going into Wes movies with absurdly high expectations, because he always meets them. I’ll read the hater critics some other time – maybe they were looking for something more than an endless parade of favorite actors and impeccable production design, but I wasn’t. Much of the movie is in 4:3 black and white, and either my screening was over-matted or the titles appear at the extreme top and bottom of frame.
Bookending segments in the newspaper office, with editor Bill Murray alive in the first piece and dead in the second. Bicycle tour through the town of Ennui by Owen Wilson. Story 1 is relayed by Tilda Swinton, involving art dealer Adrien Brody patronizing imprisoned painter Benicio del Toro whose guard/model is Léa Seydoux (they get some actual French people in here sometime). I was least involved in the middle piece, about faux-May’68 student revolutionary Timothée Chalamet’s affair with reporter Frances McDormand. Then Jeffrey Wright is reporting on celebrated police chef Steve “Mike Yanagita” Park, who helps foil a plot by Edward Norton to kidnap chief Mathieu Amalric’s son.
Michael Sicinski (Patreon) also liked the Benicio story best:
By contrast, Anderson’s snotty riff on May ’68, “Revisions to a Manifesto,” succumbs to the director’s worst comedic instincts, essentially declaring that political desire is nothing more than sublimated horniness … The final segment, “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner,” sort of splits the difference, although it is elevated considerably by a fine performance from Jeffrey Wright, channeling James Baldwin as a melancholy ex-pat uncomfortable with his journalistic distance. The story itself is mostly just a riff on The Grand Budapest Hotel‘s portrait of courtly civility as a bulwark against anarchy. But it’s Wright’s representation of honest inquiry, and humanistic curiosity, that makes it far less silly than it should be.
Watched again a month later, with Katy this time.