by ·Comments Off on Million Dollar Mermaid (1952, Mervyn LeRoy)

Finally, a decent Esther Williams movie. True-ish story of record-breaking swimming star Annette Kellerman who controversially wore one-piece bathing suits (an arrestable offense in 1907) and somehow less-controversially appeared nude in major films. Kellerman also pioneered synchronized swimming, which Esther re-enacts with Busby Berkeley rather than doing the nude scenes, unfortunately. It’s the second movie (after Sherlock Jr.) I’ve seen in which the star breaks his/her neck onscreen during a water stunt.

Victor Mature (Doc Holiday in My Darling Clementine) plays Esther’s manager/love-interest. From the writer of The Glass Bottom Boat and director of Random Harvest, nominated for best color cinematography but lost to The Quiet Man.

by ·Comments Off on Tales from the Crypt (1972, Freddie Francis)

Anthology horror with a lousy framing story, exactly like Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors. This is actually based on the comics, didn’t just steal the title. Buncha pricks on a tourist romp in some ancient crypts get lost, run into evil cryptkeeper Ralph Richardson (bad parson of The Holly and the Ivy), leading to series of flashbacks before revealing that they’ve all been dead all along.

First, TV star Joan Collins kills her husband (for the insurance) on Christmas, then she’s stalked by a psycho killer santa.

Next, Ian Hendry (Repulsion) leaves his wife to run off with a girl, but he dies in a car crash then comes back a zombie.

Robin Phillips wants to do some realty scheme, but friendly old Peter Cushing refuses to step aside, so Robin destroys the old man, who comes back a zombie and kills him.

Richard Greene (Hound of the Baskervilles) dies in a car crash after his financial advisor (Roy Dotrice, Mozart’s dad in Amadeus) wishes on the monkey’s paw, then he and Greene’s wife have second thoughts and wish him alive again, but he lives in zombie-agony. Three zombie stories in a row!

Mustache businessman Nigel Patrick (The League of Gentlemen) becomes new head of a home for the blind and slashes budgets for everything to the despair of Patrick Magee (Alex’s tormentee/tormentor in A Clockwork Orange), who plots elaborate revenge.

by ·Comments Off on The World of Apu (1959, Satyajit Ray)

The further, depressing adventures of doomed Apu (now played by newcomer Soumitra Chatterjee) in an uncaring, godless world. Apu now lives alone, trying to write a book while dodging the landlord. When he finally attempts to find a proper job, he claims to be less educated and take a manual labor position, but then decides that won’t be any fun. Still with no ideas or direction, he accepts an invitation to the country and accidentally gets married.

Well it’s a weird situation – he’s going to his friend Pulu’s cousin’s wedding, but the groom appears to be insane. The girl’s dad is convinced that there’s an “auspicious hour” during which she must marry to avoid curse, so they ask Apu. “Is this a play or a novel? What do you take me for?” But he does it, returning to his city apartment with his bride Aparna (Sharmila Tagore, star of Devi the following year).

Aparna makes the best of the situation, seems to be a caring and hard working wife. Things are going well for Apu, so we know this can’t last. She goes home to her parents’ after getting pregnant, dies in childbirth, then he wanders away to finish his novel, leaving his son with the in-laws.

Pulu tracks him down five years later. Apu has abandoned the novel and is working odd jobs from town to town. He’s more of a fuckup than I thought he’d end up. He comes to see his son, convinces the boy to leave the disapproving grandpa and come a-roaming, in an apparently happy ending.

Film Quarterly called it “the most important single film made since the introduction of sound” and I’m not even kidding, while Rosenbaum calls it “the final and weakest part” of the trilogy. At least we can say it’s authentic Indian cinema, the same year Fritz Lang released his “Indian Epic”

by ·Comments Off on A Generation (1955, Andrzej Wajda)

I wanted to see Ashes & Diamonds, but since Criterion released it as the third title in a loose war trilogy, I figured I’d dutifully start with the first and work my way up to the masterpiece. But damned if this one didn’t feel like a masterpiece itself. It’s an anti-nazi resistance movie, more emotionally deep than Rossellini’s Paisan, younger and less world-weary than Army of Shadows. It also sports my favorite kind of 1950’s photography: artful, almost expressionistic compositions with great depth and lighting

Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki of Blind Chance, a mild-looking Polish Tobey Maguire) and his buddies are introduced stealing coal from trains of the occupying nazi forces, one of them getting killed straight away, but Stach doesn’t join the organized underground resistance until he sees the beautiful Dorota (Urszula Modrzynska of Knights of the Teutonic Order) recruiting. He gradually gets involved with the resistance, seeing a bright future ahead for the two of them, until she is captured – a sure death sentence – in the final minutes, and Stach meets a new group of recruits alone, the struggle carrying on.

Jasio, doomed:

Stach’s loose-cannon friend Jasio (Tadeusz Janczar of Kanal) kills a German and is eventually shot down in a stairwell. Another friend is played by Roman Polanski, just about to jump into short filmmaking.

Polanski:

Background from E. Mazierska:

[This, Wajda’s first feature,] “marks the beginning of the Polish School, the paradigm of Polish cinema that arose from the political and cultural thaw of the mid-1950s.
…
A so-called political thaw followed the deaths of Stalin in 1953 and the leader of the Polish Communist party, Wladyslaw Bierut, in 1956, and the bloody events of June 1956, when scores of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by government troops during street riots in Poznan. These events paved the way for Wladyslaw Gomulka, who envisaged a more independent, less totalitarian Poland, to become the new party leader in October 1956.
…
[The Polish School] directors, including Wajda, Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and Wojciech Has, were all trained after the war, mostly at the Polish National Film School, in Lodz, which opened in 1948. They rejected the simplistic world vision offered by socialist realism and wanted their films to appeal to the viewer through images, rather than the verbal tirades of elevated individuals.

I also watched Wajda’s documentary short on the disc, Ceramics from Ilza, mostly of interest for the way he photographs the ceramic figures in natural environments: against a lake or a hillside, instead of in the studio where they’d normally be displayed.

by ·Comments Off on Mona Lisa (1986, Neil Jordan)

Bob Hoskins (between Brazil and Roger Rabbit) is a cheap gangster who gets a job driving for expensive call girl Cathy Tyson (The Serpent and the Rainbow) after release from prison. He acts shitty and ignorant, hates his job, but finally warms up to Cathy, helps her search for her old friend, the two of them going on a sort-of Taxi Driver underworld revenge spree, getting in trouble with head gangster Michael Caine.

Hagrid plays Bob’s rat-faced friend. I didn’t recognize Detective Lester Freamon, so young and with few lines or close-ups, until his death. Hoskins won best actor at Cannes, Baftas, Golden Globes and a bunch of film critic groups, but lost the oscar to Paul Newman. DP Roger Pratt worked with Terry Gilliam through 12 Monkeys.

Bob watches Lester Freamon on TV:

Bob’s idea of a disguise:

by ·Comments Off on The Man With The Iron Fists (2012, RZA)

With help from Eli Roth and encouragement from Quentin Tarantino, RZA cast himself in his own martial arts wish-fulfillment movie, constructing a mega-movie with all the favorite scenes, character types and plot threads from what looks like decades of obsession with Asian action cinema. Unlike Tarantino’s movies, RZA’s comes across as a misguided attempt to join in the fun, an overbudgeted male revenge fantasy with generically shit dialogue. It’s overstuffed with plot and action, so stays entertaining enough, at least.

RZA plays an emotionless blacksmith who creates weapons for all the warring clans in some awful village. Clan leader Gold Lion is killed with poison, and his psycho proteges Silver Lion and Bronze Lion take over, shafting revenge-seeking Zen Yi and employing a badass brass-armored wrestler. Lucy Liu runs a brothel. Crazed bounty hunter Russell Crowe comes to town for mysterious reasons. A dude is kicked through the throat with a knife-toed shoe. More people get poisoned. Blacksmith gets his hands cut off and forges new metal ones. Many alliances and betrayals later, Crowe fights the poisoner and RZA fights the brass guy, good guys win.

by ·Comments Off on Three Musketeers (1973, Richard Lester)

I expected to like this a lot more, considering the last 1970’s Richard Lester star-studded period adaptation I watched. Adapted by the guy who wrote Octopussy and a few later Lester films, which starred some of the Musketeers, so I guess there were no hard feelings all around.

Logan’s Run star Michael York is our excitable young D’Artangnan, who teams with musketeers Oliver Reed (between The Devils and Tommy), Frank Finlay (his follow-up to Shaft In Africa) and Richard Chamberlain (Julie Christie’s husband in Petulia). The evil Cardinal Heston plans to undermine the monarchy by exposing Queen Geraldine Chaplin’s affair with Duke Simon Ward. Heston and his partner Faye Dunaway try to preserve evidence of the affair while the Musketeers ride to their presumed deaths trying to hide it. Doesn’t seem like the most noble use of their talents in service of the king, but whatever, it’s pretty fun. Christopher Lee and Spike Milligan were in there somewhere, too.

by ·Comments Off on Georges Franju double feature

Pleins feux sur l’assassin (1961)

A pained old man in fancy garb staggers around before entering a secret room with his wind-up doll, and so dies top-billed Pierre Brasseur within five minutes. Soon his whole estranged family is summoned, and told that they’ll have to maintain his castle but can’t receive an inheritance for five years since the man’s body was never found. It is decided to turn the castle into a tourist attraction, using an electronic light & sound system to tell a ghost story. Meanwhile, all the (generally disrespectful) cousins and siblings and girlfriends and spouses are gradually turning up dead, leaving fewer in line for the inheritance.

Dead man in the walls:

Both movies feature a guy aiming a gun at his reflection:

Murder story full of unmemorable characters, a stock mystery with a less mysterious atmosphere than most of Franju’s non-mysteries, and my faded grey VHS tape defeating Franju’s usually deep shadows. Jean-Louis Trintignant (star of My Night at Maud’s) is our young protagonist, with his girlfriend who is not into the whole castle thing (Dany Saval of the Envy segment of The Seven Deadly Sins). I like how her car radio is tuned to the movie’s score, a sweeping, upbeat waltz. Gerard Buhr (of Bob Le Flambeur) dies first, then Philippe Leroy (fresh off his debut in Becker’s Le Trou) is killed in a jealous rage by Claude, husband of Jeanne (Pascale Audret of Phantom of Liberty), who later jumps from a tower in front of a paying audience (after being attacked by an owl!). An unseen evil manipulating people to their deaths using a microphone and sound system – someone has been watching Dr. Mabuse movies.

Marianne Koch (A Fistful of Dollars) is thrown from her horse but lives, helps unmask the killer/instigator as Jean Ozenne (Bunuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid). They get Jean Babilee (the great dancer of Duelle) to shoot Ozenne as he’s escaping, then we see Babilee attend the funeral so I guess that turned out okay. Same writers as Eyes Without a Face and cinematographer as Judex.

Thomas the Impostor (1964)

Don’t think I’ve ever seen a horse running with its hair on fire before. Thanks, Franju. A WWI movie based on Cocteau’s story of a blank-faced boy faking his way into the war. Thomas (Fabrice Rouleau, son of the actor who played the mysterious leprous baron in L’assassinat du Père Noël) uses the charmed name of his general “uncle” to ferry socialite nurse Emmanuelle Riva (star of Hiroshima Mon Amour) through barricades. Industrialist Jean Servais (the Stephanois of Rififi) wants to marry Riva, finds out the truth about Thomas.

Was less interesting in the second half, as Servais pulls strings to get Thomas an actual army position with Captain Roy (Cocteau regular Edouard Dermithe, hot young poet of Orpheus). A lot of strings are pulled in this movie, all to get unhelpful people closer to a war they should be avoiding. Roy gets a soldier killed through reckless flashlight use, reluctantly sends an eager Thomas on a mission that gets him shot, then Riva’s Thomas-smitten daughter kills herself. Slow, elegant camera – this would be worth seeing again if a better copy shows up.

Released two years after Cocteau’s death, supposedly inspired by his experiences as an ambulance driver during WWI.

by ·Comments Off on All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011, Adam Curtis)

The Trap and The Power of Nightmares felt like they presented central points (clearly expressed in the open of each episode), then assembled evidence in an orderly fashion, supporting their points in a complex, sometimes roundabout way. This one presents a number of points with related themes. Each episode opens with different titles and explores different events which don’t directly relate back to each other. During episode 2 I was wondering when the Ayn Rand story would come back, but during #3 I realized it had been there all along, that this time Curtis is drawing the connections without explicitly calling back to previous subjects all the time. The movies are starting to link together in interesting ways. At this point, you could fill an “art and world politics” course just by running all his movies and assigning his blog as the textbook.

Episode 1 “begins with a strange woman in the 1950’s in New York,” connects Ayn Rand with Alan Greenspan and Silicon Valley, tracing the failures of her personal life and lack of acceptance in her philosphies, comparing to their massive influence decades later among people in power over the global economy. Rand rejected altruism and supported rational egoism, so surprisingly there’s no relation to the RAND Corporation discussed in The Trap, which worked on game theory, positing human behavior as perfectly selfish.

Part 2 is about natural ecosystems, and the myth that they remain perfectly in balance – Curtis says more recent, complex models show them to be in constant flux. Loved the ecology discussions, the scientific project that attempted to precisely measure every detail of a particular field. This is shown alongside early communes (humans trying to live in perfect balance without power structures) and recent national revolts (glorious-looking uprisings by “the people” against authoritarian power, only to see it replaced by new authoritarian power a year later).

Part 3 discusses the social tendency to view people as individually unimportant parts of a large, self-balancing system. We get stories of a game-theory biologist and his colleagues who theorised that all behavior of living creatures is a result of the needs of their genes – more depowering thoughts. We close in Africa where another animal behaviorist, Dian Fossey, was working, showing how false theories on human behavior and evolution combined with the desires of technology companies led to disaster for the people of Congo/Zaire and Rwanda.

So the movie’s often-mentioned “rise of the machines” isn’t literal so much as a social-control concept, caused by simplifying models of natural behavior. It seems perfect that I finished watching this the day before seeing The World’s End, which is about the rise of actual machines that aim to simplify human behavior.

I also read a bunch of articles from Adam Curtis’s amazing blog – sadly without the video segments since I was sitting at the airport sans wifi. Essay called “You think you are a consumer but maybe you have been consumed” about Texas oilman HL Hunt, caricatured in Ken Russell’s Billion Dollar Brain. “The roots of so much of the distrust of the media today lie back with him and his ideas.” One called “Paradiabolical” on Somalia and Algeria, one on England’s history of bumbling spies, and one on animal shows before the rise of David Attenberg Attenborough.