by ·Comments Off on Vengeance Is Mine (1979, Shohei Imamura)

Imamura’s comeback film a decade after Profound Desire of the Gods. Flashed back and forth in time and space and starts at the end, rather like most of today’s movies, telling story of a sociopath killer with a troubled past. Iwao Enokizu is on a delivery run when he kills a couple of guys. Goes on the run for a couple months, pretends to be a professor and takes up with a girl at the boarding house he’s hiding at. They seem to like each other, but he ends up killing her (and her distrustful ex-con mother) and I think one other person before getting caught.

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Style to spare. Not my favorite movie, but definitely good and possibly great, makes up for the last Imamura movie I wasn’t too sure about, The Eel. Happy to see a very modern Japanese movie, not a sloggy period piece. Watched with Jimmy Lo, who also liked. Made about the same time as Days of Heaven, Apocalypse Now, Stalker, Stroszek, Kagemusha, Zigeunerweisen, Altered States and The Elephant Man.

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by ·Comments Off on Spider-man 3 (2007, Sam Raimi)

Felt kinda empty and unexciting. Too bad. Bruce Campbell has a longer, funnier scene than usual, but otherwise it’s a big ol’ studio comic picture. The Sam Raimi that brought us Evil Dead is gone. Oh well, enjoy the aerial acrobatics and the sandman effects and wait in line for the next one.

Tobey is still our man, Kirsten is still better to look at than to watch, and Franco is still a rich and vengeful third wheel (feat. a welcome Daddy Dafoe cameo). But we need more baddies with half-assed excuses to dislike spiderman, so we’ve got Parker responsible for photographer Topher Grace losing his job, and we’ve got Thomas Haden Church who apparently killed spidey’s uncle and I think Topher convinces Haden that Tobey did something I dunno it doesn’t matter.

Coincidentally, Tobey turns the dude he fired into Venom, and the dude who killed his uncle turns into Sandman. but first, Tobey experiments with the Venom suit and goes all Chris Gaines in some horrible dance/club sequence. Sandy blows away unharmed, Venom “dies” strangely, and Franco dies by rocket sled, same as his dear daddy.

Also Theresa Russell was Haden’s wife but I didn’t notice at the time, and Bryce Dallas was Topher’s girl.

Anyway, there was some effects and stuff, and I dig Topher’s style. Movie was just good enough to keep seeing the sequels. This ranks somewhere between the grim and badly paced Batman Begins and the surprisingly decent X-Men 3.

by ·Comments Off on The Valet (2006, Francis Veber)

Still shocked that I liked this, after the awful cheesy trailer. It’s well-played light comedy, a story of little consequence, but kept on a high enough level that I even recommended it to people. The director is well known for quality (The Dinner Game), but I’d so grown to dislike that trailer that my enjoyment of the movie was as surprising as if I’d ended up liking The Italian or the last two Pirates of the Carribean films.

Anyway, valet is standing next to fabulously rich dude arguing with his supermodel girlfriend when a photo is shot by tabloid journalist. In order to keep his fortune from a wife who’d love to catch him cheating, the rich guy has to pretend the supermodel wasn’t with him at all, but with the other guy, the valet. So he and the wife hire competing teams of spies to follow the two around, one group trying to prove the valet and supermodel are not together and the other trying to make it look like they are. Fun premise, and it’s carried through well. Valet ends up with his childhood girlfriend after they get plenty jealous of each other’s new lovers, and model gets her revenge on rich guy, with the closing shot having the same photographer catch him in a trap standing next to a transsexual.

The Farrelly brothers are supposed to helm the U.S. remake in 2008.

by ·Comments Off on Killer of Sheep (1977, Charles Burnett)

Wowwww, wonderful movie, lives up to its reputation after I’d had lowered expectations from Several Friends and My Brother’s Wedding. This little masterpiece falls right between those two somehow.

Simply but artistically shot, just follows a guy who works part-time at a slaughterhouse and wants to fix his car and live comfortably with his wife. Things don’t work out that well. Movie not centered on him really, follows some neighbor kids, some friends of his and others nearby. A mostly realistic little neighborhood drama. Don’t know what to say, don’t know what made it so affecting, but that’s why I ain’t no film critic here.

The part where the car engine falls off the back of our hero’s truck had more suspense-and-release than anything in Spider-man 3.

by ·Comments Off on L’Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)

The first time I watched this, I felt bad for not liking it. Just… nothing ever happened, and it seemed to mostly consist of people standing theatrically far apart from each other and looking away. Bored me to death. Then I embraced my dislike of L’Avventura since I found that more and more Italian films made me feel tired and annoyed. And geez, can those mofos not lip-synch properly. I will never get over that. But watching L’Eclisse and talking to Dawn convinced me to give this one another go, and so I have…

And what a masterpiece it is! Beautiful from start to finish. I guess knowing what I was in for (pace-and-plot-wise) and knowing what to look for (camera compositions, not an engaging story) really helped. Played most of the commentary track afterwards and that helped too.

There is a story here. Gorgeous Claudia (Monica Vitti) vacations with her friends Anna (reconnecting with fiance Sandro after months away) and Giulia (with her drab husband) on a cruise. At a rocky island, Anna disappears and never returns. Claudia and Sandro search everywhere for her, extending the search to the mainland, where they finally fall for each other and give up on Anna.

Story’s not so bad, characters not as horrible as all that, just can’t believe that Antonioni can set up EVERY shot so beautifully.

by ·Comments Off on Charles Burnett shorts

Several Friends (1969)
Just that, several friends. They’re in a car discussing what to do. Eventually some of them do something. Sound isn’t great, movie goes nowhere, looks like a student/demo film.

The Horse (1973)
First one with a “story”, three white guys come to the old farm to have their horse put down, but they gotta wait for the black guy with the gun to arrive first. His son is out in the field taking care of the horse, close-up on son’s face as the trigger is pulled is the final shot. A much better “first film” than the other one.

When It Rains (1995)
Not a first film at all, but a late-career short, about a woman who absolutely needs the rent money and a friend who helps her out by calling in favors all across town. I liked it and all, but don’t see where the Rosenbaum “best short of the entire 90’s” opinion comes from. Guess there’s some jazz structure in there and I don’t know what that means.

by ·Comments Off on Play Time (1967, Jacques Tati)

Wow, this is one of my favorite movies now. I was right about watching it in the theater (on film)… really helped see everything properly. More important, possibly, was seeing it for a second time, already knowing the pace and the organization of story (such as there is a story), being able to sit back and enjoy.

First third (?) of the movie is an architectural dream, all buildings and structure and angles, beautiful and disorienting. Whole movie is concerned with structure and glass.

Funny, but not punchline-funny so much as enjoyable and light, building up towards the end of the crazy restaurant sequence when suddenly humor’s flying from all directions.

I feel like I “got it” this time, but also feel like I missed a lot. Not in a bad way, more in a “could see this again and again” way.

I’d thought Mr. Hulot wasn’t in this one but of course he is. What was I thinking of… Parade?

Katy, Jimmy, Misty, even Adam liked it.

by ·Comments Off on My Brother’s Wedding (1983, Charles Burnett)

Wasn’t expecting this at all. Has a real amateur-theater feel to the acting and dialogue, wasn’t knocked over by the direction or editing, so all I’m left with is the story/moral… which is pretty alright.

Pierce just wants to hang out with his cool friend Soldier, but his family’s bugging him about his college-grad brother’s impending marriage to a rich hottie (with whom Pierce does not get along). Well, Soldier dies and his funeral’s on the same day as the wedding. What will Pierce do? Idiotically, he races from the wedding to the funeral before his bro+girl have walked down the aisle. The wedding ring in his pocket, he doesn’t even make it to the funeral on time. What a douche.

Nothing against marginalized director Burnett’s intentions… making a little film about family and friendship and personal responsibility and “doing the right thing” (some six years before Do The Right Thing), focusing mostly on small things and small events, but the thing struck me as amateurish. Maybe my expectations were high for this one (“Burnett, lost masterpiece director”) and lowered for Killer of Sheep, which I loved a few weeks later.

by ·Comments Off on The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006, Ken Loach)

Kind of ruins the Atlanta Film Festival to take a break from their offerings and watch a movie this good.

I don’t know much about Ireland vs. England but it looks like a bad scene. Bros Cillian and Teddy turn to rebellion after being terrorized by brits, then when their guy signs a peace agreement, Teddy joins the new government while Cillian keeps fighting. ‘ventually Ted kills his own brother.

Family vs. country / neighbor vs. neighbor thing plays out very effectively. Movie leaves me with my stomach burning. All shots of countryside are heartbreakingly wonderful. No death is taken lightly. Loach takes his “socialist realism” to a Serious Historical Topic and succeeds hilariously. Best picture at Cannes no duh. I’m only writing so little because I waited too long and have lost some details.