Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Due Date (2010)

Ah, it's an old chestnut the buddy road comedy, and its done well here. They don't start out as buddy's though, Robert Downey Jr. and Zack Galifianakis. It's basically Plains, Trains, and Automobiles minus the trains. Galfianakis gets Downey and himself kicked off an airplane and put on a no fly list. Downey left his wallet on the plane and is strandrad in Atlanta while his wife (Michelle Monaghan, pretty but with little to do in this one) is in L.A. due for a cisarian section in just a few days. Downey must get to her, Galifianakis has a rental car, so away they go. He's a trying one to travel with that Galifianakis, and Downey's very uptight, but thanks to a series of adventures and a little drug use Robert Jr. comes to warm  to him. This movie does its genera well, there's some gross out humor but not too much, it mostly concentrates on more traditional comedy very much like PTAA. Rarely do I find a comedy that's this much of a pleasure to watch.

Good +

Monday, November 28, 2011

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Well that was rough. I had to watch it in parts, at first because I couldn't get into it, and later because it was intense, and often off-putting. It was effective though I think, Darren Aronofsky is a director that you can't just watch placidly, you have to grapple with everything he does, he makes it that way. The plots, the themes, and the execution, he has an idiosyncratic style. I haven't seen Black Swan yet, and now I both want to more and am afraid to more. I was very impressed with The Wrestler, but didn't like The Fountain.

Requiem is only Aronofsky's second film, it is a story about addiction, an examination of it through four interleted characters. In a way its like an updated more intense and graphic version of The Days of Wine and Roses, a relationship that may have seemed promising but was doomed.  Jennifer Connelly and Jared Leto do good work as the doomed couple, and Marlon Wayans is satisfactory as the best friend, but its Ellen Burston's movie.

I love Ellen Burston, she just enhances everything she's in, your drawn to her performances. She's strong even when portraying a weak character like this one, Sarah Goldfarb. Her husbands dead, her son's a trial, she lives in a small apartment on Brighton Beach, and I suspect living off some kind of welfare. She enjoys watching an infomerical over and over again. She gets a call from a casting service saying she has been selected to be on TV, presumably for a game show.  She's not told when, or for what program, only that they will be contacting her. She waits, she waits, she gets a form, she fills it out and then she waits again. She's not happy about how she looks, she wants to lose weight for her television appearance, but every diet she tries she finds she can not sustain, a neighbour tells her about these wonderful little pills.
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The repeated sequences of the drug ritual, Sarah's pill popping, the toking up or whatever it is the other characters are doing. Things spin around and around, going faster and faster. One of my main problems with the film at first, in addition to not having the most relatable characters for me, was how slow it seemed. But the pace picks up and keeps going and going, building and building. By the end were ricocheting between character and character as they repeat parallel mistakes and actions, as the spiral leads to inevitable and unpleasant conclusion, until all is lost.

So needless to say a bit of a downer. But quite something, which even though I didn't really 'like' this movie, I was impressed. Your forced to go to a place you'd rather not, to witness a train wreak, and I don't know if you could ever make a better anti-drug movie. It's something.

Great

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Smokey & the Bandit (1977), What! NO Beer? (1933)

Smokey & the Bandit, I'd never seen it. The gold standard of the 1970's trucker genera I'm glad I saw it because I suspect this will make a very good wallpaper film, one of those movies you can have on in the background and just kind of lightly pay attention too. I confess that's what I did with this film. Sally Field cute, Jackie Gleason, we'll he's what you'd want out of a Jackie Gleason character. Turns out Smokey means a cop or patrolmen, where as Bandit means Burt Reynolds. Bandit has a lot of colorful trucker friends who help Bandit keeps the Smokey's off of his tale as he runs a truck load of beer from Texas to Georgia, which for some reason is considered bootlegging and hence a major reason to avoid  smokey's . Not spectacular.

Good

What! No Beer. A Buster Keaton talkie. Buster didn't do too well in the talkies, though obviously still revered as a silent genius. Busters voice sounds the way you'd expect it to given his naive stone faced persona, he's perfectly adequate as a talker. Jimmy Durante steals it though, how could he not. Buster and Jimmy made a number of these buddy comedies together, in this one they are two friends who hope to capitalize off the repel of Prohibition by fixing up an abandoned brewery. They jump the gun however and start making the beer the day after the referendums and don't wait for the official repeal. The cops come, but the pair didn't really know how to make beer and turns out there product was alcohol free. The police let them go. Jimmy finds someone who can make real beer but they tell upright Keaton that it's near-beer. Organized crime becomes interested in using them as a distributor, Keaton is smitten by a gangsters moll. Hijinks's. Roughly Three Stogies quality.

Fair

The Brotherhood (1968)


Quite good proto-Godfather offering. Kirk Douglas helms the film and carries it, his characters interesting enough to hang with for an hour and forty minutes. Douglas's father had been a mobster and now he's one too, part of a powerful syndicate but still fostering deep sentimental ties to the old school Mafiosos who have been pushed aside. He welcomes his brother (Alex Cord) into the outfit after the young man's marriage, Douglas is a family man and loves having him around. He is also a cautious man and when his compatriots decide they want to get involved in a scheme to skim money from the federal government, Douglas decides its too risky and repeatedly vetoes the measure (the syndicate operates as a kind of council that requires unanimous consent from its leaders). Frustrated his fellow mobsters decide that if Douglas doesn't play along they will  have him eliminated, they enlist his younger brother to try and talk some sense into him. Douglas won't listen, then he discovers that one of his fellow board members was responsible for the death of his beloved father, he must settle this (kill the guy) and then flee to Sicily. The syndicate later sends the brother out to off him, and the story ends in an interesting way.  Good, solid, satisfying, Douglas's character a multi-fascinated one and his performance makes the film. Worthy. Directed by Martin Ritt.

Good

Nosferatu (1922)

Classic example of German expressionistic cinema. F. W. Murnau directed this lose adaptation of the Dracula story (changed so as to avoid hefty copyright fees) set in a fictional Germanic city called Wisborg in the 1830's. Gustav von Wangenheim and his young wife Greta Schroder are happy but not as well off as Gustav would like them to be. He takes a commission for his employer Alexander Granach to travel to Transylvania to sell a house in there town to the reclusive Count Orlok (Max Schreck).

Orlok is of course a vampire. Schreck is an interesting looking man, looking at an old photo of him on the internet you can see how gaunt and morose he seems, with an odd bulbous head. This serves him well as the base upon which one of the most memorable makeup jobs I've ever seen rides. He's scary, this is a scary kind of vampire, unearthly, misshapen, with long claw like hands and a face that honestly looks bat like. He will torment Gustav, he will pursue Gretas lovely neck, and Knack (Alexander Granach) will go made. Good sense of moode in this, maybe a little slow. I like how the rats who accompany Orlok in his dirt filled coffians are worked into the story, they spread plague to fair Wisborg; a little bit Camus. Not as memorable as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari but still good.

Good

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Water for Elephants (2011)

Unexpectedly good.

Engaging

I didn't hate Robert Pattinson.

Reese Witherspoon in tights.

Some good supporting parts.

Depression era setting.

Standard framing story for flash back bulk of the film, but it features Hal Holbrook so that's okay.

Christoph Waltz makes this film.

You have to wait like forty minutes before you see an elephant drink water.

Grade: B+

The Protocals of the Elders of Zion (2005)

Lose form documentary by Jewish filmmaker Marc Levin. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is of course a notorious piece of anti-Semitic literature, a forgery that casts its self as the minutes of a late 19th century meeting of a cabal of Jews bent on world domination. While the text first appeared in 1903 its still in wide circulation on the Internet and elsewhere, and despite being debunked numerous times is still held as true by certain white supremest groups, a distressingly large number of Muslims, conspiracy theorist and some people who just don't know any better.

In the film Levin travels around and talks to people about the pamphlet, having interviews with white supremacist, people on the street, and a surprisingly thoughtful group of prison inmates. An interesting film, I'm glad it wasn't just about the tract itself in a narrow sense, but rather a broader portrait of the psychological and cultural worlds in which it is taken as fact.

Grade: B

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The Devil Rides Out (1968), Fail Safe (2000), The Omen (1976), Berserk! (1967)

Halloween Edition

The Devil Rides Out

Charles Ray and Christopher Lee are two World War One veterans who have agreed to keep an eye out on the son of a fallen comrade. They meet together once a year on the anniversary of the death of Simon's father but one year in the early 1930's Simon breaks the appointment. The two men journey to Simon's new home, only to find that he is already hosting a party, a meeting he says of an astronomical society he has been planing to join. Lee is suspicious, he insists on seeing the observatory that has been added to Simon's home, there he discovers space set up for a Satanic ritual. Ray and Lee knock Simon out and take him to Lee's home (all the homes in this movie seem to be mansions). Lorene Green, leader of the Satanic cult is not pleased.

Ray is unconvinced of Lee's assertions, Simon escapes and the two friends return to his home to look for clues as to his current whereabouts, theyencounter an evil spirit, Ray becomes convinced. Ray tries to seduce a young lady he saw at Simon's party in the hopes of finding his whereabouts before he can undergo his satanic initiation (which mustbe performed in conjunction with a lunar cycle that is about to end).The young women (Nike Arrighi) escapes as Ray attempts to sequester her at the home of Lee's niece (Sarah Lawson) and her husband (Paul Eddington, yeah). Ray has learned that Nike has yet to undergo the satanic initiation that would rob her of her soul and being smitten by the lass hopes to save her too.Lee and Ray meet up, they find the location where the black mass is to be celebrated, thy disrupt it and rescue Simon and Nike whom they take to the home of Lee's niece. Lorene Greens wants his two would-be acolytes back, though they have now recognized the danger to there Souls. A final confrontation is in store.

This was good, a little campy undoubtedly but enjoyable. I've never seen a film quite like it, Satanists are a surprisingly underused horror movie villain. Guilty pleasure.

Grade: B-

Fail Safe

A remake of the sold 1964 film of the same title doesn't seem necessary but the form it takes makes it worthwhile. This film, made for television and shot in black and white was mentas an homage to the classic teleplays of the early years of television. That it was a live broadcast lends it a certain extra energy and quality of immediacy. The cast is all star, Richard Dryfuss, Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Hank Azaria and more. At first maybe a little stiff, but the strength of the story and dialogue (much lifted from the original film) careis it. Worthwhile effort, I'm glade they made this.

Grade: B

The Omen

This is a classic, semi-revered, and I'd never seen it. The story is familiar, diplomat Gregory Peck adopts a child in Italy who is destined to be the anti-Christ. Years later while Peck, his wife (Lee Remick,so beautiful) and the child Damien (Harvey Stephens) are stationed in London strange things begin to happen, the child's nanny kills herself, animals go mad in Damion's presence and Damon goes mad when he's brought to a church. Peck receives cryptic warning from Catholic Priest Patrick Troughton, and later embarks on a search for Damien's origins with freelance photographer David Warner. Surprise, there is a final confrontation.

It wasn't all that good at first, felt kind of hollow, slow and predictable, but it picked up. It's one you should see just to say you've seen it. A tad disappointing, but significant to its genera.

Grade B-

Berserk

A late career Joan Crawford slumming in horror. She's the head of a traveling circus in England, her high wire artist dies a grisly death in front of an audience, he is quickly replaced by thirty-seven year old Ty Hardin, who improbably pins for sixty-two year old Crawford. There are various circus types including dwarf (George Claydon), human skeleton Ted Lune (who would die the year after the films release), as well as Crawford's comely daughter (Judy Geeson). More members of the circus die, Scotland Yard investigates, and the murdererturns out to be somone whom it would be basically impossible for them to commit all those murders. Watchable but little more, harmed by the ending.

Grade: D+