Carnage (2011)

 Roman Polanski directs this adaption of the 2006 French play 'God of Carnage'. There are only four characters with speaking lines, two married couples, Kate Winselt and Christoph Waltz, and Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly, who have gathered at the latter couples New York apartment to discuss what to do about the former couples child attacking the latter couples child with a stick. Things are very stilted and civil at first and degrade from there, and what starts as basically family A vs family B devolves largely into the men vs. the women. Strong performances by all, obvious comparison can be made to 'Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolfe' but that 1960's film opened things up better, here I think I'd rather have seen a filmed production of the play then such a stage bound movie. **1/2

Somebody Up There Likes Me (2013)

Not to be confused with the Rocky Graziano bio-pic of the mid 50's staring Paul Newman, this 'Somebody Up There Likes Me' is another one of those Bob Byington films I've been indulging in lately. Staring Jess Wexler and such Byington regulars as Keith Poulson and Nick Offerman, the film is told in a series of flash forwards at five year intervals from the 1990's into the near feature. It focuses on Max (Poulson) who at the beginning of the film is a waiter at a steakhouse whose marriage has just ended in divorce. Over the course of the film Max gets married again, has a kid, gets rich, has an affair, gets divorced, loses his money, starts business, becomes a grandfather, gets rich again, reconnects with his estranged son, and somehow never seems to age while the other characters do, which of course is a set up to the final joke of the film. The plot is not so much important as the shear Byingotnness of the proceedings, if you like dry, awkward, surreal, sometimes inappropriate humor and Nick Offerman, I would recommend this, and practically any other Bob Byington directed feature. ***

The Trip (2011)

Adapted from the British TV series of the same name 'The Trip' is the first of a now four film series that features actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing versions of themselves on a working vacation reviewing restaurants, in this case located in the north of England. The film consists of the two talking in restaurants, the two talking in the car, the two talking in hotels, the two doing impressions to each other, Brydon calling his wife on the phone and Coogan sleeping with a local women. I liked the casualness of the film, the lose structure, though there is just enough stakes in Coogan's general dissatisfaction with his life and career and eventually making an important decision about a TV project. While not all the gags worked for me for the most part I found this a pleasant trip. Yeah that gag didn't work for me either. ***

The Stepford Wives (1975)

 The original film adaption of the 1972 Ira Levin novel of the same name 'The Stepford Wives' concerns a high end Connecticut community where the married woman tend to transform, overnight, from their regular flawed and human selves into seeming automatons of domesticity. While the 2004 remake played the material as a comedy this version treats its pretty straight, and you can definitely see its influence on a recent horror classic about personality transformation 'Get Out'. I wasn't wild about the specifics of the final twist but I enjoyed getting there and the general mode of the piece. Good cast includes Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss and Tina Louise. While the film deals with feminist themes Betty Friedan reportedly hated it. ***

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

 Based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Joan Lindsay, 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' is a wonderfully evocative mood piece. an existential horror movie ably directed by Peter Weir ('Witness', 'Dead Poet Society', 'Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World'). It is 1900 and a group of twenty or so students from a women's finishing school in rural Australia are accompanied by two teachers and a carriage driver on a Valentines Day picnic at a nearby geological attraction known as 'Hanging Rock'. Three of those students and the teacher that went looking for them after they wandered off disappear, without a trace. Search parties are organized but they appear to have simply vanished off the face of the Earth. 

The bizarre uncertainty of the whole thing rock the school and nearby community to their core, emotionally destroying almost everybody. The film that it reminded me of most was Roman Polanski's 'Repulsion' which also also has an incessant feeling of dread and foreboding throughout. Both films are not what you would traditionally call a horror film, there are not monsters human or otherwise just an overwhelming psychic sense of something being extremely wrong. I was absolutely blown away, possibly the best film I've seen this year. ****

Indiscreet (1931)

In preparing to do an episode of the podcast I'm on about 'Sunset Blvd' it occurred to me I'd only seen Gloria Swanson in three films, in one of which she could be said to be playing herself, and in another she was actually playing herself (the third was a silent with Rudolph Valentino). 'Indiscreet' was free on Prime, it's a love quadrangle and I thought the most interesting thing about it is that co-star Barbara Kent lived to be 103 years old. This is a bad movie, drama-ish, but a segment of a review on its Wikipedia page claimed it was a comedy, well not a funny one. There is one moment however where Swanson's character gives another character a death glare that is downright meme worthy. * 

Playtime (1967)

French comedy legend Jacques Tati directors and stars in this his penultimate Monsieur Hulot film. 'Playtime' is a lose assemblage of segments that concern both Hulot and a group of English speaking tourists over the better part of 24 hours in Paris. It plays kind of long so while all of these segments are good (some more then others) they might work better as short films then parts of a whole, at least up until the last two where you get your pay off. 

The film practically bankrupt Tati who was a perfectionist and spent loads of cash on the project, the large sets he had built for the film are extravagant, but play nicely off his evident interest in modern architecture and human alienation from it. Shot in 70 millimetre the film now doubt would be best appreciated on as a large a screen as possible, Tati so loves along shot and filling a frame with movement its the closet thing I've seen to 'Where's Waldo: The Movie'. 

If you see it be prepared for something very structurally different, it is only loosely a traditional narrative film. Francois Truffaut said of the movie  "a film that comes from another planet, where they make films differently". ***1/3