Some Came Running

Image of the day, 10/3/11

Shirley MacLaine, Some Came Running, Vincente Minnelli, 1958

"This movie must have a lot of meaning for you, given that you named your blog after it," my friend Tony Dayoub remarked as we entered the BAM complex for a screening of this, a part of the place's exemplary Complete Vincente Minnelli retrospective now in progress. "I guess," I shrugged. "But you know, it was also one of those things; I'd gotten bounced from my job that day, I got drunk, came home, started a blog..."

And to tell you the truth, I don't think I'd seen the picture in its entirety in some time at the point I started the blog. Nor had I seen the picture in its entirety, up until yesterday, since. Nor have I ever finished reading the enormous James Jones novel on which the film is based, which was generously gifted to me by my friend Tom Carson a few years back. And frankly when I named the blog I was thinking maybe as much of Michel Piccoli's character's intended homage to Dean Martin's Bama, in Godard's Contempt. 

But it's a great picture, as I was happy to rediscover at the screening yesterday. It's a very peculiar picture in some ways. The screenplay by John Patrick and Arthur Sheekman seems an exemplarily schematic blueprint for a '50s epic contempo melodrama-entertainment event picture; a funny/ironic bit here, a heart-tugging sincere bit there, an explicit foreshadowing of what we expect is going to be a problem here, the "shocking" and galvanic articulation of the problem there. (Although some of the problems are not all that thoroughly articulated; we never really learn just what the deal is with Martha Hyer's character, do we?) The extent to which it's a very conventional '50s treatment of Big Authentic Feelings at odds with Narrow Smalltown Minds is pretty conventional, except for the meticulousness of Minnelli's direction, which you can see how it might have driven Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin nuts; there are a bunch of shots here in which you can see that the actor has to step on to one particular mark at precisely this time, or else the lighting effect that's gonna throw the shot/scene into a completely different kind of relief just isn't gonna come off. But it is most often in the not-necessarily expected and less directly overt exercises of that meticulousness when the film makes very moving contact with The Real, as in the above shot, wherein Shirley MacLaine's Ginnie Moorehead (yeesh, that name), making an awkward and eager confession to Martha Hyer's entirely more prim Gwen French, hangs her head in embarrassment/shame/self-abasement, and Minnelli and lenser William H. Daniels and editor Adrienne Fazan just hold the shot on MacLaine and allow you to get a really, really good look at her roots, which tell a story of their own. So yeah, I'm quite happy to have named the blog after this film.

Nine films at the New York Film Festival

1) The Loneliest Planet

My reactions to this film are unavoidably colored by the fact that it's based on a short story by Tom Bissell, who aside from being in my estimation an unimpeachable great writer is also a very dear friend of long standing. (Back in 2002, Tom and another pal who shall remain nameless were kind enough to stage The World's Smallest Intervention on my behalf, which didn't take at the time but for which I've become grateful.) So I just walk in to the screening feeling chuffed that a talented and distinctive screenwriter/director, Julia Loktev, decided to adapt Tom's story, "Expensive Trips Nowhere" (featured in his wonderful collection God Lives In St. Petersburg) in he first place. 

The tale is not a complicated one; it's an account of a young Western couple's hiking trek across a part of Kazakhstan, and an incident that sheds a glaring light on their characters and their relationship. And then there's their relationship to the guide. Lotkev takes Tom's story and makes it her own; she mostly jettisons the elements of social critique (Tom lays out a lot of the couple's First-World-Problems meticulously throughout; in his story, they're also married, while in the film, they're engaged to be) and, most crucially, renders indeterminate the result of the event that in the story pretty much sunders...well, I don't want to give away too much. 

My friend The Self Styled Siren isn't the first person to weigh in on the film with some frustration over the fact that the film's couple, played by the very appealing Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg (seen above with Bidzina Gujabidze, who plays their guide), never verbally address the elephant in the room after it shows up. "The movie explodes if one character turns to the other on one of the many arduous hikes and says 'What the hell...?'" If I may be allowed to play devil's advocate and represent what Hitchcock might be gratified to note as an anti-Plausible position, the fact that neither of the characters does utter any such thing might just be precisely the point. I'm only saying. In any case, what works like crazy here is both Loktev's pictorial sense and ability to ratchet up tension in distinctly unshowy ways; while dunderheads and the eyeless might be under the impression that nothing is happening when she cuts away to a ravishing long shot of the scenery and lets Richard Skelton's gorgeous, otherworldy ethnological not-quite-forgery music have its way with the movie, the rest of us will get the feeling, for sure. (And how's that for a Kael-like lunge at SPEAKING FOR THE "RIGHT" PEOPLE, huh? Um, maybe not.) Its narrative open-endedness seeks, I think, to engage the intuition of the viewer, which is something that I'm noticing certain viewers are coming to resent. But that's another issue for another piece. 

2) You Are Not I

Sarah Driver's long-kind-of-lost 45-minute 1981 adaptation of a Paul Bowles short story, shot in Vampyr-inflected black-and-white by Driver's frequent collaborator Jim Jarmusch, and featuring a deliberately bugging-the-hell-out-of-the-back-of-your-brain-like-an-alarm-clock-you-can't-shut-off electronic score by Phil Kline, often plays like the New York Underground answer to Carnival of Souls, which I mean entirely as a compliment. 

3) Le Havre

2006's Lights in the Dusk was a real rut in Aki Kaurismaki's path to sweet-and-quirkily-warmhearted-old-fogeydom, but this very satisfying quasi-caper is an exhilarating rebound that places him squarely and touchingly in that territory. The story of a fairytale community in the title burg that rallies round to help a delightfully taciturn and well-mannered young undocumented African immigrant reach his destination across the channel, its sure pace and consistent comic understatement nicely set up some of the director's most casually daring absurdist tropes in years. Filtering a genuine contemporary European social concern through his wry and slightly addled (by what I have no idea, I'm sure) sensibility seems to have charged Aki's batteries up a bit. Nice going. 

4) We Can’t Go Home Again

What's that guy in back of Woody Allen say about the new Fellini, that it's "very indulgent?"  Yeah, that's what he says. One would not, honestly, need to be forgiven if those very words, and with the exact same inflection yet, flashed through one's own mind at various points at this film signed by "Us," supervised by Nicholas Ray when he was a filmmaking instructor at SUNY Binghamton in the early 1970s. I mean, how IS one to characterize a film in which the one-time Hollywood director is depicted ineptly attempting suicide? (Although admittedly the attempt does produce one of the film's biggest laughs, when the magesterial white-haired wreck Ray, fumbling with some rope, grumbles "I've made thirteen Westerns and I still have no idea how to tie a noose.") But again, I think the indulgence is the point. A multi-frame expectoration of footage of himself and his students interrogating themselves and him and each other mixed with ruminations on the political upheavals of the prior years mixed with reflections on the increasingly bitter reality that home/America/a sense of belonging/what have you is dissolving into the corrosive acid of ever-mounting cultural and sexual and political fragmentation, Home is both an effort to find coherence/community and an avowal of the possible impossibility of doing so. So of course it's going to be indulgent. It is also frequently kind of tedious, and frequently kind of dazzling, and frequently kind of infuriatingly self-pitying. It's quite a few provocative things, but many of its qualities won't be immediately discernable to anybody who's not already a Ray-head, so consider this a warning. 

5) Tahrir

One of those pictures that one could look at and say, "Well, sure, of course, with the time, the place, and the people, anybody could go in and make a good film." Of course, if you've seen enough docs that had the time, the place, and the people, and the filmmakers STILL managed to fuck things up, you know that's a glib assessment. So all praise to director Stefano Savona, who's assembled an incredibly engaging and provocative moving snapshot of a Cairo's square's chanting, rock-throwing, cell-phone-and-computer-checking, social-media-enabled contribution to Arab spring, featuring conversations between young firebrands and monologues from old blowhards who are still hugely touching for all their blow-hardedness. Not a comprehensive survey of political perspectives and tensions nor a prospectus on what's ahead for Egypt or what the West is in store for, but rather the vital story of some people gathered together, and their crucial passions, and how they united under those passions. 

6) The Turin Horse

I've always looked at the anecdote about Nietsche and that poor horse as an exemplary paradoxical parable about how once/if you reach total consciousness/compassion over all the overwhelming pointless suffering in this world, the only possible reaction is not that you become a better/nicer person, but that you fall into the grip of an absolutely paralyzing madness (which can sometimes be helped even further along by dementia courtesy of [maybe] tertiary syphilis). And those are the breaks. Aiiee. In any event, my biggest problem with Bela Tarr's apparent cinematic swan song is that its perspective doesn't quite jibe with my own above interpretation of the whole equine kerfuffle. Still and all, I found this cinematically virtuosic, narratively minimal, and genuinely, albeit peculiarly, gripping almost-two-and-a-half-hour black-and-white account of the end of the world as disaffected father and daughter and horse know it, absolutely superb. Even though it didn't galvanize me as much as some prior Tarr films, even including the rather more overtly problematic The Man From London, have. I think maybe it wasn't meant to; there's a peculiar serenity at the center of all its considerable dread. I should like to see it again soon. 

7) Carnage

See a bit below. I think it's worth reiterating that this is a satiric farce, and deserves to be considered as such. I think it's also worth reiterating that People Are Fucking Stupid. I read somewhere (I can't find it now...does the fact that I can't link mean that I'm Doing That Thing Again) someone complaining that the piece makes no sense because the one couple could just LEAVE and they don't and it's always the lamest pretext compelling them to re-enter the apartment. Yeah, The Return Of The Plausibles. Someday I'd like to see somebody make a film in which all of the action unfolds in the most absolutely plausible and true-to-life fashion possible. Oh, yeah, they already made that film and it's fucking called Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, and I bet The Plausibles won't like that picture much either, albeit maybe for different reasons. What is worth noting, although not having seen the play I can only speculate rather than accurately cite stuff, is that Polanksi seems to have some fun coming up with little bits of business to nudge that characters back into the apartment where the main action (such as it is) is largely set, including a sly couple of shots involving a fellow tenant, or Tenant, that will evoke a chuckle in some and perhaps outrage in others. 

8) A Separation

A very nifty piece of cinematic sleight-of-hand from writer-director Asghar Fahadi, this Iranian domestic drama takes a home trauma and ratchets it up to a kind of judicial thriller. If Michael Haneke were filming this scenario, he'd hold his shots in such a way as to goad the viewer into looking deeper into them. (See certain of the views in Caché.) If the director were Hitchcock, he'd foreground certain objects in such a way as to set off the audience's intrigue about them. (See the telephone in Dial "M" For Murder.) Fahadi's seemingly naturalistic shooting and editing style is deceptively simple; he gives, or seems to give, no particular weight to any given object or action, and all the while he's stowing away things that will be vitally important later on. If the film's second half is a very tense round of "Find What The Sailor Has Hidden," the first half shows the, um, sailor hiding everything in plain sight. Mongo impressed. Fuckin' A, you definitely need to see this. 

9) Living in the Material World

As it was for my friend Tony Dayoub, this picture was an easy sell for me, whose first LP was Beatles '65, gifted to me at Christmas 1964 when I was all of five years old. A satisfyingly lengthy musical and social and cultural history as well as a biography, it's suitably empathetic—if anyone can reveal George Harrison's Jake LaMotta side, it's the film's organizational intelligence/spirit Martin Scorsese—and a little more plastically and conceptually clever/resourceful than its goes-down-easy narrative initially indicates. Not strictly linear by any means, it gets to the many places it wants to go via dovetails that are simultaneously thematic and chronological, and it accomplishes an awful lot via implication/example, c.f. the frankly horrific live concert footage the film cuts to right after Klaus Voorman brings up the subject of cocaine for the first time. The picture is sometimes unusually candid and finally very moving, and the sound mix is spectacular. As a bonus, Jackie Stewart as you've never seen him before. No, really.

Some propositions from Pauline Kael

Hollywood follows the mass audience and the mass audience follows Hollywood; there is no leader. The worst of the past is preserved with new dust. How many films that we once groaned at do we now hear referred to nostalgically? When the bad is followed by the worse, even the bad seems good. (Film addicts talk about Grand Hotel or Busby Berkeley's choreography, as if those were the days.) The hostility toward art and highbrowism that infect much of our culture helps to explain the popularity of so many untrained and untalented screen performers. Richard Burton and Dan O'Herlihy do not stimulate the fans; Tony Curtis, Tab Hunter, Janet Leigh, Jane Powell do. Fans like untrained actors; perhaps they like even the embarrassment of untrained actors (why should they tolerate the implied criticism of speech or gesture that derives from a higher culture?). The office girl says, "No, I don't want to go see Howard Keel—he was a professional singer, you know." The taste of the mass audience belongs to sociology, not aesthetics. Those who make big films do not consider primarily the nature of the medium and what they want to do with it, they try to keep ahead of the mass audience.

As the mass media developed, the fine points of democratic theory were discarded, and a parody of democracy became public dogma. The film critic no longer considers that his function is the formation and reformation of public taste (that would be an undemocratic presumption); the old independent critic who would trumpet the good, blast the bad, and tell his readers they were boobs if they wasted money on garbage, gives way to the amiable fellow who feels responsible not to his subject matter but to the tastes of the stratum of his public. Newspaper critics are, in many cases, not free to attack big films (too much is at stake), but they are usually free to praise what they wish; yet they seem too unsure of themselves, too fearful of causing a breach with their readers, to praise what may be unpopular. It is astonishing how often they attack the finest European productions and the most imaginative American ones—safe targets.  Attitudes become more important than judgments. The critic need not make any definite adverse comments; his descriptive tone is enough to warn his readers off. Praise which includes such terms as "subtle," "low-keyed" or "somber" is damnation; the critic saves his face but helps kill the movie.

There are people, lots of them, who take big pictures seriously. What is one to say to the neo-Aristotelianism of the salesgirl who reports "I saw The Student Prince last night—it was so wonderful and so sad. I cried and cried, and when it was over, why, I just felt all cleaned out." Only snobs howl at Duel in the Sun ($11.3 million gross), and if you crawled out on Quo Vadis ($10.5 million gross) you not only showed your disrespect for heavy labor, you implied contempt for those who were awed by it. Hollywood productions are official parts of American life, proofs of technological progress; derision is subversive. You will be reproved with "What right have you to say Samson and Delilah is no good when millions of people like it?" and you will be subjected to the final devastation of "It's all a matter of taste and one person's taste is as good as another's." One does not make friends by replying that although it is all a matter of taste (and education and intelligence and sensibility) one person's taste is not as good as another's.

—Pauline Kael, "Movies, the Desperate Art," The Berkley Book of Modern Writing No. 3, 1956, revised for Film: An Anthology, 1959, reprinted in The Age of Movies, Selected Writings of Pauline Kael, edited by Sanford Schwartz, The Library of America, 2011 

The current cinema, don't look edition

What's Your Number? was pretty bad. Uncinematic, even. My review for MSN Movies. 

What is "cinematic?" part deux

So, I am WAY behind on my New York Film Festival blog coverage, and I do hope to get up to speed soon, and I do recommend in the meanwhile that you check out my Close Personal Friend The Self-Styled Siren's ruminations on the fare she's seen thus far, as her notes are as trenchant and acute and delightful and well-mannered as she herself is. I dowant to report that I did get a rather big kick out of Carnage, the film Roman Polanski has directed from an adaptation of Yasmina Reza's international hit play thingie. It seemed to go over very well with much of the rest of the Festival press and industry audience too. The piece as filmed is a pretty good satire that, in and of itself and perhaps necessarily, underscores the limitations of pretty good satire as a form. Which is to say that its various reversals are a little, well, telegraphed. There's a little bit of a paradox inherent in a piece that aspires to aggressively twist the nipples of its target audience's collective sense of propriety and/or social grace while at the same time satisfying said audience's expectations of entertainment. Which may in fact be precisely the point...only the film doesn't take things that far. It's modernist, not post! 

But I did enjoy it, and after the film, I happened to run into a colleague who out-and-out hated it. And who said, and I quote, "There was nothing cinematic about it." Which I kind of couldn't believe, in the first place because more than anything else, Carnage is an absolutely virtuoso piece of cinema craft. As many of you likely know, the whole film, save for a brief prologue and epilogue, is set in a single Brooklyn apartment and its hallway. Polanski treats this space and its varied subspaces absolutely cinematically; the film is a potential masterclass in staging, blocking, camera angle, shot selection, shot length, pacing in terms of both rhythm of actual cutting and duration of shot, and so on. One could write a 1,200 word piece alone on how Kate Winslet's physical stature mutates over the course of the film's hour and twenty minutes. (We should note that Polanski's actual frame—film, that is—is wider than the image posted above.) It's all kind of amazing even if you're not crazy about the content of the picture. So, yes, I would say, entirely cinematic. 

And yet my friend, who hated it...and who, and this is really the beauty ironic part, I rebonded with a couple of weeks back on account of our shared conviction that David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method is both really great and, yes, entirely "cinematic," found it to be not. And of course I wonder why, and I do look forward to having a longer conversation with her about that. And I post this now not to make fun of my pal or call her out or any such thing but because it struck me as kind of odd and funny, the language we  adopt when we're kind of affronted. My friend also found Carnage "misogynist," (in case you're wondering what road one of the drama's predictable turnarounds goes up, there's a clue for you) and it was pretty clear that the whole experience had touched her in a way that was a little more irritating than an average bad-movie experience. In a sense maybe the point was that calling it uncinematic was the deepest insult she could give it, and an insult she felt it deserved. But I strongly believe that the film is, well, frankly, not that thing. And, of course, conversation about movies is rather different than writing about movies, although what with this kind of comment-friendly format, and with Twitter, and with and so on, writing about movies and movie criticism and talking about movies is becoming a big ball of virtual wax and a different one from what it was. But I think that while conversation about movies can absolutely be about the vagaries of taste, criticism has to go beyond that. This conviction is really at the core of my whole quarrel with that ridiculous "cultural vegetables" conceit/debate. 

The current cinema, can't stop what's coming edition

The mighty Take Shelter, with the great Michael Shannon, reviewed for MSN Movies.

Image of the day, 9/26/11

John Baragrey in The Colossus of New York, Eugène Lourié, 1958

Blu-ray Consumer Guide: September 2011

Call me paranoid, but I was beginning to get a little apprehensive of a "is this a blog about movies, or a blog about slagging movie critics?" backlash, so I figured maybe I ought to snap to it with respect to getting this puppy posted. Et voila. Enjoy. Equipment: Playstation 3 console and Oppo BDP 83 were the players, Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30 the display, Pioneer Elite VSX-817 AV the amp.

UPDATE: A Note On Grades

"What are the grades for?" asks Some Dude on Twitter™. "Movie or transfer or both? It would be much more helpful if you grade them separately, IMO." Like I'm doing this to be "helpful." (Hey, wait a minute—why am I doing this?) I thought I had explained this in a prior column, but it looks like I didn't. The grades I assign represent my assessment of the film's presentation as a Blu-ray disc. Obviously in my capsules I'll get into my opinions/observations on the film itself, but given my inclinations and the demands on my time, it's pretty likely that I'm only gonna look at Blu-rays of films I already have some kind of interest in. Obviously (or maybe not) my interest in something like Cobra is more along the lines of a cinema-historical artifact rather than as something I personally enjoy/cherish, but you get the idea.It always used to drive me nuts, when I was running the "Home Guide" at Premiere, when writers would try to use a DVD assignment as a pretext to "craft" their own "review" of a film itself, and not treat the commodity in hand, that is, the tape or the DVD or the Blu-ray. And I believe this philosophy informs how I create this column. So there you have it. See also here. Although entertaining as the prose is it doesn't really serve as much of an analogy to what's going on here. And thank you for your support.

 

The Battle of Algiers (Criterion)

Not much to report here: what was an exemplary package in SD has been transposed to high-definition perfectly. For some reason there are times I get off even more on a high-def rendition of something with this kind of pictorial and celluloid roughness. Which is not to say that I cheer when that bomb goes off in the café, in case you were worried about my moral state. —A+

The Big Lebowski (Universal)

A lot of the times this looks just jake, and I get off on the ultra-sheen of the bowling alley scenes and dreams, but in certain night scenes the DNR is too much and it’s a drag. Not fatal, but lousy, and in particular really obvious and obtrusive in the faces of The Dude and Walter during the drive-to-drop-the-ransom-money scene. A disappointment, then. I know the Coens are kind of disdainful of certain aspect of home vid tech wonkiness, but they might have thought to raise their voices here. Still. It’s Lebowski in high-def, what are you gonna do? Boycott? I mean, it’s a thought, but still. —B-

Cobra (Warner)

Wait, wasn’t Sylvester Stallone the biggest movie star in the world at the time this film was made? Then how come this looks about as slick as a William Lustig picture of the time? So grainy it’s grimy, which is at least kind of apropos, given it’s a picture that its contemporary critics deemed as “unimaginably degraded” (David Denby!) and “the foulest, greediest, most anti-American movie in ages” (my pal John Powers!). Oh, and wait, here’s the explanation: it’s a co-production of Warner and…Golan/Globus! Seen with a quarter century’s hindsight, it plays less like a Dirty Harry ante-upping than a failed Stallone grindhouse condescension. Still, poor director George P. Cosmatos brings his outsider’s competence and ESL straight face to the proceedings, which give this thing its own, um, integrity. Moronic integrity. Particularly risible are the script’s attempts at “ironic” humor, as when Stallone’s character “kids” a “goofy” sidekick: “You know what the trouble with you is? You’re too violent.” Oh, the hilarity. The movie also gets bonus points for casting Andy Robinson as a police department bigwig. It’s a good transfer, but I can only recommend as a library addition to those who enjoy confounding their friends with displays of cinematic perversity. —B

Coeur Fidèle (Eureka!/MOC U.K. import, Region B locked)

Like Feuillade, Jean Epstein doesn’t get enough respect. Although at this late stage in the game, what would he DO with it if he got it, right? The French director’s remarkable 1923 romance is precisely NOT the sort of thing that gets trotted out in garden-variety film appreciation courses and so on, and it’s in this particular respect (among many others, but bear with me for a second) that outfits such as Masters of Cinema do such important work, work that really deserves/earns the cinema lover’s support. In terms of imagery and what we can project as its influence, this film is a MAJOR revelation, and its sheer physical beauty—you can almost literally see the silver nitrate shining in every beautifully digitalized frame—is reason enough to own it. —A+

The Complete Jean Vigo (Criterion)

Regular readers of this blog may recall my telling of my childhood love for Vigo, and how the P. Salles Gomes biography of the man was the first film book I ever bought. I remember when I was ten having found a listing for a screening of Zero For Conduct at some local library and begging my dad to take me to see it and then crying like a baby when they didn’t show the film because the print never showed or was too damaged, and they screened some fucking French doc about wheat fields (or something) instead. So you can maybe imagine my exhilaration at the fact that now the compete oeuvre exists on one handy-dandy high-def disc. The thing is, after watching the work itself, I realize it’s not really all it’s cracked up to be…Nah, just kidding. Seriously, this is amazing.  To think that 40 years ago these films were nearly impossible to see at all, particularly in gorgeous or even watchable versions. And here they are. Almost enough to make one a kind of optimist.  —A+

Cross of Iron (Optimum U.K. import, Region B locked)

This widely misunderstood late Peckinpah was potent bait for critics who wanted to pursue the Bloody-Sam-is-a-fascist theme, because, you know, this picture features sympathetic treatments of German soldiers during World War II! It’s PRO NAZI! Of course it’s not, and in fact it’s so antiwar it’s practically pacifist, except of course it’s violent as hell. It’s also got moments that are strangely enervated, and Peckinpah’s really at his most Captain Obvious a lot of the time (that poor kid!), but, still. Never not watchable and often moving in spite of itself, it’s in a way less of a problem piece than Straw Dogs. And this disc looks damn good, WAY better than any video version I’ve seen retaining a gritty but autumnal palette. The digitalization involved in the transfer/restoration, however, does make itself plain in some of the foggier scenes, where the mist has a distinctly unfilmlike (but not disgracefully artificial-looking) quality to it. —B+

Damnation Alley (Shout Factory)

I was always fascinated by this picture merely by dint of the fact that in ten short years, Dominique Sanda had gone from debuting as a suicidal beauty for discoverer-of-non-actors Robert Bresson in Une femme douce to costarring with George Peppard and Jan Michael Vincent in this, un film de Jack Smight. Other Bresson stars that opted to remain in the film biz had even more bizarre career arcs, but Sanda’s was the most publicly conspicuous for a while. Of course this picture boasts other cult charms, including sorta-painted-in pink/green horizons, or, as a title card puts it, “skies lurid and angry.” Another way you can tell it’s after the apocalypse in the film is the way the synths take over the music score. It’s that kinda movie. And it’s brought to digital life very nicely, and with a lot of extras, in this edition. Of course you understand that the attached letter grade best applies if you Like This Sort Of Thing.—A-

Dead Man (Miramax/Echo Bridge)

I was all set to make this film a kind of object lesson in the difference between black-and-white films in the post-color 20^th century and black-and-white films in the period when such was the norm (c.f. the below-reviewed Orpheus) and discuss the sharp, detailed picture with a more smoothed-out gray scale when I encountered a nasty digital glitch only a minute or so into the movie. As you will see in the illustration, a snapshot of my display. At which point I went and exchanged the disc, and got a second disc that had the same glitch at the same point. Which leads me to suspect that glitch is on the master, and that someone at Echo Bridge isn’t doing his or her job. I’m looking into the matter but in the meantime I certainly can’t recommend.—D+

Dressed to Kill (MGM/UA)

Really looks pretty great overall; as someone who saw this thing in theaters one or two times too many when it was first released, I can attest that the sometimes creamy, sometimes grainy look is pretty much what we got back then, and that it’s entirely appropriate to the material at all times. The sole extra of note, the brilliantly titled doc “The Making of a Thriller,” is not in HD. But it hardly matters; this can be acquired at very good prices on line and elsewhere and if you’re a fan of the film (and why not? It’s got some bravura moviemaking in it!) it definitely warrants a place in your library.—A

Essential Killing (Artificial Eye U.K. import, Region B locked, region free)

Excellent image, from the desert caves of the opening to the blue/white snow of deepest Europe in winter where most of the rest of the film. Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest film is a tough, terse, blunt but not unempathetic thing; a small-scaled masterpiece of such grabbing immediacy that it’s practically a sin that it’s gotten next to nothing with respect to U.S. distribution at the time of this writing. Of course it helps if you can forget that the lead actor is Vincent Gallo. Who’s quite good actually, but still Vincent Gallo. Given this Blu-ray is the best way you can see the film as of this point, I feel like maybe you ought to. See it this way, I mean. If you’ve got a region-free Blu-ray player. (Correction: initially flagged it as region-locked, it will in fact play on any Blu-ray player worldwide.)—A

The Exterminator (Synapse)

The commentary track for the digitization of this grindhouse classic begins with producer/director James Glickenhaus trashing the film’s reviewers,  so you know it’s gonna be good. Overall this is a very solid presentation of a very visually flat film. A terrific test case for the not-quite eternal question “is this Blu-ray really necessary?” My answer: Why the hell not. Scummy criminals, senseless mayhem, Christopher George, and dialogue along the lines of , well actually what follows is a precise quote: “That ‘nigger’ was my best friend, you motherfucker.” Awesome. Later, during an outdoor cabaret scene, Glickenhaus notes, “Here’s old Stan Getz, that’s pretty neat.” He then complains that critics didn’t “get” that this was a Getz cameo and then, barely pausing for breath, allows that the Getz bit is “a throwaway.” Told you it was a good commentary. The Getz factor also makes it an exemplary half for a double feature with the new Warner Archive issue of Get Yourself A College Girl. —A

Fast Times At Ridgemont High (Universal)

Ohmigod the ugly mall lighting! You can tell it’s meant to be ugly mall lighting because the sun-lit scenes—oh, and you know which one I mean, really—are beautiful and dappled and have good, um, reds and, um, flesh tones, and all that. Seriously, overall a good sharp image for a generally foursquare visual piece (ah those reverse-angled cafeteria setups with the shallow focus…) . Movie’s still real good for the most part, practically a classic. Is it too old for “the new canon” or whatever the heck it is? —A

The Funhouse (Arrow U.K. Import, region-free)

Ah, an early work from blockbuster producer Mace Neufeld! And hey, remember Elizabeth Berridge? Boy, that’s cute, barely ten-year-old baby brother accosting his absolutely not-faking-it naked sister in the shower with a plastic dagger in the shower. Boy, the stuff you could get away with in the ‘80s. I took this Tobe Hooper item as a sample of Texas Chainsaw lite when I saw it in its 1981 theatrical release, and I haven’t thought of it since, but watching it recently in this stellar Arrow presentation gave me a real “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” feeling. While not as depraved as corresponding Euro fare, it’s genuinely nasty rather than winkingly nasty, and kinda casually so, which makes a big difference. And here Tobe’s got a budget, and a crane, and anamorphic lenses, and he tries (and fails) to replicate the effect of that simple but killer under-the-porch-swing tracking shot from TCM. Like I said, he doesn’t, but it’s still a handsome little piece of work, about 39 minutes in, and the transfer is so specific you can track the focus anomalies created by the anamorphic lens in tandem with the moving camera. Whoo, and additionally, hoo. In other telling-detail related moments, the line of spittle hanging from lip of  that guy’s Frankenstein mask. Disgusting, and rightfully so. —A+

Orpheus (Criterion)

Very, very nice. Aside from being, you know, a classic and transportive film (eat it, ’49!)  this is a beautifully presented pertinent example of film texture of a certain age. The black-and-white textures have a kind of plastic solidity that the film stock of Dead Man simply doesn’t recreate, and here of course it’s combined with light and décor and makeup and effects creating this seductive but admittedly now anachronistic (by a certain perspective, at least) artificiality. Amaze your friends! Or at least the friends who might not find it boring. I’m sure you can divert one or two be directing them to the shot here that was used as a Smiths single cover shot. —A+

Paul (Universal)

Full disclosure: I’m friendly with this film’s director, Greg Mottola, and cordially acquainted with one of its costars. So, you know, take my endorsement of this film as a knowing, lively, albeit, yes, kind of vulgar delight with whatever grain of salt you believe the above knowledge requires of you. In a bit of inside knowledge that’s likely to be no surprise to anyone, Greg found the post-production process, wherein an entirely visually digital alien had to be seamlessly blended into the action, a hugely challenging part of the filmmaking process, and I think it was pulled off beautifully and it looks great in the digital high-def realm too. As digital is now an integral part of the process, the other good news here is that the film looks very much like it did in its theatrical presentation, which is very crisp and colorful. The real locations of the American West were clearly shot with a lot of love and appreciation. Lovely. —A

Pigs and Battleships/Stolen Desire (Eureka!/MOC U.K. import, Region B locked)

Whoa. This double dose of early Imamura is a pretty damn near flawless. The stunning, roiling 1961 Pigs and Battleships is the star of this set (Stolen Desire, the maestro’s debut feature, is very solid but comparatively constrained).  Some occasional print damage appears but overall it’s an incredibly stunning widescreen black-and-white image. The film is replete with amazing shots of long duration, such as an overhead crane following the film’s heroine walking with a group of friends while feckless hero Kinta follows parallel and eavesdrops on their conversation unseen from the other side of a fence. And of course the climax…well, seriously, a must-own, and another argument why an investment in a region-free Blu player would be worth it JUST for the sake of Eureka!/MOC releases in the format. —A+

Scarface (Universal)

Goddamn this is shiny, in that too shiny way that people complain about. No, it is NOT the best-looking version of the DePalma film ever. The DNR takes the sweat on the faces of the boatlift people and glues it to them so that they look like wax figures. If that’s your idea of enhancement, you’re welcome to it. Plus there are a lot of artifacts. Haloes,  black edges shimmers, all that kind of stuff. I usually go easy on taking issue with other people’s perceptions, but seriously, if you can’t see the problems here I worry you might not have eyes. On the plus side, the compression is well done overall. (See the bonfires in the riot scenes early on, if you can tear your eyes away from the hilarious evidence that DePalma is the most ineffectual director of extras EVER.) I don’t know if it’s a matter of one being able to get used to anything, or what, but the aforementioned problems diffuse, or at least are easier to take, as the film goes on. It winds up watchable. And it could have—should have—been more than that. —B-

Straw Dogs (MGM/UA)

This is one visually WEIRD film, right from the get go, where the children playing around the stone church look to be shot in forced perspective, so the buildings almost seem to be being dwarfed by them. And on it goes. Gray, gray gray. And then that dull, almost moon-like, autumnal sun. And then the ultra-violent climax, shot almost entirely in near dark, Peckinpah and cinematographer John Coquillon really pushing the film stock.  Really, it’s almost as daring visually as it is, um, thematically, and a lot more successfully so too. This Blu-ray is not blow-you-away sharp, but very solid. And a real representation of what the filmmakers GOT, for better of worse, tons of grain and all.—A

 

The Superman Movie Collection (Warner)

A pretty awesome one-stop-shopping package of sorts, featuring superb HD renderings of the Salkind films, the Singer reboot, etc.  The authenticity proof is in the pudding: you get more of the flushed ‘80s flesh tones I’ve been noticing on Blu-rays of films from that period on Lester’s Superman II. And dishy commentaries. Featuring odd semi-Zen pronouncements such as “This is the sort of thing that is funny, but at the same time not funny.” Rather irritating, though, that many of the generous and well-chosen extras, such as the Fleischer Supes cartoons, are NOT presented in HD. Grrr. They still look pretty good though. Still. Grrr. —B+

Tenebre (Arrow)

What is UP with this? Really. While the Arrow Blus of Inferno and Crystal Plumage Phenomena looked super terrific (correction; the Plumage to get is the U.S. Blue Underground issue, which goes against the Storaro Directive and presents the image in full 2.35), this, Four Flies, and in part Deep Red have these grain/speckling issues that detract severely from one’s enjoyment of the Argento baroque. One actually thinks of Jeffrey Wells’ mythical mosquitoes, if they had all flown through a shower of white paint prior to showing up on screen. My old Japanese laser disc had a solider grain structure than this. As with Dead Man, this is a case that requires further research that I might need a while to successfully conclude. In the meantime:—C

Vera Cruz (MGM/UA)

The title type at the beginning shows the film’s age in the way that it will (the picture was produced in 1954), as in those reds are a little blurred in the saturation, to coin a phrase. Soon things settle in nicely. Enjoy the unusual 2.00 aspect ratio. It’s a bright clean picture albeit with what seems a lot of sharpness variation with respect to long shots versus medium close-ups, but not QUITE as dramatic as what you’ll see in The Big Country, reviewed last month. A lot of variation from long shot to medium closeup. Really nice overall. Neat film, too. A Western with mismatched protagonists that’s also kind of a road movie and/or chamber drama in disguise, featuring double crosses galore. Quintessential Aldrich, in its way—pessimistic but simultaneously filled with a near-perverse good cheer. Highly recommended. —A

The Ward (Arc Entertainment)

Answer the question, John Carpenter: Did you shoot this anamorphically, for real? Alas, the maestro does not answer the question in his amiable, casual (but not quite as gonzo as the stuff he used to output with his old buddy Kurt Russell) commentary for this disc, which has male star Jared Harris sitting in with the director. This admirably crafted comeback film from Carpenter gets a very solid Blu-ray rendering, looking, as so many contemporary high-def discs do, like a chip off the old digital intermediary.  The diffusion of the light in the final shot of the shower sequence is one of the dead giveaways that this ain’t the summer of celluloid no more, but as J.C. says on that audio track, albeit in another context, “You can’t worry about older movies.” If you liked this picture—and I did—this is worth your time. —A-

Went the Day Well? (Optimum, region-B locked U.K. import)

I have an elaborate theory about how this sort-of alternate history fantasy of Britain in World War II is both a refutation AND a confirmation of all the snarly things Godard said about British wartime film in his Histoires, but I guess this isn’t the place for that. So I’ll just say that this crackling Cavalcanti piece, from a Graham Greene story, still works like mad as a yarn and a thriller, and looks great here. Good grain, a minimally scratched source, a particularly rich gray scale. A transfer from the 2010 restoration, one presumes. Not much in terms of extras, e.g., a BBC Radio 3 audio essay on the film. If you know the film, you know you want it. If you only know its legend, well, I bet you won’t be disappointed if you make the investment. —A

Win/Win (Fox)

Strong image, again probably straight from the digital inter; good detail, and again, not very FILMIC. On the very plus side, the dark parts of the image (and many of the film’s scenes take place in dimly lit living rooms and such, it’s that kind of cinematic entertainment) have no noise. As in, none. So if you like your indie comedy-dramas very clean at home, this is the way to go. Seriously, I found this one of the better films of its ilk this year, so I’m glad to have this version. —A

Women In Cages Collection (Shout! Factory)

Ooh, three Roger-Corman-produced women-in-prison films from the ‘70s in one convenient package. Which to watch first? Well, as helpful Roger points out, “Playing the ‘new fish’ in prison [in The Big Bird Cage] is the gorgeous Anitra Ford of The Price Is Right.” “New fish,” that’s classic. What we learn from watching Big Doll House and Big Bird Cage is that Jack Hill was pretty much Corman’s answer to Edgar G. Ulmer. Great basic but hardly unstylish or unstylized filmmaking in cheap-ass settings and situations. Gets pretty exciting in the outdoors, too. Hill’s commentary notes how Coppola destroyed some of the beautiful Bird Cage Philippines locations for Apocalypse Now, and Jack sounds a little ticked off about it. The third film, Women in Cages, is not directed by Hill, and looks the crappiest of the three, has sound sync problems, etc. As a result though it conveys something like a more AUTHENTIC 42^nd Street feel, again, if you Like That Sort Of Thing.—A

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Kino Lorber)

A quite gorgeous, warmly colored rendering of a rather…well, meh film. Something you could probably watch with your mom, except for Sophia Loren’s striptease scene, ay caramba. So watch Sunflower with your mom instead, and save this for a cold lonely winter night or something. —B

NEXT MONTH: Kane! Ben-Hur! Dumbo! Chabrol! Eisenstein! Edwards! Keaton! Altman! And more! It's gonna be legendary!

Image of the day, 9/23/11

Jean Renoir, La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game), Renoir, 1939 (which can "eat it!")

The Schwarzeneggerean Concept of Eternal Return

Despite various sins against criticism, and the fact that I am sometimes moved to pity by the wailing and gnashing of teeth of my younger confreres, I've never felt moved to comment on the apprehension-producing output of one Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a really not-so-bright young thing whose staggering smug banalities suggest the witless confidence of the preternaturally attractive, and yet...oh, never mind. However, the gnashing of teeth attending her inaugural column for GQ—I'm not sure if it's both the print and online edition, but if it is, holy crap, copy desk, get on the stick; all that passive voice really tends to stick out on paper—has been sufficiently poignant to stir up sympathy enow to foster a word of commiseration or two.

Ms. Vargas-Cooper's column is dubbed "The New Canon," and therein she proposes to Take Very Seriously, or Kind Of Seriously In Her Ostensibly Sassy Way, the works of what she calls "our generation of filmmakers." That she chooses to first treat a picture by James Cameron brings up a question concerning that  "our." James Cameron is older than ME, Natasha. I thought you were supposed to be a Bright YOUNG Thing. Ahem. But that's not important, as Leslie Nielsen (28 years Cameron's senior) said in Airplane!.  

What is impor...well, not important, but kind of interesting, in a really irritating way, is how she prattles on as if she's doing something subversive or transgressive by proposing...wait for it...Terminator 2: Judgement Day for her "new canon." Didn't some notion relative to this idea come along with, um, Andy Warhol, or, wait, was it Milton Caniff, and didn't the "bums" WIN that particular argument? I mean, is this individual REALLY rekindling a high/low dispute that doesn't figure in ANYONE'S actual conversation about film or almost any other aspect of culture anymore? I mean, Kingsley Amis dubbed Terminator 2 an "unimpeachable masterpiece." David Foster Wallace disdained it as the first work of "effects porn," and bemoaned that it was a betrayal of its low-budget antecedent. Neither writer, each a certified bonafide highbrow with a fancy college edumication and everything, even hinted that the movie was in any way beneath their notice or consideration. Thinking seriously about a film like Terminator 2 was no more novel to either than, maybe, drinking a glass of water was. And yet here's Natasha Vargas-Cooper, flouncing around like a moron giggling "Look at me! I think Terminator 2 is actually a great movie! Aren't I naughty?"

Sigh. And I'm not even getting into the slack, stupid prose (as I believe I mentioned, that's a big ole passive voice ya got there, Natasha, and I say that as a feller who regularly piles on and abuses the subordinate clauses, if'n ya know what I'm sayin' and I reckon ya do), the unmotivated swipe at a classic film combined with a brag that she hasn't seen it (Rules of the Game, in case you're wondering...) and other such delights. As I said, it's causing a lot of pain for my chums ("Would GQ hire a literary columnist who bragged that she hadn't read Hamlet?" a friend writes, in genuine confusion and anger), but I can't get TOO worked up about it. "Professional" "arts" "writing," particularly on the internets, is becoming something of a zero-sum game conducted AGAINST the reader; the more effin' mad it makes you, the more the desperate-for-relevance-and-page-views editors think it's "hot" and "provocative" and likely to go "viral." And rest assured that Natasha Vargas-Cooper is laughing at you, very loud and very cattily. Include me out.

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention, relative to a rather inappropriate (to the reading-comprehension and irony-challenged, at least) pastiche-joke I made on Twitter (although, on reflection, pastiche-jokes that call for a lot of contextualizing might not be entirely apt Twitter-fodder, alas), and a few of my phrasings above, that certain of my speculations and opinions concerning Vargas-Cooper were/are on the sexist side. For better or worse I've learned that saying "I am NOT sexist" when someone calls you sexist doesn't really earn you any slack, so my assurances that I would cite "the witless confidence of the preternatually attractive" with respect to a bad male writer who came on as if he looked like Armie Hammer would no doubt be exerted in vain, at least as far as those readers committed to being convinced of my sexism were concerned. Which is a long winded way of saying, "Sorry, but tough."