Modern architecture, like modern art, has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Though I can appreciate the clean lines and minimalist, uncluttered spaces, they’ve also never been spaces I’ve wanted to live in but on a tour through West Vancouver a few years ago, I had a realization that “modern” architecture, as applied to Vancouver, means something much different than what I had envisioned in my mind. In many aspects it is still about minimalism and open spaces but it’s also about communing with the nature around you and living in a space where the outdoors feels like an extension of your living quarters. Turns out this approach to modern architecture, though not exclusive to the west coast, has really taken a hold here and Coast Modern explores the architecture and ideas that have developed from LA to Vancouver.

Peppered with interviews of prominent modern architects, writers and the individuals that call some of these spaces home, directors Mike Bernard and Gavin Froome have pieced together a fascinating and beautiful account of the movement, its importance and why it never quite took hold. With the sentiment that “Modernism is a beautiful failure,” Bernard and Froome introduce the pioneers of the movement, the Case Study Houses that caused such a stir of attention but never quite took off and explore the modern ideal with a focus on the human connection. It’s not just about the beautiful homes but what they instil in the people that live in them. There’s a feeling of wanting to be part of nature, of living a healthier life when you surround yourself with so much nature and tranquility.

Like a walking tour of a neighbourhood, Bernard and Froome take us from Los Angeles to Vancouver, into homes that feel more like museums than living spaces but once inside, they’re cozy and warm and there’s a feeling of peace when you look out 12 foot high glass walls to overlook the water or when one comes through what appears to be an old farmhouse only to reveal a tranquil garden. It’s almost as if these are spaces of meditation where the loudest noise one would expect to hear is a beeping microwave. Though in some instances the spaces are clearly lived in – on two occasions we see children running around, jumping on furniture – others, even when crammed with papers and books, feel more like museums than homes; it’s their scarcity that makes them unique and foreign, objects of attention in many cases even decades after construction.

I was thoroughly engrossed by Coast Modern, it’s gorgeous vistas, beautiful homes and the history and ideas encapsulated within it, particularly the notion that these aren’t just places to live in for a few years, sell and then move on. They’re homes, extensions of the people that designed them and those that live in them, the kinds of places that stay in the family for generations. Considering the current love for reality TV, I’m surprised no one has thought to create a “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” type show dedicated entirely to modern architecture. I’d watch it and considering the buzz around this documentary, I’m not alone in my enthusiasm.

Coast Modern screens tonight. Online tickets are sold out and Rush line in effect. Second screening has been added. Details and tickets at DOXA.

Change is constant and many of the technological advances of the last century have significantly changed our way of life but there’s a feeling, especially as our parents and grandparents get older, that we are the last remaining connection to a world and a way of life that will soon be relegated to pages of books and scenes from photos and videos. Soon no one will remember what it was like to live without TV, never mind not being able to access it on the go and it seems that with every step forward in technology, the memories of the past fade even faster.

Justin Simms’ Hard Light is a deeply personal film about a time long ago; a time that many have forgotten but in remembering the past, it’s also a look at what we’re missing in today’s world. Newfoundland author Michael Crummey seems determined to remember that old way of life and Hard Light is a combination of re-enactments and interviews with Crummey, a story as much about the filmmaker, who at the end of the film admits to Crummey that his novel “Hard Light” changed his life, as it is about the author whose writing is the result of his inner struggles with finding himself in a world that seemed to be passing him by.

In the interviews, Crummey shares details about his life growing up in Newfoundland, of his relationship with his parents and grandfather and how his memories and experiences shaped the adult he wanted to be. It’s fascinating hearing Crummey discuss his life as a wonderer after leaving home to pursue writing. He was willing to do anything, including own nothing, in order to do what he loved and it took him decades to realize that in his choice of nomadic living, he’d failed to really live, to stop and enjoy the moments and people in his life. Listening to Crummey speak was both soothing and inspiring, and I found his observations on life and how communities and families are changing interesting and insightful.

As fascinating as I found Crummey’s insights, I found Hard Light lost a bit of steam with the incorporation of re-enactments. I found them unnecessary and the narrator for these moments leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a particularly poor way to start the film because as interesting as the story being read is, it’s doesn’t do much to draw the audience in and the deliberately soothing, all too quiet tone is grating. At some point, Crummey reads some excerpts from his book and I found these much more effective as his voice lends added weight to the words he has put to paper.

I didn’t care for nor did I find most of Simms’ artistic choices effective for this documentary, they come across as poor attempts to spruce up what is essentially an interview with Michael Crummey but Crummey and his writing far surpass any fumbles by the filmmaker. I would listen to Crummey wax poetic on just about anything and am thrilled to have discovered another powerful voice in Canadian literature.

Hard Light screens Monday, May 7th. Details and tickets at DOXA.

There’s a great scene early on in Brishkay Ahmed’s feature documentary debut Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan where Ahmed speaks with a couple of guys on a Vancouver street. She asks them what they think of the Burqa and their responses are surprising, both saying that the practice of the burqa is unnecessary. Things get stranger when Brishkay travels to Afghan and the surrounding areas and is told, on more than one occasion by a number of highly respected men, that the burqa isn’t even a traditional Afghan garment. So how does such a constricting piece of clothing come to be so important to a culture to which it was imported? The answers aren’t easy or simple but Ahmed sets off to find out and what she discovers along the way is shocking.

Walking the markets of Kabul, watching men coming in and out of a small burqa shop, we learn the details of how the garments are made and we see men, many of them traveling from afar, buying burqa’s for their daughters and wives. Seeing educated men speak of the burqa and its purpose and importance to the culture, it quickly becomes apparent that the controversial garment is a long engrained symbol of control and not some cultural norm long practiced by the people. Ahmed travels the world digging up the history of the burqa, it’s origins and how it eventually came to Afghanistan and her discoveries are eye opening not to mention unnerving.

Though it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that a garment forced on women under the guise of religious necessity is so popular among men, there’s a sense from Ahmed’s interviews that many men aren’t even aware that the burqa isn’t a necessity but rather something that has been forced on the culture from external sources. It’s fascinating, and scary, to see how long this process has taken and how totally it has entered public consciousness.

Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan uncovers some hard truths and fascinating facts and though a necessary, must see film, it lacks the polish of a project from a more experienced filmmaker. Most of the interviews veer off course from their starting point and though interesting, some of Ahmed’s points are muddled by additional unnecessary information; it’s all very interesting but much of it feels like a stretch from the story Ahmed sets off to uncover.

Though Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan is a bit rough around the edges, it’s a fascinating film and one that deserves to be seen and discussed. As they say: knowledge is power and this is knowledge that needs to be distributed.

Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan plays Thursday, May 10th. Screening details at tickets at DOXA.

An exceptionally tall girl in an orange dress with a piece of red-velvet cake on a plate and a lanky New Zealander with a video camera meet on the subway headed for Coney Island. They chat. They separate. They meet again. Could it be fate? Could it be the romance of both their lives? So begins the premise of Love Story, which is part Rom-Com, part art-experiment, part documentary. The woman is Masha, a Russian beauty who Kiwi filmmaker Florian Habicht hired to be his girlfriend for the making of the film. Their meeting is staged, as is Florian’s quest to find her afterwards. He solicits on-the-street advice from a charming rouges gallery of New Yorkers on how to proceed with his relationship-slash-film with the girl, including at one point climbing right into a taxicab occupied by a lady stock-broker to ask for seduction advice for a possible sex-scene (more on that in a moment.) In one of many fourth wall breaks, you not only get the seduction advice (“play the shy card”) but you also see the stock broker sign the documentary release form from a stack that Habicth carries around. If nothing else, it shows the power of a man and a movie camera and a built in conversation in a city of extroverts – and that even the most guerrilla of filmmaking projects still has a lot of paper work.

Not content to solicit advice completely from strangers, the director/subject also consults his father for advice on how to proceed with the film (within the film) via Skype on a laptop on a wooden board over his bath-tub that happens to be in his kitchen. When approaching something that contains enough quirk, the director himself sporting pink pants and a Bert & Ernie T-shirt is a 6 and a half foot talk doppelgänger of Roberto Benigni, you walk the dangerous line of drowning in quirk. Not the case here. Habicht has an easy interaction with the folks on the street who he allows into the process of writing his story and you get the sense that his entire goal is to raise the happiness quotient of the universe. I’d be lying if I said that a repurposing of the charming and goofy “Sean, Sean, Sean” Ennio Morricone score from Leone’s Duck, You Sucker! didn’t win me over.

He finds a black female auto-mechanic in Harlem that offers the best advice to human kindness, “Just say, ‘How was your day?’” We know that Masha is more of a fantasy image to the director, just as in a romantic comedy the couple and their manufactured troubles are a fantasia for the audience. Another on-the-street conversation starts with “Are you a good artist.” The directors response, “A con-artist!” And Love Story has the surface and all the tropes of a classic New York Story, but it is also self-aware enough to gently mock all the tropes while indulging in them all the same. The guiltiest (and funniest) being a particular body quirk of lanky Habicht that is exploited once to call out its own signature rom-com scene, and the echoed later on to remind us that we are watching a fabrication. Later the film packs Masha into a suitcase and is done with her. Not so much a human being, but a stunningly gorgeous prop for the film, she looks exotic and sexy with her short page-cut, and frequently sporting sheer stockings (and nothing else.) I imagine it took a fair bit of trust on the part of NYU student and photographer Masha Yakovenko to participate in this two person, three month shoot as it could have just been a highly unconventional way for one New Zealand filmmaker to meet girls. Indeed, feminists could have a field day with the exuberant penchant for making the object of director-writer-star’s affection into somewhat of a Kim Novak type surrogate (even as she sometimes resists this notion.) Yet, it is hard not to fall in love with the energy and humour on display in the filmmaking and the mythology of New York in summer, even as it is deconstructed right in front of you.

Director: Tak Sakaguchi & Yûdai Yamaguchi
Screenplay: Tak Sakaguchi & Yûdai Yamaguchi
Based on a manga by: Ken Ishikawa
Starring: Tak Sakaguchi, Shingo Tsurumi, Mei Kurokawa, Akaji Maro
Producers: Yoshinori Chiba, Toshiki Kimura & Shûichi Takashino
Country: Japan
Running Time: 106 min
Year: 2011
BBFC Certificate: 18

After spending the last couple of weeks watching and reviewing Mizoguchi films and Mark Cousins’ Story of Film I’m heading right over to the other side of the spectrum by covering the latest Japanese splatter-comedy offering, Yakuza Weapon. The star (Tak Sakaguchi) and writer (Yûdai Yamaguchi) of cult classic Versus join forces behind the camera after working together on Battlefield Baseball to co-direct this blood-soaked action comedy for specialist production company Sushi Typhoon (Cold Fish, Helldriver etc.).

Ex-Yakuza Shozo (Tak Sakaguchi himself) discovers that his gang-boss father has been murdered and heads back home to find the culprit. When he returns he discovers that his father’s right-hand man Kurawaki (Shingo Tsurumi) was to blame and has ruthlessly taken over the business. Shozo of course heads off to take revenge, but an epic battle results in both of them being mutilated. A secret Japanese governmental agency who have their eye on Kurawaki then step in, kitting out Shozo’s missing arm and leg with a high powered mini-gun and rocket launcher, turning him into the Yakuza Weapon. Kurawaki meanwhile, takes it upon himself to build an army of super soldiers to get his own revenge, including turning Shozo’s former friend Tetsu against him.

It took me a while to get into this one. Hastily squeezing the film in before I had to go somewhere didn’t help, but I’m also getting a little tired of this sub-genre of crazy Japanese splatter-fests. For me they need to really go all out to impress or at least keep things well paced and short. Helldriver for instance had some inspired moments, but became very repetitive and drawn-out by the end. Yakuza Weapon had the opposite effect though. Playing more with the action genre and less with the gore/horror aspects, the film just didn’t seem to be anything special in the first half, but got a lot more entertaining towards the end.

It still never went far enough to warrant a recommendation though. I liked that the film didn’t rely too much on gore as it’s selling point as I’m more of an action fan anyway, but the action was pretty uninspired for the most part and the humour that it wanted to rely on was too childish for me. However, the final third did offer up a couple of eye-opening scenes that were a lot of fun. First up was a fight scene done in one insanely long take that came out of nowhere (most of the other fights are quick-cutting). Although the choreography wasn’t quite as intricate as in the famous long-take in Warrior King (a.k.a. Tom-Yum-Goong), the actual take length may rival it and it certainly made me sit up and take notice of the film. Not long after this the film then lays it’s ‘bat-shit-crazy trump card’ when Tetsu arrives with a super-weapon made out of the naked body of his dead sister!? It’s not as sick as it sounds, but I did find it very funny, as base as it is. Also in the film’s climactic scenes is an interesting sequence where the action plays out in colourful silhouette which is a nice touch (see above).

On top of those standout scenes, the film is quite evenly paced and the action more varied than in Versus, which I always found slightly disappointing due to its bloated running time and repetitive action scenes. It doesn’t have the flair or style of that film though and coming over a decade later it doesn’t have anywhere near the same impact either. Because of this, Yakuza Weapon is a fun trashy genre film, but is never going to be remembered as any sort of a ‘cult classic’.

Yakuza Weapon is released on DVD & Blu-Ray by Bounty Films and distributed in the UK by Eureka Entertainment on 7th May. Picture and sound quality is great on the Blu-Ray, although I find low budget, digitally shot films like this look cheaper on Blu-Ray as the pin-sharp picture shows more flaws in the effects, costumes, sets etc.

The discs are loaded with extras. You get a bunch of deleted and extended scenes, a fun making of documentary, a short film – Takuzo’s Weapon, Toki’s Wedding – an odd little film about Tak Sakaguchi going to his sister’s wedding, the full Tower of Kurawaki video, an opening day stage greeting, Dream Jumbo Talkshow featuring interviews with the filmmakers, a trailer and an isolated music track. So pretty much everything fans of the film could possibly want.

With no fanfare, we’re dumped straight into the story in media res, panning over a city, then zooming in to see a man and woman embracing in a parking lot, then breathlessly discussing some plot they have to get away from someone. Not much is clear, except that there’s some backstory here that we’re not privy to, a situation that continues for a while, as the couple returns, separately, to a club were we discover that the woman is married to another, much smarmier man who she doesn’t like much. The beginning of this film doles out information like a morphine drip…just enough to keep you going, but never too much. It’s succinct and matter of fact, setting up characters and relationships with a beautiful economy, but keeping you grasping to know the backstory, how these characters got to where they are.

Thankfully, there’s soon a flashback that fills in the blanks, but only after you’ve managed to do most of it yourself. It’s a rather satisfying technique, managing to give the audience a feeling of investment and agency as well as the necessary exposition. Even the flashback is economical by noir standards, with the requisite defeatist voiceover kept minimal, for the most part letting the action play out without comment, content to just add a bit more to the backstory that was left so tantalizingly slender in the first few sequences.

Though the title might suggest a Strangers on a Train-esque murder swap, really it’s just a whole bunch of double crosses – primarily relating to the armed robbery that forms the center of the plot, but also in terms of the love triangle the three main characters find themselves in. Yvonne DeCarlo plays the girl, initially in love with Burt Lancaster, but instead she randomly married Dan Duryea, a small-time crime boss. How they got to that point is in the flashback. The present-day is concerned with Lancaster and DeCarlo’s attempt to escape Duryea, with a boatload of stolen money to boot. But loyalty is cheap in film noir, and the double-crosses don’t stop with the plan to cut Duryea out of his part of the robbery proceeds.

Criss Cross is often cited as a quintessential noir, and it’s easy to see why. Pretty much all the traditional markers are here – a petulant femme fatale, a crime gone wrong, a defeatist voiceover from a despairing schmuck, flashbacks to simpler times when at least the possibility of happiness existed, as opposed to the murky hopelessness of the present. It’s got a solid cast of high B/low A level actors, is directed by noir specialist Robert Siodmak, decent but economical production values, and a taut and direct screenplay. There’s always one more double cross than I expected, yet somehow I found much of it rather on the typical side – perhaps that’s a side effect of being a quintessential example of a well-known genre. I enjoyed the film, but I found it less interesting than many of the other new-to-me films of the Fest. One touch I did love – the girl at the bar who I expected to have some part to play, but didn’t. She was just there. All the time. That was awesome.

Director: Robert Siodmak
Screenplay: Daniel Fuchs
Producer: Michael Kraike, for Universal
Music: Miklos Rosza
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne DeCarlo, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally
Year of Release: 1949
Running Time: 88 min.
TCMFest Film Guide
IMDb
Letterboxd
Flickchart (formerly unranked, now 1103 out of 2921)

Director: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (Life After Love, The Rocket)
Screenplay: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Novel: Win Lyovarin
Producers: Raymond Phathanavirangoon, Pawas Sawatchaiyamet
Starring: Nopachai Chaiyanam, Sirin Horwang, Chanokporn Sayoungkul, Apisit Opasaimlikit, Kiat Punpiputt
MPAA Rating: NR
Running time: 105 min.
Country of Origin: Thailand

 
An interesting premise with engaging character quickly goes sour and strays dangerously close to flat out boring in the second half of Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s ninth feature film, Headshot. A talented under cover cop/detective is framed for a murder he didn’t commit. In order to leave prison early, he agrees to work as a hitman for a mafia-like political faction. In an assassination gone wrong, our hero takes a bullet to the head,wakes up from a coma three months later to find that his vision is now upside-down. From there it’s a non-linear story about revenge, corruption and finding solace.

Using mostly flashbacks, we’re told the back story of our hero and how he came to be the man he is today. Watching this slowly evolve is a treat and rather quite exciting and engaging… for the first thirty minutes or so. As the story unfolds, bringing us closer to the present, the more and more contrived and convenient things start to become. And likewise, more and more tedious.

Things get pretty boring from about the halfway point to the end; with even the action sequence(s) being not of any particular interest – though I can appreciate the heartful attempts in at least trying to make things interesting with locales and style. In the end, the plot is obvious and contrived; feeling a bit like bad 90s film making. On top of that, the craft is not all that stylistically interesting.

A good premise that goes uphill really fast, then the bottom falls out from beneath us and I really just wanted to get the hell out of the theater to get some munchies and make the early bus home.

Because I do not want to spend one more minute thinking about it, and I will only use 60 second of your valuable time. Here is yours truly, courtesy of TheSubstream, speaking of failed meta-film experiment constructed with behind-the-scenes footage of James Franco at General Hospital and goofy voice-over to do…something. The result is a steaming pile of meta-mush.

Director: Frédéric Jardin
Writers: Frédéric Jardin, Nicolas Saada, Olivier Douyère
Producers: Marco Cherqui, David Grumbach, Jean-Jacques Neira
Starring: Tomer Sisley, Serge Riaboukine, Julien Boisselier, Joey Starr, Laurent Stocker
Country of Origin: France
MPAA Rating: NR
Running time: 89 min.

During an early morning drug robbery, the culprits make off with a dozens of kilograms of cocaine, but one unlucky fellow, Vincent, gets tagged with a stab wound, and even worse, has his face spotted by the dealers he is stealing from. But wait a minute. Vincent and his partner are cops who have plotted a rogue, and quite illegal heist for some much needed cash. Vincent, all ready at odds with ex-wife gets in trouble when the owner of the drugs, Jose – a snappily dressed middle-man who operates out of a Paris night club the size of a small airport – kidnaps his son Thomas in exchange for Vincent returning the drugs. During a packed night, the hand-off at the club gets royally messed up as two more branches of the police, Vincent’s partner, the Turks who are trying to buy the drugs from Jose and at probably a couple of other interested parties join the chase as Vincent’s changes of getting his son back dwindle and his changes of getting beaten, shot, stabbed, busted, or simply bleeding death on the floor increase – exponentially. As far as I can tell, the entire film takes place within 24 hours, but the pacing is so relentless, that at times, it feels like a single whirlwind take.

You can probably imagine the logistical challenges to making an action driven chase film set almost completely inside a mega-sized night club: camera placement, sound continuity, controlling the tightly packed horde of extras and communicating the complicated geography of the place to the viewer. Director Frederic Jardin not only rises to the challenge, but throws laughs heartily in the glory of what is possible with this basic genre concept. He layers in the sack full of cocaine, a dozen or more mobile phones, changing clothing, and teenage hostage that change locations as often as they change ownership. The mind reels thinking just how damn well this is executed. A scuffle in the kitchen involving a baton has the hero opening drawers as he crawls underneath to block from being clubbed, later, a similar trick of opening a series doors in a corridor to block bullets. These are visually pure images shot with real panache. The press of flesh and sweat and desperation is palpable as the lines of who is who, who knows what, who is where and where are they headed gets blurry. This is all dizzy pleasure, akin to the twists and turns of Fabian Belinski’s clockwork confidence scheme in Nine Queens or Martin Brest’s buddy comedy Midnight Run. Objects and people travel at high speed through the packed main floor, pounding with French Drum and Bass (or in one great set piece, a DJ mash-up of Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust.”), into the kitchens, restaurants, corridors, duct work, strong vault, the parking lot (and various vehicles, and several the mens and ladies room. They are captured from all sorts of strange angles by cinematographer Stern who alternates effectively between both visceral and stately visual strategy.

The film juggles relationships just as effortlessly, who is on whose side and whose side they thing others are on, without losing the films focus on Vincent getting his son back. You would think with all that attention to detail would be enough, but then Jardin throws in some real heart with the arc between Vincent and Thomas, proving that the relationship between father and son can be the knottiest one of all. As action pictures go, Sleepless Night is a complete and satisfying package that will make genre aficionados and general audience alike, stand up and take notice.

IMDb

Either Mads Brügger has balls the size of grapefruits or there is mondo chicanery going on in The Ambassador. Well, it’s a given that there is trickery happening, so the thing to figure out is who the trick is on: The Central African Republic (a former French colony smack-dab in the middle of the contient), shady European dealers of grey-market diplomatic credentials, helpful local guide-advisers or us the viewers. The result is a thoroughly captivating, often hilarious bit of guerrilla filmmaking that is subversive both to its subject matter, and its medium of choice.

Lets start at the beginning. Mads Brügger Cortzen is a Danish media personality that is kind of an amalgamation of Michael Moore and the Borat side of Sasha-Baron Cohen. His previous TV documentary/comedies, Danes for Bush and Red Chapel explored the political and social landscapes of the United States during the 2004 election and the social and propaganda mores of North Korea, respectively, both by on-the-ground insertion in a particular form of misdirection of intent. I’ve not seen either of these films (nor his TV Talk Show, The Eleventh Hour) but I want to see them all based on the brains and brawn exhibited in The Ambassador. Here, Brügger goes to the Central African Republic to set up a (blood) diamond smuggling operation fronted by building a match factory. He gets his contacts and credentials by spending $30,000 to some rich European brokers who have a side-business in selling diplomatic papers from one African country (here, Liberia) to another (CAR). Then, donning an expensive tan suit, mirror shades and polished burgundy riding boots, the new diplomat-entrepreneur is ready to get some old-school colonial exploitation happening. Over the course of the film, Brügger, with his ‘trusty’ adviser Paul (a CAR local), and his beautiful white secretary, dispense many ‘envelopes of happiness’ to people on the political and business scene in Bangui. He tours parts of the country, visits other diplomats for advice, and eventually works his way up to meetings with the ministers of defense and security. The latter being the son of the president of CAR, François Bozizé. What is crazy about the whole thing is that our consul-in-training is going by his real name, something that anyone in the Central African Republic could have found with a simple Google search in five minutes. Why Brügger is not dead in a ditch somewhere is beyond me. Either that or the joke is on me. It is a joke told with enough chutzpah and style that it perhaps does not even matter.

With his extravagant, highly cliché posturing and seemingly opening filming his business/political journey Brügger sets out to expose the corruption on both sides of the 1st world / 3rd world equation and do so in as highly entertaining a fashion as possible. The quite excellent framing of various hidden cameras in compromising meetings suggest to the skeptical (including me) that manipulation of the film-making is not insignificant here. It is noteworthy that Lars Von Trier’s Zentropa company is the chief backer here, too. But since I do rather like being manipulated by (in the right hands such as Mr. von Trier’s) I find this particular mash-up of humour, journalism, and ethics-busting cliche-transcending politics to be daring, and in no way whatsoever, trite. Brügger mugs to the camera with a wild sense for marking moments with big speeches; layered with equal parts self-deprecation and self-incrimination subtext. Amusing sideways tangents to the diamond smuggling goal, specifically involving hiring Pygmy workers (for the voodoo-mysticism credibility offered) to make matches for the front-business – one that is not likely to happen – and political kingdom-building in African-diplomat circles offer further trampling on ethics and overall morality in the name of entertainment. Nothing is more true in our 21st century need for ‘reality’ and ‘content.’ Furthermore the art-work for the proposed matchboxes contains some hilarious images of the current mix of French and Chinese colonialism at play in the CAR. The soundtrack, boasting The Ink Spots, The Mill’s Brothers Woodie Guthrie and the original version Istanbul (not Constantinople) by the Four Lads – appropriately more downbeat and ambiguous than the high-energy They Might Be Giants’ cover – add a fair bit of pizzazz and in no small proportion, ironic distance, to the proceedings.

In the end, The Ambassador feels as much a like a lark as anything else. Unlike the board room impersonation antics of say, The Yes Men, the real danger that the filmmakers are in here is part and parcel to the viewing experience. We see diamonds and ‘envelopes of happiness’ exchanging hands, but never the promised ‘suitcase full of diamonds’ crossing out of the continent without any border obstruction. Brügger may have been swindled (by both the Africans and the Europeans) or simply hit too many dead ends to drive the blood diamond narrative to completion. But the real ultimate goal was achieved. That is to point out the ease and baldness of white-collar crime accompanying of absolute corruption in the wilder parts of African Jungle-Republics. Humour is often more effective than rage and indignation. You can be the judge.

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Want the 1 minute video version? See below

[Originally published on The Frame as part of a Blind Spots series addressing films on my List of Shame]

This has been an extremely difficult review to sit down and write, largely because this film elicited such strong and conflicting reactions from me both while viewing it, and thinking back on it afterwards. I have never felt so in turmoil about a film, even while in the midst of watching it, my thoughts and emotions swirling back and forth even within the same scene. Loving it, hating it, sympathizing, being repulsed, being moved, understanding, feeling detached, exasperated, annoyed, intrigued, heartbroken, unresolved. Of course, maybe that’s utterly appropriate, given that the film is about a couple constantly at each other’s throats, except when they’re in each other’s arms, who drag a younger couple along with them on a night of “fun and games.” But what is the game, and what are the rules, and who’s having fun? The answers to those questions shift as often as my emotions did, and with as little warning or explanation.

George and Martha are a middle-aged academic couple, respectively a professor in history and the daughter of the university’s long-time president. As the film opens, they’re wending their way home after a university party, chatting quietly while lovely and calm background music plays. But even at this most peaceful point in the movie, they quickly fall into a rhythm of argument, clearly their default mode of interacting with each other. As they return home, Martha quotes one of Bette Davis’s campiest characters, proclaiming “What a dump,” then hounding George to tell what movie it’s from. At this point, the movie was already grating on me pretty badly, and it’s only getting started!

Soon a young couple comes over to continue the party, but they don’t know what they’re getting into any more than I did. The night wears on, Martha goading George continuously and flirting with the young man, while his wife gets more and more inebriated. But George, though far wearier and less vulgar, can give as good as he gets from Martha, his barbs carrying an air of intellectualism that makes them cut even deeper. Meanwhile, the younger couple aren’t innocents, either, but have their own skeletons in the closet. The film is almost a one-room drama (as the original Edward Albee play was), focusing on the four characters’ ongoing conversation and interactions. Most of it is very antagonistic, quite mean-spirited, and rather stagey and histrionic.

And yet. And yet. I can’t simply write the film off, and not only because I know how highly regarded it is. Somewhere about halfway through it started getting under my skin, and I’ve found it often popping up in the back of my mind since I finished it. As more details start to come out about George and Martha’s past and the “games” they play with each other (as George says, “we’re not ‘at’ each other, we’re just exercising what little of our wits is left”), I found myself more and more intrigued both by these people and by the structure of the film itself. It lets us in only slowly, at first only showing us George and Martha as they are now, a bitter couple who have grown almost complacent in their antagonism. But there’s more to them than this, a depth that soon becomes apparent in Burton’s weary eyes, his sighs as he accepts or counters yet another of Martha’s hurls.

Really, if it hadn’t been for Burton, I doubt I would’ve made it through the entire film. Taylor’s performance is often praised (and she won an Oscar for it), but except for one or two times when she quieted down and revealed some of the pain behind her own animosity, her performance largely tends toward shrill and histrionic, and I rarely if ever believed her. Burton, though, I believed all the time. All his emotional beats worked completely for me, and I felt every catch in his voice, every callback to old pain revisited. I will say that Taylor came very close to redeeming herself for me in the final scene, by which time the film had put me through such a confusing emotional wringer that I was as drained as she and Burton (the kids are there mostly as audience surrogates and something for George and Martha to play off of; they have their own stuff going on, but it’s relatively insignificant in comparison).

So by the end, the film’s power had definitely gotten to me, but I still don’t know if I could rewatch it any time soon. And yet…I do want to rewatch it. I want to study why it had the effect on me that it did. Very rarely am I this confused about my reaction to a film, and on the one hand, I know the film is powerful for affecting me the way it did, and the last act is pretty devastating however you slice it. Meanwhile, the first act is viciously funny (it worked better for me after I opted to think of it as a comedy – until somewhere in the second act, that becomes impossible). Also, I credit Mike Nichols and cinematography Haskell Wexler for some greatly affecting lighting and camerawork, which did a whole lot to balance out the theatricality of the dialogue. Even when I was recoiling from the characters and the mean-spiritedness on screen, I was still usually fascinated by the way it was shot. Even so, I can’t in good conscience say I think everything in it worked. Sandy Dennis also won an Oscar for her role, which I don’t understand, because she’s largely just acting a silly drunk girl the whole time, and she’s almost more annoying (if more innocuous) than Martha. Taylor I can’t get behind totally, and the young man is pretty dull.

And one thing about the ending. Vague spoilers follow.

The ending depends on the revelation that something George and Martha have been talking about the entire night is actually an elaborate fantasy, the breaking of which fantasy because reduces Martha to nothing. Now, I have in my life indulged in an awful lot of elaborate fantasy, which has, at certain times in my life, been very real to me. But despite the undeniable sincerity with which Burton and Taylor treat this aspect of the film, it stretched my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point to believe that two well-educated adults had kept up a fantasy just between the two of them that has this kind of power over them. It’s one of those things that worked while I was watching the film because Burton and Taylor put it over, but five minutes after the film was over, I was going “wait, really?!”

The “who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” is an academic variation on “who’s afraid of the big bad wolf,” and in this case, apparently, the big bad wolf is a life free from illusions, free from facades – a life that Martha in particular fears to face. But I got that from a Wikipedia article, not from the film, at least not on a first viewing. And even with that, I’m not sure WHY she fears it so much, and why George, who seems better adjusted, would help her keep up such a strange and elaborate fantasy for so long, and then finally break it that night. Those are questions that will have to wait until I get to another viewing. But returning to the world of George and Martha will be exhausting, and I’m not sure when I’ll be ready for it. At this point, I’m inclined to rate it highly simply because I think the extremely unsettled feeling I had both while watching it and thinking back over it is intentional. On the other hand, I’m still not sure I like that, and while certain scenes worked like gangbusters, as a whole I can’t say I enjoyed watching it. But not every film is made to be enjoyed. So I end up where I started – conflicted.

I am doing a series of one-minute video reviews for The Substream on the various Hot Docs films that I flit in and out of during the festival. Below is a one of them: the solid and informative documentary how pranksterism and trolling on the interwebs eventually morphs into high-stakes political and social activism. The hacker group Anonymous is outlined and examined in We Are Legion: The Story of the Hactivists.

Ugetsu Monogatari

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay: Yoshikata Yoda, Matsutarô Kawaguchi, Kyûchi Tsuji
Based on Stories by: Akinari Ueda
Starring: Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyô, Kinuyo Tanaka, Ichisaburo Sawamura, Eitarô Ozawa
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Country: Japan
Running Time: 94 min
Year: 1953
BBFC Certificate: PG

It’s very interesting listening to the special features for Ugetsu Monogatari where Tony Rayns talks about when the film was premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon had won the festival’s Golden Lion a couple of years previously and Mizoguchi was jealous. He wasn’t happy that this ‘upstart’ was one of the first Japanese directors to be recognized at such a level in the west. So he went to work on quite a personal project, Ugetsu Monogatari, in the hope of dethroning the ‘youngster’. It played at Venice and was declared the best film that year, but the judges refused to award it the Golden Lion, instead giving it the Silver Lion, claiming that no film was strong enough to gain the top prize that year. On top of this, Mizoguchi himself wasn’t happy with the film, claiming the studio made him change his intended ending. However, these days Ugetsu Monogatari is considered by many to be the director’s finest work and has cropped up on numerous lists as being one of the greatest films of all time. Personally, I think I’d side with Mizoguchi though to an extent. As great as the film was, it didn’t quite match up to Sansho Dayu in my eyes and to be honest, I even slightly preferred the less respected Gion Bayashi.

Set during the Japanese Civil War of the sixteenth century, Ugetsu Monogatari follows the trials and tribulations of two men, Genjurô (Masayuki Mori) and Tobei (Eitarô Ozawa), as well as their wives (and son in Genjorô’s case). Genjorô is a hard-working family man who wants to profit on the inevitable war by selling his pottery to the soldiers. Tobei is a simple man who wants nothing more than to be a samurai but is told that he can’t even attempt to join their ranks without appropriate weaponry or armour. So he helps Genjorô produce a great stock of pottery to take to town and earn a slice of the profits. The war comes early as they have put the wares into the kiln though and the families are forced into refuge. Sneaking back into their village, the men do manage to rescue the results of their labour and take them to a further town, making a lot of money, but separating themselves from their wives. As the film goes on the men are punished in various ways for their greed, with Genjorô’s story bringing a supernatural element to proceedings as he is seduced by the mysterious Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyô) and all memory of his wife seems to disappear with his new dream-like existence.

As mentioned, this didn’t quite live up to expectation for me, even on my second viewing, but that’s not to say it isn’t a great film. As ever, Mizoguchi’s direction and mis-en-scene is stunning. Employing his usual long takes and complicated tracking shots, the film looks fantastic and feels very much alive, although I didn’t feel it looked as meticulously fine-tuned as in Sansho. The misty boat journey near the start of the film and the climax of Genjurô’s entrapment in particular are stunningly well-realised sequences though and show why Mizoguchi is considered with such high esteem amongst critics and filmmakers.

For me, it was the more human elements that weren’t quite as strong as in the films in the previous set though. The narrative of Ugetsu is richer and more complex than in those others, but the dialogue, mainly in the first half of the film, felt a bit blunt. The film just didn’t seem as subtle as it could be in places. The latter half of the film, once the ghost story kicks in, is much stronger though. I think the reason I felt a little underwhelmed is because the elements of the film were quite diverse so I never really latched on to any of them for long enough to get a deep emotional reaction. The supernatural scenes for instance are fantastic, but only make up a small proportion of the film and the more dramatic moments are broken up throughout so I never felt the impact I did when watching Sansho. I guess Ugetsu isn’t meant to be as heartbreaking as that, but it still seems to aim for something similar.

I really shouldn’t keep comparing the films though and bad-mouthing Ugetsu Monogatari, because it is a truly great film. It may not have had the impact I would have liked, but the unusual narrative is entrancing and it is a beautifully told story. There are some hauntingly touching scenes too, especially towards the end, and makes for a strange hybrid of subtly creepy ghost story mixed with moral drama. You’re best off ignoring my nitpicking and seeing for yourself.

Oyu-Sama (a.k.a. Miss Oyu)

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay: Yoshikata Yoda
Based on a Novel by: Junichirô Tanizaki
Starring: Kinuyo Tanaka, Nobuko Otowa, Yûji Hori
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Country: Japan
Running Time: 94 min
Year: 1951
BBFC Certificate: PG

Oyu-Sama was the first film Mizoguchi produced for Daiei Studios, which was who he made all of the films in these two sets for. Of course, he’d been making films for several decades before this, so it wasn’t anywhere near the start of his career, but it was the start of a period in which he produced some of his most well-respected work, at least in western eyes.

Oyu-Sama tells the story of a bizarre love triangle of sorts. Shinnosuke (Yûji Hori) is looking for a woman to marry and is introduced to Shizu (Nobuko Otowa) as a prospective partner. However, when they meet he falls for her older sister Oyu (Kinuyo Tanaka), who develops feelings for the young man in return. Unfortunately, Oyu is a widow still caring for her young son and her strict family will not allow her to remarry. Seeing the love the two have for each other, Shizu agrees to marry Shinnosuke, but tells him on their wedding night that this is only to be a formality so that he can remain close to her sister. As this sham marriage moves on, the facade becomes more and more difficult to uphold (especially seeing as Oyu is unaware of it) and rumours in the town threaten their ‘arrangement’.

This is definitely the weakest film of the four. Although the subject matter is clearly very downbeat, the film isn’t nearly as moving as Mizoguchi’s other dramas. I think it’s largely down to the script, which is quite melodramatic and leaves little room for subtlety as characters come right out with their problems at frequent intervals. It’s a shame, as the idea is very dark and interesting for a modern western audience that doesn’t share the same values of honour when it comes to family matters.

Mizoguchi does his best with the material though. He still crafts some memorable scenes, with a shock death in the middle beautifully handled and a poignantly poetic ending tying things up nicely. His visual style is stunning as ever too. A long tracking shot as Oyu falls ill and Shinnosuke takes her through a nearby house to rest is incredibly well constructed and complicated without really ‘showing’ it.

The music lets things down on the style front though. Oyu plays a traditional Japanese instrument, the koto, and the scenes when she plays this are beautiful, but elsewhere in the film the music is quite westernised and sounds bland when put against the sumptuous visuals.

Oyu-Sama is not a bad film by any means, but you get the feeling it’s a case of a great filmmaker working with not-so-great material. It’s worth a watch for fans of the director and is a welcome addition to the Blu-Ray/DVD set, but otherwise I’d stick to the classics.

Ugetsu Monogatari & Oyu-Sama are out now in one set on Dual Format Blu-Ray & DVD, released by Eureka as part of their Masters of Cinema Series. I got sent the Blu-Ray to review and the transfers are decent, but not quite as strong as the previously reviewed set. Ugetsu Monogatari looks crisp and clear, but shows its age more than Sansho Dayu does on the other set with minor scratches showing up here and there. The audio is a little treble-heavy again too. Oyu-Sama isn’t as strong, with quite a soft picture and a more damaged audio track. For such a rare film it still comes across very well though. I imagine this is largely down to the condition of the available print.

As usual you also get a hefty booklet in with the package. I didn’t get sent a digital copy of this as I usually do, but I imagine it will be as informative and fascinating as with their previous releases.

Director: Mark Cousins
Screenplay: Mark Cousins
Starring: Mark Cousins, Lars von Trier, Kyôko Kagawa, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, Bernardo Bertolucci
Producer: John Archer
Country: UK
Running Time: 900 min
Year: 2011
BBFC Certificate: 15

Say what you like about the documentary itself, but nobody can deny that Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film: An Odyssey is a phenomenal achievement. Based on his own book of the same title, Mark Cousins presents us with an epic 15-hour love letter to cinema. Shown in the UK originally as a 15-part documentary series, the film was intended to be seen as a whole and played at numerous festivals in one go. This 5 disc DVD set presents it as such, only splitting the film 5 ways for storage reasons.

Cousins describes in his introduction to the journey how the widely known history of cinema is inherently racist and sexist. He believed it was “time to redraw the map of cinema history”, presenting the true story of how film moved from the early static shots of traffic or people leaving factories to the variety of films we enjoy today. A lofty, arrogant statement to make of your own book/film perhaps, but as you move through this long trawl of film’s development over the past 11 decades it’s hard to disagree or scoff at the high ambitions of his work.

Beginning with the very invention of film, the documentary moves chronologically through the last century or so, only overlapping from time to time with specific film movements that occured concurrently. Cousins’ primary focus is looking at the innovators of cinema; artists that changed film language and heralded new eras as well as looking at how historical change effected film. His scope spans the entire globe, drawing attention to revolutions in cinema big and small rather than going over old ground only covering Hollywood classics such as Citizen Kane or Casablanca (although these do get a foot in). This epic scale justifies the epic length of the piece and made the documentary eye-opening to me. Yes I’d heard of a large proportion of the filmmakers discussed, but it certainly got me onto a number I hadn’t, and also made me realise how many of these important directors I’d heard of but not actually discovered for myself. If one negative can be found in me watching The Story of Film it’s that it’s going to cost me a lot of money in DVD’s and Blu-Rays. As I first watched the ‘series’ as it was portrayed on TV I would add to a great ‘shopping list’ of films and filmmakers that I wanted to invest it.

Presentation-wise, it’s a very straightforward affair. We get Cousins’ narration taking us through the story as he shows us literally hundreds of clips from films, illustrating his points and the work of the filmmakers he is discussing. Interspersed with these are some interviews with well known filmmakers and film historians. We also get some basically shot ‘filler’ footage which is used to take us to different locations in the story of film (the travel budget must have been hefty) and some clearly and simply shot examples of film techniques being discussed. This additional footage isn’t particularly well shot or noteworthy, but does a good job of taking us through the places and events being discussed. A couple of Cousins’ more ‘symbolic’ sequences are a bit shoddy though.

Cousins’ narration is one of the documentary’s most divisive points when I’ve discussed it with fellow film-lovers. Without wanting to cause offence, the writer/director has a peculiar rhythm and tone to his voice that can be quite grating and monotonous. I grew used to this quite quickly and didn’t find a problem, but I know others have put off watching the film as they’ve heard him speak before and don’t fancy 15 hours of it. To me, this is a poor reason to avoid such an incredible piece of filmmaking and although his voice can be difficult, his passion for film and insanely detailed dissection of its development is absolutely compulsive viewing. A testament to this is how, when asked to review this set, I figured I wouldn’t need to watch it again as I’d caught it on TV, but when I popped the first disc in to check the picture quality and recap on the content, I struggled to turn it off and spent about 3 hours going through various sections again.

It’s a truly inspiring work and even if you feel you know the ‘story of film’ or have read the book, it’s still an absolute joy to watch the staggering number of clips from cinema’s most innovative and important works of art. Watching sequences like the first ever close up or the earliest use of editing for instance is captivating as well as revelling in the work of Ozu or Bergman. Cousins may miss a few great directors here and there and the focus is possibly too director-orientated, forgetting the importance of great cinematographers, actors or other artists who have shaped the medium, but overall the documentary is astonishing.

Don’t let the 15-hour length put you off. If you care at all about film history you simply have to watch this documentary. The beauty of watching this at home is that you can split up the experience into manageable chunks to view over several days, but to be honest, it’s that intoxicating I could probably sit through the whole thing in one go (with a couple of comfort breaks of course).

Absolutely 100% recommended viewing.

Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film: An Odyssey is out now on DVD, released by Network Releasing. The set is as basic as you get. With the type of film it is, I don’t think many extras are required and the picture quality reflects the varied clips on show, but there is one major omission and that is of a basic chapter menu. Given the extreme length of the film, a menu where you could jump to the chapters so clearly marked in the film itself would seem a must, but one isn’t included here. You can skip through chapters during playback, but is a menu really too much to ask for?

Nonetheless, just owning this set to be able to re-watch at your leisure is a wondrous thing, so why nitpick?

Director: Joss Whedon
Screenplay: Joss Whedon
Producers: Kevin Feige, Avi Arad, Jon Favreau
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Tom Hiddleston, Cobie Smulders, Samuel L. Jackson.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running time: 142 min.

Marvel has been very clever with the way they’ve been building up to The Avengers. Instead of rushing into things and doing the big movie right away they, with the exception the two lesser known members, dedicated a movie to each of the heroes (or two movies in the case of a certain billionaire hero), exploring their respective back stories thoroughly and giving them purpose and, most importantly, giving us purpose to invest ourselves in them.

So after five movies and more fanboy hype than just about any movie to be released this year short of The Dark Knight Rises, does The Avengers live up to the hype? Absolutely.

Picking things up some time after the events of the last Marvel movie Thor, the God of Thunder’s evil brother Loki is following through on his plans to attack Earth using the Tesseract, a powerful object he has stolen which could be the source of unlimited energy but also has the potential to destroy the planet. Headed by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), S.H.I.E.L.D. assembles a team of superheroes including Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) to fight back and save mankind.

It’s a pretty simple premise on the surface, but as I said Marvel has done such a great job of laying the groundwork for this, the mother of all superhero team-ups. And that allows for the film to not waste any time getting to the point – we don’t need a ton of back-story in this one as we’ve already had five movie’s worth. Having said that, it doesn’t feel like it’s rushed either. Director Joss Whedon – an excellent choice for the material – finds a brilliant pace and mixes the action and humour extremely well.

Speaking of which, in true trademark Whedon style he injects a lot of genuine humour amidst all the chaos (as he also did recently with The Cabin in the Woods). It’s not exactly a comedy as it indeed keeps its eyes on the action almost at all times but the comedy, whether that be Robert Downey Jr’s trademark quips (in the way only Downey can deliver) or Dr. Banner joking about his “condition,” comes as a welcome bonus.

There’s also a great chemistry between the team members, which was absolutely essential for making this movie work. Whedon finds breathing space for the characters to interact on a level beyond assisting each other fighting off the bad guys, and seeing them go from reluctance (snarky remarks and in-team fights are very much on the menu here) to the team we all know they’ll become is a joy.

There are mightily impressive action set-pieces peppers throughout the film that, while they are in essence teasers for what’s to come later, are still completely memorable and substantial on their own. One sequence in particular, which I won’t spoil, hints at the teamwork we’ll eventually behold and actually contains some moments that gives the impression not all of the heroes are going to survive the turmoil. Of course we know they will but it’s rare for a blockbuster to make you forget that, if only for a moment.

Although impressive in their own right, the earlier action sequences don’t really compare to the big one at the end. Essentially one giant set-piece, it is truly spectacular stuff, delivering on all fronts imaginable for this type of movie and giving each of the Avengers their time to shine in their own fun and unique ways. Iron Man’s suit, Thor’s hammer, Captain America’s shield and, of course, the Hulk’s sheer brute force (etc.) are all on full display here, turned up to 11 if you will, and to see them work together to fight off an extremely formidable foe is an absolutely blast.

There’s a plus that, despite its resemblance to the Transformer’s franchise, the end set-piece features none of the annoying shaky cam and, you know, you actually care about the characters battling it out. Comic and blockbuster movie geeks in particular will be clapping and open-mouthed with aww and enjoyment at some of the action and money shots found in the last half hour.

What surprised me most about the movie was just how much the Hulk steals the show. His two films so far have been mixed (though I enjoyed them both in their own ways) but it’s ultimately when he’s part of a team that he really gets the chance to shine. Whedon finds inventive ways to utilize his power and in a city sitting he causes maximum carnage while helping to save the day. Mark Ruffalo, taking over where Edward Norton left off, does a fantastic job portraying the non-Hulk Dr. Banner, with just enough of the snarky humour that Downey brings to the table while still maintaining a more grounded, serious footing. And the fact that he also played “the other guy,” as Banner refers to him, via motion capture gives it strange believability (if such a phrase can be used for a film like this). At the end of the day the Hulk is the one that leaves the biggest impression (no pun intended).

Any sort of major issues to be had with the movie lies with the army that Loki has enlisted to destroy Earth. They don’t leave much of a mark, both in how they look or how they attack (a sort of B-grade Green Goblin), and scenes which attempt to explain who they are and why they’re helping Loki are a little weak. But when there’s so much else done right this ends up as a blip on an otherwise potently entertaining radar.

As it turns out all the fuss and anticipation has paid off. The Avengers is an exhilarating blockbuster experience that pulls together some of the most iconic comic book characters ever and utilizes that team-up in a way that’s as satisfying as a whole as it is thoroughly entertaining in the moment.

This review was previously published at Thoughts On Film.

There is a point where a loose-canon bonkers-insane inmate knows he shouldn’t push the ‘Big Red Button,’ the fire all guns defense system on an orbiting space-prison, and for about two seconds he caresses the console around it before howling with glee and mashing the button, only to apologize to his superior later. That’s Lockout in a nutshell. A confectionary composite of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, John McTiernan’s Die Hard and oddly enough, David Mamet’s Spartan, this Luc Besson action picture is fun precisely because its star, Guy Pearce, has a cocksure chemistry with the camera. Far more than Rhadha Mitchell Rhona Mitra in Doomsday, a film that could be a kissing cousin to this one for its short-hand on other sci-fi action classics.

With snappy (and completely empty) one-liners like “Here’s an apple and a gun, don’t talk to strangers.” delivered in a breathless rata-tat throughout, and a reckless editing sprint to match, one might be fooled into thinking that Lockout is a mere 75 minutes long. In reality it is still a lean 95, but judging from the breakneck location changes and ‘missing’ bridges between scenes, there is probably a 110 minute cut kicking around somewhere. For all the trouble they go through to stretch the 20 million dollar budget (a very small sum for this kind of film) with command centre sets – including one gratuitous in the basement of the White House – CGI space combat and a plot that is hilariously – hell, needlessly – convoluted, why not give us the ‘Die-Hard’ cut with more breathing room devoted to the prison break situation and couple of down-time scenes as a balance to the big action and sarcastic commentary from the lead? Die Hard is one of the pinnacles of the genre, and the editors of Lockout could have taken more notes than just plot-points.

Nevertheless, there is always something funny around the corner. I laughed out loud more times in Lockout than in most comedies, both from the dialogue and sight-gags. The initial interrogation featuring Peter Storemare, with perhaps the most ludicrous American accent in the history of Euros playing Yanks, still has a great deadpan repartee with Pearce (punctuated with repeated face punching.) Cross cut is a bit of flash-back character history and a chase setpiece all in one. A macguffin-briefcase and Pearce’s not-quite-perfect jump though a window almost convinced me that this could have been a great satire of the entire anti-hero action genre, but I think much of the success of this film can be chalked more testosterone-base attempts at humour more than cleverness. For better or worse, this makes Lockout a more successful film than Cabin in the Woods at mocking its own precedents, even if it is a far less ambitious one. Writers Luc Besson and James Mather (who also directs and photographs the movie) manage to deliver enough goods for a rollicking brain-dead popcorn munch, but actually squander too many missed opportunities to call this a parody of the genre. The phrase ‘writing’ may be a stretch here as I do not believe anything other than Pearce’s pithy quips were written by human beings. My theory is that the plot as presented on screen is an indication of Script-0-Matic-2000 computer simulation rapidly approaching sentience, but has its wheels spinning in the uncanny valley. The only indications of a human pen are the casually racist and unrepentant sexist remarks on constant display. Still the ridiculousness (note the ultimate flipping the bird to physics in a late in the game sky-dive from low-orbit to a city roadway) can be appreciated on a certain level. Even the good old standby expositional scene of equipping the hear with fancy tech-toys’ is edited to the bone save the audience from potential ‘non-action,’ and a few tech-explanations were left on the cutting room floor. Namely the nifty ‘Voice-Activated Grenades.’ But since they lead to explosions later on, they show up later in the film anyway. Like so many modern genre-pastiches the filmmakers take for granted that the audience has seen enough versions of basically the same story up until this point, that they can just prune scenes wholesale to get to the action. Unless you are buying the satire explanation (which is a fallacy) the film also suffers from a silly ‘why didn’t they do that in the first place?’ at least half-a-dozen times almost toppling only Ricky-O: The Story of Ricky as the benchmark example in this department. But Lockout is too busy to catch its breath from its own confident swagger and its hapless stupidity. Against the grain of the usual direct to DVD films of this ilk, again due to Pearce and the supporting cast; Inglourious Basterds‘ Jacky Ido shows up here in mission control as ‘good cop’ to Peter Storemare’s ‘bad cop.’

Maybe the correct analogue is actually Escape From L.A. and truth be told, I have got zero issues with Carpenter’s mid 1990s self parody. Since the master of the badassery has since completely lost his mojo, and his ability to get a feature financed, after forgettable drivel like The Ward, this is probably as close as we are going to get to the long-awaited Escape From Earth. They should have cast Kurt Russell to play the head villain, just to further pay further unabashed homage to Carpenter. Sure, Snow is no Snake Plissken, but Pearce doesn’t aim for the silent broody-type, he is more of a 50/50 composite of Snake Plissken and Jack Burton – with a dash Val Kilmer’s Special-Ops footsoldier from Spartan. Nevertheless, Lockout, or hopefully Lockout-the-Directors-Cut on DVD, has enough camp and comedy to be appreciated even moreso upon multiple viewings. Those ‘voice-activated’ grenades never get old.

Director: Ken Scott (Life After Love, The Rocket)
Screenplay: Ken Scott, Martin Petit
Producer: André Rouleau
Starring: Patrick Huard, Julie LeBreton, Antoine Bertrand, Dominic Philie, Marc Bélanger
MPAA Rating: 14A
Running time: 109 min.

It’s always a welcome surprise when a movie you’ve never heard of impresses. That was the case when I saw Ken Scott’s Starbuck.

Co-written by Scott and Martin Petit, this plot is one that will have you shaking your head. Bon Cop, Bad Cop’s Patrick Huard stars as David Wozniak, a 42 year old man who still lives like an irresponsible teen: he’s seriously in debt, has a grow-op in his living room to help pay the bills and works at the family butcher shop delivering meat. He’s well loved by everyone but he’s also not trusted with anything of importance because he tends to muck things up. But he has a good heart and when it comes right down to it, he’ll do what he can to help those he loves.

One such instance of caring in the late 80s led to a spree of sperm donations when he was in his 20s. Using the alias of Starbuck, David spent numerous hours in a little room doing his business into a little cup. Yes, it’s a bit strange but it got the job done and after collecting the funds he needed David went on with his carefree life until 20 years later, he gets a visit from a lawyer. The doctor who led the clinic David had frequented made the mistake of giving his sperm to all of the couples that came in for the period of one year and as a result, David is the father of 533 children, 142 of whom have filed a class action suit to open the record books and make public the name of the man who is a “father” to them all.

The lawyer leaves behind an envelope with bios on the kids which David is determined not to open it but depressed with his current situation (his lack of money and news that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant and wants nothing to do with him), he randomly selects a bio that leads to another and a third until his life becomes a quest to be a guardian angel to all of his children. It’s laughable and on paper reads like a saccharin disaster waiting to unfold but the dramedy that reveals itself onscreen is infectious.

Part of it is Scott and Petit’s script which manages to grow the cheesy premise through some truly tender moments (I’m particularly fond of the first time David brings his girlfriend home to meet the family) but the majority of the credit goes to Huard who with the rest of the cast, primarily his best friend and lawyer Antoine Bertrand (his monologues on why David shouldn’t want to be a father are hilarious and poignant) and Julie LeBreton as David’s girlfriend Valerie, bring an unexpected humanity to the story.

I found myself taken with Starbuck on first viewing and was thrilled to find that the film plays just as well on the second and even third time around. There’s a charm that encompasses this story and rather than playing like a forgettable Hollywood blockbuster, Starbuck retains a humaninty and delivers a story about family and what it really means to be a father.

A hugely entertaining dramedy, Starbuck is a widely accessible bit of Canadiana.

Starbuck is now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Entertainment One.

Eureka are re-releasing some of their previous Kenji Mizoguchi Masters of Cinema releases in new dual format Blu-Ray & DVD editions. Below is my review of one of the first sets to be released, a two-film collection containing Sansho Dayu and the lesser known Gion Bayashi.

Sansho Dayu (a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff)

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay: Fuji Yahiro & Yoshikata Yoda
Based on a Story by: Ogai Mori
Starring: Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyôko Kagawa
Producer: Masaichi Nagata
Country: Japan
Running Time: 125 min
Year: 1954
BBFC Certificate: PG

Sansho Dayu, alongside Ugetsu Monogatari, has always had a powerful reputation as being one of the finest examples of Mizoguchi’s work and can often be seen loitering around various ‘Greatest Films Of All Time’ lists. Often films which draw such critical admiration struggle to live up to the hype and require a second viewing to fully take in, but that wasn’t the case with Sansho Dayu for me. Along with Sunrise and Battleship Potemkin I’ve had an eye-opening year for cast-iron classics that I’d never got around to watching previously.

Sansho Dayu (a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff or Sansho the Steward) is based on a Japanese folk tale set in the Heian era, the final period of classical Japanese history. The story begins (told through flashbacks) with a compassionate governor being exiled by the military and governmental leaders in the area due to his wish to do good for the poor and needy under his rule. He is even taken away from his family, and several years later his wife Tamaki (Kinuyo Tanaka), son Zushio (Yoshiaki Hanayagi) and daughter Anju (Kyôko Kagawa) head off on the difficult journey across the country to reconcile with him. Along the way the children get separated from their mother though, to be sold into slavery and Tamaki gets sold to a brothel. The rest of the film follows the plight of the children as they struggle under the hand of Sansho the Bailiff, waiting until they are older and stronger to try and escape their forced servitude.

This is an immensely powerful film which reduced me to tears by the end. It’s a bleak and harsh portrayal of the caste-like systems prevalent at the time, with the slaves toiling for the upper classes whilst being treated like animals. A song that features throughout the film (and used to great effect in a number of scenes) puts it simply; “isn’t life torture”. There are hopeful elements though as Zushio endeavours to follow his father’s teachings of “even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others.” He does fall by the wayside on his way and things certainly don’t turn out rosy by the end, but there is a compassionate message to be given.

There are some truly heartbreaking scenes that are handled impeccably well, remaining emotionally powerful without lurching into clunky melodrama. The scene where the children are separated from their mother, a riverside suicide and the film’s denouement in particular will be forever seared in my memory.

Mizoguchi, like Ozu, was famed for being a master of his craft, putting a particular emphasis on carefully constructed mis-en-scene and Sansho Dayu is clear proof of this. Using largely wide, long takes, all of the shots are meticulously framed, making the most of all the available space. By using fairly deep focus most of the time, Mizoguchi creates beautiful painterly compositions, but still with elements of movement to retain a cinematic poetry.

I really can’t praise Sansho Dayu enough and so much has been said about it before I won’t prattle on, but all I can say is that you must see it if you haven’t already. It’s a stunningly well-made period piece that is devastatingly poignant and filled with hauntingly beautiful imagery.

Gion Bayashi (a.k.a. Gion Festival Music or A Geisha)

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay: Matsutarô Kawaguchi, Yoshikata Yoda
Based on a Novel by: Matsutarô Kawaguchi
Starring: Michiyo Kogure, Ayako Wakao, Seizaburô Kawazu
Producer: Hisakazu Tsuji
Country: Japan
Running Time: 85 min
Year: 1953
BBFC Certificate: PG

With Sansho Dayu gaining such praise amongst critics’ circles, it’s easy to see Gion Bayashi as a ‘bonus film’ tacked onto the Sansho Dayu release, but such is the quality of Mizoguchi’s work, the film is a masterpiece in its own right and deserves much more recognition than it gets.

Gion Bayashi (a.k.a. Gion Festival Music or A Geisha) tells a structurally simple story of two contrasting geishas in the 1950′s (mirroring the decline in traditions of the role at the time). Eiko (Ayako Wakao) is a young girl who wishes to become a geisha like her (now dead) mother, seeing as her father wants nothing to do with her and her uncle, who is her current guardian, wants to take her to his bed. Miyoharu (Michiyo Kogure) is a more experienced and traditional geisha that takes Eiko under her wing. Eiko is trained to continue the valued traditions of the geisha, operating as a beautiful and dignified entertainer for the town. The men who pay for these services have other thoughts in mind though, using the two women as assets in their business deals and holding clearly more ‘Earthly’ desires for them.

Mizoguchi was famous for showing a lot of sympathy towards women in his films and this is no different. None of the male characters come off well (other than a couple of minor workers in the geisha house), with most of them portrayed as sweaty, lecherous pigs with nothing but sex and money on the mind. Alongside the two business men who attempt to force the women into their ‘care’, we also get Eiko’s father who refuses to support his daughter when she is in need, but comes skulking around, grovelling for money once he learns she has a chance of benefiting from a relationship with a wealthy business man. With characters like this the film made me ashamed to be a man.

These elements make for a moving film which, like Sansho Dayu, is quietly devastating, especially by the inevitably bleak conclusion. Although the actions of the male characters aren’t always very subtle, the restrained performances of the female leads, especially Kogure, prevent the film from feeling blunt or melodramatic. Hiding behind the constraints of their polite niceties and social facades, their plight is even more powerful.

As with Sansho Dayu, much of the film is shot in long, beautifully constructed takes, which look gorgeous. Mizoguchi is great at framing things meticulously without creating the coldly calculated feel that can often result from such careful construction.

So I advise anyone who buys this set to ignore the ‘+ Gion Bayashi’ tag and experience this great film as a worthy companion piece to Sansho Dayu.

Sansho Dayu & Gion Bayashi are released on 23rd April in one set on Dual Format Blu-Ray & DVD, released by Eureka as part of their Masters of Cinema Series. I got sent the Blu-Ray to review and the transfers are great as always. Sansho Dayu is the strongest of the two, with Gion Bayashi showing more sings of age, especially in the darker scenes, but both still look great for their age. The sound on Sansho Dayu wasn’t quite as strong, with much of it seeming a little too low amongst some piercingly loud moments. Again, considering the age of the films, they have still clearly been well cared for and the soundtracks have been cleaned up as much as possible I imagine.

As usual you also get a hefty booklet in with the package, crammed with essays and further thoughts on the films and their production. I didn’t get sent a digital copy of this as I usually do, but I have the original DVD release, which is impressively detailed and informative, and I imagine it will be pretty much the same as that included with the new version.

Director: Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y.)
Writer: Jean-Marc Vallée
Producers: Pierre Even, Marie-Claude Poulin
Starring: Vanessa Paradis, Kevin Parent, Hélène Florent, Evelyne Brochu, Marin Gerrier, Alice Dubois
Country of Origin: France
MPAA Rating: NR
Running time: 120 min.

I was somewhat shaken walking out of Jean-Marc Vallee’s latest film and needed to actually catch my breath off to the side of the cell-phone checking hordes. It was partially due to several very personal reactions to a few moments and characters, but mostly because the film was absolutely magnificent in just about every respect. I’ve found my “I can’t imagine seeing a better film this year” film.

Vallee’s Young Victoria didn’t exactly win any converts in major production house circles, but anyone who saw C.R.A.Z.Y. has probably already given him a lifetime pass. As great as that film was (and if you haven’t seen it, please track it down via any legal means possible and also give a listen to the Movie Club Podcast episode specifically on that film), Cafe de Flore has just surpassed any reasonable expectation of what this filmmaker could do. Possibly even all the unreasonable expectations too. It shows a command of thematic content across multiple stories, an inate feeling of putting music to images and an almost perfect sense of flow. He knows when to ask his actors to be subtle, to bring forward some emotion and when to go BIG. He knows when to keep a scene going, when to stay with a take and when to cut across stories and time periods. That’s what I’m left with as I consider my reaction to the film – everything seemed dead on perfect.

Which might seem a bit funny to say when you hear the synopsis of the plot: High flying DJ with a great life bemoans leaving his beautiful wife for an even more beautiful woman while a mother struggles to take care of her Down’s Syndrome child in a parallel story from 40 years before. For awhile it seems like the only two things that connect the stories is a song by the name of Cafe de Flore – the 1960′s version is an uptempo lounge jazz number, while the present day one is pure dance club (make what you want of the fact that it is also the name of the coffee shop in Paris where Godard and other Paris intellectuals hung out). The song, though terribly catchy, isn’t necessarily notable, but it’s what it signifies to both the DJ (Antoine) and the young Down’s Syndrome boy that matters. For each, it’s a source of happiness and helps to restore their life force. In Antoine’s case, it reminds him specifically of the moment when he met his second soul mate and the silly song has now become a central part of his life. Music itself is his wellspring and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I responded to the film so strongly. For anyone who lives with music day to day and finds an infinite source of pleasure and inspiration in it, Cafe de Flore will strike a chord. Antoine talks about it at a certain point in the movie when he relates how much happiness music has brought to his life and how he can even tell that strangers recognize that joy in him. It resonates. The scores of album covers from flashbacks to the early 80s (Joy Division, Patti Smith, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, etc.) should keep music fans happy too.

Though it’s easy not to feel overly sympathetic to Antoine as he complains to his psychiatrist, he is honestly concerned that he may have screwed up his family’s life – his ex-wife is on her way to a nervous breakdown and his older daughter is purposely trying to annoy him at every opportunity. He begins to wonder about his choices. Can you really find two “soul mates” during your life? Can new love spring up while you are already in love? What about those that are left in the wake? How do they handle letting go and what happens if they don’t? The mother and son story adds another layer to these questions as the young boy meets another Down’s Syndrome girl at school and they immediately become completely attached to each other (the scene of their initial meeting is one of the sweetest moments on film this year). His mother has been so close to him for so long that she doesn’t quite know how to handle this competition for her affections and so the parallels of the stories begin to make sense. The film absolutely takes off for the stratosphere around this time as Vallee starts to crosscut between the different stories with an almost wild abandon at times. One of the movie’s best sequences uses a Sigur Ros song and even plays up the obviousness of choosing it (his kids and his new soul mate make fun of him for over-playing the song). In a montage of scenes that pushes the themes of the film forward and creates further tension, Vallee creates a breathless sprint that washes over the viewer. It doesn’t matter if you don’t pick up every detail – the feelings and intent come across easily as the story lines hurtle towards a head-on meeting and the emotional attachments to these flawed but interesting people grow and help bring about a lovely resolution. Even if it doesn’t immediately shake you, it’s the kind of art that lingers with you for days. Likely even longer.

IMDb

Director: Giorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth)
Writers: Giorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
Producers: Giorgos Lanthimos, Athina Rachel Tsangari
Starring: Aris Servetalis, Johnny Vekris
Country of Origin: Greece
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 93 min.

“There are many types of lighting receptacles, that come in both professional and consumer grades.”

“Cold is a word that winter swimmers do not know.”

This is the icy-precise line-reading one comes to expect from writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos. Those who got an offbeat intellectual charge out of his weird fable Dogtooth or simply enjoyed the alien-dance moves of actress Aggeliki Papoulia are in for more of the same with ALPS, perhaps a spiritual sequel which features similar visuals and narrative beats. Things are taken out of a singular location of the Greek director’s previous film, and the insular family dynamic is scaled up to a group of people who form the eponymous organization. The business concept behind ALPS is one of role-playing and empathy. People who recently lost of a loved one can hire an ALPS employee to impersonate the deceased for a few days or weeks to ease through the grief process. As the film demonstrates exceptionally well, the barrier between indulging a client’s grief and devolving into a form of prostitution is a rather thin and permeable one. The domineering boss of ALPS, a gymnastics coach who does not indulge his star pupil (also an ALPS employee) in song choices for her routines. Instead he makes unexplained demands: “You are not ready for pop music.” As CEO of ALPS he is more like a pimp. When his star employee (Papoulia), a nurse who spots potential clients from the pool she encounters – families attending to their dying loved ones at the hospital – decides to go rogue and take on a customer outside of ALPS, justice is swift and bloody, an arbitrary. It takes the form of a chastising game which obfuscates the use of naked power and authority.

Of the many sights and sounds on display for our amusement and consideration are the book-end displays of gymnastics. The first scored, as an act of counterpoint foreshadowing, to Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” (is there a more overused piece of ‘epic music’ in cinema?) and slyly puntastic use of pop-electro hit from the 60s “Popcorn.” A game of charades to keep the ALPS rank-and-file in good form. A few client visits and other mini-set-pieces all serve to underscore the fusion of high and low culture; the earnest and ironic execution is how it goes in this new wave of Weird Greek Cinema of which Lanthimos is the undeniable star.

The dying are asked who their favourite actor is (Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman), the ALPS mission statement is such that the moniker be suitable obscure in purpose, but nevertheless communicate that while the most majestical set of mountains in the would could happily replace such lesser ranges, they, in themselves are irreplaceable. This is not unlike an actor who can easily play a role of a famous figure, or fictional character, but they remain the iconic movie star and celebrity nevertheless. ALPS’ clients re-create key emotional scenes with those recently lost using other family members and a personal prop or two. An effort to re-live a scene or emotional moment that cannot be accurately ever represented. It may evoke a similar reaction or feeling (as far as the mind knows) but it is a mutant version. If art, as Picasso famously once said, “is lies that tell the truth,” these LARP self-psychotherapy sessions are not so much performance art, but ghastly acts of self-indulgence. Ones with unhealthy consequences. Providing the service gets addictive enough for the nurse that she would risk her bosses wrath or perform a little breaking and entering to keep the high going. Her going ‘cold turkey’ from the tennis player’s family is akin to a semiotic meltdown – an apt description of this directors brand of cinema which is violently absurd, and occasionally absurdly violent.

As Dogtooth goes after the idea of how we are prepared to go out and face the world, ALPS is concerned with what we do when we are out there in the thick of things. We all are actors in our varied relationships intimate or otherwise with a seemingly limitless ability to rationalize and compartmentalize, but do we indulge or demand our emotional fulfillment? These questions and more are carried out with a Lanthimos’ signature style: Derivative is a word that Greek auteurs do not know.

IMDb

Until a few weeks ago, the only Harold Lloyd films I’d seen were his signature Safety Last with its famous building-climbing set-piece, and The Freshman, which I cannot, at this point, separate in my mind from Keaton’s College. Lloyd is one of the Big Three when it comes to silent comedians, but in terms of the popular consciousness, he still falls well below Chaplin and Keaton, and I was content with his third-wheel position based on what I’d seen. After a recent double-feature at Cinefamily, I was primed to change my view on that, and Girl Shy clenched it. Lloyd is every bit as worthy a giant of silent comedy as either of his rivals. They’re all in a dead heat as far as I’m concerned.

Lloyd’s essential persona is a normal, slightly nerdy guy who deals with problems as they come along, usually involved with trying to get a girl. He has neither Chaplin’s downtrodden acceptance nor Keaton’s stoic stubbornness in the face of the outrageous situations that befall him, but instead shows his exasperation and yet continues to push through toward his goal. In Girl Shy, his own worst enemy for much of the film is himself, and his irrational fear of women that causes him to be flustered and stutter uncontrollably whenever a girl comes near him. It doesn’t help matters that he’s adorable and girls tend to flirt with him, even to the point of tearing their stockings so he can fix them (he’s the tailor’s son in a small town).

However, he shows quite another side, in fantasy at least, as he writes a book from the point of view of a womanizer, explaining in each chapter (and dramatized on screen for our delight) how to win different types of women – the vamp, the flapper, etc. While taking the finished book to a publisher in the city, he helps a girl (regular Lloyd costar Jobyna Ralston, who I kind of have a girlcrush on right now) hide her dog from the train conductor and loses his stutter completely as he gets wound up telling her about his book. A match made in heaven, except his lack of money (compared to her privileged background) leads him to convince her he doesn’t care about her.

It eventually leads to an absolutely incredible chase from town to city when he discovers she’s about to marry someone else, using every mode of conveyance possible. This is the big set-piece of the film, and like the building climbing in Safety Last, it basically takes up the last third of the film or so. This is more akin to Keaton’s fantastic driver-less motorcycle chase in Sherlock Jr, though, except Lloyd constantly changes from car to car to horse to carriage to streetcar and everything else you could possible ride in the 1920s. It’s one of the most thrilling sequences I’ve ever seen. But that’s true of many silent comedy set-pieces. What sets Girl Shy apart is how endearing and genuine the rest of the film is; my major complaint against Safety Last is that no matter how much I love the last part (and I do), the rest of the film doesn’t do a lot for me.

The screening was accompanied by the Robert Israel Orchestra, who does most of the scores TCM commissions for the silent films they play. It was jazzy and very ’20s in feel, and worked perfectly with the film. I don’t always mind more avant-grade or unusual approaches to silent film music – the bombastic score played with Metropolis two years ago was awesome – but for this, the score we heard was exactly right. The screening wasn’t packed out, but it was a good crowd, and the gasps and cheers as Lloyd careened his way through the streets reminded me just how inadequate it is to watch silent films at home alone. The audience is half the fun, and that was truly the case here. For me, this was the best screening of the festival, and easily my favorite new-to-me film.

Director: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
Written by: Sam Taylor, Ted Wilde & Tim Whelan (story), Thomas J. Gray (titles)
Producer: Harold Lloyd
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Richard Daniels, Carlton Griffith
Year of Release: 1924
Running Time: 80 min.
TCMFest Film Guide
IMDb
Letterboxd
Flickchart (formerly unranked; now #368 out of 2892)
****½ (4.5/5)

Director: Bobcat Goldthwait
Writer: Bobcat Goldthwait
Producers: Jeff Culotta, Sarah de Sa Rego, Richard Kelly, Sean McKittrick
Starring: Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr
Country of Origin: USA
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 99 min.

While a couple on the run setting fires to America’s citizens and their warped sense of “good” isn’t really anything all that new, Bobcat Goldthwaite is able to take the idea and add some twists to the idea; while more importantly stirring in some pretty clever and funny dialogue to boot.

Frank is a slave to the everyday corporate grind (in a cube). His family life is gone, everyone surrounding him is an over-the-top caricature of a pop media drone and society as a whole seems hell bent on almost purposefully dumbing itself down into an “Idiocracy.” Rather than offing himself, Frank decides that maybe in the interest of preserving or “fixing” society as he knows it, it would be better to get his hands dirty and start taking care of business. Which would entail exterminating those responsible for such abhorrent behavior and their mentalities. Along the way he picks up an admiring high school girls who sees the world as just as “dead” as Frank does. Together they’re on the run, eliminating all those that “deserve to die.”

The bullets and violence that one expects from this sort of fare is fun for a while, but slowly loses its impact and sick fun fairly quickly. Especially since the movie can never elevate itself beyond the awesome depravity of the opening scene in Frank’s neighbor’s house, with whom he shares a wall. What works surprisingly well however and keeps the movie chugging along at a pretty even pace, are the two lead performances in Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr; the former ironically appearing only in Disney related projects previously. The two play their parts with gusto and their moments of “extreme dialogue” are moments not to be scoffed at. Skewering of everyone from the obvious (Fox News, American Idol, Westboro Church, etc.) to the more fun and obscure (Diablo Cody, cinema texters, or people who give high fives and misuse the word “literally” [YES!]).

So there’s certainly fun to be had and it never overstays its welcome – though it comes close near the end. Bobcat clearly has something to say and the movie doesn’t take long to say it. It must survive solely on its witty dialogue and outlandish violence. The violence is never all that outlandish or creative however. Nevertheless the film still works, resting on the squarely on the shoulders of the two leads.

Is it offensive as it could be or arguably should be? Not really. I felt it really pulled back on some of its punches and the people that need to see this movie probably won’t anyway. Is it hypocritical? Yeah, I could maybe see the spouting of that line for that critique but c’mon; it’s a comedy first and foremost and isn’t all that particularly deep so I don’t think it’s worth the argument. Is it anti-American? That too is a line that might be drawn. I do think it comes dangerously close at times in commenting negatively on the country itself rather than society and the people within the country. But again, it’s a line that isn’t really crossed and thereby once again does not come off as hypocritical – though easily could’ve been.

Audience laughed. Audience had a good time. Audience nodded/applauded approvingly (particularly with Frank and Roxy dispatching of some texting/talking teens in a movie theater). Some audience walked out. That about sums up the film in two lines.

As an aside, Goldthwaite himself was at my screening and he’s very charming and funny and an all-around nice guy. He hung out with fans afterwards and took pictures and signed stuff. SUPER cool guy!

IMDb

For reasons I can’t entirely explain (but I’ll probably try anyway), the prospect of seeing vintage 3D films fascinates me, even as I do my best to avoid current 3D as much as possible. Part of it is simply a the ability to see something in a form that we usually can’t anymore (because 3D films from the 1950s and before are usually seen only in 2D now), part of it is an interest in the more experimental shorts included in the program, part of it is an illogical preference for old things, part of it is mere curiosity about whether it would be better or worse or different than modern 3D, and part of it is just perversity. In any case, I knew from the moment this program was announced that I would try to go see it, and I’m very glad I did, for all the reasons I just mentioned, and because Serge Bromberg, the French film historian who curated and presented the program, is an absolute delight, as well as being extremely knowledgable and able to accompany the silents himself on the piano. If scheduling had permitted, I would’ve gone to his Trip to the Moon program as well.

The program had everything from Disney cartoons from the 1950s 3D boom to Pierre Lumiere remaking his own turn-of-the-century films in 3D in the 1930s to experiments as old as 1900 to Russian nature films, and even a couple of modern CG cartoons. Pretty much everything was delightful in one way or another, and I’m just going to go through the program short by short, mostly in the same order Bromberg did. One note: we were given two pairs of glasses at the beginning, both red/green anaglyph paper glasses and modern RealD polarized glasses. We only used the anaglyph glasses on one film, which surprised me. Somehow I thought all the 1950s films were done with that technique, but actually, it seems very similar to current 3D, and the RealD glasses worked perfectly for them all. I know very little about the technical side of these things, so I apologize in advance for any errors I make on that front, and please correct me.

Three Dimensional Murder, aka Murder in 3-D (1941)

This was the one film that used the anaglyph glasses, and it was basically a tech demo for 3D, albeit directed by George Sidney. Part of the Pete Smith series of shorts, this one has Smith (first-person camera pspective) heading into a creepy house and being attacked by all sorts of things – a mummy with a spear, a witch’s hand, and Frankenstein’s monster throwing or dropping everything in sight directly toward the camera. All the stereotypes of 3D being about hurling or thrusting things at the camera, yeah…they’re all here. With the glasses on, the red and green tints combined to make a black and white image – to do color, they had to go to a different technique, much closer to what is done today. This short was ridiculous, but fun, until it wore out its welcome about halfway through. The anaglyph process is not that great, either, and was easily the most eye-straining part of the program, with the colors flashing annoyingly on the screen and a lot of ghosting effects.

Musical Memories (1935)

This Fleischer animated short actually isn’t in 3D, but it fits the theme because its subject matter involves stereoscopic viewers (forerunners of the ViewMaster) as an older couple pulls out their stash of stereoscopic photographs to reminisce about their youth. In flashback, the animated backgrounds use perspective and movement to simulate the 3D of the photographs. It’s a pretty dull short, fairly average for the time period. Cute, but nothing special.

Working for Peanuts (1953)

I had no idea when I posted this Chip ‘n Dale short a few weeks ago that it was originally in 3D, but apparently it was. By this time the process was much more developed than in Murder in 3-D (we used the RealD glasses here and for the rest of the program), and much easier on the eyes. Generally the animated layer with the actual characters on it was pretty much 2D, and the 3D largely gave depth to the background. In other words, there wasn’t a sense of the characters being rounded, the way modern CG animation has. Frankly, I liked it better this way. I really enjoyed seeing this short in this fashion, and the combo of deep backgrounds and flat hand-drawn characters worked really well for me.

Arrival of a Train and other shorts (mid-1930s)

The apocryphal story is that the original version of this Lumiere film had 1896 audiences scrambling out of their seats in fear that the train would run them over. In the mid-1930s, Louis Lumiere developed his own 3D process (which was apparently very cumbersome, using horizontal film or something crazy) and remade a bunch of the pioneering films he and his brother had done in the 1890s, which would indeed have increased the sense of the train coming out into the audience. There were a few more shorts in the section – a woman playing with a baby and more – and frankly, this was the most pleasant 3D I’ve ever seen. It was lovely, not intrusive, not eye-straining, didn’t shimmer, ghost, or have focus issues. I have no idea what Lumiere was doing, but I think we need to investigate further and pick up some pointers.

Parade of Attractions 1, 2, and 3

I can’t find these on IMDb, so I’m not sure of the time period (I’d say 1940s or 1950s), but these are Russian shorts that experiment with 3D. Bromberg was quite entertaining about them, building a little narrative progression for them (I have no idea how true most of it was). None of them have a story, and the first two are silent. The first is set underwater, with some really quite lovely and tranquil 3D images of fish and other undersea life. The second did essentially the same thing, but with birds – neither as lovely nor as peaceful. I liked the underwater one a lot, but the bird one was just…too manic for 3D. Lastly, they decided to try people and filmed basically a juggling act, which I have to say was kind of awesome. Juggling bowling pins directly toward the camera is EXACTLY what 3D is for.

Motor Rhythm, aka In Tune With Tomorrow (1939)

Originally made for an exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair and later rereleased in the 1950s, this stop-motion film depicts the assembly of a car. It’s a cute idea, and I do love me some stop motion, but it goes on waaaay too long (it’s about 15 minutes long) and has too many gotcha moments when some part of the car rams its way toward the camera before falling back into place. It does have the distinction of being the first color 3D film, and perhaps as a display where most people would just walk by and see part of it before moving on to the next booth, it would be great. Watching the whole thing as a captive audience got dull quickly, though. Someone has uploaded the short to YouTube here in a red/blue anaglyph version, if you have the glasses to see it.

Lumber Jack-Rabbit (1954)

I swear I have never seen this film before, which is really surprising since it’s not only Bugs Bunny, but Chuck Jones directing! Perhaps this is one of the few I missed when I used to record every single hour of Cartoon Network’s June Bugs marathon. In any case, it’s the first Warner Bros. cartoon produced in 3D, and it’s pretty darn good, as you’d expect, with Bugs accidentally finding himself in the land of Paul Bunyan – i.e., everything is really big. Bunyan isn’t in it much himself, though, as he sends his dog off to check on the vegetables, and the dog and Bugs spend the rest of the toon antagonizing each other. Regarding the 3D, though, this one had some bothersome shimmering – I don’t know what else to call it. It wasn’t ghosting, but everything looked really shiny around the edges. Sometimes I don’t know if distracting effects like the shimmering and ghosting I often see in 3D films is due to my wearing glasses under the 3D glasses or what, but this was the only film of this program that shimmered noticeably.

Turn of the century paper strip films

As early as 1900 people were experimenting with 3D motion pictures, using the stereoscopic photo viewers as a basis. The four films from this time period Bromberg showed were all basically series of stereoscopic photos on a paper strip, and each was only about ten seconds long. They were actualities – a man walking across a railway platform, a maid waking up a woman, and oh, right, the apparent beginning of a threesome. They were from France. These are the kinds of things I was hoping to see in this program, and even though they were tantalizingly short, they were fascinating.

Méliès shorts in 3D

After watching Hugo, I commented that if 3D had been around when Méliès was making films, he totally would’ve used it. Well, it turns out that Méliès inadvertently did do 3D, but he probably never knew it. To combat piracy of his films by American producers (yep, the entrenched studios were just as hypocritical then as they are now), Méliès took to releasing his films in the US and France at the same time. To speed up the print duplication process, he built a camera with two film reels and two lenses situated side by side so he could film both the French and American prints at the same time, not realizing that this would create a 3D film if the prints were put together. Archivists in France and the US trying to complete damaged prints figured out what had happened when they couldn’t get their prints to match up exactly, and they put together a 3D version of some of Méliès films, three sections of which Bromberg played for us. This was definitely the coolest story of the program, and I quite enjoyed the films, too, even if the damaged nature of the prints was a little disorienting, as sometimes one eye would just go dark because either the French or American print was missing frames. Even so, the French prints were in glorious hand-tinted color, and even though it was short and incomplete, this part of the program was magical.

Falling in Love Again (2003)

The program wasn’t totally devoted to vintage 3D, and included three more recent animated shorts. One is this delightful CGI film set to Marlene Dietrich’s classic rendition of the title song from The Blue Angel (so it still has a classic connection), depicting a pair falling in love as they literally fall back to earth after being hurled into the stratosphere by a huge explosion. Pretty insubstantial, but really cute in either 2D or 3D. You can watch it on the National Film Board’s website; it’s in 3D there so you can watch with color-coded 3D glasses if you want, but it actually looks pretty decent without them, even though you can see the second image overlapping.

Knick-Knack (1988)

An early Pixar short by John Lasseter, specifically intended to prove to Disney that Pixar could pull off 3D computer animation. And how they could. This film has all the hallmarks of Pixar – great design, expressive characters, a simple but solid story, and delightful humor. And the 3D looks gorgeous, too. Bromberg’s comment on this as regards the 3D is that the mermaid’s um, assets are more pronounced in the 3D version, because when they scaled it down to 2D for general distribution, they decided to tone her down to more, um, acceptable proportions. I will report they were very prominent in this version. You can watch the edited 2D version here, and yeah, holy crap. She’s totally flat-chested.

Daffy’s Rhapsody (2012)

This was a special addition to the program, as Bromberg said they’d only just gotten permission from Warner Brothers to run it. This is one of the new Looney Tunes shorts they just started making, and director Matthew O’Callaghan was there to say a couple of words about it. Back in the ’50s, Mel Blanc had recorded the song “Daffy’s Rhapsody” for a children’s album, but it had never had animation attached to it, and WB asked O’Callaghan to make a film to go along with it. I was really really torn on this short. On the one hand, the Mel Blanc song is great, the gags are good, and even the 3D is pretty effective. But…and this is a big but…the CGI is totally atrocious. Obviously I’m biased as a huge fan of hand-drawn animation in general and of classic Looney Tunes in particular, but this rounded, shiny CGI on Looney Tunes characters is a travesty. If they had done this exact same short, including the 3D, in the animation style of Lumber Jack-Rabbit or Working for Peanuts, this would’ve been a real treat. Most everyone else in the audience seemed to enjoy it, though, so I guess all I can say is “get off my lawn!”

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: John Steinbeck, Jo Swerling & Ben Hecht (uncredited)
Based on a story idea by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson
Producers: Alfred Hitchcock & Kenneth Macgowan
Country: USA
Running Time: 98 min
Year: 1944
BBFC Certificate: U

When I was first getting into films as a young teenager, Lifeboat was always one of my ‘go to’ titles when I wanted to impress people with my knowledge and appreciation of film. Back then I only tended to watch the Casablancas and Gone With the Winds of the film world, I rarely ventured beyond ‘the canon’, so I felt like I was unlocking some hidden gem when I discovered the relatively unappreciated Lifeboat. I can remember liking the film a lot and for the decade or two that followed I’ve always brought it up in Hitchcock conversations as his ‘underrated classic’. Of course it’s not actually the most rare of films, but it does tend to get pushed aside in favour of titles like Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo. These and many other of Hitchcock’s bonafide classics are rightly worthy of their status, but I always felt this needed a little more recognition. Well, I haven’t actually seen the film since those early days, until the fine people at Eureka offered me the chance to review their meticulously restored Masters of Cinema edition. Of course I jumped at the chance and have finally settled down with the film that had stuck with me for over half of my life, so what do I think of it now?

For those of you that haven’t heard of Lifeboat, it’s a film that Hitchcock produced for 20th Century Fox during the Second World War in the first few years of his move to the USA. With David O. Selznick leaving producing duties to help with the war effort, Hitchcock saw his chance to make a picture on his own terms, so he came up with the story behind Lifeboat. This idea was then brought to John Steinbeck to produce a script, which was later adapted by Jo Swerling & Ben Hecht (uncredited). The film is about the rag-tag group of survivors of a ship torpedoed by the Germans during the war and how they cope together on a lifeboat as it drifts across the ocean, hopefully towards rescue. The waters are further muddied however by the arrival of one last survivor, a German from aboard the very submarine that put them in this situation.

The film is one of Hitchcock’s first attempts at a ‘single-location’ movie. We never leave the ocean and the camera only leaves the boat itself in a long opening shot that shows the ship’s funnel sinking underneath the waves. With his relative freedom he fancied a challenge and that he certainly got, having all the characters in such a close vicinity to one another as well as shooting on a moving set with water splashing over everyone and everything (in a studio of course). The director would give himself similar constraints in the future with Rear Window and Rope, but he knocked it straight out of the park with this one.

Keeping plot minimal, instead focussing on the characters and scaling back the tension (a little), it’s not your typical Hitchcock film, but it certainly has his stamp on a lot of it. As well as a cleverly incorporated cameo (which none of his films can be without), the director shows off his mastery of the craft by managing to shoot such a small space with a different shot each time. There aren’t many flashy angles, but the handling of segments such as the amputation scene are key evidence to his genius and the film never looks or feels boring. Speaking of which, the film rockets along, despite its limitations. The audience is always kept one step ahead as we learn new twists to each of the characters, especially the mysterious German, Willy (Walter Slezak). Hitchcock also makes great use of sound, in using a technique that he was to repeat years later in The Birds; Lifeboat doesn’t have a score (other than briefly over the opening and ending sequences), which forces the sound and situations to accentuate the drama. Fluctuations in the weather are used for any peaks, as the waves build and the rain hammers down whenever patience wears thin between the tired and thirsty crew. It’s a contrived and blunt technique, but it sure as hell works. As does the sharp and witty script.

What makes it an interesting film beyond mere entertainment value though is its theme of prejudice. For a mainstream title released during the war it paints a surprisingly multi-dimensional picture of its German character who can often be sympathised with (this was one of the reasons it wasn’t as successful at the time). The one African-American character, Joe (Canada Lee) isn’t given as much screen time as the others, but the film is surprisingly PC for the time in its attitudes towards race, other than a couple of minor details.

It’s not the fact it isn’t racist that makes it interesting though – it’s the politics on board the boat and power shifts that keep the story moving along. The various ways in which the Allied crew deal with the ‘enemy’ and how these develop is key too. The culmination of this is very powerful, bringing the film to an almost perfect conclusion, although a tacked-on addition spoils matters somewhat, bringing a clunky propagandist slant at the last moment.

This misstep at the end as well as a couple of dodgy accents and scenes of ‘madness’ aren’t enough to totally derail the film though. It’s a wonderfully entertaining and thought provoking chamber piece, given the cinematic treatment by the master himself. Yes I prefer a handful of Hitchcock’s other films, but Lifeboat is still the underrated classic I held dear as a teenager.

Lifeboat is out 23rd April on Dual Format Blu-Ray & DVD (as well as a swanky steelbook edition) as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series. As is to be expected of the label, the transfer/restoration is fantastic. Video and audio are crisp and clear without looking or sounding doctored.

Finally, we get a 36-page booklet, which is brilliant as usual, loaded with essays and archival imagery.