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.
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 a two-film collection containing Ugetsu Monogatari and the lesser known Oyu-Sama. I reviewed the other set they released here – Review of Sansho Dayu & Gion Bayashi.
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
(4.5/5)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.
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
(5/5)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.
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.
(4.5/5)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.
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.
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.
(4/5)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.
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My regular coverage of releases from Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series is starting to make me worry about my reputation as an online critic as my reviews seem to be a stream of 4-5 star love-ins. With their remit of restoring and remastering well-loved and forgotten classics from some of the world’s finest directors, it’s hard to find fault with their output though and when they continue to release films as incredibly good as they do, it’s difficult to buck the trend. Not that I’d want to. I guess these reviews are more a reminder of the work they are currently doing and a way of helping the discerning film collector add to their shopping list.
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.
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
(5/5)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.
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.
(5/5)
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.
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.
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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).
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.
(3.5/5)
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!]).
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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.
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.
