Forbidden Games

Jeux Interdits
1952
Robert Dorfmann
Director: Rene Clement
Length: 85 min.
Country: France
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 15 March, 2006

Master director Samuel Fuller, who served in WWII, once discussed that when moving through towns in a war zone, the only human life left is typically the elderly and children, the latter being either abandoned in the confusion or orphaned by bombs and artillery. French director Rene Clement, his country still recovering from the war, seemed to also understand this truth, and in 1952, used it to good effect in his adaptation of Forbidden Games. There are two children in the spot-light of the film, Paulette and Michel (played by the exquisite Brigitte Fossey and Georges Poujouly), the former orphaned in the tense opening sequence, the latter belonging to a farming family who takes in the five year-old girl. Michel falls under Paulette's spell immediately, and begins to wait on her hand-and-foot. Paulette rather quickly becomes his Lady Macbeth as the two begin stealing crosses for their own pet cemetery, put together in an abandoned windmill as a way for Paulette to try and come to terms with her own parents' demise. The film as a whole is very well done and is incredibly moving, especially in the final act. The contempt for country folk shown in the film is a little off-putting, but is the film's only real flaw. Some might see the ending as too bleak, but its realism is part of the film's power - there are very few happy endings in war - as is its elliptical nature. It's the perfect ending for a fine film.

You Can Count on Me

2000
Shooting Gallery
Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Length: 111 min.
Country: USA
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 13 March, 2006

Responsibility is the key word in Kenneth Lonergan's excellent You Can Count on Me. Responsibility informs every decision made in Lonergan's solid and tidy script - avoiding it, taking too much of it, and most importantly, trying to find the right balance for it. The performances are all outstanding (especially Linney, who was robbed at the Oscars), the characters interesting, the script moving and inspiring, and the cinematography and editing tasteful and elegant. There are no weak elements here, and You Can Count on Me stands as one of the best films of the decade.

Arsenic and Old Lace

1944
Warner Bros.
Director: Frank Capra
Length: 117 min.
Country: USA
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 12 March, 2006

Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace is a flawed film that is still pretty enjoyable, but could have been so much better. Peter Lorre is outstanding as per usual, and the dialogue is hilarious, as are many of the pitch black ideas in the screenplay.

The script does not get off the hook that easy, though. It is way too long, and should have been no more than 90 minutes in length - the film runs out of steam at about that point, and we begin looking at our watches for the last half-hour.

Grant's performance also hurts the movie, though it appears that Capra may have been to blame for this. Apparently, Capra felt that an America entering WWII (keep in mind this was filmed in 1941 but not released for three years) needed something zany to liven up the very dark core of the film and national war-time climate, and instructed Grant to wildly overact. Grant, later admitting that he disliked the decision and indeed considered this to be the worst performance of his career, went along with it and goes so over-the-top that it can only inspire plenty of eye-rolling in all but the youngest viewer.

The question then is why Capra made this decision? If he wanted to make a black comedy, why not go for the gold? Otherwise, why not just direct a light and zany comedy? His foolish decision decidedly kept Arsenic and Old Lace from being a great example of dark comedy done right; I guess we'll just have to settle for pretty good.

Repo Man

1984
Universal Studios
Director: Alex Cox
Length: 92 min.
Country: USA
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 12 March, 2006

Who knew that punks and aliens would mix so well? This is one of the great cult films; a down and dirty picture that's endlessly hilarious and includes a treasure trove of quotable lines. Cox keeps Repo Man extremely politicized, but never allows this to overwhelm the film as a whole as the political messages plays out mostly in the background of shots and in the quiet throwaway lines. The big flaws of the piece are the giant plot holes and changing character alliances that make no sense and are left completely unexplained. This confusion doesn't leave us feeling like it was intended, but more like there was a ton of explanatory material deleted to keep the pace at its breakneck speed. This does little to lessen the enjoyment, however, of watching two hardcore criminal punks threatening to eat sushi and not pay.

The Breakfast Club

1985
Universal Studios
Director: John Hughes
Length: 97 min.
Country: USA
Format: 35mm
Date Viewed: 12 March, 2006

The Breakfast Club takes the notion that most stereotypes are based on truths and mostly runs with this, but also tweaks these stereotypes here and there to create more interesting characters that don't always match our expectations. Take, for instance, the pot smoking sequence. The prissy nerd eagerly takes part even though we are sure he will not, and the girl who looks already perma-fried at 17 is the only one who steadfastly refuses, looking shocked at what the others are doing.

The movie also bucks certain trends that were popular in the day. Though it's an '80s teen comedy preoccupied (as teens from any era are) with sex, the movie takes the typical Hughes stance that being a virgin throughout your teen years is a-OK, something most of Hughes' contemporaries rarely agreed with.

Many of the situations and much of the dialogue is very reminiscent of my school years, and, judging by its cult status especially amongst those in my age group, reminiscent of the social realities of most kids who grew up in the '80s and '90s.

The films works overall, but it does hit a major misstep at the end, with the "improvement" of Allison. For some reason, Hughes felt it was important for her entire style to be eradicated and replaced by the get-up of your standard zombie-like teen princess in order for the jock to want to date her. Though this is pretty true to what would happen in real life (can you imagine a jock dating Allison before the make-over?), but it would have been a much stronger statement to let her style alone and have the Andrew go for her anyways, bucking one more trend that desperately needs bucking. As it is, this ending, combined with Bender's relationship with Claire, reinforces the ugly American idea that only girls who primp and preen and follow contemporary fashion can get a guy's attention.

Avanti!

1972
Phalanx-Jalem Productions
Director: Billy Wilder
Length: 142 min.
Country: USA/Italy
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 8 March, 2006

Billy Wilder's Avanti! is a film that is 100% dated - clearly a product of the "swingin'" '70s. The film's ultimate message is an unsurprising one for its era - having an affair is good for you, but only so long as it's meaningful and based on love. Yet another genius idea given to us by the Baby Boomers (thanks again, Boomers - because you slept with everybody, we now can't sleep with anybody). This ridiculous free-love message is here wrapped up in a mediocre and extremely predictable film. It's genuinely funny quite often, and the performances are generally good (Clive Revill being a standout as the string-pulling concierge), but the film needed a large part of its 142 minutes cut down and Lemmon's Ugly American abroad is so grating that we don't really care for him even when he inevitably softens. Avanti! isn't a bad film, like Wilder's Sunset Blvd., but it certainly won't be mistaken for one of his better works, either.

The Trouble With Harry

1955
Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Length: 99 min.
Country: USA
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 5 March, 2006

Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry is an unfortunately underrated work by the legendary director, and indeed it was one of the infamous five lost Hitchcocks, thankfully given back to us by his daughter, Patricia. This is the first film of Hitchcock's I've seen that could truly be considered a comedy, though North by Northwest has a heavy element of comedy to it (and the director himself considered Psycho to fit that genre), and all I can say is that now I want to see more. Hitchcock has a special gift for comedy.

The witty dialogue, of course, was provided by somebody else (for this film, John Michael Hayes), but Hitchcock deftly enhances the script with his natural flair for mise en scene, and his interesting and altogether appropriate juxtaposition of the gorgeous Vermont locations with the script's pitch black humor, lending an extra depth to the comedy, pointing fun at our notions of the tranquility of small-town life and the upstanding nature of our nation's senior citizens. Though it is primarily a comedy, the tension over the fate of the body builds as much as it does in his better suspense films.

The Trouble With Harry is not the best Hitchcock film, but it is very good and should be required viewing for any restrospective of the director's work.

Jackass: The Movie

2002
Paramount
Director: Jeff Tremaine
Length: 87 min.
Country: USA
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 4 March, 2006

Overall, Jackass: The Movie, is a rather funny movie. Comprised entirely of episodic stunts, the feature-length version of the infamous TV show follows a handful of twenty-somethings around the US, Europe and Japan as they realize their incredibly dangerous and dumb, yet often perversely hilarious ideas on how to best destroy themselves or property (or better yet, both at the same time).

Some of the stunts (notably the rental car demolition derby and the golf cart bit) are much better than others (the insane amount of bodily fluids expelled from body gets old fast, as does any stunt with Bam Margera). But the filmmakers seem to know this, and thankfully kept the run-time to a scant 87 minutes - including an extended closing credits section - while keeping the stunts flying by like jokes in a Zucker movie.

Other reviewers are right in that this film gives you no insight into the performers or the youth culture as a whole, but it does reflect our generation's penchant for self-destruction, though quite mild in real life and obviously taken to the extreme in Jackass. Luckily, most young people seem content to only go as far as pierce and tattoo themselves endlessly in rather awkward places, not tightrope-walk over alligator pits with raw chicken in their underwear for a little bit of money and a lot of respect from their peers.

Vacation is Over

I have just posted my review for Cache below, and will get caught up as fast as I possibly can. Sorry for the delay, folks!

Cache

2005
Wega Films
Director: Michael Haneke
Length: 117 min.
Country: France
Format: 35mm
Date Viewed: 27 February

[I stress that you do not read this review until you have seen Cache. If you haven't seen the film, I'm not sure what you are waiting for. Hurry up and see it; it's an outstanding film with excellent performances and strong directing. This review is essentially nothing but spoilers; you have been warned.]

Most people who have seen Cache seem to be hung up on which person is sending the videotapes, and choose their most likely candidate. Many other people seem to think the tapes are a McGuffin, and that it isn't important who is sending them, only that they are sent. I argue, though, that both camps are wrong. No person is sending the tapes, but the sender is important. The sender is white, middle-class fear - a silent, undefined threat that's looming over suburban houses and families, threatening to tear white "civilized" society apart. The threat is face-to-face confrontation with minorities (specifically Algerian Muslims, as this is France, but it can easily apply to blacks or all Muslims for Americans). These minority groups seem to drive the racist white middle-class crazy with extreme anxiety, maddening them with naive questions of '"what do they want," "why don't they leave us alone."

This feeling is shown explicitly in the scenes with the black cyclist and the entire Majid plot. Notice also the elevator scene; the rightfully agitated Arab gets in and everyone else (all lily white) stiffens and faces forward, afraid of what he might do. The news reports that Georges watches implicitly provides the embattled whites with a plan of action by explicitly telling the white coalition forces fighting in the Middle-East to stand together in order to conquer the Muslim enemy combatants.

But what to make of the end? It's clearly left up to the viewer to decide, and I of course have my own interpretation. When Georges tells Anne about the lies he told to keep Majid from entering his family, keep in mind that he refuses to allow the light to be turned on. Doing so would allow us to scrutinize his face and destroy his chance for an anonymous confession. He confesses his sins in an unused backroom, quietly and with as little fanfare as possible, much like many political leaders do when discussing their imperialistic mistakes (how many of us know of Churchill expressing regret over not creating Kurdistan when carving up the Middle East after WWI?).

The subtext in the second-to-last shot reveals Georges' generation (the currently aged middle and political class) going to sleep, naked and vulnerable behind darkened curtains. Doing this will keep him hidden from the outside world. He is becoming isolationist, much like we can see France becoming, especially when it comes to imperialism in the Middle-East (perhaps they have not forgotten Algeria while we have already forgotten Vietnam). Note that he also demands that his son (generations X and Y) not be too noisy so as to wake the older generation from their head-in-the-sand slumber. Haneke here seems to think that our current middle and political class will soon try to pass the buck onto my generation, allowing us to inherit their messes, and the messes of their fathers and grandfathers before them, but to clean them up without needing to rope our elders back in.

As for the hotly contested and mysterious final shot, I take the view that it is an optimistic ending. The conversation between Majid's son and Pierrot appears to be nothing but friendly - the sons are mending the fences smashed by their fathers. The film thus shows us that we must move past the current racist climate in America and in Europe, or we will reenter the same cycle as Georges and Majid in the film, and our current War on Islam in the real world. Haneke appears to be optimistic, but how will the new generation (i.e. people my age) act in our highly racist climate? Will we act as our fathers or will we move on? We, of course, must immediately take a cue from the sons.

[If you have seen the film, leave some comments. I'd love to hear your interpretations on the ending.]

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

A Cock and Bull Story
2005
Scion Films Ltd.
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Length: 94 min.
Country: UK
Format: 35mm
Date Viewed: 27 February

A sort of fraternal twin to Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, Tristram Shandy is a self-referential look behind the scenes of a major entertainment industry. Whereas the former was about Factory Records and the Manchester New Wave scene of the '70s, '80s and early '90s, the latter takes aim at the film industry, poking fun at weak directors, overbearing producers and ego-mad actors trying to make an adaptation of the unfilmable titular book (that actually exists, and is supposedly rather good).

The film is consistently hilarious and the performances great across the board, but is also incredibly and quite unnecessarily complex. It's rather difficult to figure out the film's rhythm and its many, many layers of reality, and as a result, it's easy to get lost for the entirety of the first act (if not longer). It's refreshing that Winterbottom trusts our intelligence, but the film ends up being one for active movie-watchers only. I can't imagine any passive movie-goer enjoying this film in the slightest, regardless of how extremely funny it is. It's definitely worth seeing, but don't expect an easy ride.

The Edukators

2004
Y3 Films
Director: Hans Weingartner
Length: 127 min.
Country: Germany
Format: DVD
Date Viewed: 26 February

The Edukators is a poor film already growing a sizable cult following amongst angry leftist youths who are unable to see past the laughable sloganeering and "edgy" technique that director foolishly believes adds urgency to his tribute to young revolutionaries (Weingartner himself having been just such a kid).

The acting is rather good, but is the only thing the film has going for it.

Lucky for the director, most young lefties are adamantly against criticism of the left of any kind, so The Edukators' fan-base refuses to see just how superficial the entire enterprise is. Even to this young (but highly critical) lefty reviewer, the opening succeeded in stirring up class-conscious anger. Once you begin to think about what the characters are doing and especially what they are saying, though, you will soon realize that the dialogue is essentially the stuff of bumper stickers, and yet we are expected to take it as serious political discourse; it is here that the movie falls apart, to say nothing of the dumbed-down MTV-style editing and typically soft DV cinematography. None of it can be taken very seriously, and none of it is especially thought-provoking - it's all just preaching to the choir, but using only sound-bites to do so.

The movies' climax sees the three titular kids opening their eyes a bit, but the conclusion reveals their eyes as firmly shut once more and continuing on with their ridiculous pranks, driven solely by their anger towards their own lower-class situation (notice two of three don't have jobs), like most revolutionaries. No lesson is learned, and the film ends asking us to support the Edukators' acts because of a "surprise" and cynical (but incredibly common-sense) turn by their kidnapping victim, which apparently shows us that anyone with money is someone who can never be trusted.

Not only is it incredibly naive, the movie is also a good thirty minutes too long (or by my count, 127 minutes too long), and has Jeff Buckley's song "Hallelujah" playing for some 15-20 minutes out of the final thirty, just to kick you in the kidneys after making you suffer from the film's stupidity for the first seventy-five percent of the runtime. Avoid this movie like the plague.

Floating Clouds

Ukigumo
1955
Toho
Director: Mikio Naruse
Length: 122 min.
Country: Japan
Format: 35mm
Date Viewed: 26 February

Floating Clouds is widely considered to be Naruse's masterpiece. It's a good film, to be sure, but I think it is easily bested by the excellent When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Floating Clouds begins with a flawless first act; the cinematography, editing, sound, music and acting all work together flawlessly, jumping between present and some four years earlier with match cuts every bit as awe-inspiring and revealing as the infamous bone-to-spaceship edit in Kubrick's 2001. Some twenty minutes in I began to think that perhaps this was Naruse's masterpiece, but after the first act, the film becomes disappointingly standard in its technical side, betraying the first act and revealing it as a hook that does nothing more than perfectly comply with Sam Fuller's rule that films need openings so technically and emotionally perfect that they induce erections.

The acting remains strong throughout (another knockout performance by the fantastic Hideko Takamine) and the story and script are generally solid, but as the style mellows, the film becomes - dare I say - a little bit boring. It's a full two hours and every minute after minute thirty is felt, and by the end it becomes clear that some twenty minutes could have been easily removed from Yukiko's (Takamine) ping-pong like flights to and from the men in her life.

Still, it is a good movie, and is filled throughout with small shots that initially seem throwaway until looked at more closely when deep or witty symbolism is revealed. Take, for instance, a wonderful shot that occurs at about the end of the third act after the murder of a certain young woman. After Yukiko leaves Kengo's (Masayuki Mori) apartment, we see three children playing in the foreground. We've seen these kids before but the camera lingers on them with Yukiko in the background, looking emotionally lost. The kids begin playing house. As the shot is curiously held, it hits us that they represent the characters of the film as essentially children in adult bodies, playing adult roles, but not getting it quite right. The adults in the film are every bit as emotionally immature and confused about the world as children are; a result, perhaps, of the famously repressed society they were born into, and certainly a result from the recent and vicious loss of a World War.