My March movies (NOT a ten-best list), 1931-1999Apr 01 '06 (Updated Apr 02 '06) Write an essay on this topic.
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As usual, jottings of more than a paragraph about a movie are set off by dashes, and movies are listed chronologically by their year of release. (A + before the entry indicates it is a movie I had seen before.) My March film-viewing included a number of movies with lightning flashes of extreme violence amidst sad, yearning romances (including some romances between already married couples). And I continued to examine the amazing heritage of Japanese cinema. Die Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera, 1931. directed by G. W. Pabst, 4.7 stars). Pabst watered down Brecht's cynical adaptation of John Gay's "Beggar's Opera" some, but the criminals discovering that they can do better running banks than robbing them and manipulating the masses is still very clearly stated. Some of the Brecht-Weill songs were cut, but "Pirate Jenny" (sung by Lotte Lenya) and reprises of "Mack the Knife" are there. In that this is my favorite musical (in the early-1950s Broadway version of Mac Blitzstein, with Bea Arthur in the cast recording), my enjoyment of the movie may partly derive from memories of the two superlative stage productions I've seen and the cast recording (with better lyrics than the subtitles). The movie was long believed lost, increasing tolerance for a somewhat degraded print (but not for cropping the picture...) Carola Neher is outstanding as Polly Peachum, the woman that whoremonger Mack the Knife (an unfrightening but dapper Rudolf Forster)weds and who runs his crime empire when he is jailed (reluctantly by his old friend, Police Chief "Tiger" Brown). Otona no miru ehon (I was Born, But...,1932, directed by Ozu Yasujiro, 3.3 stars) is the first pre-WWII Japanese movie I've ever seen. Ozu already liked to have the camera about one meter in elevation, which was eye-level for the children who are the main character of this movie. Back then, he sometimes tracked and panned as well as intercutting shots within a scene. The New Yorker video cuts off the top of standing adults' heads and provides no musical accompaniment, so that it really is a silent film. It portrays a family with two grade-school-age boys. Their father (Saito Tatsuo)has been promoted, and they move to a suburb, where the boys are bullied, skip school, and are very dismayed that their father is a subordinate of the father of one of their schoolmates. The organization of adult society is incomprehensible to them, and what they do understand repels them. I enjoyed Ozu's later film about young brothers in postwar Japan intent on convincing their father to purchase a television set, "Ohayu" (Good Morning, 1959), which I don't see as a "remake" of this. (OK, the boys vow to stop eating in the earlier film unless their father quits his job and the boys in the later one stop speaking when their father orders them to stop wheedling for a tv, which is kind of parallel.) The Spoilers (1942, directed by Ray Enright, 3 stars). This incarnation of the oft-filmed Rex Stout novel is pedestrian. It has Marlene Dietrich as a (censorship-disguised) madame and dance-hall proprietor (who has no songs), John Wayne being robbed of his Alaskan mine by Randolph Scott. For northern action, Anthony Mann's "Far Country" is much superior, and Wayne is more entertaining up there (a quarter of a century later) in "North to Alaska." The drawn-out fist fight between Wayne and Scott was disappointing (especially after recently seeing the creative final duel in Kill!). This Happy Breed (1944, directed by David Lean from a play by Nöel Coward who produced the movie, 3.2 stars) followed upon the success of In Which We Serve and is almost as dull and uninvolving as the earlier Nöel Coward decade-spanning and similarly talky Cavalcade, despite a fine performance by Celia Johnson. It has unusually restrained performances from Robert Newton and Stanley Holloway, and John Mills as a stalwart sailor (again). The family is not very interesting, the conflicts and historical background contrived. In addition to Johnson and Mills, what it has going for it is the muted Technicolor cinematography of Ronald Neame (who would later cast Johnson and Mills after the breakup of the Coward-Lean-Neame team and repertory company). "Waga Seishun ni Kuinashi" (No Regrets for Our Youth 1946, directed by Akira Kurosawa, 3.2 stars), a historically unique movie that has a very boring first hour, and is only available on DVD with fractured-English subtitles and poor video transfer. Even though one of the women in Mizoguchi Kenji's "Utamaro o meguru gonin no onna" (Five Women Around Utamaro , 1946, 3 stars) takes extreme action and the woodblock artists Utamaro Kitagawa (1753-1806) is passionate about his work (which is celebrating the beauty of women, most of whom are prostitutes in the Yoshiwara pleasure district of the capital, Edo {later renamed Tokyo]) and, early on, an artist of the hypertraditional Kano Art School (Bandô Kôtarô) challenges Utamaro (Bandô Minosuke) to a duel, the movie (and the killer deranged by jealousy) still have pretty flat affect. It seems that I started with Mizoguchi's masterpieces Ugetsu and "Sancho, the Bailiff." My subsequent encounters with Mizoguchi films have been disappointments or worse (47 Ronin). The portrayal of living to make art surely has autobiographical resonances, and the movie also has the historical interest of being a piece of advocacy for a creative individual defying tradition that was acceptable (or more) to the US Occupation (as in Kurosawa's rebels in No Regret for Our Youth). Sexual passion is represented as a curse, but Utamaro's sublimation into art and will to make art his own way are lauded (not just implicitly). For me, the beginning (a long tracking shot of a procession) and the end (the piling up of Utamaro's art after 50 days of having his hands bound in punishment for having "offended the shogunate") are the best parts, though I'm sure that others must dote on the young women fishing (one of whom catches Utamaro's eye). The Man on the Eiffel Tower, 1950, directed by Burgess Meredith, 2.5 stars) has perhaps the only boring performance ever delivered by Charles Laughton along with (coproducer) Franchot Tone out of his depths and very limited acting ability. The colors have mostly turned brown. What the movie does have are chases across the Paris of 1950. It is otherwise not worth watching. Thérèse Raquin (1953, directed by Marcel Carné, 4.2 stars) begins as a slow-paced seeming soap opera about a woman who has never lived (the great Simone Signoret turned to stone). Thérèse is married to a spindly and sickly cousin (Jacques Duby) and domineered by her aunt/mother-in-law (Sylvie) until stirred by a passionate Italian truck-driver (Raf Vallone). Carné more or less invented cinema noir during the 1930s, and the second half of the movie returns to the thwarted lives and passions of the noir universe. Although it is based on Émile Zola's naturalistic 19th-century novel (set further down the social hierarchy than the movie is and updated to post-WWII Lyons), Carné's movie bears many resemblances (not least in the freak accident near the end) to the first Hollywood movie version of James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice. (Of course, if there was literary influence it has to have been from Zola's novel to Cain's decades later... and to Cain's Double Indemnity, too) Marcel André is excellent as a cynical, feral blackmailer drifter (the most noir character in the movie whose jokes are not at all appreciated by his audience). It's Always Fair Weather (1955, directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen) has a delightful dance with garbage-can lids with three just-demobilized World War II buddies, then a boring hour in which Gene Kelly annoys Cyd Charisse, and then a very funny fight with Jay Flippen and his goons before an ending that is schmaltzy even for an MGM musical of the 1950s. 15-20 inspired minutes out of 102 is not enough. Party Girl (1958, directed by Nicholas Ray, 2.8 stars) has one of those ominous mob boss turns of Lee J. Cobb. It also has an unconvincing lead in Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse unconvincingly slumming as a moll. One of Ray's more forgettable movies. (And talented and beautiful as Charisse was, was she good in any movie other than "Band Wagon"?) + "Sanma no aji" (An Autumn Afternoon, 1962, Ozu Yasajiro 's last movie, 4.4 stars ), again shows Ryu Chishu resigned to losing a daughter (and drinking a whole lot of alcohol). The colors are vibrant, the emotions subordinated to obligations (though the spoiled son played by Sada Keiji squabbles over money with his wife and signs of change are all around). I had confused Kon Ichikawa's (1962) "Watashi wa nisai" (Being Two Isn't Easy) with Ozu's (1959) charming "Ohayô" (Good Morning). Long before the "Look Who's Talking" movies, Ichikawa had an infant narrator (a less sardonic one). The movie is a little gooey a portrait of parenthood maturing parents and extremely different from Ichikawa's grisly WWII dramas "Fire on the Plains" and "The Burmese Harp." He had great range, also pulling together the greatest of Olympic documentaries, Tokyo Olympiad (1965). BTW, "Being Two" is about the first year of the baby boy. Japanese are considered to be one year old when they are born, and the film ends with the anniversary of his birth (turning two). Being a parent of an infant is not easy, as the film reminds viewers. (And getting television sets is a major plot element in Ozu's movie, as well as Ichikawa's, which I had not seen before, though I thought I had.) Loosely based on a historically important event in 1860, called the "Sakurada Gate [of Edo Castle] Incident," Samurai Assassin (1965, directed by Okamoto Kihachi, 4 stars) has a veritable tsunami of names and exposition, but also has a fine hungry performance by Toshiro Mifune, and superb visual compositions (with a lot of low-angle shots) by Murai Hiroshi, who also shot Okamotoi's Sword of Doom the next year. The two battles (both near the end) are impressive, though action fans undoubtedly would grown restless en route (though there are a couple of duels on the way to the climactic battle. Reportedly, Neil Simon considers Plaza Suite (1971, directed by Arthur Hiller, 3.2 stars) the worst screen adaptation of his work. I noticed that it is ranked 18 out of 37 by IMDB voters, surprisingly ahead of "California Suite." Simon rightly considers the movie too confined to the hotel rooms. He also did not like the casting Walter Matthau (with black hair opposite Maureen Stapleton, a hideous brown wig opposite Rosemary Harris, and gray hair opposite Lee Grant) in all three playlets. Matthau shtick and Simon shtick go together and the resulting broad humor sometimes work, sometimes seems labored or stupid. I like the third playlet the best (adding .2 stars to my overall rating). The 1973 Senegalese movie Touki Bouki (Hyena's Journey, directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty, 2.7 stars) was a disappointment after seeing his masterful 1992 Hyenas. Semi-Tough (1977, directed by Michael Ritchie, 3.5 stars) is carried by the charm of Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, and Jill Clayburgh, mostly wasting Robert Preston, and, allegedly, the more cutting humor of the novel. It is more a comedy about 1970s therapy fads than race and football, but is entertaining. Go Tell the Spartans (1978, directed by Ted Post, 4.8 stars). George_Chabot opined that this is the best Vietnam movie. Finally having caught up with it, I agree. Set in 1964, it manages to provide a remarkable cross-section of the difficulties faced by American soldiers in Vietnam. Burt Lancaster is the star, as a grizzled major who has survived two wars to take up a command that "thankless" does not begin to sum up. Evan C. Kim is also notable for vividly portraying a very complex ARVN interpreter who is a sadist, but also a brave and effective leader. (Post was a television director whose only other remotely notable movie was the Clint Eastwood vehicle "Hang 'Em High.") + The Sting (1983, directed by George Roy Hill, 5 stars). This crowd-pleaser requires considerable suspension of disbelief. Although ragtime was nearly forgotten by 1936, when the movie is set, the movie's revival of Scott Joplin rags makes this seem unimportant. The cast is excellent, with the nastiness of Robert Shaw and Charles During particularly memorable. Robert Redford has the biggest part, but Paul Newman has the authority to make the Big Con work. "Urs al-jalil" (Wedding in Galilee, 1987, written and directed by Michel Khleifi, 4 stars) seems to me to have too much going on (that is, too many subplots) but is, nonetheless, an interesting portrayal of attempted accommodation by Arabs and the Israeli army in an earlier day. It was also a pioneering exploration of gender roles by the film-maker who was born in Nazareth. It prefigures last year's tragicomic (and Oscar-nominated) Paradise Now. "Duo luo tian shi" (Fallen Angels1995, directed by Wong Kar-Wai, 3.6 stars) is a variation on Chunking Express with much of the cartoonish Hong Kong violence of Wong's early movies and the hopeless romances that have become the mainstay of his recent movies (In the Mood for Love, 2046). The charismatic Kaneshiro Takeshi (House of Flying Daggers) plays a character with the same name (He Zhi-Wu) as in "Chunking Express." Here he plays a mute who expropriates closed businesses at night. His sad voice-overs are in Mandarin, the music he plays is in Taiwanese (Hoklo), and everyone except for his father speaks Cantonese. Instead of Tony Leung, the other man who is featured (one can't really say that his "story" is told, since Wong doesn't show stories, though his characters sometimes tell them) and who also has wry voice-over self-analysis, is Wong Chi-Ming (Lai Leon), who is a contract killer. It seems that his contracts involve shooting everyone in a room with guns blazing in both his hands. Both of the male leads have hopeless infatuations. Wong's is with his agent (Michele Reis, who has three extended masturbation scenes on Wong's bed after she cleans his hovel of an apartment). He's is with a woman who keeps crying on his shoulder without really noticing who he is (Charlie Yeung). And even her rival, Blondie (Karen Mok) gets some voice-over soliloquy. Christopher Doyle again provides saturated-color (especially green), odd-angled, jagged images for Wong's dark vision of a terminally alienated Hong Kong (or the postmodernist world in general). --- "Hana-bi" (1997, Fireworks, written directed by, edited by and starring Kitano Takeshi, 4 stars) has its longeurs, punctuated by savage outbursts of violence with a bass line of anguish as Yoshitaka Nishi (Kitano) leaves the police force to spend time with his wife (Kishimoto Kayoko) is dying of leukemia and with his police partner, Horibe (Osugi Ren), who, paralyzed by a bullet wound, takes up painting animals with floral eyes (the painting, too, are Kitano's; he is also a published poet, writes a weekly column, and is all over Japanese television). Kitano has coiled power (charisma), but generally looks affectless, even when he seems to have strong feelings (as, for instance, in Brother). (His face was partially paralyzed in a near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1994, but it is more that his eyes are dead than that his face is immobile.) Kitano's sense of humor is IMO offbeat (though he calls himself "Beat"), particularly in Tokyo Eyes. The rhythm of his movies, and what he intercuts is very alien even to someone like me who has seen and admired many Japanese movies. The mixture of melodrama about longing and crime drama and pop-art colors has some affinity to Wong Kar-Wai's movies of the 1990s, though Kitano is not above telling a story (or more than one at the same time.) Visual style is more important than story-telling to both, and beneath the bravura stylization, deep melancholy about the human condition throbs in the movies of both. The New Yorker DVD of "Fireworks"" has, reportedly, cropped the images, cut bits, and jiggered the colors. --- + Head-On (1998, directed by Ana Kokkinos, 3.3 stars) is an aimless movie about an aimless, unemployed, handsome Greek (Alex Dimitriades) who has sex with men in Melbourne, Australia, but no gay identity. Whether he is unable or unwilling to grow up is not clear. As he spins his wheels, he does a lot of drugs (like many a permanent adolescent). As Ari's drag-embracing friend, Paul Capsis is impressive, taking on hatred of effeminacy head-on, whereas Ari bobs and weaves and protects himself. (I had already seen this movie and wanted to see the Turkish-German movie directed by Fatih Akin that has the same English name.) --- Snow Falling on Cedars (1999, directed by Scott Hicks [Shine], 3.6 stars) is a little too arty, more than a little too long, with too many flashbacks (for too many characters, but especially too much childhood first love flashbacks). The cinematography by Robert Richardson (Platoon, The Aviator) of snow, and cedars, and fog, and islands (British Columbia and Washington state, and even a Maine lighthouse) is often gorgeous. Perhaps a little too gorgeous for the story about racist persecution and multifold vindictiveness, though the nature shots interfere with narrative drive much less than the first love flashbacks do. As the defendant, Kazuo Miyamoto, Rick Yune did not look Japanese to me, and he is, indeed of Korean descent. I thought the movie would have been better with more of his memories (flashbacks) and fewer of Ethan Hawke's, who withholds evidence out of petty vindictiveness, but gets to play the Great White Savior part that is so common in movies about racist persecution. James Cromwell as the judge, Max von Sydow as the defense attorney, and James Rebhorn as the prosecutor are superb, and it was a jolt to see Richard Jenkins as a sheriff rather than as (the ghost of) a mortician. Yûki Kudô and Sam Shepard didn't have much to do other than look emblematic. I found the book overly poetic, too, though the court case seemed less subordinated to the story of the pangs (for the white boy) of first love. The movie is definitely an example of where less would have been more (that is, cutting 15-20 minutes would have made a better movie). --- Mystery, Alaska (1999, directed by Jay Roach, 3 stars) is preposterous even for an underdog sports movie. It did make me wonder if there are any sports movies in which the underdogs are completely annihilated in the momentous (to them) game. I was hoping for more "Northern Exposure" and David Kelley offbeat humor (and for more of Adam Beach and Nero Wolfe, I mean Maury Chaykin). Russell Crowe exerted himself, while Burt Reynolds phoned in a performance as the coach of the locals who are hosting a match with the New York Rangers. --- My jottings on movies from this millennium that I watched in March are at http://www.epinions.com/content_4707688580. The master list of all the movies I watched in 2005 is at http://www.epinions.com/content_4624588932. I continued with notes on what I watched in January and February, so it seems that eradicating the habit is almost as difficult as establishing it! BTW, I updated my listing of the best non-American movies by country and hereby renew an invitation for others to list their choices.  |
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