My April movie-watching (NOT a ten-best list)
May 14 '06 (Updated May 15 '06)
The Bottom Line Check out "Gunman in the Street" and "The Interpreter" .
Having been traveling at the beginning of May I am very tardy in getting my list of movies I watched in April posted. I have deferred jotting about a few and, because I saw a number of movies focused on Native American characters in April, I added "The New World," which I saw on DVD this weekend. My April viewing was even heavier on old Japanese movies. As usual, my jottings that go beyond one paragraph are set off with "---"s, jottings on those I'd seen before are preceded by a "+". The movies are listed in chronological order of their original release.
Ben-Hur (1925, directed by Fred Niblo, 3.8 stars) is a 143 minutes, which seems less than half the length of the 1959 version, despite having much more romance. The naval (Roman/pirate) battle in the silent version is better, and the chariot race is almost as good. The plot is just as preposterous, for which General Lew Wallace's popular novel is mostly to blame. Francis X. Bushman is a stereotypical villain as Messala, Ramón Novarro the Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur, a boyhood friend of Messala turned bitter, vengeful enemy. The parts with Jesus were shot in early Technicolor. Much of the rest is tinted. The cast officially numbered 125,000 and reputedly some drowned in the filming of the sea battle. It was a huge success for the new MGM studio (putting Culver City on the map?) I miss Hugh Griffith's horse trader, and find Jesus working miracles on the way to Gogoltha noncanonical, and would fast-forward either version were I ever to watch one or both of them again.
Laughing Boy (1934, directed by W. S. "One-Take Woody" Van Dyke, 2.2 stars) is a very disappointing adaptation of Oliver LaFarge's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1929 novel about a proud, good-natured, naive young Navajo from a remote part of the reservation (Laughing Boy, played by Ramon Novarro) who meets and is swept off his feet by a "fallen woman" (Slim Girl played by Lupe Velez) at a pow-wow (some time in the 1910s). She attempts to become a proper back-country wife, but periodically goes back to the white world (c-o-r-r-u-p-t-i-o-n) until the inevitable discovery of what (whom) she is doing there by Laughing Boy. There's lots of back projection from New Mexico locales, peculiar songs crooned by Novarro (under a terrible wig). He prefigured Anthony Quinn in playing "ethnics" of all sorts (including "Eskimo" and a Polynesian in "Pagan," also directed by Van Dyke). Novarro was boyish in contrast to Quinn's parts (and appearance). Indeed, he looked younger than he had a decade earlier as Ben-Hur! Although there were some real Native Americans in the cast, Velez was also Mexican (indeed, "the Mexican Spitfire"). The movie is more about her (conflicts) than about Laughing Boy (though she does not have any songs, playing American music on a Victrola instead).
I am increasingly realizing that the first two Kenji Mizoguchi movies I saw, "Sancho, the Bailiff" and "Ugetsu" are a lot better than his other movies (while discovering great movies by Japanese directors I had not heard of when I was seeing my first Japanese films). The earlier Mizoguchi movies I have subsequently seen, including the earliest, "Gion no kyoudeai" (Sisters of the Gion, 1936) I find not just slow, but boring, grim melodramas. This one runs only 69 minutes, but considerably tried my patience. (And it is worth noting that other Japanese movies I consider fascinating masterpieces seem slow to other American viewers.) It shows two sisters, the older one an old-fashioned victim playing by the rules strongly slanted against women, the younger one trying to make male desires work for her advantage, but failing as miserably, or even more so in an increasingly impersonal (capitalist) pleasure-quarter milieu. (1.8 stars)
The first movie in which I saw Kay Francis had her as a vindictive bitch, Cary Grant's "Wife in Name Only" (1939). Mick LaSalle's championing of her pre-Code movies, stimulated looking at earlier movies and greater appreciation of Francis in movies including "Jewel Robbery" and "Trouble in Paradise." The movie in which I've seen her challenged to act a gamut of emotions and characters is I Found Stella Dallas (1935, which is after the Production Code began to be enforced). She played a successful London stage-actress whose sordid past has returned in the guise of a blackmailer. She is very good, and Ian Hunter (King Richard in "The Adventures of Robin Hood") sounds remarkably like Cary Grant as a penitent heel. Jessie Ralph provided excellent support along with Paul Lukas as the impresario who made Stella Parish a Star. (Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 3.3 stars)
After her triumph in "Gone with the Wind," Olivia de Haviland was disappointed to be lent out for the bland ingenue part in the third version of Raffles(directed by Sam Wood, who was filling in for Victor Fleming mopping up GWTW, so William Wyler shot some of "Raffles" with cinematographer Gregg Toland: they would do more memorable work together on "The Letter" and "The Little Foxes." two of the best Bette Davis vehicles). David Niven prefigured his later tv role in "The Rogues" as a dashing thief (a part already played without censorship interference by John Barrymore and Ronald Colman). Niven and De Haviland are charming, but most of the fun comes from Dame May Whitty's Lady Melrose. She had been even better in the previous two years in "Night Must Fall" and "The Lady Vanishes," but was very good at puffed-up imperiousness (Mrs. Miniver, Crash Dive, etc.). Although only running 72 minutes, it drags (in comparison to William Powell's debonair jewel thief movies; I haven't seen the earlier versions of "Raffles.")
Dangerous Passage (1944, directed by William A. Berke, 3.2 stars) is a low-budget "Maltese Falcon" intrigue in "Journey Into Fear" motion with some good performances from a no-name cast and a not-well-preserved print available on DVD.
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There were two names in the credits of the 1949 B movie Port of New York that got my attention: the great noir cinematographer George E. Diskant (The Narrow Margin, They Live By Night, On Dangerous Ground) and, in his film debut (with a high forehead, but with hair) Yul Brynner (who did not appear on big screens again until 1956, when he was in three major motion pictures). The movie was one of those celebrations of government crime-fighters (customs, narcotics, and Coast Guard) that showed the high technology of the day (others include "Kansas City Confidential," which was also shot by Diskant, The House on 92nd Street, and The Street with No Name) with lots of sententious voice-over narration.
In addition to a sinisterly charming cold-blooded Brynner as a heroin kingpin, there was a notable performance as a sweating junkie entertainer by Arthur Blake. He reminded me of Zero Mostel in "Panic in the Streets" with Brynner reminiscent of Jack Palance in that movie. The good guys were standard issue B-movie lawmen (Scott Brady, Richard Roby). Director László Benedek is best remembered for "The Wild One" with motorcycle gang leaders Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin. He also directed "Death of a Salesman" with Fredric March's Willy Loman. The editing (credited to Norman Colbert) was more impressive than the directing.
Diskant used some low-angle shots and many crane shots. The movie was shot on location on the docks and streets of New York City, providing documentation of how the waterfront looked in 1949. This was a year after Jules Dassin's "The Naked City," but its focus was terrestrial, while a significant part of "The Port of New York" takes place on the water (followed by dry dock and the facility's office). (3 stars)
(Both this and the previous movie are in the "Suspense 20" pack that George_Chabot reviewed with his usual sagacity.)
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Gunman in the Street (1950, directed by Frank Tuttle, 4.4 stars) was never released in the US. It is a very competent noir romance with the transcendent Simone Signoret and a bitter Dane Clark on a doomed escape.
Take The High Ground (1953, directed by Richard Brooks, 3.2 stars) . I thought this was a Korean War film, but it follows a group (including the brash young Russ Tamblyn) through boot camp in preparation for being shipped to Korea, and does not show how they did there. A tough drill sergeant prepares green recruits for service in the Korean War. Richard Widmark, who generally played officers, played the tough drill sergeant, with Karl Malden attempting to restrain him (a Dean Jagger sort of a role). Widmark could certainly snarl, but the movie is tame for those who have undergone viewing "Full Metal Jacket" or "Jarhead" (or experienced the real thing).
The White Orchid (also known as "Creatures of the Jungle," 1954, cowritten and directed by Reginald Le Borg, 1.7 stars) is pretty silly, involving a blonde photographer (Peggie Castle) who convinces a vanilla-grower (Armando Silvestre) to guide her and archeologist Robert Burton (William Lundigan) into the jungle (by way of a desert) where Toltec society allegedly is still functioning. I am a sucker for location shooting from Mexico before the 1970s (when I first went there). The jealousies of the "love" triangle are totally predictable, the "Toltecs" totally preposterous (among other things, looking unusually pale, and an Orientalist folk dance before the heroine's heart is to be cut out). And the deer trap! Well it and its role in the plot are jay-droppingly ludicrous.
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+ The gruesome, extremely unerotic suicides in Kobayashi Masaki's "Seppuku"(Harakiri, based on a novel by Takiguchi Yasuhiko, 1962) are motivated by parental and uxorial love (and the samurai honor code). If I had not been thinking of suicides in Japanese movies, it would not have occurred me to include this film on a list of screen romances. The first suicide (with a bamboo sword, a scene that made a number of those in the audience of the film's premičre at Cannes faint) stems from a desperate father (Motome portrayed by Ishihama Akira),trying to feed his sick wife and child. This story is told in flashback by the great Nakadai Tatsuya, as Tsugomo, a ronin who spends most of the movie immobile kneeling in the center of the same courtyard, seething with bitterness and guilt and discomfiting Iyi Clan elder, Kageyu Saito (Rentaro Mikuni). After telling Motome's story and his relationship(s) to Motome, Tsugomo takes many Iyi retainers with him.
Danielpar's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_162731167364 contends this is the greatest of all samurai films. Although I don't agree with that claim, "Seppuku" is definitely a stunningly acted and photographed film with Takemitsu Tori's first soundtrack (a very innovative one), bravura cinematography by Kobayahi regular Miyajima Yoshio, and one of many mesmerizing performances by Nakadai, who also carried Kobayashi's The Human Condition trilogy and played a key role in another Kobayashi masterpiece, Samurai Rebellion, as well as in many Kurosawa masterpieces, culminating in Kagemusa and "Ran".) I would add that there is now a superbly remastered Criterion edition, with a second disc that includes interviews with Kobayashi (by Shinoda), Nakadai, and screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto . "Seppuku" is a great movie, even though it is not primarily a romance. Despite a slow (and easily bewildering) start, I'd rate it 4.8 stars.
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The Raven is a 1963 Roger Corman camp horror movie that I saw as a child. It has nothing in common with Edgar Allen Poe's poem except the title raven (OK, the last word is "Nevermore"), with cheesy special effects, a lot of ham sliced by Vincent Price and Peter Lorre and surprising restraint from the callow young Jack Nicholson and the old wizard Boris Karloff. 3 stars
"Akage" (Red Lion, 1969, directed by Okamoto Kihachi, 3 stars) made for the production company of its star Toshiro Mifune is a cynical historical comedy markedly inferior to Yojimbo and Sanjuro (historical comedies in which Mifune starred) and Okamoto's pragmatic "rebel samurai" masterpiece Kill! and Sword of Doom, and his overly complicated Samurai Assassin (which also starred Mifune). As a stuttering village boy who returns with a red lion's mane during the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Mifune is good, as is Terada Minori, who had just starred in Okamoto's "Nikudan"/"The Human Bullet" as a WWII kamikaze pilot. Here he plays a pickpocket who becomes a lieutenant in a de facto peasant rebellion, following the "red lion" (Mifune's character, Gonzo). The fights are not very good. The color photography is interesting, though I think the stylization of black and white works better for movies set within the span of the Tokugawa Shogunate, even the very end as here.
"Shinjű: Ten no amijima" (Double Suicide, 1969), adapted from Chikamatsu's very famous 1720 puppet play "The Love Suicide at Amijima" and directed by Shinoda Masahiro (Samurai Spy), is highly stylized, even for a Japanese historical melodrama. Indeed, that it is a puppet play is explicit, as it begins with shots of assembling the puppets and setting the stage (and subsequent scenes), though live actors take over the parts. Married merchant Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura) is besotted with the courtesan Koharu (Iwashita Shima) whom he cannot afford to buy out of her contract. His wife Osan (also played by Iwashita! who is Shinoda's wife) is dutiful to an extent that some may find touching, but that I find insane. The movie has a great austerely haunting score by Takemitsu Toru and superlative black-and-white cinematography by Narushima Toichiro. The Criterion DVD (which had no bonus features, though this is a film in which interpretive help would be most welcome!) provides a crisp picture and clear soundtrack. It is very difficult to identify with or even much sympathize with Jihei or Koharu. Jihei's father is more sensible than Osan, but ensures the finale already evident in the title. The most sympathetic character is Osan's handsome brother, Mogoemon (Yusuke Takit) who undertakes to impersonate a samurai and in other ways tries to ward off the tragedy. One could identify with him, but in a work which emphasizes artificiality and the manipulation of puppets, clearly, one is supposed to maintain the stance of detached observer (3.9 stars)
I was expecting a comedy like writer director Itami Juzo's "noodle western" "Tampopo" and "Taxing Woman" (both starring his wife Miyamoto Nobuko) when I set out to watch "Ososhiki" (The Funeral,1984, 3.1 stars), his first film (followed by those two international hits). "Ososhiki" has some anarchic moments but they are few and far between in a movie than runs more than two hours. It shows seemingly in real time (though not) the preparations, ceremonies, Buddhist chants, wake, and post-cremation lunch for a well-to-do man who did not quite make it over the hurdle of a 70th birthday. Miyamoto played a major role, and the priest was played by Ozu's alter ego, Ryu Chishu and Yamazaki Tsutomu (the intern in Kurosawa's High and Low and the clan leader second lead in Kagemusha) in a performance that won him a Japanese Academy award for best actor, but the pace was far too slow for comedy (or for 2006 audience expectations). It didn't help that some of the subtitles were illegible and that Fox Lorber chopped off the widescreen image (even though Fox was the leader in widescreen shooting). has excellent color cinematography by Maeda Yonezo.
I think that I know more about Rosa Luxemburg (1870 – 1919) and her rivals than 99+ percent of Americans (I'd know a lot more if I ever read the biography that has been gathering dust on my bookshelves for decades...), but found writer-director Margarethe von Trotta's award-winning 1986 biopic Die Geduld der Rosa Luxemburg more than a little confusing. Barbara Sukowa delivers a multifaceted performance in the title role, but the screenplay not only fails to provide context for her activities, but seems to me to lack any interpretation of her motives. These are serious defects in a biopic of any sort, particularly one of a political theorist/agitator.
+ Chunking Express (1994). I don't really like the movies of Wong Kar-Wai, but seem unable to leave them alone. "2046" drove me back to watching "Fallen Angels" and watching "Chunking Express" again. Knowing what (and how little would happen) made it easier to sink into the look of each shot of Christopher Doyle (and some by Lau Wai-Keung when Doyle had moved on to other commitments). From Quentin Tarrantino's afterword, I learned that Wong made it while trying to decide how to cut "Ashes of Time" and that Brigitte Lin's blonde wig and trench coat (and dark glasses?) were meant as a homage to Gena Rowland in John Cassaveates's film "Gloria" (which I should have figured out on my own, though it's been a long time). (4 stars?)
I got the Disney Squanto(1994, directed by Xavier Koller) mostly to see Adam Beach before he put on weight. The movie provides a Disneyfied Native American perspective. Without Beach's earnest charm appeal, the movie would, collapse, but it is supplemented by Mandy Patinkin as the member of a band of monks who first reaches out to the Squanto, escaped from exhibition by a very flamboyantly nasty Michael Gambon and by Sheldon Peters Wolfchild, as Mooshawset, a fellow captive who becomes a novelty display and eventually makes it back to Massachusetts (played by Nova Scotia) with Squanto ahead of the Pilgrims. The middle seems a variant on "Lilies of the Field" with monks instead of nuns, and Adam Beach instead of Sidney Poitier. The stunts are outlandish—might I say "cartoonish"? but are still entertaining. 3.4 stars from this Adam Beach fan.
There is more camera movement in the first three minutes of "Qianxi manbo" (Millennium Mambo, directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2001, 3.1 stars) than in all of the three previous films he directed that I've seen ("Puppet Master," "Goodbye South, Goodbye," "The Flowers of Shanghai") combined. It is stylized in a different way from "The Flowers of Shanghai" and not nearly as boring as that exercise was. It seems to me that "Millennium Mambo" was lifted (in melancholy mood, anomic milieu, jagged look, techno music, and disorienting chronology from the world of Wong Kar-Wai (both were born in Guandong, though Hou presented himself as Taiwanese while he was becoming established). Vicky (Shu Qi) keeps taking the drug-abusing (crystal methedrine), Vicky-abusing, deadbeat Hao-Hao (Duan Jun-Hao) back for reasons that are opaque to the viewer. To support him, she works as a lap dancer. He takes her money but is violently jealous (among all of his other fine qualities...). Eventually, she is let down by a gangster (Hou regular Jack Kao) whom she thinks will save her from Hao-Hao, but strands her in Japan. As Hou seems to be channeling Wong, cinematographer Lee Ping-Bing seems to be channeling Christopher Doyle (Wong's cinematographer, who also shot "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"). I think this is the reason that MM won a Grand Prix Technique at Cannes. Shu Qi is very good. She narrates the film (noir style), trying to understand her many bad decisions. She doesn't make them comprehensible, but at least provides the viewer the sense that she has put Hao-Hao away for good. The DVD includes a long (quarter hour) sequence of scenes of Vicky in Japan. They are beautifully shot, but would have brought the movie to a standstill (something that usually has not bothered Hou; indeed, it is not as visually static as many sequences in many of his films). There is also an interview (about ten minutes) with Hou, who is not very informative about anything (quel surprise!).
I am a Tony Hillerman fan and an Adam Beach fan, and enjoyed Coyote Waits (2003, directed by Jan Egleson, 3.4 stars) more for its characters and the opportunity to see Beach, Wes Studi, and Graham Greene do their things on location in Navajoland (plus Joseph Tran as the young Vietnamese struggling to find himself in a radically different environment). The "making of" featurette added to my enjoyment, not least in including Hillerman's comment. It was better than the other (third) Chee/Leaphorn WGBH/Granada movie, A Thief of Time". I have yet to see the first, "Skinwalkers" (or the 1991 Erroll Morris movie "Dark Wind" with Lou Diamond Phillips as Jim Chee) but hope for more installments. (Eyre directed Beach in "Smoke Signals," a movie I like a lot. I'd also like to see Eyre's 2005 "Thousand Roads").
+ La Mala educación (Bad Education 2004, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, 4.4 stars). After watching the DVD bonus features, I watched the movie again. I could enjoy the outstanding performances of Gael García Bernal and Fele Martínez) not having to figure out the complex plot.
+ Brokeback Mountain (2005, directed by Ang Lee, 4.8 stars). Jiahong wrote about the bonus features. My reviews (of movie, and movie-tie-in book) challenge both terms of the "gay cowboy" label and discuss at some length what I call the "collateral damage" of the pressure on men who love men to "get over it" by marrying and procreating that continues to be actively pushed by unscrupulous "ministries" and "reparative therapy" charlatans.
Kicking & Screaming (2005, directed by Jesse Dylan, 3.1 stars). I only watch Will Ferrell movies on airplanes (and even then with considerable reluctance). Still, I somewhat enjoyed Mike Ditka and the young Italian soccer players Massimo and Gian Piero (but was a captive audience desperate for some entertainment on a long flight). The underdog sports team and overly competitive parents are fossilized and it was difficult to decide whether Robert Duvall's "performance" or part were more listless. There was considerable ethnic stereotyping, but I decided it was not mean-spirited. The caffeine addiction part was lame. "Shaolin Soccer" is funnier, though I have some qualms about it (and doubts that I would have watched K&S on the ground).
I saw the original (1968) Mel Brooks movie The Producers in its initial theatrical release and thought it was sometimes amusing. I could picture Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in the Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder roles without seeing the musical play or movie. I had to see the movie to imagine Uma Thurman in the throwback blonde Swedish bimbo role. I don't know why I thought that the musical would be any less sexist, heterosexist, or silly and I already knew that the songs were unimpressive. The movie was in front of me flying to Europe. I watched it, laughed a few times, rolled my eyes many more times. It has the relentlessness of Mel Brooks and Nathan Lane, some residual Broderick charm, and some people apparently find Will Ferrell funny, but if I'd been able to do so, I'd rather have slept. (It was only noon my time; 2005, directed by Susan Stroman, 2.5 stars)
Jarhead (2005, directed by Sam Mendes [American Beauty, Road to Perdition], 4.3 stars) has bored those wanting constant adrenaline-stimulation (it does not seem to me lacking in testosterone pumping characters!). It is, IMO, not a "war movie" but a movie about the military bored and waiting to fight (From Here to Eternity leaps to mind as an analog). These Marines are eager to risk their lives and eager to kill, disoriented by their long wait in the desert before finally moving into Kuwait, bewildered by the war fought entirely from the air, and by the eerie light of the oil wells torched by the retreating Iraqis. There is a memorable latrine (exterior) scene and fine acting by Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) playing the author Anthony Swofford, Jamie Foxx (Ray) as a lifer noncom, and Peter Sarsgaard (Garden State, The Dying Gaul) as a wannabe lifer. Like most of the best films of 2005, "Jarhead" is too long, but in that to a considerable part it is about the boredom of waiting for a few minutes of mettle-testing, doesn't it have to be somewhat becalmed? I found the DVD commentary track by Swofford and scenarist William Broyles Jr.(a Vietnam combat veteran who wrote screenplays for "Apollo 13", "Cast Away", and the pilot of "China Beach")) absorbing and informative both about the intentions of the movie, but about their military experiences
The New World (2005, written and directed by Terrence Malick), like "The Thin Red Line" and "Days of Heaven" has gorgeous cinematography and not much interest in narrative, even though re-telling an often mythologized story (not only the Disney cartoon version in "Pocahontas" but the Disney live-action "Squanto" set further north and a bit later were more dramatically realized). I was expecting something more like "Whale Rider," not least from newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas, who is a beautiful cypher who falls in love with, saves, and loses Colin Farell's Capt. John Smith. Christian Bale has the very underwritten part of John Rolfe, who becomes her husband, and there's not much for Christopher Plummer's Captain Christopher Newport or Wes Studi's Opechancanough to do, either. That is 3+ very accomplished and charismatic actors squandered. There is no reason for the film to have run on 135 minutes other than unwillingness to cut the gorgeous images (those of English gardens are just as romanticized as those of Virginia swamps and woods and the Jamestown colony) filmed by Emmanuel Lubezki (A Walk in the Clouds, Ali, Y tu mamá también). James Horner received credit for the musical score, though it seemed to me mostly Wagner (Das Rheingold) and Mozart (the 23rd piano concerto). At least this time (cf. the soundtrack for Glory and Carl Orff), he did not just appropriate their music: it is credited. I'd give it 5 stars for cinematography and period detail (including teaching cast members a sort of proto-Algonquian language), 2 or less for editing, 2.5 for dramatizing, 3+ for acting.
Elizabeth I (2006, directed by Tom Hooper [Prime Suspect 6], 4.1 stars) Helen Mirren seems a natural for the role, but then so did Bette Davis, Glenda Jackson, Judi Dench,and Cate Blanchett. It is a meaty, multi-faceted role for flamboyant actresses. The paramour parts are more difficult to bring off, but Jeremy Irons is unusually heroic and unperverse, Hugh Dancy a sultry, hot-headed quasi-gigolo as the Earl of Essex. Earlier male courtly flirtation is offered by the very Gallic Jérémie Covillault as the Duke of Anjou Barbara Flynn plays a dowdy Mary, Queen of Scots, effectively. Mostly, it's a Helen Mirren show, though, playing a woman "whose passions are many and great, ... someone who manages to both throb with her own power and tremble with inner vulnerability and insecurity" (quoting my local paper). The 4-hour HBO(/BBC Channel 4) mini-series starts rather slowly and has much speechifying and more than a few other monologues. The movie was shot in Vilnius, Lithuania?! Is that where Tudor grandeur is now?
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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,
March I, March II.
©2006, Stephen O. Murray
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