My Nov. 2006 movie-watching (NOT a 10-best list)
Dec 03 '06
The Bottom Line Give "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" a chance... and Herzog's documentaries, too.
I saw a lot of movies in November--many comedies that I had hoped would be funnier, a number of disappointing Mexican films (overlapping the first category), but a number of riveting documentaries.
"Geschlecht in Fesseln - Die Sexualnot der Gefangene" (Sex in Chains, 1928, directed by and starring William Dieterle, 2.6 stars) was a protest movie seeking conjugal visits for prisoners. Defending his wife's honor (more than she bothered to do, Grouch Marx might have sail the anguished wife was played by Swedish actress Mary Johnson; this was the last of her 32 appearances on screen), the underemployed man played by Dieterle is sentenced to prison for three years. Supervised visits by his wife drive him (and her, the movie stresses) crazier. It would be possible to miss that he forms an erotic liaison with a cellmate (talk about not graphic! The earlier Different from Others at least makes it clear who is with whom). I hate the ending. There are some expressionist compositions and edits. The movie is a historical curiosity, not least for showing that Dieterle, who became a director of prestige biopics at MGM, was a handsome and expressive leading man in the silent era. The print was cobbled together from different archives (different parts had been censored in different countries) and supplied with an uninteresting period piano score by Pasquale Perris.
Her Majesty Love (1931, directed by William Dieterle, 2 stars) is a very dull cross-class thwarted romance (between Ziegfeld Follies star Marilyn Miller and Ben Lyon) with tedious music. It enlivened only by the few scenes with W.C. Fields, who wants his daughter to marry well enough to support him. His juggling and passing eclairs (like passing a football) at a hoity-toity banquet is by far the best part.
Mark Of The Vampire (1935, directed by Tod Browning, 2.6 stars) recycled Bela Lugosi's Dracula (Browning directed that and the infamous "Freaks") in a vampire-ridden murder mystery in which Lionel Barrymore chewed up scenery as a vampirologist and Lionel Atwill played straight man (the "I don't believe in vampires" policeman). I think (hope!) that it was intended as a parody of a horror film rather than as a horror film.
Fools for Scandal (1938, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, 3 stars) is a minor screwball comedy with Carole Lombard (To Be or Not to Be, My Man Godfrey) playing a movie star, Fernand Gravet (The Great Waltz, Gunman in the Street) playing a penniless French nobleman who can cook, and Ralph Bellamy playing the fiancé who will never become the husband that he played in so many 1930s comedies. The best part, the only really funny part, is the engagement dinner. Lombard is too shrill, and Gravet more droll than an irresistible romantic lead, but Allen Jenkins is entertaining as the unlikely friend of the marquis. Rodgers and Hart Music is unremarkable in Club Harlem (a number directed by Bobby Connolly) and elsewhere.
Fast and Furious (1939, directed by Busby Berkeley, 3 points): a mildly amusing backstage (of a beauty pageant) whodunit with Ann Sothern, Franchot Tone, three lions, and no production numbers!
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The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941, directed by William Dieterle from the story by Stephen Vincent Benet, who collaborated on the screenplay (and adapted the story from one by Washington Irving), 3.2 stars) has he only one of Bernard Herrmann's many great movie scores that won an Oscar. It also has some fine studio black-and-white cinematography by Joseph August (The Informer, Portrait of Jennie) and entertaining scenery-chewing by Walter Huston (about to play Uncle Sam, a change of sides). The rest of the cast, which includes Edward Arnold as a self-indulgent, self-adoring Daniel Webster, James Craig as the New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul for seven years of prosperity, Anne Shirley as his stolid, virtuous wife, Jane Darwell (another major scenery-chewer) as his impatient mother, and Simone Simon as his literally satanic vixen of a mistress.
Despite having been edited by Robert Wise (fresh from "Citizen Kane"; Wise's first editing credit was for Dieterle's version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" with Charles Laughton and Thomas Mitchell, who played Daniel Webster until he was nearly killed in a runaway wagon), the development is far too slow. And Hollywood hokeyness is everywhere. (For me, Webster was wise in opposing admitting Texas to the US, though he compromised on many other matters to the dismay of his admirers.)
The Criterion DVD is disappointing in terms of extras, in terms of a pulsating image, and with audio in which the music blares at a level at which the dialogue is inaudible (so after readjusting the volume many times, I turned on the subtitles).
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Guernica is a short documentary directed in 1950 by Alain Resnais before any of his feature films with Robert Hessens. (included on the Criterion release of Henri-Georges Clouzot's marvelous "The Mystery of Picasso"). I'd wanted to see it for decades and was disappointed. Picasso's painting protesting the Nazi bombing of the Basque city of Guernica in 1937 is in black and white, and I appreciate many black-and-white films, but not seeing other Picasso paintings in black and white. Similarly, I consider Paul Éluard one of the greatest of 20th-century French poets, but what he wrote to be read over Picasso images for this movie is IMHO overwritten (too exalted, not too melancholy) and too "poetically" declaimed by Maria Cesares and Jacques Pruvost). Its jump cuts and cross-fades adumbrated the "new wave," of which Resnais may or may not have been a member/exemplar. 3.1 stars
Woman on the Run (1950, directed by Norman Foster, 4.7 stars) is unusual noir in focusing primarily on a woman. The title character is unhappily married wife of a man who is the one who is on the run—after he witnessed a gangland murder while out walking his dog (Rembrandt). The police and the press and the murderer all think she can lead them to him. As the woman, Ann Sheridan turned in a great performance. The fast-moving film provides something of a visual tour across San Francisco, ending with some macabre Playland at the Beach material on and under the rollercoaster tracks.
All About Eve (1951, written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, 4.9 stars). I don't know all the lines, but I know some of them. I think the music is sometimes a bit too intrusive (and Eve's them is too much like the Tara one from "Gone with the Wind"). The movie is part of a wave of post-WWII movies trying to get women back into the domestic sphere, the only proper place for fulfillment for them. My only other complaint is that Thelma Ritter disappears too early (at all!). I think that Anne Baxter has more lines than Bette Davis, though Davis has great lines and eloquent wordless looks (particularly an exchange of them with Ritter). The cast is uniformly excellent, including the starlet played by Marilyn Monroe, and the Oscar-winning performance by George Sanders of the caddish critic Addison DeWitt.
Captain’s Paradise (1953, directed by Anthony Kimmins, 3.3 stars) takes a lot of time to get going and then is mostly predictable. Alec Guinnes provides a demonstration of my oft-repeated claim that great screen acting is done with eyes more than line delivery. He has some priceless facial expressions. Also he does a flamenco dance with Yvonne De Carlo. Even more a surprise is Celia Johnson's turn on the dance floor. These two women are his companions in different ports of call. To his frustration, each changes and rebels at the narrow role he has assigned them. It could be argued that this is proto-feminist, as the sententious male gets his comeuppance, but the movie is not top-flight Guiness 1950s comedy (that would be The Lady-Killers, The Lavender Hill Mob, Kind Hearts and Coronets, all three of which are also included in The Alec Guinnes DVD Collection along with "The Man in the White Suit"), but it's a lot better than "Hotel Paradiso." It has a good musical score by Malcolm Arnold and some shots of Gibraltar and Tangier.
El Analfabeto (The Illiterate, 1961, directed by Miguel Delgado, 3 stars) is too long, but Cantinflas's charm and ability to spew mellifluous nonsense almost carries off a fairy tale of multiple patrons helping out the illiterate and some sharks aiming to cut off his bequest.
The Shooting (1967, directed by Monte Hellman, 2.4 stars) is a very bleak, cryptic, pretentiously existentialist, and very, very"1970s" film (après la lettre) , coproduced by Jack Nicholson, who has a secondary role and appears halfway through the hunt across Utah desert led by Warren Oates at the behest of Millie Perkins. The movie is very slow between the opening and closing shootings and feels longer than its 82 minutes.
Su Excelencia (1967, directed by Miguel Delgado, 2.2 stars) was a vehicle for the Mexican comic Cantinflas. Running 2:13, it has few laughs, most of which are at the beginning. It ends with an impassioned speech against American and Soviet maneuvering that could have fit in a Frank Capra movie, if Capra had still been making movies (and in Spanish). The names of the country are funny if one knows Spanish, and an exchange of medals is, too, but the female agent 007 drops from sight. The only DVD extras are trailers for the "Cantiflas collection," "The Crime of Father Amaro," and some American sitcoms.
Hearts and Minds (1974, directed by Peter Davis, 4.5 stars), which won as Oscar as best feature-length documentary, holds up well, and is, unfortunately, all too relevant as another Texas president lied about provocations (the Gulf of Tonkin pseudo-attacks, Saddam Hussein's purported WMDS and el-Quaida links, etc.) has the US mired in another war that is not only unwinnable but in which the conception of what "winning" would be has been lost ("the hearts and minds of the people who live there" were not and are not with the regime the US attempted/is attempting to hold up). After Nixon sabotaged the peace accord tentatively reached in 1968, the US remained more out of concern for looking weak and admitting defeat than from any clear mission, and General Westmoreland requested more and more troops (now Vietnam veteran John McCain's solution). I haven't reviewed the movie, because I want to listen to the commentary track on the Criterion edition. The movie was very much in the cinema verité tradition of not tying things together with voice-over narration. Instead, it juxtaposed images of devastation with claptrap from politicians and American generals. And the viewer can juxtapose more recent images of clueless neocon rationales, the military inability to understand counterinsurgency and demonization of Muslim to the statements about Vietnamese 30 years ago. There is much that is painful to see and hear herein.
I loathed Grey Gardens, the 1975 Maysles brothers documentary about an eccentric aunt by marriage of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onnassis (Edith, aged 80) and her daughter (Edie, aged 56), who is clearly mentally ill. In addition to being very boring with Edith singing and Edie confiding nonsense to the film-makers, it strikes me as exploitation of two very out-of-it bluebloods in a crumbling Long Island mansion. I don't understand why Criterion revived a sort of home movie about a squabbling older woman and her semi-invalid mother amidst filth, lots of cats, and raccoons (to whom Edie feeds loaves of bread). The edition includes a 40-minute audio of Katherine Graham explaining background and some fashion designers' admiration for Edie's bizarre self-presentation and ubiquitous turbans. 1 star
Sebastiane (1967, directed by Derek Jarman, 2.5 stars) is notable for being a movie in which all the dialogue is in Latin. There is a lot of male semi-nudity and some nudity, a wisp of a plot, and some desert beach scenery.
"Se ying diu sau" (1978,Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, directed by Yuen Wooping, 3.2 stars) was the first big hit for Jack Chan's combination of kung fu and comedy. He played a young janitor and punching bag in a kung fu school who learns snake-style technique from a master in hiding as a beggar, and after watching his cat kill a cobra, develops a new style that mixes the snake style and what he calls "cat's claw." The eagle-proponents had almost eradicated knowledge of the snake style (why? that's a question best not to waste time considering in kung fu movies), but with the extraordinarily deft Chan, the eagle can be brought down... There is a bit of plot and the familiar underdog working hard and triumphing in the end. The movie is markedly inferior to "Drunken Master," but is of interest for showing Chan breaking through to his own style with great physical grace and less mugging than in his later movies.
Antonio Gaudí (1984, directed by Teshigahara Hiroshi, 3.7 stars has almost no narration until near the end (in regard to La Sagrada Familia). To eerie music of Takemitsu and others (Takemitsu wrote the music for Teshigahara's most famed film "Woman in the Dunes"), it wanders from Catalunya, particularly Parc Güell. Surely, it is more resonant to those who have seen the buildings, though there is plenty of visual stimulation for those who have not.
Cold Summer of 1953, 1987, directed by Aleksander Proshkin, 4.2 stars) starts slowly and confusingly in a Soviet forced-labor camp in Siberia a few months after Stalin died in 1953. The criticism of the system of political prisoners is implicitly criticized. In the foreground, however, is a thriller with a plot similar to many a western and some ronin movies, with a very underplayed (in the Henry Fonda manner) prisoner turned rebel, portrayed by Valerij Prijemykhov.
Mystery Train (1989, written and directed by Jim Jarmusch) has the usual Jarmusch very slow pace and peculiar perspectives on America of outsiders. Of the three parts, like Hasan with whom I watched, I was least interested in the last one, the one with something resembling a plot, and most entertained by the very deadpan young Japanese pilgrims to Memphis 1950s rock venues ("Far from Yokohama"). There is some bad acting, particularly the raconteur in the middle section, but, as in "Down by Law," it is difficult not to be charmed by Elizabeth Bracco. 4.5, 3.3, 2.7 stars
The Commitments (1991, directed by Alan Parker from a novel by Roddy Doyle, 3.2 stars) is the name of a Northside Dublin soul group put together by would-be impresario Jimmy Rabbitte (Michael Arkins). A group comes together and sounds excellent, but egos clash in what is more a "blue-eyed soul" music video than a narrative motion picture: enjoyable but not memorable.
"Lektionen in Finsternis" (Lessons of Darkness, 1992) has astonishing visuals of the ecological disaster of Kuwait oil fields torched at the orders of Saddam Hussein when his troops retreated in 1992 and Heavy Music further asestheticizing the catastrophe. "Savage beauty" is a recurrent Herzog quest, but I have major qualms about a film-maker showing apocalyptic destruction to strains of Wagner (among others), especially a German-born film-maker who also removes any mention of the despot responsible for the spectacular scorched earth retreat.
"Lu Ding Ji" (Royal Tramp, 1992, directed by Wong Jing, 3 stars) is a very wordy Stephen Chow (Zhou Xingchi) comedy parodying "Once Upon a Time in China" and other wuxia films (and Louis Cha's The Duke of Mount Deer). At the start Wilson Bond/Wai Siu-Bo (Chow) is a sort of standup (actually sit-up) comedian at his sister's brothel. He rescues an anti-Manchu rebel (Damian Lau) who sends him to the Forbidden City, where a kung fu-expert eunuch, Ha Da-Fu (Ng Man-Tat), sends him into the quarters of the Empress Dowager in quest of a kung-fu book. There, Wilson meets first the feisty (played by Yau Chingmy) sister of the emperor, then the emperor (a lonely boyish one played by Wan Siulun). Both are delighted by him. The sister discovers that he is not a eunuch, but neither discovers that he was sent by Ming-restorationists (Heaven and Earth Society), and the emperor makes Wilson his intimate advisor. There are a lot of jokes about detached and still-attached male sexual organs, lots of wire work, lots of mugging by Chow and others, and a serpentinely twisting plot in which Wilson manages to stay afloat (hang on), more as a spectator than a doer. And so much dialogue that it is difficult to keep up with the subtitles. Moreover, many of the puns are lost in translation (into Mandarin dubbing or into English subtitles.) "Shaolin Soccer" remains my favorite Chow film. This one, like his most recent international hit "Kung Fu Hustle," has some extreme violence. (The sequel, Royal Tramp II, has Brigitte Lin playing the Empress Dowager.)
The Snapper (1993, directed by Stephen Frears, 3.2 stars) is "kitchen-sink realism" though I question how realistic the simplistic feel-good scenario (by Roddy Doyle, adapting his very slangy dialogue-driven novel, the follow-up to The Commitments). It is heart-warming without curdling and has a fine Irish ensemble cast, but did not seem "exceptionally funny" to me, as it did to Roger Ebert, who was starved for comedy with remotely plausible stories and characters.
Natalie Canerda, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Chris Cooper delivered superlative performances in October Sky (1999, directed by Joe Johnston, 4 stars) a conventional tale of determination being rewarded (Rocky, Billy Elliott, etc., etc.) set in a West Virginia mine town where the coal is running out and a science teacher played by Laura Dern and most everyone except Homer Hickam's father (Cooper) helps the young rocket-builders in the days of Sputnik, Sam Cooke, and Fats Domino.
Is it possible to dislike The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, narrated by Ru Paul, 4 stars) or its outlandish but good-hearted subject? She cries a lot but has vast reserves of resiliency, which is good, since she has needed them. Although largely taking its subject's perspective, the documentary shows something of how evangelical Christianist television came about. Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell are villains in the movie, and I don't doubt as lacking in Christian charity as they seem to Baker. (Pat Boone comes across much better than they do, saying ""It's so often true that Christians are one army that kills their wounded. We don't try to nurse them back to health. I don't know of any woman of our time that has been so put down and so maligned.") Local reviewer Edward Guthman, got it exactly right, writing that the movie shows that "the most ridiculed woman of the 1980s is in fact a compassionate, funny, shoot-from-the-hip survivor."
Chihuly at the V&A (2002, directed by Peter West, 4.5 stars) begins by showing glassblowers supervised by glass sculptor Dale Chihuly and his gigantic warehouse. He had been commissioned to do a chandelier for London's large (and as I remember it) highly miscellaneous Victoria and Albert Museum. He must not have cased the joint in advance, because when installed, he felt that the chandelier of multi-colored glass was too small. This led to making a really immense one and to a retrospective exhibit, which was a big hit with museum-goers. The documentary shows some of them. I found the scenes of him installing his work, particularly outside (and I don't even remember seeing the V&A gardens, probably because the only time I have been to the museum was in December) the most interesting. West also made a documentary in 2004, "Chihuly: Gardens and Glass," that I would like to see, having been fascinated by his installations at the Fairchild Botanical Gardens that we saw last winter in Miami (some photos of which Barbara and I have posted on Gather.com) and by seeing some of how he went about placing work outside in London.
Nicholas Nickelby (2002, adapted and directed by Douglas McGrath [who earlier adapted Emma with considerable verve, 4.2 stars) is very Dickensian, in both good and bad ways. The cast, particularly Christopher Plummer as Ralph Nickelby, is outstanding, as is Dick Pope's (The Way of the Gun and many Mike Leigh movies, including Topsy-Turvy) cinematography of Yorkshire and London. The coincidences, piled-on pathoses, cartoonish villains and deux ex machina patrons, a too-good-to-be-true hero and heroines are all too true to Dickens. And this version is 7 hours shorter than the previous one I saw (all in one day!).
Bend It Like Beckham, directed by Gurinder Chadha, was one of the sleeper hits of 2002, a feel-good movie that worked cultural and gender politics into the Talented Underdog Overcomes Obstacles sports movie. An English-born daughter of a successful Punjabi-immigrant father, Jesminder "Jess" Bhamra (Parminder Nagra) is the one with sports talent. She must overcome conceptions of women's roles in her parent's culture (to which her adherence is limited) to play football (soccer). The English girl who recruits and befriends her, Jules (Keira Knightley), has a mother (Juliet Stevenson) who wants a similarly demure daughter. Further complicating things are infatuations with the coach, Joe (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). The movie could have jettisoned about a quarter of an hour, including some of the cross-cutting of football finale and a raucous wedding, but "Nessum Dorma" from "Turandot" pops up very amusingly. 4.1 stars
Japón, the 2002 first feature film by Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven) goes on a very long time (126 minutes) and is opaque in the grand Antonioni manner (with similarities to "Woman in the Dunes" with a much older woman. Every so often there is something striking to look at or mull, but less would have been more. 2.8 stars
I found the Hungarian film Kontroll ( 2003, directed by Nimród Antal, 4.6 stars) exhilarating cinema. It blends dark humor about ticket-control officers in the Budapest subway with a murder mystery and the mystery of what has made Bulscú (Sándor Csányi) unable to function above ground, or even venture there.
takes place entirely underground in the Budapest Metro, on trains and in stations. The escalator up and out seems to terrify the movie's protagonist (who seems like an anti-hero most of the time, but is, I think, heroic in the last analysis or last reel).
La Meglio gioventu (The Best of Youth, 2003, directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, 4 stars) is a soap opera made for Italian television (and running 6 hours) that is focused on two very different Baby Boom brothers Nicola and Matteo Carati (played by Luigi Lo Cascio and Alessio Boni), over the span of four decades, beginning in 1966, when both are in college. They don't look related (differing considerably in head size, also in temperament) but their very different trajectories touch on major events in Italian history of the last 40 years. I was curious as much about what contrivance would connect with what political event next as much as I was curious about what would happen to the characters (though I was also interested in that). For a tv miniseries, BY is quite scenic, though almost all of the long shots are travelogue footage. Not slack, but unhurried, and with nothing particularly cinematic, BY is a visual analog of a page-turner, leaving a warm glow upon turning the last page.
Cowboys and Angels (2003, directed by David Gleeson, 4 stars) is a charming "buddy movie" that includes a female "buddy" (Amy Shiels) in addition to roommates engagingly played by Michael Legge and Allen Leech as young adults in gentrified Limerick.
Decade Under the Influence (2003, directed by Richard LaGravenese and Ted Demme, 4.4 stars) is a three-part IFC documentary with clips and talking heads. Given that he started as a film historian, I found what Paul Shrader had to say disappointingly unilluminating. I was not surprised that Sydney Pollack, Julie Christie, and Ellen Burstyn had insightful things to say, along with Francis Ford Coppola, Marin Scorcese, Clint Eastwood, Robert Altman, Robert Towne, Sidney Lumet, and Peter Bogdanovich. I was surprised that William Friedkin and Dennis Hopper did. The clips were well-chosen, and the rise and fall of independent directors between "Easy Rider" and "Jaws" was convincing, with studio control after and before that stretch of time. As Mick LaSalle noted, "The notion of movies as a predominantly adult pastime is so foreign to our present reality that before the documentary explains what happened to film in the '70s, the filmmakers must explain how it could have happened." (I also agree with him that "seen again today, 'Dog Day Afternoon' and 'Klute' look great, and 'Shampoo' looks better than ever. But 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's 'Nest' looks like too much work, and 'Midnight Cowboy' looks faintly absurd,' though I thought the latter two looked like that at the time.) The DVD contains additional director talking heads footage. Admiring interviewers coaxed out a lot of praise for the movies of that generation of film-makers. Tough questions about the bad movies Altman and Ashby and Cimio made during the 1970s were not asked—at least there is no evidence that they were. Christie and Burstyn praise Altman, Ashby, and Scorcese, but also note that there were few parts for women other than portraying prostitutes (as in "Klute" and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," though Pollack directed Jane Fonda's triumph in "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", too).
The Brown Bunny (2003, written, produced, directed, and edited by Vincent Gallo who also starred in it and took another credit as director of photography; 1.8 stars) is a very self-indulgent portrayal of a numb motorcycle racer driving across the country (New Hampshire->LA). Most of the first hour is the view through a dirty truck windshield, with windshield wipers sweeping much of the time. The key to the character is eventually revealed, though it is not worth the wait and spending an hour and a half with Gallo's greasy hair blowing in and out of his eyes as his drives and drives and drives some more. The women in the movie are more interesting, but have little screen time.
The Station Agent (2003, directed by Thomas McCarthy, 3.4 stars) is a road picture in which there is only one short journey (along with many walks on railroad tracks and the protagonist's fascination with trains). It is a quiet and quirky movie about a dwarf (Peter Dinklage, Living in Oblivion) who was not interested in making friends, and three others who wanted to befriend him. For all my own recluse tendencies, I was most sympathetic to Joe (Bobby Cannavale, The Night Listener), who is marooned far from the city (Queens) in which he belongs. Not much happens, and what does seems contrived, so most everything depends on a viewer's interest in the characters.
Werner Herzog's 2003 document Wheel of Time is the most conventional of any of the Herzog documentaries I have seen, but as breathtakingly beautiful and with as fluid camerawork as his other masterpieces. The primary focus of this one is Kalachakra initiation for Tibetan Buddhist monks in Bodh Gaya, India, the site of the Buddha's enlightenment (with the fifth-generation descendant of the bodhi tree under which Prince Siddartha attained enlightenment and became the Buddha) two and a half-plus millennia ago. Half a million pilgrims flowed in, including many who prostrated themselves every step of the way (up to 3000-mile journeys), with wooden clogs on their hands. That is not extreme enough for Herzog, so he also includes dazzling footage of a ritual high-altitude trek of 32 miles (52 km) around the sacred mountain Kailash in Tibet, on which some people die each year. (The peak of the mountain is nearly four miles in elevation). Those managing to make the three-day (or longer) circumambulation believe that doing so wipes clean the sins of a lifetime.
White Diamond (2004, directed by Werner Herzog, 3.8 points) is a documentary that got Herzog back to the South American jungle, this time in Guyana. The protagonist is not unobsessive, but is a model of sanity and calmnness compared to Klaus Kinski in Herzog films. Dr. Graham Dorrington, an aeronautical engineer who teaches at the University of London designs airships (small, modern dirigibles) to fly just above the jungle canopy. He was traumatized by the death of a cinematographer in Sumatra in 1993. The early part of testing components is not involving. but there is much gorgeous nature photography in the last half and the offering of flutes of champagne to the spirit of Kaieteur Falls. The "natives" (no Amerindian, but mostly Rastafarians) ignore some of the pretentious babbling of Herzog and Dorrington, but have some eccentricities of their own. (And the aliens' pretensions cannot compete with those of Timothy Treadwell in Herzog's "Grizzly Man"; nor are they in competition in narcissism with him.) The eclectic music score is very effective. (And there are some diamonds that are mined nearby, not just the metaphor of the airship, which looks to me more like a white fish than a diamond.)
Soldier's Pay (2004, directed by David O. Russell, Tricia Regan, and Juan Carlos Zaldiva, 3.9 stars) is a talking heads documentary of US soldiers' experiences enlisting in the army and in Iraq in 2003. Its sympathies are with foot soldiers, not with the confused missions they were sent on in Iraq. Marine Major General (ret.) J. Michael Myatt is affecting while Rep. David Dreyer spouts party line.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, not "The Matador" was the best buddy comedy of 2005 (and neither found its audience!). I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s narration and Val Kilmer's apology for the bad language. Like "The Big Sleep" the plot is too complicated, with too many corpses, but the point of view is very funny. I hope to write a real review of this return of action writer Shane Black, whose first directorial effort it was.
The Goebbels Experiment (2005, written and directed by Lutz Hachmeisterl, 3.9 stars) draws on the Goebbels diaries (which I read once upon a time, long ago) to show the vanity, self-intoxication, jealousy and loathing of other prominent Nazis of the clubfooted, manic-depressive propaganda minister and president of the Chamber of Culture for the Reich in his own words (read without much interest or involvement by Kenneth Branagh). The archival footage is more interesting. Hitler and Goebbels gestured broadly and ranted. This apparently drove listeners to frenzy, but is way too "hot" for the "cool medium" (in Marshall McLuhan's sense) of television. In terms of content, the most interesting material articulates Goebbels' belief that propaganda should not try to foist lies on the public, but to do what we would now call "spin" facts. For instance, too many Germans knew the Reich was not winning in Russia for propaganda about glorious victories there to be plausible. (On epinions, the movie has received the full Macresarf1 treatment. I agree that there is much more about Goebbels to examine, but think that what is onscreen is more interesting than Alex does.)
Match Point (2005, written and directed by Woody Allen, 3 stars) looked good and had attractive-looking young people. I thought that the first half hour or showed promise. It brought to mind two Patricia Highsmith novels, Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Then the movie settled down into a not very interesting tale of infidelity and pressure, like a slack "Closer." The last half hour or so returned to Highsmith territory, but too late. Perhaps if the middle hour had been compressed to half its length... There was lots of Grand Opera dwarfing the tawdry goings-on, but it was nice to see Jonathan Rhys-Meyers getting to play Irish (which he is) for a change.
Directed by John Ford (2006, directed by Peter Bogdanovich) an expanded version of a 1971 documentary of the same name narrated by Orson Welles. Bogdanovich added about 20 minutes of comments from himself and other currently active directors and better prints of the clips. Stephen Spielberg has some interesting things to say, but Henry Fonda, John Wayne, and James Stewart had better stories to tell (filmed in 1969). Wayne stressed that Ford did not cross the line between sentimental and maudlin. The clips show painterly compositions and music that to me crosses the line into maudlin, though it may just be that I have an aversion to the sentimentality that Ford embraced.
© 2006, Stephen O. Murray
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