Oscar's Cinema Journal 2005

[oscar jubis]

*I was quite aware of what was playing in New York. It was indeed a family vacation and we had tix to two Broadway shows and a Yankees game, and dinner with my sis who was there on business...so I only managed to see 3 movies.
*Why'd Netflix be a mistake? It's cheap, efficient, and they seem to have every Region 1 disc in existence. Even if every film I wanted to watch played at a nearby theatre, I couldn't afford the cost of admission and transport.
*I watched Le Cercle Rouge at the Cosford, 2003 I think. Well worth it.

Thursday August 4th[/i]

Yes (UK, 2005) at Regal SoBe
Driving home after watching Sally Potter's latest, I prepared myself for the scorn and ridicule I predicted some reviews would contain. I also found myself almost grieving over the fact that it's unlikely I would ever watch Yes on a theatre screen again_ today was the 7th and last day of its theatrical run here.
I wouldn't want to give you the impression that I believe Yes must be uniformly regarded as an instant classic or a masterpiece, although it's the one English-language movie of 2005 that perhaps merits such accolades (of course, only my humble opinion after a first viewing). It's just that Yes is the type of film that conjures up the sarcastic, jaded and Philistinic out of reviewers, particularly those employed by mainstream dailies: an adulterous affair between a White She (Joan Allen) and an Arab He (Ararat's Simon Abkarian), written in iambic verse, and featuring philosophical soliloquies by a cleaning lady. Moreover, although Yes is clearly Potter's response to the state of global politics, I can't remember any other recent film that distills class issues with such earnestness (taboo subject, at least in the land of opportunity). A final affront: the final poem takes place in Cuba, viewed here as a land that facilitates moral cleansing and renewal, if only because of its isolation.
It's apparent that Potter spent a great deal of time and effort in rehearsals aimed at removing any trace of mannerism from the actors' delivery of the dialogue. The script would seem particularly challenging to Allen and Abkarian, as their characters go through a wide range of emotions, from flowery romantic passion to abject scorn. I am perhaps most impressed by Potter's display of technique in order to render some of the most awesome images I've seen this year: her use of slurred action, "security-camera" angles, freeze frames, expressionistic use of color, and a variety of framing devices_most memorably, a tree trunk from which we gaze at the couple strolling during their first rendezvous. Sally Potter has delivered a film in which the visuals never play second fiddle to the attention-grabbing text. There is a poetry of images that complements the verses. The eclectic score incorporates Chopin, the Kronos Quartet, BB King and Rachmaninoff, but it's a melody by Phillip Glass that reappears quite effectively at key moments.
Yes is that rare film that looks directly at the dirty mess that seems part and parcel of human existence, perhaps as much now as ever, and manages to provide an affirmation, a rebuke to nihilism and despair.

[oscar jubis]

My practice of periodically taking a chance on relatively obscure, "under the radar" titles disappoints sometimes (Camel(s) and Rear Entrance the most recent). Below two instances of the practice yielding good results. Head in the Clouds received a limited release in 2004 and received generally poor reviews. The Russian The Wedding was undistributed in the US. The dvd version released in Brazil is the only one I know that has English subs.

Friday August 5th

Head in the Clouds (Canada/UK, 2004) dvd
This winner of 4 Canadian Academy awards (cinematography, editing, costume design, music score) was directed by John Duigan (Flirting, Lawn Dogs) and stars Oscar-winner Charlize Theron as Gilda, a hedonist dilettante. The film opens at Cambridge in 1933, where Gilda meets Guy, an inexperienced and affable young student. The course of their relationship is charted over the next, eventful dozen years. A third major character is introduced when Gilda moves to Paris in 1936: Mia (Penelope Cruz), a Spanish nursing student who shares Guy's passion for Gilda and commitment to political causes. Head in the Clouds is a handsome, eye-catching movie with an over-familiar romance-in-wartime plot and a great performance from the perfectly cast Theron. Ultimately, what makes it worth watching is the focus on her Gilda's interior struggle between selfish convenience and moral sacrifice.

Svadba The Wedding (Russia/France 2000) import dvd
Tanya returns to the small mining town where she grew up after 5 years in Moscow pursuing a modeling career. Childhood sweetheart Mishka, a miner, is still smitten and available. They decide to marry. Of course, the remainder of the film concerns the preparations and the wedding. A chaotic, music-filled affair involving eccentric relatives, petty gangsters, politicos, cops, and a lot of vodka. A tragicomic blend of Jiri Menzel's My Sweet Little Village and Kusturica's bawdy and raucous Black Cat, White Cat. The Wedding was co-written and directed by Pavel Lungin (Taxi Blues, Luna Park).

[oscar jubis]

Sat August 6th

Letter to Jane (France, 1972) dvd
A 52-min long analysis of the "Hanoi Jane" photograph of Jane Fonda, which appeared in L'Express and countless publications following her visit to North Vietnam. Gorin and Godard take turns discussing in accented but comprehensible English every aspect of the photograph, its dissemination, interpretation and public reaction to it. Some of the material is instructive, some thought-provoking; some of it is risibly tendentious and boorish_such as their ascribing all kinds of substance to the expression of an out-of-focus Vietnamese while considering Fonda's concerned gaze utterly meaningless.

Thieves Like Us (USA, 1974) import dvd
Three guys (Keith Carradine, John Schuck and Bert Remsen) escape from a Mississippi jail during the depression, reunite with friends and relatives and rob a series of banks while being pursued. Carradine and Shelley Duvall fall hard for each other and become a young-couple-on-the-lam. These are common elements of a string of outstanding American movies. Thieves Like Us is based on the novel of the same title by Edward Anderson, which was first adapted by Nicholas Ray with the title They Live by Night. What's special about Robert Altman's film is his uncanny ability to convey a very specific sense of place and time. He opens the film with a masterful long shot of a prairie as the trio escapes. Altman was a consummate artist by the time he shot Thieves Like Us, every frame provides ample evidence of his skills. The use of radio programming (news, serials, music, ads, etc.) to provide a sense of the world-at-large is carefully blended into the complex sound design, which includes Altman's trademark overlapping dialogue. Available only on vhs in the USA.

[Chris Knipp]

Thieves Like Us -- this makes me want to see it. I don't believe I ever have.

[oscar jubis]

Pauline Kael never praised anything more enthusiastically.

"Robert Altman finds a sureness of tone and never loses it; Thieves Like Us has the pensive, delicate romanticism of McCabe but it isn't hesitant or precarious. It has perfect clarity. I wouldn't say I respond to it more than to McCabe or that I enjoy it more than the loony The Long Goodbye, but Thieves Like Us seems to achieve beauty without artifice. It's the closest to flawless of Altman's films_a masterpiece".

"Thieves Like Us is so sensuous and lucid that it is as if William Faulkner and the young Jean Renoir had collaborated. Altman uses the novel as his base, but he finds the story through the actors, and, as Renoir did, through accidents of weather and discoveries along the way."

"Thieves Like Us come closer to the vision and sensibility of Faulkner's novels than any of the movie adaptations of them do".

[Chris Knipp]

Though I loved reading Pauline Kael's writing, I didn't go out and follow her advice, and I often disagreed when I did. Nevertheless, as I said, this sounds like I might like it.

[oscar jubis]

I probably disagreed with Kael more often than you did, but I feel she wrote some valid things about Thieves I didn't bring up.

Sunday August 7th

Babes on Broadway (USA, 1941) on TCM
It ain't Meet Me in St. Louis, but it stars Judy Garland and the talented Mickey Rooney, who had good chemistry together. Also in the cast: Virginia Wiedler (Hepburn's sister in The Philadelphia Story), who's always a pleasure to watch. Director Busby Berkeley's characteristic crane shots are here, but so is a blackface number that made me squirm.

[oscar jubis]

Monday August 8th

Devils on the Doorstep (China, 2000) dvd

The Night of the Hunter (USA, 1955) on TCM

"LOVE and HATE tatooed acroos the knuckes of his hands
The hands that slap the kids around 'cos they don't understand
how death or glory becomes just another story"
(The Clash, 1979)

A repeat viewing of my favorite American movie of 1955, despised by critics and ignored by audiences upon release, then hailed as a masterpiece of iconic power less than a decade later. Actor Charles Laughton had never directed a film before and never directed a film again. Robert Mitchum played many unforgettable characters, but his Harry Powell is the most enmeshed in the cultural fabric of America. A vulnerable psychopath with delusions of grandeur, a hypocritical preacher obsessed with locating the $10,000 his cellmate gave to his kids before being executed. The Night of the Hunter is by no means realistic. It's a moral parable/fairly tale/horror story with a mix of German expressionism and film-noir stylings. A queer, self-conscious object d'art in which even the stiff performances by the child actors have a very welcome "nightmarish" quality_several sources agree that Laughton hated the kids and that it was Mitchum who "directed" them. The script is based on David Grubb's Depression-era novel and credited to Pulitzer-winner James Agee, but apparently Laughton changed a substantial portion of it. Anyway this is a story told with striking images, lensed by the great Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons).

[oscar jubis]

Tuesday August 9th

These current releases earn only a mild recommendation from me largely because of indistinctive and unremarkable debut scripts by Amy Fox (Heights) and Sabina Murray (The Beautiful Country).

Heights (USA, 2005) at Regal SoBe
The first feature by director Chris Terrio is an ensembler about the problems of the heart of art-world Manhattan residents. Glenn Close is an actress rehearsing Macbeth who can no longer feign indifference to her husband's infidelities. Her daughter Isabel is a photographer about to discover her fiancee's secret life. Interlocking stories involve a large cast that includes Eric Bogosian, George Segal, and musician Rufus Wainwright. They're all fine; not surprisingly, Glenn Close is magnificent. Lamentably, the sense that you've seen it all before, and you know exactly where it's going, becomes increasingly pronounced. Alternative title: "Two Degrees of Separation", which highlights how inferior Heights is to John Guare's play and Fred Schepisi's film adaptation.

The Beautiful Country (USA/Norway, 2005)
Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland has a good track record (The Last Lieutenant, Zero Kelvin, Aberdeen, all on dvd). A substantial portion of The Beautiful Country does for SE Asians what El Norte did for Central Americans: dramatize the difficult journey of those who immigrate to the USA. Despite its honorable intentions and the skillful filmmaking, the film is hampered by a facile if serviceable script that takes the "easy way out" too often. The protagonist is Bihn, a young Vietnamese man who is extremely meek and deferential_probably the result of a lifetime of humiliation because his father is a white American. (Warning: Spoilers Below). Binh reunites with his mom who's working for some very bad rich people in Saigon. The ineffectual man is not the type who abandons his loving mom (thus becoming less sympathetic) or embarks on a perilous transoceanic journey. So there's an unlikely, elaborate accident scene in which Bihn simultaneously breaks an expensive statue AND kills the nasty, rich lady. Now, he has to leave, with mom's toddler son in tow. By the way, unlike the vast majority of American soldiers who fathered kids in Vietnam, Dad (Nick Nolte) married Binh's mother, and played no part in decision to leave Vietnam without her. The Beautiful Country is too careful not to lose the audience's sympathy for any of its major characters. Granted, the immigrant's struggle to come to America and to carve a niche here is given proper exposition, and the encounter between father and son is brilliantly understated.

[Chris Knipp]

I reviewed Heights, also referring to Guare's play and the Fred Schepisi film.

I also thought of El Norte after seeing The Big Country. I loved Nick Nolte. I may write a review--and your criticisms of the screenplay will help me; I have some others, but you see different things.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks for the link to your CineScene review. My only disagreement therein has nothing to do with Heights_ I thought Le Divorce was far from a "disaster". While at the site, I checked their 2004 Top 10 poll of contributors and was surprised that none of the top 10 are foreign-language films. It seems more of a "mainstream" site than I had anticipated, with The Incredibles and Shaun of the Dead as #2 and #3 films of the year.
Watching and thinking about Heights led me to thoughts regarding critic and audience (For the purpose of this discussion let's regard ourselves as "critics"). I don't think presumptuous to state that you and I have watched many more films than the average moviegoer, particularly young ones. Heights, for instance, suffers in comparison to films like Short Cuts and Six Degrees of Separation. But many in its potential audience have not seen those. And, isn't it better than others currently at theatres? Isn't it a lot better than hits like Dukes, Bewitched, Longest Yard, etc? Yes, we can only write what we see, think and feel from our unique perspectives. But perhaps we need to moderate our comments about a film that may "work well" and be a good choice for a certain audience making a choice today at the multiplex. After all, there are lots of places where 2046 and The Beat that my Heart Skipped ain't playing.
I'm only thinking out-loud here, riffing on to what extent an experienced-moviewatcher-turned-amateur-crit need to consider the casual filmgoer's p.o.v.

[Chris Knipp]

I can't compare Heights with The Longest Yard, The Dukes of Hazard, and Bewitched, since I haven't seen those. I think though the general public would find those more entertaining. In fact I'm sure of it. How could someone who's looking for what The Dukes of Hazard has to offer possibly be interested in spending their time watching Heights? But my concern is to be honest about my evaluations of movies, not to educate the "mainstream" audience. You seem disappointed to learn that Cinescene isn't Senses of Cinema, yet you want us to be nudging fans of The Dukes of Hazard toward Heights. How's that work? How can we want to write for elitist offbeat sites, and influence the mainstream? Cinescene's year-end lists are a vote that includes a lot of people whose writing rarely appeared on the site, so it doesn't very accurately reflect the views of the most frequent reviewers, which might be less "mainstream." I'm more elitist than you are, I've found. I only want to recommend the movies I really like, and I wouldn't pretend to like Me and You or The Beautiful Country or Heights or even Machuca because they are admirable or come from a more sophisticated place than The Dukes of Hazard. But I'm hesitant to recommend a movie to anybody. I'm evaluating them, not recommending that people see them. There's little use urging somebody to see a movie that they won't like.

[oscar jubis]

I don't know who's more or less elitist, and I don't want to be nudging anyone. Actually, like I wrote, I'm JUST thinking out loud and all I want is what I got: some sense as to whether you write with an audience in mind. Published crits either do or are forced to think of the readership by editors, publicists, etc. It's a luxury not to have to consider anybody. Friends and acquaintances who know of my passion ask me if I'd like to write for the daily: "Interviewing Mel Gibson or having to watch The Longest Yard AND write 600 words about it sure ain't my idea of a fun job. I'd rather deal with neurotics and schizos all day than do that".

[Chris Knipp]

I can't find anything in my last post about not writing for anybody. I did suggest I don't write to nudge the mainstream audience to change its moviegoing habits. I do write primarily to please myself; I'd assume that's the most honest thing and also what the best "published crits" do. I don't see them as going through a process of being tamed and modified by editors pointing to a dissatisfied audience. If they've been well chosen, then the editor can trust them to please him and the audience. A good editor is a dream come true for any writer. Being a reviewer for the local "daily" isn't what I dream of, but it's a job that has its benefits. You don't have to interview Mel and crank out 600 words on Longest Yard every day; with the job comes other interviews and other films to write about, and a good sized readership. You're scorning the job that would give you the best opportunity to lead the "mainstream" audience away from Dukes of Hazard toward Heights (and best of luck to you).

[Chris Knipp]

I can't find anything in my preceding post that suggests I write I without an audience in mind. I may have implied that I write without the mainstream audience's needs in mind. Certainly not without the editor's interest in mind, when there is one, as with Cinescene. "It's a luxury not to have to consider anybody." Is it? You misconstrue the idea of writing primarily for oneself. I don't think it's a luxury but a necessity. If one isn't one's own most stringent critic, but also one's own most ardent fan, how can one produce anything good? So one hasn't the luxury of writing with nobody in mind; one writes with oneself in mind. And if one seeks to inform and to entertain, one writes with the civilized and well informed reader in mind too. I would like to have an editor who was stringent, congenial, and diplomatic (I think the best ones are). Unfortunately, I can't say I have the editor of my dreams. Critics with good jobs don't have to be constantly altering what they say to accomodate either the audience or the editor. They please both, or they wouldn't have been hired. But then their job is to do what they do best: exercise their own taste. As for writing for the "daily," that isn't the job you have assigned yourself, but interviewing Mel Gibson and reviewing The Longest Yard would also give one permission to interview other people and review other films, for a decent salary. Not such a bad job if you can get it.