1960: L'avventura

When a party of youngish rich Italians goes on a boating trip, one of them disappears. But Antonioni's film is no run-of-the-mill mystery; rather, after the initial events (the most entertaining part of the movie in my view), it turns into Scenes from a Relationship. I feel wholly ambivalent about the film: Visually, it is stunning; as a narrative, the deliberately paced and loosely plotted L'avventura is much less successful. Overall, a weak recommend (6.5).

1957: Les Espions

The director of a small psychiatric clinic in rural France accepts lots of money from someone claiming to represent the US secret service, and the next day lots of strangers have moved in, taking over the clinic uttering more or less vague threats about what will happen if he resists. It's a cool premise for a movie, but the lack of clarity about who is on whose side tends to create confusion rather than suspense or surprise. (6)

1917: His Wedding Night

It is not quite clear what the general idea was when this Fatty Arbuckle vehicle was conceived, although in the end Buster Keaton is kidnapped while drunk and wearing a dress. Features an illustration of discriminative pricing and mental rotation deficiencies on the part of the filmmakers or the targeted audience. (5)

1962: Vive le Tour

Louis Malle's eighteen-minute documentary explaining the Tour de France is not particularly interesting. (5.5)

1957: Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria)

Fellini's (seminal?) take on the hooker with a heart topos, firmly in the neorealist tradition, is not a bad film at all, but somehow its famous magic managed to elude me. (6)

1917: The Rough House

A silent comic short featuring the usual silent comic short ado and the only film I can think of the trivia about which is more interesting than the film itself (6.0). From IMDb:

• Directorial debut of Buster Keaton.
• Buster Keaton hadn't yet solidified his "Great Stone Face" persona; he smiles, laughs, grimaces, and smirks.
• Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle performs a prototype of the "dancing dinner rolls" that Charles Chaplin used in The Gold Rush (1925). Until "The Rough House" - thought to be lost - was rediscovered, Chaplin was credited with creating the gag.

1939: Midnight

Co-written by Billy Wilder, of Menschen am Sonntag fame, this movie gives us an American gold-digger stranding pennyless in a magical Paris where everyone loves speaking English, and soon attracts the interest of a variety of men, some rich, some less so. Mistaken identities, confusion. Typical, and good, example of the screwball comedy. (7)

1983: Sans soleil

Situated on the border between fictional and nonfictional film, Chris Marker's second-best known film features a woman reading the letters sent to her by a cameraman who travels the world, while we see the footage he has shot. The somewhat experimental book of moving pictures emphasizes the strangeness of foreign continents, or at least that's what I felt it's doing. (7)

1917: The Butcher Boy

Buster Keaton debuts in a minor role while Fatty and Slim, rivals for the heart of the same girl, both cross-dress to sneak into her school. Features a dog, lots of violence, and an attempted kidnapping. (6.5)

2006: Children of Men

In 2027, everyone in the world is infertile (everyone?) and Britain has closed its borders, trying to stem a tide of illegal immigrants who want to come despite England looking like a shithole - apparently the rest of the world is even worse off, the film's a bit vague on this. The screenwriters, keeping the basic dystopian setup, but substantially altering the plot of the novel the book is based on, remembered that in a screenplay the main characters need a task and came up with the lamest one in the book: the characters have to get from A to B, despite obstacles. It takes a lot of hard work to make that interesting, and this film doesn't deliver. Also, pretty much all of the film is shot in a grey-green-blue shade, which is a bit like someone shouting "DYSTOPIA!" in your face for two hours. On the plus side: Michael Caine sporting really long grey hair. (5.5)

As for dystopian Britain, didn't Mark E. Smith remark something to the effect that if you want to see humanity at its worst, you should go to central Manchester around closing time? Now, there's an idea for a film for you: Showdown at the taxi stand.

1931: Le Million

Michel, a poor painter, has won a million in the lottery, but to collect his winnings, he needs the ticket, which is in his jacket, which his financé gives to a man who is fleeing from the police, who sells it to an opeara singer, and so on and so forth: Soon, it seems, tout Paris is chasing the jacket, and director René Clair makes this comic musical a charming little film not dissimilar to the best-know Marx Brothers movies. It starts with a great tracking shot over the roofs of Paris, which are obviously models and look all the better for it, and Le Million is a genuinely early sound film in that Clair, much like Fritz Lang in M, leaves the dialogue unheard when he doesn't need it and seems more conscious of the way sound can be used to great effect than the directors of most contemporary films. Somewhat famous is the fade-in of the roar of a sports stadium crowd when a variety of men fights over the jacket in a rugby-like manner; and when Michel's friend Prosper hears his conscience, it is a whole choir singing to him from the off. Is there a social psychological theory in there? I say yes. (7.5)

Link: Matthew Dessem's essay on the film. Contains lots of spoilers, but they don't really spoil. It's not exactly a mystery, you know.

1935: Bride of Frankenstein

While I found the original Frankenstein charmingly silly, the sequel is more charmlessly stupid in my book - there are even little people in bottles. There are also bad technical glitches. (5)

1973: Serpico

The film starring Al Pacino as the cop who won't take bribes, which is not making him particularly popular with his colleagues, is shot in the same generic 1970s New York cop movie style you'll also find in French Connection and Prince of the City, for example. Entertaining throughout, gripping for about three fifths. (7.5)

1930: Zemlja (Earth)

The film about conflicts between the old and the new in a farmer's village during the early days of the Soviet Union is not particularly exciting in terms of storytelling, but succeeds as moving pictures. The photography of nature is often lauded, yet I found the harvest scene, as rhythmic as an Eisenstein battle sequence, to be the highlight. (7)

1967: Point Blank

The plot about a man who wants his share of the money back from his partners in crime after escaping from Alcatraz has two feet planted firmly on "not a masterpiece" ground, and the film doesn't win the Sergej M. Eisenstein Award for Outstanding Achievements in Editing either. What makes this film worth a look is the lush late-60s interior decoration of the appartments most of the film is set in. I'm not being cynical here: The interior decoration is a marvel to behold. (6)

1968: Targets

Peter Bogdanovich's debut as a film director is visibly low-budget and self-consciously camp. The parallel stories about an aging horror star - played by Boris Karloff - who's tired of acting and a detached young man who turns into a killer really shines when it cuts down on the talking, primarily in the two extended shooting scenes. As a whole, it gives you a real sense of time and place. Great final shot. (7.5)

2010: Shutter Island

The first half or so of Scorsese's film about two agents investigating on a kind of Alcatraz for the criminally insane has an extremely well-crafted plot, but the ending is extremely poor - indeed, my enjoyment of the film was heightened because I discounted early hints about the ending thinking that they couldn't possibly go for something that lame. Also, Scorsese generally doesn't seem at the top of his game, the music's poor and the back projections' quality made me wonder whether they were intended as a deliberate hommage to Hitchcock. Having said all that, of course if Martin Scorsese directs a thriller based on a Dennis Lehane book it's going to be a good film. (7)

1965: Pierrot le Fou

Godard's film about the joys of being a left-wing terrorist is a bit hard to review on purely aesthetic grounds, especially if you keep thinking to yourself: "I bet Baader and Meinhof loved this one." I'll give it a shot, though: Great colours, but the "let's have many scenes that don't advance the plot" strategy is a risky one; here it works somewhat. (6)

2005: Batman Begins

Does what it says on the label - childhood and death of parents, education, development of gadgets, etc. - in a thoroughly professional/predictable way. Too long, although not by as much as The Dark Knight, the visual acumen of which it lacks. I haven't used my stopwatch, but got the impression this might well win a competition for similarity of scenes' length in blockbuster movies. (6.5)

2002: The Transporter

The action film about a man that sells his driving services to illegal enterprises and has his otherwise simple and quiet life disrupted when one of the packages he's hired to transport turns out to be an attractive girl is photographed like an expensive commercial, scored like a cheap one and not quite as bad as that sounds. (5.5)

2005: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Best of the Noughties: Lists and Suggestions #10)

Call me daft, but maybe the plot of this crime comedy was a little too clever for me: I found it hard to follow. Never mind that, though, because with Robert Downey jr., fast-paced, witty dialogue and a corpse being peed on, it works well enough on a minute-by-minute basis, though it's not quite The Last Boy Scout. (7)

2007: Youth without Youth

Francis Ford Coppola's film about a language genius, his doppelgänger and lots of mirrors, raked in less than three million dollars worldwide, at least if you want to believe the standard source. That's surprising for a film by such an famous director. Until you see the film: It's artsy, disjointed and whacky. It does have really good cinematography and Bruno Ganz, but for a film about human consciousness, as which Coppola sees it, it's surprisingly unilluminating about that topic. Recommended for fans of teeth falling out. (4.5)

1972: The Candidate

Nothing much is to be said about the film starring Robert Redford as an idealistic Democratic politician trying to stay honest despite running for senate: A very decent showing all around. (6.5)

1995: To Die For

With a few small changes in the script and a few major changes in style, the film featuring Nicole Kidman as a superficial bitch determined to make it on television could have been a neo-noir; as it is, it's more of a media/American dream satire that's visually unappealing in a 1980s way - and I don't just mean Nicole Kidman's makeup. (6)

2004: La Mala Educación (Bad Education)

Almodóvar's intricately related partial stories have exploitative priests, football, exortion galore, good cinematography, anal sex, theft, a boy singing "Moon River" in Spanish and much, much more. It's all very cleverly constructed, but either Almodóvar doesn't really care about his characters or it's just that his sensibilities and mine are too far apart. (6)

1963: The Haunting

If you're a woman in her twenties still living with you're mother, then you're in trouble - or at least that's what horror films shot around 1960 would have you believe. As though trying to provide an example for the how-not-to box in the textbook, The Haunting uses voiceover to present us with the clichéd thoughts of such a spinster who is participating with two other subjects and a researcher interested in paranormal phenomena to spend some time in an allegedly haunted house. Today the film takes its entertainment value more from its quaíntness than from any shock value it might once have had, but the b/w photography is among the best examples of its kind. (6.5)

2009: An Education

Nick Hornby's script, set in 1961 England, about a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and her petty bourgeois parents falling for a rich, good-looking and cultured man in his late twenties (I think) is somewhat predictable, as are the characters, but makes up for it with humour, a sense of place and time and an excellent performance by Carey Mulligan in the female lead, so I can recommend it overall. (7)

1985: Jagged Edge

Lame female midlife crisis/courtroom drama from the pen of Joe Eszterhas, who later gave us the not dissimilar Basic Instinct. Features good-looking horses and bad-looking haircuts. (5)

The Best of February 2010

1. La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928) - 9
2. Obsession (1976) - 8
   
3. Phantom of the Paradise (1974) - 7.5
4. High and Low (1963) - 7.5
   
5. Sherlock Holmes (2009) - 7.5

Films Not Finished: February 2010

Amsterdamned, Höstsonaten, One Fine Day, Solyaris

1936: Sabotage

Not to be confused with Saboteur, the Hitchcock film about foreign agents violenty disturbing public life in London shares with other Hitchcock movies of that time a certain patchyness and technical shortcomings, but is somehow delivered with more charm to make for an entertaining bit of viewing, though it certainly is not a masterpiece. (7)

1972: Deliverance

When four friends go on a rafting trip, senseless violence finally strikes after a somewhat tedious 25 minutes or so, and after that things get ugly. Not badly executed overall, but I don't really need a film to tell me that civilization is only skin deep and you're never really save; after all, I do pick up a paper from time to time. (6)

1980: Altered States

A brilliant scientist tries to find the essence of the self using unusual methods, which turns out to be a bad idea. The longer it goes on, the harder it gets to take it seriously. (5)

2009: Logorama

The Oscar-nominated short, packed with as many corporate logos as would fit into a quarter of an hour, isn't just visually attractive in a brightly-coloured, in-your-face way, but also a nicely structured police-and-thieves story. Just overlook the sixth-graders style social criticizm. (7)

1984: Body Double

Brian de Palma's take on Rear Window has 1980s: Decade of Bad Taste written all over it and even features Frankie Goes To Hollywood performing "Relax". Interestingly, de Palma uses the kind of dramatic scene that most writers would have put at the end or maybe the beginning of a script as a turning point right in the middle; rather neat. Even so, not his strongest bit of work, especially in visual terms. (7)

2006: Inside Man

This is a Spike Lee movie? Seems like one of those "one for the studio" things. Anyway, this walk down the well-trodden bank robbery path had an ending I found somewhat puzzling, but I found it more regrettable that it didn't seem to want to add anything to the genre. Like, the characters could have recited Whitman once in a while. Or something. I don't know. All in all, no bad entertainment, though. (6.5)

1963: Tengoku to jigoku (High and Low)

About two thirds of Kurosawa's contemporary kidnapping movie show the police trying to catch the perp, as us police people put it, so why is it better than your average TV crime film? A few points:

• The screenplay does leave some questions, but it is structured more interestingly than your average script; in particular, it has well-placed turning points that aren't just there because the textbook says you need them.
• Looks better: It's set in early 1960s Tokyo rather than, say, late 2000s Bremen.
• Looks better: It's in black and white.
• Looks better: It has a director with a sense for visual stuff. This is a thing that baffles me: Much of made-for-TV stuff seems to be by directors and cameramen who don't care how things look. Lack of time and money can't explain all of it.

That list certainly isn't exhaustive. All in all, 7.5.

2009: Up in the Air

George Clooney, radiating his usual charisma, plays a not very realistic outplacement specialist whose passion for living on plaes, in airports and hotels is threatened when a college graduate (the very funny Anna Kendrick) is hired by his firm and suggests that hencetoforth all firing is done via video conferences. After a pacey first hour, the film turns into a standard RomCom between, roughly, minutes 60 and 90, only to redeem itself in the end. Those 30 minutes make the film poorer than it could have been, but, on the upside, much of it is set inside airports and planes, which I just happen to like. A classic 7.

2000: Proof of Life

Meg Ryan is the wife of a man who gets kidnapped in a Southern American country, Russel Crowe is the professional who knows how to handle these things. Will they develop a liking for each other? - Seems like the kind of film made by capable people who swore to each other to work hard enough to deliver a product that's professionally made and is nothing to be ashamed of, but no harder! (5.5)

2009: Moon

Debutant Duncan Jones's film about an employee of an energy company who discovers he is not the only person on his lunar base after all has often been compared to 2001 because it has a talking computer in it but is actually more akin to The Shining as it exploits the setting of a large, sparsely populated building to eerie effect. The film's devoid of weaknesses, but doesn't manage to cross the threshold to greatness either. (7) Given that I blame the regrettable fact of so few films that are set in space coming out on their production being expensive, maybe the best thing about this one is that it was made for only five million dollars, but is entirely convincing in terms of special effects. Let's hope this makes some of the money men rethink their views on funding this kind of film.

1946: Gilda

This noir take on the meange a trois trope, which contains Rita Hayworth's famous one-glove strip, is a very solid piece of work. (7)

1942: Saboteur

In this Hitcock wartime film, you'll be surprised to learn, a man is wrongly accused of being a saboteur. It's a little patchy and the showdown on the Statue of Liberty has more in terms of symbolism than in terms of spectacle. Not a bad film, but North by Northwest it is not. (6)

1950: In a Lonely Place

The main character is called Dixon Steele, but we never see him perform. He is, in fact, a screenwriter, and has a woman falling in love with him who thinks he's wrongly accused of killing a girl. The ending totally doesn't work, but the film makes up for it with generic 1950s b/w US film charm. (7)

1981: Eye of the Needle

The Second World War: Ruthless Nazi spy vs. upstanding, albeit inept, English Rose. Who clearly does too much crying for this to be called a feminist film, and the overly dramatic score is bordering on parody, but why not? (6)

Film Links #3

1. Danish tourism ads directed by Lars von Trier (pointer)

2. "The Greatest Long Tracking Shots in Cinema" and the "20 Greatest Extended Takes in Movie History"

3. Kubrick's Napoleon project

2003: Monster

When Charlize Theron's performance as Aileen Wurmos in Patty Jenkins' biopic about the multiple murderer is discussed, variants of the idea "daring to be ugly" are bandied about a lot. In fact, "daring to be ugly" is one of the most undaring things a good-looking actress can do, because, as the reaction to Theron's performance showed, even if you convincingly demonstrate the role is beyond your reach, soon it's going to rain accolades. Good filmmakers would get a lot out of this meaty topic even with a less than stellar cast, but writer-director Jenkins goes straight for made-for-TV aesthetics and concentrates the rest of her energy on making a political statement of the killer-as-victim variety. Having said all that, a turkey it's not. (5)

1992: Bad Lieutenant

Building your film around a cop that does all kinds of drugs, cheats and is generally devoid of morals is a bit of a cheap idea, the kind of thing that appeals to sixteen-year-olds, and at times the film is way too slow. On the upside: A perfectly cast leading man and the whole thing filmed with just the right amount of nittygrittyness. Summary: Tries to be Taxi Driver, isn't. (6)

Match

From Olly Moss's Films in Black and Red series. More minimalist poster designs here and here (last link NSFW in an abstract way).

1976: Obsession

Brian de Palma's film about a middle-aged man who meets a younger woman that is the spitting image of the man's late wife (who died in a car accident many years before) is often criticized as being merely derivative. But although de Palma's movie is clearly inspired by Hitchcock - he even got Bernard Herrman to compose the music - it tells a story that's quite distinct from the one in the 1958 masterpiece. Indeed one might argue that Vertigo's more important influence is stylistic, the beautiful score sometimes seeming to play endlessly to the painstaikingly composed frames depicting the man's, well, obsession with the young woman. An exercise in style that succeeds all the way. (8)

Roger Ebert sort of agrees.

1930: Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel)

The film that made Marlene Dietrich Marlene Dietrich and chronicles the downfall of a well-respected man who falls in love with a disreputable woman suffers somewhat from the usual technical shortcomings of the day, including an uncinematic overall visual style as well as the fact that leading man Emil Jannings overplays his tragic role. (5.5)