Movie Roundup: Super Capsule Edition

Usually with these roundups I like to devote more than a couple sentences to each film. But once again I've fallen way behind and am playing catchup, so we'll try to speed through this as quickly as possible.

The Immortal Story - Late Orson Welles made for TV movie based on an Isak Dinesen story. Fine performances from Jeanne Moreau and Welles himself, and interesting story and a lack of typical Wellsian flourishes make for a fine, if not necessarily great film. The #7 film of 1968.

Moby Dick - John Huston's adaptation of the Melville classic that I've still only made it halfway through, despite three attempts (the last was a decade ago). Orson Welles is great as the thundering preacher, and Gregory Peck makes a fine Ahab (though he was apparently panned at the time) but otherwise just an above-average literary translation. The #12 film of 1956.

Broken Blossoms - DW Griffith classic about an abused wife who finds refuge with a Chinese storekeeper, which ends in tragedy. Relatively racism-free, for Griffith, and a touching melodrama, actually quite a beautiful film. The world would be a better place if this was the film Griffith was most remembered for.

Little Women - Pedestrian literary adaptation enlivened by the perhaps too on the nose casting of Katherine Hepburn as Jo, her 19th Century doppelganger.

The Man Who Knew Too Much - I'd resisted seeing this Hitchcock remake of his own 1930s British film for such a long time, that it likely couldn't help being surprisingly good. James Stewart is as good as ever, but Doris Day's the real shocker with a fine performance as a mother caught up in international intrigue. The #5 film of 1956.

My Name Is Julia Ross - Very fine psychological noir film about a secretary who gets brainwashed into thinking she's a rich guy's wife. Directed by Joseph H. Lewis, a B movie auteur worthy of further study (his Gun Crazy is terrific).

Little Miss Sunshine - Generic indie comedy that somehow won a massive audience and a number of Oscar nominations despite its mediocre, cliche-ridden and generally messy script. The #27 film of 2006.

Madame de. . . - Max Ophuls masterpiece about a pair of earrings winding their way through high society infidelity. Gorgeous camera movements, fine performances from Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio Di Sica.

The Kid - Very fine Chaplin comedy/melodrama in which the Little Tramp comes to adopt an orphan. Jackie Cooper gives a tear-inducing performance and Chaplin's in top form both in physical comedy and in his unique ability to sidestep maudlin in even the most sentimental works.

A King In New York - Late Chaplin about a deposed monarch who flees to America and is overwhelmed by modernity. Some very fine setpieces (Chaplin as TV advertiser, and a communist propaganda-spouting child are the funniest bits). The #7 film of 1957.

Blonde Venus - Marlene Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg combine for this melodramatic tale of infidelity and a mother on the run. Dietrich's as great as ever as an ex-showgirl who goes back to work to make money for a life-saving operation for her husband. But while he's away, she has an affair with another man. When the husband returns, he chases her all over the country to get his kid back. Overlong, but still good.

The Heroes Of Telemark - Decent enough WW2 action film set in Norway as the Allies try to blow up some Nazi reactors to prevent them from developing heavy water (necessary for an atomic bomb). Entertaining, but I expect better from director Anthony Mann. The #17 film of 1965.

The Train - This is more like it. Burt Lancaster leads a group of French Resistance trying to prevent Paul Scofield's Nazi commander from stealing precious works of art during the last stages of WW2. Lancaster and friends try every means possible to stop Scofield's train, without damaging the art. Lots of train wrecks and some exciting action and a fine supporting cast that includes Jeanne Moreau and Michel Simon. Lancaster's really grown on me in the last year or so, I know longer hate him. Directed by John Frankenheimer. The #11 film of 1964.

New Rose Hotel - Ahead of its time noir from director Abel Ferrera stars Christopher Walken (in one of his great wacky performances) and Willem Dafoe as corporate espionage guys who hire Asia Argento to seduce a scientist and get him to move to another company. Has to be seen to be believed, the last 20 minutes are bizarre and wonderful. The #13 film of 1998.

The Quiet American - Joseph Mankiewicz's adaptation of the Graham Greene story about a cynical Brit and idealistic American (who may be a CIA agent) in Vietnam and the woman they both love. A beautiful film with excellent performances by Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy. I haven't seen the remake yet, but it'd be hard to top. The #6 film of 1958.

Pan's Labyrinth - Quite overrated. Sloppy story construction is totally not excused by the film being a "fairy tale". Del Toro makes it clear in the end that the whole fantastical aspect of it is in the girl's imagination (the objective shot in the climactic scene showing her talking to empty space). Really, I found the whole thing ugly and depressing. The editing is great though, I love the creative use of the wipe and Del Toro uses it a lot, to great effect. The #20 film of 2006.

Man Of The West - Mediocre Western starring the always(?) mediocre Gary Cooper. Anthony Mann made far better films, I was just never into it. Maybe I should give it another shot? The #13 film of 1958.

Some Came Running - Fine combination of Vincente Minnelli and James Jones, as Frank Sinatra plays a writer who returns to his small town after the war only to get himself into trouble along with Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. The #11 film of 1958.

Pal Joey - Another Sinatra film, this time as a wanna-be club owner torn between the rich and vicious Rita Hayworth and the poor and honest Kim Novak. The great Rodgers & Hart soundtrack elevates it quite a bit. The #10 film of 1957.

Unknown Pleasures - Probably the most accessible of Jia Zhang-ke's films, as it has a lot in common with a lot of other films, most notably Hou Hsiao-hsien's Goodbye South, Goodbye. Young Chinese unemployed, flirting with lives of crime and angst, beautifully filmed with fine performances. The least weighty Jia film I've seen, but still pretty great. The #6 film of 2002.

The Trial - Some flashy Wellesness, great creepy modernist architecture, a very good performance from Anthony Perkins and some weird supporting work from Welles, Jeanne Moreau, and Akim Tamiroff. But, in the end, it's a Kafka adaptation and my enjoyment of it is dependent on how I'm feeling about Kafka. And I like Welles better than Kafka. The #12 film of 1962.

Paisan - Six-part Roberto Rossellini film about the conquest of Italy in World War 2. Unusual for this type of film, I actually really liked every section. Some great action and suspense sequences (the opening story in a castle, the story about a woman attempting to reach her husband) and very moving non-action sequences (the bonding between an African-American soldier and an orphan who steals his shoes, a priest a rabbi and a minister having dinner in a monastery). One of the best war movies I've seen.

Europa 51 - Ingrid Bergman plays a high society housewife so distraught be the tragic death of her son that she dedicates her life to helping the poor. Quite naturally, her family has her declared insane and locks her in an institution. Great performance from Bergman in another terrific Rossellini film.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated - Mediocre documentary about the MPAA. The director hires a PI to track down the secret MPAA members for way too much of the film, as if anyone cares what they look like. The stuff about the history of the organization and the examples of their wacky decisions and decision-making processes is interesting though. The #26 film of 2006.

One Week/The High Sign - A pair of Buster Keaton shorts. The High Sign has a great climax as Keaton bests a house full of assassins with some amazing stunts, and One Week is a lot of fun with a build-it-yourself house gone horribly wrong. Not as brilliant as the best Keaton, but still very physically impressive.

Spiderman 3 - An entertaining enough mess of a film. One villain too long, and James Franco doing his best to fight Hayden Christensen for the title of The Worst Actor Of His Generation. The middle section homage to Saturday Night Fever and The Nutty Professor is the funniest part, but Tobey Maguire is generally speaking, pretty bad. Kirsten Dunst does a fine job of looking cute and singing terribly, though,

A Prairie Home Companion - Perhaps the most human of all Robert Altman films, he abandons his steady microscopic zooms for a camera the fluidly moves around the mise-en-scene like recent Hou Hsiao-hsien. A film explicitly about death and the lovable Midwestern existential acceptance of it. A perfect little film from a man who specialized in big messy films. The #4 film of 2006.

Mudhoney - Like Baby Doll on acid. Russ Meyer's Southern Gothic horror film (can I call it that?) about a drifter who gets entangled in an exploitation web of God, sex and violence. Not quite as exhilerating as the first 20 minutes of Meyer's Faster, Pussycat Kill! Kill!, but a better film on the whole. The #9 film of 1965.

The Reluctant Debutante - Terrifically charming Vincente Minnelli film about a young girl (Sandra Dee), raised in America, who enters British high society at the insistence of her step-mother (Kay Kendall) to upstage her rival (Angela Lansbury). Of course, she falls in love with the wrong guy, and it's up to her father, wonderfully played by Rex Harrison, (who abhors all the nonsense, but goes along with it anyway) to fix things. Fun and entertaining, with some great Minnelli color and compositions (I recall a certain lamp quite particularly). The #7 film of 1958.

Tropical Maladay - Mesmerizing masterpiece from the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The first half is a fairly typical gay romance, set in the forests, factories and caves of rural Thailand. The second half reenacts the emotional arc of the first, while resolving its psychological complications with a eerie and suspenseful mythological cat and mouse game between a soldier (one of the men from the first part) and a shadowy panther. The #5 film of 2004.

The Quatermass Xperiment - British sci-fi film that was apparently the first of a whole series of Quatermass films. Astronauts come back to space infected with some kind of alien plant life that threatens to kill us all. The #21 film of 1951.

The Garden Of Allah - The beautiful gold tones of two-strip Technicolor are about the only highlight of this Marlene Dietrich melodrama about a priest on the run who marries a saintly woman (Dietrich, if you can buy that). Also stars Basil Rathbone and Charles Boyer.

The Mating Season - Thelma Ritter (Pickup On South Street, Rear Window) gives yet another standout performance in this Mitchell Leisen comedy about a hamburger stand owning woman who goes to visit his son and his new rich wife (Gene Tierney) and through some mistaken identity, ends up as the maid. Sweet and funny.

Superman Returns - Better than any of the current cycle of superhero films, and the best since Batman Returns.
I had kind of the opposite reaction to it that I've had to the Spiderman trilogy. With those films, the action and effects are great, but the melodrama is dull, repetitive and all-around unbearable. In Superman, though, I really dug the drama and thought the effects were kinda lame, dare I say cartoonish. There's a real dramatic problem with Superman, in that he's essentially perfect and invincible. The Kryptonite plot is OK for one film, but if they make a sequel they need to follow the lead of Superman II and give him some extra-terrestrial villains to fight. I dug the whole Superman as God/Christ motif, I thought it ran through the film at a nice, not quite beating you over the head level. It raises but doesn't really answer some interesting questions about the role of heroes/saints in modern life. The performances were fine all around, with nobody really sticking out, though I think Kate Bosworth had the same problem Katie Holmes had in Batman Begins: namely that she's not really believable as an adult. The #8 film of 2006.

Bienvenue a Cannes - TCM documentary about the Cannes Film Festival has some good anecdotes and gossip, but ultimately isn't very insightful about the history of the festival or the films that have played there. Kind of like that foreign film montage at the Academy Awards last year that reduced the history of non-American cinema to the most boring and maudlin films the US could find.

Mutual Appreciation - A worthy addition to the existential slacker comedy genre that I'm generationally predisposed to be a fan of. Director Andrew Bujalski shows some real skill as he gets surprisingly good (considering how indie the movie is) performances from his actors and keeps an slow, but never boring, pace to the film, creating a believeable reality out of it all. The #5 film of 2005.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley - So much better than I expected. Ken Loach's Palme d'or winner at last year's Cannes film festival is pretty much a perfect historical epic. Cillian Murphy stars as a young doctor who joins the post-World War I IRA, becomes increasingly radical and eventually finds himself on the wrong side of the civil war over the creation of the Irish Free State. Essentially the micro story of Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, except with all the Hollywood touches stripped away leaving a raw core of historical realism and melodrama. The #2 film of 2006, though that may change. I've only seen it one and a half times and I've seen Miami Vice several more, but this may very well be the better film.

The Alamo - John Wayne's directorial effort is a by-the-numbers telling of the fate of the famous mission and its Texican defenders. Wayne plays Davy Crockett, Richard Widmark is Sam Bowie and Laurence Harvey as Col. Travis. It takes way too long to get going, and Wayne doesn't appear to have much of an eye, though the transfer shown on TCM wasn't particularly good. The #17 film of 1960.

Once More, With Feeling! - Stanley Donen's light comedy stars Yul Brenner as an over-the-top maestro and Kay Kendall as his longtime girlfriend who breaks up with him after an apparent infidelity. Through a variety of plot contrivances, the two have to get married and then get divorced. Pleasant, but unremarkable. The #13 film of 1960.

The Glass Bottom Boat - Zany Frank Tashlin comedy starring Doris Day and Rod Taylor (along with a thin Dom DeLuise and Dick Martin, from Laugh-In). Taylor's a NASA scientist who may or may not suspect Day of being a KGB agent. Wackiness ensues. 60s comedies are very strange, I don't know that I quite understand them. But the most shocking discovery: Doris Day is hot. The #12 film of 1966.

The Edge Of The World - Early Michael Powell film about the last days of a small island north of Scotland. Some fine scenery and decent performances, the story's kind of a poor man's How Green Was My Valley. The editing is out of control though. I'd never noticed such an Eisentstein influence on Powell before, it's a good thing he lost it later, as it's just way too much here. On the meagre evidence of this and Peeping Tom (both very fine films), I'd have to say Powell needed Pressburger.

Where Eagles Dare - Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood star in this mediocre WW2 action film about spies and assassins and a daring assault on a Nazi castle high in the mountains. The plot twists left and right, but the direction (by Brian G. Hutton, who did Kelly's Heroes and the Tom Selleck masterpiece The High Road To China) is pedestrian and clunky. Burton and Eastwood deserved better. The #16 film of 1968.

Still Life - As yet unreleased in the US is Jia Zhangke's most recent film, about a two people from Shanxi each searching for people in and around the town of Fengjie, as it's in the process of being dismantled to make way for the flooding caused by the Three Gorges Dam. Might be Jia's most beautiful film thus far. At least in terms of the colors he gets out of the digital camera, it ranks with Miami Vice as the best digital movie I've seen. The deliberately-paced realism is lifted into the sublime by a few shots I refuse to give away until more people have a chance to see it. The #5 film of 2006.

Where Danger Lives - Decent enough John Farrow noir starring Robert Mitchum as a doctor who gets suckered by a crazy woman. Her husband ends up dead and the two of them try to flee to Mexico, while Mitchum's got a concussion and the girl gets crazier and crazier. Great supporting actors are largely wasted in much too small roles, namely Claude Rains and Farrow's wife, Maureen O'Sullivan.

At Cinema's End

Ryland's got his review of Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End up at The House Next Door (Warning: There Be Spoilers!), so I'd thought I'd kick in the two cents I wrote last week about the film, in response to complaints that the two sequels are such much messier than the tidy first film (an aspect Ryland touches on as well).

The messiness of it, the sheer crazy incomprehensible insanity of the whole enterprise is exactly what I love about Pirates 2 & 3. I thought the first one was alright, but aside from Depp, it was pretty standard. These last two though, are just all over the map.

So many action/adventure blockbuster movies are straightforward and earnest and linear, full of exposition and tearful Tobeys. The last two Pirates, though, are wholly unique. Avant-garde summer blockbusters that are in every way Anti-Ratners.

I thought of two films while watching At World's End, and the first is Miami Vice, a beautiful, expositionless tone poem of a film in an action movie's clothing. Pirates 3 is a beautiful film, with some fascinating imagery and only tops the intricately complex and deep compositions of the second one, especially in the action sequences. The baroque Looney Tunes stunts within frames of overwhelming detail are always stunning, the only action sequence I've seen equal it is in the opening shots of Revenge Of The Sith.

Which is a nice segue to the second movie I was reminded of . . . Star Wars (oh yeah, I said it). We ran Star Wars at the theatre Tuesday night for the staff (for the anniversary: the original, non-Special Edition one, naturally). I was struck again by just how relentless the last half of the film is, and how little information there is to orient the viewer. It's just one action sequence after another, with the bare minimum of information conveyed as efficiently as possible in a few lines of dialogue to connect the action. Now, the Pirates films aren't as good as Star Wars (I'm not that crazy). But they're clearly following the same model and I think they work for the same reason.

I just find the anti-Pirates camp to be inexplicable. Too me, it's like saying there weren't enough explosions in Citizen Kane. I don't understand what it is they expect . . . a straightforward narrative? Bleh. Give me chaos instead any day.

And all of this is not to mention the fascinating web of ideological explorations in the Pirates films. Many a master's thesis can (and will) be written on the transformations in the sexualities of Depp and Knightly in these movies.

Launching Metro Classics

As you can see, there's a new addition to the sidebar. We've managed to convinced the powers that be at Landmark Theatres to allow us to program and run a repertory film series this summer at the Metro Cinemas in Seattle. It's going to be a nine week series constituting a decade-by-decade survey of film history from the 1920s to the 2000s. If the series is successful (meaning if we can draw enough customers to break even) then they're going to let us continue to program rep films in the future, and possibly expand the program to Landmark theatres in other cities around the country.

So if you, or anyone you know is in the Seattle area this summer, come on out to the scenic U-District and catch some great films and help further the nationwide cause of repertory cinema.

Free popcorn for anyone who finds me and mentions The End Of Cinema!

Bring Me The Head Of Charlie Brown

Found at The Screen Grab.

Darth Vader: Jackass

From the good people at The House Next Door, where you can also find my friend Ryland's very fine appreciation of Revenge Of The Sith.

In the comments section for Ryland's post, you can find this great summary of George Lucas from House founder Matt Zoller Seitz:

"But what he's good at -- immensely complex action scenes packed with so much information you can't absorb it all in one viewing; primal pulpy metaphors for emotional states and moral quandaries -- are things very few filmmakers even attempt post-silent cinema, and he succeeds. That's why the movies are great in spite of the fact that they're always teetering on the brink of incoherence and stupidity and often toppling in."

The #54 War Movie Of The Last 50 Years

Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan was hailed as a masterpiece immediately upon its premiere, and that ranking doesn't appear to have dimmed in the collective reckoning in the nine years since. Well, I thought it was overrated then, and after watching it for a third time last night, I'm more convinced than ever that my initial reaction was the correct one.

The case for SPR generally runs along these lines: the opening 25 minute Omaha Beach sequence is groundbreaking in its technique and realism, and the remainder of the film is a powerful tribute to The Greatest Generation, a reminder of what they sacrificed for the rest of us in World War II. There are variations, but generally it boils down to realism and patriotism as the reasons SPR is great. It's telling that few, if any, advocates of SPR have anything to say about the film's script (written by Robert Rodat, who also wrote Fly Away Home and The Patriot), which is, at best, maudlin and sentimental.


Omaha Beach - It's one of the great stories of American history: the D-Day landing and the hard slog up the beachhead in the face of overwhelming German firepower. It's a sequence that appears in a number of different WW2 movies, most notably Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One and the multi-director epic The Longest Day. There are also variations of it in, among other films, Allan Dwan's The Sands of Iwo Jima and Don Siegel's Hell Is For Heroes, the former features a beach landing under heavy fire, the latter a suicidal uphill attack on a German bunker. Another noteworthy comparison is Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, which was released a few months after SPR, is just as viscerally intense, but with none of the moral or filmic complications of Spielberg's film, and also features an extended assault on an uphill bunker, one that is superior to SPR's in just about every way. Watching the sequence again, I was surprised at how small it seems. There's no sense of the vast 10 mile expanse of the beach, we're pretty much confined to the same 300 yard stretch of sand through the whole attack. Spielberg's never been strong on continuity, a problem which repeatedly comes up here: the same shots (especially a POV shot of the German machine gun firing at the same half dozen troops, which we see at least three times) repeat several times, and appear to have no geographic relation to the main thrust of the plot, which is how Tom Hanks destroys a bunker, thereby making the beachhead safe for the invasion (the absurdity of which should be self-evident). The sequence appears to function in real time, making the whole of the Omaha Beach landing appear to take about 20 minutes, when in fact it stretched on for several hours before the troops were finally able to break through.

Spielberg's decision to show the battle from Hanks's point of view is especially limited, in that it reduces the heroism of many to that of one: the star and protagonist. In SPR, Spielberg repeatedly reduces the general and the epic to the specific and generic. Thus the massive Omaha Beach landing is reduced to a half dozen guys in a small space fighting one gun and a handful of Germans. In the same sequence in The Longest Day, a massive array of troops must crawl under enemy fire to set up a bangalore torpedo and take out one of the many bunkers on the beach. Soldier after soldier volunteers to run out there only to get shot, as true a depiction of collective heroism in war as I've ever seen. In SPR, the nameless soldiers' deaths are instead often reduced to macabre jokes: a GI wanders the beach holding his severed arm (a shot lifted from Akira Kuroawa's Ran), a medic frantically works to save a wounded man, only to have his patient get shot in the head as soon as he says "I've stopped the bleeding!", Hanks barks commands repeatedly to his radio man, but the third time he pulls him over he's missing his face and the radio's been shot, Hanks gives a comical look and throws the radio away.


So, the Omaha Beach sequence is neither epic in scope nor particularly noble in character, nor original in plot. What about in its film technique? Speilberg shoots the sequence with a shaky handheld camera, with desaturated color, both of which were (and are) supposedly revolutionary. And indeed, the use of a handheld camera was revolutionary. . . when Roberto Rossellini and the Italian Neo-Realists started doing it in Rome, Open City 53 years before Saving Private Ryan. The shaky POV action sequence is a recurrant trope in war, action and horror movies, and had been for years before SPR. Spielberg may have been the first to splash blood and mud on the camera, but I'm not sure. Similarly, his may be the first film where we see people being shot underwater, a dubious achievement at best. As for the color, well, as with his decision to shoot Schindler's List in black and white, it's an homage to the war movies he grew up watching (and the documentaries shot during the war, which were very often shot in black and white. And it's hard to be original when you're making an homage. Yes, Saving Private Ryan is far gorier than a film like The Longest Day. But is that really what we mean by realism? More blood?

The Rest Of The Film - Given much of the talk about SPR, you'd think the film ended when Omaha Beach was taken. But no, there's over two hours left of film time to go! Two hours that basically consists of generic characters doing stupid things for no clear reason and ascribing great meaning to them, with the occasional justification for war crimes thrown in.

1. Generic Characters - Like many a war movie, SPR's characters are a collection of representative types, both in genre iconography and as a PC multicultural mix. There's the captain who's sick of killing, but serves as a father figure to his men (he's even a school teacher back home), played by Tom Hanks; his sergeant, big and gruff but also brave, honest and protective, Tom Sizemore; the medic, smart and sensitive, as horrified by war as Alan Alda and who also fills the role of the soldier who takes abut his mother, Giovanni Ribisi; the wisecrackin' kid from Brooklyn, Ed Burns; the Southern sharpshooter, lifted whole straight out of Howard Hawks's Sergeant York, right down to the pre-shot prayer, played by Barry Pepper; the New York Jew, there to remind us of why the Germans are bad, played by Adam Goldberg (who will always be Chandler's roommate Crazy Eddie to me); the big dumb Italian who carries a rosary, Vin Diesel; the cartographer/interpreter who knows nothing of war (think Lawrence Of Arabia), quotes poetry, translates Edith Piaf and who functions as our surrogate in the group: we meet the other characters through him, Jeremy Davies; and finally the holy grail himself, Matt Damon as the corn-fed blonde Iowa farmboy (a type which appears as a symbol of wasted youth and innocence and possible homoerotic desire in The Sands of Iwo Jima, but functions as the American ideal here). A brief sequence with Pvt. Ryan's mother is as generic as possible: a white picket-fenced farmhouse amidst amber waves of grain. I swear there's even an apple pie cooling on a window sill. Many films, war films in particular, use this kind of generic character setup. But it's telling that films like The Big Red One and Platoon don't follow that structure, as both Samuel Fuller and Oliver Stone actually fought in wars, unlike many a war movie writer or director.


2. Doing Stupid Things -

A. The initial stupid thing is the mission itself. Back in Washington, a secretary discovers that three of the four Ryan boys were KIA on the same day. A debate ensues with Gen. George Marshall over whether or not to find the fourth Ryan and send him home, despite the fact that he's missing somewhere far behind enemy lines and any rescue mission will likely lead to many more men being killed to save one. In an astounding display of irrationality, Marshall reads a letter Abraham Lincoln wrote to a Mrs. Bixby, expressing his regrets over the loss of her sons during the Civil War. (Note that in the reaction shot to Marshall's reading, his staff member is framed next to a portrait of George Washington, in case we don't know who Lincoln is, I guess). Somehow, this letter is so moving to Marshall and his staff that they decide Mrs. Ryan cannot be allowed to sacrifice as much as she did for the cause of freedom, though there's nothing but respect, sympathy and admiration in Lincoln's sentiment. The power of the letter is supposed to trump any question of the utility of wasting several lives to save one, though there's no logical reason for it to convince us of that fact.

B. The next stupid thing occurs when the small band reaches the besieged town of Ramelle (fictional, naturally), where Ryan is supposed to be. It's a bombed-out village, with no inhabitants. Except, of course, for a French family who for some unknown reason are still in their half-destroyed house when the group arrives. Inexplicably, the father tries to pass his daughter to the soldiers, and even more inexplicably, Vin Diesel disobeys direct orders, takes the daughter, stands out in the open and gets himself shot by a German sniper. There's no reason for any of this to happen but expediency: Spielberg wants to show us some civilian French, he wants to show off Pepper's sharpshooting, and he wants to subject us to a long death sequence for Diesel (which is also apparently why the sniper never shoots him again, but instead waits five minutes for Pepper to get into position before looking for a second shot).

C. Disobeying orders is a recurring type of stupid thing in SPR, most clearly when the wisecrackin' Brooklynite refuses to assault a machine gun, and then wants to shoot a German POW and Hanks won't let him. Insubordination of this type would hardly be tolerated in a war, let alone from a veteran like Burns who's been with Hanks for several months. Hanks, of course, defuses the tense standoff by sharing a little bit about his life back home. If only someone had thought of that at My Lai.

D. The final battle is a seemingly endless series of stupid things. Why do the Americans so desperately protect the bridge when they planned to blow it up anyway? Why do they wait until the Germans show up to string the wires for their mines, both in the street and on the bridge? Why do they have Davies carrying ammunition from point to point under heavy fire instead of stocking the ammunition in their foxholes and sniping points before the battle? Why does Davies cower in fear instead of saving Crazy Eddie's life? The answer to that last one is simple enough: Spielberg is asserting that we, the audience (for whom Davies has been the surrogate throughout the film), and especially the brainier types out there, are incapable of functioning in the horrors of war, and were we placed in the same position as The Greatest Generation, would be entirely worthless. And did I mention the absurd deus ex machina at the end of the sequence?

3. War Crimes - I'd always remembered that it was Davies at the end of the film who shoots the POW, committing the film's major war crime. Watching it again, I was surprised at how often these murders occur. In fact, the film can easily be interpreted as a coming-of age story in which we learn how necessary it is to execute POWs because they shot at us first. After the Omaha Beach sequence, the Americans shoot defenseless Germans in a trench and murder surrendering Germans with their hands raised in the air. The emotional power (and graphic bloodinesss) of the preceding beach landing is apparently supposed to justify the murdering of these POWs, just as the death of the medic is later supposed to justify the murder of the German that Burns causes so much trouble over. These crimes reach their culmination when Davies, after cowering throughout the final stages of the final battle, assassinates the German soldier he let kill Crazy Eddie, as that soldier is telling his compatriots what a coward Davies is. Davies, of course, had been the one stridently protesting Burns's attempts to murder the other POW. Thus the audience member, after being shown their own cowardice, is asserted to be a murderer as well. It's one of the most insulting things I've ever seen on film, and I can't believe how many people are willing to let Spielberg get away with it. How can this film be taken as a glorification of The Greatest Generation when it shows them repeatedly engaging in the same brutal habits as the pure evil Nazis of Schindler's List? It's like the Bixby letter: the overwhelming assertion of emotion precludes any logical examination of what the film is actually saying.


Finally, I have a couple of minor quibbles with the film. The opening sequence shows an old man wandering through a cemetery with his family following. He stops at a grave and the camera slowly zooms in on his eyes. From there we cut to Tom Hanks preparing to land at Omaha, thus setting up an identification of the old man with Hanks. The slow zoom on the eyes is often a precursor to that person's flashback. Of course, it's Pvt. Ryan who is the old man, and what follows can't possibly be a flashback (Ryan wasn't at Omaha, he parachuted behind enemy lines). The only purpose of the zoom appears to mislead the viewer into believing that Hanks will live and thereby increasing the shock when he dies and we realize the old man must be Ryan. This kind of incoherent manipulation is something a director of Spielberg's caliber should be better than. Also the faded US flag we're shown twice appears to have 50 stars, which is two too many for 1944, but maybe that's intentional. The old Ryan appears to know exactly where he's going in the cemetery, though this is supposedly his first time visiting Hanks's grave. Also, Hanks's grave is conveniently placed such that there's lots of space for Ryan's family to stand well behind him, instead of bunched together like all the other grave markers.

To conclude, here are 53 War Movies I've Seen from the last 50 years that are better than Saving Private Ryan:

Paths Of Glory
Bridge On The River Kwai
Hiroshima mon amour
The Horse Soldiers
The Guns Of Navaronne
Lawrence Of Arabia
Hell Is For Heroes
The Longest Day
The Great Escape
Dr. Strangelove
Zulu
The Train
Shenandoah
In Harm's Way
The Heores Of Telemark
The Battle Of Algiers
The Dirty Dozen
Hell In The Pacific
The Sorrow And The Pity
Patton
A Bridge Too Far
The Deer Hunter
Apocalypse Now
Kagemusha
The Big Red One
Breaker Morant
Das Boot
Gallipoli
The Killing Fields
Platoon
Salvador
Top Gun
Empire Of The Sun
Full Metal Jacket
Good Morning, Vietnam
Glory
Henry V
The Hunt For Red October
Europa Europa
Last Of The Mohicans
A Midnight Clear
Schindler's List
Gettysburg
Braveheart
Starship Troopers
The Thin Red Line
Three Kings
Black Hawk Down
Pearl Harbor
Master And Commander
Gods And Generals
A Very Long Engagement
Munich

Still Of The Day

/Film has some stills up from Wong Kar-wai's latest film My Blueberry Nights, which kicks off the Cannes Film Festival this week.

Movie Roundup: Beaned Again Edition

Fallen behind again, thanks to yet another cold. So, as word breaks that the A's have acquired former Mariner folk hero Chris Snelling, I'll drown my sorrows with my brand-new copy of Conan The Barbarian and try to kick out a quick-hit version of the roundup. This is Part One, which I wrote on Wednesday but am only getting around to posting now. Part Two will follow later this week, hopefully.

Lancelot du lac - Robert Bresson's version of the end of Camelot has essentially the same plot as the godawful First Knight (#86, 1995): Lancelot returns to Camelot after the failed grail quest, tries not to sleep with Guinevere, fails and the whole thing falls apart. However, Bresson takes the opposite route to filming a medieval epic. Instead of overblown melodrama, Bresson made a minimalist epic, consisting of little dialogue, his typically emotionless acting and a camera that willfully avoids showing the most obvious images of a scene in favor of sounds (hoofbeats in particular), and lingers longer than it has any right to over apparently inconsequential things (the knights' unarmored legs being a particular favorite). Like all the Bresson's I've seen, it unnerves you, defies your expectations and provides a wholly unique experience. The #6 film of 1974.

Wild Strawberries - Somehow I missed this when I saw it a few months ago, but frankly I was underwhelmed. The dream sequence was pretty cool, but other than that, this quite famous roadtrip movie about about an old professor traveling the countryside and flashbacking on his life (think Deconstructing Harry, without the jokes) just left me cold. The #10 film of 1957.

Metropolis - Fritz Lang's hugely influential mashup of the Communist Manifesto and the Tower Of Babel is perhaps the most influential sci-fi film of all-time. Tremendously expensive in its time, it set the template and standard for the way we think of the filmed future (Blade Runner's only the most obvious example of it's influence). As a movie though, it's got some serious flaws: a whiny protagonist, some obvious plot holes (complicated perhaps by the incomplete nature of the most recent restoration, though Lang's Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler had the same problem), and the interesting thematic choice of resolving the eternal struggle of rich and poor through a damsel in distress love story rescue.

The Long Voyage Home - John Ford's adaptation of a quartet of Eugene O'Neill plays set on board a ship near the beginning of World War 2. Shot by Gregg Toland not long before he did Citizen Kane, it's got the same brilliant deep-focus black and white photography. Terrific performances from Ford's regulars (Ward Bond, Thomas Mitchell, John Wayne, etc) liven the generally dour material.

They Were Expendable - Much to his distress, John Ford was pulled out of the war to shoot this propaganda film about the guys who proved the usefulness of PT boats in waging war during the battle for The Philippines at the start of WW2. As war films go, it's pretty great, with top notch performances from John Wayne and Robert Montgomery, some really nice scenes with Donna Reed, and some exciting action sequences.



8 Women - François Ozon's musical murder mystery stars three generations of hot French women, some of whom can actually sing. They're all gathered one winter eve only to learn that the family patriarch has been murdered. Cut-off from the outside world, it's up to them to solve whodunnit, airing all their dirty secrets and essentially exposing themselves as the most screwed up family you'll ever see. And all with a solo musical interlude for each actress. Stars Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Beart, Fanny Ardant and Ludvine Sagnier. My first Ozon film, but it won't be the last. The #5 film of 2002.

The Informer - Tag Gallagher ripped on this a lot in his great book John Ford: The Man And His Films, though I liked it quite a bit. Gallagher didn't like the lack of tonal variance (all-serious, all the time), whereas I enjoyed the atmospheric, proto-noir, hyper-foggy images, and found plenty of humor and sympathy in Victor McLaglen's portrayal of a desperately poor former IRA operative who turns his old buddy into the police for the reward money. Sure, it doesn't rank with Ford's greatest films, but it's in the next tier.

The Wings Of Eagles - Another Ford film, this one a biopic about naval aviator turned paralyzed screenwriter Spig Wead. Wead and Ford were friends, and it shows in this rather tame film. Sure, Wead has his bad qualities, but he's still a helluva guy. Ward Bond does a hilarious Ford imitation as the Hollywood director Wead goes to work for, and like all Ford films, there are some really terrific moments, but they're way too few and far between. The #11 film of 1957.

A Scanner Darkly - Richard Linklater's interpolated rotoscope adaptation of a Philip K. Dick mindbender is perhaps the best Dick adaptation ever (yes, that includes Blade Runner). The fluid, squggly animation is perfect to the shifting realities of Dick's druggy, schizophrenic worldview. Keanu Reeves plays an undercover cop who loses his identity in his job (thanks to a killer new drug) and begins to suspect reality is even more fucked-up than it appears when you're high. Also stars famous druggies Robert Downey Jr, Woody Harrelson and the sorely missed Winona Ryder. The #4 film of 2006.

Rome, Open City - Roberto Rossellini's breakthrough film, and the movie that launched Italian neo-realism, shot with whatever the crew could find around town in the middle of a war. A story of the Italian Resistance during WW2, it builds to a devastating climax halfway through the film, such that everything that follows is, well, anti-climactic (much like Full Metal Jacket). Still, unlike, say Metropolis, it manages to be both stylistically influential and a tremendous film of its own. I'm not a big fan of neo-realism, at least, I didn't like Bicycle Thieves, but this was great.

How Green Was My Valley - The last of my Gallagher-inspired Ford marathon is this story of a Welsh coal mining town that famously beat Citizen Kane for the best picture Oscar. It's a fine film, with some wonderfully lyrical sequences (Maureen O'Hara's wedding, Roddy McDowell digging for his father) but after a single viewing I don't think it's the masterpiece Gallagher describes in his book. I don't know if he was overcompensating for the film's subsequent overshadowing by Kane, or if I just missed the many, many subtleties he found in the film. Perhaps a little of both.

House Of Yes - Parker Posey gives a fine performance as a crazy rich girl in an incestuous relationship with her brother (Josh Hamilton from Kicking And Screaming) in this decent enough pice of filmed theatre. Tori Spelling(!) plays Hamilton's appalled fiancée and Freddie Prinze Jr his younger brother. The #40 film of 1997.

The Trouble With Harry - Essentially Alfred Hitchcock's version of Weekend At Bernies, as a collection of eccentrics (including Shirley Maclaine and Jerry Mathers) in a small New England town discover, bury, exhume, and rebury (again and again) a dead body. Quirky and entertaining, with a marvelous sense of place. It's light Hitchcock, and a lot more fun than the similarly weightless To Catch A Thief. The #12 film of 1955.

Coconuts - The first true Marx Brothers film is also the worst one I've ever seen. There are some classic jokes, and some funny Busby Berkeley-esque dance sequences, but there's way too many lame songs sung seriously by non-Marxes.

Woman In The Dunes - Hiroshi Teshigahara's beautiful, mysterious and odd little film zigged when I was certain it was going to zag, almost always a pleasant experience. A high school science teacher on vacation to study some bugs in a desolate desert gets tricked into living in a deep, inescapable sand hole with an odd, and not unattractive, widow who wants to 'marry' him. I was prepared for an intense Japanese ghost story along the lines of Kwaidan or Ugetsu, instead it's naturalistic and more than a little political allegory. Lyrical and kinky, it looks a little like Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour with sand. The #7 film of 1964.

2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her - One of Jonathan Rosenbaum's favorite Jean-luc Godard films, I found it more of a way station between the Godard highlights Pierrot le fou and Week End: absurdist and comically self-referential like the first; logorrheic and blatantly political like the second. The plot setup is essentially the same as Buñuel's Belle de jour: middle-class housewife is a prostitute in her spare time, but it's more a slice of French life in the late 60s than an actual story. The #7 film of 1967.

The Loyal 47 Ronin - Kenji Mizoguchi's two-part adaptation of the classic Japanese story (think their version of The Gunfight At The OK Corral or the Omaha Beach landing) is a masterpiece of action withheld. Through its nearly four hour running time, there's almost no scenes of violence, including none of the many many ritual suicides that punctuate the story. Clearly what Mizoguchi's after is not the action violence of a great revenge epic as the titular ronin seek to avenge their lord who was forced to kill himself after insulting a venal superior. Instead, he examines the culture and society that leads to a world in which mass suicide is the greatest possible act of honor. Filled with his signature long tracking shots, his camera constantly cranes over walls following the characters from above and thereby exposing and transcending the boundaries they choose to live in.

The Mizoguchi Movies I've seen, and all are great:

1. Ugetsu
2. Sansho The Bailiff
3. Story Of The Last Chrysanthemums
4. The Loyal 47 Ronin
5. Sisters Of Gion
6. The Life Of Oharu
7. Street Of Shame

Quote Of The Day

As reported on David Bordwell's blog (see link on the sidebar), Werner Herzog speaking at Ebertfest:

“Our technological civilization is not sustainable on this planet. Nature is going to regulate us very quickly. . . . We’ll be the next ones [to go extinct]. But that’s okay. Let’s enjoy movies and friendship and beer.”

Number Of The Day

Prose Of The Day

From "Tender Buttons" by Gertrude Stein:

A light in the moon the only light is on Sunday. What was the sensible decision. The sensible decision was that notwithstanding many declarations and more music, not even notwithstanding the choice and a torch and a collection, notwithstanding the celebrating hat and a vacation and even more noise than cutting, notwithstanding Europe and Asia and being overbearing, not even notwithstanding an elephant and a strict occasion, not even withstanding more cultivation and some seasoning, not even with drowning and with the ocean being encircling, not even with more likeness and any cloud, not even with terrific sacrifice of pedestrianism and a special resolution, not even more likely to be pleasing. The care with which the rain is wrong and the green is wrong and the white is wrong, the care with which there is a chair and plenty of breathing. The care with which there is incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain.

Movies Of The Year: 1954

It's been too long, but here we go back to the countdown. Caveats, methodologies and all previous years, with the addition of any films I've seen since the original entries, can be found at The Big List, now in two parts!

16. Them! - Giant ants attack a city in a classic 50s sci-fi Cold War parable (the ants are caused by nuclear tests in the desert.) The only time I saw this was on TV as a kid, but I still have an irrational fear of insects.

15. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - Live-action Disney sci-fi film about an obsessive captain, his submarine and the giant squid that attacks it. Cheesy special effects and aimed at an audience of kids, but it's got Kirk Douglas and James Mason, and was directed by Richard Fleischer, who had one interesting career. From cheap but great noir (The Narrow Margin, His Kind Of Woman), to big budget crap (The Jazz Singer, Dr. Dolittle, Tora! Tora! Tora!) to B-movie wallowing (Fantastic Voyage, Soylent Green, Red Sonja), he was all over the auteurist map.

14. Dragnet - Essentially just an overlong episode of the TV series, but in Technicolor. Jack Webb's just the facts procedural is a fine genre exercise, but it's lacking in visual style. Compared to a procedural like Jules Dassin's The Naked City, which tells a similarly straight story but with an expressive noir pallet, Webb's brightly colored and evenly light LA comes off as drab and boring.

13. The Caine Mutiny - Filmed theatre of the well-acted variety, with Humphrey Bogart as the martinet commander of a naval vessel whose crew rebels during World War 2. Bogart's great as the tightly wound, possibly insane Captain, but the crew comes of just as bad (especially that weasel Fred MacMurray). Also stars José Ferrar, Van Johnson and Lee Marvin, and directed by Edward Dmytryk (Murder, My Sweet, Back To Bataan) who was one of the Hollywood Ten who backtracked after being thrown in prison and named names.

12. Track Of The Cat - Very interesting William Wellman film about a family on a remote, snow-covered mountain. A panther of some type has been attacking their animals, so two of the sons (including Robert Mitchum) try to kill it. When the panther kills his brother, Mitchum sets off alone to find it. Meanwhile, the crises sets off a series of domestic squabbles at home, between the parents, the daughter and the third son, and the neighbor girl he wants to marry. Half low-key, yet intense, theatrical melodrama, half outdoor adventure film, Wellman shot the whole thing in pseudo black and white: it's in color, but only a few key items are not black or white. It's like Day Of Wrath meets Grizzly Adams. An odd film, and worth a second viewing.

11. A Star Is Born - The version with Judy Garland and James Mason isn't as good as the one with Fredric March and Janet Gaynor, but it's still pretty good. Mason's the celebrity actor with a drinking problem that only becomes worse when the young wannabe he discovers and marries becomes more successful than him. Compared to the earlier version, directed by William Wellman, this George Cukor film is rather boated, especially by the addition of some mediocre Judy Garland songs (the songs are mediocre, not Judy, naturally. She's as great as ever.)

10. Samurai I: Musashi Myamoto - The kind of samurai film Akira Kurosawa spent much of his career deflating, this first part of a biopic trilogy of Japan's greatest samurai hero is full of colorful scenery and costumes, features a great performance by the always great April Fool Toshiro Mifune and was directed by Hroshi Inagaki in a reverential, if uninspiring style. It's going to be on TV in a day or two, I'm a-gonna watch it again and see if it's improved any in the decade or so since I last saw it.

9. The Far Country - One of the several dark Westerns directed by Anthony Mann starring James Stewart. Stewart plays a loner driving cattle across Alaska who becomes embroiled, very much against his will, in a dispute between a gang of criminals and the small town they control through violence and fear. This is similar to the character Stewart plays in the other Mann films: anti the typical Western hero, whose sense of duty and honor obliges him to protect the innocent. Instead, Stewart is a selfish jerk, only concerned with his own interests and avoiding conflict not for some non-violent ideal (as Stewart did in Destry Rides Again) but out of pure apathy for the public good. Being a Western, of course, this anti-hero eventually comes to protect civilization, but it's a long struggle to get him there. The genre conventions are preserved, but the sense of post-war alienation is the dominant emotion, not the visceral excitement of the triumph of imperialism.

8. The Barefoot Contessa - Beautiful counterpart to Joseph L. Mankiewicz's masterpiece All About Eve. Where that film was all cattiness and ambition in the world of Broadway actors, writers and directors, this film is wistful nostalgia and innocence corrupted by Hollywood, romanticism destroyed by cynicism. Humphrey Bogart gives one of his better performances as a run-down director who discovers Ava Gardner in Spain and watches her rise to stardom and tragic collapse as a result of love gone horribly wrong.

7. Dial M For Murder - Ray Milland plots to kill his wife, Grace Kelly, but has to improvise when she manages to fight off and kill the man he hired to murder her in this elegant little suspense film from Alfred Hitchcock. This is Hitchcock in his light, entertaining mode, despite, you know, the murder and everything. Milland is terrific as the scheming husband, sure of his own brilliance and Kelly's as beautiful as ever. Made to be seen in 3D, I've only ever seen it on TV. I understand it's much better with the silly glasses.

6. Sabrina - Speaking of charming, this is perhaps the great misanthrope Billy Wilder's most ingratiating film, about a young girl, the daughter of the chauffeur, who loves the playboy son of her father's employer. When she returns home from Paris she's turned from a cute little wallflower into Audrey freakin' Hepburn. The flighty son falls for her, as does his strictly business older brother, played by Humphrey Bogart at his fussiest. Sweet and romantic, and more than a little silly, I can't imagine why anyone would ever want to remake it.

5. La Strada - The great Giulietta Masina stars in this Federico Fellini film about a young woman sold off by her family to be the wife of a traveling strongman, played by a dubbed-into-Italian Anthony Quinn. Quinn's a brute who mistreats the poor girl at every opportunity. On their travels, they meet Richard Basehart, another circus performer, who treats the poor girl well enough to confuse her by explaining that Quinn, despite his boorishness, actually loves her. Masina is great, but the film feels to me like a warm up for Nights Of Cabiria (#3, 1957), in which she plays a similarly put upon character but with a more knowing, more existentially uplifting and moving impact.

4. On The Waterfront - A great example for the politics vs. art debate is this Elia Kazan film about longshoremen with a corrupt union in New York (or is it New Jersey?). Karl Malden plays the local priest who's trying to get the workers to organize and inform on their mob boss union leaders so the government can lock them up. Marlon Brando plays an ex-prize fighter (Coulda been a contender) and brother of the boss' right-hand man (Rod Steiger), who after falling for the ridiculously hot Eva Marie Saint starts to become morally confused and decides to talk to the feds. All of this is fine and moral, but for the fact that Elia Kazan named names to the House Un-American Activities Commision and this film was the defense of his actions. Like most Kazan films, the visual style is decent if unremarkable while the acting is phenomenal. Brando gives perhaps the finest performance by the greatest actor of his generation, and the other leads are at the top of their game as well. It's a film I've seen maybe a dozen times, but I can't bring myself to love it because of that rat Kazan.

3. Sansho The Baliff - Kenji Mizoguchi is perhaps the greatest filmmaker whose films remain largely unavailable on DVD (a situation which is slowly, finally, being remedied). I saw this years ago on video and thought it was one of the most depressing movies I'd ever seen. A few months later, I watched it in class and though it was one of the greatest movies I'd ever seen. Earlier this year, a traveling retrospective of Mizoguchi films played at Seattle's Northwest Film Forum, and I got to see it a third time. While it's not one of My Top 20 Movies, and right now only my third favorite Mizoguchi (after Ugetsu and The Story Of Late Chrysanthemums), it's still a phenomenally great and powerful film, and, yes, one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen. A family of rich folks (mother and two kids) are on the way to their father's new post in the country, when they're kidnapped by slave traders. The mom is sold into a brothel and the two kids are trucked off to a slave labor camp, where they grow up battered and terrorized. A decade or so later they attempt to make their escape and reunite with their mother. Horrible things happen, hopes are dashed and yet humanity struggles on and many other great humanist themes. Like all Mizoguchi films, it's shot in a beautiful black and white with long-take, long-shot tracking and crane shots that emphasize the reality of the hellish space the film depicts while simultaneously provoking a profound sense of aesthetic satisfaction. Criterion's releasing it in a few months, I've already got my copy pre-ordered.

2. Rear Window - One of the greatest, and most famous, of all Alfred Hitchcock films is this essay on voyeurism in which James Stewart plays a wheelchair-bound photographer who passes his convalescence watching his neighbors through their open windows. Not even the quite nubile Grace Kelly can manage to draw his attention away from the little dramas he invents for the people across the courtyard. Of course, this being Hitchcock, Stewart thinks he sees Raymond Burr kill his wife, and enlists Kelly and his nurse, Thelma Ritter, to help solve the mystery. As perverse as any Hitchcock film and one of the greatest metaphors for cinema ever filmed. It's also a relentlessly entertaining suspense film. Few directors were as able to be both profound and popular at the same time as Hitchcock. Ford, Scorsese, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Renoir, Welles, Keaton, Chaplin, Hawks. . . .

1. The Seven Samurai - The greatest film ever made. The story is simple enough: poor farmers learn they're going to be attacked by bandits, so they hire a group of samurai to defend them. Defenses are prepared, the bandits attack and life eventually goes on. Along the way, the whole realm of human emotion and community experience is chronicled, satirized, critiqued, and explored, with Kurosawa at the peak of his artistic powers. The film is huge, and not just in its running time (I find the film's three and a half hours fly by faster than most 90 minute films). From that simple premise ideologies of book-length complexity grow through masterful, original, sometimes breathtaking, though often surprisingly subtle, technique. Dozens of characters are created and brought to life by some of the greatest actors of mid-century Japan, from stars Toshiro Mifune and Takeshi Shimura to minor character actors like Bokuzen Hidari and Seiji Miyaguchi.



It seems to be popular among the trendy critics of today to either dismiss or ignore Kurosawa in favor of his not-quite-contemporaries Mizoguchi and Ozu (as if there were a quota on how many Japanese directors are allowed into the Pantheon. Some of this criticism is an extension of the racist and xenophobic charges against him on both sides of the Pacific in decades past: that he was too Western and not "Japanese" enough. But largely the criticism now seems to be that he's too popular, too simplistic and too epic compared to the intricate long takes of Mizoguchi and the simple family dramas and character studies of Ozu. Even the greatest critics occasionally fall victim to this misapprehension: my favorite film critic, Jonathon Rosenbaum, for example, includes only two Kurosawa films in his Top 1000 List (Ikiru and Rhapsody In August). Not surprisingly, Kurosawa's being treated by the trendy today in the same way his idol (and most comparable director) John Ford was treated by critics before the auterists came along and showed how stupid everyone was being. Ford is now revered by critics good and bad, and I love his work as well. But I'd still take Kurosawa if I had to choose between them. There's nothing Ford has that Kurosawa doesn't.


Some good Unseen Films this year, but the first is the one I want to see most. I'm just barely getting into Roberto Rossellini, there's a whole lot I need to see.

Voyage In Italy
Magnificent Obsession
Touchez Pas Au Grisbi
Broken Lance
French Cancan
Seven Brides For Seven Brothers
White Christmas
Godzilla
Brigadoon
Creature From The Black Lagoon
Animal Farm
The High And The Mighty
Suddenly
Wuthering Heights
Chikamatsu Monogatari
Johnny Guitar
Salt Of The Earth
Silver Lode
Senso
River Of No Return
Executive Suite
Adventures Of Hajji Baba

Siskel, Ebert, Protestants

This clip has been making its way through a series of tubes for the last several days, but if you haven't seen it yet, do so. Courtesy of Sergio Leone And The Infield-Fly Rule.

Back In Tweed

Been a busy few weeks around here at The End Of Cinema HQ. I got flattened with a cold for a week, went on vacation for ten days and have been watching as much baseball as possible during opening week (melt damn snow!). I have managed to watch a few movies, but not too many (I still haven't made it to Grindhouse, one of my most anticipated movies of the year). I anticipate getting back in the swing of things over the next couple of days, with a Movie Roundup and the next installment of the Movies Of The Year countdown, 1954. Can anyone guess what #1 from that year will be?


I've also been working on making The End Of Cinema a theatrical experience, trying to program an experimental repertory series at my theatre. We're currently in negotiations with the execs at corporate headquarters, but it looks like we're going to get the chance to try and make it work. Repertory cinema has died a slow death over the last 15 years, as the cost of prints, the plague of corporate multiplexes and fear of advanced technology (DVD and cable) have made suits wary of the effort required to try to market a rep series effectively, even in a film-crazy urban market like Seattle. But I and my coworkers think we can make it work at our theatre, and it looks like we'll get the chance (knock wood).

We proposed an initial calendar of nine films, playing one day a week for nine weeks. Each film represents a decade of film history, from the 20s through the present:

1. Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans
2. Duck Soup
3. Casablanca
4. The Searchers
5. Pierrot Le Fou
6. Taxi Driver
7. Do The Right Thing
8. Miller's Crossing
9. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Wish us luck. Further updates to follow if and when The End draws near.

Movie Roundup: Bergman Hates Kittens Edition

Trying not to fall behind again, here's the last few movies I've watched.


300 - Going in I figured it would either be really great or really terrible, but definitely nothing in between. I was sort of right: it's both really great and really terrible. Over the top across the board, which works great for the action scenes and the general Spartan speechifying. But there's way too much of the Queen's actions on the homefront, trying to rouse the Spartan Council to war despite the evil presence of Jimmy McNulty. Any attempt to look at the film as a political statement is bound to end in fascism or worse. Let's be kind and just call it politically irresponsible. Several images though, lifted straight from Frank Miller's graphic novel, I understand, are breathtaking. Gerard Butler, as the King Leonidas is surprisingly good in a role that basically requires him to cause mayhem, shout and look at the sun. Rodrigo Santoro is simultaneously awesome and hilarious as Xerxes. And, hey, Faramir's there too!

Abraham Lincoln - Well, that didn't really help. I was trying to erase thoughts of DW Griffith's paean to the KKK by watching this, which I'd heard some good things about. It's a fairly conventional biopic, and Griffith pretty much entirely avoids the subject of slavery entirely: the cause of the War comes down to Walter Huston repeatedly glancing skyward and in a stentorian tone announcing that "The Union must be preserved!"

Visually, it's obviously an early sound film. The sound quality was really terrible and the camera hardly ever moves (early sound cameras were to big to float around in the ways they did in the late silent era). Griffith manages to condense Lincoln's entire life to an hour and a half, mainly by structuring the film as a collection of short scenes connected by fades. Lincoln rarely has anything more to say on an issue than a sound bite or a short folksy anecdote. Lincoln's most famous speeches are elided together or eliminated altogether: the "House Divided" line is inserted into the Lincoln-Douglas debates (which consist of, IIRC, 6 total lines), "Malice toward none and charity toward all" from the second inaugural is moved to some remarks before Our American Cousin starts (along with the final lines of the Gettysburg address). The War is nothing but crushing defeats, until suddenly the North wins.

It's better than BOAN in that its not actively evil, and there are some very nice framings. But Griffith's silent work was all movement and kineticism, both in camera and in editing. This film just kind of sits there.

Le Procès de Jeanne D'Arc - Robert Bresson's film of the trial of Joan Of Arc is a fascinating contrast to Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion Of Joan Of Arc because passion is exactly the thing that Bresson attempts to remove from all his films: the kind of actorly emoting that tells the audience how to feel that is so powerful in the close ups of Maria Falconetti's performance in Dreyer's film is entirely absent from Bresson's. Bresson uses the actual transcripts of Joan's actual trial to tell a short story (only 68 minutes) that is exactly what the title proclaims it to be and nothing else. Florence Delay (perhaps the cutest Joan yet, maybe too cute) says her lines with the total lack of emotion Bresson demanded from his non-actors, unlike the intense performances Flaconetti and Milla Jovovich (in Luc Besson's underrated The Messenger) have given in the role. not as powerful as the other Besson's I've seen, but I think that's largely a matter of the familiarity with the subject matter and the literalness of the film. Au Hasard Balthazar and Diary Of A Country Priest and even Pickpocket are open-ended narratives that leave the question of if the story is an allegory and if so, about what, up to the viewer. In Le Procès, the mystery is in the historical events, less so the film. The #5 film of 1962.

The Slow Century - Rock documentary about the band Pavement that's fairly conventional as these things go. You don't really learn anything about the band that you couldn't learn listening to the albums and reading their Wikipedia entry. the film is largely valuable for an extensive collection of archival footage of the band's performances, especially their early, chaotically messy shows. The #22 film of 2002.

The Missouri Breaks - Weird Western directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde, The Left-Handed Gun) and starring Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid and Harry Dean Stanton. Nicholson, Quaid and Stanton are a gang of horse thieves in Montana and Brando's the crazy guy who gets hired to hunt them down and kill them. The film never seems to decide if it wants to be serious (Stanton, various speeches about the morality of capital punishment) or comic (Brando's overthetop wackiness, the jaunty score) or something in-between (Nicholson and Quaid). The result is a disjointed mess of a film that never feels right. It's more jarring than interesting. The #11 film of 1976.

I Know Where I'm Going! - Another low-key romantic masterpiece by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Wendy Hiller plays a determined golddigger who gets stuck by a storm an island away from her wedding in the islands off the Western coast of Scotland. There she meets Roger Livesey, a naval officer on leave and resident of her destination island. Thanks to some traditional Scottish culture, a bit of superstition, some magic an uncooperative eagle and a very bad boat trip, they, of course, fall in love. Not as successful as the very similar A Canterbury Tale at building a romantic, quasi-mystical epiphany out f the mundane details of country life, but still a terrific film.

I think I've seen all the most important Powell and Pressburger films now. They're all oustanding, but here's my ranking:

1. The Red Shoes
2. Black Narcissus
3. A Matter Of Life And Death (Stairway To Heaven)
4. A Canterbury Tale
5. The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp
6. The Thief Of Baghdad
7. The 49th Parallel
8. I Know Where I'm Going!
9. Tales Of Hoffman

Movie Roundup: Waiting For The End Edition

Since I've got a massive backlog, here's a quick roundup the last 60 films I've watched. If you want to know more about any of them, please ask in the comments. I've just got to get through this list:

Curse Of The Golden Flower - Not as good as the last couple Zhang Yimou period pictures. It out-ornates even Marie Antoinette. Great performances from Gong Li and Chow Yun-fat, though Chow's still missing his charm. Not as much action as Hero or House Of Flying Daggers, but the second most Shakespearean film of 2006, after The Departed.

Tea And Sympathy - Vincente Minelli drama about a young man who may or may not be gay and the older woman he may or may not love (played by Deborah Kerr). Brightly Technicolored complex swirl of subtexts, fascinating. The #7 film of 1956.

Rancho Notorious - Tremendously fun revenge Western directed by Fritz Lang. Marlene Dietrich stars as the proprietress of the eponymous hideout. Arthur Kennedy's the weak link as the protagonist out to kill the men who murdered his fiance during a holdup.

The Mortal Storm - Interesting 1940 anti-Nazi film by Frank Borzage that manages to run it's entire length without ever mentioning that the people the Nazis are killing are Jewish. Great cast including James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan and Robert Stack.

Death Takes A Holiday - The remake, Meet Joe Black is a guilty pleasure of mine. This, the original, directed by Mitchell Leisen, stars Fredric March, who isn't half the actor Brad Pitt is. Think about that.

The Last Hurrah - 1958 John Ford film starring Spencer Tracy as an old school politician on his way out as the world changes. Basically a low-key American version of The Leopard. There's a tracking shot towards the end that's one of Ford's best. The #7 film of 1958.

The Barefoot Contessa - Dreamy Joseph L. Mankiewicz film that's the perfect Technicolor counterpart to his All About Eve. Ava Gardner plays a young dancer who gets cast in a Hollywood movie, becomes rich and famous, marries a Count and has everything fall apart. Also stars Humphrey Bogart ("What's the Spanish word for 'Cinderella'?") and Edmund O'Brien.

6ixtynin9 - Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Tarantino-esque comedy-thriller about an unemployed girl who has a fortune fall into her lap and her attempts to keep it from the hoodlums who keep killing each other in her apartment while trying to retrieve it. A lot of fun, but never as sublime as his Last Life In The Universe. The #12 film of 1999.

Children Of Men - Entertaining, but flawed dystopian action film by Alfonso Cuarón. In the not too distant future, the human race can't reproduce which causes repressive anti-immigrant hysteria in England as the last bastion of civilization on Earth. Clive Owen has to escort a miraculously pregnant young woman out of the country. The art direction is clever and inventive, and the film is already famous for its impressive long tracking shots. The technical virtuosity combined with the political allegory establishes a serious mood that's undermined by the humor of the mise-en-scène and the inherent silliness of the film's central remise. The incongruity leaves the film neither fish nor fowl, but platypus. The #5 film of 2006.

Platform - Director Jia Zhangke's semi-autobiographical film about a traveling musical comedy troupe in post-Cultural Revolution China. Wistful, nostalgic and more than a little confusing at times (it can be hard to keep all the characters straight on first viewing) the film's at heart a generational coming of age story along the lines of American Graffiti or Dazed And Confused. The #5 film of 2000.

Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler - Four hour Fritz Lang silent that was the first in his trilogy of films about criminal mastermind psychologist Mabuse. It's fun to see Lang inventing both film noir and the crime thriller in general bit by bit as he goes along, the film is archetypal. But it's hampered by what has to be one of the dumbest detectives in film history.

13 Ghosts - Low-budget British horror film from 1960 directed by William Castle. Like seemingly all horror films, the lower the budget, the more effective it is. A very creepy haunted house movie with some mediocre acting, cheap special effects and some rather confusing, if silly, plot twists at the end. The #12 film of 1960.

Last Year At Marienbad - Alain Resnais's masterpiece about a pair of lovers who may or may not have met one year before at the same palatial estate/luxury hotel. One of the most beautiful black and white films ever made, filled with long tracking shots through the house and its surrounding grounds. The plot, such at it is, is a puzzle that may or may not have a solution. Unlike the tick movies of the last decade, however, it's a film that grows and deepens with every viewing. A must see for any film fan. The #3 film of 1961.

The Proposition - Bleak, Peckinpaugh-esque Australian Western written by Singer/songwriter Nick Cave. Some nice landscape photography, particularly the sunsets. Fine performances by Ray Winstone and Guy Pearce, but doesn't really add anything new to the genre, aside from the accents. The #18 film of 2005.

Elena And Her Men - Charming Jean Renoir romantic comedy with Ingrid Bergman as a Polish princess with a variety of suitors. Effortlessly fun and enjoyable, the Technicolor costumes create a mood of vibrant buoyancy. The #5 film of 1956.

The Long Goodbye - Another in a string of Robert Altman masterpieces from the early 70s (along with MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville). Elliot Gould turns Raymond Chandler's detective Philip Marlowe on his ear in a post-hippie adaptation of the author's hard-boiled crime novel. With pitcher Jim Bouton as Marlowe's murdered friend and Sterling Hayden as the drunken great author who may be a suspect. The #4 film of 1973.

Portrait Of Jennie - Joseph Cotton stars as a starving artist who meets a girl (Jennifer Jones) in the park who inspires him to paint some salable pictures. He becomes rather confused as each time he meets her, she appears much older than before, but he heedlessly falls in love with her anyway. The film, directed by William Dieterle, won a special effects Oscar thanks to some cool-looking dissolves as the film frame gradually gains the texture and grain of a painting on canvas.

Goodbye South, Goodbye - Hou Hsiao-hsien's gangster film is about as far away from the pyrotechnics of Scarface as you can get. The set up is familiar enough: veteran gangster is trying to go straight but the younger gangster he's got to look out for keeps screwing things up for the both of them. You may remember that from such films as Mean Streets and Wong Kar-wai's As Tears Go By. But the film's told in Hou's unique style: long deep focus shots with multiple planes of character and movement always keeping things interesting. Only in a Hou movie can you see a five minute-take and not realize there's a character at the bottom of the screen until the fourth minute. The #10 film of 1996.

Hamlet - Michael Almereyda's version, with Ethan Hawke as the melancholy Prince, Julia Stiles as Ophelia, Bill Murray as Polonius and Geoffrey Wright, Kyle McLachlan, Liev Schreiber, Steve Zahn and Sam Shepard along for the ride. The play's recent in the world of a contemporary corperation, with Hamlet as a video artist. Self-consciously artsy, it's the kind of adaptation people who call things "pretentious" would hate. The actors are fine, but the only thing that stands out is the vaguely silly mise-en-scène. The #11 film of 2000.

Hell In The Pacific - A can't recommend this forgotten masterpiece highly enough. Sometime in World War 2, two soldiers are stranded on a deserted island: one American and one Japanese. The American is Lee Marvin and the Japanese is Toshiro Mifune. neither speaks the others language, and Mifune's dialogue is not subtitled. At first the two are antagonistic: Marvin trying to steal the water Mifune's gathered, trying to upset all the machines Mifune's built, generally trying to kill each other. Eventually, they decide to work together to build a raft and escape. The direction, by John Boorman and the cinematography by Conrad Hall are Malickian. The #5 film of 1968.

The Women - The Desperate Housewives of 1939. Gossip and drama in the lives of rich, catty women. It's got a great all-female cast though: Norma Shearer, Joan Fontaine, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and Paulette Goddard. Ably directed by George Cukor.

Curse Of The Demon - Mediocre horror film in which Dana Andrews is called in to find out whether or not a demon has been conjured to murder people, who conjured it, and why. Director Jacques Tourneur made some great low-budget horror films in the 40s, but this is more The Leopard Man than Cat People or I Walked With A Zombie. The #13 film of 1957.

Sylvia Scarlett - Cross-dressing adventure comedy with Katherine Hepburn as the daughter of a embezzler on the lam. She disguises herself as a boy and falls in love with Cary Grant, a con artist they meet along the way. The three of them manage their escape, pull some cons start a variety show and meet an annoying artist. The film was a tremendous flop, Hepburn was labeled "box office poison" and it was years before she regained her stature. Directed by George Cukor.

Taste Of Cherry - The first Abbas Kiarostami film (and the film Iranian film) I've seen, and it's mesmerizing. A middle-aged man is thinking about killing himself, so he drives around the outskirts of tehran looking for someone to come to a specific place the next morning (a hole he's dug in the side of a hill) and help him out if he's alive and bury him if he's not. He first tries a soldier, who runs away in fear, then a religious student who tries to talk him out of it and finally an old taxidermist who agrees but only to help his sick child. The ending is one of the more astounding things in film history. The film is shot almost entirely from the interior of the car, alternating shots of driver and passenger. Apparently the dialogue is largely improvised, with Kiarostami playing the opposite part of whichever actor was being filmed at the time. The #5 film of 1997.

The Criminal Code - Minor Howard Hawks film about a DA (Walter Huston) who gets a kid convicted for murder then becomes the warden of his prison. He takes a liking to the kid and makes him his valet. The kid falls in love with Huston's daughter and witnesses a murder in prison. He's got to choose whether or not to rat out the killer. The direction is fine and Huston's always great, but the rest of the cast (aside from Boris Karloff) is pretty mediocre, and the film lacks the fierce energy Hawks would bring to Scarface a year later.

The Banquet - A loose Chinese adaptation of Hamlet, starring Zhang Ziyias the Queen and Daniel Wu as the upset son. Zhang isn't Wu's mother, which eases some of the incestual tension of the play, and makes the film more f a tragic romance between the two. All the principals and events are there from the play, in slightly altered form, but the tone of the thing is different. Whereas the play is a brilliant mixture of comedy and tragedy, the film is dark and moody to the point of hysteria. The sets and costumes are elaborate, but the direction and cinematography are rather pedestrian. The #11 film of 2006.

A Canterbury Tale - I don't know how it is that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were able to do it: take the simplest stories an wring the profoundest emotional experiences out of them. During World War 2, an American soldier on leave, a British officer and a young girl find themselves in a small village outside Canterbury. There's an odd criminal on the loose: some weirdo likes to pour tar in girls' hair late at night. The three set out to capture the crook and along the way learn the joys of small-town life, and eventually, the wonder of life in general. No filmmakers have ever glided more elegantly from the mundane to the transcendent. The Archers were magicians.

Last Of The Mohicans - I was surprised at how closely Michael Mann's version followed this 1936 adaptation starring Randolph Scott and directed by George B. Seitz, who went on to direct many an Andy Hardy film. It's a terrific action film, but never approaches the poetry of Mann's version. Some of the dialogue I'd always credited to 80s action movie tropes in Mann's film are actually in this one ("Someday you and I are going to have a serious disagreement.")

The Man In The Iron Mask - I've never yet read a Dumas adaptation I liked, and even the great James Whale couldn't manage it in this 1939 film, though it's easily the best of them. Louis XIV is an evil tyrant with a twin brother. The famous four musketeers maneuver things such that the evil twin is replaced by the good one. I've read a fair amount of Dumas (The several Musketeers books and The Count Of Monte Cristo) and they are cinematically written but have yet to be well-adapted. We need a four hour Three Musketeers directed by Quentin Tarantino or something.

Bill Of Divorcement - Well-made melodrama with John Barrymore as a patriarch returning home suddenly after 15 years in an insane asylum to find his wife has divorced him and his daughter's about to get married. Katherine Hepburn plays the daughter, who increasingly becomes afraid that she'll go nutso as well. George Cukor directs, but the film doesn't quite escape from its theatrical roots.

Dragnet - Jack Webb's film adaptation of his popular and ground-breaking police procedural TV series. Essentially just a 90 minute episode of said show, the only thing it really added was color, which I guess was a bigger deal then than it is now (especially since I've only ever seen the TV show in color). As an early attempt at a color noir, it fails. But then noir and the procedural genre only have a tangential relation. The #14 film of 1954.

Faust - FW Muranau's adaptation of the timeless story has a delirious mise-en-scène and some fine campy scenery chewing from Emil Jannings as Mephisto, but the plot doesn't entirely make sense (the end is literally a deus ex machina) and the lead actress, while pretty, is fairly poor. It's not as great as the best Murnau films (certainly not Sunrise) but is still pretty terrific.

This Could Be The Night - Chalk my viewing of this mediocrity to my, understandable I think, infatuation with Jean Simmons. She plays a nice, college educated girl who gets a job as a secretary at a low-class night club. She's charming to most of the regulars and staff, but Anthony Franciosa doesn't like her, until, of course, he loves her. Directed by the great hit and miss director Robert Wise. The #14 film of 1957.

Arrowsmith - Mediocre early John Ford biopic about a doctor trying to cure bubonic plague. He neglects his unfortunate wife for his work, and so, of course, she ends up dying from plague. Stars Ronald Coleman and Helen Hayes and based on a Sinclair Lewis novel. Ford's always great, but this isn't exactly the top of his game.

Hangmen Also Die - Surprisingly terrific war film by Fritz Lang. The Nazi ruler of Czechoslovakia is murdered and the Nazi establishment tries to solve the crime. The assassin escapes to the home of a local professor (and his hot young daughter). Despite random arrests and murders, the whole Czech populace unites to protect the assassin. A moving and entirely effective war film with a co-story credit for Bertolt Brecht. the cast includes an unrecognizable Walter Brennan, I literally did a double take when I realized it was him.

The Life Of Oharu - Man it must have sucked to be a woman in medieval Japan. In Kenji Mizoguchi's classic film, everything that can go wrong for poor Oharu actually does. She sleeps with Toshiro Mifune, who's below her class and gets her family kicked out of Kyoto, she gets a decent life as the second wife of a nobleman, but so angers the first one that she gets thrown out, she marries a decent merchant out of love but he dies too young, eventually she ends up an old prostitute, mocked by monks. the film would have been more moving if it wasn't so schematic. Oharu isn't a woman or a character, she's a type, a political statement. Mizoguchi would make better indictments of the fate of women.

Lord Love A Duck - A truly weird high school film with Roddy McDowell as a genius who makes it his mission to fulfill every wish the ridiculously hot Tuesday Weld (the new girl in school) happens to have. Dark and satirical, the film parodies teen movies in general, along with the beach film genre, the Disney Merlin Jones series, and anything and everything serious. I don't know if it's brilliant, but it's unlike anything I've ever seen. The #15 film of 1966.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? - I've seen this referred to as Sidney Pollack's best film and a great film in it's own right, but I ain't buying it. I liked it a lot until the ending, which seemed forced and unmotivated and depressing for the sake of seeming deep and serious. Give me Out Of Africa any day. Anyway, the story is that jane Fonda and red Buttons and Bonnie Bedelia and Bruce Dern are all in one of those endless dance marathons of the Depression. They're poor and desperate and exploited for the entertainment of others, but that's show business. The #6 film of 1969.

The Killer Is Loose - Joseph Cotton stars in this procedural about a cop who captures a bank robber and gets him placed behind bars. When the psychotic crook escapes, he goes after Cotton and his wife. A taut, no nonesense thriller that doesn't resonate much beyond basic suspense. Directed by Budd Boetticher, and reportedly one of his lesser films. The #12 film of 1956.

El Dorado - I'd occasionally heard that this Howard Hawks film was superior to his film it is a remake of, Rio Bravo, but I never believed it. But, honestly, now that I've seen it. I think it might be. Te premise is the same: John Wayne, an old man, a drunk and a young kid have to hold off a gang of outlaws until the marshall shows up to take away a killer. This version trades Robert Mitchum for Dean Martin and James Caan for Ricky Nelson, a acting improvement in both cases. It also adds some interesting backstory and vulnerablizes the heroes. For example, Wayne, instead of the superpowered John T. Chance of the first film is a flawed man who accidentally kills someone in the first 15 minutes of the film and isn't necessarily always on the side of the law. Both films are great, but this may very well be better. The #6 film of 1966.

On Dangerous Ground - Odd little Nicholas Ray noir with Robert Ryan as a cop so close to the borderline of police brutality that he gets sent upstate to help solve a murder in a small town. Ward Bond plays the father of the murder victim, anxious to shoot the killer, but Ryan's heart warms when they track the killer to Ida Lupino's house, a pretty blind girl who takes care of her disturbed brother, the murderer. Simple and moving.

The Spiral Staircase - Horror noir about a serial killer on the loose who prays on invalid young women. Directed by Robert Siodmak with some nice POV shots and a spooky mise-en-scène that elevates the rather simple story and pedestrian acting by Dorothy McGuire, George Brent and Ethel Barrymore.

Tears Of The Black Tiger - A Guy Maddin version of a Sergio Leone story, in Thailand is director Wisit Sasanatieng's action film. A frenetic, melodramatic score, some over the top violence and lushly colored visuals amke for a highly entertaining culture and genre mashup. The #9 film of 2000.

Lost Horizon - A group of Brits are kidnapped and crash-landed in the mysterious land of Shangri-la, where they experience a paradise that literally too good to be believed. Director Frank Capra's idealism infuses the film, but the cast led by Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt and Edward Everett Horton isn't quite up to the task. An odd misfire of a film, a complete version doesn't appear to exist, there's a long, slow-moving middle section and some 1930s nudity. And the ending doesn't really work.

Hamlet - The 1948 version by Laurence Olivier, and I'm not a fine. It's well-directed, with a noirish mise-en-scène that's entirely appropriate to the material and some elegant tracking shots between scenes that establish the space of Elsinore Castle quite nicely. But I have two major problems with the film. First, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are almost entirely eliminated, along with my favorite speech from the play ("I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams."). Second, and most importantly, the acting is the worst kind of Shakespeare there is: recitation, not performance. This was a problem in Olivier's Henry V as well, a film about passion that was totally lacking in passion. Here, Olivier manages to play a line like "Now could I drink hot blood!" as if he had a hankering for a nice cup of tea. Give me Mel Gibson and Franco Zefferelli any day.

Street Of Shame - A more realistic Mizoguchi feminist film, this time set in the present as anti-prostitution laws are being debated by the Japanese government (supposedly this film helped get those laws passed). The film centers on a single brothel and the various trials the girls that work there are put through. Not as poetic as Hou's Flowers Of Shanghai, made 45 years later, but more effective as a political statement, not that the two are not interrelated effects. The #6 film of 1956.

Hype! - Documentary on the Seattle music scene of the 1980s and early 90s. Some interesting interviews with now unknown members of that scene, but there's little that's insightful to someone who grew up during the grunge explosion. There's the familiar Northwest paradox of everyone trying to be rich and famous while disdaining all things rich and famous as sellouts or lame or whatever. Also odd that the film manages to go one for 75 minutes before it ever mentions drugs, the prime mover that corrupted and eventually destroyed the whole thing. A fine record and worth watching. The #26 film of 1996.

A Star Is Born - This, the original 1937 version of the oft-remade story directed by William Wellman I liked a lot better than the more famous remake starring Judy Garland and James Mason and directed by George Cukor. This time, Janet Gaynor (Sunrise) plays the young girl who makes it big in Hollywood as her big star husband descends into drink and obscurity. There's no way I'd ever choose the cedarian Fredric March over James Mason, one of my favorite lesser stars, (and likewise Wellman over the great Cukor) but this film works a whole lot better with Gaynor and a lack of musical numbers. It's a great story and hard to do wrong (though i suspect the Barbara Streisand version manages it). The two-strip Technicolor process gives a quite unusual look to the film that's worth watching just to see.

Sisters Of Gion - My favorite of the Mizoguchi anti-prostitution film, this time he boils the story down to two "sisters" who share a house and a struggle for clients. One gets screwed over by a man she thinks loves her and the other sees her manipulative schemes fail and create misery for everyone, but most especially herself. It's also got a fair amount of humor, something which Mizoguchi's other films aren't especially successful at.

Story Of The Last Chrysanthemums - I managed to see this and A Star Is Born in the same day, which was rather serendipitous, as both films are about the difficulty and costs of an acting career. This is easily my favorite of the Mizoguchi films that played here recently that I'd yet to see, and not just because there wasn't a prostitute in sight. It's less schematic and obviously political than the others, but just as fundamentally humanist. It's about a young kabuki actor who sucks but no one will tell him because his father is famous and successful. He falls in love with his nephews servant, who has the nerve to tell him he isn't very good, and the two of them run off to hone his acting kills on the road. You can imagine the course of the melodrama from there, but it's nonetheless tremendously moving and effective.

Monsieur Verdoux - A terrific late Chaplin film about a serial killer just trying to support his family in the years before the Depression. He charms old ladies, marries them and then inherits their money after murdering them. Totally lacking in the sentimentality that colors far too many of Chaplin's films, it also avoids the nostalgia of the otherwise great Limelight or the political aggressiveness of The Great Dictator. Chaplin's too old for the best of his physical comedy, but the movie still manages some moments of hilarity, especially in his interactions with Martha Raye as his most obnoxious wife.

Speedy - On the basis of this, my first Harold Lloyd film, I'd say there's no way his in the class of Keaton or Chaplin as silent film comedians go. A collection of set-pieces, on a couple actually work: Lloyd as a terrible cab driver who ends up scaring the hell out of Babe Ruth, Lloyd and his girl in Coney Island in a sequence that has a lot in common with the amusement park sequence in Sunrise, except the Murnau is sublime while the Lloyd is mediocre, and the final race against the clock as Lloyd high-speed drives a horse-drawn train all the way across New York.

Cleo From 5 To 7 - Agnes Varda's chronicle of two hours in the life of a singer who things she might have cancer. The film starts off has a lot of fun as the singer and her old friend go hat shopping and ride around town in a cab, turns a little weird as she fights with her songwriters (one of whom is played by the great film composer Michel Legrand), and picks up again as she meets a soldier in a park. It's the only Varda film I've seen thus far, though I'm a huge fan of two of her husband's movies: The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and The Young Girls Of Rochefort, The #6 film of 1961.

Pandora's Box - GW Pabst's famous silent film about a sexy girl and the havoc she wreaks on a decent family. She marries the father and drives him to kill himself on their wedding night. The son falls for her and helps her to escape in a scene reminiscent of a Bob Dylan song. The daughter's not too subtly gay and in love with the girl as well: all three of them, along with the girl's father and a variety show producer end up in a gambling den where they not so slowly go throw away all their money. Eventually they end up destitute and victims of a serial killer. Louise brooks is radiant as the heroine, Lulu, and her haircut was the model for Anna Karina's in many a Godard film.

The Circus - Classic Chaplin silent has the Tramp join a circus. Closer to his manic shorts than his more ambitious features like City Lights or The Gold Rush, it also manages to avoid the sentimentality that drives me crazy in those otherwise great movies. I'll take the ending of the Circus over City Lights any day, but that's just the kind of guy I am.

Objective: Burma! - A very fine Raoul Walsh war film with Errol Flynn as the leader of a group of American paratoopers trapped behind enemy lies after a successful attack on a radar station in World War 2. Made in the midst of the war, it's an obvious propaganda piece, not just in the opening and closing titles, but also in the generic demonization of the Japanese enemy. A Pacific theatre version of William Wellman's Battleground, or an inland Sands Of iwo Jima, it works to set the archetype of the WW2 movie that so many folks have been demolishing for the last 60 years.

The Leopard - Luchino Visconti's elegiac story of Sicily during the wars of reunification in the 1860s. Burt lancaster plays the Prince Of Salina who sees his old order collapsing in the wake of political turmoil and does what he can to ensure his family's success in the post-Garibaldi world. Alain Delon plays his nephew, who's marriage he arranges to the daughter of a vulgar, corrupt local politician for whom he foresees great wealth and power. He doesn't hurt that the daughter's played by the ridiculously beautiful Claudia Cardinale. If the scenery reminds you of The Godfather series (especially the Sicilian parts) that's no coincidence. The #8 film of 1963.