The Instant Watch Film Society IV: The Quest for Peace

Thomamelas

As I was was putting together this thread, I realized how much it's grown since it's first incarnation. It has allowed me to view some films that I would have overlooked. Some films that I would simply not have had a chance to watch and they were films that very much deserved to be watched. So I want to start off by thanking each and everyone of the presenters from previous threads. I'd like to thank you for taking the time to write up and present these films to us, and on a personal level I'd like to thank them for exposing me to movies like Fresh or Play Time that would have simply never popped up on my radar. So thank you. As a general rule, my goal with this thread and it's previous incarnations has been to do at least five films. We've done 34 films. So it's been more successful then I ever expected.

The single biggest issue with Netflix is that it has so many movies. So many choices that it can create choice paralysis. This thread is here to help with that by presenting a curated list. Each week a forumer is going to present a movie they love, a movie they feel passionately about that the rest of the world may have let pass by. This is a chance for people to take the films they love and preach about them to the forum as a whole. They may be documentaries. They might be martial arts films. They could be westerns. (There is a 100% chance I'm doing a western.) Or they could be art house films that challenge your sense of what is art. Or they could have giant robots. We're not picky people, we're people who love great film, and great film comes so many genres.

But we've got some rules.

1. Have your post ready to go by the Tuesday of your week. I have no special reason to pick Tuesday, it just seems like a good day. But seriously if you don't present your film, I will hunt you down. And I will be super annoying. If you can't do it, let me know in advance and I will figure something out.
2. No fucking terrible films. I don't mean films that are so bad they are good. Or bad films that perhaps have cinematic importance. I mean no fucking repeats of The Love Guru, a film with no good qualities at all. I reserve the right to shoot down films. I watch every film posted in the thread. Each and every film. Which means I watched The Love Guru. I'm not repeating that experience.
3. If you want to get in line to present a film, send me a PM with the film.

Week 1: Bogart Grosse Pointe Blank
Week 2: Wash Double Indemnity
Week 3: Gim The Trial
Week 4: Astaereth Let the Right One In
Week 5: Jacobkosh The Untouchables
Week 6: Thomamelas Who Framed Rodger Rabbit?
Week 7: Atomika Don Jon
Week 8: Thomamelas High Noon
Week 9: Simonwolf Rabbit Proof Fence
Week 10: Stevemarks44 Zodiac
Week 11: Bogart Labyrinth

Previous Thread:

Week 1: Jacobkosh Fresh
Week 2: B:L Four Lions
Week 3: Thomamelas Exiled
Week 4: Atomika Young Adult
Week 5: Deaderinred Following
Week 6: Farangu 13 Assassins
Week 7: Bogart Miller's Crossing
Week 8: Robos A Go Go Upstream Colour
Week 9: Wandering Billy Elliot
Week 10: Astaereth The Conversation
Week 11: LoveIsUnity Lost in Translation
Week 12: ihaveachair Time Bandits
Week 13: TehSpectre Miami Connection

First Thread:

Week 1: Bogart, Midnight Run
Week 2: Preacher, Spartan
Week 3: Jacobkosh, Blue Velvet
Week 4: Thomamelas, The Searchers
Week 5: Gim, Play Time
Week 6: Ryadic, Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
Week 7: Xenogears of Bore, The Love Guru
Week 8: Elki, Sans Soleil
Week 9: JamesKeenan, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
Week 10: Drez, Show Me Love
Week 11: Fluffy, Our Beloved Flopsy Bunny Friend, Brick
Week 12: Quid, Red Cliff
Week 13: Thanatos, Falling Down

Second Thread:

Week 1: Jacobkosh, Chinatown
Week 2: Thomamelas, Shane
Week 3: Bogart, Sonatine
Week 4: Atomika, The Big Lebowski
Week 5: Amateurhour, Ghostbusters
Week 8: TychoCelchuuu One, Two, Three
Week 9: JoeDizzy Way of the Gun
Week 11: Gim The Red And The White

Some tools to help you with your Netflix searches:

http://instantwatcher.com/
http://www.canistream.it/
http://www.allflicks.net/

Some Sample Write Ups:

Fresh By Jacobkosh

Jacobkosh wrote: »

FRESH
1994, directed by Boaz Yakin
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Fresh/524745?trkid=8133737

The early 90s saw the ascent of two parallel and interdependent movements in American film. Independent movies, which had been an occasional flickering flame on the edges of the American film landscape, were becoming “indies” - a fully-viable alternate model of moviemaking, spearheaded by a few visionary producers and distributors taking advantage of new avenues to produce, market and distribute film. And some of the earliest beneficiaries of that were black filmmakers, who found new opportunities to get their voices heard in the fall of American inner cities and the rise of hip-hop as a cultural force.

Boyz in the Hood, Menace II Society, New Jack City, Juice - by 1994 the field of gritty inner-city crime dramas was becoming downright crowded. So it’s not entirely a surprise that Fresh, the debut film by a white Israeli action-movie screenwriter named Boaz Yakin, was lost in the shuffle. There were no cameo appearances by famous rappers and no tie-in songs by Snoop Dogg or Public Enemy; the soundtrack, by Police drummer Stewart Copeland, featured no hip-hop, no lyrics, and was as aggressively minimalist as Philip Glass.

Audiences ignored Fresh, but critics noticed it. That’s how I heard about it - effusive praise from Kansas City Star critic Robert Butler, and Roger Ebert on Siskel & Ebert - but I wouldn't get to see the film until years later on VHS.

It was worth the wait.



Michael (Sean Nelson) is a 12-year-old boy in the ghettos of Brooklyn. He comes from a broken home, but he's a smart kid, a, quiet, hardworking student. Everyone tells him he has a bright future. He saves his money and he takes care of his family. But Michael is also a drug runner, moving huge amounts of crack cocaine and heroin across the city, and in this world, he goes by "Fresh."

Everything that happens in Fresh depends on you, the viewer, understanding Michael and the world he moves through, so the first forty minutes very carefully and patiently show you everything you need to know. Fresh lives and bunks with 11 other children in a shelter run by his aunt. His older sister is beautiful and he loves her, but she is a heroin addict, living with whatever dealer can keep her supplied. His father (Samuel L. Jackson) is an alcoholic living in a tiny camper, but at one point was a national chess contender, and now makes his booze money hustling games in the park. Fresh isn't supposed to see his father, but he visits him anyway, once a week, and learns to play. Fresh goes to school, and his friends there talk about comic books and making money, about breeding fight dogs, about imaginary millionaire relatives - but Fresh doesn't join in very much. He keeps his own counsel, speaking only when he has to, and Nelson's quiet, impassive face invites us to try and get inside his head.



There are two drugs in the ghetto, heroin and crack cocaine, or "base," and two kingpins responsible for them. Corky, the crack dealer, isn't a world away from Avon Barksdale in The Wire; he's a hot-tempered street fighter, and runs a shabby-looking organization from the corners. Esteban, the heroin dealer, runs a largely Hispanic organization; many of his employees are members of his extended family. As played with an unwholesome sort of class by Giancarlo Esposito, Esteban prides himself on the smooth efficiency of his work:

“Smack is the way to go. This is a gentleman’s operation. The clientele is stable and peace-loving, the competition is unconfrontational, and the heat mostly let it slide.”



Both men employ Fresh as a courier, paying him to move weight across the city - as a young boy, he's almost invisible. Both men respect his scrupulous honesty and his discretion, and both promise that he will be an important wheel in their organizations when he's older, while warning him against the promises of the other.



For his part, Fresh is interested in saving his money, getting to school on time, and finding excuses to talk to a pretty girl in his class. But when a schoolyard pickup game escalates into a shooting, and his crush is caught in the crossfire, Fresh finds a new purpose - escape. Seeing how he goes about this supplies the tension of the second half of the movie, as the gears of the plot begin to turn and we realize that these characters are pieces and this world is a chessboard.



If you've seen The Wire, or Boyz in the Hood, or (particularly) Spike Lee's Clockers, the world Fresh lives and moves in will be familiar to you. What sets it apart is its twisty plot and the style with which it is told. Yakin's direction isn't flashy, it doesn't call attention to itself, but he unerringly finds telling details that help us understand a character in a single visual snap, and creates a world that feels one hundred percent tangible. The drone-y, almost avant-garde soundtrack is odd and a bit distancing at first, but after 20 years it's helped to make the movie feel timeless; a few hightop fades and giant cell phones aside, this could be one of a thousand ghettoes somewhere in 2013.

And then there's the acting. Sean Nelson has an incredibly difficult challenge as a child actor and pulls it off wonderfully, creating a character we both sympathize with but also don't fully understand until the very last shot of the movie, and he is supported in this by Samuel L. Jackson - memorable despite being in only a handful of scenes, and without relying on the habits developed over the last 15 years of B-movies - and Giancarlo Esposito's snakey charm.

Take your seat. Set up your pieces. It's time to play Fresh's game - and you'll be glad you did.

Thomamelas

Young Adult by Atomika

Young Adult

Let me first preface this article with the caveats exposing my indifference toward both director Jason Reitman and his frequent collaborator, screenwriter/Williamsburg-Patient-Zero Diablo Cody. They have both developed a polarizing presence in film criticism circles in their relatively short time in the spotlight, and while I can't argue that those grievances are wholly unfounded, it's also true that Reitman and Cody both have a specific and unique voice to offer the cinematic community. Reitman, particularly, I've had various problems with in his three films prior to Young Adult, and the most consistent complaint I've made against him is his proclivity to dress up hoary rehashes with great acting from famous faces paired with a more nuanced aesthetic to disguise what is clearly middlebrow as the thoughtfully highbrow. Now, to put a positive spin on this phenomenon, you could say that he knows how to elevate the thin and trite above its origins (and you'd be right), but I actually think Reitman's real talent is telling stories within the performances of his actors. No matter what you might think of the gravity of his milieu or its detachment from realism, it's clear that Reitman firmly believes that the internal lives of people are the most important thing in a story, and that's something that I could only hope that more directors (I'm looking at you, Zach Snyder and Chris Nolan) would take to heart.

Jason Reitman builds characters. He crafts them. And he lets their actors inhabit them and become them. Then he tells a story about their lives. And what could be better than that?

The Woman-Child in full regalia

This is Mavis Gary. She's a thirty-something single woman living in the city and working as writer of young adult fiction, which is her "dream job," as she's constantly reminded by other people in the film (though we never hear her speak of it so fondly). We open on her being completely miserable and alone in her apartment, where she finds out through the internet that her old high school boyfriend and his wife are holding a party for their new baby. With little forethought and great impulse, she hatches a plan: travel back to her old hometown, seduce her ex, and make a new life with him. This may sound poorly thought-out to begin with, but don't worry . . . . it gets much worse.

The schlub of her dreams

Mavis isn't subtle in her efforts, basically throwing her herself at her ex when she first sees him, and his initial rebuff only strengthens her resolve. However, her pettiness and destructive course is pointed out by an old friend from school, Matt, who pointedly informs Mavis about how shitty she's being for her own personal ends. Matt is a lonely geek who is still crippled after a particularly nasty bit of hazing while still a high school student, so not only does he have to contend with his statural and social challenge (because, well, Patton Oswalt), he's also now physically impaired and almost incapable of having sex. Mavis and Matt form an interesting couple, and in a more traditional dynamic Matt and his weary cut-through-the-bullshit attitude would be the obvious foil for Mavis' oblivious recklessness (and in many ways he is), and their meeting at loggerheads would be the engine that drives the eventual and inevitable epiphany that they are perfect for each other. But this film largely eschews that bit of meet-cute tradition and plays the relationship with much more melancholy and realistic dourness than it might under a different writer and director.

"I'm not joking. My penis has a right angle. Stop laughing."

The traditional narrative arc for these kinds of films almost always end with the girl realizing that the hunk is a pig and the geeky nerd is the real prize, but Young Adult turns those tropes on their heads.

The "Nerd Proves Self to Hot Girl to Win Her Away From Psycho Jock Boyfriend" plot is almost always a fantasy from the POV of the nerd. The theorizing on that says that this exists because most writers are nerds and most nerds did not have hot girlfriends in high school (or any girlfriends, regularly), and while a bit pat in its application, the math on this assertion proves itself for the most part; look at almost any example of this trope and you'll find a poorly-developed female lead that is barely a human being at all, and certainly one devoid of any agency on her own part. She needs the help of the sensitive D&D player to forcefully demonstrate that her dumb, violent, abusive, lecherous boyfriend is bad for her, and when this successfully happens, the nerd will be rewarded with sex from the hot girl. The girl in this scenario is never more than placeholder for motivation and reward for the main character, the heroic nerd, and her will and desires are never considered because A) as a desirable female she obviously will have to have a man, and men will win her sexual affection through alpha-tastic feats of skill. Spelled out like this, it's hopefully easy to see why this trope is negative and harmful and hopefully dying out with the rest of the rape culture; even when it's done well (like, say, The Revenge of the Nerds), it's pretty ick when broken into its elements.

Young Adult subverts this common narrative first and foremost by regendering the scenario, and then making all the stereotypically unlikable players into nice people while making the protagonist a petulant weirdo who (still cleaving to the mores of the tradition) treats people like prizes to be won or discarded. Mavis Gary is petty and mean and empty, but she's also complex and uniquely motivated. And the guy she's trying to win over? He's pretty happy, and is in a healthy and fulfilling relationship with his wife. There's no one to "rescue" here, and everyone acts with their own agency. The people here are real people, not rewards or achievements for objectifying someone. But that's the interesting part about Mavis -- she objectifies everyone. Everyone is a means to some selfish end for her, and she barrels through this narrative arc not too unlike the charismatic nebbish (played by Ben Stiller or Matthew Broderick or Jesse Eisenberg or whothefuckever) would in a middling rom-com. She treats her ex, Buddy, like he's the missing piece that will not just complete her life, but will rebuild it and make it whole and fulfilling, never pausing to ask herself if that's something he even remotely wants (spoiler: it's not, at all). In that way, Young Adult is a mature and more realistic version of a John Hughes movie, with all the horrible outcomes that would surely produce.

from Abercrombie's "Resentful Stepmom" collection

So what's it all about?


Mavis is an unlikable character, and intentionally so, and so her story isn't about rooting for an unlikable person to succeed, but rather rooting for an unlikable person to gain some perspective. In better words, to grow up.

I've never liked that phrase, really. I've always found it condescending to imply that age imparted some kind of innate sense of wisdom once you allowed it to wash over you, accepting the loss of your youth and (largely implied) your energy and optimism and belief that you still control your outcomes. However, there are admittedly aspects of youth that do not survive the transition into adulthood without hamstringing a person in ways that impair their functioning as a self-directed independent human. Everyone knows (or often, unfortunately, IS) someone who is still controlled by holds put on them as a child, either through parental approval or bonds made in grade school or accolades heaped upon early achievement. I personally have a friend who came from a broken and impoverished home and made himself the vice president of a major national corporation by his 30th birthday; he frequently spends his weekends gladhanding in stadium suites with the likes of Drew Brees and Jay-Z, but almost every time I see him he can't help but bring up how cheated he felt by our football coach in high school when he was made second-string linebacker (the guy that was first-string, btw, is entering his eighth year in the NFL this season). So there's my friend; great job, lots of money, great marriage with a kid on the way, hangs out with celebrities, . . . . and yet he can't let the past go, even when it's petty and he's probably in the wrong.

Late in the film, we learn about a big event involving her ex, Buddy, that explains why Mavis can't let the past go, and I've always been torn about that late-coming revelation. I don't like when films withhold information from the audience to build false drama or mystery; it's usually just shitty writing, and quite often I feel like the director has falsely manipulated the audience or wasted their time. However, I also believe that a clever director can make that false manipulation work in favor of the film, forcing the audience to rethink their attitudes toward characters and scenarios once framed in a different context. Does that happen here? I'm not totally sold on it one way or another, to be truthful. In this case, however, a big question is, "Does reframing the context make Mavis a better person?" Honestly, I'm not sure, but what I can attest to is that it makes her a more relatable and understandable person. It provides the audience with empathy, and it colors sadness to everything that came before it. Mavis ceases being an unstoppable rampage of wanton greed and petty destruction and instead becomes a sad and bitter woman facing middle-age alone because she feels that a better life was stolen from her. And maybe she's right.

It's her insistence upon magical thinking, the kind of which romantic comedies and children's stories depend on to make their worlds work, that defines Mavis as an overgrown child and distinguishes her from everyone she knows. In the end, I wouldn't argue that we're supposed to be rooting for her, and I wouldn't even suggest that she's a better person. The journey here isn't an arc of self-discovery, or an arc of overcoming adversity, or an arc of defeating opposition. Mavis' journey is crossing the last bridge to her past simply because it's the only familiar thing she has left. She sticks one hand out, grasping and beckoning for it to take her back, or for it to go forward with her; failing that, her other hand holds a blazing torch, ready to burn the bridge down.

Upstream Color by Robos A Go Go

Just as a disclaimer, I think you should watch the film without reading anything about it first. If you go in ignorant, then you're in a much better position to just let it wash over you and have your own unique emotional experience. Plus, it's only 96 minutes long, so if you don't enjoy it you aren't going to regret the wasted time so much.

It's also a movie I'd recommend to couples, though there are two scenes that might make you uncomfortable without being nightmarish.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't steer anyone away from this movie unless you're the sort of person who always needs to know what's going on in a film. Even then, you could read my post, gain a rough understanding of things, and then give the film a try anyway.

Anyway, hope you dudes like it.

Upstream Color

Two thirds of the way into Upstream Color, there is a scene where the main characters Kris and Jeff snap at each other over whether a childhood memory belongs to her past or his. There’s a strange, threatening undercurrent to the exchange, one that evokes the film’s themes of psychic transference and the loss of self, but it also comes across as realistically petty and mundane. Even outside of science fiction, couples develop running arguments over conflicting memories, and being in a romantic relationship long enough tends to create bonds so intimate that you cannot see where one person’s life ends and the other’s begins. Upstream Color therefore exists on two wavelengths, as a high-concept narrative about psychic phenomena and as an intimate drama about a couple navigating the emotional challenges of their fledgling relationship. Rather than operating at cross-purposes, these two threads coalesce wonderfully as the intrigue of science fiction bleeds into the romance between Kris and Jeff, forcing them and the viewer to examine how unseen forces, both internal and external, have brought them together. In doing so, the film’s science fiction conceits become a lens for exploring the universal questions of human nature and love, topics no less mysterious, terrifying, and awing than any sci-fi conceit.

By design, Upstream Color is a challenge to summarize. Perhaps in response to the close scrutiny given to the plot of director, writer, and actor Shane Carruth’s previous effort, Primer, Upstream Color foregoes exposition entirely and instead loosely links events through dreamy, emotional montages that force the viewer to fill in the blanks. As the audience witnesses the opening scenes of Kris being forced to liquidate her life by an unnamed Thief and his mind-controlling worm, we know nearly as little as she does about the reasons and means of her victimization. However, the story is much more concerned with the aftermath of this event, a trauma that severs Kris from her old life but also strangely connects her to Jeff, whose eager pursuit of her conceals a tortured past of his own. While the two break down their emotional barriers to come together, awkwardly flirting but still hiding the most sensitive parts of themselves, the mind control conceit nearly recedes enough to let them both pick up the pieces of their ruined lives and start anew. That new start is soon threatened, though, when higher powers intrude upon their lives once again to threaten not just their happiness but also their grasp of themselves. It is that this point, when the love story dovetails back into the realm of science fiction, that Upstream Colors’ ability to perplex and fascinate the viewer reaches it apex.

Since Upstream Color centers upon Kris’s relationship with Jeff and sets no higher stakes than their happiness, Amy Seimetz’s and Carruth’s affecting portrayals of their characters are essential to our investment in their story. Seimetz is equal to the task throughout her opening scenes, where she projects starvation and fatigue along with a childlike innocence as she bends to her captor. After he leaves, she sways and writhes in her sleep with the languid flexibility of the worm inside her, then awakens to shock and fear when she discovers the creature growing beneath her skin and struggles to tear it out. She convincingly bears the wounds of that ordeal within her voice and her body throughout the rest of the story, guarding herself against others and her own desires out of fear that the psychotic episode she remembers experiencing will repeat itself.

Carruth’s Jeff therefore faces no small challenge in his courtship of Kris, whose instant attraction to her suitor just makes her less willing to engage him. Jeff’s persistence verges on the aggressive, but Carruth’s portrayal of the character demonstrates a light charm and frank demeanor that make him seem trustworthy rather than threatening. When Kris finally gives into her feelings for him, Jeff’s resilience and reliability furthermore allow him to chip away at her reserves and return her to life, nurturing playfulness in Seimetz’s character that seems new yet natural for her. Revelations about Jeff’s embezzling past, a phantom pregnancy, and the larger forces at work in their lives soon disrupt Kris and Jeff’s happiness, but their bond becomes stronger and more intimate in response. The characters’ agonies are experienced two-fold, with the pain of one being felt equally by the other, and so each trial reinforces the relationship between them. Theirs is a bond so fundamental that separation has become as unthinkable as amputation, and the actors inhabit it so well that we want their love to survive as surely as we want them to survive.

Contrasting the warmth and tenderness of the film’s two leads, Upstream Color’s two remaining main characters display a sinister detachment that distinguish them as the villains of the piece. The Thief, played by Thiago Martins, is shown ineffectually urging a woman to ingest a worm disguised as a party drug, only to then lose patience and force it down Kris’s throat after assaulting her with a stun gun. Martins’ character abuses his power over her without shifting out of his matter-of-fact monotone, betraying the routineness of his crimes and his lack of empathy for his victim. The hold that the Thief has over Kris is wondrous, much like the bond between Kris and Jeff, but its application is so one-sided, crude, and violent that it becomes a violation of the highest order. If Kris and Jeff’s supernatural connection embodies love, then the Thief’s warped, self-serving form of that connection is rape.

Meanwhile, the character of the Sampler, portrayed by Andrew Sensenig, has a similarly alienating presence as he exploits the victims of the Thief for his own curious pleasure as a voyeur and artist. When the Sampler’s speakers begin playing sounds designed to draw worms out of the ground, Kris finds herself drawn to him at the behest of the worm within her, then helplessly watches as the Sampler surgically transplants the worm into a pig. Though Kris is soon released, the Sampler is able to connect with her at his leisure through the pig, which remains psychically connected to Kris through the worm inside of it. The Sampler maintains an entire farm of pigs that possess such connections to other victims of the Thief, and by secretly connecting to each of them he becomes an omnipresent and omniscient figure in the story, aware of everything though unwilling to act upon that knowledge. He’s a God estranged from the human condition, an all-knowing being who experiences the suffering of others but lacks the empathy needed to feel anything himself.

Instead the Sampler uses those experiences as the basis for musical compositions, which replicate and blend sounds like the whirr of copiers and shuffling of envelopes that define a person’s life. The Sampler finds proxies for those sounds in the area around his farm, and Sensenig’s older, intelligent appearance gives scenes of the Sampler gathering and editing recordings a clinical, professional aura. The songs that emerge from such sessions mimic the connections established between the pigs and people like Kris, with each resulting track serving as a gateway into a person’s life. Like the Thief’s connection to his victims, the Sampler’s compositions are transcendent, but that wondrous connection is also perverted by its one-sided nature. Whereas Kris and Jeff share themselves with each other, the Sampler intrudes upon private moments and then regurgitates them as albums that expose his subjects yet reveal nothing of him. The Sampler is not a friend or a lover, but rather a hack plagiarizing the lives of others while contributing nothing himself.

Yet while the Sampler’s connection to Kris and Jeff through the pigs is one-way, the connection between the leads and the pigs themselves is not. While the two lay in bed together half-asleep, their bodies are briefly shown in the Sampler’s farm where the pig from Kris’s operation is known to reside. That connection between her and that pig is elaborated upon during her phantom pregnancy, which mirrors the actual impregnation of the pig by a male pig. As The Sampler drags away the male to steal and kill the mother’s piglets, both Kris and Jeff feel the anguish of the animals as if it was their own, with Kris searching for children she cannot find and Jeff lashing out at his coworkers like a threatened, territorial beast. Those emotions are dictated by events and connections that they cannot fully perceive, much less begin to understand, and yet they are as real to Kris and Jeff as anything occurring in their lives.

It’s even possible that Kris and Jeff’s love for each other, the focal point of the film, emanates from the unseen lives of those two pigs, which are shown meeting and pressing their snouts together long before Kris crosses paths with Jeff. It may seem like a glib explanation for their mysterious attraction, but it feels appropriate for something as fundamental as attraction to be located inside the simple, primal frame of an animal. For their part, Kris and Jeff reconcile with their animal selves rather than rejecting them, and when the pigs have piglets Kris holds one as though it was her own. The source and nature of her maternal feelings, whether internal or external, aren’t important. All that matters is that she’s a mother.

Likewise, the question of why Kris and Jeff love each other is perhaps resolved not with an explanation but with the realization that, if they truly love each other, that is satisfying enough. Regardless of why they feel the way they do, their connection shines compared to the emotional distance of other couples. Furthermore, despite the uncomfortable intimacy of their relationship, it’s that closeness that allows them to experience the empathy for each other that's absent within the exploitive, one-sided connections formed by the Thief and the Sampler. Two thirds of the way into the movie, they bristle over their closeness by arguing about whether a childhood memory belongs to her past or his, but then a whistle is heard and the argument stops. Kris smiles at Jeff, and it’s as though they remember they’re in love again, and as long as that’s true nothing else matters.

Thomamelas

The Searchers by Thomamelas

The Searchers.

There are times in film when an actor transcends mere typecasting to the point where their roles are iconic. Where merely saying their name conjures very specific images, roles, codes and words. John Wayne did this and became the most iconic cowboy of all time. When he was paired with John Ford, viewers knew what kind of film they were in for. Good and Evil will be well defined. The landscape will be beautiful and empty. Civilization will triumph over lawlessness. The two men created a shared mythology that has never been equaled by any other combination. Some have come close. Scorsese and Bobby D would come so very close with crime films. But no one every quite had the magic of the Two Johns. It is with this in mind that audiences went to the movies and saw The Searchers.



It was not the film they were expecting. Ethan isn't a good man. He's not a decent man. John Wayne took all that had he put into the myth of a cowboy and turned it just a little so the light fell differently. The stoicism of the cowboy became nothing more then a lack of humanity. The use of weapons to tame a wild land became nothing more then a nightmare of violence. The creation of civilization was nothing more then wanton destruction. The belief in the superiority of the White Man's culture was little more then racism. All that the two men had held up as good was turned so it's flaws could exposed as evil. Ethan is a little racist at first, not really an issue for the audience at the time. Then he gets a little more racist. And then he achieves a level of racism that even the audiences of the 50's found excessive. But the characters the audience sympathizes with, the ones that play our role as observer aren't much better.

I know that John Wayne isn't an actor that one thinks of when you think great dramatic roles. A number of his films didn't ask a heck of a lot of him. But again, this film isn't those films. Much of the movie revolves around the subtext of Ethan's love for Martha. Something that only shows up in early scenes in the form of touches that linger too long, or looks shared that are too tender to give to a sister in law. Of his anger and rage at her rape mixed in with the hatred and racism already in his heart. Ethan isn't a card board cut out of a character. He's evil and vile but not without his charm. And John Wayne plays the role with a depth that only very good actors can really achieve.




Like many Westerns, it's a story of obsession. Ethan and Martin are seeking a little girl. Martin's adopted sister and Ethan's niece. She's been taken in the raid that left Martin's adopted family wiped out by the Comanche. So the two men set off on a quest to find her. Martin wants to rescue her but Ethan has a different goal for the little girl. To remove the taint of the Indian from her by killing her. The two men develop a relationship, a twisted father and son relationship of admiration and hate. One that builds to an unexpected but unavoidable climax, leaving us with perhaps the most perfect ending in film.



It wasn't the first deconstructionist Western. Not even close. But the two John's had a power that few would ever have. They had brought back the Western with Stagecoach. They created a new shared myth of the west. And then with thunder they broke the myth apart, knowing it's flaws in a way that only a creator can. This is what audiences saw when they sat down to watch The Searchers, and yet few would realize the importance of what they were watching. They would say all that needed to be said about the Western, and all that would be left with was the good-byes. It would be up to men like Leone to invent a new myth of the West.

In the end, this fine movie would be passed over by the critics of it's day. No academy awards, no praise, no nothing. But the film makers of the 70's saw this film, and they saw it for the classic it is. It would influence people like Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Steven Spielberg, John Milius, Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, and George Lucas. Bits of The Searchers ends up in many of the works of the 70's. Taxi Driver takes the theme and transfers it to modern New York. Schrader would make it again in Hardcore. Spielberg would use Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Milius would talk about how he would always try to put a little bit of The Searchers into each of his films. Godard compared the ending to Ulysses being reunited with Telemachus. Wenders would take bits of it and put it into Paris Texas. And the shot of Luke finding his aunt and uncle's farm destroyed mirrors Martin finding his family's farm destroyed both in story and in visuals. Buddy Holly would take Wayne's signature line from the film and turn it into song. It left an impact on film and culture that lingers among us to this day.

With all of that said, I present to you, The Searchers

Red Cliff by Quid

Were you like me? Were you watching Lord of the Rings and, while finding the epic battles satisfying, finding something missing. Some unexplainable thing that just sort of irked you? Stronger female characters? Tighter story telling? Minorities? No, there was one, all important piece of film making that was absent.

White doves.

So bad ass that it was rated R for sequences of epic warfare, Red Cliff is John Woo's epic war film dramatizing the events immediately leading up to the period of the Three Kingdoms in China. The movie is easily one of the best films to come out of China with top notch acting, special effects, and writing. The last an especially impressive feat given the government's tight control of the movie industry. But even within those confines Woo created a masterpiece that rivals even some of Hollywood's better creations.

Set in the year 208 and based on historical events, the ruling Han Dynasty sends the imperial army, lead by chancellor Cao Cao to quell a rebellion lead by two warlords, Sun Quan and Liu Bei. The film details the strategies throughout the war, from head to head battles, espionage, deception, and the clever use of warfare technology that all culminates in the final battle at the titular Red Cliff. That it should even get that far is all thanks to one man, Zhuge:

In that particular picture Zhuge is deep in thought. That's because he's always deep in thought. If you have a problem, he will solve that shit and do it the entire time showing off his bitchin' crane feather fan. These days the man's name is literally synonymous with wisdom and strategy. As the movie progresses the film makes use of both Zhuge's historically accurate solutions as well as the more popular exaggerated ones, such as when tasked to obtain 100,000 arrows in 10 days on pain of death. Zhuge uses everything from spies to use of weather to help the warlords defeat an army several times their size. But it's not all intrigue and strategy.

Sometimes a guy just runs in and wrecks some shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPrFwd4aQXA&feature=related

The head on battles in Red Cliff are vivid, spectacularly over the top fights that can are wonderfully choreographed. Anyone who's played Dynasty Warriors will be instantly familiar with the visuals. Military generals roam the fields of battle fighting their way through the rank and files before either falling to the masses or engaging with equally deadly foes.

Assuming, of course, a giant, moving deadly maze of shields doesn't pop up.

Now, the original version released in Asia unfolds over the course of over four and a half hours split in to two parts. Shit was long. "But Quid," I can hear you say "280 minutes is way too long for me to sit and watch a movie." Well good news, buddy. The version available on Netflix for instant watch is the Western release. And even better, this version is widely praised for making the movie more fluid and tightly pulling together the narrative. Having seen the original itself, I personally highly recommend this version over it. Which isn't to say that the Western cut doesn't lose some important scenes. Zhuge's motivation for trying to collect arrows (Death!) is gone, as is the spy, Sun Shangxiang's, interactions with one of the enemy camp's soldiers that helps sympathize the enemy. Overall, though, the film benefits far more from much needed editing.

This movie is not by any means the greatest film I've ever seen. I've seen each version only once even though I've found both enjoyable. It is, however, one of the best recent movies produced by the mainland and a definite must see for anyone interested in their films.

tl;dr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3qIXQCHf94

[/quote]

Brick by Wash

Brick

Brick is Rian Johnson's first film. He filmed a good chunk of it at his old highschool. That information's not important when you're watching the movie, but it says something about the man who made it.

The movie opens with Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) crouched over the dead body of a girl with a blue bracelet. Soon we find out her name is Emily, and she is his ex-girlfriend and the person he loves. We don't know who killed her. Brendan needs to find out.

The plot isn't original, it's your classic whodunit murder mystery, glued together with all the best noir tropes. You've got your stoic, morally questionable "detective" Brendan, his man behind the scenes and nerdy sidekick, affectionately called Brain (Matt O'Leary), the femme fatale Laura (Nora Zehetner), the dame who set the whole thing into motion, Emily, (Emilie de Ravin), and a mysterious crime boss, the Pin (Lukas Haas). Brendan needs to know who killed Emily, and he's willing to dive deep into the shady criminal element at his highschool to find out.

You'd be surprised at what a detective story can become in a different setting.

It's a little amazing how well old noir tropes lend themselves to a highschool setting. Highschool has always been a test-run for the real world, a tiny cloistered society within a society. You've still got your social elite, your intellectuals, and your criminals. They're all still there, just a lot younger, and a lot out of their depth.

So yeah, it's an old formula. Still, you can't claim this film ain't fresh.

The score, composed by Rian Johnson's brother, is gentle, sad and sweet. The characters, too, are fragile. One thing that sets this aside from other detective stories and neo-noir flicks is that most protagonists are, well, older. Jaded middle-aged detectives who drink too much and have already seen it all are common-place; it's different when you're dealing with people who are, comparatively, innocent. This is a detective story but it's also a story about a kid looking for whoever's responsible for the death of his love. When your jaded old detective takes a beating, or provokes murderers and scoundrels, you expect he has some experience with this, he's been around.

Brendan, our protagonist, is in highschool, and when you watch him slowly, over the course of the film, breakdown physically and emotionally on his quest for justice while dealing with things way above his maturity level, it's heartbreaking. Levitt does a great job.

It's meaningful in a way that Rian Johnson filmed his first movie at his old highschool. He chose a place symbolic of his childhood for his ascension from aspiring filmmaker to filmmaker proper. Brick was his graduation. I think that's pretty cool.

[/quote]

Chinatown by Jacobkosh

CHINATOWN
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Chinatown/374030?trkid=4213507

The cramped, dirty office, lit by sunlight filtered through Venetian blinds. The cigarette smoke coiling lazily through the blades of a ceiling fan. The rumpled trenchcoat and fedora. The mouthy secretary. The mysterious, classy dame. The gumshoe.

Even people who've never watched a private eye movie in their life know the drill. After seventy years the little tics and visual shorthands left over from the great heyday of hardboiled detective fiction still saturate our pop culture, surfacing in everything from kids' cartoons to SNL sketches. They've been done, redone, examined, turned over, refuted, parodied, laughed at, revived - the whole long arc that any really good idea takes as it passes through a thousand hands over the years. That's the thing with good ideas; they're perennial. They keep turning up, and they stay fresh.

So in one sense, you already know Chinatown. But make no mistake - you're in for an experience as fresh, original and bracing as if it had come out yesterday. Chinatown is a movie that's full of good ideas.

Jack Nicholson stars as Jake Gittes (pronounced "gittys"), private eye in Depression-era LA. He's a little different from the private eyes you might be used to. He's not a loner; he employs a large staff of competent professionals to handle the drudge work of tails and photographing. He's not a rumpled, heartbroken Bogart character; Gittes keeps a clean, spacious, modern office, dresses to the nines, and moves through his environment with an easy, extroverted confidence. He's a smart, worldly guy who likes what he does for a living and is pretty sure he's got it all figured out.

Is it a spoiler to say that he doesn't?

It starts, of course, with the dame. A woman calling herself Evelyn Mulwray comes into Gittes' office to hire him to tail her husband Hollis and find proof of his infidelity. Gittes, an old hand at these things, tries several times to turn her away. "Let sleeping dogs lie," he advises. He really seems to believe that it's better that way. Of course, when she pulls out the giant checkbook...

The husband will not strike you as the unfaithful type. He's a much older man, tall and gangly, and seems to lead an incredibly boring life. He gives a lecture at City Hall about the dangers of a new proposed dam - it seems Hollis is the county water commissioner - and then spends the night visiting drainage ditches and dry riverbeds all over town before going to bed in his home at a respectable hour.

Jake is good at his job, though, and..."determined" isn't the right word. It's more businesslike than that. Let's say "persistent." After some clever tricks with a stopwatch and the judicious use of a telephoto lens, Jake does catch the husband with a young woman. The photos create a scandal; the man's name is dragged through the mud, while Jake Gittes gleefully passes his business cards to the press.

And then a woman, a complete stranger, turns up at Jake's office, demanding to know who hired him to follow her poor husband.

Whoops.

That's where Chinatown really kicks off, and the less said about the twisty, complicated plot that ensues, the better. It's a really good plot, a pleasure to follow, with clues that lead seamlessly into a complicated web of corruption and, ultimately, the blackest human evil. As a mystery, Chinatown is almost unparalleled in the craftsmanship of its construction. Raymond Chandler used to joke that whenever he was stuck on a difficult chapter, or had trouble getting his hero to the next stage of the story, he'd have a couple tough guys kick down the door and start shooting. As you watch, notice how rarely that happens in Chinatown. Jake Gittes may not be as noble or incorruptible as the classic private eyes - although he's more noble and incorruptible than he looks - but he's every bit as competent if not more so. He's in every scene of the movie, and the story always moves ahead because of his tenacity and facility at unraveling the maze that's been set before him.

That's why it's all the more distressing that, good as he is, Jake may be up against a problem that even he can't solve. The movie's title is a reference to something the screenwriter, Robert Towne, was told by a former LAPD officer; back in the old days, unsure of how best to deal with the complexities of Chinatown, the police opted to do "as little as possible." It's a sad lesson in pragmatic cynicism that Jake Gittes has learned before, and will learn again in the movie's legendary, eminently quotable "downer" ending.

Largely because of that ending, Chinatown has a formidable reputation as a classic, but I want to emphasize that that doesn't mean it's not fun. It is! There are fights, chases, and menace a'plenty. Jake's journey takes him from a midnight confrontation with a genuinely chilling pair of hired killers -

- to the sunlit portico of the most powerful man in LA -

- to, of course, the bed of a beautiful woman. I think because Chinatown was made in the 1970s and directed by a European, some people blithely assume it is somehow satirizing or deconstructing the hardboiled detective genre. I don't think that's true at all. Chinatown unironically delivers all the pleasures of that kind of story; it just does them really well, with a piercing intelligence, a dash of urbane wit, and a painstaking, craftsmanlike dedication to authenticity and historicity.

The director, Roman Polanski, is a contentious subject. I won't say anything except to note that missing this movie because of him is a huge mistake, and Polanski is only one of the reasons it works so well. The story comes to us courtesy of Robert Towne, who also wrote Bonnie and Clyde and co-wrote The Parallax View, the beautiful photography is by Robert Alonzo, and the music was composed by none other than the great Jerry Goldsmith. For whatever reason, all of these men turned in some of the best work of their careers here.

Let them, and Jake Gittes, take you on a ride to Chinatown. It's unforgettable.

Thomamelas

Ghostbusters by Amateurhour

Ghostbusters....

It's a word that is uttered and carried on the winds from every man, woman and child of that fabled time of hope we called "The 80's..."

I'm going to start off with the facts.

Ghostbusters
Directed by Ivan Reitman
Written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis
Starring... These Guys



From left to right

Harold Ramis - Egon Spengler - The super scientist who has no social skills whatsoever and once tried to drill a hole in his head.
Ernie Hudson - Winston Zeddemore - The only non founding member of the Ghostbusters. Took the job because of the steady paycheck, regrets it often.
Bill Murray - Peter Venkman - Ladies man, pseudo-scientist, and probable sociopath.
Dan Aykroyd - Raymond Stantz - Almost as smart as Egon, good looking, and the Chief Financial Officer, with a thrice upside down house to prove it.

But let's not forget the B-Team who make the ghostbusters day to day operations work.

(note: this picture is from the still very entertaining but highly inferior sequel Ghostbusters 2)



Annie Potts - Janine Melnitz - the only true love interest of Egon, despite any canon depicting otherwise, and the best Goddamn receptionist in the WORLD

Rick Moranis - Louis Tully - Horrible accountant, even worse attorney, and the most boring man alive.

Okay, now that you know who these guys are, let's talk about the film itself.

Ghostbusters was a 1984 SMASH HIT that really set the bar high for non adaptation, non remake movies, especially during the 80's when most of the stuff we see getting rehashed today was still a new and exciting property. It was originally the brain child of two very coked up comedians, Aykroyd, who was, and still is very into the paranormal studies, and John Belushi, who died way to young and would have made a fine addition to this film.

What wouldn't have been fine was the original idea for the film, which would have been titled Ghostsmashers, about time traveling ghost fighters who used wands instead of proton packs and wore SWAT team outfits. Thankfully Ivan Reitman helped fix this in the early stages of studio development and we got the movie we have today.

Throughout the film you'll see common themes of the 80's, from the group of baby boomers with no real clue what to do with their lives, despite being highly ranked in their scientific fields, to the usual 80's level of greed and excess, to less conventional themes like demon worship and Twinkies ©.

Honestly I'm not going to write up some long winded synopsis of this flick. You've probably seen it a dozen times, and there's a HUGE writeup on wikipedia.

Instead I'm going to talk about things in the movie that I thought were fantastic, specific scenes that stand the test of time, and the impact a movie like this has on a young child.

First off, you'll notice I didn't mention Sigourney Weaver in my initial writeup. She plays Dana Barrett and honestly she doesn't do a lot other than act as a plot device when absolutely necessary. She's supposed to be the love interest for Peter but this is a guy that's banging his students as little as three months beforehand, and it's made abundantly clear in the sequel that things don't go so well for the young couple after the events of the first movie. Just to be clear, I LOVE me some Sigourney, but this was not her finest role, despite fantastic acting on her part and being incredibly attractive and tall. It's not even that the role was bad, it was just not needed. It was there to sell date night tickets.

Second, the real unsung hero of this movie is the devious bureaucrat for the Environmental Protection Agency Walter Peck, played by the simply perfect William Atherton whom you may remember as for playing a similar character archetype in the Val Kilmer vehicle Real Genius. He plays a perfect foil to Peter. He's fantastic in almost every scene and even his slight victories, albeit short lived, inevitably end in defeat. He alone managed to shut down the entire Ghost busting operation only to release a veritable hell on Earth moments later.

Ghostbusters wasn't just a financial success at the box office. It was a successful franchise. It spawned two animated series, an entire line of toys and clothes (of which I owned all of them), a less successful but still entertaining sequel, a lifetime of adoration from fans, a bitter feud between the original cast that's supposedly still sour, a planned end to the trilogy in the works, and a career of convention appearances, in costume, by this man who, even though went on to do better things with his career, will still take a photo with you for $20 dressed like this no less than 14 weekends out of the year all across the country.



When I was a child, I WAS a Ghostbuster. I remember wanting to join, and my mother having a fake phonebook page printed up with a listing for the Ghostbusters in it, and giving me the phone as I spoke to Janine Melnitz who told me I could be a junior member (I later found out this was my Aunt, a fact I am still bitter about to this day) as I proceeded to run around the house shooting possibly toxic and unbelievably thick foam pads from my plastic proton pack and imaginary ghosts and very realistic house pets before slinging out my containment trap and springing it on unsuspecting prey.

I hope you enjoy this movie.


Edit: I'm well aware I didn't speak to some other fantastic scenes, but I thought it would be fun for everyone to watch this tomorrow and then we could talk about giant wads of marshmallow goo "money shots" and giant wads of green ecto plasmic goo "money shots" at that point.

Sonatine by Bogart

Sometimes, comedians become gameshow hosts. They're often pretty good at it. And if they're a comedian and they've reached the level of popularity that means they can front a gameshow, they've probably done a movie or two as well, maybe a sitcom. They've dipped their toe into acting, probably leaning heavily on their stand-up persona, but still. Maybe they've directed a couple of episodes of their TV show as well. That's pretty much the career trajectory of Japanese actor, comic, gameshow host, writer and director 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano, except instead of making amiable comedies that will delight the whole family, Kitano turned out to be the Japanese equivalent of Robert De Niro, Martin Scorcese and Steven Soderbergh all rolled into one amazing rennaisance man. It is as though Drew Carey wrote, directed and starred in Bad Lieutenant.

He paints as well.

I first became aware of him after seeing his first movie, Violent Cop, of the back of a recommendation from I can't remember where. It's a pretty bleak film, one in which almost everyone ends up dead, and where Kitano's protagonist is a cold, brutal killer cop barely any better than the murderers he's chasing. But all the way through it's completely clear that Kitano draws the eye like few other movie stars. A single long shot of him walking towards the camera is ridiculously absorbing, his arms swinging unevenly as he scurries along. And his face. Lord, his face. Impassive and plain yet extraordinarily interesting, even when, as is often the case, he's looking down or away from the camera. An horrific motorcycle accident that left him with considerable facial damage has made it even more arresting. You may remember him from such movies as Battle Royale, and the fairly terrible Johnny Mnemonic.

Violent Cop gave him a certain amount of foreign critical attention, but it was Sonatine that really made people really sit up and take notice. I should mention that pretty much all the clips are NSFW, and some are spoiler-heavy. Here's the trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7chFW_Fhb0

Kitano plays Murakawa, a weary gangster sent to calm the waters between two rival gangster clans in Okinawa. Suspecting a set up, Murakawa finds his suspicions confirmed when he and his men are attacked. The survivors flee to a beach house, and it's here that the movie takes flight. Up till now it's been solid, but hardly unique, gangster movie fare. Once they reach the beach it's like a different movie entirely. The gangsters start playing childish games and playing pranks on each other, relaxing against the gorgeous backdrop of the beach and the blue, blue ocean. Long scenes of nothing more than these guys messing about with fireworks or pretending to be cardboard sumo wrestlers. It's almost idyllic, though when shooting beer cans off each others heads turns into a game of Russian Roulette you start to wonder where all this will end. A sinister undercurrent of violence flows around all this good, clean fun. Here's a justly famed scene where the gang plays on the beach.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA1FE1tnXZQ

Murakawa and his men are eventually drawn back into the gangster conflict from which they have retreated with a sudden, violent shock. Further violence punctuates the movie like a short series of hard slaps, over in a flash, leaving you jolted and nervy. You can see it in the trailer, as a gunfight erupts in an elevator and suddenly BANG BANG BANG in a tiny space and then there are dead bodies everywhere. Then there's the end, with the strangely beautiful sight of a gunfight in almost total darkness, everything lit by muzzle flashes and the constant yellow glare of automatic weapons firing on full auto. Half the action isn't even seen, as the camera looks on from the ground outside up at the windows illuminated by gunfire. It's an amazing choice for a climactic gunfight. Warning, heavy spoilers in this clip, including the end of the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHywJrs7qN8

It's a truly odd film, part brutal yakuza movie, part leisurely comedy piece, part quiet, contemplative arthouse flick.

Kitano's materpiece, Hana Bi, shares much in common with Sonatine, though it's a quieter film, with better jokes and the single most underplayed bank robbery scene I can remember seeing. Zaitochi is a samurai film with Kitano as the titular lead: a wandering, blind ronin. He's made more yakuza movies (perhaps going to that well too many times), autobiographical movies, lyrical meditations on love and a movie about a deaf surfer. But if you want an introduction to Takeshi Kitano, Sonatine is the best bet. Revenge, honour, betrayal, broad comedy, sudden, shocking violence and that rarest of things in the movies: a genuine sense that the film has left the rails of normal narrative convention and is merrily chugging away to who knows where.

I'll leave you with the bank robbery in Hana Bi:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwRhhcEpmlA

Astaereth

Glad to see this thread returning, but it's a shame there's no horror movie lined up for October.

Wash

Astaereth wrote: »

Glad to see this thread returning, but it's a shame there's no horror movie lined up for October.

That could be where you come in

Thomamelas

Astaereth has been added in time for Halloween. Bogart's review to start us off will be on October 7th.

Gim

I am sorry that you watched The Love Guru, Thom.

Atomika

I'll do something. I love this thread.

Jacobkosh

I am so, so happy to have this thread back, and I am really looking forward to this slate of movies, many of which are old favorites of mine.

@Thomamelas you should link the thread in your sig!

Also, you should have a sig!

Thomamelas

Week 9 added. Simonwolf and Rabbit Proof Fence.

Mikey CTS

Oh sweet! Glad to see this thread is back.

Astaereth

So it looks like Netflix may have taken Don't Look Now off of Instant for the month. (sadface) I'll pick something else but for now the horror film entry will be TBD.

Thomamelas

Astaereth wrote: »

So it looks like Netflix may have taken Don't Look Now off of Instant for the month. (sadface) I'll pick something else but for now the horror film entry will be TBD.

Understandable. I'll make you TBD. If this happens to anyone else, let me know and you can of course choose a different film.

Atomika

I think You're Next is on Netflix right now. I haven't seen it, but I hear it's alright.

Bogart

Grosse Pointe Blank

The plot's pretty simple. A hitman has a crisis of confidence and attends his high-school reunion. Shenanigans ensue. There you go, there's your blurb. Everything past this point has spoilers, so if you haven't seen it, go do that now. I'll wait. Here's the trailer. No, scratch that, here's the opening scene.

http://youtu.be/-230v_ecAcM

Back? Wasn't that great? I know, right? So funny. And smart. The script has obviously been honed and polished, the casting done with care, the storytelling considered and executed with intelligence. It's an action movie, a romantic comedy, a high school reunion movie, and an existential redemption of a lost soul in one, and what's amazing is that the movie is all of things to a degree of excellence. Martin Q. Blank is a hitman who's lost his taste for a life of contract murder and personal isolation. He's dislocated from his reality, and feels no agency. "It's not me." he repeatedly tells his victims. What he needs is to connect, in that very nineties way, with himself. Before he loses himself and ends up dead. And there's this ten year high school reunion coming up, sooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I said that it was smart. It's smart in obvious ways and it's smart in ways it doesn't have to be but wants to be because this is a movie with some goddamn ambition. Look at the ten second scene where Martin visits his father's grave. He walks up, empties of bottle of whiskey onto the plot and then drops it neck first to the ground. Cut to next scene, and it's never mentioned again. A wealth of information about his upbringing and authority issues in a wordless snippet the movie doesn't drag out or refer back to like a nervous joke-teller wondering if he needs to repeat the bit about it being a giraffe the guy walked into the pub with. You got it, let's move on. Storytelling. Even the title is funny in at least two ways.

How about another scene, much later, during the dance. John Cusack catches up with an old friend who's had a baby and picks him up. The soundtrack flares and suddenly Cusack is looking into the eyes of a baby and is in the throes of what Minnie Driver earlier called Shakabuku: a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever. See, now if you read that in the script you'd roll your eyes and it'd be the first thing you'd cut on grounds off being too corny for words. But it works, because Martin is so well-drawn and Cusack sells the moment sincerely and the movie has earned this moment. It's weird and touching and beautiful and a moment of deep character development that we totally get even though its a guy and a baby looking at each other. It helps that the baby is a pretty good actor. A wordless few seconds, and we understand Cusack has been given all the Shakabuku he can handle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWyuAq5Yq34

Cusack's so good in this it's difficult to imagine anyone else playing the role. A hitman suffering from angst and a loss of faith and enjoyment in his line of work, his only relationships those with a psychiatrist who doesn't want to see him, a secretary who dresses like Sergeant Pepper (the great Joan Cusack) and competitors like Dan Akroyd's psychopathic Grocer. Line after line of quotable dialogue issues with great speed from Cusack's lips in quiet, understated tones. He twitches when his back is to the door and torments Alan Arkin's psychiatrist with appointments in order to work through his existential angst. Pinched lips, an amazingly naturalistic delivery of long, complicated lines, the ability to sit back and let his supporting cast steal scenes. He's brilliant, and reportedly involved in every step of the production, from writing to shooting. How many actors could have resisted a self-knowing smirk as he tells everyone what he does for a living and watches them assume he's joking? He's also a goddamn revelation in the action scenes. Check out this scene, set to Mirror In The Bathroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0ScNLt2zNc

Holy Christ did you see that bit where he kicks the little guy into the lockers? That looked painful. The little guy is his longtime kickboxing trainer, Benny Urquidez, a well known Bad Mutha Fucka, and that kick left an imprint of the locker dial in Benny's back. Quentin Tarantino was a big fan of this scene, obviously. Note the perfect song. As Guardians of the Galaxy reminded us this year, sometimes stumping up the cash for the rights to use original pop songs in your movie is worth every penny. The 80's hits that pepper the movie are bubblegum buckshot fired from a jukebox gun of discerning taste. Tarantino probably liked this one too. It's the climactic gunfight. Look at all the character work and jokes they fit into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc4TpDTwsVE

Hey kids, John Cusack was once unbelievably cool. I don't know what happened in the last decade or so, but seriously: this guy was who discerning film nerds wanted to be back in the 90s. Not least because it would mean we'd run off with Minnie Driver. Smart, funny, earthy, self-assured and possessed of a thrillingly sexy voice, Driver is immensely appealing here, thus doing the hard job of every romantic comedy: being someone the audience believes the hero would love, and can therefore invest in a relationship. Check out the scene where she takes him apart after not having seen him for ten years, or try to, because that clip isn't on YouTube. Or the bit where Blank comes over to her house and gives her an airplane ride because it is adorable.

Every part is cast beautifully and every actor is engaged fully and completely. It really is one of those movies where everything came together. Way before he settled on a career path of shilling vodka out of glass bottles shaped like skulls, Dan Akroyd was an actor, writer and comedian. He was pretty good at all of those things. As Grocer he stretches some acting muscles that pudgy, friendly-looking types like him aren't usually called on to display. He's nervy, ulcerated, intense and twitchy, all the time exuding top-quality malevolence and spite. He's a great bad guy, a surburban looking schmuck turned murderer that contrasts excellently with Cusack's black-clad complicated killer. Jeremy Piven is Cusack's best mate from back in the day and fits a lifetimes worth of resentment into the words HEY JENNY SLATER. Or how about the amount of fun he has with this line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X06HoBb2e0

Grosse Pointe Blank is a movie I watch all the way to the end whenever I catch it on TV partway through. It repays repeated viewings, and age has not wearied it. The soundtrack remains evergreen, the action convincing and fun, the characters engaging and the script witty. It manages to be grown up, violent, funny and remain sort of nice and comforting. It's kind of sweet that even a hired killer with a certain moral flexibility can find redemption and the love of a good woman.

Jacobkosh

POPCORN!

This is such a hilarious, wonderful goddamn movie - one of those things that is so perfect yet so unheralded that it seems to have slipped into our universe from another, cooler one.

Mikey CTS

Gross Point Blank is one of those movies that I can't believe is still so under-appreciated. It is the quintessential 90's movie. Contrasted with High Fidelity, which is another essential 90's John Cusack movie I still love but honestly hasn't aged nearly as well, GPB is clearly the superior film.

Nice write-up @Bogart

Julius

I love Grosse Point Blank. Love it. It just has this kind of energy that you rarely see where it remains funny, emotional and charming throughout the whole movie instead of offering any of it up in favour of another. Which is amazing considering how difficult that is.

Also Grocer is the best character.

Martin: There's a contract out on your life. Believe me. I was hired to kill you, but I'm not going to do it. It's either because I'm in love with your daughter or because I have a newfound respect for life.
Grocer: [following in van] That punk is either in love with that guy's daughter or he has a newfound respect for life.

Astaereth

Grosse Point Blank is good but I've always felt like it's slightly overrated. Something about it never feels real to me--perhaps because the actual violence is not terribly serious, thereby giving the rest of the film nothing to push off of. The locker fight scene above, for example, feels like it's pushing too hard against the emotionality of the fight--you have the pop music counterpoint, and then the murder is off-screen, no gouts of blood, and then when we see the body it's a long shot, and before we get a chance to really contemplate this, Cusak's delivering another joke.

Ostensibly the movie is about a hitman who has to redeem himself, but I think the movie is too afraid of us not liking him to make him enough of a scoundrel early on for the redemption to land as strongly as it should. Either that, or Cusak is just too darn adorable to sell the killer side of the character.

Bogart

You totally see the murder on screen. He sticks the pen right in his throat and Benny jerks around some as he bleeds out. I mean, you don't see the light go out of his eyes or anything, but we've already seen Blank shoot an unarmed man in his pyjamas, so.

Cusack's next line isn't really a joke. Minnie Driver's horror at what she's seeing makes sure of that. Blank isn't really a scoundrel, he's an empty vessel looking for a shot at redemption.

Tomanta

There are two comedies that will forever be in my top 10 movie list. My Cousin Vinny is one. Grosse Pointe Blank is the other.

EDIT: Ok, fine, Office Space, too. I may need to change that to top 25....

shryke

I haven't watched GPB in like ... 8 years? Something like that anyway. Don't get the effusive praise personally. It was a good movie but it didn't hit me and stick around in my head at all. I'll give it another try maybe.

P10

I really enjoyed Grosse Pointe Blank. Your write up nailed it.

Variable

hahaha "kill who: the warrior's dilemma"

Astaereth

Heads up: since Don't Look Now is unavailable at the moment, my entry has changed to Let the Right One In. I'll be doing something similar to my The Conversation review, either looking at either a single scene shot by shot or going through the first 15-20 minutes of the film with a fine-toothed comb, I haven't decided yet.

I wanted to do a really high-quality film here, rather than something minor but more obscure. But since a lot of you have probably already seen LtROI, I've compiled a short list of slightly more out-of-the-way recs on Netflix Instant:

• You're Next, which I reviewed over in the film thread earlier this month. It's a fun, crowd-pleasing slasher/action movie.
• The Conspiracy, also reviewed in the film thread this month. This is a fake documentary about conspiracy theories with a decent build and a very creepy, effective third act.
• Ju-On If you've never seen this groundbreaking Japanese horror film, do yourself a favor and check it out.
• Stake Land A better than expected, moody post-apocalyptic road film about a man and his "son" trying to survive in a nation full of vampires.
• Absentia Solid, low-budget horror from the writer/director of Oculus.
• Pontypool A mostly single-location unique take on zombie films, set in a radio station.
• The Sacrament The most consistent film by new horror auteur Ti West (whose other films, The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers, are also on Netflix and worth seeing), this recent pick follows a crew of Vice reporters into a mysterious cult village.
• The Nun I've honestly never seen a movie like this Spanish-language import, a "so ridiculous/absurd that it's hilarious instead of scary" movie that somehow also manages to have exquisite direction and cinematography.

Wash

Billy Wilder remains one of the greatest filmmakers to have ever lived, and his film Double Indemnity served to better define the noir genre. If you know anything about film noir, even just what you've picked up through the cultural zeitgeist, this is a movie that will feel familiar to you. Behind the narrative, the way that Wilder and John Seitz shot it has established a look for the genre that has been built on for decades. If you find it cliche, remember that this film established a lot of 'em.

When we think of film noir, many of us have an image of a small, smoke filled office, behind which sits a man who can expect a visit any moment now by the femme fatale: the woman who sets off the plot, the dame that ought not to be trifled with. But each time the detective does trifle with her, she's temptation incarnate, and without her we wouldn't have a story.

Succumbing to weakness and trying to overcome it – Billy Wilder's neck of the woods.

When I think of Wilder's work the first word that comes to mind is empathy, a quality I think is really important in a director. You can see Wilder's empathy in the way he treats his characters, particularly when it comes to portraying the ones who are wounded, or weak in the face of temptation. Billy Wilder has always struck me as someone who knows that life's hard and that we can't all be strong all of the time, and there's a certain measure of heroism in the way he presents characters in their moments of weakness – protagonists who are weak men who, in the end, finally stand up for themselves, or at least find their integrity.

It's worth noting that the screenwriter for this picture was Raymond Chandler. Chandler is known as one of the greatest writers of pulp noir, responsible for stories such as The Long Goodbye and The Big Sleep, but he's no screenwriter. Double Indemnity became the first screenplay he ever penned, based on a story by John M. Cain, and he did a helluva job. Having pulp author Raymond Chandler working on your noir piece is basically getting the goods straight from the source.

The film I've selected begins with our protagonist entering his office late at night, bleeding, reciting into a dictaphone the details leading up to that moment – the movie is told almost entirely in flashback, with Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) narrating. I'm not going to go into what happens throughout the movie, because before the first seven minutes are up, we're told who he is, what his job is, who's dead, and who got them that way – after that, we get to see it all go down. The whole tale is told by Walter to his co-worker, friend, and mentor Keyes (Edward G. Robinson); it's something of an atonement, even if Walter doesn't pitch it like that. In that way, Walter Neff is another one of Wilder's protagonists who, after falling to weakness, eventually manages to find some of his integrity, even if it might be too late.

It's interesting how a filmmaker so adept at doing comedy is also one of the greatest contributors to the noir genre. I'd say the trick to excelling at both is the ability to approach your characters with compassion, and an equal dose of humour.

“Walter and Phyllis are pulp characters with little psychological depth, and that's the way Billy Wilder wants it. His best films are sardonic comedies, and in this one, Phyllis and Walter play a bad joke on themselves.” - Roger Ebert

Astaereth

Wilder is a truly amazing director that you just don't hear enough about these days. Many of his movies are famous for themselves (Some Like it Hot, for instance) without much attribution of their success to his direction and viewpoint, even though a cursory glance at the rest of his work shows a very distinct perspective matched by impeccable craft. In his ability to consistently achieve technical perfection while making both hard-edged noirs and biting satires, he was basically the David Fincher of his day. (Or vice versa.)

If you like Double Indemnity you should also check out Ace in the Hole, possibly Wilder's darkest movie in terms of theme and outlook.

MsAnthropy

Bogart wrote: »

You totally see the murder on screen. He sticks the pen right in his throat and Benny jerks around some as he bleeds out. I mean, you don't see the light go out of his eyes or anything, but we've already seen Blank shoot an unarmed man in his pyjamas, so.

Cusack's next line isn't really a joke. Minnie Driver's horror at what she's seeing makes sure of that. Blank isn't really a scoundrel, he's an empty vessel looking for a shot at redemption.

Agreed. I would also add that--despite other people concentrating on its 'popness'--the song is perfect for that scene. The references in the lyrics to mirrors and mental illness reinforce exactly the reflection that Martin is undergoing and what the other hit men in the film represent to him in his journey.

In fact, I feel like pretty much all of the music choices were excellent. The decision to have Cusack's friend and former Clash-frontman Joe Strummer handle the soundtrack was inspired.

Thomamelas

First I want to thank you Wash for pointing me to a movie that I had some how missed and is fucking fantastic. Right from the very first opening shot. The flickering light of the welding illuminating the Los Angeles Railroad Company sign with the speeding car coming towards us tells us exactly what kind of film we're in for. He did more with that shot then a lot of directors could do with a voice over. And I love when directors know when to break the rules. The shot of him getting into the elevator with his back to us sets the mood better then any amount of dialogue could.

I remember Fred McMurray from his comedic roles. My Three Sons and Flubber. I knew he did some serious roles like the Caine Mutiny but I forgot them. But the moment he starts chewing on Chandler's dialogue. My god.

Gim

The Trial
by Franz Kafka by way of Orson Welles

WHELDON: How do you feel about THE TRIAL? Have you pulled it off?

WELLES: You know, this morning when I arrived on the train, I ran into Peter Ustinov and his new film, BILLY BUDD has just opened. I said to him, "how do you feel about your film, do you like it?" He said, "I don't like it, I'm proud of it!" I wish that I had his assurance and his reason for assurance, for I'm sure that is the right spirit in which to reply. I feel an immense gratitude for the opportunity to make it, and I can tell you that during the making of it, not with the cutting, because that's a terrible chore, but with the actual shooting of it, that was the happiest period of my entire life. So say what you like, but THE TRIAL is the best film I have ever made.

That is an excerpt of an interview with Orson Welles done in 1962. The bolded sentence at the end is what others have used to promote this film, that by Welles' own admission at the time it is his best work. I don't know about that. By design it is frustrating in its storytelling and characterization while its scope and visuals are engrossing. It's not an easy film to get into but there is a lot to appreciate.

Just a heads up now, there are mild spoilers throughout.

Before I plunge into the visuals and atmosphere of The Trial, let me start off by discussing the character of Josef K. and the way Welles chose to portray him.



Where others would portray a Kafka protagonist as a put-upon everyman who is wrongfully being targeted by the system, Welles' interpretation of Josef K is that of a person who is very much a middle-management bureaucrat working his way up the ladder. You're not seeing an outsider being eaten by the machine, you are watching as the machine eats a piece of itself (which is also echoed in the fate of two policemen halfway through the film). He doesn't necessarily deserve any punishment because the story flatly refuses to tell us what he has been charged with. All we are left with are his interactions and reactions. Towards those who have any authority over him such as the police or his boss he acts awkwardly, towards family members he is dismissive and agitated, towards the people who might be able to help him he is short-tempered. And then there are the women.



The woman he pursues (in a somewhat creepy manner) barely seems to notice him. The women who pursue him (in a somewhat aggressive manner) are largely dismissed. He seems incapable of having any sort of meaningful relationship in this movie.

Josef K is a man who is twitchy, brash, nervous, and self-righteous. Anthony Perkins somehow makes this all work, portraying a man who is meek one moment and shouting over the crowd the next. He's about as effective either way. This should be a man who the audience unapologetically roots for but Perkins and Welles keep the viewer at an emotional distance. He may be fighting for his rights but he comes across as smug and slightly off-putting, too uneasy to fully invest in.

Now where The Trial shines is worldbuilding. And by that I mean something that looks like a few different versions of the apocalypse all smashed up into one modern hellscape. As Kafka's works were banned in Prague in the early 60s, Welles had to cobble together sets and locations from around Europe to give it a distinctive look of ruin, including Yugoslavia, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Rome, Milan and Paris. A long shot outside of Josef K's housing complex sees him slowly traverse a landscape that's about as bleak and joyless as anything this side of Béla Tarr has to offer. A gigantic warehouse filled with desks and typewriters may be the defining image of impersonal office drudgery I have ever seen on film (though it seems to be a reference to King Vidor's The Crowd, so I should probably see that at some point).



A large amount of the film was shot at the abandoned Gare d'Orsay railway station to great effect, a large space that is difficult to move around in.



Whether set in wide open spaces like the above or in uncomfortably intimate locations such as Josef K's apartment, the whole movie has a feeling of being constricted and suffocated. A pivotal scene late in the movie features Josef K in a room that is so small and rickety you feel like it will close in on him at any second. A famous scene that takes place in a largely improvised courtroom is packed to the gills with people creating a sense of claustrophobia.



And the movie never gives you any hint as to why the world is the way it is. There is no context for the disparate architectural styles or the bizarre spaces everything inhabits. The movie may be based partly in absurdism and the randomness of dreams but everything still seems to have a purpose; this is not a dream and everything is as exactly as it seems. That's what makes it so maddening.

The Trial is beautifully framed and lit from start to finish. You wouldn't be too wrong thinking that you were watching a noir or German Expressionist film the whole time.





As I said, it's an intentionally frustrating film. The pacing can get slow, the editing can be a bit distracting at times, and the ending is kind of nothing. But the look and feel of this world are impressive. It is one of the few experiences where Orson Welles was able to put out a film as he saw fit and that's probably worth a bit of your time.

Bonus:
Recorded in 1981 and intended as a supplemental piece, but never edited, there is a Q&A session with Welles where he talks specifically about the making of The Trial. I can see why it was abandoned; the production is plagued with getting good audience sound and there is only one camera that shoots both Welles and the crowd, creating a lot of awkward shots, movements, and focus issues. Every time they had to load new film into the camera, Welles had to give a clap to sync up sound later. But it's all kind of funny and Welles is quite charming the whole time. Worth a watch if you want to know more about the film or just see a weird Orson Welles interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbUe-bM6bXg

Pailryder

wow, great write up @Gim. having read the story but purged most of it, it seems like the film captures the essence fairly well. i'm not sure i want to subject myself to it, but you have made it more tantalizing than i would have believed possible. kudos!

Gim

Thank you very much! The only Kafka I've read is "The Metamorphosis" so I'm not too aware of the adaptation differences here, but I can guess.

Bogart

I haven't seen Welles' version, but I'm anxious to.

The only film of it I've seen is a BBC TV film they did a couple of decades ago with Kyle MacLachan and Anthony Hopkins. It was pretty good.

Astaereth

NOTE: I am going to spoil the hell out of this movie, so go watch it first if you haven't seen it.



"Keep proper distance. Not too close, not too far. Keep distance." - the gym teacher

There are two kinds of great art in film: movies so resolute and powerful in their vision that you are swept helplessly along, and movies whose mysteries remain alluring yet impenetrable long after they have ended. Rarer still are those films which accomplish both at the same time. Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In is one of those. I have seen it at least four times at this point, and I know as little about it as I did when I first watched it. Perhaps less. Not because I do not understand what the movie is doing, and how, and why; but because each viewing makes me less certain of how my own heart responds to its beauty and its horror.

Purely on the basis of this film and the 2011 John Le Carre adaptation "Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy," Alfredson is one of the finest adaptors of literature working today. His methods are the same across both films: dense, intricately plotted narratives that work simultaneously as thrillers and as character studies; a faithfulness to the original text that captures the spirit of the work while refining it down into only the most vital elements; art film techniques of withholding or merely suggesting (rather than underlining) expository information; and a fearsomely strong control of cinematography, production design, and editing designed to express complex thematic relationships.

It's that last that I want to talk about here, because it's the key to understanding how Let the Right One In perfectly controls our emotional response to what would otherwise be a tonally dissonant work. I've been fond in the past of saying that, where the movie's faithful English-language remake, Let Me In, is a horror story with romantic undertones, the original film is a love story with horror undertones. This is imprecise. Let The Right One In is a horror movie which, through the careful use of direction and cinematography, feels like a romance. How is this accomplished?

I can't say I've actually counted, but I suspect that Let the Right One In has fewer distinct kinds of shots than most comparable movies. It has essentially five which it returns to again and again in service of the emotional problem that concerns the film:

1. The long shot, reserved for victims.

As indicated by the quote at the top, LtROI is about the problem of loneliness and isolation, a problem expressed entirely through cinematography. This first category of shot is used for several reasons, depending on context. One set of shots shows Oskar being bullied, a situation that isolates him from both his peers and his parents (he lies to his mother about what he's going through, and doesn't even bring it up with his father); later, Oskar will reverse the visual relationship when he strikes back against them.





That the shot indicates the film distancing itself from victims is reinforced by its use whenever Eli or her caretaker attack. This also serves to (paradoxically) both increase the horror (since you're using your imagination to visualize what's happening way over there at the back of the shot) and decrease our sense of the characters' culpability (since the victim him or herself is de-emphasized, faces hidden, etc, during the attack). We have an intellectual understanding of what they've done, but our emotional understanding of it is compromised. This is part of how the film makes Eli seem like a complicated figure and not simply a monster.




One of the final uses of the shot before the long take in the pool (which uses this as a distancing technique, emphasizing Oskar's importance over the lives of the bullies) is when Eli loses her caretaker. He literally falls away from her, over a cut from what was a connecting shot (see 5) into a telephoto over the shoulder. From lover to victim:




2. The interior shot, showing fractured space.




Why doesn't Oskar go to his mother for help with his bullying? Because he feels isolated and disconnected from her, as indicated by shots like these. They may live in the same apartment but the camera never places them in the same space, using the walls and angles to divide the two.



The same shot is used to a different purpose with Eli's caretaker, when parallel lines of action and emotion are dramatized by the divided spaces within the frame. On the left, the old man contemplates suicide; on the right, three teens we don't know break down the door to rescue their friend. Both sides are in focus, but the left side is closer to us; the result is that, even in an otherwise evenhanded wide shot, our attention and emotional identification is entirely with the would-be killer. This is just one example of the way Oskar and the caretaker are connected throughout the film by the ways in which they are shot and how those shots convey loneliness and isolation from others.

3. Shallow depth of field




Much of the film is either shot with telephoto lenses or using a relatively low f-stop (probably the case with interiors like these) in order to achieve a shallow depth of field that can be manipulated to isolate elements and characters within the frame. In the first shot, Oskar tries to ignore Conny the bully (facing away from him) and embrace his powerlessness while Conny dominates the shot (planting his elbow mock-casually in Oskar's visual space). The focus here is used to prevent the characters from having an actual connection, emphasizing that their relationship is essentially a violent power dynamic and laying the groundwork for us to be pleased when later the tables are more than turned on Conny and his friends. In the second shot, we see how Oskar is generally isolated from his peers. He's a weird, quiet, morbid little kid who finds it difficult to engage in school and especially with others; look at the way he lets his long hair hide his face here. This is the shell his relationship with Eli will eventually draw him out of.




Mirroring Oskar, Eli's caretaker is also isolated from his peers, as in the cafe where he encounters the group of friends Eli will victimize over the course of the film. This scene in particular is a really nice demonstration of Alfredson's visual strategies when it comes to connection; it opens with an exterior shot setting the caretaker apart via the placement of the window (see shot type 4), then the first shot posted above (type 3). Crucially, Alfredson shoots some of the only real ensemble shots in the movie here, allowing these friends to coexist together in one frame with everyone in focus, using them as an example of the closeness that Oskar and the caretaker are seeking. Later in the scene, one of the friends invades the caretaker's space by sitting down at his table, forcing his way into the same focal plane as he tries to build a connection (inviting the caretaker to join them for a drink). The caretaker's response is to refuse to engage (silently drinking his milk, which also breaks the sight line between them, and then leaving).




The caretaker's problem is that he's isolated even from Eli; this is apparent even in their first shot, which pans from an isolated (in frame and in focus) close-up of the caretaker to a similar shot of Eli. They're connected by space and by situation, but they couldn't be farther apart emotionally. Their relationship will disintegrate over the course of the film; as the caretaker has become too old to successfully secure Eli blood, she also becomes unable or unwilling to give him the love that he desires from her, instead turning her attentions to Oskar. This progression is demonstrated throughout the film using these same strategies; the caretaker is usually seen in tight, isolating close-ups within a shallow focal plane, and when he does interact with Eli, typically she is out of focus (as in the scene where she paces in front of him, raging) or both of them are (as in the shot below where Oskar hears them arguing but the pair are just vague silhouettes in the window).

4. Physical divisions




In these shots, generally exteriors, we see the use of architecture to present the idea of individuals trapped by their environment within their own emotional spaces. Oskar from his neighbors, the caretaker from his victims (here, ironically representing the youth that he has lost over the course of his relationship with Eli). Sometimes these divisions are deliberately erected by those who fear connection; the first thing the caretaker does upon moving in is cover up the window, shutting he and Eli off from the community. Eli is always negotiating the level of separation between her and Oskar, trying to hide the secret of her nature, as when she climbs into bed with him but won't let him look at her, or in this shot, which reverses the typical human/vampire threshold interaction:



For Oskar's part, he comes up with ways to communicate through these barriers, most prominently through the use of Morse code to speak to Eli across the literal wall between them:



5. Connecting

On the other side of things, the camera takes careful note of times when characters do manage to connect with one another. Sometimes this is as simple as putting them within the same frame and focal plane; other times, the film deploys one of its rare close-ups. Hands are emphasized as people reach out and touch one another. Here you can see the progression of Eli and Oskar's relationship, which began with the two of them separated within the frame (only one in focus at any given time) but eventually becomes more equal and intimate until, at the end, they share a smile directly across opposing close-ups, each of which begins out of focus but becomes clear as they connect:










The sublime nature of true connection is on display here, the only time so far that Eli and her caretaker are ever together in focus in the frame:



We see how much he truly loves her and desires her love, but the rarity of the gesture is a sad, poignant reminder that their relationship is nearly over. The only other time they're together is when Eli kills him, an act of predation and love all mixed together.

There are, of course, other types of shots in the film, but by using them sparingly Alfredson is able to accomplish a great deal more than he normally would--for example, the sequence of shots the establish all the information we'll need later to comprehend the climactic long take given its limited perspective. Each is made more memorable because the shots stand out from the rest of the film.







(There's no corresponding shot with this last, but it does set up a sound effect--the muffled sound of breaking glass during the pool shot which indicates that Eli, who perhaps came to look one last time at her friend before splitting down, has broken through that barrier in order to directly and violently intervene on Oskar's behalf.)

Another example of a shot used rarely for great effect is this one:



As far as I know it is the only time in the film that Oskar is shot from below; in this moment (after striking back at his bullies) he has achieved a position of personal power for maybe the first time in his life. This is all the more impactful because Oskar has again and again been depowered and decentralized by the camera; our first time seeing him in school, for instance, shows us only the back of his head:



It's not until he takes romantic initiative, learning Morse code so he can teach it to Eli, that we see him from a frontal, more neutral angle in the classroom, head up and interested in something:



Another example is the startlingly happy shot of Oskar riding a snowmobile with his father:



Later, once his father ignores Oskar in favor of his drinking buddy, the close up, lonely shot resurfaces:



Is it any wonder Oskar hitchhikes home to Eli?



All of this is centered around Oskar's perspective, around his loneliness and need for connection. But what about Eli? What does she want? The ambiguity surrounding her character provides the film's central tension. The only thing we know she needs is blood, a desire that drives many of her scenes (and by extension the scenes of her elderly caretaker). Juxtaposed with sweet, tender moments of connection between Eli and Oskar are two horrific subplots. First, Eli's caretaker goes out several times to try and secure her fresh blood; both attempts meet in disaster. Second, Eli herself preys on a local group of friends whose comfortable camaraderie is destroyed in the process. The blood motif spreads throughout these scenes, echoed by the use of the color red elsewhere in the film. Both symbolize suffering, whether it's life drained:



Indecency borne:



Horrible destruction:



Or a reminder of underlying family tensions:



How does Eli prove herself to Oskar? By suffering for him at the threshold of his apartment:



and by causing others to suffer for him at the pool.



Whether you view these instances as horrifying or romantic is largely up to you. But we're primed to accept them as romantic because of the direction and cinematography establishing the characters as lonely and isolated, victims and victimizers, within the cold, wintry atmosphere of Swedish adolescence. One final motif establishes this cold environment in which people seek out one another for comfort and warmth (although Eli is cold, too, isn't she?). Outside of its last shot, Let the Right One In is bracketed by shots of snow falling:



and often pauses to show the snow-covered trees and landscape:



And it's telling that Let Me In made sure to keep the same wintry atmosphere. Why? Because it's important that the movie be set in a cold and lonely place. You need someone to care for in such a place; and someone to care for you. Does Oskar find such a person in Eli, someone who can assuage his loneliness and protect him fiercely if need be? Or does Eli find herself a new caretaker, a young boy warped by suffering into someone who will soon be killing for her?

All of the film's strategies and codes come together in that final shot. We start at the train window (still cold outside, but we're moving), then pan over to Oskar. At first we fear he is alone:



But then we hear morse code being tapped out, and the shot widens enough for us to see the box Oskar is traveling with:



He and Eli are together, separated by their differing natures but still connected enough to pass messages through the intervening walls.

Also in the frame is Oskar's luggage, a bright red bag. Suffering and pain will remain with them, the price of connection, whether it's Oskar's past that he carries with him as baggage or an omen indicating that the cycle of violence will continue on. Either way, Oskar doesn't care. The shot is a medium wide, with a large depth of field; no victim here, no loneliness. He smiles in relief. He's happy. He's finally let someone in. Whether that someone was the right one is up to you.

Atomika

@Astaereth‌

That was bloody brilliant, my friend. A profoundly literate analysis, and maybe one of my favorite ever things you've done, which is a long list (if you didn't know ).

Two things:

1) What are your thoughts on some of the changes Matt Reeves made to the narrative, characters, and interpersonal dynamics with his remake, Let Me In?

2) If you are aware of the full origin given to Eli/Abby in the original novel, what are your thoughts as to both films' reluctance to divulge that information, and do you think that had they not, it would substantially change the dynamic between her and Oskar/Owen?

Astaereth

Thanks! That is high praise indeed.

1) I like them, generally. Having seen this story in three different forms at this point, I feel like they all have their individual merits. Honestly, I don't remember the specific narrative changes Reeves' version makes, but I don't remember disliking them either. I do recall enjoying the very different direction in which he takes the filmmaking--pulling much more suspense out of the caretaker's murder attempts, as in the excellent scene in the car (which has no antecedent in the original film or novel), and generally going the opposite direction of Alfredson's calm, measured, stable cinematography. The pool scene, for instance, isn't a beautiful long take but a sequence of frantic, fractured images that conveys some of the same ideas but with a very different emotional spin. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think Let Me In tips the balance of the story towards horror, to the point where we're not really supposed to feel good about the ending. But I think that's okay! I look at it like restaging Shakespeare, where different directors can find very different meanings in the same story. I like what the American setting adds to the story (the Reagan bits, the 80s video games, and especially the symbolic Now & Later candies), too. No adaptation this good is pointless, I think, even if in the end I prefer Alfredson's formalism to Reeve's more visceral filmmaking.

2) I have read the original novel, which is very Stephen King (mostly appreciated, but it has some of King's structural messiness to it, too). The aspects you're talking about--actually, this deserves a spoiler tag:

The gender aspects of the story are super interesting to me, especially the way the film handles them, but I couldn't really fit any discussion of them into the essay because they're not really part of the visual/directorial strategy of the film.

I don't think the movie is necessarily reluctant to include Eli's true gender--after all, it does feature that shot (which Let Me In absolutely skips) where Oskar sees that Eli has scars instead of genitals. To go into the backstory of how that happened would, I think, tip the delicate balance the movie has going on--the film relies on Eli's past being a mystery to keep you guessing as to her motives.

Also, the revelation of Eli's mutilation and abuse are one of two key elements in the novel putting forth a very specific theme about the problem of lust (the other being Eli's caretaker's return later in the novel as a rotting, obsessive, priapetic monster). For better or for worse, Alfredson simply focuses on other aspects of the narrative. He also underplays how fundamentally creepy and serial-killer-in-waiting Oskar is in the novel, something that Let Me In makes more explicit (for example, putting Owen in a slasher movie mask). These are legitimate choices of adaptation--the book is too long to get all of it into a movie--and I don't begrudge them.

What's there in LtRIO is interesting enough, although it seems like an unsolved puzzle to me. If Eli was born a boy, why does she identify as a girl? She definitely hints at the truth--"Would you still like me if I wasn't a girl?" she asks, referring to her vampirism but also obliquely her gender--but it doesn't seem to bother Oskar, although he does seem to kind of ignore her. (For example, giving her his mother's dress to wear when she needs clothes, instead of something of his that would probably fit her better.)

As relationships go, theirs seems fairly chaste, anyway. They spoon in bed together and share a bloody kiss; other than that, it's a lot of hugging. Oskar seems so happy to have found somebody he likes and can talk to that I'm not sure it would matter if Eli insisted on being treated as a boy. Either way I think they'd end up on that train together.

Atomika

Astaereth wrote: »

Thanks! That is high praise indeed.

1) I like them, generally. Having seen this story in three different forms at this point, I feel like they all have their individual merits. Honestly, I don't remember the specific narrative changes Reeves' version makes, but I don't remember disliking them either. I do recall enjoying the very different direction in which he takes the filmmaking--pulling much more suspense out of the caretaker's murder attempts, as in the excellent scene in the car (which has no antecedent in the original film or novel), and generally going the opposite direction of Alfredson's calm, measured, stable cinematography. The pool scene, for instance, isn't a beautiful long take but a sequence of frantic, fractured images that conveys some of the same ideas but with a very different emotional spin. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think Let Me In tips the balance of the story towards horror, to the point where we're not really supposed to feel good about the ending. But I think that's okay! I look at it like restaging Shakespeare, where different directors can find very different meanings in the same story. I like what the American setting adds to the story (the Reagan bits, the 80s video games, and especially the symbolic Now & Later candies), too. No adaptation this good is pointless, I think, even if in the end I prefer Alfredson's formalism to Reeve's more visceral filmmaking.

Agreed, and I think both films make excellent use of their period setting to instill a heightened air of paranoia and vague, imminent doom; I do find it remarkable, however, that the anti-soviet attitude is just as prominent in the American version of the story, considering Sweden is in direct firing range of Moscow while the US is thousands of miles away.

The differences between the films' tones and approaches largely strikes me as the dynamic between lyrics and music; Alfredson's film can almost be seen without the dialogue (and as a subtitled film, it nearly is for non-Swedish speakers), as his compositions visually paint the information directly on the screen, while Reeves is more direct and driving with his intentions, but intentionally so to make the tension more immediate. As you suggest, Reeves tells a love story within a horror film, while Alfredson inserts horror motifs into a romance.

2) I have read the original novel, which is very Stephen King (mostly appreciated, but it has some of King's structural messiness to it, too). The aspects you're talking about--actually, this deserves a spoiler tag:

The gender aspects of the story are super interesting to me, especially the way the film handles them, but I couldn't really fit any discussion of them into the essay because they're not really part of the visual/directorial strategy of the film.

I don't think the movie is necessarily reluctant to include Eli's true gender--after all, it does feature that shot (which Let Me In absolutely skips) where Oskar sees that Eli has scars instead of genitals. To go into the backstory of how that happened would, I think, tip the delicate balance the movie has going on--the film relies on Eli's past being a mystery to keep you guessing as to her motives.

Also, the revelation of Eli's mutilation and abuse are one of two key elements in the novel putting forth a very specific theme about the problem of lust (the other being Eli's caretaker's return later in the novel as a rotting, obsessive, priapetic monster). For better or for worse, Alfredson simply focuses on other aspects of the narrative. He also underplays how fundamentally creepy and serial-killer-in-waiting Oskar is in the novel, something that Let Me In makes more explicit (for example, putting Owen in a slasher movie mask). These are legitimate choices of adaptation--the book is too long to get all of it into a movie--and I don't begrudge them.

What's there in LtRIO is interesting enough, although it seems like an unsolved puzzle to me. If Eli was born a boy, why does she identify as a girl? She definitely hints at the truth--"Would you still like me if I wasn't a girl?" she asks, referring to her vampirism but also obliquely her gender--but it doesn't seem to bother Oskar, although he does seem to kind of ignore her. (For example, giving her his mother's dress to wear when she needs clothes, instead of something of his that would probably fit her better.)

As relationships go, theirs seems fairly chaste, anyway. They spoon in bed together and share a bloody kiss; other than that, it's a lot of hugging. Oskar seems so happy to have found somebody he likes and can talk to that I'm not sure it would matter if Eli insisted on being treated as a boy. Either way I think they'd end up on that train together.

I think the part I find the most confounding in both movies is that neither film shies away from this information wholly, but only inserts the most slight nod to the novel's origin, begging the question as to why do this if it's only a mere winking nod to those who have read the book.

Jacobkosh

THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)
directed by Brian De Palma
http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/60004086?trkid=13462100

“1930. Prohibition has transformed Chicago into a City at War. Rival gangs compete for control of the city’s billion-dollar empire of illegal alcohol, enforcing their will with the hand grenade and tommy gun.

It is the time of the Ganglords.

It is the time of Al Capone.”

A storybook film should always start with a storybook opening, and make no mistake: while Al Capone and Eliot Ness and Frank Nitti were real men, and Chicago is undoubtedly a real place, this is a storybook. This is not history, and very little that happens in the movie you are about to see is real.

Now keep that fact somewhere in your back pocket, and quietly delete it from the rest of your brain, because this movie exists for one reason only - to entertain the hell out of you - and it’s going to do that if you just take it on the terms it cheerfully, straightforwardly offers you in literally the very first thirty seconds.

Al Capone, crime boss of Chicago, is played here with memorably over-the-top panache by Robert De Niro, who gained over fifty pounds for the role in a memorable physical transformation. Capone is a mobster, but he’s not like the Corleones or the Sopranos, hiding discreetly behind a veneer of gentility or legitimacy: this is the Depression, an era where sociopathic bank robbers could be front-page heroes, and Capone lives his life on the front page, joking with reporters from his barber’s chair or from the lobby of the hotel that he’s transformed into his personal palace, claiming that he represents the common drinking man, and daring anyone to do anything about him.

As the city’s violence escalates - depicted in an early scene that is as legitimately shocking as it is shameless - that dare is taken up, and a new lawman comes to town: Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner), agent of the United States Treasury Department. An outsider both to the city and its police department, Ness is viewed as a meddler even by the police whose support he needs, and in a corrupt and worldly big city, his naive-feeling Puritanism makes a poor first impression and leaves him vulnerable to a series of early betrayals.

The movie has great fun setting up the contrasts between these two men: Capone, the charismatic Italian wise guy, living it up in luxury, with the city hanging on his every word, versus Ness, a stiff, seemingly-humorless WASP and family man in a modest home. Both men play up these contrasts, making sure to announce their victories to the press, fighting their war not just with guns, but with PR.

But it isn’t a spoiler to say that neither man is entirely what he seems. In a memorable and much-parodied scene, Capone’s jokey mask drops to reveal a man capable of sudden acts of terrifying violence and pointless cruelty, while Ness, taking the setbacks and mockery in stride, displays a quiet, unpretentious fortitude that earns the trust of a few valuable men. This small group, united by trust and common purpose, will become famous for their inability to be bribed or frightened off the case - they are “untouchable.”

Chief among them is Malone, an Irish beat cop played with gusto by Sean Connery in one of his last truly great film roles. Malone knows the ways of the world and, in a famous scene, counsels Ness that breaking Capone for good may mean going beyond the bounds of the law. It’s a dangerous message, but we sense that Malone is an ethical man in the ways that matter: it is remarked on several times in the movie that a cop his age should not be walking a beat. In a city full of corrupt policemen, he has done something to earn the ire of his superiors, and despite his impatience with Ness’s straight-arrow tactics he keeps finding reasons to stick around.

At this point I have only taken you maybe twenty minutes into the movie. As penned by the great American (and Chicagoan) playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, The Untouchables is a dense, suspenseful movie, full of twists and reversals, and generously-stocked with quotable dialogue. Mamet is also a moralist, and he creates several moral tests for his heroes; in his later movies this tendency has become didactic, but here, it is understated and more effective for that: Ness is a man who wants to do good, Malone is a man who wants to atone, and Capone is a man who wears the mask of a pragmatist but has a long list of excuses for the horrible violence he perpetrates.

Director Brian De Palma was near the top of his game in 1987; with films like Carrie, Scarface, Blowout, and Body Double, he had established himself as both a gifted cinematic chameleon, capable of reproducing other directors’ styles and atmospheres, as well as a teller of solid, crowd-pleasing stories. While The Untouchables was not a personal project for him, his gift for stylish mimicry stood him in good stead here, as he stages tommy-gun duels, horseback chases, and even an homage to the “Odessa Steps” segment of The Battleship Potemkin with memorable aplomb. Even knowing perfectly well what was coming, my breath caught in my throat all during the climactic shootout, and that’s a mark of a well-made action scene.

The soundtrack is by the legendary Ennio Morricone, veteran of a thousand spaghetti Westerns, and at this time he was just coming off of Sergio Leone’s desperately underappreciated period mob movie Once Upon a Time in America. Perhaps that’s why Morricone was chosen for this project, or perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but he does terrific work here, creating a score that is both propulsive and ominous. And a good thing it is, too, because this is a storybook movie, and what kind of storybook movie would it be if the theme song didn’t swell up during the final gunfight?

In real life, Eliot Ness didn’t catch Al Capone, but he did write a best-selling memoir about his G-man experiences that became one of the most popular TV shows of the 1950s - it was called The Untouchables, and a young David Mamet and Brian De Palma almost certainly watched it. The photographers’ flashbulbs and newspaper headlines that you will see in this movie are, in a way, the first shots in the media war between Ness and Capone that ultimately led to the creation of this very movie. Along the way, a lot of the real history has been left behind, but the myth is more stylish, more fun, and has way better theme music.

Astaereth

That's a really good, exciting review that makes me want to rewatch a movie I have probably seen five times already.

The main weakness of the movie is Ness; he's just too boring a character to be the center of the film, which is why it feels like so much of the film revolves around Capone even though De Niro only has a handful of scenes. Still, it's a smashing piece of entertainment. And I have always wanted to see an unofficial sequel with Kostner as an aging Ness trying to deal with the Cleveland Torso Murderer.

Thomamelas

So Ketar didn't post his movie review. So I'm gonna post a small filler review. We will still have our regularly scheduled movie this Tuesday from Atomika. Also, I'm gonna apologize, I'm rushing this out a bit.

A missing will. A hard boiled detective crawling into the bottle and deeper into the sewers. Blackmail. Pattycake. A mallet that shoots a boxing glove. Trolley Cars. A cartoon rabbit and his wife who isn't bad, she's just drawn that way.

http://youtu.be/OFCIaMyMORg

Cartoons and Noir. Not a combination you expect to work, but Robert Zemeckis meticulously crafts a film in which they do. For those who have never seen it, the film combines animation and live action. But it does so with an intense eye for detail. The cartoons cast shadows. The actors are placed just so, so that they are looking right at the animation. It gives them a weight and feel that is often missing with green screen effects and CGI. And time and effort it took. It was originally planned with a budget of $30 million. It would be finished with a budget of $70 million and the effort shows.

And the casting is about as perfect as one hoped for. Bob Hoskins plays Eddie Valiant with a gruff seriousness to give the film grounding, and his interactions with the members of Toontown brings them into our world as an accepted part. The kind of thing you encounter on the street. A particular challenge since very few of his co-stars are even there. And Christopher Lloyd as Judge Doom. Evil and foreboding and yet making excellent use of his comedic talents. It's enough to make you wish he hadn't disappeared into kids direct to video films in the 90's.

In the end we get a film that riffs on Chinatown, somewhat spoofingly, somewhat lovingly in a way that could only come through cartoon logic. By all descriptions, none of this should work but it does so, and in doing so it's brilliant. It presents us with a rich world to explore. So come, enjoy it.