CinemaRian Blog

Nashville (1975, USA, Robert Altman) ****

CinemaRian — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:20:21 GMT

Nashville is Robert Altman’s best film. That’s not a controversial claim, but its reputation is accurate. This is one of the greatest American films of the 70’s, and certainly one of the most unique.

The tagline of the movie is “The damndest thing you ever saw” and few promotional lines are more accurate. If the film were made today, I suppose it would be referred to as a hyperlink picture, but it doesn’t even have the required structure. There is either no plot, or about fifteen of them. There is nothing approaching a main character, and in fact, all twenty four of its “lead” actors have equal billing (and, for that matter, two major characters are never seen onscreen at all). Altman shoots the film in a documentary style, and some of the characters are very real, but others and the situations they find themselves in are clearly satirical. There is no other film like it, including others by its director.

The most basic storyline in the films involves an independent political candidate who is preparing for the Tennessee Presidential primary, but said candidate is only heard as a van travels around town, obnoxiously blaring one his speeches. Among the many other intrigues is an undiagnosed illness of country superstar Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), the struggling marriage between political operative Delbert Reese (Ned Beatty) and his wife, gospel singer Linnea (Lilly Tomlin), framed by observations of Opal (Geraldine Chaplin) a pretentious reporter for the BBC. Unlike the modern films that Altman inspired, such as Babel, not everything fits together, but that’s not a criticism. Not everything in life makes sense or is explained. Too few movies understand that once in a while things are just plain random.

Take the example of the Tricycle Man (Jeff Goldblum) who rides around town on giant, ugly motorcycle never saying a word and rarely interacting with other characters. Or L.A. Joan (Shelley Duvall) a woman who seems to be everywhere in this conservative culture though she dresses like she’s a flamboyant male homosexual. My favorite character is Sueleen Gay (Gwen Wells) a wonderfully endearing but naïve singer who (tragically) has no idea that she’s talentless and that audiences only appreciate her for her sex appeal.

The movie is kind of its own genre. There is nothing else the film can be, for it is unlike any other film. One entire of the movie (a third of its running time) is devoted to concert footage performed live by the actors, most of whom wrote their own songs (Keith Carradine won an Oscar for the best, “I’m Easy”.) Few of the stories payoff, and the few that don’t have much of a setup.

But that’s what makes film so endlessly fascinating. It exists in an out of documentary, drama and comedy. The characters are clearly constructs, but you end up caring about them. I was tempted to say that climax says something about America, but I’m not sure even says anything about Nashville. But its kind of like life.

The Curse of Frankenstien (1957, Great Britain, Terrence Fisher) **

CinemaRian — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:13:16 GMT

The Curse of Frankenstein(1957)

For a film of its historical importance, The Curse of Frankenstein is surprisingly bad. The movie led to the third (and longest) wave of horror pictures, lasting until the early 70’s. There would be no Hammer horror without it, nor probably Roger Corman’s Poe films or even the founding of Amicus studio at all. But the picture itself is pretty bad, boring at just 83 minuets, failing to inspire even the smallest of amount of apprehension or chills in the modern viewer and lacking the intellectual depth of Mary Shelley’s novel.

The most interesting parts of the film to note are where it differs from the 1931 James Whale version. Although the novel had been in the public domain, Universal strenuously controlled the rights to their version and Hammer had to be very careful to avoid even the slightest resemblance to that classic. The most obvious consequence of this is the role of The Creature (Christopher Lee) is minimized. Perhaps Hammer was afraid that creating an actual character would make the character to similar to Boris Karloff’s Monster, but the Creature (the main reason anyone is going to see the film) is given so little screen time that at times he seems a bit more like a robot than an actual person (or, to be specific, a collection of people). This is not to say that Lee does not do a good job, but this part should have been much more memorable.

By far the best aspect of the film is the performance of Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein. Beginning here and continuing over the course of the series, Cushing creates a cold, tragic figure. We don’t sympathize with the doctor in the same we did with Colin Clive’s 1931 interpretation, but Cushing makes the character more plausible and psychologically real. This is someone who incapable of love or most other forms of human contact, a brilliant man who became so obsessed in his efforts to make a human being that he forgot how to be one.

Despite Cushing’s splendid performance, the movie is still pretty empty, content to merely repeat the old Frankenstein standby of not playing God without bothering to really deal with the implications of that idea. Director Terrence Fisher, who make some of the finest horror films ever made, is having a hard time here and spends too much effort on gore instead of actually frightening imagery or archetypes (he would correct this in his next film, The Horror of Dracula). Aside from the appearance of the Creature, there is not a single surprise in the entire movie, we find ourselves waiting for it to be over.

Despite the fact that picture is by contemporary standards pretty by the numbers, it’s important to remember just how surprising a color horror film with crimson blood in it was to 1950’s audiences. Even though the movie is difficult to make it through, the fact that it spawned so many wonderful movies can’t be overlooked, and on that level, this bad movie can be celebrated.

The Horror of Frankenstien (1970, Great Britain, Jimmy Sangster) ***

CinemaRian — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:12:03 GMT

The Horror of Frankenstein(1970)

I’ve never responded to Frankenstein movies in the same way I have to Dracula films. The reason is, I think, that there are near endless variations on the plot and themes to Dracula, whereas with Frankenstein you are pretty much stuck aquasi-mad doctor either bringing a dead creature to life or doing something else with one that he brought to life in the previous film.

There are many great Hammer Dracula pictures, but only one great Frankenstein film, the second, The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) which took every ridiculous plot point and played as if it could actually happen, and in doing so made us feel a little sorry for the tragedy of the good doctor.

Perhaps sensing their Frankenstein series was not as strong as their Dracula films (or many of their standalone titles) Hammer in 1970 to reboot the pictures instead of doing another sequel. They were eager for screenwriter the screenwriter
of the first film, Jimmy Sangster, to write the re-launch, so they offered him
both the producer’s reins and director’s chair as well. Sangster probably had more control over this picture than any director ever did at Hammer (well, except for Michael Carreras on The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb).

Although a lot of Hammer fans are not fond of this picture (perhaps due to the absence of Peter Cushing), I rather liked it, and I appreciated Sangster’s choice to make the film as a black comedy instead of another unsuccessful attempt at horror (was Frankenstein ever that scary, anyway?). The picture follows the usual Frankenstein outline (boy dreams of monster, boy creates monster, monster kills people, boy tries to hide monster), but Sangster has fun with the usual cliché’s.

I was afraid that I would miss Cushing in the lead role, but Ralph Bates (who bears a stunning resemblance to The Kink’s Ray Daves) is really exceptional in the part and is quite funny. He’s endearingly evil in the Richard III sense, and unlike Cushing’s interpretation, not the least bit mad. At least this sociopath admits he’s one. The supporting cast (which also includes Graham James, who strangely looks just like The Moody Blue’s Justin Hayward) is mostly spot on, impressive for a first time director.

The movie also looks good, but nearly all the Hammer films do, despite their budget. If it can be said to have a flaw, it would be in the portrayal of the creature (David Prowse). It’s not Prowse’s fault, but his character is given little motivation as to why he so loyal to Frankenstein when he otherwise so violent). Perhaps it was supposed to parody why the doctor always fails at his attempts to create a good person, but wake-up-and-kill approach the character has doesn't work.

This is not a major cinematic landmark, but it is a fun movie that manages to present a couple compelling characters while still being mostly funny. If there is one thing that all the Hammer director’s had in common, it was the fact that they
never played the material for laughs, which is usually suicide in speculative
fiction. Here’s the only to my knowledge that Hammer did it, and amazingly, it worked.

The Curse of Frankenstien (1957, Great Britain, Terrence Fisher) **

CinemaRian — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:11:23 GMT

Sunshine Cleaning (2009, USA, Christine Jeffs) **

CinemaRian — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 06:59:34 GMT

Sunshine Cleaning has all the signs of a movie that went into production too soon, with script that was either still being written or with one in serious need of revision. The movie has the cast it needs and a setting that works, but lacks the crucial element of focus.

As you’ve seen from the trailer, the movie is a light comedy about a two sisters who open up their own business cleaning up after bloody suicides or murders. This is certainly an interesting idea for a movie, but the picture never bothers to consider most of the implications of this. Instead it spends much of its time on a great many subplots, some of which are set up and never pay off.

The two sisters are Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blundt). Rose works as a maid and has a young son named Oscar (Jason Spevack) and spends a great deal of time looking forward to her weekly rendezvous with a married police officer (Steve Zahn). Norah lives with her father Joe (Alan Arkin), an unsuccessful businessesman who is trying to market a new kind of candy. Oscar gets kicked out of school due to some troubling behavior (that the movie never resolves, nor mentions again) so Rose feels the needs to make more money to get him into a private school. The cop advises that she can big bucks cleaning up after dead people, and she convinces Norah join her.

Among the nine million other subplots in the movie are Rose’s attempt to impress her former high school classmates at a baby shower, Norah’s quasi-voyeuristic interest in the daughter of one of the suicides (Mary Lynn Raskub) , Rose’s relationship with the cop, Rose’s potential relationship with the owner of a cleaning supplies shop (Eric Christian Olsen), the sister’s coming to terms with the death of their own mother, and Joe’s potential inability to deliver on a promise to Oscar.

Lost in all of this is any kind of analysis as to the implications of the cleaning company, the ostensible selling point of the movie. At no point does director Christine Jeffs or screenwriter Megan Holley deal with any of the obvious questions. Aside from the fact that the job would be disgusting, how would this effect a person psychologically? Would this change someone’s opinion about death, or life or religion or whatever? Is there much of a distance between cleaning up blood and tomato sauce if you clean up one enough after a while?

The screenplay is the central problem here, although the direction by Jeffs in uninspired. Some plot points, such as Oscar’s trouble at school are introduced and never referred to again, while others, such as the death of the sister’s mother, are brought up too late and pay off too quickly. The entire chronology of the movie seems off, with events that should be days apart apparently (and implausible) taking months to occur, while others seem to come along too fast.

Where the film works is in the acting, which is very impressive. I really got the impression that Adams and Blundt were members of the same family, something that rarely happens in movies. They share a sisterly bond that is utterly believable and silently real, more real that anything else in the picture.

I can’t flaw Sunshine Cleaning for a lack of ideas, or even a lack of good ones, but I can find fault in its inability to focus itself. The whole is far less than the sum of its parts, though I have to say that the movie was not boring. I think I might want to see a movie about a single mother with a troubled child, or a thirty something dealing with the emptiness of her life, or two sisters who start a weird business together, or two sisters dealing with death of their mother. But not all at once.

Sunshine Cleaning(2009)

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (Patrick Tatopoulos) ***

CinemaRian — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 05:09:22 GMT

I have a confession to make. I was not a fan of the first two Underworld movies. Or, more accurately, of what I saw of them. I rented both and turned both off because I found them quite dull, despite the fact that I did not find their star, Kate Beckinsale, to be dull at all.

So why did I even bother with the third film? There wasn’t much else playing and I wanted to see a movie, and I have a very strong weakness for vampire films, good, bad and ugly. Despite the star rating, I’m not sure that I can classify Underworld: Rise of the Lycans as a “good” movie, but I can say that I enjoyed far more the other two (of what I saw anyway). I can’t complain about the money, I spent on it, either, as it delivers exactly what you would expect from a movie with its title.

The first two pictures are not required viewing as it’s a prequel, so I didn’t feel that I walked in on the third installment of something. This is not to say that everything makes sense, because nothing makes sense in these movies. Set in the Middle Ages, the story revolves the revolt of werewolves (the Lycans) who enslaved by vampires. What the movie never explains is why the vampires would need to enslave anyone. What kind of resources do they need? They don’t need to eat, and since they are all strong, they should be able to do all the work they need themselves. Are they just lazy? If so, what do they do all night?

Anyway, one Lycan named Lucian (Michael Sheen) gets special treatment and falls in love with the vampire Sonja (Rhoma Mitra, in a strange coincidence bares a striking resemblance to Kate Backinsale). This creates problems as later starts to feel bad for the other werewolves, and he eventually escapes and ends up leading the other werewolves to revolt (hence the title). Among all this action, there is the love story between Sonja and Lucian, which is not boring but not moving at all. I don’t know how moved I could be by a werewolf\vampire romance, but I did wonder what there children would be like.

The movie is a success in the sense that the characters look cool (despite the fact the film has a strange digial grade), is not boring, and does not waste its story time. It doesn’t go on and on like the first films, nor does it have any gun fights. I mean, if vampires and werewolves were to have a war, would they fight it with GUNS?

I didn’t care about the characters or the plot, and found no deep message or human observation, but I can say that I was entertained, which is something that a whole lot of more ambitious movies fail to do. I can’t even say if fans of the first two pictures will like it, but I can say that it passed the test as a dumb, fun movie to see on Saturday night. Believe it or not, that is a virtue in of itself.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans(2009)

I've Loved You So Long (2008, France, Phillippe Claudel) ****

CinemaRian — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:34:31 GMT

The first thing we notice is the face of Kristen Scott Thomas. She is a beautiful woman, and still is, but there is something in that face of extreme pain. It is as if all of the life and happiness has been sucked out of it. It is a face that not only lacks joy but seems to negate the possibility of it.

Her character is named Juliette, and she sits at an airport terminal waiting for someone to come. That someone is her sister, Lea, played by Elsa Zylberstien. Lea hasn’t seen her sister for fifteen years, when she was a child, but there is only the most basic level of recognition at the reunion. For Juliette, there is no reason for anything anymore.

The movie works simultaneously as a drama and mystery, as we slowly find out what the characters know about what happened and what led to this reunion. Most everyone walking into the picture will know that Juliette has spent the last fifteen years in prison, but the crime itself and that motive behind are revealed slowly.

Because we do not know this information, we judge Juliette slowly. It is not so much that she has no social skills as it is that she chooses not to use them. There is no reason for her to do so, no society for her to believe in. She is intelligent, educated and articulate, but has nothing to say to anyone.

Lea, on the other hand seems to have everything- with kids and a loving husband, Luc (Serge Hazanavicius). What makes the picture so interesting (and moving) is that Lea loves her sister unconditionally. She believes that no matter what she did, she has not done anything beyond understanding or forgiveness. This is the central conflict of the film. One sister wants to recall the other to life, and the other has forgotten that there is any purpose in living.

The acting in this film is superb, but Scott Thomas is outstanding. Setting aside the fact that nearly all of her dialogue is in a second language she manages to show us the utter darkness that her character lives in without ever becoming manipulative. Zylberstien must also be complimented for playing a part that could have easily become maudlin without a trace of Robin Williams- like manipulation.

Although an excellent movie, there are a few flaws. There’s a rather ridiculous pastoral montage in the middle of the film that belong in another movie, and occasionally the screenplay (by director Phillipe Claudel) seems a bit contrived and lays on its points a bit obviously, especially in the subplot involving Juliette’s parole officer (Frederic Pierrot). But overall, this is a moving picture about one person who knows, just knows, her sister is a person worthy of love and respect, and another who cannot conceive that anyone could feel that way.

I've Loved You So Long...(2008)

Stranded: I've Come From a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains (2008. France\Brazil, Spain, Gonzolo Arijon) ****

CinemaRian — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:28:43 GMT

Note: It’s impossible to discuss the movie without giving away spoilers. Pretty much everyone going into this probably knows what happened, but if you don’t you’ve been warned.

I walked into Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains wondering if I could make it through the picture without becoming disgusted, and I found that the what everyone remembers about the story- cannibalism-is not the main focus. It’s more about in an insane situation, and it’s own way is kind of life affirming.

The story has been previously told in Frank Marshall’s 1993 fiction film Alive (which I have not seen), and well known in the annals of airline disasters. In 1972, a plane flying from Uruguay to Chile crashed in the mountains of Argentina. The passengers consisted almost entirely of members of a Uruguayan college rugby team, their friends, girlfriends and family. Seventeen of the forty-five people on board died within twenty four hours of the crash. The remaining twenty-eight would have to find some way to survive in the cold with very little food for seventy two days. The governments of Uruguay, Chile and Argentina tried a rescue but the bad weather meant that the plane could only be visible for one hour a day, and it was white against white snow, and no one knew where the plane was when it went down, and eventually the passengers realized that they would have to in some way be in the instruments of their own rescue.

Director Gonzolo Arijon avoids what could have very easily become an Oprah – type inspiration story. Instead, he focuses on the sociological aspects of what happened- how a new world with new rules was formed immediately after the crash. Death was always close at hand, the survivors deal with it as best they can. Some lose their fear of death or the desire to live, or both, others fight until they end so they can return. Nearly all of them become very spiritual, and this how the film becomes a positive statement.

It is not so much their will to live or their endurance that is moving (though it is to a degree) then it is there the attitude towards the event afterwards. Many of the survivors return to the crash site and there are tears but one man says “I’m glad I came here.” This event has haunted these men for thirty years, but it has not broken them. They bring their children with them, and they celebrate and thank the dead. One says that he feels the dead “Gave their muscles so we might live” and that’s how the men seem to feel. Many equate what they did to a kind of Holy Communion, where the dead gave their body for the life of others.

The movie ends with footage of the men as they play soccer game. They all still live in the same small town. They did what they needed to do to live, and in watching this film, I learned that living is to a degree in end unto itself.

Stranded: I've Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains(2008)

Gran Torino (2008, USA, Clint Eastwood) ***

CinemaRian — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 08:03:18 GMT

Do you remember that guy on your street who people referred to as “Old Man Hastings” or what ever his last name was? The kind of guy the kids in the neighborhood never played around, because he would get so scary if anyone touched a blade of grass on his lawn?

The greatest strength of Gran Torino is Clint Eastwood’s sheer embodiment of that guy we all knew, the guy who seemed to be about 68 for the last thirty years. Eastwood’s character has all of the attributes you would expect from That Guy- he’s tough, racially insensitive (if not a sheer racist), set in his ways and frequently uses the phrase “Get off my lawn!”

In the movie, The Guy’s name is Walt Kowalski, and the picture opens at the funeral of his wife. Walt’s marriage was successful and one gets the sense that the departed was a bridge between him and his sons (Brian Haley and Brian Howe), who do not seem very close, or indeed, very able to communicate with each other very well. Walt is the last white left in his Detroit neighborhood, which consists almost entirely of Hmong immigrants and their children. A veteran of the Korean War, Walt does not like Asians (although he doesn’t have much nice to say about African Americans and Latinos, either). Next door, teenager Thao Vang Lor (Bee Vang) is being pressured by a gang to join them, and eventually the harassment spills over onto Walt’s lawn. Motivated more his love of his property than altruism, Walt uses his rifle to rescue Thao, and unintentionally becomes a hero to the neighborhood.

I am not giving anything away if I state the unsurprising character development that Walt slowly begins to lose his racism. In fact, there is a lot in the movie that is not surprising. If you have seen the trailer, Gran Torino is pretty much the movie you would expect it to be, except for the climax, which is unsuspected though not satisfying.

I have consistently argued that I have found Eastwood’s recent series of critically acclaimed films (Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima and Changeling) to be overrated, and I still feel that I way about Gran Torino. Like Baby and Iwo Jima, it’s a good movie, but not a great one, and not a film that’s particularly deep, either. Perhaps the greatest weakness of Eastwood’s film as a director has been the fact the films seem more serious or profound than the actually are (Unforgiven being an exception that actually is deep). But Gran Torino is more entertaining than any of the films listed above, merely because Eastwood’s character is so much fun to watch. Even as we see the screenplay’s manipulations, the actor is a great screen presence.

I am not sure, however, that this is a “great” performance, though Eastwood is considered to be the front runner for the Best Actor Oscar. It’s more like a version of a movie stars persona than an actual “actorly” role, which Eastwood is capable of doing (as in The Beguiled, for example). Still, the lead performance is clearly the best thing about the movie. It is occasionally ridiculous, and usually predictable, but Gran Torino gives you a sold night of entertainment at the movies.

Changeling (2008, USA, Clint Eastwood) Zero stars

CinemaRian — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:29:03 GMT

Often, it’s a sign of a movie’s greatness when you are unable to move once credits roll. You sometimes need to sit and collect your emotions before you leave. I had to do that with Changeling, as the movie had a profound effect on me, but the anger I felt was not directed towards the films antagonists but towards the filmmaker. I was disgusted and offended.

I should point out, that of course, I am in the minority here. The movie came within three votes of being voted the Best Film of the Cannes Film Festival, and it has ended up on many critics Ten Best lists. With the exception of Unforgiven, I am not a fan of Clint Eastwood as a director, and I know that a whole lot of people are. So you should probably take what I am about say with a grain of salt, but feelings from deep within me told me that something about the film was deathly wrong.

The movie is based on a true, tragic story of a Los Angeles woman named Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a single mother whose son Walter (Gattlin Griffith) was kidnapped in 1928. The LAPD waited 24 hours before beginning an investigation and the story developed into a national story at a time when the police department was under fire from various sources, including Presbyterian minister Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovitch) for incompetence and corruption. After five months, they inform that they have located her son in Illinois, but the reunion is not heartfelt- the child (Devon Conti) is not her boy. Spoilers ahead. She tells this to the detective on her case, J.J. Jones (Jeffery Donovan) but he wants the case wrapped up, so he commits the totally sane woman to a mental institution where she tortured. This is not even the first of many unlikely but true things that occur in the movie.

Okay, I get that all of the terrible things portrayed here happened. But like another film about abuse and suffering in recent years, The Magdalene Sisters, I felt that the filmmakers lacked any kind of sensitivity about how to treat this material. On three separate occasions in my life, I have been emotionally scarred by inappropriate actions of police officers, two times severely. Watching this movie brought those memories back, but I felt like I was being manipulated by cheap dramatic ploys. Was the entire LAPD bad? If so, how did they get that way? The implicit argument that Eastwood is making in this movie is that pretty much everyone was guilty of horrid and callous insensitivity. Even the “sympathetic” cop, Detective Ybarra (Michael Kelly) at one point orders a child to do something so abusive that it was difficult to think about. I have no doubt that there are bad people on every police force, and that sometimes even good cops do bad things, but I knew that already. WHY, damnit?! The only reason they abuse Christine and the other characters in this film is to get a rise in us, the audience. It’s wrong for Eastwood and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski (infamous for creating the worst TV show I have ever seen, Babylon 5) to bring up these serious issues and then treat them in such a cavalier, manipulative way.

The worst scene in the movie takes place shortly after Christine is involuntary committed to the mental institution. She is stripped naked, sprayed with a fire hose and then made to spread her legs, in full view of three people, while a nurse checks her for syphilis. What I saw on the screen was not a melodramatic moment. Jolie plays the scene so bravely and convincingly that I saw an actual person, suffering and being humiliated. I do not like to see people suffer, and I especially do not like to see women suffer. Sometimes, as in a movie like May, it is okay for a director to show pain on this level, to remind us that such things exist in the real world and it’s our call to do something about it. I saw no evidence of that goal in this film. Christine Collins was being humiliated on the screen, in 1928, and I could do nothing but sit in the audience, unable to help or comfort her. I was showed this and made to feel awful for no good reason, perhaps no reason at all, as there is no reason for this movie to exist. I hate this film.