-88 Reviews

Songs from the Second Floor (2000)

"Slapstick Bergman" indeed

[8/10 · 13 June 2003]

One critic described this film as being "Slapstick Ingmar Bergman"; it's a great joke, and in many ways a true one. I've never seen a movie like this before, and I haven't laughed so hard at one in years. Every single scene has something off-beat or funny happening in it, so that you may want to see it more than once. (I watched it twice in one day!) The best bit occurs when the businesspeople decide on a rash course of action to save the faltering economy. I won't spoil it for you but trust me, it's one of the blackest comic moments in all of film. Don't miss it!

Dangerous Liaisons (1959)

A blazing good time

[7/10 · 22 February 2003]

This hyper-cool French updating of the Laclos classic is a blast from start to (amazing) finish; its immorality can be a drag in the middle section, but there's too much fun to be had in it to abandon it for that reason. Jeanne Moreau does the full range of bad girl, and her performance alone would merit a viewing, but you can also enjoy the film for its sleek, French attitudes, its Thelonius Monk score, a handsome young Jean-Louis Tritignant, his suits, her wardrobe, and so on, forever. It's a nasty little film is some ways, but I enjoyed it immensely just the same.

Eban and Charley (2000)

Very offensive

[1/10 · 25 October 2002]

This film takes the position that society has no legitimate interest in "interfering" in a romance between a fifteen- and a twenty-nine-year-old; I disagree, but more than that I was offended by the portrayal in the film of those who share my concern: bigots, drinkers, military disciplinarians. The film presents a repellent point of view: that those who advocate relationships with minors -- and the minors themselves -- are victims of society's intolerance; to make their point more profoundly, the filmmakers make their couple victims in many other ways: Charley's mother and best friend are deaf, his mother was killed by a drunk driver while he watched, his father is senselessly cruel, while Eban has been fired from his job (a boys' athletic coach) and is hounded by his ruthlessly "concerned" parents. At one point, a propos of nothing, Charley's friend Sunshine (whose parents kick her out of the house for dating a non-white) asks Charley if he's heard about a young man in Seattle who was beaten "just for being a gay kid." Where does the bravery in the face of injustice end? The film's composition and tone are spare; I was reminded of a Belle and Sebastian cd cover, and then lo and behold, the band was thanked in the end credits. For inspiration, I wonder? 1/10

Crawlspace (1986)

Ugly

[1/10 · 24 September 2002]

An ugly, mean-spirited horror movie, directed in a detached, hallucinatory style, like "Phantasm." Klaus Kinski is repugnant as the sadist; his performance is garbage, but can you blame him? Just soft-core enough to make it to dvd. 1/10

George Washington (2000)

A lovely film. Meaning?

[5/10 · 15 March 2002]

This film was lovely, and there was dozens of good ideas in it, but it didn't seem sorted out to me, and in the end I felt that I was being invited to take whatever meaning from it I wished. Doesn't that kind of art come rather too easily to the artist? If it were exuberant, you might have that to buoy you, but instead the material is treated very somberly -- it invites you to find meaning in it, and implies that there is much there. But is there? For instance, one scene near the end features a portrait of George Bush, Sr. hanging on a wall; in a film named "George Washington," you naturally look for significance. But later, a friend told me that he had seen an interview with the director in which he mentioned that the portrait was placed more or less arbitrarily in the shot. How many of us found something there that wasn't intended, and that wasn't an organic function of the film? I enjoyed watching "George Washington," but I can't say that I found it satisfying. I'll look forward to Green's next feature -- I only hope his meanings will be both present and better expressed.

Congo (1995)

Smell the steaming jungle

[1/10 · 15 December 2000]

Let's see: there's a civil war, a lost city, a talking gorilla, some regular gorillas, a previously unknown species of killer albino gorilla, the most powerful laser ever known to man, a *lot* of diamonds lying mined and loose in the sand, attack hippos, an active volcano, and a hot air balloon packed in a suitcase in a downed plane. That's not too much, is it? I've had more coherent fever dreams ("... and then the Romanian guy picked up a bunch of diamonds, because this was a lost city that he had been looking for or something, but then the mean gorillas that we had seen before came out of nowhere and ate him. Now somehow the talking gorilla was back from visiting the regular gorillas, and, as a kind of earthquake or volcano started, the woman industrialist/doctor built a gun using a laser and this big diamond she had just found in her dead fiance's hand..."). It's a blast if you're looking for more ammunition against the pernicious influence of Michael Crichton in American entertainment (and hence world entertainment), and if you keep firmly in mind the extent to which this cynical and half-hearted attempt fell on its face at the boxoffice. But, sadly, the men responsible -- Crichton, sceenwriter John Patrick Shanley, director Frank Marshall -- probably never lost a dime. Shame on them, and I mean that. 1/10

Black & White (I) (1999)

...and grey all over

[1/10 · 14 December 2000]

It's like a millennial "Zabriskie Point": the characters take turns making skin-deep observations about youth today in "conversations" that are all exposition and nothing else. They may as well address the camera directly. There are no heroes here, but the whites come across the worst: there's a sycophantic documentarian and her predatory homosexual husband, a hired murderer who will do anything to fit in with the black rap crowd, an unbalanced detective whose game is entrapment and blackmail, his cold-blooded ex-girlfriend (an intellectual who begins one conversation by saying, "Did you know that Paleolithic women...?"), a crooked, publicity-hungry D. A., a band of slick Italian stereotypes, and so on. Street life is idealized here as being somehow more virtuous, and the blacks in the film are more self-aware and honest, but the message inadvertantly sent is not flattering to anyone, and no real issues are explored. It would be harmless enough if it didn't pretend to such gravity; it's offensive as is. 1/10

High Fidelity (2000)

No conflict

[4/10 · 11 December 2000]

It's a cop-out, and it has no dramatic structure. John Cusack plays Rob, the unappealing protagonist who owns a record store and loses his girlfriend to his own apathy and fear of commitment; he maybe is too believable in the role, and I ended up resenting him almost as much as his girlfriend must have. By the time the ending rolled around, I was left with no one to root for, and no conflict to resolve except the non-dramatic one in Rob's head. (The film, incidentally, starts over about three quarters of the way through, stranding the viewer in Rob's neuroses -- how much fun is that?) There are a lot of likeable moments, especially when Joan Cusack is on-screen, but there's nothing to hold you, unless you identify with the protagonist -- which a lot of guys must. It's also dismaying to hear the screenwriters name-checking bands from Serge Gainsbourg to Stiff Little Fingers. It goes far beyond demonstrating the characters' erudition. It's there to divide the audience into the hip and unhip: "street cred." 4/10

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

"This makes no sense"

[1/10 · 1 November 2000]

Director Joe Berlinger is better than this, and terrific films like "Brother's Keeper" prove it. What happened here? Maybe he was reaching to a younger audience than his documentaries might attract and, not trusting his judgment, made compromises. (I notice he has a writing credit, too.) Maybe his ideas were watered down in re-write. Or maybe there was studio pressure. Regardless, "Book of Shadows" is a shambles, either as a stand-alone or as a follow-up to the inventive original.

(The original, by the way, scored its success in part because it didn't pander; "Book of Shadows" is nothing if not pandering, from its Goth chick to its "Deliverance"-like treatment of the locals to the death rock on the soundtrack. The subtext of this multi-million dollar production is that it understands those on society's fringe and those who imagine themselves to be on the fringe, and that it sympathizes; really, though, it just wants their money.)

So much is wrong here that I don't think there's any reason to go into it. Is there? One thing, though: the actor portraying Sherriff Cravens (I can't find his name here) gives the worst performance I've seen in a major film in a long, long time. It's too awful to blame the actor entirely, and I think it's symptomatic of everything that's wrong with "Book of Shadows": What script calls for this? And where was Berlinger?

Prophecy (1979)

Another white buffalo

[3/10 · 15 May 2000]

A ludicrous horror film with a young, handsome Armand Assante as a native American (with a five-o-clock shadow and a sprinkling of chest hair poking out the top of his shirt). The monster, when it appears, is one of those 70s kinds that moves on a dolly, like in "The White Buffalo." And to show how well the film has aged, consider the hero: a bearded white guy from the EPA. 3/10

Simon of the Desert (1965)

Cinema's tallest soapbox

[9/10 · 2 May 2000]

The funding for this gleefully blasphemous feature was pulled before the film was completed, resulting in an abrupt and not quite satisfying ending. Still, what's left is a little slice of heaven (pun intended) with some of its directors most direct and powerful attacks on the clergy he made a career of hating. Bunuel here presents us with an ascetic so self-involved that he declines to embrace his own mother; he restores the hands to a peasant who immediately uses them to strike his own child; he prides himself on eating only lettuce, mentioning it often and to anyone who will listen. "Simon" is a good-looking film, too, with a visual landscape that echoes its protagonist's austerity and startling surreal touches -- such as a coffin that slides through the desert scrub to the base of the column atop which Simon spends his years -- that recall the glory days of "L'Age d'Or." It might have been a masterpiece had Bunuel been allowed the full scope of his vision; it's a major film as is. 8/10

The Ninth Gate (1999)

What was Polanski up to?

[3/10 · 12 March 2000]

People threw things at the screen at the showing I attended; I didn't blame them, although I thought it deserved just a little better than that. The question "The Ninth Gate" left me with was: what was Polanski up to? He directed this impersonal piece as if he had little interest in it (although he had a producer credit), and it wasn't any fun to watch -- it didn't seem as though he was having a wicked good time. This film never gets on its feet, and the cast performs dispassionately (although Frank Langella gets a good bit in when he passes his hand through a flame while shouting "Behold!"). 3/10

Deadly Sunday (1982)

You're the hostage

[2/10 · 9 March 2000]

I'M GOING TO DISCUSS THE "SURPRISE" ENDING, so sign off now if you really intend to see this.

I picked this loser up in the horror section of a local grocery store, so when the characters began to pointedly mention that they were awaiting the arrival of a criminal gangleader, I naturally assumed that something supernatural was going to put in a cameo toward the end. Wrong: the twist ending to this tiresome hostage melodrama is that the bad guys are fronted by -- are you ready for this? -- a woman! Too tedious to be any fun in even a B-movie way; since movies this bad usually depend on naked women or monsters to recoup their modest budgets, it makes you suspect that the director thought he was actually doing something. Wrong again. 2/10

I Am Cuba (1964)

Swallow

[10/10 · 7 March 2000]

This is my favorite piece of propoganda filmmaking -- and I'm remembering Reifenstahl when I write that -- but I think it's better than that kind of genre comparison implies. The film takes a Marxist look at the state of Cuba in 1964; it's episodic, and while the ideas expressed are nothing new, the film presents them so cinematically and with such overt fervor that it transcends its numbskull earnestness. There's nothing naive about it: this isn't the work of a starry-eyed naif, but rather a calculated piece of agitprop in which the Americans chew gum loudly and run their hands up the skirts of the innocent Cuban girls, and the blame for Cuba's woes is laid squarely on Batista's shoulders. But it believes itself, and the film, when it connects, is as powerful as anything you've ever seen. 10/10

Deep Blue Sea (1999)

preposterous and idiotic

[5/10 · 5 August 1999]

It's preposterous and idiotic, but at least it's not a rip-off; you get the feeling that the director actually wants to provide you with an experience. And it offers a lot of unintentional laughs, which is more than you can say for "The Haunting." Watch it with "Congo."

Schindler's List (1993)

path of least resistance

[2/10 · 29 June 1999]

Steven Spielberg used to entertain us; now he educates us as if he were entertaining, and his films are leaden with their messages: slavery is bad, the Holocaust was bad, D-day was bloody. He keeps taking the path of least resistance. He used to charm us with his imagination; in "Schindler's List" he abandons imagination for the sake of repellent explicitness. It left me longing for the days of "Forbidden Games." Meanwhile, having succeeded in dumbing down American moviemaking-as-entertainment in the 80s to the level of "The Goonies" and "Batteries Not Included," he proceeds to dumb down the Holocaust with the introduction of fake art-house effects and fairy tale symbolism. In interviews following the film's release he said that the making of the film had so opened his eyes to the horrors of the Holocaust that he regretted having used the Nazis as villains in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"; apparently he literally needs a picture drawn for him -- a moving one -- and assumes that we do, too. It made me wonder if he would go back to "Raiders" if he could and digitize all the fun away.

The Killing Fields (1984)

preaching to the converted

[1/10 · 29 June 1999]

The worst kind of preaching to the converted: a film that gives us vivid atrocities in the name of opposing the secret bombing of Cambodia when, of course, everyone who sees the film opposed the bombing as soon as it was made known anyway. The director presents us with dying children and we can feel high-minded and morally superior for agreeing with him that what we're seeing is wrong. This log-rolling is worse than offensive; it's pornographic.