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Cold Skin (2017)
War with the Newts? Not exactly.
I have the advantage. Having recently read Karl Capek's brilliant satire, Cold Skin makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately, as a social commentary, this movie lacks the keen insight and biting wit of that novel, but instead supplies some rather unsavory sexual exploits of its two protagonists. (Mercifully, the movie does not provide us with details as exhaustive as I understand the original book did - but it was still more than I needed.)
I've noticed that many reviewers here seemed perplexed by some of the movie's admittedly sloppy plot points, but I see no great mystery here. For instance, it's not surprising that a kidnapped child subjected all her life to the overweening will of her oppressor might not find the will to escape even though the opportunity was always present. Still, despite its flawed writing and awkward and shallow symbolism, Cold Skin manages to be a fairly entertaining 3 character chamber piece/Assault on Precinct 13 scenario greatly opened out by some excellent photography of its austere Icelandic setting. I think it is best viewed from this perspective.
There is one mystery I would like cleared up though, respecting the notebook with the clumsy, almost laughable drawings that was found early on in the house. What exactly did Darwin get wrong, I wonder? Kapek employed Darwinism to explain the existence of the Newts quite effectively. This question still haunts me.
As for the frog people, I initially feared for them when the British navy ships arrived off their coast, but I know they ultimately are going to be just fine.
Yajû no seishun (1963)
A master of style with a big bag o' tricks
I watched my first Suzuki film, Gate of Flesh, many months ago and was fascinated, almost against my will, by its vivid mixture of cheesiness and style. I wasn't sure what it was that so intrigued me until I saw Youth of the Beast and realized that I was watching the director that Tarantino, Miike, Chan-wook Park all would like to be. He is the real deal, sui generis, derivative of no-one, who single handedly broke out of the doldrums of Nikkatsu Studio's b-unit yakuza film grind of the late 50s early 60s to turn the genre into a bona fide art form.
The story is Yojimbo like, enemy gangs played off against each other by Jô Shishido, alpha-male extraordinaire, a maverick thug, possibly concealing extra bullets in his pudgy cheeks, who shows up with no apparent history but some serious baggage. But the story doesn't matter, it just a frame on which Suzuki hangs his surreal, over the top sensibility, using slyly inventive camera work, splashes of brilliant color, and astonishing set design to create a dark parody of the genre that displays the jazzy hyper kinetic chaos of post war Tokyo. The honorable gangster of the 50s is dead, summarily shot in the head by Suzuki's fiendish wit, and only fools and sadists remain.
The set pieces sustain a freshness even 44 years later, and illuminate what more recent (and derivative) genre directors might be trying to achieve. A sadomasochistic interlude plays out in an impromptu backyard dust storm painted in brilliant yellows. The invasion of a yakuza foot soldier's apartment yields a ceiling festooned with inexplicable face-bumping model airplanes. A one way mirror in the office of a yakuza nightclub examines the oblivious decadence of its patrons as violence plays out in the foreground. The rival gang is unaccountably headquartered in a movie theater, where the characters lay plots in the projection room as giant heads peer in and disembodied voices provide an eerie and distracting backdrop. Suzuki compels us to watch snippets of various Japanese and American noirs while we are watching his movie, how clever. A series of quick cuts hop around amongst a collection of candy colored telephones returning in full circle to settle in a slickly kitsch ultra stylish hostess club, where the camera, set in an invisible wall, follows the action by gliding effortlessly up and down a string of booths.
It begins to be difficult to avoid the idea that Suzuki might just be poking fun at our voyeuristic lust for cinematic sex and violence. As the film progresses I keep getting an image of a puckish little fellow giggling gleefully from behind the camera - his humor is so infectious and so playful that I can't help laughing at myself right along with him. His mise en scène is all about disengaged observation, and when he isn't cramming his audience inside walls or behind glass partitions so we can a better view of a nice bit of torture, he makes us stand with the rest of the rubberneckers, at a safe distance, where we can enjoy the fun of a vicious street brawl without getting blood on our shoes. The camera pulls back whenever physically possible, not to demonstrate the wood block beauty of classic Japanese cinema, but to show us ourselves, sitting in the dark watching, or leaning in to discover just who is speaking from all the way across a room. He creates the same sense of distance for his characters, scattering them them liberally throughout the room, so that conversations occur with cuts that must leap the distance from one side to the other, while backs are often turned, and profiles more common than full face shots. Like us, they are permitted no empathy, no connection, all puppets in Suzuki's absurd universe.
But we're still nowhere near the bottom of Suzuki's bottomless bag of tricks. His situational comedy is as broad as his camera is sly, taking care to subvert every code and convention of the genre along the way. There is a lot of fun to be had here as well, including a particularly amusing heist scene involving ineptly applied stocking disguises, smoke bombs and undignified scrambling, or Jo's decidedly un-stoic petulance regarding some Yakuza style finger whittling.
As for pacing, there is no fat to be trimmed, and no fades, no dissolves and sparse transitional scenes. Suzuki's cuts are disconcertingly abrupt, he flings out plot points with utter contempt, often allowing mere seconds for us to absorb information. Quite challenging while trying to read subtitles, I made liberal use of the rewind button.
A driving, jazzy score punctuates the film throughout that not only matches the amped up mobility of the visuals but the innovative jump cuts. The Criterion transfer is worth mentioning, it's a joy to behold. It rare to find such a crisp, brilliant restoration, and there aren't many b-level Japanese films from this era that look this good. Bonus material reveals Suzuki to be just what I'd expect, a sweet and unpretentious little old guy with a naughty gleam in his eyes. He's not very forthcoming about his film but seems very entertained by all the questions. Jô Shishido also has a brief interview where he ruefully discusses his cheek implants.
The Strange Woman (1946)
Period melodrama with distinctly proto-feminist touches
It's a very pleasant surprise to find that not only could Lamarr act but that she could handle a role of some complexity. Jenny, like Scarlett, is a villainess that I am inclined to root for even as she puts her evil plots into play - and that she could pull that off is really down to the acting. If Jenny behaves badly, Ulmer makes is clear that she certainly has her reasons; abandoned by a feckless mother and beaten and abused by a drunken father, and condemned to eke out her existence in poverty on the wrong side of the tracks as her betters look down on her. As a female with no opportunity to improve her lot, the best escape on offer is to serve in the kitchens of the wealthy - she's not good enough to attend school with her childhood girlfriend - and the worst to land a job as serving girl/prostitute in one of the local saloons. In the early scene at the creek, Ulmer established character and motivation for the balance of the film. The young Jenny despises both options, and as she rejects the questionable and condescending generosity of the Judge and torments her future lover, she demonstrates her both her anger at the inequity of her lot and her determination to bootstrap herself out of a life of poverty and humiliation. In effect, she has "spirit", that singular quality that moviegoers so admire in their heroes, good or bad.
Instinctively, as a young girl she knows her only ticket out in this man's world will be her beauty. But while she recognizes this truth with a brutal honesty, she neither accepts it nor takes it for granted in the fashion of a typical Hollywood femme fatale. In fact, it's clear that she intends to punish men for their weakness and susceptibility to her charms as well as their hypocrisy and need for control. Ulmer is at pains throughout to make us aware of these elements. The scene where the town fathers presume to decide how to dispose of Lamarr after her father's death in a way that will meet with the requirements of propriety is quite pointed. Incredibly, their solution is to marry her off to a man old enough to be her father, and the combination of salacious satisfaction and priggishness that Ulmer puts across here is delicious. Again in the church scene we see upstanding citizens content to complain about the depravities of the town's wilder elements but unwilling to apply their pocketbooks to the problem. Only after Lamarr stands up to volunteer a fair chunk of her husband's income and calls upon other women to do likewise do purse strings begin to loosen - indicating that there are other things on her agenda besides accumulating wealth and exacting revenge. Unlike many upstart type characters, she remembers where she came from and she means to do something about the condition of those she left behind. Not that her good deed gains her more than dismissive annoyance and a sexualized comment about her lips, but she is hardly surprised by this reaction - actually she seems amused. She's helped those she feels more akin too and screwed over the self righteous both within the same piece of business - it's been a good day. And then there's that wonderful scene with Sanders, where she bares all and shows him just how deliberately dishonest his efforts to quash his suspicions about her have been.
Just as she punishes men, spends their money, plays with their affections and even incites them to murder, Lamarr is seen to consistently champion the cause of downtrodden women. Not the kind of behavior one would expect from a sociopathic femme fatale. There is a more complex individual here and yet one that also seems to stand for both feminine anger and as well as sisterly compassion. Brooke is the exception to the rule, but she is arguably rich enough and complacent enough to fall into the enemy camp. Lamarr's charitable works on behalf of impoverished women and children is not a ruse to gain respectability any more than her aid and staunch defense of her barmaid friend. Unlike Scarlett, she doesn't seem to care at all for propriety. In fact, she seems to despise it, recognizing that its standards are applied far more stringently to women and most often by men. Not for nothing does Ulmer show us even her true love Sanders arguing to chuck her friend Lena out into the street for the sake of propriety.
However, this wouldn't be a Hayes code film if the message didn't get muddled by the very same false propriety that's being attacked here and it does gets very much muddled in the third act. Lamarr inexplicably falls for a miscast Sanders, who is not an appreciable improvement on any of the other men in town. He's just as dishonest, self interested and priggish and decidedly lacking in the charisma needed to explain how he manages to find the chink in her armor. Not a terrible plot turn in itself - she is human after all - except that we see it setting the stage for the inevitable crime doesn't pay comeuppance and contrition finale.
In spite of the spoiled ending it's a well turned out film. The photography is good, the pacing quite good - it moves right along with very little that needed trimming. Having not read the original book I found Ulmer's feminist take on it refreshing and enjoyable especially considering the era it was made and it was fun to see Lamarr get an opportunity to trot out her acting talent.
Two for the Seesaw (1962)
A Manhattan film with no Manhattan
In spite of Ted McCord's beautiful deep focus b&w photography there is very little in this film that is interesting to look at. As a stage play brought to film, it never manages to get off the stage and with all of NYC as a potential set, a little more time devoted to exterior shots could have opened this up and made it into a 'real' film. A few brief glimpses of lower Manhattan, Mitchum pacing the streets in the opening sequence or stalking MacLaine from the shadows outside her apartment gives a taste of what this film could have been if Wise hadn't allowed himself to become hidebound by a talky script.
Mitchum is clearly miscast - it almost feels like the overabundant dialog is being dragged out of him. But since it is Mitchum, and he's such a force of nature on screen, it's hard to mind too much - but also hard not to consider that Fonda would have been a much more appropriate choice. As it is, MacLaine has a lot of work to do to convince us that Mitch is the guy for her. She almost succeeds (no doubt the off screen chemistry between the two stars helped her a bit with this), but most of the pleasure in her performance derives from that lovable slob thing that she could do falling out of bed, as she proved so ably in Some Came Running. Problem is, she is a comedienne and Mitch most definitely was not. She could snap out those one-liners, "That must have been some bridge!", and get a laugh. If Mitch said anything funny, I must have missed it.
Unfortunately most of the film is shot in two tiny, claustrophobic apartments with very few changes in camera angle which made me think that Wise could take a tip or two from Ozu on how to make a repeatedly shot interior more interesting. When we aren't gazing listlessly at one or the other of these stupefying spaces, we are treated to a stale looking split screen shot of both a la Pillow Talk. Except that this doesn't really remind me so much of Pillow Talk, and not that I ever wanted to be reminded of it, as make me wonder if the original stage set had been carted in.
Some relief is provided by Elizabeth Fraser as MacLaine's friend Sophie and Billy Gray as the cranky landlord. At least they get us out of the house before we go stir crazy to visit a few post beat generation Bohemian style parties and MacLaine's dance studio loft space. Early on we do get to go out to for Chinese once with a real live waiter (yay!), but that is soon buried under endless home cooked meals, warm milk and the perennial opening and closing of fridge doors. It's oddly underpopulated for a Manhattan film - think the World the Flesh and the Devil - without cityscapes...
Previn's score, loved by many but sorry, I've never been a fan of that overly loud 60s jazz style. Beyond that, it threatens to over power the film by setting a jazzy New York tone that the proceedings simply can't live up to. No matter how hard the music tries, what we see is never in sync with what we hear.
Worth a watch for MacLaine's perf and McCord's lensing, but not one of Wise's better efforts.
Show Boat (1951)
Unispired, but Gardner, Keel and Warfield manage to salvage it
It's not possible to watch this film without comparing to the 1936 version. Both films have their strengths and weaknesses and if it were possible to combine the best elements of both, I think you would end up with a definitive version. What's mainly lacking in the '51 version is Whale's attention to narrative and his inspired staging, which told stories within stories. I am missing the lover's nighttime tryst on top of the riverboat with the mist swirling around them, the wonderful montage of suffering and toil during Robson's "Old Man River", the charwoman's faces as Dunne auditions in the Trocadero and most of all the incredibly staged New Year's Eve scene which was pure movie magic. By contrast, Sidney's staging is claustrophobic and mundane, which serves well enough for the Champion's excellent dance numbers - but all that is really required here is to hold the camera steady - and well enough for Gardner's scenes because here's an actress who knows how to emote with her whole body and and is able to completely inhabit even this cramped and uninteresting framing. Grayson, doesn't fare as well, she seems lost and lacking in affect compared to poignancy of Dunne's luminous performance. To be fair, Sidney seems to have no clue how to present her character, which is most glaringly obvious when he trots her out in a hideous bottle green dress for her over lit Trocadero number. In Whale's version this scene is probably the emotional high point of the film. Dunne is framed in long shot, a tiny ethereal presence isolated on a cavernous black stage, transforming her into a fragile, otherworldly creature who just blew in from another realm. Very disappointing.
Which brings me to the next problem - costuming. Just because it's Technicolor and you can showcase every noxious color in the spectrum and bring every light to bear on it doesn't mean you should. Less would have been better here, even if Gardner is gorgeous enough to carry off the most blinding hues of magenta and gold - she shouldn't have to. I often felt sorry for Grayson, perpetually squeezed into gowns that made her head look several times too large for her body.
Much or the casting is also misjudged, though this holds true for both films. While the captain is written to provide some comic relief to what is probably the most melancholy of classic musicals, Brown turns the part into too much of a bad joke. Keel on the other hand is fine, though a bit too strong for the part of the weak and feckless riverboat gambler. But too much presence is preferable to the utter absence of it brought by Allan Jones. In spite of this miscalculation, Keel still manages to convey some of the wistful sadness of the story, a responsibility that he is left to shoulder alongside Warfield and Gardner in the face of Sidney's bland and bloodless imagery. Moorehead also was fine, what little I saw of her, as her part was almost completely written out. I could have done with more of her and a lot less of the unlovable Helen Westley of the '36 version. Warfield's amazing voice and emotive power was an entirely acceptable alternative to Robson for me, but again, Gardner's departing carriage,though not unaffecting is still an inadequate substitute for the original montage. Last, but by no means, least, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that as much as I admire Helen Morgan as Julie LaVerne, I prefer Gardner, dubbing and all. She basically carries the movie and I found myself waiting through scenes to see her back on screen. Although she didn't have to, I doubt that Morgan could have brought that off. Many speak of that last shot, but for me Gardner delivers her best during her final scene with Keel on the riverboat - she brings all the physicality the part requires effortlessly - proving that she really knows how to work a red dress.
To sum up, Whale's version is elevated by a compelling expressionistic vision but somewhat hampered by a few casting mistakes. Conversely, Sidney's film is sunk by a banal conceptualization and only partially rescued by some lucky casting and extraordinary talent. Both films are worth watching for different reasons and beyond the obvious comparisons, probably both should be watched, as they seem to inform one another.
Aleksandra (2007)
Not as 'universal' as it could've been
I am getting a little tired of Russian films that make claims to universality of theme and yet are packed with obscure (to me as a Westerner) and specific cultural cues. You can't have it both ways. At least I hope that was what was going on. Otherwise I would have to say that many of the exchanges between characters were fraught with mechanical sentimentality, were oddly disturbing (as when Alexandra takes a deep whiff of her grandson's manly aroma)or just downright incomprehensible.
Alexandra's grumpy, tough as nails old Mother Russia come to inspect her sons embroiled in yet another war is understandably cranky. Having survived the hell on earth of WW2 Russia would wouldn't be a little impatient with all things military? But while the actress carries the role with some gravitas, she is surprisingly unsympathetic and never more so as when she stops to deliver the director's pearls of wisdom regarding the relative merits of brute force versus intelligence to a surly Chechen youth or discusses with her grandson the autocratic structure of the Russian family - or was that government? Even an uninitiated Westerner can detect when a filmmaker breaks into his own film to use his actors as mouthpieces. It's not only jarring and annoying - it bespeaks a failure to convey these thoughts within the framework of character and action. Only when Alexandra encounters other women does she soften and become more accessible but I'm afraid most of the credit for the emotional connectivity of those scenes goes to the woman playing the Chechen cigarette vendor. While I enjoyed those scenes, they were nonetheless somewhat suspect for me, smacking of oversimplified beneficent sexism - women nurturers good, men warmongers bad.
On the plus side, it was the specificity of location and the excellent photography of the camp, the crumbling town and the seared countryside that kept me engrossed. The silent tableaux of working soldiers, hostile locals, the machines of war and even grandma traversing this landscape were far more effective and evocative than scenes that included dialog and reminded me that the great strength of Russian film making is traditionally grounded in the purely pictorial. These images, thankfully devoid of distracting and mysterious verbal cues and directorial soapboxing, did succeed where the storyline failed, in transforming the local to the universal.
The Shape of Things (2003)
Petty and Incendiary
There is not much that is really thought provoking here. Mostly I see posters having violent reactions to the questionable 'morality' of this film, airing their gender driven grievances or arguing endlessly about 'truth and art'. Basically this film is a pretty transparent and misanthropic diatribe vs gender relationships that focuses almost exclusively on the power struggles that happen within them. There is a lot more to interpersonal relationships than this, but LaBute doesn't seem to know that.
Clearly LaBute hates artists, or at least performance artists. And he wants us to hate them too. That is why Evelyn is such a shallow, self-important poser. We are allowed to see only a superficial caricature. What makes her tick besides a chilly artistic ambition, remains a mystery to us, because he has made sure that there is nothing else there. A little teary eyed discomfort in the last scene is not going to rescue Evelyn's humanity. It's a case of too little too late, cheesy and hypocritical. LaBute is the bad artist here, trying to manipulate our perception of this woman-as-artist, by taking away our ability to see her as an actualized person.
So physical attractiveness empowers people, and as with any other form of power, it can challenge their fallibility, making them prone to abuse of it. Especially poor saps like Adam who have no prior experience of the potential moral pitfalls. Is this searingly insightful? Is this news? To anyone? Who hasn't, at one time or another been the victim of, or employer of this kind of power? This is an easy button to push. Do you feel manipulated yet?
This is a very petty kind of misanthropy. If you are going to despise your fellow humans, at least do so for imposing war, greed, starvation, slavery, torture on one another. But despising them for trying to muddle their way through the pitfalls of gender relationships, and trying to manipulate your audience into jumping on that bandwagon seems absurdly small-minded to me.
Black Caesar (1973)
Larry Cohen - my kinda guy
Say what you will about Larry Cohen, for me he is the sui generis of maverick, grindhouse directors. He is my urban guerrilla film maker of choice. Who else shoots all over NYC without permits, unleashing wounded Harlem kingpins on unsuspecting midday shoppers on 5th Avenue, or racing cabs down NYC sidewalks with thugs in hot pursuit, on foot no less? Although he has been slotted in the grindhouse and cult categories, Cohen doesn't really belong in either, mixing classic Hollywood b-unit gangster formula and 1970s blaxploitation, with a healthy measure of social comment bludgeoned in.
BC is a well-known tale of the rise and fall of a crime boss that follows the conventions of it's namesake, Little Caesar. It's protagonist, played by a convincing and charismatic Fred Williamson, wants power, revenge and some social and economic justice for the people of Harlem. He gets it, by Bogarting his way into the confidence of a local Mafia boss, blackmailing corrupt city officials into submission and siphoning some of his ill-gotten gains into legitimate black owned business. But as his ambition and power grow, so does the hatred of his enemies and the alienation of his family, girlfriend and allies. Like Caesar, he is headed for a fall, but unlike Rico, it's a fall that grandstands it's way across Manhattan in broad daylight, even making a pit stop for a little well earned payback, culminating, surprisingly in a homage to Buñuel.
If you like slick and polished, don't look here. As cheap as a low budget film can get, Cohen used his own basement and his mom's house as sets, and every time he comes up with an expensive car, I wonder who he borrowed it from. But his best set is great, a raw, gritty and unsuspecting NYC of the early 70s. The acting is sometimes sub-par or over-the-top (this fits though) but often good, especially by Gloria Hendry, girlfriend (who we don't see enough of), Julius Harris, estranged Dad, Minnie Gentry, Mama Gibbs and Williamson best of all. The soundtrack, by the Godfather himself, James Brown, is perfect, and probably the best of any film of this genre.
Mang jing (2003)
Zola for the 21st Century
What starts out looking like a crime story, soon becomes something far more sinister that reads like a prequel to Germinal. It seems that 19th century industrialization has hit the post Mao era like a pile-driver. It's not difficult to envision the riots and strikes to follow. While it's probably safe to assume the working conditions in Chinese industry have never been ideal, adding nouveau capitalist elements of corruption, greed and cynicism creates an even bleaker picture of a Chinese worker's future. It's a giant leap backwards for Chinese culture, rendering the suffering and death of the prior giant leap forward particularly poignant in its wastefulness and futility. Yang Li is not slow to point this out, as his protagonists/villains sing cynically revised lyrics to old socialist songs. The very fact that these songs are now sung on a karaoke machine in a whorehouse, and no longer sung in the village square by smiling schoolgirls waving flags, says it all. The optimism and hope of the under class, no matter how fragile or ill-founded, is dead.
From the vantage point of a post-industrialist society this picture looks weirdly anachronistic, and tragically ass-backwards, where the social reforms have already occurred Before the abuses of industrialization, to no effect. It's too easy to see this as a morality tale from the comfort and security of western complacency. But I hesitate to pass judgment, not having to scrabble for survival in a world with no recourse, and where most of the checks and balances have been removed. Song and Tang are no better than they should be, and certainly no worse than the mine bosses they con. Their tools for survival are no more civilized than dumb luck and 'enterprise', and knowing this, they have discovered a clever way to exploit the system that is exploiting them. "China has a shortage of everything except people", is neither an apology nor a justification. It's a simple fact of life, these people are worth more dead than alive. The casual, matter of fact brutality of the murders, including Tang's attack on Song, underscore this. And if you are still not sure, that little puff of smoke at the end is there to remind you.