Rosemary’s Baby

[spoilers] A bit campy/cheesy but overall a gripping movie.  I was expecting, even hoping for, a happy ending where Mia Farrow beats the shit out of John Cassavetes and kills the demon child, but the darker ending is certainly a bolder and more interesting choice.  Rating: 8

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The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Not bad.  Good as a genre picture, and also good as a unique twist on the genre.  But the seemingly endless scenes of the (deliberately) pathetic burlesque show really ground things to a halt.  I had a choice to watch the 1976 original version, or the 1978 re-release which is a half hour shorter.  I think I should have gone with the edited version.  Oh well.  Rating: 7

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Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (rewatch)

I’m at a bit of loss for words here.  I think I need more distance from the trilogy before I can fully enjoy it again.  The movies are practically flawless, and exciting or moving in all the right places.  And yet, I was a bit bored while watching ROTK again.  My wife was, too… she seemed distracted at times.  I think it’s overfamiliarity, overexposure, overhype.

Not changing my 10 rating, but I think I’ll wait a year or so and then have a trilogy marathon.

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A Woman Under the Influence (rewatch)

If I was forced to perform the excruciatingly difficult task of making a top 10 list, A Woman Under the Influence would definitely be a contender for one of those spots.  Though from a technical standpoint it’s unremarkable (Cassavetes never paid much mind to the photographic aspects of filmmaking), it’s a tour de force of perfect writing as performed by brilliant actors under a powerful director.  It’s not easy to watch — the tension and awkwardness is packed so densely it could drive the viewer as mad as the characters — but it’s impossible not to be held in its sway.  The film is about insanity of a nuanced and thoroughly un-Hollywood kind.  Mabel’s madness is nervous and desperate and held in by only the barest of threads.  But there’s also Nick’s madness, his violent need for a happiness he can’t define, a happiness that one feels he wouldn’t know what to do with if he ever found it.  And yet despite their madness, I feel that I understand and sympathize with these characters so deeply.  I wince at their mistakes but I know exactly why they make them.

And it’s not just about madness, there’s so much more, too much for me to talk about.  An incredibly rich, though constantly painful and emotionally draining, experience.  Rating: 10

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Faces

Much better.  I think that this along with Influence makes the set worth keeping (though it remains to be seen how I’ll react to the other two films).  The performances are greatly improved here, marred only by some distracting bits of obvious over-dubbing.  Doesn’t approach the emotional intensity of Influence, but it comes pretty close in parts.  Rating: 8 

Addendum 12/28/04: First of all, a correction.  Apparently it’s not over-dubbing after all, the sound is just out of sync.  But the effect is the same.  It’s unnatural and jarring.  Secondly, upon further reflection, I’m bumping my rating up to a 9.  I really liked this one a lot.

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Shadows

The only way to get A Woman Under the Influence (one of my top 100) on DVD in the correct aspect ratio (besides ordering the Canadian version) is to get the John Cassavetes: Five Films box set from Criterion.  The only other Cassavetes film I’ve seen is Minnie and Moskowitz, which I wasn’t crazy about.  So the box set was a risk for me, and I’ve been hesitant to buy it, but I asked my wife to get it for me for Xmas, and here it is.  Isn’t that a fascinating story?

Cassavetes’ first film is interesting, but too amateurish to really get into.  It would be better if the acting weren’t so stagey.  According to the booklet in the box set, Shadows is responsible for launching the independent film movement.  That might be an exaggeration, but it is obviously a bold and unique film for its time, just not quite my cup of tea.  Rating: 6 

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Camera Buff

Good movie, lacks the universal appeal and impact of Decalogue or Three Colors, but definitely worth watching.  Rating: 8

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I Confess

Boring and ridiculous and unsatisfying.  Even in 1953, the extremely tame “scandal” at the heart of the film would not have motivated people so strongly.  Horribly overbearing music.  Nicely shot, though.  Rating: 5

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How’s Your News?

If this isn’t exploitation, then I don’t know what it is.  There is no laughing with the stars of the movie, it’s all laughing at them, and the producers damn well know it.  There is no deep message here.  Is it trying to show that the mentally handicapped can do anything we can do?  Of the five, one is almost normal but oddly disconnected from the world around her, one can only ramble on about celebrities, one is at a constant loss for words, and the other two can’t speak coherently at all.  So these aren’t profiles of folks overcoming their disabilities.  

Then is it meant to make us feel disdain for the people who avoid them or feel awkward around them?  OF COURSE the retarded make people uncomfortable.  You don’t want to condescend to them and yet they can’t engage in regular adult conversation, so you’re left with nothing to do except humor them and hope they leave you alone soon.   If someone came up to me on the street and started asking me weird questions about Chad Everett, I’d feel awkward no matter what they looked like or talked like.  Is that so shameful?  I don’t think so. 

So what’s the point of this movie?  It’s laugh at the retards, plain and simple.  One might feel some kind of affection for them, but it would be a patronizing, almost parental kind of affection.  Witness the woman who “dances” with the wheelchair-bound, incomprehensible Larry.  Is she really interested in Larry?  No, she’s doing her good deed for the day, and as a bonus she’s getting it memorialized on camera for the whole world to see.  Rating: 4

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Scenes from a Marriage (rewatch)

No one captures the nature of relationships so well, the ebb and flow of conversation, the emotional turmoil.  Ullman and Josephsson give astonishing performances, and if Nykvist’s photography lacks its usual flair, it has an immediacy and intimacy that perfectly suits the material.  

Unlike Fanny & Alexander, I think I actually prefer the trimmed-down theatrical version to the longer television version.  There’s a lot of extra interesting stuff in the TV version, but the theatrical release stays more focused.  It’s more consistently riveting.  Rating: 10

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