High Noon

Yeah, I never saw High Noon before now.  It’s my general aversion to Westerns, but I was very pleased with this one.  I’m not usually a big Gary Cooper fan, but he was excellent.  And I loved the editing, the ominous shots of clocks and railroad tracks and empty streets, the political undertones, and the fact that it played out in (almost) real time.  Also, John Wayne apparently hated it and I fucking hate John Wayne.  Very good flick, I feel bad for avoiding it for so long.  Rating: 9

IMDb

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

I haven’t taken a chance on many Winterbottom films because a lot of them sound pretty bad.  Perhaps now I’ll try some of those riskier films, because Tristram is even more inventive and exciting than 24 Hour Party People (and perhaps I’ll also read the book, which sounds like a conceptual work similar in tone to what I enjoy in Calvino).  There’s a ton of fun in this movie, playfully layered and frequently hilarious.  Every scene brings something new, not a moment feels superfluous.  The dialogue over the end credits is a riot too (“just touch my teeth”).  Rating: 9

IMDb

The World’s Fastest Indian

About as entertaining as you’d expect — nothing special, but decent.  It’s kind of like Crocodile Dundee (guy from Down Under is fish out of water in America) meets The Straight Story (lovable and tenacious old coot charms everyone he meets on a road trip).  The film is at its worst when Munro first arrives in America, which is chock-a-block with all the tired “stranger in a strange land” scenes we’ve seen in other crap movies a thousand times… foreigner gets ripped off, foreigner drives on the wrong side of the road, foreigner mystified by magic fingers bed, foreigner encounters a cross-dresser, foreigner marvels at American extravagance (menus with pictures!).  They seemed to be pushing him as an eccentric, but really he was just sort of slightly clueless.  Predictable and formulaic, but Hopkins makes it watchable.  Rating: 6

IMDb

The Importance of Being Earnest

My third Asquith film, and another stage adaptation.  Wilde’s play is brilliant, of course — a cleverly constructed comedy of stunning coincidences, both fortunate and unfortunate, stacked with witty dialogue.  Asquith’s adaptation is just fine, but I must say I actually prefer the Rupert Everett/Colin Firth/Reese Witherspoon version by Oliver Parker.  Asquith focuses too heavily on the theatricality of the work (even opening and closing his film in the theater) while Parker’s has greater vitality.  The performances are roughly equal.  Rating: 7

IMDb

The Thief and the Cobbler

There’s a lot of story behind this one, but I’ll try to give the short version.  The Thief and the Cobbler is a 26-year work by master animator Richard Williams.  When Williams received funding to complete the project, he could not finish in time and the studio took it away from him and re-edited it into two different versions: The Princess and the Cobbler and Arabian Knight.  I haven’t seen either, but they are widely said to be inferior, and they certainly sound like Disneyfied garbage.  The version I watched is the “Recobbled Cut”: a fan project compiling material from the released versions, workprints, storyboards and found scraps in an attempt to recreate Williams’s vision.

Credit to Williams for his absolutely stunning animation.  He plays with geometry and perspective in ways that evoke Escher and cubism.  At times the choices he makes with regards to perspective look like the kind of mistakes an amateur (or child) would make, but are done with brilliant inventiveness and style.  He also populates his story with likeable characters and loads of fantastic visual gags.

The fan edit, however, suffers from pacing issues.  I’ve seen some short films by the person who did it, and they’re terrible.  He has a severe lack of judgment in determining what to leave on the cutting room floor, and it shows here too.  Many sequences are too drawn out, or simply feel sluggish, as he tries to squeeze in every scrap of Williams animation he could find.  It’s certainly great stuff, but would perhaps be better suited for a “deleted scenes” section on the DVD rather than in the context of a film that needs a tight narrative.

10 for the animation, 6 for the editing, average it out to… Rating: 8

IMDb

Haonan Haonu (Good Men, Good Women)

I have no attention span at all lately.  I’ve been channel surfing, wasting time on the internet, hanging out with Elizabeth, reading, playing videogames, and watching this movie in 10-15 minute installments.  And yet, it’s the most interesting Hou film I’ve seen yet.  He blurs the lines between the “film” and the “film within the film” until eventually they become reversed.  I’m not explaining it well, but it’s a really intriguing narrative.  Surprisingly, I didn’t have much difficulty following it, despite the fragmented way I viewed it, and despite not knowing anything about the historical incidents being portrayed.  I didn’t catch the significance of the clip of Late Spring, except that the events sort of involved the Japanese.  Maybe Hou just likes Ozu (they do have their similarities).  Rating: 8

IMDb

Witness for the Prosecution

Very good courtroom drama.  Interesting in that it plays out exactly like every other courtroom drama, but subverts the viewer’s expectations in the end.  I can’t say any more but trust me, it’s worth checking out.  Good performances from the cast, and the tight script sparkles with Billy Wilder’s wit.  Rating: 8

IMDb

Superman Returns

There’s not much new here (in fact, the film seems to pride itself on mimicking the Reeve movies) but it’s pretty entertaining, especially considering the length.  The tension and relief is there, the special effects are superb, and there are occasional good jokes and great use of the original John Williams theme.  The Christ allegory didn’t do anything for me, but I guess it was good for a few laughs (Superman falling back to Earth in crucifixion pose).  The biggest mistakes are in casting.  Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth are both bland, bland, bland.  Now, Superman can get away with bland, so Routh gets a pass (for now).  But Lois Lane needs to be a character, needs some personality.  I never got the feeling from Bosworth that Lois Lane was anything more than Superman’s bitch.  She may be more attractive than Margot Kidder, in a generic Hollywood kinda way, but she doesn’t have a fraction of the humor and spunk.  Parker Posey could have been a great Lois Lane, but instead she’s mostly wasted as Luthor’s moll.  Rating: 7

IMDb

Antoine et Colette (rewatch)

A lovely little short.  Truffaut perfectly captures the enchantment and awkwardness of adolescent romance.  The mistakes Antoine makes are achingly true, but then they are based on Truffaut’s own experiences.  Rating: 9

IMDb

Crazed Fruit

The build-up is stuff that may have been provocative at the time, but is pretty mundane nowadays.  The last 15 minutes are superb, though.  I dunno, the movie was good but it doesn’t strike me as especially meritorious.  It may be a seminal film, but only in regards to a genre (taiyozoku, or “Sun Tribe”) that’s ultimately inconsequential.  What’s next, a Criterion edition of Porky’s?  Rating: 7

IMDb