Gishiki (The Ceremony)

I spent the week watching the “Planet Earth” documentary series, which was good, but I’m glad to be watching movies again.  Gishiki gives me mixed feelings.  I really struggled to get through the movie at first.  The family dynamic, though complicated and confusing (incest galore!), should have been interesting, but it just didn’t push my buttons at all.  I dunno… maybe it was the excessive voice-over.  However, things got cooking in the final half hour, starting with the bride-less wedding.  At this point I started to enjoy myself.  I still don’t quite know what the movie was getting at, perhaps you need to be Japanese to really get it.  I think it had something to with how the insularity of Japanese society was destroying them, but I could be way off.  Overall, I liked it — the avant-garde score and interesting visual tableaus helped get through the early parts.  Better than In the Realm of the Senses, at least.  Rating: 7

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David Holzman’s Diary

This may be the first “mockumentary”.  It’s 1967 New York, and a young man loses his job and learns that he’s been reclassified for the draft.  Inspired by Godard (“Film is truth, 24 times a second”) he decides to record his life on film, certain that it will uncover truths… but things don’t turn out as he hoped.  I might be misreading it, but director Jim McBride seems to be poking fun at the effectiveness of cinema vérité.  He makes a good point, but it’s awfully cynical, and perhaps explains why McBride would go on to do such pedestrian fare like The Big Easy and Great Balls of Fire (and, notably, the ill-received remake of Godard’s Breathless).  It’s an interesting piece, and the documentary style and actors are convincing, and even though it rubbed me the wrong way a little bit, I liked it.  I felt that certain sections were supposed to illustrate how mundane cinema vérité can be, but I liked those parts too.  Rating: 7

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Brute Force

Pretty good prison genre flick, done with a lot of Dassin’s noir style but falters in a few areas.  Despite a delightfully evil performance by Hume Cronyn as the sadistic chief guard, the character is rather over-the-top.  Also the prisoners are such a nice bunch of guys, one would think that nobody deserves to be incarcerated.  The flashbacks to their romantic lives on the outside were really hokey.  I haven’t listened to the DVD commentary, but I do wonder if Dassin threw them in there primarily to bring in more women.  Overall, however, not a bad movie at all, and easily watchable.  Rating: 7

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This Filthy World

I just mentioned John Waters, and here he is again.  What sets Waters apart from other “shock” directors is how funny he is.  As he puts it, “It’s easy to be gross, it’s harder to be witty”.  And John Waters is very, very witty.  Anyone who’s listened to one of his DVD commentaries knows what an excellent speaker he is, and this monologue performance does not disappoint.  There are a couple of points where he slips into more of a stand-up comedian mode, which doesn’t suit him, but I’m nitpicking.  In this lecture he offers his thoughts on his career as well as assorted other topics like Baltimore and censorship and youth.  Definitely worthwhile for fans.  Rating: 8

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Seemabaddha (Company Limited)

The story of a man who is thoroughly modernized and Westernized, and how his ambitions ultimately corrupt him.  Even the movie’s style is modern, with its intro that feels like an industrial film, the commercial that suddenly appears in color, and a somewhat European flavor to the camerawork.  It doesn’t have the melodramatic heft of Ray’s more celebrated films, but the deft handling of the subject matter is very effective (it could easily have been much more heavy-handed).  The use of the visiting sister-in-law as the film’s quiet conscience is a nice device, as is the staircase scene near the end.  The acting and cinematography are nearly flawless as well.  Rating: 9

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The Holy Mountain (rewatch)

I must say, seeing this with a pristine restoration in the original aspect ratio makes a HUGE difference.  The imagery in this film is absolutely stunning, the things Jodorowsky can do with a decent budget are impressive indeed.  If nothing else, this is a great movie to just soak in the visuals.  But I still have a problem with the content.  Again, he’s just throwing together of bunch of rather obvious juxtapositions and symbols, without having that much to say about any of them.  It definitely comes off like a screenplay a college student would write during a particularly intense acid trip.  The difference being that when the college student sobers up, he looks back at what he wrote and thinks “Oh god, this is retarded.”  It doesn’t help that most of the scenes contain some “shock” element, something perverted or controversial or sacrilegious.  Of course, the 1970′s were a particularly bad time for cinema from naughty little boys trying to push buttons (Waters, Makavejev, Jarman, et cetera).  Still, you don’t often get to see a movie like this, and it deserves points for the awesome visuals, and a pretty cool soundtrack too.  And I liked the ending.  Rating: 7

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Fando y Lis (rewatch)

Jodorowski takes a “let’s throw a bunch of crap at the wall and see what sticks” approach.  Problem is, not much of it really sticks.  Even on the commentary track, he seems to be making it up as he goes.  Unless Holy Mountain really wows me on the second viewing, I won’t be keeping this box set.  Rating: 3

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Yakuza Graveyard

Tetsuya Watari (Tokyo Drifter) stars as one of those “loose cannon” cops, but this movie manages to transcend the genre.  The pace is almost relentlessly frenetic, with fast and furious editing, fights breaking out every 3 minutes, judicious use of jump cuts and freeze frames, and a couple of nifty tricks (loved the psychedelic colors during the “truth serum” scene).  Many movies of this ilk blur the line between good guys and bad guys, but this one seems to go the extra mile: some of the cops are utter scumbags, while some yakuza take delight in helping out Watari.  Nagisa Oshima is somewhere in the cast, but I have no idea what he looks like, so I couldn’t tell you who he is.  Rating: 8

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The Fearless Vampire Killers

Not terrible, but clearly comedy is not Polanski’s forte.  There’s a few good chuckles, most of it is pretty lame.  Not nearly as funny as Young Frankenstein, or even Blood for Dracula.  The castle is a magnificent location, though.  Rating: 6

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For Your Consideration

Christopher Guest’s weakest film since The Big Picture, which was also (coincidentally or not) a movie condemning Hollywood.  Not that there isn’t plenty of nonsense in Hollywood worthy of condemnation, but the targets are too easy, the jokes too predictable, and I have to wonder if there’s not some small amount of sour grapes involved.  There are some good laughs, but not nearly enough of them… it’s a waste of this troupe’s talent, let’s hope for a return to form next time.  And more Ricky Gervais.  Rating: 6

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