Jesus Camp

A scary movie for Halloween!  Ignorance is one thing, willful ignorance is another.  Christians rile me up enough, but Evangelicals totally make my blood boil, and I fear for the future of this country.  This documentary doesn’t take a stand either way, and while the even-handedness is admirable, I still would have appreciated more voices on my side.  Even the commentary track was rather annoyingly unbiased.  At some point you have to be willing to take a stand and step on some toes.  But I suppose it wouldn’t sway anyone’s opinion either way.  I only hope some of these kids come to their senses when they grow up.  Rating: 7 

IMDb

Days of Heaven (rewatch)

Don’t have anything new to say since the last time I watched it.  Linda Manz and her narration grew on me even more, to the point where I’m considering a rewatch of Out of the Blue.  Rating: 9 

IMDb

The Darjeeling Limited

Wes Anderson is becoming difficult.  I enjoyed this film a lot (many laugh-out-loud moments, the Satyajit Ray music, wonderful little touches like the perfume humorously called “Le Petit Mort”) but I also really want to see him step outside his comfort zone.  I love his aesthetic sense, it’s enchanting… but I wonder if he’s buying too much into the cult of Wes Anderson.  I hate to begrudge a filmmaker for having a distinctive stamp (certainly many of my favorites do), it’s just starting to feel more like a template than a style.  He needs to break away from these same disaffected characters looking for a family, shouldering the weight of their melancholy with a world-weary sigh.

If it sounds like I’m bitching, it’s only because I really like Anderson and I want to see him grow.  I did have a good time watching Darjeeling (not so much the opening short, but the two are practically inseparable) and it even renewed my interest in Life Aquatic, and with luck it will get people excited about Satyajit Ray.  But I want him to spread his wings a little more.  Rating: 8

Hotel Chavalier / The Darjeeling Limited

Barry Lyndon (rewatch)

A flawless film that nonetheless doesn’t feel essential to me.  It’s an engaging story, which goes down many paths and says a lot about the life of Redmond Barry.  The cinematography and lighting is phenomenal, the locations and sets are gorgeous, and the actors are all commendable.  I really, really like this movie.  But I don’t LOVE it, it doesn’t have the same power over me that 2001 or The Shining does.  Rating: 8

IMDb

Lolita (rewatch)

I’m rather annoyed that the new “reissues” of Lolita and Barry Lyndon are the same old discs.  The only difference is the switch from the crappy snapper case to a standard keepcase… and not even a booklet to go with it.  If I’d known, I would have just held on to the old ones.  Nevertheless, I haven’t seen either film for a while so at least it gives me an excuse for a revisit.

The first time I saw Lolita, I liked it.  The second time, I loved it.  Now I’m kind of indifferent towards it, and will probably end up selling the DVD again.  It never hits on any particular tone or style, and Kubrick seems to be just going through the motions.  He never cared much for sticking with the source material, but in this case something really is lost in the translation.  It’s essentially reduced to a romantic comedy (the cot scene could be straight out of It Happened One Night), where the disturbing context of the situation is almost an afterthought.  What I do like a lot is the supporting performances.  Shelley Winters is both hilarious and tragic as the most inept seductress in the world, and Peter Sellers as Quilty is golden.  There’s a couple of beautifully lit scenes as well (the footlights during the school play, the hospital scene where Humbert learns he’s been ditched).  But overall, I can take it or leave it.  Rating: 6

IMDb

Variety Lights

Fellini’s first film is simple, but charming.  Warm and funny and bittersweet, and Fellini’s love of performers (especially flawed ones) is on full display.  It’s not a very deep or rewarding film, but it’s a lot of fun and Guiletta Masina is touching as always.  Rating: 8

IMDb

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

I don’t think I’ve ever had such mixed feelings about a film. Let me get the negatives out of the way first: this is tremendously tedious. I say this from the perspective of someone who adores Ming-liang Tsai and has been known to enjoy the work of Kiarostami on occasion. But Dielman was quite a trial. In the simplest terms, it’s 200 minutes of Delphine Seyrig doing housework. Let me describe one sequence: she sits down at the kitchen table, pours a cup of coffee with some milk. She tastes it, finds it unpleasant, and dumps it out. She pours a glass of milk, smells it, tastes it, and finds it satisfactory. She pours another cup of coffee, but it still doesn’t agree with her. She prepares a fresh pot of coffee. How long do you think you could take this? 2 minutes? 5 minutes? Try TEN.

And yet… it’s also quite genius. Akerman shows Dielman slowly falling apart in the most minute ways, but because of the monotonous attention to detail, it becomes glaringly obvious, even upsetting. You wouldn’t believe the tension that can be evoked simply because a woman puts plates away slightly differently from the way she did the day before. You wouldn’t believe how fascinating it is to watch her knead ground beef for five minutes (and kudos to Seyrig for a brilliantly subtle performance).

It all builds up to a climax which is simultaneously predictable as hell, quite thought-provoking, annoyingly cheap, and daringly executed. The whole thing is madness… frustrating, but in some ways wonderful, madness. Akerman may be female, but she’s got a hell of a set of balls on her. I have to give points for boldness and originality, and paving the way for Tsai and the like. On the other hand, I doubt I would ever sit through it again. Rating: 7

IMDb

The Face of Another

The third Teshigahara/Abe collaboration is almost as good as Woman in the Dunes.  It falls just a tiny bit short by being a little too overtly analytical.  It needed more “show, don’t tell”.  However, it’s a minor problem, and otherwise the film is utterly outstanding and thought-provoking.  It explores the splintering of identity to great depths, aided by numerous shots through windows, frames, mirrors and other distortions.  The photography, especially the artful sense of composition, is stunning.  The music and surreal flourishes create an unsettling, eerie mood.  It reminded me of (besides the obvious Eyes Without a Face) Cronenberg without so much “ick” factor.  Normally, I might think of the secondary plotline (primarily relating to post-war anxiety, but it does intersect the main themes in some ways) as a distraction, but I actually thought it fit in quite well.  The way it just kind of pops in and out the narrative was like a movie-within-a-movie.  Rating: 9

IMDb

The King of Kong

I remember my first game of Donkey Kong.  I was about 10 years old, so it would have been 1981 or 82.  A family friend was driving us around the mountains of Washington, and we stopped at a ski lodge (probably not that far from Redmond, Steve Wiebe’s hometown).  In the lobby was a DK machine.  I think I went through 4 quarters in about 5 minutes.  It’s a tough game that I never came anywhere close to mastering (I don’t even think I ever made it past level 4), so watching these guys tear it to shreds was pretty impressive.  But the real compelling aspect of this story is David and Goliath — Wiebe vs. the old champion Billy Mitchell.  Mitchell is one of the great despicable villains of film, a real douchebag.  His weasel-ly ways and toadying henchmen make for riveting viewing.  Points off for the corny “record scratch” sound effect at the end, though.  Rating: 8

IMDb

Otoshiana (Pitfall)

A weird mix of ghost story, murder mystery, conspiracy thriller and social commentary.  The disjointed nature of the film is sometimes distracting — I get the feeling that the social commentary was initially the point of the story, but that it was what least interested Teshigahara.  However, it’s a very unusual and intriguing work.  Not the allegorical masterpiece that Woman in the Dunes is, but definitely worth seeing, especially for the cinematography and odd stuff happening around the fringes of the narrative.  Rating: 8

IMDb