The Virgin Spring (rewatch)

Over and over again I’ve found that Bergman’s films get even better on subsequent viewings (or perhaps I’m just becoming more fanatical).  My earlier criticisms of this film were against its ending and its simplicity.  I no longer have a problem with the ending… I don’t subscribe to the belief, but it definitely sets the stage for the upcoming “faith trilogy”.  And besides, without it the title wouldn’t make a lick of sense.  As for the simplicity, yes, the film does have a fable-like quality to it, but it also has a richness and ambiguity of purpose.  Bergman never points and says “this is what I’m trying to say”.  The period authenticity is completely immersive, never once did I feel removed from that time and place.  It’s also an intensely harrowing experience, even more so when you know what’s coming.  Rating: 9

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Assault on Precinct 13

Meh.  Another overhyped and disappointing John Carpenter film.  I do like his synth-tastic score, and the technical aspects — editing, camerawork — are well done.  And the movie does have a couple of tense moments and sometimes manages to be fairly suspenseful.  But so much of it is riddled with nonsensical actions, unanswered questions, characterization that rarely rings true (talk about forced romance!) and plot holes.  And I love it when movies have roving gangs (“Street Thunder”! ooh how intimidating) of improbably multi-racial psychotics who seem to have no plan for profitable crime, just randomly murdering ice cream vendors and driving away.  The main premise is basically a rip-off of Night of the Living Dead except with an explanation even less plausible than zombies.  I wouldn’t be bothered by how little sense it all makes if only it was a little more fun.  But it’s not fun enough, not really anything enough.  Pretty bad acting, too.  Rating: 5

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Ore wa matteru ze (I Am Waiting)

Satisfying but spotty Japanese noir.  While waiting to hear from his missing brother, an ex-boxer with a guilty conscience gets involved with a girl in trouble.  The two threads are connected, but only by coincidence, and thus the film has two distinct and unmatched halves.  The first (with the girl) is more engaging… the quest for the brother has its moments, but is fairly routine and doesn’t have much of a payoff.  The revelation that it seemed like it was building up to was far more interesting than the one that was delivered.  But the film has a lot of flashy noir style, with some wonderfully framed shots, and the two leads are quite personable.  Rating: 7

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Pursued

Years before taking the title role in Night of the Hunter, Robert Mitchum played the hunted in this movie that’s more film noir than Western.  While there’s nothing truly spectacular about it, it’s quite excellent in every regard and thoroughly watchable.  A tight script (some of Mitchum’s voiceover monologue is a bit overcooked, but no more so than your average noir), good performances, stark cinematography, a fair-to-good Max Steiner score, dark psychology and a lot of tense moments.  And now I’m definitely feeling some movie burnout, gonna take a break for a few days.  Rating: 8

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The Getaway

Tough guys with guns, lots of cheap blood, and women getting slapped around.  Yep, it’s a Peckinpah.  But it’s tempered somewhat to make it more palatable for the non-fan.  His usual nihilism is balanced out by the redemptive ending, and his misogyny (in full effect with the Sally Struthers character) is balanced by the strength of the Ali McGraw character.  The film is a tense and well-constructed heist-gone-wrong flick, which I usually find quite enjoyable.  One of the better Peckinpahs, IMHO.  Rating: 7

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And the Ship Sails On

Fellini’s tribute to opera (among other things) doesn’t have that spark of brilliance to put it alongside masterpieces like Juliet of the Spirits, 8 1/2 or Nights of Cabiria.  But it does have a variety of fun characters, some unusual ideas, and a handful of really magnificent scenes… the boiler room performance, the musical glasses, the Serbian dance, the seagull in the dining room, the rhinoceros.  And there’s nothing terribly flawed about the film, except that the fake vintage footage doesn’t quite work.  There’s more to old cinema than sepia tones and scratches, and Fellini uses camera techniques and depth of field that would not have been utilized much (if at all) in 1914.  But artifice is part of the package, notably in some of the blatantly artificial sets and the movie’s finale, most likely meant to parallel the kind of artifice one would see in an opera.  Rating: 8

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The Magician (rewatch)

Kind of an odd one in Bergman’s career.  Some call it a religious allegory (even going so far as to call Vogler a stand-in for Jesus), and while there is something to that, I think it’s more about the magic of film and theater.  While Bergman achieved fantastic success mixing comedy and drama in Seventh Seal, it often doesn’t quite work here.  For instance, the scene with Mrs. Egerman confessing to Vogler and coming on to him is a fine scene, but it feels pasted in.  But if it doesn’t always gel, it does have some great moments and is generally pretty entertaining, with the usual strong performances.  Gunnar Fischer’s photography is quite wonderful, too.  Rating: 7

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The Grey Zone

I dunno about this one.  I think I’d rather read Miklos Nyiszli’s book.  The casting choices are all wrong.  David Arquette is surprisingly not the big problem here (he handles his role quite well, actually).  But it’s incredibly jarring to see Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel in this context.  And you can almost hear Mira Sorvino’s agent telling her that doing a Holocaust movie is a good career move.  And Tim Blake Nelson (writing and directing here, not acting) makes an odd choice to have the dialogue in clipped, Mamet-esque rhythms.  One gets the sense that it was just something he always wanted to do, so why not do it here?  The story does raise powerful questions of morality, but this is really nothing new in Holocaust films, and has been done more effectively in films before and since.  Anyway, more and more I’m of the belief that dramatizing the camps is a bad idea.  It can never be horrible enough.  I don’t mean that in a voyeuristic way, I don’t get any kicks out of seeing people suffer.  But the truth of it is so awful and so overwhelming that it cannot be captured by actors with scripts on sets.  Should there be “amazing shots” in movies about so much death and pain and unbearable loss?  On the other hand, it seems wrong to put limitations on any kind of artistic endeavor.  I just don’t know.  Rating: 6

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The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Good enough for what it is, but I didn’t get very excited by the premise.  It’s not unoriginal or hackneyed, I just… didn’t get that into it.  Also, Rex Harrison annoyed the heck out of me.  I hate being in this situation where I have so little to say, but the film just didn’t make much of an impression.  It’s an okay movie, I guess.  I wouldn’t bother with it again, although I might watch a few minutes if I was flipping channels.  Rating: 7

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Stop Making Sense (rewatch)

I have two teeny-tiny complaints about this movie (besides the fact that it ends).  One, Chris Frantz’s little outbursts on “Genius of Love”.  I love the song, and all the stuff from the record is fine.  It’s the dumb extra bits like “check it out!” that just sound like white boy trying too hard.  The other thing is that you gotta keep Bernie Worrell on a short leash.  The man is funky as fuck, but some of the worst Funkadelic songs are the ones where he’s given free rein, and his noodlings on “Making Flippy Floppy” often sound overambitious, or just plain off.  That’s it.  Other than that, it’s a thing of perfection.  One of my big regrets is not going to see it during its 2-year run at the Fine Arts Theater in Chicago.  I thought about it a bunch of times, just never got off my ass and did it.  Rating: 10

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