Psycho (rewatch)

Of the stuff I’ve got waiting to watch, I picked this one for two reasons.  One, knowing that little brats in costumes would be ringing my doorbell all night, I wanted something I was already very familiar with so that the constant interruptions wouldn’t be such a big deal.  And two, it seemed like a good choice to transition from Halloween into Noir-vember.  There are a number of noir-esque elements to Psycho, in fact the first half hour is practically a mini-noir (love the use of Marion’s bra to indicate the shift in her character).  Anyway, I’ve had a trying night and ended up getting even more interrupted than I anticipated.  Besides, what can I say about Psycho that others haven’t said a million times already?  Rating: 9

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Hearts of Darkness (rewatch)

Boy, last time I watched this was 15 years ago.  It’s a fascinating look at the production of AN, very well put together with some revealing moments and never lingering on any one aspect for too long.  It’s about as good as you can get for a behind-the-scenes documentary, especially with such a complicated and ambitious film as the setting.  Still, not the kind of thing you’re going to watch over and over.  It’ll probably be another 15 years before I watch it again, if ever.  Rating: 8

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Apocalypse Now (rewatch)

Thanks to all these awesome new Blu-Ray releases, it’s a weekend of indulging in some of my favorite movies.  I’m going to have to watch some shit movies before I forget that not everything is amazing.  Speaking of that, I’m also running out of synonyms for “amazing.”  In this case, “haunting” and “surreal” are the words I keep coming back to.  It’s just such a powerful vision.  It’s funny, I tend to forget about how much I love this film sometimes and it takes a revisit to remind me that it’s one of my favorites.  Maaaaaaaaaaybe the Kurtz section goes on a little too long, I can’t decide.  It’s the only point in the movie where I feel a wee bit restless.  But with everything in the film building to that confrontation, it’d be pretty dumb for Willard to jump off the boat and whack Kurtz in five minutes.  Perhaps just a little trimming here and there (as much as I get a kick out of Dennis Hopper, some of his stuff seems unnecessary).  I’m nitpicking, though.  It’s a truly magnificent work.  Rating: 10

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Seven Samurai (rewatch)

I’ve already done two reviews for this, and while they were both micro-mini-reviews, I just don’t know what to say.  This never, ever gets old.  After 6 or 7 viewings, it’s still every bit as riveting as the first time.  Perfectly crafted, wonderful cast, memorable characters, great music, superb action, nice moments of humor, intriguing drama, and even a little romance.  It’s cinema perfection, and I can’t be any more articulate than that.  Rating: 10

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Hausu (rewatch)

Ahhh I’ve been waiting for this.  My beloved House on Blu-Ray.  It looks magnificent, and I’m even more smitten with it than the first time.  My skeptical side tends to have a knee-jerk reaction to hype.  It’s not a quality I’m proud of.  So it’s always a bit of a triumph when I can enjoy a movie despite the hype.  And this one not only lives up to it, but surpasses it.  It’s a non-stop joyride, almost every moment you’re watching something amazing or unexpected or mind-blowing happening.  And again I have to make special mention of the score: the music runs throughout nearly every second of the picture and adds tremendously to it.  This movie makes me excited to simply bask in its unbridled gloriousness, absolutely one of my favorites.  So, ummm Criterion… how about releasing The Aimed School, huh?  Rating: 10

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Emotion (rewatch)

See, this is why I love Criterion.  They package Obayashi’s best film, Hausu, with his best short.  I’m so glad to finally get to see this with subtitles… although if anything it’s even more confusing than the first time I saw it.  No matter, it’s still a wild, free-wheeling mish-mash of wonderfully carefree styles.  It may not make a whole lot of sense, but its playfulness is infectious.  Not too much else to add to my previous review, but I do want to point out that the music is really terrific.  Rating: 9

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The Yellow Rolls-Royce

Anthony Asquith directing a Terence Rattigan script, but don’t expect anything nearly as great as The Browning Version.  Right off the bat, there are two big red flags.  One, it’s a portmanteau film, which usually means stories that feel tossed off.  And two, a star-packed cast featuring Jeanne Moreau, Shirley MacLaine, Ingrid Bergman, Omar Sharif, Rex Harrison, George C. Scott and more.  There’s a law of diminishing returns with big-name actors.  Once you get more than around four or five, your chances of sucktitude increase… no one really cares because they know they’re not the star.  And pretty much everyone here is phoning it in.  The film documents three owners of the titular vehicle all across Europe over several years.  I’d get into the specifics, but it’s really not worth it.  None of them are particularly interesting or enlightening.  The second is the most entertaining, with the best performances of the bunch (MacLaine, Scott and Delon, plus a nice minor role for Art Carney).  However, it’s also the longest, and definitely overstays its welcome.  The first is instantly forgettable, and the third includes a thoroughly ridiculous character transformation from Bergman.  There are some lovely scenery shots, but more often it’s a lot of cheap-looking sets.  Overall, just a drab and unremarkable film.  Blah.  I actually hate wasting time on mediocre films more than bad ones.  What a shame this was Asquith’s swan song.  Rating: 5

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The Last Command

An once-powerful Russian general is reduced to a Hollywood extra, and the film charts how he came to be in that position.  Emil Jannings kinda hams it up, as is his wont, and the ending didn’t quite work for me (for reasons I can’t divulge without spoiling, but let’s just say the final line didn’t ring true at all) but otherwise I thought this was almost as good as Docks of New York.  The long intro – extended flashback – long conclusion structure was intriguing, and I liked how your sympathies are frequently shifting.  I also thought Evelyn Brent was terrific, and Jannings, despite his over-mannerisms, is pretty damn good too.  Some excellent camerawork as well.  An all-around fine film, very compelling and watchable for a silent.  Rating: 8

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The Dungeon Masters

I went through a brief D&D phase as a kid.  I loaded up on books, dice and miniatures.  But I never actually played that much, probably not more than 8 hours total.  I guess I just liked rolling characters.  I was entirely done with it by the time I was 15 or 16, and after that kept my role-playing to occasional forays in the videogame world.  But this documentary caught my interest, for reasons I can’t remember.  Unfortunately, it spends almost no time on the game, or really anyone’s relation to the game.  Instead it follows three dungeon masters and chronicles their rather sad lives.  I couldn’t help but feel that director Keven McAlester was snickering at these people.  At times it seems extremely condescending, and McAlester goes out of his way to associate his subjects with bleak, pathetic locations.  Two of them are introduced, for no apparent reason, with montage segments that begin with a Target and a K-Mart.  These two, both male, are painted in the worst light.  One is a failure at pretty much everything he touches, one is a social misfit who takes his DM role far too seriously, both are ham-beasts who seem to be stuck in slightly bitter marriages.  The third subject, a young female, is slightly more sympathetic with a sad divorce story under her belt, but her obsession with “World of Warcraft” still seems to be played for giggles.  I have to believe that McAlester had more well-adjusted people to choose from.  One hopes that he picked these three because he thought they’d be interesting, not merely laughable.  The problem is, they aren’t terribly interesting.  Not terribly boring, but not compelling enough to carry a character study.  This movie really needed more gaming, less “look at these losers”.  Rating: 5

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Sugata Sanshiro: Part Two

And with this, I’ve seen every Kurosawa film (with the exception of Those Who Make Tomorrow, a movie he disowned).  It’s too bad I couldn’t have ended on a better one, but at least it satisfies the completist in me.  Anyway, this wasn’t too bad.  Obligatory demonizing of Americans aside, I’d say it was a touch better than the first.  The story seemed a bit more nuanced, and I really liked the ending.  Fantastic sense of composition, as usual.  I do think it’s a bit hypocritical to hold up this ideal of “we don’t fight for entertainment” in a movie which displays fighting, for entertainment purposes.  Also I have to say that this fanatical alignment with a particular martial arts branch & style is one of those cultural oddities that I understand, but always found rather silly.  It’d be like “your AK-47 style is no match for my Uzi style!”  Although I guess there are Western movie heroes who like to stick with a certain gun, so maybe it’s not so weird after all.  Rating: 7

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