Brandon Recommends 11-20:
One
of the most recent Criterion additions has had me intrigued since I saw it on
their Coming Soon page. Walker has a 5.8 on IMDb! And yet it's in
the Criterion collection! It's plot description makes it sound like a
rollicking adventure set in Colonial Nicaragua, and its star is Ed Harris.
It
can't be that bad, right? I'm pleased to report, that no, it isn't that
bad. In fact, I quite liked it, and can only assume those who rated it
poorly on IMDb have no sense of humor, and/or the only people who have voted on
the movie are the Cannes jury who screened Marie Antoinette. You see,
Walker is full of anachronisms, from a car racing past a carriage--it's set in
the 1860s--to men reading Newsweek to get the latest political gossip. But
these are used expertly by maverick director Alex Cox, and I found myself
laughing way too hard at some of them. Ed Harris is tremendous, going from
subtle and restrained to overbearing and volatile in a single line. And
the movie? It's a satire of American imperialism, and yes, it's from 1987,
but it's probably even more appropriate for 2008, what with Ed Harris
practically channeling W. He even claims to be chosen by God! Surely
Cox wasn't satirizing Reagan in that manner, right? Or maybe I'm just not
as up on my late '80s pop culture as I should be. But regardless, I
definitely recommend seeing Walker, especially for fans of Ed Harris. Just
remember to laugh.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Julian Schnabel - 2007
The story of Elle's editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who
has a stroke that paralyzes him except for his left eye, is reaping accolades
for its
cinematography, undoubtedly among the best of the year. Perhaps a
bit showy, the cinematography is the obvious focus of the movie, with blurred
vision, close-ups of the people who stick their faces in front of his eye, and
fantastic visions of the metaphor for his paralysis: a diving bell that he
is trapped in, alone underneath the sea, his mind a butterfly, alert and able to
spread its joy to those around him. Bauby learns to communicate using his
eye, blinking through the letters of the alphabet (in order of usage frequency,
the chart on the left, which I will never forget), and ends up writing a memoir.
You'd probably assume this is a tear-jerker, and it is touching, but never
overly sentimental. About the worst I would say about it is that I'm not
quite sure of the point, but I never once complained about the time I spent.
Mathieu Amalric is exceptional as Bauby, and the woman hired to take his
dictation is equally great. Where Johnny Got His Gun is unrelentingly
dark, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is uplifting.
Bride of Frankenstein by James Whale - 1935
James
Whale's 1931 Frankenstein, in my opinion, is the best of the three first
Universal horror movies (the others being Dracula and The Wolf-Man), but the
sequel Bride of Frankenstein is even more beloved. Naturally, I was
intrigued. Bride of Frankenstein picks up exactly where its predecessor
leaves us, in a burning, ruined windmill with both Dr. Frankenstein and his
monster beneath piles of rubble and surrounded by a mob. Of course, both
characters survive the catastrophe, and the movie splits into two for a bit.
The doctor and an esteemed colleague work together to create a bride for the
monster, just as he demands in the original, and this storyline ventures into
even greater fantasy than before. Meanwhile, the monster lives out parts
of the book that were not covered by the original movie, namely the whole affair
with Felix's cabin. They all meet up at the end, with the Bride of
Frankenstein getting something like 10 minutes of screentime, and it ends just
as the first one did, I expect. There's yet another sequel, Son of
Frankenstein, so I don't think it's a spoiler to assume that everyone'll be back
for that installment too. I loved both of the Whale Frankenstein movies
I've seen, with their beautiful scenes, elaborately Gothic settings, and
grotesque characters. You feel like you've seen it already just because
it's so ingrained in the zeitgeist, but that won't keep you from loving it.
The Shooting by Monte Hellman - 1968
Acid
westerns are a subgenre of westerns featuring existential angst played out in a
postapocalyptic, nightmarish Old West wherein strangers are not
only unhelpful but suspicious, and everyone is out for themselves. The
Shooting is technically the first acid western, and you can see how the style is
reflective of America in the '60s, extravagantly disillusioned. Monte
Hellman shot this and Ride the Whirlwind back-to-back, both featuring Jack
Nicholson and Millie Perkins, and they both premiered at Cannes in '68, but this
is the one I prefer by far, though the other is certainly good. The
Shooting sees Warren Oates return to an old camp to find a friend made hostile
by previous events. Oates' brother ran off the other day, and another of
their company was picked off by gunshots in the camp soon after. Soon, a
woman comes along, reeking of femme fatale, and she hires Oates and his friend
to accompany her to a far town, and they all ride inexorably to the end.
Nicholson shows up along the way, everything gets weird, dreamlike and bizarre,
and the ending adds a twist of perfect existentialism to this simple noirish
western that launched a style.
Dont Look Back by DA Pennebaker - 1967
This Bob Dylan documentary is without a doubt the most
enlightening music doc I've seen, especially surprising given that Monterey Pop
and Altamont came in '68 and '69 (and I have yet to see a Woodstock doc).
But Dont Look Back sees Pennebaker not simply documenting a concert and a
culture, but delivering insightful conversations with the enigmatic Bob Dylan.
On the music front, we got a decent sampling of songs (nothing compared to
Pennebaker's Monterey Pop docs), but a recurring rendition of "The Times, They
are a-Changing," which is obviously a significant song, particularly for
Dylan in '67, but I was kind of hoping for more. What we get
instead, and in droves, is Bob Dylan the thinker. He responds with outrage
to a New York Times reporter's ridiculous line of inquiry, and he channels
Socrates when dealing with a sycophant, two of my favorite parts of the movie.
We even get Dylan with Joan Baez, apparently in the last throes of their
relationship. The ending echoes I'm Not There--or more accurately,
I'm Not
There echoes Dont Look Back--as Dylan gets in a limo, responds with a bit of
outrage about a newspaper article, and the camera lingers, allowing us one more
opportunity to try and figure out this enigmatic poet.
The Mole (El Topo) by Alejandro Jodorowsky - 1970
As
if my love for this film were not already apparent. The Mole is one of
those movies that I loved so much, I sought out similar movies only to be
disappointed in seeking out equal greatness, like The American Astronaut or
The
Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. That is because The Mole, like
those other films, is so unique, so imaginative and off-kilter in its telling of
a post-Christian, mythical Old West. Jodorowsky never even made another
western, although, thankfully for me, he is still trying to make a sequel,
The Sons of El Topo, whose title has been changed, tellingly, to Abelcain.
Again, that only scratches the surface of the allegory in The Mole, which is
divided into two sections. The longer one sees El Topo sounts to.
Fittinglyeek out and battle
the Four Masters of the Gun, whom he battles, but also learns from. By the
end of his quest, he's almost more interested in achieving spiritual peace than
he is in fulfilling his mission. The second section sees El Topo, years
later, digging a tunnel to free a clan of inbred midgets from a cave. The
violence is brutal, and the cinematography astonishing, but the meaning is
confounding. Parts of it are apparent, but ultimately, I'm still not sure
what it all am, the movie's tagline is, "What it all
means isn't exactly clear, but you won't forget it."
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! by Russ Meyer - 1965
I first heard about this movie during the inaugural
weekend of TCM Underground, which aired two Ed Wood features, but the next week
was airing two Russ Meyer exploitation films. This one always looked
fascinating, and then I saw the poster in our theater (Defense Against the Dark
Arts) at the Drafthouse, and it stayed with me. I'm so glad I finally got
around to it, because it is a fascinating, weirdly feminist work of pulp.
Three pseudo-lesbian car-lovers end up killing some cheerleader's boyfriend and
kidnap the cheerleader. They all end up at some lonely ranch house whose
residents are various macho, misogynistic rednecks, and the expected violence,
suspense, and wisecracks ensue. The dialogue is fascinating from a
cultural standpoint, something akin to the hard-boiled noir stuff, but with more
pop culture references and even more straight-faced; it's almost like The Family
Guy as an insecure lesbian, which is to say it is the '60s version of Sex and
the City. You'll see what I mean. It's something of a classic of
exploitation, and without irony and in all earnestness, I thought it was great.
No, this is an insanely fun little spree on its own terms, and of course, it's
even cooler to look at it through that detached ironic filter, laughing at the
ridiculous plot, lame jokes, and awesome fights.
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo - 1971
Dalton Trumbo is the most famous of the Hollywood 10,
and this is his treatise against war. It's about a young soldier in WWI
who becomes paralyzed, trapped inside his
own head, and Trumbo ironically took
it out of print during WWII to support the cause of war. But when Vietnam
rolled around, rather than take the book off the shelves, he made it into a
movie. Timothy Bottoms, star of The Last Picture Show in the same year,
plays the hot, young soldier, and hearing his mental screams when he discovers
he's been amputated is among the most disturbing scenes in film. Certain
medical/surgical things are really difficult for me to handle, and this was
unquestionably one of the most unbearable things I've made myself watch.
Bottoms was amazing. Since he falls in and out of sleep, unable to control
his eyes, we get some fascinating dream sequences as he tries to cope with his
situation by talking things out with his mental version of his father, Jason Robards, and Jesus, Donald Sutherland.
Even better, his real life is shot in black and white, and his dreams in color. At the end, he learns to
communicate using his entire head as a telegraph punching Morse code, and it
reminds me of when I first heard the story of Koko the Gorilla. The ending
is inevitable, and what better compliment for a movie?
Body Heat by Lawrence Kasdan - 1981
Lawrence Kasdan's love letter to classic film noir is drenched in the heat of
the title. William Hurt plays a lawyer who meets Kathleen Turner's bored
wife and begins an affair. They decide to kill her husband in order to
inherit most of his money, and as you'd expect, the plot unravels from there.
I can't think of a single scene where Hurt isnt sweating, or Turner isn't
glistening--that's how oppressive Kasdan makes his setting. Hurt and
Turner adeptly maneuver not only their noir situations but some fantastic
hard-boiled dialogue with authenticity. Ted Danson co-stars as a friend
and co-worker of Hurt's in a performance that is not only surprising to those
who only knew him from television but especially effective in his weird charm.
And the plot is the perfect one for a neo-noir, obvious predecessors being
Double Indemnity and The Long Goodbye, although Body Heat doesn't have quite the
subversion of Altman's work. Nevertheless, I found Body Heat entrancing,
especially as a lover of hard-boiled detective stories, and I completely
understand why it's one of Ebert's great movies.
The Man Who Knew Too Much by Alfred Hitchcock - 1956
When
people think of Hitchcock, they go to Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds, Rear Window,
and North by Northwest. I love Psycho and Vertigo, but
instead of the others, I prefer Dial M for Murder, Notorious, and The Lady
Vanishes. And now, The Man Who Knew Too Much. After being
disappointed by two of my last Hitchcock outings (To Catch a Thief and Shadow of
a Doubt, over two years ago), I was so happy to find a good, old-fashioned
mystery-thriller. James Stewart and Doris Day go to Morocco with their kid
on vacation, and quickly become involved in an international intelligence
conspiracy. Morocco is evoked beautifully, like Egypt in Raiders of the
Lost Ark. James Stewart is a great hero, but Doris Day was the surprise
for me. This, by the way, is the movie where she sings "Que Cera Cera,"
which becomes a major plot point. And the mystery, unlike say, North by
Northwest, carries a huge dramatic weight whose payoff is all the more joyous.
I've seen more movies by Hitchcock than any other director save Spielberg, and
while he definitely has more hits than misses, I'm pleased to say this one is a
big hit.