Brandon Recommends 21-30:

Rosemary's Baby by Roman Polanski - 1968

I am blown away by how fantastic Rosemary's Baby is.  Roman Polanski's direction is masterful:  most scenes are comprised of long shots simply watching events, rather than frenetic cuts, and then the dream sequences flow beautifully from one bizarre scene to the next and then back to Rosemary sleeping, and finally the horror scenes, augmented by the camera's usual stillness, dart all across the room, the camera dynamically reflecting Rosemary's hysteria.  Mia Farrow is extraordinary as an expecting mother who comes to suspect her neighbors of evil, the pain of her pregnancy present in every scene.  As her husband, though, John Cassavettes was phenomenal, such a natural performance from an infamous director of natural underground cinema.  Meanwhile, I'm pleased to report that Ruth Gordon's Oscar was well-deserved, and frighteningly, her voice in this movie is exactly like my grandma's.  Refreshingly, the horror aspects are actually scary, and Rosemary's helplessness is devastating.  In all, I found Rosemary's Baby to be an involving, well-executed across the board horror drama, and I highly recommend Polanski's first American movie.

Werckmeister Harmonies by Béla Tarr - 2001

In 39 long shots totaling 2 and a half hours, Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr takes us on a ride through man's struggle to comprehend nature and his relationship to it.  Amidst a bevy of ill omens, the travelling circus comes to town with two main attractions:  The Whale, a spectacular stuffed whale, and The Prince, a shadowy dwarf figure.  The rest of the film deals with the consequences, as a well-liked boy named Janos grapples with concepts he barely understands.  Béla Tarr's lush black-and-white cinematography illustrates the struggle between darkness and light, and the camera's geometric direction--circles and lines are everywhere in this film--reflects the natural harmonies of planetary orbits and the musical scale.  Werckmeister Harmonies is ambitious in its attempts to understand the world, hypnotizing in its stylish execution, and demanding in its philosophy. I couldn't recommend it more. 

Blast of Silence by Allen Baron - 1961

I continue to be grateful to Criterion for excavating underseen gems that ought to be classics, like this low-budget noir by a new 26 year-old writer-director-star.  The opening is seared in my memory, a black screen with a slowly approaching white spot while a vicious narrator speaks in the second-person to the main character about how we are born into a world of hate--mothers delivering babies while screaming--and we carry that hate for the rest of our lives.  The narration is the most notable feature of the film, in fact, as it often overwhelms us, taking over entire scenes of dialogue with angry, aggressive diatribes addressed to Frankie Bono, the lead hit man, played by Allen Baron for financial reasons.  It's Christmas in the naked city, and Frankie's on assignment for one last hit, stalking his mark, buying a gun from a sleazy contact, and calling his contractor with updates.  It's a simple story with an appropriately short running time, and the editing is impressive, particularly during the murder scenes and the chases.  The music is also expertly incorporated--one of the best scenes occurs at a nightclub where Frankie finds both his gun dealer and the mark, while the club band sings a tension-building song with a lead conga drum.  In contrast, after the film's first murder, we are treated to a series of scenes set practically to silence.  There's no raging narration, just Frankie and the bleak landscapes of a chilly New York. 

Recount by Jay Roach - 2008

Recount, airing periodically on HBO, is surprisingly effective at examining the minutiae of a single state's electoral process (and shenanigans) in 2000. Director Jay Roach is most surprising, and while he makes an occasional misstep--the opening scene of a confused elderly voter is laughable, for instance--he navigates us through the murky political process well, especially the technological problems with Florida's voting machines and chads, excuse me, chad.  "The plural of chad is chad?!" is the quote that best encapsulates how ludicrous the election of 2000 was, and Kevin Spacey (with assistance from Denis Leary) absolutely nails it.  But the highlight is Laura Dern, who had me laughing from the moment she got dressed for a surprise press conference.  As of now, she's my favorite film actress of the year, and I'm rooting for her to take the Emmy in a couple months.  Of course, the entire cast is impressive, the leads supported by the indomitable John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, Ed Begley, Jr., and Bob Balaban.  And at the end, after endless politicking in Florida, you walk away wondering about all the anti-democratic fishy business going on in other states. 

King Lear (Korol Lir) by Grigori Kozintsev - 1971

After loving the play King Lear, I set out to find a movie version.  First I saw Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear, which is about the play King Lear rather than a telling of it.  Well, it is a version of the play, just not strictly Shakespeare's story, which is what I was looking for.  Then I came across Grigori Kozintsev, who is famous for his Hamlet and his Lear.  The film was exquisite.  The cinematography reminded me of a slightly reined in Orson Welles, the camera never getting too close to the characters but still finding the best shots.  Shakespeare's asides are cool here:  they are done in voice-over as the characters' thoughts, rather than the expressionistic way most play them.  Jüri Jarvet is not what I expected of Lear (neither is anyone I've yet seen play him), but he is fascinating, especially in the pictured scene during the storm's approach just after his self-imposed exile from Gloucester's castle.  Speaking of which, the locations are amazing, especially the castles and the camp at Dover, and the opening is perfectly enthralling, as we watch peasants marching amidst a sea of outcroppings to the castle to witness King Lear's division of lands.  I doubt I'll find a better version of King Lear on film, and I certainly hope to acquire this on DVD someday. 

Duck, You Sucker (Giù la Testa) by Sergio Leone - 1971

It took me forever to get a hold of this film.  Until last year, it had only been released in Europe, and even those versions were rare.  Finally, as part of a Leone DVD release, they restored the print and slapped on a bunch of features so the rest of us could finally see the middle film of Leone's so-called America trilogy (Once Upon a Time in the West, and America are the opening and closing entries).  And now that I've seen it, I can say unequivocally that this is my least favorite Sergio Leone film.  And it is also, absolutely, a must-see for Leone fans.  It's interesting how his America trilogy has much more purpose, more of a story to tell than the Dollars trilogy.  Sure, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has a rather complex web of plot, but it's really just a journey from one set piece to the next.  Duck, You Sucker opens with the words "The revolution" plastered across a black screen, and continues to give us an entire quote about the price of revolution by Mao Zedong.  The film, you see, is set during the Mexican Revolution of 1913, during Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata's peasant revolt.  And I enjoyed the revolution and social message aspects, but I liked the carefree whimsy of the Dollars films more.  Even if Blondie won't kill Tuco himself, you know he'd get along just fine were Tuco to get killed.  But Duck, You Sucker gives us a Blondie-Tuco relationship between a Mexican bandit and an IRA explosives expert who become fast friends amidst the Revolution.  We get sporadic flashbacks a la An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge about the IRA guy's life in Ireland, but they're not very eager to shed light on his backstory.  So they grow and learn from each other, Juan (the bandit) and Sean/John (the Irishman) and they become family, but the best parts are the opening (the best stagecoach robbery I've seen), and the action scenes.  The ending is as arty and existential as, say, The Shooting, and other acid westerns, and the rest of this film, and it's the perfect cap on Leone's most socially conscious story. 

Rio Bravo by Howard Hawks - 1959

Rio Bravo is apparently the conservative response to High Noon.  Carl Foreman wrote the screenplay for High Noon--which is based on a previously written short story, it should be noted--as an allegory for the blacklist, with Gary Cooper's sheriff fighting his battle alone because he's a marked man; nobody in town will help him, including former friends.  While John Wayne supported the blacklist, this response is less about that aspect and more about his view of the Old West, the conservative view.  Wayne and Hawks (and Ward Bond and Walter Brennan) didn't think Cooper's friends would have shied from a fight, so they made Rio Bravo, which sees a similar situation, but Sheriff Chance, played by Wayne, fights the bad guys with a host of allies.  Wayne is inconsequential, both as an actor and a historical figure--and I'd like to point out that he and Hawks were essentially wrong in that evidence points to gunfights being avoided by most in the Old West, but such is the romantic lie of the conservative--but the star here is Dean Martin as an alcoholic deputy who gives an incredible performance that should have been Oscar-nominated.  I also loved Walter Brennan, as usual, and while the film could stand to lose a few minutes off the ending, it's mostly well-paced.  One last thing:  in westerns, I love seeing the looks of the various towns visited, and in Rio Bravo, the town is yet another great-looking place with an interesting layout of wooden buildings, adobe houses, and brick ruins against the backdrop of a cactus-ridden, mountainous desert. 

Django by Sergio Corbucci - 1966

Django is probably the most celebrated spaghetti western that wasn't directed by Sergio Leone.  It's about a mysterious, taciturn gunslinger who drags a coffin visiting a town tormented by the KKK and Mexican bandits.  The town is gloomy, but gorgeous, and Corbucci films his story in a world that seems permanently overcast and deserted except for the main characters.  Django, played by Franco Nero, is a pretty cool hero with incredible aim, and he immediately takes up the town's cause, or rather, the saloon's cause, since the only people in town we meet are the bartender, piano player, and saloon girls.  The coffin is a fantastic quirk, and the revelation of why he's dragging the coffin is quite rewarding.  Also, the shootouts are awesome to watch, and they all hinge on the characterization of Django as a selfish hero who is saving the town to get the girl.  Collateral damage isn't his problem.  I really enjoyed Django, all the way till the end--and it's a quick movie, a little over an hour and a half--but it doesn't even come close to touching the Leone westerns, and I'd put money on Clint over Django any day. 

Walkabout by Nicolas Roeg - 1971

This gorgeous Criterion is a billion times more bizarre than I expected.  The story is about sibling orphans making their way alone through the Australian outback, and that's what I expected, some sort of picturesque survival movie.  But no, we open in the city, with shots of mechanical buildings and swimming pools, manufactured versions of nature.  Then, a man drives his kids out into the desert for a picnic, tries to shoot them, burns the car, and kills himself.  I knew they were orphans--I didn't realize that they become orphaned in the opening.  Of course, the trek across the outback is even greater than I imagined, especially when they meet an aborigine at an oasis.  The cinematography is as beautiful as you'd expect as well, even in the city scenes at the beginning and end, and the weirdness is intriguing rather than off-putting.  What is a bit off-putting is the message, the idea that nature is good and industrialization is bad.  I don't think that superficial interpretation is the predominant theme, but it is the only negative aspect of an otherwise fascinating journey.  

The Hudsucker Proxy by Joel and Ethan Coen - 1994

In the '80s, while they were all living together, Joel and Ethan Coen and Sam Raimi wrote the script for this screwball comedy based on the works of Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, and Frank Capra, and the script itself is a work of seemingly effortless beauty.  The story opens as Tim Robbins climbs out a window of a skyscraper and contemplates jumping, and then we flashback to see how he got there.  As Norville Barnes, Robbins' character, is hired by Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman as a greedy, ambitious member of the board of directors) as an inept puppet head, Amy Archer, a fast-talking reporter played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, is looking to move to the editor's desk and decides the Hudsucker Industries story is how she'll do it.  Of course, she starts to fall for Norville, and it all ends up as Capra, Hawks, or Sturges would have it.  The acting is impeccable, each of the leads not only aping the screwball style but connecting with the humanity of their types.  I found it really interesting that the Coens made such a pastiche of an homage, since Capra's not exactly screwball, and Hawks had more range too, so you'll recognize the opening from It's a Wonderful Life, while Leigh's Amy Archer is a tribute to The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday.  It's set in the '50s, so it's even further removed from those films, but it feels perfectly appropriate.  The Hudsucker Proxy is not one of the Coen's upper tier works--I feel it has less to say than more philosophical outings--but it is certainly a good movie of theirs that is frankly, incomparable, even by Coen collaborator George Clooney (Leatherheads).