#6 - Seven Samurai

I crossed some sort of invisible line when I was 16. I had moved to a new town about two weeks before school started and didn't really know anyone, so I had to wait a little while before I really made new friends. High school was kind of a joke, so I had a ton of time after school to kill. I spent that first winter clearing out the local video store 3 tapes at a time. You know that person in your building that has too many cats and wears cat sweaters that you see lugging 50 pound bags of meow mix into the elevator. Well I was that person except, you know, movies instead of cats. Things turned around for me of course, even though I had shoulder length hair that flipped out like Judy Jetson, but the video store in town was always a comfortable place for me. And it was there, when I was feeling a little adventurous, that I picked up Seven Samurai. 3.5 hours long, in Japanese with English subtitles. I was skeptical. I just figured that movies made in different countries would be unintelligible, that there would be other barriers besides language. I was wrong. I was also lucky. I imagine if I had picked up Solaris I wouldn't have fallen in love with foreign films so quickly. Sometimes the right film comes to you at the right time.

This was the perfect gateway drug for sixteen year old Don Jacobson. I loved how it took its time to introduce me to the characters. I laughed my ass off at Kikuchiyo's introduction and the way he was slowly introduced into the group. I marveled at the way the action and the tension built once we finally came to the village the samurai were sent to protect. I was blown away.

The twenty-nine year old Don Jacobson is still blown away. Film classes and books have allowed me to further appreciate how carefully constructed it is, and how different it is from other Japanese features at the same time. How the action is all about precise camera movement and editing. At the same time it transports me back to being that sixteen year old in the basement, smiling and marveling at something he'd never seen before. From that day on, it was rare to see me leave the video store without some kind of foreign film under my arm. Many of them were as stupid as their American counterparts, but they laid the groundwork for my discovery of countless others, three of which are on this list.

I have a sixteen year old brother now. I think I'll bring Seven Samurai next time I see him.

R.I.P. DFW

A friend of mine jokes occasionally that I only really like 5 novels. If that were really true, it would only be because Infinite Jest ruined my expectations forever. It taught me that I didn't need to fully understand a novel to engage with it. It challenged me to become smarter, it made me look up words and re-read sentences. I feel like to some degree the experience taught me how to read. His other novel, his short fiction, and his journalistic work are all similarly rewarding.

A great loss.

11/25/2008

Also available in Blu-Ray
http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=453

Ugh I've been lazy about this blog, expect more soon.

Wave of Mutilation

Richard Kelly may be cinema's first accidental genius. Donnie Darko is a genuinely mysterious film with some haunting visuals. It's brilliance lies in its mystery-- you can't really tell what's going on, but you're given just enough to put theories together. So what does Kelly do? He creates a director's cut that explains more, and ruins the pace and the mystery that made the film magical in the first place.

This prologue explains the main problem I have with Southland Tales. It's ambitious, inspired, and genuinely funny. The film quotes T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Philip K. Dick, but its main influence lies in metafiction, namely Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. References pile on top of each other, authors are misquoted, characters break into song and dance, the world is familiar and alien at the same time. But the difficulty with metafiction is that the audience is going to get lost, they're not going to catch all the references, and they're going to be confused and frustrated. This is unavoidable. An audience is only willing to go as far as it trusts that the author knows what's going on and is going to be able to pull it all together. Richard Kelly hasn't earned that trust from me, and he doesn't change that in this film.

So does Richard Kelly know what he's making when he makes a film? Are the parts that I love about Southland Tales merely accidents? Was Donnie Darko's success more a result of limited time and budget, and less the result of a confident new voice in cinema? Unfortunately, that's my suspicion.

That being said, there are a lot of things to like about Southland Tales. I think the decision to use actors with a lot of baggage is an inspired one, and I love The Rock as an anti-action hero. The addition of former SNL cast members makes the world feel a little off, a little alien. I admire the way the film refuses to explain too much. In a way it feels like Buckaroo Banzai-- like the second film in a trilogy where the first and the third were never made. It reminds me a lot of David Lynch, Ridley Scott, and Terry Gilliam. And it successfully creates a kind of Pynchonian world where Karl Marx or the Marx Brothers could be around the next corner.

This makes it even more disappointing when Kelly fails to bring it all together in a satisfying way. What passes for satire seems really facile, and every time the film tries to make a political point it falls flat. The ending disintegrates into an underwhelming mess of Christ figures. I think the biggest misstep is the lack of a theme tying it all together. Gravity's Rainbow has cold war paranoia, Infinite Jest has addiction, Southland Tales has no discernible theme and that's why it doesn't work as metafiction.

Still it's fun to watch, and I've spent two weeks unpacking it in my head after one viewing. That's more than most films give me, even it if may not be on purpose.

#7 - Bringing Up Baby

If you think classic hollywood comedies are simple, you need to see Bringing Up Baby. The first time you see it you won't notice how complicated the whole thing is because it moves so fast. Jokes, pratfalls, and visual gags hit and combine and overlap and never let up, so much so that you're likely to miss a few because you laugh over them. This is the signature style of the comedies of director Howard Hawks. The secret ingredient that sets Bringing Up Baby apart from Hawks' other comedies is the combination of two of the most charismatic actors of all time, Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Not only do they have chemistry and comedic timing to spare, they also sell every line, every fall and every joke. Their charisma brings likeability to two characters that could have been very tiresome otherwise.

Any kind of plot synopsis would give everything away and sound crazy anyway, so suffice it to say that there is a leopard named Baby, a dog named George, a missing intercostal clavicle from a brontosaurus, a trip to Connecticut, a drunk Irish gardener, and everybody ends up in jail at the end. Got it? It won't matter if you don't. What does matter is that you see it because I am convinced there isn't a funnier movie in existence.

If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out

Charlie Bartlett is really, really good. I was expecting a kind of precious faux-Rushmore, but instead I got something more like Ferris Bueller. I'm sure if I was in a more critical mood I'd find a bunch of faults with it, but a lot like Lars and the Real Girl it generated such a good feeling that I didn't really want to find things that didn't work in it. It's a little Hollywood, but it makes you feel good. Go see it, and hurry because it won't be in theaters long. Seriously, I'll go with you.

#8 - Viridiana

A man holds a small, ornate cross in his hand, then slowly pulls it open, revealing the pocketknife it contains. A little girl plays with a crown of thorns, but it pricks her so she throws it in a fire. Anyone who loves seeing religious imagery being subverted can find a lot to like in Viridiana. But if it was only a collection of irreverent anti-religious images it wouldn't stand a chance of making this list. Bunuel made that film earlier in his career with L'age D'or. But L'age D'or is a film that's rotten on the surface, a slideshow of funny images that subvert religious icons. Viridiana is rotten to the core, subverting not only through the images, but through the story as well.

Viridiana is the story of a woman who is just about to take her vows to become a nun. Before she joins the convent for good she is ordered to pay one last visit to her patron, her uncle. During the visit her faith is shaken and she decides to stay at the farmhouse, choosing to take care of poor and crippled beggars from the nearby village. This being a Bunuel film, her plan backfires horribly. Her idealism is destroyed, and the film ends by suggesting that she hooks up with her worldly cousin. But a plot synopsis can't convey how deranged the journey is. The uncle dresses Viridiana up in his dead wife's wedding dress, and drugs her after she refuses to marry him. The beggars she tries desperately to help take terrible advantage of her and bicker with each other constantly. The beggars enter the farmhouse when she's away and destroy it, leading to the climax where Viridiana is attacked by the very people she tried to help. Finally she is not saved by heroism, faith or strength, but by the greed of one of the attackers who turns on the other. How could anyone maintain their faith after that ordeal?

And that's the terrible, wonderful question that the film ultimately asks. How can idealism exist at all in this world? It's conveyed best in my favorite scene. Viridiana's cousin notices a dog tied to a cart. He asks the man why the dog can't ride in the cart, and the man tells him the cart is for people to ride in. So the cousin buys the dog from the man. Sweet, right? But this is Bunuel so as the cart rolls away it passes another cart travelling in a different direction. And tied to that cart is another dog. It's this mastery of summing up an idea in an image that makes me love this film, and love Bunuel.

See also: Deranged foreign masterpieces- L'age d'or, Exterminating Angel, Week/End

It's Been a Pretty Good Week for Movies

This was last night.

Show and Tell

I really liked National Treasure because it made anybody with an eighth grade history education and a penchant for word puzzles feel like a genius [and feel like you could land Helen of Troy]. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets takes it one step further, giving every piece of information three times so nobody gets lost. Don't believe me? Take our initial look at the J Edgar Hoover Building. We're shown the building, expertly framed so that the sign that says "J. Edgar Hoover Building" takes up the left side of the screen. Then, at the bottom, for the six people in the theater who didn't notice, a caption pops up reading [you guessed it] "J. Edgar Hoover Building". Cut to the inside, where Harvey Keitel and everyone else in the building wears clothing with FBI in huge letters! It's like the motto for this one was No Movie-Goer Left Behind. Did lots of people have trouble following the first one? I don't understand. The number of times everyone described what we were being shown was really distracting.

The good news is that if you have a blind friend that really wants to go to the movies, you can take them to National Treasure 2 and they'll follow it just fine.

Also I'm still looking for an archivist that looks like Diane Kruger.

#9 - Once Upon a Time in the West

Once upon a time an Italian made the greatest western of all time. The thing that Once Upon a Time in the West understands better than any other western is that there's no need for realism in the genre. Instead it takes all the elements of the western and blends them all together into the ultimate combination. You get all the familiar archetypes: the loner seeking revenge, the crazy bandit with a heart of gold, the dangerous villain, and the woman who brings them all together. Claudia Cardinale even gets to be two western archetypes at the same time, being both a widow and a whore. [if only she could be a schoolteacher as well, she'd have everything covered!] Now put these characters in a fast-paced story where alliances change at every turn, and a double-cross is around every corner.

Next add music. Oh, the music! Ennio Morricone's music for Leone's films have become legendary for good reason. Even if you haven't seen a western you probably can hum the theme to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Now, instead of making one great iconic theme he made four, one for each character, each one unforgettable. I think 'operatic' is used far to often to describe the relation between Leone's films and Morricone's music. In this film I think the most accurate comparison is to dance, in the relation between music and movement.

The other element that makes this western seem larger than anything you've seen before is the cinematography. Like Leone's other westerns extreme close-ups dominate. It makes these characters who are already larger than life seem like giants. The combination between these close-ups and the music are almost too much, like the film is bursting at the seams. But the thing Once Upon a Time in the West has that the earlier films do not is scale. The first time you hear Jill's theme the camera follows her into the train station and moves up over the roof and as the music swells you see this large bustling western town. It's one of my favorite moments in all of cinema, the perfect blend of image, movement, and music. Once Upon a Time in the West is full of moments like these, and that's why it made the list.

See also: My other fave westerns- The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Fistful of Dollars, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers, Rio Bravo, Deadwood, The Wild Bunch

#10 - Vernon, Florida

I'm going to be going backwards through my top ten of all time, rewatching the films and giving a bit of detail about why I chose them. If you want to know what I've been watching lately I've added a movie diary list on the right hand side of the page. I hope to update it with all the films I see this year, but we'll see how well I stick to it.

I've set myself a hell of a task in describing Vernon, Florida, let alone explaining how a 55 minute collection of strange people in a small town talking into the camera is my favorite documentary of all time. Errol Morris wanted to make a documentary about Vernon because he got wind that people there were intentionally disfiguring themselves to collect insurance money. Unfortunately when he arrived he soon figured out that people aren't really comfortable recounting the details of how they defrauded insurance companies on film. Undeterred, he began to interview the locals and collected a group of strange interviews. The result is to me far more interesting than a documentary about insurance fraud. A turkey hunter tells us about his experiences on the hunt. A policeman tells the tale of how he was shot at one night. Three old men argue about the best way to shoot yourself with a shotgun. A couple shows off a mysterious jar of sand that they claim is expanding at an alarming rate. Faulkner couldn't make this stuff up.

Errol Morris is one of our most respected and acclaimed documentary filmmakers, and he is indisputably a master of the form. But an issue I have with him is the amount of control he imposes on his latest films. He always seems to find amazing stories, but he is obsessed currently with putting a subject in a room with his two-camera system [the interrotron] and having that person look you in the eye and tell you his/her story. And his most recent films are certainly powerful and entertaining, but I prefer the spontaneity of Vernon, Florida and his first film, Gates of Heaven. In Vernon we get to see these people in the context of the place where they live. There's a bit of the genius of Walker Evans' photography in this film. Evans realized that people will give you a great deal of information about themselves if you allow them to pose for a picture, and there's an element of that in the way we see these people 'performing' for the camera in the film.

There are also some lovely little contrasts in the film. My favorite consists of a pair of scenes where a man who is seemingly building his own church by hand tells a story of how God answers his prayers for very practical things, contrasted by the next scene where a pastor of a huge church gives a sermon about the amount of times Paul uses the word therefore in the book of Romans. It also has some absolutely gorgeous camerawork, capturing the strange beauty of a tiny town. The whole film seems like a beautiful, miraculous accident.

See also: My other favorite documentaries-- Anything else by Morris, The Sorrow and the Pity, The Last Waltz, Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Burden of Dreams, The Five Obstructions, Grizzly Man, Don't Look Back, and No Direction Home.

Because I promised

1) Chungking Express
2) Magnolia
3) Chinatown
4) Solaris (1972)
5) Annie Hall
6) Seven Samurai
7) Bringing Up Baby
8) Viridiana
9) Once Upon a Time in the West
10) Vernon, Florida