CineFile Video

LOCAL TALENT:

The Science of Sleep

Michel Gondry’s first narrative feature not written by Charlie Kaufman is a painful confession wrapped in whimsy, and coated in plaster of paris and cellophane. Gabriel Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Motorcycle Diaries) plays a young artist/inventor whose sensitivity, creativity, and sensual lips, aren’t enough to win the heart of his neighbor Charlotte Gainsbourg–primarily because he mishandles every major turning point in their emerging relationship. The storyline has the kind of low stakes and personal tone that one expects from microemotional directors migrating through film festivals with Super-16mm films made starring their ex-girlfriends, or former crushes (Bujalaski, anyone?). But Gondry directs music videos, and his visual efflorescence temporarily camouflages the film’s small scale. Unexpectedly, this is where the film may disappoint; the conceit that Bernal can’t distinguish reality from dreams seems false next to the embarassing honesty of the central story, and the visuals are only occasionally striking, and often retreads of stuff he’s done better in the past. But Gondry has some astute observations that took me offguard: primarily, how unattractive we can be when in love. The behavior is mostly believable, though I like to think this is the kind of shit most of us figure out by the time we’re out of college. God, I hope so, anyways. You only act this way once, but Gondry has finally recorded it with his camera, and made it a little harder to forget.

Employee of the Month
All I can say about this Dane Cook workplace comedy is we watched Clerks 2 as a palate cleanser–suddenly Kevin Smith seemed relevant and witty.

Farce of the Penguins
March of the Penguins spoof, with Bob Saget making funny. One of our oldest customers came in while this was on the televsion: “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen you guys watching.”

Flags of Our Fathers
Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima, Part 1, is a cynical examination of hero worship, spending as much time with the after-effects of the flag-raising as with the actual battle.

Flyboys
Director Tony Bill (My Bodyguard) and producer Dean Devlin (Godzilla) come together to bring us a CGI-filled war and glory film about WWI pilots starring James Franco and Jean Reno.

Gridiron Gang
Based on a inspiring true story about teenagers at a juvenile detention center who gain self-esteem by playing football together. Starring the Rock.

The Grudge 2
Takashi Shimizu has now made this movie six times. This is sad, because he’d gotten it right the first time. By now, though, meowing cell phones and creaking monocromatic little-boy ghosts just don’t pack the same punch.

The Guardian
Kevin Costner is Louis Gossett Jr. and Ashton Kutcher is Richard Gere in this Coast Guard redux of An Officer and a Gentleman. This film is also a prequel to Costner’s Waterworld, as evinced by the ending.

Hollywoodland
Surprisingly clear-eyed examination of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of George Reeves, TV’s Superman. Ben Affleck as Reeves delivers his best performance to date. Professionally directed by Allen Coulter, who made his name helming a seasons worth of Sopranos episodes. It’s better than the Black Dahlia, the other 2006 L.A., period noir. Plus, it’s got tons of hot chicks in 50’s fashion.

The Marine (UNRATED!)
The first film solely developed by the WWE is an attempt to make an action star out of John Cena, self-proclaimed “Doctor of Thuganomics”, which I guess he picked up at the School of Hard Knocks. Opens with him inflitrating an Al-Qaeda compound in Iraq. And he looks like a steroidical Mark Wahlberg.

Open Season (animated)
In this amiable, expensive cgi animation, a ragtag group of forrest animals sneak into suburbia, and learn some lessons about friendship and family. Oh, hold, it, I think that’s Over The Hedge. In this one,…ah, whatever.

Running With Scissors
Shot in Dysfunctionoramascope!

Saw III
All of your favorite elements are back: Piss-colored lighting! Sharp, oily metal! Dripping black pipes! Torture! And, most importantly, Jigsaw, the supercilious psycho with the philosophical depths of a Korn lyric. Without spoiling the thrilling ending, I’ll tell you that it involves….ten plus minutes of exposition! The horror!

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
The “beginning” is hopefully the end–but horror franchises, like their mass murdering heroes, never really die. Oh, and this is the prequel to the remake, not the original, which was also different than Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. And, in yet another dimension, the Texas Chainsaw clan use their powers for good by battling crime and protecting wayfarers.

REGION-CODED IMPORTS:

Louis Malle Box Set:

-Black Moon
After the controversy surrounding Lacombe Lucien, a serious film about a French collaborator in WWII, Malle decided to make a film impossible to take seriously, and succeeded. This uncharacteristic foray into fantasy and dream logic by the usually down-to-earth Malle is one of those lysergic Alice in Wonderland movies that proliferated in the 70’s (Polanski’s What?, Lemora). Beautifully shot by Sven Nykvist, a blonde hottie (Rex Harrison’s grand daughter, Cathryn) wanders around a world with a literal war between the sexes, talking animals, unicorns, and Joe D’Allesandro.
-Fire Within
Malle’s most Bresson-influenced film is about a writer contemplating suicide. Featuring Malle’s muse of the time, Jeanne Moreau. Writer Jean Genet celebrated the film, saying, “Malle has effected something phenomenal, having turned literature into film, photographed the meaning of an unsubstantial, touching and rather famous book, and given its tragic intention a clarity it never achieved in print.”
-The Lovers
Along with Elevator to the Gallows, this film is credited with making a star of Jeanne Moreau.
>-May Fools
Made in 1990, this is one of Malle’s last films. Set during the May ‘68 student riots, you never actually see them, because the movie is a gentle farce about a family that happens to be out of town at the family’s country home for a funeral. Co-written with Bunuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere.
-Zazie Dans Le Metro
Made in 1959, Louis Malle’s most “New Wave” film features more film trickery than a gaggle of commercials, prefiguring the zany comedy of Richard Lester. The slender clothesline to hang the various episodes is a day in Paris from the point of view of a 12 year old girl left in the care of her transvestite uncle.

Fried Dragon Fish
An early film by Shunji Iwai (All About Lily Chou-Chou) involving a computer-operator-turned-detective, whose hunt for a stolen fish leads her to a guild of trained assassins, as well as obiquitous heartthrob Tadanobu Asano.

Two Hilarious BBC Spoof Shows

-Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
A note-perfect contemporary parody of low-budget 80’s horror television, complete with cheesy production values, stilted acting, and bargain basement special effects. The series-within-a-series is set at a haunted hospital, with a new monster every week, and its framing sequences are modern-day “reminiscences” by the cast and creators.
-Look Around You 2
Another brilliant recreation, this one of 70’s children’s science programs, with absurd weekly scientific explanations of subjects like health (including a facelift by the surgical computer Medibot), music (with a contest judged by the ghost of Tchaikovsky), and sports (with the introduction of gonnis, the sport between golf and tennis).

The Goddess of 1967
From Chinese art director Clara Law (Reincarnation of the Golden Lotus, Temptation of a Monk) comes this tale of a Japanese man who travels to Australia to buy a Citroen DS, a car that was nicknamed “Deessee”, or “Goddess” (hence the title). Once there, circumstances force him to hook up with a 17-year old girl and the two set off across the continent. A road picture with gorgeous cinematography that brings out both the beauty and terror of the Outback.

Memories of Matsuko
This tragic novel, tracing the sorrow-filled life of a Japanese woman, is warped by director Testsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls) into a candy-colored comedy with songs, while still somehow retaining its emotional effect.

Torchwood Season One, Part One
Incredibly disappointing spin-off of the recent series of Doctor Who, with square-jawed bisexual American pilot Captain Jack Harkness taking center stage. He’s the head of an incredibly inept special branch of the government, whose purported mission is to protect the world from aliens and supernatural menaces. The biggest problem is that he and his team are complete buffoons, making every possible mistake in handling crises, and often exacerbating them to the point of ridiculous civilian casualties. And, let me stress this, it’s NOT A COMEDY!!! These are our heroes, and while I can respect the creators for attempting to inject some human failings into their characters, there is a big gap between flawed and completely worthless. Torchwood manages to erase that line.

Two Films by Shane Meadows
Shane Meadows is a regional director from the industrial Midlands of England who favors naturistic acting, sometimes by non-professionals, and hand-held but artful camera work.

-Twentyfourseven
Bob Hoskins plays a coach who galvanizes the young men in a working-class own, pulling them away from gangs and into the world of boxing.
-A Room for Romeo Brass
The story of two twelve-year old boys and the charismatic older man who has his eye on one boy’s sister.

Letter From an Unknown Woman
Max Ophul’s classic.

“INDIE”:

The Puffy Chair
Back to Andrew Bujalski.

Like in Bujalski’s festival hits Funny Ha-Ha and Mutual Appreciation, the Duplass brothers have fashioned a understated, tragicomic film about the foibles of 20-something relationships using amateur actors, handheld camerawork, and a budget that could be raised from friends and family. The Duplass brothers are more willing to use classic dramatic structure and comedy artifice, with scenes that, beneath rippling shaky surface, are basically well-constructed farce. Bujalski will probably please the connoisseurs more, but The Puffy Chair is that half-step closer to the mainstream that predicts better commercial success. On a smaller scale, its the same phenomena that explains how a band like Nirvana could take the more challenging, but less accessible, music from cult bands like Sonic Youth, and sugar the pill just enough to make it real pop.

There does seem to be an emerging aesthetic of realism here. Since whats “real” is subjective, it doesn’t “really” exist as anything more than a group of conventions that express certain points of view. John Cassavetes’ reality looks awfully different than Eric Rohmer’s; the camera moves around a lot more, and people really freak out. It’s interesting to see how infectious these conventions can be; watching movies in the years after Husbands , like The Last Movie or anything by Norman Mailer, you often see actors doing there best to have the kind of honest raw emotionality of a Cassavetes film, and lots of repetitive, stultifying dialogue. What The Puffy Chair, Bujalski, and even Curb Your Enthusiasm have most in common, is an agreement of acting style. I found myself wondering how much of this was due to the influence of reality television. It’s like a whole generation learned how to act natural watching The Real World.

Wholphin #3
McSweeney’s publishers Dave Eggers and Brent Hoff named their DVD quarterly “wholphin” after a genuine, but rare, hybrid of dolphin and killer whale to emphasize the singularity of their visual magazine. What’s really unusual is a DVD magazine that’s actually good. Issue three keeps up the high quality with amazing selections by well-knowns like Dennis Hopper and Alexander Payne, festival favorites like the Zellner Brothers, and talented unknowns who are probably soon to be known. Also, the second half of Adam Curtis’ Power of Nightmares!

12 and Holding
From Michael Cuesta, the director of L.I.E., another tale about the fascinating sexuality of those poor, poor beautiful boys. Cuesta has been directing episodes of Six Feet Under between films, and the mixed reviews often cite his talent for capturing a moody suburbia.

Adam and Steve
Queer-themed romantic comedy, quirky. Directing debut by Craig Chester (Swoon, Boys Life 4).

The Bloody Child
Semi-experimental film by feminist indie icon, and local film teacher, Nina Menkes about the arrest of a Gulf War veteran who had murdered his wife and buried her in 29 Palms. Menkes pulled the kernel of the story from a newspaper article, and uses it to create her trademark blend of mysticism, minimalism, and surrealism. 1996.

The Festival
Sundance satire distributed by IFC, so there’s no mention of Sundance at all. Instead they’re at MUFF (Mountain United Film Festival). I’m skeptical of any film that uses L.A.M.E. humor (Lazy Acronyms Must End!).

Motel
Another fave from the Sundance workshop, and it has the hallmark traits: multi-culti, provincial, coming-of-age, personal, quirky, slightly dangerous sexuality. Critically well-received, and only 76 minutes!

Poster Boy
A right-wing senator (Michael Lerner) has his anti-gay platform undermined when his son is outed by a lover. This project was developed by veteran director Herbert Ross(The Hospital, The In-Laws), but he died before it went into production. The replacement director, Douglas Keeve, quit, leaving the editor, Zac Tucker, to finish up and take credit. From the metacritic ratings, I think it looks about as good as its production history sounds.

Sherrybaby
Sherrybaby’s a vehicle for alternative sex symbol Maggie Gylenhaal–the smirky girl who’s hot in the believable way of someone you might actually date or be, at least in your mind. Like a lot of older movie stars her charm is partly based on her accessibility, though it doesn’t hurt that she can really act. Here she plays a drug addict, fresh out of prison, and at first the movie marches through the dramatic beats of parole like a good little soldier, looking like a gender-twisted Straight Time (Dustin Hoffman’s underappreciated masterpiece, based on Ed Bunker’s autobiographical novel). Not that I have a problem with the similarity, both movies feel well-researched, and what’s true is true. Besides, as the second act rolls around, you see what different movie Sherrybaby is.

Unfortunately, Sherrybaby came out the same year as Half-Nelson–another character portrait abouta drug addict built around a bravura performance–and suffered a bit by comparison. Lauri Collyer’s direction isn’t as visually ambitious, the writing is less ambigious and expectation-defying, and, well, it’s just not as good; but Half-Nelson was one of the best movies of the year. Taken on it’s own terms, Sherrybaby is a pretty darn good. Sherrybaby is a sweet and likable slut, the kind of girl who’s trouble, but basically sweet, the kind whose muddled sexuality and charm make you feel something’s gone wrong and sad. Gyllenhall is sharp enough not to play her sad, though. Instead, she is almost relentlessly optimistic, which is all the more heart-breaking. But by the end of the movie, I was never really surprised, or made to feel there’s more to her than I could possibly understood. She’s basically who you think she is. And that lack of revelation is the dramatic flaw that keeps the film from ever really rising above sea level.

FOREIGN:

Brother
Shoestring-budget Russian gangster film by Andrei Balabanov (Of Freaks and Men). Popular enough in Russia to spawn a sequel. IMDB review: “What happens when Ayn Rand fanatics and the IMF run a country.”

Dark Waters
Not to be confused with Dark Water, the Japanese film, or its remake. Director Mariano Baino has melded the mythology of H.P. Lovecraft with the stylistic flourishes of Dario Argento in this tale of nuns in an island convent worshiping an evil deity. NoShame has released a beautiful restored print of this 90’s Italian horror movie, struck from the original master, along with a bonus disc of the director’s short films. Winner of the Vincent Price Award at the Rome Fantafestival.

Duck Season

This low-key, clever Mexican comedy is heavily influenced by early Jarmusch –with its miniscule cast and crisp black & white photography– but with a broader sense of humor. The deceptively simple plot involves two 12-year-old boys, their cute female neighbor, the pizza delivery man, and how they all spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. Simultaneously, the movie manages to deal with topics like divorce, emerging sexuality, and society’s definition of success. Plus, there are pot brownies.

Harvest Time
2004. A nostalgic, magic realist throwback to Soviet era “Boy Loves Tractor” movies, but with a new gender for a new millenium.. The first-time director Marina Razbezhkina even uses a vintage 35mm camera from the 50’s. Only 68 minutes!

Heading South

Laurent Cantet (Time Out, Human Resources) directs this middle-aged girls gone wild movie, third world edition. Three older women go to 80’s Haiti, get freaky art-house style, and learn some hard lessons. Adapted from a book of short stories by Haitian Dany Laferrière.

La Moustache
Adapted from his own novel, Emmanuel Carriere directed this surreal, low-key thriller about a man who shaves his moustache, and not only does no one notice, but everyone insists he never had a moustache. Don’t worry; it’s not meant to be a horror film, but more of a Kafka-esque waking nightmare.

Line of Beauty
Queer-themed British mini-series adapted from the Alan Hollinghurst novel; the plot of the Great Gatsby is loosely appropriated and reset in 80’s Thatcherite London, with a gay twist.

May 6th
Blow-Up-style conspiracy film about a photographer who accidentally captures the assassination of a controversial politician. Based on true events. Ironically, this was Dutch iconclast director Theo Van Gogh’s last film, before he himself was assassinated by a Muslim extremist for his previous film, Submission.

Mouchette
Another masterpiece from Bresson, adapted from a Georges Bernanos, who also wrote Diary of a Country Priest. 1967.

Nails & Visions of Suffering
These two dream-like Russian atrocity films are probably gaining a release due to Nightwatch’s popularity, but bear better comparison to the hardcore art-gore guys like Jörg Buttgereit and Tsukamoto.

Here’s director Ivan Iskanov, in a somewhat incomprehensible interview: “Absurd cruelty, destruction of flesh… It Seems, in all that I do there are these themes? In this film are a lot of images which really came from the darkest side of dreams. How many films based on dreams do you know? In any case, I certainly hope, that my film will be the first in your list. But I also could not refuse a scene of beating the girl even in film based on the real night nightmares. Some spectators are surprised - why she does not fall after such strong impacts? I answer: ‘In the first place , her heroine would take drugs to not feel pain, and in the second, its just a movie.’”

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
Zhang Yimou returns to the smaller-scale human dramas of his mid-period (Not One Less, Story of Qui Ji) in this tale of a Japanese father travelling the Chinese countryside in an attempt to record a live performance of a classic opera for his dying son. 2005.

Tale of Cinema

Korean art director Hong Sang-soo (On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate, The Day a Pig Fell in the Well, Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors)  crafts a title with only three words for a movie involving a suicidal film fan, an actress, and her lover.

Time
The new film by Kim Ki-duk involves a woman who, worried about the strength of her relationship, goes through an extreme, protracted process of plastic surgery. This film is about identity and vanity, and is not yet another in a series of misogynistic fantasies from the famed Korean auteur.

Yojimbo/Sanjuro
If you haven’t seen Akira Kurosawa’s seminal samurai flicks by now, Criterion has restored the prints to pristine gorgeousness. If you have seen them, Criterion has restored the prints pristine gorgeousness. It’s a win-win.

“JAPANESE NEW WAVE”:

The Japanese New Wave is one of the most striking, and criminally unrecognized, film movements in cinema history. In the 60’s, Japanese filmakers like Suzuki, Oshima, and Imamura, were deconstructing conventions, both filmic and social, faster than you can say Godard. So when I got the word that  japanesenewwave.com was going under , I realized we had to immediately vacuum up their entire inventory before it was too late. They’ve been doing a beautiful job–great movies, great prints, great subtitles. All, really hard to find. If you see what they were going to release it makes you wanna cry.  

       

Boy

CINEFILE AGENT BILL KROHN: “This true story about a couple who used their little boy in a dangerous scam, soberly filmed in color, turns a shocking news item into a symbolic drama exposing the psyche of postwar Japan The young hero’s  “job”  (throwing himself in front of cars so his parents can collect from the drivers)  becomes a repetition of the scars inflicted on his father by the Japanese defeat in World War II, which keep him from earning a living for his family. Japan is represented as a prison for the grifter family, because they have to keep moving around to avoid get getting caught. Eventually they come to the sea: ‘The only way we can keep going would be if Japan got bigger.’

The boy’s repeated sacrifice is an acting-out of a national repetition compulsion, but for him it is also the resolution of his Oedipus complex - in the end he and the mother (who isn’t his real mother) leave the father and become grifters on their own. Nagisa Oshima’s radical politics are never far from the idea of incest. This is one of his most beautiful films - a seemingly naturalistic story that is as subversive as Bunuel’s Tristana because of the way it sets you dreaming by the brilliance of its mise en scene.

Labryinth of Dreams

Japanesenewwave.com: “Sogo Ishii is one of the original new wave of Japanese avant-garde directors, infamous for his mold-breaking “in your face” visual style as evidenced by the grimly stylish early epics Thunder Crazy Road (1980) and Burst City (1982)… Hauntingly effective stuff, a dream in every sense of the word, a masterpiece of quiet, Labyrinth of Dreams is a film that demands to be heard and experienced.”

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief
Again Oshima shows his obsession with the criminal mind, in this tale of
young man who can only get off sexually by being caught stealing, and the
sales clerk who lusts after him. Meanwhile, Oshima intercuts documentary
footage of student riots, theatre productions, and breaks the fourth wall
with aggressive regularity. 1968.

A Profound Desire of the Gods

1967. Japanesenewwave.com: “Imamura’s last narrative film of the ’60s would also be his last for almost ten years, turning to documentary work throughout most of the ’70s. Profound Desire of the Gods may fall in line with many of the surface characteristics of the “epic”, but it never loses Imamura’s connection with the smallest building block, the endless desires of humankind. An almost forgotten island is visited by a Tokyo sugar plant employee, investigating not only his company’s investment, but also his (precursor’s) disappearance.”

A Man Vanishes

1967. Japanesenewwave.com: “Ostensibly Imamura’s first work in documentary features, A Man Vanishes is much more, heralding the future work of Kazuo Hara and Werner Herzog, amongst others, in the genre-defying mix of style and loose adherence to filmic “reality.” Imamura follows one case of a growing phenomenon of working Japanese men who, sent to other cities while their families are left behind, disappear completely.”
 

Intentions of Murder

1964. Japanesenewwave.com: “Amongst Imamura’s strongest, yet rarely seen films, Intentions of Murder is both a crystallization and reconstruction of his many themes. Masumi Harukawa plays Sadako, a archetypical Imamura woman: one who revels in the pleasures of food, labour, sex, and self-preservation. Carrying the burden of her status as a lowly, poor, prostitute-birthed commoner wife, Sadako is subjected to an escalating series of belittlement both at home and in society.”

Man Who Left His Will on Film

Japanese New Wave: “Oshima Nagisa’s The History of the Post Tokyo War / The Man Who Left His Will On Film is a Mobius loop of a film played over revolutionary youth, disillusioned with the fractured student movement of the late 60s in Japan. In what many consider Oshima’s most challenging film, the director toys with ideas of authorship, memory, and identity, and uses these to examine the concept of a film within a film.”


Death by Hanging

CINEFILE AGENT BILL KROHN: “One of Nagisa Oshima’s most demanding films, Death By Hanging is only superficially a “film against the death penalty,” even though it opens with an execution that is shown in realistic detail. One French critic has suggested that Oshima was drawn to the subject because of the symbolic “O” of the noose, a symbol of castration and the negation of the imperial sun on the Japanese flag. R, the protagonist, is a Korean convicted of raping two Japanese women. (Koreans are a subjugated minority in Japan, victims of the country’s historical imperialism.)

But his execution doesn’t come off, leaving him alive, but with no memory of his crime. The prison bureaucrats are therefore obliged to act out the rapes for him in his cell so that he can recall his guilt and finally be executed for real. Filmed in stunning black and white, their amateur theatrics reveal their own racism, misogyny and murderous violence. R finally remembers who he is and proclaims his innocence, but asks his captors to execute him in place of
‘all the other Rs.’ ”

The Ceremony

CINEFILE AGENT BILL KROHN: “Imagine Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (a man’s life seen as a series of birthdays) crossed with Hou Hsao Hsien’s baffling multi-generational history of Taiwan, City of Sadness, and you still won’t come close to the fire and ice of Nagisa Oshima’s history of Japan after World War II, told as a series of ceremonies- weddings, funerals - in the ongoing life of one well-to-do family, the Sakaduras. The protagonist is Masuo, a weak idealist who has learned democracy and baseball from the American conquerors.

Like many Oshima films - think of In the Realm of the Senses, with its obsessed
couple taking sex to the point of death in one room while the Emperor’s army prepares for World War II outside - The Ceremony offers distant reports of events in the larger world of postwar Japan that filter their way into a series of interiors exemplifying what Manny Farber calls “shallow-boxed space - a shallow stage with the ritualised, low-population image squared to the edges of the frame. Facing a fairly close camera, the formal-abstract-intellectualised content evolves at right angles to the camera, and usually signifies a filmmaker who has intellectually surrounded his material.” The images of The Ceremony anticipate the extraordinary pictorial values of In the Realm of the Senses, and In the Realm of Passion.

The ceremonies that unfold within these deep-focus compositions construct to a grasshopper-style narrative (the death of Masuo’s father in Manchuria in 1946, his mother’s funeral in 1952, Uncle Isamu’s marriage after Aunt Tetsuko’s death in 1956, Masuo’s marriage in 1961) that leaves out a lot we can only infer on a careful second viewing: for example the incest committed by Masuo’s doppelganger, the bastard Terumichi, with Aunt Tetsuko, who is really his mother.  Terumichi’s suicide, which brings the Takadura line to an end, recalls the suicide of Oshima’s friend Yukio Mishima the year before the film was released, which was designed to show Japan “that there is a value greater than life.”

First Love, Infernal Version

CINEFILE AGENT BILL KROHN: “For the moment fans of Nagisa Oshima and Ysauzo Masamura have only this film to give them some idea of the genius of Susumu Hani, the third leading figure of the Japanese New Wave of the 60s and 70s. (The fourth, Yoshishige Yoshida, remains a complete unknown, although those who saw Coup D’Etat at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the early 70s will never forget the Langian precision of its paranoid black-and-white imagery.) First Love, Infernal Version is an impossible film to describe. Shot in black and white whose roughness is somewhere between Italian neo-realism and Night of the Living Dead, it is a torrent of images pouring out of the national unconscious in 1968, the year of all the failed revolutions.

The story is sad: A love story between two youngsters who are unable to consummate their relationship during a long, frank and frontal scene in a seedy Tokyo “lovers hotel” that anticipates the treatments of sexuality we are accustomed to see in much more recent films from Korea. Shun is a metal-worker whose adoptive father is gay; Nami is a sex worker who poses nude for bored businessmen with a spirited innocence that recalls Betty Page. In their first scene at the hotel we see his past and hers in flashback sequences that set the tone
for all the mental imagery in the film: heterogenous (stills, freeze frames, somersaulting angles, films within the film), wildly imaginative and mysteriously beautiful.

The two key sequences: a long S&M session involving several girls where Shun spies on Nami and Hani’s chiaroscuro compositions make the now-familiar imagery sinister and shocking all over again, and Hun’s masturbatory fantasies, which include spooky, misty freeze-frames of naked children in devil-masks from the Noh theatre. Having brought us into what he would call ‘the human truth’ of his two characters through a dazzling array of cinematic inventions that give the impression of images burned into the negative from their minds, Hani kills off his hero en route to a second try at sex with the love of his life and ends the film on her smiling, hopeful face.

ASIAN GENRE STUFF:

Citizen Dog

The second film from Wisit Sasantieng, the director of the amazing Tears of the Black Tiger, comes another astonishingly vivid, richly colorful Thai film.  This one is a quirky, contemporary romantic comedy involving obsessive recycling, zombie motocab drivers, and grandmothers reincarnated as lizards, rather than a hybrid of a Douglas Sirk melodrama and a Sergio Leone western. Yes, you should see Tears of the Black Tiger, too.

Exiled
Johnnie To, director of the Election films and Fulltime Killer, pays homage to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and the classic Hong Kong genre of ‘heroic bloodshed’ with a spare, note-perfect story of bad men doing some good in a bad world. Recommended for all lovers of badass cinema.

The Host
The best monster movie of 2006. Hands down. See it. Now.

Memories of Matsuko
Japanese pop director Tetsuya Nakashima follows Kamikaze Girls with the tragic tale of one woman’s life, told as a sugary, brightly-colored musical.

Perth
Thai reworking of Taxi Driver by one-name director, Djinn. At least 50% English, for those of you with subtitle-phobia.

Rob-B-Hood
The new Chinese-made Jackie Chan film contains his trademark jaw-dropping choreography, including dodging a roller coaster. It also features an adorable baby hostage, who teaches safe cracker Jackie and his partner Louis Koo the true meaning of yadda-yadda ad infinitum. Diaper jokes ensue. The baby was nominated as Best Newcomer for the Hong Kong Film Awards. No, seriously.

Shinobi: Heart Under Blade
Romeo and Juliet with ninjas. 2005, Japan.

3 films by Ryuichi Hiroki:

-I am an S & M Writer
Hiroki cut his teeth making pink films for Nikkatsu in the 70’s, and used his experience for inspiration in this 2000 release. The story centers on a smut author whose relationship with his wife is affected by his increasingly cerebral attitudes towards sexuality.
-Tokyo Trash Baby
Released the same weekend as I am an S &M Writer. A waitress is so obsessed with her upstairs neighbor she begins to go through his trash. Tokyo Trash Baby was the first in the Love Series, the same group of films that Takashi Miike later made Visitor Q for.
-Vibrator
Again, Hiroki explores the charged sexuality of an isolated female who enters an unusual relationship. Frank sex!

ANIMATION:

The Amazing Screw-On Head

From Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, comes this hilarious animated short film, documenting the surreal adventures of a disembodied head, his robot bodies, his zombie arch-nemesis, and Abraham Lincoln. With the voice talents of Paul Giamatti, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon, and Patton Oswalt and an animation style that perfectly captures Mignola’s angular, shadowy art.

Hellboy: Sword of Storms
More animated Mike Mignola, this time a feature-length-ish journey into haunted Japan, with the actors from the Hellboy live-action film reprising their roles, with one odd difference. Doug Jones was the physical actor for the character of Abe Sapien in the film, with David Hyde Pierce providing the voice (like James Earl Jones in Star Wars). Here, he provides the voice only for the cartoon version of the same character, giving a more-than-passable David Hyde Pierce impersonation. With that in mind, why did they hire Pierce at all?

Hopeless Pictures
This disturbing animated IFC show revolves around the trials and tribulations of a studio head (Michael McKean), which include his embittered wife (Lisa Kudrow), his inept head of production (Bob Balaban), and his incompetent shrink (Jonathan Katz). For fans of Dr. Katz and Christopher Guest’s satires.

The Invincible Iron Man
More animation from Marvel Comics, this time focusing on the power struggles between an American C.E.O. and a nefarious Chinese leader called The Mandarin. Oh, yeah, the American has a flying suit of armor. Don’t worry, though. There are more than enough scenes of corporate intrigue, board meetings, and office skullduggery to sate your appetite for cartoon business dealings.

Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles
This is a modern, American-made sequel to the Japanese cartoon from the 80’s. Nostalgia fans rejoice! Or maybe cringe.

CLASSICS:

Arabian Nights (1942)
Enjoy the pleasures of 3-strip Technicolor!

The Arrangement
Failed 1969 comeback film for Elia Kazan, adapted from his own semi-autobiographical novel about the crack-up of a aging superstar advertizing executive, torn between his lover and his wife (Faye Dunawaye and Deborah Kerr, respectively). Maybe if Kazan had gotten Brando for the lead, as he wanted, instead of Kirk Douglas, it would have been more than a fascinating failure; but as it is, there’s plenty of interest in seeing Kazan dive headfirst into some late 60’s modernism that looks somewhere between an overcooked Antonioni and lackluster Tati, and edited like Lester’s Petulia (a film it bears more than a passing resemblance to). Sadly, Kazan would essentially retire after this film bombed.
P.S. Does anyone out there have a copy of his true swansong, 1972 the independent 16mm, The Visitors, written by his son?

Band of Angels
1957 Raoul Walsh melodrama, written by Robert Penn Warren (All The King’s Men). A seething hotpot of dark secrets, miscegenation, and Civil War starring Clark Gable as the Plantation owner who purchases newly enslaved, formerly white (yes), Yvonne DeCarlo, and Sidney Poitier as his trusted overseer RauRu (that’s a name, not an exclamation by Scooby-Doo).

The Heiress
William Wyler directed this adaption of Henry James’ Washington Square. Olivia De Havilland won her second Oscar for this performance opposite Montgomery Clift.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan
The original 1941 version of Warren Beatty’s Heaven Can Wait (not to be confused with Ernst Lubitsch’s 1943 film of the same name) or, if you’re a masochist, Chris Rock’s Down to Earth (not to be confused with the 1947 Rita Hayworth vehicle of the same name, which was actually a sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan). In this one, Robert Montgomery plays a boxer who dies before his time and is sent back to earth as an old millionaire, instead of a football star or a comic.

Monsters and Madmen (Criterion)

First Man Into Space/The Atomic Submarine
The Haunted Strangler/Corridors of Blood
Richard and Alex Gordon produced classy but dirt cheap exploitation films in the late 50’s, taking their financial cues from Roger Corman’s AIP Pictures. Criterion has now released four of their better works. The first two are science fiction, one involving an irradiated astronaut returning to Earth as a horrible monster and the other about a deep sea mission that encounters a UFO. The latter two are Victorian horror stories, both with Boris Karloff.

A Summer Place
Best known for its hit theme song, the re-release of A Summer Place will surely please Sandra Dee fans everwhere. 1959.

Robert Mitchum Box Set:

Angel Face
Mitchum co-starred with Jean Simmons in Angel Face, the last of Otto Preminger’s classic noirs. Angel Face was a particular favorite of the French New Wave. Jacques Rivette was so enamored with it, he used his Cahier Du Cinema review to ask the question what is mise en scene? (”bodies, movements, spaces, gestures, and dialogue are contained within an ever-changing unity, the transcendental comprehension of which is both the task of the work and an elusive promise held out by the medium.”); and, in 1962, Jean-Luc Godard listed Angel Face as one of the top 10 sound films of all time. Excitable Frenchmen aside, Angel Face has a lot to enjoy. Jean Simmons, a kind of proto-Audrey Hepburn (Hepburn got her star-making turn in Roman Holiday when Simmons turned it down), has a kind of neurotic menace than is all the more dangerous because of her titular sweetness. The script, by Frank Nugent (The Searchers) and Ben Hecht (His Girl Friday) has the kind of of 50’s Freudian loopiness that I enjoy. Interestingly, Mitchum again rebelled against an autocratic director; after being made to repeatedly slap Simmons in take after take, he turned on the notoriously sadistic Preminger, and slapped him instead. Mitchum just gets cooler and cooler.         

Home From the Hill
Epic Vincent Minnelli melodrama focusing on the meaning of masculinity in a powerful Southern family, headed by Mitchum. 1960. Co-starring George Peppard and George Hamilton (doing a pretty good Anthony Perkins, with a tan).

Macao
Two pantheon directors in one movie! According to a TCM interview with Mitchum, included on the extras, Josef Von Sternberg was fired two thirds after Mitchum provoked him by feeding the cast and crew lunch (”No food on zee set!”, was apparently a Sternberg edict). Nicholas Ray was brought in to replace him and direct the last 30 minutes. Produced by Howard Hughes, and co-starring tit-missiled Jane Russell. 1952.

The Good Guys and the Bad Guys
A tongue-in-cheek western (note the self-consciously ironic title) directed by lightly likable Burt Kennedy, who seemed to specialize in this sort of thing (Support Your Local Sherriff, Support Your Local Gunfighter). Like many a latter-day Western it focuses on a group of characters who are as old as the genre trying to prove that there’s still life in their old bones. George Kennedy co-stars. 1969.

The Yakuza
The most brilliant thing about this 1974 attempt to harness the incredible coolness of Japanese Yakuza movies was the casting of Robert Mitchum, perhaps the only white dude on the planet who could believably hold his own against the steely machismo of Japanese superstar Ken Takakura. Very flinty stuff, with some serious screenwrighting punch: two Schraders and and a Towne (Leonard, Paul, and Robert, respectively), though it’s difficult to unravel all the pieces of who did what. Towne certainly did a rewrite for director Sydney Pollack, but poor brother Leonard, who had lived in Japan and knew the culture back to front, only got a story credit, while hio. From the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, in Paul Schrader’s own words:

I had always treated Leonard badly. Taking sole screenwriting credit on The Yakuza wasn’t very nice. Treating him as an employee wasn’t very nice. Throughout all that, he had one thing that I didn’t have, which was Japan. And then came Mishima[: A Life in Four Chapters, 1985], and I stole Japan from him. To do Mishima was his idea.

OTHER REISSUES:

Border Radio
Criterion. 90’s indie curio gets the serious treatment. Notable for being Allison Anders directing debut (along with UCLA classmates Kurt Voss and Dean Lent), as well as starring post-punk icons like John Doe and Chris D. (now the programmer of the American Cinematheque).

Cannibal Campout
One of those 80’s horror trashheaps, shot on video for video, by a guy who probably read that book about how to make a movie for the price of a used car. Looking back, it’s an amazing mini-moment in exploitation history, a very special low. Interestingly, it’s NOT the first film to feature a fetus-eating scene. 1988.

Coastlines
Latest by regional director Victor Nuñez (Ruby in Paradise, Ulee’s Gold) focuses on a love triangle between an ex-con (Timothy Olyphant), his sheriff friend (Josh Brolin), and the sheriff’s wife (Sarah Wynter) in sweaty Florida.

Crossing Delancey
Likable romantic comedy by Joan Micklin Silver–and don’t worry, it’s kosher!

Eddie Murphy: Delirious
Arguably Eddie’s finest hour is now finally available on DVD. If someone could explain how the edgy, electrically confident performer seen here has morphed into Norbit, please drop us an e-mail.

Gymkata
Tagline: “The skill of gymnastics, the kill of karate.” Either you think a movie about a world-class gymnast who learns karate and fuses his skills into a new martial art in order to go enter a deadly tournament held by a ficitonal nation on the edge of the Caspian Sea to gain U.S. access for the Star Wars orbiting missile defense platform is awesome, or you don’t. And if you don’t, I can’t help you.

Jacknife
Robert DeNiro is a Vietnam vet. Ed Harris is his friend. James Lipton is creaming his pants.

Looker
1981. Sci-Film written and directed by Michael Crichton with another lame acronym; LOOKER stands for “Light Ocular-Oriented Kinetic Emotive Responses”. Albert Finney plays a heroic plastic surgeon who undercovers a plot to brainwash the public using subliminals in advertising–almost as absurd as global warming! Includes a cool electronic score by Barry de Vorzon, and gratuitous full-frontal nudity by Susanne Dey (Did you know “gratuitous” and “grateful” share the same etymological root?). Interestingly, Finney is made suspicious by models who keep coming in for microscopic surgeries–so unnecessary when you can alter everything later, like this:

DOCUMENTARIES:

This Film is Not Yet Rated

Kirby Dick’s documentary about the MPAA ratings board is a real muckraker, delving into the ratings board’s history, makeup, and prejudices. The film is most entertaining when shooting its barrel of fish, using comparative clips from the various films to show the hypocrisy of the MPAA Board’s judgements, it’s prejudices, and the absurdity of its methods. Dick tries to give the film more narrative momentum by hiring a private detective to discover the identities of the anonymous members who rate each film. The problem is….who cares? I mean, they could be rated by magical ratings gnomes, or by tossing chicken livers in the air and seeing where they land on a twister board–it doesn’t really matter. The board is a private organization that is offering concerned parents a service that, theoretically, the rest of us can choose to ignore. Personally, the only time I ever check the ratings is when I want to know whether there’s gonna be toplessness (Doh! PG! why did I even take this home!) . Complaining that a rating loses the film money would seem to be a pointless lament about pleebs, except for the unfair business practices.

It seems to me the real villains are the newspapers that won’t allow ads for NC-17 movies, and the companies like Blockbuster, which had a virtual monopoly of the home video industry throughout the 90’s, who wouldn’t carry them. The fact that Blockbuster was owned by Viacom, which owned Paramount, one of the big 6 who fund and essentially make up the MPAA, presents a pretty good case for unfair business practices. As a political statement, I wish the documentary had followed the road to the real dark side of the street, instead of getting distracted by weaker arguments.

Of course, Dick is a skilled documentarian, and the bouncing ball rarely drops. It does work well as a history of the MPAA, and it does achieve real political force, but not onscreen. Dick’s most profound statement was his decision to claim Fair Use, and not clear the clips he uses throughout the film. It could be argued that this makes Dick’s film a historical landmark in the battle against corporate censorship, just not in the way most people think. In fact, it has been argued, quite well, by Paul Cullum in the L.A. Weekly. Check it out.

After Innocence
2006. Devastating documentary following the lives of ex-convicts exonerated of their crimes by DNA technologies, and their struggles to get their lives back. Stephen Hunter, of the Washington Post:

The moral purity of After Innocence is so overwhelming that it simply leaves you with nothing to say or do. It’s kind of beyond criticism.

So I won’t.

Beales of Grey Gardens
From what I understand, Grey Gardens is the Maysles’ brothers greatest financial success, by many miles. So who could blame Albert, the suriving brother, for chopping up the hours of unused footage into a follow-up film. For me, I’d rather watch this shaped footage then see the original film marred by an unnecessary extended cut, or just hours and hours of extras.

Cocaine Cowboys
A documentary on the rise of cocaine smuggling from Colombia and the subsequent gang wars that erupted in Miami, as told by the cops, cons, and carriers from the time. With music by Miami Vice noodler Jan Hammer. Not to be confused with the Jack Palance/Andy Warhol film of the same name.

Jesus Camp
Scare film about crazy Christians, spooky music included. The particular freako novelty of this piece is watching the more hyperactive children spout dogma with the enthusiasm of describing Pokemon episode. I didn’t personally need the Air America DJ to talk about how wacky and dangerous evangelicals can be, I think the footage speaks for itself. Also, features an ironic and apropo anti-gay speech by Ted Haggard. What can I say, I love this stuff.

We Are Dad
Documentary about a couple of gay nurses who attempt to adopt five HIV-positive infants they’ve been taking care of at work. Original source material for My Two Dads, but it changed a lot. Oh, Hollywood.

MUSIC:

Bob Dylan & the Band

David Bowie Under Review: The Berlin Trilogy
Talking head direct-to-DVD doc about the three Bowie albums produced by Brian Eno

Gary Numan: Micromusic
Numan’s legendary “final show” from April, 1981. Directed by Derek Burbrudge (Urgh! A Music War). Numan’s decision would be short-lived, and fateful; in his autobiography he recalls walking out onto an empty stage after his final concert and thinking, “What the fuck have I done?”. He never regained such a level of popularity again.

If It Ain’t Stiff, It Ain’t Worth a Fuck
Ultra-rare film of the first Stiff Records package tour (”Live Stiffs Live”), from 1977. Ian Drury, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric, and Larry Wallis, not to mention lots of excessive drinking.

John Cage: One” and 103
“One11″ was composer John Cage’s only full-length film, assisted here by Henning Lohner. It is legendary in Cage-circles, and fans have been demanding this for some time now. Also includes “The Making of One11″, Henning Lohner’s documentary on the making of the film, originally aired on German television.

Magazine: As Seen on TV
Music videos and live appearances by the groundbreaking British post-punk band Magazine, fronted by Howard Devoto (who previously had co-founded the Buzzcocks).

Rock Around the Clock/Don’t Knock the Rock
Savvy Hollywood producers discovered the lucrative teenage dollar of the fifties by casting the unique rock ‘n’ roll style of Bill Haley and the Comets (as well as the Platters and DJ Alan Freed). And so, rebellion was commercialized before it began.

Twist Around the Clock/Don’t Knock the Twist
Same as above, except with “dance” and “Chubby Checker” replacing “rock ‘n’ roll” and “Bill Haley and the Comets”.

TELEVISION:

Doctor Who Season Two
The first season of this relaunched BBC sci-fi show, with Christopher Eccleston as the title character, had a lot of good things to it. Thankfully, the second is even better, with David Tennant taking over the lead role and more consistency in the writing. Both the human aspects and the fantastic elements are stronger, with a genuinely touching finale. In short, it’s solid, imaginative entertainment of the best kind.

Lucky Louie
Just when I thought the multi-camera, traditional format sitcom was dead, comedy guru Louie C.K. breaths life back into it, with foul language, drug references, and a level of raunch that could never have been predicted from the Honeymooners. And it’s really funny. Only on HBO. Or maybe Showtime. In fact, it’s so good that I even forgive Louis CK for remaking Chloe in the Afternoon with Chris Rock.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 11:55 pm and is filed under New Arrivals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.