Constantine (2005)

Better than expected, mainly because it seems fully aware of its own silliness. Whenever the central relationship between Keanu and Rachel Weisz threatens to get too ponderous, one of the other characters (or, occasionally, Keanu himself) will drift in and loosen things up a bit. Offbeat casting helps too (I figured this might amount to something interesting the moment I saw Tilda Swinton playing the Angel Gabriel). Sadly, Keanu's talentless ass is still a liability, but it's not a fatal one. Overall, this is actually pretty fun; in particular, Peter Stormare's cameo makes the whole film worth your cash. Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to Rachel Weisz's barely contained breasts. May they continue to make their presence known in many films to come.

Grade: B-

Hide and Seek (2005)

This is a lot like a film from last year which in the interest of spoilage I will not name, except that this is even stupider (at times crossing over into unintentional humor) and it doesn't have the saving grace of an entertaingly daffy performance from a certain fella who's up for an Oscar right now. Dakota Fanning is now officially afflicted with Jeanne Trippelhorn Syndrome; meanwhile, does Robert de Niro even bother to read the screenplays people send him anymore?

Grade: C-

Little Black Book (2004)

Mesmerically weird late-summer offering didn't deserve its box office failure, but by the same token its failure is unsurprising. It was advertised as a quirky rom-com, so I can only imagine the displeasure of the people who turned up expecting such a film and were instead blindsided by a paeon to romantic martyrdom leavened with cynicism and bitterness. (I mean, the film opens with a quote from freakin' Macbeth. That's like the polar opposite of cute.) It's tonally all over the place, either from studio interference or from a couple of neophyte writers trying to cram this oddity into the framework of a chick flick. There's a lot of scenes that plum don't work (biggest offender: the visit to the doctor ex-girlfriend). But the cumulative effect is really quite fascinating. Plus, Brittany Murphy wins back my trust here -- it's been a while since she's had anything resembling an actual human being to play. I'd forgotten how good she could be at this acting thing.

Grade: B-

Revenge of the Cheerleaders (1976)

Movies don't get much more worthless than this. Even judged by the low low standards of 70s-softcore-cheerleader-porn, this rot is pathetic. See, you've got these cheerleaders, and they apparently only function as a group. At least, it seems that way because the script doesn't assign any of them any kind of personality traits that would set them apart from their fellow squad members. So you've got that against the film. Then factor in the terrible acting, the blind-man's-bluff direction and the haphazard plotting. Lastly, just to provide that final twist of the knife, take note of the fact that none of the sex is interesting. How sad is that? I mean, the sex'n'nudity is the film's entire reason to exist. And they couldn't even get that right. And the people responsible for this did all this on a dollar-fifty, which means the film isn't even worth looking at. I've seen hardcore porn films with better production values. I know, you're thinking The Devil in Miss Jones or The Opening of Misty Beethoven. But you know what? As I type these words, there's a DVD in front of me entitled Cheerleader Diaries. It exemplifies everything that's wrong with the shot-on-video porn industry -- it's cheap, it's dull, it looks like crap and it's got actresses who look like they'd rather be elsewhere and aren't even that good-looking besides (I like Allysin Chaines in the Kelly the Coed series, but her appearance here is the DVD's low point). It's an all-around failure at its job... and it's still miles ahead of Revenge of the Cheerleaders. If I had the money, I would devote the rest of my life to flying around the world, finding everyone involved with the making of this movie and beating their freakin' faces in. (Except for two principals: David Hasselhoff, who accrued enough cool points from The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie to garner a pass, and Cheryl 'Rainbeaux' Smith, who died from hepatitis back in 2002.)

Grade: F

The Battle of Algiers (1965)

Powerful look at the state of modern revolution. It clearly sides with the revolutionaries (which leads to some weird mixed feelings), but at the same time it's a thoughtful consideration of both involved parties -- it's not a hatchet job. The character of the French colonel is especially well-constructed. Instead of a tyrant or a cardboard villain, he's a reasonable guy who knows and respects what he's up against and knows what he has to do to achieve his goals. Provides, quite literally, a textbook definition of Hitchcock's delineation between suspense and surprise -- the suspense in a number of scenes could peel the paint off walls.

Grade: A-

Santo vs. Dr. Death (1973)

This is not the Santo I know. This is some low-grade James Bond knockoff that happens to tangentially toss in the masked man every ten minutes or so. An incomprehensible mess, directed by someone who from all evidence had never seen a Santo film before; after roughly twenty minutes, my friend Dave and I began to treat it as moving wallpaper to protect our sanity.

Grade: D-

The Ape (1940)

Ho-hum. This is a generic B-grade shocker with nothing to recommend it save brevity and a typically distinguished performance by Boris Karloff. Weirdest factoid: This is actually based on a play, one which I would bet few people ever saw.

Grade: C

Blue Velvet (1986)

Wow. I'm not sure one viewing can do justice to this, the best David Lynch film I've seen to date. It has all the now-familiar Lynchian nightmare touches, but Lynch isn't working in complete abstraction here and has left room to allow genuine human feelings to flourish. Disturbing, yes, but the insistent beauty of Lynch's compositions and the complicated-but-sympathetic lead performance by Kyle MacLachlan keep the eyes on the screen even when the mind says look away. I wish I hadn't seen it in pan-and-scan, though. I'll have to remedy that soon.

Grade: A

The War of the Roses (1989)

Black as pitch and funny to boot, this portrait of a violently dissolving marriage is one of the nastiest slices of gallows humor to ever emerge from Hollywood. I'm still in awe of how it avoids blowing itself to pieces every time it downshifts into even darker territory -- it starts as a relationship comedy, but by the end of the film we're somehow embroiled in an Argentoesque two-character stalk-and-slash... and it still gets laughs. A bit uneven but when it's on it's amazing. (Best line: "And now I'm gonna go piss on the fish.")

Grade: B+

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

This is funny stuff. It's a bit lower-key than the other Ealing comedies I've seen, but somehow that air of gentility seems appropriate. More clever than it appears at first glance, too. The final car chase feels a bit protracted, and the moralizing framing device annoys, but a delightful heist comedy is still a delightful heist comedy.

Grade: B+

Fat City (1972)

Well-written, well-acted, well-directed; not sure what else there is to say. Maybe that's why I don't do this for a living.

Grade: B+

St. John's Wort (2001)

Okay, so say they made a videogame out of that stupid Jan de Bont movie The Haunting. Of course, like all videogames, it would be only tangentially faithful to the source film. And then some coke-addled Hollywood exec gets the bright idea to make a movie out of this videogame. He hears Uwe Boll does horror-based videogame movies cheap, so he hires him to write and direct. Boll churns out the project in a matter of weeks and hands it over to the studio, at which point they decide to shoot for a PG-13 and cut down the gore Boll is so fond of. In going through this re-editing, they inadvertantly lop off several moments that are important to the plot and the character development, so now the thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense. After a disastrous test screening, the studio calls in Takashi Shimizu to do some reshoots in hopes of maybe injecting some atmosphere into the project. Go on and take a minute to imagine this film. Look at it. See how bad it would turn out. I'll wait for you.
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Okay, are you locked in on that hypothetical film now? Can you envision the pain it would cause, the disgust that would register upon viewing it? Now get this: St. John's Wort, though superficially similar to the described hypothetical film, is undoubtedly EVEN WORSE than whatever you've just imagined. Yeah. I know.

Grade: F

Kaaterskill Falls (2002)

Bald-faced ripoff of Polanski's Knife in the Water as produced by two gents with little of Polanski's subtlety or tonal control. The main difference between the two films is the setting (this film moves the plot from the ocean to the wilderness) and a reliance on improvised dialogue, which would be a useful selling point if any of the three actors evinced more charisma and talent than, say, a bowl of cold gravy. The fact that nobody got sued over this gives me hope that maybe I won't have to buy rights in order to sell the screenplays I'm working on. I can dream...

Grade: C

Youth of the Beast (1963)

Gorgeously stylish nonsense from Seijun Suzuki is fun for a while. Unfortunately, style only carries it so far before we have to think about things like characters and plot. What actually happens in this film is a matter of debate, much like who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep. Entertaining but bloody well confusing, and far from the masterwork that some people consider it to be (it can't touch Branded to Kill or http://moviesteve.blogspot.com/2005/02/fighting-elegy-1966-i-dont-know-where.htmlFighting Elegy in that respect).

Grade: B-

Sideways (2004) [second viewing]

You wanna know what makes this film so great? It allows its characters to be intelligent and self-aware, and isn't afraid to show them being obnoxious or dislikeable. Yet it accomplishes this without losing our sympathy (unlike Payne's previous film About Schmidt). And the scene that clinches it for me is Giamatti's pinot noir monologue. Critics of the film dismiss the scene (and the metaphor) as too on-the-nose, but study Giamatti's inflection and body language during the scene. It's supposed to be too on-the-nose -- Miles is trying to be clever and poetic with the whole damaged-goods, gee-I'm-fragile pose. What's brilliant about the scene is that Maya listens, observes, understands and then stares him straight in the face and calls his bluff. Just when we think the film's foregrounding its subtext, it shifts gears and turns it into a perfect character moment. The ability to make beauty out of flaws -- that's why I love this fucking movie.

Grade: A

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (1956)

You mean to tell me that three films were needed to tell this simple story? Spreading the path from ignorance to enlightenment over three films and six hours kinda blunts any kind of character arc, don'cha think? Not to mention the whole narrative-flowing-like-molasses effect. Maybe I'm a plebe, but I think The Twilight Samurai told a similar story in a fashion more becoming to my own tastes. If you're going to stretch your story out like this, maybe you should just write a book instead.

Grade: C+

Wonder Bar (1934)

Whacked-out pre-Code musical extravaganza featuring a couple lavish Busby Berkley numbers and a couple of plot twists that defy expectations for '30s cinema. This is my first exposure to Al Jolson, and I'll say he's quite a dextrous showman (the 'Russian' conversation is a kick). Of course, if you know about this film all you're probably interested in is my reaction to the notorious "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule" number, which is astonishing in a couple of different ways. I will expand upon my thoughts later, but I'll say this: You just can't prepare for a scene like that.

Grade: B

A Wedding (1978)

What a shame. It starts out as a funny, well-observed tapestry of behavior in the best Altman tradition, but somewhere along the line keeping all fifty-odd characters straight (not to mention actually giving them something to do besides stand around in fancy clothing) becomes too much of a chore for ol' Bob. In the second half of the film, he loses his grip on the proceedings and allows his cynicism to run wild, which makes for a rather discouraging experience. If the director thumbs his nose at his own characters, why should we bother watching them? Does this film really amount to anything besides "Look how embarassing and gauche the nouveau riche are"? Has some good moments, but it's not much really.

Grade: C+

Come and See (1985)

This film will shake you up. It's as simple as that. One of the most harrowing of all WWII films, this angry and absurd tale of a young boy who runs off to join a ragtag army fighting the Nazis is a sensory assault. It starts off awkwardly, as if the director can't quite match the tone with the material, but about forty minutes in everything starts to click and the film pitches down into the depths of Hell. The long sequence near the end detailing a Nazi invasion of a small farming village is one of the most difficult things I've ever had to watch. An agonizing and overwhelming work of art (the last one its director ever made, which seems appropriate).

Grade: A-

Anatomy of Hell (2004)

What on earth is wrong with you, Ms. Breillat? More importantly, though, what on earth are you trying to say with this latest film of yours? Best I can tell, it's about how men will always try to dominate, subjugate and overpower women (even if the man is, ya know, gay) because they can't understand them and are intimidated by their bizarre genitalia (even if the man is, ya know, gay). But that's just a guess, since you're apparently too concerned with shock value (tampons in teacups!) and vague, half-realized feminist-philosophical musings to try and communicate with us, the audience. Is there anything more asinine than a provocation that doesn't know what it's trying to provoke?

Grade: D

When Will I Be Loved (2004)

What's with the hate for this film? Does everyone suddenly dislike well-written dialogue-driven pictures, or is it that James Toback makes no bones about his dirty-old-man desires? Hell, Toback even anticipates his detractors by casting himself as the Jewish professor by whom Neve Campbell is being interviewed, casting his lust as professional concern and worldliness but not exactly trying to hide the intent. Over his last few films, he's been reworking and refining his muse, slowly carving away at the self-importance and the chaff, and it looks like he's finally reached the perfect distillation. Imagine what Black & White would look like if it was more honest, better acted and didn't hide behind the facade of race-relations-drama, and that's what you get here. Neve by the freakin' way gives her best performance yet, and one of the best female performances of the year -- the long negotiation scene with Dominic Chianese, in particular, hints that she might be surprisingly skilled with Mametspeak. The loss of her inhibition vis-a-vis nudity coincides with the loss of her self-consciousness as an actress. It'll be interesting to see where she goes from here.

Grade: B+

Vanishing Point (1971)

I suppose that's why they call 'em cult films... Hippy-dippy motor-porn has aspirations towards grandeur and meaning but doesn't even come close to fulfilling its promises; instead, we're given endless shots of cars chasing each other. Tries to be laconic and iconic at the same time but merely comes off as lackadaisical; Hal Needham and H.B. Halicki spent their entire careers making films like this, so how come their films aren't hailed as existentialist masterworks?

Grade: D+

Shark Tale (2004)

Ugh. Better than Shrek 2 (at least this film has Jack Black trying as hard as he can to make his material worthwhile), but not by much. Would it be possible to ban Dreamworks from all future CGI-animation ventures until they hire some screenwriters who don't view clumsy, out-of-date pop-culture references as the height of hilarity? Pretty please?

Grade: D+

The Diabolical Axe (1964)

Not-bad entry in the Santo canon. It's notable as one of the looniest I've yet seen in this series (Santo's 'origin' is hilarious, and the use of 'abracadabra' is so stupid that it scrapes unintentional genius), but more surprisingly it's fairly well-directed; the unexpected appearances of Santo's nemesis, in particular, are executed with a throwaway flair that shames most B-movies of the period. Also, Santo takes off his mask. Also, this is now a must-see for Kent Beeson, as it includes a cameo appearance by The World's Phoniest Bat(tm).

Grade: B-

The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973)

Strong yakuza flick benefits from lapel-grabbing, stylish direction from old hand Kinji Fukasaku, but it also has a fairly likeable identification figure in the character of Shozo Hirono. (The lack of likeable leads is usually one of my major quibbles with the yakuza genre, e.g. Fukasaku's Graveyard of Honor.) Starts to come apart after about an hour (when Hirono gets sent off to prison), but just when it seems ready to go all to hell Fukasaku will steer it back on course with a well-timed burst of violence or a nice character moment. (I especially liked the barbershop assassination, with the chair spinning wildly every time the target is shot.) I hope all the films in this series are at least this good, 'cause now I'm committed to tearing through the whole thing.

Grade: B

Zatoichi the Outlaw (1967)

It's nice that the later films are trying to wriggle free from formula, but I'm not sure incoherence is the correct path to take. Too many characters and not enough running time created a situation where I was unsure of who everyone was and I didn't particularly care besides. The only thing to do was drum my fingers and wait for Ichi to slash everyone to ribbons. Weak, weak, weak. I'm kinda getting frustrated with this series now.

Grade: C

The Blood of Fu Manchu (1969)

Are all Jess Franco films this stupid? If so, color me a fan, 'cause it's been a long time since I had this much fun watching a bad movie. The Mexican bandito in the pink horseshoe-adorned cowboy hat is a character for the ages; I feel bad, though, for Christopher Lee, whose title character is so boring and square compared to the madness surrounding him.

Grade: C+

The Return (2004)

More fun with long takes: this Russian film about a father coming back from a long absence to take his two sons on a fishing trip benefits from a poetic, clean filmmaking style that emphasizes the characters' relationships to their surroundings while also not losing track of the characters themselves. (Between this and Twentynine Palms, it's been a better-than-average year for symbolic-road-trip movies.) It's a beautifully directed film, but more important is that it works as drama too -- the push-pull tension between the taciturn father and his sons (the elder overly eager to please, the younger overly hostile towards this stranger claiming to have some relationship with him) is precisely detailed, and the brotherly bond between the two sons is also exquisite and wholly believable. The unexpected narrative event that carries the film to its conclusion throws the whole thing into relief and illuminates the film's points about responsibility and duty -- it is, at heart, about Doing the Right Thing. (The photo montage at the end could represent any number of things; I see it as a representation of the difference between how things can be perceived and how they are, which does tie in to the idea that the 'right' thing may not always look that way.) Haunting and memorable, with a crucial central performance by Ivan Dobronravov as the younger child (it works because we're allowed to see his anger and pettiness as not always justifiable); Konstantin Lavronenko is also excellent in a difficult role, coming off like a Russian Billy Bob Thornton.

Grade: A-

The Child I Never Was (2004)

Far be it from me to criticize a serial-killer biopic for attempting to show restraint and not wallow and sadism (we don't need more films like The Hillside Strangler)... but I'm afraid that's what I have to do with this German genre effort. The problem here is that, like Dahmer before it, the choice was made to ultimately go too tasteful and sterile. The cinematic eye begins to feel passive, and the audience is detached from the experience of watching the film. Character and narrative involvement is thus kept to a minimum; we might as well be watching the weather report for all the passion evinced here. Message to filmmakers: I can understand not wanting to skew towards the lurid, but at least try to look like you give a damn about the film you're making. The accomplishment of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer just looks more impressive every year.

Grade: C

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2004)

Meanwhile, the audience will sleep whenever it damn well feels like. If James Ivory made a gangster film, this is what it would look like -- all oblique dialogue and meaningful silences, with little narrative thrust to keep it moving. If this film moved any slower, it'd create a time warp and absorb everything in its path into the Fifth Dimension. The repulsive streak of homophobia that goes tearing through the film's second half is what pushes it into the realms of the painful; I'd like to think it's intended as a thoughtful commentary on the homosexual panic that seems to permeate every modern British gangster flick, but the handling of the material is so ham-fisted that it can only be taken at face value.

Grade: C-

Fighting Elegy (1966)

I don't know where Seijun Suzuki got his cracked outlook on life, but God bless him for it. Here, he takes a standard juvie-delinquent tale and throws everything in his stylistic-trick bag at it, and while the audience is dazzled by the pretty sights he subtly starts weaving a message into the film, so that the last shot carries with it the force of realization (so that's what he's getting at! wow!). And every time you think he's emptied his tank, he tops himself. (I especially liked the random close-ups whenever someone pronounced the name of the town in the scene where Kiroku is being oriented at his new school.) I think I prefer Suzuki's black-and-white films -- he can be too overwhelming in color, not to mention overwhelmed -- and this is the best of his I've yet seen. You can't miss it.

Grade: A

The Blood of a Poet (1930)

One of cinema's great surrealist works, a gorgeous and inventive slice of madness from Jean Cocteau. I think the reason I respond to first-wave surrealism more than later examples of the form is the the originals seem infused with a playfulness and vitality that often eludes modern practitioners. Best moment is unquestionably when our hero jumps through the mirror, though it's not like there isn't any competition for that honor (the mouth on the hand was pretty cool, and the whole hallway sequence had me wondering how on earth they did that). I'm in awe.

Grade: A