My Week In Film (6/8 - 6/14)

Citizen Kane (1941)*
(Directed by Orson Welles)

I just have no place of my own from where to approach it. I mean, it's very inventive visually and always engaging and its BIG THEMES or whatever are interesting. The acting is good although muggy (damn you, Old Joseph Cotten!) and the compositions in Deep Focus (i know my shit, durr) are always fascinating. Welles is such a goddamn showoff. Gotta love him. Yeah, it's deeply ingrained into all of us. It's entertaining and boring and too familiar and never familiar. It's the Greatest Movie of All Time. Fuck this, give me Rita Hayworth.

★★★

The Patsy (1964)
(Directed by Jerry Lewis)

So awesome. It's essentially about how celebrities are nothing but the sum of the people who handle them. They would be nothing without their staff. Some staffers have their star die so they rally around Lewis and begin to groom him into a star. They have him take lessons for everything to hilarious results. It all leads to a mindblowing routine outside of all plausibility that proves to everyone that I AM THE GREATEST HUMAN BEING ON THE PLANET. Once you accept this on my own terms, we will get down to the real things. Oh, Lewis would be nothing without his people. Let's take a break!

★★★1/2

Porco Rosso (1992)*
(Directed by Hayao Miyazaki)

It's just impossible for me to dislike it. Porco Rosso is a continuation of the laidback attitude that Miyazaki employed in Totoro and Kiki's where there's no real threat and even if there's a "bad guy" or something, it's never serious and it's treated offhandedly. I think last time I mentioned the scene where Porco just watched the women work on his plane and there's such a beautiful magic to a moment like that that encapsulates everything that Miyazaki is about. Finding the beautiful in everything. And that ending is totally heartbreaking and cheerful and everything about this movie is great. People are just wrong. He is the greatest.

★★★★

High School Musical (2006)
(Directed by Kenny Ortega)

It's terrible if you let it be terrible. But it's actually sort of good at points and the beginning song and the final song are both highlights and the chemistry between the leads is good. It's cheesy shit and most of the songs that are not kind of slow are terrible but you smile like an idiot and hate the people who actually think it's "good" or whatever. I don't know. I needed these things in my life.

★★

High School Musical 2 (2007)
(Directed by Kenny Ortega)

what happened? I mean, the first one was okay but this one is just bad and terrible in all the Disney Channel-trappings that the first one suggested to me and then denied (well, not denied but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be). This was that bad though. I can't really perv on Tisdale cuz I just noticed her nose and she is not the Tisdale from Suite Life so I'm left with little to do but have my mouth drop at the awfulness of the songs. I hate myself but I must continue.

★1/2

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008)
(Directed by Kenny Ortega)

It's good. Relatively. I can't really remember the songs that well (there was one big highlight, maybe the "can I have this dance?") but it's still true. Most of the songs are terrible but the performers have such charm and charisma that they sell you the most horrid shit in the world. Plus it reminded me of all the things I didn't do my senior year. What an asshole.

★★★

Wild at Heart (1990)
(Directed by David Lynch)

Don't turn away from love, roujin.

Lynch was an insane man in the early 90s. Cuz Fire Walk With Me and this (not counting INLAND EMPIRE) are easily his most abrasive and ugly (?) works. There's something about the grotesqueness of Wild at Heart that gets to you. I mean, the film starts off with a vaguely racially-tinged violent as hell assault. Then the film gets going with the flashbacks to the past and the fucking and the maniacalness. Ladd is kind of insane in this film and I'm not sure what Lynch is doing with her character but it's almost too much for me. Now, I hate The Wizard of Oz but I dug it here cuz the allusions were so hilarious and all the fuck bunny stuff just got to me. The pain and hatred that are found here and the ridiculousness of it all barely scratch the surface. The world's fucked up and there is no room for two lovers. You know what I'm saying? Willem Dafoe's role is particularly ugly and his come on to Laura Dern is one of the film's most powerful scenes. The film is a wild ride. It's not totally successful but the insanity should please any Lynchian tricksters that are found in those wild places in the woods. Sheryl Lee's best role.

★★★1/2

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
(Directed by Charles Reisner)

Hits the spot. Basically. It's cool to see Buster's dad have all that homo-panic "my son is an effete intellectual!!!" stuff like with the hat. But this film only really takes off with the tornado or whatever the hell it is destroying everything. It's really impressive stuff, even today. Props to that. Keep it coming, Busta.

★★★1/2

Sunset Blvd. (1950)
(Directed by Billy Wilder)

eh, call me crazy and insane but this was not that impressive. Maybe it's because I don't find Gloria Swanson all that compelling (except for when she brings out Buster Keaton) or because the thematic implications of that strand of the plot don't really interest me at all (and the ending sucks, too?). Any time it's not focused on Swanson, I'm intrigued. I really liked Stroheim's character, too. Maybe this just felt really overplayed for me. It's hard to come at it from anywhere. It's reasonably entertaining and the cinematography is good or whatever but it does very little to me. I might say I dislike it? Never lie to yourself, roujin.

I would say it didn't hit me on a gut level but I don't have a gut level. I have a shrug level and that's where this hit me.

★★1/2

Police (1985)
(Directed by Maurice Pialat)

man, oh man, oh man.

wounded characters going around pretending that they're okay, trying to work and be in normal relationships when really they're just morose beings desperately searching for a true connection which will never come. This shit is desperate and unreal. There's something particularly frenchie about the way that the film deals with its crime elements. They're only there to uphold the emotional toughness which is found all throughout, anchored by Pialat's steady but somehow always wanting camera. What I am talking about? This film is about the danger of loving. God, she is beautiful. Depardieu is a beast. Who let you out from your cage? How did I get here? Where are these artifacts of hatred and love? Man, love is insane.

★★★★

He's Just Not That Into You (2009)
(Directed by Ken Kwapis)

This shit was brutal. Probably its biggest crime besides being ridiculously overlong is thinking it's "truths" are anything but bullshit. Celebrates emotional immaturity and vapidity. Just terrible

★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Police