My Week in Film (2/8 - 2/14)

Written on the Wind (1956)
(Directed by Douglas Sirk)

Why can't all movies look like this one? It's so awesome. It's basically the recipe for Gossip Girl and all that shit with rich heirs and heiresses turning out all fucked up and with all kinds of familial issues (CHUCK BASS) and turning to all these different things to deal with them. Robert Stack has his drink, and Dorothy Malone fucks anything that moves. Even with all the critique and the phalluses and all that cool stuff, it's still awesome. It's not as powerful as Imitation of Life, but it's hard to deny how damn entertaining all the melodrama is (even the ending). This film confirms what I kind of already knew: Rock Hudson is awesome. Seriously. I need to go through this filmography in worship and do dances to praise his strange way of talking. He's magnificent. Basically, you could probably spend forever and a half going through this movie and analyzing all the color schemes and the mirrors and all that stuff, but you'd get distracted with Malone's dancing and the way that Hudson carries himself and the overwhelming amount of things which mean nothing, but we ascribe meaning to anyway. It moved me. Please arrest me.

★★★★

La Collectionneuse (1967)
(Directed by Eric Rohmer)

The problem is that everyone in this movie is annoying. The two guys are lazy jerks whose sole plan for the summer is to regress back into some catatonic state where they do nothing. The girl is just a girl to them, one who sleeps around a lot apparently. The rest of the film is basically about those dudes being jerks to the girl, the girl kind of playing around with them, rejecting, succumbing, in equal measure, and their morphing relationship over the summer. Liking characters or finding them sympathetic isn't a dealbreaker for me at all. I think empathizing and identifying with characters is only a part of what makes movies great so even if one part is denied to me, there are other things to focus on. I liked the feeling of lounging around and doing nothing. I liked the ideals one sets oneself at the beginning of summer (kind of like new year's resolutions) that are quickly broken. I liked huge house. I liked the character's frequent trips to the beach. And I liked the ending. I liked the ending a lot. I mean, of what use is a house without people to ignore? Solitude isn't what you want, roujin.

★★★

First Name: Carmen (1983)
(Directed by Jean-Luc Godard)

80's Godard may be the densest cinema around (I still haven't watched Histoire(s) - he goes even farther out?!). I don't know what it is about his (and Cotard's) eye that can make you see things anew again. It's like they can film anything and it's like a revelation. At the level of sound and image, I can't think of a filmmaker who makes more demands of his audience. It's impossible to keep up with everything that's happening. It's not only like the perfect staging and composition, it's also the sound work. Oftentimes, the sound will drop and waves crashing will come on the soundtrack or classical music. The film is kind of mixture of the modern and the classical, or something. There is a plot, but it's so digressive and the film undercuts it at so many turns that it's basically not all that important (watch the weirdest bank heist of all time!). And the visual metaphors (waves as fate? open windows?) and the cutting back to to the string quartet (that ties back to the sonic motifs and the actual plot of the story) and Godard playing a hilarious version of himself (maybe as funny as Keep Your Right Up), is awesome. I honestly don't get this film at all, but I do know that just like that damn coffee cup, I'll never look at the static on my TV the same again.

★★★1/2

Last Days (2005)
(Directed by Gus Van Sant)

Final film of Van Sant's Death Trilogy. I liked it more than Gerry and about the same as Elephant. The film is mostly composed of long takes of not a lot happening. Michael Pitt wanders throughout the forest region of around some huge house like a ghost, or just something clearly about to die. When people talk to him, he does not respond at all. He barely seems to be aware that they're there, or that they expect him to talk. He goes around the house wearing a dress and wielding a gun just because, he has a strange gait that seems slightly exaggerated, whatever. I liked watching Pitt wander about the dilapitated house and the forest around him. My problem is that pretty much every single character beside Pitt is annoying. Asia Argento shows up, Harmony Korine shows up, Ricky Jay shows up, Kim Gordon shows up, but for what? Or, I guess that I just found the cameos distracting (though Korine's made me laugh). I know that they're supposed to talk to him and see that he's far gone, but it just bothered me. Probably my two favorite parts where the long pull back when we're looking into that one window where he's messing out with the instruments. And that long take where he walks back to the house at night. Textures!

★★★

Gamer (2009)
(Directed by Neveldine/Taylor)

Kind of the more evil and disturbing cousin of Southland Tales (therefore, funnier?). It basically 90 minutes of complete disregard for spatial continuity, any type of decency and good taste, and, coherence. And it's kind of good. There are moments of complete brilliance (the intro to "Society" scored to the "The Bad Touch," and the incredible dance/fight/basketball sequence at the end). Actually, the picture it paints of America is so ridiculously dark and twisted that it borders on depressing. And, actually, it stays that way most of the time. Did I misjudge Crank?

★★1/2

The Navigator (1924)
(Directed by Buster Keaton + Donald Crisp)

Buster fights cannibals and duels with a swordfish using a swordfish. Good times.

★★★

Passion (1982)
(Directed by Jean-Luc Godard)

I have pretty much no idea what happened for about the first 30 minutes or so. It seemed like a flurry of quotations, weird sound/image manipulation (it seems like it never shows who's actually talking on screen, which makes things confusing), classical music, and stuff (all this stuff is common for Godard, I just couldn't make heads or tails of it in this one). Whatever story there is centers around a more or less failed movie production where the director is staging reproductions of famous paintings by Goya, Delacroix, etc. but won't film them because the lighting is bad and he gets exasperated when people point out that his film is both over budget and has no story. Then Michel Piccoli (of Contempt and Rochefort) owns some factory and he fires Isabelle Huppert (?) who's the director's lover? And Hanna Shygulla (of Fassbinder fame) is also in a relationship with the director and she owns the hotel where the crew of the film stay. I don't know. I just know that Myriem Roussel's only purpose in this film is to be naked, and Jerzy fights some guy dressed as an angel. It wasn't as beautiful as Carmen or Mary, and I actually found it more impenetrable than both. It eases up later on when you actually see some of the filming and stuff, but even so, it's hard for me to enjoy something if I have no idea what's happening. That's just the way it is.

★★1/2

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946)
(Directed by Bob Clampett)

Daffy takes on the baddies, blows up all conventions of the detective genre, and makes out with a pig. Hilarious.

★★★1/2

I Love to Singa (1936)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Owl Jonson is born into a family that hates jazz. Well, he has to change their mind. Moving.

★★★

Ceiling Hero (1940)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Takes on the newsreel format to make various jokes about airplanes. My favorite may be the Only Angels Have Wings reference, or the polar bear on the wing.

★★★

Red Hot Riding Hood (1943)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf and the grandma get tired of being in the same old boring fairy tale so they ask it to be spiced up. It's spiced up. The whole thing seems to exist in a perpetual state of sexual frenzy (the grandma tries to devour the wolf!). I laughed a lot.

★★★1/2

Who Killed Who? (1943)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Pretty nonsensical and frantic. It just so happens that it's also really funny. The detective looks around the mansion where nothing seems to make sense or add up, tries to solve the crime, only to find out that the whole thing goes beyond cartoonland. Good stuff.

★★★1/2

King-Size Canary (1947)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Pretty funny. A cat goes looking for food, finds some tonic that makes everything bigger, and it spirals out from there.

★★★

Bad Luck Blackie (1949)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

This thing is all kinds of hilarious. It's kind of a one joke shot, but it's a damn funny joke and there's always a variation on it.

★★★1/2

Little Rural Riding Hood (1949)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Another variation on the "Riding Hood" story, this one has a country wolf going out to the city and being enraged with lust when seeing the performer there. It's the same joke, basically, only not as funny. The punchline at the end is what makes it work.

★★★

Magical Maestro (1952)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

I'm not sure things get funnier than this.

★★★1/2

Rabbit of Seville (1950)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

He makes a fruit thingie majigger on his head

★★★

Feed the Kitty (1952)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

So cute and funny.

★★★1/2

Duck Amuck (1953)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

It's impossible to deny how great this is. Even for someone like me who knew pretty much all the gags before hand and wasn't ready for any type of sincere appreciation, it had me laughing the entire time. Loved it.

★★★★

One Froggy Evening (1957)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

eh, it's good. Kind of obvious, but always entertaining.

★★1/2

What's Opera Doc? (1957)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

Pretty hilarious. Not sure you can fit anything more into it. It stands as it is. Mostly perfect.

★★★1/2

Have You Got Any Castles? (1938)
(Directed by Frank Tashlin)

Basically, a bunch of characters inside books come alive. When The House of Seven Gables is shown, seven Clark Gables join in on the song. The screenshot above refers to The Thin Man. Get it? It's funny, but pretty whatever.

★★★

You're An Education (1938)
(Directed by Frank Tashlin)

Same thing as Castles except instead of books, it's travel brochures. Get ready for a bunch of politically incorrect depictions of minorities! But also some hilarious stuff. Canada is represented by mounties!

★★1/2

Light is Calling (2004)
(Directed by Bill Morrison)

Some footage of the 1926 film The Bells is manipulated in strange ways by Morrison. I liked that I could still out make parts of the action in the thing. I could see the girl, the horses and the soldiers. It was moving, actually, and I couldn't quite point out why. The score helped, I imagine.

★★★★

Window Water Baby Moving (1962)
(Directed by Stan Brakhage)

It's not hard to feel humbled and moved by the entire thing. It's so goddamn intimate, and even though some of the editing bothered me, it wasn't enough to detract at all from its power. Life is beautiful. Really, it is. Full of beauty and illusions. Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead.

★★★1/2

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Written on the Wind!