My Week in Film (3/1 - 3/7)

Three Comrades (1938)
(Directed by Frank Borzage)

With this and Little Man, What Now?, Borzage shows that while he's all about all-out romanticism, he does not ignore the real world. The setting is post-WW Germany, and its a confusing time. There are a bunch of anti-fascism (?) rallies and stuff and there's fighting going on in the city. Things are tough. The titular three comrades come back from the war, start up their own business and go about their life, but soon Margaret Sullavan shows up, charms everyone (roujin included) and the movie takes off. She's magnificent. She speaks in this husky, throaty way that just melts me, and the relationship between the three dudes was so great. They just sit around being the bestest buddies, supporting each other to ridiculous extents and drinking lots. That kind of stuff just speaks to me in ways I will never begin to understand. There are two things that bothered me: the chase through the snow, and the ending. The first seemed a little strange in the context of everything else. I dug how it looked, but it didn't really seem to fit in with the rest. The ending is ridiculously beautiful and heartfelt and I was moved, but it is beyond cheesy (and I'm not entirely sure on the motivation behind it). But, these are quibbles really. There's too much greatness here. It can't be ignored.

Couples Retreat (2009)
(Directed by Peter Billingsley)

I hate myself. Just a compendium of all these different things that I guess are supposed to be entertaining and "funny" but really are nothing but soul-killing and hateful. The whole Davis/Favreau storyline really just made me want to puke repeatedly into a bucket, and there's just this whole bunch of hollywood cynicism about relationships and about what happy endings mean and the emotional highs and lows are so telegraphed and calculated into the running time like it was done in some excel spreadsheet or something and I don't know. This movie is just terrible.

Shutter Island (2010)
(Directed by Martin Scorsese)

I feel like I have a very large blind spot in terms of whatever movies Scorsese is working off of and referencing. A lot of it seemed really hysteric and blah blah blah. I really have nothing to say about it.

Wheels on Meals (1984)*
(Directed by Sammo Hung)

So I watched this again with some friends but it didn't hold up too well. I mean, I was having fun with the general goofiness going on but the friends didn't seem to be having too much fun with it and that brought me down and the kind of buddy movieness of it stopped working for a while, which was sad. I guess Project A would be the best out of these then. I don't know. My mind has stopped working. No more questions.

My Week in Film (2/22 - 2/28)

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)*
(Directed by John Ford)

A high school classroom is not a good place to watch movies. Seriously. I remember really digging some parts when I was a junior in high school, and then spacing out and falling asleep and making jokes with the people I sat next to (this was probably the best class for that). So, although, I've seen this movie before, I hadn't really seen it. But, now, it's all clear. Well, not at all. Ford definitely goes all out. He's kinda showing off cuz that's how ridiculously beautiful this film is. Not only does he totally master all these dark as fuck scenes with characters barely resembling shadows but he shows why he's the ultimate landscape filmmaker. Sky battling Earth and winning. Seriously. He frames people against the skyline and it is an overwhelming experience. Sure, things get preachy, but Steinbeck's book had that, too. Basically, THE PEOPLE. They can run their own lives. They can...

"A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then... "

whoa, whoa, STEINBECK, what you doing there?

I'm not really sure what happened this week...

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... The Grapes of Wrath

My Week in Film (2/15 - 2/21)

Go! Go! Go! (1962-1964)
(Directed by Marie Menken)

"Yet for Menken, animation also became a way of radically transforming the world around her, reimagining postwar New York City, for example, in her masterpiece of single frame cinematography Go! Go! Go! (1962-64), a work that condenses two years of patient documentary filmmaking into a delirious and exhilarating vision of a hyperactive city."

Okay, I didn't find it delirious or exhilarating. Mostly it amused me how strange and bizarre some things look at that speed. The patterns of ships avoiding each other in the harbor or of people on the beach or of sidewalks and streets are made new again by seeing them this way. But that wasn't enough for me. Because I'm an asshole.

Living (1971)
(Directed by Franz Zwartjes)

A couple enter their new apartment, and it's creepy. They seem to be wearing this ghoulish makeup and the camerawork accentuates the off-kilter quality of the short. The camera is held by the dude (the director) as he films himself and the wife going around the apartment which is mostly empty. There's lots of strange camera movements that and there's some interesting editing when the wife lays down on the bed (?) and the music is pretty interesting (noisy nothings in the background), but ultimately I didn't take much away from it. Interesting experience, I guess.

Out of the Blue (1980)
(Directed by Dennis Hopper)

Linda Manz is a tough-talking punk who loves Elvis. She lives with her mom, skips school all the time, and gets into a whole lot of trouble. Her dad is played by Hopper. He's in jail. Things will happen. It's so goddamn sad and lonely. I love that entire part where she runs away from home to go the city and has all these crazy ass adventures that are actually pretty fucked up and terrible. I love that random singing dude in the street. When he finishes singing, you can hear Hopper behind the camera cheering him on. And Manz's smile when she gets to play drums with that one bad is so beautiful. The turns the story takes later on are kind of a little too over the top, but the rawness that the performers give the material just enough to survive for me. I mean, it's better to burn out than to fade away, right? GREAT FILM.

To Have and Have Not (1944)
(Directed by Howard Hawks)

I can see what my evil twin is talking about vis a vis this and Casablanca, but he's wrong. I mean, I knew this was really great early on and pretty much nothing changed my mind, but it doesn't reach the iconic heights of Casablanca for me. I think it has to do with the character of Eddie. He's just kind of annoying and is only there to make trouble for Bogart's character. Anyway, Bogart and Bacall are seriously amazing. So many damn cigarettes being lit all over the place. HOT! Also, it's hard to deny how cool Bogart looks in that outfit. Damn lean and handsome. And those were the things I noticed about the film. I don't know what they add up to, but I loved it nonetheless. It's just a feeling you get, and when you get it, you know it in your gut, "this one's a keeper." I like this Hawks fella. He sure knew how to make them.

Lucky Star (1928)
(Directed by Frank Borzage)

Janet Gaynor is sublime in this film. It's not anything special, really, just her face. She just makes you feel the moments of happiness and the moments of sadness, and all she has to do is slightly alter her face. Something like that. She's this little dirty child at the beginning of the film and by the end she's this mature woman or something and the transformation and the moments of beauty (like when she just looks up with wonder at that one dress) really melted my heart. The film exists in this strange space where downtrodden individuals can see each other through broken windows and really, truly believe that they can love. It should not surprise then that the ending of the film is unbelievable. Love conquers logic and reality. You know what? Fuck logic and fuck reality. Lucky Star is excellent.

Liliom (1930)
(Directed by Frank Borzage)

Really bizarre film. Charles Farrell plays Liliom a carousel barker who's apparently an artist even though we never see what he actually does. Mostly he just drinks and chases the girls. Then he meets a girl who seems to have nothing but devotion for him. The whole thing is some weird ass paean to the irrationality of love. The performances are all weird and mannered in their own way and everyone seems to be trying to deliver their line in the weirdest/slowest way possible. And what they're saying is bizarre, too. While Julie is on the ground comforting Liliom in what's supposed to be a really dramatic scene, the cops undercut it with some totally banal talk. And Liliom keeps calling Julie bird names (?) and none of it seems to make sense, and the end is like this totally messed up thing that's saying that there's beauty in abuse (he hit me and it felt like a kiss~). But some of this movie is ridiculously beautiful. That entire carousel bit casts the film the film in the realm of some bizarre fairy tale and so it's hard to take any of it very seriously and when the trains jump into rooms from huge ass windows, roujin's heart leaps out into the streets and dances like David Bowie.

Little Man, What Now? (1934)
(Directed by Frank Borzage)

As the movie makes clear, we are the little man, struggling against a universe which is indifferent to us. It is depression-era Germany and unemployment is widespread. If there is something I've figured out about Borzage from watching these three movies in quick succession is that he's a hyper-romantic (kinda like of Carax in a way). He treats his lovers as the center of the universe and the outside world is against them at every turn. What Borzage does is overwhelm the reality of their world thru artifice (miracle endings / studio shenanigans) in order to give them more hope. This film basically follows the lovers as the dude gains and loses jobs and he returns home every night to his wife, the source of his strength and happiness. They go thru up and downs and everything seems lost but then we learn that there's nothing too fear. Goddamn, those closeups killed me. Margaret Sullavan just glows! This is an ardently romantic and emotional movie. I loved it.

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Little Man, What Now?

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!

My Week in Film (2/1 - 2/7)

The Sun in a Net (1962)
(Directed by Stefan Uher)

Two teenagers living in the city deal with STUFF. They sunbathe in secret on top of a building where no one can see them. She takes care of her blind mother. He takes pictures of people's hands (the most beautiful part). They pass the time together. He is sullen. She is something. In order to get away, he goes to a summer work camp to farm and be a man and all that stuff, and because they left off on a bad note, the boy and the girl look for different partners. Things happen. Blah, story. Too many great compositions and individual shots and stuff (took so many screenshots) too count, and while there's some clunky inserts and editing, it's not enough to be distracting. I wish I got a handle on how the soundtrack was working or what it was doing/adding but I was mostly paid attention to the other stuff. HEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH

★★★1/2

Adieu Philippine (1962)
(Directed by Jacques Rozier)

Some young cad with an annoying moustache picks up two girls. He hangs out with them a lot. He tells them he'll introduce them to his other friend, but he never does. He wants them all for himself. He's due to get called up for Algeria in a couple of months so he figures he might as well have some fun. This is all very loose, very jazzy, often hand-held, shot on location, NEW WAVE. It's a tale of youth and romance and all that stuff, but it never gets all serious and shit and whatever implications there are just get left as suggestions and stuff. I really liked all the music in it, too, and how the music would make the whole thing reach deeper into another LEVEL of stuff. Crap, there's that one shot where the girls are walking down the street side by side and this really awesome song plays in the soundtrack and all of a sudden there would be a jump cut and the girls would be walking along another street and the entire thing was perfect and things and ideas were flying around the place just waiting to be grabbed and put to use. Yes, movies are good.

★★★1/2

3 Idiots (2009)
(Directed by Rajkumar Hirani)

Three hours of cliche. Sigh. Seriously, every single thing you expect to happen does happen. Every single plot strand gets tied up in just about the most predictable way. Every single time. Blergh.

★★

The Brothers Bloom (2008)
(Directed by Rian Johnson)

I don't have much to say about this other than I found a whole lot of it pretty uninteresting. Johnson is definitely enthusiastic and he's always doing things that are inventive, and the actors are charming and stuff, but when the story is basically 2 hours of people saying "this is not an adventure story" or "it's all a con" or "the lie that tells the truth," I get pretty bored. I just don't see anything more here than the whole cinema is a con game or a magic trick (hi, orson) stuff. Color me unimpressed.

★★1/2

La danse - Le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris (2009)
(Directed by Frederick Wiseman)

First Wiseman I've seen. The approach is faultless: no talking heads, no narration, no on-screen text to let us know what's what. Okay, cool. But... this is the part where I just lay out my personal situation thingie: I walked into this 10 minutes late and when I got there I immediately realize how fucking tired I was. So, yes, I did close my eyes a little too much in the last hour.

Okay, that's done. The film is built on process. The dancers rehearse and rehearse surrounded by mirrors, often being critiqued/praised by others in the room. One person points out something off in the dancer's movement, shows him/her the exact movement they should go for, and the dancer tries it again. There are a lot of rehearsal scenes. Early on, I was pretty in to the film. I dug how Wiseman and crew always found an interesting way to frame the dancers. They frame them so all of their bodies can be seen (ala Astaire) and we're witness to the full range of their movement. I found it very impressive. Wiseman doesn't just stay with the dancers though. We see the people who make the costumes, the lunch room, dark hallways, underground, some bee keeper on the roof and, perhaps most prominently, the head art honcho, who is seen in a bunch of administrative meetings regarding sponsors and the choreographers. That stuff is fascinating. But the film is 2 and a half hours long. That's something I didn't realize when I was walking into it. It seems a lot of Wiseman's films are incredibly long (his later stuff, apparently). I'm not entirely sure it benefits from it. I liked that a lot of the dances go on uninterrupted and we see the movement and the staging of these things, but I guess I'm just a dilettante or something (that's probably the wrong word) cuz I got tired of it all pretty quickly. I've never attended a ballet recital in my life or anything, but I don't think I ever want to (unless they're like The Red Shoes or something). All that said, I'm actually pretty excited to watch more Wiseman films now. I can see myself liking some of his films. I could've also seen myself liking this more if I hadn't been so tired. People looking for a "narrative documentary" should avoid, avoid, avoid.

★★1/2

Drama/Mex (2006)
(Directed by Gerardo Naranjo)

Surprisingly good. Or, rather, it doesn't start out that great and then it grows and grows and grows as all the participants get increasingly more and more fucked up drunk. It starts out with two old lovers reuniting. The dude basically breaks into the house, kind of fucks his way into it somehow, and soon enough the old lovers are planning some stuff. Problem is she has a boyfriend. Then on a totally unrelated plot strand, this old businessman goes down to a beach hotel to kill himself. A young girl goes down to the beach to turn her first trick. How are these things related? I don't particularly care. Naranjo scrambles the chronology a bit, too, except it takes a while for you to register that these events are supposed to be happening at the same time. Actually, Naranjo, I'm pretty sure, screws up the chronology in a pretty major manner at some point later on. Doesn't matter. Why? Because the character of Gonzalo is introduced. We first see him playing goalie in a soccer game when his friends show up and inform him that his girlfriend is cheating on him. What does he do? He starts chugging right there by the goal. Needless to say, the film had me by that moment. All his friends get totally shitfaced and go and sing "Motivos" and the whole thing is just a mess of "machismo, sand, futbol, and alcohol" as people are prone to put it. I didn't know that was something I liked. Too much of the film is perhaps in close up and Naranjo just kind of follows his characters around instead of actually constructing a scene (and that kind of got on my nerves at the beginning) but it grew on me (like fungus). The sun is out and I want some.

★★★1/2

My Night at Maud's (1969)
(Directed by Eric Rohmer)

Film #3 of the Six Moral Tales. I don't really know what to say about this other than I loved it and it illustrates a lot of what I like about movies, and it kinda deals mostly in the ways that we navigate the world or try to negotiate it and make sense of it, and there are moments of complete beauty, but they're mostly based on behavior and other things. I don't know. It's just great.

★★★★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... My Night at Maud's

My Week in Film (1/25 - 1/31)

The Lady in the Water (2006)
(Directed by M. Night Shyamalan)

This movie is fucking infuriating.

★

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)
(Directed by Preston Sturges)

I don't have words other than "funny," "cute" and "stuff" because. . .

★★★1/2

35 Shots of Rum (2008)*
(Directed by Claire Denis)

Because this movie was still playing around in my head. It's basically moment to moment perfect and about things I care about and done in a way that I find endlessly watchable. That entire commodores sequence is pretty much a masterclass and emotional in all the ways that count, and the necklace shot is probably my shot of the year and i was kinda tearing up just at the beginning credits with that incredible score and the neverending rails.

★★★★

Whip It (2009)
(Directed by Drew Barrymore)

It's formulaic-to-the-max, but essentially harmless and forgettable and it goes down easily enough. The people are all good (really liked the friendship between Maeby and Juno) and all that was cool and I even dug the wardrobe and the glasses and all that stuff that reminded me of people that I used to hate but probably liked (even though they were all terrible and self-absorbed and deserved nothing). It's kind of girl power obvious and I suppose that's okay and I smiled at the Jens Lekman songs and the underwater kiss was kind of stupid in a way, but also pretty sweet and cute, and I was charmed (even though I don't like tattoos) and we was robbed and the whole thing stunk of desperation and calculation, but Barrymore managed to evoke a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Or maybe I was in a good mood. Nah, definitely not. That makes no sense.

★★1/2

To Be or Not to Be (1942)
(Directed by Ernst Lubitsch)

Kindred spirits with The Great Dictator and Inglourious Basterds in a way (with the former's ridiculing of the Nazi image) and the latter's theater climax shenanigans. While Inglourious Basterds sought to end the Third Reich with cinema, Lubitsch's film is probably smaller in its ambitions. Its characters use acting as a weapon and also as a method of survival. Parts of this film actually come off as genuinely suspenseful and show that Lubitsch was comfortable working in different registers and doing these quasi-espionage set pieces. It was cool. Lest I make it all sound all serious and stuff, there's lots of hilarity to be found here. Really loved all the performances (particularly Lombard, and whoever played the guy who constantly went "Schultz!") and just found the whole thing REAL FUN. I didn't know I had it in me.

★★★1/2

Project A 2 (1987)
(Directed by Jackie Chan)

Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao’s presence is sorely missed. But, Jackie doesn’t miss a beat. You got your former pirates looking for revenge, corrupt police deparment (and plenty of chances for Jackie to show what an outstanding guy he is) and, of course, your awesome blooper reel at the end (with Jackie singing the theme song!). Plus, if there were ever any doubt of the Keaton/Chan connection, look no further than Chan’s homage to Steamboat Bill Jr. late in the film. You see a tall building, you go up it, you jump off it and hit things on the way down. You see a chair, you throw it at a someone. Use your environment, roujin. The world demands it.

★★★1/2

Police Story 2 (1988)
(Directed by Jackie Chan)

Again, not as good as the original. The bad guys from the first film are released from prison and they start messing around with Jackie and his girlfriend, Maggie Cheung. He’s demoted because of all the crazy shit he pulled in the first movie. And now there are some crazy blackmailers/terrorists out on the loose. The film loses a lot of “Jackie Chan Goes Rogue” feeling (and a general sense of “yeah, we’re pulling off some crazy shit”) and replaces it with Jackie actually trying to do police work. This involves bugging and tailing suspects and following orders, which is probably not as interesting (to me). Still, fun movie. What does this mean though? What does it mean to utilize all of the universe to ensure your survival? Whereas in Woo, bullets destroy the environment, in Chan, the human body is the destroyer. the roujin is near. can you feel him?

★★★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Project A 2 (shocker!!!)