ADAM'S RIB (1949)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Comedy / Romance

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Katharine Hepburn / Spencer Tracy / David Wayne

Plot

Conservative District Attorney Adam Bonner and his liberal lawyer wife Amanda take opposing sides in a criminal case involving a wife who has shot her two-timing husband.

What I Liked

In many ways, “Adam’s Rib” might be called the first important post-war romantic comedy.  With many American women having entered the work force during World War II and suddenly expected to return to domesticity at the war’s close, the film tackles what was then a very pressing issue: the role of women in post-war America.  While the feminist movement would not become a cohesive and visible social presence for years to come, the place of women in the home, in the marriage, in the workplace, and in the legal sphere are topics of frequent debate between the aptly cast Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, albeit wrapped in a harmlessly funny package.  The couple’s battle-of-the-sexes conflict would be a theme recurrent throughout romantic comedies for decades to come.

What I Didn’t Like

*spoiler alert*

Though the banter and chemistry between Hepburn and Tracy still wins over the viewer’s heart, the rest of the film has not aged particularly well. Because many of the more radical ideas that Hepburn’s character puts forth in the film have become mainstream thought today, the film has lost some of its shocking or rebellious edge.  Consequently, much of the fun falls flat.  The director’s choice to bring zany theatricality into the courtroom is very old Hollywood and I’m sure delighted 1949 filmgoers everywhere; but today the more outrageous and goofy moments just don’t go over well and seem just that, old Hollywood.  Hepburn, Tracy and their supporter cast may hit every point perfect, but the fact is a dated script and outmoded production mean that the film really isn’t all that funny anymore.

Even as timely as the movie might have been in 1949, the filmmakers clearly didn’t want to push the envelope too hard at the dawn of the McCarthy era.  Sure, the clever crusader Mrs. Bonner wins out in the social arena of the courtroom, but when it comes to home and the bedroom she is manipulated and eventually conquered by Mr. Bonner, who reclaims his place as master of his household in the final scene, ultimately the filmmakers’ conciliation to the “normalcy” that would become so important in the 1950s.

Most Memorable Scene

Eventually the defendant and her victim, a husband and wife couple themselves, take the stand and are questioned by each attorney, who are of course married to each other.  Tom Ewell and Judy Holliday play the idiotic Mr. and Mrs. Attinger, two world class heels, so thoroughly that they both steal their scenes from two of the silver screen’s biggest icons.  Holliday in particular is marvelously funny as the scorned and furious Mrs. Attingero, too honest for her own good.

My Rating: 3 out of 5

DIABOLIQUE (1955)

A.K.A.: Les Diaboliques / The Devils

Country: France

Genre(s): Crime / Drama

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Cast: Vera Clouzot / Simone Signoret / Paul Meurisse

Plot

Tired of his physical and emotional abuse, two women plot to murder the headmaster of a boarding school.  One woman is the man’s wife, the other his mistress.  However, when the body goes missing unexpectedly, the two women are overcome with paranoia.

What I Liked

By effectively combining the perfect-crime-gone-wrong element of the American noir films that the French loved so much and the psychological thrills of Alfred Hitchcock, director Henri-Georges Clouzot created one of the most enduring thrillers in film history, one that stands the test of time without becoming passé.  With three well-rendered, believable characters navigating complex relationships, the film seethes with underlying emotional tension from start to finish.  The simplicity of its plot, matched with well-timed plot twists, brings a timeless universality that allows its chills to remain intoxicating into the twenty-first century.

This is genre-bending at its best.  Noir-inspired angular shadows disorient the eye.  A private school is transformed into a labyrinthine haunted house. And the motives of all involved, even the children, are called into question as each and every person seems to have his own psychological agenda.  The film’s unpredictable switching back and forth between the conventions of noir, mystery, and ghost story genres allows the filmmakers to play games with their audience, never letting us know which genre will win out in the end, even to the very last, haunting line.

What I Disliked

I did watch the 90s remake starring Sharon Stone years ago.  I remember liking it, although it got bad reviews.  While this isn’t the first time I’ve seen the original, it’s been a long time, and despite seeing both versions I had completely forgotten how the ending turned out.  However, I was able to figure out the answer to the mystery about half way through.  Whether this came from the last vestiges of my remaining memory or whether I deduced it on my own, I can’t be sure.  Either way, that deadened the “ah ha!” factor of the big reveal at the end.  Nonetheless, “Diabolique” remained a compelling viewing experience thanks to the evocative atmosphere and interesting characters.

Most Memorable Scene

Just when everything seems to be wrapped in a nice Scooby Doo-ending package, Clouzot cleverly weaves the mystery back into the film with an unsettling conversation between a member of the school staff and one of the students.  Then the movie fades out just as we’re beginning to think, “Wait, what?”  Suddenly, we’re left to wonder what has really happened and this time we won’t have an answer to the twist but our own imagination.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

IN THE LOOP (2009)

Country: U.K.

Genre(s): Comedy

Director: Armondo Iannucci

Cast: Peter Capaldi / Tom Hollander / Chris Addison

Plot

After he makes a politically incorrect statement intimating a possible war in the Middle East, mid-level British politician Simon Foster and his associates find themselves in the United States as pawns in U.S. plans to orchestrate an unprovoked war.

What I Liked

First and foremost, it’s damn funny.  A “Dr. Strangelove” for the twenty-first century, it’s kind of frightening also, as it accurately portrays the way we all hope politicians do not actually behave themselves behind the scenes (but probably do).  For most of the characters involved, politics seems to be about three things, beating the opposition at any cost, personal advancement by any means, and trying not to cause a media scandal while doing the first two things.  Morality only serves as a rationale, something to spin into a convenient justification to do the three aforementioned things.  But, also, it’s funny.  Tom Hollander is perfect as the bungling British minister of something-or-rather who is in way over his head.  It’s refreshing to see James Gandolfini cast as something other than a thug; he is excellent as the only qualified military man in the debate, forced to stomach the pettiness and ignorance of politicians.  And Peter Capaldi’s is fucking delightful as a communications expert who can do nothing but projectile vomit obscenities and insults at everyone in the room with him. 

Lending strength to the film’s credibility, and thus its comedy, is its presentation.  While “In the Loop” doesn’t pretend to be a documentary and is therefore not technically a mockumentary, the photography and lighting are done in a documentary-like manner.  This not only brings a sense of realness to the characters and events, it lends to the chaotic atmosphere of all the political maneuvering and also reminds one of the 24-hour news networks that report on politics all day long.

What I Didn’t Like

I have no complaints at all.  Really, I tried to think of something and couldn’t.

Most Memorable Scene

For me, the moment that got the most laughs is when Foster’s assistant shows up late for an important meeting with a U.S. diplomat and tries to make excuses for himself afterwards.  Foster’s verbal reaction is great.  Some of the best lines of the movie.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5

THE AGE OF GOLD (1930)

A.K.A.: L’Age d’Or

Country: France

Genre(s): Art Film

Director: Luis Bunuel

Cast: Gaston Modot / Lya Lys / Max Ernst

Plot

The expectations and interferences of society thwart a man and woman’s carnal desires for one another.

What I Liked

Fresh off of his collaboration with surrealist artist Salvador Dali, “An Andalusian Dog,” director Luis Bunuel continues in a similar vein with “The Age of Gold.”  Again the psychology of sexuality is the main theme and is illustrated through the juxtaposition of unrelated (at least on the surface) images.  This time, though, the movie has a more discernible plot and less of the nightmarish free associations of its predecessor.   The movie is a fine example of the possibilities motion pictures still represented to creative people here, at the dawn of the sound era.  Movie making, though on the fast track to studio-imposed conformity, was still an open form for some innovators, who often acted as scientists, tinkering with the limits of what could be said with such a populist medium.

What I Didn’t Like

Bunuel’s use of the movies to explore the taboos of psychology was indeed groundbreaking and certainly opened up the possibilities for many a respected filmmaker to come.  At this point though, those filmmakers have long since took what Bunuel did and greatly improved upon it.  And there was plenty of room to improve.  “Age of Gold” holds little intellectual or emotional sway over a modern viewer.  The truths it depicts may be timeless, but the method with which it delivers those truths are badly dated.

Most Memorable Scene

In the film’s most famous (and titillating) image, a woman whose foreplay with a male lover has just been interrupted by his being called away to the telephone, makes due by wrapping her lips around the toe of a nearby statue and sucking.  You don’t have to be Freud to suppose what that toe might have been taking the place of in her mind and that’s the point.  Even then, certain images uniquely pluck the same Jungian nerve in all of us, and the movies, Bunuel realized, could arouse the collective unconscious like no other media before.

My Rating: 2 out of 5

ANDREI RUBLEV (1966)

A.K.A.: Andrey Rublyov

Country: U.S.S.R.

Genre(s): Drama / Epic

Director: Andrey Tarkovsky

Cast: Anatoliy Solonitsyn / Nikolay Burlyaev / Ivan Lapikov

Plot

Russian painter and monk Andrei Rublev struggles to reconcile his religious faith with his creative gifts and the horrors of life in the Middle Ages.

What I Liked

Director Andrey Tarkovsky gives us an epic portrait of the fickle and sometimes torturous nature of creative genius with this strange but fascinating fictionalization of the life of a Russian Saint.  Though it lacks conventional dramatic structure, the movie manages to keep the viewers’ attention with a mysterious and melancholy tone.  Shot in grainy black and white, the use of barren lightness, enchanting darkness, and haunted grey tones somehow captures a strange beauty underlying a grim Russia made cold by death, superstition, and struggle.  The film’s protagonist, Andrei Rublev travels through this world as a sensitive observer, grasping through the darkness to grab hold of that beauty but unable to capture it.  He witnesses the pain of his people, the depravity of man, and begins to wonder if man has betrayed God or vice versa.  Anatoliy Solonitsyn gives a moving performance as the painter monk, subtly portraying the burdens and guilt which living presents for Rublev.

Rublev’s struggle has accurately been seen by observers as a self-portrait by director Tarkovsky, the fifteenth century artist’s dismay at the state of Russia and his fellow Russians filling in for the twentieth century director’s own feelings about the Soviet Union and his fellow Soviets.  Naturally, the Soviet censors did not appreciate Tarkovsky’s analogy.  They correctly took the film’s unconventional storytelling, obscure subject, unclear motives, and religious symbolism as a potential threat to their control and long delayed its release.  When it finally was released in the U.S.S.R., it was in a badly butchered version.  I have a love for art of dissent, so naturally that history endeared the film to me somewhat.

What I Didn’t Like

 A strange movie to say the least, this movie’s unconventional story can prove a challenge.  While there is clearly meaning to the madness and something of a plot is still discernible, one’s attention span is forced to focus on mood and metaphor, rather than story.  In some ways, this is a refreshing perspective.  After all, does real life actually confine itself to the rules of storytelling?  No.  Rather, the human mind fashion stories out of the formless reality.  Thus Tarkovsky presents us with a much more true-to-life depiction than we want to admit.  Nevertheless, that doesn’t make the movie any easier to take in, particularly at over three hours long.

Most Memorable Scene

The final quarter or so of the film temporarily departs from Rublev and focusses on the tale of a teenage boy who escapes the plague by convincing the Prince’s henchmen that he is a master bell maker.  When he takes the job of making a bell for the Prince, knowing that the results will determine his fate and those of his people, we are pulling for his bluff to somehow magically work.  Watching the boy and the others uncover the bell after it is forged and then waiting to hear if it actually tolls or not is a rare experience of classic, movie-going suspense in the film.  The moment also doubles as a metaphoric coda for a film largely about faith.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976)

A.K.A.: Ai No Korida

Country: France / Japan

Genre(s): Drama / Romance

Director: Nagisa Oshima

Cast: Eiko Matsuda / Tatsuya Fuji / Aoi Nakajima

Plot

In 1930s Japan, a former prostitute becomes obsessed with her employer’s husband during an increasingly sado-masochistic sexual affair.

What I Liked

The 1970s.  The decade that films like “Debbie Does Dallas,” “Deep Throat,” and “The Green Door” generated a so-called “porno chic” in America.   The decade that mainstream films became increasingly more graphic in their depiction of sexuality: “Last Tango in Paris,” “Salo,” and “Caligula,” for example.  And Nagisa Oshima’s “In the Realm of the Senses” probed the previously unexplored border between porn and the mainstream.  Where “Tango” and the mainstream flicks I mentioned earlier featured copious nudity and simulated sex, Oshima dared to put actual sex on screen: fellatio, penetration, erections.  Yet the movie makes no attempt to pander to the base distortions and fantasies of pornography.  While several stylized erotic moments are present, the sex and nudity are displayed in a manner that is not solely to titillate the audience but also to disturb the audience, to make the relationship between its main characters painful to watch rather than arousing to watch.  As was the case with “Tango,” both characters here use sex to alleviate the only things they have in common, loneliness and self-loathing.  Pornography, by necessity, never bothers to explore either loneliness or self-loathing in any meaningful way.

Just as the filmmakers themselves drove past the line of taboo, the main characters allow themselves to play with a dangerous middle ground between love and hate, pleasure and pain, life and death.  At first their sex is playful and flirtatious but quickly progresses into a kind of instinctive need.  Before long one gets the feeling that these two are being suffocated (not just literally, but that too) by their carnal desires, that self-destruction is inevitable.  Even more disconcerting, it’s clear that both characters are aware of this too and they seem to long for the final climax of death.

What I Didn’t Like

As groundbreaking as it must have been in 1976, the movie’s themes have since been thoroughly mined by countless of psycho-erotic movies of varying quality.  Real sex is still pretty rare in mainstream film, so that aspect of the film’s edginess still sets it apart.  But for the most part the whole theme of sadomasochistic relationships and sexual obsession, though effectively rendered here, doesn’t have the same taboo punch it would have for filmgoers over thirty years ago.  And, really, this film is built around those elements, so its impact and entertainment overall has been weakened (if only slightly) by its many imitators.

Most Memorable Scene

One particularly bloody act is foreshadowed throughout the entire film yet will still make anyone but a sociopath cringe to watch when it finally comes.  It’s not that this moment was more artfully done.  It’s just the fact that the filmmakers actually went there.  The event is made even more disturbing (and necessary) by the fact that it’s all part of a true story.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5

STRIKE (1925)

A.K.A.: Stachka

Country: U.S.S.R.

Genre(s): Drama / Propaganda

Director: Sergei Eisenstein

Cast: Mikhail Gomorov / Ivan Klyukvin / Grigori Aleksandrov

Plot

In part of the failed 1905 Bolshevik revolution, Russian factory workers react to the abuses of their employers with a work stoppage.  When the industrialists and politicians retaliate, chaos and bloodshed ensue.

What I Liked

I first saw director Sergei Eisenstein’s most revered film, “Battleship Potemkin,” back in college.  Before that time, I had never heard of the man but I have since become more familiar with his importance to film history.  Thus I was intrigued to watch his first important movie, “Strike,” a Soviet-financed depiction of class conflict in turn-of-the-century Russia.  Watching it, I found all the hallmarks of the Eisenstein trademark style.  Stylistically, he is perhaps best known for his editing techniques, using fast cuts to emphasize the drama or excitement of key moments.  These techniques also often featured the splicing in of shocking images that may not be directly related to the story line but convey the emotion of the scene, an unsubtle kind of montage.  No other director of his age did this so effectively.  Eisenstein was also never one to shy away from using what I’ll call cheap gimmicks, for lack of a better word, at the climaxes of his movies.  In “Strike,” as in “Potemkin,” he does this by putting very young children in deadly peril… more than once.

Eisenstein undoubtedly preferred an in-your-face approach, but no one can doubt its effectiveness.  Even today, “Strike” moves with a noticeably quick rhythm.  His movies have a unique pace all their own, the same kind of speed that makes Buster Keaton’s comedies still work as well, yet Eisenstein’s films are no comedies.  Once the montages get going in particular, the senses are bombarded so quickly that the eye barely takes it all in and the mind struggles to keep up.  Scenes like those must have been where Hitchcock got the inspiration for the way he filmed the shower scene in “Psycho.”

What I Didn’t Like

Where Eisenstein’s stylistic strengths lie in his lack of subtlety, this proves a weakness in his storytelling, but no more so than with any film of its kind and age.  As one might expect from a silent-era propaganda film, this movie is not very complex in its analysis of social ills and, as one would expect from a silent-era Soviet propaganda film in particular, ham-fisted in its martyrdom of the workers and vilification of pretty much everyone else.  If we’re to believe Eisenstein’s portrayal of the classes, every wealthy person lounges around all day in a three-piece suit, smoking cigars with his fat cut buddies, joking about the miseries of the poor.  And every crime ever blamed on a member of the working class was either a heroic act of protest or a complete frame-up.  As is the case with a great deal of revolutionary work, there’s no moral middle ground in Eisenstein, only the villainous oppressors, their sniveling cronies, and their honest victims.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert!*

The final defeat of the strike occurs after the authorities call in a military attack on the strikers.  Here Eisenstein’s frenetic style works its magic perfectly to capture the ensuing chaos.  Beginning with the panicked retreat of the strikers, continuing through some marvelously stylized scenes featuring water hoses, proceeding through a horrifying depiction of wholesale slaughter, and finally ending with a morbid depiction of mowed-down corpses, we’re treated for the last quarter of so of the film to what really set Eisenstein apart from his contemporaries.  Griffith and DeMille might have had more scale, Chaplin more poetry, and Dreyer more subtlety, but Eisenstein’s movies are simply more visceral than anything else being made at the time.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

PROJECT A, PART 2 (1987)

A.K.A.: ‘A’ Gai Wak Juk Jap

Country: Hong Kong

Genre(s): Action

Director: Jackie Chan

Cast: Jackie Chan / Maggie Cheung / David Lam

Plot

Dragon Mao of nineteenth century Hong Kong’s Navy is given the assignment of ridding the Hong Kong streets of piracy and police corruption.

What I Liked

That Jackie Chan is a stunt man extraordinaire goes without saying and this film features some thrilling set pieces that allow Chan’s athleticism, timing, and daring to shine brilliantly.  What’s even more impressive, though, is Chan’s fight choreography.  Though I’m no expert on martial arts films or fight choreography, I can’t think of anyone who has consistently put out fight sequences that hit all the necessary marks for both thrills and creativity.  In a lot of martial arts fight scenes, the combatants seem to exist in a vacuum, in much the same way duelists in an American Western do.  The scenes become about the rivalry between the primary characters; they fight in an open area, with minimal obstacles between them and others acting only as spectators.  Chan’s characters are almost always crammed together in a confined space like a cluttered room or an alley, which adds to the intensity of the combat (the proverbial fight in a phone booth).  Chan is known for using ladders, furniture, doors, and others familiar surroundings as instruments in the violence.  Their use demands precision timing and physical accuracy yet the action is delivered with convincing fluidity and stunning speed.

Chan is also brilliant in his integration of comedy into the on-screen violence.  He is often compared to silent star Buster Keaton for the death-defying comedy he brings to the screen.  However, as a man who is clearly a master of the human body and its capabilities and one who was raised in the Chinese Opera, he has innate physical timing and bodily control that more resembles Keaton’s silent contemporary, Charlie Chaplin.  He uses the same props that generate great action sequences to spice the suspense with chuckles, a rare sort of savvy that could be found in both Keaton and Chaplin.

What I Didn’t Like

Nobody watches a Jackie Chan movie for social commentary, psychological complexity, or intricacies of plot, so I won’t even go there. Let’s get down to what matters in his movies, the action sequences.  Those in this film are terrific.  There are some truly unforgettable stunts and gags.  It’s been awhile since I watched a Jackie Chan movie and seeing this one was refreshing.  But I still was left wondering why, of the multitude of exciting Jackie Chan movies, the editors for my source book chose this one.  Honestly, I hadn’t even heard of it until I read about it in the book, and I’ve seen a fair number of Jackie’s movies.  The book’s reasoning for picking this one was that it featured the hero in his prime, before age and injuries slowed him down.  I would argue that part of the fun of his nineties movies is that he was so old and yet still doing such amazing things (Like the window jump in “Rumble in the Bronx”) and also that those later movies featured bigger budgets that made for more eye-popping moments (I’m thinking the hovercraft in “Rumble in the Bronx” and the wind tunnel in… “Operation Condor,” I believe it was).   And if you’re going for his earlier films, why not the earlier and more iconic “Drunken Master”?

Most Memorable Scene

Though Jackie’s run down the wall of a collapsing building is probably the most famous moment of the movie and deserving of inclusion on any highlight reel of Chan’s career stunts, the most unbelievable stunt to me is when he falls a couple of floors through some sort of bamboo scaffolding, bouncing between the shattering rods like a pinball until he smacks the ground with a thud.  I can’t imagine Jackie walked away from that one unscathed or at least without the wind thoroughly knocked out of him.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5