THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921)

A.K.A.: Korkarlen

Country: Sweden

Genre(s): Drama / Fantasy

Director: Victor Sjostrom

Cast: Victor Sjostrom / Astrid Holm / Hilda Borgstrom

Plot

Drunken vagrant David Holm is visited by the Grim Reaper on New Year’s Eve and made to repent for his wasted life.

What I Liked

I really want to like “The Phantom Carriage,” because there’s a great deal to admire in this dark fantasy film.  Most obvious is the effect described in the film’s title.  Through the use of double-exposure, director/star Victor Sjostrom pioneered the now standard look of spirits and ghosts in motion pictures.  The Grim Reaper, his horse, his carriage, and his passenger are all partially transparent images who pass unseen down city streets and through building walls in search of souls.  Though the technique has been copied and imitated countless times since and though it has now been replaced by the use of CGI, somehow the ghostly images in “The Phantom Carriage” remain chilling, even enhanced by silence and graininess of the faded black and white images of silent film, which can be unsettling for the modern viewer.

Also interesting is the low-key, realistic performances by the actors, at least in comparison with the flamboyant theatrics coming out of early Hollywood at about the same time.  European silent cinema seems to focus more on the subtleties of human body movement and facial expressions than its American counterpart, for the acting here is not all that different from the famously understated performances found in the films of Sjostrom’s Danish contemporary, Carl Theodor Dreyer (“Vampyr,” “The Passion of Joan of Arc”).  I imagine –though I don’t know – that Dreyer would have admired “The Phantom Carriage” very much.  Unfortunately, that same restraint I admire also got in the way of my truly enjoying the movie.

What I Didn’t Like

It took me a very long time to get through this movie.  Weeks.  It’s not that it’s very long, clocking in at just over an hour and a half in length.  It’s just that it felt so unbearably long.  When the Grim Reaper is not present, most of the film is spent on a lengthy backstory telling of David Holm’s descent into loneliness, sin, and poverty and of the idealistic young woman who tries to redeem him.  The problem is that the story is far too long and uninteresting, particularly when it is presented as a series of silent conversations interrupted by constant title cards.  With the exception of a few nail-biting moments toward the end, the film is made up almost entirely of these conversations.  They probably played much better to a 1921 crowd but this desensitized twenty-first century viewer was frustrated and disappointed.

Most Memorable Scene

The first appearance of the phantom carriage and its driver is easily the image that will most often pop up in the memory whenever the film is mentioned and for good reason.  The effect is what really makes the film unique.  Incidentally, there is also a scene where an enraged Holm, uses an axe to chop his way through a locked wooden door to get at his terrified wife.  I was waiting for the “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” title card but was again disappointed.

My Rating: 2 out of 5

TOP GUN (1986)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / War

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Tom Cruise / Anthony Edwards / Kelly McGillis

Plot

Pilot Peter “Maverick” Mitchell is sent to the Navy’s top flight academy, but his loose cannon attitude causes friction with his fellow students and his instructors.  Things become more complicated when he falls for a civilian aeronautics expert who works there.

What I Liked

In some ways, “Top Gun” should have been buried in a time capsule in 1986. For, if I had to pick one single movie to illustrate what passed for mainstream entertainment in 1980s America, I would probably have to pick this one.    From the hit soundtrack featuring Kenny Loggins and Berlin, to the big budget production values, to the mind-numbing simplicity of its plot, the movie is a distillation of what worked in earlier blockbusters into the perfect product.  The filmmakers constructed a movie that is pure dazzle, full of pretty young people, lots of gorgeous sunset photography, and, best of all, aerial combat stunts and effects that surpassed anything previously filmed.

It might sound like the above praise is really not-so-veiled criticism.  Here’s the thing, though; all of it still works to full effect more than a quarter century later.  “Top Gun” remains as potent of a narcotic for the eyeballs as it was all those years ago.  Somehow this very dated movie has aged remarkably well, and that’s no accident.  For the filmmakers certainly knew that watching beautiful movie stars, fantastic action sequences play out against a brainless plot has been the very source of Hollywood’s success since the silent era.  Those things have rarely been done to such technical precision as they were here.

One other observation.  Perhaps the reason this movie’s action sequences still thrill is that they were filmed with real cameras shooting real planes (for the most part) doing real maneuvers and stunts.  There are a lot of benefits to the CGI effects of today, but I wonder if they’ll age as well as the real thing has in the case of “Top Gun.”

What I Didn’t Like

Director Tony Scott used to make commercials, and it shows.  This whole movie is a great commercial for the military, and there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself.  It’s just that it’s all too perfect.  Nobody’s hair is out of place and their teeth are spotless.  The characters and conflicts are as cliché as they come.  Everything is filmed against either a purple sunset or a clear blue sky.  Even the sex scene is filmed with such blue-tinted precision that eroticism is rendered nonexistent.  Who can really relate to any of that?  Nobody.  Scott’s skills as a commercial filmmaker, though, were used to make us want to be able to relate.  It might have all been farcical escapism, but we can’t help but wish it were true.

Most Memorable Scene

As I said before, nothing even remotely close to the aerial photography and action featured in this movie had been seen in motion pictures before.  Thus these are used to great effect in the opening action scene to hook the audience right away.  We are treated to some popcorn popping eye candy and get introduced to some of the key characters (except for the faceless, voiceless Middle Eastern enemy, of course) in a fun-to-watch dog fight that sets the tone for the rest of the film.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5

MAN BITES DOG (1992)

A.K.A.: C’est Arrive Pres De Chez Vous

Country: Belgium

Genre(s): Comedy / Crime

Director: Remy Belvaux / Andre Bonzel / Benoit Poelvoorde

Cast: Benoit Poelvoorde / Remy Belvaux / Jacqueline Poelvoorde-Pappaert

Plot

A film crew follows a serial killer, catching his murders on film, and eventually becoming accomplices in his crimes.

What I Liked

I do have an affinity for most anything subversive.  Any creative output that offends the norm or challenges preconceived notions automatically scores a point or two with me, regardless of quality.  That probably shouldn’t be the case, but it is what it is.  A black comedy if there ever was one, “Man Bites Dog” apparently caused quite a stir in Europe upon its release for its frank portrayal of murder, even of children and old ladies.  In fact, the film is nowhere near as bloody or gruesome as I expected but it does generate a certain chill in those of us who are not sociopaths.  This is done not through gore or graphicness but through the point-blank, no frills, un-glossy depiction of death.  Also disturbing is the casual regard given to the murders by the man committing them and the crew of filmmakers who follow him around.  They treat the killing of innocents like a craft rather than a crime, dwelling on the proper strategies of committing murder and never once the morality of it.

The character of the killer, Ben, might be the most realistic portrayal of a serial killer this side of “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer,” released a few years earlier (and reviewed earlier in this blog).  Like Henry, Ben is absolutely devoid of a conscience and goes about his work with a passion.  In most other ways, though, Ben is the antithesis of Henry.  He is a talkative, flamboyant man with friends and family, compared to monosyllabic loner Henry.  Ben has the sociopath’s narcissism and incessantly babbles on to the camera about art, culture, and poetry, clearly believing that the world should be absolutely fascinated with him.  He is completely unaware that the pretentious mask he wears is not only boring but also absolutely transparent, as its plain to see that he is a man lacking not only a soul but also a personality.  While I still feel Henry is likely the more accurate portrayal of your standard serial killer, Ben is still a frighteningly believable character who isn’t easily forgotten.

What I Didn’t Like

A mockumentary it may be, but “Man Bites Dog” is no “Spinal Tap.”  With a few exceptions, its laughs are generated primarily either through shock value or subversion.  For all its intentional silliness and self-referential satire, the film never once got an audible laugh out of me.  Really just a few smirks.  I don’t really care what it intends to say about society (the world’s current fascination with “reality” TV does make the film seem prophetic), ultimately it really failed to entertain or enlighten me in any way.

Most Memorable Scene

Ben’s invasion of a suburban household stands out along with similar scenes in “A Clockwork Orange” and “Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer” as among the most hard-to-sit-through murder scenes I’ve witnessed.  Maybe my coming from a mostly standard suburban background makes scenes like this literally hit home at little harder, but it definitely makes for a “worst nightmare” level scenario for me.

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5

THE PALEFACE (1948)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Comedy / Western

Director: Norman McLeod

Cast: Bob Hope / Jane Russell / Robert Armstrong

Plot

Calamity Jane reluctantly accepts a job working in secret for the feds to uncover a gun smuggling ring.  Wanting to pose as a common pioneer woman on a wagon train, she marries cowardly and bungling dentist “Painless” Peter Potter.

What I Liked

Bob Hope carries this otherwise dismal attempt at comedy on his back.  He successfully plays off of the common notions of the American Western hero by playing a fool and a coward caught in the type of situations we’re used to seeing involve men like John Wayne or the Lone Ranger.  Bolstered by Hope's shamelessly goofball cut-ups, Painless Potter’s buffoonery provides some amusement in a movie that has not aged well.

What I Didn’t Like

My source book points out that “The Paleface” is too silly to take its racist depictions of Native Americans and historical inaccuracies seriously, and generally speaking it is correct.  One can no more criticize these elements of a film this goofy than one can criticize similar racism and stupidity in the “Hot Shots” or “Scary Movie” franchises.  The filmmakers could be said to be spoofing the very same elements that appear in serious films of those genres.  Besides, it is clear that all of it is done in fun and no harm is meant whatsoever.  But I do wonder if today’s Native Americans feel the same way when they watch Hope goof around over a pile of “Injun” corpses.

Anyway, my dislike of this movie had little to do with its political incorrectness.  I was more offended by the fact that the movie just wasn’t all that funny.  The jokes just do not stand the test of time.  Sure there was a silly line that made me smirk here and there (“Rigor mortis, here I come!” or “Brave men run in my family”).  But overall this movie does not deserve a spot among the 1001 elite.  I’m pretty sure that this movie was picked to compliment Hope’s status as one of the premier film comedians of his era and, since this is (unfortunately) one of his best, it was (also unfortunately) squeezed in.  Shit, I’m not even a Jane Russell fan.  The woman couldn’t act worth a damn and if she’s what passed for a sex symbol in the forties, I’m sure glad I live in the days of Salma Hayek and Scarlett Johansson.

Most Memorable Scene

When Potter mistakes Jane’s dead-eye shooting for his own, he soon transforms himself into a puff-chested Dude and swaggers into a local saloon.  What happens next you can probably already guess and it leads to a wonderful parody of the standard Western duel.  Hope is perfect here; maybe because he’s allowed to just do his thing without much interference from other actors or annoying constraints like plot.

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5

TO LIVE (1952)

A.K.A.: Ikiru

Country: Japan

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Cast: Takashi Shimura / Shin’ichi Himori / Yunosuke Ito

Plot

Stricken with stomach cancer, an old man regrets having spent the last three decades behind a desk and looks to find a purpose for his life in his final days.

What I Liked

*spoiler alert*

Enriched by the enthrallingly expressive face of lead Takashi Shimura, “To Live” returns inspiration and meaning to the old cliché that “it’s never too late.”  Shimura’s Mr. Watanabe is frighteningly pitiful and, more frighteningly, easy to empathize with.  Watanabe has closed himself off so thoroughly from the passions and beauty of life that his co-workers call him “The Mummy,” but Shimura does a fantastic job of embodying that description while defying cliché.  His shuffling gait, decrepit movements, and suffocated voice are in no way monstrous, but familiarly human.  Through Shimura, Watanabe is not a creature entirely devoid of soul, but a man on a quest to recover a long lost soul. 

In some ways he is less Mummy, than he is Odysseus.  Like the epic hero on his quest to find his way back home, Watanabe’s journey brings him through a series of mistakes, lessons, dark places, misfortunes, discoveries, and defeats.  His refusal to give up the journey and, once he discovers the true path, his conquering of every obstacle is inspiring.  It’s a simple story with a simple meaning, but one that has more to tell us than countless more complex tales.  “To Live” is a universal story that could have taken place in any era and any place, but it’s setting in post-War Japan does seem to have a special importance.  As Watanabe searches for a way back to living, director Akira Kurosawa places around him the gaudy sights and sounds of Japan’s quickly Americanizing society.  The image of the lonely old man in decades-old clothes hobbling against a background of shiny lights, drunken celebrants, and pretty young Japanese girls singing Rosemary Clooney’s “Come On-a My House” might be Kurosawa’s lament for what his people were losing in a rat race pursuit of money, convenience, and escapism.  That Watanabe is also seduced by this world but finds no joy there provides one of the film’s most haunting moments, when he sorrowfully sings an decades-old song to some befuddled young late-night revelers.

Though Watanabe’s journey ends with a personal satisfaction, Kurosawa in no way gives us a traditional happy ending, but rather one much more touching and thought-provoking.  After his death, the great message to be found in Watanabe’s success is thoroughly lost upon those he has left behind, who are too either too concerned with self-aggrandizement or too frightened by the lessons to be found in Watanabe’s quest to make any changes in their own lives.  Thus Kurosawa gives us a final scene that is hard to stomach as a parting warning to examine our own choices in life.

What I Disliked

Few movies are as flawless as “To Live.”

Most Memorable Scene: “I can’t afford to hate people.  I don’t have that kind of time.”  A mantra everyone should take up.

My Rating: 5 out of 5

GOOD BYE LENIN! (2003)

Country: Germany

Genre(s): Comedy / Drama

Director: Wolfgang Becker

Cast: Daniel Bruhl / Katrin Sab / Chulpan Khamatova

Plot

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, an East German family tries to prevent their passionately Communist mother, recently awakened from a coma and in ill health, from learning what has become of her beloved country.

What I Liked

Sometimes all a movie needs is a good story to satisfy its audience; which makes “Good Bye Lenin!” even better for having not only an engaging plot but also moving performances and relatable characters.  Such a movie, with that trifecta of strengths, and helmed by a director who knows how to keep his ego from getting in the way of those strengths, is able to evoke heart-warmed smiles and heart-broken tears with equal success.

But it is the storytelling that is the source of the movie’s real power; not just the sometimes funny, sometimes hand-wringing nature of the plot itself, but how the characters all evolve on their own personal journeys and the various lessons they slowly learn about life, love, and truth.  Few films engage the audience with a family dynamic as interesting and touching as this one.

What I Didn’t Like

Really no complaints.  This isn’t a movie that will blow anyone’s mind with style or innovation, but it’s just a solid, no-frills piece of filmmaking about human beings and life.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

What can only be assumed to be the mother’s death is such a beautiful moment of both peace and sadness that my eyes welled up.  That does not happen to me much when I watch movies, but I definitely choked up here.

My Rating: 4 out of 5

A DAY IN THE COUNTRY (1936)

A.K.A.: Un Partie De Champagne

Country: France

Genre(s): Romance

Director: Jean Renoir

Cast: Sylvia Bataille / Georges D’Arnoux / Jacques B. Brunius

Plot

Accompanying her family on a country picnic, Parisian girl Henriette is seduced by a local man who takes her on a trip down the river in a rowboat.

What I Liked

Despite its understated look and plot, “A Day in the Country” remains an emotionally evocative movie nearly eighty years after it was made.  Brief but poignant, it is the aborted creation of legendary French director Jean Renoir, who apparently stopped production on the film after experiencing some sort of creative block.  He left the film incomplete and it was not released for a decade, with minimal title cards to help make the plot more understandable.  What Renoir did put on film stands well on its own, even in truncated form, as truthful and emotional filmmaking.  The film tells the story of a city family’s day trip out into the country to fish and picnic and two young locals who try to seduce the female tourists.  From this simplicity Renoir calls forth wonderful feelings of sentimentality and light-heartedness, and, later on, remorse and longing.  Some of that emotion is generated through some fascinating technical work, particularly as Henriette rides a swing and enjoys the carefree beauty of her surroundings.  The camera swings through the air with her, capturing her weightless joy.  Today such shots are common, but it must have been very difficult with the hulking mechanisms that passed for motion picture cameras in the 1930s.

What I Didn’t Like

While everyone in the family are portrayed as ignorant, naïve tourists bumbling their way through a vacation, the father and his future son-in-law are made particularly idiotic as the film’s comic relief.  The father is a false know-it-all, trying to impress everyone with his pretended outdoorsmanship.  The future son-in-law is his spineless, man-child sidekick, one of the most annoying buffoons I can remember seeing in a movie.  The attempt at a Laurel and Hardy dynamic fails.  Neither character is interesting, funny, or entertaining.  Ironically, the boringness of one of the characters becomes a source of the tragedy to be found later in the film.

Most Memorable Scene

*spoiler alert*

While the majority of the film is light-hearted, almost whimsical, the film’s last moments remind us that one day cannot last a lifetime, as much as we might sometimes wish it to do so.  The title cards take care of a leap forward in years where we find that young Henriette has again travelled to the scene of her youthful, romantic memories.  She has since married the young buffoon, who has come with her only to take a nap and leave her alone.  When she encounters the same man with whom she had shared such a wonderful afternoon so long ago, the hearts of both characters endure the torture of a last, longing conversation.  Suddenly the film becomes about as heartbreaking as any movie can be, Henriette’s tears at her inability to escape her fate and the man’s obvious longing to return to that moment when they were young serving as a solemn coda that will long linger in the mind of the viewer.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5

SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Drama

Director: Samuel Fuller

Cast: Peter Breck / Constance Towers / James Best

Plot

Looking to boost his career with a sensational story, reporter Johnny Barrett pretends to be a disturbed man in order to pass as a patient in a mental ward and solve a recent murder.  Things don’t go as planned, however, and he soon loses touch with his own sense of reality.

What I Liked

Few films can find let alone walk the wobbly tight-rope between B-movie schlock and fine art as well as “Shock Corridor.”  Quaking with a neurotic mess of silly psychos, face-biting nymphos, pop psychology, electroshock therapy, strippers, and incessant yelling, the film is a black-and-white kaleidoscope of exploitation ridiculousness.  Yet it rises above other films of its kind in two very important ways.

First is the unabashed way in which the filmmakers use a mad house as a metaphor for 1960s America.  As Barrett gets closer to three of his fellow patients in particular, he learns of that the sources of their illnesses stem from the social ills of contemporary society.  One man has been so ostracized for his Communist beliefs that he has convinced himself he is dead Confederate General Jeb Stuart to compensate.  One of the scientists who designed the atom bomb has reverted back to a childlike state to avoid the guilt of responsibility.  And, most fascinating of all, a black man is so troubled by his status as second class citizen that he comes to believe himself not only a white man, but a member of the KKK.

Even more important to the film’s status as a bonafide classic is the cinematography.  The severely underrated cinematographer Stanley Cortez (“The Magnificent Ambersons,” “The Night of the Hunter”) enhances the sense that the ward is a world all to itself, with its own innate natural laws.  As the story continues and Barrett’s own psyche falls pretty to these laws, the camera angles go off-kilter, distort, and sometimes turn completely upside down, adding to the growing sense of unease.  The claustrophobia of the film is made more potent through Cortez and director Sam Fuller’s emphasis on the single hallway the patients call “the street” and the shadows lurking in the corners and side rooms.  Thus the movie has a unique, eye-popping look that can only be described as psychedelic noir.

The movie’s likable blend of cesspool and quality clearly left its mark on later generations of filmmakers.  From an infamous Dave Chappelle skit,  to the motifs found in “Shutter Island” by Martin Scorsese, to a lot that can be found in Quentin Tarantino’s work, much of what was considered so deviant about “Shock Corridor” when it first came out is now considered brilliant when modern filmmakers imitate its strangeness.

What I Didn’t Like

The movie’s depiction of psychology and psychosis can’t be taken seriously.  But accurately capturing the complex nature of the human mind was likely not anywhere on Fuller’s agenda.  “Mark Twain didn’t psychoanalyze Huck Fin and Tom Sawyer,” complains one character in the film.  It’s true, and seems to be Fuller’s point.  He’s telling us a story and, just because the details used to tell that story might be scientifically incorrect, doesn’t mean the story doesn’t have something to tell us.

Like the goofy psychos of the ward, the B-movie melodramatic acting and shock value tactics would be hard to put up with if it wasn't for the fact that the film's better qualities render its faults charming as only the best cult cinema can be.

Most Memorable Scene

If Fuller got the nature of personal psychosis wrong, he certainly captured the insanity of mass psychosis with frightening realism.  As I mentioned earlier, the insanity of society itself is a major theme of the film.  The moment when a black orderly is chased down the hall by a ravenous crowd of mental patients who have been spurned into attacking him by a racist rant from another black man is a fine example.  The whole scene is legitimately terrifying, an unflinching portrait of the madness in human civilization.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5

FANTASTIC PLANET (1973)

A.K.A.: La Planete Sauvage

Country: France / Czechoslovakia

Genre(s): Adventure / Animated / Fantasy / Sci-Fi

Director: Rene Laloux

Cast: Jean Valmont / Eric Baugin / Jennifer Drake

Plot

The human-like Oms rebel against the enslavement of the giant Draags.

What I Liked

“Fantastic Planet” is a peculiar mix of 70s European animation, surrealist visions, and hippy ethos.  Back in the 1970s, it was still rather unusual for an animated adventure movie to carry adult messages, but this one does just that – albeit with childlike simplicity.  Clearly designed to veil Cold War-era political statements in some colorful and far-out science fiction gimmicks, the movie has some admittedly creative creatures and gadgets that might have otherwise been the product of collaboration between Dr. Seuss and Salvador Dali.

What I Didn’t Like

This is what happens when you let hippies make movies.  It’s hard to imagine a movie more dated.  From the unbearable 70s porn soundtrack, to the “Star Trek” cartoon sound effects, to pretty-but-archaic animation, to the peace-and-love morality of its conclusion, it’s now only watchable as retro kitsch.  Any ground it might have broken in 1973 has been thoroughly excavated by later films, rendering the innovations of “Fantastic Planet” obsolete.

Most Memorable Scene

The gratuitous glow-in-the-dark forest orgy made me cringe.  So bad.  Apparently saxophones are the soundtrack for sex even in galaxies far, far away.

My Rating: 1 out of 5

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Comedy / Horror

Director: John Landis

Cast: David Naughton / Griffin Dunne / Jenny Agutter

Plot

After an attack by a werewolf, an American tourist becomes a werewolf himself.

What I Liked

Where run-of-the-mill horror movies tend to rely purely on shock value, this one has much more to offer.  The most respected of a spate of werewolf flicks that came out in the 80s (“The Howling and its sequels, “Teen Wolf,” “Silver Bullet,”  etc.), “An American Werewolf in London” stands out from the pack thanks to the playfulness of writer-director John Landis and the still fascinating effects work of Rick Baker.  Landis was an accomplished veteran of comedy films (“Animal House,” “Blues Brothers”) when he was given the chance to make his dream film, one he had written when he was 19 years old.  His joy in having that kind of opportunity comes through in the finished product, which is a respectful homage to the werewolf pictures that had come before but goes out of its way not to take itself too seriously.  The film is full of goofiness and self-referential clichés from the start, along with a morbidly hilarious scene where the main character is forced to confront his grumpily undead victims in a porn theater.

Of course comedy’s all well and good, but the film also delivers on the thrills as well.  The real star of the film is of course the werewolf creature, brought to convincing life by Baker’s incredible work.  He has created a monster that looks to be more beast than man.  Unlike the bipedal Wolf Man characters of the past, this werewolf prowls about on all fours and has the elongated face of a very terrifying wolf.  Though some of the effects concerning the movement of the monster seem a little outdated, these scenes are few thanks to Landis’s wise choice of showing much of the action from the werewolf’s perspective.  These scenes, particularly one shot in the London Underground, are fraught with eerie suspense.

What I Didn’t Like

Nothing, really.

Most Memorable Scene

Baker’s effects really take over the movie once David transforms for the first time into the wolf.  No on screen werewolf transformation had ever appeared so fluid, frightening, and downright painful before.  The hair and claws grow right before our eyes while David’s bones stretch, break, and rearrange with agonizing realism.  Of course today it would all be done digitally and look even more natural.  But honestly, in a film market riddled with CGI, I sometimes long for the painstaking craft and ingenuity of first-rate makeup effects like those in “An American Werewolf in London.”

My Rating: 4 out of 5