104 in 2009 Week 22: Stardust Memories

Just one this week. Ah, well.

Stardust Memories
Woody Allen, 1980

Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) is a successful filmmaker who is known for lighthearted comedies, but now feels he’s been wasting his time and wants to make more substantial fare. While attending a weekend festival of his work, he struggles to stop the studio from imposing a happy ending on his latest film, reminisces about his past with Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling), contemplates a potential future with Isobel (Marie-Christine Barrault), and tries to figure out who he is and why he is the way he is.

This is easily my favorite of the Woody Allen movies that I’ve seen, primarily because it is the first one that seemed to take full advantage of the medium. I’m not just talking about the gorgeous black and white photography, but about the things that you can only do in film, like Dorrie’s jump-cut fractured semi-monologue toward the end, or the flashback in which Sandy (and the audience) watches Dorrie reading a magazine, while she becomes increasingly conscious of his/our gaze. These are the moments that bring the piece to life, and they’re not things you could do in, say, a stage production – unlike most of Allen’s work, which I think would be perfectly at home on stage.

To be fair, the movie does run the risk of becoming over-simplistic and trite at times, what with Sandy’s constant kvetching about comedy seeming pointless in the face of all the suffering in the world. This is well-worn territory, which was pretty definitively explored in the mediocre but highly regarded Sullivan’s Travels. I don’t think we’re meant to take this message at face value, though – Sandy’s problem isn’t that he can’t figure out the benefit of comedy in the face of suffering, but that he is asking the question in the first place. Whereas Sullivan’s Travels (and the aliens in this film) give us the easy answer that comedy relieves suffering, Stardust Memories presents a more nuanced view that Sandy is dealing with a false dichotomy. Dorrie makes him miserable 28 days out of 30 (as several characters point out), but the remaining two days make him happier than anything else in his life. The good and the bad in life feed on each other, you can’t have one without the other, etc. . . actually, that also sounds kind of trite when I put it that way, but I suppose anything does when it’s reduced to a single sentence. There's a lot more ambiguity in the movie.

Technically, there isn’t really anything I could complain about other than Jessica Harper’s performance feeling a bit flat. Oh – and keep an eye out for the ever changing breakfast nook walls.

9/10

Progress: 47 (Par +3)

104 in 2009 Week 21: How to Steal a Million, The Magus, and Anna

Three movies this week, one of which maaaaaaybe shouldn't count for a couple of reasons, but I'm going to count it anyway, because it's good enough to deserve counting.

How to Steal a Million
William Wyler, 1966

Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of an art forger (Hugh Griffith). After her father unknowingly gives the Paris art museum permission to have a fake statue tested, Nicole must find a way to steal it back before the forgery is revealed. She turns to a handsome burglar (Peter O’Toole) for help, but he has an ulterior motive (here’s a hint: it involves kissing. A lot. A lot. Also, it involves a lot of kissing).

How to Steal a Million is a fluffy, pleasant comedy that pretty much coasts by on the charisma of its stars, but is definitely a minor entry in the filmographies of everyone involved. It’s fun enough to watch, but it never really comes to life, just moving everything forward in a perfunctory manner. I’m tempted to use the word lazy.

It’s also too long by a considerable amount – it’s over two hours, when it would probably feel better at 90 minutes. Fortunately, the best material comes late in the game, so by the time that you start to get bored or restless, everything finally starts to kick into gear so it winds up feeling less bloated than it is.

The actors pretty much do their thing in a basic fashion and move on, with the exception of Audrey Hepburn, who does her thing with spectacular gusto. People watch her movies so they can see her fall in love – and she does that here in spades. With her sudden glassy-eyed, dreamy, far-away look and near paralysis at key moments, I was starting to wonder if Peter O’Toole had smeared his lips with some kind of tranquilizer. I was kind of laughing at her, not with her – but hey, I was laughing, so they must have been doing something right.

6.5/10

The Magus
Guy Green, 1968

Nicholas Urfe (Michael Caine), fearful that the relationship with his girlfriend, Anne (Anna Karina), is becoming too serious, takes a job as a teacher on a small Greek island to escape. There he meets Maurice Conchis (Anthony Quinn), a supposedly dead Nazi collaborator, and the ghost of his lost love, Lily (Candice Bergen). Or maybe he meets Dr. Lambros (Anthony Quinn), and his schizophrenic patient, Julie (Candice Bergen). Then again, maybe he meets Maurice Conchis (Anthony Quinn), an avant-garde movie director, and his lead actress, Julie (Candice Bergen). Whoever they may be, they’ve been waiting for Nicholas’s arrival for a long time, so that he can play a key role in a bizarre game that he can never hope to understand.

The Magus is an infamously terrible movie, panned by critics at the time and panned by critics today. I rented it in the hope that, given the intriguing premise, strong cast, and ridiculous level of vitriol leveled at it, I might uncover some sort of misunderstood masterpiece. Sadly, this was not the case, although it’s far from the debacle that it is typically identified as. In fact, other than the insufferably smug ending, I quite liked it.

Part of the problem, critically speaking, is that it is based on a long (700+ pages), complex, and well-regarded book. A two hour movie really has no hope of satisfying fans of such a thing. The movie does feel a bit disjointed and even shallow at times, as if we’re skimming and skipping over something deeper – but from my perspective, not having read the book, that felt more enticing than frustrating. Still, that disjointedness does keep it from being as effective as it could be, and is the primary reason why something like the conceptually much simpler The Game, which shares much of the premise of this movie, has a much stronger emotional core.

Anthony Quinn is the driving force that holds this movie together, and he is front and center in the most effective segment, an extended flashback to the Nazi occupation. Michael Caine was perhaps not the best choice for his character, as he is far too cool and stoic to display the kind of psychological breakdown the role required. Anna Karina is perhaps miscast as well, seemingly far too vibrant and likeable for such a world-weary character. Still, her presence is always welcome. Candice Bergen is really just weird throughout the movie, but that actually works to its advantage. That’s a 50% success rate for the principal cast, with caveats on both sides – which well sums up the movie as a whole. Even when it’s a failure, though, it’s an interesting one, so I can’t really complain.

7/10

Anna
Pierre Koralnik, 1967

Anna (Anna Karina), an artist at an advertising agency, is accidentally photographed without her glasses in the background of a shoot. Serge (Jean-Claude Brialy), a photographer at the same agency, finds the picture and becomes obsessed with finding this woman, not realizing that she is the co-worker that he sees every day (because of the glasses, you see). Meanwhile, Anna daydreams a lot and sings about being lonely, I think. Then some weird stuff happens. . .

Before I get any farther, I need to point something out. Anna is not available in the English language. I got a copy that was most likely recorded off of French TV, although with a bit of digging, I understand that you can find it on youtube as well. Since I don’t speak French, I didn’t understand a word of it. That’s why I won’t be giving it a rating, and that’s why I’m kind of unclear on several plot points. Most of it was fairly easy to follow since, as you may have picked up from my plot summary, the basic story is pretty thin (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing). Somewhere around the ¾ mark, though, we start getting soldiers jumping on trampolines and Anna Karina in a spacesuit. With a cape.

Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing either; I just couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

By the way, did I mention this was a musical? It’s actually a rather strange example of the genre, about as far from the classical Gene Kelly type of production as you can get without switching to a whole other genre (not that that’s necessarily a . . . ah, who am I kidding. It’s a very good thing). Anna actually has a lot in common with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, in that many of the songs aren’t really songs, per se, but just music. They lack the repetition and structure that one tends to expect from a song (There are a few exceptions, though, including the fantastically catchy Rollergirl - which you can hear in the trailer I linked to above). This is somewhat surprising given that the music was all written by Serge Gainsbourg (who also costars), a man with extensive experience writing songs. Whether you call it music, or songs, or something else, though, the soundtrack to this movie is terrific.

The visual style is also very interesting. Koralnik seems intent on keeping things as grounded as possible, tying his actors into the physical world around them. The stars are frequently photographed from angles that obscure them with foreground objects – cars, columns, other people. A lot of the camera work also seems to be hand-held, with a lot of close-ups and continually shifting framing. Oddly enough, this is more true of the musical numbers than the rest of the movie. At times, it almost starts to look like Battlestar Galactica.

All in all, I loved this movie. I love the look, I love the songs, I love the leads, I love the vibe. There’s a good feeling to it, which is particularly appropriate for watching it late at night, when you’re just a little too tired. I’d kill for some subtitles, although I do worry that the words might turn out to be a little too pedestrian, and some of the magic will be lost.

No rating/10

Progress: 46 (Par +4)

Caprica: The Pilot: The Review

I’m a couple of weeks late in getting to it, but I finally watched the unrated extended pilot for Caprica, which is currently available on DVD in anticipation of the full series, which will air sometime next year. Having done so, I have to say that. . . well, it’s okay. Not really good, but not by any means a disaster. That’s the short version. Here’s the long, which will have the occasional spoiler:

Caprica is, of course, a prequel to the new Battlestar Galactica, which completed its run not long ago. I think that connection, though, is best ignored. There are names (Adama, Caprica), design elements (the missing corners on paper), and concepts (Artificial intelligence, Mono- vs. Poly-theism) in common between the two shows, but keeping Battlestar in mind while watching Caprica is, at the very least, distracting. I know that little Willy Adams eventually grows up to be Edward James Olmos, and that made it hard to think of him as an 11-year-old – which in turn prevented me from buying into his scenes entirely. I know that the Cylons that rebelled fifteen years later or so only seemed to have rudimentary intelligence and communication capabilities, so the fact that the prototype has a human-level mind seems to be a problem. These complaints aren’t really fair, though, because neither really has anything to do with what’s going on in the show itself. So I’ll try to put Battlestar out of my mind.

Even ignoring Battlestar Galactica, though, Caprica is still a mixed bag. First, the good – the adult cast is quite solid, particularly the two leads: Eric Stoltz is, as usual, fantastic, and while Esai Morales couldn’t quite match him, he still brought a kind of essential humanity to the role that added a lot to the show as a whole. Bear McCreary’s music helped to develop more of a mood than some of the other elements of the show really deserved. The production design and cinematography were very effective, with the simple shift between the greys and blues of Caprican society and the warmer colors of the Taurons. The story is built on some interesting and weighty ideas relating to the nature of consciousness and identity – I particularly liked virtual Tamara’s pain and horror as she started to figure out that she didn’t exist. All in all, there’s a lot to like here. Unfortunately. . . .

. . .there’s also plenty to dislike. As good as the adults were, the teenage actors nearly sunk the whole thing with their belief that shrill and dramatic are the same thing. This is particularly problematic because the show was heavily front-loaded with their scenes, which could cause viewers to check out prematurely. The effects were pretty hit and miss – little things like the electronic paper were pretty good, but big things were more problematic, with the train explosion looking particularly embarrassing. The prototype Cylon was about on par with those from Battlestar, which is to say, not all that good, but good enough not to be a distraction. And those weighty ideas I was so keen on? Nothing is actually done with any of them. They’re just laid out there, touched upon, and cast aside. Of course, this is just a pilot, and there may be a lot more thematic exploration of these things over the course of the series.

Speaking of which, that leads to the question that ultimately determines the effectiveness of any pilot – do I want to watch the series? The answer is yes, provisionally. There’s enough decent groundwork here to build a good program on, and pilots are typically much, much worse than the series that follow (the only two exceptions that come to mind are Firefly and Battlestar). That’s the beauty of shooting a pilot - you get the chance to step back and reconceive problematic elements before starting up the series proper. With that in mind, here are some changes that will keep me watching:

1. Ditch the teenagers. Or at least minimize them. I’m sure Zoe will stick around, considering that she is now the first Cylon, but her friend could be booted, especially if my next suggestion is heeded:

2. Downplay the religious strife. As much as I love Polly “Atia” Walker, I’m already bored with her school for monotheistic terrorists. I’m not suggesting they ignore religion completely – it’s a key component of any culture and adds depth to the world they’re building – but I’d be happier if it became more of a tertiary element.

3. Lighten up! I actually have pretty high hopes for this one, since Jane Espenson will be taking over as showrunner about halfway through the season. She was responsible for Intervention, which is by far the funniest episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as an amusing episode or two of Firefly and Angel. A lot of people complain about Battlestar Galactica being completely joyless, but I think it had a decent undercurrent of humor that was missing from Caprica. Yes, I understand that it’s a story about two guys whose families just got blown up, so things will necessarily be a little somber. But it will get old without a little bit of contrast. I don’t need actual comedy routines, just a few lighter touches, like the funny, halting walk that Joseph Adama had during his first visit to the virtual world. More of that, please.

4. On a similar note, MORE ROBOT BUTLER!!!!

5. Less Willy Adama. I know I said it’s not fair to be distracted by his future Edward James Olmos-ness, but I can’t help it.

As I indicated above, I only really expect to see change number 3, but who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky. At any rate, I’ll leave you with a couple of random comments/observations:

--Zoe, from some angles, looks a lot like Zooey Deschanel. She also kind of sounds like her. Given her name, I was consistently amused by this.

--I do like the fact that the first Cylon is a rebellious teenage girl, since they revealed on Battlestar Galactica that the Cylon genocide against humanity was caused by what amounts to a petulant child with severe mommy and daddy issues. See? It does all tie together.

--Several early scenes in the pilot featured a decent amount of nudity and sexual content, which will certainly be cut from the Sci-Fi Channel (oops, I mean Syfy) airing. I think it’s very interesting that they went ahead and shot this footage anyway, especially since it wasn’t just random cutaways – there were shots that included both bare breasts and principal cast members. This suggests to me that we’re reaching the tipping point where producers are beginning to view the DVD release as the primary home of a program, with the actual television airing serving as a sort of promotional necessity. This is a very good thing.

104 in 2009 Week 20: Pierrot Le Fou

Only one this week, but I'm still ahead of the game overall. Also, this week marks a milestone for me - Pierrot Le Fou was the 1800th movie that I've seen. Or at least, the 1800th movie entered into my spreadsheet, which means very nearly the same thing. And fortunately, it turned out to be a pretty good movie on top of that. Huzzahs all around.

Pierrot Le Fou
Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

Ferdinand (Jean Paul Belmondo), unhappily married to a rich Italian woman, runs away one night with Marianne (Anna Karina), the babysitter, who is also an old flame of his. They travel across the French countryside, dreaming of making it to Italy and trying to figure out if they’re really in love, all the while trying to elude a troupe of gun runners who want to reclaim a suitcase full of money that Marianne stole from them.

Pierrot Le Fou reunites Godard with two of the three stars from A Woman is a Woman, but it can’t quite match the sheer effervescence of that film. I suppose it really isn’t meant to, because despite sharing the same exhilaratingly unencumbered structure, occasional musical number, and periods of absurdism, Pierrot is also filled to the brim with images of death and bouts of despair. It’s arguably a much richer work, with themes that center around the clash between intellect and emotion, although critical consensus holds that it’s really just a movie about itself. I can’t really get behind that consensus, myself, as the dichotomy between Ferdinand’s intellect and Marianne’s chaotic emotional life is too stark not to serve a deliberate purpose. Despite this, I do still rate it a bit below A Woman is a Woman, because it just isn't quite as fun.

I have to wonder if David Lynch was a fan of this movie. The dialogue, which frequently built tension through repetitive banality, was very reminiscent of his works, as was the parade of grotesquerie in the ancillary characters, which particularly called to mind Wild at Heart or the first half of Mulholland Drive. On the other hand, at no point has Lynch ever embraced the freewheeling lightness of Godard, as even an improvisational work like Inland Empire has an overwhelming feeling of weight and structure.

As before, Belmondo and Karina are fantastic. They have an instant chemistry that does wonders for keeping the movie grounded when it threatens to fall apart. In particular, they’re both well suited for Godard’s tendency to break the fourth wall – Belmondo’s casual, almost bored delivery lends emotional weight to the times when he speaks to the audience, and once glance into the camera from Anna Karina could render paragraphs of dialogue redundant. As in A Woman is a Woman, Karina’s character is a bit too crazy to really be sympathetic, and this time there’s an added level of almost sociopathic manipulation. Free-spirit types are often difficult to pull off in movies for this very reason – it’s difficult to really convey the sense of joy and life that they exude, so you wind up wondering why the protagonist would put up with all of the crap that someone like Marianne throws his way. With Anna Karina playing the role, though, all it takes is one look into her eyes and it all makes sense. Ahem. I’ll cut myself off here, to avoid turning this review into one big gushing love letter to Ms. Karina, but the point I’m trying to make is that, while Pierrot Le Fou is very typically Godard, and definitely representative of his vision, it also belongs just as much to the actors, without whom it could never have succeeded.

8.5/10

Progress: 43 (Par +3)

104 in 2009 Week 19: Perversion Story, Seduced and Abandoned, and Le Doulos

I'm a little late this week on account of traveling, but to make up for it, please enjoy my new feature, whereby I include a paragraph that summarizes the plot for each movie. I wish there was a word for such a paragraph. . . I guess I'll have to create one. I'm going to call it a SYNOPSIS. That's my word, I made it up right now. Anyone who wants to use it has to pay me a dollar.

Una Sull’altra (One On Top of the Other, AKA Perversion Story)
Lucio Fulci, 1969

Dr. George Dumurrier (Jean Sorel), vacationing with his mistress, is shocked to hear that his ailing wife, Susan (Marisa Mell) has died of a medication mis-dose. He’s even more surprised to learn that Susan, who despised him, had recently taken out a million dollar life insurance policy on herself, in his name. He soon finds himself accused of Susan’s murder, and his only hope lies in uncovering the secret behind Monica Weston (also Marissa Mell), a stripper who appears to be Susan’s exact double.

An early giallo from a director better known for rather extreme gore-filled productions, Perversion Story is surprisingly restrained. In fact, other than a couple of shootings near the end, there really isn’t any onscreen violence, which sets it well apart from other gialli. To be honest, I would be hesitant to call it a giallo – while it does feature a wrongly accused protagonist and a certain element of psychosexual confusion, it also lacks nearly all of the formal elements of the subgenre.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter what label you put on the movie, because ultimately Perversion Story is what it is, and what it is is a clumsy but affable production that works far better than it has any right to for a little more than an hour, due largely to a compelling central mystery and Fulci’s crude but stylish camerawork. One very tense sequence in particular – a “seduction” at a photo shoot – stands out as one of Fulci’s best, which is surprising in that it is also very atypical. Fulci tended to shy away from sex and nudity in most of his later films, especially his more well-known works.

Sadly, about 2/3 of the way into the film, the villain sits down with Dr. Dumurrier and explains the whole mystery to him. The decision to do so is reasonably justifiable, from a character standpoint, but it’s kind of a bummer for the audience. Things never really recover after that, and the movie (unbelievably) ends with a reporter relating the climax of the story to us after the fact! That sort of thing is usually pretty unforgivable for me, but the first part of the movie really was impressive, so I’ll stick with a mildly positive rating.

6/10

Sedotta e abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned)
Pietro Germi, 1964

Peppino Califano (Aldo Puglisi) is engaged to Matilde Ascalone, but that doesn’t stop him from seducing and impregnating her fifteen-year-old sister (Stefania Sandrelli). Once he learns of this betrayal, Don Vincenzo Ascalone (Saro Urzi) engages in an increasingly bizarre struggle to preserve and redeem his family’s honor at any cost – especially if that cost is Peppino’s honor.

I went into Seduced and Abandoned hoping for something on par with Germi’s earlier Divorce, Italian Style, which may have been a mistake. Seduced and Abandoned is not a bad film in its own right, but it suffers terribly in comparison, reusing several thematic and plot elements, not to mention Stefania Sandrelli as the young woman who incites all of the excitement in both films. Taken on it’s own, this is an enjoyable and funny film held together by Urzi’s wonderful comic performance, but it also overstays its welcome by at least twenty minutes and kind of falls apart plot-wise in the home stretch.

6.5/10

Le Doulos (The Finger Man)
Jean-Pierre Melville, 1962

Maurice Faugel (Serge Reggiani), a petty thief newly released from prison, attempts to pull off a safecracking job which goes awry. Someone ratted him out to the police, and murdered his girlfriend for good measure. The likeliest candidate is his friend Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo), and Maurice sets out to make him pay. Meanwhile, Silien is inexplicably unfolding a plot to clear Maurice’s name.

While it doesn’t reach the heights of Melville’s Le Samourai, Le Doulos is still a very engaging new wave noir. It’s slow-paced almost to the point of frustration, just like Le Samourai, but it never tips over the line despite several lengthy stretches with little or no dialogue, as well as Melville’s preference for very long takes. Perhaps deliberate is a better word than slow-paced. . . either way, it does work. The cast is quite good as well – Reggiani has an appealing hang-dog look about him that suits the character, and Jean-Paul Belmondo elicits a lot of sympathy just by being Belmondo, despite the fact that he is the titular informer (or is he? Even after the movie, there’s enough wiggle-room for debate).

Unfortunately, the ending loses a lot of steam (a common theme for this week), as Belmondo has a lengthy illustrated monologue that grinds the film to a halt. There’s a rather nice concluding sequence that follows, but by that time it feels like the movie has ended and we’re starting up another one.

7.5/10

Progress: 42 (Par +4)

104 in 2009 Week 18: In America and Holiday

Two more this week, both good but not great. Still better than last week, though.

In America
Jim Sheridan, 2003

On paper, this sounds like a sappy, schmaltzy mess. An Irish immigrant family sneaks into New York so the father can pursue his dream of acting and so that they can try to get over the loss of one of their children to a tumble-induced tumor. It’s told from the perspective of a precocious twelve-year-old girl who records everything around her on video. There’s a sequence in which a fourth, newborn child may or may not die right out of the womb. Writing all of this makes me want to hate the movie.

Amazingly, though, Jim Sheridan shows a sure hand throughout, and manages to repeatedly turn schmaltz into emotion. He’s helped immensely by the children portraying the two young girls, who do spectacular work and manage to be cute without being ‘cutesy,’ and an adult cast filled with semi-familiar but very adept character actors.

8/10

Holiday
George Cukor, 1938

For a romantic comedy, Holiday sure does traffic in human misery. In fact, I’m tempted to call it a drama that happens to have some jokes in it. I don’t intend this as a slight – it’s actually quite good, filled with strong characters and better than average acting for the time. But it is telling that the most interesting and compelling character was Lew Ayres’ Ned, who starts out looking like a spoiled rich kid, but turns out to be defined by the tragic pairing of astuteness and weakness, and spends every day in an alcoholic stupor because he’s given up on everything else in the world. Even Katharine Hepburn’s trademark charming mania winds up turning into pitiful desperation. Very compelling stuff, and atypical for the era and the genre. Unfortunately, the last third of the movie isn’t as carefully drawn as the rest – the dialogue gains an unfortunate tendency to turn into oration and the pace gets a bit sluggish– so I can’t recommend it as highly as I would have liked to.

7.5/10

Progress: 39 (Par + 3)