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10 Best Worlds for Animal-Starring Animated Movies
Reviews
Color Adjustment (1992)
A sobering tonic of cotton candy; one of Marlon Riggs's triumphs as a documentarian
Color Adjustment was far greater than I could have expected, and I looked forward to something incisive and in the editing dynamic (just from Black is Black Ain't). What is spectacular dare the juxtapositions and perspectives, in particular once it gets into the late 1960s material. But throughout, this is remarkable as a stellar collection of interviews with figures who were in the shows, the producers who were there at the time seeing how the evolution of Black representation in television was at a crawl (from Amos to Nat King Cole to Dihann Carroll to, sigh, Bill Cosby and so on).
I know it doesn't break ground stylistically as it's clips and talking heads, but that's never an issue here. On the contrary, Riggs understands practically intuitively the power and the magnetism of the whole Medium is the Message of images and how this technology shapes a public whether they realize it or not. Also, how little steps were made that mattered, even if it was one season (never heard of East Side West Side and now I have an indelible image of James Earl Jones I never had till now), and moreover how complicated things were with positive images at various times (ie King Cole and how he was so smooth and gentlemanly and yet so "acceptable" to white society- albeit not so much to those in the South who couldn't fathom a Black TV show host with white guests! I do declare!) And maybe we still have never quite caught up to the ruthless satire of Archie Bunker.
If nothing else, this makes me wish Ruby Dee narrated more documentaries. Good golly miss Molly she had a tremendous, attention-demanding voice. And this will be a surefire pick to show one or more of my Media classes in the future.
Blonde (2022)
"Daddy..." sigh
Ok. I don't think or believe that Andrew Dominik meant to make a hit piece, or even (intentionally) a piece of exploitation. My sense in looking at this (months after it's inital release and critical hoopla and notoriety) is that Dominik aimed (via that Oates book) to do a brutal but deeply emotional critique of how male domination over the industry at this time ruthlessly made MM into the very symbol pop culture has fed the public for many decades since. And to be fair, to make a proper critique you got to show things like the trauma... and the trauma... and the capital T TRAUMA!
But the road to good intentions can get mired in crap when the artistic aims are to make SYMBOLS and SORROW and UNBORN BABIES and STARS AND *S***M the priority - style not so much over but like physically assaulting the substance that's there, to put it in a blunt term - into a miasma of (occasionally) good cinematography and more often towering, full-of-itself grandeur.
At the center is Ana de Armas trying her darndest to be true to what is asked of her (poor accent and all), not to mention legit excellent turns from Bobby Cannavale (terribly on the nose anger-POV shots and all) and Adrien Brody (he has maybe the rare involving scene with MM talking pre marriage about his play); but they're all let down by a filmmaker who thought Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me was too elusive.
And don't tell me Dominik didn't think of Lynch with his choice of composer (Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, who find a few decent notes) and the discount/dimestore Angelo Badalamenti score they're made to do, especially in the final reel (RIP). Go read "My Story" by Monroe instead. Or just watch Don't Bother to Knock, the high point as a screen actor. Or maybe the way to do this should be closer to My Week with Marilyn which, while not great, got to some essential truths by taking just a sliver of time in her life and career.
Love Affair (1939)
Hard not to fall in love with Irene Dunne in this very good romance (Boyer, too)
This is Lovely with a capital L. It is a Romance that has probably bonded so many daughters and mothers and grandmothers and a niece or aunt or too (and maybe a Dad got in there to be enamored at some point), and it fills my crusty loaf of bread of a heart with a tenderness from its sensitivity and open spirit. I thought I would have to resist seeing Charles Boyer in Gaslight mode and that went away pretth quickly (he's particularly good in that emotional climax in the meeting at the end, but he rises to meet Irene Dunne in her Open-Hearted turn as Terry).
Some parts may be a bit maudlin, rather with those orphans and the whole "he can't see me like this" stuff, but I can't make much of a fuss when Leo McCarey puts genuine pathos into his direction and allows or takes the actors to where they can find a truth in the drama. Point is, a good goal in life is for you to find someone who looks at you the way Michel or Terry does. And of course I should've watched this around Christmas despite it only taking place in that time for the last 25 minutes. And Maria Ouspenskaya (who for a time was acting alongside/for Stanislavski of all the people) is perfect in every second she's on screen.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)
The Darkness and Bravery of a Soul
Really two documentaries in one, though they're inextricably linked not simply because of the person at the center but because of Nan Goldin's life, how open she made herself (through visual distortions but sometimes just with the total, brutal truth in photography) and how dedicated she was and is, as the person to be a major driving force in the fight against the Sackler's, in particular with their All the Money in the World style stamp on museums and places. But above all, it's a great film (documentary or otherwise) about community - the ones that Goldin was in as a young artist, as an art organizer in 1989 with the AUDS exhibit, and then in the past several years against the Sacklers.
This is a film that would have been on its own a terrific story of this group staging these protests (taking as direct influence the Act Up protests of the height of the AIDS crisis); what takes it into feeling so important and unique is how Poitras weaves Goldin's recent times, and how harrowing and terrifying it becomes for people in the group (spoiler, the Sackler's were spying on Goldin and others), with her story as told through the thousands of photographs she took over the years. Just the use of the sound of that slide projector with those clanks immerses you into her memories and the rich, daring, wonderful and sometimes very tragic tales she had of those she knew (not least of which John Waters collaborator Cookie Mueller).
It's an equally inspiring and devastating portrait of a life - among other lives - where there was almost no other way to go except to create and find a voice through artistic expression. It doesn't take long for one to be taken with her storytelling, not just her story, and because Poitras is careful with using music and needle drops, like they are there but used to emphasize a particular time or place like "Sunday Morning" over footage of Provincetown in the 70s, you have an intimacy, like you are with her in the room seeing these slides and seeing an entire world that is now more celebrated of course (what Hipster or borderline Hipster hasn't said "damn I wish I could've lived in New York in the 70s and early 80s), but then it was such that, as Goldin says, they were seen as the outsiders, but they saw the Normies of the world as those outside of their world.
What's also so great is how the storyline of the Sackler/Opioid protests and that entire campaign - which turned out to be a mixed success, sadly Purdue and the Sacklers got a way with a lot and it's frustrating to see that (it doesn't make the film frustrating, it actually is good that nothing is sugar-coated and, ultimately, the outcome of the names being taken off like the Met and the Louvre is as good as they might very have expected - does dovetail into how Goldin found her voice as an activist, past just with her artistic/erotic photography, into that exhibition that caused a mountain of controversy. You almost may take for granted how skillfully and seamlessly Poitras brings the strands of history and governmental and business-related chicanery, and despite the several important supporting characters, like the journalist and the one woman who are central to the Sackler case, Goldin never gets lost as the subject.
This is sensational documentary filmmaking because of how it draws us in thematically, politically, and personally and emotionally. This is a story of a hero who wasn't in her early years always but bared witness always. And I'm sure Goldin would bristle at anyone calling her that, but she went through a lot of pain and struggle (and addiction and isolation), and it cant help but feel *monumental as a saga of what is possible in America (against what many in the Powers that Be would want to see or know in art, culture or from victims of addiction). I knew very little about her going in and I suspect many will become absorbed as I was; moreover, you may find yourself affected by the heart-break that these families shown on camera confronting the Sacklers. Or, if not that, the catharsis that Goldin comes to regarding her sister and her parents.
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Be careful with that Weenie King!
Sublimely and consistently amusing and occasionally hilarious comedy about divorce, the super rich (JD Hackensacker, one of the great names in movies), money and all that glitters, and the problems that might (or decidedly mighg not) come from taking 700 bucks from a hard of hearing Weenie King (Robert Dudley in one of those eccentrics the Coens transplanted so brilliantly into their own milieu).
And Sturges casts his leads well, and he has to because MaCrea and Colbert need to convey melancholy while also delivering his machine-gun patter (I really like that subtle set up and payoff involving her needing his help taking off the dress). It has a few parts that are more worth smiles than laughter - Toto is a funny French cartoon but he wears on you a little as a one-note walking nose with a hat - and during that big uproarious Ale and Quail Club set piece on the train (the reactions are great, but the black Porter is very 1942).
But I love Rudy Valee ad the aforementioned Hacksnsacker, Mary Astor kind of steals the show from the leads in the final twenty minutes, and it has such a terrific finale I want to tell you all to watch it simply for that. It's not an all time classic, but who cares? Palm Beach Story is delightful and zany and ultimately sweet and romantic, despite its own skeptical (if not cynical) worldview - that is to say, Sturges can't stop won't stop mocking Blue Blooded men and women, but he believes enough in feelings, even when they're from befuddled and overwhelmed Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert.
The Movie Orgy (1968)
Sock it to Me! (As Nixon would say)
I really gotta see College Confidential now, don't I?
10 minutes into this and I have to give if 5 stars by default. Not simply because I know this is a tremendous epic effort of a singular, incisive American pop-culture satirical force, but because this is basically the movie equivalent of looking around my father-in-law's workroom. And... his workroom is friggin' fab!
So, I know (thanks to an intro from a friendly rep from AGFA before the screening that Joe Dante has said that he just sees this as a bunch of "stuff;" but editing and flow matters, pacing matters, and as an editor, taking himself as well as a college audience raised on some/much of this, Dante knew what he was doing here - at least to get a laugh whenever possible.
Examples: like when he has the clip of the kids coming in to the clubhouse or whatever to watch something and then it cuts to a nudie movie with two ladies taking off their clothes by the rocks. Or the kid in the one Western show saying "and rmthis here dog" and it cuts right to a close-up of Lassie in another show. Or in a Bible program and the line "as the hour of the lord drew near" and it it cuts to a killer Gorilla movie. There's a plethora of examples like that.
It's Free Association cutting, but often it isnt; it's madness and there's a method, as sometimes Dante and Davison let a set piece play out longer than you expect because, hey, who doesnt want to see Elisha Cook Jr in College Confidential. Other times, the Movie Orgy is what it may be most easily pegged as: flipping through channels - at a time when kids or anyone couldn't do that so easily. It works like the brain does to make connections between references... only this has 10,000 of them. And sometimes, well, what else are you going to cut to when Jimminy Cricket is in a Pinocchio commercial than... Elsa Martinelli?! Sure! And the Abbot and Costello scene is legit a laugh Riot.
It's a crazy, uproariously funny, surreal, abstract, proto-Keyboard-Cat cameoing cornucopia-smorgasbord of mid 20th century Escapism, advertising, propaganda (both nuclear and political purposes, from cops to the first televangelists to of course why giving bonds to Vietnam is important, you listen to Ann Margaret now) and shtick. When you are watching things on TV, you almost don't know how maddening as well as entertaining (and, indeed, crap) it all is until its presented as such. Or maybe we always knew.
I understand all the better how the Boomers, who were glued to TVs, fed ads for cigarettes, peanut butter and fear, and oh right those nice youngsters the Beatles (or that one cringe bit with Elvis and the hound dog), got attitudes about certain parts of life, the opposite sex, and living they may not have been conscious of (how could they be). It's a Boob Tube but a Dream Machine and Magic Store. And it would be the most staggering coincidence to me that the makers of The Atomic Cafe didn't seen it at some point. The whole thing feels like a miracle. And a cacophony. It's what Advertisers and Schlockmeisters and Hacks and the Government have wanted us to see from the start.
Unique. Look out for giant grasshoppers and Nixon reading the Checkers speech!
Speedy (1928)
The Great Speed-ino
I know deep down Speedy isn't as phenomenal as Safety Last (what is though), but there's plenty to recommend about it. For one, the Babe Ruth driving/speeding/making-a-case-for-rearview-mirrors through traffic is enough for anyone (certainly a died in thr wool Yankee fan like me) by itself. While I don't think this is entirely the biggest-laugh-per-gag Harold Lloyd movie, and the plot is standard, it has so many ingenious touches and moments; like the detectives who go into the back of Speedy's cab and the ongoing tickets from the cop chasing him (of course the detectives are nowhere to be found once Speedy stops, it's a different passenger in the back he didn't know was there), or a lot of little moments with the dog.
The two stand-out set pieces are (1) Lloyd and Jane at Coney Island (Ann Christy), which is more charming, heartfelt and even poignant than funny, and that adds an extra dimension got the pathos at the end (the moment they run out of money and Lloyd turns his hat over and gets change unwittingly was probably repeated to an extent of all places in Umberto D decades later), and it's just a joy to see all of those locations and rides and the bit where the night sky is lit up with all those special lights; and (2) the big Old Man brawl in the street with dozens of extras (one even has a peg leg!)
And I have to ultimately hand it to Lloyd and his collaborators that even after that brawl they didn't stop and wanted to live up to the title: the final chase sequence as Speedy goes after the criminals in the old trolly car is stupendous (oh that poor woman better hold on to her hat). It's also too long to explain, but I couldn't stop laughing with the "Traffic Cop" and it is a moment of pure comic timing that you can imitate but can't duplicate. Oh, and someone else pointed this out and I don't know how I missed it: the old Civil War soldiers are from the Union side - not what you'd see in too many movies in this era (no romanticizing the Dixies here).
I've got to see this someday with a full New York City crowd, that'll be extra special -and next year it enters the public domain so who knows? For now, the Criterion restoration is fab as is with a rollicking Carl Davis score.
Kes (1969)
Ken Loach's powerful, sobering story of freedom and repression
Well, ain't that the most pig burly bastard (to use a word Billy would say) of a Football coach I've seen in a film, first of all. Maybe one of the truest examples of "those who can't do - teach" as a true blue bully who exerts any limited power he has over those younger and smaller than him (when in spirit hes smallest of all).
The fact is, of course, Billy Casper (a remarkable, raw performance from Bradleh) has to endure the biggest bullies; at home (his dad Jud); his completely average and antagonistic teachers and headmaster; to an extent his Mum, though her ire is more at her awful husband; and he has no friends, as far as we can tell (and to be fair to them, they also are forced, like in a prison, to withstand the literal blows of a cane from a gruff mediocrity). It's never explained exactly, like in exposition, why Billy decides to take on taking care of a Falcon, to the point where he buys a book to understand how to properly train and care for them (it doesn't look like the kind of working-class home that has many books, if any).
Ken Loach doesn't have to: he simply shows us a boy looking at birds in flight and anyone with a few brain cells to rub together can tell this is maybe what he'd like for himself (that's my take anyway, you may have another one). Loach also understands that there's real power in simply showing us people who are from the places they live in, local school kids - they can act quite well because the scenarios they're in, like a kid being berated and belittled in a class, or seeing a fight break out in the schoolyard, are or should be natural for them to react to. Loach's brilliance is to not give anything the performers on screen can't handle dramatically, and yet that seeming simplicity makes the atmosphere gritty but not to where it's pushed. It's just... there.
Probably the best scene in the film, when I realized this is quite a special little film with a wise sense of how people just want to be (forgive such a pretentious word) enlightened, is when it comes out in class from one of the kids that Billy's been taking care of a bird. He's asked about it by the teacher, and at first one expects the same ridicule and scorn that's come around him up till now. But his teacher (a different bloke than we've seen, certainly not the headmaster or the coach) is genuinely interested, even down to certain words associated with taking care of the Falcon like Jessie's (writing the name up on the board itself seems like a radical act in this school). The teacher and the students, very soon, become enthralled with the details that Billy has about taking care of it, and Loach makes sure to show us the kids listening. For the first time in the film, and probably for the first time in a while for most of the kids (teacher, too), they're actually connecting with someone organically.
We can figure there will be some kind of tragedy that will come, and it does, since the tone of the film doesn't portend this will end in wine and roses. What happens in the last ten minutes of the film I won't tell you in depth in case you haven't seen it, but it is devastating to watch, mostly because of how Loach lays bare what is so fundamentally different between this boy and his parents. One fundamentally cares about the lives of others, and the others just don't (the mom might berate the dad for his actions, but ultimately she'll hit the kid because, well, that's what they do in this society). The film ends on a sad note, and I'm sure an argument can be made that Kes ends in a depressing manner, like there's no hope and the boy has to just get on with life like we all do.
I'd still prefer to think that experiences, even the ones that reveal the ugliness in human beings, have something in them that someone (like Billy, some of us who aren't burly bastards or degenerate gamblers) can realize "Hey, I could do this, it's in me to care." Maybe it would have hit me even harder when I was younger, or, conversely, not as much (I did cry a lot as this came to a close). Having lived long as I have, I've come to realize a film like Kes shows us an underdog, yet underdogs have a way of being resilient - and freedom can't be wiped out completely by some asshole dad. This is a powerful film about one's decency and spirit, and it's disheartening and yet in its peculiar way inspiring.
(PS: turn on the subtitles. Yes, even for some of you in the UK)
Lick the Star (1998)
Sofia Coppola telling the world what she's concerned about in 13 minutes. Not bad!
In brief... some critics had issues with The Bling Ring, like that was Sofia Coppola going in a more shallow stylistically/character-based way about that material. If anything, she may have just been going back to her roots that were already on display in Lick the Star. When a Clique is formed, you better watch out, boys and girls! In this case, there's a "plot" that these girls get from, of all things, Flowers in the Attic (who hasn't), and they're going to poison a boy (or boys) at school. Because... Kill the Rats or some metaphor for Destruction due to privileged boredom.
This is all delivered in a very flat and affected style by these young performers. It's not something I find all that satisfying on a character level, because Coppola is cutting so quickly from one girl to the next that there's no time to develop anyone. It's like a lot of cut-out sketches of teenage girl ennui, and maybe she thought if things were light in the script direction and editing could take center stage to keep things moving along (and god I wish there was more time with Bogdanovich for the principal - guess she got a favor). And there's a slow-motion shot of the girl Chloe as she walks into school that's cool.
Ultimately though, this attention to how rotten a group gets as soon as they congregate and conspire (and then fall on their proverbial faces) is not that far removed from Bling Ring (or to an extent Virgin Suicides). On one hand Coppola would get far richer performances with a more assured grasp of tone and emotion tthere. On the other, as a short burst of inspired teenage s***head shenanigans shot in 16mm black and white as a quasi Student Effort with the backing of Father Francis... not bad.
The Invisible Maniac (1990)
Wait, what were the four elements again?
The Invisible Maniac (tight title): Very dumb and vulgar, kind of horny (in that Skinamax sense), very booby, some self-conscious violence and a couple of nifty stunts; the comic highlight really is the opening where the scientist teacher gives hus presentation ("I came all the way from Belgium for this?") and then his subsequent attack is funny too. There's a lot of things in this movie that are juvenile, crass and crude, but one can tell this was also shot for pocket change - Adam Rifkin, aka Rif Coogan, was like 22/23 when he shot it - and the time they had access to a high school, so there's charm in its amateurish acting and hijinks/mayhem. If it had any higher budget or more resources or a barely more legitimate cast, it'd be reprehensible; as it stands, it's cheeky and tasteless and a gas.
Kind of interesting this was Noel Peters's only performance; I have a suspicion that teacher really wanted to be the Joker (or at least audition). It's hard to say for sure, it's subtle, but...
Francesco, giullare di Dio (1950)
Rossellini and Fellini take us to Sunday school, only better because it's funny and harrowing and moving
Overall, and at first glance, Flowers of St Francis may not seem as special or unique as the "trilogy" of post-war films from Rossellini (few have had as good a run as that trilogy though, Paisan alone), but taken on its own terms the humble aims of this production, with a series of episodes about St Francis and his slightly naive, motley bunch of friars and Brothers who get into various encounters and adventures and mishaps, is actually what makes it interesting.
Rossellini is not trying to create anything else than what it is, which is a series of parables, some with a moral (if you go taking off a pig's foot, no matter the good intent, face the consequences of its owner), and some less so but with something to do with Capital F Faith (I kind of missed the point of the segment with the Sisters on a first watch). It's like he and Fellini want to give the audience a feeling like what it would be to spend a month at Sunday school, only it's far from boring. After all, Ginepro gets into enough mishaps - including almost getting himself killed by a bunch of locals who confuse Ginepro with a killer, and then that encounter with the big hairy dude is surprisingly funny - to make even the most cynical and hard-edged atheist to sit up and engage with the text on screen.
And, most notably, the scene with the Leper, who appears at night to Francis and against any expectations is confronted by the Monk with the love and care we can safely assume he hasn't had (or not in a long time), is as moving as anything he or any Italian filmmaker has directed or will ever direct. It's told with barely any dialog, it was the only thing I could remember from when Scorsese talked about the film in My Voyage to Italy, and it brought me to tears almost immediately. To go up to the one who has become the Ultimate Outcast, the one who has to live completely on their own, and say with a physical gesture "Hey, you matter, you're somebody, you are loved, it's ok," is profound and speaks to what is meaningful about Christianity or any religion at its purest.
Maybe not a film you'll think you're in the mood for, and it takes some time to get going. But Flowers of St Francis is memorable: a great minor film or a light-major work, if that makes any sense. 8.5/10.
Skidoo (1968)
"It's a bit beautiful blob of nothing"
Skidoo is one of the ultimate case studies in a movie being both watchable and insufferable at the same time. It's the kind of turgid comedy that is trying so hard to be funny that it forgets that playing it straight would have worked far better.
It absolutely *is* a complete oddity, featuring stars like Mickey Rooney and Frankie Avalon among many others, here largely because of the prestige of the producer/director behind some classic films but unable to comprehend that he could be taking a massive dump on millions of dollars of a budget. It's got a plot, I suppose, and it putters from one scene to the next like an old jalopy that you can see the filmmakers pouring water in to keep it sputtering up the hill. And in the last twenty minutes it feels like it could be dissolving like acid burning through a space ship ala Alien.
At one key set piece moment, Jackie Gleason in jail is given LSD and hallucinates tommy guns firing all over the place and hackneyed audio effects come rolling in like a liquid virus, and of course he sees all the wavy figures of his enemies and his daughter and God (played by groucho Marx, duh). It's a square's idea of "hip" filmmaking. And Gleason by the way is a primary example of what's amiss here; he can be broad and funny, but be can also be genuinely intense, see The Hustler. Here, he leans more into Ralph Kramden than what should be an intimidating gangster and it's weird to see him floundering.
The scenes with any of the Hippies, when they're grooving in a van or in a house or that one guy with the s***y wig remind me why Easy Rider had to happen. But it is the only non Batman film to feature Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshen and Burgess Meredith so... sure. Only Austin Pendleton (making his debut) seems to understand what the tone should be, and even he is saddled with crap dialog - by the future writer of Brewster McCloud no less (apparently Altman threw much of that script out and I understand why).
It must be noted last but not least that Groucho was 78 years old by this time and was forced to wear his grease-paint mustache and dyed black hair. Somehow he still manages to have some integrity... until at one point undresses a young woman old enough to be his granddaughter. Yikes. Shame Preminger lost his mind as a director here, not to mention it looks cheap, bright-lit like shot for TV despite being widescreen film; but it is still one of the most fascinating boondoggles of all time. You can't believe it's unfolding as it is.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)
What a vision of grief, learning, and being a good person (made of wood)
In case you were wondering what was missing from an adaptation of Pinocchio: 1) more Fascist commentary (not to mention Tom Kenny voicing Mussollini); 2) Frankenstein allusions (or sorry did I say allusions I mean he's clearly so in love with ol' Frank that the imagery is just there in spades); 3) a showstopper Ewan McGregor musical number that hilariously keeps getting interrupted until the ending (you'll hear it at the Oscar's live I bet); 4) the word 'Burden' made existential and harrowing for a child of wood; and 5) and an even more gnarly designed sea beast. It also made me laugh and cry and lay back in awe in my theater - feel lucky if you get a chance to go see theatrical and don't pass it up if you can - at one of the great stop motion animations of my lifetime.
I'm sure there are little complaints or nitpicks I can have - ie as strong and believable and emotional an actor Gregory Mann is for the regular scenes, he's slightly one note as a singer for me. But they mostly pale in this giant work of a vision that is collaborative (Jim Henson productions Co produced and I'd love to know if any of this was puppeteers not just with the stop-motion 24fps), yet del Toro's voice and mind and vision is very potent and daring; that of creating a story of Disobedience in the face of the Big Paternal thing of a Fascistic leaders and so called fathers, and a fairy tale in an Iconoclastic approach (meaning as he said at a q&a it doesn't tell you to obey your parents so you'll be a good boy, it says you should be and think for yourself).
GDT's Pinocchio is a wonderful hot chocolate that deals with parental grief; why Gepetto creates Pinocchio is a prologue that makes this a film as much about him as the title character and what he has to learn. It's loaded with what we've come to love from Del Toro and his collaborators (Desplat especially), and I hope it reaches families all over the world. How young can you watch it? Uh... how young did you see the Disney one? Go a year younger!
Obchod na korze (1965)
A powerful drama about what one values
What we value in life matters. Are we only going to matter things, objects like gold or money or jewels, things that we can't take with us? Or do we value a human life - yes, even if, God forbid, that man or woman, someone old in fact, is a Jew or Jewess - despite everything else going on? Decency and some kind of compassion are things that can't be taught or even held on to for long in a society that makes repression its top priority, it has to be there within somewhere.
For Tono Brtko (not Krtko), he's had little luck in his work as a Carpenter, and when he gets thrown a bone, a bum bone as it turns out, by his brother in law to be the "Aryan" to oversee the business of an old woman running a button shop, he is kind of crest-fallen... that is until he spends some time with her, and it's never spoken (doesn't have to and shouldn't be) he realizes this is a decent human being in front of him - something he absolutely is not seeing with his wife or brother in law or most others in the small Czech town he's lives in.
This is a film that builds to staggering dimensions because it's about how we can or should or should not act as people. What do you do in the face of blinding fascism and rot? It's reasonable to assume Tono is not fully on the Nazis side early on, but he doesn't say anything (mostly the performance is so striking because of what he holds inside and shows completely on his face, those eyes and glowering expression he has nailed down), but it becomes clear that what the society around him does to his kind is complicated.
He's been a lazy loner kind of man who hasn't done much for anyone- why should he do something to help protect or save this little old lady who doesn't even seem to have any idea whats going on (until, of course, she pieces something together and utters the word "Progrom" which she very much knows)? But it's baked into the drama of the film that deep down Tono is a good person, and the expectations of this society that's been torn into anti-semetic smithereens, with only one or two decent townspeople left, is staggering for him. You'd drink, too!
(Kroner's drunk acting by the by is so special because he goes for big but it only makes sense because we've seen when he's been more brooding/thinking drunk)
One could possibly criticize a few parts for being a bit cutesy, even down to the Krtko/Brtko thing, or that he has a kind of quirk giving himself foot baths. But The Shop on Main Street is shocking and it leaves a kind of psychic scar, especially once it goes into the second half and those final twenty-five minutes that are largely set inside the shop as The Day has arrived (on the Sabbath, no less, good heavens) and the drunken despair becomes a howl of pain and anguish. Of course we as the audience know what's coming for the Jews more than the people in the town... or maybe they do know and just don't want to say what this 'camp' business is.
Tono knows, and him being the hero, the continuously and hopelessly reluctant hero, makes the film extraordinary.
'Jûsangô taihisen' yori: Sono gosôsha o nerae (1960)
Underrated little noir with some moments of great direction
This is one violent (not in gore as it is brute force intensity), gritty film-noir (part of the "Nikkatsu Noir" set from Eclipse/Criterion) that has a helluva hook - a prison van carrying a couple of peeps is driving at night and two criminals knock a truck in its path to stop the van and then shoot to kill. In the aftermath, one of the guards, Tamon (Mizushima, strapping and no BS male star for Japan if I ever saw one, a bit like a Japanese Mitchum or Glenn Ford), takes it on himself to investigate who was behind it, and it leads him into an 'Agency' that pimps out young women among other nefarious crimes (and what does Tsunaka Ando, played by Shiraki, have to do with it all, or does she even know?)
What makes Seizuki's direction so palpable and involving is how he manages to find some stylistic flourishes while keeping this tight 79 minute story moving; there's this one superbly edited bit where Tamon is walking down a street and Seizuki cuts from him and his grim-determined profile and these four young ladies singing along to a pop song on a jukebox. You think he's recognized the young woman he's been after, he followed her and lost her in a previous scene (those darn graveyards will get ya), but it's not till just a slight beat after he goes by her that he does a double take and recognizes her (and her him) and as he lunges for her she gives a look and the other girls pounce on him. It's extremely clever direction placing us in suspense we aren't even sure will come about, and then it ends on a tussle that is more funny than thrilling (and that's good sometimes!)
Take Aim at the Police Van (one of my favorite titles of all time for the record) doesn't have the most original supporting characters, mostly low life thugs and pissants who may only best Tamon because they're a step ahead of him, and even Shiraki is mostly there to get tense when questioned and then fold pretty quickly thereafter. But the mystery is drawn out without any extra fat on the spine, when characters (mostly Tamon but eventually some others in his orbit) are in danger and are either trapped or fending for their lives it feels like anything can happen, and Seizuki understands widescreen can be used formidably for creating spaces and tension and also for an impactful, once or twice nearly iconic close up (like the sunglasses when we get to see them on the man).
Maybe it is "minor" when compared to Branded to Kill, but that's a tall bar to clear and this is perfectly entertaining B moviemaking all on its own - with an ironic twist ending, but one that means to end more on a surprising emotional beat than a simple "gotcha.
The Killers (1964)
Great B movie fun with an A level cast all working wonders on a meaty script
"Well, it's not really the money. Maybe we get that, and maybe we don't. I gotta find out what makes a man decide not to run... Why he'd rather decide to die."
Well, for one thing, this is easily the high-point of Ronald Reagan's life (not just his career, his life in general too being in this); he didn't like playing the villain, but he managed to squeeze out a convincing portrayal of a pomade-hair filled "Businessman" who is a total lady-slapping crap-head. He's genuinely good in this, and I'm not loathe to admit it. If only he stopped here....
Stylistic downsides: The ADR in this is fairly wretched and dates this immesurably. A part of me also bristles at the contrasty color palette (that 1960s MCA color stock that aged the most out of any color stock of the mid 20th century, even Hitchcock could barely escape it), and even Criterion cant make it look less than washed out (maybe the 4K restoration looks better).
Otherwise, this is a rollicking strong piece of Grade-A Pulp moviemaking that has a sensational Hollywood cast delivering B-level dialog with constant attitude, aplomb, and even pathos (and even Seymour Cassel without a line of dialog makes a distinct impression of menace). Flashbacks create conflicting points of view about a heist gone awry - was it more of this, than The Killing, that basically have Tarantino his necessary juice for Dogs and Fiction, I wonder, I don't see why not structurally at least - and a race car crash is somehow fatalistic simply due to how much Siegel and the editors make use of that wobbly tire. Why doesn't Johnny just stop? Why not? And then the boom comes and changes everything.
Cassavetes and Marvin are tough as nails (though the former has some vulnerability he finds here), Clu Gulager is a total tooth-shining menace in his blsck sunglasses, Norman Fell in that sweat machine creates a perfect little worm, and Angie Dickinson creates a wonderful bridge in her layers of seduction and fragility (she gets knocked around a... lot) between the 1940s dames and the later Neo-Noir double-crossing Femme Fatales of the last 40 years or so. She is one step ahead of both the men in her orbit, and as things go on one isnt sure how much she is with Johnny or against him or whether she will make Jack pay or what. And she has money already! Can she get away? Who can?
It's not only a double cross, it's a triple cross - and it criss ceases the narrative lines this way and that. I know this probably strays from the Hemingway source by a foot or two, but it doesn't mean Siegel and his cast don't understand how they can convey a sense of existential doom and how morality collapses when money- a whole giant mess of money- makes people do some foolish and stupid things. And of course all Marvin's hit man wants to know is... why?
"Lady, I don't have the time."
There's many moments of satisfying moments of Pulp intensity and violence and pain here, even down to a single shot of big drops of blood hitting a man's shoes at a pivotal moment in the climax. 8.5/10.
Kalpana (1948)
Delightful, experimental, bold early Indian musical by Ravi Shankar's brother
This was the only film directed by Uday Shankar (brother, as Scorsdse tells his on the Criterion disc, of Ravi), and it's the kind of production where one can possibly get the sense this man had never directed before - or acted, or written - but that's the thrilling part about it.
I don't think most who come to this would think to compare it to Citizen Kane, but hear me out that there is a basis of compatison: like Welles, Shankar doesn't know (or maybe he does and just doesn't give a damn and throws caution to the wind to risk) about the conventions of Cinema, so what we get here does include a narrative, but it's more about an entertainer wanting to thrill and excitement us. And, in the process in this instance, to get some to think about the rampant abuse of power and how art can redeem a culture and people (especially driven by women dancing their asses off beautifully).
Now, the comparison to Kane should probably end with the basic Thrill for a New Director to Have Fun with the Provebial Train-Set of Filmmaking, as this is not much character driven or out to give us lines of dialog for actors to chew on (again like Welles was want to do then). Kalpana is a (quasi? Not much quasi about it) autobiography through Phantasmagoria of Shankar as he rises from a childhood of poverty and abuse to become connected and lead a dancing group, and by actively refuting the Power Elite and speaking against how little is cared for or given to artists (its one of the more memorable scenes without dance or singing that stands out her, where he tells off the rich), one man gives him a donation and through that he and his troupe take off. But there's ups and downs, sometimes with the women in his life like the fiery Uma who loves Udayan so. And will the Cultural Center run out of money? Maybe its time for the tried and true Save the Rec Center move! (I'm not kidding that's like the last 45 minutes of this).
What I mean by making such a grandiose comparison at the jump is how much visual invention Shankar and his team put into many sequences here. He's using many sets rather obviously, to where it becomes about the staging and we can find fascination in how dances and what appear to be reenactments of ritual dances and moves that it takes on a spiritual dimension at times (is it dance as prayer? Prayer to something that is beyond my cultural knowledge, not that that means I can't see there's something deeper going on, like a dance created and perfected to something beyond regular existence itself). Other times, Shankar dazzles with super-impositions, optical effects, special shots that combine two bodies into one shot as one hand will be moving around while a face or body moves in another part of the frame. Any time there's a dream, or he moves the camera into a fantasy space, ::chef's kiss::
A lot of the shots of dancing may be more basic as to simply show performers full body, but when the dancing is so joyful and alluring it's hard to complain. This is probably the earliest Indian musical I've seen, and one or two of the numbers have dated a bit over the past 75 or so years (mostly the numbers where one of the women is singing about devotion to Udayan or other). And as I'm sure Shankar didn't know whether he'd make another film or what would come after, he may have put everything he wanted to do in a film in this one go. I'd rather see that than something that just lays there, and it has... a Lot on its mind.
If one takes in many of the lyrics, it's not something that would appeal squarely to men, on the contrary its sumptuously pro feminine, and politically it even questions the activists of the time ("Gandhi? He just gives speeches!" I more or less saw in the subtitles which... wow man). It's a celebration, but also a critique; about love and betrayal and jealousy, and a call to action, and, during one very bog set piece the company puts on (a good 2 hours into the run time) it's unabashedly pro worker and farmer.
The performances are not too polished and Shankar himself sometimes has the energy in a room (I may delete this later) of like Jim Parsons like he is going go comic or dramatic or something but itll be BIG. And.... I'm glad I saw it once, nd you may be too. Who knows - maybe Shankar made something that, thanks to Criterion and Scorsese, could become someone's RRR. Exuberant, long, definitely not boring.
Yau doh lung fu bong (2004)
For this one? Sure! Lyrical excess and brilliant direction overcome OK script
First impression... directorial tour de force, if (dont kill me for saying this) light on character development. I suspect Johnnie To did a minor miracle getting what was (or may have been) fairly thin stuff on the page via other writers to be far more (dare I say) poetic and lyrical (and even innocent) vibe than it would be in the hands of a Journeyman. This flows much more like a something Id actually expect to see in, I dont know, an animayed feature than live action, like from the fluidity of the tracking shots and movements of the camera as well as the slow motion.
It's the work of a dedicated Smuggler, bringing something deeper about how some of us out there - like the Gambling addict nightclub owner, more clear-eyed and pragmatic (would be) Nightclub singer, and ex Judo champion who may or may not find redemption as the plot summary says - are in an exiential rainstorm and its hard to run fast enough to find shelter or what to do. If I even tried to break down "story beats" it would sound silly, and rightfully so. Its an expressionistic experiment first, kick-ass action-crime thriller second.
Maybe a little too much sappy synth music for my taste to lift up the mood, maybe one or two flourishes that I didn't love (the guy singing mournfully during the nightclub fight, hmm gotta sleep on that). But this is often sumptuously directed, which is not what I was expecting, albeit I think my exposure to To has been the Election films and not a lot else (shame I can hear you crying), and I'd love to analyze the lighting and shots with a class or a film club or something. If it ever plays Alamo or the like, count me in.
And when I say To did a lot with the direction here, I also can tell he worked with the actors - Kwan and Ying but Ko especially in the kind of expressive/tortured masculine role Mickey Rourke could've crushed 20 years prior- and I felt depth from them in the style. If nothing else, it makes Judo fighting seem the most like a calling I've seen in any other film I can think of (even more than the directly cited Sanshiro Sugata by AK).
Raise my rating or lower it by tomorrow? Place your bets.
Heojil kyolshim (2022)
brilliantly directed Neo-noir that is about an odd kind of obsession
Well.... someone definitely made a decision at the end of this! (That's what I said when the final shot concluded and the titles started to roll).
I'm not sure I can add much other critics haven't pointed out - that it is slow going, restrained, the intensity of the emotions between this cop and the "suspect" (is she, isn't she, and is he dun dun dun) mostly underneath a well of insomnia and a loss in translation from Chinese to Korean - except that I do want to see it again not so much to experience this or that stylistically so much that it got a little more confusing for me as it got into the climax than it did for some of you smarter folks out there.
Park hae-il and Tang Wei do have chemistry and some kind of spark going on here, but what may throw off some expecting the high melodrama of Oldboy and Lady Sympathy is how quiet a lot of this is. At the same time, it's just exhilarating ho Park chanwook gets an audience into these set pieces, specifically using Park hae-il comes into these crime scenes as he projects himself. Matter of fact, this movie is very much about how someone, like a sleep deprived emotionally fractured Detective, creates this scenarios that may very well have happened because he's that smart and sharp a Detective... or he needs for it to be true on some level.
This is a stylistically ambitious film, both by camera and more-so with its editing and cuts within scenes and transitions, perhaps so much so that it's more of a directing triumph than a script one; I do find the characters not as deep as perhaps Park does and the actors, hae-il especially, who are exceptional, can imbue these people with more pathos than is on the page. But this is another of those times where how a scene is shot, how someone is framed, how we see even those eye-drops go in to that angst-ridden cop, not to mention how all of those scenes on the beach are shown near the end (I'd dare not say what happens on said beach just that it's a... beach boy howdy), it's a filmmaker in crafty and clever command of his craft.
Decision to Leave is satisfying bravura direction (justified Cannes win). A great film? Gotta sit with that.
Kika (1993)
Make up your corpse in style!
Kika may not be entirely a "major" work written and directed by Pedro Almodovar (whatever that means), as he may have conceived it and executed the film for a string of hilariously tawdry, perverted sex jokes, of course those being the best kinds that age like fine wine (and at one key point, a key plot point involving putting make-up on a corpse... or is he dead dun-dun). But when an artist with a consistently raucous and ribald sense of humor is out to go dark, I'm not one to say no to see where it goes. At times this is what one may expect from him for this delightful tonal whiplash between silliness and surreal and dramatic especially at this time of Nervous Breakdown and Atame!
And it even may surprise those who come to this after swimming in several Almodovar films how he dances on a razor-sharp edge with scenes that are quite dramatic and harrowing - like, say, a rape - and manages to mine bits of comedy, or at least taps into a comic tone, all due to his faith in Veronica Forque that she can pull it off. A significant part of how daring these scenes are is how Almodovar makes the rapist so patently ridiculous, or how it's framed that she is mocking him through what she's saying.
He may be a serious threat, or maybe hes totally pathetic and needs to be shown as such. Forque (and Rossy de Palma who has to do a lot of physical comedy in that same scene) isn't about to let him off easy in that scene, and the aftermath drives the rest of the film on the kind of adrenaline that is unpredictable. Indeed where this goes, it almost threatens to run off the rails, like Almodovar himself can't catch up to where his characters are going. That's thrilling.
Does it all add up to much? Yes and no. Maybe it is a lot of ideas for set pieces and characters (even the brilliant Victoria Abril with the camera on her head like some Walking Human-Camera Cyborg and wild performance in the final reel) that he had and decided to put them in one package, even if that means for stretches we leave behind like the writer character Peter Coyote (why he's here I haven't the foggiest), who seems to be a lead but becomes less relevant in the scope of all the madcap sexually-charged crimes and delirium we experience. And why all of the Herrmann Psycho score? Sure is evocative, I suppose.
But Kika is always entertaining, never the slightest boring, and you want to see where it goes next. If certain movies are like jokes, this is a joke told with intricacy and complexity and it may contain not one or two but three or four ARISTOCRATS exclamations.
Terrifier (2016)
A craft exploitation gore-fest with a great performance at center
Damien Leone set out to make a gore-show, exploitation horror experience with Terrifier, and it's there on the screen in full splendor. This is a filmmaker who has no pretensions in the slightest about what he's doing - I was reminded of this in particular since a trailer for the upcoming Jigsaw screend with this, the *eighth* Saw film which may or may not be a reboot or at least is a sequel. The point is that's a gore-show that thinks it's meaning something when it isn't. But Terrifier is by someone who actually loves the genre.
This may not mean Terrifier has much to *say* exactly, but why carp? Sometimes a horror movie can be about the simple things in life, like a silent, homicidal/maniacal clown in black lipstick sawing a young naked woman hanging upside down in half... starting from her privates.
Another key thing is how much David Thornton brings to this performance (in his feature debut). Good holy crap is he good in this! This is an actor fully committed to playing sadistic, twisted, mean, and yet he's having a blast being this character. Again, he doesn't have a word of dialog - one might want to say there's Mime going on, but that's not entirely true, he just doesn't speak - and yet he doesn't need to speak. It makes it outside of the stuff we usually get with clown characters in horror, even with Pennywise. What would "Art the Clown" have to say anyway? "Hoo-hoo, ha-ha, I'm going to cut off your head and kick it like a football down this grungy cellar hallway?" There's also nothing at all we know about him either, except that he's killed before and, presumably (spoiler? I don't know) may kill again.
And lastly the gore is fantastic; Leone loves his practical effects, and all of the bodies are really BODIES, and you can tell watching it. There's no s*** CGI or bad/fake blood, and it also doesn't skimp on the violence like modern horror sometimes does in the name of appealing to "all audiences" with a PG-13. This may be going in a massive way in the other direction, to the point where if it's not laughable it's gross. But maybe I needed gross horror tonight, or on a certain night that's rainy and miserable and all that. At the same time Leone subverts conventions here and there, characters you think won't bite it do, and there's some creative color grading to make it more grungy and filthy.
Will it stay with me or will I revisit it many times like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Return of the Living Dead? Probably not. But it did the job well it set out to do, and it didn't do *stupid* things. It kept to what it knew it could pull off and as far as movies involving maniac clowns offing drunk girls and bug exterminators on Halloween night... you could do a lot worse I'm sure!
El espíritu de la colmena (1973)
"Everything in the movie was fake. It isn't real."
Is Spirit of the Beehive one of the only times in cinema history where a work of art was directly influenced by a censors cut to another film?
For those who don't know, Whale's Frankenstein for many years (and certainly at the time this was set, 1940, hell I even suspect when they made Beehive in 1973) was missing those several seconds where Karloff's Monster chucks the young girl into the pond - in his undead bubble-headed brain, the Monster thinks he's following the little girl's lead as she throws little flowers into the water he will do the same. When he sees she is drowning, he freaks out and absconds, with her father carrying her body totally distraught that someone killed her. Without that scene in the movie, this little girl Ana (played by Ana Torent) is like everyone else in the world, having to fill in the gap that's left in those several seconds with ones own imagination.
Why wouldn't one think the Monster killed the little girl, or worse? If only Ana got to see it post restoration of the cut. Maybe she'd be better off... or not? It's not that this hangs over every single moment of the rest of Beehive, but it does make an impact on how she sees this moment and her faith in Frankenstein carries over into how she sees spirituality as a whole. Not to mention, more concretely, is that moment of solitude where Ana is by herself and sees that giant footprint in the earth by that little farmhouse and the field. Is it the Monster's footprint? Why not, if you have the mind and soul to believe in it? ::insert the I saw your footprints on the beach and etc etc faith::
I didn't write more about this until thinking a few days extra about it, which is the nice thing about a website like this where you can ruminate and your first thoughts aren't a final edit. What makes The Spirit of the Beehive a remarkable and absorbing film are qualities that would make it stand distinctly from other films today (even those by one of its greatest admirers, Guillermo del Toro, who called it practically "autobiography" on social media and in appreciations over the years, and it's influence on Devil's Backbone and Labyrinth can't not be seen). It's a film that has dialog and scenes where we hear voiceovers, like from Ana's parents as they write in journals, but it's very sparse by a certain point and the final half hour largely functions like a haunted silent-era film, albeit with sound effects of the wind and the lovely score very important points of the cinematic soundscape.
It's a film that has to tell its story this way in some part because the performer playing Ana (also her name, I suspect this was not totally coincidence) is a non professional actor and how she appears in scenes is kind of withdrawn and observant and quiet, and that also has to do with this character. Perhaps withdrawn is too strong of a phrase - introspective is a better word for it, someone who may be told before a movie like Frankenstein plays what it's supposed to represent in her corner of the world of Franco-era Spain, but there's something more monumental going on with a story where a being is brought back to life and (seemingly) inexplicably kills. Why should the Monster kill and destroy? Can't the Monster be kind or even just neutral, for someone else (ie a little girl) to connect with if he got a chance? Not when society gets a hold of him, no sir. Her identification, as I try best I can to read into it, with this film - despite being told it's "fake" - sticks so strongly that when another "outsider" of the soldier comes to that abandoned house and, after she sees him, gets shot for being a desserter late in the story, she just can't take it anymore and runs away.
Another part of why the film is shown like this is simply because it makes for a more interesting reading if, as I suspect, director Victor Erice wants us to try to meet it halfway and to leave things for us to figure out for ourselves. It could mean that the little girl becomes disillusioned with spirituality and faith. Maybe something breaks in her where she believes so strongly. Maybe her sister shouldn't play a prank on her and play dead and draw it out for so long, as she does about midway through. Or she simply can't take being part of this "beehive" of the world and how people are expected to be and behave and do this or that. It's ultimately more on a first viewing a profound film intellectually speaking, like the meat on what's on its mind is strong. Emotionally it was slightly more distant for me, though the music and power of the lighting in some scenes was moving, like seeing paintings of innocence and haunted malaise come to life.
The Spirit of the Beehive is a fascinating, gorgeously rendered tale of youth and belief and faith. Masterpiece? I leave for you to decide.
Viy (1967)
A Cossack's time to be very afraid in this Gothic, impressive feat of spooky folkloric horror
I don't know if Gogol in the original story for sure meant for this to be an excoriation of the Cossacks for what they did during his time, though I haven't read the original story and can't say for sure. What is clear is that this adaptation - made by film students apparently, which is to me the start of a great tradition of young filmmakers getting their start on something scary and gnarly as a first feature - manages to bring visuals that audiences associate with horror movies into this mythical-spiritual realm; this is a story where being in the same space with a dead witch in a church (at night only, of corse) will bring out the baddies of the night like a serious version of the Monster Mash, but it's less indebted to Universal Monsters (despite the cries for Vampires and werewolves) than folklore of the local kind.
This does take some time, after a sort of introduction in the first ten minutes to set up how this woman dies - who appeared to be an old hag but was actually the young adult daughter of a local man - to get going as we are introduced to the religious student Khoma, the 19th century version of a hapless young dude who gets in way over his head in so many contemporary horror movies (he even has the hair and beard of a hipster who's listened to a lot of Sublime and Phish, albeit still, yes, a Cossack as he tells us), who somehow was tapped by the young woman as the one who should read her prayers (she asked for him by name... somehow!) So Khoma (Leonid Kuravlyov) is given the task: read prayers to this dead woman (Natalya Varley) in the church for three consecutive nights and he will receive a thousand gold pieces... but can he make it out alive? Muahaha!
Once you get past the set up, which is about a half hour of this 77 minute movie, it does take off and then some: we know from the moment he is left alone with her in the church that s*** will hit the fan, and despite his special supernatural-protection circle, she wreaks havoc on his psyche like any good proud witch should do. And while Kuravlyov is splendid at playing a cowardly dumbass, Varley is one of the great cinema Witches of this or any time period in film. The one influence I might detect, in the filmmaking and for her performance, is Italian horror and some of the lighting and camera tricks and special effects evoke Bava (from what Ive read the same story also inspired Black Sunday, so there you go). But the filmmakers manage to create their own spooky and Gothic aesthetic that grips you, with only the roar of the rooster bringing us out of it... for a moment or two. They may have seen the movies, but they've listened to stories their elders probably told them, too.
As you may have also read, the finale does indeed rock and is like its own 5 star movie in about 7 or 8 minutes, for the ferocious take-no-prisoners intensity of these monsters and creatures coming out, including the title character (don't look into his or its eyes!) And more than anything I just admire the creativity the filmmakers have in devising the camera tricks and make up effects on what must have been paltry budget (at least compared to Hollywood or even Italian horror standards). I think the tone overall isn't totally consistent, as the musical score in particular early on seems more like it's meant for an adventure movie than for something that will later involve supernatural/undead/bat ghosts and goblins, and the supporting human characters mostly get by by having gnarly facial and head hair. But if you can look past that, what you come to see for fantastical spooky effects is masterful and impressive.
Rooty Toot Toot (1951)
a little musical-noir-animated masterpiece
John Hubley was an innovator and quite daring when it came to mixing and experimenting with forms and styles of animation. He worked for UPA for a long time, and here in this short film that is equal parts (Jazz) musical, raw film noir and courtroom saga, he manages to fit in with his team and whole mess of incredible background art; some of it very decidedly meant to be harsh in contrasts to the figures we are seeing, the world becoming distorted as it were as we are seeing varying perspectives on what happened to his man shot in his own home.
It's also kind of funny how a few of the characters look like templates for Mr Magoo, who would come out of UPA and that world of animators. But it doesn't detract from the staggering sense of playfulness and ambition here; like when you see something by the Brother's Quay, you know there are things that are so densely packed that you'll need another viewing or two to understand what everything means, or if not even that just how certain shapes and moments blend together.
This is sophisticated in hoe Hubley and his animators understand color and timing and how to have music drive the narrative without it overpowering what's on screen (a perfect marriage, which shouldn't be a thing but it is here), but it doesn't ever feel like it's above its audience like it should be in a museum. Rather this is precisely the kind of short that would get me in the mood to watch, oh I don't know, Sam Fuller's hardboiled pot-boilers, or the Asphalt Jungle.
A little masterpiece.
Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. (2022)
excellent cringe dark comedy with career high-point turns from Brown and Hall
An example of how you show who a character is in a seemingly minor (as in not directly plot related sense) but important moment is when, after that first day of filming is done for the documentary, Lee Curtis and Trinitie Childs are in the car going home at night and they're both quiet, nothing to say to one another and it seems tense. Lee Curtis puts on the radio and blasts a very uh Explicit rap song and he is rapping along to it. At first one sees Trinitie not saying anything and the thought is this is showing her as we might reasonably expect - she is along for the proverbial ride and she really can't stand this side of Lee Curtis (or rather who he is when the cameras aren't on)... but then she cuts in on the female verse of this track and raps right along with him. *Well*.
She knows what's up, in other words, and whatever is going to happen with this man driving the car, she is right along with him. And that means through *all* the BS.
This is a very funny, awkward, satirically successful and rich movie where the stylistic choice to do both Mockumentary and just regular-shot drama is OK but sometimes spotty; you can tell when because it'll cut to wide-screen and be shot with convential coverage, albeit there are a few especially keen close ups and, at one point, tracking/dolly shots to create some particular character dynamics (like with Lee Curtis and the sound guy at the basketball court, one of my favorite scenes for how this Minister turns on a... varied kind of oily charm for this guy).
One wonders if it could've worked a little better as a totally conventional-shot film or if it needed to go more all in on the Fly on the Wall approach. On the other hand, how would we get that one sex scene? But the strengths here aren't necessarily in directorial choices so much as it's all in the script, which is especially strong in providing us some extremely awkward and Cringe scenarios that do develop past feeling (potentially) like a one note joke of "Hahaa yes we are for the Lord ::Smile-Rip-Bleed::"
And it's also, most of all, a spectacular showcase for what Brown and Hall can do. I don't know if I've ever seen Brown deliver such a darkly comedic turn, and one laughs because he is playing it so sincerely - my God, when he starts to strip when doing the service for the small gathering, I was about to lose it - but Lee Childs is a, let's say wildly charitably, flawed human who has not so much a Trumpian dimension but like those who are around Trump's orbit. You'd want to feel sorry for this guy if he wasn't so relentlessly digging the hole for himself so fast he's gonna wind up in China.
And meanwhile, Hall has the even more complex part of the film to carry as the woman who didn't, unlike her husband, do anything exactly so scandalous as touching/molesting/who knows with young men. But she is, her predilections for capital S Stylish hats and all, married and committed to this man and she considers this church ultimately *her* church as much as his. By the time she's in that Mime make-up, I feel like she's giving one of those performances you'll read about for years (inasmuch as it will get overlooked, especially by awards branches). For acting students, you can't not see it. Oh, and by the by, Nicole Behaire is 2 for 2 for supporting performances in as many new releases in theaters right now (that also apparently premiered at Sundance)!
So, in brief, this is mostly excellent, gripping, stylistically bold American comedy in a time where theatrically we've been kind of starved for it, and it's more or less for Televangelists what Drop Dead Gorgeous was for beauty pageants.