blueloop

Again Dusan Makavejev manages to mix fiction filmmaking with the documentary form, this time by sampling from a 1942 film, the first Serbian talkie. The original film, also called Innocence Unprotected is directed by a Serbian strongman performing feats of strength without the use camera tricks. Makavejev tints the original film with occasional flourishes of color and mixes in lots of documentary footage of more recent interviews with the excitable and self-worshiping strongman.

IMDB reviewer AdFin had some insightful though gramatically flawed thoughts about this film:

“Steven Soderbergh is possibly the most talented director at work at the moment (that’s debatable, but he is the most talented American director of the last fifteen years), his ability to effortlessly switch both genre and cinematic devise is a talent most directors lack, but Soderbergh went from the low-key drama of Sex, Lies & Videotape to the arty-thriller Kafka, and then moved onto the arty-low-key drama King of the Hill…”

“Much has been said in recent IMDB reviews about how the film is a betrayal of Kafka, having never read a word of Kafka I cannot comment, but I think people should allow Soderbergh and writer Lem Dobbs some artistic licensing.”

“Kafka is an unbelievably assured film from the (then) young Soderbergh that needs to be seen by more people besides Kafka fanatics who are only destroying the mystique of the film with their propaganda. This is a standout fantasy-thriller that has more style and intelligence than anything you’ll find playing at you’re local multiplex.”

I’ve been wanting to see Errol Morris’s first film for years and my expectations for it were very big, perhaps too big. Here Morris uses his camera to introduce us to a family and their pet cemetery business. He also interviews some of their clients, who tell stories of their recently deceased pets. There are moments which are sublime but my modern attention span was expecting a bitmore; perhaps a dark secret like the one which emerges in the second half Dr. Death. Oh well, so Vernon Florida remains my favorite of his films.

Here is a movie that knew it was going to get the box-office-killing rating of NC-17 and decided to run with it. It’s got both male nudity and very disturbing relationships- as you can see in the rather revealing preview above. As a film about the perverse relationship between these characters it’s thorough and complex, but Bertolucci tries to squeeze in other themes which aren’t given enough depth. The running theme of Film History, cinephilia, which is how Mathew meets this strange pair in the first place comes to feel a bit like name dropping and fades almost completely away in the last third of the film. Would it not have been better to choose a specific film to tie-in the plot with rather than dropping reference to dozens of them? And the theme of revolution is hinted at throughout, with sirens and megaphones heard outside of the dreamer’s lair, but the sudden revolutionary ending felt very out of character for Theo and seemed to have been tacked-on to the film as an afterthought.

Blow Up is almost the exact of a Hitchcock film; it tells the story of a mysterious murder without any interest in discovering who committed it or why. Antonioni’s protagonist is no amateur sleuth, he’s an obnoxious photographer whose only interest in the crime is for material for a book of avant-garde photographs. Ultimately the film doesn’t do enough to separate itself from the selfishness of its protagonist. By not providing a rebuke to his vapid lifestyle the film itself gets dated and sealed into the self-indulgence of this era.

An engrossing portrait of a man on the run from his old life. The six minute “barred window” long-take that ends the movie is stunning. Above is the preview from the film’s 2005 American re-release.

Akira Kurosawa was hesitant to call his book an autobiography in that it’s more a collection of poignant memories than an authoritative memoir but it’s still highly readable and quite informative. What surprised me most was how directionless he admitted to being in his mid twenties. He describes years on end of heavy drinking with no thought for the future. On a whim he answers an ad for Assistant Directors at the Toho studios and his whole life changes. I was also fascinated by Kurosawa’s method of writing screenplays; like I’ve heard John Sayles does, Kurosawa brags about how fast he can crank out a good screenplay. Once he becomes a director the book goes along film by film until its rather sudden end with his first international success, Rashoman.

I’d love to buy this Ross McElwee DVD collection to treasure all the 70’s tinted colors of his Southern towns and curious townspeople. But for now I’ll just go through and rent the different obscure titles. This disc contained two short films, CHARLEEN, and BACKYARD. CHARLEEN concentrates a few weeks in the life of the filmmaker’s former poetry teacher, who also appeared in his masterpiece, Sherman’s March. Charleen is a buoyant person with a vigor for life and nearly uncontrollable sexual energy towards all she sees. In BACKYARD we get a taste of the strange world of Ross’s childhood, a sprawling southern home complete with paranoid neighbors and live-in black servants.

I saw this at a matinée screening in a nearly empty multiplex in Vermont last week. I’m a big fan of Lynch but despite faint aromas of a tasty plot I completely lost the scent after an hour or so and the next two hours felt very long indeed. It’s all shot on a consumer-grade DV camera which is cool to see blown-up and distorted on a big screen but like much of the writing this effect quickly loses its edge and begins to feel forced and too-intentionally weird. Coming out of the theater into the late afternoon sun felt great, like I’d woken up from a cruel and repetitive nightmare.

Every Christmas when we’re visiting Maryland my dad and I will flee the family for a few hours and drive half an hour over to a cool arthouse movie house in Bethesda. A few years ago we saw Talk to Her, so it seemed fitting to catch Volver this year. Almodovar is unpredictable in general but Volver defies genre altogether. Is it a ghost story? A murder mystery? A redemption story? Volver is at once all of these but Almodovar is too clever to limit himself to one. In the end it’s what all of his movies seem to be; the unique story of one woman and her struggle. So what if my mom makes fun of us for our choice of movies…