A few reviews

[TM2YC]

Christiane F. - Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (1981)
I've been curious about seeing this West German movie ever since I first got into David Bowie, as it features a soundtrack made up of tracks from his late 70s "Berlin period" ('Heroes', 'Warszawa' etc). It's a true story depicting a year in the life of West Berlin teen Christiane Felscherinow as she descends from Bowie fan (he performs at a concert she attends), into heroin addiction, prostitution and utter degradation, eventually selling her Bowie LP collection for a fix. It's harrowing stuff, it doesn't take the colourful, partly fun 'Trainspotting' route to addiction, it's just grey, vomit drenched, bleeding misery. 13-year old actress Natja Brunckhorst delivers an amazingly believable and tragic title performance but the other young cast are noticeably inexperienced first-time actors. I wouldn't describe it as an enjoyable watch but it's interesting to experience a contemporary vision of the Berlin that Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop sing about in their music of that period. Bowie's 'Low' album is one of my all-time favourite records.

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Baal (1982)
Director Alan Clarke and David Bowie collaborated on a 1-hour TV play adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's 'Baal' for BBC1. It was obviously a different broadcasting landscape when something as curious, abrasive and uncommercial as this would be shown on "prime time" TV, celebrity appearance or not. Bowie plays the title role in dramatic scenes, plus in expository musical interludes, often using split screen. I liked the tableau framing of many shots, as if we are observing events from an imaginary theatre. Baal and all the characters in the play are thoroughly unpleasant and it's a pretentious production/play, about pretensions characters, speaking pretentious lines. So I didn't really enjoy it but I was strangely fascinated by it's intensity all the same.

Bowie and Tony Visconti released a 5-song EP of the songs (but fully orchestrated) to accompany the broadcast, an addendum to his Berlin period. It sounds great:

 

[asterixsmeagol]

The Beatles: Get Back (2021)

I watched this while working at home with COVID a few weeks ago. I couldn't imagine sitting down to watch it with 100%, or even 50% of my attention for 8 hours straight, but as a passive viewing experience, it was excellent. It was fun watching them "slowly" figure out how to put some songs together, and it did a good job of showing how well they worked together, while also highlighting why after a decade nearly constantly in each others' presence, they were having interpersonal issues, and while Yoko was present, it also makes it clear that she wasn't the source of the issue and didn't make the Beatles break up, no matter what portions of pop culture would have you believe. (That said, I can't stand her "singing" and I'm not a fan of her art. Also, the more I've read about John as a person, the less I like him. Great musician, great social commentator, bad husband, terrible father.)

The Beatles: Get Back - The Rooftop Concert (2022)

Now this part, I could imagine sitting down to watch, and I really did enjoy watching it again on a big screen (10 days later, after I was allowed out in public again).

 

[Moe_Syzlak]

For a band that hadn’t played live in years, they still knew how to sell the live performance. Plus, many of the rooftop takes ended up as the best takes and made it to the album.

 

[TM2YC]

For a band that hadn’t played live in years, they still knew how to sell the live performance. Plus, many of the rooftop takes ended up as the best takes and made it to the album.

Yeah I couldn't believe that. Those cuts I'd heard so many times times before on the record, sound about 300% better recorded than most studio tracks and according to the film they were being taped remotely several floors below. I guess that's why George Martin and Glyn Johns are such master engineer/producers.

while Yoko was present, it also makes it clear that she wasn't the source of the issue and didn't make the Beatles break up, no matter what portions of pop culture would have you believe. (That said, I can't stand her "singing" and I'm not a fan of her art.

Yep I've never bought that one but my parents hate her with a passion to this day because they were fans at the time

After having read Ian MacDonald's track-by-track Beatles book 'Revolution in the Head' (probably the finest book ever about music recording), I formed the opinion that McCartney was the one most responsible for "breaking up" The Beatles because ironically he tried too hard to keep them together. I think if he'd just let everyone have a break and do a few solo projects, acting jobs, or whatever, The Beatles could've carried on loosely working together for many years/decades. That came across in PJ's film, with McCartney himself, getting sick of having to be the one cajoling the others. Even after the acrimony of the 'Get Back' sessions, McCartney had the guys back to make 'Abbey Road' just 3-weeks later. Read the room Paul! Despite all the amazing music produced in that period, it'd be interesting to vsit the parallel universe where The Beatles just went on holiday for a year after 'Get Back', then got back in the studio together when they were looking forward to it and missed each other.

 

[TM2YC]

Passing (2021)
I didn't think this ever recaptured the electricity of the tense opening scenes but it looks stunning. Every frame is perfectly composed by Director/Writer/Producer Rebecca Hall, I couldn't believe it was not 35mm, digital seems to be catching up to the point where I just can't tell any more. Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga are sensational, I reckon the latter was deliberately channelling Katharine Hepburn. The top layer meaning of the title "passing" is about skin colour in 20s US society but there are also more subtle layers of class, economics, societal expectations, marriage, outward appearance, friendships and an implied gay subtext, that give different meanings to a person "passing" as something other than what they are inside. I craved more scenes with Negga's Clare character because we see nothing of her private life, it's mostly focused on how Clare is disrupting Reenie's (Thompson) carefully contained feelings about herself and her life. Dev Hynes' era appropriate jazz piano score is wonderful. I look forward to seeing what Hall directs next.

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The Godfather (1972)
'The Godfather' remains one of the greatest films ever made, a "perfect movie" (apart from that miss-timed punch by James Caan). A chance to see the new 4K transfer at the cinema could not be missed. Despite having seen this about 50 times, I was spotting new details all over the frame, including being able to read the hand-written brown-paper label on the bottle Don Corleone offers to Sollozzo during their meeting at the Genco offices, it's home-made Anisette. Food and drink play such a central role in the film (as they often do in Francis Ford Coppola productions), reminding us of life, in a story that features so much violent death, so don't watch this hungry. On cinema surround speakers you can hear every instrument of the score with new clarity. Previously, I hadn't fully appreciated Nino Rota's genius in scenes like the one where Michael proposes to Kay. It starts with this false tonally romantic theme, which is stifled by the malevolent seduction of the Godfather theme, mirroring the parody of a love scene, where Michael's words are trying to woe Kay but his voice is emotionally cold. I'd also never heard the chilling "horse's head" music in the same way before, there are two duelling dissonant pieces growing more hysterical and macabre, until they suddenly cease and are replaced by endless screaming. Roll on 'The Godfather Part II' next week.

 

[TM2YC]

CODA (2021)
There are two halves to 'CODA'; one features a wonderfully fresh, surprising, hilariously funny and thought-provoking portrait of a deaf family dealing with problems with their fishing business, relating with their community and their one hearing child feeling the pressure of communicating for them, while dealing with her own changing life; the second half is an "inspirational teacher"/"following your dreams" story that isn't terrible but feels like something we've seen a hundred times before, especially when intercut with the other new and different aspect. It's doubly annoying at the end when some of the interesting family subplots are quickly resolved in a montage, to make room for the "inspirational teacher" angle to play out in full, with two big scenes that could've arguably been combined. I'd have been very happy with a whole movie just about this family trying to start a fishing co-op. This is nitpicking somewhat, afterall I did have a tear in my eye at the end because I loved the characters and cared about them. The father is so funny, what a strong performance by Troy Kotsur, I didn't know ASL could be this outrageous and vulgar (in a good way!). He deserves the Oscar and Bafta nominations for sure. I'd love to see more deaf movies please Hollywood, it's little different than watching a subtitled foreign film.

 

[Moe_Syzlak]

Drive My Car. I knew pretty much nothing about the plot of this movie going in and, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, I suggest you stop reading now and go see it. Still here? It starts with much more sex than I was expecting, prompting us to pause several times as our young kids got out of bed. But all of that happens in an extended pre-credits scene. It’s a movie that takes its time, but I never felt the three hour run time was too long. It also helps if you know Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. I read it in university but that was a long time ago. The film does do a decent job of giving you the main themes through the lines being run.

Communication is a big theme here. The lead character puts on multilingual experimental productions, where he presumably slaves over ensuring that communication is free and accessible to all during his productions. But he is unable to communicate effectively in his own life when it matters most. Many scenes in the movie are communicated non-verbally and a central character is a mute (not deaf) person who employs sign language. But the big “what ifs” in life are what run through this story. Life is complicated and there a billion potential what ifs. “What can we do? We must live our lives.”

 

[TM2YC]

The Godfather: Part II (1974)
I loved every second of seeing 4K GF1 at the cinema a week ago but re-watching the sequel in the cinema was a bit of a slog. GF2 is a great movie but I never thought it was "that one sequel that is better than the first", this time it seemed like an even bigger step down in quality than usual. It's always felt narratively muddled in the middle, in a way I couldn't put my finger on. Now I'm sure the Pentangeli scenes have been cut up and stretched across the runtime, just so his suicide can be part of the "settling all family business" montage at the end (a weak reprise of the same idea from GF1), when it should have happened halfway through. Given the length, the structural issues I mention and the availability of deleted scenes, there must be a potentially better cut of this story, one that is that bit closer to the effortless perfection of the first. Either that, or this material works better in the various "novel for TV" extended versions where structure and excessive runtime problems are irrelevant, compared to the opportunity to spend hours on your sofa soaking up all this beautiful period detail, intoxicating music, iconic dialogue and faultless acting.

A note on the new 4K transfer. A number of shots looked soft, when compared to the incredible detail of the bulk of the movie. I'd guess they couldn't use the negative for those shots (for some reason) and had to fall back on prints and had tried to upscale and apply DNR to them. I suspect these shots won't be noticeable on a TV though, just the scrutiny of a big cinema screen.

 

[TM2YC]

The Lost Daughter (2021)
I wasn't keen on Maggie Gyllenhaal's wobbly, hand-held, out of focus, extreme close-up, directorial style but I could see she was using it to contrast with holding some characters at a distance and those close-ups are often on Olivia Colman giving a nuanced acting masterclass. So I didn't mind too much. Colman's character's internal demon's had me completely fascinated but I felt the story didn't really go anywhere with them.

Was it just me, or did the film's excellent score (by Dickon Hinchliffe) sound identical to 'It's a Man's Man's Man's World' by James Brown, to a copyright infringing degree.

Compare from 0.20 in Dickon Hinchliffe's 'Let Me Tell You All About It'...

...to 0.14 in this James Brown instrumental...

 

[TM2YC]

After Love (2021)
Joanna Scanlan always impresses in dramas or comedies but I can't recall there being a film where she's been the star before and not one like 'After Love' that's all about her subtle central performance. The BAFTA nomination is well deserved. Scanlan plays the British born wife (and convert to Islam) of a Pakistan born husband and English Channel ferry pilot, the two seem comfortably in love but after he suddenly dies, she discovers he had another woman across in France and goes over there to find out why. The script (written by Director Aleem Khan in his feature debut) hits you with one revelation, or twist after another but they always feel natural, relatable and unexpected. The viewer and the characters are lead to make assumptions, that often prove kinder and deeper than expected. Scanlan's character makes some bad decisions, but through her performance you understand them as being the result of being frozen by grief and the need for answers. A thoroughly emotionally satisfying, beautifully directed and possibly perfect film.

 

[TM2YC]

Zelig (1983)
This was my second viewing of Woody Allen's 'Zelig', which exists in a small but wonderful "alternate history" sub-genre of mockumentaries, including Peter Jackson's 1995 silent-era tribute 'Forgotten Silver' (1995) and Eric Idle's 1978 "Rutles" retrospective 'All You Need Is Cash' ('Zelig' is much closer to the former). They are meticulous observations of their "parallel universe" subjects and acutely observed satires of the documentary format itself, the commitment to documenting something very funny and very silly, which never actually happened is taken very seriously. Allen's attention to the style, movement and texture of 1920s/1930s film-making and film-stocks is so perfect, that often the only way to know when something is genuine old stock footage, or a brand new shot, is when the camera pans over onto Allen, or Mia Farrow. The film even goes to the trouble of creating a plethora of convincing but imaginary popular Jazz records about Zelig, cutting in scenes from a supposed romanticised Hollywood adaptation of Zelig's exploits and interviews with real-life 1980s social commentators. I was already reminded of Orson Welles' fake "News on the March" reel (from 'Citizen Kane'), before Allen does his own homage news segment about a visit by Zelig to William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon estate (called "Xanadu" in CK).

 

[TM2YC]

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
Park Chan-wook's film is a horror thriller in the usual violent way but also horror in the deep down, stomach churning, intellectually disturbing way. There is a point about 45-mins in when we're an inch away from a happy ending but it all goes dreadfully wrong. There is one shot in particular from that point in the story, that is almost too horrifying to watch, despite featuring no blood or violence. Across the twisting narrative, Park skilfully balances our distaste for his competing characters because of the unforgivable wrongs they commit, with our sympathies for them because of the unimaginable wrongs done unto them. The soundtrack is terrific, especially one song but I had a hell of a time finding out what it was because I didn't know what the translation was from Korean. I think it's 'An Unremarkable Dog' by UhUhBoo Project.

 

[TM2YC]

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
I could never get tired of rewatching 'It's a Wonderful Life', any time of the year. It's near perfect, guaranteed to get the tear ducts flowing and is pretty damned progressive for 1946, socially and politically anyway, perhaps not the talk about a visit from "the stork". I'm not sure why I hadn't quite realised before (probably because there is so much comedy and romance in the scenes just after) that the dinner where George's father is forlornly trying to convey the virtues of the 'Building & Loan' institution to his son and asking him to take it over, is earlier in the same night that his father dies. His father looks so exhausted but puts a brave face on for George when he's once again rebuffed, it's so much more sad when you have the notion that he's feeling death approaching, as everyone around seems so care free.

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The Power of the Dog (2021)
Jane Campion's compositions of the Montana ranch land (actually New Zealand) are all beautiful, Jonny Greenwood's score is brilliantly unnerving and the whole film smoulders with erotic tension and dread but I thought the four characters are not likeable and their cruel actions also make it difficult to even sympathise with their inner pain. They are fascinating people though and well acted by the cast, if a little reserved and mysterious. One's experience of the film will probably be effected by how early you sense where it's going, before the final twist is clearly revealed.

 

[Moe_Syzlak]

I think the information is pretty much out there at this point, but I’d almost spoiler tag that there is a twist. I saw the movie knowing nothing about it and therefor I wasn’t even looking for a twist. My wife suspected, but I didn’t. I agree that helped me to enjoy the movie. I also agree that no one is particularly likable but I liked how it plays with your feelings about the characters.

 

[TM2YC]

I think the information is pretty much out there at this point, but I’d almost spoiler tag that there is a twist. I saw the movie knowing nothing about it and therefor I wasn’t even looking for a twist. My wife suspected, but I didn’t. I agree that helped me to enjoy the movie. I also agree that no one is particularly likable but I liked how it plays with your feelings about the characters.

Note taken on the spoilers above. Thanks. I had the suspicion that it would end in murder from the get go (there is this brooding violent atmosphere, where everything, even the banjo playing and whistling is a threat) but as soon as the "quiet, introverted" kid killed and dissected the cute rabbit (at the mid point of the movie) without us being shown any emotion, I was pretty sure he'd be the one to do the killing (and a probable sociopath). That combined with the dialogue "just happening to mention "anthrax" perhaps 10 times.

So I imagined it would make a big difference if in the second half if a viewer wasn't seeing it as the older experienced Phil, trying to seduce the younger inexperienced Pete but they saw Phil was the unwitting spider in Pete's web all along. It made me wonder if Pete was even gay, or just allowed Phil to assume that. It makes the Phil character appear as a much sadder, lonelier and more desperate figure.

 

[TM2YC]

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
'Big Trouble in Little China' isn't a perfect movie but it's so full-tilt, bonkers and loveable that it gets better with every watch... and I've seen it a lot since 1986! It's yet another example of John Carpenter being tragically ahead of his time, in these post-internet, pop-culture literate times, it's almost unimaginable that a movie this funny, with this much attitude and genre-hopping energy could've sank without trace at the cinema, only to slowly but rightfully become a huge hit on the increasingly popular VHS and DVD markets. The cast know exactly what they are doing, Kurt Russell homages and skewers John Wayne, Kim Cattrall does a perfect 1950s style go-getter, James Hong is chewing all the scenery as the villain and the real hero Dennis Dun is up to the standard of Jackie Chan's charm and physical exploits.

This Chinese reaction from Jessie and Lee is well worth viewing. They point out a lot of Chinese cultural references in the film which I would've had no idea about and translate some of the normally untranslated background Cantonese/Mandarin dialogue, adding more layers of humour for viewers who can speak those languages:

She also interviewed Carter Wong from the movie:

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Tangerine (2015)
Sean Baker shot 'Tangerine' on an iPhone but it looks better than a good deal of other movies and the medium brings a lot of free roving, documentary energy. Collectively the soundtrack reminded me of Primal Scream's 'Exterminator' album. The story mostly follows transgender sex worker Sin-Dee Rella barrelling through Hollywood like a tornado, causing epic drama everywhere and every time she opens her mouth, while her friend Alexandra (also a trans sex worker) is the calm in the storm. It also focuses on a trans sex addicted male cab driver they both know, who is struggling to keep his wife and respectable Armenian family out of it. It's life on the margins and it's very, very funny but frequently beautiful, sad and touching.

NSFW Red Band trailer:

 

[Moe_Syzlak]

Licorice Pizza. I’m a Paul Thomas Anderson fan. Even his movies that aren’t favorites of mine are still interesting and worth watching. This one is perhaps his most irreverent, certainly since Inherent Vice. It lives in a space that is not quite reality and not quite just pure nostalgia. I’m old and it did remind me of being a kid in the 70s when it felt like there was a new adventure just waiting for you to find it. In fact this movie seems structured that way. It’s really a series of vignettes that seem at times grounded and at other times dreamlike; yet there is always a certain sense of dread underlying. It’s also very funny. The well-known actors that have small parts here are played totally over the top and wacky. But the real comedy comes from the young newcomers in the lead roles that provide the film with its scaffolding. Anderson is certainly an actor’s director, but everything else here is also technically so great. It should also be noted that Jonny Greenwood’s score is a crucial part of the uneasy feeling that bubbles beneath the surface. At first I wasn’t sure about it, but later I understood. Be forewarned, this isn’t a movie about plot. It’s more Inherent Vice than Boogie Nights. It’s not my favorite movie of the year right now but it could become so on future viewings.

 

[TM2YC]

Time to watch through my 3-disc 'Cape Fear DVD boxset again...

Cape Fear (1962)
Although 'Cape Fear' is directed by the excellent J. Lee Thompson, the use of Bernard Herrmann for the iconic, gothic score and the whole style and tone of the piece make you think you're watching one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest thrillers. If you've seen Hitchcock's own 'Psycho' (1960), Gregory Peck's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (1962) and Robert Mitchum's 'The Night of the Hunter' (1955), it feels like they feed into 'Cape Fear'. It's almost as if Mitchum's sadist 'Max Cady' and Peck's lawyer 'Sam Bowden' are reprisals of their 'Harry Powell' and 'Atticus Finch' characters from those other two movies. Except this time Finch isn't a perfect hero of the law, he's fallible. I'd seen 'Cape Fear' before and thought it was good but this time I'm calling it "perfect". The increasing stakes of the game that Cady plays with Bowden's fear is expertly plotted. For a 1962 film, it's very dark and unflinching, the only way it's dated is the censoring of some actual words but the nastiness of Cady's crimes are still made very clear. In fact the inability to plainly state in the dialogue exactly what Cady intends to do to Bowden's 14-year-old daughter, makes the implied threat even more horrifying. Apparently they still had to make 161 cuts to avoid an X-rating in the UK at the time

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Cape Fear (1991)
I really liked Martin Scorsese's remake of 'Cape Fear' the last time I watched it, and how can you not like such a bravura central performance from Robert De Niro but seeing this again right after the faultless 1962 original, it did look marginally inferior. Scorsese approaches the material from some fresh angles, the lawyer Bowden isn't an honourable guy who made one mistake, he's deeply flawed (plus Nick Nolte just looks naturally more skeezy than the upright Gregory Peck), his marriage is now not a happy one but the most impactful change is the teenage daughter being attracted to and flirting with Cady, even when she knows he's a dangerous sexual predator. Perhaps because of it, to defy her parents. So this is of course a much more complex and morally fascinating character study but this undermines the simple sense of right and wrong, of heroes and villains, of catharsis, that made the original such a satisfying thriller. Bowden doesn't deserve what Cady does to his family but we feel that this new more dubious Bowden does deserve some comeuppance. De Niro also elicits more sympathy for the brutish Cady, he really conveys the absolute desolation and fury he must have felt, having been illiterate, then teaching himself to read in jail, only then to find he'd been betrayed in the words of his court reports, at the end he howls in pain "you were my lawyer!". There are iconic elements to the production like De Niro's cruciform prison tattoos (surely homaged in 'John Wick'), Cady laughing and smoking in the cinema and him sitting on a wall, framed against a sea of fireworks. It's admirable the way Elmer Bernstein re-used Bernard Herrmann's music for the remake, rather than trying to do his own thing. It must take a confidant composer to recognise that musical perfection can't be improved upon. Iif only other's would view John William's unbeatable 'Superman' theme in a similar way.

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The Making of 'Cape Fear' (2001)
Martin Scorsese seems to have had a desire to remake a Hitchcock movie, without actually doing it, so a Hitch-alike movie such as 'Cape Fear' was the ideal candidate. Scorsese stuck fairly closely to Bernard Hermann's score, augmented by an unused score from another Hitchcock movie. He also got frequent Hitch collaborator Saul Bass to do the titles. All the info about filming the climactic river battle was fascinating. This feature documentary also goes into some detail about the making of the original 1962 movie.

 

[Moe_Syzlak]

C’Mon C’Mon. The look of the film is amazing. It’s black and white, but it’s a soft black and white. It couldn’t look more different from The Tragedy of Macbeth. It sometimes feels pure black and white and other times it’s more sepia and still other times it seems to have traces of color and/or leans pinkish. But man, the establishing shots are just gorgeous. All the performances are great. The kid is impressive. But Joaquin Phoenix… the guy is just a national treasure.

The story is simple; even cliché. The middle-aged single, childless man who finds himself suddenly in a father like role to young boy. But it feels very real in a way not typical of this cliché story. The boy, Jesse, of the film is nine and I happen to have two nine year old boys in my house right now. It feels honest. It doesn’t pull any punches about how hard it can be, about how caregivers can feel like failures at times. Phoenix’s character is also on an assignment interviewing and recording kids as they talk about their lives and how they envision their futures. I loved these little vignettes. As a teacher, it was great to see so many kids from such different backgrounds in those scenes, all who go through their own issues and all who have their own hopes and dreams.

It may not be a movie for everyone. But I sure liked it. It feels personal. It doesn’t have twists or a big climax. It just is.

 

[The Scribbling Man]

Even with those cuts, the original Cape Fear is still a pretty shocking watch for the period. Makes you wonder what was left out.