Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
I'm curious if this was filmed sequentially because it gets progressively more accomplished as it goes along. The opening act around the oil fields and in Hollywood feels like the work of amateur director, cinematographer, and editor, with amateur performances. But once the film moves to the lush countryside of the northwest, it settles into a nice groove and proves itself worthwhile.
Grade: B-
Cargo 200 (Aleksey Balabanov, 2007)
If you ever wondered what Roy Andersson's
Texas Chainsaw Massacre might look like, here's your chance.
Cargo 200 makes the drabness and moral decay of 1984 soviet Russia oddly appealing and even comic. The film is narratively uneven but thematically on-point, a harsh critique of an era that maybe isn't as "bygone" as I'd like to imagine.
Grade: B
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri, 1970)
Gian Maria Volontè gives an all-time great performance here. This portrait of authority is really incisive and even terrifying. Surprisingly, Morricone's bouncy score fatigued me after a while. I'm surprised I haven't yet seen this paired on a double-feature with
The Conformist, made the same year. It'd also pair perfectly
Cargo 200, which shares the same surrealist, black comedy approach to institutional satire. I didn't watch them together, however. Just a nice coincidence.
Grade: B
Scrooge (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1951)
Another all-time great performance, here from Alastair Sim. His wide eyes reminded me of Klaus Kinski, who would have made an amazing Ebenezer Scrooge in his own right. The cinematography and art direction are also top-notch, and Dickens' excellent dialogue really crackles with this cast. The fantastical elements — the special effects and transitions between scenes — feel more dated than they should, even by 1951 standards, and Hurst's direction doesn't work around those limitations well at all. The story also suffers in the Christmas present and Christmas future sections, when Scrooge's character isn't foregrounded enough. But the film rebounds extremely well in the climax, with Sim's gleeful transformation radiating joy.
Grade: B
The 10th Victim (Elio Petri, 1965)
I'd definitely like to read the source story by Robert Sheckley, which exists somewhere on the spectrum between
The Most Dangerous Game and
The Hunger Games. Petri's film adaptation is so 60s, for good and for bad. The Art Deco style is really appealing, and Andress and Mastroianna are as cool and beautiful as can be. I would have loved to delve more fully into the politics of the Hunt and also other various elements of the future, like the state of marriage and the once-alluded-to Homosexual Union, among other things. The cat-and-mouse game (which reported inspired the college game of Assassin, which in turn inspired the paintball episodes of
Community) is engaging during its brief focus, but Petri is seemingly more interested in the romantic black comedy at the edges. The ending seems like a nod to Marcello's role in
8½, and yet not very satisfying. Piero Piccioni's jazzy score is fairly celebrated, I believe, but I couldn't really judge it fairly, as I kept rooting the film to be less playful and more serious.
Grade: B-
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