Finally back to feeling well again, but a very mixed bag this week.
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)Frank Capra’s first go at the plain-speaking everyman thrust into the City whirl. Gary Cooper simmers, often silently, while being judged by all manner of gadflies, parasites, and crooks. When he’s not speaking, he’s banging heads together. We’re in full-on Capra-corn, being carried shoulder high by the community territory here. A feel-good, socialist Depression-era film bringing hope if not small-holdings to the masses of the American jobless and dispossessed. This is the sugar that helps the medicine go down.
Beavers (1988)Two beavers go about their lives of civil engineering and compulsive gnawing in IMAX! Thirty minutes of North American natural history including murky underwater shots. This lacks anything in the way of insight. The narration is soporific, there are few helicopter shots, and certainly none of the creatures in question. Even the bear attack lacks drama and threat. It may as well have been a man in a bear suit. In a world of amazing nature documentaries, it’s reassuring to know bad ones still exist.
Ultracop 2000 (1992)Well that was something. Dubbed German language abstract action-comedy set on the Philippines with cars that explode for no apparent reason, people who die expelling a stream of milk from their mouth, an entire subplot consisting of homphobic jokes about AIDS, and the conceit that everyone is bulletproof until the plot requires them to die or to limp. The soundtrack is composed mostly of a fast chattering noise that’s the director’s idea of what automatic gunfire sounds like. Perfect for people with the shortest attention spans.
Blind Husbands (1919)Erich von Stroheim dons a monocle and gets all the best tailoring in an Alpine seduction of a bored wife. It seems those men who dwell in the mountains spend their lives smoking extraordinarily long pipes, rescuing mountaineers embarking on suicidal attempts of unclimbable peaks and giving the side-eye at good-looking lieutenants spending too much time flattering married women. Well paced, the tension and jealousies slowly ratcheting up until the spirit of the mountain has to intervene..
Take a Chance (1918)Ten minutes of Harold Lloyd’s writers taking it turns to put him in terrible situations and letting the others work out how to have him escape. Slow-cranked, super-speed slapstick with so much narrative discontinuity it’s pointless trying to follow the plot. There is no pathos here, just pain, embarrassment, weakness and many laughs at the misfortunes of others. You’ll laugh, but you’ll have seen it all before. This is what’s left when you reduce all slapstick comedy to its bare essentials.
Transcendence (2014)Johnny Depp plays Clippy the electronic personal assistant. I can see you’re angry, but I’ve made a breakthough I think you’ll enjoy! Something has gone wrong in the writer-directer-producer chain here. Wally Pfister has learned things from working with Christoper Nolan, but didn’t pay attention when it came to the story understanding its subject matter. Moody visuals, yes. Pompous soundtrack, yes. Ignorance bending credibility beyond its breaking point for narrative convenience, yes. The more you watch, the worse it gets.
Le notti di Cabiria (1957) aka Nights of CabiriaGiulietta Masina is put through an emotional wringer by Fellini. An astounding performance of a woman desperate for connection, for protection, for safety. Her vulnerability masked by her confrontational attitude that seeks to distance herself from any threat even if they’re there to offer help is clear to all and exploited by the few able to slip through her defences. Though, there's much casual cruelty from men on display, Masina keeps the ember of joy and self-worth glowing at the core of her character.
The Dirt (2019)Another rock band, another biopic. Motley Crue are certainly more famed for the stories that surround them than their musical output, so perhaps are more suitable for this treatment than most. Nevertheless, what emerges is a by-the-numbers tale of drugs, drink, damage, break-up and reunification. By the end it’s close to a self-congratulatory group hug that they all survived. The wreckage they left in their wake, the lives used, abused and abandoned do not merit comment. A whitewashing of history.
Making Waves (1987)A group of older ladies go on an overcast seaside holiday to a largely deserted British resort, out of season. A closely observed short of verbal affectations, middle-aged lusts and thick woollen coats. Throwing a single and slightly younger man into this pot yields something between mothering and sexual tension and is subtly disquieting. More disturbing still are are the lies and a dark past that emerge. It crams a lot in to its short length. The director’s been studying her Alan Bennett and knows her subject well.
Shorts of the WeekDots (1940)Full of experiment, Norman McLaren’s dots boing, pffft and splodge along to a hand-drawn soundtrack. Like much of his work, there is a joy to be found in something as simple as dots and blotches animated to synchronise perfectly with the noises emerging from the speakers. McLaren has perfected his art of drawing waveforms and now has some indulgent fun with them, like a hippopotamus in a mudbath. It may be entirely abstract visually, but somehow these dots are alive and know how to party.
LinkOko wykol (1960) aka The Menacing EyeJerzy Skolimowski replaces menace with something weirdly seedy, surreal and blowsily erotic. It starts with a shadow of a knife approaching a woman’s house in a decaying fairground. Sinister. The knife is old and rusty. As is the man to whom the shadow belongs. He interrupts her make-up application to indulge in some circus knife-throwing that has a quality more of an argument in a dysfunctional relationship. After the death of a wig and a tactical, you’re left with a sense of uneasy impotence and decline.
LinkNo.1: Strange Dream (1939)The first of Harry Smith’s early abstractions involves mesmeric, hand-painted blobs jostling on the screen. There’s the sensation of a message, or some form of communication being attempted. As the title suggests this feels like the sort of meaning that might form inside a dream and tempts to look at it closer in case we’re missing something or perhaps analyse to sift through the noise and discover a deeper insight. An uneasiness amongst the colour and movement.
Link