Ecks vs Sever -- I think this film is about intelligence agencies struggling for control of a secret weapon. (Hey, maybe Saddam has it?). This is a non-stop tribute to the ecstatic joys of killing. Lots of fun ways to kill, fancy looking guns, knives, bombs, car crashes and the martial arts. Sadly I didn't notice any hangings. Hey murderers just want to have fun. Besides killing is legal in Baghdad. Feeling unemployed and helpless? Uncle Sammy wants you.
El Mariachi -- This film is a Mexican gangster-comedy about a young Mariachi singer who always wears black and carries a guitar case, unfortunately so does a drug lord who is being hunted down by a rival. The drug lord carries a machine gun in his case. Of course mistaken identities ensue and everyone begins trying to kill the Mariachi . The film offers a believable portrait about how a small Mexican city can be completely owned by drug dealers. The script is well written, ironic, action packed, and the acting is splendid as are the close-ups. And here's the amazing bottom line - the film was made for only 7,000 bucks!
Emma -- A very pleasant adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. How the Brit rich and super rich lived in the early 19th Century. They lived very well indeed, in magnificent palaces of fine food, music, furniture and great gardens. Emma is the daughter of commanding wealth, a beautiful and benevolent busybody who tries to arrange a good marriage for her best friend. Instead makes a fine mess of everything. When she herself falls in love, she loses emotional control and discovers that the ruling class can't rule everything. There's some highly genteel and witty "Taming Of The Shrew" in the mix. And while it hardly has Marxist rigor, some interesting Austenesque commentary about social class.
Empire Of The Sun -- The story of a pre-adolescent ruling class Brit kid surviving without his parents in a Japanese internment camp (in China), during WW2. The film was shot in Shanghai and vicinity by Spielberg.
Eraser -- Staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The big guy is portrayed as a government bureaucrat loner working for the Secret Service's witness protection program. He has to protect Vanessa Williams who is spilling the beans on a high level plan to secretly sell terrorist weapons to the Russian Mafia. Arnold has to keep her alive but it seems almost everyone else in the government has an interest in killing her. Tons of violent action with humorous asides sets the tone. My favorite scene? Arnold brawls with a zoo alligator who seems the more likable of the combatants. The best plot device? Having the American Mafia go to war with the Russian version.
Eternal Sunrise of The Spotless Mind -- Slick, well acted, and photographed Sci-fi. Do you have memories that bum you out? Go to a doctor and have them erased. With a now spotless mind life will be beautiful. Except that it's all ugly and sleazy - a complete corruption of 60s humanistic values.
Evita -- Juan Domingo and Eva ruling post WW2 Argentina with a young El Che, played by the very handsome Antonio Banderas (he also played Sequeros in Frida) looking on. Ah, they were all so musical and romantic - still the visual images of Personismo, its achievements and discontents were striking and having Che give sardonic commentary was a masterstroke.
Feardotcom -- About a snuff web site that absorbs people's soul energy, pulls them into its script, and then brutally murders them - apparently punishing them just for watching. Filmed with endless intimate and off-beat non-stop carmera angles in darkest noir, with tunnels, unlighted interiors, and nightmares leaving you wondering if this is all a hip critique of passive consumerism, or a joyous celebration of murder chic. We have certainly come a long way from Disney and Tron.
Femme Fatale -- A French/English film directed by Brian De Palma, shot in the mean streets of Paris, and featuring beautiful women criminals with fantastic asses. Fortunately for them they 'usually' escape without punishment, all the while they are being pursued by two, very mean, Black gangsters out for absolute revenge. De Palma's main point, (made in a surprising and shocking manner), is that people really do have the free will to make the crucial decisions upon which hangs the rest of their lives.
For The Boys -- A wonderfully misleading movie staring Bette Midler and James Caan. At first you think it's going to about the biographical triumphs, along with the feuds and fights of a famous and aged show business couple, but it's really about the decline and fall of virtuous American patriotism. The couple is famous for entertaining the troops during WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam, and with each succeeding war their act becomes more and more difficult to justify, the morale and spirit of the troops grows darker, and for Midler and Caan, death gets very personal in Vietnam. Midler's singing and humor are fantastic, and her version of In My Life is off the charts. Caan produces just the right combination of cynicism and sentimentality.
Freddy vs Jason -- A horror film in the tradition of "Frankenstein vs Dracula" or "Godzilla vs Mothra" or heaven protect us, 'Bush vs Kerry'. The town's teenagers are no longer afraid of Freddy's dreamscape butchering because they are secretly being given dream suppressants by their parents and the police. Those teenagers who have first hand experience with Freddy have all been locked up in a local mental hospital. Freddy lives on fear, so he tricks slasher Jason into leaving a soft birth in Hell by pretending to be his domineering mother giving him orders to return to life, and the joy of mass murder and Elm Street. Soon the kids are again very afraid and Freddy regains his full force. But wouldn't you know it? The two monsters start slashing each other. In addition to various adolescent sexual fears, the film is also about how much teenagers hate their lying, scheming, manipulative parents. The demons seem only slightly worse than the grown ups. The films grandest moment is when Freddy quotes FDR. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." And then gets on with the slaughter.
For Richer Or Poorer -- A formula comedy about a wealthy and spoiled husband and wife who get caught up in a tax fraud case and then go underground hiding among the Amish. Predictably the strong communal life they encounter and the difficult farm work they must perform turns them into very likable people. Despite its cliches, the film does have its moments of likable sincerity, especially those among the once unhappy wife and the Amish women. It's nice to believe that somewhere in America, even if it's only Hollywood's version, a fugitive stranger can still encounter kindness and support.
The Freshman -- Marlon Brando brilliantly satirizes his Godfather role playing a gangster who seems to be illegally importing endangered species. Then he invites the worlds most glamorous and evil citizens to dine on the poor creatures at a million dollars per plate soiree at the "Gourmet Club." Don't get your conscience in a knot, it's a comedy and things are not always what they appear to be or not be. Film school and fashionable cinema criticism also come in for some hilarious spoofing. The best scene is when the legendary Bert (Miss America), Parks entertains the decadent during dinner hour by singing Dylan's Maggie's Farm. Best line spoken by Brando? "Scam? That is an ugly word. I prefer opportunity."
Frida -- Beautiful- the colors, costumes, art, songs and a lot of sex and pain. And a tale about larger than life Frida Kalho and Diego Rivera. Throw in Leon Trotsky and Siqueros and you have the best red film of the decade. Frida fights her sickness with artistic ferocity. A good role model.
Friday Foster -- 1975 black exploitation movie from a time when the Panther still prowled the American mind. It was sort of amiable with a black woman news photographer (Pam Grier) as super heroine - and lots of familiar faces in the cast, including my childhood super crush Eartha Kitt. All about a plot to kill off all the black leaders at one shot, in one place. Black economic and political elite unite to foil the plan. Plot problem? It's not clear just who wants to do all this killing. And what is the motive? --My guess? It's Whitey. But they ran out of money and couldn't cast him.
The Front -- All about blacklisted writers and actors in the early 1950s. Writers were able to set up "Fronts" -- individuals who had no left wing backgrounds (like Woody Allen's character) . The writers kept writing, and the Fronts submitted their scripts (and took a cash share of the payment). A lot of the actors, writers and directors of the film were once blacklisted, and this flick is their partial revenge. Zero Mostel in particular, taking aim at the horrible things that once happened to a friend.
Funny Farm -- Chevy Chase as a sophisticated MG driving journalist and his wife buy a rural estate and try living off his book contract. Naturally everything goes wrong and their neighbors turn out to be soft core sadists - even their marriage starts falling apart. The movie only gets a bit "funny and clever" when the couple decides to sell the house along with raising its value by bribing the towns people into pretending they are like the lovable rural folk from a Norman Rockwell illustration.This film is a good example of how Chase (and Hollywood), wasted his comic genius.
Gaudi Afternoon -- A screw ball American-Spanish comedy with soul, shot amidst the surrealism of Gaudi's dreamscape Barcelona architecture. An American woman literary translator becomes involved in a custody battle between lesbians, gender subversives, and homosexual magicians, waged over who is the best parent for a likable little girl. There are countless absurd kidnappings. The film is very funny, with a heartfelt message in support of grand tolerance. But it also cautions the sexual rebels to take into full consideration, the feelings of those they love. Especially their kids.
Ghost In The Shell -- As usual the visuals were fantastic and the music, some really fine New Age Japanese. The plot was very hard to follow - lots of chatter-blabber about individuality creativity, humanness and total control by mysterious puppet masters hacking into implanted techno mechanisms of angst ridden human robots and just what is the government up to? It all loses a bit in the translation.
Goin' South -- A pure and simple, hilarious and sexy comedy set in the mythical old West when they still hung people for horse stealing. Jack Nicholson is on the gallows when Mary Steenburgen invokes a town law that allows single women to pull guys of the gallows if they agree to marry them. The horse thief figures she did it for the sex but its really about him working very hard all day in her seemingly hopeless gold mine. Of course, they fall in love in a crazy sometimes kinky comic way, they really are a splendid odd couple. They have the invading railroads to contend with and Nicholson's old gang that can't shoot straight plus a sex crazed Deputy Sheriff and John Belushi doing his weird Mexican impersonation.
Goodbye Lenin -- East German film looking back on the good and bad old GDR and what was gained and lost when the Wall came down. The plot is motivated by a middle aged East German woman who has a heart attack and goes into a coma. She is a Party stalwart in a somewhat critical and humanistic Che Guevara earnest way. When she finally wakes up East Germany is becoming a capitalist colony of the west. Her son is afraid that the shock of knowing that socialism has gone down would kill her, so he keeps pretending in a hundred different hilarious sad and increasingly creative ways -- that the Party is still in charge and all is Red with the world.
Gods and Generals -- A well done, nuanced remake of Birth Of A Nation minus the hideous racism of the silent film masterpiece. Emphasis is placed on the widespread and deep religious beliefs prevalent at the time -- and held by Generals on both sides. During the civil war the main military tactic seems to have been for opposing soldiers to just stand in place and shoot each other. It all produced casualties on a level that should have made it the last war -- and not a forerunner of the modern world.
Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla -- The titles tells it all. Godzilla is desperate for strong opponents, Mighty Mothra is retired with a bum knee, and King Kong is suffering from Hepatitis C. Godzilla outsources his search for adversaries finding one in outer space who looks just like him only it has wings. The high light of the film is the appearance of earth bound Baby Godzilla, the cutest kid appearing in the movies since Shirley Temple.
Gothika -- Halle Berry plays someone who really is seeing life from both sides now. First as a highly respected shrink in a prison hospital that is run by her husband, and then as a cruelly treated inmate in the same hospital because she is accused of ax murdering her husband. At first she doesn't remember much of anything and spends the better part of the rest of the film figuring things out and regaining her power. A highly motivated ghost helps her along the way. The film is shot completely in dark surroundings, the hospital, the streets, houses and human souls offering little brightness and not much hope.
The Great Dictator -- The Great Chaplin finally speaks and has plenty to say. Film now a revered classic- a comedy about Hitler and the fascist personality. In its day it was denounced first for damaging American German relations and then when the war broke out for being too light hearted on Hitler. And in the McCarthy period for premature anti fascism.
Grosse Pointe Blank -- John Cusak stars as a professional assassin who under the advice of a shrink attends his high school reunion. "Don't kill anyone for a few days. See how you like it." He's also in town on one of his usual murderous tasks. Looking for a date he encounters his old high school sweetheart. Mutual love, and animal attractions are rekindled - but the bumpy road of romance takes a major detour. His target for murder turns out to be his girl's father! Slightly dark, and mildly cynical, the film is funny and communicates how matter of fact and ordinary killing for hire has become. It's just another American career.
Harry and Tonto -- A buddy film about an old guy and his cat out on the road from NY to Venice Beach. looking for a new home, and along the way they meet some remarkable people. Directed by Paul Mazursky in his usual eccentric and likable manner, we watch a portrait unflold of what it's like to get old. Harry loses the love of his life, his best friend, and a great apartment on Manhattan's upper west side only to be badly battered, but Harry never gives up.
Hero -- Chinese martial sword fighting film set at the birth of China. One brutal emperor is trying to forcibly unite the country and some of his victims are plotting to kill him. There's is good and evil on both sides, and both sides have a crucial historical role to play out. The brutal sword and beautiful calligraphy are counterposed, each will act out its part in creating a new China. Because of its spectacular camera work (enjoy the Chinese desert and the flying sword fighters) and sophisticated plotting, this is the kind of Asian film that makes you think western imagination is dead. True, it borrows some from spaghetti westerns, but only as a cover for Taoist magic and dialectical philosophy.
High Anxiety -- Mel Brooks - Psudo-Hitchcockian send off on shrink land. Some of the same great cast from Blazing Saddles - very funny at times--but the mark of comic genius is missing. A fun film to see when you are sick.
Hitler's Pawn -- HBO's new documentary offers a frightening account of how the US was suckered into being part of the Berlin based Olympic Games of 1936. In response to a large "Boycott Berlin" movement Hitler allowed German Jewish athletes to tryout for the German team. He also called off all Nazi attacks on Jews. Even storm troopers were instructed to smile. The Nazis claimed two Jews would be on their team, one was half Jewish and looked like an Aryan - the other was Gretta Bergman, a dark attractive Jewish woman high jumper. The documentary's narrative proceeds from her point of experiece. It was all a big Nazi lie, Bergman was told, but only after the American team began sailing for Germany, that she was not eligible for the team. The Nazi's bait and switch routine had worked.
The Holy Land -- This is a completely offbeat Israeli film about an ultra Orthodox rabbinical student who masturbates in his parents bathroom and reads Herman Hesse. His rabbi, quoting from appropriate Talmud sources, suggests that he take sometime off from his Torah studies and hangout with prostitutes. He'll get sex out of his system and then return to more sacred pursuits. Instead he falls in love with a hooker from the Ukraine and hangs out in a Jerusalem bar frequented by American expatriate hippies, a Dylan loving Arab, an insane Jewish fanatic who can't let go of his machine gun and all sorts of characters who you don't expect to be friends or even live in Israel. But don't think all that great dope and music can make political and religious hatred and wars go away. Israel is one of the most physically beautiful places on earth and The Holy Land's camera demonstrates this in a perfect and pleasing way.
A Huey P Newton Story -- I first saw this in NYC as a "one man" play staring Roger Guenveur Smith. I thought I was in the presence of a powerful and demanding ghost who happened to be a dead friend. Smith has joined forces with director Spike Lee to create an even stronger, and somewhat more frightening screen version of the Black Panther Party's cofounder. Anyone who ever spent a long afternoon with Huey will be familiar with the speed rapping - occasional mind blowing - genius who could also go off the rational wall. Smith catches Newton as a guy who could be soft spoken, playful and charming. And then he might become explosively angry, and out of all self control. My favorite scene is Huey's mad dancing to Bob Dylan's "Ballad Of A Thin Man." Newton really did love Dylan.Mostly what the film so painfully portrays is that Huey P Newton was a brave fighter, an audacious revolutionary who finally succumbed to his own demons and Americas.
Illuminato -- Set in NYC in 1900 - about a company of actors who (like the Yippies!) cannot possibly distinguish between the stage and real life - funny when it's not incomprehensible. I loved the shots of night time Central Park, and Christopher Walken's performance is a gift.
The Impostors -- A pleasurable comedy - directed, written and co-staring Stanley Tucci with Oliver Platt, and strongly influenced by the 1930s screw ball Laurel and Hardy style and also the more recent masterpiece, "Some like it Hot." Two out of work actors, who like to perform in the streets, get in a fight with a famous Shakespearean star. Trying to avoid the police they accidentally wind up on an Ocean voyage where everyone is trying to con everyone else - love and extreme foolishness dominate the air. And then there is one guy (Tony Shalhoub, TV's "Monk") who just wants to blow up the ship, kill everybody and create an ideal world.
IL Postino -- One of my favorites. It's all about Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet and politician, living in Italian exile and becoming friends with a poor Postman. Neruda, a great romantic poet and a great Communist encourages and inspires the Postman in both directions. Their relationship results in a bittersweet ending -- but it's good to remember that Communism wasn't only Stalin and Gulags -- it was also Neruda and the Postman.
Into The Badlands -- A pitch dark western. Imagine Rod Serling and Clint Eastwood being blended into a bitter paste and you have this film. The Badlands are not the promised land of milk and honey, they are a desert of absolute doom where the only promise is death, set in a metaphoric zone where all the spin and razzmatazz of life are stripped away. We are forced to face our doom and we can do it with irony, resistance, or fear, but there is no exit - face it we must.
The Iron Triangle -- A movie about the Vietnam War with a difference. It sees the war at least in part from "our enemies" point of view. The plot line is strongly influenced by a Vietcong soldier's diary. We discover the shadowy and super humanly indomitable VC to be made up of a normal assortment of ordinary human beings, many of whom are admirable but some are awful. We see the original face of our war time enemy up close and it looks a lot like us.
Isn't She Great -- A Jacqueline Susann biopic, that portrays her as a failed actress rising to superstardom as a spectacularly trashy novelist. Bette Midler and Nathan Lane, play the writer and her husband agent with surprising warmth and likability. The scenes of these energetically vulgar Jews, charming staid Christians in Connecticut, are particularly enjoyable. Susann wasn't Hemingway or Heller, but her dreams were harmless, and unlike some, she didn't want to rule the world. She just dreamed of it loving her.
JFK -- Oliver Stone's docudrama on the Kennedy assassination, and the efforts of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to figure out who did it and why. The long film boasts an outstanding cast with Kevin Costner, playing Mr. DA. Stone's work establishes that Garrison proved there was a violent CIA cabal operating in New Orleans and that the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had some relationship to the group. But he wasn't able to get much beyond that point. I was convinced that Garrison was correct in his hunches about the killing of Kennedy being a right wing coup d'etat, when years later, Judy and I visited Dallas and looked out of the very window of the Texas Book Depository supposedly used by Oswald for murder most foul. Sorry Warren Commission, but Lee Harvey could never have made that third shot. For more evidence that Garrison was on target about anti-democratic ultra right wing government being forcibly imposed on America, read all about George W Bush in the morning news.
Joe and Max -- It's the 1930s and Joe Louis and Max Schmeling are preparing for a championship fight. Joe has the title and Max wants it. Nothing unusual about any of this except that the German Schmeling is Hitler's favorite fighter and Joe Louis, the first black heavy weight champion in decades has become a national hero and a symbol of American democracy, The fight seems to be a model for World War 2. The portrait of the corrupt boxing world of that era is accurate as is the portrayal of the social and political climate surrounding the fighters. The plot's big surprise is that Max wasn't really a Nazi (more like an opportunist with a Jewish manager), and that throughout their brutal battles he and Joe really became warm personal friends. A friendship that survived the war between them and their nations. Of course, after WW2 Schmeling dropped the villain persona and became a wealthy businessman working for Coca Cola in Berlin and Joe was financially broken by the IRS. He was last seen working as a greeter in Las Vegas.
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 -- A revenge film ala Japanese spaghetti western featuring tons of super spurting blood is about honor, a true Samurai flick, it's Quentin Tarantino with magnificent quickly seen surfaces and a brilliant plurality of techniques. He sometimes goes black and white and there is an incredible Japanese animation sequence that makes beheading seem reasonable. For dedicated sadists, this scene should be a rewarding experience. Vol. 1 is only half the film, so we can't know what Tarantino is really up too till we see his other half.
Kill Bill: Vol 2 -- The Tarantino sequel moves from Japan to American and Mexican deserts and from Yakuza-Samurai heroic style to Spaghetti Western anti-epic. The photography is menacing and paranoiac but Kill Bill's limitless cruelty is generously mellowed by the films arch absurdity. And we are even treated to an ironic ending when this tale of deadly revenge turns out to be a great romance brought down by a lovers quarrel. David "Grasshopper" Carradine is perfect as the terrifying but vulnerable Bill and Uma Thurman continues to succeed as the vengeful bride.
Kundun -- Martin Scorcese's visually stunning account of the Dalai Lama's life and the Mean Streets of Lhasa, from his being recognized as the 14th Dali Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) - the reincarnation of his predecessor, and thus an incarnation Avalokitesvara, [the Buddha of Compassion], to his escape into India where he was given political asylum - with Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Red Army hot on his trail. The cinematography brilliantly simulates the look of Tibet with its mountains and holy places - stressing the magically mysterious ritual aspects of Tibetan Buddhism over the scholarly. This accounting of the Tibetan/Chinese conflict is very one sided. Mao seems like Bela Lugosi playing Dracula, and the storyline predominantly features only the official Tibetan version of events. This must be one of the most accomplished (and brilliant), propaganda films ever made!
The Lady Vanishes -- Hitchcock at his finest and most fun. A nice old Brit lady is on a mysterious train in central Europe when suddenly she is "disappeared." All the passengers but one deny her very existence. Seemingly motivated by conspiracy or selfishness, and only one fellow traveler, a younger woman, proclaims the Lady's existence. She has to resist incredible pressure, not to conform to the majority who insist she is delusional. Kafka would have loved this film.
The Last Picture Show -- Peter Bogdanovich's chillingly black and white masterpiece about a dying Texas town and its inhabitants. The town's economy isn't the only thing that's being gutted - individual and collective souls are also dying. Only friendship and its values remain and they are under constant attack. Friendship doesn't always win. Bogdanovich uses slow sweepingly graceful camera pans and extra long close ups of grim stares, to portray the overwhelming bleakness of it all. There's a bit of Welles here and even some Eisentein for good measure.
Laurel Canyon -- Yuppies are seduced into the predictable and boring decadence of LA's music scene and the seducers and seduced behave in ways that are completely expected. Some good acting but the most unusual plot device is that one of the corrupters is the guy's mother.
A League Of Their Own -- Set during World War 2, it recalls some forgotten American history. All the great baseball players were in the army, so the team owners decided that if Rosie is riveting in the factories why shouldn't she also be belting baseballs in the stadium? A pro-women's league is formed and some exciting baseball is played. Great team work, and inspiring companionship but also harsh rivalry. After the war ends, and the big male stars come home, efforts were made to keep the women's league alive - but in line with the coformist/conservative 1950's, the sisters were now playing soft ball instead of hard ball.
Lost Boys -- K Sutherland in his heyday - Rebel Without A Cause for California vampires.
Love At First Bite -- A very sexy and hilarious romantic comedy about the eternally recurring Count Dracula. Tthis time around the count is portrayed with dignity, and absurdity by George Hamilton. Dracula is kicked out of Romania by the Communists because he still seems to be biting peasants, along with stealing their land. Then he shows up in NYC, where nobody seems to be afraid of vampires. Dracula is desperately seeking the knockout fashion magazine super model who has seized his passion. My favorite film joke is Dracula with a hangover complaining he can't be happy because "for 700 years I have had to dress like a head waiter."
Love And Death -- Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are hilarious as doomed and very silly lovers. It's all a mix of the Napoleonic wars, Eisenstein, Bergman, the Marx Brothers, Chaplin, Tolstoy and Prokofiev. Endless dismal topics are satirized via verbal put downs and endless sight gags. God, moral responsibility, heroism, patriotism and death are roasted in the finest traditions of over the top kibitzing. Every famous character in a Russian novel is mentioned. My favorite line is spoken when a Russian officer tries to encourage his men to fight by telling them, "Think of your wives and children, if the French win, they will be forced to eat all that rich food."