criterionforum.org

bottled spider wrote:

zedz wrote: Eimbcke's follow-up Lake Tahoe is a much more confident and impressive film, in my opinion. It's less overtly funny, though, but cinematically it's way more ambitious.

Lake Tahoe was great. I found its quiet, deadpan humour very amusing, but then it gradually, gently reveals itself to be a more serious film; the comedy and sadness seamlessly merge. I've never seen anything quite like it in terms of tone and humour.

I'm glad you liked it. Just that fact that Eimbcke does so much with the comic potential of widescreen mise-en-scene is impressive, but then those tonal trapdoors really turn the film into something special. There's still time to see this for the 2000s list, folks!

Pather Panchali (1955) - Satyajit Ray

Satyajit Ray's masterpiece family drama about the lives of an Indian family in a rural Bengali village. The film is an extraordinary glimpse into a time and place with which most of us will be totally unfamiliar, and yet the human themes are probably more accessible and meaningful than nearly any modern film. Most of the characters are flawed in some way, like real people, and I loved all of them in their own way. The elderly "Auntie" reminded me of the grandparents in HHH's "Dust in the Wind" and "A Time to Live, A Time to Die." In terms of its realism and poetic pacing, "Pather Panchali" seems to be way ahead of its time. This film in my opinion deserves to be placed in a high pantheon along with other family dramas like Ozu's "Tokyo Story" and Malick's "Tree of Life".

Pather Panchali was my introduction to Ray, and I'm embarrassed to admit I was a little bored with it, and with the second film of the trilogy too. But I went on to like Charulata, Big City, The Coward, The Chess Players, The Music Room, The World of Apu, and Home and the World. Now that I've acquired a taste for Ray, I expect I'll have a much better appreciation of the trilogy when I revisit it for the project.

Another Ray film eligible for this project is Two Daughters (Teen Kanya). I don't know if it's considered minor Ray (it appears to be less often discussed), but I thought it superb, delicate and strongly dramatic at the same time. I've only seen it on VHS, but there's a DVD available on Amazon.

Babies (Thomas Balmès, 2010). No introduction, voiceover, or talking heads, just All Babies All the Time. Specifically, a baby and family from each of four countries (Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, and America), followed from late pregnancy to about eighteen months, I think. There are some hair-raising moments where we watch babies in what to Western eyes appear to be rather unsafe situations. As much as I heartily approve of this unadorned style of documentary, this has to work against the inherent obstacle that holding an actual baby is approximately one billion times more satisfying than watching them on screen. It's a nice film, but not list worthy.

Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio, 2009). A semi-documentary of a father and young boy going on a fishing trip at a reef together as a goodbye visit before the boy moves to Italy with his mother. (Ambiguities as to how much is pure documentary are not, I think, an important aspect of the film; suffice it to say that it is more documentary than not). I don't know what to say about it except that it is beautiful, sweet, satisfying. I expect it will remain in the top half of my list.

bottled spider wrote:Pather Panchali was my introduction to Ray, and I'm embarrassed to admit I was a little bored with it, and with the second film of the trilogy too. But I went on to like Charulata, Big City, The Coward, The Chess Players, The Music Room, The World of Apu, and Home and the World. Now that I've acquired a taste for Ray, I expect I'll have a much better appreciation of the trilogy when I revisit it for the project.

Another Ray film eligible for this project is Two Daughters (Teen Kanya). I don't know if it's considered minor Ray (it appears to be less often discussed), but I thought it superb, delicate and strongly dramatic at the same time. I've only seen it on VHS, but there's a DVD available on Amazon.

I also wondered whether Devi was eligible too; given that Sharmila Tagore's character is supposed to be 17, I think.

More youth-focused films from this past year:

Cinderella (Kenneth Branagh 2015) Slick but soulless adaptation of the ever-popular fairy tale, shot with anonymous splendor by Branagh. Fresh-faced Lily James makes a fine non-sexually threatening Cinderella (a necessity I touched on here in my discussion of Lesley Ann Warren’s take on the character), but sadly, outside of Stellan Skarsgård’s unexpectedly upbeat heavy, none of the other cast really registers— and this includes Cate Blanchett, who phones in her evil stepmother part. The film’s costuming is extraordinary and looks like it cost the GDP of entire Eastern countries, and if nothing else it was worth seeing the film once on Blu-ray to appreciate the exquisite craftsmanship at play. Pity the same attention to detail wasn’t carried over to the rest of the production. This is beautiful-looking and admittedly entertaining enough, but also disposable and instantly forgettable.

Goosebumps (Rob Letterman 2015) Literally the best possible movie that could ever be made on this subject, this quickly exceeded my low expectations by being a smart and cheeky embracing of the popular Goosebumps series while constantly keeping horror cliches and tired tropes at arm’s length by acknowledging and playing off them to great effect. This last thing I expected a film based on this series to be was clever, but here we are. Plus, the film devotes a good thirty minutes to establishing its youth characters before RL Stine’s creations come into play, and the three teenage leads are great, especially Super 8’s scene-stealer Ryan Lee, who walks away with this film as well. I was also pleasantly surprised to see Amy Ryan and Ken Marino pop up as the requisite useless adults (though the latter isn’t given much to do and I suspect he had a larger role at some stage of the production). This is all pretty clearly cut from the Jumanji cloth, but I thought it was the best youth adventure film I’ve seen since Super 8, and I recommend it to those perceptive to pleasures of this sort.

Jem and the Holograms (Jon M Chu 2015) Savaged by critics and given a historic theatrical retraction by Universal after it bombed, to the surprise of no one this turned out to be a little more interesting than the dismal response suggested. I’ve not seen the animated series that provided the loose inspiration here for this story of a viral video star who learns Valuable Lessons while on the shortcut path to fame, but considering how much the fans hated this, maybe it helped in my positive response. There is still a great and defining film to be made about how the current youth culture uses and fetishizes internet communication and social media, and while this movie isn’t it, it does have a few novel approaches to bring to the table. I especially liked the use of intercutting popular YouTube musical clips to score some scenes, with perhaps the best moment coming when a drumming duel is used to score a dramatic instant messaging exchange. The songs the titular Jem and her band of sisters perform are generally pretty good (early on the soundtrack features Hailee Steinfeld’s inescapable “Love Myself” and the original songs here are in that mold of anthemic girl pop), though the initial “viral” song is easily the worst and most forgettable of the lot. A lot of films require a leap of faith, this one takes a chasm’s worth— the film is almost gloriously misguided in its attempts to be cool and relevant (it would have killed anyone involved to email someone at Rookie and get some actual insights into teenage girls?), but I thought it inadvertently revealed the adult-driven approaches to depictions of acceptable teenagedom that drive a lot of youth entertainment. The film is cheesy and supremely self-earnest, but it plays its absurdities straight and true. Recommended.

And still more youth-focused films from last year:

Divergent (Neil Burger 2014) / the Divergent Series: Insurgent (Robert Schwentke 2015) The least of the three post-apocalyptic YA franchises I’ve sat through, this was still okay, but as during superhero movies, I just spent too much time asking questions I’m not supposed to (“Who built these things?” “How can they afford everything we see on screen?” “Who organized all of this?” and so on). The symbolic value of a society that pigeonholes its citizens into life-long careers is an obvious tip of the hat to the anxieties of the average high schooler fearing the real world, but these movies are also about as clever as your average teen— which is to say, sporadically, but not enough to confuse anything happening with art or even great trash. Things do tick up a bit in the second film with an utterly bonkers action sequence that finds Shailene Woodley careening all over a flying house as it rises above a decimated metropolis, where as in Sucker Punch or Life of Pi the filmmakers have managed to use CGI to expand beyond the ordinary into new creative arenas, but even the best moments in this film are appreciated in a cheesy, arm’s length way. I guess I’ll still watch the rest of these, but I can’t really recommend anyone else follow suit.

Dope (Rick Famuyiwa 2015) The obvious blueprint here is to make a new Friday for the millennial generation, but this teen comedy about a 90s-fetishizing “nerd” (or so the film claims, he seems nothing of the sort) who finds himself in possession of a backpack full of MDMA and proceeds to sell it online for BitCoins (So now, so hip!!!!), is a lighthearted romp about things that aren’t funny, with characters I hated, played by actors I hated more (especially the curly-haired dude from Workaholics, who fills the race-reversed token role here). The only interesting part of this film was in how the director was so bad at his blockings and set-ups that I didn’t even realize one of the main characters was played by Rick Fox until 3/4 of the way through the movie because every scene he was in was shot from the same angle.

the Longest Ride (George Tillman Jr 2015) By the numbers Nicholas Sparks adaptation with more nudity than I expected for a PG-13 teen flick, but no other surprises in store. The central dilemma— how can two people from diametrically-opposed walks of life possibly co-exist in a happy relationship— is hilariously circumvented in a cheat that is predictable in a “They aren’t really going to do this, are they?” fashion while still being wholly unattainable for any poor kid caught in a similar situation. I’ve sat through far worse from far more acclaimed sources, but you could probably write your own Wikipedia summary from just knowing the premise.

the Maze Runner (Wes Ball 2014) / the Maze Runner: the Scorch Trials (Wes Ball 2015) The first entry for this series is my favorite yet of the dystopian YA sagas filling up our screens, with a legitimately intriguing set-up and welcome aversion of the usual post-apocalyptic landscapes that seem to fill every other entry in this subgenre of Hunger Games cash-ins. The answer to who could be sending up one new teenage boy a month into a lush glade surrounded by a killer maze could never be satisfying, and indeed, once we find out the answers, we wish we’d remained in the dark longer, but the wind-up still worked for me. I found the second entry far more conventional, though, as I’ve just seen too many zombie movies to want to see a YA one, but I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt for now since I only have to devote one more movie’s worth of a chance to it. There is a great action set-piece inside a toppled skyscraper, and boy after watching these two films back to back, I feel the need to brush up on cardio myself! Recommended.

Slow West (John Macllean 2015) 2015 turned out to be an unexpectedly banner year for Westerns, with three great examples (the Hateful Eight, Jauja, and the Keeping Room), one interesting failure (Bone Tomahawk) and this, the least of the quintet. A disappointing film in all respects, especially its ugly, overly digital look. The story of a foolish Irish lad on a quest for a girl who already friendzoned him is a little too dunderheaded to ever buy into— at no point did I believe the motivations for literally anything this kid does— but I’ve seen so many bad westerns that I can find the simple pleasures in a mediocre one like this.

Tiger House (Thomas Daley 2015) Slight but worthwhile noir riff with Kaya Scodelario from Skins (and hey, now the Maze Runner movies!) trapped in her boyfriend’s house while armed men hold the family hostage. She’s no John McClaine, but she is a former ballerina with access to a crossbow, so as you could guess there are more than a few opportunities for her to play the hero. I found the ending appropriately noir-like in somehow navigating a happy ending while still acknowledging the class conflict at the heart of the film. Recommended.

domino harvey wrote:the Maze Runner (Wes Ball 2014) / the Maze Runner: the Scorch Trials (Wes Ball 2015) The first entry for this series is my favorite yet of the dystopian YA sagas filling up our screens, with a legitimately intriguing set-up and welcome aversion of the usual post-apocalyptic landscapes that seem to fill every other entry in this subgenre of Hunger Games cash-ins. The answer to who could be sending up one new teenage boy a month into a lush glade surrounded by a killer maze could never be satisfying, and indeed, once we find out the answers, we wish we’d remained in the dark longer, but the wind-up still worked for me. I found the second entry far more conventional, though, as I’ve just seen too many zombie movies to want to see a YA one, but I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt for now since I only have to devote one more movie’s worth of a chance to it. There is a great action set-piece inside a toppled skyscraper, and boy after watching these two films back to back, I feel the need to brush up on cardio myself! Recommended.

I haven't seen these Maze Runner films yet but the whole era of Battle Royale/Hunger Games films keeps making me wish that someone would adapt J.G. Ballard's short story War Fever to the screen. That's an amazing piece of work in which various groups of young people in a futuristic Beirut fight to the death for nebulous goals, broadcast over the news media to mass audiences (long before reality TV, this is more a Vietnam journalism satire) with the big twist being:

Spoiler

that these are the 'unwanted' peoples of an overcrowded world, mostly children who have been orphaned and therefore forcibly enrolled into the programme by their respective countries, brought up to fight and die as representatives of their particular nations. The never-ending conflict being the way that nations let off steam, are entertained and settle their quarrels about all kinds of subjects to avoid messy and unpredictable wider conflicts outside of this one, unilaterally agreed as legitimate, Middle Eastern 'battlezone'.

It is also a brilliant piece for the way that its uniform bunch of naive, beautiful and idealist young people are explained as never having known any other world but conflict. And brilliantly the 'colour blind', or international casting of the squads of soldiers jars unrealistically at first and then becomes entirely apt as an explanation for why you have a Brazilian, a Hungarian, a Korean and so on all fighting in a squad, and why everyone all speaks English as a common language! Its an inclusive and diverse 'melting pot', but a melting pot for all of the worst, most horrifically callous arbitrary reasons.

colinr0380 wrote:

domino harvey wrote:the Maze Runner (Wes Ball 2014) / the Maze Runner: the Scorch Trials (Wes Ball 2015) The first entry for this series is my favorite yet of the dystopian YA sagas filling up our screens, with a legitimately intriguing set-up and welcome aversion of the usual post-apocalyptic landscapes that seem to fill every other entry in this subgenre of Hunger Games cash-ins. The answer to who could be sending up one new teenage boy a month into a lush glade surrounded by a killer maze could never be satisfying, and indeed, once we find out the answers, we wish we’d remained in the dark longer, but the wind-up still worked for me. I found the second entry far more conventional, though, as I’ve just seen too many zombie movies to want to see a YA one, but I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt for now since I only have to devote one more movie’s worth of a chance to it. There is a great action set-piece inside a toppled skyscraper, and boy after watching these two films back to back, I feel the need to brush up on cardio myself! Recommended.

I haven't seen these Maze Runner films yet but the whole era of Battle Royale/Hunger Games films keeps making me wish that someone would adapt J.G. Ballard's short story War Fever to the screen. That's an amazing piece of work in which various groups of young people in a futuristic Beirut fight to the death for nebulous goals, broadcast over the news media to mass audiences (long before reality TV, this is more a Vietnam journalism satire) with the big twist being:

Spoiler

that these are the 'unwanted' peoples of an overcrowded world, mostly children who have been orphaned and therefore forcibly enrolled into the programme by their respective countries, brought up to fight and die as representatives of their particular nations. The never-ending conflict being the way that nations let off steam, are entertained and settle their quarrels about all kinds of subjects to avoid messy and unpredictable wider conflicts outside of this one, unilaterally agreed as legitimate, Middle Eastern 'battlezone'.

It is also a brilliant piece for the way that its uniform bunch of naive, beautiful and idealist young people are explained as never having known any other world but conflict. And brilliantly the 'colour blind', or international casting of the squads of soldiers jars unrealistically at first and then becomes entirely apt as an explanation for why you have a Brazilian, a Hungarian, a Korean and so on all fighting in a squad, and why everyone all speaks English as a common language! Its an inclusive and diverse 'melting pot', but a melting pot for all of the worst, most horrifically callous arbitrary reasons.

How about a film version of Ballard's Running Wild?

Some second viewings:

Jacquot de Nantes (Varda). Demy certainly had a rich childhood to have lived through. To sit through as a spectator is another story. Much of the film is to do with the young Demy's efforts to make homemade films with extremely limited resources. His perseverance is admirable, but not necessarily exciting to watch. I don't know: the first time I watched it I found it enchanting, and a touching tribute to her dying husband -- I was considering spotlighting it -- but I found it dull on second viewing.

Turtles Can Fly (Ghobadi). Similar to the earlier A Time for Drunken Horses, you either get into to the film, or you push away from its brutality and suffering. Turtles Can Fly is the more extreme of the two, but it is also a stranger, richer film, with a leaven of humour and some moments of suspense that help the viewer stay with it. This will definitely be somewhere on my list.

Pather Panchali (Ray). I found out almost at the last minute that the university cinema was showing single screenings of each member of the restored trilogy. My mind often wandered during this leisurely paced film, as it did the first time I saw it. Which is fine, films don't have to be gripping. What matters is the total effect. I was blown away by the artistic confidence of this director's first film. Aparajito: when the credits rolled I marvelled at the distance covered in less than two hours. World of Apu: each entry has its own character, and could be viewed independently, but they complement each other, and make a satisfying whole. I saw them a week apart; it would have been something to watch them three nights in a row. These will be in my top ten.

Drama/Mex (Naranjo). This has a rating of 5.0 on IMDb, which given the generally inflated ratings on that site, is pretty dire. I see from a search that attempts have already been made to champion this, without much success. I really don't know what to say in its defence, but it will probably be in my top ten anyway.

I loved "Turtles Can Fly".

Recent first time viewings and some revisits of childhood favorites:

Blood and Lace (Philip S Gilbert 1971) One of the most gleefully strange horror movies I’ve ever seen. Foul things are afoot at Gloria Grahame’s foster home: the corpses of runaways are kept locked up in the freezer to be trotted out as “sick” patients in the infirmary during site visits, and Uncle Leo from Seinfeld’s handyman makes his introduction in the film by throwing a butcher knife at a boy trying to leave the foster home, severing the kid's hand in the process. He’ll later try to rape poor recently orphaned Melody Patterson from F Troop, here so lovely that everyone either wants her or hates her because others want her. The ending to this movie is so gloriously tasteless and perverse that I don’t know how you can do anything but just shake your head in delighted disbelief. Recommended.

the Chipmunk Adventure (Janice Karman 1987) As someone who’s slowly but surely been rewatching virtually everything I saw as a kid, I occasionally still get surprised at how much something resonated with me that I had completely erased from my consciousness in the interim years. I in fact forgot all about this film and was only reminded of its existence by an internet posting elsewhere and, well, having disposable income means that the next day it’s on my front porch. But I was shocked at how much I remembered from this once it started, and it’s all so weird that I can’t believe I blocked it out: In a world where chipmunks are child-surrogates in size and status (?), Alvin and his fellow Chipmunks face off against the Chipettes on a global journey while inadvertently serving as elaborate jewel-smuggling mules. What kid wouldn’t love to see child stand-ins race around the globe while being drug runners (diamonds=heroin, surely)? Along the way the kid/monks perform a number of original songs, almost all of which are pure 80s heaven. I’ve seen arguments that the film is somewhat suspect in how it presents the Chipettes, and while I think most of this is just people bringing their own Graham Greene-ish baggage to whatever this cartoon has awakened within them, there’s at least one eye-opening piece of evidence that could be read in favor of that thesis: Two of the Chipettes, dressed in belly dancer-style garb, perform “Getting Lucky,” a catchy number about how they want to romance up some snakes (and this is shortly after one of the Chipettes is kidnapped and held for an arranged marriage). Uh…. Regardless, I enjoyed this all beyond any reasonable degree, and much of it was animated by artists who were fired from Disney after the failure of the Black Cauldron, so there’s some surprisingly fun and lively animation at work as well.

DuckTales: the Treasure of the Lost Lamp (Bob Hatchcock 1990) I remember seeing this feature length continuation of the popular syndicated cartoon in theaters when it first came out and loving it, but this one definitely didn’t live up to my memories. While passably entertaining, it never rises above TV-quality animation and some rather tired ethnic characterizations. I do love the perversity of hiring Rip Taylor to voice one of the main characters in a childrens’ movie though!

Les Grandes Personnes (Jean Valere 1960) Durgnat includes this one in his study of the Nouvelle Vague, but despite Jean Seberg in lead and Raoul Coutard behind the camera, it struck me as having far more in common with the stuffy and braindead prestige pictures the New Wave was fighting against. A tale of Seberg’s puppydog infatuation with the man her new boss tried to commit suicide over, this is a frequently drab and unimaginative slog, with no real ideas or function. If we really must consider it part of the New Wave, it’s one of its worst products.

the New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (Ken Annakin 1988) Maybe if I’d ever seen the Swedish versions everyone seems to prefer, I could be snobby about this one, but this is the one I grew up with and I enjoyed it again as an adult, even with all of its myriad problems (every actor, save Tami Erin’s Pippi, either goes broad or doesn’t know how to even do that). But the songs are still annoyingly catchy earworms and it’s all cute and harmless enough. Nothing revelatory, but a nice way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon while sick in bed.

The Childhood of Maxim Gorky A strange movie about Gorky's crazy upbringing with his crazy hillbilly relatives. A whiff of Soviet propaganda and a strong silent movie vibe add to the strangeness. Gorky had a rough childhood, but this is not a grim film. If anything I'd call it exuberant. Some beautiful cinematography too. It won't make my final list, but I can comfortably recommend it.

White God
This is a cute enough film even if it seems utterly confused by what the lead girl's age is supposed to be. Socially she seems to be a good five years older then she is, but with her dad and dog she's much more age appropriate. That complaint aside this is a pleasant reworking of your typical lost dog children's film narrative as working class commentary. There's a few injections of social consciousness and while the dog stuff lands what I think is an attempt to turn into a metaphor Hungary's racism is much less so leaving the film more cartoonish then it aims to be. The first half in particular is bad at this with all of the adults playing evil crackling villains basically. When Mundruczo focuses in on the girl's relationship with her father as a healing exercise starting after the clubbing scene her story begins to take off and succeed. It's a raw and emotionally honest climax to a not terribly realistic until that point relationship. The single scene though almost post facto makes sense of her story. The stuff with the dogs is much more consistent, in spite of one real serious surprise which takes it out of kids film territory, though it never lifts up to Bressonian donkey levels which is probably an unfair standard.

Kingsman
This is significantly better then Kickass, but is too derivative and its politics too toxic to be good. It's almost beat for beat a knock-off of Men in Black down to some shots though the intercutting makes it feel more overdrawn. The only real benefits the film has are the collection of actors, who are all great, and some very clearly edited action. Hell, even Mark Hamill is here sporting a silly accent (unfortunately everyone else sports even sillier ones). The action is all at the center of the frame and barely edited. Again though too bad this is all at the service of a frame of view that is too disgusting without the benefit of an aesthetic that makes it more then an okay blockbuster.

Fish Tank
I did not need to see a dramatic Kevin and Perry film. The second half of the film is possibly the worst film in the collection.

Wadjda
Obviously the novelty of seeing a film out of Saudi Arabia gives this film a major boost in value, but it manages to function well in the vein of Shoeshine and Kiarostami's The Traveler. On the first front it really is interesting to see how expectations of of Arabian life get undermined or redefined from my foreign perspective. Wadjda's little bits of Americana and the private American style dress present little surprises. There's also stuff like the professional woman driver which should have been obvious as a necessity for Arabia to function, but not something I had thought of before. He also presents compelling questions of a possible immigrant situation for the country that is too on the periphery yet is a tantalizing possibility.

I could continue on like that for a while, but it is important not to just treat this as a piece of exotica and appreciate as the good if often ordinary film it is. What really raises above the average children starring neo-realist film is Waad Mohammed's mature and smart-ass performance that is frankly more complex then a lot of adult performances. The film doesn't really allow her a lot of room for expression given her lack of power. Instead she has to delicately indicate everything through subtle shifts in her eyes and lips. This is especially powerful in her little FU to the teacher in the climax, but merely highlights the brilliance of her overall performance. Director Al Mansour isn't chopped liver though as, for example her steady hand in the mother's story more clearly shows her strength. In a way the mother is a more normal protagonist. Instead of falling into cliche the melodrama of it tends to be underplayed as an external expression of neurosis that Wadjda feels. The plot and Abdullah's performance could support their own film, but I think is was the smarter move on Al Mansour's part to leave it as support. Likewise, and I suspect this comes from having to still live with this society, the story leaves a greater nuance of the good and the bad of the society then something like Persepolis. This is just how things feel like from Wadjda's, and I assume by extension Al Mansour's, perspective and they just have to learn how to maneuver it. It's a delicate nuance that I'm sure could have easily been lost even for a native.

Himizu
Having only seen two of his films so far I'm ready to claim Sono as the best youth director since at least Truffaut, maybe even de Sica. Through his own brand of fantasy he highlights with surprising realness the exaggerated world consuming nature teenage life can seem like. His is a classical surrealism that seems like the most objective lens to experience possible. The real shocker though is the amazing versatility with which he does it. This is almost the complete opposite to Love Exposure despite so many of the same character types, themes, and narrative injunctions. Despite being shorter by almost half Himizu has a more languid pace which allows for not just breathing, but a casual atmosphere like we're merely watching a particularly eventful week in an otherwise normal life. The themes are also much more insulated dealing with emotional blow back of the tsunami in direct and personal terms which make it feel so much less like transgressive cinema. If anything it feels more like The 25th Hour with one scene even functioning as an explosive retelling of the mirror scene. Sono has here an empathetic film which conjures sadness all throughout and doesn't allow for any of the giddy comfort that Love Exposure was so permissive on. The violence, for instance, even when expressed against 'deserving' villains is not cartoonish, but instead hurts to see even with the comedy and always has consequences for those who perform it.

OK, here's an adolescent highschool drama-turned-life alteringly toxic apocalypse anime that should be approached with extreme caution:

Urotsukidoji: The Legend of the Overfiend (1989)

Perhaps the most notorious 1980s anime, at least in the UK! This is sort of the ultimate hentai tentacle porn (and amazing that even the English dubbing voice actors for an animation seem to have wanted pornography-style pseudonyms!) But it also strikes me as one of the best films about the turmoil of the adolescent mind and relationships, abstracted out into a ginormous world (and taboo)-shattering epic.

The basic plot revolves around a prophecy that three ancient worlds man, man-beast and demon (basically id, ego and superego!) that are due to be reunited when the Chojin (sort of assumed to be a Christ-like saviour figure) is born. But what the prophecy does not go into too much detail in is that for re-birth there has to be death, and that comes in the form of the precursor figure that various characters are searching for during the story, the Overfiend (basically the Devil-figure, who will inevitably father the Chojin!)

Everything narrows down (as usual for these things) into the nexus of the local highschool, in which various characters, such as the jock, seem to be the Overfiend and are tested and found wanting, all whilst our nerdy 'hero' ogles the female lead doing rhythmic gymnastics and eventually finds the nerve to start a relationship with her in the traditional manner by saving her (after a couple of minutes watching, naturally) from the questing probing of her lecherous tentacle-y lesbian gym teacher! Of course our nerdy hero turns out to be the true embodiment of the Overfiend and the only reason the jock character (who has an unfortunately gruesome transformation/burn out during a cocaine-fuelled threesome that does not end well for anyone involved!) was suspected was that he accidentally ingested some of the hero’s blood during a bullying incident! Which is sort of mind-boggling in itself for all the metaphors it raises!

But of course our hero is too shy and in running away from their first date gets spectacularly crushed to death under a truck! His mangled body is taken to the local hospital where the Overfiend within awakens, assaults a nurse (in perhaps the most uncomfortable sequence) and destroys the entire hospital, before our hero wakes up again without a scratch or memory of the incident.

The second half of the film eventually funnels down into the eventual, almost pre-ordained, relationship between the main couple again as they both seem to, harrowingly, accept their respective fates imposed on them by the world, as well as the desires seething within themselves. They consummate their relationship (with an amazing zoom upwards from the girl’s orgasmic cries up through the roof of the building, through the sky and into space, from which the Earth is surrounded by vapours and looks like an egg about to be fertilised, with the girl’s crys turning into those of a baby), after which the girl is immediately turned purely into a voiceless incubator for the hundred year pregnancy for the Chojin’s rebirth and gets magically whisked away by attendants to a highly protected temple in the city, while the guy turns fully into the demonic Overfiend whose function from this point on is to lay waste to the human world in preparation for the new order, all while the previously sealed barriers between the demon and human worlds open.

The man-beast character who has functioned as the audience identification figure throughout the story, investigating who the Overfiend might be and observing (and of course inevitably being turned on!) by the human behaviour he is witnessing, is left angy at this seeming ‘betrayal’ of this being a devastation rather than a unification (is it just a matter of semantics though?) and abandons the human world to the wrath of the Overfiend, vowing to return when the Chojin is born.

The final shot of the film is the Overfiend destroying Tokyo underneath the end credits as the human world, so long separate from the others, begins to be invaded by demons. Its really a giant generational anxiety metaphor for the way that each new generation in some senses takes over, destroys and remakes the adult world anew.

This film has an extremely dark and brutal take on adolescent sexual awakenings (adolescence here is distressingly being seen as the inevitable loss of childhood innocence that immediately corrupts someone into just another adult enslaved by their sexual urges, with the innocent and naive young lovers who keep inevitably appearing over and over again through the rest of the films in the series both pale echoes of the main couple here and fresh grist to the violation mill), the societal constraints that are pressing down on everyone in the story (nobody escapes their assigned roles, but are doomed to repeat them over and over), and an eventual almost nihilism to submitting to a destiny that produces a new generation that destroys everything that previous generations built up in one fell swoop (its sort of inevitable that the film also has echoes of the Second World War and the atomic bombs to it, along with Allied Occupation of Japan in the post-war years). It also feels as if it captures that cliched adolescent attitude of lashing out at everything and pushes it to its ultimate and transgressive limit. It is not a film for the faint of heart in any shape or form, and all the sex is obviously meant to be titillating to some extent, which only complicates matters even further when scenes shift into horror and the fluids become blood. I would even accept it being seen as an extremely problematic work in many, many ways, but a lot of its power comes from feeling like it is an uncensored work, unfettered by notions of boundaries, taste and decency (and of course consent!). It wouldn’t have the same impact if it didn’t feel like such an unconsidered howl of the id, mixed with certain, but similarly brutal commercial considerations!

I kind of wish Gaspar Noé would do a live action remake of it, as this seems entirely within his sex-violence, brutally nihilistic wheelhouse! Although only if he scores the final scene of Tokyo destruction to ATB's Till I Come that segues into Heaven (or Castles In The Sky) for some callously ironic, happy euro-pop end credits!

[reconsidered]

Gregory's Girl (Forsyth). I enjoyed this a lot when I first saw it at around fourteen. It's a bit dated now, and with age my interest in coming of age films wanes as my interest in films of childhood waxes. The sight gags work better on the big screen, and in general the humour benefits from the presence of an appreciative audience. I can recommend it to those who have never seen it, but it's a long way from being list worthy.

Getting these films on the plate is pretty easy, who many in just the past decade have been made, but I'm finding it comically hard to say anything of substance for most of these. The below almost get there, but even they are basically just various forms of nostalgia highs. Anyone else finding such problems?

Starlet
I was really guarded to this because at best it looked like it could be an annoying Andrew Bujalski film and the first few minutes play out like this with the lead woman being a crazy person harassing this old lady. After the movie gets its plot out of the way though it preceded to charm me with its absolute realism in terms of character, milieu, and simplicity. I don't think any film could more accurately represent California then this. Given how everyday this reality is for me that should make this film unlikable and I kind of want to, but knowing the real versions of these characters only adds to the bizarre glee this film produces. It also manages some major horror out of very mundane situations. The dueling emotions that bring out the tension of the market scene about an hour in are extremely intense even though the worst that could happen is a minor inconvenience. Also take a look at the scene with the friend at the agency is the perfect encapsulation of a certain type of twenty something Californian that I have to stand in shock that someone was capable of portraying it so right. I could really go on and on describing how Baker does everything right with this film, but you can just watch the film for a better idea of that. This and not Frances Ha or Girls should be the film of this generation.

Also, apparently Hemingway was one of the roommates in While We're Young. Looks like someone at least was a fan.

The Spectacular Now
This is the most cliche ridden ball of Alfie nonsense I've seen in a long while. Woodely's character is a total non-entity who exists for Whiplash guy to have someone to reduce the literal nature of his self fellatio. What makes this really intolerable though is how annoying Whiplash guy is. The Alfie character in general is pretty awful, but to tie him to someone so young and to an actor so annoying, let's face it he's no Michael Caine, makes it instantly intolerable. Woodely's performance is about as good as the character permits, but it also highlights why she's the only one of the gang of three actresses to yet win an oscar. I hate that it is so much easier to talk about this unlikable film then the previous one that I did enjoy a lot.

10 Things I Hate About You
There's a bit of sideways nostalgia going here since I was a fan of the show back in the day, don't tell me if it is actually bad, and of course JGL's weird interview with Jon Stewart. That potential bias went pretty far out of the window when the movie actually started with cinema's band on '99 blaring with only the slightest irony. The movie is probably the weakest o the high school set literary adaptations I've seen. The big problem is mostly left to the first act where the teachers are bizarrely portrayed and the cartoonish attempt at making cliques just does not work. It begins, essentially, as a vulgar child's idea of the freedom of high school. That said once the film zooms into Shakespeare and lets the young actors run wild it becomes as funny and poignant as The Taming of the Shrew could probably be.

Song of the Sea
Tomm Moore is really proving himself to be the best non-Japanese animator to premiere in the last decade. Even before getting into the nitty gritty of the story his animation is stunning in how unlike it is to everyone else's. Here he and his crew expand upon The Secret of the Kells' Irish painting style to force it into modern times yet allowing it to seem like an ancient myth being told in frames. Even just the way the characters move, especially the seals, is hard to believe can be done. Of course all of this beauty would be a waste if the very traditional narrative and its Wizard of Oz casting didn't pull through. The story is basically the same as Labyrinth, but Ben is a far more complex character then Jennifer Connelly ever had the chance to be. His relationship with the baby, particularly the sibling rivalry, is motivated by a large mix of circumstances that realistically explain his emotions without straying from kid logic.

Sweet Sixteen
It took long enough for me to find, but here's a Loach film that succeeds on basically all levels. He sets some rough circumstances that play to his social consciousness well, but allows the characters to just do their things. Until now I've found him to overly dictate his characters to the point where they can't be talked about in the terms of being people. Here though with Dardenne brilliance each and every character seems to be working exactly as their initial temperaments, attitudes, and evolving lives would suggest they do. It's easy to anthropomorphize them as 'real' which for this sort of character study i beyond essential. That's not to say the film doesn't have its flaws. The characters are pretty dumb with the plot depending so much on them being self destructive there's a scene halfway through dedicated to telling the lead what a road he's on. This leaves the ending with an unnecessary sense of inevitability. That said because of his youth and social class the motivations for the stupidity he exhibits does feel organic with the exception of one scene with Pinball near the end which reverts back to over the top writer insertion. This ignorance leaves the lead totally self destructive and without the self awareness to realize his plan for the caravan is going to not end well; fire or not.

As an aside while I can appreciate the need for subs in the film I think HBO's edition is a bit over the top even subbing that song that plays early on which gave perhaps the wrong sort of levity to the scene.

Lake Tahoe
This is a far less stylish and out there affair then I was expecting based on the trumpets that blared in its favour. Instead it takes on the generic arthouse long take style that Porumboiu has much more effectively mined for comedy and Tsai (who seems to get explicitly referenced) for drama. In fact I'd go as far as to argue that it doesn't really add anything to the film given how ordinary the other components are with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and surprisingly minimal interest in movement. There's really only one moment where the style aids in the joke or pathos and that's about halfway through when the lead looks at the girl with the radio. Apart from the aesthetic there's not much special here either especially when surrounded by Starlet and Sweet Sixteen. Eimbcke does make some interesting character sketches and the relationship between the lead and the young mother is very sweet, but even that high point feels like a missed opportunity muted in emotion by the needless style.

No One Know About Persian Cats. (Ghobadi, 2009). I found this one rather bland (with the caveat that I'm not the audience for the kind of music this movie was about). I understand now Domino's warning about the ending. It's like something out of a tv show -- it's so commonly done, the industry must have a name for

Spoiler

that style of silent montage of flashing emergency light, grief stricken reaction shots, wheeled gurneys, overlaid with a plaintive score.

One thing I did find interesting though -- assuming there's a degree of documentary accuracy to this fictional film -- was the way the repressiveness of the regime kept manifesting in ways quite different from what one might expect as a non-Iranian. That's certainly one worthwhile aspect of the film, and others might be more interested in the Iranian music scene than I was.

Super 8
I'm still trying to figure out to what extent I like this, but it's certainly a good one. If the Star Treks highlighted Abrams abundant failings as a director this does an equally good job showing off his strengths. The main action with the kids, so separated from that actual Spielberg theatrics, is new territory for him presenting about as honest a portrait of the good and bad of childhood you can without getting too melodramatic (and thankfully it's Fanning who has to deal with the real melodrama as I doubt the other actors would be up to it). That separation is what I feel is the movie's greatest strength. The kids don't really ever become more involved then curious observers,but that's how life is. I'm not entirely sold this is more then a very well articulated entry in the genre (which already puts it in the 90th percentile though), but in some respect that's good enough.

Hard, Fast, and Beautiful
Whelp, this was a surprising disappointment. The Hitch-Hiker and Lupino's television work are quite excellent, but none of her qualities are present in this melodramatic slop with some awkward gender politics. The big pain is the total lack of style present. The lighting in particular is low level television quality. It's stiff and flat with little room for expression making it so that when Lupino does something interesting with the camera, as rare as that is, it seems out of place and distracting. This is just a total failure on the aesthetic level working in service to a fairly generic stage mum story.

Heathers
This is a fabulous, dark, neurotic movie which probably does the best of all the films I've seen lately of expanding the feeling of high school into a fantasy where everything is important. That said the most interesting thing is how it works as a historical artifact. The aesthetic, slang, and storytelling seems to have one foot in the natural grittiness of the '80s and the other preparing for the Tashlin coloured satire of the '90s. It probably couldn't get as far as it does today either with the only comparable film being World's Greatest Dad which is a lot nicer and still was sidelined away when as I understand it this became a surprise success despite the MTV video games.

It Follows
This is about as close as we're going to get to a Black Hole adaptation and for that alone this was a worthwhile experience. Though it does not have the complexity of Burns' masterwork it's take on the pains of youth at the precipice of adulthood is still very compelling with enough of a unique twist to sustain intellectual interest. Just to give an example of where I think the interest undermines the complexity

Spoiler

I'm not entirely sure if the transference about an hour into the film is 100% believable from a narrative standpoint. It seems like just a pause in the story to feed the gorehounds the movie otherwise is not playing to.

That said for the purposes of Mitchell's metaphor it's a stunner where he really visually in just a couple of shots explains all of the hormonal insecurity of that age.

The Chocolate War
My one take away from this is that Keith Gordon really loves Harold and Maude. Not only does Bud Cort cameo but the use of music and cinematography is highly reminiscent of Ashby's film. All of that works very well too, but on a narrative level it flounders severely. Ashby's balance between the fantastic and emotional realism is tried here with flop sweat and exhausted effort but never succeeds. The fantastic elements here are played far too heavily ruining the cute little Hawthorne metaphor it has by laying it on too thick. I just can't believe the dilemma the film is trying to sell as anything serious and when a film is this self serious that's suicide.

The Runaways
I watched this mainly for Sigismondi who is a pretty excellent music video director and I was curious what she'd be able to do with a traditional narrative especially one as vapid as the musical biopic). Be careful what you wish for I guess. There's nothing too bad here though the soundtrack Zemeckises itself constantly underlining with red ink even the most minor emotional beats with the most obvious musical choice possible. Beyond that the only other things that stand out if a particularly strange Michael Shannon even by his standard and some nicely washed out cinematography which looks to be aiming for a super 8 with a red based film stock look. Hopefully Sigismondi will get another chance for a feature with better material.

The Prophet
I'm not a fan of Gilbran's sterile, analytical poetry preferring the likes of Tagore's The Gardener from that generation. Still the segments directly adapted from his poetry are consistently beautiful inspiring some inventive use of the animated medium. Particularly Paley and Plympton's segments discussing birth and food are worth seeing the whole project for. Liam Neeson's drone of the poetry does nothing to give the prose cinematic life, but can be carefully ignored as the images live the words better. I wish though that the same could be said of the framing device which is left carefully offscreen in the original novel, but forms here as a lame duck. It's animated in that weird CGI form that has recently made Michel Ocelot's unwatachable. Roger Allers, a director on The Lion King, also for whatever reason has decided to form this frame as a child's story with cute morals of being yourself that is completely immature in the face of Gibran's complex social view. It's an idiotic talking animal film basically insulting the adults and children leaving little audience left. I mean he turns Gibran's best poem, a rumination on the beauty and defiance in death, into a tale of comfort for the little girl that should cheer up which is punctuated by a background joke that the mother and younger guard, played by the annoying Office guy, have hooked up. That just makes this seem like a cheap affair.

American Pie
This isn't really my thing, but I can all the same respect the good joke construction that pops up regularly enough that I imagine if somebody found this type of humour funny it would be an adequate diversion. The movie is entirely in the sketch comedy mode with the narrative of losing virginity being there just to give the movie an end point though I don't think the film realizes it and gives too many scenes without jokes. Sean William Scott, who I normally like, in particular seems to be an indication when a scene won't have a joke which makes it weird that he seems to be the breakout character besides maybe Eugene Levy's. Also one central joke really looks especially ugly now with the Internet getting more criminal since the '90s. I should have probably just watched Can't Hardly Wait instead.

Laggies
I can't remember the last time a film made me laugh as hard as the interpretive dance at the wedding early in the film. There's many other virtues here I'll get into in a second, but a truly hilarious comedy is so hard to come by that when one presents itself a moment should be taken to just appreciate that.

The charms of this film are so classical that the few very small odd pieces really add to the portrait perfectly. The choice to not delve into the plot for the first thirty minutes and instead painstakingly detail Knightley's life allows for her to come across as a person rather then the magical plot device that a more Rockwell or Moretz focused film would have left her even as the main character. That Rockwell and Moretz are split fairly equally (admittedly leaving the back end a little Rockwell heavy but who would complain about that) is the other straying benefit as it allows the weirdness of the two genres, buddy and romantic comedies, to relax into such a genteel film. Obviously they're opposed in the context of this story which the film acknowledges, but Shelton doesn't allow it to play for drama mostly and when it does it comes from a reasonable place.

The closest I can come to having something negative to say is that Knightley's attempt to speak with an American accent seems to physically pain her with her neck flexing at all moments. Still, I can't really complain about this as it is a tick which suits her character and otherwise she plays the drama and comedy as perfectly as could be. Now I suppose I have an excuse to praise Rockwell who continues to surprise with a shockingly naturalistic and underplayed performance as a realistic object of affection and mature love for Knightley. Hard to believe less then a decade ago people were still joking about him being the poverty row Jim Carrey. This film also has some of the most random background pop culture references I've seen in a movie. I'm not sure what the mother having a postcard of In Old Arizona is for.

Our Mother's House
For the first half of this film everything becomes lost in this haunting world of religion and nostalgia that it it conjures up thoughts of a more mainstream friendly horror bound Terence Davies. Some of the images and performances Clayton delivers will be haunting for days. The haircut especially is powerful to the extent I'm sure the child actress wasn't performing, but rather genuinely that terrified. It runs like this throughout the first half getting more and more insular as the events become more fantastical leaving the entrance of Bogarde with a feeling of the film's conclusion. Certainly the hour that follows feels less special never properly dealing with the effects of their time alone and running to cute with his fatherly misbehavior. The story runs fairly similar to the Mitchum role in Losey's great Secret Ceremony and could have been a match had Clayton sustained the weirdness of the first half, but alas it doesn't have the gumption to do so.

Win Win
Wow, Burt Young's still alive and ready to give a great if severely underused performance. That that is the most exciting thing about the film is perhaps a little too telling. McCarthy spins things so deliberately small scale that that's hard to hold against it though. A lot of the story feels like a xerox of quirky Sundance comedies with nearly the entire first act begging to be directed by Jason Reitman instead. There's a few bits that play too far into that cute arena like the tattoos and hungover secretary. The genuine emotional experience takes a lot of effort and time to get through these artifices limiting their effect.

Also Giamatti while giving a good performance could be half asleep with this role and basically is. Amy Ryan, in a role I'm surprised didn't go to Laura Linney given how obvious the rest of the casting is, runs circles around him as a result genuinely coming across as the character rather then just playing her character as the character. Even she though can't push the film's attempts at playing pathos beyond mild pleasure or sadness. I would probably be more forgiving to the film if it avoided that last emotion and instead worked on building this community as a set of good people trying and very occasionally succeeding at not doing wrong. Lynskey and Martindale, when will she get that oscar she deserves, are amazing as the villains but they can't help make the turn in the story be anything more then the cheap source of unnecessary conflict it is. It is very well set up though and works well enough to stick the landing, but nothing more.

Los Olvidados (Buñuel). So nasty, so sly, so scathing, so surreal, so outrageously mean, and in short, one helluva a fun ride. A true work of art, and one of the Master's masterpieces.

Lord of the Flies (Brook). It's easy to enumerate the virtues of this film. So why is it such a chore to sit through? Read the book.

Lolita (Kubrick). Ditto. Undeniably superb performances. Still boring. Read the book.

Deprisa, Deprisa (Saura). These unprepossessing, murderous, acne-ridden sociopaths who look like their mamas still dress them, how I love 'em to itty bitty little pieces. I never tire of watching this, and I'm talking about a worse-for-wear ex-rental VHS tape. Among Saura's best. The soundtrack is irresistible.

Little Fugitive (Engel/Orkin). Sweet, yet dark too. Part of the appeal of the Little Fugitive is that Engel & Orkin so obviously didn't give a shit that some viewers might find the subject matter slight or sentimental, they just went and made exactly the movie they wanted to make according to their own sensibilities. The film's documentary qualities are another significant reason for its appeal. Don't overlook Lovers and Lollipops, also eligible for this list. (Weddings and Babies in my view is the best of the three, but doesn't qualify).

Romeo and Juliet (Joan Kemp-Welch, 1979). Uneven, but more watchable than, say, the 1978 BBC production, the Stratford Ontario production with Megan Follows, the 1954 Castellani, or the bloody Luhrmann*. The two leads, bland in the initial phase of infatuation, fare better in later scenes where they are distraught or angry. I warmed to it as it went along, but won't go so far as to recommend it.

Private Romeo (Alan Brown, 2011). Wow. Unnerving, fun, touching. In an odd way, the sheer incongruity between text and action throws the emphasis back on the text. One of the few R&J's I've enjoyed.

Secret of Roan Innish (Sayles, 1994). For children, but not by any means for children only. With a combination of atmosphere, style, and deft story telling, Sayles carries off what might seem a silly and mawkish premise. Some wonderful language here ("he made honey in his heart of her good looks"). Another pleasingly strange movie.

* Does anybody want to make a case for the Luhrmann R&J? I saw it ages ago, and only watched it with half an eye (my flatmates had rented it), so I hardly gave it a fair shake. It struck me at the time as something of a Procrustean exercise in making the modern setting fit by hook or by crook the Elizabethan text, finding eye-rollingly creative solutions to problems that weren't worth the solving. By contrast the tension between text and setting in Private Romeo is productive, the effect reminding me a little of Potter's Blue Remembered Hills.

I believe, as any fan of Hot Fuzz will tell you, it is R+J not R&J.

Offside (Panahi, 2006). A better, darker film than the North American DVD cover might suggest, which markets it as some sort of screwy, family-viewing comedy. A few viewers must have been dismayed (or delighted) to discover instead a Panahi masterclass in making the most out of meagre materials, closer to an Iranian Waiting for Godot than an Iranian Bend it Like Beckham. I'm surprised at how widely this is regarded as essentially a comedy; I found it more often bitterly absurdist than outright funny. It does have one of the most exhilarating, electrifying endings, though not an unambiguously happy one.

Spoiler

The soldiers repeatedly emphasize that a list of names has been taken, so it's conceivable the women could be found later and rearrested. We are told, after all, that the authorities are determined to deal harshly with the Iranian culprits after having to overlook foreign women in the stadium to avoid bad publicity during elections. The soldiers also reiterate several times that they will be severely disciplined if they "lose one girl" -- I think at one point it's implied their compulsory military service could be extended -- and then they lose all of them. By the end of the film we've seen enough of the soldier's reluctant decency and humanity to not wish them ill. It's up in the air whether anybody is really off the hook.