As always, I’ll be polling you folks to determine my next Reviews By Request column. To vote, see the poll at the end of the review.

With more than 270 adaptations of his work listed on the Internet Movie Database, Charles Dickens is one of the most-adapted authors in movie history. It’s not hard to see why- unlike many literary giants whose greatness lies primarily in their style, Dickens was first and foremost a gifted storyteller, famous for telling vivid tales full of memorable characters. Even in novel form today Dickens is both compulsively readable and easily adaptable to movies and television. Many adaptations of his work have a nuts-and-bolts Masterpiece Theatre quality, while others have re-imagined the stories in a different setting. But a few Dickens adaptations- the best ones, really- have managed to honor the author while simultaneously making his work wholly cinematic.

David Lean’s version of Great Expectations fits into this final category. It’s the kind of movie that reminds us not only of what made Dickens’ work special, but also of the pleasures of a particularly well-done big-screen literary adaptation. In run-of-the-mill cinematic adaptations, the filmmakers dutifully step from one storytelling beat to the next like an actor hitting his marks, and their films feel like homework. But in Great Expectations, the novel is the starting point rather than the destination, and Lean spins the yarn as if it were his own. Where most of its counterparts are pale shadows of the works that inspired them- the Cahiers du Cinema critics of yore disparagingly referred to these films as “tradition of quality”- Lean’s Great Expectations is a great entertainment in its own right, perhaps because he understands that Dickens was himself an entertainer.

Read More...

The title character of James Westby's The Auteur, Arturo Domingo (played by Melik Malkasian), is the most artistically creative filmmaker working in hardcore pronography. Westby's movie is mostly set over the course of one busy weekend in its hero's life, during which he's in Portland to attend a tribute being held in his honor at Cinema 21. The festivities include a documentary about his life and work and a career retrospective, which provide a handy way to brief the audience on his back story: how he was set on his path to glory after reaching under his parents' bed and pulling out a copy of Hustler with one hand and a copy of Cahiers du Cinema with the other; how he met the actor who would become his regular leading man and muse, Frank E. Norma (John Breen), and how they would work together on his first masterpiece, Five Easy Nieces ("I can set you up with a room for the night, but you'll have to put up with those nieces of mine."); and how their string of hits, and Arturo's marriage as well, ended with the ambitious Vietnam war film Full Metal Jackoff, which was intended to be "a journey through Hell, with a nice hand release at the end." After the producer reshot and re-edited it, Arturo and Frank parted ways, and the director's career has been in a tailspin ever since. The reaction to his latest is summed up in a cameo by Screengrab contributor D. K. Holm, who appears onscreen just long enough to declare in wonder, "Even I didn't feel like masturbating to this."

Read More...