The Screengrab : paul clark

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Andrew Osborne — Sun, 31 May 2009 14:12:00 GMT

Andrew Osborne Reviews T.V. Party: The Documentary

Phil Nugent's "Don't Forget The Flaming Arrows!"

Paul Clark Promises Famous Last Words To Return!

Scott Von Doviak Reviews Sons Of A Gun

And more to come at the Screengrab In Exile...stay tuned!

Reviews By Request: King of New York (1990, Abel Ferrara)

Paul Clark — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Once again, thanks to Scott Tobias from the Onion AV Club for recommending this film, which he previously selected for his weekly column “The New Cult Canon.”

One of Christopher Walken’s greatest assets as an actor is his unpredictability. Watching Walken onscreen, it’s hard to tell how he’s going to deliver even the most mundane bit of dialogue, much less predict how his characters will behave under pressure. But while Walken’s off-kilter presence has garnered him a sizable cult following, it’s easy to overlook what a fascinating actor he can be in more complex roles. In many of his character roles, Walken has fun with his image, but he’s not afraid to play it straight when the part calls for it. Abel Ferrara’s King of New York is one of those parts, and consequently one of his best performances.

Frank White, the crime lord Walken plays in King of New York, is one of the most frightening criminals I’ve ever seen in a movie, due in large part to the unpredictability that Walken brings to the role. From the first time we meet Frank, he seems to be capable of anything, which gives him an edge in his criminal endeavors. Most of his competition sticks to hard and fast traditions, the most important being that the bigwigs keep their hands clean while the foot soldiers fight the wars. Frank has no use for such traditions- when he needs someone killed, he’d just as soon do it himself. There are many possibilities as to why Frank would do this, but I think it’s because he wants people to think he’s the baddest, scariest man in New York. And when he follows the killing of a rival gang leader by inviting his underlings to join his gang, it sends a very specific message- if you’re crazy enough to follow a guy who does this, I want you on my side.

Consequently, many of Frank’s foot soldiers are as volatile as he is- and some even share his flair for the theatrical, as when one storms into a hotel room shootout screaming, “room service, motherfuckers!” In addition, Frank’s gang could be called “post-racial”- whereas Frank’s rivals generally adhere to ethnic boundaries, such concerns are beneath Frank. Most of his underlings are African-American- two of his most prominent foot soldiers are played by Laurence (then Larry) Fishburne and Giancarlo Esposito- but Steve Buscemi also turns up as Frank’s in-house drug tester. And Frank’s own ethnicity- just look at his name- allows him an entry in legitimate society that would be more limited to other criminals of his stature.

It’s this air of near-legitimacy that rankles the NYPD, especially a trio of cops played by David Caruso, Wesley Snipes, and Victor Argo. Whereas the power of the city’s other top criminals is relatively contained to the underworld, Frank hobnobs with New York’s elite, turning up at black-tie parties and charity events. “He’s a movie star,” says Caruso, who bemoans the fact that Frank is running roughshod over the city while he and his partners are only bringing in a modest policeman’s salary. But how to stop him? Caruso and Snipes determine that in order to catch Frank, they need to be as crazy as he is. It isn’t until it’s too late (when Frank crashes one cop’s funeral to kill another one) that that discover that crazy isn’t enough- one must also be lucky.

Argo’s Roy Bishop is the one exception to the film’s cycle of brutality- the one “good cop” who sticks to his principles and hopes to bring Frank in not by sneaking around but by nuts-and-bolts police work. We see him sitting at home in front of his computer, sifting through police files in an attempt to make a case. Throughout the film, Ferrara contrasts Roy’s steadfast adherence to old-fashioned morality with Frank’s more slippery kind of ethics, and Frank understandably sees Roy as his biggest threat. I found it interesting to see Argo, who usually played wiseguys, playing the closest thing this film has to a steady moral compass.

King of New York is one of the bleakest crime movies I’ve ever seen, with one scene of unsparing violence after another. But it’s stylish enough that it’s anything but a slog- like GoodFellas and Scarface before it, it’s amassed a considerable cult, even serving as an inspiration for the late Notorious B.I.G. I’ve only seen a handful of Ferrara films to date, but one thing that’s impressed me about them is how stylish his films can be despite their budgetary limitations. In King of New York, Ferrara uses the low budget to his advantage, setting scenes in scruffy back-alleys and abandoned buildings to give the film a grittier feel than most movies of its kind. I also liked that Frank’s home isn’t an expansive estate but a suite at the Plaza, which combines a location in the heart of New York (perfect for shots of him overlooking the city) with a kind of rented luxury that says everything about the mystique Frank wants to create for himself.

At the center of it all is the enigma of Frank White. Throughout the film Ferrara and Walken invite us to ask the question, what drives this man? Late in the film, he confronts Roy in his apartment and tells him that he considers himself a businessman rather than a criminal, and states that “I never killed anybody that didn’t deserve it.” But how to reconcile that with the charge he seems to get from his power? Or for that matter, what of his efforts to save a children’s hospital in a poor neighborhood? One thing’s for sure- he’s hooked on his sense of power. When he says he wants to run for mayor, everyone laughs until Frank tells them he’s serious. Is he? Who are we to question him?

Trailer Review: In the Loop

Paul Clark — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

For my final Trailer Review here at Screengrab, I thought it would be nice to go out on an up note. So in lieu of the trailer for something I’m dying to see- what, still nothing from Avatar or Tree of Life out there?- I’m posting one of the best trailers I’ve seen lately, for Armando Iannucci’s political comedy In the Loop. Since the international trailer for this posted earlier this year, I’ve been getting a vibe similar to that of the original British Office, but to my eyes that’s a good thing. And I’m something of a sucker for trailers that don’t just stick to the usual trailer tricks- the style of this one is an homage to Kubrick’s original Clockwork Orange spots, down to the use of the Wendy Carlos sped-up electronic version of the “William Tell Overture.” But what I like most about this is that it doesn’t come right out and tell you everything you know about the premise of the movie, but it puts enough out there in one form or another that one can more or less figure out what’s going on if he’s paying attention. But then, what’s not to love about a trailer that includes a reference to Bugsy Malone- hardly the sort of allusion one generally finds in movies, much less the trailers for them.

Th-Th-That's All Folks: THE SCREENGRAB CURTAIN CALL!

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 29 May 2009 03:00:00 GMT

So, th-th-that's all folks. Enjoy the last precious remaining hours of the Screengrab while you can, and be sure to look for us here at Nerve.com, in the archives at www.thescreengrab.com, at our new blog the Screengrab In Exile, and also...

Andrew Osborne:
Look for me at The Ol' Bait Shop, The Ol' Blog Shop, New England Screenwriters, and if The Meat City Beatniks ever comes to a theater near you, be sure to buy a ticket!

Scott Von Doviak:
Check out Scott's blog, his tweets, his book Hick Flicks and the continuation of his journey into Unwatchable madness!

Leonard Pierce:
Look for Leonard at A schediastic hootenany and the Onion A.V. Club!

Phil Nugent:
The Phil Nugent experience rolls on at The Phil Nugent Experience!

Hayden Childs:
Read Hayden at From Here To Obscurity, and check out his book, Shoot Out The Lights!

Paul Clark:
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to write for the Screengrab for the last two years or so. In the future, I’ll be devoting more of my energy to my blog Silly Hats Only, where I’ll be carrying on a few of my favorite Screengrab traditions- including the reincarnated Famous Last Words, starting in June- and exploring some new ideas as well, I hope. I’ll also continue to be involved in The Muriel Awards, and you can follow me on Twitter under the username “opalfilms”. Be seeing you.

Nick Schager:
Nick can be found at Lessons of Darkness, Slant magazine, IFC News, Cinematical, and on Twitter.

Sarah Clyne Sundberg:
For more Sarah go to: http://www.sarahclynesundberg.com/

Vadim Rizov:
Vadim lives on at The House Next Door.

Lauren Wissot:
Lauren's work can be found at Beyond The Green Door.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten & Eleven

Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:30:00 GMT

THE GRADUATE (1967)

As I noted in our list of the Top Ten Best Movies Of All Time, The Graduate is pretty close to perfect, right down to its classic finale. All by itself, the climactic rush to the altar made our list of great “race-against-time” scenes, and the sequence where Dustin Hoffman’s character pounds the church window and wields a crucifix against the older generation to rescue his lady love from bland suburban mediocrity still feels cathartic today. But the final moments truly seal the deal in one of the greatest ambiguous fade-outs of all time as Katharine Ross’ Elaine stares at the man she’s chosen, suddenly wondering what exactly comes after “happily ever after,” while Hoffman’s Ben stares straight ahead, the lost expression of the opening scenes returning to his face as he clearly wonders, “Now what?” Considering Charles Webb, the author of the source material, spent the next several decades in cash-strapped obscurity, tending a clinically-depressed lady with painted-on eyebrows named Fred while trying to get a Graduate sequel off the ground, maybe Ben and Elaine had reason to worry. (AO)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

The ending to Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece continues, forty years after its release, to baffle and intrigue, its post-light-show sights – a white room; Keir Dullea’s astronaut seeing himself, as an elderly man at a table and dying in bed; the monolith’s sudden reappearance – forming a tantalizing riddle. In its final, mesmerizing image of the star-child, 2001 does what no subsequent Kubrick film did, presenting a hopeful vision of the future, one in which man is finally free (at least until the forthcoming dystopia of A Clockwork Orange) of his base animalism. (NS)

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)

Let me first make it clear that I’m very much aware that the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange was originally published with a final chapter that never saw the light of day in the United States until Rolling Stone featured it in a 1987 issue. That’s when I first read it, and at that point I’d already seen the movie approximately 783 times. (Stanley Kubrick claimed he’d never seen the missing chapter before making his film, but he had – he just didn’t like it.) Burgess’ ending finds the cured Alex out for another night on the town with his new droogies. But he’s not really up for it – he’s getting too old for this shit, and entertaining thoughts of domestic bliss. I never felt like I needed to know this about him. “I was cured all right” strikes the right note for me – it doesn’t preclude the possibility of Burgess’ outcome, after all, but if we’re going to give this guy his free will back…well, we better be prepared for anything. It’s hard to imagine that final chapter fitting in cinematically with the world we’ve been immersed in for over two hours, and as Kubrick later demonstrated when working with Stephen King, he was never one to let the author’s intentions get in the way of his own worldview. (SVD)

STROSZEK (1977)

Werner Herzog has never been interested in sticking to convention, and nowhere is this more in evidence than in the strange and wonderful Stroszek. Beginning with a fairly formulaic setup -- a trio of misfits journey to America in search of a new life -- Herzog then proceeds to spin out his story in the most unexpected of ways. After hard times hit, the film courts cliché as the title character (played by Bruno S.) and his elderly pal Clemens Scheitz decide to hold up their bank, but when the bank is closed they rob the neighboring barber shop instead to the tune of a whopping $35 and use it to go shopping before Scheitz gets arrested. From there, it gets even odder. It’s the images that Herzog finds to conclude his tale that make this a classic, as we witness the sight of the stolen tow truck, now set ablaze, driving in circles around the parking lot with nobody at the wheel. So bizarre is the spectacle that it’s easy to miss Bruno climbing onto the ski lift with his shotgun, followed by the sound of the shotgun firing. Then, of course, there’s that dancing chicken, one of the most famous images in Herzog’s entire oeuvre. According to Herzog, the entire crew hated the damn chicken, but it so fascinated him that he felt the need to journey 600 miles from his principal filming location in order to shoot the final scene in the rest stop where the chicken danced. What does it all mean? Herzog, to his credit, leaves it to us to decide. (PC)

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)

No Country For Old Men denies audiences the grand gesture and the blood. Strange to say about a film that features a killer who is less a man than a force of nature, but it's true. When Llewelyn first comes upon the scene of the drug shootout, the violence is over. When the bullets finally find Llewelyn, it happens offscreen. When Sheriff Ed Tom Bell stumbles into a potential conflict with Chigurh, the killer has melted away. Carla Jean even dies offscreen. It's a bloody movie, sure, but it studiously avoids giving audiences the easy conclusions that they may want. This is especially true at the end of the movie. Sheriff Bell has retired, giving his wife the peace of mind she wants, and he describes a couple of dreams he had to her. Both feature Bell's father, who he told us in the introduction was sheriff before him. In the first, he's lost money that his father gave him. In the second, his father silently passes him, carrying a fire, and Bell knows he will make a fire to protect and warm him. That's one of the beautiful things about this movie: even as it denies audiences their basest impulses, it gives them something unexpected. Here, the language is one of author Cormac McCarthy's major concerns, the existential quest for a moral code in a fallen world. The Coen brothers like to subvert expectations, and it's fair to say that this jolt of philosophy wasn't at all what audiences were expecting. But it was a far greater gift. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

REPO MAN (1984)

Mike18xx, the nice fellah who posted the clip above, notes in his YouTube comments that “Seeing the ending won’t actually ‘spoil’ the film if you haven’t seen it before,” which is absolutely true. The plot of Alex Cox’s first, best film (involving aliens, car thieves, secret government shenanigans and the search for a very special 1964 Chevy Malibu -- what Mike18xx rightly calls the best McGuffin in film history) isn’t nearly as important as the overall vibe, a pleasant reminder of a more innocent pop culture moment when punk and indie weren’t just corporate flavors and Emilio Estevez was actually kinda badass (although, judging by a recent feud unwittingly instigated by our own Scott Von Doviak, it seems both Cox and the Mighty Duck still have at least a little piss left in their vinegar). Plus, like all the best endings, Repo Man features an effective curtain call of characters and themes, as well as a memorable epigraph for my own particular hipster doofus generation: “The life of a repo man is always intense.” (AO)

ZABRISKIE POINT (1970)

Love him or hate him -- and there are plenty of cinephiles in both camps -- it’s hard to deny that nobody could end a movie quite like Michelangelo Antonioni. With plenty of wonderful conclusions in his work, it was hard to confine ourselves to just one Antonioni film (or even two, as we ended up doing), but ultimately we couldn’t possibly overlook the finale of this, his most critically-savaged work. Taken as a whole, Zabriskie Point is a scattershot vision of late-sixties America -- sometimes visionary, sometimes ponderous, often both. But even if you aren’t a fan of the movie, the ending packs a wallop. Sure, it’s somewhat obvious what Antonioni’s up to here, blowing up a gaudy “modern” house that has intruded on the natural majesty of the desert, even showing the explosion from multiple angles for extra emphasis. But it’s how he does it that turns the scene from sledgehammer symbolism to transcendent cinema (besides, this is relatively subtle compared to Antonioni’s other proposed ending, which involved an airplane writing “Fuck You, America” across the sky). As Antonioni shifts the film into some of the slowest slow-motion the cinema has ever seen in order to capture the explosions in exhaustive detail, he manages to exact his cinematic revenge on consumer culture -- watch as he blows up a television, a refrigerator, even a loaf of Wonder Bread -- while simultaneously transforming the destruction into something beautiful, with an assist from a modified version of Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.” For lack of a better phrase, it’s pure cinema. And if that’s not good enough for you, there’s the notion that even a director as art-damaged as Antonioni knows sometimes his hardened audiences just want to watch stuff blow up real good. (PC)

PLANET OF THE APES (1968) & BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

Sorry to ruin it for you, but the planet of the apes? It was Earth all along! Charlton Heston sure feels silly now. But not as silly as he’ll feel when he finds himself the prisoner of underground mutants in the sequel. Now he’s really had enough, and it’s hard to blame him for overreacting. I’ve told this story before, but one more time before they turn out the lights: Having had quite enough of talking apes and telepathic mole-people, Heston unleashes a mighty cry of "You bloody bastards!" and plunges onto the detonator with his dying breath. And you can pry it from his cold, dead hands, if you can find them, which you can't because, indeed, the planet explodes. Or as the abrupt final line of narration has it: "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead." Hey, thanks for coming to the show, ladies and gentlemen! Drive home safely! It's an ending that provokes laughter in your modern sophisticated audience, much to the bafflement of a gentleman who was sitting behind me at a revival house screening some years ago. "I dunno what everyone's laughing at," he muttered. "It's gonna happen." (SVD)

WEEKEND (1967)

By the end of the ‘60s, it was clear to everyone that Jean-Luc Godard was through fucking around. He was using cinema less as a means of communication and more as a weapon, but how deadly serious he was about deploying that weapon didn’t become clear until the final scenes of his dizzying film Weekend. The circumstances are brutal enough; the bourgeois couple we’ve followed throughout the film, cheated of their inheritance, resort to murder and end up in cahoots with a pack of radical revolutionaries with a taste for human flesh. But throughout Weekend, Godard was operating on a higher level: it’s full of meta-reference, and the director makes no bones about his characters being tuned into their own artificiality at every juncture. He planned it not as a mere statement, but as a command: this art form, he said, is dead; leave the theatre not to discuss it, but to seize and tear down. It was a powerful message, and a prescient one a year before Paris exploded into a nearly miraculous revolution. But even in that atmosphere, only Godard would have had the balls to give Weekend its famous ending: a simple title card reading “END OF CINEMA/END OF WORLD.” (LP)

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY (1966)

Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Leone's, aren't concerned with Western realism, but the myth of the West, which they blow up like Greco-Roman gods. This might be the most iconic and expressionist movie ending outside of, y'know, German Expressionism. The clip above starts after Tuco and Blondie find the graveyard, with the camera spinning through the graves as Tuco races through the rows, looking for the right name. Then Blondie forces him to dig. Angel Eyes appears and there's the first double-cross: the grave Tuco is digging up has bones rather than money in it. The Mexican standoff. The second and third double-cross: Tuco's gun is empty and Blondie didn't write anything on the rock. Tuco digs at the right grave, but as soon as he strikes the gold, there's the fourth double-cross: Blondie has hung a noose over his head while he was working. The camera stays with Tuco as Blondie rides away, and we all watch him disappear, thinking, "wait, that one is The Good?" But he returns and frees Tuco, calling back to an earlier scene of camaraderie between them. It sounds like a story from The Odyssey even as I describe it here. If there had been such a thing as a Mexican standoff when Homer was writing, I'm certain that Odysseus would have found himself at one point of the triangle, one step ahead of the others. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Hayden Childs

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

So, in case you somehow missed the news, our beloved little blog will be ending at the end of the month, meaning THIS (sniff...sniff...) will be the very LAST of Screengrab’s Thursday lists.

Yet, in the classic words of Supersonic (heavy-rotationed into my very DNA by the good people of alternative radio), “every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end,” which means that while this blog will be pushing up daisies soon, you’ll still be able to get your fix of the Screengrab All-Stars at our new blog, Screengrab-In-Exile, featuring new (if somewhat less frequent) writing and links to writing from the usual gang of idiots...we may even pop up from time to time hereabouts writing for Nerve.com. Meanwhile, all your favorite Screengrab posts will be preserved in amber for future generations at www.thescreengrab.com (and stay tuned for the end of today’s list for links to all our individual websites).

Anyway, I have to say I’ll miss the ol’ place, and I’ve really enjoyed organizing and contributing to these lists. Heck, I’ll even miss getting called a douche by anonymous internet hecklers.

But all good things must come to an end, so once more for auld lang syne, let’s fade out together with THE BEST & WORST ENDINGS OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)

Last week we saluted Slim Pickens’ whooping death trip aboard a nuclear bomb, but of course, that was only the beginning of the end of Dr. Strangelove. There’s no pie fight as Stanley Kubrick had originally planned, but we do get to see the great minds of the War Room contemplating the bright side of nuclear annihilation (10 women for every man!), the continuation of Cold War tension through the end of the world and beyond, and of course, the song we hope will be playing in your head as the Screengrab fades to black: We’ll meet again…don’t know where, don’t know when... (SVD)

THE PASSENGER (1975)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s ennui-drenched cinema reached something of an apex with The Passenger, the tale of a reporter (Jack Nicholson) who, while in Africa on assignment, assumes a dead stranger’s identity to escape the soul-crushing disaffection of his own life. It’s a beguiling pseudo-noir that culminates with one of cinema’s most awe-inspiring shots, a 7-minute single take – in which the camera magically passes through a room’s iron-barred window and then rotates 180-degrees – that expresses the film’s faith-and-philosophy-tinged portrait of the folly of dreaming about escape. (NS)

CARRIE (1976)

The shock ending of Brian De Palma's horror classic provides a hint as to how De Palma got the reputation in some quarters as a rip-off artist: it's a direct steal from the ending of John Boorman's Deliverance, from just four years earlier. But it's also a clear indicator of how De Palma, in the quarters that matter, earned the reputation of a master director: his execution smokes Boorman, whose scene was a bit of a botch. By contrast, De Palma's makes audiences jump as high as anyone has ever managed without installing ejector seats in the theater. (PN)

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Just a quick word to acknowledge how clever Spielberg was to have the Ark of the Covenant, the holiest of holies, the subject of all of this strife and death, crated and boxed away in an anonymous government warehouse, presumably one of thousands of forgotten treasures. That's a wry sense of humor there. (HC)

CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000)

The best movie endings are the ones that come at great cost, the ones that make us feel that we’ve lived with these characters and that their eventual fate, whatever it is, has been earned. The greatest recent example of this is Ang Lee’s wuxia masterpiece, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. After a truly epic sequence of events, changes of scenery and direction, life, death, moral redirection, and any number of other twists and turns, the young lovers Jen and Lo, hiding out at the Wudan temple, fondly recall their time together in the forbidding, barbaric deserts, where their love had first blossomed. “Make a wish, Lo,” says Jen, in one of the most perfect deliveries of a movie line in modern memory; “I wish that we’ll be in the desert together again,” he replies. Jen then silently hurls herself off the edge of the temple, into the clouds below, suspended first and then flying, calling back to a legend they’d discussed during their desert idyll as Tan Dun’s majestic, gorgeous music plays us to the credits. It’s one of the most romantic endings imaginable, and guaranteed to raise a lump in the throat of all but the coldest viewer – a scene that’s truly earned. (LP)

25TH HOUR (2002)

For most of Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, Monty Brogan (played by Edward Norton) is shown coming to grips with his upcoming incarceration -- saying goodbye to his loved ones, trying to determine who sold him up the river, even asking his best friends to beat the snot out of him so he won’t look like an easy target for prison rape. But just when Monty has more or less accepted his fate, the morning he’s scheduled to make the trip up to prison, his dad James (Brian Cox) meets him for the trip with an alternative -- to escape and start a new life. Over the next ten minutes, James paints a beautiful picture of this way out -- go West, find a little town in the desert, get a new identity, and so on -- and with Terence Blanchard’s elegiac score playing behind him, the plan is as tempting as it is far-fetched. But there’s a steep price for this escape, as Monty could never return to his old life. And so, the central theme of the movie snaps sharply into focus -- the choices we all must make in life. James is prepared for the possibility of never seeing his son again as long as he knows he’ll be okay, but is Monty ready to give up everything he knows for freedom? As we see him passing all those New Yorkers he once railed against, now smiling at him and seeing him off, we wonder if he can sacrifice his past to save his future. And just when he’s come to the end of his imagined life, all of a sudden he snaps back to his real one, back in the car on the road to destiny, and Lee’s camera lingers once again on Norton’s face. The choice is yours, Monty. (PC)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, Phil Nugent, Hayden Childs, Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce

Trailer Review: Sherlock Holmes

Paul Clark — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

As I’m sure many of you can guess, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes isn’t exactly at the top of my must-see list for 2009. Really, this trailer is pretty much what I expected from this combination of material and director- wacky camera angles, bare-knuckle boxing matches, and lotsa stuff blowing up. What’s more, the oafish “lad” humor that’s shown up in all of Ritchie’s other films to date is also well in evidence here too, which the frat boys might enjoy but has never really done much for me. So any interest I have in this project comes from the cast, which is actually pretty intriguing to me. Being a Downey fan, I knew he would have fun as Holmes, but I wasn’t sure exactly how he’d take on the character, and it’s nice to see that he’s playing him not as a ninny (like Johnny Depp’s Ichabod Crane, funny as that was), but as a fairly capable if somewhat unorthodox crime-solver. And Jude Law should be entertaining as Watson- I generally like Law better when he’s not the protagonist, which lets him air out his inner character actor usually to good effect. Also, there’s Rachel McAdams in lingerie, which is nice to see- both the lingerie and McAdams in general. Plus I gotta admit- the hammer gag is pretty funny.

DVD Digest for May 26, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

In advance of the upcoming shuttering of The Screengrab- just four more days, folks!- the DVD departments of Disney, Paramount, and Fox have graciously decided not to put out any recent releases this week in protest. Thanks for the support, guys!

Unfortunately, this boycott leaves us with precious little to report in regards to recent movies. Put it another way- when your highest-profile recent release coming to DVD is the forgotten Renee Zellweger/Harry Connick Jr. rom-com New in Town (Lionsgate), the phrase “slow week” doesn’t quite cover it. If you’re looking for Asian fare, this week also brings Mamoru Oshii’s animated The Sky Crawlers (Sony, also Blu-Ray), as well as two Wayne Wang indies, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Magnolia) and Princess of Nebraska (Magnolia). And let’s not overlook the much-anticipated How to Give Pleasure to a Woman by a Woman (Pacific Media).

Thankfully, there’s a little more of interest in the classics department, although that’s kind of a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that Warner is releasing titles from Michelangelo Antonioni, David Cronenberg, John Boorman, Hal Ashby, and Hugh Hudson. The bad news is that this week’s releases include some of these estimable auteurs’ worst films. Now, I’m aware that Zabriskie Point and M. Butterfly have their defenders. However, I’m not sure people were exactly clamoring for a DVD of Beyond Rangoon or director’s cuts of Revolution and Lookin’ to Get Out, no matter how excited Jon Voight is about the latter. At least they’re not in a box set, so you Zabriskie fans can finally watch stuff blow up real good at the end without having to buy a DVD of Al Pacino fighting the Redcoats as well. Also this week: Falling Down Deluxe Edition (Warner).

Now that Hollywood has seen fit to make Land of the Lost into an expensive summer movie, it was inevitable that Land of the Lost: The Complete Series (Universal) would be hitting stores in advance of that. Or if you’re more into the whole cop-show thing, this week also sees the release of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: The Ninth Year (Universal) and The Closer: Season 4 (Warner).

Finally, this week’s Blu-Ray only slate includes perhaps the “man”-liest triple feature around, with new Blu-Rays of Children of Men (Universal), Cinderella Man (Universal), and Inside Man (Universal) hitting stores today. Also this week: Field of Dreams (Universal), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Extended Cut (Warner), Seabiscuit (Universal), Spy Game (Universal), and True Romance Unrated Cut (Warner).

In the words of Annette Hanshaw, “that’s all.”

Yesterday's Hits: The Birth of a Nation (1915, D.W. Griffith)

Paul Clark — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

When I first hit upon the idea for Yesterday’s Hits about a year and a half ago, the idea was to look at movies that were extremely popular when they were first released, but which might not have maintained this popularity to the present day. In looking at movies that haven’t necessarily stood the test of time, I hoped to gain some anthropological insight into what audiences of the past responded to, both stylistically and ideologically. And while some of the movies I’ve selected have held up pretty well (and some even better than that), some of the more interesting cases have been the ones that haven’t, for various reasons. In some cases, the popularity of these films have been due to their employing some then-impressive technical breakthrough, while others were very much of their time, featherweight entertainments that simply weren’t built to last.

But ever since I began writing this column, one movie has remained at the back of my mind- D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Generally acknowledged as the first blockbuster in movie history, Birth of a Nation was the film that cemented the commercial viability of the feature-length release, grossing more than $10 million in 1915 dollars, which translates to roughly $200 million today. In addition, the techniques employed by Griffith and his crew were groundbreaking in their day, and exerted a profound influence on cinema that continues even today. Yet despite its influence in film history, Birth is usually condemned for its borderline hateful views on African-Americans and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. It’s this combination of the film’s runaway popularity and its troubling, dated ideology that makes it an ideal subject for a Yesterday’s Hits column.

So what was it about Birth of a Nation that so excited audiences back in the teens? Based on a recent viewing of the film, I’m tempted to say that many audience members simply hadn’t seen a movie this big before. In the first few decades of cinema, the dominant mode of filmmaking was in short subjects, which dramatized small-scale stories over the course of twenty minutes or so. By contrast, Birth of a Nation ran upwards of three hours long. In addition, the scale of its story was big enough to encompass the Civil War (both the Union and Confederate sides), the assassination of President Lincoln, and difficult process of Reconstruction. In 1915, this was a story that was still fresh in the minds of many Americans, and they were no doubt eager to see it “brought to life” on the screen.

Today, after nearly a century of advances in filmmaking technology, the expansiveness of Birth of a Nation is no longer impressive. Yet it’s interesting to observe many of the conventions of contemporary Hollywood cinema in their embryonic form here. The most obvious example of this is Griffith’s use of cross-cutting between different storylines that run concurrently. Today, cross-cutting can be found in the vast majority of films both big and small, but at the time it was practically revolutionary, and it’s sort of amazing to see how closely Griffith’s version of the technique resembles its current form. Birth of a Nation should be taught in every film program as a textbook example of how to use cross-cutting to not only keep several plotlines going simultaneously but also to play them off each other to increase the audience’s level of excitement.

And I have no doubt that it would be if not for the film’s much-ballyhooed reputation of racism, which I must report is completely justified. For much of the film’s first half, this isn’t an issue, as Griffith concentrates primarily on the Civil War, and of the two families- the northern Stonemans and the southern Camerons- whose fates are inextricably linked throughout the story. But once the North wins the war all hell breaks loose, as the newly re-United States is very nearly reduced to a shambles by the Reconstruction process. In the film’s view (and presumably, that of Thomas Dixon’s novel as well), Reconstruction was a period in which opportunistic northern politicians who wanted to punish the south for seceding, and the newly-freed slaves who wanted to stick it to their former masters, nearly ruined this country. And the only thing that prevented them from doing so were the righteous members of the Ku Klux Klan, who brought our country back together by putting the "coloreds" back in their place.

Now, there’s a forgiving part of me that wants to believe that the audiences of the day were so bowled over by Griffith’s filmmaking that they could scarcely be expected to pay attention to the odious racism that runs through the story. But the hard truth is that racism didn’t magically disappear with the passage of amendments thirteen through fifteen, and was still prevalent at the time of Birth of a Nation’s release. What makes the film’s imagery especially alarming is the way it fans the flames of hatred towards African-Americans. Throughout the film, Griffith shows us African-Americans who are stupid, lazy, gluttonous, underhanded, sneaky, and violent- in short, “sub-human”. One of the many glaring examples of this is in the scene depicting the South Carolina Senate, full of freed slaves who prop their bare feet up on the desks, gobble down food in the middle of giving speeches, and use their newly-acquired to enact a law permitting interracial marriage. The most hateful ones of all in Griffith’s eyes are the “mulattos,” who combine the intelligence and cunning of whites with the craziness of “blacks.”

The first half of the film is riveting (it could play as a great Civil War melodrama on its own), while the bald-faced racism of the film’s second half is jaw-dropping But what the two halves have in common is Griffith’s filmmaking sense, even in the wrongheaded later sequences. This makes these scenes all the more disturbing, as the ideas are so mind-boggling yet sold so well, that it’s little wonder that Birth was banned in a number of areas for fear of inciting race-related violence- or that KKK membership increased dramatically in the years following the film’s release.

There’s a famous, possibly apocryphal story that after seeing Birth of a Nation, President Woodrow Wilson declared that, “it’s like writing history with lightning.” This is something of a two-pronged statement, simultaneously praising the power of Griffith’s images and expressing fear at the influence that these particularly images might have over audiences. Today, the majority of Americans no longer hold the same kind of racism that informs Birth of a Nation, but it’s illustrative to remember that nearly a century has passed since its release, and to consider how few of today’s blockbusters will be able to withstand this same level of scrutiny a century from now. If nothing else, to consider Birth of a Nation today is to reflect on, in the words of Haven Hamilton, “how far we’ve come along ‘til now/ how far we’ve got to go.”

Trailer Review: The Road

Paul Clark — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

One of the problems with big-budget post-apocalyptic movies is that most audiences are down with downbeat storylines, preferring to watch movies that make them feel good and don’t remind them of the world’s troubles. Consequently, most movies set in a dystopian future tend to be action-oriented, to make the stories’ hard truths more palatable by adding plenty of chase scenes and shootouts. The most troubling thing about this trailer for The Road is that the Weinsteins look to be selling just that kind of movie when the story doesn’t really call for it. Sure, this approach might get a few more asses in the seats, but the I Am Legend crowd might grow uneasy with the despair and desperation that the story- or at least the original novel by Cormac McCarthy- traffics in, and might feel ripped off. Another really hamfisted tactic this trailer uses is the liberal use of Charlize Theron, who by all rights should be barely in the movie itself, but is portrayed as more or less a co-lead with Viggo Mortensen. Still, I have faith in this movie’s potential- even if Harvey Scissorhands gets his choppers on this one, McCarthy, Mortensen and director John Hillcoat bring enough talent to the party that it should at least be interesting. More interesting than the trailer, anyway.

Trailer Review: Face (International Trailer)

Paul Clark — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

One of my most anticipated films in competition at the currently-in-progress Cannes Film Festival is the latest from the great Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, which will premiere later this week. Face marks the first time that Tsai has set a story largely outside of Asia, but despite the new setting, this definitely has a Tsai feel to it. More specifically, this feels like the surreal Tsai of movies like The Wayward Cloud, with the trailer highlighting the strange imagery and musical numbers that distinguished that memorable film. In addition, longtime Tsai watchers should appreciate this as the latest installment in the ongoing adventures of Lee Kang-Sheng, in which Tsai’s favorite leading man finds himself transplanted to Paris and into the path of the lovely Laetitia Casta. The super-cool supporting cast of talented French performers- Jean-Pierre Leaud, Fanny Ardant, Jeanne Moreau, Nathalie Baye, Mathieu Amalric- should attract some francophilic moviegoers, which ought to at least get Face the American release that Wayward Cloud deserved but never got.

DVD Digest for May 19, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the same old stuff you always get from DVD Digest. Also, a new Steven Seagal movie!

For some people reading this column, the news that the recent releases Valkyrie (MGM, also Blu-Ray), Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony, also Blu-Ray), and My Bloody Valentine 3D (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray) will be more important than anything else. But we’re looking out for the rest of you as well. And if none of these titles quicken your pulse- and I perfectly understand if they don’t- there’s always the latest from movie-star-turned-musician-turned-energy-drink-magnate (take that, Billy Bob Thornton!) Steven Seagal, Driven to Kill (Fox, also Blu-Ray). On the other side of things, the artsy and fartsy out there should be salivating over the release of John Gianvito’s excellent Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (E1 Entertainment). In other words, something for everybody!

And what would a DVD Digest be without the classics section, for those of you who aren’t all uptight about black-and-white, subtitles, Academy ratio, and long-dead movie stars. Devotees of the Criterion Collection no doubt already know about the dynamic duo of DVDs hitting streets today. First, Peter Yates' great Boston crime drama The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Criterion) makes its long-awaited DVD debut. Or if you’re in the mood for something more, uh, Eastern, check out Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura (Criterion)- includes The Insect Woman, Pigs and Battleships, Intentions of Murder. Fans of old Hollywood would be advised to pick up two John Wayne favorites, El Dorado Centennial Edition (Paramount) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Centennial Edition (Paramount). And by some happy coincidence, today’s release of Fritz Lang’s Nazi-hunting thriller Man Hunt (Fox) is timed perfectly with the release of the aforementioned Valkyrie. Funny how that worked out, dontcha find?

Fans of TV on DVD should find something to enjoy among this week’s releases, which include the ever-popular 24 Season 7 (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Alan Ball’s vampire saga True Blood (HBO, also Blu-Ray), and the no-longer-surprising-in-its-awesomeness Friday Night Lights Season 3 (Universal).

Finally, if you’ve a Blu-Ray player, you’re in luck! Today’s a big one for Blu-Ray only releases, highlighted by the Batman 20th Anniversary Blu-Ray Book (Warner), which includes a Batmobile full of extras, documentaries, and other cool stuff. For the kids, A Bug’s Life (Disney) hits stores to capitalize on the upcoming Pixar release Up, while those who are looking forward to the latest Terminator blockbuster will no doubt pick up Terminator 2 Skynet Edition (Lionsgate). The political drama Lions for Lambs (Fox) is coming out for fans of political speechifying. Finally, Paramount’s got a whole slew of new Blu-Ray only releases hitting stores today, including Three Days of the Condor, Changing Lanes, Enemy at the Gates, Paycheck, and The Machinist.

Trailer Review: Nine

Paul Clark — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

These days, it seems like most of the musicals that Hollywood makes are designed as Oscar bait, made with an eye to raking in Academy Awards in various technical categories if nothing else. So it’s kind of odd watching the trailer for Nine, which boasts a cast as prestigious as any musical ever produced (that’s six Oscar winners in the cast, for those playing along at home), and realizing how little it trumpets its pedigree. If nothing else, I admire this spot for not trying to cover up the fact that it’s a musical, with lots of dancing on display and Fergie belting out a song in the background. Still, the Rob Marshall factor gives me pause. Chicago was a good-looking (and good-sounding) movie, but the jackhammer editing became oppressive long before the end, and the whole enterprise felt fairly impersonal to me, like a reverse-engineered machine designed to rack up awards. But I’m holding out judgment on this project for now, at least until the first full-length trailer, in which one hopes we’ll finally hear Daniel Day-Lewis singing.

Reviews By Request: Angel Heart (1987, Alan Parker)

Paul Clark — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

As always, voting for my next Reviews By Request column can be found at the end of this review.

The conventional wisdom regarding cinematic plot twists is that they be unexpected. This means that either the audience shouldn’t see that a twist is coming, or that they shouldn’t anticipate the particular twist that the movie has in store. So what to make of a movie like Angel Heart? Here is a movie that more or less announces from the beginning that nothing is what it seems, and the film is filled with clues that are somewhat less than subtle. Yet at the same time, it’s entertaining and stylish enough that it entertained me even as I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I more or less guessed where it was headed, but I had a good time getting there.

Consider an early scene in the film, in which the detective protagonist Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) meets his mysterious retainer Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) to discuss the case Harry has been investigating. In most detective movies, Cyphre would be portrayed in a way that makes him seem slightly off, but wouldn’t hint at his dark secrets. But rather than trying to hide Cyphre’s true nature, director Alan Parker almost dares us to guess, as he tempts Harry by offering him $5,000 to take the case (a pretty good sum for a fifties-era gumshoe), then uses his elegant long nails to peel one of the hard-boiled eggs on his plate. Angel knows something is afoot, but he’s so anxious (both by Cyphre and the eggs, since he’s “got a thing about chickens”), and in thrall to the money being offered that he doesn’t even try to guess what. But it becomes pretty clear to the audience who Cyphre really is by the time he mentions that eggs are seen by some cultures as symbols of the soul then takes a big bite from one of his eggs, a sinister glare in his eye. It’s almost like… Parker wants us to guess.

Really, the whole movie is like this. And while as a mystery Angel Heart leaves something to be desired, it’s much more successful as an exercise in lurid style. Parker, who first worked as a commercial director, has always been more comfortable with visuals than with substantial narratives, which torpedoed serious efforts like Angela’s Ashes and The Life of David Gale, but was well-suited to more stylized and less plot-driven fare like Pink Floyd: The Wall (Evita straddled the line, making mincemeat of plot and character development but providing thrilling, almost Riefenstahl-esque lighting and choreography for the production numbers). Angel Heart fits into the second category, which goes a long way toward explaining why this is one of the director’s more interesting films.

If Parker doesn’t seem especially interested in making a whodunit, that’s because they’re largely a setup for the story’s seamier trappings- the dingy home of a morphine-addicted doctor, the shadowy back alleys of old New Orleans, the ornate choreography of a late-night pagan ritual. Likewise, Parker’s use of blood makes the movie feel almost like an old-school giallo in parts, complete with leering closeups of freshly disembodied corpses and the various organs that were removed in the process. And the notorious sex scene between Rourke and Lisa Bonet is one of the more memorable of Parker’s career, so frenzied and over the top that it must be seen to be believed. That the scene in its current form was actually edited down so that the film was get an R rating just goes to show how far Parker was willing to go to get his effects.

However, the movie would be nothing more than empty style without the assured lead performance by Rourke. Even prior to his nineties career meltdown, Rourke excelled at playing down-and-out guys who thought they were smarter and more charming than they actually were, and the role of Harry Angel was a perfect fit. While many actors would have turned Harry into a retro-cool archetype, Rourke’s performance is eccentric (look at the way he reacts whenever he spies a chicken) and emphasizes his deep-seated anxieties and preoccupations. Rourke isn’t afraid to highlight Harry’s less capable side- for a detective he can sometimes be pretty slow to pick up on things, and he occasionally makes some pretty big mistakes out of carelessness. Yet he’s so engaging in his rumpled, careworn way that it’s hard not to like the guy, and to feel sorry for him once the story has painted him into a corner.

In the climactic scene of Angel Heart, Rourke faces off against DeNiro for the final time, as Harry finds out not only Louis Cyphre’s secret but also his own. DeNiro was still in the full flower of his talent at the time, not yet having become a bloated parody of himself. But it’s Rourke who shines in this scene, as he cries out “I know who I am!” again and again. As the scene continues, Rourke wrings one emotion after another from this line- first defiant, then pathetic, then resigned- and it’s a reminder of what a fine actor he was back before we nearly lost him to his own self-destructive impulses. When I saw The Wrestler this past winter, I knew that it was designed to be Rourke’s comeback vehicle, but I had only a limited exposure to the early years of his career. Now that I’ve seen Angel Heart, I’m eager to see more.

For my final Reviews By Request column here at Screengrab, I’d like to pay tribute to one of the Screengrab’s favorite sites, The Onion A.V. Club. One of the A.V. Club’s most interesting regular columns is The New Cult Canon, a weekly feature written by the talented Scott Tobias. Every week, Scott takes on a fairly recent cult-friendly movie, and he was gracious enough to recommend five of his favorite New Cult Canon selections for this column. Which of the following should I review next?

Online Surveys & Market Research

In case you’re having trouble reading the poll, the choices are: Bitter Moon (Polanski), I Am Cuba (Kalatozov), King of New York (Ferrara), Married to the Mob (Demme), and Millennium Actress (Kon). And remember, the comments section is open. See you in two weeks!

Trailer Review: Whatever Works

Paul Clark — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Throughout my college years, I was a fairly rabid Woody Allen fan, watching his movies on video two or three in a row, much to the consternation of my roommates. Since then, his more inconsistent recent output has tempered my enthusiasm somewhat, but I still make sure to watch all of his new films in theatres, partly out of my long-established loyalty, partly out of hope that he’s got another masterpiece in him. Based on this trailer, Whatever Works probably won’t be that masterpiece, seeing as how it’s full of the sorts of easy potshots (particularly at Southern Christians) that mar most of his latter-day movies. Yet at the same time, it’s nice to see him back in New York after his years abroad- one hopes that his European sojourn has awakened a new creativity in him. And like a lot of people, I’m excited to see him working with Larry David, who is possessed of a similarly neurotic and cosmopolitan comic sensibility. If nothing else, David should be one of the better straight-up Allen surrogates to come around in ages. Miles better than Kenneth Branagh, that’s for sure.

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST FILMS EVER!!!! (Part Nine)

Andrew Osborne — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Paul Clark's Top Ten Best Movies Ever!

1. BELLE DE JOUR (1967)
2. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
3. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928)

The greatness of The Passion of Joan of Arc stems from the fact that director Carl Th. Dreyer knew what it was that made Joan’s story important- not that she believed that God had tasked her to save France, but that she was so steadfast in her faith that she thought it better do die than to deny it. Consequently, Dreyer’s version of Joan’s story has no battle sequences and no heavenly visions, merely a powerful retelling of Joan’s final days, her trial and execution. The world of this film is an unsparing- one might say godless- one, full of evil and underhanded men who are more than willing to sacrifice Joan for their own political gain. This serves to throw into sharp relief the power of Joan’s faith, by heightening the pain and suffering she endured up to the end for the God in whom she so resolutely believed. Falconetti’s performance, then as now, is a wonder, and it’s only fitting that she never appeared onscreen again- how could she have possibly lived up to it?

4. JEANNE DIELMAN (1975)

The sheer amount of focus that director Chantal Akerman and star Delphine Seyrig bring to this film is pretty breathtaking, showing us the everyday life of one woman over the course of 3 ½ hours. What’s more, Jeanne Dielman isn’t an especially noteworthy woman- she’s a single mother who turns the occasional trick to help pay the bills. But rather than lingering on Jeanne’s side job- which has no bearing on her life outside the confines of her bedroom- Akerman instead shows us the details of her everyday routine- preparing the meals, cleaning the flat, doing the shopping, and so on. Because of Akerman’s extensive use of real time, the film becomes about this routine, and consequently, when anything interrupts the routine, the film gains a surprising amount of impact, even from something as simple as Jeanne not getting her usual seat at the local café. As of now, Jeanne Dielman is unavailable in the United States in any home viewing format, so if the film ever makes it to your local rep house, you owe it to yourself to go.

5. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)

6. ORPHEUS (1949)

“A legend is entitled to be beyond time and place,” states director Jean Cocteau in his introduction to Orpheus. This unique approach to the original myth allows Cocteau to re-imagine it as one of the kinkiest love-quadrangles the big screen has ever seen, involving the titular poet, his wife Eurydice, Death herself, and her chauffeur Heurtebise. The movie’s key performance is from Maria Casares, who is not the larger-than-life Death that most audiences would expect, but so life-sized and lonely in the role that the love entanglements are allowed to be as poignant as they are. One of the most memorable touches Cocteau brought to the film was his knack for making the real world surreal, not merely through editing and camera trickery (film run backwards for eerie effect, characters suddenly disappearing into thin air), but also through strange locations (a bombed-out building used as the realm of the dead) and surreal plot points (chiefly among them the car radio on which Orpheus listens to the bizarre "poetry"). Cocteau was a true multi-talented artist, and Orpheus is on top of everything else one of the great films about the uneasy mix between art and life, in which life and art intrude onto each other, but in the end, if the art is truly enduring then not even death- or Death- can take it from the world.

7. CITIZEN KANE (1941)

8. PLAYTIME (1967)

I don’t think that any viewer who is paying attention can possibly deny what a singular directorial achievement Playtime is. With this film, a box-office disaster on its initial release, Tati re-created modern-day Paris on his own terms as a sterile maze of boxy skyscrapers, plate-glass windows, and beeping gadgetry. But while other filmmakers might be tempted to turn this setting (built entirely from scratch for the film) into an urban nightmare, Tati- true to the film’s title- concentrates on the funny little eccentricities that sneak their way in. This approach is ideal, as it turns out, as Tati’s impossibly intricate mise-en-scène (his skill at engineering visual moments is even keener than Keaton’s) would run the risk of becoming stifling if it wasn’t done with such offhand charm. To describe any of the priceless moments in the film wouldn’t spoil them so much as it would sell them short, as Tati pulls them off so perfectly, yet so unassumingly. And in the midst of it all is Tati’s signature character Hulot, a bastion of old-fashioned provincialism, who would exist at odds with his hyper-modern surroundings but for his singular brand of good-natured aloofness, which translates surprisingly well to his new environment. Playtime is bravura filmmaking of the gentlest kind, a film that demands to be revisited- and seen on the biggest screen possible- innumerable times to be appreciated, and is a sheer delight on each and every viewing.

9. THE GENERAL (1926)

If I was forced to choose a favorite filmmaker, my first choice would almost certainly be Buster Keaton. But for me, an even tougher choice is which of his films to choose. For the purpose of this list, I decided to disqualify Keaton’s short films, which sadly eliminated such classics as One Week, Neighbors, and The Scarecrow. In the end, while part of me was tempted to choose Sherlock Jr. or Seven Chances, I kept coming back to The General, which is both the greatest Civil War movie ever made and one of the greatest comedies in cinema. Rather than filling the film with wacky, distracting supporting characters, much of The General is comprised of scenes with Keaton alone on the train, and these scenes feature some of the most ingeniously realized gags ever put on film- the most legendary being the one in which Keaton finds a railroad tie atop the tracks in front of the train, so he carefully climbs down onto the train's cowcatcher and uses another railroad tie to knock the first one off the tracks. Like so many of the film's great moments (which are plentiful) this gag is less about gut-busting hilarity than engineering- we marvel at the simple ingenuity of it, with the added charge that Keaton did even the most dangerous stunts himself. There’s also a nonchalance about the film that's refreshing, a charm that takes its cue from its star's unassuming demeanor, that allows even the most intricate gag or potentially deadly stunt to feel like a throwaway, as though instead of a show-stopping moment it's all just another annoyance to this character's routine. Which, of course, only makes it funnier.

10. GATES OF HEAVEN (1978)

Roger Ebert may sometimes be prone to going overboard with praise, but when he’s right, he’s right, and he’s 100% right about Gates of Heaven, a movie he’s been stumping for for more than three decades. Fans of Errol Morris know what I’m talking about, but for the rest of you- yes, it really is that good. Morris may use pet cemeteries as his starting point, but ultimately it's about the ways in which we deal with the death of those we love, and by extension with our own mortality. Morris has always been one of the most patient of documentarians, and one of the chief pleasures of Gates of Heaven is in the distinctive and colorful ways the various interviewees talk, from the bone-weary resignation of failed cemetery owner Floyd McClure to the regurgitated management philosophies of Philip Harberts to (especially) ornery old Florence Rasmussen. And as Morris interviews various owners of dead animals, they reflect on how important these pets were in their lives as a source of companionship and unconditional love- sure, these people sound a little crazy for projecting these feelings onto animals, but simply by presenting these people the film asks us how many people can offer the same kind of loyalty these pet owners felt from their pets? In the end, this film offers no small amount of plain-spoken philosophy, as when one pet owner states, "there's your pet, your pet's dead. But what happened to the thing that made it move?" No film I've seen is this profound about the ways in which people seek meaning not in art or centuries-old wisdom, but in the lives (and deaths) of others.

SPECIAL MENTION: DECALOGUE (1989)

This being a “best movies” list, it’s debatable whether Krzystzof Kieslowski’s The Decalogue really qualifies, since while it has played theatrically all over the world, it was originally intended as a ten-part miniseries for Polish television (call this “special mention” a compromise). What’s undeniable, however, is that this is one of the major works of the twentieth century. Decalogue was inspired by The Ten Commandments, but one of its great achievements is that it views the Commandments less as religious doctrine than key moral tenets that govern most modern-day societies. So rather than trafficking in pious, preachy parables, Kieslowski and co-writer Krzystzof Piesiewicz examine the ways in which people in the modern world struggle with these age-old decrees, not always successfully. In one of the episodes, a girl who has grown close to her widower father must decide how to deal with her feelings after she discovers that he isn't her biological father after all; in another, the unfaithful wife of a gravely ill man finds out that she is pregnant by her lover, and tells her husband's doctor that the unborn child's fate will be decided by whether or not he believes her husband will die. And in the series’ most beloved episode, a teenage voyeur falls in love with a woman he spies on, and decides to become part of her life. The way this film plays out defies all expectation, yet in retrospect the events seem almost inevitable. The Decalogue may or may not be an according-to-Hoyle movie, but I’m guessing that when the history of moving-image-thingies is written, The Decalogue will occupy a place of honor.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight & Ten

Contributor: Paul Clark

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

3. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

The year 2001 has long since come and gone, but the movie named for it seems to exist outside of time. There was nothing like it before and there’s been nothing quite like it since, although Stanley Kubrick’s space odyssey has influenced filmmakers as dissimilar as David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson. Ranging from the dawn of man to beyond the infinite, it’s larger than life and should be experienced that way, preferably on 70mm, as I once saw it at the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles. (A screening at which it seemed self-evident that the intermission coming rather late in the game is timed perfectly for the audience to slip out to the parking lot and get into the proper headspace for the grand finale.) You could fit all of its dialogue on a greeting card, and little of it means anything at all. Kubrick’s epic is all about exploding the structure of narrative film, marrying big, bold imagery to minimalist plotting – it’s about a filmmaker reaching for the stars. Kubrick’s reach may have exceeded his grasp, but he took us on a hell of a ride along the way. (SVD)

To watch 2001 is to marvel at how big Stanley Kubrick’s ideas really were. Most movies, even the best ones, are content to confine themselves to the concerns of man, but the scope of 2001 stands astride human history, observing the beginning before leaping forward to behold the beginning of the end. He did this through bravura filmmaking to be sure, but also an uncanny ability to make his ideas visual rather than spelling them out in dialogue. Long portions of 2001 play without dialogue, and when the human characters speak, they have almost nothing of consequence to say. They go about their business as momentous events play around them, and even after they learn of an important extraterrestrial presence on the moon, they pass the time by prattling on about the sandwiches they’ve been given. Of course the effects are lovely, even today -- a feat that’s all the more impressive for the fact that Kubrick and his technicians had to invent many of them for the movie. But the technical wizardry doesn’t stand alone: rather, it's part of a directorial tour de force that was made with genuine care by one of the most gifted filmmakers ever to pick up a camera. (PC)

2. THE GODFATHER (1972)

There’s no real debate – maybe there hasn’t been for 35 years – about whether or not The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are masterpieces of Hollywood filmmaking. The only real debate is which of the two is superior. Many critics and viewers simply refuse to choose and lump the two together as a single film; it’s a decision I can fully understand and support. Most critics, though, when asked to pick just one, go for the second film, with its epic scope, its ramped-up internecine complexity, and its darker vision of violence and betrayal. When the wind is south-southwest, I agree with them; the two films are of such phenomenal merit that any given day, either one could be considered the greatest movie ever made. But if I had to carve in stone my favorite, it would be the first. It may have not had the engaging complexity of its sequel, and it left its ending far more ambiguous than the blood-soaked tragedy of Part II, but its cast was note-perfect in every single scene, anchored by the monumental presence of Marlon Brando, and its structure was untouchable, serving as a moving textbook of how to craft a great film. It built the towering edifice that its sequel would so brilliantly destroy, and it was one of those rare films that arrived in the world instantly recognizable as a thing of greatness. If Part II shocked the world by surpassing it, it’s because The Godfather was so great it seemed impossible to surpass. (LP)

I can’t recall if I ever posted this story before...but what the heck, I’m outta here soon anyway, so: I once had a girlfriend (now sadly and tragically departed, and way, way too young) who was obsessed with both parts of The Godfather. During our years together, we watched the whole epic dozens of times, and eventually came to know every scene and line by heart (especially Luca Brasi’s stated hope for “a masculine child” on the day of Connie’s wedding, a line delivered with absolutely believable nervousness by actor Lenny Montana, reportedly due to his own absolute nervousness on the day of filming). Very few movies stand up to so many repeat viewings...and then one night, a freshly-struck print of The Godfather screened at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, and I was astonished to discover even more sumptuous visual detail packed into the frame than I’d ever noticed before, which only heightened my awareness of the nearly unparalleled genius of the film...as well as the staggering crappiness of The Godfather: Part III. (AO)

And now, the Screengrab's pick for the Number One Film Of All Time...

1. McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)

Robert Altman's take on the Western is as upside-down as Sam Peckinpah's. Where The Wild Bunch is epic and bloody, McCabe and Mrs. Miller is about being small and transient in the great landscape of the West. As big as John McCabe's dreams are, they're only in his head. All the poetry in his soul doesn't mean anything in this tiny community grasping at civilization. His final stand, his big gun battle, is as unimportant to the town of Presbyterian Church as Icarus plunging into the sea in Pieter Brueghal's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. W.H. Auden wrote of this painting in his poem "Musee des Beaux Arts":

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In Presbyterian Church, the burning of the unfinished titular church takes precedence over McCabe's last stand. And there's always something else happening when humanity takes its last stand. Where Peckinpah mixed the myth with realism, Robert Altman always preferred the real. (HC)

You know what always gets me? When Mr. "I don't make deals!" says of McCabe, "That man never killed anybody," he sounds as if he were describing a character defect. The movies have always been populated by guys like this, and it's sobering to realize how many times the movies they were in didn't recoil from them in dismay; on more occasions than I think I want to know, these guys were the heroes! By the end of the movie, McCabe will have killed somebody, all right, before settling in to be covered over with snow as if he were a statue commemorating the town that he'd built. The town will go on, and the woman he loves may eventually notice that he's not around anymore, but at the moment of his death, she barely knows what planet she's on. (PN)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark, Leonard Pearce, Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Screengrab Presents THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

7. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)

I could go into (a little bit of) detail about how Leone simultaneously anticipates the "demythologized" Westerns of the 1970s and beyond and blows them all out of the water, but to do so would be pigeonholing the film's achievement. This film isn't just the greatest Western of all time -- it's one of the all-time great experiences one can have in a movie theatre. Sergio Leone's command of iconography is second to none, and his juxtaposition of pore-baring closeups and expansive landscapes is justifiably legendary. Many have called this film "operatic," and for good reason; this is an epic story told on a grand scale, with wonderfully archetypal characters who linger on and on in the mind. Much credit is due to the great Ennio Morricone, whose score defines the film's characters by their respective musical themes (love the way Henry Fonda's acid-guitar theme and Charles Bronson's guitar noodling mesh, suggesting their shared fate). One of the greatest pleasures for a filmgoer is finding a timeless scene -- a "Moment Out of Time," as it were. Once Upon a Time in the West is so assured and startling that it contains one Moment Out of Time after another, adding up to a peerless entertainment -- tense, moving, funny, artful, exciting as all hell, and above all the very cinematic definition of "iconic." (PC)

6. CITIZEN KANE (1941)

Yes, I know that including Citizen Kane on a “best movies ever” list is something of a cliché. But I’m not including it out of obligation -- I’m including it because it’s awesome. And while much of that has to do with the storytelling innovations of Orson Welles and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, the movie would feel like a cinematic bran muffin if not for the showman’s flair with which Welles infused every frame. Newly arrived in Hollywood after a stint as the wunderkind of stage and radio, Welles made the most of his shot at the big time, flush with the brashness of youth -- twenty-five years old, folks! -- while perhaps realizing he might never get a gig this sweet again (he didn’t, of course). So rather than playing it cool and keeping an eye on his long-term career, Welles poured every bit of inspiration he had into Kane, using every trick in the cinema’s arsenal, including some that were still in their infancy. But it’s Welles’ gusto -- and not incidentally, his genius -- that comes through most clearly, and even though his ideas have been co-opted and warmed over by thousands of films since, almost none has mustered up the same magic. (PC)

5. THE GODFATHER, PART II (1974)

Here’s the criteria I tried to abide by while picking the top ten best movies of all time: I wouldn’t list my ten favorite films, because I have a personal connection to some movies that I can’t possibly justify as all-time greats. And I didn’t want to go the "I've been told a thousand times that Grand Illusion is the best movie ever, so I better include it or I'll look like a schmuck" route, either. So I asked myself, “Self, gun to your head, no time to think, what is the greatest movie of all time?” The “gun to your head” part made it an easy choice – The Godfather, Part II. A bajillion gallons of ink have already been spilled praising its complex, large canvas storytelling, timeless themes, masterfully executed set pieces and brilliant performances, so I won’t pretend I have anything new to add. I’ll just mention a few images that come to mind: Robert De Niro running across a Depression-era New York rooftop, breaking a gun down into pieces and disposing of them as the sounds of a street festival waft up from below; Lee Strasberg dismissively passing a solid gold telephone around a table; Francis Coppola’s camera tracking through the Corleone compound as autumn leaves swirl around the yard. And if every masterpiece must have a flaw, well, we’ll always have Diane Keaton screaming “It was an ABORTION!” (Oh, and that first Godfather movie? That one’s pretty good, too.) (SVD)

4. THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939) & LA GRANDE ILLUSION (1937)

Two masterpieces in two years (with La Bête Humaine, a near masterpiece, in between). La Grande Illusion was the rarest of war movies, a film that never showed a battle but focused on the aftermath, a film that argued that war is inhuman in every sense of the word, which could devolve into a bumper sticker (such as the ubiquitous "war is bad for children and other living beings") but miraculously doesn't. Jean Renoir's humanism can never be underestimated. All of his characters are three-dimensional, and all -- even the sad, flawed German Captain von Rauffenstein (played by Erich Von Stroheim) -- are deserving of your sympathy. La Règle du jeu has the same commitment to the saving grace of underlying humanity, even as it explodes the Edwardian upstairs-downstairs upper-crust comedy of manners. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Hayden Childs

Screengrab Presents: THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME!!!!! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

As faithful readers already know by now, the End Is Near for this blog...but before we all get Raptured up outta this bitch, your soon-to-be-less-employed-than-usual pals here at the Screengrab figured we’d settle the age-old question of ultimate movie quality once and for all with our own definitive and irrefutable rulings on the subject.

Last week, we determined the Top Ten Worst Atrocities in the History of Cinema...and now, after months of intensive research, legal wrangling, animal testing, sleepless nights and enough partisan debate to make the Coleman-Franken dispute seem like a mere coin-toss, we hereby present our individual and collective picks for THE TOP TEN BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

(And...okay, so we cheated a little, kicking things off with an insoluble three-way tie for the #10 spot, starting with...)

10. DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978)

Terrence Malick’s sophomore effort about a love triangle that develops in the 1920 Texas panhandle is a work of pure cinema in which everything about its story, its characters, and its larger concerns is conveyed through overwhelmingly evocative imagery. From piercing cutaways to the natural world, to Linda Manz’s strange, haunting narration, to peerlessly beautiful twilight hour cinematography and Ennio Morricone’s wrenching score, it’s a film whose mournful poeticism casts a lingering spell, and which stands – in this critic’s humble opinion – as the finest feature ever committed to celluloid. (NS)

10. BELLE DE JOUR (1967)

Earlier this year, I sat down and watched Buñuel’s masterpiece Belle de Jour for what must have been the fortieth or so time, and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, this story is all a fantasy in the mind of the main character’s husband. If you’ve seen the movie, think about it -- the story is about the virginal Severine (Catherine Deneuve), who plays the elegant wife for husband Jean (Jean Sorel), while harboring (and eventually giving in to) fantasies of debasing herself as a prostitute. Observe the way Jean is always on the sidelines of the story, until the final reel, when he gets dragged into the middle of it. And look at his knowing smirk in the final scene. Now, I have no idea if this reading was something Buñuel intended. But no matter -- Belle de Jour is the kind of movie that invites readings like this one, however strange and far-fetched they might be. Also, it’s got Deneuve at the apex of her icy-hot sex appeal, Michel Piccoli at his most insinuating, plus it actually gets funnier with each subsequent viewing. From an objective point of view, Belle de Jour may not be the best movie ever made, but nuts to that -- it’s my favorite, and that’s good enough for me. (PC)

10. STAR WARS (1977)

During my tenure here at the Screengrab, I’ve rhapsodized endlessly and embarrassingly about my love for the original Star Wars, and now, as Grand Moff Tarkin would say, it will be the last time. But why is it one of the best movies ever? Because, personally, no other film has ever transported me as far and completely from the grip of dull reality into the escapist realms of cinematic possibility. Because, in a general sense, it distilled decades (even centuries) of recycled pop culture into something nobody had ever quite seen before. And while many blame George Lucas (and his buddy Steven Spielberg) for spawning the sort of CGI-infused, ADD-inducing summer blockbusters that led to the Michael Bayification of Hollywood, it should be remembered that Lucas’ original space opera was powered as much by crackerjack storytelling, likeable characters and a sincere joie de vivre as it was by special effects...a lesson clearly absorbed by the best of the new generation of blockbuster auteurs like Jon “Iron Man” Favreau and J.J. “Star Trek” Abrams. (And, finally, one last Star Wars fun fact, for old time’s sake: while double-checking the Internet Movie Database to see if I got the above Tarkin quote right, I unexpectedly discovered that the deformed guy who gives Luke Skywalker a hard time in the Mos Eisley cantina (“He doesn’t like you...I don’t like you either”) is apparently a doctor -- Dr. Cornelius Evazan, to be exact -- though I’m guessing the doctorate was more of an honorary degree, possibly bestowed by Arizona State University). (AO)

9. THE WILD BUNCH (1969)

"A simple story about bad men in changing times" is how Sam Peckinpah summed it up. But it's so much more than that. Pauline Kael said it was "a traumatic poem of violence, with imagery as ambivalent as Goya's" and also that "pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle." Westerns had always been mythic stories, morality tales about good and bad without the guiding force of law to keep matters civilized. The Wild Bunch brought a sense of grim reality to the story without losing the mythic quality. Gunfighters weren't good guys living by a code and bad guys living for themselves. Gunfighters didn't color-code into white and black hats. All of them - crooks, thieves, and highwaymen - were amoral, self-serving murderers. If they had a code of honor, it was a situational code, painting themselves in the best light. In the opening scene, the Wild Bunch weren't above using innocent civilians as a smokescreen when making their escape, nor were the railroad's hired guns above shooting through the civilians to get the Bunch. Peckinpah wanted his audience to feel the blood and iron, and he hoped that people would find themselves excited by the bloodlust and marvel at their own excitement and what it says about people. However, he stuck to a relativistic morality throughout the movie: the Bunch were merciless killers, but the railroad's hired guns were scummy desert rats unworthy of the Bunch. The Bunch robbed trains and put guns into the hands of the Mexican warlord Mapache, but their robbery was silent, clever, and cool, and they despised Mapache's base brutality. Considering the alternatives, they were the white hats, and moreover, they sort of knew it. All the arguments between the Bunch's leader Pike Bishop (William Holden) and his lieutenant Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine) were about what it meant to be honorable, what it meant to take a stand against the greater evil. Time is weighing their arguments down. The 20th century is upon them, and they're barely out of the 18th. They're getting older, slower, and there's no retirement plan for gunfighters. Pike talks about making one last score and then backing off, but Dutch brings him back to reality: "Back off to what?" That's a great question, and there is no answer for it. (HC)

8. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

Even fifty years ago, it seems Hollywood's best days were already behind it. Los Angeles is a city that has been haunted by its past for nearly the entire length of its existence, and Sunset Boulevard is still its quintessential ghost story. Half a century later, Billy Wilder's masterpiece remains the eeriest and most caustic evocation of the Golden Age's twilight ever captured on celluloid. Wilder is often dismissed as a "writer's director" (or worse). It's true that his visual style is a fairly elemental one, but if Wilder's images don't possess the verve of a Kubrick or an Orson Welles, they do exert a cumulative power: William Holden’s cynical screenwriter shot from underneath as he floats lifelessly in the pool, flashbulbs popping behind him; the same pool seen empty and disintegrating from his garage apartment window, and the decaying tennis court beyond it; faded star Norma Desmond rising into the dust illuminated by a projector casting shadows of her former self on the wall; her legendary approach to the camera at the end, as she proclaims herself ready for her close-up. The air of rot and dissolution is almost unbearable. It's difficult to imagine now how shattering Sunset Boulevard must have been back in 1950. Tinseltown has been skewered many times since, in movies as different as Robert Altman's brilliant The Player and Joe Eszterhas's wretched Burn Hollywood Burn. Yet in all this time, no film-about-film has ever approached the dark, glittering genius of Wilder's vision. Even as the movie industry grows more and more appalling, Sunset Boulevard just gets better and better. (SVD)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine & Ten

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Nick Schager, Paul Clark, Hayden Childs, Scott Von Doviak

Trailer Review: Humpday

Paul Clark — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Up to this point, I could sort of take or leave the indie-film movement that’s become known as “mumblecore.” While I respect the scruffy lo-fi aesthetic of these films, I’ve never quite bought into the “voices of a generation” hype that’s followed such adherents as Andrew Bujalski and the Duplass Brothers. However, ever since I first heard about Lynn Shelton’s Humpday in reports from Sundance this year, I’ve been pretty eagerly anticipating the film. Part of the reason is the premise itself- two straight friends co-starring in an amateur gay porn more or less on a dare. For one thing, I like the twist this premise brings to the usual comedy-of-homoeroticism formula, perhaps because I don’t find it funny when characters are oblivious to the “gayness” of their actions, but hilarious when they acknowledge the homoeroticism, and their feelings about same (the jackass movies have much the same approach, albeit without so much tentativeness). Add to this the fact that the Joshua Leonard character bears an almost uncanny resemblance to an old college friend- the kind of friend who would have been totally down for a stunt like this- and this looks to be right up my alley.

DVD Digest for May 12, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a bunch of new tie-in DVDs for a little movie called Star Trek flood the market, as well as a new Criterion release from an old master.

But first, recent releases! For most moviegoers, this week’s big ticket title is the Euro-flavored kidnapping thriller Taken. Produced by Luc Besson and helmed by Pierre (District B13) Morel, Taken became the first action hit of 2009 by combining the high-octane grit of its action scenes with the unexpected gravitas brought to the story by star Liam Neeson. Not faring so well at the box office was Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (Sony, also Blu-Ray), the third in the seemingly deathless vampires-versus-werewolves saga. Also this week, Terence Davies’ Liverpool doc Of Time and the City (Strand) hits stores, along with a trio of high-profile direct-to-DVD releases: the Donnie Darko follow-up S. Darko (Fox, also Blu-Ray), Michelle Pfeiffer and Ashton “Twitter King” Kutcher in Personal Effects (Universal, also Blu-Ray), and The Grudge 3 (Sony), the not-particularly-anticipated third entry in the Grudge series.

In classics, the Trek love continues today with Paramount’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture Trilogy (also Blu-Ray), which thankfully doesn’t include the boring-ass first Star Trek movie, but instead encompasses films two through four. And if Trekkers are in need a few laughs and don’t feel like watching IV (or V, for that matter) again, they can pick up the Galaxy Quest Deluxe Edition (Paramount), which for my money is the best (unofficial) Trek movie since Kirk and Co. saved the whales. Or if you’re all Trekked out, the folks at Eclipse are releasing their latest box set, Eclipse Series 16: Alexander Korda’s Private Lives, which includes four high-spirited big-screen peeks into the lives of Henry VIII, Catherine the Great, Don Juan, and Rembrandt. And finally, Criterion’s releasing John Huston’s beloved “late” film Wise Blood (Criterion), one of the last “great” Huston films I still have yet to see. This of course would make it a key candidate for a Reviews by Request column except for oh wait.

This week’s TV on DVD slate is highlighted by the release of The Dana Carvey Show (Universal). Despite airing only eight episodes before getting the axe, this series has a cult following among TV fans. In fact, I’d be tempted to call Carvey a genius for surrounding himself with such promising talents as then up-and-comers Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, Robert Smigel, and Charlie Kaufman, if not for the fact that he was also responsible for The Master of Disguise. Also this week, Seth Macfarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy (Fox, also Blu-Ray).

In Blu-Ray only news, today brings the release of Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture Collection (Paramount), which collects all six of the original cast movies in one spiffed-up Blu-Ray Collection. And Paramount’s got plenty of comedy hitting stores as well, with Black Sheep (Paramount), Major League (Paramount), Wayne’s World (Paramount), Wayne’s World 2 (Paramount), and Without a Paddle (Paramount) on the way. Also this week: CSI Season 1 (Paramount), Force 10 from Navarone (Fox), and The Grudge (Sony).

Finally, our Synopsis of the Week takes us to the world of kiddie animation, with the four-part Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 25th Anniversary Edition, Season 7, available today in four parts from Lionsgate. Dig this crazy premise:

“Mutated into anthropomorphic fighting machines when they fall into the sewer at a young age, four turtles--Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello, and Raphael--have been trained in the martial arts by the sewer-dwelling Hamato Yoshi. Now, they fight crime in New York City, using their ninja skills as well as the aid of news reporter April O'Neil to counter the efforts of their enemy, Shredder. In this collection of the first six episodes from the 1987-96 animated series’ seventh season, the Turtles tangle with both natural and man-made elements while on adventures involving a massive tidal wave, melting glaciers, and the Eiffel Tower.”

Wow, who thinks of this stuff? And whoever thought it would play to kids?

Trailer Review: District 9

Paul Clark — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

If I was really cynical, I would complain about the way this trailer spoils this movie’s big “twist”. But in the world of marketing, there’s a thin line between a twist and a hook, and I dare say that this movie wouldn’t find its intended audience if it there were no aliens to be found in the trailer, to say nothing of the pissed-off arthouse fans who probably wouldn’t enjoy having their docudrama on the issue of illegal immigration suddenly full of extraterrestrials. So instead, I’ll just say the trailer for the Peter Jackson-produced, Neil Blomkamp-directed District 9 is pretty damn cool. For one thing, the idea of flip-flopping the traditional alien-invasion storyline, with the visiting aliens oppressed by the human race, is a solid one. Indeed, the idea of treating making the story’s metaphorical “illegal aliens” into actual ones is so obvious that I’m surprised I’ve never seen it before (feel free to set me straight, commenters). And to set it in present-day South African is an inspiration, since the old wounds from apartheid are still fresh in everyone’s memories, but all humans black and white are still happy to bring down the newcomers. So much for Truth and Reconciliation...

Yesterday's Hits: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986, Leonard Nimoy)

Paul Clark — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

With this week’s release of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, I thought the time was right to look back at an earlier big-screen installment of the franchise. But which one? Despite the enduring popularity of the Star Trek brand, few of the Trek movies could be classified as blockbusters. Even The Wrath of Khan, the current fan favorite among the original-cast adventures, only grossed a fairly unremarkable $78 million domestically. As of earlier this week, the biggest hit out of the Trek movies is the series’ fourth entry, 1986’s The Voyage Home, which was the only pre-Abrams Trek movie to gross upwards of $100 million.

So why, out of ten Star Trek movies to date, was this the one that struck a chord with moviegoers? Much of it had to with the idea that it was, to quote a recent essay at The House Next Door, “the Star Trek film for people who don’t actually like Star Trek all that much.” The Trek franchise won legions of fans with its futuristic stories set in far-flung worlds, but others were turned off by the more science fiction-heavy aspects of the show and movies. So, by setting the majority of its story in 1980s San Francisco, The Voyage Home gave devotees another agreeable two hours to spend with their beloved Enterprise crew, and allowed non-fans to enjoy a Star Trek movie without feeling so, for lack of a better word, geeky. When the film hit theatres over Thanksgiving weekend, it took in the largest opening weekend haul of 1986, and eventually became one of the year’s biggest hits.

Of course, there were other factors that contributed to Star Trek IV’s box office success. Even more than most Trek movies, this one was pretty family friendly, with a few mild expletives (or, as Leonard Nimoy's Spock calls them, “colorful metaphors”), but nothing stronger than a “damn,” “hell,” or “double dumbass on you!” Its timely save-the-whales message didn’t hurt either. Through some deliciously convoluted plot developments, the fate of the human race depends on the survival of two humpback whales, which allowed director Nimoy and his co-screenwriters to shoehorn a lesson into the story in the classic Trek fashion.

But most importantly, The Voyage Home was- and still is- funny. The 1980s were the heyday of the fish-out-of-water comedy, and by placing the familiar Enterprise crew four centuries into the past, the film afforded the characters plenty of opportunities to get laughs from their cluelessness about 20th century life. The film, to its credit, makes the most of the disconnect between the characters and their unfamiliar surroundings, and our knowledge of the crew’s personalities only makes it funnier. So when engineering whiz Scotty (James Doohan) comes face to face with an old-school computer, or Chekov (Walter Koenig) wanders around San Francisco inquiring about “nuclear wessels” at the height of the Cold War, the comedy is richer than it would have been had the characters not been so well established.

One of the better surprises the movie holds is William Shatner’s performance. In the more serious Trek episodes and on the series, Shatner had a tendency toward hamminess, especially when the situation called for big emotions. Here, in a more lighthearted movie, Shatner isn’t exactly natural, but that’s the point- his cartoonishly stalwart bearing allows for a nice contrast with the casualness of the eighties setting. One of the more amusing running jokes in the film is that while Kirk repeatedly admonishes Spock for looking out of place, Kirk really doesn’t fit in any better, although he’s convinced that he does. Because of this, he’s able to sell lines like the scene in which he feels the need to apologize for Spock, explaining that he’s an old hippie who “took too much LDS.” Rather than leaning on the line to milk the joke, Shatner practically throws it away, which makes it that much funnier. In recent decades, Shatner has become a parody of himself, so it’s nice to see him getting intentional laughs.

Aside from the comedy, the movie is more uneven, but it’s still one of the better Star Trek movies. Yes, the plot is ridiculous, but that’s part of the fun. Too many big-budget franchises play it safe in their narratives, setting up a formula and sticking to it from film to film. With Star Trek (especially the movies) the formula is less in the plot than in the characterizations- Kirk’s unconventional but instinctive leadership sense, Spock’s unflappability, Dr. McCoy's (DeForest Kelley) cantankerousness, and so on. Because the characters are firmly established, the filmmakers could afford to be more adventurous with the stories themselves. It’s hard to think of another movie series that could get away with a plot that hinges on an alien intelligence that communicates in humpback whale-song, but somehow The Voyage Home makes it work.

Of course, maybe I’m biased. After all, Star Trek IV was the first Trek movie I saw as a kid, although had already seen quite a few episodes from the series. But while I remember laughing a lot back then, it plays better for me now that I’ve doubled back and caught the rest of the movies. One may not have to be a fan of Star Trek to enjoy the comedy scenes in 1986, but a working knowledge of the movies, especially the second and third films, makes the 23rd Century sequences much more worthwhile. The Voyage Home brings the storyline that began with The Wrath of Khan to a satisfying end in the movie’s final scene, in which the crew takes a long, loving look at their new ship- the all-new Enterprise A. It’s an obvious ending, but at the end of this long, strange journey, the crew has earned it, and so has the movie.

Trailer Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Paul Clark — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

I recently read an interview with G.I. Joe director Stephen Sommers in which he said that this movie would probably the closest he would get to fulfilling his dream of making a James Bond film. To which I can’t help but think… what? Sure, there’s a baddie bent on world destruction and a whole lot of snazzy technology on display. But up until Quantum of Solace anyway, the Bond series was distinguished by a certain amount of wit, and a charismatic hero whose roguish nature and appetite for danger helped him to bring down dozens of villains. Where can you find anything like that in the G.I. Joe trailer? In the ragtag band of buffed-up B-listers who play the titular team? In the wholesale destruction of the Paris skyline’s most recognizable landmark (the 007 adventures use their locations as settings, not simply monuments to be toppled)? One could argue that the brute-force efficiency of the G.I. Joe team is the American equivalent of British sophistication, but if that’s the case, we got the fuzzy end of the lollipop, cinematically speaking. Then again, this is the guy who legitimately thought that Van Helsing was a tribute to classic monster movies, so what the hell does he know?

Trailer Review: Tetro

Paul Clark — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The popular line on Francis Ford Coppola is that after directing four of the most important films of the seventies, his career hit the skids in the wake of his Zoetrope Studios failure, and he’s never quite recovered. But while it’s hard to deny that he’s never lived up to his seventies salad days, he’s still capable of crafting fascinating and beautiful work. Most of his best middle- and late-period films (One From the Heart and Tucker, to name two) are highly stylized films that hearken back to classical Hollywood traditions, and based on this trailer, I’d say that Tetro finds Coppola up to that same game. One thing I particularly love about this trailer is how is introduces the themes of the film while revealing little about the plot, aside from the two brothers (the older one played by Vincent Gallo) and the long shadow cast by their father. Plus, it looks bloody gorgeous. Yeah, it could turn out to be another Youth Without Youth, but I’d rather have the Coppola who made that ambitious mess than the one who made Jack, thank you very much.

DVD Digest for May 5, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, the fifth and final Best Picture nominee from last year makes its DVD debut, and a whole lot of TV and Blu-Ray releases hit the market.

Recently, there was some uproar over the announcement that Criterion would be releasing David Fincher’s latest film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, on DVD and Blu-Ray. Frankly, the naysayers sort of had a point- while Button is Fincher’s first stab at Oscar glory, it’s hardly the best-regarded film of his career, and it looked like Criterion was grabbing a big-ticket title in order to make some money to find its more esoteric efforts (such as last month’s Jean Painlevé box). But it turns out that we all underestimated Criterion- while the movie itself might be nothing special, the new 2-disc DVD is, boasting nearly three hours’ worth of documentaries on the making of the film, from on-the-set footage of Fincher at work to exhaustive features on the movie’s technical marvels. Paramount will also be releasing a film-only version as well, but if you really want to own this, the Criterion set is the way to go, and besides, if enough people buy the Criterion Button, maybe they’ll be persuaded to release some other Finchers as well. I for one long for a snazzy new version of The Game, but that’s just me…

Other recent releases coming to DVD this week include the Bollywood hit Chandni Chowk to China (Warner) and Azazel Jacobs’ priceless indie Momma’s Man (Kino).

The only notable classics release that’s on my radar this week is Mike Newell’s 1992 arthouse hit Enchanted April (Disney).

The week’s TV on DVD include: Spader and The Shat in Boston Legal Season 5 (Fox); the Daniel Defoe reworking Crusoe: The Complete Series (Universal); Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: The Final Conflict Season 1 (Paramount); the Candace Bushnell-penned Lipstick Jungle Season 2 (Universal); and the since-cancelled drama October Road Season 2 (Disney).

Finally, this week’s selection of Blu-Ray only releases has plenty of fun to help lead movie watchers into summer. We’ve got comedy- Big (Fox), There’s Something About Mary (Fox), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Paramount). We’ve got love stories- It Could Happen to You (Sony) and Roxanne (Sony). We’ve even got a double dose of dancing Travolta, with Grease (Paramount) and Saturday Night Fever (Paramount). Or if none of these does it for you, there’s always Michael C. Hall as everyone’s favorite serial-killer-hunting serial killer in Dexter Season 2 (Paramount).

Trailer Review: Julie & Julia

Paul Clark — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The “food movie” has been around for years, but it seems like Hollywood has been making more and more of them ever since the Food Network’s popularity went through the roof. Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that we can’t all be gourmet chefs, but the great majority of us have put in time in the kitchen, and we all know the feeling that comes from cooking and/or eating a good meal. Food is a kind of common cultural currency, and that seems to be the central theme of Julie and Julia, which despite my general lack of interest in Nora Ephron films has me intrigued. Sure, there’s plenty of Ephron-style girl talk, but the central idea of the film- that struggling career woman Julie Powell (Amy Adams) forms a bond with the late, great Julia Child (Meryl Streep, staking her claim for nomination #16) by cooking her way through her famous cookbook- is a fairly unconventional idea for a film, especially since it’s impossible that the two will meet. I’m not exactly expecting this to be Big Night or Babette’s Feast in the food movie department, but as long as it’s better than No Reservations that’ll be good enough for me.

Yesterday's Hits: Fiddler on the Roof (1971, Norman Jewison)

Paul Clark — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

In some ways, it isn’t hard to determine why Norman Jewison’s big-screen adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof was a hit. From the time sound was introduced to the cinema, musicals were one of Hollywood’s most popular and enduring genres. But while most musicals of the 1930s and 1940s were frothy entertainments, the fifties saw an increase in musicals that tackled more serious material. And the record-breaking initial Broadway run of Fiddler on the Roof made a film version inevitable, and its status as the top-grossing movie of 1971 was practically pre-ordained.

While the reasons for the long-run popularity of Fiddler on the Roof seem obvious, its initial success is somewhat trickier to pin down. For one thing, the story’s subject matter doesn’t appear to lend itself to the musical treatment. What’s more, a community of Russian Jews around the turn of the century wasn’t the sort of setting to which most sixties-era audiences were normally expected to relate. And quite frankly, even in the post West Side Story-era, the storyline of Fiddler on the Roof was something of a downer. After all, Fiddler was about a man who loses most of what he holds dear- his three eldest daughters and finally his home- before the end of the story, and its treated these losses not as a tragedy (which might’ve allowed for some cathartic tears at the end), but with a sense of resignation.

Yet Fiddler on the Roof made a real connection with audiences of the day for numerous reasons. There was the music of course- Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s catchy, Jewish-inflected song score produced half a dozen songs that quickly became musical theatre standards. Likewise, the movie’s deeper themes- particularly the conflict between forward-thinking youth and their tradition-minded elders- had a great deal of resonance in uneasy sixties. And while Fiddler doesn’t soft-pedal its Jewishness by any means, the characters’ concerns were common enough to many difficult cultures that it came across less as a Jewish story than a universal one.

But most of all, audience members fell in love with Tevye, who quickly became one of musical theatre’s most enduring characters. Tevye is not a larger-than-life hero, but a poor milkman who has been “cursed” with five daughters and no sons, and despairs of finding them husbands. Tevye believes above all in the need to uphold tradition, and it’s the clash between this need and his daughters’ need to forge their own paths in life (especially when it comes to finding husbands) that drives the story. Throughout the story, Tevye struggles with how flexible his love for his daughters will allow him to be, until he finally reaches a point where he must throw up his hands and say, “if I bend any more, I will break.” And all the while, Tevye carries on a conversation with God- so much, indeed, that he must speak to God more than any flesh-and-blood character.

Before MGM brought Fiddler to the big screen, the role of Tevye was most commonly associated with the great Zero Mostel, who originated the character on Broadway. Because of this, there was some controversy when Jewison decided to fill the role not with Mostel, but the lesser-known Topol, who starred in the West End production. In the end, however, Jewison made the right choice for the film. With his outsized style of acting, Mostel was the perfect stage Tevye, able to pitch his performance to the rafters. But for the more naturalistic big-screen production, Topol’s more human-sized turn proved to be ideal. Whereas Mostel’s over-the-top bluster would have overwhelmed everything else, Topol’s never does, and he’s a sensitive enough performer to pull off the smaller character moments, as in the quiet musical number in which he asks his wife of twenty-five years, “Do You Love Me?”

One of director Norman Jewison’s key filmmaking decisions at the outset was to go for a more realistic feel which would make the musical transcend its stage origins. However, this gambit doesn’t always pay off, and occasionally this commitment to realism makes it feel almost like Jewison was uneasy about making a big-budget musical. In some ways, it’s probably good that Jewison limited the dancing to social scenes such as the barroom and Tzeitel and Motel’s wedding. But on the other hand (as Tevye is so prone to saying), Jewison undermines several potentially powerful scenes by having the songs sung in voiceover rather than actually voiced by the characters onscreen.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the “Chavaleh (Little Bird)” number, in which Tevye ponders the loss of his third daughter, who has eloped with a non-Jew. Had Jewison allowed Topol to perform the song onscreen, it might have made for one of the most emotional moments in the film, with Tevye realizing how his need to uphold tradition has lost him a beloved daughter. But instead, Jewison has Topol sing the song in voiceover, shooting him gazing into the distance while imagining his daughters dancing away from him. The number turns into what Roger Ebert calls a “Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude”, and like most scenes of this type, it’s pretty laughable- a far cry from the powerful moment it should rightly have been.

But overall, Fiddler on the Roof does right by its original inspiration, and the elements that people loved in the stage production translated quite nicely to the silver screen. It’s not one of the greatest movie musicals by a long shot, but it’s a worthy adaptation, certainly better than most of the post-Golden Age adaptations of long-running musicals, which all too often get shoddy treatments a la The Phantom of the Opera and A Chorus Line. Perhaps the most definitive testament to the impact of the Fiddler movie is that, nearly four decades after the film’s release, Topol is currently starring in what has been called his “Farewell Tour.” That just goes to show you that while Zero might have originated the role of Tevye, he hardly owns it anymore.

Trailer Review: The Hurt Locker

Paul Clark — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

A lot of ink (both literal and figurative) has been spilled by the entertainment media about how American moviegoers don’t much care to see movies about the War in Iraq, no matter how well they’re reviewed or how many big stars appear in them. Alas, it appears that The Hurt Locker will be the latest victim of this trend, despite getting some of the best reviews of any recent war film. It’s a shame, since of all the Iraq War movies to date, this one looks to have the broadest appeal, being sold not as a political statement but as a visceral war thriller. Sure, you say, but does it look any good? You bet it does. Kathryn Bigelow can do hard-R action as well as any filmmaker of either gender, and I’m looking forward to seeing stars Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie anchoring a high-profile movie like this. Besides, it’s much more rewarding for me to watch movies that let me infer my own conclusions about war than it is to have the filmmakers’ opinions rammed down my throat for two-odd hours. And so what if nobody else sees this? It’ll be their loss, I reckon.