The Screengrab : stuart gordon

Phil's Film Faves, Part Two

Phil Nugent — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:00:00 GMT

STOP MAKING SENSE (1984) & SOMETHING WILD (1986)

Jonathan Demme's movies were essential to my having survived the 1980s. I had the closest thing I've ever had to a religious experience during the week when I saw Stop Making Sense five times; I've never seen another movie, including dance films and martial arts flicks, that conveyed to me so much of the pleasure of physicality, of moving your body, and there was something about seeing all those people joining their skills together and losing themselves in the shared experience of being simultaneously brainy, goofy, and hot that suggested everything I wanted to get, and never got, from college. The mixed-tape road trip of Something Wild, where the wild weekend gives way to a trial by fire that leaves the hero and heroine stronger, was everything I wanted out of the rest of life, including the handcuffs and the used-car-salesman cameo by John Waters.

RE-ANIMATOR (1985)

I've always loved horror movies, I've always loved comedy, and I've always loved the idea of comic horror midnight movies that go just far enough in the direction oftoo far. Maybe if more movies that light out in this direction got it right, it would matter less to me that Stuart Gordon got this one just right. But most of them don't.

DUCK SOUP (1933)

What I just said about midnight movies? It goes double for crackhouse-rat comedy.

SONGWRITER (1984)

This movie, starring Willie Nelson and Rip Torn, written by Bud Shrake, and directed by Alan Rudolph during those three weeks a decade when his meds are working, captures the spirit and flavor of Texas hipsterdom as it has always come across in the best of Nelson's music, Torn's acting, and Shrake's writing, and that's about as hip as things get in the South. I myself, a product of the Louisiana/Mississippi border, have spent about a month total in Texas my whole life, but am not above resorting to a contact high.

BEFORE SUNRISE (1995)

Can we talk? I don't get girls. Never have, never will. I miss signals, I misread situations, I don't know...I just don't get girls, okay? And if I may presume to speak for the losers of the world for a second, being one of those people who doesn't get anywhere with other people in that way can sometimes make it a sobering experience to sit in the dark watching a lot of movies in which couple effortlessly hook up. But if I ever saw a movie in which my own fantasy of the best way you could hook up with somebody, this is probably it. Two nice, smart people just run into each other, take a chance, and for as long as the movie is running, it pays off, only to end with a cliffhanger. The director, Richard Linklater, later resolved things with his sequel, Before Sunset, and I like it fine, but I think I may have enjoyed the nine intervening years of wondering even more.

I met Linklater once, not that he would remember. It was at a festival where he was showing his first movie, Slacker, and someone tried to introduce the two of us, and I actually, fairly elaborately snubbed him, because I'd heard about--hadn't seen--his movie and thought it sounded like a pile of shit. After snubbing him (and mortifying the person trying to make the introductions(, I walked away invisibly pinning a medal to my chest, and the last time I looked back at Linklater, he was smiling at me in a very nice way that I may only imagine seemed to say, "Gee, before I made a movie, this fellow would be one of the biggest jackasses I've ever met, but now, he wouldn't even make my personal top 500!" Maybe I don't deserve to get girls.

MAGNOLIA (1999)

I could get very personal here too, but I'll just say that I saw this movie at a moment when I very badly needed to see this movie. It is, of course, the movie that, of all P. T. Anderson's works, is the one most likely to get a shoe thrown at you if you sing its praises before a mixed audience. Both these facts probably have something to do with the fact that, while there are other movies of Anderson's that I think are better, his having made this one is the reason I'd be happy to take a bullet for him.

Remembering Amicus, the Other British Horror Movie Factory

Phil Nugent — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Anyone with an interest in horror movies probably knows something about "Hammer horror", the strain of movies put out by the English production house for some twenty years beginning in the 1950s, which produced its own versions of the classic Universal monster films and made cult stars of such actors as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Hammer had its own wayward, dark cousin--the films made in the 1960s and 1970s by Amicus Studios, which might easily have been mistaken for Hammer product by twitchy-eyed buffs on a misspent matinee weekend, or later, by kids parked in front of the TV on a Saturday. As Will Hodgkinson recalls, Amicus was the result of a handshake deal between "a socially inept scriptwriter called Milton Subotsky and a fast-talking hustler called Max J Rosenberg". Subotsky was the hands-on, on-set presence during the company's salad days. Everyone who met him seems to remember him as a very sweet man and a bit of a social misfit and oddball--which kind of figures, very sweet men being in short supply in film production circles. Ironically, he is also remembered as a true horror buff, in contrast the the bosses at Hammer, who happened to find a commercial niche and beat it into an assembly line. "Had it dealt in garbage disposal," the director Freddie Francis once said, "it would have been just as successful." And Subotsky, Hodgkinson writes, was "driven by a deep-rooted hatred for Hammer. In 1956, Hammer had rejected a script he wrote called Frankenstein and the Monster, only to go on and have huge success with a similarly themed film called The Curse of Frankenstein. To Rosenberg, this proved there was money in British horror movies. To Subotsky, the gauntlet had been thrown down." It must have pleased him considerably to feel that he was eating into Hammer's market share, making films pitched to Hammer's audience that sometimes featured actors who were identified with Hammer, such as Cushing and Lee, while telling interviewers that his own stuff was better.

While Subotsky wrote scripts and hung out on sets overseeing the filming and driving the directors crazy, Rosenberg stayed in America, cutting distribution deals and shoveling money across the Atlantic. Not that he shoveled in great quantities; Amicus gave their movies a top-grade look while pinching pennies by hiring actors, ranging from horror stalwarts such as Cushing, Lee, and Vincent Price to the likes of Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, Denholm Elliott, Terry-Thomas, and Joan Collins, by hiring them for only a few days at a time. Their first real production, the 1965 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (directed by Francis and written by Subotsky), was an anthology film, with five short stories contained in a wraparound framework with Cushing telling the fortunes of a group of men in a train car. (Subotsky claimed the idea was an homage to the 1945 omnibus film Dead of Night, Ealing Studio's classic fling with the horror genre.) Amicus would later turn out a string of horror-anthology movies, including three with scripts that Robert Bloch adapted from his own stories--Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), and Asylum (1972)--as well as one, 1973's From Beyond the Grave (1973), that was derived from the ghost stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and two, Tales from the Crypt (1972), with Ralph Richardson as the Crypt Keeper, and The Vault of Horror (1973), based on classic EC horror comics. (Comics freaks might almost think of Amicus as the movie equivalent of Warren Publishing to Hammer's EC.) The company almost made one or two unsuccessful stabs at penetrating the art house market, hiring William Friedkin to film the Harold Pinter play The Birthday Party. But Subotsky also had his pragmatic, philistine-studio-boss side; he wrote an ambitious version of the Jekyll-and-Hyde story called I, Monster and demanded that the director, Stephen Weeks, make it in 3-D, despite the fact that "the sets had been built the wrong way round. The script called for the action to go from left to right, but the building lines went the other way." But when the money ran out with the picture unfinished, Subotsky "simply told Weeks to cut whatever scenes he had filmed into something resembling a finished movie. The film was released to terrible reviews - but, like most Amicus films, it made a profit."

According to Hodkinson, Subotsky ended up walking away from the company "for reasons that remain unclear", just when it was branching out into adventure fantasies based on the works of Tarzan's creator. "In 1975, the studio released an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' lost-world adventure The Land That Time Forgot. It had proved a difficult film to shoot: its star, Doug McClure, was drinking heavily after the collapse of his marriage, while Subotsky was rumoured to be spending more time at Hamleys buying toys than running the studio. His only real involvement with the production was to turn up at a screening with his four-year-old-son, announce that the boy could tell there were men inside the dinosaur suits, and leave." Amicus produced a sequel called The People That Time Forgot (1977) as well as At the Earth's Core (1976), which is best remembered by some of us eternal adolescents for the way that the leading lady, Caroline Munro, really filled out her me-Jane costume, but by then Subotsky was long gone. After working as a producer on one more horror omnibus, 1977's The Uncanny (a linked series of story with the common theme that cats secretly run the world--I didn't know it was supposed to be a secret), the 1980 TV miniseries The Martian Chronicles, and a number of Stephen King-based properties (including King's sole directing job, Maximum Overdrive), he died in 1991. Rosenberg died in 2004. Two years ago, the company name was revived by producer Robert Katz; the first movie from the new Amicus Entertainment was last year's Stuck from director Stuart Gordon.

DVD Digest for October 7, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

It’s a massive week for classic films, and a surprisingly good one for new releases too, once you get past the big Hollywood titles…

DVD of the Week: There was no small amount of competition for this spot, not merely because of the jaw-dropping number of classic titles being release but also due to one of TV’s best sitcoms seeing its most recent season bow on DVD store shelves. But with all the great stuff that’s hitting stores this week, to my eyes there was only one logical choice- Universal’s Touch of Evil 50th Anniversary Edition. It would be one thing if this DVD was simply a cash-in, a new pressing of the previously released 1998 cut of the film. But joining the “restored” version of the film are both the original theatrical cut and an additional “preview version”, both of which are being released on DVD for the first time. In addition, there are plenty of extras both old and new, including commentary tracks to correspond with each of the three available versions of the movie. What more could a Touch of Evil fan ask for? How about a reproduction of the legendary Orson Welles memo that led to the 1998 restoration? Yep, that’s in here too. I don’t normally double-dip my DVDs, but I’m definitely going to make the upgrade this time.

But wait, there’s more! Disney is releasing a 2-disc “Platinum Edition” of their 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty, packed with plenty of extras for both family audiences and animation buffs. Criterion is releasing two more films from the French master of crime dramas, Jean-Pierre Melville- Le Doulos (starring Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Le Deuxieme Souffle (with Lino Ventura). There are new 2-disc special editions of three of Hitchcock’s most iconic classics- Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo (all Universal). And Ray Harryhausen is representin’ here too, with a new DVD of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad 50th Anniversary Edition (Sony, also Blu-Ray), plus the Ray Harryhausen Giftset (Sony, also Blu-Ray), which includes previously-released editions of 20 Million Miles to Earth, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, plus collectible Ymir figurine.

Also, like musicals? Then pick up Fox’s The Alice Faye Collection Volume 2, which contains Hollywood Cavalcade, The Great American Broadcast, Four Jills in a Jeep, Rose of Washington Square, and Hello, Frisco, Hello (also available separately). And with the winter months coming sooner than you’d think, you can start traveling in the comfort of your own home with The Michael Palin Collection (Warner), which collects the amiable Python’s adventures Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Hemingway Adventure, Great Railways Journeys, Sahara and Himalaya into one handy box set. Finally, Warner is releasing two very different classic titles, The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Watership Down Deluxe Edition. So yeah, something for everyone.

But wait, there’s more! Two of my favorite films from the first half of 2008 are hitting the streets today- Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park (Genius Productions) and Stuart Gordon’s Stuck (Image Entertainment). And two other acclaimed indies are getting released as well, The Visitor (Anchor Bay, also Blu-Ray) starring Screengrab fave Richard Jenkins, and Boy A (Genius Productions). And, oh yeah… The Happening (Fox, also Blu-Ray) and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (Sony, also Blu-Ray). Although I’m not sure I want to know anybody who’d buy these instead of any of the aforementioned classics.

This week’s TV on DVD release is 30 Rock Season 2 (Universal), which finds Liz, Jack, Tracy, Kenneth the Page, and the rest of the TGS gang taking a trip to MILF Island, among other misadventures. Also this week: Brotherhood Season 2 (Paramount), How I Met Your Mother Season 3 (Fox), and The Simpsons Season 11 (Fox).

Finally, this week’s Halloween-heavy Blu-Ray only releases include: The Amityville Horror (MGM), Beetlejuice 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner), Body Heat (Warner), Young Frankenstein (Fox), Carrie (MGM), and Otis (Warner). No word on whether Carré Otis is somehow involved.

Screengrab's Back To School Round-Up: The Top 15 College Movies (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Two weeks ago, in the spirit of the season, your overeducated friends at The Screengrab kicked off a two-part Back To School tribute with a list of the 18+ Top High School Films. The second part of our salute to readin’, writin’ and massive student loan debt was postponed so we could honor the memory of fallen voice-over king Don LaFontaine with a celebration of the Greatest Coming Attractions Trailers...mini-masterpieces of marketing that make even the worst movies seem like must-see events.

On further reflection, though, I realized the Coming Attractions list maybe wasn’t such a detour from our Back To School tribute after all. For me, at least, the College Movies I saw growing up were a vivid advertisement for all the wild ‘n crazy fun and (more importantly) SEX I’d be having in the hallowed halls of higher education.

But, like any number of flashy preview trailers, those cinematic depictions of frat party free love turned out to be VERY misleading, and I soon learned a liberal arts degree ain’t nothin’ but a one-way ticket to the Blogosphere of Broken Dreams...

...not that I’m bitter, like so many of the characters in the College Movie’s sister genres of Post-Graduate Malaise and Faculty Feuds...all of which await your approbation (it'll be on the SAT...look it up!) as we count down the Top 15 College Movies Of All Time!

ANIMAL HOUSE (1978)

I read an article recently about the way the success of Animal House led to a pernicious slob culture (or something like that...anyone who knows the article I’m talking about can probably correct me in the Comments section). But the gist, if I remember correctly, was the way the “misfits” of Delta House became the obnoxious norm in American society, in the same way that hip-hop and “alternative” music became all-pervasive and, in so doing, lost most of what made it good in the first place. The argument has some merit, I suppose...but in the same way Grandmaster Flash and Nirvana can’t be entirely blamed for all the crapulosity they inadvertently spawned, John Landis’ modern classic at least earns a high spot on this list as the template-setting granddaddy of the modern college film. It's also, it should be noted, much smarter than many people remember, neatly bridging the gap between Baby Boomer self-indulgence and Gen-X ironic detachment. Sure, Tim Matheson’s Otter is a smarmy asshole...but at least he’s an asshole with a sense of humor and a modicum of perspective (unlike those Omega House choads). John Belushi’s Bluto may be a monster of destructive Id...but the movie wisely uses him as a spice, perfect for those moments when revenge and treacley acoustic guitar smashing really ARE the best options. And the ever-delightful Peter Riegert and Karen Allen ground the movie with just enough brains, heart and maturity to remind us that villainous Dean Wormer has an actual point when he notes, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.”

COLLEGE (1927) & HORSE FEATHERS (1932)

The greatest film comedian of the silent era, Buster Keaton, and the greatest comedy team of the early talkies, the Marx Brothers, both brought off classics with collegiate settings, and both zeroed in on the same aspect of college life: sports. In Keaton's gentle-spirited slapstick romance, he plays a brainiac who abandons his books in hopes of proving himself on the athletic field so he can win the girl of his dreams. Less interested in fitting in or plucking heartstrings (though they do all takes turns throwing themselves at "the college widow", Thelma Todd), the Marxes head straight for the wheels of power, with Groucho installing himself as the head of Huxley College and devoting his time to trying to staff the university football team with ringers hired out of the local speakeasy. A more inspiring vision of the American higher education system is hard to imagine, though you might find one in Groucho laying out his administrative plan and philosophy of life in the introductory anthem, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It."

RE-ANIMATOR (1985)

Future adaptations – of which there are many coming down the pike – may one day prove us wrong, but for our money here at the Screengrab, the most successful film adaptation to date of an H.P. Lovecraft story is the one that refused to take the material completely seriously. There’s no doubt that Stuart Gordon loves Lovecraft; one look at his oeuvre proves it. But when he made Re-Animator in 1985, he served it up with a wicked dose of black humor that’s entirely invisible in the source material. Of course, Lovecraft’s stories were rife with collegiate atmosphere; the legendary Miskatonic University plays a major role in almost all his Cthulhu-mythos tales. But Gordon updates it to the modern day, making his protagonist a medical-school everyman, his major villain a scheming blowhard with tenure, and his female lead’s father an ineffectual – and ultimately doomed – school administrator. Only the role of mad scientist Herbert West – played by a deliciously over-the-top Jeffrey Combs – seems like a throwback to classic movie horror. The rest of the movie, from its ultra-gory fright scenes to one of the most repulsively memorable sex scenes in modern cinema, plays like a filmed treatise on how to successfully screw with horror conventions. Like Night of the Creeps, it does more than set its action on campus; it takes a decidedly academic (and often sophomoric) approach to its subject, and the result is a modern-day classic.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)

There’s nary a student to be seen in one of the greatest college movies of all time. In fact, there’s hardly anyone in it at all: two college professors at a small-town university – one an older history professor, the other a young chemistry professor – and their wives (and, briefly, an ancient couple who run a roadhouse on the edge of town). The history teacher, played by a quietly vicious Richard Burton, and his wife – whose father is the president of the university – despise each other, and over the course of the evening, they will attempt to destroy each other, stopping just short for the strangest of reasons. For Burton and his wife – a poisonous, unstoppable Elizabeth Taylor – the young professor and his agreeable nothing of a wife are nothing more than weapons to be deployed against one another; over the course of a single late night, which begins at a faculty party, and quickly moves on from campus politics to what has been memorably termed ‘the politics of personal destruction’, they will fully understand their status as knives waiting to be unsheathed. Featuring some of Edward Albee’s sharpest dialogue, and Burton and Taylor at the peak of their powers, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has survived countless parodies (it’s virtually shorthand for hateful feuding couples) and the rising and falling stars of its actors, director, and author, and it’s remained one of the most riveting pieces of cinema of the 1960s.

Click Here for Part Two & Part Three

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce

OST: "Psycho"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Bernard Herrmann was one of the most legendary film composers of all time. One of his first major compositions was the score to The Devil and Daniel Webster, in which he showed both his innovative approach and his playfully subversive nature by by double-tracking a violin to play a jaw-droppingly complex rendition of "Pop Goes the Weasel", and then claiming the solo was the work of a teenaged violin prodigy he'd discovered. He composed a number of memorable movie scores over the years, from the towering, epic sweep of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (his very first project) to the moody, dark tension of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (his very last). But it is with Alfred Hitchcock's name that Herrmann's will be foreever linked.

Hitchcock knew he was playing with dynamite when he made Psycho. The movie that buried noir and ushered in the age of the maniacal slasher was a risky venture for him on many levels: with its shocking violence, infamous mid-film twist, and horror plot, it was a massive deviation from the big-budget hit mysteries that had made so much money for his studio bosses in the late 1950s. Fearing disaster, Hitch -- who was nothing if not determined -- tried as much as possible to make the film on the cheap, and he wasn't afraid to capitalize on personal relationships to do so. Some stories have it that he strong-armed Herrmann, who had turned in incredibly monumental work for him before on such movies as The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest, and Vertigo; but Herrmann wasn't one to be cowed so easily. He agreed to work on the soundtrack for Psycho at less than his normal pay, but Herrmann -- a rarity amongst film composers insofar as he retained near-total creative control over the final product of his labors -- made it clear he was going to do things his way. Most famously, he ignored Hitchcock's foremost prerogative when writing the score: the director insisted that, for maximum shock value, there be total silence on the soundtrack during the murders, most especially the infamous shower scene.

Luckily for generations of moviegoers, Bernard Herrmann chose to completely disregard this directive, and, when Hitchcock raised a stink, Herrmann insisted that he view the scene with the music he'd written intact. If Hitchcock didn't agree that the music improved the scene instead of distracting from it, then he'd relent. Hitchcock agreed, and, as has been every one of the tens of millions who have seen Psycho since then, he was blown away by how perfect was the juxtaposition of music and visuals. Since then, it's become one of the true classics in the history of movie scoring; Herrmann's brilliant decision to use only the string section of his orchestra for the music, with the only low-end being provided by bass and cello, was inspired and set the standard for high-pitched, shrieking instrumentation as the default for horror films. It also spawned hosts of imitators and 'tributes' over the years (and none proved more determined than Brian De Palma, who, mirroring his own obsession with Hitchcock, used subtle variants of the music in both Carrie and Dressed to Kill). Very few soundtracks in motion picture history so reflect the personality of their creator than does Bernard Herrmann's work -- unnerving, brilliant, raw, and determined -- than does Psycho.

BEST TRACKS: It's impossible to even discuss Psycho -- the movie or the soundtrack -- without discussing the music from the notorious shower scene. (It's called "The Murder", by the way.) As other critics have mentioned, it's almost unfair to call it a piece of music; it's just the sound made by every string section in every orchestra in the world as they warm up. And yet by placing it in context, Herrmann transforms this ordinary sound into one of the most chilling pieces of music in history, and sets the tone for hundreds, maybe thousands, of future citematic murders. Not bad for a piece of music that's barely a minute long; and it's even more astonishing when you consider that, on an album of dozens of short pieces, it virtually defines the score's less-is-more aesthetic by being one of the longer pieces on the album! Still, this wouldn't be one of the greatest film scores of all time if it was simply one minute-long piece of genius; there's much more to love here, including the memorable title track ("Prelude", in which eerie swirls of strings leap and tangle with one another over the unforgettable Saul Bass title sequence), which is so well-loved that Stuart Gordon lifted it wholesale for the opening to Re-Animator. Other strong tracks include the tragic, melancholy "The Body"; the creepy, tense "Cabin 10", and the wailing, cacaphonous avant-gardeism of "The Cellar". A must-have score from a movie where almost all participants were at the tops of their games.

Half Measures: Paul Clark's Favorites of the First Half of '08

Paul Clark — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Last week, Screengrab’s Andrew Osborne shared with you his favorite movies from the second quarter of 2008, so I figured that I might as well get in on the act as well. Unlike Andrew, I’ll be writing about my favorite releases dating back to the beginning of the year, mostly because I didn’t write one of these back in April. But I’d like to concur with Andrew’s statement that the moviegoing year, like so many others, started slowly but quickly improved in quality as it continued, with both big-budget blockbusters and limited-release arthouse fare making strong showings thusfar.

My top five:

1. The Duchess of Langeais- had Jacques Rivette not made a film called L’Amour Fou forty years ago, he very well might have given his most recent film that title. Based on a novel by Balzac, Duchess often plays like a mirror image of The Age of Innocence- only this time, the knowledge (and flouting) of propriety only serves to drive an emotional wedge between the two lovers. The Duchess (Jeanne Balibar) and her officer (Guillaume Depardieu) must play games with each other in lieu of an actual relationship, and almost imperceptibly their innocent courtship spirals out of their control. All the while, Rivette’s formal boldness remains intact, resulting in his best film in over a decade- no mean feat for a master of Rivette’s standing.

2. WALL*E- speaking of masters, was anyone really surprised that Pixar’s latest turned out as wonderful as it did? In perhaps their most experimental gambit to date, much of WALL *E is practically dialogue-free, as director Andrew Stanton and his team make most of their points visually. And what visuals! So beautifully-rendered is the dusty Earth future of the film’s first half that the more traditionally eye-popping second half (with its interstellar mega-mall) looks almost chintzy by comparison, like all the life and heart was drained from it. Which is of course the point, as WALL*E’s message isn’t so much anti-corporate as anti-complacency, celebrating the industriousness and determination of its robotic protagonist while despairing of those who would content themselves with having their decisions made and lives lived for them.

3. Stuck- like The Duchess of Langeais, Stuart Gordon’s latest film tells the story of a man and a woman locked in a tragic, fateful duet. The difference is that this one is about a guy who gets stuck in a windshield. There’s nothing pretty about Stuck, from Gordon’s grimy visuals and grayish color palette to the behavior his film portrays, as the film’s anti-heroine (played by Mena Suvari) hides the accident victim (Stephen Rea) in her garage rather than risk jeopardizing the insignificant promotion she supposedly has coming to her. Stuck is a film born of its working-class setting, in which the poor fight over the scraps the rich give them, with little regard for the lives of those who get in their way. It’s ugly, harrowing stuff, but it’s also thrilling like the best exploitation films are, and Stuck is one of the best movies of this kind to come along in ages.

4. Paranoid Park- for years, Gus Van Sant has specialized in films about outsiders, but this is the closest he’s come thusfar to seeing the world through an outsider’s eyes. Much of the credit goes to the subjectivity inherent in Van Sant’s favored style, which he perfects with this film, as he follows a marginalized teenager (newcomer Gabe Nevins) who views his world- his parents, his peers, his girlfriend- from a distance, even before the killing he may or may not have been responsible for causes him to sever emotional ties from them altogether. He would sooner escape into his own mind as find a place for himself in this world, a point Van Sant makes most vivid in the scene where the protagonist takes a shower as the soundtrack becomes overrun with rainforest sounds. Simultaneously nightmarish and poetic, Paranoid Park is a major work by a filmmaker who remains as experimental as ever.

5. Speed Racer- yes, really. I sort of wonder if the overwhelming critical drubbing that was afforded the Wachowski Brothers’ adaptation of the animated series was due to the directors’ key inspirations- comic books, video games, Saturday morning cartoons- not being part of the critics’ pasts. Granted, I too was skeptical about the film going in, but it didn’t take long for it to win me over. I’ll be damned if I can find a subtext, but with its dazzling array of eye-popping colors, deliberately unrealistic effects, and snazzy edits (Ang Lee could take a lesson in the latter from the Wachowskis), that scarcely matters. The racetrack scenes alone gave me that rush that all big summer movies promise but which few deliver, playing like the Day-glo daydream of a Pixie Stick-fueled kid racing and smashing up Matchbox cars. Plus there are ninjas, and as any young boy can tell you, ninjas make every movie better.

Trailer Review: Stuck

Paul Clark — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I saw a number of excellent films at Toronto last year, but the week’s best surprise was easily Stuart Gordon’s new film Stuck. Unfortunately, this trailer doesn’t really do it justice. On the one hand, I like that the ad campaign for the film (such as it is) doesn’t shy away from the true-life story behind the movie. On the other, Stuck is hardly the sensationalistic exploitation film this trailer (with its wacky music and editing) makes it out to be. In truth, the film is a brutal, nasty piece of work, finding surprising cinematic possibilities in the story of a man whose body is stuck in a young woman’s windshield. Of course, the film’s gritty, true-to-life brand of horror (to say nothing of its working-class setting) doesn’t exactly translate into a sexy trailer, so leave it to the marketing geniuses to make it all look fun and disposable. But take it from me, folks- Stuck is miles better than its trailer, and easily Gordon’s best film since Re-Animator.

The Rep Report (October 24 - November 1)

Peter Smith — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

SEATTLE: As part of the annual Earshot Jazz Festival, the Northwest Film Forum is hosting a trio of documentaries that offer chilled sights and sounds for music and movie lovers, from October 23 to November 1. The mini-fest opens with the new Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer and Ron Mann's 1981 Imagine the Sound, featuring Cecil Taylor, Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, and Bill Dixon. Then, starting on the 26th, comes Bruce Weber's newly restored Chet Baker profile Let's Get Lost, a movie that we are always happy to tout.

NEW YORK: New French Films (October 24 - 28) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music provides audiences with the chance to buck the increasingly spotty international distribution system and see the New York premieres of some recent work from France. One film, Je t’aime...moi non plus: Critics and artists is a documentary, on the role of the film critic, directed by the actress Maria De Medeiros, that will be followed by a panel discussion including such critics as Kent Jones, Dave Kehr, and Dennis Lim.

Beyond Boundaries: The Emergence of Croatian Cinema (October 26 - November 14) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center is designed to provide an entry point for audiences unfamiliar with Yugoslavia's cult reputation as a hotbed of experimental and provocative film making. The schedule crams in thirteen classics from the "golden age" of Yugoslav filmmaking in the 1950s and 1960s, eleven more recent works, and a selection of eleven shorts, curated by Croatian film scholar Mato Kukuljica, showcasing the achievements of "the Zagreb school of animation." Krsto Papic, Dejan Sorak, and Ognjen Svilicic, three directors whose combined careers span some fifty years of moviemaking, will be in attendance.

LOS ANGELES: It's that time of year again, and the American Cinematheque at the Aero Theater just wants to say, from the bottom of its heart: Boo! Starting Wednesday, October 25 (with the classic ghost stories The Haunting and The Uninvited) and continuing on Thursday (with the funkier '70s sci-fi of Demon Seed and the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers), it throws on a couple of double features as a simmering build-up to its Dusk-to-Dawn Halloween Horror-Thon on Friday the 27th. With two films by Italian gorehound Lucio Fulci and movies by Tod Browning (Freaks), Stuart Gordon (From Beyond), and Wes Craven (Last House on the Left) that probably aren't the first thing even those guys would tell their mother's friends about, this is not the horror marathon of guys who believe in doing things half-way.

— Phil Nugent