Five Additional Netflix Instant Suggestions

A friend of mine who just finished school asked me if I could suggest some films for him to watch on Netflix Instant. Here are five additional recommendations. I've previously written about a few of these films and included links to the past reviews of them. Each of the films below were available on Netflix Instant in the USA at the time this was published.

Fish Tank
2009, UK/Netherlands
Andrea Arnold

On paper, Fish Tank sounds rather pedestrian: Mia, a teenage girl from the projects, tries to escape her grim existence by winning a dance competition. But on the screen, it's anything but, thanks to Andrea Arnold's spectacular vision and a dynamic central performance from Katie Jarvis. While the film is consistently breathtaking, there are at least two individual sequences that are just about heart-stopping. Older Post about Fish Tank: Down... on the Ground

With: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing, Rebecca Griffiths, Harry Treadaway, Sydney Mary Nash, Jason Maza

Network
1976, USA
Sidney Lumet

A fine example of the stellar films coming out of Hollywood during one of its richest periods, during the 1970s, Network is a brilliant satire that only feels more relevant today in our world of reality programs and trash television. On one hand, it's sad to see how far we've fallen from a time when a TV station would be creating a news show following a group of political terrorists, but on the other, I could cite plenty of examples of how the television narrative as evolved. You take the good with the bad, I guess. Faye Dunaway (and the rest of the cast) is impeccable.

With: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty, Beatrice Straight, Bill Burrows, Jordan Charney, Kathy Cronkite, Ed Crowley, Jerome Dempsey, Conchata Ferrell, Ken Kercheval, Ted Sorel, Lane Smith, William Prince, Sasha von Scherler, Marlene Warfield, Lee Richardson

Open
2010, USA
Jake Yuzna

A surprisingly tender and whimsical film following two separate pairings of gender dissidents: one a hermaphrodite who goes on something of a road trip/hometown-discovery-adventure with one-half of a couple who have undergone cosmetic surgery to look like one another, the other an FTM transsexual who ends up pregnant after having sex with a cute boy he meets at a show. I've never seen a film handle gender like this; it's honest, unique, and, well, open. Winner of the Teddy Jury Prize at the 2010 Berlinale.

With: Gaea Gaddy, Tempest Crane, Morty Diamond, Daniel Luedtke, Jendeen Forberg, Jill Sweiven

Don't Look Now
1973, UK/Italy
Nicolas Roeg

Easily one of the greatest horror films of all time, Don't Look Now follows an American architect (Donald Sutherland) and his wife (Julie Christie) who relocate to Venice after the death of their young daughter. While Donald Sutherland works on restoring a crumbling church, Julie Christie meets a pair of sisters, one of whom claims to have psychic visions of the dead girl being close-by. Nicolas Roeg used the city of Venice masterfully and created not only one of the great what-the-fuck finales but the greatest sex scene ever committed to film. Older Post About Don't Look Now: Boo!

With: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania, Massimo Serato, Renato Scarpa, Giorgio Trestini, Leopoldo Trieste, David Tree, Ann Rye, Nicholas Salter, Sharon Williams, Bruno Cattaneo, Adelina Poerio

Night of the Comet
1984, USA
Thom E. Eberhardt

One of my personal favorite apocalypse films, Night of the Comet finds the population in jeopardy when a comet hits earth and turns nearly everyone to dust, except for a duo of sassy teenage sisters from the Valley. Where so many films like it fail, Night of the Comet does a good job balancing its intentional and accidental cheese; it has just enough awareness of itself to keep things playful and annoyingly/hilariously trendy.

With: Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Robert Beltran, Sharon Farrell, Mary Woronov, Geoffrey Lewis, Peter Fox, John Achorn, Michael Bowen

DVD Coming Attractions, Part 1

Like Warner and Universal before them, MGM has jumped onto the DVD-R bandwagon, with over thirty titles to be available by the end of the month. They started rolling out films in December, with titles such as Carol Reed's Trapeze (which received a proper DVD release from MGM in the UK), Bruce Beresford's Rich in Love with Albert Finney, Jill Clayburgh, Kyle Maclachlan, Piper Laurie and Alfre Woodard, Robert Wise's Two for the Seesaw with Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine and Sidney Lumet's The Group with Candice Bergen. Since then, Gavin Millar's Dreamchild with Ian Holm, Lumt's Garbo Talks with Anne Bancroft, Morgan J. Freeman's Hurricane Streets, Hal Ashby's The Landlord with Beau Bridges and Lee Grant, Lumet's The Offence with Sean Connery and Ken Russell's Valentino with Rudolf Nureyev as Rudolf Valentino have been added. Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron [Człowiek z żelaza], the sequel to his Man of Marble [Człowiek z marmuru] which both star Jerzy Radziwiłowicz and Kystyna Janda, will be available on the 20th. Other titles available for pre-order, though without a date, include François Truffaut's La chambre verte, re-titled The Vanishing Fiancée, which like Man of Iron (which won the Palme d'Or in 1981) and Valentino (mid-range Russell), is more deserving of a proper DVD release.

After a big month in March, the Warner Archive hasn't added anything terribly noteworthy to their collection. However, browsing through Netflix's Instant Watching titles, I noticed a handful of films still unavailable on DVD in the US: Raoul Walsh's Saskatchewan, Richard Brooks' Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Joseph Losey's The Go-Between, Bigas Luna's Chambermaid on the Titanic [La femme de chambre du Titanic] and Margarethe von Trotta's The Promise [Versprechen].

Assayas, Godard, Lumet and Lee on Criterion's April Schedule

Criterion announced their April titles this afternoon, with DVD and Blu-ray for Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours [L'heure d'été], Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie and Ang Lee's director's cut of Ride with the Devil. Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind, with Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward and Maureen Stapleton, will also be available on DVD only. In addition to the mainline releases, the fifth volume of their Essential Art House Collection will be released, with the Region 1 debut of Gillo Pontecorvo's Kapò. The other five titles are Fellini's 8½, David Lean's Brief Encounter, Ozu's Floating Weeds, Truffaut's Jules et Jim and Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde.

Tourneur, Lamarr, Penn & Teller and Kathy Bates in the Warner Archive

With just over 300 titles now included in the Warner Archive Collection, Warner has certainly kept its promise from earlier this year to keep bulking up their selection and, shockingly, have actually been listening to their customers by offering bundle packs and discounts on the DVD-R releases (I remember someone joking in regard to Little Darlings that $20 was pretty steep for a film starring Kristy McNichol).

A few titles you can look forward to being added, hopefully, by the end of the year: Sidney Lumet's adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Sea Gull, with James Mason, Vanessa Redgrave, Simone Signoret and David Warner; Robert Z. Leonard's The Bribe with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton and Vincent Price; King Vidor's Comrade X, with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr; and Kenneth Branagh's A Midwinter's Tale [a.k.a. In the Bleak Midwinter], with Joan Collins, Jennifer Saunders and Julia Sawalha.

Below you'll find a list of the titles recently added to the collection. All are available now at the Warner Archive homepage. Highlights include a pair of noirs from Jacques Tourneur, Roger Ebert's favorite 90s teen comedy Angus, a number of Hedy Lamarr flicks including I Take This Woman (which went through the hands of Josef von Sternberg and Frank Borzage before being completed by W.S. Van Dyke), King Vidor's silent The Patsy with Marion "Rosebud" Davies, Peter Glenville's Term of Trial and Paul Brickman's remake of Moshé Mizrahi's La vie continue, Men Don't Leave, Arthur Penn's Penn & Teller Get Killed and the little-seen, much-hated fantasy Lionheart.

- Airborne, 1993, d. Rob Bowman, w. Seth Green, Edie McClurg, Jack Black, Alanna Ubach
- Angus, 1995, d. Patrick Read Johnson, w. Kathy Bates, George C. Scott, Rita Moreno, Anna Thomson, James Van Der Beek
- Bad Ronald, 1974, d. Buzz Kulik
- Berlin Express, 1948, d. Jacques Tourneur
- Crossroads, 1942, d. Jack Conway, w. William Powell, Hedy Lamarr
- Experiment Perilous, 1944, d. Jacques Tourneur, w. Hedy Lamarr
- The Heavenly Body, 1944, d. Alexander Hall, w. William Powell, Hedy Lamarr
- Highway 301, 1950, d. Andrew L. Stone
- Hot Millions, 1968, d. Eric Till, w. Peter Ustinov, Maggie Smith, Karl Malden, Bob Newhart, Cesar Romero
- How Sweet It Is!, 1968, d. Jerry Paris, w. James Garner, Debbie Reynolds
- I Died a Thousand Times, 1955, d. Stuart Heisler, w. Jack Palance, Shelley Winters, Lee Marvin
- I Take This Woman, 1940, d. W.S. Van Dyke, Frank Borzage, Josef von Sternberg, w. Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr
- Ice Palace, 1960, d. Vincent Sherman, w. Richard Burton
- Killer McCoy, 1947, d. Roy Rowland, w. Mickey Rooney
- Kisses for My President, 1964, d. Curtis Bernhardt, w. Fred MacMurray, Polly Bergen
- Lightning Strikes Twice, 1951, d. King Vidor
- Lionheart, 1987, d. Franklin J. Schaffner, w. Eric Stoltz, Gabriel Byrne, Nicholas Clay, Dexter Fletcher, Paul Rhys, Sammi Davis
- Men Don't Leave, 1990, d. Paul Brickman, w. Jessica Lange, Arliss Howard, Joan Cusack, Kathy Bates, Chris O'Donnell
- Not with My Wife, You Don't!, 1966, d. Norman Panama, w. Tony Curtis, Virna Lisi, George C. Scott
- The Patsy, 1928, d. King Vidor, w. Marion Davies
- Pay or Die, 1960, d. Richard Wilson, w. Ernest Borgnine
- Penn & Teller Get Killed, 1989, d. Arthur Penn
- The Plunderers, 1958, d. Joseph Pevney, w. John Saxon
- Quantrill's Raiders, 1958, d. Edward Bernds
- Return of the Frontiersman, 1950, d. Richard L. Bare
- The Search, 1948, d. Fred Zinnemann, w. Montgomery Clift
- Speedway, 1929, d. Harry Beaumont
- Suspense, 1946, d. Frank Tuttle
- The Tall Target, 1951, d. Anthony Mann
- Term of Trial, 1962, d. Peter Glenville, w. Laurence Olivier, Simone Signoret, Sarah Miles, Terence Stamp
- Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, 1993, d. Randa Haines, w. Robert Duvall, Richard Harris, Shirley MacLaine, Sandra Bullock, Piper Laurie

Paramount Catalogue for Summer 08: UPDATED

Paramount announced a slew of catalogue titles for this summer, none of which you've likely ever heard of. Thankfully, there were a few you might know. On 1 July, Paramount will (finally) make available Patrice Leconte's internationally successful The Girl on the Bridge, with Vanessa Paradis and Daniel Auteuil. Also bowing on that day is John Sayles' Baby It's You, starring Rosanna Arquette and Vincent Spano. The other titles are as follows, but don't blame if you haven't heard of some of them. Almost an Angel with Elias Koteas and Paul Hogan (3 Jun), Blue City with Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and (yuck!) David Caruso (3 Jun), William Castle's The Busy Body with Sid Caeser among others (1 Jul), Desperate Characters with Shirley Maclaine (1 Jul), Hitler: The Last Ten Days with Alec Guiness as Hitler (3 Jun), Houdini with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh (3 Jun), Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again (3 Jun), Frank Pierson's King of the Gypsies with Sterling Hayden, Shelley Winters, (yuck) Susan Sarandon, Brooke Shields, Annette O'Toole, Eric Roberts and Annie Potts (3 Jun), Mandingo with James Mason and Perry King (3 Jun), Carl Reiner's The One and Only with Henry Winkler (3 Jun), The Optimists with Peter Sellers (3 Jun), Papa's Delicate Condition with Jackie Gleason (1 Jul), Partners with Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt (1 Jul), The Possession of Joel Delaney with Perry King and Shirley Maclaine, Rhubarb with Ray Milland (1 Jul), Serial with Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld (1 Jul), The Skull with Peter Cushing (3 Jun), Some Kind of Hero with Richard Pryor and Margot Kidder (!), Student Bodies (3 Jun), Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (aka Monte Carlo or Bust) with Tony Curtis (3 Jun), Villa Rides with Yul Brynner, Robert Mitchum and Charles Bronson (awesome cast) (3 Jun), The Whoopee Boys (3 Jun), and ZPG with Oliver Reed and Gerladine Chaplin (3 Jun). Whew.

UPDATE: According to DVDDrive-in, these titles will be released by Legend Films, a division of Genius Products. I don't quite know what's going on. Also announced with these titles: Sidney Lumet's Daniel with Timothy Hutton, Mandy Patinkin, Ellen Barkin and Ed Asner (1 Jul).

Also, via Eric, Lionsgate will be releasing another actor-themed box, via Studio Canal; this time it's Catherine Deneuve. The set contains some minor Deneuve work: Jean Aurel's Manon 70, Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Le sauvage, André Téchiné's Hôtel des Amériques, Robin Davis's Le choc and Alain Corneau's Fort Saganne. I'm probably most excited about the Téchiné film, which would be the first of five collaborations between the director and star, preceding Scene of the Crime, My Favorite Season, Les voleurs and Changing Times. The set will be available on 10 June.

List #4: Questionable Praise

What’s perhaps more indicative of a person’s best of or worst of any given year is where they feel the general public has been mistaken. Certainly, frat boys and soccer moms galore will scoff at my pick of 300 for the worst film of the year (if you need proof, I believe Maxim magazine named it the best film of the year… that says it all). There are a number of critical bandwagons that always end up puzzling me, even if it doesn’t outright offend my sensibilities. Sean Penn’s Into the Wild was easily the most over-bloated junk of the year (hence it’s placement on my worst of the year list), but it was hardly the sole offender of a clusterfuck of a year where the only real agreement seems to have been that Cannes had a pretty phenomenal crop of films this year (No Country for Old Men, Zodiac, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Persepolis, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to name a few). Here’s nine films (consider Into the Wild your tenth) that perplexed this reviewer as to their wild critical praise.

I’m Not There – dir. Todd Haynes – USA

I’ve been a long-time fan of Haynes ever since I got my hands on an edited VHS copy of his Poison. Haynes never really seemed to adhere to what most people would expect of him; after all, what would you have really expected him to follow Poison with anyways? There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll never top the brilliance of Safe, but even with his haughty ambition in I’m Not There, I think I wanted something more than I got. Haynes has always been a visual director, though I wouldn’t say his films are necessarily from the same spectrum. Yet… I’m Not There feels like his best attempt to throw everything and the fucking kitchen sink into something that’s, well, a mess (purposeful or not, it’s still annoyingly untidy). You have Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, 8½, Don’t Look Back (naturally), and even Haynes’ own Velvet Goldmine. And what do you do with all that? I’m afraid I’m going to have to toss it back. I don’t usually like to spit upon others’ interpretations of films (unless, of course, you thought Into the Wild was painted with the stroke of God), but I think most of the praise for I’m Not There comes from looking really hard and trying to find something that’s really not there (no pun intended). Certainly, though, if you rummaged through someone’s messy house you’d likely find a stray twenty-dollar bill or maybe a great vinyl somewhere within the wreckage. I just don’t see why you’d want to find out.

The Savages – dir. Tamara Jenkins – USA

I always find the need to defend myself when I refer to something as “boring.” My definition of “boring” probably doesn’t mirror the general consensus; to go back to Haynes, I don’t think Safe is boring in the least (though I’m sure many would beg to differ). The Savages bored me to sobbing tears. It was the sort of boredom that would make most equate to watching paint dry. I’m serious. Laura Linney’s character, when discussing her as-of-yet-unwritten play, constantly begrudges her brother (Philip Seymour Hoffman), making sure he doesn’t think it’s terribly bourgeouis, and I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t Jenkins voice coming out on the screen, shaken and uncertain as to whether anyone could muster up an ounce of caring for what might as well have been a pipe slowly rusting. Yeah, sure, the film was smart, unsentimental (thank God), and well-acted, but none of that added up to something I’d want to sit through again.

Margot at the Wedding – dir. Noah Baumbach – USA

What bothers me most about Margot at the Wedding was what preceded Baumbach on his way to another bitter tale of intellectual malaise. The Squid and the Whale was just wonderful. Absolutely fantastic, and yet it was one of those movies a friend of mine described as a film everyone raved about for the two weeks it was in theatres only to forget about it shortly afterward. And, yeah, that’s probably true. So with Margot, Baumbach needed something that would stick, not something that felt like a day-old coffee pot version of something he’d already made. I’ll watch Jennifer Jason Leigh in fucking anything, so when even her presence fails to hit me in the right spots, my alarm signal goes off. Margot is stale, familiar, and, worst of all, wholly forgettable. Like she does in To Die For and The Others, Nicole Kidman always makes for a great cunt, all tightly-wound with Botox, tin-lipped and viper-tongued. Most of Margot’s detractors complained that no one in the film was likeable, but it was precisely the opposite case for me. No one in Margot at the Wedding was nearly as dislikable as I would deem necessary to hold interest further than the first explosion of words between its snake-y characters.

I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone – dir. Tsai Ming-liang – Taiwan/Malaysia/China/France

I’ve never known anyone to casually like the work of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang (or his compatriot Hou Hsiao-hsien, for that matter), as their films seem geared toward the most avid of international film aficionados. There’s nothing in the realms of accessible to their agonizing long-shots of, usually, nothing, and that was just splendid… for a time. With I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Tsai has continued this streak, painfully. What seemed like radiance and freshness in What Time Is It There? or Vive l’amour has grown tiresome. He doesn’t really break any new ground with his latest, and for once, I’ll stand by you, the MTV generation, and concur, “this shit is fucking tedious.”

Superbad – dir. Greg Motolla – USA

I’m one of those jerks that usually make for a bad person to ask about films. I’d decided, before seeing either, that I would hate Knocked Up and love Superbad for purely superficial reasons. Firstly, I laughed a grand total of once during Judd Apatow’s sketch comedy-cum-romantic yarn The 40-Year Old Virgin (and I saw that grueling two hour “unrated” version). I also don’t follow the notion that his beloved, cancelled TV series Freaks and Geeks was anything special. With Superbad, the crudeness seemed without Apatow’s signature schmaltz, without that thin message of acceptance that makes me run for the eject button on my DVD player. And it had that Michael Cera in it expanding his life past the criminally-axed Arrested Development where he proved to have the best comic timing of the whole bunch. Unfortunately, my expectations got the better of me, and I ended up sheepishly enjoying Knocked Up and just-about loathing Superbad. I don’t do zany, and I don’t do antics. And for every minute of awkward teenage dialogue about cocks and Orson Welles, there was another nine of zany antics. Superbad is a comedy of errors, and to throw a zing at ya, I made an “error” watching this crap. Yeah, see, that joke was about as funny as most of what I witnessed in Superbad.

This Is England – dir. Shane Meadows – UK

If I had one word of advice for filmmakers working today, I’d say, “lay off the cheap sentimental bullshit.” And I’d say it just like that. This Is England (what a stupid title) is director Meadows’ recounting of his youth during the early stages of the Thatcher regime, and, yet, hindsight for him is less 20/20, more a lousy sermon. I always want to go back to a quote from Bernardo Bertolucci where he criticized the youth of today for not rebelling against the forces that be like his generation did in the 60s (his own auto-fellatio can be seen in The Dreamers). Let’s face it, budding filmmakers, cinema hasn’t changed anything in this world in a long time. And it ain’t going to anytime soon. Therefore, you don’t need to be vomiting up lessons and messages to your potential audience (unless that lesson happens to be that lessons don’t do a damn thing… subversive, eh?). This Is England isn’t a complete waste and probably isn’t even one of the great offenders of 2007, but for garnering an impeccable 86/100 rating on Metacritic (a slightly better version of Rotten Tomatoes), I could have used my history lesson away from the pulpit.

Gone Baby Gone – dir. Ben Affleck – USA

I guess what confuses me most is whether critics actually liked this one or were just surprised that Ben Affleck happens to be a better director than he is an actor, because Gone Baby Gone isn’t phenomenal by any stretch. One of its main detractors, as I discussed in my review for it, was that Affleck chose to cast two primary cast members from the television show The Wire (Amy Ryan and Michael K. Williams), which may very well be the finest thing to grace television screens… ever. Affleck didn’t need the comparisons; in fact, I can hardly muster up any interest in any films crime-related any more after my eyes have officially been opened by the uncompromising brilliance of The Wire. Gone Baby Gone suffers from the Pumpkin syndrome: a film that ends with a bang, almost forgiving the missteps taken throughout the rest of its running time. Almost.

The Simpsons Movie – dir. David Silverman – USA

I haven’t watched anything from the latest seasons of The Simpsons, but general consensus is that, without most of their original writers, the show blows. Like Seinfeld though, when The Simpsons officially signs off the air, it will always be remembered for its high points instead of its low ones. Therefore, it won’t be remembered for The Simpsons Movie, an eighty-seven-minute expansion of what would have been a mediocre episode (despite the return of many of the series’ creators) in the first place. About a third of The Simpsons Movie is hysterical, but you’d really have to rack my brain to recall any of those moments (and I just saw it two weeks ago). Instead we’re left with a missed opportunity, the first (and supposedly last) foray of America’s favorite animated family onto the big screen.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – dir. Sidney Lumet – USA

In my review of Sidney Lumet’s latest, I said something along the lines of “if Lumet chose to retire now, he’d retire on the high note he’d failed to achieve in the past twenty years of his career.” What I said was true; Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is probably better than all of the films he’s made since the 90s put together. However, you have to consider that adding Critical Care, Gloria and Find Me Guilty together would result in something slightly better than the last Jennifer Lopez movie. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is one of those films that’s just “fine.” It’s well-acted by PSH, Marisa Tomei, and even Ethan Hawke (I think Albert Finney is kinda hammy here), and I love the kaleidoscopic structure of Lumet’s modern tragedy. And, yet, I still can’t muster up any real excitement for the film. Maybe it’s my loss here, but its universal praise strikes me the same way Gone Baby Gone’s does. Here’s a film no one expected to be good, it ended up being pretty decent, and the praise flew in. See Match Point for another example of a once-great filmmaker who’d been stuck making mediocre films for years, only to come back with something comparatively better with accolades to follow.

The 2007 Saint Louis International Film Festival

Cinema St. Louis has officially announced their line-up for this year's International Film Festival, to be held November 8th through the 18th. As usual, the line-up is pretty humdrum (not that I should expect any better in Saint Louis), but Peter Greenaway will be present to receive a lifetime achievement award after a screening, on the 18th, of his lovely Drowning by Numbers. Curiously, Drowning by Numbers will be the only of his films to screen at the festival (which will be nice for those who haven't seen the film, as it's still only available on DVD in Australia). Neither his latest, Nightwatching, or any segment of the Tulse Luper Suitcases will be playing at the fest. The only other rather special event will be held on November 10th, at Webster University, where James Gunn (Slither) will present one of his favorites (and mine), The Naked Kiss.

Other features of note screening this year:
Before the Devil Knows Your Dead - dir. Sidney Lumet - with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, Albert Finney - USA - November 11, 7pm, Plaza Frontenac
Bill - dir. Bernie Goldmann, Melisa Wallack - with Aaron Eckhart, Timothy Olyphant, Elizabeth Banks, Jessica Alba - USA - November 13, 9:30, Tivoli [This was filmed partially in Saint Louis]
Crossroads - dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa - Japan - November 10, 7pm, Saint Louis Art Museum
Daisy - dir. Andrew Lau - South Korea/Hong Kong - November 17, 7:15pm, Plaza Frontenac / November 18, 6:30pm, Plaza Frontenac
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The [Scaphandre et le papillon, Le] - dir. Julian Schnabel - with Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Marina Hands, Max von Sydow, Isaach De Bankole, Emma de Caunes, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey - France/USA - November 18, 6pm, Saint Louis Art Museum
Honeydripper - dir. John Sayles - with Danny Glover, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Charles S. Dutton, Vondie Curtis-Hall - USA - November 8, 7pm, Tivoli
Iron Horse, The - dir. John Ford - USA - November 16, 7pm, Saint Louis Art Museum
Juno - dir. Jason Reitman - with Michael Cera, Ellen Page - USA - November 14, 7pm, Tivoli
Persepolis - dir. Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi - France - November 17, 7pm, Plaza Frontenac
Ploy - dir. Pen-ek Ratanaruang - Thailand - November 10, 9:45, Plaza Frontenac / November 12, 7:15, Plaza Frontenac
Walker, The - dir. Paul Schrader - with Woody Harrelson, Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ned Beatty, Moritz Bleibtreau, Mary Beth Hurt, Willem Dafoe - USA - November 16, 7pm, Plaza Frontenac / November 17, 9:30pm, Plaza Frontenac

As usual the foreign-language films of the festival look to be socially-conscious, politically-ripe, and downright boring. So, happy festival-going... I will probably go to a few screenings before the fest, hopefully, and have something to say.

Time-Wasting (in the bad sense of the term)

I’ve been thinking a lot about Sean Penn’s Into the Wild lately, though not because of any haunting quality about the film (my full review will be posted next week here and on Playback's website), but that it has all the makings of one of those over-appreciated films that first-year undergrads cream over. A friend of a friend made a comment about Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, stating, “it appeals to the undergrad in all of us.” I’ve been thinking lately how that has changed for the worse. I can see where he’s coming from, though I have a guiltless, yet hardly impassioned, liking for the film. I think as time goes by, a film like Wings of Desire has gone over the head of the peons of the pre-graduate collegiate study. Instead, something a bit more manageable and whimsical (a word I hate) like Amèlie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind have replaced the likes of Eraserhead as standards for these individuals. Alas, I digress. What’s truly unfortunate about Into the Wild is that it pains of the staleness of self-importance. Penn has been running around promoting his ambitiously middling meditation of the existence of man (God, too bad Antonioni had to die before seeing the shallowness of Penn’s perspective), even garnering the attention of Miss Oprah Winfrey, whose taste in literature looks scholarly in comparison to her appreciation of film (shoot me if I’m wrong, but I thought I overheard someone say that she compared Paul Haggis’ abortion-to-turn-Roe-v-Wade Crash to Citizen Kane). Penn is not a filmmaker, and if you need an example of such, notice his pedestrian motif to show the passing of time, which he’s so proud of that he uses at least ten or so times throughout the film. Penn couldn’t even find an actor capable of selling whatever it is that he’s throwing out there, let alone lift the film above its mediocrity. In Emile Hirsch, he finds an actor of a certain sheepish capacity, who apparently performs all of his own stunts, none of which the least bit marvelous. I guess it should say something that Hirsch was outshined by Justin Timberlake in Alpha Dog. Thankfully, Penn enlisted some fine supporting talent, particularly from Catherine Keener, who, even in tripe like Lovely & Amazing, always floats my boat. As Hirsch’s parents, William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden effectively ham it up, and even the usually painstaking Jena Malone makes for a fine occasional narrator (Penn can’t commit to anything here). I’m sure a bunch of young folks (not to mention the members of Oprah’s cult) whose intelligence is exceedingly surpassed by their own egoism will jump all over this, and, I ask, isn’t this upsetting?

On television, at three-in-the-morning last night, some subsidiary of HBO or Cinemax played the finest double-feature in cable television history: The Wiz, not followed by but playing during, Less than Zero. I say finest, because one who lost their remote and bound similar to that scene in A Clockwork Orange wouldn’t have to suffer through both. Plenty of people cite Robert Altman’s Popeye as one of the worst missteps of an acclaimed director, especially in relation to the musical genre, but have they not seen Sidney Lumet’s The Wiz? Oh, it has black people in it, so we can’t be too harsh, right? Dead wrong. The Wiz is… fucking… terrible. My friend commented on this, “how could a film go so wrong with so many good people involved?“ I responded, “you mean so many good people… and Diana Ross.” I’ve always hated Diana Ross, but if you need a solid example of why you should too, see her arm-flailing performance here, fully equipped with a rat’s nest weave to boot. She has the charisma of a worn-down nickel, and I’m just glad Judy Garland was dead by the time this piece of shit came around (there seems to be an unintended theme of: thank-God-they-were-dead-before-seeing-this running through this blog). The only good song in the whole film, “Ease on Down the Road,” occurs way too late in the film to sustain any interest, and also way too far from the end to allow for one to seal the deal. At the very least, one could make plenty of nasty comments about “easing on down the road,” as my friend Mike did when realizing he hadn’t rated the film on Netflix, “ease on down the road to the fucking river and throw in this abortion.” There’s something refreshing about referring to films as abortions.

Now for Less than Zero… what a crock of dead babies (this blog has multi-layered thematic elements). Y’know, say all you want about Bret Easton Ellis, but as a high school nihilist, his books enthralled me to no end (at least Less than Zero, American Psycho and The Rules of Attraction, certainly not his awful collection of short stories entitled The Informers). He certainly captured a sect of society and youth like no one else had, likely because most of the disgustingly rich and emotionally vacant elite didn’t dare speak poorly on their legacies, bank accounts, or filthy secrets (or, they just couldn’t write). But in the film adaptation of Less than Zero, these youths are strikingly similar to those of St. Elmo’s Fire or The Breakfast Club, only with fancier abodes. I really couldn’t bring myself to watch much, as I’d seen and blocked out the film in its entirety previously, and plus, it’s not as fun making fun of Jami Gertz as it is Diana Ross.

Car Wash was also playing, and being the superior of the three aforementioned films, I opted not to watch it, though it’s worth noting that the screenplay was written by Joel Schummacher, who also wrote The Wiz. The film was directed by Michael Schultz, who also directed everyone’s other favorite musical Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club.

In conclusion (I’ve decided not to go on about how much of an… abortion the film The Apple is for now), I now understand the appeal of gay-bashing. With the combination of Schummacher and fifteen-minutes-of-fame-whore/Britney-loony Chrissy Crocker, I caught an episode or two of here! television’s The Lair, apparently a spin-off of one of their more popular gay soaps Dante’s Cove. The show stars a bunch of gay porn stars and the only major cast member of Shortbus not to shuck off his clothes, Peter Stickles, in what I firmly believe to be the biggest horseshit excuse for “entertainment” I’ve seen in… maybe forever. I really doubt gay television stations like here! or Logo are looking for a crossover audience, but I highly doubt their intention was to fuel hatred for the homosexual community. I could go on about gay cinema and its reputation, but that would take forever. In summation though, most queer cinema is dreck, starring chiseled male bodies in place of actors, or on the occasion that a film of said community is of quality (Shortbus, The Raspberry Reich, Poison, The Doom Generation, Presque rien), its anger, sexual explicitness, or “perversion” keeps its larger audience at bay. I digress, again… The Lair follows a self-proclaimed “small-town journalist trying to make it big,” who somehow manages to have a fantastic apartment in wherever the series is supposed to take place. The journalist, who has a seedy shower body-worship sequence early in the series, is aided by an informant to a string of hot-man-murders in town because, as the informant states, he seems like “a decent guy” (read: has a hot body). The show is shockingly free of mood, tension, intrigue -- and most shocking of all -- genuine eroticism. When your program makes David DeCoteau films look like high-art, you should just stop. You should see what the fags who make this bullshit look like, because maybe that would explain why someone would put up money for them to explore their sparkless sexual fantasies on film (or video as it likely is). Oh, well, no one is really holding their breath for true queer cineastes to destroy the stereotype anytime soon.

Save your time with all that’s been mentioned above and rent Tony Richardson’s French melodrama Mademoiselle, starring the incomparable Jeanne Moreau in a script by Jean Genet and Marguerite Duras, featuring sexual repression, arson, animals in peril, and -- best of all -- fishnet gloves.