A Dangerous Method (2011)

A brief disclaimer is in order before I follow through here.  I haven't picked up much psychology reading in quite a while.  I read Sigmund Freud as an undergraduate in literary theory courses but we never read Carl Jung.  I took a couple classes in psychology as a sophomore in college.  The bulk of the psychoanalysis I've encountered in the past six years has been in the form of film theory and, never being much of a devotee to such approaches to spectatorship, my understanding is crudely general.  Essentially, if you're looking for a scholarly analysis of David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (2011) from such a context, I am unable to provide it.  

The Artist (2011)

The midst of the annual awards season has given cinephiles two tremendous treats in Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011) and Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist (2011).  While Hugo attempts to redeem the overlooked - outside of introduction to film courses at least - career of film pioneer Georges Méliès, The Artist takes willing viewers back to late 1920s Hollywood as the industry was transitioning from silent film production to early talkies.  Hugo is one of the best films of the year thanks to Scorsese's potent mixture of heartfelt redemption, film history lecture, adventurous dissection of three dimensional space, and support of film preservation.  The Artist, a heartwarming and nostalgic dollop of cinematic whipping cream, never goes beyond the superficial.  

The Tree of Life (2011)

I feel incredibly conflicted over Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011). It is, without question, one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. The theatrical release poster, showcasing a barrage of images from the film, is a fitting marketing tool, as the film's raison d'être is not the story nor the performances by Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, and the children.  The film's being stems from Malick's work with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who also shot Children of Men) and production designer Jack Fisk (and, in a few sequences, with special effects guru Douglas Trumbull, who designed some of the effects for Tree of Life's formal ancestor, 2001:  A Space Odyssey).  Each shot in the film aims for the sublime (and the film has a lot of shots...I'd love to see a shot by shot analysis, but someone would need to have a lot of time on their hands to put that together) and the formal achievements of the film should not be underestimated.  On the other hand, the vague impressions of plot that Malick attempts to tie the images together with simply does not provide enough narrative momentum to justify the 140 minute running time.  

The Descendants (2011)

Alexander Payne's first film in seven years (yes, it has been that long since the wine infused, lovable snobbery of Sideways), The Descendants (2011), would be a great film if it wasn't for its familiarity.  That is not to say that the plot or the casting is necessarily stereotypical, just that it feels like Payne, despite his absence, is still drawn into the same comfort zone:  middle aged men dealing with an existential crisis.  In Election (1999), Payne gave us a portrait of a school teacher (Matthew Broderick) fraying at the edges thanks to troubles at home and his obnoxious star pupil (Reese Witherspoon).  His follow up, About Schmidt (2002), focused on a recently widowed man (Jack Nicholson) who, after discovering that his wife had cheated on him, goes on a road trip to try to protect his daughter (Hope Davis) from following in his footsteps.  Sideways (2004) continued the trend by giving us another school teacher (Paul Giamatti), this one a lovesick and struggling novelist, who quotes Bukowski.  

Three Colors: Blue (1993)

It has been almost a decade since I first gazed upon Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy (1993-1994).  After re-watching his first entry, Blue (1993, on the newly issued Criterion Blu-Ray), I chastised myself for having taken so long.  While I remember being moved by Blue - Kieslowski's work as a whole affects me - and loving the trilogy as a whole, I failed to account for my own evolving position as a subjective viewer. Obviously, Kieslowski's films, like those of Robert Bresson, do not objectively change over time.  However, our impressions of the films are changed, charged, and altered by our own life experiences.  For instance, my personal impressions of the losses that Julie (Juliette Binoche) experiences in the opening moments of Blue were compounded the second time around.  The films haven't changed but I have gone from being an single teenager to a married twenty-something.  

Hugo (2011)

Martin Scorsese's Hugo (2011), based off of Brian Selznick's children's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007), is a memorable oddity in the filmmaker's always watchable filmography.  A PG rated film that does not feature an once of bloodshed or a single curse word, Hugo lacks the most superficial of Scorsese identifiers.  Delving deeper into the production, it is also the first film that Scorsese has shot digitally and in 3D.  In other words, it's a change of direction that looks unlike anything the filmmaker has produced before.  Considering Scorsese's age and the longevity of his career, one of the accomplishments of Hugo is that it showcases the talents of a filmmaker willing to take risks...while also chronicling the career of a filmmaker who took risks and lost.  

Batman: Year One (2011)

I love Batman.  I love Batman so much that when I finished the first draft to my dissertation - focused on the remediation of style in comics and film - I got a Batman tattoo.  When I was a kid, Tim Burton's Batman (1989) and The Animated Series (1992-1995) got me into comics.  When I was a teenager and moved away from comics, the Batman titles were the only ones I still kept tabs on...and then I eventually stopped reading them (there were not a lot of comic book stores in Port Washington, Wisconsin).  When I got back into comics in college, after some heckling from my friends Neal and Will, I started back up with Batman.  I read Batman:  The Long Halloween (1996-1997) and Arkham Asylum:  A Serious House on Serious Earth (1989) before I was handed a copy of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman:  Year One (1987).  

Saboteur (1942)

I was drawn to watch and re-watch some Alfred Hitchcock movies after covering The White Shadow (1923) a few weeks back.  I decided, after polling some of my Cinema and Media Studies folks, to give Saboteur (1942) a spin.  In many ways, it embodies the formula of the classic Hitchcock thriller:  a man is wrongly accused of a horrible crime and must clear his name with the help of a beautiful woman (see also North by Northwest, The 39 Steps, The Wrong Man) and add in a cross-country chase (again, see North by Northwest, another film that reaches its climax atop a national landmark).  Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) is a blue collar worker at an airplane plant during World War II.  One day, Barry meets a strange co-worker by the name of "Fry" (Norman Lloyd) and, shortly after, a fire breakouts at the plant, killing Barry's best friend and leaving Barry the prime suspect.  

The Horror! The Horror!: The Exorcist (1973) and Session 9 (2001)

Guided by Scott Weinberg's list of 120 Horror Films now on Netflix Watch Instantly, I decided to hunker down on a rainy, October, Los Angeles day and watch two of them:  William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) and Brad Anderson's Session 9 (2001), one of Weinberg's favorites.  While I have documented my favorites over at Pajiba (and before that in the pages of the UWM Post), my tastes have changed and evolved.  When I last watched it, ten years ago, I wasn't a huge fan of The Exorcist.  See if my tastes towards a purported classic changed after the jump.  

The White Shadow (1923), The New 52, and Women Comic Book Readers Day

Last night was the U.S. debut of a lost, found, restored, yet incomplete print of one of Alfred Hitchcock's first credited (not directed) features, The White Shadow (1923).  Initially a six-reeler, three reels of the film were recently found in New Zealand and sent to the United States for restoration.  The film, directed by early collaborator Graham Cutts, was adapted by twenty-four year old Hitchcock from a novel by Michael Morton (no relation) and featured Hitchcock in several other significant roles including assistant director, editor, art director, set director, production designer.  It featured Betty Compson in a dual role as a set of twins - one socially "evil" (she drinks, smokes, and gambles!) and one her complete opposite - who fall in love with Clive Brook's American. 

Drive (2011)

In Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011), mobster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) tells his newly hired stunt and getaway driver (Ryan Gosling) that he used to produce B-movie genre films that the critics called “European…  I called them trash.”  That description fits the abyss that Drive attempts to jump, Dukes of Hazard/General Lee-style, between trash (the heist/thriller genre) and art cinema (particularly the existentially infused crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville).  Taking on a mode of filmmaking similar to both Michael Mann and Jean-Luc Godard, directors whose films cross-pollinate pulp narratives with a cool exploration of film form, Refn sticks the landing without the danger of a catastrophic rollover, taking cinephiles on a ride beyond their wildest imaginations. 

Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-Ray Review

On the evening of September 15th 2011, I left my apartment in West Los Angeles to camp out for the Blu-Ray release of all six Star Wars (1977-2005) films.  I hadn't stood in line for Star Wars since a cold day in April when, at age 16, I dressed warmly in a Green Bay Packers jacket and waited outside of the Northshore cinema in southeastern Wisconsin to buy tickets for The Phantom Menace (1999).  When that day in May finally came, I walked away from Phantom Menace - like many others - with disappointment.  I had moderate expectations for the Blu-Ray and clung to a childlike hope that my disappointment would be reversed by the high-definition glory of seeing three of my favorite films on my home theater.  Was my new hope redeemed or did I walk away poisoned with bitter anger?  Continue reading to find out! 

Citizen Kane (1941): 70 Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition

I've been dreading the task of writing a review of Orson Welles's masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941).  For years, I've avoided writing about it.  I've done so by favoring other Welles pictures when it comes to reviews (The Immortal Story, Touch of Evil) simply because the scholarship produced by André Bazin, Peter Bogdanovich, Pauline Kael, Laura Mulvey, James Naremore, and Jonathan Rosenbaum (amongst others!) leaves me with little to say.  It's a great film and far greater writers and thinkers than I have spent the past decades discovering its secrets and disclosing them to cinephiles and potential cinephiles.  That said, this review will be more focused on the features on the new 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition Blu-Ray than the film itself.  If you really want to learn about Citizen Kane, read one of those books.  If you know nothing about Kane and want a quick gloss, this is for you.  

Contagion (2011)

Contagion (2011) is much like Steven Soderbergh’s Academy award winning chronicle of the drug war Traffic (2000) except this one is about a deadly virus.  Soderbergh, acting once again as his own DP, still provides ice blue and warm yellow monochromatic shots of various plot threads focusing on a government bureaucracy that is - ideally – in a position to help but also has structures and protocols that get in the way.   Moreover, like Traffic, Contagion features an electronic score by frequent Soderbergh collaborator (and former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer) Cliff Martinez, slick editing by Stephen Mirrione, and another Vanity Fair Oscar Party of an ensemble cast.   The key difference between the former and the latter is characterization and unfortunately Contagion takes the form of its subject:  a detached, calculated, killer. 

A Trip to the Moon (1902)

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted an extraordinary program entitled "A Trip to the Moon in Color, and Other Travels Through Time, Color, and Space" the other night.  The program, hosted by Serge Bromberg (film historian and archivist) and Tom Burton (head of preservation at Technicolor) featured more than ten short films ranging from the San Francisco city symphony/actuality A Trip Down Market Street (1906) to early experiments in hand-colorization (Gwalior, 1907), sound (one of the first sound print shorts was shown), 3-D (Méliès had a camera that shot two lenses and negatives side by side for quick duplication, which actually created rudimentary 3-D prints), and Deco animation (Joy of Living, 1934).  The evening culminated with the screening of a restoration of a handcolored print of Méliès's famous A Trip to the Moon (1902).  

The House That Dripped Blood (1971)

Anthology films are often hit and miss.  Using 90 to 120 minutes to introduce new sets of characters and separate plots leaves a filmmaker - or filmmakers - with very little cinematic canvas to work with and, as a result, a miniscule margin for error.  To further complicate the construction, anthology films often utilize a framing plot to bridge the short films together, eating up further screen time to provide the narrative glue to a diverse set of stories that can, on occasion, embrace a wide range of aesthetic options.  Peter Duffell's The House that Dripped Blood (1971), a British horror anthology produced by Hammer rival Amicus Productions (who also produced anthologies based off of the EC Comics series Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror), is no exception to the hit and miss rule.  Yet, it comes in - for the most part - on the winning side of the equation. 

Fright Night (2011)

Tom Holland’s Fright Night (1985) is one of those films I’ve seen bits and pieces of on cable but I’ve never bothered to sit down and watch entirely.  After watching Craig Gillespie’s remake (2011), the cinematic equivalent to the contents of a pumpkin shaped trick or treat pail, I may need to remedy that blind spot.   Fright Night may not be F.W Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) or Guy Maddin’s Dracula:  Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002) when it comes to great vampire movies but it is, like Sam Raimi’s romp Drag Me to Hell (2009), a hell of a funny, scary time. 

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) is a difficult film to evaluate. Like Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999) or Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), the film contains more than the usual quota of stunning images and inspired sequences. However, like the films by Kubrick and Welles, Gilliam’s is a film that cannot escape the shadow of its production history. As most readers are no doubt aware, Parnassus stands as the last film featuring the talents of the late Heath Ledger. Yet, Ledger’s death occurred before the film was finished shooting and Gilliam was forced to shut down production to contemplate a means of constructing a film without one of his key personnel. Eventually, Gilliam settled on re-casting the part with Ledger’s friends (Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell) in his role over expensive CGI solutions. Unfortunately, while it was the most cost effective and arguably the most tasteful creative choice Gilliam could have made, the solution costs the film dearly.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)

A week and a half ago, after serving nearly twenty years behind bars, Jessie Misskelley Jr., Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols – also known as the West Memphis Three (WM3) - were released from prison after entering Alford pleas (a plea which allows the defendants to assert their innocence while acknowledging  the existence of substantial evidence that could be used for a conviction) with the Arkansas court system.  The release of the trio was bittersweet.  On one hand, three men who appear to be innocent are free to walk to the street.  On the other hand, three innocent men were convicted because their interest in Stephen King and Metallica made them different from the bulk of the West Memphis population and they lost almost twenty years of their lives.  Most significantly, the killer or killers behind the murders of three, eight year old boys (Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers) have yet to be found. 

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

The always likable Paul Rudd hits theaters this weekend in Our Idiot Brother (2011) and, in homage, I decided to pop in one of my favorite Rudd comedies:  State member David Wain’s directorial debut Wet Hot American Summer (2001). The film, one of my favorite comedies, was what introduced me to the those cloudy bootlegs and cued my anticipation and interest in Reno 911! (2003-2009), Stella (2005), and the recent series Michael & Michael Have Issues (2009), the latter two series were short lived.