Tuesday, March 18, 2014
I haven't blogged about any movies since the Wolf tussle. I have faithfully tracked all of my viewing on Letterboxd and even went Pro over there.

For some reason, today, I've felt the blogging itch.

Here's a recap of what I've watched so far in 2014.

January

The Wolf of Wall Street
Magnificent Obsession
The Pride and the Passion

I was reading a lot in January. The few movies that I did catch up with were all disappointing. I've already gone on at length about Wolf. Sirk's melodrama made me want to puke. The Pride and the Passion is a big bloated mess of a prestige picture. By the end of January, I was ready to give up on all motion pictures (how's that for melodramatic).

February

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Your Sister's Sister
Her

Watching this string of recent movies didn't do much to re-awaken my dormant cinephilia. Mitty was refreshing in its commitment to cheesy good will, but it's not that great of a film. Your Sister's Sister is all of the Sirkian circus without Sirk's compositional sense. And Her had less to say about relationships than that other classic about a computer woman, John Hughes' classic Weird Science. That's not really me giving either film a compliment. Meh.

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein
Captain Phillips
Minority Report

Meet Frankenstein is exactly what I needed to watch to keep me from movie despair. The gags hit every time and the pacing is fantastic. It's so easy to love. Then came another couple of duds. Captain Phillips is saved by Hanks' performance, but I never felt any of the tension. Maybe this is my fault. As for Minority Report, it is laughably bad in places, especially the way that it all ties together in the end. The chase that takes up the middle is tedious. The visual style of the film is oppressively ugly. This blockbuster is not for me.

High Sierra
Bicycle Thieves
The Machine That Kills Bad People
Umberto D.

Remembering how good it felt to watch Meet Frankenstein, I returned to the classics. I could watch Bogart and Lupino all day long. I was a bit nervous about re-watching Bicycle Thieves because I was afraid that it wouldn't hold up. It doesn't need my approval, but it has it. The film has lost none of its quiet power. Machine That Kills Bad People was a pleasant surprise to me. I had never even heard of it before. Rossellini is one of the most interesting directors in the history of cinema. His later TV work is probably him at his best and all of his films prior to those historical dramas feel like him stretching his talents in different directions, trying to settle on a style. Machine That Kills is a fable with stagy bookends. The high artifice of it all is a direct opposite of his earlier realist films. I think that he finds the best balance in Flowers of Francis, but this meeting of the stage and realism is also clearly where he goes toward with his later films. I need to watch more Rossellini. Umberto D.? Well, it's good, but I'm not a big fan. Between Umberto, Ikiru, and The Last Laugh, one would be safe in assuming that I have no tolerance for old men rejected by their societies. Luckily, I can redeem myself by saying that I really liked The Browning Version and that Make Way for Tomorrow is one of the truly great films that I adore.

March

Serenity
The Monuments Men

Serenity works as a science fiction film (and less so as a western, though that was a huge part of the TV feel) but what is always really impressive about Whedon is his timing, both comic and tragic. The man doesn't miss a beat. Monuments Men, on the other hand, plods along and does its historical duty. I can imagine it playing extremely well in history classrooms across the country. As such, it does its job well. I won't knock the film too much. It is what it is and doesn't pretend to be anything else.

The Color Wheel
What is Cinema?

I wrote that The Color Wheel reminded me of Alverson's The Comedy and so it does. Wheel skirts the line between offense and irony. It does not pander to its audience nor does it seek its approval, but it is constantly engaging. It alternates between being clever and being honest and sometimes it's hard to know the difference. As the story of two vulnerable siblings making their way (or not) in the world, it is delightfully uneven. Vishnavetsky, one of my favorite critics even when he's wrong, gets it very right in his review of this film. Read his review. But first watch the film.

What is Cinema? provided a lovely night out with my bride. So far, it's been my favorite cinematic experience of the year.

Robot & Frank
Women Reply: Our Bodies, Our Sex

Robot & Frank should have been a big blockbuster. It's a superior Hollywood product.
Women Reply is a "cine-tract" by Varda in response to a television network asking for responses to the question, "What is a woman?" It's an interesting piece because it plays today as very conservative (“To be a woman is to be born in a female body” is something that is no longer taken for granted) in its response to the prevalent misogyny and "patriarchal" power systems of its day. I think that it's a very strong rebuke to films like Wolf of Wall Street, for instance. I don't think that it perfectly achieves its aims (partly because of its brevity), but it is an interesting provocation.

Taxi Tangle
A Night to Remember

Another great night out at Binghamton Classic Films. A Night to Remember is no Thin Man, but it is more than enjoyable in its adherence to the Thin Man husband/wife comedy/crime formula.

The Browning Version
The Kid Brother
A Talking Picture
Stripped
Forst
The Musketeers of Pig Alley
Arrival of a Train

And I've about tired myself out with this blog post already.

The Browning Version earns its sad triumph. The Kid Brother provides plenty of laughs. A Talking Picture is the best film I've seen all year, though I can see others despising it. Stripped is a good enough doc. Forst is piece of dung. The Musketeers of Pig Alley has that one great alleyway shot. Arrival of a Train demonstrates all of the power of cinema in one brief shot.

What's coming out soon? Let's go see a movie together.


Posted by trawlerman at 10:35 AM (1) comments
Consider this post a quick apology to Brandon for never responding to his "from arguing to discussing" post.

You asked serious questions that deserve serious answers. I wasn't feeling up to the task of responding because I knew it would take a lot of work on my part. I chose the lazy path of not responding. More than that, the sort of conversation we were heading into is something that I feel totally comfortable talking about. But that's just it, talking. Preferably over a beer and a bowl of Frog Morton. Face to face. Blogging is a different beast and way more prone to misunderstandings. So, I'm letting all of your objections go, unless of course we have that face to face convo some day.

Briefly, though, I'm linking to an article that you can read or not read. Whatever. It does not at all even begin to answer all of your questions, but it might give you a new perspective on Psalm 137, which of course you're still free to find despicable. I actually think this one is pretty easy. The conquest of Canaan, which you also object to, is what would take a longer time to respond to as it involves a fair amount of theological and literary assumptions. But, yeah, the bottom line is that I think killing Amalekites and others AT THAT TIME was a great thing and you think that it was an atrocious genocide. Buy me a beer and we can get into a fistfight.

http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/biblical-horizons/no-3-the-problem-of-psalm-137/

Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the Rock!

(Now I'm going to work on a movie post. I'll get it up in the next few hours.)
Posted by trawlerman at 9:22 AM (0) comments