Watch on the Rhine

1943 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Sara's been in away in Europe for eighteen years, presumably because her mother is really annoying. While away, she meets a troublemaker named Kurt and has three children who prove that "annoying" is something that runs in the family. They arrive in Washington for a visit, and a Romanian house guest, a guy who's staying with Sara's mother only because he knows there wouldn't be much of a movie without him, learns some of the family's secrets. He attempts to extract money. Oh, Bodo!

It's always interesting to me to see movies like this out of their context. It's a movie about Nazis and WWII, but it really only touches on the historical stuff lightly, and its themes of dedication, sacrifice, and tough decision making are still relevant today. Unfortunately, this is bogged down by what feel like 1940's movie cliches. You get that oh-no-she-didn't stock mother character used for comic effect. Her loud utterances probably had 1943 audiences' sides splitting. You get dialogue that feels painstakingly written, stagy. You get a romantic subplot tossed in, probably to add a bit of light to an otherwise dark ending. But really, the characters of David and Anise just aren't necessary in this thing. A rousing patriotic score that's just a little too much. And Watch on the Rhine has my biggest pet peeve of all--bad child acting! Now if it was just Joshua, the firstborn who speaks in this terrible accent, I could probably tolerate it. And the middle child, a daughter, is just a girl and doesn't get too many lines anyway. But the third child is intolerable. And his name is Bodo! Bodo! How director Herman Shumlin didn't recognize that Bodo, played by Julia Roberts' brother actually, just wasn't working is beyond me. Seems like a good director would have had Bodo fall off the train early in the movie.

Sara: Honey, have you seen Bodo?
Kurt: Yeah, Bodo fell off the train about a half hour ago.
Sara: What? And you didn't tell me about it? Aren't you concerned?
Kurt: C'mon, Sara. You've met Bodo.
Sara: You've got a good point there, Kurt.
Joshua: Mother? Father? We shall be ever so happy now that Bodo is no longer with us.
Kurt: Shut your pie hold, Joshua, or you're going to be the next to "fall" off this train.

Since Herman Shumlin wasn't able to recognize that Bodo didn't work, he was only allowed to direct one other movie, the only Hollywood director ever to be blacklisted because of a Bodo. Now Oscar-winner Paul Lukas is really good. His quiet brilliance emanates and actually makes Bette Davis into a better actress. He's got this quiet strength, this unspoken but palpable fatigue, and eventually a powerful resolution that makes him heroic in an unflashy way. There's no way this guy would have a child like Bodo. Bette Davis, sure, but not Paul Lukas.

Marwencol

2010 outsider artist documentary

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Mark Hogancamp was severely beaten outside a bar by a few thugs. He wakes from his coma brain-damaged and traumatized and instead of dealing with a complicated real world that he can't control, creates a World War II town called Marwencol with soldier action figures and Barbie dolls that he can. Elaborate stories of romance and adventure develop in Marwencol, and Hogancamp photographs it all. Eventually, his "art" is discovered, and Hogancamp gets to show off his world at a New York City art show.

If you enjoy outsider art or stories about outsider artists like me, Marwencol's definitely a movie you should check out. It's the lone film of director Jeff Malmberg (although I do see film editing for fine works of art like The Hottie and the Nottie is on his resume) and he does a fine job giving us Mark's story objectively. The more Hogancamp's character develops in Marwencol, the stranger he gets, but Malmberg passes no judgement and it's obvious that his subject trusts him and considers him a friend. And I think that's what makes this so good. Hogancamp lets Malmberg into his little world, and we get an intimate look at both the little world and at its creator. Details about the latter (how he walks his army figure's Jeep every day; his love interests; some odd little surprises near the end) are interesting, but this movie's got another layer when the plots and subplots in Marwencol are shared. A lot of those reflect how Hogancamp sees his reality and how he deals with the trauma and the loneliness he feels after the attack, but they're also cool little fictions, the sorts of stories that Tarantino could probably tell really well. A third layer deals with Hogancamp's introduction to the world as an artist, something I'm not sure he's entirely comfortable with or really even cares about. It raises those questions about the purity and purposes of art. There's no denying that he stills of his characters interacting in Marwencol are pretty awesome though. I'm really really glad that Hogancamp shared this world with Malmberg and that Malmberg shared it with us in this great little documentary, a fascinating glimpse at a troubled mind and the very positive way that those troubles are dealt with.

Hogancamp's pictures:

Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South during an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

1986 self-indulgent documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A guy's given some funds to make a historical documentary about General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea that devastated the South during the Civil War. He gets sidetracked and ends up making a documentary about his failed attempts to find love. Tracing Sherman's path, Ross McElwee meets various women, falls for them, and then watches his chances at a lasting relationship with them fall to pieces. Meanwhile, nightmares about nuclear war keep him up at night.

Full disclosure: I had to give this a bonus point once I found out the title was much longer than Sherman's March. At 2 1/2 hours, this is a little too long, and I'm not really sure who the audience would be for this sort of thing. People like me, I guess. It's got a Woody Allen vibe (or maybe a Michael-Moore-without-a-Point vibe), philosophically self-conscious, and folks annoyed by Woody's filmed dissertations on romantic love would likely be just as annoyed with this but for a lot longer. And it's essentially a guy making his own reality show in a time that predates reality television. But I like how McElwee's inner conflicts revolving around art as well as love become universal, and the freeform approach is as revealing as it is humorous. The film tackles a trio of discursive topics--love, nuclear bombs, Sherman--but they somehow come together as a cohesive whole. It's also a series of nice portraits of random people from America's South, almost working as an ethnological study on the side. You've got militia men, a woman who thinks slavery should be allowed for blacks who want to be slaves, and island-dwelling hippie chicks. The episodic, meandering structure makes this a very watchable, entertaining 150 or so minutes, and chances are, if you don't mind the guy, you'll probably enjoy this movie just fine.

No Time for Sergeants

1958 comedy

Rating: 12/20 (Jen missed the beginning but said she's give it an 8/20.)

Plot: Country bumpkin Will Stockdale is drafted into the Air Force. He's simpleminded and naive and makes life difficult for his commanding officer Sergeant King and new pal Ben.

Andy Griffith acts like he's attempting to make his character bust through the screen and bite your face off. And I don't mean that in a good way. He's a lumbering doofus of a character, lovable enough but way too much of a character to make this realistic enough for the comedy to work. Myron McCormick as the sergeant and Nick Adams as Private Ben are guilty of the same thing, almost like the leads have realized that the script isn't very funny and feel the need to out-funny each other with outrageous caricaturization. I kept waiting for the comedy to add up to something, turning into something satirical maybe, but it remained nothing more than a very very mild goofy comedy, like slapstick where slapping and the use of a stick has been strictly forbidden. That's fine because I can appreciate a dumb comedy as much as the next dumb American, but there wasn't a single thing that tickled any of my funny bones, and other than the criminally underused Don Knotts, I doubt I'll remember a single gag from No Time for Sergeants in a few months. In a way, this feels like an American take on a Jacques Tati type movie, the simple man who is thrown into a technologically-advanced world, or a world where the rules and regulations don't seem to match up with how the main character goes about things. But, typically American, the main character talks way too much and kind of stomps all over everything. I don't know. Maybe the the whole thing's a metaphor for our military?

To Be or Not to Be

1942 black comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A group of Polish actors' lives are turned upside-down when Germany invades Poland. Apparently, this is based on something that actually happened. They're also upset because they can't make ice cubes after losing the recipe. And they're upset because the only library in Poland had to close down after somebody stole the book. Through an English pilot, they get wind that a spy has entered Poland, a spy with some information that must not get into the hands of the Nazis. It might take the performances of their lives, but they're going to try to stop him.

The reason I loved Three's Company so much as a kid was because of its clever use of dramatic irony. Well, and Don Knotts' Mr. Furley. To Be or Not to Be, possibly a movie even more clever than that television show, has plenty of those Three's Company dramatically ironic moments. And it's when the audience is privy to information the characters aren't that things get really fun here. There's also a great script, and this is one of those cases where I wish I would have read a plot synopsis prior to starting the film so that I could have spent more time just enjoying the dialogue instead of trying to figure out what was going on. Good, sharp dialogue though. "You weren't funny when you played Lady MacBeth." "Thank you." The excitement that Tura has when he exclaims, "Maybe he's dead already!" "He's just a man with a little mustache." Lots of funny early lines as they're preparing their "Nazi" play, too. It's that classic movie dialogue that's too zippy and vibrant but nonetheless terrific. We're not looking for realism anyway, are we? Speaking of movies that are this old, this one sure seems ballsy for a movie made in 1942. The lightness it addresses concentration camps and the war (a very non-Three's Company sort of dramatic irony) and marital infidelity feels contemporary. The performances are good, especially the two who get their faces on the big yellow poster. Carole Lombard's classy in the way she doesn't seem to have to work hard at all to be very funny. And Jack Benny shows comic virtuosity in a versatile and funny performance. I really liked the beard scene. It's scenes like that that make this as funny as The Great Dictator and a whole lot funnier than Schindler's List. My one wish: a "mirror" scene like in Duck Soup with Hitler and a lookalike. Lost potential there.

Ivan's Childhood

1962 war movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Poor Ivan. Germans killed his parents. He attempts to avenge their deaths during World War II by acting as a Russian spy, taking advantage of his tiny frame to sneak around undetected and bring back important intelligence.

I told Jen that she had to watch this with me because I watched (survived) the painful Meet Me in St. Louis. She agreed, but she didn't last five minutes. Too bad because this is one terrific movie! I've got plans to watch all of Andrei Tarkovsky's movies this year and decided to start with this, his first. Although this maybe isn't as avant-garde as the other movies of his I've seen, there's still a lot of stunning stuff going on here, especially for a directorial debut. What you notice first is the cinematography. The black and white gives this a dreamy quality, and the locations (swamps with streaks of dark trees cutting across gray skies, dilapidated buildings devoured by war) are filmed so beautifully. Ivan's Childhood is also the type of movie that makes you think about lighting. Three or four dream sequences, including a startling bit with a truck full of apples that represents the most experimental part of the movie, give Ivan some backstory as well as bringing his character, in his current state, closer to you. The kid (Nikolay Burlyaev) is really good, a child performance that rivals Jake Lloyd's in The Phantom Menace. The ending is a real downer but just about perfect. It, along with a few other scenes, are so good that you almost have to pause the movie to pick your jaw off the floor. A real soul rocker!

Next Tarkovsky movie: The Mirror. If anybody's interested in simul-watching, let me know.

Lifeboat

1944 Hitchcock movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A black guy, a nerdy guy, a guy who likes dancing, a guy who doesn't like to wear a shirt, a snobbish socialite, a young woman, and maybe a couple people I've forgotten about survive the sinking of their ship. Tension mounts when they pick up one of the Germans who torpedoed their ship. They debate what to do with their "prisoner" but soon realize they may have to rely on his expertise to save them from their predicament.

I was skimming a trivia page for Lifeboat and came across this nugget: Members of the crew noticed that Tallulah Bankhead was performing sans underwear and brought the issue to Uncle Alfred's attention. Hitchcock answered, probably while chewing on marbles, "I don't know if this is a matter for the costume department, makeup, or hairdressing." I told my wife this, and she asked (with that scrunched-up face she makes some times), "Are you putting that in the blog?" I said, "Of course!" She suggested I start writing cleaner and "get rid of the randiness." So that brings us to the first shane-movies poll of 2011! Please leave your answer(s) in the comments. Do you:

A) want less randiness
B) want a lot less randiness
C) want more randiness
D) want a whole lot more randiness, randiness of Mary Poppins proportions!
E) want nothing but randiness
F) want no randiness at all
G) want the exact same amount of randiness
H) want the same amount of randiness but desire some diversity in the randiness
I) have no problems with randiness as long as it's not too gross or read too close to dinner time
J) have problems even remembering any shane-movies randiness in previous entries
K) have no problem with randiness as long as it's in an entry about randy old Uncle Alfred's movies
L) just want me to write about the movies and not go on and on about randiness
M) want this to be the randiest blog in the history of the Internet
N) think I should start having give-aways like some blogs my wife reads


Quick note: Two movies in a row to start this year with a compound word for a title. Although I'm not sure Timecrimes is a real word.

The movie? Well, John Steinbeck wrote it, based on Hitchcock's idea, and Hitchcock directed it. For a 40's movie that takes place entirely in a boat (Hitchcock experimenting again with a one-setting movie), it sure manages to seem realistic. I like that Hitchcock wasn't afraid to take a tense situation and throw in some comic moments. There are a lot of characters for one lifeboat, and I wish they could have been developed more. This is the type of movie that forces the viewer to put themselves in the situation of its characters and imagine making the same choices though, and it is a story more about the situation than the individuals involved. I really liked Walter Slezak as the enigmatic German, always calculating and with motivations that don't entirely make sense to me. Odd ending, one that made me wonder if Hitchcock was messing with me. Speaking of the director, you've got to look close for his trademark cameo, but it's a clever one.

Rome Open City

1945 slapstick comedy

Rating: 18/20

Plot: It's just like every skit that I ever saw on The Benny Hill show except with more Nazis and no "Yakety Sax" at all.

Stark, powerful look at the life of ordinary people and folks involving themselves in the Resistenza near the end of World War II, the "Not-So-Great" War. There aren't special effects or exterior sets needed. This was filmed right after the Germans were booted, and maybe better than any movie I can remember, it shows everything like it really was, even more than a documentary would. And definitely more than an Ernest movie would! The characters and their motivations are sketches, but I liked that. It made some of the twists in the story more twisty and helped lend a realism to everything that was going on. It never really felt like I was watching a movie. To be completely honest, it didn't always feel like I was watching a good movie. The lighting is bad in spots, and it looks cheaply produced at times. But when you take the film in context, it's impressive stuff and somehow seems to give the movie more ummph. It's really Open City's rough edges that make it the experience that it is. It's not the happiest movie you'll ever see, especially the devastating final fifteen minutes, but it's probably a movie you should see anyway.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

2009 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A journalist who isn't afraid to show off his lightsaber on film takes off for Iraq to hopefully become a war correspondent and impress his ex-wife. Apparently, she's not impressed with his aforementioned lightsaber. He's not having much luck until he runs into Lyn Cassady who claims to be a member of the New Earth Army, a U.S. army unit trained to battle the enemy with psychic powers--walking through walls, killing with the mind, using Jedi mind tricks. Journalist Bob Wilton decides to tag along, hoping to get the scoop of a lifetime.

I hadn't heard anything positive about this one unless you consider "quirky" or "Coen Bro. rip-off" compliments. However, it's got a lot going for it, and I enjoyed it despite its flaws. First, it's got a solid cast. You've got golden boy George Clooney. He's been in some bad movies, but his resume's got more cream than crap and I really like how he does comedy. Jeff Bridges is always delightful, and Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor do a good job with roles atypical for them. Heck, Ewan doesn't even display his junk in this one! Good supporting cast, too. The subject matter, about as ridiculous as a something based on true events can get, opens the door for loads of comedy, and although a lot of the jokes seem a little too easy, it'll appeal to those who like their comedy a little left of center. The pace is reckless and the story scattered and heavy on narrated flashbacks, but I thought this worked satirically, poking at fish in a barrel maybe but nevertheless cleverly dealing with the absurdities of war. I wish this would have been a bit more focused or more fully realized or even more intelligent, but if you mentally place it in that "dumb comedy" genre, it'll work for you. I chortled anyway.

Archangel

1990 romantically-comedic fever dream of a war movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: It's World War I, and Lt. John Boles finds himself in the arctic Russian town of Archangel where he meets a woman named Veronkha who he mistakes for his dead former lover Iris. Veronkha's married to cowardly Philbin who can't seem to remember that he has a wife. Meanwhile, Veronkha starts to believe that John is her husband. All this while a war is going on! Maybe. I think the narrator said at one point that the war was over. I'm not sure because I was almost almost as confused as the characters in the movie.

And the likable thing about shane-movies favorite Guy Maddin movies, to me anyway, is that it all doesn't matter a whole lot. His characters follow their own logic, a fuzzy dream logic that I suppose would make perfect sense if you were able to use a different part of your brain to watch it. Idiosyncratic (read: downright weird) to say the least. At the same, Maddin's got a message very similar to Tarantino's in Basterds about how film or, more specifically, propaganda film can shape people's opinions on war. Archangel features some nifty photography and creative expressionistic set design, and like most of Maddin's movies, offers a generous helping of dry, ultra-askew humor. If you're into old-timey melodramatic and surreal oddballery, I can't recommend this guy's (pun intended) movies enough. And if all that isn't enough to sell this to you, I'll add two more words: intestine strangulation! Hooyah!

No End in Sight

2007 horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A documentary about how our elected officials and the people they work closely with are sometimes really silly.

Quick confession: This documentary was so scary that I eventually decided to mute my television. Watching the antics of Dubya, Dick "The Man with One Face" Cheney, Booty Rice, and Donald Duck without the sound wasn't any less scary, so I ended up playing "Yakety Sax" over and over again as a soundtrack to the film. Then, I watched the documentary at twice the normal speed so that it looked more like outtakes from Benny Hill's show. It turned out to be hilarious that way! I typically avoid politics, and I didn't really need to be reminded about the goings-on of what will undoubtedly later be thought of as a Mt. Rushmore of ruination and American embarrassment. I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed this, and I'm not sure I really know enough to figure out if I'm being duped by a deluge of propaganda. I'm also not sure how much of this is new information or how much is just a rehash of stuff I would already know if I paid attention to the always-reliable American media. I did think a lot of this--image juxtaposition, the repeated "declined to be interviewed for this film" line, one-sided narration--was a little too obvious; the statistics and interviews of the people involved were effective by themselves. This is shocking, jaw-droppingly so, like a horror movie where you already know the ending but are stuck on the edge of your seat anyway. I'd love to watch this with a Bush supporter to find out how he'd justify any of this. God, I wish this was a mockumentary.

The hippie half of Cory recommended this documentary.

The Caine Mutiny

1954 boat movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Rub a dub dub, a bunch of men in a tub. Mother-fixated horndog Ensign Keith hops on board the titular rickety ship. The first guy in charge (Lt. Capt. Sergeant Commander) is replaced by a new guy who looks and acts suspiciously like Humphrey Bogart. It doesn't take long for the rest of the crew to figure out that this guy is not only a stubborn and unfair disciplinarian, but probably batshit insane and a little yellow. After a series of questionable decisions, the titular mutiny occurs during a storm. Then, there's a court martial.

Here's an action drama with the rawness and depth you'd expect from a Disney production. Maybe that's just because of Mickey Mouse's pal Fred MacMurray, but more than likely it's something else. Stuffed to the gills with big, big music and images of actors almost looking like they're actually on a boat, this sounds and looks like an enthralling dramatic adventure story, but it's really pretty flat. The characters are types, and the acting, including with Bogart's Queeg but especially with Robert Francis's Keith, is just ho-hum, exactly what you'd expect instead of being challenging or creating characters with depth. The story's fine, but it just seems like nothing fits right with this movie, like a Japanese man singing the blues. My favorite scene:

(Keith and his special lady friend are standing outside saying romantic things to each other, things that were apparently written by somebody who has never heard real people talk and gets his inspiration from romantic movies from the 1930s. Keith kisses his special lady friend on the forehead.)
Special lady friend: Keith! There are people.
Keith: I don't care. Let them look!
(More forehead kissing ensues.)
Special lady friend: It's getting late.
(Scene fades. And the next shot is a waterfall the following morning. It's symbolic.)

That kind of seems sexually explicit and borderline offensive because of how the rest of this movie feels. And that's really the main problem with this movie. It's ok. It's butterscotch pudding. If you really want to eat some pudding, butterscotch pudding is fine. But it's a boring pudding that nobody really wants. If you have to watch The Caine Mutiny, it's fine, but I don't see anything here that makes it seem like something that anybody really wants.

Yet another Cory recommendation! He's apparently a big fan of butterscotch pudding.

"Breaker" Morant

1980 war movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: During the Boer War, a war that nobody's even heard of, three Australians are put on trial for killing Boer prisoners-of-war and a missionary.

"Breaker" Morant is a movie that just seems different, and I think I finally figured out why. As I watched, the pacing seemed off. After finishing, however, I realized what is different about the pacing--there's nothing wasted here. Everything the director shows us contributes to either the flashback sequences or the courtroom stuff. Most films like this would take a different approach, I think, with superfluous character development or extraneous scenes designed to pull at our guts, but this just lays out the facts, revealing them incrementally in the flashbacks or the courtroom revelations. Of course, the way the story unfolds is a little different too. There's nothing that really dazzles in this. The performances are great from top to bottom, but none of the actors draw attention to themselves and give any of those obvious award-winning performances. Edward Woodward (The Wicker Man) is great as the title character, but Bryan Brown and Lewis Fitzgerald are also good as the other two lieutenants on trial. And Chris Haywood, providing some lighter moments as Corporal Sharp, was also really good. The war scenes are exciting, but the court room scenes are even more powerful. I really liked the flashback structure, and knowing nothing about the true story this is based on, I was surprised by how wrong I was about what actually happened or how things were going to turn out. This raises interesting questions about war, specifically the idea of "war crimes," and justice, and it's really a nice little gem of a movie.

Note: I may or may not have given this movie a bonus point for a bawdy limerick. Knowing me, I probably did since "bawdy limerick" is my favorite literary genre.

This Cory recommendation wasn't one I looked forward to watching or really expected to like. I guess I should trust him a little more.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

1956 movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Meet Tom Rath--WWII veteran, businessman, father, titular man, generally nondescript guy. He's got a nice home in Connecticut, a nice job in New York, a loving wife, some loud children. But Tom Rath isn't without his problems. He's haunted by things that happened in the war, and money's tight. So when a fellow commuter shows him an open door leading into the chromium jungle, Rath decides to enter.

I like the general ideas here, the character study of a guy who superficially is as mundane as the gray suit he wears to the job but who, like most people, has so much bubbling subcutaneously. The color gray's important, too, as Rath is a character who you really can't define in blacks and whites. The almost alarming thing about The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is the lack of depth, especially given how long this movie is. Overlong even. This is technicolor melodrama wading in the shallow end of a swimming pool filled with squirmy things. It skims along the story's surfaces like a stone, bouncing across issues like war trauma, infidelity, career changes, the importance of money, the importance of family, honesty, and a man's moral obligations. But you only get ripples, not anything to really reflect upon or digest. I also didn't like Gregory Peck. I've liked him before, and I wish I sounded like him when I talked because I think it would be funny to say things like "Oh, man. My underpants are bunched up again!" in a Gregory Peck voice. Or, "I'd give top dollar for a nipple-softening machine." But here, Gregory Peck is cardboard, and cardboard, when you put it in water of any depth, just gets soggy and useless. I'm fairly positive this is the longest movie I've ever seen.

Readers, what words do you think would sound funny if spoken by Gregory Peck?

The Man Who Never Was

1956 WWII movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The English want to attack the Axis in Sicily, but they don't want them to find out about it before it happens. In order to convince them that they are actually going to attack in Greece, they plant some confidential information (basically a briefcase that has FYOBFFLOL ["For You Only Best Friend Forever Laugh Out Loud" for my non-military readers]) on a dead guy, take him for a submarine ride, toss him in the Mediterranean, and push him toward the shores of Southern Spain. The right people find the body, and a spy is sent to England to investigate this dead guy. Even though this sounds a little like Weekend at Bernies II, it's actually based on a true story.

This is a look at the chess game behind World War II, and I loved the cat-and-mouse game going on here. The first half of the movie is devoted to the meticulous scheming and all the arrangements they had to make for the plan to succeed. They're excellent heroes because they're smart heroes. They, Lieutenant Montagu and Lieutenant Acres played respectively by Clifton Webb and Robert Flemyng, also have good rapport and talk with each other with this dry English humor that gives this a little something extra. The second half brings the spy into the picture. He's smart as well, and there's a lot of fun and suspense in watching him try to find some evidence that the titular (I can't help myself) man is a fake while they run around trying to fill in the gaps. There's nothing flashy because there doesn't need to be anything flashy in this story where the truth is definitely more interesting than fiction. I like how director Ronald Neame (Tunes of Glory, A Man Could Get Killed, Man with a Million) focuses on the minutiae. The tiny details lend a realism. Cool little war movie!

Army of Shadows

1969 war movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: The precursor for MTV's reality show The Real World, this follows some members of the French Resistance as they find various ways of resisting, stopping only to bicker about who put his finger in the peanut butter or ate the last of the ice cream. Unlike the MTV show, however, some of these guys die instead of just being people you wish you could see die on camera.

Here's the cool thing about this one: there's (if I recall correctly) no violence shown on screen in this one, yet there's this incredible underlying but palpable fear of violence. This is the quiet side of the French Resistance, and nearly all the action takes place inside the characters. Most of the suspense comes from these characters simply making difficult decisions, so instead of getting a gripping action-packed film, you get a gripping reflective and philosophical film, albeit one that is just as exciting. I just love how all the characters go about their business nonchalantly. There's nothing stunning about the performances, but you can see fear beneath the pores and a resignation that they will more than likely die because of what they're doing. They're great characters doing extraordinary in really ordinary ways. They really are more shadows than they are men and woman. The story is almost frustratingly episodic, and many would consider the ending a bit of a let-down, but each individual anecdote is intriguing and packed with tension. But it's that quiet, relaxed tension, almost like Melville was filming this in a library or near sleeping children and had to use an inside voice the entire time. This film is as good as any at showing the human side of this sort of thing. There's nothing tricky here--no special effects, no explosions, no shoot-outs. Just good drama. Man, this Melville cat was good. Expect a review of his Bob the Fumbler, an action-packed tale of a French running back with tiny hands, later this week.

Another solid Cory recommendation.

Block-Heads

1938 comedy

Rating: 15/20 (Dylan: 11/20)

Plot: Laurel (he's the skinny one, right?) is left to guard the trenches as the rest of his squadron, including Hardy (he's the fat one, right?) charge. And guard that trench he does, for twenty years after the war is over. Buddy Hardy (the fat one?), now unhappily married, reads about him in the newspaper and goes to meet him. He brings Laurel (the skinny one, I think) back to his house, but their stupidity gets them into trouble after trouble.

I tricked Dylan into watching this by telling him it was widely-considered the "greatest war movie ever made." That was a lie, but I don't feel guilty about it because he kind of liked it. This is, I believe, my first exposure to Laurel and Hardy's full-length film career. I didn't have high expectations and was pleasantly surprised with the comedic hijinks of the duo. The comedy is maybe a bit dated, like all my favorite comedy, but there's a visual element that I didn't figure would be in their movies. I like the stuff that could only make sense in dream logic--Laurel pulling a glass of water out of his pocket or smoking his "pipe," for example--and I was really surprised how much both Dylan and I laughed at their antics. The story, or what passes as a story here, is episodic, but my ADD self can appreciate that when the alternative is the more story-driven comedies of this period. I'll be checking out some more Laurel and Hardy films soon!

Oh, I almost forgot. Not only does this have a great scene with a little person, there's also a moment where Laurel teabags Hardy.

Punishment Park

1971 social statement

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Pseudo-doc chronicling a group of counter-cultural anti-establishment troublemakers ranging from subversive folk singers to people who want to blow up government buildings as they are sentenced and given the option of jail time or a trip to Punishment Park where they have three days to run through a desert to reach an American flag while policemen chase them.

This is one of the most consistently realistic mock documentaries I've ever seen. There's no way this Punishment Park was even considered, let alone something that actually existed, but it's hard to watch this without being almost fooled that the government had set something up like this. A lot of the credit has to go to the actresses and actors--the hippies, the pigs, and the members of the tribunal. The desert setting also contributes, giving this a harsh realism. The story is tense, filled with bile and what looks to be actual hatred, both from the screaming maltreated hippies and the less-obvious government people whose loathing was a little more submerged. The complete lack of music, the handheld cameras, and what I think was probably largely-improvised dialogue also helped. As a metaphor, this at times delivers its message a little too forcefully, an allegory that could have been two pages but ended up as twenty. And I don't think the good guys in this always look like good guys. There's also a moment when the documentarians turn subjective (when documentarians attack) and I'm not exactly sure that was necessary. But this is a completely engrossing product of its time, one whose relevancy today is more than a little scary. Strong stuff, likely to offend a bunch of people, even people who might agree with the politics. But most hippies would love it, assuming they can afford dvd players to watch it on and could squeeze in some time to watch it between all their dope smoking and not bathing.