Dirty Harry - 1971 - 4 Stars, 1½ Stars

I gave this film two ratings because Dirty Harry is actually two movies - one is a really cool crime drama about a cop who doesn't always play by the rules, the other is a really awful crime drama about a cop who doesn't always play by the rules. I felt it was unfair to combine the two.

Let's talk about the one I liked first, because it doesn't have any spoilers. Two things I loved about the way the good Dirty Harry was made - the use of light and dark in scenes. Sometimes it's so dark we don't quite know what we're looking at, but it's the good kind of obscurity - it's realistic. This flows into point number two: Dirty Harry does not often resort to typical film chicanery in many of its action scenes. Many action scenes create tension by pitting two forces against one another and have us constantly checking in on both those forces - the classic example is that horror film moment where people are led to scream 'Don't open that door!' at the screen because they know the murderer is behind it. In these cases, we are presented with a (literally) unrealistic view by basically being two places at once; it squarely makes us an observer of the action - we wish we could tell the characters what to do. Dirty Harry mostly puts us in the eyes (or close enough) of our protagonist, which creates tension because his uncertainty is our uncertainty - we think about what we would do, rather than what other people should do. I generally like this way better.

Note: Major Spoilers Ahead

The second movie, however, is terrible; it made me angry and bored at the same time, and I hope to do the same to you with this writeup. I do not understand what this film is trying to accomplish. If you haven't seen the movie in a while, the killer is set free on a technicality because basically Dirty Harry totally didn't follow procedure at all. He also tortured the killer so that he would release information; a torture which the film does not show us, which to me is unforgivable. If the film is going to traffic in this kind of morality where torture is acceptable, it cannot then fail to show us the brutal torture that no doubt happened. So the killer gets free, but Harry shadows him on his free time. The killer notices this, so he hires someone to beat him mercilessly (which the film does show us). He then claims Harry delivered this beating, a plot point which the film totally disregards after it happens. He strikes again, Harry is called to the mayor's office, which mayor is completely set on giving the killer exactly what he wants because he Needs To Get Re-Elected - at which point Harry is asked to be the bagman for yet another handoff to the killer (the first one failed, remember). This point is totally absurd given that Harry has already been reprimanded for tailing the killer on his off-time as well as failing to make the first handoff, but the situation does provide the necessary deus ex machina for the very cathartic ending whereby Harry finds out the killer's location so he can kill him.

My mind is now saying, 'But it's just a movie, that's just a plot point'. Maybe so. I'm not really upset at all the attacks on the Rule of Law - lord knows the film world does not need another Courtroom Scene (which scenes I generally find awful - the only thing worse than fetishizing vigilante justice is fetishizing its opposite), and this film delightfully stays out of that quagmire. The reason why it feels monstrous is because we know the ending - we know Dirty Harry is going to beat the living shit out of this guy. But first some kids have to get slapped and bus drivers beaten and lives endangered - the violence and mayhem becomes pornographic at that point, which is of course hugely ironic because Harry's whole raison d'etre seems to be fighting against those who feel that violence is fun by engaging in violence (which he may or may not find fun, but which we as an audience should). Violence IS fun - don't go ruining it with morality.

So yeah - if I had turned this movie off around 70 minutes in, I would've been pretty happy with it.

Wet Hot American Summer - 2001 - 3 Stars

The camp film parody Wet Hot American Summer can basically be summed up in one scene. The host of the climactic talent show is one of the camp counselors, dressed up as a Castkills comedian. He begins delivering his super-lame act, but for some reason, the audience absolutely loves it, and laughs wildly at all of his insanely corny jokes. This is the essence of the film: it's a mockery of mockeries, poking fun at films that were already light-hearted.

I was not one of those people who generally went to summer camp (I hate both people and summer camps, which is probably why I now have a film blog), and I've avoided the summer camp film, so the parodies in the film mostly fall flat for me. Even so, I (very) grudgingly give it three stars with the recognition that I am mostly no fun and that this movie really, really tries to be fun.

Stroszek - 1977 - 2½ Stars

It is often said that comedy doesn't translate well. What's considered humorous in one culture is not always so in another, and the language is always a barrier. Even more difficult is black humor, where tragedy and comedy mix freely - it's very hard to figure out what is miserable and what is funny. Stroszek, Werner Herzog's 1977 dark comedy about Germans in America suffers from a further problem: it's a German view of America, so what is supposed to be poignant satire, what is farcical? I understand that humor is subjective and that anything is funny, but I guess I just didn't 'get' this film. It has a definite Coen Brothers feel, but of one of their lesser films which feel more cruel than funny.

Making the film more difficult for me to interpret is the presence of Bruno S. as the lead man. Bruno S. is very clearly not a traditional actor; he kind of reminds me of Harpo Marx. He seems almost oddly blessed, despite not being very bright. His way of acting around other people is not like any other person or actor. I don't know that he's really the right actor for this film, though.

Burden Of Dreams - 1982 - 3½ Stars

I wasn't even sure if I should write this up here, because Burden of Dreams is a documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo. So basically this is an injunction to see Fitzcarraldo if you already haven't.

Note: Spoilers for Fitzcarraldo ahead

We've all watched a movie with someone who points out, during a particularly harried action sequence, something like 'that's a cool special effect'. I've always felt things like this are strange to say, because it is composed of two parts, both of which are kind of opposite; that A: that special effect very well replicated how real life is and B: that special effect very well replicated how life should be. These two conflicting claims get at what film itself is trying to do, but of course in doing so, it reveals that we are, of course, watching a film.

Fitzcarraldo makes a viewer confront this 'I'm watching a film' phenomenon with its incredible sequence where Fitzcarraldo and his native followers manage to lift a boat across a mountain. The question of 'How did they do this?' works both within the film and outside of it - how the hell did they do it? Burden of Dreams is unfortunately silent on this, mostly because it seems the documentary-makers themselves were forced to give up on the very project they were filming. It does, however, show that the man hired to engineer this feat walked off the set because he felt it would endanger people's lives.

What's striking about Burden of Dreams is that it reveals just how difficult it was to use natives in the film. Herzog decides to shoot the film thousands of miles from civilization 'to get performances out of his actors that he wouldn't otherwise' - but he's also employing lots of natives whose language Herzog does not speak and who have not been extras in a film. The documentary is filled with complications such as these, and we are left to wonder - how was it even possible to make this film?

Filmmaking is such a strange art - a filmmaker needs to employ dozens of other people to make his vision come to life. In Burden of Dreams, we learn how much suffering is undergone by everyone involved to make one man's mad vision exist forever.

Five Star Films

Some of you know me, some of you don't - even so, I figured I'd produce a list of films I consider 5 star movies, just so there's an idea of where I'm coming from with this.

Some films will be denoted with an asterisk - these are films I will not be defending as 5 star films in the comments section. They are movies I really liked for one reason or another, but have obvious flaws.

25th Hour* - Lee - 2002
American History X* - Kaye - 1998
Amores Perros* - Inarritu - 2000
Andrei Rublev - Tarkovsky - 1966
The Asphalt Jungle - Huston - 1950
The Big Lebowski - Coens - 1998
The Bridge On The River Kwai - Lean - 1957
Casino - Scorsese - 1995
Cool Hand Luke - Rosenberg - 1967
Das Boot - Petersen - 1981
The Decalogue - Kieslowski - 1987
Double Indemnity - Wilder - 1944
Fitzcarraldo - Herzog - 1982
The Godfather - Coppola - 1972
The Godfather II - Coppola - 1974
The Godfather III - Just making sure you are paying attention...
Goodfellas - Scorsese - 1990
Groundhog Day - Ramis - 1993
The Hustler - Rossen - 1961
In Bruges* - McDonagh - 2008
Koyaanisqatsi - Reggio - 1983
Monty Python And The Holy Grail* - Gilliam - 1975
Monty Python's Life of Brian - Jones - 1979
Mulholland Drive - Lynch - 2001
Network* - Lumet - 1976
No Country For Old Men - Coens - 2007
On The Waterfront - Kazan - 1954
Ran - Kurosawa - 1985
Rashomon - Kurosawa - 1950
Ronin* - Frankenheimer - 1998
Rope - Hitchcock - 1948
The Seventh Seal - Bergman - 1957
Sunrise - Murnau - 1927
The Third Man - Reed - 1949
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? - Nichols - 1966
Yojimbo - Kurosawa - 1961

Gerry - 2002 - 3½ Stars

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt described his compositions as 'tintinnabular' - 'like bells' - slow tempo music with few notes and long silences. Despite this, his pieces Spiegel Im Spiegel and Fur Alina are incredibly moving and rich. The film Gerry is much the same way, and these two pieces by Pärt are a supremely perfect choice to comprise the bulk of the film's music. There's a tiny skeleton of a plot and character, the film moves at a snail's pace, but it is still full of life.

It is somewhat difficult to believe that Gus Van Sant directed Gerry in 2002 coming off 2000's insanely mediocre Finding Forrester (which I happened to catch a large portion of last night in a post-Yankees stupor). More amusingly, the average rating on Netflix is 2.4 stars, which suggests a lot of folks who liked Matt Damon and Gus Van Sant in Good Will Hunting did not so much appreciate their effort here. It is funny how a varied film career can sometimes work against an artist.

Gerry is kind of like if a director took the first 20 minutes of Koyaanisqatsi and gave it characters. Ian accused me of using the more obscure to explain the less obscure in a previous entry, and I may again be doing that here, but the analogy will hold to anyone who's seen both. Maybe it's more like Easy Rider updated for the 21st century. Whatever. It's certainly worth seeing if you can stomach a bit of wandering.

Hot Fuzz - 2007 - 3 Stars

Note: Oblique spoilers ahead

Since I began this blog, I have desperately tried to avoid my previous post-film ritual - running to the Internet to see what other people thought about the movie. I like to keep my own impressions fresh without watering them down with others' commentary. With Hot Fuzz, I just couldn't resist - the film turns from a cheeky country vs. city British comedy into something far more absurd, and I had to know what others thought about it.

Hot Fuzz runs into a problem that comedy films often do - to play something as big and ridiculous as possible, hoping that big laughs follow. My suspicion is that Animal House is not considered a comedy classic because of its anarchic final scene; Hot Fuzz goes for a similarly big climax and misfires.

One thing the film makes great use of is editing - a lot of jokes are created simply by the way the film is cut. It's reminiscent of Requiem for a Dream, as well as those British movies where British people shout in British accents about a lot of gangster stuff. It's rather ingenious.

The film is probably better than I am giving it credit for being, but it runs long and much of the humor derives from parody; being inundated with parody all over television and film, I may be immune to thinking that parody is at all clever. It's probably worth seeing.

Heat - 1995 - 4 Stars

Note: Minor spoilers ahead

Why or how I managed to go the last fourteen years without having seen Heat - I'm not quite sure. I think I confused it with Sly Stallone's Copland, and I'm only half-joking about this. Heat is a Hitchcock film for our time. It is not a revelation in plot, character, or really any other way; it's just a damn good all-around film.

Pacino/Deniro Scene: Deniro wins easily. Overall disappointing - unless I'm in a David Lynch film, I do not care about dreams in movies. I understand why their conversation went that way, and perhaps dreams were the best place for the chat to go.

Touch of Realism: There's always a kind of invincibility to characters on film - they tend to walk through storms of bullets, fire, etc. I like minor touches that remind us that these characters supposedly exist in the same world that we do - Heat has one such scene. Al Pacino pulls over Deniro's car on the shoulder of a major highway. Before getting out of the car, he looks over his left shoulder to ensure he won't be creamed by oncoming traffic. I don't even think this is normally worth commenting on, but it's a moment of tiny 'weakness' that films often remove. And yes, next up, I mention seatbelt usage and turn signals in Ronin.

Cool Setting: I normally dislike LA movies, since every movie that's set in no particular city is set in 'LA'. However, Heat makes use of the entire city, giving it a character that most films ignore. Coolest was the scene set at what appeared to be an abandoned drive-in movie theater.

Musical Selections: Gyorgy Ligeti's dissonant, tense music has been used to great effect in film (2001, The Shining) and has also been aped so many times (most recently in There Will Be Blood) that I was surprised to see in the credits that it was actually his piece used here. Moby's God Moving Over the Face of the Waters is a brilliant post-minimalist piece that ends the film perfectly.

Real Life - 1979 - 4 Stars

Not long after the Reality TV craze began, a lot of middlebrow folks wondered what exactly was 'real' about Reality TV. Sure, the people on these shows were usually not actors, and there was no 'story', but the situations depicted were so removed from actual living. Further adding to that is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Art (which I may have stolen from somewhere), which is that observing people, when they know they're being observed, changes them.

Albert Brooks's Real Life anticipates all of this, but its wit does not even lie in prediction. It is a genuinely funny film. Brooks plays a Hollywood director producing a movie that captures the life of a normal American family for a year. Adding an extra layer of irony to the whole thing is the fact that it is a movie about a movie about 'reality' which is being depicted by actors and has a script; as a meta-film, it doesn't really work (or goes over well-trodden ground), but as a meta-meta-film, it's quite brilliant and hilarious at points.


There's a great shot in the film that kind of captures this - Brooks is talking with the wife of the family, who would like some privacy to have a discussion with him about the 'film'. Of course he will not allow this, insisting that his cameramen, dressed in masks that are essentially cameras (as in the picture above), capture this moment. The wife and director stand in front of a storefront window, so that we can see the cameramen in the reflection. However, we cannot see the actual camera, as it is hidden by the actors' bodies at the center of the frame. Meta-meta-film, indeed.

The film tries to get across the notion that when one becomes an artist (or comedian), one's version of the world is warped in perhaps the same way that a businessman's is: a businessman might look at a mountain and see profit, a film director looks at people and sees a story. I have always wondered how actors, who so often marry one another, exist off-screen - their personal lives and fake lives so wrapped up with one another, their identities so amorphous. So too with writers who write about deeply personal things, for whom all their experiences are an opportunity to generate art. Such people excel at replicating universal elements of the human condition - but whether they ever lead real lives, I cannot say.

Kagemusha - 1980 - 4 Stars

Note: Major spoilers ahead.

I'm slowly working my way through the Kurosawa oeuvre - this is the sixth Kurosawa film I've seen. Like many of his films, this one is long and epic in scope, but unlike Ran or The Seven Samurai, it misses the mark. I give it 4 stars anyway because the visuals are unbelievably good, and the first half of the film is as good as any other Kurosawa picture.

What gets lost in this tale of feudal Japan may just be cultural. The dying lord Takeda orders that his death remain a secret; that a man who looks just like him be put in his place - why is this order carried out? It becomes obvious at once that having Takeda's double fulfill all his roles is impossible; his concubines are forbidden to touch him, he is unable to speak publicly, and so forth. Somehow this all comes off with only a few minor hitches, despite the fact that the fake Takeda is low-born and lapses into vulgar behavior any time he is away from anyone not 'in' on it. Yet accidentally it seems that the fiefdom is better off with the false Takeda. as neither he nor his advisors have any plans for war. This is in stark contrast to the other daimyos we see during the film, who are endlessly scheming.

The elements of the film don't come together right - we know that eventually his secret will be found out, and that eventually Takeda's double will die or be cast out; scene after scene unfolds with his advisors figuring out yet another way to disguise their lord's true identity.

More puzzling are the seeming allusions to Christianity throughout - from the double's impending crucifixion at the beginning of the film to the use of Christian missionairies as a physician to Tokugawa's distaste for red wine (brought to Japan by same). If I had to bet, I'd bet that the fake Takeda has 12 advisors, and that his 'son' is the Judas of the lot. What this all adds up to, I am not really sure.

By the end of the film, even Kurosawa realizes we are tired of endless carnage (or just could not stage the final scene properly). The end is tragic, but in a different fashion than traditional tragedy - Takeda's double willingly takes on the disguise in full awareness that he will either be found out or will no longer be useful. That he experiences brief joy with a grandson that is not actually his is not tragic; Kurosawa shows us that the life of a daimyo is always filled with loss.

So yeah, see this, but only after you've seen Ran, Rashomon, Yojimbo, The Seven Samurai, and Throne of Blood.

Quick Change - 1990 - 3 Stars

Quick Change is an ideal TV Comedy Movie. By TV Comedy, I mean the kind of movie one trips over on basic cable, has never heard of, sees that it has Bill Murray, and watches with low/no expectations. Under these circumstances, this can seem like a lovable, underdog, 'How come no one ever told me about this?' kind of movie. With the expectation of Bill Murray comedy, though, the movie doesn't quite make it. There's an excess of hijinks and a lack of Murray witticisms, but still a few genuine laughs.

Trivia note - there's a huge ad for Suntory whiskey in Times Square at the beginning of the film. Suntory is also the whiskey that Murray's character advertises for in Lost in Translation.

Easy Rider - 1969 - 2 Stars

It is worth noting that if I had more political clout, I'd be the mayor of Squaresville. This film may not be for me. Its depictions of drug use and sexuality had to be revolutionary at the time - now it just seems boring. This may be an unfair critique - later films should not inform the way this one goes about telling its story. However, it is not only plotless but characterless, and there is nothing for us to grab on to except beautiful Southwestern vistas, 60s counterculture sights, and an interestingly cut film. Further diluting the revolutionary nature is the soundtrack - hearing the strains of 'Born To Be Wild' over the opening credits must've been fresh in 1969, but having heard it trying to hock automobiles, credit cards, and liquor in recent television ads destroys its potency.

The French Connection - 1971 - 4 Stars

The French Connection is one of those movies I felt guilty about stumbling onto when it was on television, as I'd seen several scenes in the movie multiple times, but had never watched it all the way through. Having finally seen the entire thing, it is a brilliantly shot movie. There is a recent trend towards fragmenting action scenes with so many cuts that the viewer can no longer figure out what is going on (recent Bond films, the Bourne series are good examples). The French Connection shows that a film can still have high tension without overwhelming the viewer.

One of the things I feel is most overlooked about films is their location. The French Connection is, of course, a gloriously New York film. Too many films take place in MovieLand - an indistinct nowhere. The characters are therefore given no locale, no origin; we're set in a weightless story, where there is no past besides what is written into the film. I am aware that it is more expensive to shoot a movie in an actual place, but fantasy is far more vivid when mixed with familiar elements.

Million Dollar Baby - 2004 - 3½ Stars

Umberto Eco said of Casablanca,

"Thus Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. [...] When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion."

I could not help but think of this quote as I watched Million Dollar Baby, a film I had not seen before today. 'Archetypes' is the perfect way to describe the characterization in this film, from the gruff, grizzled, hiding-a-secret trainer to the plucky, determined heroine fighting against everything that's ever beaten her down in her life. It got me to wondering about the nature of cliches and why sometimes we reject them and sometimes embrace them. Million Dollar Baby's plot twists are not always predictable, necessarily, but they're certainly not unexpected either, as its archetypes navigate through thick and thin. We're still left with thoroughly unpeople in this film.

Making the film more cliched was Hilary Swank's hateful, money-grubbing family, who may as well be wearing Evil hats throughout the film. I have always wondered about Hollywood's portrayal of the Midwest and South - I don't live in either of those places, nor have I ever, but it always feels tremendously condescending.

What salvaged the film for me are the acting performances, which are all great, and the story is a nice self-contained unit that gets across everything it wants to. I understand why the film won an Oscar; it is throughout a Hollywood-created fantasy, on all the fictions Hollywood makes us believe because we so badly want to.

The Brothers Solomon - 2007 - 2 Stars

I've already been fooled once. When I see, 'Directed by Bob Odenkirk', I figure that the Mr. Show alumnus is devoting himself to a project at least of equal caliber to Mr. Show, the terrific HBO sketch-comedy show that is still relevant and fresh almost fifteen years after its inception. But Odenkirk directed the mostly terrible Let's Go To Prison - this movie is better, but not by very much.

I will grant that comedy on film is really hard, and the reason why it often does so poorly is that everyone involved can no longer tell what's funny after seeing it fifteen times. There's one moment in the film where à propos of nothing, Will Arnett's character is getting into a rooftop hot tub with the girl he's obsessed with. She is disgusted by him and leaves. After she leaves, he climbs out of the tub and kisses her wet footprint left on the ground. This is mildly funny. The picture begins to fade, showing us Will Arnett in bed - he's dreaming. He wakes up with a smile on his face. This is hilarious. Then the film makes a terrible 'wet dream' pun, and it ruins the dark humor of a character who is excited by the prospect of kissing his crush's remnants (in a dream, no less).

There's the makings of a good movie here, but ultimately it succumbs to the Comedy Movie Formula™.

Harvey - 1950 - 3 Stars

Harvey is a fucking weird movie. That's about all I'll say, although I will say that it is *not* particularly odd if one thinks about it for a short time. It's yet another movie I've seen recently that tries to prove the old George Costanza saw - 'It's not a lie if you believe it.'

I guess all I want to mention here is that this movie completely does not work without Jimmy Stewart. Stewart's aw-shucks honesty in this role is perfect, there is no winking to the audience, and never any doubt in his character.

I can definitely see why Steven Spielberg is supposedly remaking this movie. I will be eager to see how he screws it up.

A Quick Note on Spoilers

I will warn of spoilers if they occur within a post, but everything's fair game in the comments section. That should be self-evident, but I get furiously angry about having movies/tv shows spoiled for me.

The Maltese Falcon - 1941 - 4 Stars

Note: Very minor spoilers

Thomas Hobbes once described life without government as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Film noir paints a picture of life that is quite similar, yet it somehow manages to create out of this Hobbesian muck a life filled with heroes, villains, quips, and dames. Why are some of us so drawn to film noir?

Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade is a private detective working with a partner. When his partner gets shot to death, there's little or no grief or panic, just naked wonder about who perpetrated the crime. That's what, to me, separates noir from other films - the nakedness of the characters' desires. The desire is usually quite simple, but the ability to achieve it quite convoluted. We get to see the characters' interests intertwine and clash, double-crosses, double-dealing, even triple-crosses (hat tip to Miller's Crossing). It's all so damned interesting.

The one failure of film noir is the ability to truly sympathize with the characters - as we find out more and more about what's really going on, our interest in the story's players wanes. Their role is to act out the part of these desires and little more. The Maltese Falcon is no exception, and while its final scene is tremendously well-written, it still strikes a false note to get to that point.