Husbands and Wives - 1992 - 4 Stars

Actors: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow

Director: Woody Allen

Woody Allen has written and directed a film every year since 1981. It's an absolutely amazing output; I can't think of anyone with a body of work even close to as all-encompassing as Allen's. Yet his career disappoints me. His films are like jazz performances of the same song - sure, all the notes and beats won't be the same on each performance, but they won't be all that different either. The underlying themes remain the same.

Husbands and Wives should be a tour de force, a career-defining film. Allen is at his most inventive with camera work - the camera swirls around people's New York City apartments, sometimes focusing on the person who's not talking. Allen experiments with jump cutting as well, using that to great effect. There's extended monologues where the camera stays focused on the person speaking for the entire time. It's really great stuff, and would be greater if I hadn't seen most of Allen's 'best work'.

I'm currently reading the book Truffaut/Hitchcock which is merely an interview of Alfred Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut. It's fascinating stuff. Hitchcock says that too many directors rely on dialogue to get their point across. Film is an inherently visual medium, he says, and too often directors forget that. Allen has made so many almost great films, but he lards them up with narration or other fourth-wall breaking devices that allow him to get all his points across. In Husbands and Wives, for instance, there's several scenes where it appears that the characters are either in therapy or being interviewed for a television show. Maybe there just isn't a good visual way to bring across the way that people convince themselves to either accept their lot in life or seek something different; maybe these people have to talk into the camera to really get a sense of how fleeting their feelings are. I don't know. Part of me just wishes that Allen had only made 15 films over the last 29 years - I think his output would be far stronger.

The Rules Of The Game - 1939 - 4½ Stars

Actors: Nora Gregor, Marcel Dalio

Director: Jean Renoir

The Rules of the Game is so ingeniously plotted that it feels like adapted Shakespeare - it is continually twisting and turning as the characters' desires bend and sway and break. Set in pre-WWII France, The Rules of the Game concerns the marital and extra-marital affairs of a particularly bourgeois set and their hired help.

It's really the film's inventive camera-work that's appealing - scenes are stuffed with characters moving in and out of the shot, and Renoir always manages some way to show the most important character(s) in the scene even if they're not talking. The only complaint I'd have is that it is difficult to keep track of all the characters, but still, I think that's part of the fun.

My Own Private Idaho - 1991 - 3 Stars

Actors: River Phoenix, Keanu Reeves

Director: Gus Van Sant

For all its flaws, My Own Private Idaho is clearly made by a talented and inventive filmmaker. A loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV set in the Pacific Northwest (and concerning male prostitutes), Idaho... contains scenes bursting with creative life, and scenes that seem to drag on endlessly. Among all the virtuosity, it's hard to get a grip on our main characters until the end of the film. I'd like to label this sort of movie a 'things happen' movie - because that's what happens in this movie. We go from place to place without much investment in our characters. I feel like if one or two scenes were trimmed, and one or two scenes added, this could have been a great film.

On the plus side, I've never seen a less wooden performance out of Keanu Reeves - he actually looks like an actor in this film.

The White Ribbon - 2009 - 4 Stars

Actors: Ulrich Tukur, Susanne Lothar

Director: Michael Haneke

The White Ribbon has 3 strikes against it to any potential viewer - it's foreign, it's in black and white, and it's a period film. Set in the early 20th century, The White Ribbon explores a breakdown in civility within a small German village. The film excels is at making this village and all its characters feel real. There's no one who is too attractive to have been living in an early 20th century village, for instance. It takes a while to get going, and some of the characters are difficult to distinguish from one another, but such is a black and white film where everyone wears drab clothing.

What The White Ribbon really feels like is Dostoyevsky, which is high praise for a film. There's elements of all his works in here; for instance, the reserved way in which the characters comport themselves in public being contrasted with the evil things that people do and have done to them in private. There's the way in which some characters celebrate their own baseness. Haneke explores how class affects people's relations with one another; small towns are a perfect place to do that. One almost comes away from the movie knowing less than when one went in, which is a kind of success.

Unforgiven - 1992 - 4 Stars

Actors: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman

Director: Clint Eastwood

When we leave behind an old habit or even a way of life, does it remain a part of us? How much of a part of us is it? And what would it take to reawaken that part?

Unforgiven asks these questions and answers them in a roundabout fashion. Great performances from Hackman and Eastwood, as well as all of the women in the film. It's this portrayal of women that tells us Unforgiven is not a typical Western, which is perhaps why it won an Oscar.

Hot Tub Time Machine - 2010 - 3 Stars

Actors: John Cusack, Craig Robinson

Director: Steve Pink

It's hard for me to believe that meta time-machine humor exists, but it does. Hot Tub Time Machine plays around with the tropes established by films like Back to the Future and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure without directly referencing them. There's also an inordinately large special effects budget for this film - they really went all out with the whole Hot Tub Time Machine concept. Regardless, the movie gets some pretty consistent laughs throughout, even if it never had me laughing uproariously.

Note: Spoilers Ahead

Much like The Hangover, I do have a problem with the film philosophically - but I suppose that's ridiculous for a film called Hot Tub Time Machine. Whatever the case, the film's happy ending was not happy for me.

Z - 1969 - 4½ Stars

Actors: Yves Montand, Irene Papas

Director: Costa-Gravas

Z begins with what is probably a famous statement - "Any resemblance in this film to any persons, living or dead, is not accidental - it is INTENTIONAL." I don't really know if the events of Z are true, and it's been 45 years since they occurred. This is helpful, I think, to evaluate the film - I didn't see it from an idealogical standpoint, even though the film unquestionably takes a stand.

Where Z succeeds and a lesser movie could have failed is in its commitment to demonstrating self-interest at every turn - our heroes are not heroes, and our villains not fully villainous. Everyone has their reasons for doing what they did, and their reasons often are less airy than ideology. From a direction standpoint, there's also some brilliantly conceived camera shots; the filmmaker was able to restrain his anger enough to create audacious shots that are too rarely seen in American cinema.