by Dean | Jun 30, 2015 | General
The Howard Hughes-produced The Racket (1951) is a remake of a 1928 film, which I haven’t seen, and it’s nicely convincing about the workings of a city dominated by a crime syndicate. Probably the best thing about it is the cast. Among others, Robert Ryan co-stars as a crime boss, the second in the syndicate hierarchy, and early on, we are startled to see his brutal behavior toward Robert Mitchum’s police chief.
The Racket is based on a play. What it lacks in originality it makes up for in vitality. Because director John Cromwell received a lot of uncredited help from Nicholas Ray, et al., it is finely made. The movie is far from faultless, but I’m glad it exists and is available on DVD.
by Dean | Jun 28, 2015 | General, Movies
Night and Day (2008 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the Hong Sang-soo film, Night and Day (2008), Seong-nam is a soiled Korean fellow who is in Paris after fleeing the police (the crime was smoking pot) in Seoul. A painter, he meets several young Korean women affiliated with the Paris art scene and, though married to a wife in Seoul, eventually commits adultery with one of them. The movie, both directed and scripted by Hong, is about Life, period. Related to this, of course, are Hong’s themes: sexual desire in an alien country, the fluctuations in human connections, the concept of sin (Seong-nam is a Bible reader), and when even a middle-aged person lacks a real occupation—and a direction in life. What’s more, Night and Day slowly becomes an absorbing love story, including between Seong-nam and his wife.
Hong is a talented man who savvily depends on medium and medium-long shots, and is an imaginative writer. Plus he works well enough with his performers that the acting ranges from good to very good. Kim Yeong-ho is very good as the main character.
by Dean | Jun 26, 2015 | General
The new animated movie, Inside Out (2015), has the effect of instructing us that human beings are truly important.
This is not only because of their emotions—the inner being of the little girl Riley contains Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger, all personified—but also because (unlike animals) they have in their minds Abstract Ideas and are perfectly capable of critical thinking. The latter is not reified in the film, but the former—Abstract Ideas—manifests itself when Joy and Sadness briefly lose their three-dimensionality. See the movie and you’ll understand what I mean.
We are also told about the human subconscious—rather a letdown, this, since we don’t even know if the subconscious exists. . . But Inside Out in toto is no letdown. It’s delightful. It’s not merely for children; it may not be for children at all. They do laugh at it, though: I heard them in the audience. One is obliged to point out that it is funny as well as deeply moving apropos of the need and love for family.
A moviegoer is unlikely to undervalue human beings, or human life, after seeing this smart Pixar film.
by Dean | Jun 23, 2015 | General
Roger Michell knows how to direct, and Hanif Kureishi is a serious screenwriter. Early in their 2003 British film, The Mother, a cocky carpenter, Darren (Daniel Craig), meets and chats with an elderly man called Toots (Peter Vaughn) while ignoring Toots’s aging wife May, played by Anne Reid. Subsequently we see dark scenes of a life winding down: Toots dies of a heart attack.
For her part, May feels lost, refusing to stay in her marital home, moving in with her fragile, unmarried daughter Paula (Cathryn Bradshaw). Fairly desperate, Paula is crazy about Darren, a spoken-for man living apart from his wife. Critic David Edelstein is right about the film’s reminding us that “neediness never dies.” May’s doesn’t. Correspondingly she too is drawn to the carpenter, and Darren learns of this. The man who ignored her earlier now takes her to his bed, despite the big age difference. Paula finds out about the betrayal, and naturally the result is more frustration, more self-pity, more suffering than have already occurred.
May and Darren do not genuinely conduct a love affair, and although May might be in love, Darren assuredly isn’t. With anyone. He has in common with May the fact that he is somewhat of a castaway. Meanwhile, Paula believes she is simply a loser, no good at anything. A self-absorbed loser, this woman. And her mother, by the way, can be as decidedly selfish as Edelstein says she is. These people are not angels. They face their own wretchedness. Kureishi does not let them off the hook.
The Mother cannot be acquitted of a certain sensationalism, or of unpleasantness. Even so, it is a potent movie about impotence: May’s, Paula’s, etc. It doesn’t have much of an ending, but the rest of it holds its own. And, er, the sex stuff is well managed. Before Reid’s breasts and Craig’s buttocks are revealed, the couple lie in bed, slightly out of focus, in the background while thin curtains fly in the constant wind in the foreground. No sensationalism here, at least.
Cover of The Mother
by Dean | Jun 21, 2015 | General
The best thing about the late Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni was his perennial interest in the human condition. His first feature film, 1950’s Story of a Love Affair, offers an original screenplay wherein a husband investigates his young wife’s obscure past and a vexing affair between said wife and a car dealer gets rekindled. Ironically, however unsavory the (rich) husband is, the two lovers enable him to morally one-up them. At long last, an event that would seem to “free” the lovers merely leaves them at a painful impasse.
Although some of what is here cannot be taken seriously, alas, Affair is a personal and impressively directed enterprise. As was expected, stylistically it anticipates L’Avventura, Eclipse, etc., and it is near-profound—unlike L’Avventura, Eclipse, etc., which are profound. The progress was beginning.
The film stars Massimo Girotti and Lucia Bose.
(In Italian with English subtitles)
The Howard Hughes-produced The Racket (1951) is a remake of a 1928 film, which I haven’t seen, and it’s nicely convincing about the workings of a city dominated by a crime syndicate. Probably the best thing about it is the cast. Among others, Robert Ryan co-stars as a crime boss, the second in the syndicate hierarchy, and early on, we are startled to see his brutal behavior toward Robert Mitchum’s police chief.
