by Dean | Mar 19, 2015 | General
In Old West mythology–and not, perhaps, in the actual Old West—it is necessary for a greenhorn to learn how to shoot a gun. The greenhorn in Hannie Caulder (1971) is a woman (Raquel Welch’s Hannie Caulder) who is expertly taught by a bounty hunter played by Robert Culp. This goes on after Beauty meets the beasts: Hannie’s husband is murdered by three wicked thieves who in turn rape her and burn down her house. Hence a revenge story gets underway.
The gun fights are riveting, even if Burt Kennedy’s film is highly imperfect, including directorially. But, although Raquel is too much the nonactress, she is so easy on the eyes it is almost uncanny. The characters are not exactly bland, and there is even a man of sheer mystery thrown in. Re Westerns, in ’71 ’tweren’t dead yet: Hannie Caulder has a real vitality.
Cover of Hannie Caulder (1971)
by Dean | Mar 16, 2015 | General
A Danish man of God, Absalon (Thorkild Roose), allows an unrepentant practitioner of the dark arts to be executed on the stake despite his having rescued his young wife Anne’s witchcraft-practicing mother from the same fate. The year is 1623; the film is Carl Dreyer’s Day of Wrath (1943) , which reveals by and by just how disturbed Absalon is over his refusal to save the now slain woman. There is, however, a kind of punishment that befalls him through the actions of his wife (Lisbeth Movin) and his son (Preben Lordorff Rye), for they embark on an adulterous affair.
In Day of Wrath, adapted from a play called Anne Pedersdotter, people commit sin because it means something to them; it means a lot. It shouldn’t, but it does. Dominant here is a not-my-soul-but-my-body stance: The witch-woman (superbly acted by Anna Svierkier) is uninterested in repenting and converting, but is terrified of a physical snuffing-out. Absalon’s wife Anne refuses to renounce physical love with Martin the son. . . The religious Absalon dies without being willing and, subsequently, able to produce a resolution for these matters. Everyone in the film is standing empty-handed before God.
Dreyer’s masterpiece is the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. Day of Wrath is a lesser work, but still a classic full of powerful meaning.
(In Danish with English subtitles)
by Dean | Mar 12, 2015 | General
Something terrible this way comes: comes to a woman living in rural China in the 1920s. She becomes the slave wife—a purchased spouse—of an old man who savagely beats her when she cannot bear him a male heir. Unbeknownst to him, the fault is his, not hers. In despair of her life, she seduces the old man’s adopted nephew, who fornicates with and comes to love her (and she him). But Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s pessimism kicks in; Ju Dou, his 1990 film, ends unhappily. It isn’t just the old man who is oppressive; it is society, this society. It is despotism.
In the title part, Gong Li is unerring as sufferer and seducer. Zhang is an enormously gifted tragedian with all the right camera moves. No, not moves; placement.
by Dean | Mar 9, 2015 | General
The new high school comedy, The DUFF (2015), is entertaining, but very frequently it does not ring true. Mae Whitman nearly overacts but (oh well) this is a comedy, so in truth she is amusingly watchable, pleasantly straightforward.
Although a crummy self-esteem message concludes the film, a Slate.com writer has sincerely praised The DUFF for “offering the most realistic, interesting depiction of cyberbullying we’ve ever seen.” Doubtless this is true, and is one of the film’s few virtues.
by Dean | Mar 8, 2015 | General
There is no excuse for the Nick Roeg movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), constantly making no sense. What’s more, this arty sci-fi product based on Walter Tevis’s novel is a nudie show with too much sex: David Bowie, whose acting is undistinguished, eventually exposes his offputting phallus. If Candy Clark (of American Graffiti fame) was underused by Hollywood after this film, it may be because it didn’t care for her unspectacular naked body. Roeg’s film, then, is a rather homely nudie show.
It is, in fact, another mid-Seventies piece of cinematic rottenness, like The Last Woman, That Obscure Object of Desire and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Cover via Amazon
by Dean | Mar 5, 2015 | General
Russian Dolls (2005), a Cedric Klapisch picture from France, is the perfect sequel to his hokey L’Auberge Espagnole because it itself is not hokey and is acceptably written. All it does, really, is catch up with Xavier and a few others five years after their Barcelona experiences, but provides some laughs and a certain air of sadness while avoiding the European Union dopiness of L’Auberge. Typically, Klapisch’s directing is fancy and childlike, the beguiling credit sequence setting the tone. The acting, even that of Audrey Tautou, pleases mightily. Romain Duris loses himself in the Xavier part and gets completely naked for Klapisch. I mean literally, of course.
Russian Dolls is French bounty.
(In French with English subtitles)
Cover of Russian Dolls
