MIFF: Wristcutters: A Love Story (Goran Dukic, 2006)

My final film of the Milwaukee International Film Festival was, unfortunately, the most disappointing. Between this and 13 Tzameti, the two films I was looking forward to the most, I was sorely disappointed. (Don't feel too bad for me, though, because I saw a lot of good films at the festival.) Wristcutters is the story of Zia (played woodenly by Patrick Fugit), a young man who kills himself because his girlfriend broke up with him (I think that's why, it's strangely never really explained) who ends up in a purgatory-like existence for those who have killed themselves. He meets Eugene (a character based exactly on Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello, strike one), a Russian whose whole family have killed themselves, and decides to go searching for the girl he lost (Leslie Bibb, cute but underused) after he hears she's killed himself. On the way, they meet Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon, whom I love) who decides to go with them on their travels to find the people in charge, because she claims she didn't really kill herself. Underused is one of the adjectives I'd use to describe most of the performances of the film. Sossamon is given little to do but look pretty (which she's good at, but still), Tom Waits is vitally underused even in a hammy part, and Will Arnett, hilarious as he is, is ridiculously underused as the leader of a cult in the afterworld (he doesn't even have one funny line - people were just laughing because his character is so much like Gob Bluth). The plot and characters have that "quirky" quality so popular in some independent films today, but to me, it just comes off forced and incredibly annoying. The black hole in the car? Funny the first time, not the tenth time. Kind of a beginner's Eternal Sunshine, the meditations on life and death are pathetically shallow, as if they were written by an angsty teenager. And the movie's attempt to make suicide funny? Doesn't work, for me at least - it was just really painful, although I was shocked at how many laughs this movie got in the packed theater I was in. Perhaps I'm just a cynic, but I'm not surprised that this movie still doesn't have distribution after showing in Sundance almost a year ago. It tries so hard to be hip, but hip's not what it should be looking to be. It could have been a meditation on what's the difference between life and death, but goes for the easy way out, especially in the ridiculously predictable second half. Oy. The only things that save this from being a complete waste of time are Sossamon, Waits, and Mikal Lazarev as a beautiful Eskimo throat singer (who is mute, and probably the reason I liked her so much). I was not impressed. 3/10

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Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2006)

The Saw franchise really has a lock on Halloween weekend. For the past three years, that's where I've been that weekend (or thereabouts), and it looks like it's where I'll be the next few years, at least. At least, if they keep being this entertaining, I will. I really think that the first installment in the series was the beginning of a new kind of horror (of which I think Eli Roth is now the heir apparent), a gory yet clever one. The twists and turns in Saw were those that you really didn't see coming; they weren't obvious, nor were the villian and the methods of death. Saw II was a bit of a disappointment - it was more of its imitators and not enough of itself. The third edition is a welcome return to form, however, not up to par of the first film. Saw II is about Jigsaw, now nearly dead of the brain tumor that made him the killer he is today, and his hench(wo)man Amanda, who is now physically running the torture chambers. The only problem is that Amanda does not let people go, even if they win Jigsaw's "game," a direct violation of his rules. The first fifteen minutes are both ridiculous and pretty clever - we see Donnie Walberg back from the second film, two vicious torture scenes, and several wrong turns into possible plots. When we finally do get into the story, however, it is all about Jigsaw and Amanda, who have brought a troubled brain surgeon into their lair in order to "fix" him. As long as the surgeon can keep Jigsaw alive while a man goes through their last test, she will live. Well, the next hour or so involves a freezing chamber, rotting pig corpses, and homemade brain surgery, all of which the gorehound in me though were pretty cool. Much better than the second film's tortures, at least. And then there's the ending. Without giving away anything. it is definitely more in the vein of the first film than the predictable one of the second. Although I usually don't try to predict the ending of a film (I like to be caught up in it, rather than outside, analyzing it - movies are much more fun that way and I really feel sorry for people who can't do that, but I digress), I didn't see this coming until a minute or so before it did, much like Saw I. If you're looking for some gory, borderline scary Halloween fun, you can't do much better (in the theaters) than this. 6/10 RIYL: Hostel

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The Devil & Daniel Johnston (Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005)

Daniel Johnston is a living indie legend, praised by everyone from Sonic Youth to Kurt Cobain to Jad Fair and is legendary in the indie singer-songwriter genre. In fact, it seems that modern freak folk founds its roots in Johnston's off-tune guitar playing and simple lyrics. But Daniel Johnston is seriously mentally ill, and the music that many found so inspiring was really an airing of the (literal) demons found inside him. Jeff Feuerzeig's documentary is in some ways an enlightening portrait of this sick artist, and in some ways a frustrating continuation of the legend that is Johnston, who today lives with his parents because he cannot take care of himself. Through lots of interesting archival footage and interviews with those who knew him, a portrait of Johnston appears - at first, an artist making something new and unheard in the Austin scene of the mid-80s, and then more and more, a man obsessed with casting out the devil and seeing the devil following him at every turn. Johnston visits Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley in New York City, gets a recording session with Moe Tucker, drummer from the Velvet Underground, and yet still ruins the best opportunity of his life because he is too mentally ill to deal with it. As someone in the movie says, whenever things start getting good for Daniel, his illness (made worse by his refusal, often, to take his medication) ruins it all. It is frustrating for someone like me, who has experience with mental illness, to see people idolizing this man's demons. But again, like a friend of Johnston's says in the film, in history, people who prioritized mental health over genius are seen as philistines who don't understand the artistic mind; how can we say Johnston should get help over creating his music? An interesting portrait of a very interesting man, but with a few problems. I would have definitely loved to see more interviews with Johnston himself; although Feuerzeig had access to Daniel, there are precious few moments of Daniel currently talking in the film. This adds to the legend of Daniel Johnston, and it's up to the individual to decide if that's a good or a damaging thing. 6.5/10

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Queen Margot (Patrice Chereau, 1994)

Queen Margot is one of the lushest, most sensual, most beautiful movies I've ever seen. Isabelle Adjani is absolutely radiant, playing a gorgeous, torn French queen during one of the bloodiest periods of French history. Unfortunately, I really had no idea what was going on until about 90 minutes into the movie. Again, I don't think I'm particularly dense at movies, but without a deep understanding of the bloody French Catholic versus Protestant struggles of the late 1500s, the plot of this movie is incredibly convoluted, with little explanation until things fall into place after an hour and a half. While the script is a little lacking in those not schooled in French history, the visuals and Isabelle Adjani's performance as the sexy yet incredibly strong Margot, sister of the king and forced into a marriage to a Protestant to foster peace, are both worth the watch. Adjani makes the film her own, as a woman with nowhere really to turn, and not only is she a great actress, she is ridiculously beautiful for a woman of 40 (she doesn't look a day past 20, literally). Margot forges an alliance with her husband Henri, but they are both in constant danger after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. There are attemped escapes, anonymous sex by the queen, a near-fatal hunting trip, tons of murders, along with the queen taking a lover and the king's death by poisoning (sweating blood is a grotesque, surreal effect of arsenic poisoning) all make this movie intriguing, if not quite a bit confusing. Vincent Perez is downright sexy as Margot's lover, La Mole, and even Asia Argento has an interesting little part as doomed Charlotte of Sauve, who has a great death scene. Great performances all around, just make sure to read up on the film a little bit if you don't want to be lost for as long as I was. 6.5/10 RIYL: period pieces, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (another lovely Adjani performance)

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MIFF: Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (Stanley Nelson, 2006)

I doubt I will see a better documentary in 2006 than Jonestown, Stanley Nelson's exploration of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple and the mass murder/suicide in Guyana in 1978. It started as an idealistic, socialist movement for social justice and racial equality, but soon, Jones became crazy with the power he had obtained and turned it into a cult that's eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany, where children turned in parents for dissent and no one was safe. It all ended so tragically, but the events leading up to it are equally fascinating. Nelson got unprescedented access to archival footage and interviews with members of Peoples Temple, as well as family members of some of those that died in Guyana. The most incredibly interesting interviews are with two men, both of whom had their whole family killed at Jonestown but managed to escape themselves through the jungles of Guyana. The interviewees tell of Jim Jones' childhood as an outcast, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, and eventually a young man who embraces Christianity and founds a church based on social responsiblity and integration. Jones (and his wife, about whom we hear precious little) is the first white person to adopt a black child in the state of Indiana, and his family, as described by that child, Jim Jones Jr (who is a great, revealing interview, even though he never really says anything negative about his father), was one of the first "rainbow families." In the first half of the film, I really liked Jones, who preached racial acceptance and social justice decades before these things would be accepted by the mainstream as they (sort of) have been today. Something happens to Jones, however, and he becomes increasingly power-hungry and paranoid, moving his parishoners first to San Francisco and then, the night before publication of a damning article, to Guyana, where 900+ would die. My main frustration with the film is that there is very little transition from activist Jones to crazy Jones; we find out nothing about what happened to make this change, or what those around him thought. This is mostly because Jones and those closest to him are all dead, but perhaps his son could have been informative in this way. The sinister turn of the Peoples Temple to a cult is so sudden, or perhaps, so gradual, that it's hard to believe it happened that way. But the facts are the facts, and that's what makes the story so compelling. The aftermath and details of Jones' death are also left untouched, another frustrating fact. What happened afterward? What was the public reaction, especially to the death of the congressman killed in Guyana? The ending could have been fleshed out quite a bit more. The story of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple is a geniunely fascinating one; Nelson got his hands on audio of Jones forcing the poisoned kool-aid onto the residents of Jonestown, and it literally left me shaking from fear and indignation. The descriptions of dying babies and family members are almost too much to bear. Jonestown is an incredibly researched, very impartial (as much as you can be, there is no external narration, at least) portrait of a social experiment gone very, very wrong because of the ego and paranoia of its leader. I knew very little of Jonestown beyond the basic facts, but I feel almost like an insider after seeing this film. 8/10 RIYL: Children Underground, The Weather Underground

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MIFF: Best in Show short program

The selection committee of the Milwaukee International Film Festival saw 1400 short films and made a best in show program out of the ten they liked best. All were solid, some much better than others, and here are my two favorites. My Dad is 100 Years Old (Guy Maddin, 2005) I am a Guy Maddin devotee, I absolutely love all his work that I have seen. So I was very excited to see his latest movie, a collaboration with (and written by) Isabella Rossellini about her father, Roberto, who would have been 100 years old this year. In it, Isabella discusses the politics of her father's films, not the films themselves, but the neo-realist form that they announced to the world. She (pretty brilliantly) plays Hitchcock, Selznick, Fellini, and an angelic Chaplin, along with her mother, Ingrid Bergman, in a scene that was so incredibly moving. Rossellini talks to her mother's image, projected onto a screen 10 times as tall as Rossellini, as if talking to her mother's public persona. Roberto Rossellini is portrayed by a big belly, as Isabella said in the beginning of the film that that was the part of her father she loved most as a child. As both a love letter to her father (she describes how devastated she was when he died in 1977) and an essay on his films, it is incredibly well-written and beautiful, especially as rendered in the Maddin style. A very funny moment in the film (16 minutes long) came when Maddin pulls the camera away from Rossellini, into the sky, and Isabella commands him to pull it back, focus on her face, and stop those cinematic techniques her dad found so pretentious. All of this is lovely, but it is Isabella's last monologue, where she says, "I don't know if my dad was a genius. I do know I love him," that made me tear up. Very worth seeing. 8/10 Five Minutes, Mr. Welles (Vincent D'Onofrio, 2005) No film has had such an immediate, visceral effect on me recently as Vincent D'Onofrio's directorial debut, Five Minutes, Mr. Welles. I remembered how much I liked D'Onofrio's brief turn as Welles in Ed Wood, and Welles is one of my top directors of all time (with The Third Man probably in my top 20 films oat), so I was very excited to see this. I was definitely not disappointed. D'Onofrio plays a frustrated Welles, rehearsing his lines as Harry Lime, even though it's a part he only took to finance his production of Othello. Janine Theriault plays Catherine, his assistant whose job it is to keep him on track, an increasingly difficult one as, in one hilarious instance, Welles attempts to jump out the window when called to the set. Catherine won't lie to the studio for him, Welles is frustrated with his lines and wants to write more/new ones, even though he can't remember the ones he already has. D'Onofrio coyly refers to Welles' future eating problems, as when he gets particularly upset, he pulls out the pistachio ice cream. But apart from being a genuinely entertaining little movie about a great artist in crisis, it really speaks to the nature of trying to be an artist in the Hollywood system and of integrity versus the need for money. After seeing this, I had a greater respect for Welles, even though his behavior is downright childish at times, and after researching him a little when getting home, found the amount of things Welles, a self-described genius, had to go through to make moves he wanted to. As Catherine tells him in the film, he started from the very top and worked his way down. Welles tries to argue that what Citizen Kane lost in revenue, it gained in something much more important, but no one in the studio system was buying this at that time. The scene where Welles has a tantrum and falls on the ground and finally remembers his line (showing how brilliant he really is when he puts his mind to it), is in my top ten film moments of all time. After seeing this film, it made me really want to go home and write something, and also to reevaluate Welles' films in the context of a frustrated artist. A really entertaining, great portrayal of a great, great filmmaker. 9/10 Other good shorts included The Shovel (a brisk, taut thriller starring David Straitharn) and Bawke, a tragic tale of a refugee man and his young son.

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MIFF: 13 Tzameti (Gela Babluani, 2005)

13 Tzameti was, along with Wristcutters: A Love Story (which I'm probably not going to be able to see after all, boo), one of the films that I was most excited about seeing at MIFF this year. As with many thing I've highly anticipated, I was a bit disappointed by the empty and rather predictable story. A young (hot!) carpenter named Sebastien is employed to work on a couple's roof; when the man dies, the wife refuses to pay Sebastien, and he takes an envelope containing a train ticket and hotel reservation as if in retribution. Little does he know that he has taken an invitation to a secretive competition where rich men bet on the lives of 13 competitors. Sebastien is the titular 13. Basically nothing happens in the first half of the movie, and when Sebastien gets to the competition...more nothing happens. The movie is very, very tense, but the violence does not escalate like a good thriller should. The competition is the same, only for several rounds; for me, after the first round, the shock factor was gone. I commented in my head that it's like an artsy version of Hostel, with rich people buying the lives and deaths of others, only without the violence or terror. The black and white gives it an atmospheric touch, and the cinematography is beautiful, but I was not that impressed by the action of the film. The film's defenders would say that it is a trip into the sadism of modern life, and the depravity of the human soul; I would ask where those things are! Aside from the violence, there is no characterization of the betting men or even of the other competitors (except a little of Sebastien's main competitor). They are faceless people, which makes the terror unfamiliar and dull. Even Hostel gaves faces to its murderers! The tipping point for me, however, was the events after the competitions, which are predictable and made just to upset the audience. As a debut film, Babluani's direction and script are good, but this film is so problematic that I really can't recommend it. If you're not desensitized to violence (like I think I am), however, you might find this shocking, as many in the packed audience I was in gasped several times. I, however, was not that interested. 5.5/10

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Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)

I don't think I'm smart enough to like Querelle. Now, I'm a college-educated gal who knows her gender/sexuality issues, but the structure of the film and the issues contained therein make it harder to decipher than the normal Fassbiner film. His last film, which Fassbinder also commented was his most important, Querelle is the fusion of two important artists (Fassbinder himself and Jean Genet, whose novel is the basis for the film) and the culmination of at least forty years of thought on Fassbinder's part. As a gay man, Fassbinder made this film about queerness that is so important to him; while I understand the importance, the depth makes it hard to understand/enjoy at times. Brad Davis plays the titular sailor, docked at Brest and finally coming to terms with his sexuality. He comes into the identity of a gay man with violence - his first gay experience is with a man who he subsequently murders. He becomes embroiled in gay life in Brest, including with Nono, the owner (along with his wife Lysiane, played by Jeanne Moreau) of a brother where Querelle's brother frequents (and is also Lysiane's love); Gil, a man who murders out of pride and eventually falls because of Querelle; and Lieutenant Seblon, Querelle's superior who is desperately in love with Querelle and eventually becomes the center of all these stories. The story is told in a stage-like way, with obvious sets and props. There is no real attempt at realism, and some of the dialogue is taken directly (I assume) from Genet's novel. The scene with Querelle and his brother fighting is especially opaque, as they speak to each other in philosophies while brandishing knives. This movie is a deeply intellectual, obviously meaningful movie to Fassbinder, but it is too steeped in philosophy and Genet's original work to be incredibly enjoyable to me. The mix of the high-minded ideas with crude language is sometimes effective, other times painfully pretentious and awkward-sounding. While I understand its importance, I cannot say I loved it, and that's the conundrum of some of Fassbinder's films. Recommended, but not without these warnings. By the way, I love this Andy Warhol poster based on the movie. One of the better posters I've ever seen. 6/10 RIYL: R.W. Fassbinder (his other films are the only things I can find to compare this to)

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Hardcore (Dennis Iliadis, 2004)

Hardcore marks my first introduction into independent Greek cinema, something I hadn't known existed. It is the brutal story of Martha, a 17 year old sex worker who already "feels old," and Nadia, the 16 year old new girl at the escort service who becomes the boss' favorite by not paying attention to any of the unspoken rules. The first half of the movie is about the girls' business as escorts, and their friendship that blossoms into love. Then Nadia does something that changes the whole movie, which becomes a meditation on love and fame, and what those things can do to a person. The contrast between Martha and Nadia is very well-developed in the movie; in the beginning, Nadia is the beautiful one whom everyone loves, but after she becomes famous, Martha is still the one in the background, but she becomes more beautiful and develops into her own person. The final ten minutes show just how much Martha has learned from the vicious Nadia, and it's a triumph of the script and of the director Iliadis that Martha's transformation is so subtle and realistic that we hardly notice it. Nadia is completely over the top, played wonderfully by Danai Skiadi as a woman (a girl, really) who knows what she wants and does anything to get it. Nadia has an almost preternatural understanding of human nature, even as she spirals out of control. Katerina Tsavalou plays Martha as a girl who is content because she has been so beaten down, until Nadia introduces her to a different way of life. Martha and Nadia are in love, in fact, they live together, shower together, vacation together, and occasionally kiss passionately, but they both have escort boyfriends and sleep with men for a living. Their relationship is technically a lesbian romance, but it seemed more to me like a deep friendship between two girls who have so much in common and both desperately need someone to hang on to. The lesbian aspect is treated with respect by Iliadis; surprisingly, the two girls really have no sex scene with one another. The contradictory relationship between the two, and how they change and adapt to their surroundings, is the core of the movie, and is played both realistically and superbly. The movie is dreamlike at times, as Martha's fantasies interrupt her real life on occasion (check out the caps I made, but be warned of nudity), and those are some of the most poignant and funny moments in the movie. As the two girls' lives devolve into drugs, sex, and violence (all of which are in the movie a great deal, a warning to those not looking for a shock), their world becomes more surreal and beautiful. I want to see more of Iliadis, as this, his debut feature, was so stunning. Highly recommended. 8/10 RIYL: A Hole in My Heart, Baise Moi (a movie that I didn't like, but is similar in theme)

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MIFF: Boy Called Twist (Tim Greene, 2004)

For a few minutes of volunteer work at the Milwaukee International Film Festival, I also got to see Boy Called Twist, a modern South African interpretation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. Twist is born in a rural orphanage, his name decided by a book on the shelf and because there is already an orphan named Oliver. Twist is, at age 11, sold with other children to a farm and put to hard labor, then to a man's house where he is mistreated by the other servants and runs away, and finally ends up in Cape Town, where he is befriended by other street urchins and lives in an abandoned warhouse with them and their adult master Fagin. As anyone who has seen the other movie adaptations/read the book (which does not include me) knows that his life with the other pickpockets is as hard as anything else in his life, and once he gets away, it isn't for long. Twist is played by young Jarrid Geduld, who brings a naivity and hardness to his character, often at the same time. When Twist finds himself in a real bed with a real breakfast for the first time after being taken in by Ebrahim, he embraces the maid Francine as if she was his mother he hadn't seen in years. Francine immediately understands the great meaning of the embrace, and treats it accordingly. A scene like this is hard to make touching and not just sappy, but that is the joy of Boy Called Twist; even though it is based off one of the most adapted stories in history, it brings a new understanding to it, especially because of its setting. Modern South Africa is a contradictory place, with absolute slums just blocks away from beautiful, picturesque mansions. When Twist is taken away from Ebrahim's house, he is only taken maybe a few miles away, but the two worlds are so completely different that he could never find his way back by himself. The Muslim community in Cape Town is also given a large role, and was very interesting, as I didn't know this sub-community even existed. Geduld is pitch-perfect as Twist, and exudes a very adult presence in this small child. He is both a hard pickpocket and a boy who has never known parents' love, and these roles compete for dominance in him. The adult performances are also very strong, especially Kim Englebrecht as the doomed prostitute Nancy who was taken in by Fagin at the same age as Twist and has conflicting ideas about what's right for this boy. This years old story is given new life in this contemporary world. Definitely check it out if you can, as I can't find it on Netflix yet. 7/10 RIYL: City of God (a similar portrayal of street children)

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Milwaukee International Film Festival: Candy (Neil Armfield, 2006)

Thursday marked the beginning of the Milwaukee International Film Festival, and in my unemployment, I've had some time to volunteer there. Mostly, I've been doing shifts answering the office phones ("Hello, Milwaukee International Film Festival, this is Dana, how can I help you?"), but Saturday night, I did a four-hour shift taking tickets and ballots at one of the theaters. For about twenty minutes of work, I got to see two phenomenal films (the other, A Boy Called Twist, I'll review later tonight). Candy, the utterly depressing yet oddly beautiful story of two heroin addicts in love, is definite Oscar-bait, especially with the phenomenal lead performance from Heath Ledger (so good that it rivals Gael Garcia Bernal's in The King for my favorite of the year), one that made me forget about Ledger the movie star, and just made me think of him as Dan, one of the hardest things for an actor to do. Dan and Candy (played by Abbie Cornish, who really holds her own against Ledger and Geoffrey Rush) are, respectively, a heroin addict poet and a naive art student who wants to share everything in her boyfriend's life. The beginning of the film (titled Heaven, as opposed to Earth and Hell, the second and third parts) is beautiful in every way - Dan and Candy are deliriously happy, their drug use has not yet gotten out of control, and there are colors and light everywhere in their world. Even their supplier, Casper (played amazingly by Rush, whom I have been in complete admiration of since Quills) is happy for them, but he warns, "When you can stop, you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't." This defines the film, as well as Dan and Candy's relationship. As Dan and Candy go from boyfriend and girlfriend to married couple, and Candy goes from young artist to escort to street sex worker who never does art anymore, their drug use goes from casual to intense, and tragedy starts striking them left and right. Even though they really brought these things upon themselves, you don't ever hate the couple; Candy was the less likeable to me, as she blames Dan for every problem in her life. Her character is flawed, both in human ways and in screenwriter ways that make it hard to believe her, but Cornish does amazingly with it. Dan, as portrayed by Ledger, is an eternal optimist who loves Candy with every fiber in his being, and wants nothing out of his life than to be with her. The withdrawal scenes are some of the most realistic, intensely painful ones I've ever seen, and the scene in the hospital, without giving anything away, is so incredibly raw that you can't help but feel punched in the chest. The story is a non-romanticized vision of drug use, but it is also non-judgemental. Dan and Candy are people just like us, people who have made bad choices and cannot go back. Unlike Requiem for a Dream, which seems to share a plot with Candy, the horrors in this film are not exaggerated (no orgies here), and instead are just intensely personal and real, making it a far more effective film than the former. The performances are also much stronger than the former film, as the audience can recognize themselves in these people, and thus empathize with them rather than hold them at arm's length and inspect them. The final scene is completely realistic and yet heartbreaking, something that is very hard in drug films. Ledger and Rush really give the performances of their careers, and I'll be mighty angry if Ledger doesn't at least get an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Dan. In fact, every part of this film, from the breathtaking script to Armfield's beautiful direction, deserves recognition. I'd be hard-pressed to find a more emotionally involving film this year. Checking out the MIFF ballots, most of which were marked "excellent," I'd say the rest of the audience agrees. Definitely check it out when it hits limited release on November 17. 9/10 RIYL: Requiem for a Dream (only in theme, NOT in style)

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Valley of the Dolls (Mark Robson, 1967)

It's almost useless to write about Valley of the Dolls; at this point in movie history, it's almost impossible to enjoy it as anything but a campy cult classic. Unlike the fantastic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, however, this isn't bad enough to go around to goodness; instead, it's just plain bad in a lot of spots, and there aren't nearly as many "dolls" as promised. But some amazing, over the top performances make this definitely worth a watch, especially a nonsober one. The story revolves around three women, Anne, who is infuriatingly proper for most of the film, Jennifer, a beautiful woman who has nothing to offer but her body, and Neely, who is a hopeless drunk and pill-popper. All three women experience varied levels of success, and varied levels of self-destruction. Anne does nothing to herself, more or less, and so is the most boring character. Jennifer, played by Sharon Tate, goes to France to do "art films," which, of course, is code for softcore porn. Neely is the most interesting of the three, as after she becomes a big singing sensation, she becomes an alcoholic and addicted to sleeping pills, speed pills, and any other pills she can get her hands on. She "cleans up," but not for long, and by the end of the movie is again a raving, boozy lunatic. Her screaming breakdown in the alley behind a theater is the best scene in the movie, and Patty Duke really gest props for going so over the top with her portrayal of Neely - without her, this would not be nearly as watchable. Another amazing performance comes from Susan Hayward, who plays Helen Lawson, an aging diva who is threatened by Neely's talent early in her career. But by the end of the movie, it's obviously the grande dame Helen who triumphs, as she understands what it means to be a diva; you can be bitchy, but within limits, and all things in moderation. This is a thoroughly enjoyable film, but the over the top situations and performances are often drowned out by the terribly screenplay and boring performances from some of the actors. I wish I had a few beers in me when I had watched it, but fun nonetheless. 6/10 RIYL: Russ Meyer, late Bette Davis

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Schizopolis (Steven Soderbergh, 1996)

Steven Soderbergh is another director I haven't had much patience with; to me, he just seems like an Oscar-magnet, big-budget (yet still sort of indie) filmmaker. I liked Traffic and sex, lies and videotape enough (although not nearly as much as other people), but I haven't enjoyed anything else he's done. Until Schizopolis, that is. So experimental that I can hardly believe that it got made at all, much less by a Hollywood filmmaker. The story of two different men (both played by Soderbergh himself), one, a speechwriter for a Scientology-like philosopher, the other, a dentist who is having an affair with the speechwriter's wife. Also, there's an exterminator who ends up making a documentary about attacking people and exposing his genitals. Woah. Soderbergh's performance is genuinely funny, with Fletcher Munson, the speechwriter, speaking to his wife in generalities like "Generic greeting!" The scenes with his wife are hilarious, yet painful; later in the movie, the other men Mrs. Munson meets literally speak a different language than her. The main theme of the movie is the inability in modern life to communicate, not only at home, but on the job and really with anyone in your life. There's not much I can say about this film, which means that if I start thinking about and talking about the subtleties and surrealism in the film, I don't think I'll ever stop. For all his serious films, Soderbergh made in Schizopolis a funny, meaningful, and at times poignant movie about all kinds of relationships in modern society. I will have to see this again and again to really appreciate its genius, and I think I will buy the Criterion DVD, which offers a fittingly surreal commentary track where Soderbergh interviews Soderbergh. 8/10 RIYL: Surrealism

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Twelve and Holding (Michael Cuesta, 2005)

I was expecting good things from Twelve and Holding, as Michael Cuesta's debut, L.I.E. was an interesting, fearless portrayal of pedophilia. I was hoping for the same daring intellectual approach to children's lives in the twilight of young adulthood. Instead, I got a Hollywoodized, stereotypical view of all these children's lives, one that does not allow the audience to get to know and empathize with them. The film revolves around Rudy Carges' (accidental) death by fire by two local bullies. His twin brother Jacob (who has a birthmark covering half of his face, and is obviously the quieter one of the twins), and friends Leonard and Malee are left to deal with the tragedy. Actually, Jacob is the only one who really deals with it directly; he becomes obsessed with getting revenge on the boys who killed his brother, visiting them in prison to tell them what he's going to do to them when they get out. As Jacob, Conor Donovan is convincingly paradoxical in his emotions, as he seemingly starts to forgive the imprisoned boys, yet still hates them and his family as well. I would have appreciated a lot more insight into Jacob's motivations, his life with Rudy as well as without. The two problematic and stereotypical characters are Leonard, a fat kid who wants to lose weight, and Malee, a sexually precocious Asian preteen. I'll probably reveal more than you might want to know plot-wise in my discussions of these two kids, so if you want to remain spoiler-free, stop here! Leonard is so out of shape that the high school football coach tells him that if he can get into some sort of shape, he'll be on the team next year. A touching gesture, but Leonard becomes obsessed with weight. Here comes my problems with this. Obviously, we are supposed to see Leonard's obsessive weight loss as a good thing, but Leonard starts to look down and hate his fat family because they're fat, and again, the audience, I think, is supposed to agree with him. Leonard's family is hardly ever (perhaps never) shown doing anything except eating, as if that's all fat people do. Leonard hates his fat and his family, and we are supposed to as well. Even after Leonard almost accidentally kills himself and his mother (long, somewhat silly plotline), his mother forgives him immediately and agrees to lose weight. Leonard's plotline is disappointingly fatphobic, when it could have been an intelligent discussion on the nature of family and self-image. I was disgusted. Malee deals with Rudy's death by becoming obsessed with a patient of her mother-psychiatrist's. It's touching and very sad that Malee believes that Gus might love her, despite him being in his early 30s and she being 12. I was touched by her blooming love for this man, because I remember what it was like to be on the verge of womanhood and thinking that I was a real woman now. But, like Leonard's story, Malee's takes a disappointingly stereotypical turn. Malee sneaks into Gus's house one night, makes him dinner, cleans his house, and puts on a kimono and puts her hair up in order to make him happy. One on hand, it's intentionally sad because that's what Malee believes a man wants from a woman, but on the unintentional side, Malee becomes eroticized by being the "other," the Asian geisha-girl of men's dreams. Malee, being an Asian woman, obviously, to Cuesta at least, cannot express her sexuality in a way other than this eroticized other. It was sickening to my feminist, women's studies concentrator self, to see this little girl forced into the stereotypes of Asian sexuality. I think that this is unintentional, and not Cuesta's point. All in all, a somewhat infuriating, definitely frustrating movie with an ending I saw coming a mile away. A definite step down for Cuesta, whom I hope can regain his indie consciousness and ear for reality in his next film. 5/10

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Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)

I was really excited to see this film. I'm a fan of films that are disturbing in a philosophical way (and in a horror movie way, but that's another post), and this seemed to be along the same lines as something like Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, a film I really like. Was I wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Funny Games is, strangely enough, both immorally violent and seriously boring. The postmodern devices Haneke uses to make this film a critique of modern society (I think) are just precious and incredibly annoying. Two young men, Paul and Peter, although they refer to themselves as various pop cultures names, come innocently enough to a couple and son's vacation house to borrow some eggs, and end up sadistically torturing them, physically and mentally. The first 20 minutes are promising, with a sense of tension and dread throughout every action. But once the "games" begin, the action is entirely predictable and often boring. I'll give you just a few of my problems with the film: for the first 45 minutes or so, there are plenty of opportunities for the family to escape. They are being held hostage by two men with a GOLF CLUB. That's right. I felt that there were several obvious spots where any person with any sense would have tried to escape (like when Anna went into the kitchen, without any supervision, to get Georg an aspirin). It's not like a horror film situation, where the characters are just stupid or panicking, it's just a lack of realism (to the end of hyper-realism??) on Haneke's part. The violence was predictable, and the devices that Haneke uses to achieve postmodern status, such as breaking the fourth wall and having the characters talk to the audience, as well as other things that I won't spoil here, seem very forced and unenlightening. The ending is a total lack of resolution and any sense of the future, and while I know that's what Haneke was probably intending, that doesn't make it any more well done or less frustrating. This review is probably pretty poorly written, but I haven't been this disappointed in a film in a long, long while. Such a promising premise, such a pretentious product. I haven't liked anything I've seen by Haneke so far, and I don't think I'll be giving him another chance, at least for a little while. 3/10

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Bakery Girl of Monceau and Suzanne's Career (Eric Rohmer, 1963)

These two short films are the first and second installments in Rohmer's Six Moral Tales cycle, and, in true Dana style, the third and fourth in the series I have seen. I always do that, and wonder later if my perception of the individual films and the series as a whole would have been different if I had actually seen them in order. Six Moral Tales is a pretty straightforward series, however, and I see the evolution of the male protagonists without having to see the films in straight order. Anyway, these two shorts represent the beginning of the series, about young men who are chasing after women no matter the consequences. The Bakery Girl of Monceau involves an unnamed law student (played by Barbet Schroeder, who later became a director himself) who falls in love with a girl he meets on the street. He waits during his lunch hour on the street where they met to see her again, but starts frequenting a bakery when he doesn't meet the girl. He leads on the bakery girl, finally inviting her on a date, when he meets the first girl and abandons the bakery girl. Many men's disregard for the feelings of random women is at center here - Rohmer makes the law student despicable in a small way, but not enough so he's incomprehensible to the audience. At the end, when the student and the woman, now his wife, go again to the bakery, a new girl is behind the counter, and it's uncertain whether the student even remembers the other bakery girl or not. Suzanne's Career is almost an hour, twice the length of the pervious film, and details two "friends" (who seem not to enjoy each other's company too much), Bertrand and Guillaume, who are both interested in Suzanne. The two men use Suzanne brutally, making her pay for every outing and giving almost nothing in return. Guillaume is fundamentally different than Bertrand; he is a playboy, who spends a lot of money and uses everyone around him. Bertrand, in contrast, is uncomfortable using Suzanne (but does it anyway) and is a more loyal man than his friend. The two men seem to despise each other, and in many ways, this film is more about their relationship than either one's with Suzanne. But Suzanne wins in the end; she abandons both men and gets engaged to another, unknown man. Bertrand wants to believe that Suzanne is a bad, immoral girl (he accuses her of stealing 400 francs from her when everyone else, audience included, is sure it was Guillaume), and that he has been tricked by her. Suzanne represents to these men the mystery of women, the things about them that they can never understand. These two films are a good start to the Six Moral Tales cycle, and represent youth - the beginning of love and morality, when men are callous about both those things. 7/10 RIYL: French New Wave, Jules & Jim

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (Jonathan Liebesman, 2006)

I'll let you all in on a sort of embarassing secret: I prefer the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake to the original. Yep. Driving back from the theater after seeing the remake, my friends and I were totally terrified; Minnesota highways surrounded by nothing but cornfields, in the dusky night. Yikes. So I was pretty excited to see a TCM prequel, also having enjoyed the The Hills Have Eyes recent remake. While TCM: The Beginning has its scary and funny moments, true to the original, it's too typical of the modern horror film for me to have enjoyed it fully. The plot deals with two young men heading off to Vietnam in 1969 (will any horror film set in the 60s or 70s not deal with Vietnam!?), taking a road camp to base camp with their girlfriends. Along the way, they meet the Hewitts, whose slaughterhouse has recently been condemned by the FDA. The uncle has killed the lone local sheriff ("I always wondered what it felt like to kill a whole sheriff's department," the uncle, played wonderfully evilly by R. Lee Ermey) and so there's no one to help these kids out. Predictably, the Hewitts go after the kids, and there's gore. I realized halfway through the movie, though, that even though the movie seems incredibly violent, the camera is always shaky, doing the MTV-type jolty editing that's so popular in horror films today that makes sure you can't tell what's going on. Sometimes it's cool, other times, it's just disorienting and annoying. The performances are serviceable (except the already-mentioned hilarious Ermey), and the horror is sometimes palpable. It's too typical of everything about modern, popular horror films, which is a bad thing. It's good if you love horror, not if you don't. 5.5/10 RIYL: House of Wax, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

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The King (James Marsh, 2006)

For my money, The King is tied with The Science of Sleep for the best movie I've seen in 2006. Surprise, surprise - both films are anchored by exceptional performances by Gael Garcia Bernal, with whom, every time I see him in a film, I am more and more convinced that he is the great acting talent of our generation. I cannot wait to see his directorial debut Deficit next year, but for now, he's one of the finest working actors, and his performance in The King might be his most accomplished. Bernal plays Elvis, a young man just released from three years in the navy who goes to Corpus Christi, Texas, in order to find his birth father. His father, played by William Hurt, is a pretty big-time pastor in the city, and refuses to acknowledge Elvis's existence as his son. He also has a daughter, played by Pell James (who is older than Bernal playing a 16 year old convincingly!), with whom Elvis becomes involved with. Giving away any more of the plot would both ruin the surprises and story the movie has set up; in fact, several times I gasped, not having expected what was coming. The supporting cast rivals Bernal in their great performances; Hurt and James are both exceptional, as are Laura Harring, as the family's mother, who goes from vibrant to devastated, and Paul Dano, playing the exact opposite of his character in Little Miss Sunshine, a bright-eyed Christian musician about to go to college in the fall. The whole cast is stellar, both individually and as an ensemble; their interactions are so real that you might think you were watching a documentary. James is especially wonderful - if you see the film, watch for the changes in her character from the first, second, and then third times she has sex with Elvis. That kind of evolution is so organic that it takes a talented actress to bring it out. The King could have devolved into melodrama, and I was sure that it would, but instead, it takes some daring turns and chooses to move into uncomfortable territory. Shakespearean in its depth of themes, including revenge, religion, family, and love/lust for starters, this is a beautiful and true story about what one man will do to become part of a real family. There are many questions left at the end, but not the frustrating kind; instead, I was thinking about it for days to come (why this post took so long, I wanted to figure some things out first). Not only are the acting and script great, the cinematography is beautiful as well (check out the post of stills I made from the film, but be warned of spoilers). Gael Garcia Bernal should definitely be awarded with an Academy Award nomination for his fiery, passionate, and real portrayal of Elvis (although I would accept one for Science of Sleep in its place). 9/10 RIYL: Teorema, Visitor Q (The King takes up the theme of both these films - a stranger visits a family and changes everything in their lives)

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Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene, 1966)

Black Girl has the distinction of being the first African-directed film made in sub-Saharan Africa, and it is a more than worthy start. Directed by Ousmane Sembene, a Senegalese radical who also wrote the short story on which the film is based, the film is a startling condemnation of French colonialism and racism toward Africans, even after the supposed era of colonization has ended. Amateur actress Mbissine Therese Diop plays Diouana, a young Senegalese woman who goes to France with her employer under the expectation that she will be taking care of the children in France, just as she has in Senegal. When Diouana arrives in France, however, the couple's children are nowhere in sight, and Diouana is expected to be the cook, the washmaid, as well as take care of all the other tasks in the house, for little pay and respect. Diouana is treated terribly by her employers, but in different ways. The madame of the household screams at Diouana, calls her lazy, and has utterly no respect for her. The husband, however, is a clever representation of the two-faced nature of colonialization. He seems to treat Diouana better, by not yelling at her like the mother does, but he more or less ignores Diouana in every day life. When Diouana gets a letter from her mother, the husband reads it to her (because it is assumed that she doesn't speak French, but her French seemed fine to me!), and offers to write a response. The response ends up saying only what the husband wants to write, and it is a startling representation of the patronization even people who claim to respect black people. Obviously, the husband thinks he knows better than Diouana what to say to her own mother. At the very end of the film (without revealing any crucial plot points), the husband goes back to Senegal to give Diouana's family some money. They refuse the money, and the man cannot understand why. When a little child, perhaps Diouana's brother, tails the man back to the airport while wearing a tradition African mask. It is the spectre of colonialism, of racism, and of Africa following the man home, and he cannot run away from it fast enough. Semebene's portrait of white French treatment of this Senegalese girl, who represents Senegalese people in general, is shocking, depressing, and sbsolutely necessary. I was struck while watching the film about how little has changed in the forty years since the film was made. It's a well-crafted, New Wave-esque film, important both historically and culturally. 8.5/10 RIYL: New Wave, the emotional punch of Ingmar Bergman

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Cube (Vincenzo Natali, 1997)

a Cube is another movie that sat in my room from Netflix for about two weeks before I watched it. Not a good sign, but I ended up enjoying it well enough. Although the acting and dialogue are sub-par at best, the intriguing and complicated idea of the film make it worth a viewing. I don't have too much more to say about the film than that. The acting is amateur at best, it's obvious that these people are first-time actors (at least, I hope so), and most of their performances remind me of high school theater, with their emotions played up to the fullest and most obvious way they could have been. The one exception was David Hewlett, who played Worth, the nihilistic architect. He was angry, sullen, and seemingly indifferent in ways that made the audience question his motives. The dialogue has the same problem, amateur-ness, and is often ridiculous, even laugh-worthy. Despite these definite flaws, Cube is like an episode of The Twilight Zone brought into the 21st century, with all the paranoia and isolation that goes along with living in the new century. The cube structure that these random strangers is a nightmarish place, filled with weapons and fear that have been building in these people their whole lives from living in this modern world. There are some cool violence effects, especially at the very beginning, when a man literally gets cubed. The film goes on a little longer than it needs to, but it's an interesting thought experiment that gets clouded up by bad acting and dialogue. 6/10 RIYL: The Twlight Zone, Saw (which seems to have lifted its premise from Cube and added more gore)

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Short ones

I've seen a few movies lately that I don't really want to devote a whole post to, but thought I should say something about. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000): I'm not as big of a Kar Wai fan as most people I know are; the only film of his so far that I have really liked has been Fallen Angels, which is in a style unlike his most famous films. In the Mood for Love, along with Days of Being Wild (which I haven't seen) and 2046 (which I have, and was disappointed in) makes up a trilogy of lost love. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, both of whom I rather like, play neighbors whose respective spouses are cheating together, and so they form a bond based on that infidelity. The film is very visual, with minimal dialogue, and while it's beautiful, it didn't catch me in the place I thought it would. In fact, I fell asleep halfway through. Oops. I woke up and continued, but I didn't love it. 6/10 The Woods (Lucky McKee, 2006): I liked May, I liked McKee's episdoe of Masters of Horror, and I liked this. A suspenseful and intriguing first half gave way to a silly and disappointing second half, but Patricia Clarkson's performance alone is worth a rent. 6/10

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Love in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, 1972)

The last in Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, Love in the Afternoon (sometimes known as Chloe in the Afternoon) is a simple-seeming story of a man, Frederic, who is married to Helene and has two children with her, but meets in the afternoons with Chloe, the ex-girlfriend of an old friend. Rohmer's main moral question in this film is what constitutes cheating? Frederic and Chloe simply meet to talk for most of the movie, and it more or less never gets physical, but is Frederic being faithful to Helene? He admits that he does not want to be in a relationship with a woman who knows all his secrets, and would rather have someone outside the relationship to talk to, but what kind of relationship is that? Chloe reappears in Frederic's life after six years away in America. She is not conventially beautiful, but she is immensely attractive in spite of (or because of) how directionless her life is and how desperate she is. Chloe stays with any man who will offer her something, and while Frederic is at first a target, and also afraid that Chloe is only using him, she stays with him even though he doesn't offer her anything other than a companion to talk to and someone to imagine having a child with. Frederic, as I said, is quiet (but not unhappy) in his marriage to Helene, and he even has an English nanny who walks around naked with whom he could have an affair if he wanted. In Chloe, he finds a companion, a woman with whom he can have a conversation. At first, he seems to be immune to sexual attraction with Chloe, and while that eventually changes, their relationship seems more platonic than sexual at any given moment. Love in the Afternoon is a powerful rumination on the nature of love and lust, and relationships between men and women. As Chloe, Zouzou (anyone know anything about her?) gives a radiant performance, making the audience believe that a loser like Chloe could actually be so luminous to make a man like Frederic fall in love with her. Rohmer leaves the questions very open-ended, and through his non-judgemental exploration on fidelity and adultery, gives us some good insights on the nature of love. I am looking forward to watching more of the Moral Tales. 8/10 RIYL: Truffaut, French New Wave

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Love on the Run (Francois Truffaut, 1979)

I love Antoine Doinel. Really. I love him as if he was a real person, one that I know and have shared my life with. It's not as pathetic as it sounds, I hope, but watching Love on the Run was both a happy and sad experience on my part. It was another chapter in the Doinel saga, but it was the end. This movie is a strange ending to Doinel's story; it's part clip show of the series' greatest hits, part wrapup of Antoine's women troubles. The strangest thing about the movie is that, despite Truffaut's protestations to the contrary, it works. It's a fitting ending to one of the greatest series in film history. When the film begins, Antoine (Jean-Pierre Leaud, without whom the Doinel films would not have been even half as good as they were, he truly was made for the part, not only because Truffaut wrote the films after 400 Blows for him) and Christine (Claude Jade, who is not in this film nearly enough) are getting a divorce, something that I really hoped would not happen, that some magical thing would happen to get those two back together. But it doesn't. Antoine is with Sabine (played by French children's television host Dorothee), and, as always, he is on the verge of cheating and losing her. Along the way, he reconnects with Colette, who he was in love with at twenty, who is now a lawyer and having a moral crisis over whether or not to defend a man accused of killing his stepson. Sabine and Colette's boyfriend may or may not be married/divorced (one of my major problems of the film is the lack of resolution in this subplot), and Antoine is writing a new novel, one based on the adorable story of how he came to be with Sabine. There is no real plot, it is more of a character study of these three people (Antoine, Colette, and Sabine), and a realization of Antoine's women troubles throughout his life. The ending is artificially happy, and there's not nearly enough Christine in the film, but the experimental way in which Truffaut includes clips from all the previous Doinel films really works, even though Truffaut himself said it didn't. It's sort of like a clip show from your favorite series, but when it's something like Antoine Doinel's life adventures, you enjoy the trip back. A worthy entry in the series, although nothing like Stolen Kisses or Bed and Board. And it made me realize that I really need this, for both the films and the excellent Criterion special features (the best of any dvd set I've seen!). 8/10

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Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (Shunya Ito, 1972)

If I had to name one genre to be my favorite, it would have to be Japanese exploitation films of the 1970s. I haven't met one of those films I didn't love, and Meiko Kaji is the superstar of the genre. In this film, and the other films of the Female Convict Scorpion series, Kaji plays Matsu, also known as Scorpion because of how, well, badass she is. The film before Jailhouse 41, I believe, was simply called Female Prisoner Scorpion. In that film, Matsu again was being punished for not bending to the prison guards' will, and, in a fight with another inmate, was responsible (in a roundabout way) for the warden's eye being put out. Jailhouse 41 begins with that warden attempting to get revenge on Matsu for his lost eye, but locking her in the jail's basement for a year. Matsu refuses to go insane, or give the warden any satisfaction by screaming or complaining about her fate. Further punishment, which, like most films of its kind, is based on cruelty and off the wall plot devices, allows Matsu and six other convicts to escape, and the rest of the film is based on those women avoiding capture. Meiko Kaji as Matsu has exactly two lines in the film; the rest of the film is spent giving harsh stares to everyone in her way. Matsu is terrifying and intimidating, and Kaji is perfect in the role. Director Shunya Ito takes what might have been a run of the mill exploitation film and fills it with hallucinatory and psychedelic imagery, bringing in elements of kabuki and other influences in the scenes of the seven sinful women, as the escapees are called. Much more than the average exploitation film, Jailhouse 41 uses color and imagery to present the tortured insides of these convicted women. Truly wonderful! 8/10 RIYL: Kill Bill (ever wonder where QT got his ideas? from Meiko Kaji films, mostly)

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General Idi Amin Dada (Barbet Schroeder, 1974)

French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder was given unprecedented access to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 1974, in order to make a documentary about him. In fact, the documentary turned into a self-portrait, so much so that Schroeder put the subtitle "Autoportrait" on the film. Even after editing "acceptable" to Amin, he found out that the European cut showed him in a less-than-flattering light, and took the French citizens in Uganda hostage until Schroeder agreed to change the film to Amin's liking. All this background made for a powerful film of a brutal dictator at the time, but has lost a bit of its power over the years. As Roger Ebert pointed out in his review, this is not a very good documentary, because of Amin's obsessive supervision. Many of the events in the film, such as a whole village coming out to greet Amin as he arrives in a helicopter, were staged for the film (Schroeder lets us know in the voice-over). Amin is the star of the picture, and almost every scene is just him talking to the camera, or to a group of his officials. He offers his views on Israel and Palestine, but is less forthcoming when asked about his comments about Hitler. Keeping in mind that Amin was a dictator who, in seven years, may have killed up to half a million Ugandan citizens, this is a frightening documentary. But there is another side to this documentary, and that is the scary fact that Amin is, well, charming. I found myself laughing at his jokes, such as when he jokes that the Ugandan navy, while in a land-locked country, is the pride of Lake Victoria. He plays the accordian, and in fact, produced the score for the movie. He dances with the citizens at dances in his honor. He is shown in a swimming contest, and, in my favorite scene, in a boat on the Nile, waving and talking about the crocodiles, hippos, and elephants abundant in the water. He compares himself to the crocodile, while is eerily correct. One of the greatest strengths of Schroeder's picture is showing that even though the audience knows all of Amin's evil-doings, he is charming, and we are again reminded that even the greatest evil can have a very appealing face on it. Again, it's lost most of its power thirty years later, when Idi Amin is now a footnote in world history, but this film is an interesting portrait of an utterly interesting man, as staged as it might be. 6/10 RIYL: Documentaries, world politics

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Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin, 1947)

Charles Chaplin will forever be known in the public memory as the Little Tramp, and while that's understandable, it's not really fair when you look at a brilliant film like Monsieur Verdoux. Based on an idea by Orson Welles, it was supposed to be directed by Welles, but Chaplin, after years away from American film, decided that he had never been directed by someone else, so why start now? (What artist has that sort of freedom in the studio system now?!) Unfortunately, the dark subject matter and Chaplin's left-wing politics stopped the film from getting the recognition at the moment that it deserved, but audiences have rediscovered it since. Chaplin plays the titular character, a banker who was laid off during the French depression, and, unable to find another job, has made his living since by marrying and murdering rich women. It doesn't seem shocking now, but in 1947, a comedy made about a sympathetic murderer was absolutely controversial. Verdoux is very sympathetic, in fact; his scenes with his invalid wife and son are absolutely touching, and he has a moment as touching as anything the Little Tramp did when he promises them they will never have to live in poverty again. In fact, traces of the Little Tramp show through Verdoux's character sometimes, especially during the delightful slapstick episodes. Verdoux's plan works for years, but he is eventually caught and brought to "justice." Verdoux has some heavy-handed speeches at the end of the film, and while I appreciated their message, they brought down the tone of the film in the pivotal moment. Chaplin's extreme left-wing politics are obvious near the end of the film, another reason why post-war American audiences were wary of the film. Chaplin compares Verdoux's murders to those of world governments during the wars, and says that one murder makes a villian, millions, a hero. Again, that doesn't seem shocking today, but think about how that statement looks from an expatriate American in France right after World War II. Wow. Chaplin's got guts, I'll tell you that much. This film is hilarious, both in its dark humor elements and the physical comedy, and touching, especially in Chaplin's scenes with the young woman just out of jail. Not my favorite Chaplin (that still belongs to The Kid), but a perfect post-silent Chaplin vehicle. 8/10 RIYL: Black comedies, Charles Chaplin, Unfaithfully Yours (another black comedy of the same approximate time about murder)

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Institute Benjamenta (Brothers Quay, 1995)

I had an opportunity last night to see Institute Benjamenta on the big screen at a local university's theater, and I was tremendously excited. Friends who have seen it have loved it, it's out of print on DVD, and the novel on which it was based, Jakob von Gunten by Robert Walser, is one of my favorite books of all time. Perhaps that was my downfall; I love the book so much that I expected a faithful cinematic interpretation it. Instead, the Brothers Quay took the story and mixed with other Walser texts to make a beautiful, if personally disappointing, experimental film. The story revolves around Jakob (Mark Rylance), a new student at the Institute Benjamenta, run by siblings Lisa (Alice Krige, in a remarkable, gorgeous performance) and Herr Benjamenta. The novel has gorgeous, lyrical narration from Jakob, a lot of his fellow student and antagonist Kraus, and more of a storyline. The film, however, revolves around the love triangle between Jakob, Lisa, and Herr. The film is basically 100 minutes of gorgeous imagery, much of it involving deer. The film is so beautifully shot, with everything in fuzzy, dreamlike black and white, with characters moving in and out of focus. It reminded me of Science of Sleep in a lot of ways, not being sure what is reality and what is just in the mind. I recommend this film for those interested in experimental film; I only did not love it because Walser's novel is so dear to my heart. The love triangle was not so pronounced in the novel, and I would have loved to had more of the fellow students and the student life that was so well-described (but still avant-garde!) in the novel. A beautiful movie, but not one that was faithful to the book. I understand the Brothers Quay did not set out to make a faithful adaptation of a novel, but I left the theater wishing that someone, someday would. 6/10 RIYL: Jan Svankmajer, experimental film

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Updates!

Thanks to all of you who had suggestions for me! I've decided to take a few of them into account: From now on, every movie I rate a 6 or above, I'll put a RIYL (recommended if you like) underneath the rating, with movies, directors, or genres that might help you decide if you'd like to see the movie or not. Also, someone said that I should make posts about my favorite movies, and so once or twice a week, I'll be posting about a movie that I really love, and labeling it "favorite." Watch out for those! Keep the suggestions and comments coming, and feel free to email me at dreinoos at gmail.com if you have something to say! --Dana

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Calvaire (Fabrice du Welz, 2004)

Calvaire is being billed as the French response to Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I agree with that assessment. Both films deal with the "personal terror" and take place at a creepy house in the middle of nowhere, from which it looks as if there's no escape. But Calvaire is a single man's story, told with a minimum of dialogue and more complex social situations. In the end, I ended up more terrified by the strange happenings and religious allegory in Calvaire than anything in TCM. Marc Stevens, played very believably by Laurent Lucas, is a singer whose career is probably stalled, as we see him performing at a retirement home. The first few scenes show an elderly woman and a nurse throwing themselves at Marc, and him bitterly rejecting them both. These sexual rebuttals become fascinating in the context of the rest of the story, but that's for later. Marc's van breaks down in the woods, he ends up staying at Bartel's inn, and becomes his captive. But not only is Marc Bartel's captive, everyone in the town thinks Marc is Gloria, Bartel's wife (and another character's lover) who left him several years ago. Marc is subjected to sexual torture, as well as physical, emotional, and mental torture, not only at the hands of Bartel, but at those of the townspeople as well. Calvaire is filled with homages to other films, including TCM, but also Deliverance and Straw Dogs. Instead of coming off as a retread, Calvaire is a new and fresh kind of horror tale. It's not overly gory (although there are several scenes of intense violence), but it gets in your brain and won't let go. Lucas as Marc is one of my favorite horror heroes in recent memory, as it's not often that we get a single male victim (I really appreciated that it wasn't a screaming, busty female for once), and also a victim who alternately lays on the ground and sobs and fights viciously for his life. I could really relate to Marc, and really thought he reacted the way I would have. Not only is the hero-character a refreshing change, the amount of religious allegory in the film makes it head and shoulders intellectually above most other horror movies. Calvaire, while literally translates to "ordeal," is a French word that refers to the journey one must take to be crucified. Marc is literally and figuratively crucified in the movie, and the open-ended ending obviously leads to the parallels of Marc to Jesus. Looking back, the whole film can be read as a Christian allegory. One of my only complaints with Calvaire is that Phillippe Nahon (one of my favorite creepy guys ever) has too small of a part. He does factor in greatly in the last third of the movie, but could have used a bit more meat on his part. Calvaire is one of the best horror/thriller films I've seen in a while, and certainly one that made me think more than one I've seen in a long time. Don't go in expecting a gore-fest, however, as this is a character-driven, personal thriller. 8/10 RIYL: High Tension, Straw Dogs

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Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry, 2006)

Since I am a huge Gael Garcia Bernal fan, and quite dug Eternal Sunshine, I have been looking forward to Science of Sleep for a long time. I was not disappointed. I would say that Science is better than Eternal Sunshine, more thoughtful, sadder, and says more about the nature of love and human friendship than his other movies have. Since everyone has something to say about this movie (and I want to hear what you have to say!), I'll make my review rather brief, but I could talk forever about this movie. Bernal plays Stephane, a Mexican who returns to France, his birthplace, to his mother after his father's death. He meets Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg, who looks a lot like Keith Richards, a friend pointed out to me), his neighbor, while helping move her piano. She thinks he's a mover, and the first half of the film more or less revolves around Stephane trying to pretend he doesn't live next door. She finds out, of course, and they become involved. Well, sort of. The second half is much stranger than the first, with Stephane's dreams almost completely taking over his life, and he becomes obsessed with Stephanie and her love, even after they are together. The real joy of this film is the visuals. The dream sequences so closely reminded me of my own dream world that it was amazing to see it on the big screen. Gondry playfully weaves Stephane's dreams in and out of his life, and even gives the viewer pause many times to figure out if the actions are actually happening or not. Bernal is, as always, amazing in his performance; even though Stephane is actually a child in an adult's body/world, you empathize with him and his desire for real world to be more like a dream world. Gainsbourg is also good, and I appreciated Gondry's casting of a non-gorgeous actress in the role of Stephane's femme fatale. The ending made me seriously depressed, but I could see how one could also interpret it as optimistic. That's how open-ended the film is, and how love is. Very highly recommended. 9/10

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Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980)

The concept behind Altered States is a thoroughly fascinating one: is there genetic memory in all of our bodies? How can we tap into it? The answers, in the movie at least, are yes, and through Mexican hallucinogenics and a sensory deprivation tank. While I'd like to believe the first is true, the second is a bit harder to swallow, and what makes Altered States an impressive try, but not very effective. First off, the effects. I understand that they may have been impressive 26 years ago, but they really did not age well at all. The hallucinating montages are equally visually impressive/scary and cheesy, and the last scene is probably the epitome of 80s special effects. Even though I was getting into the message of the film, the effects brought me out of it a little. This isn't really the movie's fault (how could Ken Russell have known that it would look so corny in the future?), but it's still a disadvantage. The feud between director Russell and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky has been well reported. Chayefsky eventually demanded that his name be taken off of the credits because he felt that Russell destroyed the movie. I felt the exact opposite, that Russell's beautiful direction saved the film from Chayefsky's self-important, pseudo-science screenplay (adapted from his own novel). Russell is known for his lavish directorial style, and I think it really worked well here, in the story of trying to find Truth (if it exists) through hallucinations. William Hurt (in his first film role!) does a good job at portraying the obsessive, anti-emotional nature of Eddie Jessup, the scientist obsessed with finding out if out bodies have internal memories. Blair Brown, as his long-suffering wife, does a serviceable job, but is so beautiful, and Russell really shoots her in a marvelous way, especially during the hallucination scenes. I was really enjoying the movie until the end. Without spoiling it completely for anyone who hasn't seen it, the ending (which is true of Chayefsky's novel, I have heard) is a true Hollywood ending, with all problems being resolved overly simply. It just does not work with these characters, especially Dr. Jessup, who has been so rational, almost bordering, ironically enough, into the irrational, the whole movie. Maybe Jessup did learn something profound in his last trip that changed everything he believed in his whole life, but I think it would have been more interesting for him to find out that not everything does end happily. A good watching experience that made me want to see more of Russell's films, but I just wish i could have seen it when it came out, to experience the "newness" of Russell's experiment. 6/10

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Millenium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

On the surface, Millenium Mambo bears little in common with Three Times, the Hsiao-hsien film I reviewed recently. While Three Times was about quiet worlds and lives, Millenium Mambo represents the lives of Taiwanese 20-somethings, filled with drugs, clubs, and loud music. But beyond those superficial differences, both films share the same core interests: young people and the loneliness and sadness contained therein. Millenium Mambo is the story of Vicky (played perfectly by Qi Shu, whom I was also very impressed with in Three Times), a 20-something Taiwanese girl who lives with her boyfriend Hao-Hao. Hao-Hao is physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive to Vicky, and it shows in her growing alcoholism (she is almost constantly drinking in the film) and feelings that she is not a memebr of the "normal world." At the hostess club where she eventually works, she meets and falls in love with Jack, a gangster-type character who neverthless treats Vicky with love and respect. Vicky shuttles between not only these two men, but other men and situations that give her life momentary meaning, but nothing beyond that. The film is narrated in third-person from the year 2011 (ten years after the action takes place), showing the meaninglessness of most of our day-to-day actions. In ten years, none of the things that seem so pressing to Vicky in the film are probably even remembered by her. The tragic, yet undefined, end of the film seems as if these moments are already fading away from her. The movie is not plot-based; instead, it is image- and emotion-based, with long periods of silences between characters. In this movie, actions truly do speak volumes louder than words. The anticipation that 20-somethings have of life truly "beginning" spoke to me, and in the movie, that anticipation is equated to the world's anticipation of the new millenium. Neither is as meaningful as was hoped, and that is Hsiao-hsien's impression of the world, it seems. Pessimistic, maybe, but most certainly beautiful. Hsiao-hsien is now officially on the list of directors I need to see more of. 8/10

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Moonlight Whispers (Akihiko Shiota, 1999)

I came into this movie expecting a strange little film about teenagers in an S&M relationship. I got that, but I'm not sure it's actually want I wanted anymore. Hidaka has been obsessed with his kendo partner Satsuki for as long as he's known her, and when she reciprocates her feelings, it seems that all is going well. But Satsuki soon finds out that Hidaka has been taking pictures of her, stealing her socks, and taping her while she pees. Oh. She breaks up with him and starts dating Uematsu, but she soon realizes that she and Hidaka have a connection that binds them to one another. That connection is S&M, I guess. Hidaka wants to be her submissive, and she tries to hurt him and every turn. While I'm interested in S&M relationships as something outside of sex, the characters in Moonlight Whispers are too immature to make this relationship work, or even interesting to an outside party. Satsuki goes from doe-eyed in love with Hidaka in one scene, to vengeful S&M goddess in the next. What fuels her sudden intense interest in making Hidaka cry? How does she make that change so quickly? She keeps remarking throughout the film that she hates Hidaka and only likes Uematsu, and while she seems sincere, her actions say otherwise. I suppose I didn't like this film so much because of the improbability of the characters' actions. They act the way a screenwriter would have them act, not how actual people would. The first half is solid, but I wouldn't recommend the film as a whole. 5/10

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Matador (Pedro Almodovar, 1986)

Being a big fan of Almodovar, I was more than thrilled to learn about the Sony Classics 'Viva Pedro!' series, which, along with rereleasing more recent Almodovar such as Talk to Her and Bad Education, was finally rereleasing a few obscure, unavailable on DVD films, like Law of Desire and this one. While I have some issues with the films chosen (why those new ones and not way harder to find others like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! or Labyrinth of Passion?! But I digress), I appreciate the great opportunity to see a movie like Matador, which both fits right into the Almodovar canon and stands bravely outside of it at the same time. Matador is the story of Angel, an aspiring bullfighter driven crazy by his highly religious mother, Maria, his lawyer (Angel admits to murders he may or may not have committed), and Diego, a former bullfighter and Angel's instructor. All three people have serious obsessions with sexuality and violence, and most of the problems in the movie stem from the inability to distinguish between the two. Violence is sexy, and most sex is violent. There are some very disturbing images, from the first scene of a man masturbating to a slasher film (which reminded me very much of Patrick Bateman's obsession with Body Double), to a montage in Angel's mind of rape and murder. This is the least female-focused Almodovar picture I've seen, and also the most upsetting - coincidence? I don't think so. Although Maria has this obsession as well, Almodovar seems more to be speaking to male sexuality in the modern world. Although it's set in 1980s Spain, it could be present day America. The performances are almost universally very strong - who knew Antonio Banderas could be so believeable (as Angel)? Carmen Maura, whom I have said before I really like, brightens up the second half as a psychologist. Nacho Martinez as Diego is effectively obsessive and creepy, and Eva Cobo as the immature model Diego dates is impressive as well. As always, Almodovar really gets the best out of his ensemble cast. Matador is a movie where not only is the boundary between sex and violence blurred, but that between truth and fiction, as well. The middle of the movie drags a little, as the story is so dense that it's cumbersome to tell, but once the characters' motivations begin to reveal themselves behind the layers of lies many of them hold up, it is fascinating. Matador brings into question the very notions of truth and sanity themselves; do they truly exist, or are they things that are made up by some external force? 7/10

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