Matty

The content of Stapleton’s documentary fully corresponds to the subtitle of another, significantly juicier look into the backstreets of Hollywood – Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream. The erstwhile rebel was appropriated as their spiritual father by mainstream actors, producers and directors, who comprised the system against whose products Corman’s films were defined. Corman himself views this disgrace – made doubly irritating by the awarding of an Oscar for a lifetime of filming busty actresses, severed limbs and carnivorous fauna – with emotion. Why not grant him that, to have a comparably uncompromising pragmatist among American filmmakers. Though I doubt that he would have made his delightful trash flicks, which are so much more entertaining than anything of the like that is now passed off in all seriousness as top-tier genre movies, with the vision of an Oscar and cultural enrichment of his homeland in his head. With respect to its subject matter, the documentary is not very “nasty” as such; with the exception of a brief interlude, it shamelessly omits the essential historical and social context, and during the moments when stories from filming replace personal impressions, it becomes quite slow, but it still serves well for basic orientation and if you have at least a slight weakness for exploitation trash flicks, you will likely end up wanting to get your hands on a few of Corman’s films and spend a pleasant weekend with them. 65%

The Extraordinary Voyage is a valuable supplement to the restored and colourised A Trip to the Moon, which AIR’s music turns into a sort of remake of the original film, adapted for nerds who revel in campy weirdness). Judging from what little I know about Méliès, the information presented here is not erroneous; at most, it is simplified (for example, it is not customary to state the original length of silent films in minutes). In the commentary of several film dreamers (Jeunet, Gondry, Hazanavicius), the cinephilic value clearly outweighs the informational value, and the filmmakers could have also forgiven themselves for the slightly anti-American element (though I fully agree with the oblique message that Méliès’s film was a more valuable achievement than sending men to the moon). However, that is a negligible price to pay for increasing the film’s attractiveness to audiences. Of course, the whole sixty minutes could have been filled with a detailed description of the restoration process, but the filmmakers wisely decided to take a more accommodating approach to viewers who are less passionate about the technical side of things and viewers knowledge of Méliès’s film begins and ends with the image of the Moon with a rocket in its eye. The result is rarely balanced, but I believe that scientists and enthusiasts will not be offended by it and others will not be bored. 80%

Sometimes there is a thin line separating overrated works and masterpieces. Chosen by film experts again this year as one of the ten best films of all time, The Rules of the Game comes across as stale and – though I don’t like to admit this about any film – boring. Renoir’s humanism doesn’t fit with the cynical, hypocritical and affected members of the bourgeoisie. Rather than being critical, the tone of the film is conciliatory; rather than satire, The Rules of the Game is reminiscent of a Clair-esque madcap comedy, which suddenly breaks down into a serious drama at the end. If I show leniency in evaluating Renoir’s ambitious (the film was a flop despite its large budget), lengthy and repetitive project, that is because of its formalistic aspect. Renoir’s work with multiple image planes, in which something or someone is usually in motion, does not distract the viewer’s attention, but sharpens it. Meanings are not formed through editing, but with the camera itself, without our assistance. The Rules of the Game manages to keep us on our toes with flawlessly organised entrances and exits of the characters. If that’s not enough for such a celebrated film…well, maybe it is. 75%

Another filmic ballad building up the myth of the last Hollywood desperado, Sam Peckinpah.  This documentary is on a higher filmmaking level than Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron and, compared to Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade, focuses more on Peckinpah’s films, not exclusively on his westerns. Nevertheless, mostly the same people appear in all three works (Kristofferson again sings his mournful songs, L.Q. Jones again reminisces about legendary bouts of drinking) and the portrait of the rebel director remains the same. Peckinpah’s explosive nature is presented as a necessary element in the fight against studio stagnation, and his problems with alcohol and drugs come across as a consequence of his inability to do what he wanted (though reason leads us to conversely see the lack of offers as a reaction to the director’s complicated nature). Though Passion and Poetry contains of minimum of clips from the films discussed (mostly only trailers), it offers a solid summary in its two-hour runtime. That said, it wouldn’t be inappropriate to stop diluting Peckinpah’s numerous flaws with a nostalgic and melancholic tone.

Forget the fearless desperadoes with their low-slung six-guns and noble intentions. The mask of western virtue conceals scoundrels, cowards and freeloaders who won’t go out of their way to contribute to the renown of their one-horse town. Quiet tolerance of bandits, no respect for the dead and a willingness to shamelessly fight in the mud. Only the sheriff, who has spent four years trying to get to Australia, can bring order to this godforsaken shithole. And first of all, it will be necessary to put bars in the local jail. I haven’t seen a western comedy of comparable humour. Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles comes to mind, but that was a rollicking parody that jumped over the rules of the genre like Indians jumping over fire rather than skilfully bending them like firewater bending the mind of a sober cowboy. The conversational humour flows freely, taking the piss out of the “settlers of the untamed land” theme and works very well even when taken out of its place of origin, i.e. from the film itself. A forgotten well of cowboy anecdotes that definitely won’t run dry with a single viewing. 75%

Five years passed between the release of Wes Craven’s directorial debut, the still disturbing The Last House on the Left, and his second film. As with that earlier film, he not only directed The Hills Have Eyes, but also wrote the screenplay and did the editing himself. The plot couldn’t be any simpler: the American middle class is confronted in the middle of the desert with something whose existence is not acknowledged in the safety of the home. A family of Republicans (their political leanings are apparent from their warm relationship with guns and hypocritical faith in God) is about to become intimately familiar with a family of degenerate cannibals. The film is notably less intense and disturbing than the thematically similar The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What I miss is especially the dinginess of Hooper’s cult hixploitation flick; in the best case, even the cannibals here look like a gang of bandits from a television fairy-tale for kids. They don’t arouse fear and we don’t see much of the violence that they carry out. Because there is nothing to be afraid of, The Hills Have Eyes works better as “mirror held up to society” than as a horror film eliciting a feeling of dread. It is worth noting that Craven didn’t employ the usual division between technological and pre-technological societies, as the savages also use modern technology; they have simply learned to control the achievements of civilisation, regardless of how uncivilised they are themselves. Furthermore, in their use of technology, they achieve better results than the protagonists, who are repeatedly let down by otherwise reliable gadgets, mostly at the moment when they want to kill someone with them. They manage to get the killing done only by using more barbaric means (an axe, a dagger) requiring hand-to-hand combat. In other words, if you want to survive in the wilderness, you have to become a savage yourself. This psychologically dense (the loss of the father, the mother’s fear of snakes, Pluto’s frustration from being denied sex) film ends at the moment the monster inside of us is revealed, at the moment of the direct attack on the camera. There is no epilogue that would restore the status quo. Deal with it the best you can, dear viewer. Deprived of a sense of security like the whole family in the film, we are the main victim. Very unsettling, very Craven. 65%

The girl who played with cows (and kicked the ones that angered her). She could choose what to use her gift (and curse) for. She chose livestock, the mute faces that don’t make her nervous and that she understands much better than the human beings around her. The strange subject is believable due not only to the fact that it is based on actual events, but also to the effort of the filmmakers and Claire Denis to understand Temple Grandin’s world (Denis brilliantly portrays her persistent immaturity). In order for us to get a better idea of her experience, we are shown people and things through her eyes. The ideas and emotions that Temple has difficulty expressing are rendered in images. Orbis pictus. One might seek a subject more suitable for a film. The protagonist’s difficult journey to achieving her life’s dream is devoid of impassioned moments and the film is hindered by its literalness in explaining what autism involves. Besides the protagonists diagnosis, the setting of the American Southwest of the 1960s, dominated exclusively by men, is factored in, and we can thus be even more fascinated by the determination of one petite girl, or rather woman. 75%

I assumed that the more ambitious American film and television production industry had outgrown the idealism that pervades Newsroom. However, I can’t say that I’m at all bothered by it, given the polished verbal exchanges perfectly timed to the second (the ballet performed by the camera as it moves between multiple actors slinging words around in a single room is captivating), the likable characters (fittingly, there is not a single negative character on the team; the bad guys are those who have power and money), and the irresistible, albeit utopian, model of fundamentally fact-based journalism (if this is how Sorkin gets even a single viewer to start viewing the news more critically, he has accomplished his mission). Despite that, I won't be anticipating the second season nearly as eagerly as the second season of Studio 60, which was never actually made. I apologise for the messy long sentences with a lot of parentheses, but that’s how the verbal exchanges that I most admired in the whole series were rendered in Newsroom. 80%

Why didn't someone explain to Danna that he was not composing music for a Chinese historical film, but for an American psychological film? Well, not actually very psychological…and not at all as chilling as the metaphors that it uses (family members are separated by sheets of ice and their relationships slowly approach the freezing point). If life wears you down a bit sometimes, watching The Ice Storm doesn’t. Though it outwardly addresses major issues, it’s banal and suffers from literalism (what do you call a party that’s a key element of the narrative? A key party!). Ang Lee takes care to ensure that every shot makes us aware that the story is set in a period when the United States had definitively lost its innocence, but with the exception of the reference to Deep Throat and the bizarre “Fuck Nixon” scene (or whatever you want to call it), I saw no reason why the whole relationship drama couldn’t have been set a decade earlier or later. The actors perform according to expectations, but the behaviour of their characters doesn’t make a lot of sense and is rather lacking in authenticity and uncalculated emotion. Now I would like to cleanse my palate with some Altman-style vitriol (Short Cuts, perhaps?). 60%

If it weren’t so long, The Making of ‘The Frighteners’ would be just another of the many films about film. The unnarrated shots from filming are entirely needless, the creation of digital effects, which is understandably given the most space, has advanced significantly since the time of the film’s release, and the poorly executed shots aren’t among the funniest. More than the detailed description of the production process, I was interested in Jackson’s ability to simultaneously hold the position of film fan and filmmaker. As he mentions in the introduction to this monster documentary, he is well aware of the attractiveness of behind-the-scenes material for viewers and he took a large amount of video material during and even before production (the later video blogs from King Kong and The Hobbit allowed us to feel that we were there, participating in the filming). Having learned from the bonus materials on other discs, he further tries to avoid any possible unpleasantness for BD/DVD users (which he directly mentions in the Storyboards chapter included on the BD as a separate bonus feature). By creating the impression that he is on the side of those who are enthusiastic about every new technology and pop-culture allusion, he gains the sympathy of nerds while also creating an alibi in case the film is rejected by critics, who – unlike the knowledgeable fans – didn’t know what the filmmaker wanted to achieve. A smooth move. 70%