my a to zed of cinema: i-k

Inside Daisy Clover: (1965. dir: Robert Mulligan) Strictly speaking, you could describe this as a big-budget, star-studded musical and you wouldn't be lying. Shot largely on the Warner Brothers backlot during the waning days of the big studios, you don't have to scratch hard at the veneer to dig up a dark indictment of the studio system. It's about a gamine tomboy with a great set of pipes who gets Lana-Turner-at-the-soda-fountained into the movies, and every "Hollywood" character in the script is downright sinister -- if not at first, then as the plot unfolds: from studio boss Raymond Swan and his wife to Robert Redford as megacharmer movie-star Wade Louis and Roddy McDowell as a loathesome factotum. There's nothing convincingly 15-year-old about Natalie Wood, who was in her late twenties at the time, but her Daisy is likable, and the scene in which she's shanghaied by a nervous breakdown while in the overdubbing booth watching a huge, repeating image of herself doing a silent, grotesque musical number is eerily potent. Christopher Plummer is perfect as Swan, the black-garbed powerbroker and "prince of darkness", as he's known behind his back, who starts off creepy, fleshes out convincingly into three dimensions and, in the end, is even creepier. Each of the major characters gets at least one great scene in which to cut loose, including a doozy for Katharine Bard as Swan's damaged wife who glides through most of the movie in elegant gowns and frozen smiles and is almost terrifying when her emotions emerge.




Julia: (1977. dir: Fred Zinnemann) It's a movie shaped like memory, overlapping fragments unmoored from their proper temporal sequence, painted in rich, burnished, autumnal colors. There were two movies that formed my ideal of a writer's life: this one and Reds (which is in the running for my favorite movie ever). Those eastern beaches with their sloping sands and leaning fences, their eternal grey and windy skies, a secluded cottage, thick fishermans' sweaters, plenty of smokes and whiskey and an old Royal typewriter, the handsome and intrepid Jason Robards as lover and companion in the next room. That's a piece of paradise, my friend.

Part of the story's brilliance is that it's not based on memory at all, not the part about the character Julia, anyway: although Lillian Hellman published it as memoir, it was established later that she'd cut it from whole cloth, interweaving a fictional character and plot with true strands of her life with Dash Hammett and her early fame as a playwright. Doesn't matter: it reads well on the page and plays well here, although the less you know about Hellman, the easier it is to swallow. The idea of the kitteny-gorgeous Jane Fonda playing homely old Lillian draws the first smirk -- much of Hellman's toughness of character seems intimately tied up with her want of conventional pulchritude -- but the real howler is imagining Lillian Hellman torn up for more than a few hours' drunk over the disappearance of a child she'd never met. No... the REAL howler is the idea of anyone who knew Hellman trying to thrust an innocent child upon her to rear; if ever there was a couple unsuited to the nurturing of innocents, it was Hammett and Hellman.




Kicking and Screaming: (1995. dir: Noah Baumbach) I've written about it elsewhere so I'll keep it brief... Baumbach's debut (at age 25) is deadpan hilarious. What he hasn't yet learned -- in terms of character definition, for instance -- he makes up for in casting (Josh Hamilton from Outsourced, Chris Eigeman from the Whit Stillman trilogy, Carlos Jacott from Joss Whedon's stable of recurring actors, Olivia d'Abo in a performance so good I forgave her at last for Conan the Destroyer) and fantastic writing. It's an adept melange of merriment and exploration of youthful angst: the story of a tightly-knit group of boys graduating college but unready to enter the world. There are wonderful, poignant scenes amongst the funny: when Grover (Hamilton) finally listens to the message his ex-girlfriend (d'Abo), who left him to live in Prague, has left on his machine, or when he convinces a ticket agent to let him spontaneously onto an overseas flight in the name of destiny and true love. Even Elliott Gould, who usually makes me grumpy, enhances the work in a small role as Grover's dad.

Baumbach's later works (Squid and the Whale, Margo at the Wedding) are what you might call "better", and that's as it should be, but THIS is the movie that has his heart, and it's the one that's over-and-over watchable.

the greatest movie i've never seen: herostratus

The center of the world is constantly shifting, culturally speaking: it was Paris at the fin de siecle, Greenwich Village in the fifties, Seattle for a few lively months in 1991. Herostratus came out in 1967/8, just as Carnaby Street was losing its vibrancy and the cultural omphalos was edging back overseas, possibly to California. It is the only feature film by Australian Don Levy, who apparently left the film industry afterwards in disgust. He was studying Chemistry at Cambridge when he became entangled in the moviemaking world, which led him into the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1962 the British Film Institute gave him a grant and he launched into Herostratus, which took five years to complete and opened in the same week as 2001: A Space Odyssey. He then retired to teach film in the U.S. until his untimely death in 1987.

Herostratus (named for the fellow who set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in 356 BC in a bid for immortality) is the story of a disillusioned poet who offers to sell his own suicide to an ad agency. They'll make some money; he'll send a final message of disgust; everyone wins. It stars Michael Gothard (a fascinating actor: he was the creepy-sexy exorcist in Ken Russell's the Devils, the stern-faced gaoler who tumbles for Faye Dunaway's charms in Richard Lester's Four Musketeers, and he joined that exclusive club of Bond Villains when he played Locque in For Your Eyes Only), and marks the screen debut of a nubile teenager named Helen Mirren.

Behold the reviews of the day: it was praised as "one of the great films of the year" (La Libre Belgique, 12/30/67), telling its tale "with discipline and astounding impact... in one masterly scene after another..." (Art & Artists Magazine). Molly Plowright in the Glasgow Herald (1/2/68) called it "the most astonishing film of my experience... right on the frontier of the cinema as we so far know it," and adds, "The visuals are more beautiful and the content more terrible than anything else I have seen, and the steady stare in the depths of the human mind makes Godard and Losey look like fumbling side glances." Richard Whitehall in 1972 said, "Distribution problems may have kept Herostratus from general audiences, but its impact on filmmakers, especially in Western Europe, has been profound. Its influence may be seen not only in the revitalized German cinema, but also Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange." Tom Ramage in Boston After Dark said, "Levy is a genius and Herostratus is one of the five or six most significant films of the last decade." The encomia continue... see the Don Levy Project for these references and more.

It, like much swingin' sixties' product, apparently doesn't age well. Londoners were privileged to see a revival showing a few years ago, and TIME OUT called it "Antonioni crossed with Lester... polite, irreverent, inarticulate." It may be that after all these years of longing for it I will be vastly disappointed, as I was when I finally saw Privilege.

If someone would release it on DVD, I could find out.

my cinematic a to zed: e-h

Enigma: (2001. dir: Michael Apted) A Ukrainian dog digs up a human arm. A single word, the German word for the flower Columbine, is transmitted over all frequencies then an ominous silence reigns in Nazi airspace; when messages resume, the code has been changed, and the English can no longer read it. A haunted genius, loosely based on Alan Turing (a heterosexual version played by Dougray Scott), is recalled back to his duties from the clutches of a nervous breakdown. Thus begins Enigma.

There are few places, few moments in history that I romanticize as fiercely as I do Bletchley Park. In the thick of WWII, a disparate crew of geniuses, puzzle fanatics, and maths experts were secretly gathered on an unassuming estate some miles north of London where they quietly broke Nazi codes and thereby allowed the Allies to win the war. Realistically, crammed into tiny huts and forced to share rooms, taking down or, at best, deciphering messages all day, even one's personal conversations restricted by fears for national security, I'd have been miserable. Still, I often dream myself into that time and place. This movie, then, was made for me.

First off, Tom Stoppard wrote it, managing to squeeze a Brobdingnagian heap of exposition -- about the enigma machines, the breaking of the codes, the shifting political face of the war, not to mention the mores and customs of the time -- gracefully into the action without dragging at the timing. Then there's the cast: stuffed full of fantastic Brits, from Tom Holland to Corin Redgrave to Saffron Burrows. I've seen Dougray Scott act well in only two films, and this is one. Kate Winslet and Jeremy Northam, meanwhile, have a gleeful old time, he as a silky, condescending government spy-catcher, she playing the frumpy girl for a change.





Firefly: (2002. creators: Joss Whedon and Tim Minear) This is the best thing that television ever came up with. Only television didn't come up with it; Joss Whedon did, and that makes him a big damn hero. Fox, that inscrutable tyrant, cancelled the series practically before it debuted, leaving fourteen episodes and the postscript film, Serenity, which hit cinemas a few years later. Do not under any circumstances judge the TV show by the movie, which has lost the good, beating heart and deft humor of the original. My theory is that Joss' own heart was broken by the cancellation, hence the icy spirit of the movie. It's not bad, Serenity; it just doesn't inhabit the same beautiful space that Firefly did.

It can't be described, not with justice, but here's the cornerstone: some five hundred years in the future, Earth-That-Was is no longer inhabitable, but humankind has moved out into space, creating livable planets out of moons with a process known as terraforming. The planets are tied together under the empirical rule of the Alliance, and some of the crew of Serenity, the transport-class spacecraft we follow, fought ferociously for the Browncoats in favor of independent rule in the interplanetary war six years earlier. An amalgam of Chinese and American languages is spoken, and the feel of the 'verse is as much Western as sci-fi. Settlers are dumped on a terraformed planet not with rayguns and teleportation devices but with six-shooters and horses and chickens. That's out on the boundaries of the galaxy. The closer to civilization, aka Alliance territory, the more futuristic and sci-fi it gets, but our crew of thieves and misfits keeps its distance when it can from civilization.

Whedon is never afraid to get dark (the darkest eps are the best: "Out of Gas", "War Stories", and the chilling swan-song "Objects in Space") but he's downright poetical with his humor, as well. I was going to quote some favorite lines, but it's better you watch it yourself, hear them in context. (OK, just one: "If wishes was horses, we'd all be eatin' steak.")

Seriously. It's so good I sometimes wish I'd never seen it before so I could watch it again for the first glorious time.





Gorky Park: (1983. dir: Michael Apted) Why is this a neglected film? It's a cold-war classic far superior to any John Le Carre outing, including the bloodless and ridiculously overhyped Smiley series, which are packed full of tasty British actors doing little or nothing, including Sir Alec Guinness, so distant in the role you can barely see him; his edges are almost blurry, he's so far gone. This one, on the other hand, has a tasty menu of Brits acting up a storm. The whole thing is worth a viewing just for Ian McDiarmid's five-minute masterpiece of a performance, or Ian Bannen at his best, or Alexei Sayle as a black-market profiteer. It's based on Martin Cruz Smith's novel, arguably his best, and it's got William Hurt at his handsomest (as the Moscow policeman walking a thin line between solving a triple murder committed in Gorky Park and avoiding the quicksand of fingering KGB for it) and Lee Marvin as the Big Bad. What's not to love? Plus an engaging mystery that has a ring of truth about it and snappy dialogue (Irina: "KGB have better cars, you know?" Arkady: "Yes, but they don't always take you where you want to go, do they?"), a great sense of atmosphere, a good take on the menace and mundanity of the interlocking rings of Soviet hierarchy, and the story never gets muddled in the telling. Its biggest flaw is that it bogs down in its sentimental-hogwash love-story toward the end, but the last shot, of six angry sables romping toward freedom in the snow, is wonderfully satisfying.





Hearts of Darkness; a Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991. dir: George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr) Along with Les Blank's Burden of Dreams, this is my favorite movie-about-a-movie documentary. Both are behind-the-scenes studies of lumbering behemoths of the cinema (Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and Coppola's Apocalypse, Now!) and their respective directors' doubts and egomanias. This one was originally begun by Eleanor Coppola as a way to pass the time (years, it turned out) while her husband's film, massively over-budget, massively behind-schedule, massive in every respect, was shot. It's best watched in tandem with reading her published journal of the same title, which lets us in on further details, like that Francis was frequenting an onset love-nest with a production assistant during shooting, and the marriage was in danger. Apocalypse is one of the most fascinating movies ever made, and that makes this one fascinating doc. If you really catch the bug, read assistant director and actor ("Terminate" pause "with extreme prejudice") Jerry Ziesmer's account as well, set forward in Ready When You Are, Mr Coppola, Mr Spielberg, Mr Crowe.

my a to zed of cinema: a-d

Android: (1982. dir: Aaron Lipstadt) Apparently, we as a species are unable to consider robots without imagining them turning human of their own volition. Certainly it makes for some of our most compelling science fiction tales, and this is one.

Max 404 (Don Opper) is stuck on a space station where he assists a scientist (Klaus Kinski... and, therefore, a mad scientist) in his obsessive work, which aims at the activation of the perfect android. Android research has been outlawed on earth since the Munich Massacre, a terrible Philip-K-Dick-ish robot uprising, some years prior. Word comes that his project has been terminated just as three escaped prisoners take refuge on the station, eagerly welcomed by the adventure-hungry Max, and more insidiously by Kinski's Dr. Daniel, who needs the energy of a human woman to breathe life, Metropolis-like, into his robot.

Max's whimsical charm never sugar-chokes because it's soon enough leavened by the story's descent into darkness, leading Max into his own dark places. The budget is low, the acting good, the story well and easily told. It's easy to catch a boom-mike lowered into a shot, hard to block out the '80s cheeseboard electronica soundtrack, but all flaws are forgiven in the end in this bare-bones prize.



Blueberry: (2004. dir: Jan Kounen) Overlong and pretentious (it is French, after all) but gorgeous and strange Euro tripper-Western, slipped quietly and belatedly onto U.S. video shelves in a truncated version called Renegade. Based on a popular French-language comic, it brings to life the blood-feud between Marshal Mike Blueberry (Vincent Cassel) and archnemesis Wallace Blount, played by a well-used Michael Madsen. In fact, in a largely humorless film (it is French, after all), Madsen has the one laugh-out-loud moment when he holds a tarantula in Eddie Izzard's face and says, "If I was a spider, you'd crush my head. You would. You'd crush my furry black head."

Now that I've given away the one joke, what's left is an extraordinary landscape that blurs boundaries between internal and external realms. The phenomenal thing about this film is the showdown in the end, a full ten-minute segment which takes place entirely in the heads of the two enemies as they lie next to each other, physically incapacitated but psychically released on a wild and mutual peyote trip.





Conflict: (1973. dir: Jack Gold) In the early sixties, the Catholic Church was rocked by an earthquake from within called the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican -- Vatican II for short. It changed everything, issuing revolutionary rulings on liturgy, theology, and many aspects of Catholic living. Nowadays we take these rulings for granted and are easily appalled when Mel Gibson takes an unapologetic hard line on non-Catholics being destined for Hell, but a mere generation ago the hard line was all there was, short of heresy.

Originally titled Catholics for its television debut and based on the novel of that name by Brian Moore, this low-budget b&w outing brings a young and hip Fr. Kinsella (Martin Sheen), as representative from the Vatican, to a tiny island off Ireland where Trevor Howard and his band of dedicated monks have attracted unwanted attention for the crime of saying the Mass in its traditional Latin. The monks are played by a coterie of brilliant Brits (Cyril Cusack, Andrew Keir, a young but assured Michael Gambon) and the whole film is a quiet and engaging conversation about the issues raised by Vatican II: about the nature of worship itself, what lies at its heart, what compromises are necessary in its name and what battles are worth fighting.





Dark Wind: (1991. dir: Errol Morris) I refuse to feel guilty about this low-key pleasure. It's an early screen version of the Tony Hillerman novel (one of the first Jim Chee books), made prior to the PBS series. Morris, famed for his documentaries, has an arresting visual style, and the measured pace keeps faith with the book without sacrificing suspense. Lou Diamond Phillips provides an especially sad-sack Jim Chee appropriate to his tenderfoot status on the rez, and Gary Farmer brings his usual trickster magic to Cowboy Dashee.