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Festival Coverage - Cannes 2012: Opening Night

Wed, 16 May 2012 19:18:13 -0400

Wes Anderson gets flack sometimes for a perceived superficiality in his films, and fair enough; his ornate style cultivates a carefully manicured aesthetic, paying ample consideration to every minute detail down to the color-coded characters and the wallpapered backgrounds that frame them. But Anderson's always found a way to transcend those limitations, balancing the scales of his style, so to speak, by counterweighting his exacting compositions with an understated humanism. Those scales finally tipped, however, with his last feature, the stop-motion "Fantastic Mr. Fox." As it turns out, lose the actual humans in a Wes Anderson picture and so too goes the humanism. "Moonrise Kingdom," then, returns Anderson to flesh and feeling, to the emotional stakes and some of the patience of sprawling, 'less perfect' films like "The Royal Tenenbaums" and, my personal favorite Anderson, "The Darjeeling Limited."

“Moonrise Kingdom” is set during the summer of 1965, on the fictional New Panzance Island, and it concerns a romantic tryst between two sullen twelve-year-old runaways in the days leading up to a cataclysmic, deus ex machina-style storm. Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) is a boy scout bedazzled in merit badges; his sad-eyed paramour, Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward), is a borderline depressive who sometimes resembles Emma Roberts and Lana Del Rey (she even shares the latter's affection for chansons). As the two indulge in each other's company, sharing all their favorite hobbies—she, reading fantasy novels; he, painting watercolors ("mostly landscapes, and some nudes")—a search party mobilizes to force their immediate return. Interested parties in this venture range from Captain Sharpe (Bruce Willis), the Island's lone, lonely law enforcer, Suzy's quarreling parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), Sam's skittish Scout Master (Edward Norton) and a cabal of Camp Ivanhoe's most precocious preteens, all distinguishable by their eye-patches, dog side-kicks, and other assorted quirks.

What this extensive ensemble comes to represent, however, is a kind of family. The intricacies of the family bond have become the definitive theme of Anderson's work, and their nuances supply the gravity his best films boast. 'Moonrise,' for instance, seems at first blush to be Anderson's lightest confection yet, all puppy love and innocent wilderness adventuring. But the film toes darker waters too, delving into the prickly details of a crumbling marriage and the painful trials and traumas of childhood (a soulful ache well captured by Anderson's main soundtrack man Randall Poster, whose curated a trio of Hank Williams's finest wallowers). Like 'Fox' before it, "Moonrise Kingdom’s" airtight pacing and structure don’t allow for much down time, which will likely appease those who thought 'Darjeeling' meandered too much. To me, the taut tempo isn't always a virtue, but at least it never induces whiplash quite like 'Fox' did, and ultimately it was probably the right approach for this sweet, modest coming-of-age story.

• For more Festival Coverage features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Sam C. Mac

Political Nonsense - Let's Talk About Immigration

Fri, 6 Apr 2012 14:41:03 -0400

Immigration is a true conundrum, a political issue with no easily discernible ideological right, left or center—and a perfect subject for some Political Nonsense. When looking at immigration, let’s begin by setting aside the platitude of “secure the borders.” Just about everyone, regardless of their political stripe, has pretty much jumped on that bandwagon. There may be disagreements and even minor skirmishes over how to secure the borders, but there is a general agreement on the need to do so.

Further, in a continuing bit of bipartisan harmony, most would agree that a comprehensive review and overhaul of our national immigration policy is long overdue. However, right there the harmony ends; immigration is often aptly called “the third rail of politics.” Central to any discussion of this topic is the unpleasant fact that our country currently houses over eleven million illegal immigrants. Wow! How’d that happen? It must have taken decades of indifference, imprudence and malfeasance to arrive at such an impressive undocumented population. And now, of course, nobody agrees on how to deal with those eleven million very real non-citizens, least of all our beleaguered politicians.

From these beginnings the topic gets increasingly murky, fraught with complexity and multiple side issues. Looking to our political leaders for answers finds them all over the place… and in peculiar places at that: right, left and center. Pundits who can normally be counted on to be way out there on the fringe somehow end up in the middle. Many centrists are at the extremes. We find lefties on the right and righties on the left. What gives? This is, indeed, a brand new kind of gridlock, not necessarily Republican vs. Democrat, but still a gridlock that apparently prevents us from getting anything done.

Here are some factors that seem to further muddy the water. Increasingly we hear of corporations seeking workers that they can’t find. Not enough skilled applicants. At the same time many politicians and political analysts are calling for more high skilled immigrants. Yet we have an enormous American unemployment problem and are frequently being told that the “good” jobs have gone overseas and that those jobs being added by our economy are low skill, low wage opportunities. How can all this be true? Isn’t there a major disconnect here? Aren’t we seeking more high skilled immigrants at a time when instead we should be subsidizing (either publicly or privately) the training of our own unemployed? Should we not be freezing quotas on high skilled immigrants until our unemployment crisis has abated?

True, it’s a global economy and corporations must be allowed to hire talent from wherever they can find it. But there's a huge philosophical question embedded in all this. During hard times, say when national unemployment is over some pre-fixed figure, should citizens be given preference over non-citizens? Should the burden of training or retraining Americans be forced upon the government (and, yes, upon the private sector as well) before we open our doors to foreign talent? What and who should drive the answer to that question, corporate profits or societal concerns, the free market or the nanny state?

At the other end of the immigration spectrum, we’re often asked, “Who will do the jobs that Americans won’t do?” (It seems fair to add: “…at the low wages that we are willing to pay,” but that’s a further discussion.) Most senior citizens can remember a day in America when high school seniors and college kids tried to out-hustle each other in the search for summer employment. Washing dishes, waiting tables, working construction, working on a farm, on and on—these were jobs sought after by American kids, to save money for the approaching school year, to buy their first car or just to see the country.

These first summer jobs taught many in our generation what “work” was all about. Where have they gone, these American kids? Nowadays those summer jobs that we struggled to find are filled by youngsters from Russia, the Balkans or elsewhere in Europe, here on student visas, while seasonal workers on a variety of short term visas come by the thousands from Jamaica and South America to keep our resorts running. It can’t be fair to say that American kids don’t work anymore, but one wonders.

These are only two very small aspects of a hugely complicated subject. Any national dialogue needs to address a host of highly specialized immigration issues, issues like migrant workers, national quotas, family members, entry requirements, the selection process, and what to do about the “illegals” already here. Like many Americans, I can’t say I hold a strong position on immigration. Like many others, I don’t live in a border state. I don’t belong to an ethnic community that's directly impacted, and I readily confess to a certain degree of bewilderment, if not ignorance, on the subject. Looking to our political leadership doesn’t seem to help. What most of us need, before the debate can begin in earnest, is a primer on our existing policies, in the vernacular of the day, an “Immigration for Dummies.” Perhaps then we could have an educated national dialogue without the usual high emotions and lack of civility.

• For more Political Nonsense features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: John Snow

Political Nonsense - In Search of American Exceptionalism

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:17:58 -0500

During this campaign season there have been multiple references to “American exceptionalism.” Some politicians mourn its decline, some accuse others of hindering its free expression, while every politico promises policies that will encourage and nurture it. Exactly what is American exceptionalism? My spellchecker tells me there's no such word, so what are we dealing with here? Does the term imply that Americans possess talents and qualities that others (non-Americans) don’t, or is the reference purely systemic, referring to our economic capabilities? In these days of globalization and, one might say American manufacturing decline, the latter definition, pointing to the country’s economic proficiency, seems inadequate. Listening to the politicians, it's clear their use implies that the American character is endowed with certain superior qualities, among them: creativity and entrepreneurship. Is this possible? Are Americans born with such gifts? Are they a product of our social environment? Do they exist at all?

In a search for answers, let’s first discard the assertion that Americans, somehow at birth, possess these special capabilities; such in-born advantages would seem particularly dubious in light of our extraordinary diversity. It’s just not scientifically plausible. We have to look beyond nativity for the answer; we have to look to social, cultural and environmental influences. However, there too, the source seems problematic. We are, and have always been, a land of multiple cultures, religions, ethnicities, geographic differences and political ideologies. It's hard to see how, out of such extreme diversity, a concept like “American exceptionalism” can gain acceptance. Yet, the politicians don’t hesitate to use it in their speeches. They continue to extol it, promising that the pursuit of their particular doctrines will encourage and nurture it. Then, under their stewardship, this “American exceptionalism” will solve the problems of our struggling economy and triumph over the challenges encountered on the world stage.

Is all this just so much nationalism, pure partisan cheerleading, or are we as a society exceptional? If, in fact, there is truth in the concept, then these superior qualities must somehow be inculcated in us by the shared beliefs of our society. And yet, those beliefs—cultural, religious, and political—are all over the place, anything but shared. We are a huge country; our geographic differences alone are enormous, almost tribal in nature. We are clearly not a homogenous society! So, finding what might contribute to this general “exceptionalism” is not so simple. We must look for the influences that shape all of us, for forces that work on all Americans, to forge a national character.

The common ground we share starts with our Constitution. From this foundation come the laws of the land generated over the years by Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court. These laws are the framework of our national society. Their construction, modification and maintenance is the main business of our Federal Government. Certainly, as a people, we are influenced by local, regional and state authorities. As individuals, we are influenced by parental, religious and cultural forces. But our common influences, as Americans, are the laws of the land as initiated, promulgated and enforced by the Federal Government. It is that body of rules that defines our society and makes us uniquely American. As citizens of the United States, it is the Federal Government that binds us together and it is the Federal Government that defines our national character. While each State, rightfully, has its distinctions and its local pride, we are not here trying to identify “Texas exceptionalism” or “California exceptionalism.” We are searching for the source of a national trait. The concept of “American exceptionalism,” if it exists, must owe that existence to our national character, a product of our national society.

Without the Federal Government we would be tribal or, in less dramatic terminology, simply divided, by region, by state, by religion, by ethnicity…but wait, you say, “We are divided!” Yes, but how much more divided would we be without the Federal Government? It is for this reason that today’s fiery political rhetoric is so deeply disturbing. Contempt, disrespect and distrust for the Federal Government seem to run deep in the ideology of all the Republican presidential candidates. Each tries to outdo the other not only in their support of states’ rights, but in their vociferous enmity towards the Federal Government, ironically, a body they are seeking to lead. These days it would be difficult, indeed, to find any American who believes that our Federal Government is perfect. Most would join in continuing efforts at improvement. Striving for responsible change is legitimate. That said, vitriolic disrespect and a bellicose contempt are not—at least, not if “American exceptionalism” is to ever be a reality.

• For more Political Nonsense features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: John Snow

Political Nonsense - A Liberal's View of the Republican Primaries

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:33:00 -0500

Here's a little Political Nonsense for the campaign days to come, the first in a series of short commentaries on the presidential race as it unfolds. Let's start with a brief, film-style blurb on each of the remaining five Republican candidates, an admittedly liberal assessment of what each is promising.

Candidate #1 — The Massachusetts Moderate: A Venture Capitalist who promises to “save the soul of America”—it’s hard to get more pro-unfettered Capitalism than that. And this bold promise comes from a man whose personal net worth exceeds 250 mil. As President, he will do his best to see that the Federal Government “gets out of the way,” thereby flooding the economy with jobs. He’s a bit vague on details, but he assures the voter that his experience with downsizing in the private sector will enable him to quickly downsize the government. Thus, eliminating the deficit and doing this without raising taxes or cutting the Defense Budget. He views the end of the war in Iraq and our impending exit from Afghanistan as colossal Obama foreign policy blunders. His social values, while suspect by the far right, are vigorously articulated by the candidate. His stance on Healthcare Reform is a bit muddled, but he is vociferously anti-Obamacare. He looks presidential and is considered highly electable.

Candidate #2 — The Washington Outsider: A state’s rights struggle will be at the heart of the presidential election, and this Governor is state’s rights to-the-max: He doesn’t want the Fed involved in much of anything except national defense. He wants to go to Washington and dismantle the Federal Government, make it, in his own words, “completely irrelevant.” He's suggested Congress be comprised of part-timers, people who have real jobs back home. He has a laundry list of federal functions he intends to eliminate and departments he will immediately dissolve. However, he makes an exception for the Military. The military he would beef up. Because, when elected, he intends to send those troops right back into Iraq until they finish the job. This guy claims to spend most of his spare time on the “shootin’ range.” He does have a nice presidential swagger faintly reminiscent of a certain former occupant.

Candidate #3 — The Libertarian: So that we might have a full range of choices, Candidate #3 would have us reduce the deficit by abolishing all overseas expenditures, including the military. Get rid of foreign aid, downsize the embassies, and bring boys home from all 137 foreign countries we have a military presence. This would certainly take down the deficit. But, wait a minute, he wants to abolish all income taxes as well. Up goes the deficit again. Not to worry: His plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government is even more draconian than that of his rivals. While a hostility towards the Federal Government is a common theme deeply woven into the rhetoric of all the candidates, #3 advocates a uniquely quick and terminal fix. He's particularly focused on the “money supply,” dedicated to a return to the gold standard. It is somewhat unclear to the layman exactly what that means or how these policies might impact the economy, but “fasten your seatbelts”—this is political Darwinism in the extreme.

Candidate #4 — Formerly Knows as Senator Slash: Here comes a fresh new face from somewhere in Pennsylvania. This man is a staunch Conservative, with a consistent voting record, and the only authentic social Conservative in the race (so he tells us in every speech, again and again). He's a passionate pro-lifer, adamantly opposed to gay marriage, a man of faith and an ardent supporter of family values. He presents himself as a military “hawk” on foreign affairs, perhaps a bit too hawkish to have his finger on the red button. He seems a forthright young man recently emerged from way, way back in the pack thanks to a serendipity connect with Iowan Evangelicals. We don’t really know much about how he plans to deal with the economy, but we do know he hates the deficit, federal regulations and President Obama. After New Hampshire, he may leave the circus as quickly as he has arrived.

Candidate #5 — The Reagan Conservative: Our final candidate is a Southerner overflowing with endless ideas, a swashbuckling, articulate speaker never at a loss for words or solutions. Like his fellow candidates, he's generally hostile towards the Federal Government and its attempts to regulate the free market or to “redistribute wealth” via a progressive tax code. He's a fervid advocate of immediately developing domestic energy sources wherever and however possible. He's a self-proclaimed historian with an uncomfortably aggressive worldview. The author of the Contract for America, he's a true Washington insider, well known to everyone on Capital Hill. Here’s the rub: The rap sheet on him (from those on both sides of the aisle) is more than a little disconcerting. We repeatedly hear things like “emotionally unstable,” “loose cannon,” “unpredictable,” and always the caveat, “too much baggage.”

• For more Political Nonsense features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: John Snow

Year in Review 2011 - Top 15 Films

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:00:12 -0500

Life and death. God and a Godless world. Cancer. Heartache. The collapse of Europe. The rise of the apes. The Big Bang and the end of days. Filmmakers had a lot on their minds in 2011. In this great year for cinema—the greatest in a decade—it wasn't hard to put the movies that mattered in conversation with one another. Ten years after 9/11, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” milked the fall of the towers for tearjerking bathos, while Kenneth Lonergan's long-delayed “Margaret” mined a proxy tragedy for prickly pathos. Armageddon was melodrama in “Melancholia,” metaphor in “Bellflower” and a punchline in “Kaboom.” Memory itself served as a common thread: There were autobiographies (“Beginners”; “50/50”), affectionate nostalgia trips (“Midnight in Paris”; “Pearl Jam Twenty”), stories within stories (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”; “Mysteries of Lisbon”) and more new movies about old movies than you could count. (From “The Artist” to “Hugo,” “Drive” to “Super 8,” “My Week With Marilyn” to “The Muppets,” 2011 often felt like one big Hollywood tribute reel.) The grand and the intimate seemed constantly in concert, which makes our number one choice something of a no-brainer. There were more than two paths through this year in film, but they all seemed to lead back, like a mind racing through histories personal and universal, to the story of a boy, his parents and infinity. A.A. Dowd

15. 13 Assassins / Takashi Miike
In a year that saw filmmakers old and new paying tribute to bygone cinematic traditions, this rip-roaring samurai epic felt like the purest and most exhilarating throwback. Relegating the characteristic depravities to the first reel, Japanese jack-of-all-genres Takashi Miike inverts "Seven Samurai" by putting his titular band of warriors on the offense. The obvious highlight is the climatic 45-minute battle royale—truly an action sequence for the ages—but Miike sweats the small stuff too: The feudal intrigue and suicide-mission camaraderie prove nearly as entertaining as the derring-do. Endearingly old-fashioned in both its narrative architecture and its surprisingly moving vision of honor among swordsmen, "13 Assassins" proves that sometimes they do make 'em like they used to. AAD

14. Weekend / Andrew Haigh
Haigh's understated debut drama has officially raised the bar for romantic film of any sexual orientation. "Weekend's" young gay men, Russell and Glen, hookup at a bar expecting nothing more than a one-night stand, but then they connect. Once Glen informs Russell he's leaving overseas for school, the two, realizing their time is precious, treat it as such—philosophizing, getting high, and of course fucking. Their tryst in Russell’s flat is tender, fun, soul-searching, naked—the complete opposite of the sterile, ominous, and loudly heteronormative outdoors, where Russell finds it increasingly difficult to breathe. The seemingly effortless naturalism with which these two characters come so quickly to bond and love each other feels almost staggering in its realization. One hopes this will be the first of many deeply felt, emotionally sophisticated romantic relationships Haigh brings to the screen. Tina Hassannia

13. Le Quattro Volte / Michelangelo Frammartino
Frammartino evokes the spiritual philosophies of Pythagoras while relying entirely on the ambient language of a village in Southern Italy. Life, death, and the earthbound rhythms that connect them flow from a man to a goat to a tree to a chunk of coal. But Frammartino’s observational tableau gains as much sustenance from notions of God’s (with a capital ‘G’) creations and the Buddhist cycle of suffering and rebirth as it does the transmigration of the soul. Unconscious gestures of existence were never so graceful as in images of snails teeming from a pot, goats inexplicably exploring their terrain, and an unbelievably orchestrated, nine-minute shot of a persistent dog attempting in vain to communicate. It’s appropriate that the final stage of Frammartino’s visual schema finds the smoldering, coal-producing mounds that open and close the film become an archetypal symbol of the past, present, and future. Kathie Smith

12. Mysteries of Lisbon / Raoul Ruiz
"Mysteries of Lisbon" may have tragically turned out to be Ruiz's final film, but what a glorious swan-song it is: A sprawling family epic about a young orphan whose quest to discover his true identity leads him into three decades or searching and to multitudes of fascinating people, who drift in and out of his life, each with their own unique stories to tell. Featuring a massive cast of characters and nearly Dickensian narrative depth, 'Lisbon' is a wholly immersive experience that unfolds like a great novel. Even at nearly four hours long, it never wears out its welcome. Ruiz pays loving homage to Ingmar Bergman's seminal masterpiece, "Fanny & Alexander," which his epic resembles somewhat in both form and content. If you're going to borrow, borrow from the best, and Ruiz has taken his familiarly stodgy period trappings and crafted a new and emotionally rich work of his own. Matthew Lucas

11. Martha Marcy May Marlene / Sean Durkin
"Martha Marcy May Marlene" may have an awkward title, but there's nothing awkward about Durkin's smart and assured debut, which depicts a unraveling psyche with disquieting precision. Elizabeth Olsen gives a haunted, star-making performance as a young woman who has escaped from a charismatic cult leader (an unnerving John Hawkes) to live with her sister, only to descend into paranoia and near madness from the fear he will one day hunt her down. Even the audience begins to question its own sanity as the line between fear and reality becomes irrevocably blurred. Olsen's performance is a marvel of internalized terror and confusion, and Durkin puts us square in the middle of her pained inner turmoil. As a narrative it may seem somewhat disjointed; as an evocation of madness and mental collapse, it's absolutely harrowing, and the most impressive and dynamic debut film of the year. ML

10. Margaret / Kenneth Lonergan
Much has been made of the post-production hell and legal issues surrounding the shot-in-2005, released-in-2011 “Margaret.” The real story, however, is how wildly successful this reportedly second-rate cut of the film is. Detailing the psychology of its young heroine in the aftermath of a bus accident, Lonergan’s film is content to follow said character, Lisa Cohen (an Oscar-worthy Anna Paquin), down many untidied subplots to capture every facet of her rapidly-changing internal life. At times well-spoken and preternaturally insightful, at other times infuriatingly boorish and impudent, Lisa's obsessive pursuit of justice (as she sees it), blatant mommy issues, and constant attention-seeking all blur the line between adolescent angst and psychological trauma, leaving a portrait of a girl’s bruised naïveté and battered sense of self. Lonergan has crafted a film of challenging coarseness which, much like Lisa, is all the richer for its imperfections. Luke Gorham

09. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy / Tomas Alfredson
Alfredson showed great promise with his intriguing debut, "Let the Right One In,” but nobody could have guessed he'd produce a bona fide masterpiece just three years later. Throughout "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” adapted from the popular John le Carré novel of the same name, Alfredson boasts the authorial confidence and technical virtuosity of a filmmaker ten times as experienced, delivering an uncommonly smart thriller that's among the genre's very best. And though its framework is the stuff of textbook procedurals, ‘Tinker’s’ execution—exposition rattled off like bingo numbers, the narrative's blink-and-you'll-miss-it rapidity—feels downright revelatory. Throw in a first-rate performance from Gary Oldman—and nearly every working actor in Britain—and you've got a film that elevates itself way beyond your average spy story. And I haven't even mentioned the crucial but oft-missed queer subtext, which makes the whole thing richer still. Calum Marsh

08. Film Socialisme / Jean-Luc Godard
From the confines of a luxury cruise ship that becomes a (literally) floating metaphor for European society to an intimate, small-scale family drama, Godard charts the modern world in both macro and micro, from superstructure to substructure; from state-of-the-art hi-def video to YouTube to low-res cell phone cams, an entire universe of images is displayed for us. Several critics have compared "Film Socialisme" to a visual Tower of Babel, and while they're not wrong, it's not a dodge to suggest that being confused is largely part of the point: It's a potent metaphor for how we create and consume images with virtually no limitations. Godard's typically cryptic, gnomic pronouncements rub shoulders with partial (Navajo English) subtitles and purposeful verbal distortions, anything to disrupt our comfortable, co-opted viewing habits and lazy reliance on simple narrative. And there is a narrative here, make no mistake: Godard's insistence on 'No Comment' isn't a curmudgeonly refusal to explain himself, but an open challenge to his viewers to do some of the work themselves. Daniel Gorman

07. House of Pleasures / Bertrand Bonello
Any film that soundtracks Otis-on-uppers soul belter Lee Moses basically has me at the jump. But Bonello's cracked-mirror projection of a period piece is more than the sum of its intentionally jarring deep cuts. Perched at the precipice of modernism—the waning days of the 20th century—and luxuriating in the lavish interiors of a high-end Parisian brothel, this distinctly European descendant of Hou Hsiao-hsien's gracefully elegiac "Flowers of Shanghai" is keyed to a unique temporal lucidity. Bonello's anachronistic soundtrack is complimented by nearly imperceptible details nagging at the film's already questionable period authenticity, like when one character makes reference to the Paris Metro before it even existed. This unmooring of time isn't a gimmick but rather an ingenious organizing principle: The whores of "House of Pleasures" are all vivid, vivacious, and emotionally acute vessels of feminine agency refracting the complexities of sexual politics across two centuries of change and stagnation. Sam C. Mac

06. Drive / Nicolas Winding Refn
"Drive" substitutes the taciturn professional you might expect to find at the heart of a terse, minimalist crime thriller for an outright psychopath. Ryan Gosling, identified only as “Driver,” wants to protect innocent Carey Mulligan and her son from vicious gangsters, but there’s every reason to suspect that Gosling is his own brand of predator, a demonstrably violent loner and part-time stuntman who may in fact be picturing himself as the "real hero" of one of the many action movies in which he anonymously stands in for the good guy. Refn interrupts the novelty of his crime story pastiche in two key ways: by never letting go of Driver’s savior fantasy (the violent defenses of his would-be lover often seem like sudden but satisfying tantrums) and by lingering on every luscious and tactile surface, every drop of blood on the pavement, as if Driver’s own fear and awe were rumbling beneath. Matt Lynch

05. A Separation / Asghar Farhadi
The best societal critique is one that doesn’t point any fingers, which is partially why Farhadi’s “A Separation” works so well. The title refers to the separation of Nader and Simin but this is only the bare bones of the film’s narrative—a labyrinthine drama about an accident involving Nader and his father’s pregnant caretaker. Criminal charges, threats and potentially false testimonies reveal the very human desire to save oneself when faced with moral ambiguity. Setting a story like this in Iran is a bold and apt move—its theme of moral reasoning is complicated by religious doctrine (which governs individuals in addition to theocracy). “A Separation” is not necessarily critical of the Iranian government or of religion, but of an entire culture that’s been taught to lie as a stipulation for simply living a normal life. TH

04. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives / Apichatpong Weerasethakul
There’s no shortage nowadays of strange films leaning on gimmicks or genre trappings to compensate for a lack of truly unique thinking. Rare is the movie that not only crossbreeds its various thematic and visual strains but circumvents its obtuseness to the point where every film in its vicinity appears skewed and unnatural by comparison. The dazzlingly original, riveting modern masterpiece “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” enriches, embodies, and erodes all such classifications, teeming with insight and vivid clarity into the soul of a man not necessarily nostalgic for but enlivened by the capacity of the human spirit. Apichatpong’s first largely linear narrative dives headfirst into premonition, apparition, and reincarnation with a Buddhist’s serenity, emboldening the director’s themes as he subtly galvanizes his aesthetic. Ominous, playful, and consistently riveting, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ stands as the most transcendent work yet from the world’s most vital young filmmaker. Jordan Cronk

03. Meek’s Cutoff / Kelly Reichardt
Reichardt’s most ambitious and precisely drawn work to date is a genre film by classification only, stripped of ornamentation and extraneous expositional conceits. It’s also, paradoxically, her most aesthetically impressive and engaging work, an observational, revisionist western with stronger ties to Italian neo-realism than to the John Ford school of classical filmmaking. The sun-bleached vistas, crystal blue horizons, and primary-hued dresses of the female-anchored wagon train—captured indelibly by Chris Blauvelt’s Academy ratio lensing—embolden the threadbare narrative, which grows evermore intangible even as events and motivations come into focus. An unexpected, extremely impressive stylistic leap beyond her previously intimate, small-scale work, “Meek’s Cutoff” retains Reichardt’s acute dedication to character while expanding her narrative purview, dissolving the schematic construction that would traditionally mark this as product instead of the mytho-poetic portrait it truly is. JC

02. Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami
Many critics balked at "Certified Copy’s” seemingly stubborn lack of closure, since its central narrative question—whether or not the lead couple are actually strangers pretending to be married—was left frustratingly unanswered. But there's an important ontological difference between an unanswered question and an unanswerable one, and that distinction is fundamental to Kiarostami's oblique film, which has more to say about the nature of art and its meaning than any other film since...well, Kiarostami's own "Close-Up." It's no coincidence that "Certified Copy" invokes a defense of art forgeries; like the relationship at the center of the film, a forgery's meaning is only fixed if we choose to impose one upon it. "Fake" only means something if we say it does. Is it any surprise that Kiarostami doesn’t? CM

01. The Tree of Life / Terrence Malick
The ambitions of a movie like this one—which takes us from the beginning of time to its ostensible end, stopping off to admire dinosaurs and get spiritual on a beach—are easy to mock. But the most audacious passage of Malick's great film—a birth of the universe that synthesizes creationism and the Big Bang—is a necessary inflation: It not only hews closely to the aesthetic and thematic principles which have always been connotations of the critical shorthand 'Malickian,' but it engenders a kind of humbling rack-focus akin to that feeling some of us get when we zoom-out from a blurry picture of our house on Google Earth. In fact, Malick's supposedly autobiographical odyssey would be an exercise in narcissism if it wasn't so damn expansive. In juxtaposing the birth and maturation of Malick surrogate Jack with the beginning of all life, our view of not only Jack's world but our own is broadened. You could criticize the extent to which Malick goes to achieve this—a 20-odd minute avant-garde interlude in an otherwise narrative film—but it's something you have to experience. It's like the Google Earth thing: I can tell you about how insignificant it makes me feel, but you really need to see that little pixelated planet for yourself. SCM

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: InRO Staff

Year in Review 2011 - Top 15 Albums

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:59:55 -0500

2011 was a strange year for music criticism, if not for music itself. We at InRO heard many great albums, to be sure, but it's harder to point out the definitive ones—we lacked a unifying force, a consensus pick to rally around (at least for most of the year). But without any dark twisted fantasies to galvanize us as a group, we seemed more free to explore, to look elsewhere for classics of our own designation. Disparate tastes reigned in 2011, and that's more significant than it sounds: It means my list and your list and your dad's list of the best albums of the year can be completely different but equally canonical, because there's nothing towering over us, our lists in its shadow. My own favorite album of the year is nowhere to be found on the list below. And our staff number one didn't even see release until most publications had already filed their lists, effectively reducing its chances of year-end domination to zero. We've also got avant-rap, a punk-rock concept record, a free post-R&B mixtape, and an improvised solo saxophone album about the apocalypse. It was that kind of year. Here's hoping 2012 is too. Calum Marsh

15. Tyler, the Creator: Goblin
Ever since Lil Wayne got out of jail and found himself too tired to care about being the best rapper alive, demented Odd Future ringleader Tyler has been the most compelling figure in hip-hop. And Tyler proves he'll be a big deal for the foreseeable future by remaining mainstream-relevant despite releasing the year's most challenging, radio-unfriendly rap album. Over beats that sound like what I thought a David Lynch album might sound like before I heard one, Tyler conducts an enthralling, hour-plus therapy session wherein he's both patient and analyst and invites his friends to hang around and crack wise about dicks. It's sad and sick and Tyler totally fucking knows it—he knows it's diabolically clever, too. To experience Goblin in its entirety is to dare your conscience to bunny hop off your shoulder; more enjoyably, it's to expose yourself to irreverent brilliance like the line I just paraphrased. Sam C. Mac

14. Fucked Up: David Comes to Life
The year's best rock record gave me plenty of preemptive reasons to hate it. It's got Damien Abraham's shredded-windpipe growl (the thing I find most shitty about metal music; the reason records by Mastodon and Isis keep missing these lists), and it's a concept album, so it actually expects you to pay attention to what that voice is saying. Previous Fucked Up records hit me in the gut only when aiming for it, so the strings and pianos that open David Comes to Life sent me back to the flute solos of Chemistry of Common Life and cringing. But Fucked Up usually makes navigating the wrongheaded experimental shit they do worth it. That said, David is Fucked Up at their best, consistently: each song channels righteous working-class aggression, and no band in 2011 was so committed to making an hour of music this relentless. It gives me a headache sometimes; it probably should. SCM

13. Braids: Native Speaker
The first record from this much-buzzed-about Calgary band is another in a long line of stellar 2011 debuts. Some have been quick to label their experimental pop as “shoegaze,” but there’s more going on here. Take singer Katie Lee, specifically the tension between her beautiful voice and dark, thorny lyrics: with a slight scat, she goes about cataloguing the ways in which she’s hopelessly fucked-up on album standout “Glass Deers.” Lee’s words are cynical and sometimes depressing, but they contrast with the predominately bubbly music. With lush textures, calculated time changes, and heavy emphasis on atmosphere, Braids take time to get where they’re going, but their music never feels slight or dispassionate. It’s no wonder Native Speaker has found itself among the titles shortlisted for this year’s Polaris Prize. Kyle Fowle

12. Tune-Yards: Whokill
Merrill Garbus is blessed with the most elastic set of pipes since Mike Patton—she can shift from bellow to croon, caterwaul to whisper—but it's what she's saying with that mighty voice that really registers. For the second album released under her Tune-Yards moniker, Garbus satirizes white boys who move to "bad" neighborhoods to feel dangerous, confesses to fantasizing about the cop who arrested her brother, and turns a plea of the marginalized ("Don't take my life away, don't take my life away!") into an anthem of empowerment. She's still letting her pan-cultural freak flag fly, but the avant-clutter of Bird-Brains now comes equipped with dance-party hooks. In a perfect world, all pop music would sound something like this: Idiosyncratic, impassioned, totally infectious despite (or maybe because of) its glorious weirdness. Our world is imperfect, so we'll have to make do with ten tracks and the promise of more blissful spazz-outs to come. A.A. Dowd

11. Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo
Smoke Ring carries a generous amount of the laid-back, lo-fi vibe that defined Vile’s previous work, yet something feels more complete this time. You could point to the excellent production—which is certainly noteworthy—but it's in the songwriting where Vile has really grown by leaps and bounds. So improved is the singer’s craftsmanship that Smoke Ring is a mostly unexpected delight, a collection of tunes filled with quirky introspection and casual observations that fulfill the artist’s early promise and then some. Factor in the oft-mellow yet undeniably skillful and consistently engaging guitar playing and these songs cohere into a record that flows from song to song with a gracefulness and harmony unmatched in contemporary troubadour rock. This is an album in the truest, most complete sense. Chris Nowling

10. The Weeknd: House of Balloons Mixtape
What Abel Tesfaye accomplishes on House of Balloons, the mixtape he recorded under his stage name the Weeknd, is an honest lyrical and sonic portrait of disaffection. Infusing R&B with the estrangement and dissatisfying hedonism that has become a somewhat tired and poorly executed staple of indie-rock works in his favor here; House of Balloons is both carnal and eerie, a portrait of the on-the-edge growing pains of a preternaturally insightful singer. Indebted both to mainstream American R&B and Canadian indie-pop, Tesfaye has crafted a wholly original mixtape somehow more honest for the transparency of his obvious influences. Like fellow up-and-coming crooner Frank Ocean, Tesfaye brings a much-needed humanism and edge to the typically obtuse R&B genre. Not convinced? Give Drake’s Take Care a listen and witness the influence of Tesfaye and his burgeoning style of hesitant romanticism. Luke Gorham

09. Bon Iver: Bon Iver
Justin Vernon’s follow-up to his quietly beautiful but comparatively slight debut (For Emma, Forever Ago) offers up a broader, more textured sound. Straying from his folk origins into more soulful, wholly original territory, Vernon likewise abandons his wounded-puppy vocal stylings for a more affecting, emotionally ambiguous falsetto, now capable of evoking more than just mournful yearning. Like fellow folk artist Sam Beam, Vernon’s lyrics often wax oblique; but when his impossible tenor proclaims “And at once I knew I was not magnificent,” his true growth as a songwriter becomes evident. That such a revelation can seem equally deterministic and liberating amidst his more layered yet increasingly focused arrangements gives evidence of an emotional and musical evolution that borders on the extraordinary. While Vernon’s introspective eye made his debut a rewarding experience, Bon Iver challenges listeners to employ the same pensiveness, resulting in an altogether transcendent undertaking. LG

08. Jenny Hval: Viscera
On paper, Viscera reads like an internalized narrative about external phenomenon, a song cycle riddled with images of vaginal dentata, sexual secretion, and, yes, decaying viscera. It’s appropriate, then, that so much of its power resides just below the surface, in the details. And what details: Hval’s expert fusion of avant-folk, industrial grind, and free-improv noise manifests itself like a thousand mental synapses reacting off the body’s intrinsic tensions in a single outward heave of physicality. Even amidst canyons of negative space—kneaded, textured, and burnished by Supersilent producer Deathprod—the music maintains a palpable carnality, like those moments just before an animalistic encounter when things have the potential to go either exceedingly right or horribly wrong. And yet, as we reach climax right with Hval—most viscerally on “Portrait of the Young Girl as an Artist”—the horribly wrong instead feels exceedingly pure, an addictive sensation as galvanizing as it is inspired. Jordan Cronk

07. Gillian Welch: The Harrow and the Harvest
It had been nearly eight years to the day since Welch released an LP and 10 since her last masterpiece, Time (The Revelator). Following in the footsteps of that album, Harrow is a sparse yet powerful record; Welch and guitarist/vocalist David Rawlings have their brand of minimal folk and country down to a science, drawing on the synergy of fingerpicked acoustics and voice. The songstress tells a tale of dread and inevitability on “The Way It Goes,” and tempers similar feelings on the more traditionally arranged “Six Horses” with handclaps and harmonica. She and Rawlings craft a brand of Americana that feels rustic and well-worn but still contemporary. It’s not quite nostalgia; rather, it evinces comfort through the duo’s understanding of their style. Few albums this year were as welcomingly familiar as this one. KF

06. James Blake: James Blake
In two short years, Blake has changed direction so many times that the adjectives I once used to describe him—abstract, elusive, austere—are almost the exact inverse of how I’d characterize his debut LP. Still nominally tied to the post-dubstep diaspora, James Blake is, in actuality, a fairly straightforward singer-songwriter effort from a preternaturally talented beat scientist. In that sense, the self-titled designation is less an encapsulation of aesthetic proclivities than a platform for personal disclosure. There’s more of James Blake in these eleven tracks than in any of the obtuse soundscapes he previously constructed; family life (“I Never Learnt to Share”), interpersonal relationships (“Why Don’t You Call Me”), and reconciliations with death (“Measurements”) are all presented in equally stark, hollowed productions. With his debut, Blake has beautifully, if briefly, blurred the line between intimate and universal. JC

05. Kanye West/Jay-Z: Watch the Throne
“I’m ‘bout to call the paparazzi on myself.” This acerbically self-effacing proclamation, from album standout and single-of-the-year contender “Otis,” functions as a synecdoche for Watch the Throne’s defining glory: namely, the pure exuberance and posturing ‘Ye and Jay bring to their collaborative effort. Is it a seamless alliance? Beat for beat, line for line, no; missing here is the unparalleled ambition of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and the rags-to-riches earnestness of Jay-Z’s fabled career. The uniting factor, then, is the unrestrained dynamism the two emcees are able to bring to any joint. Successful both when celebrating their own greatness and the thrills of self-indulgence (“Otis,” “No Church in the Wild”) and more socially conscious fare (“Murder to Excellence,” “Made in America”), Watch the Throne offers nothing more and nothing less than two geniuses combining efforts for a sufficiently substantive entertainment. When you’re delivering at this level, less than perfection is more than enough. LG

04. Colin Stetson: New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges
Depending on your religious beliefs, this is either soundtrack to the apocalypse or aural accompaniment to the rapture—either way, shit just got real. What doesn’t seem real, or the least bit human, is the extraordinary technique Stetson displays in his solo saxophone work, which approximates the sound of a stampeding cavalry in the throes of bullet-induced hysteria. The scorching, blast-furnace improvisations which comprise Stetson’s second album are at once invective and gauntlet, ornery exhortations pitting humanity against itself in a battle of righteous indignation. Circular breathing, close-mic’d keys, whatever—this thing will fucking crush you before you realize dude played on an Arcade Fire record. And while there are voices within the maelstrom—Laurie Andersen heralding end times like an apparition, Shara Worden conjuring the very soul of our discontent—the prophecy seems clear: no one gets out alive. JC

03. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake
Of all the albums I came to love in 2011, none was more challenging than this one. Harvey's latest is dark, strange, and never a comfortable listen, but it's a gripping, inventive record unlike any she's previously offered. This is music that can't be relegated to the background—it demands your full attention and holds it for the entirety of its 40 minutes, as Harvey spins tales of the heartbreak and anger caused by the futility of war. That subject might be an especially familiar one, but Let England Shake is anything but your typical protest record: Harvey’s vocals, which range from lofty croon to full-throated roar, reflect the breadth of influences, insights, and styles she so handily arranges into cinematic stories. Harvey depicts the way war has effected one nation in particular, and the world more broadly. CN

02. Shabazz Palaces: Black Up
After hearing Shabazz Palaces’ first two 2010 EPs—both of which flaunt an ethereal, bass-heavy take on hip-hop that, at the time, sounded unlike anything else out there—expectations were high for their eventual debut. But even then, Black Up managed to feel like it came out of left field: a record filled with little moments that coalesce into a total, immersive experience, infusing hip-hop with an intoxicating sense of innovation and political/social poignance that hasn’t really been felt since the ‘90s. It’s the biggest, most exciting statement of the year. With Ishmael Butler at the helm—an unequivocally smooth, brash, and instinctive emcee and frontman—Black Up becomes a progressive vision of the possibilities of hip-hop, an album that's liberating in its exploration of black identity and sonic exploration. KF

01. The Roots: Undun
Biting an album-length concept from Prince Paul, pivoting on a brief instrumental from a Sufjan Stevens album, you wouldn't think Undun would be the best Roots album in nearly decade, but it is. Synthesizing the concise song-craft of midlife manifesto How I Got Over with the avant-weird ambitions of Phrenology (there's a gorgeous, four-part instrumental coda), the Roots' latest is the record they've been working toward for the entirety of their long, vital career. And it makes quick work of the concept-album-as-tedious-bore, fashioning less a coherent narrative (though there's that: fictional Redford Stevens loses his life on the hustle, journeys back to reflect on the mistakes that got him there) than an impressionistic collection of gritty narrative details. Drummer Questlove's production instincts are as impeccable as ever, but it's frontman Black Thought who steals this one, mining personal and cultural tragedies to create one of the least encumbered, most affecting concept records in the history of the form. SCM

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: InRO Staff

Year in Review 2011 - Home Movies

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:35:16 -0500

Cataloguing and keeping up with the world’s DVD and Blu-ray releases is an overwhelming and obsessive job that both Jordan Cronk and I relish with a hoarder's delight. The internet may be changing the face of home distribution, but, for my money (literally), nothing comes close to replacing the DVD or Blu-ray on my shelf for instant and flawless home viewing. And when a film is restored halfway around the world, with little chance of an accessible theatrical screening, the resulting release is nothing short of priceless. Jordan and I have chosen ten such releases, including three imports, for this outstanding year. Although it might seem that we are fairly biased for Japanese films—which lock-up half this list—I would argue that we're entering an era where these films, many ignored or dismissed in the realm of English-language friendly releases, are finally getting their due, and our eight-disc number one pick is a perfect example. If you're looking to start a collection, start here, start now. Kathie Smith

10. DVD/Blu-ray: Tokyo Drifter (1966); Branded to Kill (1967)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Seijun Suzuki
Amazon Price: $27.99; $35.99
Like a one-two punch to the face, Seijun Suzuki’s two best-known films stateside received a much deserved 1080p sprucing up this year. These releases represent not the story of two newly discovered films, but rather Criterion’s unbelievable improvement on their own previous releases. Suzuki eschewed the theorizing of his New Wave contemporaries and shot his distinctive take on nihilism directly from the hip; “Tokyo Drifter” and “Branded to Kill” set the bar for style, fetish and jump-cut abstraction, but they also got him fired from Nikkatsu for being “incomprehensible.” The color wheel gangsters of “Tokyo Drifter” and the chiaroscuro assassins of “Branded to Kill” never looked so good. KS

09. DVD/Blu-ray: The Complete Jean Vigo (1930-34)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Jean Vigo
Amazon Price: $22.76
Jean Vigo made only four films before he died at the age of 29, in 1934, but his visual ingenuity and discerning awareness for human drama made him one of the most influential and greatest directors of all time. Criterion’s Blu-ray release of Vigo’s modest but monumental oeuvre, remastered and supplemented to the hilt, should be an essential purchase for any cinephile. From the aerial views and seashore meditations of “À propos de Nice” to the delicate portrayal of a transitory relationship in “L’Atalante,” Vigo displayed what François Truffaut called a secret of unsurpassed “reality of the flesh.” Even more, however, his films display a unique poetry of exploration and experimentation of the medium. KS

08. DVD/Blu-ray: Histoire(s) du Cinema (1988-98)
Distributor: Olive Films
Director(s): Jean-Luc Godard
Amazon Price: $37.99
Never covered in the pages of Home Movies as it was released just this month, Olive Films’ long-overdue Region 1 debut of Jean-Luc Godard’s mammoth, eight-part video essay “Historie(s) du Cinema” fills a major gap in the digital landscape, representing what one can only hope will be the first of many such unveilings of Godard’s major post-1968 works. Conceived as early as the mid-‘70s and stitched together in segments across a ten year period from 1988 to 1998, 'Historie(s)' embodies its title to an almost dizzying degree, overlaying dense visual montage with Godard’s verbal and textual explications on the role(s) of the cinema in various political and societal spheres. The feature is a supplement itself, to nearly everything cineastes continue to hold as true in regards to the medium of moving pictures. Jordan Cronk

07. DVD/Blu-ray: Senso (1993-94)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Luchino Visconti
Amazon Price: $24.73
This year, Luchino Visconti’s brocade historical melodrama “Senso” finally received the attention it's always deserved with a glorious digital restoration from the Film Foundation and a go-for-broke Blu-ray release from Criterion. Much has been made about the cast Visconti didn’t get, but there is an undeniable yin/yang hum between the handsome Alida Valli and the beautiful Farley Granger (who sadly passed away shortly after this was released), culminating in that devastating finale. Operatic in nearly every sense of the word, Visconti acts as historical troubadour to ill-fated love. Save for a rare big-screen viewing, the opulence of “Senso” finds near perfection right in the comfort of our own homes. KS

06. DVD/Blu-ray: Blue, White, Red: Three Colors (1993-94)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Krzysztof Kieślowski
Amazon Price: $55.49
Physical copies of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s highly influential ‘Three Colors’ trilogy have remained out-of-print for some time now. The wait would prove worthwhile, however, as Criterion ultimately offered up all three films to the glories of 1080p this Fall. Coming off the back-to-back landmarks of “The Decalogue” and “The Double Life of Veronique,” Kieślowski dedicated what would prove to be his final artistic flourish before his untimely death to three aesthetically delineated yet thematically unified films about such broad subjects as love, death, revenge, and sacrifice, keying in on tangibly articulated emotions which he heightened via consistently ambitious stylistic gestures. Criterion’s appropriately stacked Blu-ray set amends hours of bonus material, solidifying these films’ stature for generations to come. JC

05. DVD/Blu-ray: The Warped World of Koreyoshi ... (1960-67)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Koreyoshi Kurahara
Amazon Price: $46.49
Chaos reigns supreme in this snapshot of Koreyoshi Kurahara’s career as populist genre shapeshifter. Eclipse has done immeasurable work in lifting Kurahara from near obscurity, at least to Western eyes, with a five-film set encapsulating his free-form '60s work. Included in that is a psychological pot-boiler (“Intimidation”), an anarchistic Sun Tribe riff (“The Warped Ones”), an unexpectedly sunny rom-com (“I Hate But Love”), a chaotic drifter buddy film (“Black Sun”) and Kurahara’s master stroke “Thirst for Love”—a stunning family drama, adapted from Yukio Mishima’s novel, driven by one woman’s magnetic libido. Kurahara’s warped world is one of the biggest discoveries and best releases of the year. KS

04. DVD/Blu-ray: A Man Vanishes (1967)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema (Region 2)
Director(s): Shohei Imamura
Amazon UK Price: £11.99
Continuing to give Criterion a run for that cinephile money, the UK-based Masters of Cinema had an impressive twelve months, capped by the release of Home Movies favorite Shohei Imamura’s 1967 docu-fiction rarity “A Man Vanishes.” Conceived as a documentary on the missing persons phenomenon in mid-‘60s Japan, “A Man Vanishes” eventually took shape as a prescient kind of procedural, wherein Imamura probed the ambiguities of one man’s disappearance via evidence, interviews, and slyly captured confessions. Available for the first time in any sort of English-friendly format, Imamura’s subversive cinema verité experiment, which prefigured an entire movement of hybridized narrative, argued for the continued relevance and more cost effective production of standard DVD. JC

03. DVD/Blu-ray: Silent Naruse (1931-34)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Mikio Naruse
Amazon Price: $25.70
This year’s most unexpected digital release is also the most historically and cinematically vital. The five Mikio Naruse silents collected in Criterion’s 26th Eclipse set were made between 1931 and 1934, and together ably outline the Japanese master’s quickly solidifying thematic and stylistic inclinations. Establishing straight away his spry visual sense and already working expertly with montage, Naruse would focus almost immediately on what would turn out to be his greatest theme, the role of the working-class female in an ever-modernizing Japan. In such devastating works as “Every-Night Dreams” and “Street Without End” one can bear witness to the flowering talents of an artist whose stature only continues to grow as more of his work becomes available. JC

02. DVD/Blu-ray: Terrorizers (1986)
Distributor: Sony Entertainment (Region-free)
Director(s): Edward Yang
YesAsia Price: $34.99
Seemingly flying just beyond the view of even the most watchful digital connoisseur, Sony Music Group’s roll-out of six key Taiwanese New Wave classics nevertheless proved to be the most essential Blu-ray enterprise of the year. Anchoring the series is Edward Yang’s complexly structured thriller “The Terrorizers,” which stands apart from much of the late master’s work in style and narrative schematics. Yang’s films streamlined their narratives in the year's following this one, yet he ultimately would find unique ways of drawing new dimensions from emotionally dependent characterizations. Sony’s import-only Blu-ray is graciously region-free, and includes a short documentary on Yang, but it's commendable first and foremost for bringing this film into the digital realm for the first time anywhere. JC

01. DVD/Blu-ray: Late Mizoguchi - Eight Films (1951-56)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema (Region 2)
Director(s): Kenji Mizoguchi
Amazon UK Price: £35.97
If releasing a DVD box set that includes eight newly restored films from Kenji Mizoguchi seems like stacking the deck, I implore other distributors to follow suit. UK’s Masters of Cinema continues to be ahead of the curve when it comes to restoring, presenting and supplementing underserved masterpieces nonpareil. Packaging eight of Mizoguchi’s last eleven films he made between 1951-56, this set includes two of his most well known films (“Ugetsu Monogatari” and “Sansho the Baliff”) as well as six slightly more obscure, underseen masterpieces. All, however, represent Mizoguchi at the pinnacle of his very organic and emotionally resonant craft. The import rate is stiff, but worth every quid. KS

• For more Year in Review or Home Movies, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Year in Review 2011 - Sam C. Mac's Top Films

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:24:01 -0500

Well that was something, wasn't it? Twelve months and nary a week without a challenging film full of ideas and feelings hitting US theaters, vying for a place on the below list. I can't remember ever being this overwhelmed by contemporary cinema; not in 2007, when American directors rallied around an aesthetic revision of the classic western, not even in 2005, when new voices around the globe reinvigorated traditional genres and expanded their borders. If there was any commonality among 2011's most enduring films it was the same unifier that defined the previous, largely negligible moviegoing year: that of the delayed release. Even putting aside the standard one-year-removed rollout of last season’s festival premieres, there were quite a few late-bloomers in 2011 that trumped nearly everything of a fresher vintage. If your name wasn't Hong Sang-soo or Johnnie To, chances are your long-languishing masterpiece got an overdue stateside theatrical bow. Edward Yang's "A Brighter Summer Day" rode the coattails of a full Yang retrospective and earned its first weeklong exhibition in the US; and it would feature here, too, were it not over two decades old (remember: InRO permits only a five-year buffer between international and domestic releases). Instead, other, less ancient offerings from world cinema's great unsung geniuses offered the sternest competition to this year's twin American masterpieces.

10. Beginners / Mike Mills
"Thumbsucker" being the interminable, static assemblage of witticisms it is, Mills's second feature ranks among the most eyeopening improvements any filmmaker has achieved in recent years. A semi-autobiographical drama that whips its whimsy and its affectations into an essayistic roll-call of neuroses, contextualized by histories both personal and cultural, "Beginners" is calmly intelligent and emotionally acute. The world of Mills stand-in Oliver (Ewan McGregor) feels lonely and fractured after his elderly father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), comes out of the closet and dies of cancer in quick succession. In his sadness and confusion, Oliver attempts to process the memories of his late patriarch, liberated from repression after decades of unhappy marriage, and wonders why he can't also escape the emotional purgatory the same man's neglect put him in to. Mills brilliantly visualizes this reconciliation with earnest, intuitive montage, and his technique will resonate with anyone who has ever looked outward for internal peace.

09. Le Havre / Aki Kaurismäki
With economies declining the world over, the mood du jour in cinema has been one of cynicism and sadness, looking at what we've wrought with a kind of mournful resignation. Kaurismäki's "Le Havre," then, offers an opposing view of these hard times, one that suggests that the moral righteousness of the proletariat will fortify a shared sympathy in small communities. Or at least that's the context in which the Finnish filmmaker's latest seems the most satisfying and meaningful—and with news footage of war and general societal decline intercut at key moments in the film, it seems to be the implication as well. Like much of Kaurismäki's work, "Le Havre" begins as hardboiled noir and blossoms into a warm affirmation of humanistic perseverance, stylized with intuitive swatches of color and striking symmetrical compositions. Last we saw Kaurismäki (2007's "Lights in the Dusk") he seemed to be following Pedro Almodovar and Wong Kar-Wai down the path of style over substance. "Le Havre" fiercely rebukes that perception.

08. Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami
In truth this doesn’t even rank in Kiarostami's top five films, so I do mean it when I say his second tier work is better than just about anyone else's anything. Fingerprints of stubborn ambiguity are all over this arty romantic tête-à-tête, but its ideas—about the authenticity of emotional engagement, the validity of any emotional response to something that is fundamentally artificial (like cinema)—necessitate just such a remove. The ever-luminous Juliette Binoche and silver-haired opera star William Schimmel walk the cobblestones of a small Tuscan village, all the while referring to the relationship between them in lucid, shapeshifting terms. They're tentative new lovers; they're married; they're on the brink of divorce. Are they role-playing? Are these imperceptible shifts evidence of surrealism? These are the questions we ask and that Kiarostami never answers, but no film provoked more of them this year than "Certified Copy."

07. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy / Tomas Alfredson
Being a spy in the '70s might've been attractive to some for the anonymity it offered, the chance to slip into a stealth existence that would allow a person to hide who they were in times of pervasive paranoia. This is the crux of Alfredson's murky, fevered espionage yarn. Adapted from the 1974 bestseller by John le Carré, 'Tinker Tailor' embeds us in the upper echelons of "The Circus," a cabal of the British Secret Intelligence Service’s most powerful agents, and emphasizes the novel's queer subtext: Alfredson strengthens the pathos invested in these lightly sketched characters with an understanding that the paranoia of his film is about more than the looming threat of a third World War. But it's the director’s hawk-eye for unnerving compositions—framing through windows, doorways and other discreet vantage points—and his grimy, seemingly rotting-in-real-time mise-en-scène that makes his film so visually rich and immersive.

06. House of Pleasures / Bertrand Bonello
Any film that soundtracks Otis-on-uppers soul belter Lee Moses basically has me at the jump. But Bonello's cracked-mirror projection of a period piece is more than the sum of its intentionally jarring deep cuts. Perched at the precipice of modernism—the waning days of the 20th century—and luxuriating in the lavish interiors of a high-end Parisian brothel, this distinctly European descendant of Hou Hsiao-hsien's gracefully elegiac "Flowers of Shanghai" is keyed to a unique temporal lucidity. Bonello's anachronistic soundtrack is complimented by nearly imperceptible details nagging at the film's already questionable period authenticity, like when one character makes reference to the Paris Metro before it even existed. This unmooring of time isn't a gimmick but rather an ingenious organizing principle: The whores of "House of Pleasures" are all vivid, vivacious, and emotionally acute vessels of feminine agency refracting the complexities of sexual politics across two centuries of change and stagnation.

05. Margaret / Kenneth Lonergan
With its fractured, episodic structure built around a seemingly tedious legal-issues plot, "Margaret" shouldn't be as rich as it is. But such is the power of a great performance, and Anna Paquin most definitely gives one: her mercurial, tormented young woman chokes back narcissistic tantrums as a sudden, devastating tragedy—the death of a passerby through her own inadvertent fault—forces her out of adolescence and into a premature adulthood. Paquin strikes such a perfectly volatile imbalance in her role that the rest of the film falls into place around her, even at its most compromised (this 150-minute cut isn't the four-hour-plus one Lonergan would've preferred to see released, and some connective tissue may be lost in the truncation). Unmistakably framed by the densely populated cityscape of a spiritually wounded post-9/11 New York City, "Margaret" views cultural tragedy through the prism of personal moral crisis.

04. Love Exposure / Sion Sono
Sono dropped two savage satires of modern moral frailty on American moviegoers this year: a four-hour 'rom-com' encompassing religious fatalism and sexual repression (“Love Exposure”) and a brisk, two-hour-plus dismantling of contemporary family values marked by lurid horror (“Cold Fish”). Both are brilliant expansions of the Japanese filmmaker's bleak worldview, but it's ‘Exposure,’ with its maverick mix of black comedy and grueling violence, that finds this mad genius at his peak. Some take the film to reflect Sono's own sadism, but he didn't infect society—he means only to diagnose its ills. With urgent melodrama and dazzlingly nimble handheld camerawork, he suggests we must confront the evil that rots away at us if we're to beat the cycles of self-destruction his characters try so hard, in vain, to overcome. These are works of passion and intelligence and they cut deeper than the acts of violence they unsparingly depict.

03. To Die Like a Man / João Pedro Rodrigues
The 2009 Cannes comp was a breeding ground for disappointment, but attendees found solace in the eclectic Un Certain Regard sidebar. Some of these films ("Dogtooth") found acclaim and US distribution in short order; others have taken their sweet time to arrive stateside. Pedro Rodrigues's 'difficult' third feature is among the latter. A plodding musical with few, if any, proper songs, this elegy to an aging Lisbon transsexual is possessed by many of the qualities that made the Portuguese up-and-comer's first two features so special—queer ennui, a nocturnal carnality, flamboyant melodrama—but with even more on offer. A heavy character piece packed with weird, compelling cinematic techniques and at least one stunning set-piece—a forest, bathed in red, blissing-out to Baby Dee's hymnal "Calvary"—this is the kind of bold contemporary art Cannes and any other fest should be spotlighting, not relegating to runner-up status.

02. Meek’s Cutoff / Kelly Reichardt
Dust and dirt cake the faces of Reichardt's men and women of hope and heavy hearts. It’s 1885, and a wagon train on the Oregon Trail crosses miles of cracked, parched earth, its riders longing for the land of good fortune their guide promises them. From this lucid premise Reichardt induces no shortage of tension. She exploits the earthly needs of her travelers in their journey through the nothingness: the search for water, shelter, and the question of who to trust and who to blame when that trust is misplaced. A superficial assessment might suggest that nothing happens, that the film—in its brilliantly allegorical conclusion—winds up where it began. But attentive viewers will find a tautness that never lets inaction become tedious. Reichardt's images possess a painterly beauty, but her landscapes are only as picturesque as they need to be to lure her weary travelers further into a vast, endless expanse.

01. The Tree of Life / Terrence Malick
The ambitions of a movie like this one—which takes us from the beginning of time to its ostensible end, stopping off to admire dinosaurs and get spiritual on a beach—are easy to mock. But the most audacious passage of Malick's great film—a birth of the universe that synthesizes creationism and the Big Bang—is a necessary inflation: It not only hews closely to the aesthetic and thematic principles which have always been connotations of the critical shorthand 'Malickian,' but it engenders a kind of humbling rack-focus akin to that feeling some of us get when we zoom-out from a blurry picture of our house on Google Earth. In fact, Malick's supposedly autobiographical odyssey would be an exercise in narcissism if it wasn't so damn expansive. In juxtaposing the birth and maturation of Malick surrogate Jack with the beginning of all life, our view of not only Jack's world but our own is broadened. You could criticize the extent to which Malick goes to achieve this—a 20-odd minute avant-garde interlude in an otherwise narrative film—but it's something you have to experience. It's like the Google Earth thing: I can tell you about how insignificant it makes me feel, but you really need to see that little pixelated planet for yourself.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Sam C. Mac

Year in Review 2011 - Sam C. Mac's Top Albums

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:58:04 -0500

The most troubling trend to be found in this year’s most critically acclaimed music wasn't the emergence of some ill-fated new genre, but a general lack of anything being said that was worth a damn. The advent of fresh technology over the last few decades has led to plenty of fine music, but it's also weighted the emphasis against lyricism in favor of sonics. And to be fair, 2011 saw great innovations in genre and sound deserving of praise, at least to a point; but those Weeknd mixtapes I like and that Bon Iver album I don't all have vacuous spaces at their center where substantive writers would engage us with something other than drunkenly innocuous babbling about liquor and drugs, or cringe-inducing expressions like (say it with me now, in the whitest falsetto you can muster) "For once I knew/I was not magnificent." My favorite records of the year didn't all overflow with poetry, but they tended to be at least as praiseworthy for their language as they were for their music. No subwoofer shook me harder in the last twelve months than did the line "That big fucking bomb made me deaf," a piercingly timely screed from a certain, scruffy veteran; and no pillowy synths were ever as sensual as Rihanna's ploy to "tell me how much you need me by the way that you please me." The “We Found Love” singer’s latest record missed my list this year, but she did issue a challenge that her competition and just about everyone else should heed: Talk that talk.

10. Tyler, the Creator: Goblin
Ever since Lil Wayne got out of jail and found himself too tired to care about being the best rapper alive, demented Odd Future ringleader Tyler, the Creator has been the most compelling figure in hip-hop. And Tyler proves he'll be a big deal for the foreseeable future by remaining mainstream-relevant despite releasing the year's most challenging, radio-unfriendly rap album. Over beats that sound like what I thought a David Lynch album might sound like before I heard one, Tyler conducts an enthralling, hour-plus therapy session wherein he's both patient and analyst and invites his friends to hang around and crack wise about dicks. It's sad and sick and Tyler totally fucking knows it—he also knows it's diabolically clever. To experience Goblin in its entirety is to dare your conscience to bunny hop off your shoulder; more enjoyably, it's to expose yourself to irreverent brilliance like the line I just paraphrased.

09. Beyoncé: 4 (Deluxe Edition)
The year's best pop album put its author's blandest in the rearview and bucks a trend of lazy retro-fetishism with a willingness to update genres. On 4, afrobeat, disco, and funk find their way into Beyoncé's minimalist synthesizer ballads and glitchy rave-ups, resulting in a record with reverence for the past—particularly the evolution of R&B over the last 50 years—that never feels less than contemporary. It's also just a total joy of vocal versatility: soon-to-be-baby-bumped Bey bursts with love for her (Jigga) man, caterwauling herself raw on "Best Thing I Never Had" (where her voice quivers and cracks all over a song that'd otherwise scan as typical, condescending kiss-off) and sighing a feminine flip-side to D'Angelo's "Untitled (How Does It Feel)." Gaga's album was probably more consistent, but her calculating provocation would never allow for a chorus as warm and resonant as "Come on, make love to me."

08. Fucked Up: David Comes to Life
The year's best rock record gave me plenty of preemptive reasons to hate it. It's got Damien Abraham's shredded-windpipe growl (the thing I find most shitty about metal music; the reason records by Mastodon and Isis keep missing these lists), and it's a concept album, so it actually expects you to pay attention to what that voice is saying. Previous Fucked Up records hit me in the gut only when aiming for it, so the strings and pianos that open David Comes to Life sent me back to the flute solos of Chemistry of Common Life and cringing. But Fucked Up usually makes navigating the wrongheaded experimental shit they do worth it. That said, David is Fucked Up at their best, consistently: each song channels righteous working-class aggression, and no band in 2011 was so committed to making an hour of music this relentless. It gives me a headache sometimes; it probably should.

07. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake
Polly Jean Harvey's latest is a literate and poignant expression of fatigued nationalism, weighing the Dorset native's affection for her English homeland against her disgust for its war-prone exploits. It's a different theme than that which M.I.A. took up on her scathing critique of American excess last year, but it shares its anxiety, its outrage bridging the polemical and the compassionate. PJ nails the sadness of soldiers leaving behind home and family ("Their arms as bitter branches/Spreading into the world") and delivers a moving mediation on combat ("Death was everywhere/In the air, and in the sounds"), and while she's accumulated many bold statements in her career, she hasn't favored tunefulness this much since 2000's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. Don't call it a comeback—her less immediate records offer plenty of rewards. But this is PJ's most fully-realized album in a decade, and one of her best.

06. Tom Waits: Bad as Me (Deluxe Edition)
Rolling with heat, Tom Waits's first collection of all new material since 2004's Real Gone blends together that usual gumbo of bawlers and brawlers we've come to expect from the gruff showman, but with a punch-up in focus. Bad as Me is the shortest Waits set in decades; none of its tracks, on the regular edition or the deluxe (which goes two-for-three in delivering album-worthy outtakes), clock in at much over four-and-half minutes. The sleight of hand is in the way Waits finds merit in familiarity. This material doesn't attempt anything new, but it never feels drudged-up or tired: The best weepies stand tall next to those from Mule Variations and Swordfishtrombones and roiling rockers like "Get Lost" receive an added jolt from a prime-form Keith Richards. The Stones axeman's participation tips us off early as to exactly what this album is for Waits: The record that revitalizes his rock.

05. Pistol Annies: Hell on Heels
Friend and critic Phil Coldiron describes the title-track and lead single from this little record as "the year's most empirically perfect pop song." I'd extend that sentiment to the album’s other nine songs. Made up of country superstar Miranda Lambert and two of her closest songwriting pals, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley, Pistol Annies have delivered the best country record of the year by embracing the genre's minimalism. While Miranda's latest solo offering felt the teensiest bit bloated at nearly an hour, the Annies' record is a shit-hot 30 minutes, masterminded by three intelligent songwriters given just enough to do between them to guide each of their contributions toward perfection. Hell on Heels comes off so flawlessly its precision could go unnoticed at first (it did for me). But around the time it hits you just how impeccably crafted it is, the timeliness of its lyrics should start to register as well.

04. Frank Ocean: Nostalgia, Ultra Mixtape
Mixtapes have gradually become a 'thing' hip-hop savvy critics are obliged to contend with, and 2011 enforced that notion twofold: Toronto-based Drakealike the Weeknd put out two acclaimed 'tapes, and a host of trendsetting viral rappers (Danny Brown, A$ASP ROCKY) slagged off new material. Rarer is the gifted pop crooner capitalizing on the format, and if we narrow that list down to those with the balls to sample the Eagles for seven minutes, we're talking one name. Frank Ocean is the sole decent dude amidst the amorphous teen-terror squad Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All; his voice would lure D'Angelo into bed and his music taps into a thoughtful perspective on American life that’s particularly empathetic toward young romantics treading water in a cynical world. Ocean can be naive, but his Nostalgia, Ultra is never less than compelling as a calling card for one of our most promising new talents.

03. Gillian Welch: The Harrow and the Harvest
Like each of Gillian Welch and sideman/guitar virtuoso David Rawlings's other carefully crafted records, Harrow and the Harvest is informed by old conventions, with an emphasis on Appalachian folk and the biblical reverence found in Robert Johnson's work. Their latest stands as a corrective to their previous album—the messier, more indulgent Soul Journey—returning to the minimalist template of their fantastic early diptych (1996's Revival; 1998's Hell Among the Yearlings), and improving on it in subtle ways. These are some of the duo's most vividly told stories: "Dark Turn of Mind" summons the seductively macabre images of Yearlings' seedier songs and "Hard Times" offers a sensitive dialogue between plowman and cattle. But what's most welcome here is the newfound wry sense of humor, a necessary levity in the face of all that's grim and inevitable. I like the way Welch puts it: "That's the way the cornbread crumbles."

02. Me’Shell NdegéOcello: Weather
Me'Shell NdegéOcello—that smokey chanteuse who's been spinning soulful, eclectic songs as a solo artist since the mid-'90s—pulls all her talents together on Weather, a thorny collection of languid love songs taking on various forms of needling uncertainty. The first eight of the record’s 13 tracks are perfect, and in a weak year for music, the rest come close enough: Me'Shell lingers on her lover's doorstep (an act meant more metaphorically) and soldiers through her regret, groping for a new start on "Feeling for the Wall." She gender-bends Leonard Cohen's classic "Chelsea Hotel," vacillating between breathy falsetto and leering baritone to sell both sides, and pens a gorgeous piano-voice thesis on "Oysters": "World ain't never gonna change/But you could always change it for me." Other NdegéOcello records are tripped up by ostentatiousness; this one, with Joe Henry's limber, minimalist production, is scaled just right.

01. The Roots: Undun
Biting an album-length concept from Prince Paul, pivoting on a brief instrumental from a Sufjan Stevens album, you wouldn't think Undun would be the best Roots album in nearly decade, but it is. Synthesizing the concise song-craft of midlife manifesto How I Got Over with the avant-weird ambitions of Phrenology (there's a gorgeous, four-part instrumental coda), the Roots' latest is the record they've been working toward for the entirety of their long, vital career. And it makes quick work of the concept-album-as-tedious-bore, fashioning less a coherent narrative (though there's that: fictional Redford Stevens loses his life on the hustle, journeys back to reflect on the mistakes that got him there) than an impressionistic collection of gritty narrative details. Drummer Questlove's production instincts are as impeccable as ever, but it's frontman Black Thought who steals this one, mining personal and cultural tragedies to create one of the least encumbered, most affecting concept records in the history of the form.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Sam C. Mac

Year in Review 2011 - Luke Gorham's Top Films

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:50:28 -0500

This has been an unusually generous year for superior films—not since 2005 has the outside-Hollywood set made such an impact on year-end lists. With such varying (and sometimes diametrically opposed) artistic voices as Terrence Malick, Alexander Payne, Lars von Trier, and Jean-Luc Godard all releasing new films, one distinct pattern has emerged: that of the dissident. Subverting genre was a favorite past-time of idiosyncratic directors this year, notably Tomas Alfredson (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”) and Nicolas Winding Refn (“Drive”). Some directors played adversary to themselves (Pedro Almodovar's "The Skin I Live In" felt overtly out-of-character, at least compared to his recent work); others toyed with niche genres to unexpectedly strong effect (“Like Crazy,” “Cold Weather,” “Beginners”); and, on the other side of the screen, concerned critics and cinephiles banded together to demand increased exposure for the once-buried treasure that is “Margaret.” While not all dissident activity was for the best this year (I’m talking to you, Lynne Ramsay), its very presence in and around Hollywood is cause for celebration. As a real genius once said, it’s the thought that counts, and when there’s money at stake (now I’m talking to you, Hollywood), it counts all the more. Cash cows aren’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean big business cinema can’t squeeze out a little art as well. Last year I swore I’d suspend my cynicism for the mainstream as long as “The Tree of Life” was on the horizon. Having finally witnessed that hotly anticipated event after years of waiting, 2012 gets a pass as well. Your move, Hollywood.

10. Weekend / Andrew Haigh
Though we live in an age that has made significant strides toward social equality, gay culture has never been explored as succinctly and affectingly as it is in Haigh’s modest chamber drama. As members of a society, we learn to define ourselves through our interactions with the world around us and the relationships we forge. This notion of human communication saturates “Weekend” as two gay men—one bearing forceful self-assurance born of pain, the other a willing innocence and openness—bond, feud and jointly evolve over the course of a few days' acquaintance. The two bob and weave their way through objective, theoretical discourse on romance and more naturalistically intimate smalltalk before finally beginning to find themselves in each other. That the sexual orientation of the two feels less like the point of "Weekend" than a mere detail is something all together profoundly progressive for such a small-scale film.

09. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / David Fincher
No character this year, not the sleek psychotic at the black heart of “Drive” nor the mysterious prisoner of “The Skin I Live In,” has been festishized more emphatically than Lisbeth Salander. Fincher transforms his goth-girl, proto-feminist super-hacker into one big bundle of cool—from her effortless cigarette flicks to her perfectly coifed anti-coif to her impossibly dexterous typing, Lisbeth exudes pure, ferocious verve. This shift in emphasis Fincher cultivates, dismissing the Swedish original’s more earnest treatment of Lisbeth’s badassery, is critical to his film’s runaway success, allowing Rooney Mara to imbue Lisbeth with a shade of theatricality and affectation which underscores her evident vulnerability. Supported throughout by Fincher’s lustrous visual style, at its most skillfully chilly, ‘Dragon Tattoo' treats its lurid mystery narrative as a mere set-piece for the only real mystery of consequence here: who is Lisbeth Salander?

08. Melancholia / Lars von Trier
“Melancholia” has been dismissed by some self-serious critics as a trifle built solely on ham-fisted metaphor. But to think von Trier takes his metaphors too seriously—in this case that of a giant, blue planet named Melancholia crashing into earth and ending all life, meant as an externalization of a young woman’s depression—is problematic. This provocateur understands both the sobriety of depression and its hyperbolic self-consumption; his well-documented struggles it the sickness obviously factor in heavily here, and it isn’t hard to see him poking fun at himself even while regarding the troubled Justine (a career-best Kirsten Dunst) with affectionate respect and keen insight. And if that isn’t enough, the opening eight minutes of “Melancholia,” a sequence of bleakly beautiful slow-motion tableaus which encapsulate von Trier’s themes and solidify his painterly craft, contain some of the most visually stunning moments of cinema this year.

07. Margaret / Kenneth Lonergan
Much has been made of the post-production hell and legal issues surrounding the shot-in-2005, released-in-2011 “Margaret.” The real story, however, is how wildly successful this reportedly second-rate cut of the film is. Detailing the psychology of its young heroine in the aftermath of a bus accident, Lonergan’s film is content to follow said character, Lisa Cohen (an Oscar-worthy Anna Paquin), down many untidied subplots to capture every facet of her rapidly-changing internal life. At times well-spoken and preternaturally insightful, at other times infuriatingly boorish and impudent, Lisa's obsessive pursuit of justice (as she sees it), blatant mommy issues, and constant attention-seeking all blur the line between adolescent angst and psychological trauma, leaving a portrait of a girl’s bruised naïveté and battered sense of self. Lonergan has crafted a film of challenging coarseness which, much like Lisa, is all the richer for its imperfections.

06. Meek’s Cutoff / Kelly Reichardt
Resembling an arthouse adaptation of the "Oregon Trail" computer game, “Meek’s Cutoff” is a claustrophobic anti-western detailing the travails of a pilgrimage toward unsettled terrain. Deliberately paced, and shot in longtakes of prolonged silence, Reichart’s film is nonetheless underscored by a sense of mounting tension that the characters have to work at to keep unspoken. Surreal at its edges, imbuing its narrative with mirage-like uncertainty, "Meek's Cutoff" is a decidedly un-romanticized rendering of the western myth. Despite this, it proves to be as much an acting showcase as it is an aesthetic experience. Michelle Williams is predictably superb as the reluctant backbone of the pioneers, but it’s Bruce Greenwood, nearly unrecognizable as the eponymous guide, whose prideful loutishness and eerie inscrutability threaten to thwart the weary travelers in their efforts for a better life. Hey, modern world, sound familiar?

05. Heartbeats / Xavier Dolan
Emotionally superficial and visually overt, “Heartbeats” concerns a very specific, transient moment in development, highlighting the impatient, disaffected phase of young adulthood. Naysayers will assert that its directorial flourish negates its more redeeming merits; they're missing the point. Dolan pairs bombastic, capital 'A’ art—a flamboyant color palette, slow-mo glances of pure yearning, and a classical-heavy soundtrack—with lovingly deprecating humor for his characters that creates an equally funny and affecting portrait of youth’s last days. “Heartbeats” is a faux-maudlin comedy attuned to the melodrama of modern twentysomething living, both quick to acknowledge its subjective relevance to ones maturation and keenly aware of its objective absurdity. Too many critics have condemned Dolan’s perceived indulgence, and what they're missing is some of the most playful, intelligent and beautiful filmmaking of 2011.

04. A Separation / Asghar Farhadi
Competing notions of truth take center stage in Farhadi's searing portrait of modern Iran. Miraculously balancing big-picture political and social implications with small-scale ethics, “A Separation” offers no less than five supremely sympathetic characters, all struggling with individualized perceptions of morality and self-interest. Farhadi’s camera acts as impartial voyeur—as well as our own personal surrogate—gaining us access to the various conflicts that play out between these people. His closeups during the many closed-door legal proceedings capture immediacy in each pained expression, while the way in which he elides certain crucial narrative goings-on suggests the indefinite function of truth in situations so thorny and complicated. As the final extended shot continues into the credits, it is precisely this refusal to offer easy answers to hard questions which leaves us gut-punched and heartbroken.

03. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 / David Yates
Any question as to who the ‘Potter’ series belongs to should be laid to rest once and for all after a single viewing of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.” Since David Yates took over directing duties the visual and emotional resonance of these films has soared. And that pattern continues with the final installment of the saga, a fully adrenalized testament to the co-existence of commerce and art (and quality blockbusters). Approaching the visual palette of black-and-white films as a buttress to the series’ growing thematic darkness, Yates paints with gray and azure hues without sacrificing any of his film's striking vibrancy. It’s the performances, however, which cement this finale's greatness; from the at-last vulnerability of Alan Rickman’s Snape to the cracking confidence of Ralph Fiennes’s Voldemort, ‘Deathly Hallows’ smacks of the disconcerting realizations brought about by the end of childhood.

02. Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami
Kiarostami's latest is shrouded in a haze of mystery and doubt. It's thematically and structurally akin to the best Modern American Drama though void of the garishness which sometimes plagues works bound for the stage. Decidedly low-key and disorienting, it unfolds over a single day, as the specifics of a relationship between an unnamed man and woman are continually questioned. Far from unfocused, it follows a clear progression, allowing the bond at its center to evolve through prolonged conversations between the two principles and other couples. Nimbly managing its built-in theme—the question of artifice vs. authenticity—“Certified Copy” allows its romance and its ambiguous implications to act as a sphere of inquiry into the nature of human connection. If the short answer is ultimately unknowable, it's because the long answer is suffused with such powerful honesty as to expose the inconsequence of easy conclusions.

01. The Tree of Life / Terrence Malick
Malick’s microcosm as macrocosm exploration of one boy’s Texas-raised childhood is both supremely epic and heartrendingly intimate, a hallucinatory mosaic of cerebral and emotional memory. Juxtaposing a twenty-odd minute sequence of the creation and evolution of the world with one of the creation and evolution of a person (which constitutes the remainder of the film), its is an illusory, abstruse portrait of the artist as a young man, one in which Malick parallels his own spiritual birthing with that of all humanity. While this may sound wildly self-indulgent, “The Tree of Life” is a philosophically rich and aesthetically unmatched dissection of nature vs. grace and order vs. chaos. Malick’s POV seems to suggest that families, relationships (both with the natural world and with our fellow man), and life in general are organisms all their own, infinitesimal but destined for growth, change and, hopefully, transcendence.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Luke Gorham

Year in Review 2011 - Luke Gorham's Top Albums

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:50:02 -0500

After careful consideration of the year in music, the descriptor which jumps to this critic’s mind is “retro.” This may seem initially misleading when weighing the glut of unique objets d'art produced during 2011, but from the year’s best emcees to its boundary-pushing crooners to its idol-worshipping indie rockers, this notion of retro rings defiantly true. In the world of rap, standout acts like Shabazz Palaces and the Roots employed plenty of ‘90s throwback flair, while the Cool Kids delivered on their already-defined brand of ‘80s hats-and-sneakers spitting. Traditional folk artists such as Bon Iver and Iron & Wine also infused a clear ‘80s aesthetic into their picking-and-pining Americana sound, while PJ Harvey traveled even further back into the annals of English musical tradition on her latest. The common denominator here is a brazen willingness to risk polarization for the chance at honest, distinctive self-expression. From acts like ambient folk outfit the War on Drugs to headline-grabbing hip-hop collective Odd Future and their ubiquitous frontman Tyler, the Creator, these performers may not be your cup of tea, but they are refreshing, innovative and, most importantly, absolutely necessary.

10. Shabazz Palaces: Black Up
Intensely original and almost equally inscrutable, Shabazz Palaces’ debut isn’t without precedent. Brief, mostly vocal glimpses of jazz-rap influences like De La Soul and emcee Ishmael Butler’s own Digable Planets remind us of the genre’s history, all the while resolutely progressing hip-hop with each minute of this LP. Looping, layered, always moody, the production here is as memorable as that of any alt-rap album. Butler, however, is the real luminary. His flow is effortless and playful, alternating between nimble cooperation with the beats and all-out domination of them, while his often enigmatic pontificating always resonates thanks to his proclivity for recurring maxims. With Butler’s deeply humanist themes and the album’s droning, near-robotic production balanced to perfect effect, it isn’t hard to see the future (or at least a more comprehensive future) of hip-hop in every repeated mantra and synthetic drum kick.

09. Florence Welch: Ceremonials
If you’re prepared to counter the following praise by condemning Florence Welch’s unadulterated extravagance, don’t bother—it is precisely this indulgence which so captivates and endears us to Ceremonials, Welch & co.’s second, superior LP. Florence suffers no subtlety amidst her sensory attack of baroque pop and overflowing spirituality, and like fellow 2011 standouts and obvious points of comparison Adele and Tori Amos, but with more flounce, Florence’s tremendous vocal power is less harnessed than delivered with an uncanny understanding of pure musicality. Neither as mystic as Amos nor as overtly intimate as Adele, Welch hovers somewhere in between, crafting a confident and tellingly eccentric expression of herself through an impossibly catchy arsenal of tracks. If it’s an imperfect album, it’s imperfect in all the best ways—and a truly exciting signifier of what’s still to come from this 25 year-old wunderkind.

08. The Roots: Undun
From the first spoken lines of the Roots’ Undun, a Keatsian juxtaposition of sleep and death, to the album’s prolonged orchestral riff on Sufjan Stevens’s “Redford,” the reverse chronology of fictional hood Redford Stevens and the death-inspired reflections of his life are rich in ambiguity and unexpected beauty. Lyrically spearheaded by Black Thought, mixing the provocative and the cerebral, this concept album’s narrative is easy to follow but far from pat in its conclusions. Exploring Redford’s constantly shifting self-perception, from tortured desperation (“Lighthouse”) to swollen and prideful fatalism (“Kool On”), Undun creates such a believable character that it leaves its audience with the sense of so much yet unexplored. Tightly reined in by Questlove and his gift for effortlessly intricate arrangements, the Roots have delivered that most difficult of beasts—the concept album—by culling their career-long themes of choice into a record that is seemingly destined to prove the defining work of the band’s inimitable career.

07. Tyler, the Creator: Goblin
What elevates Tyler (de facto ringleader of indie-rap’s OFWGKTA) above base provocation is his near-absolute lack of inhibition. “I’m a fucking walking paradox/No I’m not,” the opening declaration of album-topper “Yonkers,” encapsulates the appeal of this idiosyncratic emcee—his willingness to explore all facets of himself and the persona he has manufactured for the public. Violent, misogynistic, and misanthropic, Goblin is an admittedly bleak and exhausting trip, though also thrillingly brazen in its sardonic willingness to explore even the most off putting elements of its creator’s still-developing worldview. Like Kanye, only angrier and possessing a greater sense of introspective objectivity, Tyler relishes holding up a magnifying glass to his seemingly unending contradictions and wellsprings of anger. Though far-surpassed by fellow Wolfgang'er Earl in technical skill, Tyler’s aesthetic sensibilities, and his shameless artistry, have likely and deservedly erased all accusations of irrelevance for good.

06. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake
Never one to shy away from provocation, Harvey has matured and deepened her tactics. On Let England Shake, her sights are squarely set on her country of origin: the horrors of World War I, the travails of post-war diplomacy, and the death of pastoral living. Her approach, however, more classically melodic and vacillating between darkly comic resignation and righteously angry realism (“soldiers falling like lumps of meat”), is a far-from-unfamiliar mindset to those of us living across the pond. Utilizing her upper register more exclusively than on recent albums, and infusing her sound with remnants of English folk and ‘60s goth-pop, Harvey offers listeners a more generous version of herself by dialing down forcefulness in favor of unobtrusive assurance. By trusting herself and her audience more fully, she has created a timely and insightful album about the large and small scale necessity of reflection and accountability.

05. Yuck: Yuck
The constancy and efficiency of the wheel negates the need for its reinvention, but slight fine-tuning can renew its wonder. Following this analogy, Yuck offers up a captivating revision to that specific breed of ‘90s fuzzy shoegazer rock-'n'-roll. At barely 20 years old, the members of Yuck are likely a product of internet-bred nostalgia and retroactive musical tastes rather than the influences of a specific decade, but their uncluttered sound and more melodic take on the stylings of Dinosaur Jr. and Mellon Collie-era Smashing Pumpkins prove their place at the forefront of nu-gaze bands. Whether it’s the wailing guitars and dissonant distortion of “Get Away” or the yearning vocal whispers and unassuming acoustics of “Shook Down,” Yuck is an album rich in emotional tenor and youthful abstraction. The band may not be authentic lo-fiers, but, against the odds, they are something equally impressive: fresh.

04. Bon Iver: Bon Iver
Justin Vernon’s follow-up to his quietly beautiful but comparatively slight debut (For Emma, Forever Ago) offers up a broader, more textured sound. Straying from his folk origins into more soulful, wholly original territory, Vernon likewise abandons his wounded-puppy vocal stylings for a more affecting, emotionally ambiguous falsetto, now capable of evoking more than just mournful yearning. Like fellow folk artist Sam Beam, Vernon’s lyrics often wax oblique; but when his impossible tenor proclaims “And at once I knew I was not magnificent,” his true growth as a songwriter becomes evident. That such a revelation can seem equally deterministic and liberating amidst his more layered yet increasingly focused arrangements gives evidence of an emotional and musical evolution that borders on the extraordinary. While Vernon’s introspective eye made his debut a rewarding experience, Bon Iver challenges listeners to employ the same pensiveness, resulting in an altogether transcendent undertaking.

03. The Weeknd: House of Balloons Mixtape
What Abel Tesfaye accomplishes on House of Balloons, the mixtape he recorded under his stage name the Weeknd, is an honest lyrical and sonic portrait of disaffection. Infusing R&B with the estrangement and dissatisfying hedonism that has become a somewhat tired and poorly executed staple of indie-rock works in his favor here; House of Balloons is both carnal and eerie, a portrait of the on-the-edge growing pains of a preternaturally insightful singer. Indebted both to mainstream American R&B and Canadian indie-pop, Tesfaye has crafted a wholly original mixtape somehow more honest for the transparency of his obvious influences. Like fellow up-and-coming crooner Frank Ocean, Tesfaye brings a much-needed humanism and edge to the typically obtuse R&B genre. Not convinced? Give Drake’s Take Care a listen and witness the influence of Tesfaye and his burgeoning style of hesitant romanticism.

02. Jay-Z/Kanye West: Watch the Throne
“I’m ‘bout to call the paparazzi on myself.” This acerbically self-effacing proclamation, from album standout and single-of-the-year contender “Otis,” functions as a synecdoche for Watch the Throne’s defining glory: namely, the pure exuberance and posturing ‘Ye and Jay bring to their collaborative effort. Is it a seamless alliance? Beat for beat, line for line, no; missing here is the unparalleled ambition of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and the rags-to-riches earnestness of Jay-Z’s fabled career. The uniting factor, then, is the unrestrained dynamism the two emcees are able to bring to any joint. Successful both when celebrating their own greatness and the thrills of self-indulgence (“Otis,” “No Church in the Wild”) and more socially conscious fare (“Murder to Excellence,” “Made in America”), Watch the Throne offers nothing more and nothing less than two geniuses combining efforts for a sufficiently substantive entertainment. When you’re delivering at this level, less than perfection is more than enough.

01. Wu-Lyf: Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
Heavily hyped indie-rockers Wu Lyf burst onto the scene boasting both a familiar ethos and an altogether new bravado with their debut LP, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain. The title alone, suggesting a scorching appeal to the masses, evinces the band’s core unpredictable glory: an anthemic, revolutionary spirit devoid of cynicism. Ignoring the group’s histrionic, “screw you” public persona, their forceful esotericism, and the guttural, almost primal gruntings of lead singer Ellery Roberts, there’s a chant-friendly tenderness to their brand of middle-finger murmurings and disaffected camaraderie. Their expansive sound is focused and tight, a precise assemblage of ugly-beautiful renderings amongst the chaos of acidly melodic guitar chords and crashing percussion. Like Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros before them, Wu Lyf has created an honest, unabashed statement of purely emotional musicality that (and this is the highest compliment I can give) temporarily rendered this critic’s cynicism impotent.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Luke Gorham

Year in Review 2011 - Jordan Cronk's Top Films

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:48:27 -0500

When I consider the hand-wringing that usually goes into these lists, it’s interesting that in 2011—the single best year for cinema in at least a half-decade—it would prove so decidedly easy to carve out a top ten. I greatly admire a few dozen films that opened in the U.S. over the last twelve months, some just now seeing the light of day after years in distribution limbo (“United Red Army,” “Go Go Tales,” “Love Exposure,” even “Margaret,” which is as inspired as it is messy), others arriving on a wave of festival hype and meeting those expectations (“Of Gods and Men,” “Poetry,” “A Separation”). But when I think of the handful of films in direct threat to my top ten (“Le Quattro Volte,” “El Sicario: Room 164,” “To Die Like a Man”) none would feel right dislodging any of my favorites. And this was, above all, a year where feeling really coursed through the best of cinema, a fact I find difficult to reconcile with the general acclaim meeting a certain subset of the year’s films (“Melancholia,” “Shame,” “We Need to Talk About Kevin”) which were utterly vacant and devoid of any tangible emotion or insight. What follows, then, are ten works of genuine passion and consistently enveloping formal ingenuity, nearly all worthy of anchoring their own respective year as opposed to sharing space with nine equally impressive films.

10. Le Havre / Aki Kaurismäki
This Deadpan Finnish master's career-long concern with the lives of the disenfranchised finds its most humanistic manifestation yet in his latest, unassuming fable “Le Havre.” With the eponymous French port town reflecting the larger burdens of modern Europe, Kaurismäki blithely yet pointedly traces an odd-couple relationship between an immigrant African adolescent and an aging shoeshiner who perhaps recognizes a bit of his younger self in the boy’s plight. A series of protracted gestures and a color coordinated visual palette once again undergird Kaurismäki’s tight narrative mechanics, his Bresson-like discretion facilitating a dialogue between thematic topicality and intergenerational camaraderie in a manner reminiscent of Jean Renoir or Marcel Carné. Another entry in his politically—and, just as importantly, cinematically—conscious proletariat series as well as a worthy spiritual successor to his 1996 masterwork “Drifting Clouds,” “Le Havre” instantly rises to the top tier of Kaurismäki’s oeuvre.

09. Tuesday, After Christmas / Radu Muntean
Shortsighted critics proclaiming the end of the Romanian New Wave were proven woefully wrong this year, as the country gave us three superb works: Andrei Ujică’s epic found footage doc “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu,” one elliptical anti-procedural we’ll get to further on down this list, and this shattering marital drama. Retaining the movement’s signature longtakes and formally dynamic compositions, Muntean expands thematically with his fourth feature, staging a tense love-triangle narrative that breaks free of the internalized singularity of many of his compatriot’s most celebrated works. Muntean’s carefully plotted film moves in a roundabout manner, introducing and redefining characters almost scene by scene. And by allowing these people the space (within the frame) and time (within the narrative) they need to reveal their secrets and motivations, he adds to the complexity and the quietly engaging nature of his film, one of the year’s most emotionally devastating.

08. Film Socialisme / Jean-Luc Godard
This French-Swiss iconoclast's first all-digital feature is in many ways his most cinematically and politically engaged since 1998's “Historie(s) du Cinema.” A three-part symphonic essay on life during wartime and the decline of the European Empire, "Film Socialisme" examines political responsibility via aesthetic reconciliation, as an array of sound editing and montage techniques piece together the greater narrative of Godard’s place within the maelstrom. As a filmmaker equipped only with what current technology has to offer—and in a self-imposed race towards the realization of a cinematic reconfiguration of the form’s responsibility and potential for change—Godard continues to argue for a complete rebirth of a classic aesthetic model. Equal parts prismatic cruise around Godard’s stylistic harbor, landlocked travelogue across greater war-torn Europe, and cinematic reconstruction of humanity’s cyclical atrocities, “Film Socialisme” spins something beautiful, provocative, and confounding from the mess we’ve wrought.

07. Aurora / Cristi Puiu
A nightmare serial-killer narrative with almost zero disclosure offered across its vast, three hour expanse, Puiu’s provocatively minimalist “Aurora” observes mundane human activity through a succession of alternately claustrophobic and expansive compositions. Casting himself as the blank-faced subject of his own saga, Puiu provokes a brave dialectic between audience and director, further implicating himself in the methodical exposition of his elliptical anti-procedural. The banal becomes loaded, motivation becomes a means unto itself; and the aesthetic has already proven influential, with Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s masterful “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” bearing traces of a similarly guarded, richly ambiguous approach to narrative. Together, these filmmakers are rewriting the rules of film grammar, and as the ripples continue to be felt, it stands to reason that “Aurora” could be seen as a watershed, the work that heroically pushed things that much further toward the unknown.

06. Meek’s Cutoff / Kelly Reichardt
Reichardt’s most ambitious and precisely drawn work to date is a genre film by classification only, stripped of ornamentation and extraneous expositional conceits. It’s also, paradoxically, her most aesthetically impressive and engaging work, an observational, revisionist western with stronger ties to Italian neo-realism than to the John Ford school of classical filmmaking. The sun-bleached vistas, crystal blue horizons, and primary-hued dresses of the female-anchored wagon train—captured indelibly by Chris Blauvelt’s Academy ratio lensing—embolden the threadbare narrative, which grows evermore intangible even as events and motivations come into focus. An unexpected, extremely impressive stylistic leap beyond her previously intimate, small-scale work, “Meek’s Cutoff” retains Reichardt’s acute dedication to character while expanding her narrative purview, dissolving the schematic construction that would traditionally mark this as product instead of the mytho-poetic portrait it truly is.

05. The Tree of Life / Terrence Malick
Appropriately enough for the year’s most ambitious statement, Malick’s messianic epic attempts to encompass everything messy, beautiful, intimate, and overwhelming about life. Few working directors, let alone one toiling within the Hollywood system, would undertake such a project, which literally moves us from the inception of the universe to the afterlife in under 150 minutes. But for Malick, our most deeply spiritual and consistently visionary filmmaker, ‘Tree’ feels like a logical end point, a summation of everything grand, transcendent, and occasionally frustrating about his process projected into a single, staggering work of intense commitment. In juxtaposing a thought-to-be autobiographical ‘50s family narrative with the maneuverings of the cosmos, Malick strikes a unique chord most anyone can identify with. Anyone who’s ever felt overwhelmed by their place in the grand scheme of existence will surely see themselves reflected somewhere within the film’s shimmering surfaces or its yearning familial dynamic.

04. House of Pleasures / Bertrand Bonello
In transposing some of the key thematic and aesthetic preoccupations of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “Flowers of Shanghai” from 19th century China to the sex trade in a fin-de-siècle brothel in Paris, Bonello both spiritually enriches and subverts the artifice of the traditional period piece. A boldly sensual, near psychedelic awakening to a more shrouded corner of Parisian high society, “House of Pleasures” hypnotizes via languorous pace, poetic dialogue, and left-field soundtrack accompaniment (the Moody Blues have found an unexpectedly apt posthumous venue), tilling the succulent vein of a cloistered existence wherein each personality is devoured by a society it gives so much of itself to. “If we don’t burn, how will the night be lit?” one prescient young lady ponders during the film’s most searing sequence, and Bonello, now working at heights equal to any other European filmmaker, answers sympathetically, allowing these transient souls an opportunity to ignite the possibilities of a chamber-based cinema.

03. Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami
Bravely exporting his singular method, Iran’s most influential and important filmmaker has found renewed passion in the potential of narrative, thereby embarking on what promises to be a fascinating new act in a career marked by repetition, authenticity, and variations on very specific themes. In this sense, “Certified Copy” is a reconciliatory work for Kiarostami, though a sumptuous visual palette and a distinctly European sense of narrative elision moves the film into uncharted aesthetic territory. The director’s increasingly cerebral, sometimes playful, always evolving dramatization of a pair of ambiguously defined verbal sparring partners takes on contrasting meanings and proposes fresh implications when approached from different perspectives, inviting the viewer in while privileging individual interpretation in uncommonly gracious terms. Through an inversion of his fundamental text, Kiarostami has constructed a key work in the grand tradition of the European art film.

02. Mysteries of Lisbon / Raoúl Ruiz
Before passing away this past August, Chilean filmmaker Raoúl Ruiz left us with what could be seen as the defining work of his nearly five decades-long career. This breathtakingly grandiose, epically staged 19th century drama bears witness to a changing of the guard, an end of an era, the collateral effect of one man’s existence on the lives of a privileged generation. In attempting to encompass all the many facets of an antiquated European society, Ruiz has constructed a frighteningly detailed, ravishingly dramatic tale of thwarted love, festering jealously, simmering anger, and vitriolic contempt. Working at a height only sporadically tapped since his mid-‘80s apex, Ruiz fashions a visual novel from the most intrinsic of human emotions, invigorating staid period practices with an aesthetic flair both reverent and valiant. As a standalone statement, “Mysteries of Lisbon” is a landmark achievement; as a capstone to one of the greatest careers in modern cinema, it’s both lament and testimony.

01. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives / Apichatpong Weerasethakul
There’s no shortage nowadays of strange films leaning on gimmicks or genre trappings to compensate for a lack of truly unique thinking. Rare is the movie that not only crossbreeds its various thematic and visual strains but circumvents its obtuseness to the point where every film in its vicinity appears skewed and unnatural by comparison. The dazzlingly original, riveting modern masterpiece “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” enriches, embodies, and erodes all such classifications, teeming with insight and vivid clarity into the soul of a man not necessarily nostalgic for but enlivened by the capacity of the human spirit. Apichatpong’s first largely linear narrative dives headfirst into premonition, apparition, and reincarnation with a Buddhist’s serenity, emboldening the director’s themes as he subtly galvanizes his aesthetic. Ominous, playful, and consistently riveting, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ stands as the most transcendent work yet from the world’s most vital young filmmaker.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Jordan Cronk

Year in Review 2011 - Jordan Cronk's Top Albums

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:48:17 -0500

Access and availability being what they are today, it’s become increasingly difficult to define any given year in music by applying overarching trends or identifying specific movements or scenes. It’s almost as if each micro-genre now has its own yearly story to tell, most not beholden to anything else going on in music, period—let alone in conjunction with blanket classifications such as independent, mainstream, or otherwise. It’s not enough anymore to say that R&B or underground hip-hop had a great year (although both did); rather, it’s more important to note that literally dozens of sub-genres produce consistently interesting and worthwhile material, so much so that any single writer’s opinion is inevitably marked by blind spots. In my estimation, then, what ultimately united 2011—reflected in the following list of my ten favorite albums of the year—was a general air of earnestness that permeated even the most outwardly niche offering or potentially hazardous pastiche. All the best records I heard this year felt not only natural but honest in their artistic expression, whether that was via free-improvisation, carefully chiseled drone, or re-appropriated genre signifiers. It was a beautifully strange year for music, and there’s more—much more—to it than the small sampling listed below.

10. Blackout Beach: Fuck Death
It’s not all that surprising that after the unhinged exhortations and swarming six-string lacerations of Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph—one of 2010’s best indie rock records—Frog Eyes leader Carey Mercer would want to retreat inward. Few, however, could have predicted the pitch-black aesthetic burial of Mercer’s third and best solo album. A sprawl of sputtering synths and disquieting drones, Fuck Death, named after a Leon Golub painting, alternates emotional lashings with ambitious invocations of wartime atrocity and political strife. The record is Mercer’s attempt, in his words, “to make something about Beauty and War,” two of the most broad, subjective topics imaginable. That this harrowing narrative is weaved into one of the year’s most opaque, impressionistic sonic tapestries suggests Mercer may not have just made something about beauty and war, but perhaps tapped into an essential expression of both.

09. St. Vincent: Strange Mercy
I admire both of Annie Clark’s previous albums, but each felt conflicted over the persona Clark wanted to establish: There was the fire-breathing guitar hero and experimentalist rearing her head in a live setting, and the chamber pop chanteuse that up until now seemed to flourish in the studio. Clark’s third record synthesizes these extremes into a whole far greater than the sum of its parts, representing a huge artistic step forward for this ever-maturing songwriter. Previously reigned in and curiously polite on record, Clark’s guitar explodes across Strange Mercy’s ten tracks, each subtly frayed edge revealing new depths of complexity within these tightly structured, visceral arrangements. In the last year, Clark has been doing everything from discussing the influence of Nick Cave to covering Big Black in concert, and with Strange Mercy, her art-rock lineage has finally emerged from its nascent form, searing and inspired.

08. Gang Gang Dance: Eye Contact
Every time I presume to have the answer to Gang Gang Dance, they up and change the question. Noise, industrial, aboriginal electro, dancehall—they’ve adopted and dropped each subgenre in quick succession yet remained loyal to their restless artistic id, establishing themselves as a genre unto themselves. With that said, they’ve reached a new plateau here, a bold expansion of their aesthetic model, rounding off the more jagged corners of their sound and bolstering their melodic sensibilities to the point where things occasionally resemble that of a pop band—that is, a pop band who drops an 11-minute disco-prog track as an album-opening salvo. From track two on, Gang Gang Dance embark on a panoramic trip through their past and on into the future, cutting confidently against the grain while refining their strengths. It may be their fifth album, but Eye Contact is the work of a slippery musical entity still hungry for greatness.

07. Tim Hecker: Ravedeath, 1972
In October 2011, Tim Hecker released Dropped Pianos, a modest EP of minimalist piano sketches. These stark ivory meditations would eventually be expounded upon via pipe organ, as Hecker laid the melodic foundation for the full-length record in an Icelandic cathedral before relocating to his studio to digitally devour those compositions. What emerged is arguably his most intriguing work to date, a brooding, disquieting lament for the transient nature of sound and the cyclical reanimations of recorded music. Another in Hecker’s long line of thematically unified albums, Ravedeath paints a grave portrait of an art form in decay (“Hatred of Music,” “Analog Paralysis,” “Studio Suicide”), blankets of noise and drone systematically snuffing out heaving organ notes as nostalgia tears gravely through the mix—our only hope, Hecker seems to be whispering, amidst a landscape with little else left to offer.

06. Robag Wruhme: Thora Vukk
With bass music staking out a pronounced foothold in mainstream pop this year, it’s been interesting to watch minimalist techno wend its way back into the fold (the genre seemed to reach its most visible point a few years back). Of course, this music isn’t necessarily for the masses, so in a sense it’s back where it belongs. Even within the scene, however, Wruhme’s Thora Vukk seems under-heard. What Wruhme has done here, though, is set a new benchmark for minimalism, sculpting from his roomy productions a welcoming, placid atmosphere wherein skipping rhythms can float airily alongside celestial piano and shuttering samples. It’s evocative without leaning on nostalgia, heartbreaking without turning melodramatic; but best of all it’s the most memorable record of its kind since Pantha du Prince’s shadow-casting This Bliss. Give it time—we’ll be hearing variations on Thora Vukk for years to come.

05. Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica
It’s been a while since I’ve heard an aesthetic concept record so seamlessly constructed that its technique becomes secondary to the visceral response it provokes, but Daniel Lopatin’s latest stands as an example of just that. Sourced from vintage instructional videos and ‘80s television commercials, it reads on paper as a potentially kitschy exercise in recycled pop culture ephemera. But in the hands of Lopatin, these fragments find new life, re-appropriated and reconfigured as a dialogue between artist and raw material. Lopatin’s enveloping drones now build not only skyward but sideways, across fresh and unexplored terrain, mutating outward through stray bouts of percussion, chamber piano, and left-field vocal edits. Lopatin sculpts melody from the everyday, severs connotation from experience, and conflates nostalgia with evolution. Without a modicum of disclosure, he offers an oasis at once familiar and foreign, a New Jerusalem bred on technology yet imbued with generations of humanity.

04. Colin Stetson: New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges
Depending on your religious beliefs, this is either soundtrack to the apocalypse or aural accompaniment to the rapture—either way, shit just got real. What doesn’t seem real, or the least bit human, is the extraordinary technique Stetson displays in his solo saxophone work, which approximates the sound of a stampeding cavalry in the throes of bullet-induced hysteria. The scorching, blast-furnace improvisations which comprise Stetson’s second album are at once invective and gauntlet, ornery exhortations pitting humanity against itself in a battle of righteous indignation. Circular breathing, close-mic’d keys, whatever—this thing will fucking crush you before you realize dude played on an Arcade Fire record. And while there are voices within the maelstrom—Laurie Andersen heralding end times like an apparition, Shara Worden conjuring the very soul of our discontent—the prophecy seems clear: no one gets out alive.

03. Shabazz Palaces: Black Up
With both underground (808s & Dark Grapes II) and mainstream (Watch the Throne) hip-hop enjoying a mostly solid year, it was the duo of ex-Digable Planets’ Ishmael Butler and second generation multi-instrumentalist Tendai Maraire who redrew the blueprint for avant-rap. Shabazz Palaces wrangle industrial IDM, downtempo electronica, and angular bass music as foundation for Butler’s severe, interlocking exegeses on the state of hip-hop. This criticism, bred from years of operating just beyond widespread recognition, conjoined with an uncompromising, gravitational instinct for infectious beats, spawned a simultaneously long-winded (check those song titles) and blunt (each beat feels carved from marble) reprimand to artists operating at both extremes. Never once playing the martyr, Shabazz consolidate their strengths into the year’s best production, emerging with a tough, lucid document of perseverance.

02. James Blake: James Blake
In two short years, Blake has changed direction so many times that the adjectives I once used to describe him—abstract, elusive, austere—are almost the exact inverse of how I’d characterize his debut LP. Still nominally tied to the post-dubstep diaspora, James Blake is, in actuality, a fairly straightforward singer-songwriter effort from a preternaturally talented beat scientist. In that sense, the self-titled designation is less an encapsulation of aesthetic proclivities than a platform for personal disclosure. There’s more of James Blake in these eleven tracks than in any of the obtuse soundscapes he previously constructed; family life (“I Never Learnt to Share”), interpersonal relationships (“Why Don’t You Call Me”), and reconciliations with death (“Measurements”) are all presented in equally stark, hollowed productions. With his debut, Blake has beautifully, if briefly, blurred the line between intimate and universal.

01. Jenny Hval: Viscera
On paper, Viscera reads like an internalized narrative about external phenomenon, a song cycle riddled with images of vaginal dentata, sexual secretion, and, yes, decaying viscera. It’s appropriate, then, that so much of its power resides just below the surface, in the details. And what details: Hval’s expert fusion of avant-folk, industrial grind, and free-improv noise manifests itself like a thousand mental synapses reacting off the body’s intrinsic tensions in a single outward heave of physicality. Even amidst canyons of negative space—kneaded, textured, and burnished by Supersilent producer Deathprod—the music maintains a palpable carnality, like those moments just before an animalistic encounter when things have the potential to go either exceedingly right or horribly wrong. And yet, as we reach climax right with Hval—most viscerally on “Portrait of the Young Girl as an Artist”—the horribly wrong instead feels exceedingly pure, an addictive sensation as galvanizing as it is inspired.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Jordan Cronk

Year in Review 2011 - Kathie Smith's Top Films

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 10:23:08 -0500

For once, the inflated year-end barrage failed to incite a personal panic that there might be a masterpiece hiding in the holidays. There probably was, but my cup had already runneth over to the point where, by the beginning of December, I had 30 films that felt more than worthy of top ten status. Foreign entries reigned, as represented in my choices, with only one American movie making the grade and Iranian filmmakers standing as the only nationality with double representation. (Had Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s “This Is Not a Film” been eligible, space would needed to have been made for one more.) But top ten lists don’t exist for regrets or conceit, but rather for sharing the love. Here’s mine.

10. Pina / Wim Wenders
Although, on the surface, Wenders’s film seems like a straightforward documentary, thanks to an inspired use of 3D and the equally innovative nature of its subject, it is easily one of the most viscerally exhilarating films of the year. It's an unselfish and vital homage to the work of modern dance icon Pina Bausch, who passed away suddenly during pre-production. Primarily a vehicle for Bausch’s choreographed pieces—some performed on stage, some in the open-air environment of Wuppertal, Germany, the dancer’s creative home—"Pina" uses 3D to perfectly capture the tactile buoyancy and physicality of its performances. In particular, Bausch’s "Rite of Spring," which opens the movie, is as thrilling as any action sequence seen all year. In “Pina,” art and film collide in the most unaffected and visually arresting manner.

09. Love Exposure / Sion Sono
Born in the bowels of chaos, the euphoric anarchy of “Love Exposure” trumps the slicked-up brutality of Sono’s other 2011 US release (“Cold Fish”). Sono’s ambitions are fleet-footed if not a little blinkered, but his vision of Catholic repression—presented with hentai aesthetics across a four-hour maze of cross-dressing, misogyny, barbarity, sanctimony, redemption, and humor—results in a frenetic supernova. Like the director’s earlier “Noriko’s Dinner Table,” “Love Exposure” employs a bloated runtime, not to slow things down but to indulge, specify, and unreel with reckless but surprisingly sincere abandon. Sono possesses a unique film language that, when given free reign, explodes with unusual dexterity, focusing the movie’s mayhem like a laser which in this case traces lead character Yu’s serpentine path to personal absolution. Receiving a belated release stateside, “Love Exposure” is a film that defies explanation but not exultation.

08. Le Quattro Volte / Michelangelo Frammartino
Frammartino evokes the spiritual philosophies of Pythagoras while relying entirely on the ambient language of a village in Southern Italy. Life, death, and the earthbound rhythms that connect them flow from a man to a goat to a tree to a chunk of coal. But Frammartino’s observational tableau gains as much sustenance from notions of God’s (with a capital ‘G’) creations and the Buddhist cycle of suffering and rebirth as it does the transmigration of the soul. Unconscious gestures of existence were never so graceful as in images of snails teeming from a pot, goats inexplicably exploring their terrain, and an unbelievably orchestrated, nine-minute shot of a persistent dog attempting in vain to communicate. It’s appropriate that the final stage of Frammartino’s visual schema finds the smoldering, coal-producing mounds that open and close the film become an archetypal symbol of the past, present, and future.

07. My Joy / Serget Loznitsa
“My Joy” opens with a mysterious corpse buried in cement and ends with a shell-shocked murderer walking off into the night—although the literal connection is abstruse, the cyclical motif is crystal clear. Blissfully unpredictable stream-of-consciousness, “My Joy” is composed of two halves that meander through various stories and leave a lingering vapor trail to a much larger allegory. Corruption unapologetically blankets the film, trickling down from a Russian national history of authoritarianism and extremity. Any kindnesses are met with an untrusting hostility that, at least within the context of the film, is never unwarranted. Loznitsa and cinematographer Oleg Mutu tell much of their story through the complex and sardonic ‘joy’ on faces. The film’s vignettes, in their structural ambiguity, are anything but detached. Heavy with heartbreak and despair, each sequence is loaded with profound social destruction and deranged malaise.

06. Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami
“Certified Copy” is Kiarostami at his best—perhaps better than we've ever seen him before. The Iranian master directs dialogue in three languages, casting an operatic baritone as the one character who can’t speak Italian (heh). He builds an aura of mystery as he simultaneously bares his devises; he reflects on classic Italian painting while polishing the tarnished halo of film-as-art; he takes an academic subject and fills it with the pulse of life; he breaks from a mold of working with non-professional actors and hires the biggest stars in Europe; and he casts us, the audience—his audience—as the mirror, the ultimate reflection of his film. Under the auspice of exploring artifice, “Certified Copy” delves into esoteric notions of love, life, and art—all on the coattails of a wandering Tuscan tête-à-tête—and turns its characters into something more fallible and beautiful than mere mechanical reproduction.

05. A Separation / Asghar Farhadi
Few films better maintain a balance of character and tense, plot-driven drama than “A Separation.” In tackling the marital difficulties of Nader and Simin, a young middle-class couple living in Tehran, Farhadi puts all manner of social issues under an incredibly incisive microscope, with gender and class perpetually at the forefront of his film’s concerns. Sharp as a razor, the movie gives equal space to all its characters: the religious caretaker, her downtrodden husband, the conflicted Nader, the brazen Simin, and even their precocious 11-year-old daughter, who's just starting to learn about the grey areas of human nature. Farhadi presents the complex moral decisions of each individual within his or her respective social and religious context, but he does so without moralizing. Tightly wound around an impeccable script and expert camera choreography, “A Separation” perfectly parables a country hurtling toward an uncertain future.

04. Meek’s Cutoff / Kelly Reichardt
Reichardt rattles the cages of the disaster narrative with a dusty neo-Western both sharply scripted and formally stunning. Shot in the nearly square Academy ratio of 1.33:1, “Meek’s Cutoff” boxes nine lost settlers within their own psychology of fear and paranoia and doubt. Extending beyond the frame is the indifference of this environment to these outsiders, represented by an unforgiving landscape and an enigmatic Native American. Through cycles of sun-bleached days and inky-black nights, the personal politics of a desperate situation create a divide, a chasm between genders, and a permanent wall separating races. Emily Tetherow, played with powerful subtlety by Michelle Williams, acknowledges the travelers’ precarious situation in the hands of larky chauvinist Stephen Meek (a pitch perfect Bruce Greenwood), following her conscience to rebellion. Haunting and austere, “Meek’s Cutoff” is filled with aesthetic elegance and civil allegory.

03. The Arbor / Clio Barnard
Barnard’s decision to have actors lip-sync recorded interviews with the family of her subject, playwright Andrea Dunbar, is nothing less than a stroke of brilliance. Avoiding the dangers one might expect from such a device, her film’s raw emotion is instead heightened, with the actors a constant reminder of a potent reality. Dunbar wrote herself into infamy, but also drank herself to death, bestowing an inheritance of dysfunction on her two daughters. These women’s shattering accounts come across with a tempered blow, crafted with assertive matter-of-fact honesty. Barnard spins Dunbar’s tale with the specificity of artistic mathematics and the patterning of a kaleidoscope, allowing shards of fact and fiction to present the semblance of a whole. The experimental presentation of this overwhelming material is formally and poignantly unique—not necessarily pushing the boundaries of form so much as refusing to work inside them.

02. House of Pleasures / Bertrand Bonello
“House of Pleasures” is a baroque free-for-all of sensuality and violence stoked by anachronism. Bonello depicts the corporeal reality of a late 19th-century Parisian brothel without schematic moralizing and swooning emotion, but with a cinematic verve that ignites the senses. The graceful narrative rhythms and organic camerawork compliment the natural performances of the ladies-for-hire within the film’s closed rococo world. Tenderness and strength, sorrow and joy are amplified with a soundtrack seamlessly embellished with English language pop and soul drawn from the 1960s. But just as soon as Bonello embraces the fruition of an illusory dream, he pulls the rug out from underneath the romance, crafting a startlingly disjunctive ending. “House of Pleasures” lends a feminine ring to the emblematic cries of the Aeneid: “These are the tears of things, and our mortality cuts to the heart.”

01. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives / Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Over a year has passed since I first saw 'Uncle Boonmee,' but its ethereal glow still burns brightly. The spiritual and natural worlds mingle effortlessly in Apichatpong's sixth feature and winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. In one of the most beautiful openings of the past ten years, a water buffalo breaks from its tether in the dim light of the jungle to conjoin with monkey ghosts. The sequence, both timeless and ephemeral, captures a mesmerizing preoccupation with the mysteries of a tangible environment. The patience and simplicity of ‘Uncle Boonmee’ slowly decode the fate of one man through gentle curiosity. Death and the magical possibilities of reincarnation materialize in a drift, a journey, a spell that taps the collective unconscious and eventually leads to a pop song-induced fracture in the space-time continuum.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith

Year in Review 2011 - Chris Nowling's Top Albums

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:02:38 -0500

To my mind, there weren’t many clear threads to follow in music this year. No genre seemed dominant, no trend took a firm hold, and aside from a few releases (PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake, Bon Iver’s self-titled album, and perhaps Adele’s 21) the best-of lists released haven’t seemed to agree on much. For me, 2011 belonged to a group that has no genre affiliation—the storytellers. From John Darnielle’s hauntingly vivid tales to the Roots’ impactful concept album to Paul Simon’s rumination on death and the divine, most of my favorite records were focused less on pushing sonic boundaries than crafting lyrically gripping songs. That’s not to say some artists can’t do both equally well—you’ll certainly find evidence below to that effect—but I also can think of a great number of bands that chose style over substance and ended up with somewhat disappointing results (Bon Iver being a prime example). While there are also the more fringe and experimental genres to consider, I’ll admit that I tend to privilege lyricism over any other individual element, and there were no shortage of lyrical masterclasses released throughout 2011.

10. Mariachi El Bronx: Mariachi El Bronx (II)
I suppose this will be the one on this list I spend the most time explaining. Mariachi El Bronx, the side project of hardcore outfit the Bronx, might be difficult to take seriously at first, but these talented punk-rockers aren’t going for laughs: their surprisingly genuine take on traditional mariachi captures the spirit of the genre and provides a fresh perspective on music that most people experience only at their local Mexican dive. It’s fun, expressive, and unabashedly emotional, with frontman Matt Caughthran ably adapting his hoarse yowl into an enjoyably rough croon as his bandmates utilize a full compliment of traditional mariachi instruments with surprising proficiency. Most importantly, they remind us that great songs are what make great records, regardless of how they’re presented.

09. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake
Of all the albums I came to love in 2011, none was more challenging than this one. Harvey's latest is dark, strange, and never a comfortable listen, but it's a gripping, inventive record unlike any she's previously offered. This is music that can't be relegated to the background—it demands your full attention and holds it for the entirety of its 40 minutes, as Harvey spins tales of the heartbreak and anger caused by the futility of war. That subject might be an especially familiar one, but Let England Shake is anything but your typical protest record: Harvey’s vocals, which range from lofty croon to full-throated roar, reflect the breadth of influences, insights, and styles she so handily arranges into cinematic stories. Harvey depicts the way war has effected one nation in particular, and the world more broadly.

08. Wild Beasts: Smother
While I initially felt puzzled and a bit disappointed at the restraint Wild Beasts display here, it didn't take long to realize how much the group had gained by mostly abandoning the soaring, theatrical style that made them so noteworthy a few years back. The unusual songwriting and vocals of Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming remain the band's defining qualities, but the two singers seem more comfortable amid the softly shimmering—and sometimes startlingly bare—instrumentals that characterize this album. Smother conveys the same flamboyant charm as before, but it’s increasingly directed and focused, and perhaps surprisingly, more potent than ever, as the band no longer strains to show off. It’s is a beautifully executed pop record by a band that has discovered how to convey more with less.

07. St. Vincent: Strange Mercy
Annie Clark’s insistence on making increasingly exploratory pop may someday result in an album that sacrifices too much for the sake of experimentation. But that moment hasn’t yet arrived. Her third effort as St. Vincent maintains a balance of beauty and oddity even more beguiling than her previous one, becoming increasingly captivating with each listen through its striking guitar textures and unusual song structures. As much as Clark enjoys throwing listeners for a loop, the hooks on this record stick to the ribs; and Clark holds everything together by anchoring all the songs to a similar tone—dark thoughts that only enrich this mind-expanding experience. With an impressively adaptable voice, some wicked guitar playing, and an abundance of creativity, St. Vincent is a force to be reckoned with.

06. Van Hunt: What Were You Waiting For?
Hunt proves on his latest and most ambitious release that he’s not only a jack of all trades, but a master of just about everything he touches. Jumping from fiery rock-'n'-roll to otherworldly R&B to outrageous funk—and slamming them all together—Hunt creates a thrilling collage of sounds which he manages to shape into songs that both intrigue and excite. Very few of the tunes come easy, but he only occasionally lets his ambitions overshadow his ability to craft a killer hook; the vast majority of the record is better for Hunt's uninhibited sonic experimentation. After a lengthy wait between officially released albums (due to frustrating contractual obligations), Hunt returns with an obvious hunger to create something all his own. And I can honestly say I’ve never heard anything quite like this.

05. Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo
Smoke Ring carries a generous amount of the laid-back, lo-fi vibe that defined Vile’s previous work, yet something feels more complete this time. You could point to the excellent production—which is certainly noteworthy—but it's in the songwriting where Vile has really grown by leaps and bounds. So improved is the singer’s craftsmanship that Smoke Ring is a mostly unexpected delight, a collection of tunes filled with quirky introspection and casual observations that fulfill the artist’s early promise and then some. Factor in the oft-mellow yet undeniably skillful and consistently engaging guitar playing and these songs cohere into a record that flows from song to song with a gracefulness and harmony unmatched in contemporary troubadour rock. This is an album in the truest, most complete sense.

04. Paul Simon: So Beautiful or So What
At 69 years old, Simon is content neither to coast on the wave of an extraordinary career nor fade gracefully out of the spotlight. His previous release five years behind him, So Beautiful arrives as more than just a welcome return; it's a wonderfully vibrant and stirring record and his strongest effort in at least two decades. His voice barely betrays his age and his songwriting remains a thing of wonder, with lyrics that focus on heavy topics (death, God, angels, etc.) yet explore them in the thoughtful, perceptive way that has always made his best music special. Simon has stated that an album’s worth of songs often takes him four or five years to write and record, and So Beautiful is the worthy result of such a lengthy, and sometimes (to me at least) frustrating creative process.

03. Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues
Scrapped recording sessions and the members' various touring schedules delayed them, but Fleet Foxes did eventually manage to release a record that lived up to the generous amount of hype around it. Blues is by no means a reinvention of the band’s pastoral folk sound, but it covers more ambitious territory than its predecessor. Frontman Robin Pecknold sings of questions twentysomethings have been pondering for decades, but he's a genuinely talented writer with a powerful voice and his songs consist of more than their gorgeous presentation. And Helplessness Blues is indeed gorgeous, with layers upon layers of vocal harmonies and luxuriant instrumentation that makes the music feel timeless—pleasantly familiar yet conveying excitement in a way that only an album of such freshness can inspire.

02. The Roots: Undun
Hip-hop has always been a great medium for storytellers, and the Roots have resolutely reminded us of that with Undun. This is a rare breed of concept album notable for both its ambitions and its restraint, hitting hard for the majority of its 38 minutes with intelligently crafted songs that function as a whole and offer plenty of highlights. Even with a story told in reverse and a four-part instrumental suite for an ending, Undun manages to be approachable while still rewarding multiple listens to comprehend its depth. The subject is bleak, but the album’s range of emotions is remarkable, the quality of both the music and the rapping nothing short of captivating. The Roots bring tragedy to life by offering insight into the mind of a character whose experiences all too frequently mirror the lives of those his story is a tribute to.

01. The Mountain Goats: All Eternals Deck
If there's one record I feel has been vastly underrepresented on year-end lists it would be this one. Perhaps that's because All Eternals Deck, one of the strongest efforts of John Darnielle's career, isn't the kind of attention-grabbing spectacle that tends to populate best-ofs. What's most impressive about it is the same thing Darnielle's built his career on: incomparable songwriting. He's at his most imaginative here, lyrically, musically, and emotionally; the relatively ornate production is a far cry from Darnielle’s tape recordings of old, and it informs this record’s driving rock and emotionally complex ballads. All Eternals Deck may sound like business as usual for the Mountain Goats, and I suppose in some ways it is, but that doesn't diminish the quality of an excellent record from such a consistently brilliant artist.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Chris Nowling

Year in Review 2011 - Calum Marsh's Top Films

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:07:25 -0500

2011 saw the release of an inordinate number of great films—perhaps more than any year in recent memory. We saw complex social dramas, like Asghar Farhadi's “A Separation” and Steve McQueen's “Shame”; works with a powerful spiritual dimension, like Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” and Terrence Malick's “The Tree of Life”; and even genre pictures elevated to another level, like Nicholas Winding Refn's “Drive” and Tomas Alfredson's “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” We somehow found ourselves in the middle of a culture war, defending the virtues of our "cultural vegetables,” but, thanks to the efforts of a few visionaries, we saw the ambitions of our artists persevere. I adored Michel Hazanavicius's “The Artist,” but what I love more is that an honest-to-goodness silent film is considered an Oscar frontrunner. I've yet to see Kenneth Lonergan's “Margaret,” but I'm astounded by the grassroots campaign that's rallied around it, convincing its distributor, Fox Searchlight, to give it another chance. And while I didn't much care for “Midnight in Paris,” it's encouraging that, at 76, Woody Allen can still pen a love-letter to art and culture and it can go on to become the biggest box-office success of his career. These are coups to an industry that assumes we want drivel, and we should cherish them. It means that more directors, whether they be nobodies like Hazanavicius or oldtimers like Allen, will be afforded opportunities to do something adventurous, to make personal films and spiritual films and highbrow films and, if we're really lucky, great films.

10. Shame / Steve McQueen
One of the year's most divisive films, “Shame” is also perhaps the most widely misunderstood. Considered by its detractors to be an egregiously puritanical cautionary tale about the perils of sex addiction, McQueen's understated drama is significantly more complex (and, yes, more challenging) than it initially appears. While it does make clear its protagonist's struggle—sex is a source of both immense pleasure and pain for Brandon, embodied with bravery by Michael Fassbender—“Shame” never comes close to adopting a moralistic tone, deigning to pose questions rather than provide easy answers. McQueen's style, precise but impassioned, is a perfect match for the material, and Fassbender astounds. More critical of pervading attitudes toward sexuality than of its character's "deviant" behavior, the film is about normality as a social construct, about how transgression causes pain, loneliness, and—you guessed it—shame.

09. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives / Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Apichatpong’s latest won the Palme d'Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and has since earned a reputation for being something of a difficult film, both slow-moving and obscure. In a sense, that judgment is fair: The film moves obliquely, its narrative drawn sketch-like and without hard lines, and it isn't always easy to glean clear meaning from its abstractions. But I think the best way to approach 'Uncle Boonmee' is innocently, open to its particular rhythms. It's best not to over-think it or to approach it like some cerebral exercise because it's easy to just enjoy Apichatpong’s style, which is subdued, calming, spiritual. The heart of this thing clicks like poetry; I saw little more beautiful this year than the orange-eyed spirits roaming ‘Boonmee’s’ countryside, and you don't need an analytical eye to feel that effect.

08. Weekend / Andrew Haigh
For the confidence with which it treats its subject matter, Andrew Haigh's stellar debut is an important film, yes, but, more than that, it’s a great one—resoundingly, even classically so. In a sense it's "just" a fleeting love story, an urgent but slight romance, but it's recounted with such depth and intensity that it plays less like Linklater’s "Before Sunrise" than it does Murnau's "Sunrise." Haigh's modern Britain feels almost oppressively straight, its buildings and buses and bars always clear sites of exclusion; the privacy of a flat seems like a life-saving idyll by comparison. And what does the central couple discuss there? Everything: what it means to be in a relationship, what it means to be openly gay, what it means to be happy. It's not enough to say we need more queer cinema of this caliber—we need more cinema of this caliber, period.

07. Drive / Nicolas Winding Refn
What's great about Refn's "Drive" isn't that it embodies cool, but that it deconstructs it. "Drive" is an action film that is highly critical of action film heroics, and of precisely the sort of hyper-masculine poses its detractors accuse it of adopting and celebrating. Action is just stylized violence, and it is violence—brutal, ugly stuff—that keeps Ryan Gosling's nameless driver from the woman of his dreams and the promise of redemption. That Refn directs the hell out of this thing makes its sleek, perfectly executed surfaces satisfying enough in their own right, and a lesser film would have been content to coast on those qualities alone. But Refn's approach to genre is a lot like Paul Verhoeven's was twenty years ago: He wants you to like it for what it is before showing you why you shouldn't. That's what "cool" is all about.

06. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy / Tomas Alfredson
Alfredson showed great promise with his intriguing debut, "Let the Right One In,” but nobody could have guessed he'd produce a bona fide masterpiece just three years later. Throughout "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” adapted from the popular John le Carré novel of the same name, Alfredson boasts the authorial confidence and technical virtuosity of a filmmaker ten times as experienced, delivering an uncommonly smart thriller that's among the genre's very best. And though its framework is the stuff of textbook procedurals, ‘Tinker’s’ execution—exposition rattled off like bingo numbers, the narrative's blink-and-you'll-miss-it rapidity—feels downright revelatory. Throw in a first-rate performance from Gary Oldman—and nearly every working actor in Britain—and you've got a film that elevates itself way beyond your average spy story. And I haven't even mentioned the crucial but oft-missed queer subtext, which makes the whole thing richer still.

05. Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami
Many critics balked at "Certified Copy’s” seemingly stubborn lack of closure, since its central narrative question—whether or not the lead couple are actually strangers pretending to be married—was left frustratingly unanswered. But there's an important ontological difference between an unanswered question and an unanswerable one, and that distinction is fundamental to Kiarostami's oblique film, which has more to say about the nature of art and its meaning than any other film since...well, Kiarostami's own "Close-Up." It's no coincidence that "Certified Copy" invokes a defense of art forgeries; like the relationship at the center of the film, a forgery's meaning is only fixed if we choose to impose one upon it. "Fake" only means something if we say it does. Is it any surprise that Kiarostami doesn’t?

04. The Tree of Life / Terrence Malick
What can you say about “The Tree of Life” when words fail even Malick? This is a film of images, something close to pure cinema, but though it's abstract in style, it couldn't be more coherent emotionally. Of course in a sense “The Tree of Life” is sweeping and grand, an epic on a universal scale. But it's also a personal film—a movie about Malick himself, with childhood and family and hope and loss all shot through a prism of memory, only half-recalled, as in a dream. Everyone's childhood felt like the beginning of a universe; solipsism's a fact of being alive, and art is, if nothing else, an act of looking at yourself and sharing what you see. Malick sees dinosaurs, stars forming, looming metal skyscrapers, sunlight pouring through trees, his mother's dress, his father's fists, his brother's death. We're just lucky to have seen what he's shared.

03. A Separation / Asghar Farhadi
You wouldn't be mistaken to describe"A Separation" as "distinctly Iranian,” but I don't think it's fair that it be defined exclusively by its nationality, either—though that's what the bulk of its Western critics do, diminishing its emotional scope in the process. Conventional only in appearance, Farhadi's acclaimed class-relations drama carries more emotional sophistication and moral complexity than the average philosophical treatise. The film, which details an increasingly nuanced legal battle between a recently separated middle-class couple and the husband’s elderly father's caretaker, is compulsively watchable. But what makes “A Separation” truly special is not the way it elicits sympathy for its three-dimensional characters, but how it forces you to ultimately challenge those sympathies—it doesn't adopt an easy stance on any ethical issue, and it doesn't let you do so either. Hollywood moralizes; Farhadi's movie is about morals.

02. The Artist / Michel Hazanavicus
In so far as it's a high-concept talking point, you could call “The Artist's” silent film framework a gimmick. But then it's hardly Hazanavicius's fault that the style itself is so totally and tragically obsolete. “The Artist” takes away one language to show us what we've been missing of another, a purely cinematic idiom as ever-marvelous as it is long-since antiquated. Its inaccuracies are conspicuous, but they can't suppress the film's charms. The world the movie restores to us is so infectious, its dated rhythms so intensely appealing, that one can't help but feel a pang of regret for the loss of the form Hazanavicius brings too briefly back to life. You wish that making a silent film wasn’t considered mere gimmickry, that the style had never been replaced or made obsolete at all. “The Artist” is a joy. That it's one of a kind is tragic.

01. Film Socialisme / Jean-Luc Godard
I saw many great films in 2011, but only one which helped redefine the possibilities of the form. Godard's best work in a decade is both an elegy for the old cinema and a blueprint for a new one, doing for digital movies what “Citizen Kane” did for the filmmaking of the sound era—summarizing the form, closing the book on the past, and pointing the way toward the future. I've seen “Film Socialisme” a half-dozen times since January and I feel like I've barely scratched its surfaces. (And what glossy, gorgeously shot surfaces they are!) Is it difficult? Certainly, and its obscurity has been dividing critics since it debuted at Cannes last year. Perhaps Godard’s most formally inventive and thematically challenging project since his video work in the 1970s, "Film Socialisme" is, like so much great art, well worth the effort it demands.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Calum Marsh

Year in Review 2011 - Kyle Fowle's Top Albums

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:27:02 -0500

In a lot of ways, 2011 felt like an unusual year in music for me. It was the first year I’ve managed to really keep pace with the deluge of worthwhile albums being released (though obviously it’s impossible to hear everything), taking in a lot of records I may not have had I not looked beyond my regular channels. I made a personal goal of listening to as much as possible, and regardless of genre; I tried to set aside my own biases, to retain my critical faculties and fan enthusiasm but open up to music that’s new to me. The result was a year filled with discoveries and subverted expectations. It’s no surprise, then, that many of my favorite contemporary bands and artists (Radiohead, Tom Waits, the Black Keys) ended up not quite making my 2011 top ten. Instead, my list features a handful of spectacular debuts, some well-worn veterans, and a common theme of pushing the limits of genre and the way music is defined.

10. Bon Iver: Bon Iver
Just because it doesn’t contain the introspection (more a listener projection than anything) of For Emma, Forever Ago doesn’t mean Justin Vernon’s latest isn’t a highly personal record. Pervading the boastful arrangements and gorgeously layered vocals is a sense that Vernon is making the music he’s always wanted to, but had previously lacked the resources to create. It’s a bold record—not just musically, but in its refusal to play to the aesthetic that made him popular. There are moments of hushed intimacy (“Holocene”), but the rewards are most present on the grandest tracks (such as “Beth/Rest,” which adds the perfect coda to a record filled with genre experiments). Some of my favorite albums this year involved artists in the throes of growth, moving away from their comfort zones. Bon Iver is a fine example of that.

09. Tyler, the Creator: Goblin
Though hype threatened to swallow whole the sophomore effort of Odd Future's most prominent member and mastermind, Tyler endured the pressure and took on critics and fans headfirst. This is a troubling record with a menacing core—from the dissonant, synth-heavy production to the violent and reflective lyrics. Some fault the OFWGKTA brand for trading in shock value, but similar accusations have hounded Wu-Tang and countless other hip-hop groups. And as Tyler takes half-hearted jabs at Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift, it becomes clear that shock isn’t the goal here—it’s the diversion of attention away from the pain and confusion of an absent father and a sudden rise to fame. This is a dense record, with a lot to sift through, but the rewards are there, hidden beneath its imposing veil of volatility.

08. Nicolas Jaar: Space Is Only Noise
Jaar’s earliest recordings were best suited for the dance floor; that’s not the case here. Space Is Only Noise compiles 14 sparse electronic tracks that explore the eclectic territories of dubstep, pop, and even doo-wop—all in 45 minutes. The vocals are distorted and lonely within the bare arrangement on “Colomb,” while “Keep Me There” hinges on a peculiar bass line. Quite a few albums this year rely on their hollow, electronic atmospheres (James Blake’s debut comes to mind), but few have managed to achieve the resonant emotionality here. It’s a cliché, but the possibilities of contrasting cold electronics with warm melodies seem endless in Jaar's hands; his is a strange blend of R&B and pop that never feels bound to genre. And it’s a blend that’s yielded one of the most surprising and cohesive records of 2011.

07. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake
PJ Harvey continues to find ways to challenge how we define her music, and in writing lyrics about England’s war-riddled past (and present), she’s unearthed a deeply lyrical muse that adds substantial weight to her new batch of songs. The title-track scans as cheery, but it's nowhere near as innocuous as it first seems; “Words That Maketh Murder” is more immediate, ripe with menace and detailing needless death in the name of patriotism. Though mortality is a lingering, threatening constant, there’s substantial beauty and hope to be found amidst the gloom. And that’s the real strength of this record: it manages to contemplate the darkest aspects of human behavior while aspiring for an ideal morality. Its imagery haunting and evocative, Let England Shake is a memorable, deeply felt addition to Harvey’s discography.

06. Braids: Native Speaker
The first record from this much-buzzed-about Calgary band is another in a long line of stellar 2011 debuts. Some have been quick to label their experimental pop as “shoegaze,” but there’s more going on here. Take singer Katie Lee, specifically the tension between her beautiful voice and dark, thorny lyrics: with a slight scat, she goes about cataloguing the ways in which she’s hopelessly fucked-up on album standout “Glass Deers.” Lee’s words are cynical and sometimes depressing, but they contrast with the predominately bubbly music. With lush textures, calculated time changes, and heavy emphasis on atmosphere, Braids take time to get where they’re going, but their music never feels slight or dispassionate. It’s no wonder Native Speaker has found itself among the titles shortlisted for this year’s Polaris Prize.

05. Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo
Channeling Tom Petty but retaining his own individuality, Vile has given us his most definitive album yet. He runs the gamut on this one, delivering confident takes on hushed odes to love (like the gorgeous, reverb-laden “Baby’s Arms”) and fuzzed-out rockers (“Puppet to the Man”). The production of his records has never been clearer, and the intricate arrangements are all the better for it. Slight sonic shifts come to define this album, and they feel like a sign of substantial growth and maturity. Vile’s signature fingerpicked riffs chime off in the distance while his vocals sound liberated, removed from the lo-fi purgatory of his previous records. It’s been a long road for Vile getting here, but Smoke Ring for My Halo reflects his consummate evolution and proves to have been well worth the wait.

04. Gillian Welch: The Harrow and the Harvest
It had been nearly eight years to the day since Welch released an LP and 10 since her last masterpiece, Time (The Revelator). Following in the footsteps of that album, Harrow is a sparse yet powerful record; Welch and guitarist/vocalist David Rawlings have their brand of minimal folk and country down to a science, drawing on the synergy of fingerpicked acoustics and voice. The songstress tells a tale of dread and inevitability on “The Way It Goes,” and tempers similar feelings on the more traditionally arranged “Six Horses” with handclaps and harmonica. She and Rawlings craft a brand of Americana that feels rustic and well-worn but still contemporary. It’s not quite nostalgia; rather, it evinces comfort through the duo’s understanding of their style. Few albums this year were as welcomingly familiar as this one.

03. Colin Stetson: New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges
There’s a good reason Stetson’s latest has stayed in my personal top five all year (and, incidentally, is the second Polaris nominee on this list). It’s one of the few albums that totally changed my conception of music, shaking me out of any self-gratifying comfort zone. Known more for his work as a touring backup musician, Stetson has proved he has the unique creative vision to warrant a record all his own. On Judges, he creates a dizzying cacophony of bass saxophone with a huge set of lungs and circular breathing. At times, it’s a manic record (“Judges”); at other times, it’s mercilessly restrained ("All the Days…"). For me, this was the sound of one man making a statement in favor of the album form and pushing the boundaries of sound and recording techniques in the process—truly innovative and intoxicating work.

02. The Roots: Undun
By the time December rolls around, most critics have finalized their best-of lists and dismissed the final month of the year as a last minute dumping season for releases of little consequence—an attitude that, in 2011, would see critics overlook the Roots’ Undun. In a year that found hip-hop dominated by a whole spectrum of over-eager personalities—the whacked-out Danny Brown, the antics of Odd Future, the woe-is-me introspection of Drake—Questlove, Black Thought, and the rest of the Roots crew stepped out with effortless swagger. The group weaves a narrative of inevitable demise, lamenting the life decisions some of us never get to make, but it’s by no means a downer. Instead, it’s pure gospel: soulful, smooth, and abrasive when it needs to be. Undun is ambitious and experimental, and it finds the Roots totally in control.

01. Shabazz Palaces: Black Up
After hearing Shabazz Palaces’ first two 2010 EPs—both of which flaunt an ethereal, bass-heavy take on hip-hop that, at the time, sounded unlike anything else out there—expectations were high for their eventual debut. But even then, Black Up managed to feel like it came out of left field: a record filled with little moments that coalesce into a total, immersive experience, infusing hip-hop with an intoxicating sense of innovation and political/social poignance that hasn’t really been felt since the ‘90s. It’s the biggest, most exciting statement of the year. With Ishmael Butler at the helm—an unequivocally smooth, brash, and instinctive emcee and frontman—Black Up becomes a progressive vision of the possibilities of hip-hop, an album that's liberating in its exploration of black identity and sonic exploration.

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kyle Fowle

Home Movies - Fall Review

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:08:25 -0500

While most people reading this feature might struggle with only visions of sugarplum dragon tattoos dancing in their heads, there's plenty else deserving of your attention in the realm of movies at present. With a great puff of hot air, Jordan Cronk and I attempt to pin-down the fall’s best DVD and Blu-ray releases, and just in time for your wish/shopping list. As a matter of fact, the twelve releases below may just suffice as replacement for the ol’ partridge, turtle doves, French hens and colly birds. Kathie Smith

Pick of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: Blue, White, Red: Three Colors (1993-94)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Krzysztof Kieślowski
Amazon Price: $50.49
Films: Release:

Only three years after completing his incredibly ambitious "Decalogue," a master stroke in and of itself, Krzysztof Kieślowski gathered the troupes—screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz, composer Zbigniew Preisner and cinematographers Slawomir Idziak, Edward Klosinski, Piotr Sobocinski—to embark on a series of equally great emotional breadth and grandeur. “Blue,” “White,” and “Red” were the final, elegiac chapters in Kieślowski’s career, and the European cinema extravaganza of the decade, rolled out with great anticipation at Venice (winning the Golden Lion), Berlin (winning the Silver Bear for directing) and Cannes (where “Red” lost to “Pulp Fiction”). The iron curtain had fallen, the Berlin Wall was rubble and Europe opened a new chapter on unification that Kieślowski filtered through his dramatic lens. Although profoundly universal, Kieślowski’s 'Three Colors' stitched Europe together by veritable heartstrings of shared sorrow, personal trials and mysterious acts of fate. Each film in the trilogy ruminates on ideals of the French Revolution, as represented by the colors of the French flag: liberty, equality and fraternity. Rather than a celebration of these principles, Kieślowski and Piesiewicz chose to pin-down the quandaries and contradictions of those concepts through a series of very intimate portraits.

Kieślowski traverses from France in “Blue” to Poland in “White” to Switzerland in “Red.” The impressionistic opening of “Blue,” wheels spinning toward tragedy, launches us into the world of Julie (Juliette Binoche), where grief and rediscovery are cloaked in flooding color and music. Because of the loss of her husband and daughter, Julie’s self-fulfilling desires of isolation (and liberation) from her past create a void in her future. In “White,” we cycle back to Julie as she briefly intrudes on the proceedings of Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) and Dominique’s (Julie Delpy) divorce. The film follows the bitter and heartbroken Karol—via suitcase—back to his home country of Poland, where opportunity waits in a changing economic landscape. A sardonic comedy, the middle chapter of 'Three Colors' is unremittingly cynical, presenting equality as a very bitter pill of resentment. But it's “Red” that anchors the entire epic series. Valentine (Irène Jacob) is the trilogy’s altruistic soul, tripped by fate to save an injured dog and rattle the conscience of a defeated man. Kieślowski seems concerned about a notion of false fraternity or connectedness, specifically through the science of the telephone, and the importance of smashing that delusion with humanity and tenderness—a message more important now than ever. The finale of “Red” acts as an epilogue, wrapping Julie, Karol and Valentine into a larger context of great possibility.

Criterion should lock one gift selection up on every self-respecting cinephile’s Christmas list with a new, high-definition digital restoration of all three films, packaged together in one handsome set. Nothing amplifies the beauty and mastery of these films more than sitting down with them in a five-hour stretch, but Criterion also gives a good excuse for spending time with them each separately: these discs aresupplemented with interviews, essays and documentaries to get you hooked on exploring the many scholarly and entertaining facets of the films. Archive interviews with Kieślowski are fascinating as well, as are the more contemporary reflections of Piesiewicz, Preisner, Delpy, Jacob, Binoche, Zamachowski, producer Marin Karmitz, and editor Jacques Witta. The set also includes three short films by Kieślowski: 1966's “The Tram”; 1978's “Seven Women of Different Ages”; and 1980's “Talking Heads.” After completing “Red,” Kieślowski announced he would retire from filmmaking, which he did—he then sadly died in 1996 at the relatively young age of 55. This trilogy, and its unadulterated sincerity and dramatic perfection, lives on as perhaps the crowning achievement of his illustrious career and in the cinema. Regardless of whether you are an armchair fan of foreign film or a devotee to Krzysztof Kieślowski work, Criterion’s 'Three Colors' is a swoon-worthy release that everyone can fall for. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Aki Kaurismäki’s Leningrad Cowboys (1989-94)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Aki Kaurismäki
Amazon Price: $25.70
Films: Release:

You could label everything Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki has done as deadpan comedy. But It pays to differentiate: great works such as “Ariel” and “Drifting Clouds” are downright melodramatic as compared to the Leningrad Cowboys series, which took as its subject the ongoing exploits of the titular collective, an outlandishly coiffed troupe of rock ‘n’ roll-bred optimists who travel halfway across the world looking for Stateside success, only to find fleeting fame in Mexico and eventually fall prey to the temptations of the bottle. The whole thing plays like “Spinal Tap” for the arthouse set: like everyone’s favorite classic-rock parodists, the Leningrad Cowboys achieved their own real-world success, touring throughout the ‘90s and on through to today with a repertoire consisting of stadium rock fixtures and cliché-riddled originals.

The three films and five music videos included in Criterion’s new Eclipse set, “Aki Kaurismäki’s Leningrad Cowboys,” represent the complete works the band created in collaboration with Kaurismäki. The collaboration's 1989 debut, “Leningrad Cowboys Go America,” remains the most indelible: travelling cross-country to Mexico, frozen guitarist in tow, stopping off for comic vignettes with Jim Jarmusch, and unsuccessfully avoiding run-ins with the law. The more thematically ambitious follow-up, “Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses,” turns their estranged manager into a prophet, who, upon reconciliation, exoduses them from the purgatory of Mexico. With the CIA now tailing the group, they head north on a tip for Coney Island before deciding to seek spiritual enlightenment in the Promised Land of Siberia.

Together the films form a circular sort of narrative and can easily stand alone as the fictionalized account of these earnestly elfin entertainers. Fiction meets reality in “Total Balalaika Show,” Kaurismäki’s concert film documenting the Cowboys’ 1993 homecoming in front of 70,000 (!) fans. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds, but as both time capsule and victory lap, also kind of charming in its way. As per usual, this Eclipse set has virtually no supplements—only the five original Cowboys' music videos (most of which play like short films), made between 1986 and 1993, and one-page liner notes by Michael Koresky on the inner case sleeve of each keep-case. It’s a modest set, one more for Kaurismäki completists or Leningrad Cowboys super-fans (there are at least 70,000 of you out there, apparently) than those unfamiliar with Finnish black comedy. But it's an oddity of such consistent delight that an Eclipse set of this sort seems like the perfect vehicle to bring the films to those who crave them. Jordan Cronk

DVD/Blu-ray: Blue Velvet (1986)
Distributor: MGM
Director(s): David Lynch
Amazon Price: $16.99
Film: Release:

“I can’t figure out if you’re a detective or a pervert.” This question, uttered by Sandy (Laura Dern) to Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) in his growing obsession with the seedy side of his quaint hometown, was probably lingering on the minds of most people in regards to David Lynch after seeing “Blue Velvet” in 1986. With a careful balance between macabre eccentricity and melodramatic ardor, Lynch’s fourth feature set in motion themes and aesthetics that we have come to learn are completely unique and cannot be pigeonholed—in a word, “Lynchian.” An ear leads to the police, the police lead to a daughter, and the daughter leads to the Deep River apartment building where a narrative deserving of its Kienholz-like environs emerges. It’s a descent into another world, through the well-manicured green grass and into the dirt with the bugs and the worms. The ruler of this world, Frank Booth (in Dennis Hopper’s return to acting), is a character that is easily as disturbing as Henry and Mary’s baby in “Eraserhead,” and as frightening on a subconscious level as the man behind the dumpster in “Mulholland Dr.” The psychosexual maelstrom is sewn together with the contradiction of a naïve romance and brought to a climax with heartfelt corniness, a thankful artifact from our deceptive decade with The Gipper. Vestiges of “Blue Velvet” resonate in the films Lynch has made since: “Wild at Heart,” “Twin Peaks,” “Lost Highway,” "Mullholand Dr.,” and “Inland Empire.” I especially took note of when Laura Dern made her first appearance in “Blue Velvet” as Sandy Williams, emerging from the complete darkness, a scene echoed with horrifying verve in the middle of “Inland Empire.” Lynch’s intention of making films that can be revisited over and over again become even more profound as his oeuvre grows.

Coinciding with the film’s 25th anniversary, MGM’s spiffy new Blu-ray is yet another definitive edition of this cult classic, only barely one-upping their DVD release from 2002. The film itself looks great, with added detail and depth, and is well worth the upgrade. But the real carrot on the stick is the inclusion of the so-called ‘Newly Discovered Lost Footage,’ presented in crisp HD. If these sequences look familiar it’s because a ‘Deleted Scene Montage’ was constructed from publicity stills on the 2002 Special Edition DVD to re-imagine scenes that “researchers have rummaged subterranean film vaults to find.” Suspiciously, as stated by David Lynch on the Blu-ray, “It’s like the song ‘Amazing Grace.’ The footage was lost but now it’s found.” Despite the questionable definition of "lost" in this context, the 50 minutes of restored footage is the perfect icing on this cake; most of it involves connecting Jeffrey to his college life and his family, but there's also a five-star bar scene punctuated by Frank Booth’s reign of terror, and a gorgeous scene where Dorothy Valance (Isabella Rossellini) invites Jeffrey to "escape" to the roof of her building. It’s a sublime, heartbreaking scene that must have been a very tough cut. Other special features are carry-overs: the entertaining 2002 making-of, a clip of Siskel’s appreciation and Ebert’s contempt, and the original trailers and TV spots. Although the Blu-ray has chapter stops (Lynch’s nemesis since the advent of DVDs), it oddly doesn’t have a main menu—you are forced to access supplements through a pop up menu while the film is running. Overall, this Blu-ray is a compulsive step-up for a one-of-a-kind film. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Kuroneko (1968)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Kaneto Shindo
Amazon Price: $27.60
Film: Release:

The Samurai class has been so romanticized in 20th century Western art and culture that it can frequently paint an inaccurate portrait of Japan’s top-tier warrior demographic. The cinema has helped propagate broad opinion concerning this nominally noble, militarized sect of pre-industrial Japan, and while the bushidō code certainly tied loyalties close to the regime at hand, there were those—just as in every successive strata of nobility the world over—who used their status as a means for personal or political gain. Born into a farming family, Japanese journeyman director Kaneto Shindo frequently parlayed his adolescent experiences with rebel Samurai into opportunities for less than flattering cinematic portrayals of the East’s most lasting cultural coterie. Shindo’s 1968 J horror-anticipating “Kuroneko” treads similar ground to that of his 1964 masterpiece “Onibaba,” both of which pit two women against an evil strain of wandering Samurai. However only "Kuroneko" accentuates its supernatural and spiritual elements, elevating the narrative into the realm of fable. After a mother and daughter are left for dead by a troupe of rouge Samurai, a mysterious black feline (the film's title literally translates to “black cat”) tends to their wounds as the deceased spirits of the women make after-life plans to enact punishment on their abusers. Commingling the characteristics of both apparition and bakeneko, the women execute a series of comeuppance rituals on anonymous Samurai before coming face-to-face with their long-absent son/brother—now a Samurai himself—inevitably pitting new-found instincts against memory. Through an innovative use of wire choreography and immaculate stage lightning and cinematography, Shindo orchestrates a series of thrilling ariel dance showdowns against eerily shadowed backdrops. But it’s his expert balance of the humane, the spiritual, and the metaphysical which ultimately provide the necessary dimensions—both cerebral and visceral—to canonize this masterful work.

After rolling out a theatrical restoration of “Kuroneko” in 2010, in association with Janus Films, the Criterion Collection debuts this jewel of the kaidan genre in an equally impressive 1080p transfer. Together with a new, uncompressed soundtrack, the aural and visual flourishes of Shindo, cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda, and composer Hikaru Hayashi translate in the highest possible regard. Extras are slim but informative: an hour-long interview with Shindo conducted in the late ‘80s highlights the set, and though it doesn’t touch on “Kuroneko” at any great length, there’s enough contextual and biographical information that is touched on to make it a very worthwhile inclusion here. A second interview rounds out the video supplements, this time with critic Tadao Sato, and running about ten minutes in length. Included in the requisite booklet is a historically detailed essay on the film by Maitland McDonagh, as well as an excerpt from Joan Mellen’s 1972 interview with Shindo, which first appeared in the book “Voices from the Japanese Cinema.” Criterion have always done an admirable job representing Japanese film in the collection, but “Kuroneko” is one of their best recent acquisitions and their presentation of the film is both aesthetically pleasing and satisfying for its many annotations. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Hickey & Boggs (1972)
Distributor: MGM Limited Collection
Director(s): Robert Culp
Amazon Price: $16.49
Film: Release:

The 1970s gave us enough high profile crime films for a near-lifetime of enjoyment, but there are just as many overlooked—or in some cases, flat-out forgotten—genre efforts from the era that deserve critical reassessment. Peter Yates’s “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” for example, is a recently rediscovered classic from this fertile period of morally ambiguous crime thrillers. A curio on a similar level but unfortunately without the digital distribution of a company like Criterion, MGM’s unexpected made-on-demand DVD-R of Robert Culp’s 1972 detective saga “Hickey & Boggs” grants this under-seen work its first legitimate digital home video release. As the titular, odd couple detective duo, Bill Cosby and director/actor Robert Culp make for a surprisingly compatible comedic and dramatic team, ricocheting off screenwriter Walter Hill’s realistically urban-centric dialogue. The intimate chemistry between the actors alone is enough reason to seek out the film, but from the director’s chair is where Culp does even more impressive work, staging a number of action set-pieces to rival anything your Freidkins or your Lumets were doing concurrently. (The centerpiece shootout at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, in particular, seems to have made at least a peripheral impact on filmmakers such as Michael Mann.)

This being a made-on-demand disc, no extras have been appended—nor were any expected. Here’s a film good enough to warrant a legitimate release but apparently without sufficient interest to make manufacturing and distribution of the title financially feasible. That’s why these M-O-D discs can prove worthwhile, as the simple availability of a film such as “Hickey & Boggs” is endorsement enough for the trend to continue. For those curious, this is the only game in town; and seeing how the film's been treated the last forty years, this could be it for the foreseeable future. Plenty of films deserve the digital red carpet treatment; most receive nothing of the sort. Perhaps we should be glad “Hickey & Boggs” has arrived to us in even this form, as availability is the first step toward remembrance and reconsideration. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Island of Lost Souls (1932)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Erle C. Kenton
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Release:

Following Universal’s twin successes of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” in 1931, Paramount was anxious to capitalize on the pre-code possibilities of a horror film. The result was the tawdry and scandalous “Island of Lost Souls,” one of many adaptations of H.G. Wells’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” This classic shocker offered a vamping Kathleen Burke as the titillating Panther Woman (“Lured men on—only to destroy them body and soul!”) and the ban-worthy implications of vivisection. The evil Dr. Moreau, played with a sneer by Charles Laughton, has been banished to an island for horrifying crimes to animals and humanity. Just what kind of crimes? Our sympathetic and serendipitous hero Edward Parker is about to find out. Moreau’s House of Pain and its tortuous operations on living things is soon discovered, as well as his plan to pair Edward with his panther-cum-seductress Lota. But Moreau’s unchecked ambitions are about to catch up with him, with a not-so subtle gang of psychologically manipulated man-beasts primed for revolt—the leader played by none other than Bela Lugosi. Directed by Erle C. Kenton, “Island of Lost Souls” is a tantalizing film that still maintains a measure of repulsion augmented with Moreau’s completely unredeemable character, and the film’s fantastic dark ambiance.

Sliced and diced by censors far and wide, ‘Island’ is made available in a complete version from Criterion, on both DVD and Blu-ray. It’s not hard to imagine that the film looks better than it ever has regardless of the kinds of flaws expected from a film almost 80 years old. An informative audio commentary by film historian Gregory Mack is included, and although he’s rather un-animated in his monologue, I am thrilled that the commentary is feature length. (Feature length! Not selected scenes!) A separate, 15-minute interview with David Skal provides even more context to this now-infamously banned film (and the climate it found itself up against in 1932, which coined it “a rich man’s ‘Freaks’”). Criterion throws in some well-considered extras to sweeten the deal: a conversation between John Landis, make-up artist Rick Baker, and genre mega-fan Bob Burns; a segment with director Richard Stanley (fired from the 1996 adaptation); and yet another with two members of the band Devo, and the inspiration they found in Erle C. Kenton’s films. You could probably dig up a VHS copy at a local library or find a dodgy bootleg of some kind online, but “Island of Lost Souls” is finally and officially 'available,' after a very long absence. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Identification of a Woman (1982)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni
Amazon Price: $17.99
Film: Release:

As Michelangelo Antonioni grew older, his release schedule became ever more methodical, reflecting his films’ patient narratives, while instilling even more weight on each subsequent image he deemed worthy of immortalization. Seven years passed between “The Passenger” and 1982’s “Identification of a Woman,” and it would mark not only a homecoming after 25 years of filmmaking in other parts of the world, but a final, completely solo effort for the Italian modernist. (His true final film, 1995's “Beyond the Clouds,” was facilitated by the efforts of Win Wenders, who shot and helped edit portions of it as Antonioni’s health waned.) In terms of precedence, “Identification of a Woman” can be seen as something of a sister film to “L’Avventura,” concerning as it does the disappearance of a leading female character and our male protagonist’s subsequent search and growing relationship with another, emotionally antithetical woman. 'Identification' bears all the hallmarks of late-period Antonioni: hypnotizing longtakes, powerfully evocation compositions, beautiful imagery, and risqué sequences of passionate sexuality. Always less a narrative filmmaker, more a purveyor of themes, these tools service three of Antonioni’s most memorable standalone moments: an extended sequence along a fog-enshrouded highway, an emotionally purging exchange set on a horizon-swallowing lagoon, and a climatic vision with sci-fi implications which stands as probably the loopiest, most left-field ending in Antonioni’s oeuvre (which is saying something).

Criterion’s new Blu-ray upgrades a blown-out, previously available import DVD of the film whose region-free capability was just about its only positive attribute. But beyond the darker, sharper hues exported by the 1080p transfer and the upgraded PCM audio track, there isn’t much else to mark this as a definitive release of the sadly underrated work. Unfortunately, there are no supplements included on the disc—a rarity for a debuting Criterion release in 2011—and only an essay by critic John Powers and a concurrent interview with Antonioni are included in the accompanying booklet (which is typically well-designed). It’s certainly great to see the film finally looking so fantastic for the home video market—and it’s certainly worthy of inclusion in the Collection—but it’s slightly disheartening that a film such as this, which could really use a serious critical reexamination, has been left so blankly staring back at the viewer when the resources that are presumably available for some sort of contextual supplements. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Distributor: Tokyo Shock
Director(s): Ishiro Honda
Amazon Price: $24.99
Film: Release:

It's little wonder why “Destroy All Monsters” is a fan favorite among the kaiju genre; from a superficial (but very relevant) standpoint, the film is a veritable who’s-who of rubber-suited wonders, employing the talents and grandeur of (in order of appearance) Godzilla, Rodan, Anguirus, Mothra, Gorosaurus on the island, Manda rocking Tokyo, and finally Minilla, Baragon, Kumonga, and Varan, all joining forces to kick a little King Ghidorah ass. But on another level, “Destroy All Monsters” signifies the end of an era; it was that the last film that employed the four original creators of “Godzilla” (producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, music composer Akira Ifukube, special effects master Eiji Tsuburaya and, of course, director Ishiro Honda). Monster Island is an unapologetic time capsule of nostalgic childhood fantasy that survives as a masterclass in special effects camp. The world’s giant monsters have been corralled to a remote locale where they live peacefully in captivity. At least, that's the case until an alien race lands and takes malicious control of the monsters, leading to a final battle that lives up to the film's title. I have a soft spot in my heart for “Destroy All Monsters” with its brilliant miniatures, imagination-inducing set design and paintings, and the lumbering Godzilla whose arm-swinging anger charmingly reminds me of senior citizens doing aerobics. The merits of this film, and many other kaiju spectacles from across the Pacific, defy scrutiny and lie in a sort of juvenile enjoyment of creative cinema that I’m thankful I haven’t lost.

The special features of Tokyo Shock’s Blu-ray of “Destroy All Monsters” reflect the kind of fanbased, film-loving attention that can only be termed as a kind of completism. There are four audio tracks to chose from: the superior English dub from the original US release, the so-called international English dub from its re-release, a dual channel Japanese (all in DTS-HD 2.0) and a previously remixed 5.1 Japanese thrown in for good measure. Also included is an informative audio commentary with Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski, co-authors on a new book about Ishiro Honda. Ryfle and Godziszewski are full of factoids and anecdotes about the production, the cast, the monster suits and films that came both before and after "Destroy All Monsters." There's an image gallery with many a monster still, some storyboards from private collections, a US promo real, an odd transfer of 16mm artifacts, and finally, in a sort of fit of being ultra-complete, Tokyo Shock includes the English language credits to show how they were worked into the original film. Although Tokyo Shock barely lists these special features on the package and gives sparse explanation for each, they are catering to the people who are not going to hesitate to pull this Blu-ray from the shelf and buy it, and anyone who does so, will not be disappointed. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Le beau Serge (1958); Le cousins (1958)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Claude Chabrol
Amazon Price: $24.49; $24.73
Films: Releases:

Time clouds history. In the world of the arts in particular, it’s easy to streamline events into convenient narratives. The nouvelle vague movement has experienced many a revisionist history lesson, its inception and concluding dates blurred between films, directors, and political incidents. Nowadays, it’s François Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” that’s generally considered the new wave’s first dispatch. But going by the school of thought that birthed the movement, and which was taught in the pages of Cahiers du Cinema, the first two films by critic Claude Chabrol more accurately mark the new wave’s official demarcation point. Released in 1958, a year prior to Truffaut’s coming-of-age classic, Chabrol’s debut, “Le beau Serge,” finds maturity itself stunted in its title character’s (Gérard Blain) adolescent misconceptions about adult responsibility. When Serge’s lifelong friend, foil and attempted savior, François (Jean-Claude Brialy), arrives home after a prolonged absence, a series of intimate considerations and interventions are staged by Chabrol in soberingly direct fashion. Chabrol had yet to abandon optimism, however, and the look of exhausted hope on Serge’s face as the film closes reflects the sense of progress the new wave was hoping to instill on a stagnant French film industry.

1959's “Les cousins” again posits Blain and Brialy as mirror images of each other; however, in a clever bit of role reversal, Brialy plays the troubled bohemian to Blain’s visiting innocent. The titular duo are staged by Chabrol engaging in verbose debates similar to those in “Le beau Serge,” though the closed confines of much of “Les cousins” bespeaks Chabrol’s increasingly conscious attention to composition and detailed mise-en-scène. Further, the sanctity which eventually marks the characters of “Le beau Serge” is stripped bare in “Le cousins,” Chabrol’s much more severe outlook manifesting in a series of misgivings which lead to tragic consequences for all involved. These bleaker tendencies would eventually find their greatest compatibility in Chabrol’s ultimate genre of choice, the thriller, but restricted to the chic modern interiors of “Les cousins,” they instead give rise to one of Chabrol’s most pointed character studies.

Criterion recently debuted both these early nouvelle vague gems in pristine Blu-ray transfers, enhancing the natural exteriors and countryside sprawl of “Le beau Serge” while highlighting Chabrol’s intricate use of interiors in “Les cousins” with appropriately precise clarity and contrast. And while both discs feature worthwhile extras, “Le beau Serge” is the more robust package. Supplements include a lengthy making-of documentary entitled “Claude Chabrol: Mon premier film,” featuring interviews with Chabrol and Brialy; a vintage 1969 television program that finds Chabrol visiting his hometown of Sardent, where “Le beau Serge” was shot on location; and a wonderful audio commentary track by Guy Austin detailing the history and significance of Chabrol’s debut feature. The “Les cousins” disc features a commentary track of its own by Adrian Martin, but misses out on any further interview or documentary materials (which is unfortunate since this is the better of the two films in my view). Both releases also feature informative and handsomely designed booklets with critical essays and A/V specs. Each package is sold separately but if ever two films felt thematically and historically conjoined, it’s “Le beau Serge” and “Le cousins,” two works that gave realization to the dreams of a new generation of French film theorists. JC

Import of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: A Man Vanishes (1967); Ballad of Narayama (1983)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema
Director(s): Shohei Imamura
Amazon UK Price: £11.99 / £12.99
Films: Releases:

England’s trailblazing Masters of Cinema continues to roll out the essential and forgotten films of Japanese master Shohei Imamura with a pair of releases drawing from very different points in the filmmaker's long career: the fervently experimental 1967 feature “A Man Vanishes,” on DVD, and 1983's Palme d’Or-winning “The Ballad of Narayama,” available as a Blu-ray/DVD combo. Both receive a five-star restoration, but the release of “A Man Vanishes,” officially available for the first time with English subtitles, is something to shout about from the mountaintops. Long before the juvenile muddling of “Catfish” or the political urgency of “This Is Not a Film,” Imamura questioned the form of film documentation by throwing himself and his viewer headlong into the chaos. The result is an engrossing tour de force that not only underscores the complexities of reality as viewed through the lens of a camera, but also the elusiveness of human nature and the mire of a modern milieu. Launched as an attempt to investigate the rampant phenomenon of ‘missing persons’ in Japan, Imamura focuses on one seemingly ordinary case of a missing man and the fiancé searching for him. Often filming and recording on the sly, this streetwise style becomes conduit to the unexpected discoveries of a latent scandal. Although released by Nikkatsu, “A Man Vanishes” was Imamura’s first feature completed through his independent production company, and it’s a vanguard piece of work rich with life and mystery. The DVD includes an interview with film scholar Tony Rayns, a very laid-back conversation between Imamura and his son Daisuke Tengan and a chunky booklet filled with photos and essays. It's the DVD release of the year.

After spending nearly a decade on documentaries in the '70s, Imamura energetically returned to fiction filmmaking with 1979's “Vengeance Is Mine,” followed soon after by 1981's twofer of “Eijanaika” and “The Ballad of Narayama,” the latter of which anchored Imamura’s reemergence with a hefty win at Cannes. At the invitation of Toei, Imamura found a home for his gestating adaptation of Shichiro Fukazawa’s stories that he had allegedly been thinking about since the '50s. Set in a remote village in mid-19th century Japan, 'Narayama' casts a blunt eye on the harsh realities and carnal pleasures of human survival. Key to the plot is the tradition of sending the community’s elders, an unnecessary mouth to feed, into the mountains to die at the age of 70. Orin is a spry and lively 69-year old matriarch and caretaker to two adult sons and three grandchildren. She prepares her family for her absence and even goes so far as to knock out her own front teeth to convince others she's old and feeble. Imamura goes to great lengths to emphasize the brutality of this microcosm (including the systematic execution of an entire family for their desperate, thieving ways) and its juxtaposition with the harsh beauty of the surrounding natural world. The habitual and sometimes cruel existence of snakes, birds and rats offer a poetic parallel to the muddled human characters. But it's clear Imamura's main concern in ‘Narayama’ lies in the thematic through-line of growing old with grace and humility, a theme he meditates on in the film's final chapter. Imamura was also determined to capture the authenticity of rigorous mountain life, and he ordered cast and crew to a remote location only accessible by foot to achieve this. As a result, the bitter cold of the film has an irreverent physical presence, as does the hot-blooded, near compulsive sex—qualities Masters of Cinema’s restoration only enhance. The MoC release improves on the only subpar version of the film that had been available up to this point, especially with regard to the natural light which Imamura so relied on; the transfer lends added, velvety richness to scenes previously assumed to be lacking visual detail. The MoC disc also contains four original trailers and (as with “A Man Vanishes”) an interview with Tony Rayns. But the care put into the booklet trumps the other supplements by a long shot, offering the assemblage of a director’s statement, a 1983 interview with Imamura, diary entries from producer Jiro Tomoda, and, most importantly, a selection of photos, including one of the greatest production stills ever shot (which also graces the release's back cover). Both films prove that even at age 57, well beyond his rebelling New Wave years, Imamura was an uncompromising maverick. KS

(“A Man Vanishes” is region-free; “The Ballad of Narayama” is region B locked.)

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Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Festival Coverage - Vancouver 2011

Wed, 9 Nov 2011 09:59:18 -0500

Wrestling for a little elbowroom in the hectic fall season, the Vancouver International Film Festival fortified itself with an extraordinary lineup this year. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, VIFF offered 240 feature-length films and 46 shorts, giving any festival-goer more than enough to choose from, especially in the banner year of 2011. I came away from the festival with an impression much similar to that of our Editor-in-Chief Sam C. Mac, when attending Toronto only a few months ago: the quantity was overwhelming and the quality consistently high. Some of these films have already opened theatrically or will do so in the coming weeks, as we head into Awards Season; others will hit U.S. theaters next year, or languish in distribution limbo. The vast majority of them are well worth seeing. Kathie Smith

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia / Nuri Blige Ceylan
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's formal compulsions recede as the director favors the sprawl of an impressionistic narrative in his latest, and most fully realized, film. “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” exhumes the dark fairytales of public servants, and the nightmares of two criminals. These characters vacillate between perfunctory and profound in a mysterious reality of effects without cause. But these somber and sometimes playful intrigues merely lead us down a road to a much less abstruse corporeal space where scalpel meets flesh and dirt clogs throat.

The Loneliest Planet / Julia Loktev
The western world’s senses of privilege and confidence are at the center of “The Loneliest Planet.” But so is the fragile trust between companions. NYU grad Julia Loktev crafts a perceptive story surrounding two beautiful, engaged to be married, globetrotters (Hani Furstenberg and Gael Garcia Bernal), backpacking through the country of Georgia. Triangulated by a local guide, the group faces a mighty fissure. Unlike Loktev’s first feature, “Day Night Day Night,” the insinuating and introspective ‘Loneliest Planet’ is potent and convincing.

A Separation / Asghar Farhadi
Few films keep their balance, building tense and plot-driven drama, like “A Separation.” Tackling the marital difficulties of a middle class couple, Asghar Farhadi puts all manner of social issue under the microscope, with gender and class at the forefront. His film gives equal space to all its characters: the religious caretaker, her downtrodden husband, the brazen wife and even the mature eleven-year-old daughter stuck in the middle. Tightly wound, with impeccable scripting, “A Separation” perceptively parables a country hurtling toward an uncertain future.

This Is Not a Film / Jafar Panahi
Bruised by bitter post-film developments (Jafar Panahi’s appeal denied; cameraman Mojtaba Mirtahmasb arrested), “This Is Not a Film” is an unprecedented construct that openly addresses the ubiquity of media in its most raw form of self-discovery, and the weight of oppression on a socially-critical artist. During a day in the life under house arrest, Panahi composes an in-the-moment diary, reading from the screenplay he was not allowed to film. His testimonial burns with frustration, and the film builds to a final shot of compulsive irreverence.

Elena / Andrey Zvyagintsev
Andrey Zvyagintsev's third film is also his best: an elegant, tightly wound drama. The matronly woman of its title is a social survivor who understands the delicate balance between necessary acquiescence and taciturn defiance. But when her hand is forced, Zvyagintsev gives her a grand stage with Shakespearian overtones. Maternal instinct takes over and Elena rejects fate for conscious, if not reprehensible, volition. Zvyagintsev builds a palpable mood of suspense, with gorgeous longtakes scored to the anxious sounds of Phillip Glass.

The Day He Arrives / Hong Sang-soo
Hong Sang-soo continues to impress within his narrow window of focus by pulling another fresh rabbit out of the same hat: he evokes his playful side in “The Day He Arrives” by ruminating on the minor coincidences that mold the lives of his fallible characters. The set up is familiar—a film director, his friends, women from his past and soju—but the narrative pattern is slightly askew, cycling different possibilities a la “Groundhog Day.” Hong finds here an opportunity to explore charming, boozed-up variations on a single theme all within one film.

I Wish / Hirokazu Kore-eda
No one films affairs of the heart quite like Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda; he's mastered the ability to capture delicate pangs without caving to predictable schmaltz and eye-rolling banality. “I Wish” folds these skills into a film about a group of charismatic youths—at its center, two brothers struggle with living apart due to their parents’ irreconcilable differences. The humble perfection of “I Wish” is found in the generosity not only given to the kids but also to the adults harboring their own hopes and disappointments. Cynics need not apply.

Almayer’s Folly / Chantal Akerman
In her adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s first novel, Chantal Akerman casts a wider swath over the notion of colonialism. Taking touchstones from the book, “Almayer’s Folly” puts a more random spin on time and place with an effective, theatrical air. Akerman piles on the atmosphere, suffocating Almayer in his own malaise of failure while his wife and daughter burn with madness and rage, respectively. The film is a stunning treatment of the material, but alone it becomes an abstruse illusion burning with obsession, jealousy, depression and death.

Sleeping Beauty / Julia Leigh
It’s going take more than waifish confidence for me to buy what this austere, affected film is trying to sell. “Sleeping Beauty” channels the emotional distance of a young woman (Emily Browning) willing to endure drug-induced sleep for the pleasures of elderly clientele. First time director and accomplished novelist Julia Leigh turns in a stylish debut, which inhabits an ethereal atmosphere not dissimilar from her novels. But the characters are cardboard cutouts of failed hearts and broken psyches, with little gravity—especially when tears are shed.

Pina 3-D / Wim Wenders
Naysayers beware: Wim Wenders's “Pina” was one of the most exhilarating films I saw at VIFF. An unselfish homage to the work of modern dance icon Pina Bausch, who passed away early in the film’s production, it is primarily a vehicle for her choreographed pieces—some performed on stage, some in the open-air ambiance of Wuppertal, Bausch’s creative home. The 3-D perfectly captures tactile buoyancy and physicality, and dispersed throughout are quiet portraits of her dancers, each an animated and impassioned reflection of Pina herself.

Headshot / Pen-ek Ratanaruang
Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang returns to the gritty noir of his cult, crowd-pleasing 1999 film “6ixtynin9,” but with an added panache for murky spaces and nuanced storytelling. A man finds his altruistic ideals unreciprocated on both sides of the law until he suffers a bullet to the head, turning his world upside-down (somewhat literally). “Headshot” skirts the edges of genre with a striking sense of ease and control. It runs through the well-trodden tropes of political, police and criminal corruption procedurals with ample bloodletting.

The Skin I Live In / Pedro Almodóvar
“The Skin I Live In” launches Spain's Pedro Almodóvar back into the spotlight with a riveting explosion of noir melodrama. Antonio Banderas plays a plastic surgeon too confident for his own good, and Elena Anaya plays the mysterious object of his demented affections. Harking back to Almodóvar’s early years, plot lines go haywire, but with the measured control of his more recent work. Yet for all its storytelling confidence and cinematic élan, there's an absence of emotional zeal—obsession and death are brilliant but somewhat plasticized tools of the film’s trade.

The Artist / Michel Hazanavicius
Michel Hazanavicius ditches his “OSS 117” franchise for a probable stint in the awards circle; “The Artist” will likely dazzle audiences with its flashy designs, strong performances, and cute dog. But behind this silent film’s undeniable charm is a rote story. Jean Dujardin plays silent movie star George Valentin, whose career is threatened by Hollywood’s new fangled talkies; the film follows George’s downfall, and his lover’s rise. You can guess what will happen every step, which didn't decrease my enjoyment in the moment, but did facilitate its eventual depreciation.

• For more Festival Coverage features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith

Festival Coverage - Toronto 2011

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:48:43 -0400

I think it's safe to say that more films drew our interest at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival than have any of the previous four years we've attended. I can recall late night rounds of elimination between myself and other writers resulting in all involved throwing up their hands; it felt like no cinephile could possibly see everything they wanted to in the 10-day allotment. Hype like that never lasts—not everyone we expect good work from will actually deliver it—but I think most would agree that the general quality of films at the festival this year, the ratio of disappointments to met or exceeded expectations, was especially high. We've gathered together our thoughts on some of these highlights (and a few lowlights), offering short-take first impressions on films that will surely be assessed and reassessed many times over the coming weeks, months, and in some worthy cases, even years. Sam C. Mac

House of Tolerance / Bertrand Bonello
Any film that soundtracks Otis-on-uppers soul belter Lee Moses has me at the jump. But Bertrand Bonello's "House of Tolerance" is so much more than the sum of its intentionally jarring '60s soul deep cuts: Set at the turn of the 20th century—perched precariously at the precipice of modernism and luxuriating in a high-end Parisian brothel—it is a quasi-Rivettian take on Hou Hisao-hsien's "Flowers of Shanghai," its decisively drawn characters refracting two centuries of change and stagnation through the desires of men and the agency of women. SCM

Drive / Nicolas Winding Refn
Eighties chintz defines Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive" as much as does its ultra-violence and self-conscious cool, evening out the tone of this bit of precision-crafted, artfully informed genre filmmaking. But the thing's so empty, which is also kind of the point—the slick surfaces reflect the same polished anonymity present in Ryan Gosling's cipher of a performance. For sleek L.A. pulp as much informed by Tarantino as the existential machismo of Michael Mann, you could do worse, but Winding Refn's new make won't endure quite like the originals. SCM

Wuthering Heights / Andrea Arnold
While her first two films oozed grit, at once high-stakes and low-key, Andrea Arnold’s latest evinces her evolution as a visual artist. Lighting indoor scenes primarily by candlelight, Arnold relishes the gothic moods of the novel, beautifully contrasting a certain claustrophobic gloom with the vibrancy of the natural world, capturing countless striking images of the English moors. If her film suffers from the nonprofessional actors, particularly the lack of dynamism from a hulking Heathcliff, she makes up for it with her arrival as a master of aesthetics. Luke Gorham

Take Shelter / Jeff Nichols
If meant to be a character study of a disturbed mind, then writer/director Jeff Nichols’s fatally literal-minded depiction of schizophrenia-as-apocalypse comes off as not that much different from Ron Howard’s far more offensively simplistic treatment of the same in "A Beautiful Mind." This follow-up to Nichols’s very fine debut, "Shotgun Stories," certainly has its virtues: an acute sense of place and character detail plus a commanding lead performance from Michael Shannon. But this ought to have been far more devastating than it is. Kenji Fujishima

Oslo, August 31 / Joachim Trier
Condensing the allotted time for scripting from the four-year period which produced debut "Reprise” to a few disciplined months, Joachim Trier's second feature, marked by tighter focus and deeper feeling, is an altogether leaner work. A character-intensive drama unfolding over a single day, ‘Oslo’ finds a junkie in the throes of self-evaluation, toeing oblivion. Call it Anatomy of Self-Destruction: it's "Reprise" formally deconstructed and rethought, with yet another complex performance from Trier's gifted go-to lead, Anders Danielsen Lie. SCM

Martha Marcy May Marlene / Sean Durkin
Within the confines of writer/director Sean Durkin's cold and clinically atmospheric film, Elizabeth Olsen gives a deceptively simple performance. All quiet, sullen glances, she seems to physically contract throughout, taking up as little space within the frame as possible. This is a potent visual metaphor for the loss of identity she’s endured; the film subtly reveals her initial attraction to communal living, suggesting what lead Olsen to the leader of a dangerous cult (John Hawkes). The tragedy here is that of a person who ultimately belongs nowhere. Daniel Gorman

Keyhole / Guy Maddin
In what has to be the strangest ever adaptation of Greek literature, Guy Maddin’s riff on “The Odyssey” is also a haunted house narrative transposed onto a '30s-era gangster picture. What’s fascinating here is that “Keyhole” plays a lot like a 180 degree thesis of the spatial semiotics of “Brand Upon the Brain!” While ‘Brand’ is interested in the way we haunt our environs, “Keyhole” looks at the way our surroundings can haunt us and change the perceptions of our present. What’s less fascinating here, though not fatally, are the characters. LG

Life Without Principle / Johnnie To
Instead of his usual grandly abstracted action setpieces, Johnnie To’s latest features an interlocking narrative centered around one fateful day when Hong Kong’s stock markets plummeted on fears of Greece defaulting on its debt. To may not be working within his usual gangster milieu, but he remains obsessed as ever with ethical codes; he uncovers all sorts of desperate double-dealings among characters who yearn for something greater, who find their moral compasses tested by economic pressures. It’s different for To, but no less compelling. KF

Rampart / Oren Moverman
Oren Moverman's sturdy, character-rich drama "The Messengers" flagged as it entered its messy, indulgent final stretch. Moverman's similarly sturdy "Rampart," on the other hand, excels right as its third act begins, indulging in messiness as a means to cap its character's dramatic downfall. While the controlled, somber tone of 'Messengers' made any breakaway seem like a misstep, "Rampart" revels in tonal fissures as they ripple through the life of its bad-cop protagonist. One commonality between the two films: Woody Harrelson is magnetic. SCM

Dark Horse / Todd Solondz
Todd Solondz has seen a major decline in the past decade, and “Dark Horse” settles nicely into that pattern as his worst yet. The seriously stunted manchild at the fore of Solondz’s woefully unfunny comedy of arrested development plays like an even more pathetic and less sympathetic sibling of the “Step Brothers” brood. The fantasy sequences are severely mishandled, shrouding an already feeble narrative with unwelcome fuzziness. Simply put, if adults like main character Jordan do exist, then they, like this film, do so without compassion from me. LG

Crazy Horse / Frederick Wiseman
With “Crazy Horse” (as with “La danse - le ballet de l’Opéra de Paris”), Frederick Wiseman turns his keenly insightful eye away from issues of social consciousness, toward those of artistic accomplishment. Capturing the creation of a new show at the titular French club, Wiseman’s latest is frustratingly fractured. He is interested in both the beauty of the women and the art they are creating, and captures both in countless striking sequences. However, his considerable attention to the behind-the-scenes creators, noble though it may be, fails to fully captivate. LG

Chicken With Plums / Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud
Adapting her own graphic novel for debut film “Persepolis,” Marjane Satrapi (with co-director Vincent Paronnaud) proved her mettle as both a visual talent and insightful purveyor of emotional turmoil. The duo’s second film, “Chicken With Plums,” lacks political and historical context, and that guiding light is sorely missed. ‘Plums’ settles for an attempt at “Amelie”-esque whimsy, ambling numbly through its bland narrative before delivering an unearned and emotionally flat climax. It would be style over substance if its style wasn’t so plainly derivative. LG

Alps / Yorgos Lanthimos
What worked so brilliantly in Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Dogtooth,” specifically its wholesale commitment to coal-black comedy and context-free immersion into a twisted fantasy world of depraved child-rearing, is precisely what the director's follow-up is lacking. Once more, Lanthimos hurls us into a world void of rationality, populated by varying degrees of unstable characters. But “Alps” is only sporadically funny, even less insightful, never shocking, and ends up playing like a poorly observed and lazily executed redux of the director’s previous work. LG

Outside Satan / Bruno Dumont
Two enigmatic figures haunt a rural European village in Bruno Dumont's minimalist stunner "Outside Satan," in some sense a continuation of last year's "Hadewijch." If the doe-eyed protagonist of that film translated religious devotion into the behaviors of a jilted lover, the goth of "Outside Satan" is just as possessed by a figure who may represent Death Incarnate. Sparser in plot than "Hadewijch"—Dumont's finest to date—'Satan' likewise builds toward a decidedly Bressonian catharsis, transcending spirituality in a gesture of humanism. SCM

Faust / Alexander Sokurov
Being most familiar with Faust through the Randy Newman musical, I can't tell you how close Alexander Sokurov's film hews to any literary source. I've heard it's not close at all; I imagine the scene in which a hunchbacked Satan-approximate defecates in a church comes straight from this idiosyncratic auteur. Whatever the inspiration, "Faust" is among Sokurov's most accessible films: every shot is dense with activity, and the narrative works out to a morbid adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" with Sokurov's "Russian Ark" as the formal template. SCM

Carré blanc / Jean-Baptiste Léonetti
Engagingly literary, both thematically and structurally, Jean-Baptiste Léonetti’s debut is rife with metaphor yet careful to avoid didacticism. Both Kafka-esque in its peculiar absurdities (the bureaucratic announcements that echo on empty streets) and Orwellian in its cautionary societal critiques, “Carré blanc” creates its eerie solitude through shots of wan hallways, dilapidated highrises and detached bouts of violence. It may seem relatively minor, but it’s pitch-perfect tone and nifty sci-fi stylings make for a memorable dystopian genre flick. LG

Snowtown / Justin Kurzel
The blood-on-the-brain psyche of John Bunting, one of Australia's most notorious serial killers, is the subject of Justin Kurzel’s debut, a film strikingly similar to last year’s “Animal Kingdom” as another Australian study of erupting psychosis and its effects on the familial construct. The first hour stokes our anxious expectations, cultivating suspense on the strength of Daniel Henshall’s eerily low-key performance. But as the repetitious brutality turns banal, the film exhausts its dread and collapses under an inflated runtime and ineffective payoff. LG

That Summer / Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel trades Paris in black-and-white for Rome in full-blown color, but "That Summer" can’t quite escape a “once more around the block” feel to it; the veteran French filmmaker fails to find a fresh and engaging angle to his usual obsession with the perplexing nature of love and romance. Still, Garrel's mingling of swooning romanticism and intellectual detachment exerts a certain fascination, as does Willy Kurant’s lovely widescreen color cinematography, leaving an imprint long after the plot and characters have faded from memory. KF

Pariah / Dee Rees
Sure to draw comparisons to “Precious,” Dee Rees’s “Pariah” likewise fixes its eye on a marginalized teen clawing her way out of unfortunate circumstances. The crux deals with the infrequently explored topic of inner city black homosexuality; yet, rather than dealing in overwrought platitudes of urban oppression, Rees utilizes her taboo-of-choice as a catalyst to explore several characters affected by her protagonist’s sexuality. With fantastic performances, subtle insights and a gritty feel, Rees delivers one of the best characters and films of the year. LG

Kill List / Ben Wheatley
From its mumblecore-with-an-accent beginnings to its "The Descent"-in-a-sewer climax, "Kill List" rarely rises above the bar of an occasionally stylish thriller, moving very very slowly from domestic discord to hit man ultra-violence. This is the second film from blue-collar Brit Ben Wheatley, and in its tasteless finale it takes the filmmaker from merely inoffensively mundane (kitchen-sink debut "Down Terrace") to downright vile. Wheatley isn't necessarily a bad filmmaker, but the sick joke this one works out to insinuates his own perverse pleasure. SCM

Himizu / Sion Sono
"Himizu" is another volatile look at love and faith in a mad world from "Love Exposure" director Sion Sono. Amidst the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last March, Sono pits a younger generation against their callous elders; at its best, "Himizu" suggests how the violence of one generation manifests itself in the younger. The film wades into increasingly grim waters, but Sono finds hope, by the end, in a phrase previously uttered in a more whimsical context, now a rallying cry for a nation traumatized by disaster. KF

Like Crazy / Drake Doremus
A romance that slowly and subtly evolves into an anti-romance, “Like Crazy” delivers a gut punch of authentic emotion built around its two fantastic performances. Skewing youthful, Drake Doremus’s Sundance hit nonetheless strikes universally in its examination of real love destabilized by untoward circumstance. This isn’t a film about unrequited love, falling out of love or even disproportionate love—it’s simpler and stronger. It’s about love's glory and its vulnerability, and about how things can fall apart just as they're coming together. LG

Good Bye / Mohammed Rasoulof
A recently disbarred female lawyer in Iran, with a husband exiled from the country for his activities as an investigative journalist, embarks on a difficult quest to flee her country; the effect of watching her progress is akin to watching an ever-tightening noose, waiting for the right moment to wrap itself around her neck. Though Mohammed Rasoulof’s latest trades the surreal allegorical poetry of his remarkable "The White Meadows" for stark realism, "Good Bye" is no less damning in exposing the indignities of life in the repressive middle East. KF

Extraterrestrial / Nacho Vigalando
Subversive of the genre its title bears to mind, Nacho Vigalando’s “Extraterrestrial” is set in the immediate aftermath of an alien invasion (to which neither character nor audience is privy), as two hungover twenty-somethings decide to fight against…moral obligation. Amidst a global crisis, the two attempt to hide the affair from an infatuated neighbor and a boyfriend more concerned with heroics than being cuckolded, never once fearing or even paying much mind to the invaders. Slight? Sure, but with just the right combination of farce and wit. LG

Tyrannosaur / Paddy Considine
Recalling his herculean performance in Ken Loach’s “My Name Is Joe,” Peter Mullan once more delivers a performance of furious intensity as Joseph, a man struggling to hold onto any emotion but anger. Crossing paths with Hannah (Olivia Colman), a meek woman of faith whose life may not be as cushy as it appears, Joseph struggles to find a role in her life. A brutal film of bitter truths, Paddy Considine’s “Tyrannosaur” succeeds in exploring the difficulties of broken lives and new beginnings through the devastating performances of Mullan and Colman. LG

• For more Festival Coverage features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: InRO Staff

Home Movies - July and August

Fri, 9 Sep 2011 04:00:09 -0400

Although Jordan Cronk and myself have four more months to spend deep in our respective caves, with the year’s remaining releases, I guarantee we'll be talking about more than a few mentioned here by year's end. With the latest Home Movies, we're straddling both summer months: the summer release calendar for July came in like a lamb and went out like a lion by the end of August, with a handful of major debuts. August was so packed, in fact, that we would be remiss not to mention some of the many gems we missed, including two films by Lee Chang-dong (the long-delayed “Secret Sunshine” from Criterion and this year's “Poetry”); a new Blu-ray of the Coen Brothers' debut film “Blood Simple”; a long-overdue US release of Agnes Varda’s 1975 documentary “Daguerreotypes”; a Blu-ray release of Jim Jarmusch’s “Dead Man”; and new Blu-rays of “If…,” “Orpheus,” “Naked,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “High and Low,” all from Criterion. What we have covered below, however, is no less of a smorgasbord, including one of the most exciting releases to come along in some time, and our pick of the month: Eclipse’s “Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara.” Kathie Smith

Pick of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara (1960-67)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Koreyoshi Kurahara
Amazon Price: $49.99
Film: Blu-ray:

In the liner notes to Criterion’s extraordinary new Eclipse set, 'The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara,' film historian Chuck Stevens makes a succinct but important argument regarding the Japanese journeyman director, noting that “Kurahara wasn’t of Japan’s early 1960s New Wave so much as alongside it… even as he expanded upon that vocabulary and added distinctive shadings and personalized pulses all his own.” At first glance, it may seem like a negligible comment, but it speaks to Kurahara’s breadth as a filmmaker; the man spent as much time turning out idiosyncratic films—little outrageous riffs on the works of Oshima and Imamura—as he did studio ones, becoming one of the biggest box office successes of post-war Japanese cinema. If you’re only familiar with Kurahara through Criterion’s release of his 1957 film “I Am Waiting”—included in the 'Nikkatsu Noir' set—then the four films included in 'The Warped World' will likely flip your wig back. There are no glamorous star vehicles or “blockbuster 80s nature documentaries” to be found here; just four tough, wild-eyed, ridiculously entertaining subversions of cultural Japanese ideals and traditions.

“Intimidation,” from 1960, tops out at just sixty minutes and is the most commonplace film included here—a solid segue from hard-nosed crime noir “I Am Waiting.” In many ways stuff like this was Nikkatsu’s bread-and-butter, outlining as it did a rough plot which pits a blackmailed bank manager who resorts to robbing his own bank against his cowardly employee, who gets wise to his boss’s shady dealings. It’s appropriately moody and well acted, while its centerpiece heist sequence is impressively played out in near total silence, but it holds little evidence of the delirium which would soon follow. Later that year came the ostensible title film of this set, “The Warped Ones,” and it’s a straight masterpiece of early New Wave stylings that makes “Breathless” look like the classic Hollywood homage that Godard always thought he was making. Cameras are strapped to anything that’s not tied down, hurtling around Tokyo with an abandon I’ve rarely seen equaled, diving through barrooms, city streets, and dimly lit dens of iniquity with a jazz-like feel of instinctual improvisation. The jazzy undertones are no accident: firecracker delinquent Akira, the film’s anti-est of anti-heroes, name drops jazz players and cranks drum solos to 11 as he cruises and boozes, generally swimming through the film like heroine through a Miles Davis session. If the other film’s in the set don’t touch this level of greatness—and trust me, it ain’t for lack of trying—it’s only because “The Warped One’s” sadistic stomp through abortion taboos and revenge machinations would likely be impossible to maintain.

“I Hate But Love,” from 1962, is the most outwardly ambitious of the films. Shot in widescreen color, the film follows its main couple—a cocky pop music celebrity and his obsessive wife/manager (she keeps track of their relationship by marking the days on their bedroom wall in multi-colored marker)—from Tokyo to a remote indigenous village. It’s all captured in sun-streaked primaries, drifting from relationship-entanglements drama to media exposé in its temperamental, totally infectious stride. But it’s 1964's “Black Sun,” easily the most outrageously un-PC of the selections here, that to me solidifies the intangible visual digressions and thematic extremes of Kurahara’s style. Again filming in black & white (all the films, save “I Hate But Love,” were shot this way), “Black Sun” updates the characters from “The Warped Ones” in even more excessive fashion, pitting Mei (formerly Akira) against his old buddy Gill, now an African American G.I. on the run after committing an undisclosed war crime. They mostly jockey for position as they stumble across opposing dialects, eventually teaming up (read: sport white and black face, respectively, to dodge American soldiers) to return Gill to the coast where he will embody the film’s title in almost unbelievably literal fashion. If “Black Sun” ultimately plays like one extended drum solo—the score was indeed contributed by American jazz drummer Max Roach, whose album of the same name provides the film its title—then 1967’s “Thirst for Love” is like an elongated slow-burn. Essentially a romance—though this being Kurahara, one centered on a woman sexually involved with her father-in-law and emotionally involved with a promiscuous gardener—the film is slyly experimental in a way Kurahara’s other films of the period were almost sadistically confrontational. It pays off with the set’s second strongest film, but when it reaches its unexpectedly violent—like, seriously, “Sanjuro” violent—climax, you’ll know the man prone to dynamic fits of visual rage was just biding his time in order to punch the viewer in the gut that much harder. Unforgettable.

This being a box set out on Criterion’s Eclipse subsidiary, there are predictably no supplements to outline here. As mentioned earlier, Chuck Stevens does provide wonderfully informative liner notes for all the films, while the packaging comes in the form of Eclipse’s typical two-tone slip case with individually housed discs. Which is all to say that rating these sets, supplement-wise, is a dead-end for multiple reasons: there probably wasn’t significant enough demand for any of these films to warrant standalone releases (though “The Warped Ones" is certainly worthy of such), and anyway, the entire point of the Eclipse line is to spotlight lost, forgotten, or overshadowed classics in "simple, affordable editions.” And by those standards, this is another rousing success. It's the second absolute essential Japanese film purchase of 2011, following this summer’s 'Silent Naruse' set, and one of my favorite releases in any format this year. Jordan Cronk

DVD/Blu-ray: Ne change rien (2010)
Distributor: Cinema Guild
Director(s): Pedro Costa
Amazon Price: $26.99
Films: DVD:

Pedro Costa has set himself apart with rigorous, gritty and often overwhelming portraits of Lisbon’s marginalized. His first five fictional features are a tough lot, but they are essential viewing that bring emotional and visual rewards that will likely linger in the cerebral cortex for some time. In 2001, Costa was commissioned to direct a documentary about the filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, and, a passionate portrayal of equally passionate artists, the resulting film, “Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?,” marked a change in subject matter and style for Costa. The spare study of Straub-Huillet, filmed while the two were editing their 1999 film “Sicilia!,” foreshadows the austere impression of Jeanne Balibar that Costa set to film 10 years later in “Ne change rien.” From a similar schema, “Ne change rien,” or “Change Nothing,” is a portrait of an artist pared down to the bare beautiful bones of the creative process. Balibar is probably best known as an actress (appearing in Arnaud Desplechin’s “My Sex Life…or How I Got Into an Argument,” Olivier Assayas films “Late August, Early September” and “Clean,” and Jeanne Labrune’s “Tomorrow’s Another Day,” to name a few), but Costa focuses on her much more seductive work as a songstress, from rehearsal, to studio, to stage. Shot in high contrast black & white, the film image willingly melts into chiaroscuro abstraction, allowing the vocals, the music and the performing process to dominate the experience. The extreme visual style is a perfect match for Balibar’s romantic and smoky singing. But the most brilliant part of “Ne change rien” is that it isn’t merely selected footage of Balibar at her best. Through long, static takes, Costa is careful to expose the repetitive and often mundane procedures of music making. The stopping, the starting, the doing-it-over-again, the screw-ups—they’re all in here. In one such shot, Balibar, in close-up, is receiving vocal lessons. An instructor, offscreen, gives guidance and gentle corrections to mistakes that could easily go unnoticed to a novice’s ear. The result, like all the other practice sessions, is fascinating and more than a little bit mesmerizing. But don’t expect to learn anything about Jeanne Balibar beyond the sublime glimpse into her craft of singing. Delivering both the essence in film and music in “Ne change rien,” Costa is not concerned here with biography in the least. And neither are we, but that doesn’t keep me from wishing the film lasted about twice as long with twice as much fly-on-the-wall vérité hypnotism. Cinema Guild does their best in fulfilling that request by including three additional performances as deleted scenes—“Le Tour du Monde,” “A Safe Place,” and “Les Petits Papiers”—and eight “Tronomettes,” or audio sketches, by Balibar. CG also includes a handful of trailers, which would be underwhelming if it didn’t include five European TV spots for the film. (Oh, can you imagine advertisements for “Ne change rien” on television? Damn this barbarian country we live in!) But a supplement perhaps worth the price of the DVD itself is a short film made by Pedro Costa in 2003, “The End of a Love Affair.” As far as releases of new films, the “Ne change rien” DVD is not one to pass up. Luscious. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: The Complete Jean Vigo (1930-34)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Jean Vigo
Amazon Price: $28.99
Films: DVD:

Jean Vigo has long been ensconced amongst an unfortunate list of cinematic demigods whose lives were cut short in their prime; or, in the case of this early French poetic realist in particular, perhaps before even reaching his prime. Unlike, say, Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Sadao Yamanaka, both of whom made a very healthy amount of films (survival and current availability notwithstanding) before meeting an early death, Vigo’s total celluloid representation is frighteningly slim: only two shorts, a short feature, and a single full-length film manifested before Vigo passed away at age 29 from tuberculosis. But the combined influence of these scant few works is vast, his advancements and experimentation with editing, montage, improvisation all studied, admired, and recast in various lights for the past 70-plus years. Besides the collective impact of these works—fit on a single Blu-ray disc by Criterion—it’s interesting to note how unique each film is in its own right. “À propos de Nice,” a silent short from 1929, stands as arguably the first (and if not, probably first essential) essay film, infectiously examining social mores and inequities then boiling amidst the port city of its title. “Taris,” a brief 9-minute documentary from 1931 on French swimming champion Jean Taris, works equally well as an editorial exercise and a visual sporting tutorial. 1933's “Zéro de conduit,” which uses its efficient 41 minutes to indict both the bureaucratic educational system of early-30s France and stage a series of grade school rebellions spurned on by a broken establishment, features perhaps one of the cinema’s first boarding school narratives, one which has gone on to find refinement in works by Francois Truffaut, Lindsay Anderson, Louis Malle, and countless others. Finally, 1934's “L’Atalante,” a vivid and unremittingly honest depiction of the first throes of marriage set aboard a seafaring vessel roaming with interesting characters, each coming to terms with their feelings regarding these newlyweds and their relationship. Prior to Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” there may not have been a more influential French production, its status as one of the great films in cinema history appropriate and continually reestablished as different prints have been pieced together from earlier, truncated releases. As implied, 'The Complete Jean Vigo' gathers all these titles in a generously priced and packaged set, which itself would be enough. However, in addition to the films, Criterion also offers a slate of some of the most thorough and illuminating supplements they have yet to debut in the Blu-Ray format. (For the sake of space, I’ll keep commentary to a minimum, but everything here is essential.) Included are audio commentaries for all four films by Vigo biographer Michael Temple; a new score for “À propos de Nice,” alongside cut footage from the film; a 1964 episode of “Cinéastes de notre temps” dedicated to Vigo; a full-length doc on the many versions of “L’Atalante”; an animated short by Michel Gondry commissioned in tribute to Vigo; and video interviews with director Otar Iosseliani and Truffaut—the latter, from 1968, conducted by fellow Cahiers critic and New Wave legend Eric Rohmer—about the influence and groundbreaking techniques employed by Vigo across his filmography. The booklet is equally imposing, with essays by Michael Almereyda, Robert Polito, B. Kite, and Luc Sante. It’s difficult to imagine a more well-considered or comprehensive release for these landmark works, and when it’s all said and done you may be looking at the Blu-Ray release of the year—to say it lives up to its title is an understatement. Bravo, Criterion. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: The Music Room (1958)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Satyajit Ray
Amazon Price: $28.49
Film: DVD:

Beginning his career in the vein of the neo-realist movement, it’s interesting that Satyajit Ray would soon attempt a reconciliation of dramatic narrative storytelling and the intrinsically musical elements which had up until then dominated India’s film industry. After all, Ray was one of the first to insist that his country’s cinema held cosmopolitan potential equal to that of his European contemporaries, of which Jean Renoir was an early supporter. His hesitance toward such an experiment is understandable, particularly when one considers his success with the first two installments of his widely acclaimed “Apu Trilogy,” which bought his filmmaking to eyes further beyond India’s borders than any filmmaker of his persuasion had yet accomplished. But if the thoughts and process behind the film were labored, then the execution of his 1956 classic “The Music Room” is seamless and the results, while inherently tied to India’s most valued pastime, are universal in a way which transcends cultural inclination.

"The Music Room" is one of the most painstakingly detailed, bluntly indicting films of its time—Ray’s mise-en-scene cultivates a Dreyer-esque intricacy that transmits stark, working-class observations indebted to De Sica, finding an unexplored middle-ground between the two titans of cinema—and its humanistic yet stridently unforgiving depiction of the downfall of a Bengalese Zamindar feels considerably applicable in this age of political and social unrest. Unfolding in an effectively deployed series of reminisces and emotionally reflective musical numbers—all framed by the absence of the Zamindar’s wife and child—“The Music Room” sees Ray utilizing a series dramatic set pieces in service of storytelling very much within a traditional form, but in the process takes the fourth wall-obliterating structure of the contemporary musical as a technique to pivot on, absorbing this into his narrative to the point where each seems neither co-dependent nor standalone. As the action moves beyond the titular palace venue, one's caught up so fully in Ray’s increasingly harrowing plot developments that the music, which had accompanied us to this point, begins to feel as foreboding as it does comforting. That Ray would go on to incorporate music in similarly inventive ways is evidence enough of “The Music Room’s” unique admixture of contrasting and ever-moving parts.

Criterion's Blu-Ray offers an impressive, detailed package; the transfer is, as one who’s watched his fair share of Ray bootlegs can attest, simply beautiful. The dark, near imperceptibility of the picture on this and many other Ray films on past formats is balanced out without boosting the brightness to unrealistic levels. The sound is equally fluid, an important distinction for a director so respectful of his music heritage. From an A/V standpoint, this may be as good as it’ll get for “The Music Room,” which I’m happy to say is very good indeed. Extras take things up a notch. Anchoring the package is an hour long documentary on Ray by Shyam Benegal, which outlines Ray’s entire career in brisk yet informative fashion. Elsewhere there are two new interviews, one with Ray biographer Andrew Robinson and another with filmmaker Mira Nair. There’s also a fascinating if brief roundtable interview between Ray, film critic Michel Ciment, and director Claude Sautet from 1981 which illuminates much of the influence Ray’s work was already having on the French film industry. Rounding out the set is one of Criterion’s always-great booklets, this one featuring an essay by Philip Kemp, details on the film’s locations by Ray himself, and a mid-80s interview with the director about the film’s music—in short, a very worthy package for one of the most overdue releases of the year. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Léon Morin Priest (1961)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Jean-Pierre Melville
Amazon Price: $28.50
Film: Blu-ray:

Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1961 film could be considered a smoldering study of physical repression, but, conversely, one could also view it as an astonishing exhibition of dialectic liberation. In contradiction to the masculine title, Melville embraces the liberate voice of Barny (Emmanuelle Riva of “Hiroshima Mon Amour”), a widow relocated to the French Alps with her young daughter on the eve of German occupation. Although the hamlet Barny lives in is free of the War’s blatant aggressions, she is cautious about her Jewish and Communist ties and is vigilant to her daughter’s safety, sending her even further into the countryside, out of harms way. Underneath the tedium of wartime life for Barny is an exploratory, willful woman with an unvented passion for life. In the opening voiceover, Barny gives a stirring account of her adoration for her office colleague, Sabine, with uninhibited sensual detail. “Seeing her, I flew through time and space. When she leans over my desk, she’s the shade of a palm tree.” When we later see the scene reenacted, Sabine leaning over Barny’s desk in a near embrace, it's enough to send blood rushing to my face. But, alas, it is not Barny’s attraction to other women that Melville is concerned with; it's the combative relationship she builds with the village priest of the title. The unbridled emotion and blunt intellect of our heroine are, nonetheless, revealed in her florid fantasies, propelling ever-toward the emasculated but challenging Léon Morin.

After feeling pressured to baptize her daughter, to protect her from the Germans, Barny decides to provoke a priest into confession with some Marxist rhetoric. That priest is Léon Morin (played by the roughly handsome Jean-Paul Belmondo) and, surprisingly, he is open to Barny’s instigation. As it turns out, our fair priest has a harem of followers he ‘counsels,’ using his Godly charms, silver tongue and will power to convert the non-believers. But it is Barny who seems to rouse the devoted priest, protected by his collar and floor-length robe. Barny cannot help but pursue her attraction to its physical ends; one day, while visiting Barny in her flat, Léon helps her with the domestic chore of chopping wood. Within Barny’s mind you can see the domestic wheels turning as she finally confronts her amour: If he were a Protestant, would he marry her? His answer lies in the physicality of his reaction, as he violently—and passionately—lodges the hatchet in the chopping stump and leaves. The priest will return to allegorically plant the hatchet again, but only to tell Barny that he is leaving. Much is made of the casting of Belmondo, sex symbol of the French New Wave, as a priest, and while the importance of his physicality is undeniable, this is Emmanuelle Riva’s film. Her character, imbued with fragility and confidence, is like a vessel for the quashed post-War spirit of France.

Adapted from Béatrix Beck’s autobiographical novel, “The Passionate Heart,” "Léon Morin Priest" was originally given a much larger historical scope, with a three-hour and 13-minute runtime. Melville fought for the French resistance and put much of his experience into the original cut, creating what he called a “great fresco of the occupation.” Both distributor and producer were happy with the longer cut, but Melville defied their advice and cut over an hour from the film, to shine its spotlight on the simmering, unrequited love of the widow and priest among utter chaos. As a result, the War’s presence is more sublime and exists only on the periphery and within the conflicted characters. ‘Léon Morin,’ flooded with atmosphere, is only a deviation from Melville’s noir tropes at a surface level, and that atmosphere glows thanks to a beautiful new digital transfer for this long overdue release. Melville holds Belmondo’s figure in authoritative lighting that accentuates his svelte cassock-draped frame and his dark dreamy eyes. One couldn’t ask for more with Criterion’s transfer, but the supplements left me about as unfulfilled as Barny. Film scholar Ginette Vincendeau offers a selected-scene commentary read from a script that sometime pertains to the selected scene and sometimes doesn’t. The 1961 interview with Belmondo and Melville is so short that when it abruptly ended I was sure that it was a disc malfunction. Two chunky deleted sequences give a glimpse into Melville’s long-lost three-hour cut, serving as the centerpieces of these somewhat uninspiring extras. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Skidoo (1968)
Distributor: Olive Films
Director(s): Otto Preminger
Amazon Price: $18.99
Film: Blu-ray:

Movie trivia hounds have long relished knowing which film featured Jackie Gleason on an acid trip and Carol Channing embracing flower power, but as of July, the cat is out of the bag. When people talk about Oscar-nominated director Otto Preminger, they are probably not talking about “Skidoo.” Best known for his 40s and 50s noir dramas, such as “Anatomy of a Murder,” “Fallen Angel,” “Daisy Kenyon” and his masterpiece, “Laura,” Preminger slid into a period of critical decline and box office bombs in the late 1960s. “Skidoo” went a step further and found Preminger working outside of his typical thematic parameters in a wild, comedic farce that tackles generation gaps of the counterculture kind. Powered by an eclectic cast, the film was panned when it was released back in '68, and has since lived in obscurity, cultivating a notorious reputation despite being largely unseen. A no-frills DVD release has allowed for reassessment and rediscovery; with 40 years of distance from the trippy decade of its release, “Skidoo” has gathered no moss and is a lively tangle of social commentary, frivolous story and grand personality cynosure that you won’t forget anytime soon.

The film opens with a brilliant snapshot of the moment: aged married couple Tony and Flo are fighting over what to watch on TV: a war movie (Preminger’s own “In Harms Way”), a Senate hearing, or a series of inexplicable advertisements for guns, beer, deodorant and soda. Gleason and Channing fill the two roles, respectively, as the parents of hippie-curious daughter Darlene. This domestic scenario acts as a precursor to “All in the Family” until we find out that Tony, aka Tough Tony Banks, was a heavy in an underground mob controlled by “God.” (God, hilariously enough, turns out to be a smarmy Groucho Marx.) Although retired, Tony is blackmailed into using his skills as “the best torpedo in the business” to knock off his former buddy “Blue Chips” Packard (Mickey Rooney) before he can testify against God. Tony is smuggled into prison so as to get close enough to “kiss” Packard, but really Tony just wants out. Flo and Darlene align themselves with the hippies to save him, but not before Flo puts the screws to a young, slick gangster named Angie (Frankie Avalon) and Tony goes on an ego-losing acid trip. The whole libretto, such as it is, comes to a dramatic close with Tony escaping via a prison electric kool-aid acid test and a homemade hot air balloon, and Flo literally singing the praises of peace and love in one of the weirdest and catchiest musical numbers I’ve seen. Along the way, Preminger solicits a cavalcade of guest performances. Fans of the recently canceled “Batman” TV series must have felt a surreal tinge beyond the nonsensical plot: they were watching a film made by Mr. Freeze (Preminger) that also starred the Joker (Cesar Romero) as a gangster, the Riddler (Frank Gorshin) as a prison insider, and the Penguin (Burgess Meredith) as a prison warden. Avalon, Rooney and especially Marx all overplay their characters to the point where their role dissolves and they become irresistible caricatures of themselves. Even Harry Nilsson, who provides the music, has a small role as a drug-addled tower guard aimlessly shining a spotlight on his hallucinations. But it is Carol Channing, and her fabulous wardrobe, that steals the show, singing, dancing and striping at the drop of a hat. “Skidoo” was resurrected by cable TV in the 80s, so many of the copies floating around up to now were full frame dupes. The original aspect ratio, and the intended color saturation, has been restored on this DVD, though the picture is a little soft for the HD world. The film is an ostentatious gem of moderate potency, but Olive Films does a disservice in the utter lack of supplements. Zilch. Nothing. Nada. (Hello? Carol Channing is still alive! There is a documentary on her coming out!) Given the cast, this film is ripe for extras, to say the least. Until someone does this release right, at least we can revel in the idiotic and infectious glory of the film itself. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: The Sound of Insects (2009)
Distributor: Lorber Films
Director(s): Peter Liechti
Amazon Price: $19.99
Film: DVD:

Documentary has always been an exploratory form that either sets out to tell a great story or to posit grand opinions. But the doc's definition has recently been pushed way outside that box, its intent taking a backseat to more artful elements often associated with fiction. But the ultimate liberation of the documentary film came with the freedom of truth's burden. Because, let’s be honest, truth, especially at 24 frames per second, resides in the eye of the beholder. “The Sound of Insects” lies in this ambiguous territory between fact and fiction, but not without making a beautiful investigation into the verities of the human spirit. A man out hunting rabbits in the winter discovers a makeshift shelter in the woods and a mummified cadaver with a diary lodged between its legs. Contained in the diary is a patient chronicle of suicide by starvation from a man who has rejected the world by embracing the fundamental strands of life to the end. This is the premise out of which Swiss director Peter Liechti constructs a seine yet somber essay film of thoughtful grace. Narrated from the pages of the anonymous man’s diary, Liechti creates a latent visual overlay to the verbal projections: the woods, the rain, the natural world he’s succumbing to and the society he has shunned. “The Sound of Insects” is based on a novel by Masahiko Shimada, in accordance to a true story and a real diary. But Liechti is quite open about his ambivalence to the truth of the text and is instead interested in the emanation of the more reflective contents on the document. The fact that Liechti’s film is often categorized as a documentary is telling that these reflections strike a tone of sincerity, despite a dubious source. The contemplative narration, not unlike that found in films by Chris Marker or Patrick Keiller, punctuates the mundane, the tragic and the poetic in a similar tone, without flogging sympathy. After 20 days of fasting, the narrator considers walking back to civilization: “In a week I would be back to my own weight of 75 kilos, and no doubt I’d live for another 20 or 30 years. Or rather I would be forced to live, just like in the past, still with no involvement with this world.” Many of these thoughts, real or not, struck me with a heartfelt intensity. Identity, and ultimately our place in the world, is the question hovering on the edges of the images and on the pages of the dead's diary. “The Sound of Insects” is a minor note in a crowded field but an utterly unique and rewarding one. It quietly made the festival rounds and received a limited theatrical release late last year. Although the DVD is not supplemented, ‘Insects’ is a film that might be best ingested in home viewing. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: The Killing (1956)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Stanley Kubrick
Amazon Price: $24.99
Film: Blu-ray:

Stanley Kubrick’s early work documented a director in search of his stylistic niche. Both 1953's disowned “Fear and Desire” and 1955's “Killer’s Kiss” had interesting elements—the latter a particularly efficient noir, chiseling the proceedings down to just over an hour while leaving a handful of lasting images strewn about its dank environs—but Kubrick’s storytelling acumen wouldn’t truly manifest itself until 1956's “The Killing,” wherein a Lionel White pulp novel is transformed by Kubrick and co-screenwriter/author Jim Thompson into an elaborately constructed narrative which doubles up and back on itself in an ambitious fashion uncommon to American film of this period. The studio system still had Kubrick hamstrung in ways that are unique to the dying days of classic Hollywood filmmaking, but he and Thompson do their damnedest to burst through the conventions of the day with a screenplay as labyrinthine and involving as any crime thriller can claim to be. Stacked with a murderer’s row of noir stars and character actors—Sterling Hayden, Timothy Carey, Jay C. Flippen, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, and Elisha Cook Jr., among others, all working as cogs in the film’s overlapping and shifting time structure—“The Killing” moves briskly between story strands before knotting up in a racetrack heist which plays out from every conceivable angle. Nowadays the film is often times spoken of in relation to “Pulp Fiction”—an obvious descendent but perhaps not even the most analogous Tarantino work (I’d say “Jackie Brown” builds on the film even more directly)—and other restless, though often times comparatively lazy modern crime films. Kubrick would follow up with “Paths of Glory,” just a year later, and with a signature style mostly solidified, he would go on to produce one game-changing film after another. “The Killing,” however, is where the seeds of greatness were first planted.

It’s understandable that Criterion would attempt to get their hands on as many Kubrick films as possible (“The Killing” marks their third, all pre-1961), but as the digital revolution begins to move down the straightaway of its second decade, it’s obvious that Kubrick’s most widely beloved work—all of which is apparently held rather tightly by Warner Brothers—will likely never see the grand treatment from arguably the only American company worthy of contextualizing his greatest artistic achievements. Which is a shame, since last year’s release of “Paths of Glory” and now “The Killing” (and also, technically, “Killer’s Kiss,” which is included as a supplement here) have unearthed and abetted some fascinating material to embolden the films' statuses. Most of what we get here are interviews, both classic and contemporary; new interviews include producer James B. Harris speaking on the film’s production, author Robert Polito on Thompson, his career, and the adaptation with Kubrick, and a video appreciation of “Killer’s Kiss” by Geoffrey O’Brien. From the vintage archives we have Sterling Hayden sitting down twice with French television series “Cinéma cinemas” in 1984 to discuss (in hilariously foul-mouth fashion) his career and his eventual association with Kubrick on “The Killing” and 'Dr. Strangelove.' Meanwhile, the entirety of “Killer’s Kiss” fills out the single Blu-Ray disc. The requisite booklet is predictably informative if uncharacteristically light on content, with only an essay by film historian Haden Guest and an old interview with actress Marie Windsor offered up. The film itself also looks and sounds fantastic, certainly worthy of the upgrade in all the technical respects. We may not see too many more Kubrick films get the Criterion treatment, so it’s nice to know that most of his essential early work is now represented in the best form possible. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: The Woman in Cages Collection (1971-72)
Distributor: Shout! Factory
Director(s): Jack Hill; Gerardo de León
Amazon Price: $28.99
Film: Blu-ray:

Roger Corman's 50 years and counting as a behind-the-scenes innovator, in both product and industry, are inordinate, and his impact reaches far beyond the B-movie subset he's largely associated with. Chief among those influences was New World Pictures, founded by Corman in 1970. While New World was busy producing films like “Piranha,” “Death Race 2000,” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,” it was also engaged in picking up foreign films from Fellini, Kurosawa, Bergman and Miyazaki. But New World’s launch would not have seen the early success it did without the infamous women-in-prison trilogy, 1971's “Big Doll House,” “Women in Cages”; and 1972's “The Big Bird Cage.” Women-in-prison was by no means a new genre, but the Corman produced films of this ilk struck a successful chord with the drive-in crowd through their fantastic mix of grindhouse-lite, unapologetic exploitation and female empowerment. 40 years on, these three films, largely interchangeable, are far more entertaining in their audacity than titillating for their exploitation.

“The Big Doll House” was directed by Jack Hill and shot on the cheap in the Philippines. Corman took it on as the second film for New World Entertainment. The less than complicated tale focuses on six cellmates who have had enough of the barbarous treatment from prison guard Lucian. Lithe and taught, Lucian regularly tortures inmates for her own pleasure—the gloves stay on but the hair comes down. Worried that they might be the next fatal victims, the iron-fisted women plan their prison break. But before they stage their big vengeance-filled escape, they must first establish hierarchy, conflict and character. And for the most part, it is a brilliant ride filled with mud wrestling, food fights, sadism and sassy, beautiful women. Very consciously filled with humor, ‘Doll House’ nonetheless took putting women in roles of power very seriously. Pam Grier, in her first feature film, found a niche that would not only earn her roles in the successive Corman-produced “Women in Cages” and “The Big Bird Cage,” but would also launch her career with “Coffy” and “Foxy Brown” (also directed by Jack Hill). Costars Judy Brown, Roberta Collins and Pat Woodell are a brocade of personality that equally matches Grier’s presence, making them an irresistible, sexy, go-for-broke team. The women are charged with sexuality and confidence rare then, and maybe even more so now.

Following the success of “The Big Doll House,” Corman quickly arranged for two more films from the same mold: “Women in Cages,” directed by Gerardo de León, and “The Big Bird Cage” by Hill. But unfortunately, neither trumps the giddy entertainment of the original. “Women in Cages” is much dakrer, bogged down in torture devices and miscasting Grier as a villain. The weakest of the three, it uses much of the same cast as ‘Doll House’ but is lacking Hill’s sense of wit and direction. De León approaches ‘Cages’ more like a horror film that fails to see the value in the charisma of the actors as it limps to an arduous ending. “The Big Bird Cage” is a return-to-form thanks to Hill. A new cast of women takes center stage with Grier playing a jungle revolutionary who hatches a play to break the women out of prison. Sid Haig, who also starred in ‘Doll House,’ gets a larger role and turns in a comical performance as Grier’s boyfriend, who masquerades as a gay prison guard (and bares a striking similarity to some form of Sacha Cohen Brown). ‘Bird Cage’ is incredibly playful, with large doses of shoot-from-the-hip filmmaking that barely keeps the story tack down.

The 'Women in Cages Collection' continues Shout! Factory’s ongoing series of 'Roger Corman’s Cult Classic' releases, both on DVD and Blu-ray. The set came out a few months ago, but for people who care about such things, the Blu-ray looks and sounds much better. One disc contains “Women in Cages” and “The Big Bird Cage” and the other is reserved for “The Big Doll House,” along with a lengthy documentary, “From Manila With Love,” on the making of ‘Doll House’ and ‘Bird Cage.’ The documentary features interviews with much of the cast (sans Grier) as well as Hill and Corman. You get the sense that these productions were no less wild and crazy off screen than they were on. Jack Hill provides a commentary for the two films he directed that repeats and builds on the content in the documentary. There is also a smattering of explosive trailers and TV spots for all three films. It's hard to be too critical of the transfers—they are far from perfect, but they probably look as good as the torn-up 35mm prints that Tarantino has in his collection. Corman made a name for himself backing schlocky but crowd-pleasing projects one after another, and occasionally he would find the right combination for a film that would survive beyond the flash in the pan. “The Big Doll House” and “The Big Bird Cage” were two such winners, worth revisiting now and probably 30 years from now. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Strike (1925)
Distributor: Kino International
Director(s): Sergei Eisenstein
Amazon Price: $20.99
Film: Blu-ray:

It’s hard to imagine that within the next decade we will start celebrating the 100th anniversary of some of film’s first masterpieces. It still tends to surprise me that the art of film is that young, but it also surprises me that films like Sergei Eisenstein’s “Strike” were made that long ago. In the case of “Strike,” Eisenstein’s first feature, I’m getting a little ahead of myself—the film was made 86 years ago, in 1925, but, assuming I’m around in 14 years, I’ll be there to celebrate. It’s an astonishing piece of work that that retains its potency and artistry to this day. Depicting a factory revolt in Tsarist Russia, “Strike” is a powerful piece of propaganda eager to project the ideals of the Bolsheviks but also the cruelty of the recently overthrown Empire. The fat cats of “Strike” spend their time chewing on cigars and enjoying the spoils of the laborers' hard work. The workers, however, suffer savage oppression and inhumane abuses. Eisenstein, 26 at the time, was swept up in the revolution and the promise of the newly formed Soviet Union. “Strike” is often qualified with the statement that it is no “Battleship Potemkin,” the film Eisenstein would make immediately following. But what “Strike” lacks in emotional berth, it gains in unsparing candor, even under the banner of agitprop. The brutality with which the army suppresses the workers is clearly meant to insight anger, but Eisenstein’s final juxtaposition with a slaughtered steer feels more like a personal statement than an act of manipulation. Eisenstein may be the ‘father of montage,’ but those famous crosscuts would mean nothing without his keen sense of composition and light. Each frame is one of rough beauty, and easily lends itself to the nostalgia of a more pure craft of filmmaking. Kino’s new Blu-ray does a fantastic job of bringing the zoetropic flicker to high definition. “Strike” was mastered from a 35mm restoration by the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and includes a very well-made new score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Although I can’t imagine this film looking or sounding any better, it is disappointing that the original Russian title cards have been replaced with new English ones. There is one original title card near the beginning where Eisenstein manipulates the words into an image. It is integrated into the film, sparing it from replacement, but it is a sad glimpse of what the rest of the film is missing. For supplements, Kino includes Eisenstein’s first 4 minute film, “Glumov’s Diary,” made in 1923, and an interesting 40-minute documentary, “Eisenstein and the Revolutionary Spirit,” about early Russian film, with historian Natacha Laurent. “Strike” is very much a product of its time, but its portrayal of morbid abuses by corrupt governmental powers could not be more contemporary. KS

Import of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: Terrorizers (1986)
Distributor: Sony Entertainment (Region-free)
Director(s): Edward Yang
YesAsia Price: $37.99
Film: Blu-ray:

For fans of Asian film, the dream of stocking your Blu-ray library with some of your favorites is slowly but surely becoming a reality. Distributors seem eager to upgrade their most popular titles to 1080p for a growing consumer society as well as anxious importers in the US and Europe. Maybe too eager. Predictably, not all Blu-rays are created equal, and many releases from across the Pacific suffer from poor source material that translates into progressive muddied messes. This is why the concerted efforts of the Central Motion Picture Corporation of Taiwan and Sony Music Entertainment come as such a welcome surprise. You needn’t look any further than the early films of Hou Hsiao-hsien or the entire oeuvre of Edward Yang to understand that Taiwan is not at the forefront of preservation and distribution. The Central Motion Picture Corp looks to change that and has thus far restored five films that, despite their contemporary status, could have easily languished and disappeared. “Terrorizers” represents some of the best of their work so far.

In the linage of Edward Yang’s films, “Terrorizers” is often overshadowed by the well-deserved praise of his next film, “A Brighter Summer Day.” “Terrorizers” may not have the sentimental depth of ‘Summer Day,’ but it is nonetheless a film of its own mastery. A layered chamber piece, “Terrorizers” is a snapshot of social dissolve bookended by separate acts of violence, products of the malaise delicately sketched by Yang. He weaves together the intersecting fates of three couples within their shifting relationships against the backdrop of modern Taipei. The world cast through Yangs’s eyes underscores the modern dichotomy of always being alone while never being alone, underscored by the massive chasm between a middle-aged married couple. He’s a scientist focused on the corporate ladder, and she’s a writer concerned with being true to herself. “Terrorizers” may be short on hope, with an extremely grim and unforgiving epilogue, but the younger generation finds an awkward reconciliation with social imperfection and modern anxiety, especially in their relationships. Two petty thieves relish their companionship in the chaos, and two restless youths argue and separate, but eventually find reunion, compromise and understanding. The married couple seems to have none of these emotional tools left in their relationship.

“Terrorizers” is incredibly lensed. Yang perfectly frames each shot within the confines of the urban landscape—nothing is without a frame or a structure to box it in. People never find their way outside of this urban grid, as if trapped but resigned to confinement. The details are perfectly captured in the Blu-ray, and it certainly looks better than I've ever seen it before. Colors are vivid and sharp and artifacts are minimal; improvement from the Hong Kong DVD six years ago is worth championing and spending the hefty price. Sony’s set is a Blu-ray and DVD combo and both are region free. Buried under a promotion from the Taipei Film Bureau is a newly produced (and subtitled) 24-minute making-of that includes interviews with people who worked closely with Yang, including director Hou Hsiao-hsien and actor, scriptwriter, director Wu Nian-Jen. A legit English subtitled release of “Terrorizers” is long overdue, but so is “That Day, On the Beach,” Taipei Story,” “A Brighter Summer Day,” “A Confucian Confusion” and “Mahjong.” Sony? Criterion? I’m waiting. KS

(Note on the title of this one: It is occasionally translated singular, or with the article “The.” I’m sticking with the translation printed on the Blu-ray packaging, although a direct translation is “Terrorist.”)

• For more Home Movies, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Directrospective #10 - Abbas Kiarostami

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 01:34:48 -0400

One of the most important filmmakers of the last 30 years emerged from a country famous for its brutal censorship, a nation that forces many artists to take up residence elsewhere if they wish to freely pursue their craft or, in some cases, even if they just want to stay alive. These unfortunate conditions turned out to be serendipitous for Abbas Kiarostami, who has managed to carve out a niche, creating films that are philosophical, poetic, quietly but powerfully critical of society, and above all, inquisitive about the perplexities of life—all the while managing the approval of the Iranian authorities, and for a great many years even receiving funding from the government cultural institution of Kanun-e Parvaresh-e Fekri-e Kudakan va Nojavanan (Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children of Young Adults). Few are the tools with which Kiarostami has chiseled out works that rival any 20th century masterpiece. He proves that, like his most archetypical characters—each dutifully oriented towards a goal no matter the obstacles in their way—the creativity of the filmmaker can trump even the most demanding and short-sighted of Iranian censors. For this reason, while the role of censorship in an Iranian filmmaker's work seems crucial—it is probably the most frequently discussed topic they encounter—it is also usually the least interesting subject for Kiarostami. It overshadows the universality of his trademark motifs and subject matter and suggests that Iranian culture is defined solely by its governmental oppression.

Kiarostami is a brilliant, provocative filmmaker. But he's also a deceptive and shrewd interviewee: he has never been one to blame his government, and many Iranians find this frustrating, even unforgivable. It is difficult to accuse Kiarostami of being a government apologist given the fact that he is an artist working within Iran (at least until recently—he now splits his time between Tehran and Paris), and that any comment a shade less than neutral can be incriminating. His answers to questions are cunning, an art unto themselves. The famous trial sequence in “Close Up” is a great example, for it appears as if Kiarostami not only gained access to the courtroom and permission to shoot the trial, but was also allowed to ask numerous in-depth questions of his own. According to Alberto Elena's book “The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami”—a bible on all things Kiarostami—the director asked his questions after the trial, but edited the sequence as to appear seamless. Yet in interviews he usually responds to questions about these trial sequences vaguely, with an amusing deflection: "What is possible is impossible in my country; what is impossible is possible in my country." In films like “Close-Up,” “Certified Copy,” “Life, and Nothing More” and others, viewers find themselves consistently repositioning their knowledge of what is going on to make sense of the narrative, in most cases only to find out that there is no certainty in the Kiarostami-verse. It appears that he is not content doing this in his films alone but in his interviews as well, as if he considers the impossible attainability of the truth a life-long chess game with others.

Jonathan Rosenbaum astutely described Kiarostami as belonging to a small group of filmmakers more interested in posing questions with their compositions than answering them. In the case of most narratives, a given shot will in some way answer the previous shot. But certain filmmakers—Cassavetes and Tati among them—do the opposite, piquing the viewer's curiosity all the while refusing to provide an answer. Kiarostami has built an entire career on creating questions out of his narratives, and the refusal of an answer is a philosophical stance that adheres to the postmodern rhetoric Kiarostami was exposed to, if not in formal education than through the cultural osmosis of modern Persian poetry. Most Western critics shy away from researching Persian cultural influences in Kiarostami's work, and reasonably so—it requires a fair bit of education on the part of the critic. But if a viewer misses this influence, they may be curious as to why Kiarostami's work is so quintessentially postmodern, especially given that he is a non-cinephile. If he didn't grow up on Godard and Tati, how did an artist of educational short films for children create such self-reflexive works? The answer can be found in the Iranian New Wave of the late 1960s. Consisting mostly of Iranian poets, and some filmmakers, the new wave translated the qualities of European arthouse cinema and Italian neorealism for an Iranian context. “Ghaav” (“The Cow”), one of the most influential films of this period by Dariush Mehrjui, concerns the life of a village man whose beloved cow suddenly dies, triggering an existential crisis that leads him to believe he has become the cow. Symbolism and social critique characterized many Iranian New Wave films, and Kiarostami continues the tradition even with his most contemporary films. Mehrjui, along with Forough Farrokhzad, Sohrab Shahid Saless and others cultivated Kiarostami's cinematic and poetic sensibilities.

This series, InRO's latest Directrospective, will, over the next few weeks, examine Kiarostami's films from the earliest, Kanun-funded works to his most recent, “Certified Copy.” The latter is Kiarostami's first fiction feature made entirely outside Iran, and the Italian production has enabled him to explore fertile ground he could not tread in his native country. You may have heard of “Certified Copy” through its "gimmick": a man and a woman meet for the first time, but halfway through the film, their relationship abruptly switches to the behaviors of a long-married couple. Many Kiarostami films contain "gimmicks," but to use that term denies the possibilities of his cinema, the unanswerable questions it poses, the uncertainty of life it represents, and the humble acceptance which many Kiarostami characters embrace: to navigate life, one must be creative and tenacious and find solutions when there are nothing but obstacles. My father, only a few years younger than Kiarostami, taught me similar lessons about navigating life and people, but he also instilled in me a paranoia of never accepting anything at face value. Life is subtext. Both Kiarostami and my father grew up in a culture that consisted on innumerable lies, from the Shah's plans of modernity, to the promise of freedom offered by the Revolution, to the excuses and white lies people are constantly trading—to get what they want, to get out of trouble, to make their lives easier. For Kiarostami, the only way out of this deeply embedded social structure is to play the game for your own fun, to be clever about it, and to never hurt anybody through such deception. His elegant explanation in Alberto Elena's book is probably the most sincere and honest thing he has ever said: "The most important thing is how we make use of a string of lies to arrive at a greater truth. Lies which are not real, but which are true in some way. That is what's important." Tina Hassannia

Our feature retrospective will commence this week, and continue through the month.

Feature Retrospective I — Starting Out in the ‘70s & ‘80s: [Reviews of each film Kiarostami directed in his first two decades as a filmmaker, with the sole exception of 1984’s “First Graders,” which would seem unavailable.] “The Experience” (1972); “The Traveler” (1974); “A Suit for Wedding” (1976); “The Report” (1977); “First Graders” (1984); and “Homework” (1989).

Feature Retrospective II — The ‘Koker Trilogy’ & the ‘90s: [Reviews of each film in Kiarostami’s ‘Koker Trilogy,’ and key works from his third decade as a filmmaker.] “Where Is the Friend’s Home?” (1987); “Close-Up” (1991); “Through the Olive Trees” (1995); “Life, and Nothing More...” (1996); “Taste of Cherry” (1998); and “The Wind Will Carry Us” (2000).

Feature Retrospective III — Avant-garde in ‘00s: [Reviews of each film from Kiarostami’s fourth decade as a filmmaker, and one from his fifth.] “ABC Africa” (2002); “Ten” (2003); “Five Dedicated to Ozu” (2003); “10 On Ten” (2005); “Shirin” (2009); and “Certified Copy” (2011).

• For more Directrospectives, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: InRO Staff

Year in Review - Halftime Music 2011

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:30:01 -0400

As promised, here's our very late mid-year reckoning, pt. 2: the top 10 albums of the year so far. The most intriguing observation I can offer here relates to statistics. Whereas our film list was topped by Malick's transcendent 'Tree of Life,' which many of our staffers (rightly) picked as their personal number one, the top spot-holder here didn't earn that designation from any of us. It's the album most everyone at InRO just really likes—and considering all our genre biases, even that level of consensus means something. Even still, here’s to the possibility that 2011’s true great uniter is still on the horizon. Sam C. Mac

01. Colin Stetson: New History Warfare, Vol 2: Judges.
Most would've pegged the breakout indie artist of the year to be a viral-baiting pop star in the making or a lo-fi electronic artist with a list of influences hip enough to bait the curious. Instead, it’s Colin Stetson, wielding a four foot sax and an intimidatingly titled sophomore album that takes free improv in a more palatable direction without sacrificing its integrity. It’s bold and completely airtight from conception to execution. New history is right. Jordan Cronk

02. James Blake: James Blake.
Coming off three unique, compelling EPs, post-dubstep prodigy James Blake did what few would’ve thought he would on his debut: emphasize a three-dimensional personality. Over stuttering, expansive beats, prudently deployed samples and glacial piano, Blake rewrote his genre with the songwriting sense of a pop troubadour and the voice of an R&B seducer, impacting a new generation of bedroom artists already picking up his thread. JC

03. Fucked Up: David Comes to Life.
Previous Fucked Up albums stretch out the band’s art-rock hardcore epics, searching for communal transcendence. David Comes to Life is a change in that the songs are shorter, punchier, more concise—the same style shoved into a smaller container. It's a risky strategy, but it pays off beautifully; the short, sharp shocks mirror the forces that buffet the protagonist as the compressed clatter of the songs reflects the turbulence in his head. Steve Carlson

04. Tune-Yards: Whokill.
Taking a significant step forward from her debut, Bird-Brains, Merrill Garbus has crafted an off-kilter gem of world-inspired pop music. These are colorful, fleshed-out tracks born of the resources a record deal affords and the confidence that results from critical recognition. Propelled by her killer voice and penchant for compellingly abrasive arrangements, Whokill proves that Garbus is a truly unique talent amongst the indie masses. Kyle Fowle

05. Shabazz Palaces: Black Up.
It takes a big, brash talent to craft an album this sonically and socially ambitious—a visceral statement on the African-American experience, past and present. Luckily, Ishmael Butler is that talent. His debut under the Shabazz Palaces moniker is a heady, ruthlessly head bob-inducing masterpiece; Black Up is dense with deep-bass, piercing synths, even the occasional mbira. This is hip-hop marinating in a strange, eclectic brew of influences. KF

06. The Weeknd: House of Balloons.
What Abel Tesfaye accomplishes on the Weeknd's House of Balloons is a most honest lyrical and sonic portrait of disaffection. Infusing R&B with the sense of estrangement and dissatisfying hedonism that has become a somewhat tired staple of indie-rock works in his favor here: House of Balloons is both carnal and eerie, a portrait of the on-the-edge growing pains of a preternaturally insightful singer who's listened to plenty of Usher. Luke Gorham

07. Destroyer: Kaputt.
On Kaputt, Dan Bejar dives into the annals of ‘80s soft-rock with such abandon he makes Justin Vernon look downright timid by comparison. But what might at first seem an awkward stylistic concept on Kaputt reveals itself to be yet another stroke of Bejar's genius as he incorporates these elements (jazzy horns, shimmering woodwinds, etc.) to craft an intriguing and consistently captivating album that ranks among his best work. Chris Nowling

08. PJ Harvey: Let England Shake.
Polly Jean’s best record since the primal scream of carnality that was 1993’s Rid of Me is also that album’s extreme opposite: an austere, deeply literate reckoning of English wars and conflicts through the ages. As in M.I.A.’s recent scathing nationalist critique, Harvey’s polemical aspirations find resonance in a very personal expressiveness. And in light of recent events over in Jolly Old England, that title would seem downright clairvoyant, no? SCM

09. Frank Ocean: Nostalgia, Ultra.
They may have built their careers around a campaign of overblown shock and awe, but the only genuinely shocking thing about the Odd Future collective is that they somehow managed to foster a talent like Frank Ocean. An accessible, adventurous, and surprisingly moving indie-R&B crossover with major commercial appeal, Ocean's Nostalgia, Ultra is essentially everything the much-hyped Goblin isn't. How's that for "swag"? Calum Marsh

10. Gang Gang Dance: Eye Contact.
Three years after the landmark Saint Dymphna, poly-world fusionists Gang Gang Dance deploy a glistening array of synths and drum pads on Eye Contact, all in service of glass-bottom textures and blinding displays of rock band dynamics. It sounds like the future because they’re refracting their ancestors best ideas through a prism of technology, with one finger on the zeitgeist and another on the trigger of a gun pointed straight at those very idols. JC

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: InRO Staff

Home Movies - June

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 01:18:23 -0400

As we slowly slide into a new era of hyped-up US paranoia, trumpeted by the Republican’s construction of a social malaise, the release of “Kiss Me Deadly” comes at just the right time. Fifty years on, this cold war-era masterpiece continues to be incredibly influential through its cynicism, surrealism and its unbelievably apocalyptic ending. It's film noir at its best and, recently released by Criterion on Blu-ray, it’s our pick of the month. Also included here is a grab-bag of releases that span the silent era to the Romanian New Wave. Our import of the month, Tsai Ming-Liang’s “Vive L’amour,” comes from Taiwan, and is one of six new restorations heralded by Sony Music Entertainment. Kathie Smith

Pick of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Robert Aldrich
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Blu-ray:

Viewing “Kiss Me Deadly” over a year after moving to Downtown Los Angeles is what some might call a sad experience. I’d call what's happened to the city over the last half-century downright tragic, a historic landmark reduced to a corporate wasteland where little is scared when money is to be made. Robert Aldrich’s 1955 masterpiece is, to say the least, the stuff of LA nostalgia, film noir nightmares, and Thom Andersen daydreams, a blistering, downright prophetic conflation of procedural crime drama, femme fatale melodrama, and cold war paranoia. On one level, it’s a travelogue of downtown—before the rich were forced out by intervening government initiative—and on another, it’s just a sadistic, pitch-black evocation of growing neurosis in the US post- the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In either sense, it’s highly cinematic and it stands as arguably the greatest film noir ever made.

Following the war, censorship was forced to loosen its grip on the entertainment community as the American public grew restless in the wake of widespread cultural disenchantment. This led to a decade of tumultuous American moviemaking, as filmmakers and audiences began to discover more progressive strains of cinema being made abroad. Up-and-coming American director Robert Aldrich found his vehicle for subversive revolution in the form of a screenplay by A. I. Bezzerides. In adapting a tough-as-nails Mickey Spillane novel, Bezzerides was tapping into the zeitgeist via an addictive anti-hero, a succession of black-hearted dames, and a government conspiracy with scientific implications. “Kiss Me Deadly’s” jaded private eye Ralph Hammer stalks the city streets from Bunker Hill to Melrose, chasing the trail of a mysterious briefcase, the contents of which carry the potential to alter the landscape of not just Los Angeles, but the world at large. It’s a sly bait-and-switch technique that’s been paid tribute to in such films as Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and Alex Cox’s equally subversive “Repo Man.” A dark cinema landmark, a groundbreaking, taboo-busting thriller, and a time capsule of a city on the brink of not only nuclear but bureaucratic destruction, “Kiss Me Deadly” stands at the crossroads of classic Hollywood storytelling and the nascent New American Cinema movement, which would rumble away beneath the industry's surface before exploding into the mainstream in just over a decade’s time.

On the technical side of things, Criterion’s Blu-ray corrects many of the failings of the old MGM DVD from 2001, including its non-anamorphic (remember those times?), cropped, brightness-challenged transfer. Scratches have been smoothed out of the print as well, and the contrast and clarity is greatly improved for this new disc, with the chilly exteriors and shadowy interiors intrinsic to Aldrich’s vision made vivid and immersive. Also upgraded are the supplements, with only a fascinatingly bleak alternative ending carried over from the MGM release. Exclusive to the Criterion is audio commentary by film noir scholars Alain Silver and James Ursini, a brief introduction by aforementioned director Alex Cox (who reverentially admits to the visual reference in “Repo Man”), two documentaries—one on Bezzerides and one of the life and work of Spillane—and a vital video piece on the original locations of the film, with comparisons between the old haunts and the blown-out, industrialized sprawls they've become. There’s also the traditional Criterion booklet with an essay by J. Hoberman, excerpted from his newest book, “An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War,” as well as an interesting written defense of the controversy surrounding the film by Aldrich himself. From its memorable backwards title sequence to its searing, unyielding finale, “Kiss Me Deadly” is an American classic in every sense of the term, and this new Blu-ray is now the only way to see it. Jordan Cronk

DVD/Blu-ray: Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas (1949-55)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Raffaello Matarazzo
Amazon Price: $59.95
Film: DVDs:

The critical eyes of Italian cinema circa the 1950s were all trained on the Neorealists now ubiquitous to the country’s film history. But if you pull back the layers of 60 years of cultural studies’ assertion and look to the populists, you find Raffaello Matarazzo. Criterion’s Eclipse label has put the spotlight on Matarazzo by releasing four of his previously unavailable films, full of tawdry desire, implausible twists of fate and engrossing melodrama. Soap operas of the most thrilling kind, these films must have represented a refreshing escape from the gritty post-war realities of Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. What Matarazzo’s films lack in overt style they gain in brazen, feverish plot. The “Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas” set includes: 1949's “Chains,” 1950's “Tormento,” 1952's “Nobody’s Children,” and 1955's go-for-broke “White Angel.” These represent the height of Matarazzo’s popularity, and though a name foreign to most ears, this set should turn plenty of new fans on to his work.

All four films enlist actors Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson as star-crossed lovers in various states of commitment, passion and torture. Nazzari is an Italian everyman with proletariat leanings and earnest commitment; Sanson, a voluptuous beauty maintaining an aura of purity even in tangled webs of deceit. “Chains” introduces us to both: they fill the roles of a happily married couple, with young son and daughter. Nazzari plays Guglielmo, a car mechanic bringing up his son to be the same. When a couple of petty thieves bring a stolen car into the garage from repairs, Rosa (Sanson) is confronted with an old flame that stirs the past and her heart. Emilio, however, is no longer the good natured man Rosa loved; he's a conniving thug who senses weakness and blackmails his former paramour into cheating on her husband and leaving her family. Emilio’s cold-hearted manipulations eventually seal his fate, but not without tearing apart the lives of Rosa, Guglielmo, and their family. “Chains” was the first film Matarazzo made with Tatanus Productions, and it became the box office hit of the year. As Michael Koresky explains in his essay accompanying the DVDs, it was Tatanus’s idea to combine the working-class sensibilities of neo-realism with the train-wreck thrills of melodrama, and its success dictated what Matarazzo focused on for the next eight years. “Tormento” came a mere four months after “Chains” and cast Nazzari and Sanson as Carlo and Anna, young lovers desperately trying to escape a conglomerate of oppressions, including poverty, illness, a wicked stepmother, and a wrongful murder accusation.

But as broken hearts and tests of faith go, the first two films are child’s play as compared to the clash of piety and destiny that informs “Nobody’s Children,” and its sequel “White Angel.” Taken in one sitting, these two represent another level of delirium for Matarazzo’s machinations: Douglas Sirk-styled melodrama with Hitchcockian convolutions. The saga follows Guido (Nazzari), who runs a stone quarry, and his love affair with the watchman’s daughter Luisa. Guido’s mother, who holds the purse strings of the family business, disapproves of Luisa and conspires with the quarry foreman to break apart the romance, by any means necessary. “Nobody’s Children” follows this trajectory to its most tragic ends. “White Angel” starts it all over again. The finale of the latter is an over-the-top riot, as a brawl in a women’s prison turns nasty and a newborn baby is threatened with a broken bottle over the mother’s deathbed. But none of these films favor sensationalism over quiet resolve or saintly reprieve. The films draw heavily from a moral well of Catholicism but also social depravity and corruption symbolic of the past. Nazzari and Sanson, in their various roles, represent a future devoted to hope against all odds. Despite their scandalous nature, there is a simplicity to Matarazzo’s camera and the powdery black and white images he delivered. Criterion has restored them where flicker is minimal and the artifacts unnoticeable. Forgotten no more, Matarazzo’s Melodramas are not to be missed. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: The Makioka Sisters (1983)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Kon Ichikawa
Amazon Price: $20.99
Film: Blu-ray:

Far be it from me to temper expectations for such an alternately lilting and wounded film, but Kon Ichikawa’s sumptuously visual 'Makioka Sisters' is, despite being something of a late career return-to-form for the Japanese journeyman director, not to be classified as top-tier work. I’d hate for that to sell the picture too short, but those perhaps familiar only with other Ichikawa titles available through the Criterion Collection, such as 1956's incisive “The Burmese Harp” or 1959's brutal “Fires On the Plain,” could be left wanting for the dynamic compositional sense and harried narrative clip of those films. With that bit of fair warning out of the way, allow me to praise "The Makioka Sisters" for what it is: a sprawling, meditative tale of the bonds between family and the customs which slowly deteriorated around them as the war approached a country once knowingly oblivious to outside influence. The film’s eponymous source material, not helpfully dubbed the Japanese “Gone with the Wind,” was adapted by Ichikawa and producer-turned-screenwriter Tomoyuki Tanaka (you can thank him for the original “Godzilla” movies). The pair seem to lose a bit of the novel’s presumed dramatic thrust, but they make up for any placidness with a handful of finely drawn scenes of real emotional depth toward film's end. Compared to other veterans working through this transitional period in the Japanese film industry—take, for example, Akira Kurosawa, whose ambition was still at this point pretty astronomical, even despite his failing eyesight—Ichikawa’s twilight fable can probably play a little too conservatively at times, but with a patient eye the visually inclined should find a lot to admire here.

It’s those visuals which translate to the greatest degree on Criterion’s new Blu-ray. Soft primary tones in the sisters’ kimonos are rich and eye-popping, as are shots of cherry blossoms coloring the Japanese countryside. There’s a heavy grain present too, offering what I’d have to assume is the most filmic representation of the picture to date. Ichikawa still had a masterful way with light and shadow by this time, and the darker scenes present a rich showcase of such talents. Even the dated, synth-heavy score sounds sharp and clean via the disc’s new lossless audio track, as does the dialogue. From a technical standpoint, I’m not sure much more could be done here. Where I’m left wanting, however, is in the supplement department—there are none present, rare for new Criterion releases. Perhaps conceding that this is a relatively minor Ichikawa work, it’s nonetheless disappointing that there wasn’t at least an attempt to re-contextualize the film’s production and legacy. Meanwhile, Audie Bock is left to provide an outline of Ichikawa’s process and historical motivation in the nicely decorated booklet. I’m hoping this won’t prove too slight a package to entice curious viewers, as support for these less canonized works could be what it takes to encourage the future release of other Ichikawa masterworks such as 1962’s “The Sin” or 1963’s “An Actor’s Revenge.” Criterion certainly seem admirably supportive of Ichikawa, this being his fourth film to enter the collection, but even still: proceed accordingly. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: The Stunt Man (1980)
Distributor: Severin Films
Director(s): Richard Rush
Amazon Price: $19.99
Film: Blu-ray:

Devoted fans have long championed Richard Rush’s 1980 ode to filmmaking, “The Stunt Man,” as a triumph. But never enough to lift it from its cult status. The film may fly slightly below the radar on some people’s charts, but it’s a fleet-footed shape-shifter standing at the pinnacle of '70s American film and looking into the abyss of the '80s. Part kinetic action film, part character-driven head-trip, “The Stunt Man” is as cool as it is controlled. Steve Railsback plays Cameron, a veteran on the run from the law who literally finds himself in a movie. Evading the police on foot, Cameron runs onto the set of a movie and witnesses (or maybe even causes) the accidental death of a stunt man while the cameras role. Director Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole) sees it all from his perch in a helicopter overhead, including the ballsy physical acrobatics of Cameron. So when Cameron is found hiding on the movie set, the eccentric director decides to help Cameron elude arrest by telling police he couldn’t be a wanted man, because he’s a stunt man. And a stunt man Cameron becomes, under the manipulative guise of Cross and the seductive ways of leading lady Nina Franklin (Barbara Hershey.) But the character pulling the most stunts is the director himself, as he uses a subtle and conniving hand to influence everyone, including the local authorities who've had enough of his crazed antics. Cameron eagerly takes part in Cross’s WWI film for a whopping $600 a stunt, but becomes increasingly suspicious of Cross and his dubious intents.

“The Stunt Man” is an incredible romp, and Rush handles the film-within-a film motif with clever guile and entertaining ease. But perhaps what makes this a masterpiece to some (most notably, Pauline Kael) is how it effortlessly skips back and forth between entertainment and art. There are explosions, but also delicacies to the narrative and craft. The title sequence opens with playful ingenuity, a chain-reaction: raven to dog, to cop car to helicopter, to workmen on a telephone pole, back to raven, back to helicopter, back to cop car, and into a café, where we meet Cameron—surrounded by authorities. Rush was committed to Railsback, passing on the likes of Martin Sheen and Jeff Bridges for the part, but the ace in the hole here is Peter O’Toole, witty, strange and captivating as an egocentric director and master of his own fantasy island. (O’Toole purportedly gleaned much of his performance from director David Lean.) Severin’s Blu-ray sports a new digital transfer supervised by Rush that has subtle color saturation differences from the previous DVD, but maintains a hard grain inherent to any film of the time. The disc is literally loaded with special features; Severin carries over a feature-length making of—on the long out-of-print special edition DVD of 10 years ago—titled “The Sinister Saga of the Making of ‘The Stunt Man,’” as well as a commentary that includes Rush, O’Toole, Railsback, Hershey, Chuck Bail, Alex Rocco and Sharon Farrell. The Blu-ray also hosts a half-dozen new supplements, the best of which is a 20-minute interview with Peter O’Toole reminiscing about the making of ‘Stunt Man.’ All the special features have either been up-converted or shot in HD, which is a nice touch but means that a ton of information is crammed onto one disc. Personally, I think the film looks great, but it could've looked better given more space and an added disc for the special features. However, “The Stunt Man” is a brilliant rabbit hole to fall into, and Severin’s release offers a multifaceted journey. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: I Only Want You to Love Me (1976)
Distributor: Olive Films
Director(s): Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Amazon Price: $18.99
Film: DVD:

“This film isn’t psychological evidence but just a film showing experiences, observations, and speculations regarding its characters.” That’s Rainer Werner Fassbinder commenting in 1975 on his then-recently broadcast television film “I Only Want You to Love Me,” but it could just as easily be read as disclosure on many of his most highly regarded theatrical works. Recently we’ve seen a small revival in interest for the television productions of the German wunderkind, who made forty films in just over thirteen years (!), with his 1973 sci-fi series “World On a Wire” touring the States last year in a restored print (which should be coming to R1 DVD eventually, after arriving overseas last year). “I Only Want You to Love Me,” from 1976, didn’t get that kind of reparatory roll-out, but it's arguably just as important a work and one near and dear enough to Fassbinder’s heart that it may very well tell us more about this prolific New German Cinema pioneer—who died at 37 years of age from a drug overdose—than anything else in his oeuvre. The film’s protagonist, Peter (played by Vitus Zeplichal), and an obvious surrogate for Fassbinder himself, spends the majority of his days looking for the approval of those around him: his wife, yes, but more importantly his mother and father, whom the mounting discomfort plays off of as we’re shown in a unique foreshadow/flashback technique that this character’s plight will only end in tragedy. Through a procession of carefully framed, immaculately composed images—courtesy of future Scorsese collaborator Michael Ballhaus—Fassbinder is able to lend gravity and a sense of isolation and identification to a character who’s yearning heart manifests itself in a most violent fashion.

Olive Films debuts the film on standard DVD, yet the print translates much better than a lot of Fassbinder’s work of the period. The progressive transfer is un-manipulated, with colors appearing truer and the film’s grain structure kept intact without obstructing detail. It’s about all you could ask for from a standard-def transfer of mid-'70s Fassbinder. The special feature—only one of them here—isn’t much on paper: a 2010 making-of documentary, “Of Love and Constraints: Speculations On Fassbinder’s ‘I Only Want You to Love Me.’” But its 62-minutes are laden with insights, looking back at the film’s production with nearly all the major players. Not only does the doc touch on the style and impetus behind the film, but it also allows a number of Fassbinder’s closest collaborators to interpret the autobiographical content embedded within. They also speak of his working methods and eventual death in reverential tones, marking this as one of the more thorough making-of documentaries I’ve come across recently. It’s a worthy tribute to a film that many will be discovering for the first time, and a lasting testament to a filmmaker who altered the landscape of world cinema. This quickly shot, highly personal work—an absolute great film in its own right—makes me wonder how many more of Fassbinder’s outlying works are worthy of reassessment. In any case, this is one of the year’s great surprises thus far. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: People On Sunday (1930)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Robert Siodmak; Edgar Ulmer
Amazon Price: $30.99
Film: Blu-ray:

Re-situate its setting to Brooklyn, give it color and sound, and “People On Sunday” would be quintessential mumblecore. Move it to Paris, add in a gun somewhere, and you'd have a work belonging to and predating the French New Wave movement. Long before plotlessness and blurring fact and fiction became a cutting edge style, there was a group of pioneering filmmakers in Germany ahead of their time. The cumulative efforts of Robert Siodmak (“The Killers”), Edgar G. Ulmer (“Detour”), Fred Zinnemann (“High Noon”) and Billy Wilder (no introduction needed) are surprising not only in their pedigree but also in their results. While Fritz Lang was wowing the world with the elaborate drama of “Metropolis” and “M,” “People On Sunday” takes a far more simple tact of low drama and spare production. It's presented as a “film without actors,” and proceeds to introduce the principle characters one by one in their natural environment to exemplify that these are people who have lives beyond the lens of the movie camera: Erwin Splettstösser drives taxi 1A 10088; Brigitte Borchert sold 150 copies of the record “In a Little Pastry Shop” last month; Wolfgang von Waltershausen—officer, farmer, used book seller, taxi dancer, and currently a traveling wine salesman; Chistl Ehlers wears out her shoes as a film extra; Annie Schreyer, a fashion model. Although we now take for granted documentary and fictional hybrids, this automatically gives the film a personal and uncomplicated experimental touch.

When Chistl and Wolfgang meet on the street one Saturday afternoon, purely by chance, they arrange to see each other again at Wannsee, a lakeside recreation area west of Berlin, the following day. Wolfgang shows up with his friend Erwin (his girlfriend Annie has overslept), and Chistl shows up with her friend Bridgitte; the four set out for a day of fun and frolicking. Wolfgang maneuvers for the affections of the two women, eliciting as much jealousy as he can, and Edwin observes, while alternating between sleep and inciting horseplay. “People On Sunday” juggles the narrative, such as it is, with portraiture of everyday people on the streets of Berlin, and at the lake of Wannsee. It’s implicit that the four lead characters are representative of all the people filmed partaking in Sunday activities and going about business in the city. It's an invaluable snapshot of an era led by the ingenuity of a group of young filmmakers that sparkles with simplicity. Criterion’s release, both on Blu-ray and DVD, is beautifully restored from what is left of the film, and offers two scores: one modeled after silent-era film music, and a more modern score that uses a wider range of instruments and techniques. Having watched both, I found the modern option more attractive with the film, and it almost enhances its timelessness. Also included is a 30-minute documentary on the making and restoration of “People On Sunday,” as well as a short film by cinematographer Eugen Schufftan. Noah Isenberg provides a contextual essay about the film's fascinating history, including the confusion of who, among its now famous creators, was really responsible for the idea and manifestations behind it. Regardless of the who/what/when/where/how, “People On Sunday” epitomizes artists engaged in the world around them—an altogether timeless film that resonates far beyond its modest means and aged status. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2011)
Distributor: Film Movement
Director(s): Florin Serban
Amazon Price: $22.49
Films: DVD:

Although the honeymoon between cinephile and the Romanian New Wave seems to be over, the romance is still alive. Florin Serban’s debut feature will do plenty to keep the embers burning, and the relationship interesting. “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” emanates the same hyper-personal, reality-driven appeal as many well-known, recent films of this 'movement,' but it is much more taught in its exposé techniques, edging very close to the tradition genre thriller. The film takes place almost entirely inside a juvenile detention center for teen boys—a powder keg of hormones and egos. Our hero is Silviu, equal parts earnest and angry, with only two weeks to go before his release. A sudden visit from his younger brother with the news that their mother has returned home sends Silviu spiraling out of control for what we can only assume are good reasons. Good behavior is the last thing on his mind when he learns that his mother wants to take his younger brother to Italy with her just days before Silviu’s release. Meanwhile, a beautiful young social worker, Ana, shows up to remind the soon-to-be-free man of the life that awaits him on the outside. Silviu’s frustration between feeling helpless in ‘protecting’ his brother and in ‘reaching out’ to Ana builds to a pulsing crescendo with open-ended consequences.

We spend much of the 94-minute runtime following Silviu, literally, on his quest of ever-increasing desperation. By the time the young man explodes, we're more than familiar with the scar on the back of his close shaven head and the structure of his thick neck that seems to elongate under pressure. Despite his sturdy build and rebellious cause, Silviu is as helpless to his circumstances as Gabriela in “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” or Cristi in “Police, Adjective,” but without the complexities. ‘If I Want to Whistle’ relies on the charisma of newcomer George Pistereanu as Silviu, and the nuanced ambiguity of his character. His life hangs in the balance between what we're supposed to see in him and what the system forces him into. Serban’s eventual message is clear, but not necessarily convincing as Silviu becomes the inevitable victim. “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” has its flaws, but is a large force in the continuing renaissance of Romanian film. It's brought to us US viewers courtesy of Film Movement, who have very quietly been picking up small and understated international films for US theatrical and home distribution through the auspices of a subscription DVD service that I have yet to tire of. (What you trade for special features on Film Movement’s DVDs, you gain in curatorial efforts.) Although all their releases are bare bones, each contains a random short film of mitigating importance and momentary interest. The short on this release is from the Netherlands: “Kiss,” by Joost Van Ginkel. Subscribers received this DVD months ago, but “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” got released to the public this month. KS

Import of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: Vive L’amour (1994)
Distributor: Sony Entertainment (Region-free)
Director(s): Tsai Ming-liang
YesAsia Price: $39.99
Film: Blu-ray:

With companies as self-important as Criterion and Masters of Cinema completely ignoring the New Taiwanese Cinema movement up to now, it’s been left to a foreign division of Sony Music Entertainment, of all outlets, to shine a long-overdue light on one of the most significant periods in modern cinema. Beginning with a vital restoration of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “Dust in the Wind” last year, SME has continued their admirable series of restorations into 2011 with six Taiwanese classics, which Kathie and I should be touching on sporadically throughout the year (these aren’t the cheapest of imports, and they’re currently only available to American buyers through YesAsia.com). Tsai Ming-liang’s 1994 masterwork “Vive L’amour” falls smack in the middle of the movement’s rise to international prominence, and as the second film in what’s turned out to be an incredibly consistent, increasingly provocative filmography, it can now easily be seen as the one that solidified a style and set of thematic concerns, as well as a predilection for dislocation and erotic desire left yearning by grotesque human fetishism. An unapologetically rigid formalist, Tsai utilized a nearly silent framing device for “Vive L’amour,” articulating the commonalities and overlapping character narratives of three ambiguous Taipei dwellers haunting a vacant apartment complex. Through an interlocking series of slowly developing, coincidental meetings and departures, Tsai eventually arrives at a brave, emotionally gutting conclusion—the implications of the moment and the totality of the film seeming to bear influence in everything from the recent work of Jim Jarmusch to Jung Sung-il’s epically antagonistic “Café Noir.”

Getting this film on Blu-Ray, let alone DVD, is obviously great news, but SME, for all the critical importance of this project, still don’t quite have their finger on the pulse of the digital age curve. They’re on the right track: upgrading from “Dust in the Wind’s” interlaced transfer, “Vive L’amour” gets an MPEG2 encode, bumping it up to 1080p in the process. In a word, the film looks great; colors jump demonstratively over bootleg editions (obviously) and the way out-of-print Fox/Lorber disc from 1998. Detail is sharp, intricate, and consistently impressive—beginning with this film, Tsai shot in extreme widescreen, and the Blu-Ray articulates the style well, with much more information on all sides of the frame. The package includes two discs, one Blu-Ray with the film and a restoration introduction, and one standard DVD with the film and a 30-minute (subtitled) interview with Tsai. Both are housed in a handsome (if incomprehensible, for those unable to read Taiwanese) multi-color box. The extras obviously could have all gone on the single Blu-ray disc, but seeing as how the film looks as good as it probably ever will and the whole thing is region-free, there’s little to complain about with the package. Tsai would go on to further develop and fine-tune this style, taking his artistry to arguably even greater heights with “The River” and “Goodbye, Dragon Inn,” but “Vive L’amour” stands as his first unqualified masterpiece—a patient, observational visual discourse on our intrinsic need for human connection. JC

• For more Home Movies, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Year in Review - Halftime Film 2011

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 21:56:44 -0400

While most halftime lists get published at the end of June, or at least in the week or so thereafter, we’ve decided to buck the trend. I’m totally kidding; we’re just late. Truth be told, we have a hard enough time getting these out once a year, and to do it twice is just a bit daunting—at least amidst everything else we try to get done on a weekly basis. But we’ve gone ahead and done it anyway, if for no other reason than to spotlight some of the releases we haven’t managed to give a proper review to. Just be advised that we’re keeping commentary to a minimum; look for more in-depth thoughts on whichever films continue to hold our interest throughout the coming months at year’s end. Today we give you our staff-wide voted on list of the top 10 films of 2011, thus far. Look for our top 10 albums later this week. Sam C. Mac

01. The Tree of Life / Terrence Malick.
Terrence Malick has always been interested in the big questions, but he's never gone quite as big as he does in "The Tree of Life"—which means no one else has either. It's a work that could exist only in the cinema, spanning millions of years and questing to locate the grace, beauty and meaning within the fear and trembling of our seeming insignificance. William Blake found eternity in an hour; Malick finds it in the space of a cut. Matt Noller

02. Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami.
What some consider the defining flaw of "Certified Copy"—its failure to provide concrete answers to its labyrinthine questions—is also its chief strength. Leads Juliette Binoche and William Shimell engage each other with a battlefield ferocity, advancing and retreating in turn throughout their day-long dissection of artifice vs. authenticity. While the specifics of this relationship aren’t clear, its powerful honesty commands our care nonetheless. Luke Gorham

03. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall... / Apichatpong Weerasethaku.
If saintly Mother Grace of this year's Palme winner got lost in the tangled foliage of last year's winner, she'd see divinity much closer than the sky above her. "God lives here and there and everywhere," she might whisper, among simian specters and translucent relatives. Then she'd discover the unique talents of Thai catfish and wonder why nobody told her about that way of nature. Once you go Weerasethakul, you never go back. A.A. Dowd

04. Meek’s Cutoff / Kelly Reichardt.
Dust and dirt cake the faces of Kelly Reichardt's men and women of hope and heavy hearts. They pull their rickety caravan across miles of cracked, parched earth, making their way through uncharted midwest territory and longing for the land of good fortune their guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood, in a broadly iconic performance), promises them. From this lucid premise, Reichardt extracts arguably the best revisionist western ever. SCM

05. Heartbeats / Xavier Dolan.
Emotionally superficial and visually overt, "Heartbeats" is about a very specific moment in one's development, highlighting the emotionally impatient, temporally disaffected phase of young adulthood. Dolan cleverly pairs bombastic capital 'A' art—a clichéd color palette and a classical-heavy soundtrack—with lovingly deprecating humor for his characters that helps create an equally funny and affecting portrait of youth's last days. LG

06. Poetry / Lee Chang-dong.
This lyrical and vibrant tale of a woman dealing with the onset of dementia and the sad realization her grandson has committed a heinous crime, is in some ways reminiscent of Bong Joon-ho’s “Mother.” But this haunting and heartbreaking film, featuring a stunning performance from Yun Jung-hee, achieves something even more profound. It's another triumph for Lee, whose "Secret Sunshine" was one of our favorites last year. Matthew Lucas

07. Cold Weather / Aaron Katz.
A Sherlockian mystery for the slackers, stoners and cynics of the world, Aaron Katz's "Cold Weather" is as unconventional and enjoyable a thriller as we're likely to see this year. Almost uncannily naturalistic in its charm and humor, Katz's third flick succeeds in ways so few indie and mumblecore flicks do; it cultivates palpable suspense within the low-stakes narrative while keying into the distinctive beauty and rhythms of the Pacific Northwest. LG

08. Film Socialisme / Jean-Luc Godard.
A perplexing, picaresque essay exploring the death of cinema, European history, cultural re-appropriation and the formation of two siblings' childhood politique—complete with cruise-ships, cell-phone videos, Patti Smith, philosophical ideas, talking cats and llamas. Godard's contemporary strategy of visual bombardment invokes reflections on pervasive digital imagery in one of his most overwhelmingly dense works to date. Tina Hassannia

09. Le Quattro Volte / Michelangelo Frammartino.
A soul's journey becomes a spellbinding cinematic poem—a hushed meditation on the circle of life. Told without dialogue, Frammartino’s "Le Quattro Volte" enchants the viewer through haunting imagery, following its protagonist through four stages of existence. Every bit as engaging and meaningful as Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” “Le Quattro Volte” achieves its spiritual meditation through less grandiose, but no less effective, means. ML

10. Leap Year / Michael Rowe.
Watching a young, emotionally placid woman subject herself to untold degradation is divisive and disconcerting. But Michael Row, a Mexican transplant via Australia, orchestrates an austere character study with one of the most fearless performances I've ever seen. A likely successor to Breillat-like bravado, Rowe defies both his gender and nationality through uncommon sympathy and tough love of the most unsettling kind. Kathie Smith

• For more Year in Review features, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: InRO Staff

Festival Coverage - Minneapolis St Paul 2011

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 09:55:24 -0400

The Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival recently celebrated its 39th anniversary, and while it featured the usual heaping helpings of Slavic and Scandinavian-leaning fare, its ambitions went far beyond our fly-over land status quo. Extending its schedule by a week, MSPIFF 2011 was able to catapult its selection to over 200 films (50 more than has ever been programmed at the fest), with screenings spread across three weeks at the end of April. For the Festival dabbler, this provided plenty of options; for the fest obsessive, it was a challenge, a bit like entering into a no-holds-barred death-match—who would run out of steam first! As for the films themselves, many qualify as 'yesteryear's festival circuit news.' Nevertheless, the selection represents a smorgasbord of the best contemporary international cinema out there—and below you'll find a mere sampling of its variety.

My Joy / Sergei Loznitsa. A kindred, chaotic spirit of Huang Weikai’s “Disorder,” Sergei Loznitsa’s “My Joy” has a rigid Russian gloss that takes a traditional approach only if you watch a portion of the film’s random hopper of narratives. Although “My Joy” is made of two halves, those halves meander through various stories that each leave a lingering vapor trail to a much larger allegory. Corruption unapologetically blankets the film, trickling down from a history of authoritarianism and extreme conditions. Any kindness is met with an untrusting hostility that, at least within the gage of the film, is not unwarranted. But these vignettes, in their structural ambiguity, are anything but detached. Heavy with heartbreak and despair, each sequence is loaded with the components of profound social destruction and deranged malaise. “My Joy” opens with a mysterious corpse being covered in cement and ends with a shell-shocked murderer walking off into the darkness of night—although the literal connection is abstruse, the cyclical implication is crystal clear. The narrative is loosely structured around Georgy, a stolid truck driver, and the people he comes in contact with. Loznitsa and his cinematographer Oleg Mutu, who worked on “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” tell much of their story through the complex and sardonic ‘joy’ on peoples’ faces. As the camera takes an impromptu walk through a market crowd we see it all—anger, frustration, fear, judgment, distrust, hate—and, in this case, for no logical reason, only to trail off after a man in an unexplained panic. The disjunctive anatomy of “My Joy” may be an aggravation to some, but I found it entirely euphoric with extremely detailed elements of subtle surprise that I could have never predicted in my wildest dreams.

The White Meadows / Mohammad Rasoulof. “The White Meadows,” a gorgeous overly symbolic film, is impossibly anchored to Mohammad Rasoulof’s current situation and Iran’s alarming politics. Rasoulof, along with Jafar Panahi, was arrested last year and sentenced to six years in prison. Although released on bail and yet to serve his sentence (affording him the ability to eek out a new film that premiered at Cannes), Rasoulof is nonetheless an artist under great constraint. “The White Meadows,” finished before he was arrested, doesn’t necessarily predict his conundrum as it does poetically contextualize the societal effects of the hard-line politics that led to the very public protests of 2009 and 2011. The film is an allegorical repository for the collective sorrows of the people of Iran, but not without inherent contradictions. Rahmut is an elderly man saddled with the duty of traveling via boat to satellite islands of tragedy. There he devotedly collects peoples’ tears, literally, and in doing so bares witness to humanity’s weaknesses and flaws. A woman is killed because she “humiliated men” with her beauty. An artist is tortured for painting the sea red. A man is sent on a suicide mission of taking confessions sealed up in jars down into a well. The entire film is very carefully calibrated into a myth that we understand with devastating clarity. I would criticize "The White Meadows" for being too overt if it weren’t for its otherworldly beauty, nearly pushing it into science fiction. The placid salty waters of Lake Urmia, juxtaposed with its encrusted white islands and coasts, may as well be on another planet—and it's within these geographical abstractions that Rasoulof constructs his striking images. One of the most breathtaking is a floating graveyard where logs, tied to discarded bodies, mark the unnamed sacrifices. “The White Meadows” is an insurmountable work given the circumstances, because even though many of us get to see this film in a bubble, it certainly wasn’t made that way.

A Useful Life / Federico Veiroj. Frederico Veiroj’s clever examination of cinephilia focuses on Jorge, an intrepid yet placid employee at the dying Cinemateca Uruguay in Montevideo. The first half of the film spies on Jorge as he carries out the mundane tasks at the Cinemateca: checking seats in the auditorium one by one, eating his dinner while watching a film in the projection booth, recording the dry pre-show announcement (on a cassette tape no less), attending a meeting on the financial priorities of the organization and then smoothly slipping on his jacket and tie to work the sparse crowd. But behind the backdrop of the preparations for a Manoel de Oliveira retrospective, it's announced that there are no more funds for “cultural institutions that are not profitable.” So begins Jorge’s exploration of the sublime intellectual and emotional joy of film through the pain of a pink slip. He empties his desk into his bag, has a good cry on the bus, calls his father to tell him he will be late—because he “has things to do”—and sets out on an adventure to an appropriated cinematic score. He gets his haircut and ditches his bag like the MacGuffin that never was, throws coins into a fountain, masquerades as a college professor, does a dance like Fred Astaire on some stairs and asks a woman out on a date. The ordinary becomes a touch more dramatic, and Jorge discovers an ability to respond viscerally to a life that had become laden with cerebral drudgery. Jorge’s work at the Cinemateca may be a lamentation of independent and repertory film exhibition, but it is also a tribute to the working stiff behind the dedicated venues that still survive around the world. Film critic Jorge Jellinek plays Jorge with a wry perfection and little affectation. “A Useful Life” thoughtfully pokes fun at those of us who spend too much time analyzing life’s theatrical imitation without actually experiencing it. But it never goes so far as to insinuate we need to leave the movies behind. Jorge’s idea of a date is, after all, going to the movies.

Au Revoir Taipei / Arvin Chen. A rom-com lite by way of Taiwan, Arvin Chen’s debut is an effortless breath of fresh air that takes the chaos of Scorsese’s “After Hours” and smoothes it out into a sweet coming-of-age love story. As the film opens, a young man's girlfriend is getting into a taxi and leaving for Paris. Kai (Jack Yao) spends his subsequent lonely days helping his parents at their food stall, hanging out in a bookstore studying French, and leaving unreturned voicemail messages to his amour in Paris. When she finally does return his call, it's to tell him the obvious: she's moved on. In a fit of youthful resolve, Kai seeks out local gangster Brother Bao, a regular at his family’s food stall, for the funds to go to Paris himself. Brother Bao asks Kai for a favor in exchange for the funds, tongue-in-cheek “Godfather” style, setting in motion a citywide caper involving two vapid cops, four real estate ruffians in orange suits, Kai, his amiable friend Gao, and Susie (Amber Kuo), a young woman from the bookstore who has a soft spot for Kai. With nearly one foot on the plane to Paris to win over an unresponsive girlfriend, Kai embarks on an overnight adventure that will eventually change his perspective on what is important in his life. “Au Revoir Taipei” has an infectious charm that works on you the entire 85 minutes and seals it with a grin-inducing finale. Chen never overplays his hand with the revolving door of eclectic but refreshingly familiar personalities. At various points in the film, characters are seen watching a stereotypical over-the-top television drama. Chen, probably realizing that his film has many of the same components of a soap opera, throws the comparison out there as if to say, 'Don’t worry—I won’t go this far.' Suffice it to say, the romantic and criminal themes of “Au Revoir Taipei” are far more modest and all the more irresistible.

Beginners / Mike Mills. Throw Ewan McGregor, Mélanie Laurent, Christopher Plummer and an adorable talking Jack Russell Terrier into a Mike Mills rom-com and you get exactly what you might expect: effortless entertainment. Mills fashions a premise, partially autobiographical, and a backdrop for the undemanding charisma of this trio of actors. Oliver (McGregor) is trying to come to terms with the recent death of his father, Hal (Plummer), who came out of the closet late in life, both in terms of his sexuality and his repressed personality. Through a series of flashbacks, we bare witness to Oliver’s cool parental upbringing under a marriage of convenience and the eventual joy his father finds through true companionship. Oliver is less concerned with his father’s homosexuality than distilling his memories of a man he barely knew into a rational narrative. As much as his father was willing to eventually jump into life head first, Oliver’s own verve is stymied by fear and uncertainty probably from what he saw between his mother and father. And then he meets Anna (Laurent) who seems to have the potential to pull him out of his funk and put an end to his pattern of lost girlfriends. Mills taps into his collage and music video sensibilities and punctuates his free flowing story of boy-meets-girl with creative deviations that allow “Beginners” to evade the type of apathy I usually feel for such films. McGregor and Laurent are so adorable you want them to be your girlfriend and boyfriend. The inevitable complication to the couples’ complications feels obligatory and kicks the magic down a notch, but that is probably all for the best. Mills doesn’t exactly dish out the perfect ending that the film seems to promise, and instead allows us to dangle a little bit with the anxiety of possibility—true to a world hesitant toward perfection.

Cracks / Jordan Scott. Having a pedigree in film probably never hurts when trying to get a movie made, but it doesn’t tend to help critical assessment. Those two sides of the coin are hugely evident in “Cracks,” the debut feature of Jordan Scott, daughter of Sir Ridley. The visual achievements of this assured first feature are sure to be handed to a seasoned crew that worked on the film, and the narrative failures are sure to be loaded directly onto Scott’s own shoulders. Based on the novel by Sheila Kohler, “Cracks” has a setting—a girl’s school in 1934 England—that nearly predefines its trajectory. The hierarchy of this feminine microcosm is established when we're introduced to the teen tyrant, Di (Juno Temple). Di is not only the leader in her class, but the pet of their sultry and worldly teacher, Miss G (Eva Green). Miss G represents life beyond the cloistered walls of their school, with her exotic tales and uninhibited sexuality. But the apple cart is upset when a new student arrives from Spain, and Miss G immediately takes a shine to her. Jealousy and betrayal mixed with forbidden ‘lustful thoughts’ run amuck while coyly hiding a mystery that is never fully revealed. The beauty of the landscape’s pallor wears off as soon as the story starts to unravel and dissolve into device. Both the sophomoric psychology and deliberate storytelling stretch the 104 minutes into an eternity. The young actors cast as the devilish girls do a great job, but Eva Green feels out of place, as does her convoluted character. These girls might be able to recite Shelley at the drop of a hat or do a perfect dive into a cold lake when called upon, but it is simply not enough to save this film from its drawn-out and anti-climatic ending.

Curling / Denis Côté. “Curling,” despite its difficult nature, is bound to play better in a place like Minnesota than more urban international haunts, and director Denis Côté, in attendance at MSPIFF, admitted as much. First, Minnesotans know what curling is and understand the joke of this innocuous sport. And second, we recognize the inhospitable landscape and prevailing isolation. A teenage girl and her father make their way home on foot on a barren road, under a grey sky barely discernible from the snow covered ground, in a blistering wind that causes them to pull their hoods tightly around their faces. A police car pulls up and an officer gets out, first to stare at them, but eventually to ask them what they're doing. Although the officer offers them a ride, the exchange seems more like a standoff with little movement and long silences in the most extreme weather conditions. This early sequence is a surreal harbinger in “Curling” that channels some of Roy Andersson’s dark absurdity before eventually chasing after a social commentary that has some kinship with Giorgos Lanthimos’s “Dogtooth.” (In fact, “Curling” produces a sequence set to Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” that nearly topples the uncomfortable dancing scene in “Dogtooth.”) Jean-François (Emmanuel Bilodeau) plays the overprotective father of Julyvonne (real life daughter Philomène Bilodeau) and has subconsciously transferred his sociopathic tendencies into ill-advised parenting. Quarantined to her home except for special trips to prison to visit her mother or to the bowling alley where her father works, Julyvonne is an unsocialized and maladjusted girl facing a very peculiar adulthood. Côté has crafted a disturbing family portrait with drool humor and incidental violence, stitched together with nearly latent oppression. Just as a mysterious tiger becomes a surreal symbol for Julyvonne’s precarious future, the group sport of curling represents a glimmer of hope for the lonely and paranoid Jean-François. The barren landscape is a perfect fit for the abstractions that lie beneath the surface narrative—mostly in the form of death, both brutal and serene. “Curling” teeters on a chasm of tragedy with measured control, never caving in to obvious moral assessment. And Bilodeau’s stark performance enables our sympathy and our repulsion without blatantly asking for either. A somber elegy at the end of the world, “Curling” was one of the best films I saw at MSPIFF this year.

Filme Socialisme / Jean-Luc Godard. Although I firmly believe Jean-Luc Godard is not done doling out filmic conundrums, if he had to cap off his career with an opus, I can’t imagine it being more magnanimous than “Film Socialisme,” an erudite essay to be debated and dissected for years to come. Four years in the making, it’s an overwhelming grab-bag of ideas spoken, for all intents and purposes, visually. Only partially subtitled, the direct meaning of the spoken words is not the main concern of Godard, but rather a vernacular created on the periphery. But the difficulty lies in the very specific, if not somewhat exclusive, themes that the film drives after. Or seems to drive after. Where do we connect? Where do I connect with Godard? And how did this romanticized global village become such a convoluted mess? “Film Socialisme” is divided into three parts: the first a microcosm on a cruise ship, the second a farcical standoff between the press and a family who runs a gas station, and lastly a meta-montage swirling with images and script that left my poor literal mind in the dust. After quelling us with a multitude of languages, it is only fitting that its lasting question—Quo Vadis Europa?—be in the mother of all Western tongues, Latin. Those who have seen “Notre musique” and “Historie(s) du cinema” will be well aware of the rigorous intellectual trial that ‘Socialisme’ has in store. It’s as scrappy as anything Godard has made (and by this I mean feisty, not tattered.) Godard uses the digital age for its full appropriative effect with clips of other films and footage that feel like surveillance, and while the narrative arch is elusive, its components move at a fair clip. Like much of today’s contemporary art, “Film Socialisme” teases out concepts with playful ease but with the gravest of intents. This sort of bravado, relegated to so-called "high art," rarely finds its way into such a high profile feature film, and for me this is a triumph. Whether I can meet the challenge of this film is, however, still in question. “Film Socialisme” was a cavalier choice among the safe programming at MSPIFF, and, recently picked up by Kino for US distribution, another jewel on the crowned legacy left by Donald Krim.

• For more Festival Coverage, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith

Home Movies - May

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:54:43 -0400

As with most months, May was bursting with Home Movie possibilities, and although we didn’t get to all of them, below is a beefy compendium of the touchstones that made their way onto DVD or Blu-ray this month. Kino International offers a survey of Italian icon Sophia Loren and mild-mannered documentarian Nicolas Philibert, and so do we. Cinema Guild releases José Luis Guerín’s under-the-radar effectual romance “In the City of Sylvia.” And Blue Underground delivers another Hi-def miracle with Dario Argento’s “Cat o’ Nine Tails.” But May Home Movies belongs to Criterion, as we obsess over five swoon-worthy Blu-rays of five diverse must-see films: “Solaris,” “Smiles of a Summer Night,” “Diabolique,” “Something Wild,” and our Pick of the Month, “Pale Flower.” Kathie Smith

Pick of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: Pale Flower (1964)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Masahiro Shinoda
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Blu-ray:

In the late 1950s, when Japanese audiences were being torn from theaters by the evil grip of television, a group of conservative studios (specifically Nikkatsu and Shochiku) were brave enough—or just desperate enough—to give a group of young and opinionated assistant directors a chance to win back audiences. Many of the most prominent directors working in the '60s, loosely dubbed the Japanese New Wave, got their foot in the door due to the moderate success of two taiyozoku (Sun Tribe) films depicting a narcissistic post-war generation of thrill-seeking youth: Takumi Furukawa’s “Season of the Sun” and Ko Nakahira’s “Crazed Fruit.” Masahiro Shinoda was one of those filmmakers and, after serving as assistant director on Nagisa Oshima’s 1959 film “Town of Love and Hope,” he quickly moved up to direct his own films. These early peripheral influences lurk in the background of “Pale Flower,” Shinoda’s tenth film in four years and an undeniable technical crescendo in his career thus far. “Pale Flower” works as both a sardonic and stylish maturation of the Sun Tribe films and an inspired ninkyo-eiga Yakuza film, but was in a class and genre all its own.

“Pale Flower” is the live-life-with-nothing-to-lose story of Muraki (Ryo Ikebe), a career-criminal recently released from prison, and Saeko (Mariko Kaga), a doe-eyed beauty bored with social norms. They meet in a gambling den where Saeko is dispassionately throwing bundles of cash down on the mat. Muraki attempts to match her bravada in a flirtatious and wordless exchange of careless betting. Cash, kicks and nihilism fuel their ensuing Platonic relationship toward an inevitable end of destruction. Hidden under Saeko’s cavalier nighttime attitude of reckless driving and freewheeling gambling is a rejection of a stagnant future as a housewife, the potential for which we only catch a glimpse of. Saeko is a few years older than the girls in those initial Sun Tribe films, and “Pale Flower” implies that within those fragile years of 16 to 19 comes a dark pessimism. But while Saeko is obliviously careening, Muraki is consciously resigned; he's an outcast even among his fellow gangsters, uninterested in the cheap thrills of his underlings but also ambivalent of the sterile power of his boss. Eight years later, Natsuhisa in “Crazed Fruit” has matured into Muraki, a man who has come to grips with the frivolity of life. Saeko and Muraki may be lost, but they share an inspired moment of understanding near the end of the film as Muraki plunges his knife into the boss of a rival gang and seals his fate—the two lock eyes from across the room with near operatic bliss.

Shinoda builds a structurally gorgeous film out of quick edits and specific framing in the night-lit world of Yokohama’s quiet streets and the underworld’s back-rooms. At the center is a haunting dream sequence that dives into the depths of Muraki’s subconscious of panic and the slow-motion pursuits of a fallen angel. Both Ikebe and Kaga as Muraki and Saeko possess a suave and elusive aura that captivates the screen. But it's Toru Takemitsu’s score and sound design that pulls these components together in fits of chaos, cadence and beauty. Although the film opens with ambient sounds and Muraki’s voiceover, the entrance into the gambling den is our entrance into the world of Takemitsu’s brilliance, building to one of the greatest credit sequences of images married to sound in film history. The click of the hanafuda cards is mixed into the repetition of the dealers call for bets, and there's a rhythm set; when Muraki throws down his money in what seems to be the scene’s climax, Shinoda tosses up the title card and Takemitsu picks up the ambient tempo with freeform jazz and disjunctive beats. If you think you're hearing tap dancing, you’re right; mimicking the sound of cards, Takemitsu recorded tap dancers and included it in his score as well.

In a supplementary commentary, Peter Grilli, president of the Japan Society in Boston and coproducer of a recent Takemitsu retrospective at the Film Forum, leads us through selected scenes where Takemitsu’s work plays a large roll, including his choice of Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” for the finale. Deeply involved in the films production, Takemitsu would not only compose music for the film but also record ambient sounds to weave into the film. Grilli’s insights are a great listen, and I can’t help but feel a little cheated out of a feature length commentary given Grilli’s expertise. Criterion also includes a new interview with Shinoda, who, although retired from filmmaking, is still a vibrant character, eloquent in reflecting on his films. Chuck Stephens includes a flowery essay that reads more like a poetic story than an informational read, but is nonetheless full of keen cultural references for even the most ardent fans of “Pale Flower.” Although I literally had my hands on the new 35mm print of “Pale Flower” a month ago, owning Criterion’s Blu-ray matches that thrill with the value of innumerable replays. The overall aesthetic brilliance of “Pale Flower” leaves me craving more high-def Japanese New Wave releases. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Something Wild (1986)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Jonathan Demme
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Blu-ray:

A little over halfway through Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild,” Ray Liotta comes out of left-field to transform this effortlessly charming road trip romance into a tense thriller with palpable implications weighing on each remaining line of E. Max Frye’s sharply written screenplay. It’s here, when Liotta has finally persuaded his estranged wife Audrey (Melanie Griffith) and her new faux-husband Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) to take a midnight drive through a small town suburb, that he nonchalantly comments about his vintage Cadillac: “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.” I cringe at the inherent cliché of the sentiment, but the same could be said about “Something Wild” itself, Demme’s beloved 1988 romantic comedy, from a time when those two words together didn’t elicit flashbacks of bad Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Anniston flicks. Part road-movie, part off-kilter romance, part thriller, “Something Wild” found Demme juggling genres with the verve and energy only a young filmmaker could muster. And despite making some worthwhile pictures prior to this, Demme reveals in an accompanying interview on this new Blu-Ray that “Something Wild” was something like a first film for the now veteran director. To that end, he certainly decked out the fringes of his cast like he may never work again, corralling cameos by everyone from John Waters to Tracey Walter to John Sayles to reggae legend Sister Carol; and as far as band cameos in ‘80s films go, the Feelies serenading a high school reunion is right up there with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds forecasting the apocalypse in “Wings of Desire.”

Criterion debut the film in high-def with their new Blu-Ray, and the results are simply outstanding. These are some of the most vibrant colors I’ve seen rendered digitally for a film from this era (and without glossing over the film grain in the process), with Tak Fujimoto’s cinematography translating in unaltered and pristine overall condition. Sound is especially key in “Something Wild” as well, and Criterion’s DTS-HD 2.0 stereo mix wonderfully handles all the film’s wide-ranging music, which includes contributions from David Byrne, X, Fine Young Cannibals, the aforementioned Feelies, Sister Carol, and a host of other left-field contributors. Supplements-wise, the disc is a little slim by Criterion standards; in addition to an always handsome booklet—here with an essay by critic David Thomson—the only other extras are two video interviews, one with Demme and one with E. Max Frye. Together they total about 45 minutes and are certainly informative, but nevertheless the cast is conspicuous by their absence. Still, this is one of the most impressive transfers of the year so far—I seriously doubt “Something Wild” will ever look better than it does now—and the film remains an excellent example of late-'80s studio filmmaking at its best. Jordan Cronk

DVD/Blu-ray: Diabolique (1955)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Henri-Georges Clouzot
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Blu-ray:

The final title card to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s mystery reads, “Don’t be devils! Don’t ruin the interest your friends could take in this film. Don’t tell them what you saw. Thank you for them.” I may not be able to have the same restraint needed in 1955, but because “Diabolique” does such a fantastic job at hiding the bomb under the table, it still seems unfair to reveal its secrets all these years later. Its perverse power and brutal tension culminates in a big twist unveiling Clouzot’s masterful restraint and structural precision built around a triangle of two women and one man: a docile and repressed wife (Véra Clouzot, Henri-Georges’s wife), a severe and fearless mistress (Simone Signoret) and a brutal and petty husband (Paul Meurisse). All three teach within the cloistered environs of a boys’ boarding school, where the adulterous affair is oddly aboveboard. Christina, the rich and pious wife, actually sympathizes with her husband’s lover, Nicole, when she shows up for school with a black eye. The monster between them is Michel, a misogynist who clearly thinks he has both women under his thumb. Nicole has had enough and devises a plan, but first she must convince the saintly Christina to conspire murder.

Save the foreboding dirge that opens the film with the title sequence, the film’s tension is built alongside an ambient soundtrack—a daring feat for a thriller of any age, but it's nothing compared to psychological and visceral shocks Clouzot has up his sleeve. An early scene that builds ample sympathy for the cold-blooded intentions of the two women, we watch as Michel humiliates Christina by forcing her to eat something she doesn’t want to in front of the entire school, and then proceeds to rape her. Even though the latter is simply implied, its nastiness is shocking even today. Not to mention the murder itself, with a horrifying recognition of the (supposed) situation between Christina and Michel before Nicole shoves his head underwater. The finale however is the film’s brilliant mise-en-scéne coup d’état, best experienced, as Clouzot had hoped, without spoilers. The two lead women anchor the film at either ends of the personality spectrum. Signoret’s Nicole is brusque, beautiful and completely frightening. Clouzot’s Christina, the other accomplice in this wretched murder, is compassionate, innocent and fragile. Clouzot was yesteryear’s Lars von Trier in that he was notoriously hard on his actors, even his wife. The heart condition that Christina suffers from in the film was no different from the illness Véra Clouzot suffered from and succumbed to only five years after the filming of “Diabolique.”

Clouzot, in many ways, out-Hitchcocked Hitchcock with “Diabolique.” Clouzot snatched the rights to the source material—Boileau-Narcejac crime fiction "Celle qui n'était plus"—practically right under Hitch’s nose. (Hitchcock would later adapt the Boileau-Narcejac fiction “D’entre le morts” into “Vertigo,” but without the immediate success that “Diabolique” enjoyed.) It was the risqué and startling nature of “Diabolique,” however, that Hitchcock would use to his advantage in “Psycho.” Clouzot was arguably at the peak of his career with “Diabolique,” both commercially and critically, and Criterion has finally given it a place in the sun. Updating their DVD release from over 10 years ago with an amazing high-def transfer and the extras it deserves. The new release is full of informative supplements that present a very good overall picture of Clouzot and “Diabolique.” The first is a spirited introduction by Serge Bloomberg, director of the documentary “Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno.” Bloomberg is the kind of film expert I could listen to for hours—his enthusiasm for and knowledge of the material reads loud and clear. There's also a more dry but informative commentary of select scenes by French film scholar Kelly Conway, an interview with critic Kim Newman giving the film context in genre, and an essay by Terrence Rafferty. I had seen “Diabolique” before, yet the film was so engrossing and the Blu-ray so pristine, when the film ended I immediately watched it again. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971)
Distributor: Blue Underground
Director(s): Dario Argento
Amazon Price: $14.99
Film: Blu-ray:

It’s hard to imagine that the director of “The Mother of Tears” would be unsatisfied with a film like “The Cat ‘o Nine Tails,” but Dario Argento is on record saying that it’s his least favorite film. The second in his animal trilogy—following his outstanding debut, “The Bird With the Crystal Plumage,” and preceding his underrated “Four Flies On Grey Velvet”—“Cat o’ Nine Tails” is yet another example of the director’s innovative formal creativity with a camera. In his hay day, Argento was a formalist on the fringes who completely changed the rulebook, and although ‘Cat’ may not be the best example of this, it's all the same a very good one. The film teases out a mystery from the Terzi Institute, a genetic research facility, where someone has broken in but nothing is missing. Corporate espionage is suspected, but Terzi is anxious to keep the police from sniffing around their secret experiments. When a scientist from the Tenzi Intstitute accidentally falls in front of a train only one day later, an intrepid blind puzzle master smells a fish. As with many Argento films, the soldiers of truth come in the form or ordinary citizens, and in this case, the odd couple to join forces is handsome and charismatic newspaper reporter Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus) and the ex-reporter who lost his sight 15 years ago, Franco Arno (Karl Malden, who will always be the American Express guy to me.) Argento dangles a title that freely references both a mutant cat and a torture device, but the nine tails are the illusive leads Arno and Giordani must follow to catch the killer.

The film is stacked with stylistic audacity even if the story itself falls short. Until the killer’s identity is revealed, he's portrayed with the subjective camera Argento was known for, literally putting the audience in the killer’s shoes. The chaotic camera direction at the scene of the scientist’s murder represents Argento’s unbridled ingenuity with tight edits and the camera swinging between train and victim, back to train and then back to victim. It’s capped by the violence that we should have seen coming as the poor sack is pushed in front of the train and nearly severed in two. Fast women and snappy men are Argento du jour, but so is a subversive homosexual context that was anything but ambiguous. He’s completely open about one character being gay, tempting the audience’s prejudices to suspect him. (It’s not surprising that when the film was originally released in the US, its 110-minute runtime was cut by 20 minutes, including all the scenes directly referencing this elegant scientist who hangs out in the St. Peters Club.) Ennio Morricone, who worked on scores for all three of Argento's animal trilogy films, creates a jazz piece that starts light and transforms into something discordant, relying heavily on a sludgy baseline reminiscent of Goblin’s killer score for “Deep Red.”

Despite imitators, there's really no one like Dario Argento. His 70s films, even today, are idiosyncratic masterpieces, islands of originality. Blue Underground’s Blu-ray is a sight for sore eyes and a remarkable improvement over the available DVD. Argento’s films are ones of style and atmosphere, and I can’t imagine ‘Cat’ looking any better than this progressive 1080 transfer where the colors, compositions, extreme close-ups and elusive clues are clear and palpable. Same goes for the remastered English audio. Although the dialogue was done in a post-dub, it was at least all acted in English, so the lips match the dub. The Blu-ray includes extras, but they're carried over from the 2001 Anchor Bay release: 15-minute making-of “Tales of the Cats,” which includes Argento, Morricone and co-writer Dardano Sacchetti, and audio interviews with actors James Franciscus and Karl Malden. Some care has definitely been put into this release—right down to the animated main menu, with a cat twirling its nine tails—and after watching a half-dozen releases from Blue Underground, a cult film fanatics dream, I wouldn't hesitate lining my shelves with their growing catalogue of stellar Blu-rays. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Ingmar Bergman
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Blu-ray:

As the story goes, Ingmar Bergman, fed up with dwindling box office in his native Sweden, a general apathy from American critics and audiences, and a crippling bout of depression, holed up and wrote one of the great erotic comedies of mid-century world arthouse cinema. The resulting “Smiles of a Summer Night” would go on to put Bergman on the international map, though it remains something of an anomaly amidst his undisputed classics, with its lightness of tone and freewheeling humor bearing little in common with such gutting masterpieces as “The Seventh Seal,” “Wild Strawberries,” “Cries and Whispers,” and “Scenes from a Marriage.” Still, Bergman’s eye for detail was already precisely acute, the film’s elaborate mise-en-scène reflecting his character’s inner plights, as four couples juggle partners over a weekend stay in a country estate. Of course, this being a Bergman “comedy” and all, there's still time set aside for a botched suicide attempt and a game of Russian roulette that moves from tense to hilarious over the course of a few swigs of vodka. Despite leaving behind such unguarded humor in his proceeding work, the film would prove highly influential, bearing marks on filmmakers as disparate as Bertrand Tavernier and Woody Allen (check the latter’s blatantly reverential “A Midnight Summer’s Sex Comedy” for perhaps the most obvious example).

Criterion’s new Blu-Ray is an upgrade of the already rather impressive standard DVD from 2004. The 1080p transfer advances subtly in most of the areas we’ve come to expect, with contrast appearing more balanced and the overall picture sharpening up a degree. Extras are duplicated from the original issue, and include a quick intro to the film by Bergman himself, and a 15 minute video conversation between Bergman scholar Peter Cowie and Jörn Donner, executive producer of “Fanny and Alexander.” The booklet is also identical, though the essay by John Simon is still one of the single best pieces of criticism on the film that I’ve read, while Pauline Kael’s original review—in which she calls the film a “nearly perfect work”—is also essential reading. Bergman would go on to make more thematically and aesthetically ambitious films, but “Smiles of a Summer Night” remains one of his most re-watchable, endlessly entertaining works, and this new Blu-Ray, despite not necessarily being worth the upgrade if you already own the original DVD, is now the best edition available for those interested in discovering the film for the first time. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: In the City of Sylvia (2007)
Distributor: Cinema Guild
Director(s): Jose Luis Guerin
Amazon Price: $29.95
Film: DVD:

Four years after its Venice Film Festival premiere, and three years after its American theatrical release, Jose Luis Guerin's “In the City of Sylvia” has finally arrived on DVD from Cinema Guild. Now established as one of the strongest independent theatrical distributors to make a name for themselves in recent years, Cinema Guild has also started acquiring DVD rights to films they didn't initially distribute, such as Manoel de Oliveira's “Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl,” Damien Chazelle's “Guy and Madeline On a Park Bench” and Pedro Costa's “Ne Change Rien.” "In the City of Sylvia" was given a very small theatrical release in the US in 2008 to a smattering of effusive critical accolades, but then seemingly disappeared, with no sign of it on home video. Now Guerin's sublime meditation on memory and missed connections has been given the DVD treatment it deserves, and is available to a much wider audience than it ever was before.

There's something reminiscent of the work of Manoel de Oliveira at work here, except in place of de Oliveira's characteristic formalism, there's a kind of fluid formlessness—a plotless but engaging drive toward feeling and emotion rather than a conventional story. “In the City of Sylvia” unfolds like something out of a hazy memory; faded, sun-dappled recollections revisited on a warm summer's day. It all revolves around a young artist who's returned to Strasbourg six years after meeting a young woman who changed his life forever. Determined to find her and reconnect, he spends his days languidly lounging around cafes and wandering about the city, hoping for a glimpse of his long-lost love. The film takes its time observing the surroundings, as the young artist hopes to spy the mysterious Sylvie, sketching each woman he sees while he waits. Who are these women? What are their stories? We only catch snippets of conversations—dialogue is kept to a minimum—as the young artist studies each, their mannerisms, their smiles, the emotion behind their eyes. Then, as if by magic, we know immediately that he's spotted the elusive Sylvie before we even see her; his face tells us all we need to know. He follows her, and unwittingly embarks on a journey that will take him through the streets and back alleys of Strasbourg, chasing a shadow in order to recapture a dream.

Like its protagonist, “In the City of Sylvia” ferrets off down back alleys and unturned corners, following paths that may or may not lead anywhere, not interested in the destination as much as the journey. Guerin is content to simply sit back and observe, and while the film's middle section is perhaps more plot-driven, the director nimbly avoids imposing any kind of stilted narrative. It's the world around the film where the real story lies; in the eyes of a stranger, an offhand gesture. For our young artist, happiness is always just around the corner, but it always presents itself as something abstract, a concept rather than a story, an idea rather than a plot. It's there, but it's felt rather than seen. The effect is strangely hypnotic; Guerin draws the audience in with an intoxicating simplicity, linking together images, sounds, and music that add up to something uniquely magical. As usual, Cinema Guild's presentation doesn't just add throwaway extras for the sake of padding. The extras enhance the film, and include Guerin's 2007 film “Some Photos in the City of Sylvia,” which strings together photos from the director's own trip to Strasbourg that provide a sketch of the film that would eventually become “In the City of Sylvia.” Like the drawings in the young artist's book, the extras open up a window into the artistic process. It's a fascinating insight into the evolution and inspiration for the film. The is a fitting package for one of the hidden gems of the last decade—a beautiful and poetic paean to youthful love and second chances. Matthew Lucas

DVD/Blu-ray: Nénette (2-Disc Set) (2010)
Distributor: Kino
Director(s): Nicolas Philibert
Amazon Price: $35.99
DVD/Blu-ray: Louvre City (1990)
Distributor: Kino
Director(s): Nicolas Philibert
Amazon Price: $22.49
DVD/Blu-ray: In the Land of the Deaf (1992)
Distributor: Kino
Director(s): Nicolas Philibert
Amazon Price: $22.49
DVD/Blu-ray: Every Little Thing (1997)
Distributor: Kino
Director(s): Nicolas Philibert
Amazon Price: $22.49
Films: DVDs:

May was Nicolas Philibert month, at least at Kino International, and now is a great time to either catch up or revisit his gentle and inquisitive documentaries with the release of his newest, last year's “Nénette,” as well as four others: 1990's “Louvre City,” 1992's “In the Land of the Deaf,” 1996's “Animals and More Animals” and 1997's “Every Little Thing.” Best known for his 2002 film “To Be and To Have,” Philibert has honed unobtrusive observation to a fine art. While most documentarians manipulate realities into their personal truths before handing them out, Philibert finds subjects, presents their stories with the utmost candor, and turns them into magical reflections of understated humanity. “Louvre City” is his first feature length documentary. This is reflected in its modest intentions but not its exquisite sense of detail and patience. Framed as a day-in-the-life, the film spends 84 minutes mining the alcoves of the grand museum during its renovation that included I.M Pei’s Pyramid. Like the tour you are forbidden to take, it’s a captivating behind-the-scenes look at moving, restoring and cataloguing some of the world’s most famous art. Far from the sterile notion of an art museum, this view of the Louvre is teaming with life and you can almost imagine the historical mirror image of activity when the structure acted as part fortress, part palace in the 13th century. “Animals and More Animals” is packed together with “Nénette,” but it's better paired with “Louvre City.” ‘Animals,’ shot from 1991 to 1994, documents the restoration and reopening of the Paris Natural History Museum. Like ‘Louvre,’ Philibert’s camera goes to the back rooms of the archives and the quiet workshops of restorationists preparing the freeze frame animals for their new home. This short film doesn’t linger too long on anything, instead giving fascinating glimpses into the secret lives of these stuffed animals, right down to the drawer full of false eyes. “Louvre City” and ‘Animals’ are magnetic with their gravitational appeal.

“In the Land of the Deaf” and “Every Little Thing” are two films also easily paired together, quietly investigating two separate social strata on the fringes. ‘Deaf’ plunges the viewer into the silent world of the hearing impaired and lends an attentive lens to their stories. Interviewing adults who have suffered from the worst abuses and watching children as they're taught to vocalize and hear with the assistance of aids, Philibert dispels stereotypes and exposes the minor battles and the major joys behind the shield of French Sign Language. Florent, a young boy struggling with his disability, nearly steals the show with his fragile but lively personality. It is with the same unadorned sensitivity that he visits La Borde Psychiatric Clinic as they are rehearsing for their annual open air play in “Every Little Thing.” The patients’ insecurities and honesty are put on full display, as is the respect Philibert gives to his subjects. “In the Land of the Deaf” and ‘Every Little Thing” are a little more introspective, forcing us to reflect on the human condition. Philibert has a talent of presenting subjects with no pretense, and, as a result, we never feel like we are outsiders looking in, but rather companions in the experience and the inquiry. His most recent film finds a middle ground between the natural fascination of “Louvre City” and “Animals and More Animals” and the human empathy of “In the Land of the Deaf” and “Every Little Thing.” “Nénette” is by far the most delicate documentary of these five releases and starts to reveal the man behind the curtain. Focusing on a 40 year-old orangutan that has spent 37 of those years in captivity, “Nénette” transforms into a portrait of us through the reflection of this amazing but stifled wild animal. For 70 minutes we watch Nénette and her mundane activities through the thick glass of her habitat, as schoolchildren cajole and mock and adults ponder and judge. The simplicity defies its subdued power and its ability to cast a wide net on humanity. As one might expect, “Nénette” is the best-looking DVD of the bunch, by a long shot. “Louvre City” is anamorphic, but the other three are letterbox and all have the foggy grain of a bad transfer. “In the Land of the Deaf” is marred with artifacts and even contains the cue marks of an exhibition print. It’s a sad reminder that there simply aren’t the resources to give these small films the attention they deserve. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Solaris (1981)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Andrei Tarkovsky
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Blu-ray:

Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” is a lot of things to different people. For some, it’s a sci-fi head-trip, and for others, a tale of doomed romance; still for others, it's a spiritual and literary exegesis. That in actuality it's all this and so much more speaks to its status as one of the elite masterpieces of modern cinema—in context of Tarkovsky’s own catalogue, I’d place it only behind 1979’s “Stalker.” Critics and audiences have been attempting to decode the film's many secrets and implications for decades now, and with Tarkovsky’s stated goal of creating a sci-fi epic in opposition to Stanley Kubrick’s cold, methodical masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey,” making interpretation that much more ambiguous, it’ll likely be many more until we’ve even begun to reconcile Tarkovsky’s conflation of the cerebral, spiritual, and emotional. The film’s elliptical, dreamlike structure opens up recesses in the mind of its protagonist, psychologist Kris Kelvin, who's sent to the Solaris space station to investigate curious phenomena aboard the ship and amongst its crew. From here, characters quickly fold in on themselves, in some cases materializing in accordance with a nearby planet which may or may not hold the key to the suffering inflicted on the Solaris crew, while Kelvin himself suddenly finds ramifications of his past and present disrupting his consciousness and shaping an uncertain future.

“Solaris” has been in the Criterion Collection for a while now (spine #164, to be exact), and despite having a pretty solid transfer the first time around, it was probably due for an upgrade. Skin tones on the new Blu-ray are noticeably more accurate and the picture is sharp while maintaining the same basic color palette. The one notable exception is the black-and-white sequences, which on previous DVD editions had carried a light blue tint to them. In an effort to confirm the intended look, Criterion contacted director of photographer Vadim Yusov, who did indeed shoot these sequences in traditional black-and-white. This problem has been corrected for the Blu-ray, rendering the film in the most accurate transfer yet for home video. Also new for this edition is the artwork, marking one of the few times the design of a Criterion package has changed during a DVD-to-Blu-Ray upgrade (never mind that I personally prefer the old artwork). Other than that, supplements remain the same, which is to say, excellent. Now all on one disc, we have the in-depth commentary track by authors Vida Johnson and Graham Petrie, video interviews with Yusov, star Natalya Bondarchuk, art director Mikhail Romadin, and composer Eduard Artemyev, and the excerpt of a documentary on author Stanislaw Lem. Rounding out the package is Phillipe Lopate’s essay on the film, which remains the centerpiece of the accompanying booklet, alongside director Akira Kurosawa’s short appreciation of the film. With the transfer of “Solaris” now existing in its most accurate and pristine condition and Criterion putting noticeable effort into all aspects of this reissue, here’s a Blu-ray upgrade certainly worth the double dip for those so inclined. Either way, this should be a cornerstone of any self-respecting cinephile’s digital library. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Sophia Loren: Award Collection (1963-70)
Distributor: Kino
Director(s): Vittorio De Sica
Amazon Price: $44.99
Films: Blu-ray:

When it comes to great movie stars, few hold a candle to the luminous Sophia Loren, whose fiery presence has been an asset to Italian filmmaking for decades. To celebrate this legendary actress, Kino Lorber is releasing three of the actress' greatest triumphs on Blu-ray and DVD, all directed by the renowned Vittorio De Sica (“Bicycle Thieves”). Kino has a catalogue of classic foreign and independent film to rival that of Criterion, and while the Loren collection may not have Criterion-like extras, just having these films on Blu-ray is remarkable enough.

The earliest of the films collected here is the 1964 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film, “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” a light and frothy comedy that may come as a bit of a shock to those who only know De Sica for his gritty Neorealist films like “Bicycle Thieves” and “Umberto D.” A lavish Carlo Ponti production from De Sica's commedia all'italiana period, “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” is a comedy in three acts, casting Loren and frequent co-star Marcello Mastroianni ("8 1/2") in three different unconnected episodes as three completely different couples. In the first, Loren is a street vendor convicted of illegally selling cigarettes, and who takes advantage of a law allowing for a six month maternity grace period by continually having kids to keep herself out of jail. In the second, she is a wealthy socialite having an affair with a working class stiff (Mastroianni) who begins to see her for the vain, shallow person she is. And in the third, Loren is a prostitute whose beauty bewitches a young neighbor studying to become a priest, much to the chagrin of her most regular client, as well as the young man's very traditional grandmother.

The third segment of 'Yesterday' is the strongest and most compelling. The middle one is much shorter and therefore less developed, but it makes its point in a strong and memorable manner. Loren and Mastroianni are a delight in all three, and De Sica demonstrates his considerable versatility by showing that he's just as adept at light comedy as he is at tragic social commentary. It's also easy to see why this was an easy film for Oscar voters to digest, and while it may not be the of the kind of weighty sentimentalism common of most modern foreign language winners, it's a real charmer that's hard not to like. Included with the two-disc set is the 2009 documentary, "Vittorio D.," which chronicles the director's long and varied career, offering a deeper insight into his craft.

The real jewel of the collection, however, is 1964's “Marriage Italian Style,” which garnered a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Loren, as well as yet another Best Foreign Language Film nomination for De Sica. It showcases a wacky screwball plot with Loren as the longtime mistress of aristocrat Mastroianni who's furious when she finds out he's marrying someone of higher status. So she devises a series of outlandish plans to try and win him back, including faking a life-threatening illness and claiming to have mothered a child he had no knowledge of. It's a romantic comedy every bit as delicious as something Howard Hawks might have concocted, with Loren and Mastroianni proving fine rivals for the likes of Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The only problem is that the film stock has aged very badly, and even on Blu-ray it suffers from degraded image quality marked by intense grain and scratches. It's in bad need of a restoration, and of the three films in the collection it benefits the least from the Blu-ray treatment, the sharp HD almost making the grain worse.

That is not to suggest that older films must all be rendered grain-free by Blu-ray, but in the case of “Marriage Italian Style,” the grain is a result of badly aged film stock rather than an extension of its personality. “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” and “Sunflower” both feature gorgeous transfers, with colors that pop and just the right amount of grain. It's a shame that the finest film of the bunch has aged the worst. Still, it doesn't take away from the film's inherent charms, which remains a comedic masterpiece every bit as funny and touching as it was nearly 50 years ago.

The most beautiful of the three films here, 1970's “Sunflower,” is a grand melodrama with Loren, in one of her most powerful performances, as a devoted Italian wife whose husband goes missing on the Russian front during WWII. With no news and little help, she sets out for the snow-swept fields of Russia to find her love and bring him back, as time and fate work against her. The only film of the trio that isn't a comedy, “Sunflower” is a sweeping drama that garnered an Academy Award nomination for Henry Mancini's gorgeous score. De Sica's Neorealist roots show themselves a little more here than in his comedies, but there's also a decidedly Hollywood flair. Rather than a Neorealist social commentary, “Sunflower” is a grand, even pulpy entertainment, filled with underlined emotions and tragic romance. There's an almost David Lean quality, especially in the epic battle scenes that tell the story of the Italian army's ill-fated excursion into Russia. It also features the most pristine transfer of the set, made more impressive by the vibrant high-def of the Blu-ray.  In the three films presented here, Loren plays no less than five different characters, showcasing her considerable talent in three varied films from one of cinema's supreme artists demonstrating his considerable versatility. For newcomers to De Sica's work, these films will provide an easily digestible introductions to one of the medium's most revered auteurs. For his fans, they will open up a thrilling and lesser known chapter of his work. For Loren devotees, this is a must-have collection, a consummate set of some of her strongest work. Available either as a DVD box set or as individual Blu-rays, Kino's Sophia Loren Award Collection is yet another welcome addition to the company's considerable catalogue that continues to surprise and impress. ML

• For more Home Movies, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk
Matthew Lucas

Festival Coverage - Rochester 2011

Mon, 30 May 2011 13:51:21 -0400

If art cinema is dying an insidious death in the United States, as cultural harbingers of doom relentlessly proclaim, you’d never guess it from the growth of Rochester’s premiere film festival over the last few years. In my three years since moving to the area, the 360 | 365 George Eastman House Film Festival (more elegant than its clunky name suggests) has expanded from a tiny series of predictable festival-circuiting pictures to an exhibition for some of the year’s best world cinema. Where 2010’s line-up boasted one of the earliest premieres of "Winter’s Bone," just after winning the top narrative prize at Sundance, this year’s series offers several high-profile holdovers from Cannes, Sundance, and Toronto, et al. Yes, independent theaters are closing down at a discomfiting pace, but the precipitous development of organized film culture in small cities like Rochester is reason for optimism. I enjoyed three of the four premieres I saw—no small coup—and yet I felt most thoroughly spoiled by the chance to see the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger classic A Matter of Life and Death on 35mm film (Martin Scorsese’s copy, as the introduction noted). Alternating between Technicolor and B&W, Powell and Pressburger take an agitprop-y logline and make it as formally playful and effervescent as the best of the French New Wave has to offer. As good as the other films I saw at the festival were, there was no better entertainment than this masterwork from the English auteurs.

The Woodmans / C. Scott Willis. Winner of the Audience Award for a Documentary at 2010’s Tribeca Film Festival, “The Woodmans” offers a perfect example of this festival’s purpose, bringing a small picture with a diminutive theatrical run to cinephiles outside of New York and L.A. The film patiently tracks the life and premature death of sui generis photographer Francesca Woodman, whose provocative work might be described as a meeting of Man Ray and Catherine Breillat. Rather than create a hagiographical memoir, though, director C. Scott Willis is more concerned with the influence of Francesca’s eccentric artist parents on her development, as well as their attempt to cope with her shocking suicide. Willis finds a careful balance between extracting candid information from his subjects and avoiding the exploitation that sometimes mires these kinds of stories. George and Betty Woodman prove to be intriguing subjects themselves, raising their two children with an almost oppressive emphasis on art. The film is at its best when exploring the paradoxical characteristics of making art itself—masturbatory, cathartic, selfless—and the distinction between Francesca Woodman and her often dark photography. Can common behaviors of artists be considered a potentially dangerous psychological syndrome? The question is never answered, but the film deserves credit for forcing the difficult problem into discussion.

How to Die in Oregon / Peter Richardson. Where "The Woodmans" refreshingly sidestepped the pitfalls of intimate documentary filmmaking, Peter Richardson’s "How to Die in Oregon" falls into these traps. Fresh off a Grand Jury Prize win at Sundance, the film begins in provocative and promising fashion, opening with a chilling home video of a man taking medication which will bring him a peaceful death in his own home, as his family earnestly supports him during his final moments. Undeniably arresting, the movie analyzes Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, a law that enables terminally ill people to take a solution that kills them quickly and painlessly. Richardson interviews a number of people who take advantage of the law, with a focus on Cody Curtis, an effervescent woman scarcely over fifty who’s dying of liver cancer, albeit slowly. Although the film takes great care in documenting Curtis’s personal and familial struggle with her affliction and decision to take the solution when she no longer feels functional, Richardson’s movie brushes over several of the political and moral contentions surrounding the law. Proponents stress the voluntariness of the decision, and yet one of Curtis’s motives for choosing to die with dignity is to avoid becoming a “burden” to her family. This reasoning evinces a greater, more uncomfortable problem in American society, where aging parents are increasingly marginalized and dumped off in retirement facilities by their busy families. Another sticky aspect of the law’s implications is brought up by a poor, dying man whose employer refuses to pay for potentially life-extending chemotherapy, but agrees to cover the costs of assisted self-termination. Understandably angered, the man sues and receives the chemo, but as a title card explains, dies from the cancer in the process. The queasily curt dismissal of this issue (only cursorily mentioned afterward) and the man himself gives the film a cold, self-interested feel of a work of activism posing as a sympathetic chronicle. Although never less than engaging, "How to Die in Oregon" is decidedly less conscientious.

Poetry / Lee Chang-dong. I couldn’t have expected any subsequent screenings to cause as much physical distress as 'Oregon,' but Lee Chang-dong’s "Poetry" still caught me feebly disarmed. Lee's patient observation of an aging grandmother (Jeong-hie Yun) with early Alzheimer’se and incidental senility strikes an extremely sensitive, albeit personal, nerve. Yun’s portrayal will likely draw a score of winces from anyone who’s lived around their parents long enough to helplessly observe the insidious effects of growing older. “Disease” films are one of (American) cinema’s most odious sub-genres, as they almost unfailingly depict the illness at the individual’s sake; Lee works without agenda, never checking off symptoms or mentioning the term “Alzheimer’s” beyond necessity. But perhaps I’ve been coy thus far—"Poetry" is on its surface a considerably dark tragedy, not far removed in subject matter from Lee’s last work, "Secret Sunshine." As the guardian of her grandson, Yun’s matriarch struggles to deal with both the practical and moral ramifications of a personal disaster (a phrase with multiple meanings in this context). Lee’s only misstep is the sometimes atonal integration of Yun’s familial troubles with her struggle to learn poetry—on their own, each is compelling, but their co-existence feels more calculated than it should. Yet at the end of the day, this is Yun’s film, and the viewer’s reaction to such will likely depend on the strength of their own relationship to the character (or whom it represents to them).

Meek’s Cutoff / Kelly Reichardt. Despite the reputations of the three aforementioned movies, this festival seemed to be leading up to its lone screening of "Meek’s Cutoff," which has received unparalleled exaltation since its debut at Venice last fall. On paper alone, this is understandable: Kelly Reichardt (American director behind the tiny, outstanding indies "River of Grass" and "Old Joy") directs an Oregon Trail Western with an ensemble that includes Michelle Williams, Zoe Kazan, Will Patton, Bruce Greenwood, and Paul Dano. Undeniably her most expansive film, Reichardt nonetheless works to subvert expectations from the start—opening with a long shot of three women crossing an annoyingly located river, it’s perhaps another 20 minutes before we get a decent look at anyone’s faces, let alone a close-up. Exposition likewise comes only in bits and pieces. Formally speaking, however, "Meek’s Cutoff" is breathtaking. The prologue is dizzyingly beautiful, adroitly translating the characters’ own febrile conditions. In one shot, Reichardt trains her camera on a desert landscape with the sun beating down, and what appears at first to be purely a long, meditative take is interrupted by a horse galloping through the frame. The viewer’s eyes instinctively train on the tiny figure just as as a new landscape fades in and it becomes apparent the animal is part of a separate shot entirely. It's an exquisitely shot moment among many, but the sense of dread, and the vagueness of that sense of dread, is suffocating.

Considering Reichardt’s past films have been intensely intimate, encouraging viewers to connect and sympathize with her characters (taken a bit too far in "Wendy and Lucy"), the detachment here is disappointing. Dialogue between characters is frequently muffled by the desert winds, and many of the travelers feel more like symbols than human beings. Most bothersome, though, is Greenwood’s performance as Stephen Meek, a hirsute guide whose self-confidence is instantly suspicious. When Barry Pepper showed up in "True Grit" last year, his earnestness was jarring next to the Coens’ usually cartoonish characters. Here, Greenwood’s presence is akin to plopping Bridges into "Aguirre: the Wrath of God"—his over-the-top boisterousness, although eventually tempering, is a relentless mosquito on a perfect summer day. The movie’s plot, involving three couples (one with a young child) led across the American West (in search of gold, and eventually water) by Meek, culminates in an ambiguous, possibly allegorical anti-climax, and demands to be seen again to better judge the film’s intentions. This is something I’m certainly looking forward to, but not without a fear of disillusion. It might well end up as one of my favorites of the year, but it’s too elusive for me to make any holistic critique.

• For more Festival Coverage, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Mike Maguire

Home Movies - April

Fri, 13 May 2011 11:53:48 -0400

Quality, not quantity. Home Movies comes to you a little late this month, but not without a flimsy excuse: distracted by my hometown festival in April, I saw plenty of movies, but none at home. Jordan Cronk picks up my slack, and together we offer reviews of nine Blu-rays (not a single DVD in here, people) with an unapologetic bias for must-have 1080p re-releases. Even though the most recent film in the bunch is from 1989, we nonetheless represent films from four decades, ending with a pair of Michelangelo Antonioni imports from Masters of Cinema. But the crown for the month, at least in our world, goes to the king of kings, Brian DePalma, for Criterion’s Blu-ray release of “Blow Out.” Kathie Smith

Pick of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: Blow Out (1981)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Brian DePalma
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Blu-ray:

It’s rather fascinating to consider “Blow Out's” rise from the lull between Brian DePalma’s hugely popular “Dressed to Kill” and the unfortunately influential “Scarface.” Perhaps it’s simply an outgrowth of the film’s availability in the digital age, but “Blow Out's” ascent in stature has seemed to curiously coincide with the establishment of a new generation of cinephiles, those weaned on Tarantino and the like, but also those still hung up on the riches that ‘80s genre cinema apparently yielded on a yearly basis. In 2011, “Blow Out” is pretty widely considered DePalma’s masterpiece, and I’m certainly not going to contend with the claim (though “Carlito’s Way” is still a glorious coke-high of a film).

By any measure, the film is a master class in pure technique: carefully framed and exploited tension; hypnotic visual diopters and split-screen narrative doubling; and, above all, a sound mix as detailed and effective as any crafted during the era. Above the line, however, are a handful of great performances to sell DePalma’s blatant conflation of Hitchcock and Antonioni: Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz, and an extremely effective John Lithgow play off the inquisitive, controlled paranoia of John Travolta’s lead. Along with his work in “Saturday Night Fever” and his revival role in “Pulp Fiction” (not coincidentally, Tarantino has on many occasions named “Blow Out” amongst his favorite American films, which arguably helped spark a bit of reconsideration for the film in the first place), this is Travolta’s best performance, and certainly the most identifiable, natural role he ever embodied. As a sound-effects man who unwittingly uncovers evidence in a political assassination case, Travolta is all probing curiosity and everyman charm, and as his life careens towards the film’s climatic showdown amidst Philadelphia’s Liberty Day Parade and beneath a sky painted with patriotism, he offers a palpable humanity uncommon in a lot of DePalma’s best work.

Criterion has now debuted "Blow Out" on Blu-Ray, updating MGM’s old, barebones disc that offered little worthy of praise besides availability—and now rendered totally irrelevant in light of this outstanding new package. Criterion's presents the film in a pristine, un-tampered with transfer, accentuating its natural grain while tightening contrast and more accurately rendering its color scheme. Beyond the film itself, the extras included should officially mark this as one of the year’s most essential purchases thus far. Of most interest to me personally—and to anyone remotely interested in the process, inspirations, and techniques behind the film—is the one-hour conversation between director Noah Baumbach (“Kicking and Screaming,” “The Squid and the Whale”) and DePalma, which touches on everything from casting to reception to Hitchcock. There are also lengthy and informative new interviews with Allen and cameraman Garrett Brown, a gallery of on-set photos shot during the film’s production, and the entirety of DePalma’s rare 1967 experimental feature “Murder à la Mod.” Rounding out the package is a beautifully collated booklet featuring a new essay by Michael Sragow, alongside Pauline Kael’s original review of the film. It’s an appropriately adorned release for a film that continues to gather the respect that eluded it back in the early ‘80s. Jordan Cronk

DVD/Blu-ray: Taxi Driver (1976)
Distributor: Sony
Director(s): Martin Scorsese
Amazon Price: $12.99
Film: Blu-ray:

The brilliance of “Taxi Driver” is very much the sum of its unique parts: a visionary director, a charismatic young actor, and a fearless screenwriter. But upon recent re-viewing for the umpteenth time, both on a newly discovered 35mm print and this recently released Blu-ray, the component that struck me like a ton of brass horns was Bernard Herrmann’s oxymoronic score, both graceful and apocalyptic. The snares and horns that open the film with a quick crescendo as the taxi moves through the steam-filled streets foreshadows the battle yet to come for God’s lonely man. Yet it just as quickly swoops into the sultry casual saxophone. The same dynamic occurs throughout the film, especially after the shootout—the sequence plays out in silence, then withdraws to survey the aftermath. Horns quaver somewhere between alarm and swing and a harp elegantly runs the scales. The energy built between these two opposing ambient moods is palpable, and Herrmann’s amazing career came to an end after “Taxi Driver,” literally dying in his sleep the night after finishing the score with a slate of projects scheduled (including Brian DePalma’s “Carrie”). The character of Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, so iconic in American film and subsequent culture, is creatively molded with Martin Scorsese’s keen camerawork and Herrmann’s visionary music.

35 years later, “Taxi Driver” feels like a time capsule—a New York City that I never knew. Gritty, bursting at the seams with life, both bright and dark, '70s New York comes alive through Scorsese’s color saturated lens. The tricky moral conundrum of violence begetting either a madman or a hero, however, is as relevant today as ever. The moral compass that eventually champions Travis as a hero is a reflection of his own high ground that he uses to judge the city streets. His anger and delusion, a portrait that scriptwriter Paul Schrader supposedly made of himself, portends and certainly sympathizes with an era dominated by the so-called disempowerment of the American white male. Travis purges his frustration with an explosive convulsion of violence leaving an impression of resolution, but his sociopathic tendencies merely lay dormant. The end is foreboding. His interest in romantic companionship has evaporated and he dismisses Betsy with the reset of his fare meter. And as he drives away, the film ends just as it began, sending Travis, with eyes searing, into another cycle.

Sony’s Blu-ray comes just a month after the digitally restored 35mm print hit screens in New York and LA. Although I'll always wax poetically about the theater experience first and foremost, Sony has outfitted this particular Blu-ray so that the home experience and the theater experience are equally singular. The oscillations of Herrmann’s score are rich with texture in the remastered audio and the hi-def image was as well projected on my 8-foot screen as it was in the theater from 35m, save the nostalgia and group experience. Add to that the replay value in three different commentaries: one recorded in 1986 for Criterion’s special edition laserdisc with Scorsese and Schrader; a new commentary with Schrader; and a commentary with film scholar Robert Kolker. The 1986 commentary is by far the most interesting, but it is a great companion to the more recent reflections of Schrader’s standalone musings. You also have the option to watch the film as the script roles onscreen—a very nice touch. Nine featurettes offer a full exploration of “Taxi Driver,” and more than one can digest in one sitting. But the real beauty of this release is the simplicity of its packaging. Everything is on one disc in an understated but well-designed foldout cardboard case with 12 postcards, all for just 15 bucks. I’ll let someone else critique the BD Live and Movie IQ features, but Sony has raised the bar on bang-for-your-buck Blu-rays. Everyone that has a Blu-ray player should own this release of “Taxi Driver.” And if you don’t have a player, this is a great excuse to get one. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Kes (1969)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Ken Loach
Amazon Price: $19.99
Film: Blu-ray:

DVD being only a little over a decade old at this point, it’s not uncommon for a film to still make its Region A digital debut. What’s very rare in 2011, however, is for a film to make its official bow on American home video, whether that be VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, or Blu-ray. That’s exactly how “Kes” arrives with this new Criterion edition of Ken Loach’s beloved 1969 debut. Previously only available on what is said to be a pretty inferior Region B import, “Kes” is quietly revelatory in its new incarnation on 1080p Blu-Ray. Set against a backdrop of working class Northern England, the film centers on a young boy disenchanted with school and sports and family, but who finds an unlikely connection with an indigenous kestrel which nests around the rain soaked landscapes of the boy’s hometown. Mixing a neo-realist aesthetic with coming of age dramatics pays emotional dividends for Loach, who captures moments of daily activity and intimate conversation with a documentarian’s flair. The film’s stark, foreboding horizons explode with familial and fraternal rage, and fifteen year-old David Bradley’s stunning performance as Billy grounds the dynamic at play between nature, society, and the inherent stress on the family unit. In the forty years since the release of “Kes,” Loach has carved out a solid, well respected career, but he arguably never topped his debut. Billy’s rite of passage from restless young boy to disillusioned-yet-ever-more-mature young man is as timeless a theme as the movies have given us, and “Kes” hums with a vibrancy undiminished by age or technical limitations.

Criterion’s Blu-ray smoothes out more of these limitations than many probably thought possible, revealing a rich picture hidden within “Kes's” original film stock—what once looked muddy and dank now registers as natural and detailed. To be sure, “Kes” wears its rough hewn quality like a badge of honor, but colors now pop with renewed texture while contrast tightens dramatically. It’s enough to present the film in a manner that many may find akin to a completely fresh viewing. Supplements come appropriately supplied for such an acclaimed film only now arriving on our shores, with an in-depth 45-minute interview between Loach, Bradley, producer Tony Garnett, and cinematographer Chris Menges covering a majority of the film’s production. Loach is profiled elsewhere in a 1993 “Southbank Show” episode dedicated to the director, while the entirety of his 1966 television drama “Cathy Come Home” is included in an effort to contextualize this early period of Loach’s career. Film writer Graham Fuller also provides a 12-minute interview and an essay in the film’s 20-page booklet. There’s a good chance “Kes” remains one of the major discoveries of the year for many American viewers, and while the wait can hardly be justified in this day and age, Criterion have done right by Loach and his collaborators and presented the film to us in its definitive new form. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Le cercle rouge (1970)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Jean-Pierre Melville
Amazon Price: $19.99
Film: Blu-ray:

While one hardly needs an excuse to revisit Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1970 crime masterpiece “Le cercle rouge,” Criterion have nonetheless provided a convenient opportunity to reevaluate the film’s place within the genre with their Blu-ray upgrade of a previous standard-definition DVD. A lot of what makes “Le cercle rouge” such a special film, particularly in light of where the genre has gone in the new millennium, is its uncommon patience and dedication to character development and procedure. Essentially a 140-minute heist film that gives a majority of its runtime over to conversation and strategizing, “Le cercle rouge” arrives at its centerpiece heist sequence coldly and methodically—and when it does arrive, it plays out in near total silence. By 1970, Melville was an established master of mood and tension, having crafted two of the finest films of the late ‘60s—the calculated hit man saga “Le samouraï” and the provocative French Resistance thriller “Army of Shadows”—but “Le cercle rouge” evidences a filmmaker at the height of his powers, utilizing every trick he’d picked up along the way in service of a sprawling, effortless display of technical proficiency and precise mise-en-scène. Melville’s camera rarely sits still, roaming around between his motley crew of characters—which include a hallucinating, alcoholic ex-cop, a cunning thief fresh out of prison, and an escaped con—as they move from locale to locale and set piece to set piece. It’s a grand, messy burst of inspiration—comparable in American crime cinema only to Peter Yates’s “Friends of Eddie Coyle”—from a director nearing the end of his career, who would never quite scale such heights again.

“Le cercle rouge” has been released in various editions over the years, and while I don’t own all of them to compare, based on screen captures provided by others, Criterion’s new Blu-ray looks to be the most authentic representation of the film yet—and that includes Studio Canal’s recent Region B Blu-ray. Skin tones are where you’ll see the biggest difference, and the Criterion’s appear much warmer and life-like atop the film’s dank, overcast backdrop. You also get a little more picture on all four sides of the frame compared to a lot of the other versions, and a thick, very ‘70s-like blanket of grain enveloping the picture, marking the new Criterion as (probably) the best rendering of the print currently available. Supplements are duplicated from the original DVD: lengthy video interviews with Rui Nogueria, author of “Melville On Melville,” and assistant director Bernard Stora; excerpts from a program titled "Cinéastes de notres temps: 'Jean-Pierre Melville;'" and original on-set interviews with Melville and his mostly male cast. There are also a couple of trailers, one for the film’s original release and one for the 2003 re-release, in addition to a booklet with excepts from the aforementioned “Melville On Melville,” essays by Michael Sragow and Chris Fujiwara, a transcribed interview with composer Eric Demarsan, and an appreciation by director John Woo. I don’t always fully endorse re-buying these Criterion Blu-rays for those who already own the original discs, but the transfer advances to such a nice degree here that it all but negates the previous edition. Regardless, this is a film you shouldn’t be without, and Criterion has been good enough to remind us of that fact once again. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: El Topo (1970)
Distributor: Anchor Bay
Director(s): Alejandro Jodorowsky
Amazon Price: $27.99
DVD/Blu-ray: The Holy Mountain (1973)
Distributor: Anchor Bay
Director(s): Alejandro Jodorowsky
Amazon Price: $29.99
Film: Blu-ray:
Film: Blu-ray:

In their book on the cult film phenomenon, “Midnight Movies,” Jonathan Rosenbaum and J. Hoberman dedicate an entire chapter to director Alejandro Jodorowsky and his surrealistic, iconography-skewering opus “El Topo.” Hoberman eventually describes the film as “a spiritual initiation (if not a kind of Dionysian bloodbath), speaking at once to the counterculture’s love of the arcane and its collective paranoia.” This was in 1983, just thirteen years after the film had become one of the defining midnight movie attractions of its time. Twenty years on and I’m still not sure we have, as a people or an audience, caught up with “El Topo” or what Hoberman’s words essentially imply. In a sense, “El Topo,” is both visual representation and ideological encapsulation of an entire movement. It’s one of the boldest, most extreme outgrowths of the counterculture movement of the ‘60s, and a film Jodorowsky has more or less expanded on—both thematically and visually—in all his subsequent work. A western with a flair for the grotesque, “El Topo” follows the title character (played by Jodorowsky himself) on a spiritual journey across a scorched-earth landscape, upending and offending nearly every race, religion, and creed along the way. Remarkably, Jodorowsky would bring even more ambition (and even less tact) to his follow-up, “The Holy Mountain,” and while the film has a little more trouble sustaining momentum—partly due its more concentrated thematic purview—it’s arguably just as dedicated and brave a statement.

Both films arrive on Blu-ray from Anchor Bay in upgraded 1080p editions with the exact same features as their DVD counterparts. Image improves to a nice degree, though the picture can look unnaturally smooth in some cases. On the other hand, colors are rich and probably more accurate, and the 5.1 audio mix is impressively handled. As for the existing extras, the commentary tracks by Jodorowsky on both films are essential, and further proof this guy knew exactly what he was attempting to accomplish with every inflammatory image and accusatory conceit. Across the two discs (packaged and sold separately) you’ll find deleted scenes, a brief Jodorowsky interview, and his thoughts on tarot cards and superstitions in a quick video feature. Both films are cornerstones of the cult film canon, but sold separately may not be the best buy. I’m fairly certain Anchor Bay will get around the reissuing their “Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky” boxset in Blu-ray format in the near future—which also includes his debut film, “Fando y Lis,” along with the soundtrack to each—marking this as perhaps incentive enough to hold off for now. For many, however, “El Topo” will be all the Jodorowsky they need (or can handle), so your best bet is to proceed according to your enthusiasm for provocative, eye-searing imagery of the at once radical and ridiculous. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Sweetie (1989)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Jane Campion
Amazon Price: $27.99
Film: Blu-ray:

“It’s Sweetie. She’s up a tree.” That’s just one of the many funny but bitter lines in Jane Campion’s debut. “Sweetie” was a remarkable film to my eyes in 1989, and, after 22 years of accumulating competing moving images, “Sweetie” still feels fresh and uncompromising. Each frame is purposeful and each color plays a part in a tightly orchestrated visual package that veers toward experimentation. This is certainly one of the beauties of “Sweetie”—it seems to function on its own rules both in style and narrative. Call it caviler artistry, but near the end of the commentary on the Blu-ray, Campion claims that “Sweetie” is her favorite because of its innocence, something that she feels she can never go back to as a filmmaker. Campion has since toned down the overt style, but she continues to carry the torch in exploring the social and sexual landscapes of women. In “Sweetie,” we get portraits of three women who, although they share the impenetrable bond of genetic code (two sisters and their mother), are otherwise in completely different places of independence emotionally. Kay is at a spiritual crossroads. Vexed by trees and taunted by fate; she is the quintessential introvert: quiet, deadpan and, as her boyfriend Louie states, abnormal. Her sister Dawn, contradictorily nicknamed Sweetie, is a much more carnal creature. Although an adult, Sweetie engages with the physical world with juvenile abandon. Sweetie excels at corporeal expression, but little else. The person that connects these two sisters is their independently minded mother, who late in life has decided to leave her husband and experience life more freely. This nuclear family, including Sweetie and Kay’s dad, have a lifetime of bitterness, happiness, anger and love that seems to be simmering for either a resolution or calamity.

Campion and co-writer Gerard Lee give us both. “Sweetie” magically combines burning humor and stark tragedy. Relationships, both old and new, are built from a foundation of disconnect and miles of psychological isolation. Kay and Louis struggle to transform their metaphysical relationship into something that is equally physical. It’s not so ironic that this is when Sweetie enters the picture, breaking into her sister’s house for an uninvited visit and simultaneously highlighting the pleasures of the flesh. But right on Sweetie’s heals is their father, who shows up, despondent, because his wife is off cooking meals for a bunch of Jackaroos. Emotions run deep and Campion filters their expression through each flawed but very human character: the thoughtfulness of Kay, the selfishness Sweetie and the confusion of their father. Much like the character of Sweetie, actress Genevieve Lemon steals nearly every scene with unpredictable violence and frivolity while never feeling like a construct. It is certainly through the chaos that Kay and Louis find their peace. Criterion’s new Blu-ray replicates the DVD they released 4 years ago in beautiful 1080p. It ups the visual ante and includes all the extras that made the DVD release so compelling in 2006—a 22-minute conversation with lead actresses Genevieve Lemon and Karen Colston, commentary with Campion, co-writer Gerard Lee and cinematographer Sally Bongers, and three student films by Campion. Considering the visual gymnastics of “Sweetie,” this is a very worthy upgrade. KS

Import of the Month
DVD/Blu-ray: La signora senza camelie (1953)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema (Region B)
Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni
Amazon Price: £14.93
DVD/Blu-ray: Le amiche (1953)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema (Region B)
Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni
Amazon Price: £14.93
Film: Blu-ray:
Film: Blu-ray:

When a great director passes away, the inevitable cavalcade of opinion emerges almost instantly. In the case of Michelangelo Antonioni, who died four years ago, the discussions, both formal and casual, was nearly as divisive as the 1960 screening of “L’avventura” at the Cannes Film Festival. Detractors and supporters alike focused on his crown jewels from the 1960s (including “L’avventura,” “Le notte,” “L’eclisse,” “Red Desert,” and “Blow Up”) as either tedious art film fodder or elegant existential portraits. Left out of the prevailing conversation were Antonioni’s earlier films, more about character and place than theory and style. Because these are not the films that Antonioni is known for, most are rarely screened, and unavailable. But things are changing in a big way. In the US, Raro Video released 1952's “I vinti” (“The Vanquished”) in March and in the UK, Masters of Cinema gives the grand treatment to 1953's “La signora senza camelie” (“Camille Without Camellias”) and 1955's “Le amiche” (“The Girl Friends”), leaving us waiting for only his debut, 1950's “Cronaca di un amore” (“Story of a Love Affair”). The two Masters of Cinema releases are more than a person could ask for, region coding notwithstanding; each comes fully restored in two-disc duel format DVD/Blu-ray sets with chunky booklets offering invaluable contextual essays. These two features— Antonioni’s third and forth, respectively—are very much companion pieces, but they're also distinct milestones to the linage of quintessential Antonioni like “L’avventura.” I'd love to see both films get the same treatment in the US, but their fully subtitled UK availability nonetheless does worlds to widen the discussion.

Antonioni turns his dramatic lens on the Italian film industry in “La signora senza camelie” (its pessimistic view, however, could easy translate to Hollywood). Clara is a young shop clerk who becomes an overnight success as an actress. Little more than a pretty face fans and producers, Clara is instantly jettisoned into roles of a tawdry variety that take advantage of her beauty. As a swirl of fame and attention surrounds her, the handsome Gianni appears, poised to sweep her off her feet. But in a strange turn of events, Gianni manipulates her into a shotgun wedding and turns into an overbearing husband who quashes her career by demanding she take only “serious” roles. Without the talent or the audience for such roles, Clara’s career and marriage quickly go up in flames. Antonioni approaches the subject of a fallen star without scandal, and instead offers what seems a behind-the-scenes look at the film industry. Sets resemble the shells of bombed out cities, full of rubble, with a small hive of activity that has little structure to its chaos. There’s an edge of neo-realism under the glamorous, melodramatic façade, echoed in Clara’s humble beginnings and her ultimate ruin. (It's worth noting that Antonioni himself felt Clara was miscast, deeming Lucia Bosè too glamorous. He had orignally wanted Gina Lollobrigida or Sophia Loren.) Clara is the naïve predecessor to the heroines that would populate his later films; she is on the cusp of realizing and wanting her independence from a male-dominated world. When Gianni reassures Clara with the proclamation, “I’ve never failed you,” the audience can already see that the reality is quite the opposite.

It’s extraordinary that only two years later, Antonioni’s next film, “Le Amiche,” would be dominated by the colorful independent personalities of five women. The men, in this case, serve as banal window dressings, wavering between patronization and confidence. The focus is placed on Clelia, recently relocated from Rome to Torino to open a dress shop. Merely by chance, she's inducted into a circle of friends, setting off a series of random social activities. “Le Amiche” is a stunner. The action is allowed to pleasantly drift almost in spite of a narrative thread that involves a failed and successful suicide. The vivid sketches of the quintet vibrate with so much life the narrative thrust hardly matters. The struggles of a modern woman are capped off with striking camerawork where Antonioni starts to extend the length of his shot. This is especially true during a boisterous get-together where unique compositions and conflicting personalities become a kind of magical combination in a very small apartment. The mood is purposefully deflated when a boyfriend arrives at the women’s social, stating, “Sometimes I wonder if women understand what being a man really is. You lack internal life.” Antonioni is clear in pointing out what the men in the film do not see: women daring enough to express their internal lives. Loosely based on the novella “Tra done sole” by Cesare Pavese, “Le amiche” won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1955. In retrospect, it is thematically and stylistically the film that acted as a springboard for Antonioni’s most canonized work. “Le amiche” has a DVD release in the US, but it can’t hold a candle to this Masters of Cinema Blu-ray. KS

• For more Home Movies, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Directrospective #09 - Terrence Malick

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:31:29 -0400

The films of Terrence Malick are so often discussed in terms outside the strictly cinematic—his work is “philosophical,” “poetic,” “painterly,” even “operatic”—that the various ways in which they speak volumes about the nature of the cinema itself tend to go unacknowledged. It’s true, of course, that Malick's cinema is fundamentally philosophical, in much the same way Sartre's Age of Reason might be classified as a “philosophical novel.” But the same could be said for quite a few of Malick's aging contemporaries—Godard, Rivette, Kiarostami, to name just a few—even if, unlike Malick, they lack the formal (and widely publicized) background in philosophy which no doubt incites this enduring comparison. Still, recasting Malick’s filmmaking practice as some kind of abstract philosophical didacticism is a hugely problematic approach, not only because it neglects the strong emotional undercurrents coursing through each of his four features, but also, significantly, because it wrongly assumes that philosophical thought and cinematic practice are mutually exclusive.

This is the strongest sense in which Malick presents himself as a philosophically engaged artist: his films continually underline the metaphysical, and therefore philosophical, basis of the cinema in general. Further elaborating on the idea that Malick's films “contain a metaphysical vision of the world,” Marc Furstenau and Leslie McAvoy write in “Terrence Malick’s Heideggerian Cinema” that Malick “must be understood to be performing a valuable gesture of clarification.” Across his four features—1973's ”Badlands,” 1978's “Days of Heaven,” 1998's “The Thin Red Line,” and 2005's “The New World,” with a fifth, “The Tree of Life,” soon to be released—Malick has drastically reconfigured the fundamental grammar of the cinema, reshaping the medium’s traditional forms and conventions to more precisely articulate his ideas about the nature of life, our world, and the cinema itself.

Each of Malick's films are not without their faults. But the standard language of criticism fails to account for the strong sense in which the breadth and resonance of Malick’s ideas transcend their specific means of expression. Even an imperfect Malick film is worth ten less ambitious but more coherent or technically well-executed Hollywood movies. I think it will be easier, then, in looking back on each of Malick’s four films—a project taken on in an anticipation of his forthcoming, a final review of which this retrospective will lead toward—to avoid lingering on their minor failures, and to focus attention instead on what these films have to tell us about the world in which we live, and the significance of the ways in which they go about saying it. That Malick is so notoriously reticent when it comes to providing details of his own intentions is probably for the best in this regard; this body of work is so rich in meaning that to adhere too faithfully to what Malick himself may have intended would be to impose unnecessary boundaries. We’ll allow meaning, instead, to vie with itself, a conflict at the heart of the nature of cinema. Whose voice is this that speaks through these films? It’s better we not know for sure.

Feature Retrospective: [Reviews of Malick’s first four films will be posted over the next few weeks, leading to a review of his new film, “The Tree of Life,” near its theatrical release at the end of May.] “Badlands” (1973); “Days of Heaven” (1978); “The Thin Red Line” (1998); “The New World” (2005); and “The Tree of Life” (2011).

• For more Directrospectives, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Calum Marsh

Double Take #2

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:21:20 -0400

In Double Take, one of our writers finds a common thread in discussing two albums or films together. On the occasion of Kelley Reichardt’s new revisionist western “Meek’s Cutoff”—an InRO Gold selection as of today—Double Take #2 finds Staff Writer Ranylt Richildis exploring two late-Aughts revisionist westerns of the ‘avenging-angel’ subgenre, and relating each to their more established forebears.

The spectre of death is as present in the Western genre as leather, horses and guns, and it nearly always comes in the form of homicide. Characters don’t die by accident or illness—if you own a ranch or a saloon in the classic American West, or if you wear a badge or ride where the wind takes you, expect to meet your maker with the aid of a bullet. Death at the hands of another is inscribed onto every plot and every finale, a solution to treachery and wrongdoing of all stripes, an art practiced by the good and the bad. This genre’s images of death are loud, dusty and sudden, but they aren’t always as cut and dry as a gunshot at high noon. In some Westerns, death isn’t a full stop but a beginning, of sorts. The leather and the dust lose materiality and give way to the supernatural, while the landscape onscreen reveals itself to be a halfway space between the hard world and the afterlife, where matter itself is doubtful, and where characters set for a time to sort through their differences. Which almost always amounts to questions of honor and revenge.

Death can be more than a collapse to the ground or a tombstone on the outskirts of town. It can be even more metaphorically animated than the sight of Django dragging his own coffin through the dirt. In some Westerns, death returns to complete his unfinished business, or to lend a helping hand—it looks like Clint Eastwood but it’s really an avenger bent on killing his own killers or protecting the innocent. The righteous supernatural limes classic Westerns like “High Plains Drifter” and “Pale Rider” with an arcane gleam that tightens our skins, as if a ghost had brushed us by. The horses, dust and leather exist in the service of something more than order or Manifest Destiny; the seeker’s quest for revenge is so urgent that it transcends the laws of nature. Two recent Westerns have hitched their wagons to the arcana of “High Plains Drifter” and veered into the occult; the occult is in fact what lifts David Von Ancken’s 2007 “Seraphim Falls” and Tommy Lee Jones’s 2005 “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” above the sum of their workaday parts. Though neither measures up to better films like “The Proposition” and “There Will Be Blood,” they’re notable for being revisionist Westerns of a very interesting kind, ones that use the avenging-angel trope with ease, even aplomb. (They’re certainly no worse than their Eastwood predecessors which, in the clear light of the Aughts, fall short of the work of Leone, Ford or Siegel, never mind Hillcoat or Anderson.)

If you know your Westerns and your Judeo-Christian lore, you’ll anticipate the uncanny in “Seraphim Falls” the moment you read the title. The undead are bound to appear, and the viewer’s only task is figuring out which of the two leads is the fallen man-angel driven back to earth by honor, and burning for vengeance. The scene opens on Nevada’s Ruby Mountain, where a man (Pierce Brosnan) is being pursued by a posse led by Carver (Liam Neeson). It’s some time before we learn why Carver wants revenge, but his prey is evidently a survivor who can overcome bullet wounds and icy torrents. Over the course of the movie, the landscape shifts from wintry mountains to thermal sand flats; as the topography morphs, so do our protagonist/antagonist convictions. Carver, who was earmarked as the villain at movie’s start—all dark colors and looming threat—is revealed to be the husband wronged, while our supposed hero, Gideon, lives up to his biblical name as a destroyer (he burned down Carver’s home and killed his family while rooting out rebels on Gen. Sherman’s orders). Good and Bad are collapsed poles, something rare in avenging-angel Westerns: Gideon is an accidental villain, at worst, who’s thirsty for understanding if not redemption, and Carver is motivated by honor rather than bloodlust—a passably positive vigilante.

“Seraphim Falls” lacks a light touch symbolically and emotionally. It gives into sentiment and indulges in clichéd shorthand, which a stronger script would have avoided (e.g. the tired visitor/boy dynamic in the ranch house where Gideon recovers from his wounds). This isn’t a revisionist Western that aims to defy or even subvert old, mottled signatures, and it tips into the laughable at times. It also worships Jarmusch’s “Dead Man” in its third act, down to the top-hatted native elder and a canted, surreal tone. But that tone, to be fair, is appropriate to a narrative about one or possibly two dead men resolving their conflict in limbo. We aren’t precisely sure, after all, that Carver is an occult force; we only know that we last saw him being arrested for the capital crime of treason, and that he fades from the landscape in the final shot (along with Gideon, who may have died in that icy river), the same way Eastwood did at the end of “High Plains Drifter.” We know he falls asleep to violent flashbacks like Eastwood’s drifter did, jarred by visions of those same events that triggered a need for revenge forceful enough to put off the grave. We know he inhabits a land of lost souls: bandits, mercenaries, chain-gangs, religious zealots, even a pickpocket with a cherubic face. And we know—at least we’re pretty sure—that the devil herself comes calling in the form of a nostrum seller in a red dress. Anjelica Huston’s Madame Louise draws her caravan alongside each man as they struggle through the desert on their way to the final showdown. She takes what’s left of their ‘lives’—water, horse—and presses guns and bullets into their hands. She sees the contest through, in other words, in a surreal scene that compensates for the movie’s earlier flaws and punctuates its supernatural work with a satisfying death rattle.

If “Seraphim Falls” is a mediocre entry into the Western genre as a whole, it’s a welcome addition to the avenging-angel subgenre. Likewise, “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” attends lovingly to its main trope. Taken as a whole, it’s a derivate vanity project with a contrived Guillermo Arriaga script (the same writer who gave us the self-important “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams” and “Babel”). But taken as an avenging-angel study, it works well enough (and, to be fair, the Arriaga gaga is toned down in Jones’s hands). The wronged man in question rides on the shoulders of his avenger, this time, but ‘Three Burials’ is very much about the dead who won’t stay dead until their honor is satisfied. Melquiades Estrada (Julio César Cedillo), who’s died at least twice, refuses to stay buried and tags along, “Weekend at Bernie’s”-style, on a horseback trek from Texas to Mexico. In his (second?) life, he was a cowboy who worked on Pete Perkins’s (Jones) ranch and forged a close friendship with his employer. When he’s accidentally shot by a nervous border-patrol rookie (Barry Pepper), his corpse is dumped in the desert (the first burial), processed by the state (the second burial), then exhumed by Perkins and his killer and hauled, without dignity, to his beloved Jiminez—his final resting place. The burial triptych is a bit smug and Arriaga’s study of US/Mexican border tensions a bit pandering, but the former has metaphorical purpose within the supernatural Western subgenre, and the latter provides the action with a starting point.

Pepper’s Mike Norton is a brutal man: an inconsiderate lover and a bully-authority who breaks immigrants’ noses. Arriaga’s script is unforgiving when it comes to portraying the bone-crunching bigotry of Texas law, and it merges in interesting ways with Jones’s romanticized good-old-boys, bathed in fond light and dulcet cadences. Perkins, who sees the humanity in illegal immigrants, is a foil to Norton, who needs to take an extended journey in order to discover the same. When the local sheriff (Dwight Yoakam) refuses to investigate Estrada’s murder, Perkins takes the law into his own hands as blithely as the Man With No Name; he’d once promised his friend that he’d see to it Mel was buried in Jiminez. Since Mel isn’t around to avenge his own death—at least directly—Perkins steps in: he pressgangs Norton into helping him bear his friend’s corpse down south, using fists and a whole lot of rope to shock the younger man into submission.

'Three Burials' is a watchable film primarily for the performances; Jones is his typically subdued self, while Pepper’s chewier style is just angular enough to convince. The friendship between Perkins and Mel (seen mostly in flashback) is tender and the world around them—a precinct of trailer-homes, diners, and soap operas—mostly avoids the off-kilter feel of Ancken’s last act. Jones, pinging us with all the standard Western cues, tries to make his landscape speak; he’s no Malick or even a Coen Brother, but he services the story and mood well enough. He attempts (with the help of Arriaga) to plug a few tufts of the absurd into the proceedings, which will work for some viewers and fail for others (though that harrowing shot of a packhorse tipping off the side of a canyon path is a universal crowd-pleaser—like Gideon leaping out of the stomach of a dead horse in the other film). Jones knows what trope he’s dealing with here, and if the viewer misses the supernatural prompts he posts along the way, we cross them head-on in the last act, when an old photo and the Jiminez locals suggest Mel died years ago.

Arriaga and Jones have jettisoned the avenging angel into a broader sphere. Where Eastwood and Neeson strain to restore the honor of a single man or, at most, a single clan of gold-miners, the character of Mel (liminal as he is) deploys Perkins to restore the honor of an entire people. When Mel is buried in Jiminez by a remorseful, re-educated Norton, satisfaction is returned for every migrant and every American of Hispanic descent who was ever wronged by a slur. Norton’s epiphany is meant to be understood in macrocosm, as is Jones’s privileged compassion. It’s a very contemporary, very germane revision of the avenging-angel sub subgenre—it held my interest as a text, at least, in the same way that “Seraphim Falls” did. Despite both films’ tendencies to mainstream sentiment and technique, Ancken and Jones update their subgenre with reverence and even wisdom. 'Three Burials' and “Seraphim Falls” form an indispensable double-bill, in fact, for those asking themselves what’s become of the Pale Rider.

• For more Double Takes, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Ranylt Richildis

Home Movies - March

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:38:05 -0400

Although Eclipse wins the pick of the month with their top-notch release of Mikio Naruse’s silent films and Criterion continually knocks our socks off, it's hard not to proclaim March 'The Month of Raro Video': Raro, an arthouse distributor not unlike Criterion, in Italy, landed on these shores this month to start unloading titles they've been specializing in for years elsewhere. Exploring the four films of Raro’s “Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection” was like discovering a whole new world that existed only in pastiche and appropriation; and at a cool 25 bucks, there is simply no reason not to own this four DVD set. On the other side of the proverbial coin, Raro also released Frederico Fellini’s obscure and esoteric made-for-TV ‘documentary’ “The Clowns.” Part novelty and part self-critic, “The Clowns” oddly brought a new perspective to Jacques Rivette’s most recent film, “Around a Small Mountain,” also out this month from Cinema Guild. Also on Raro’s recent roster, but not reviewed here: Antonioni’s “The Vanquished” and Francesco Barilli’s suspense-thriller “The Perfume of the Lady in Black.” If March is any indicator, Raro is one to watch. Kathie Smith

Pick of the Month

DVD/Blu-ray: ‘Silent Naruse’ (1931-34)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Mikio Naruse
Amazon Price: $30.99

By now, everyone knows Mikio Naruse is the unsung master of classic Japanese cinema. A contemporary of Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, Naruse was only discovered by Western audiences in the 1980s, but his so-called ‘discovery’ was, even then, limited—in fact, even today his name will register more familiarity than his films. Only “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs,” a masterpiece by any definition, has been given a DVD release in the U.S. (the UK has done a slightly better job of making his films available in recent years thanks to BFI and Masters of Cinema.) But in March, Criterion, under their Eclipse label, took one small step for home distribution, but one giant step for cinephilia with the indispensable release of Naruse’s five surviving silent films. “Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse” powerfully defines his beginnings at Shochiku Studios with one short (1931's “Flunky, Work Hard”) and four features (1931's “No Blood Relation”; 1933's “Apart from You” and “Every-Night Dreams”; and 1934's “Street Without End”). Despite the fact that Naruse earned a name for himself with his silent films at Shochiku, he lacked the heightened drama and sublime optimism of his colleagues, Ozu, Heinosuke Gosho and Hiroshi Shimizu. Naruse’s films were instead very earthbound ponderings of social ills and their somber effects, especially on working-class women. These themes followed him throughout his career, and these heart-wrenching dramas filled with simple lives and filmed with exquisite craft was something Naruse honed to perfection.

These early films are by no means diamonds in the rough or slight works of a future master; even the short, the 28-minute “Flunky, Work Hard,” packs an emotional punch despite some uncharacteristic physical comedy. That film focuses on a down-on-his-luck insurance agent and his rebellious fight-prone young son. The father won’t win any awards for his ability to carry out responsibilities, but times are very tight for his family and he's desperate to close an insurance deal for a large and wealthy family. When tragedy strikes, Naruse unloads a powerful visual montage that carries the weight of the situation. ‘Flunky’ is an uncomplicated film with complicated emotional scenarios, and is unique, at least among the films of Naruse’s I’ve seen, for having a male lead. “No Blood Relation,” made the same year, literally tosses out the main male figure by throwing him in jail. The film instead focuses on the emotional hierarchy among three females: a young daughter, an estranged mother, a dedicated stepmother and pedigree-obsessed grandmother. A successful actress returns to Japan longing to connect with the daughter she abandoned six years before, but much to her surprise, her daughter’s father has married a woman who has become a devoted mother to the daughter. It's a struggle of entitlement between nature and nurture, and inevitably between classes. Strikingly, Naruse does not make either woman a villain, but only portrays them as two people who had to make tough decisions in a society where their choices were already limited by their gender. “No Blood Relation” feels very contemporary, but only because nothing is idealized for the camera.

The first two films in the set have a natural but light ambience, especially in their conclusions. The same could not be said for the last three films in the set, made in 1933 and '34, respectively; glimmers of hope are present only as counterpoint to open-ended and melancholic resolutions for characters betrayed by life. The two single mothers of “Apart from You” and “Every-Night Dreams” sacrifice their happiness in obligatory professions as a geisha and a bar hostess, respectively, to provide for their children. Omitsu in “Every-Night Dreams” crackles with a vivacious personality in spite of her desperate circumstances; her misery and exhaustion are apparent in between the jokes and good humor, so when her son’s father shows up for a second chance, his inability to help her becomes palpably painful. She is warned by her neighbor not to be pigheaded, that it will land her "in an early grave.” But the truth is quite the opposite—those unwilling to fight for themselves are the ones who won’t survive. Omitsu will survive, but not without the weight of bitterness, and that the film has no problem conveying to the audience. Conversely, in “Apart from You” the source of Kikue’s heartache is her teenage son, Yoshio, who resents his mother for being a geisha. Yoshio falls in with a gang of thugs but also becomes smitten with one of his mother’s younger colleagues. Through this ill-fated love, he learns that women, like his mother, often don’t have many choices or options in the world. Naruse’s portrayal of geisha life is unromantic and full of life; one sequence in particular cuts between a frantic fight among lovers and a freewheeling romp of two men and four geishas. Kikue’s son eventually recognizes his mother’s sacrifice, but not without his own.

“Street Without End,” Naruse’s swan song at Shochiku, smothers you with the heartbreak of Sugiko, a free-spirited working-class girl. Sugiko is filled with the modest dreams of a happy life, but life has other plans for her. Through a series of accidents and misunderstandings, she and her sweetheart end up choosing marriages of financial convenience. Sugiko’s eventual husband is a gentle man from a wealthy family who married Sugiko, a poor waitress, against his mother and sister’s wishes. Sugiko’s life with an overbearing mother-in-law, a sneering sister-in-law and a defeated husband becomes an oppressive slow burn, written clearly on her face. Sugiko, a Naruse heroine through and through, is a vessel of emotion and a well of strength, played with heightened restraint from Setsuko Shinobu. At one point in the film, she pleads for her husband to be strong, but his resignation is all he has left. In the end, Sugiko acts with a resolve that is larger than the will of a cruel world. Naruse opens and closes “Street Without End” with Tokyo street scenes, implying that he wasn’t interested in scripting real life, but attempting to portray it.

“Street Without End” was Naruse’s last silent film and his last at Shochiku before settling at Toho for the remainder of his career. It's an unsettling work that exemplifies a young 29 year-old director’s ability for subdued brilliance, as do the other four films in the set to some degree or another. Robin Holcomb and Wayne Horvitz contribute new scores for each film, and they work quite well at not overpowering the image, but still perhaps dictate emotion too much. I ended up watching all five without the scores and simply enjoyed the images and acting stripped to their essentials. As with all Eclipse releases, the DVDs are otherwise barebones: Informative notes line the inside of each jacket, with a more extensive two page leaf in the first DVD. The most important thing is that these films are appearing for the first time on DVD, and this release is nothing short of invaluable. In my optimistic mind’s eye, I can almost see the curtain of Naruse’s re-rediscovery being opened. Here’s hoping that Criterion decides to throw that curtain wide open. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: ‘Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection’ (1972-76)
Distributor: Raro Video
Director(s): Fernando Di Leo
Amazon Price: $24.99

Raro Video, a specialty label in Italy, makes its big debut in the U.S. distribution market this month with a showcase four-disc set from Italian director Fernando Di Leo. Although Di Leo cut his teeth scripting westerns for his buddy Sergio Leone, he eventually made a name for himself as a director in the erstwhile genre of gritty crime noir with a style that reverberated far beyond his modest means and limited reach. Raro’s “Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection” includes four films: 1972's “Caliber 9,” and “The Italian Connection”; 1973's “The Boss”; and 1976's “Rulers of the City,” previously released as “Mister Scarface.” All four have received scant attention in the US, but if you had walked into Video Archives in LA in the mid-'80s and a certain Quentin Tarantino was working there, he would have recommended them. “The Italian Connection” famously served as inspiration for “Pulp Fiction,” and Raro certainly didn’t miss a chance to put one of Tarantino’s many exalting quotes about Di Leo and his films right on the front of the box. Di Leo’s influence, however, was much broader and symbiotic in the development of an international style of hard-boiled yet sympathetic thugs so prevalent in the 1970s.

“Caliber 9,” the first installment of what would become his Milieu Trilogy, quickly demonstrates that the Italians were creative in killing far before Roberto Saviano wrote and Matteo Garrone directed “Gomorrah.” Within the first five minutes, three double-crossers are ceremoniously taken out of the city, tied together and blown up with a dozen sticks of dynamite. One might wonder why they go to all the trouble to do something they could have easily done with the pistols they so readily brandish, but this is the stuff Di Leo’s films are made of. Someone has stolen $300,000 from mob kingpin, the “Americano,” and Ugo (played solid as a rock by Gastone Moschin) is suspected of pulling an inside job. Ugo maintains his innocence, but no one believes him. The Americano and his league of roughians are committed to staying on Ugo’s heels, watching his every move until he coughs up the cash. Ugo is a bulldog with a heart of gold who turns out to be much smarter than he looks, but maybe not as smart as his go-go dancing girlfriend. “Caliber 9” is rife with charisma, violence and twists amplified by a saucy soundtrack by Luis Enriquez Bacalov. “The Italian Connection,” second in the Milieu Trilogy, follows a similar formula but is anchored by Mario Adorf, who plays Luca, a small-time pimp duped for nicking a shipment of heroine headed to NYC. Two hitmen (ala Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega of “Pulp Fiction”) are sent to settle the score with Luca, but Luca is more elusive than expected; he quickly gets pushed to the edge and turns into a man with nothing to lose. Luca's rage fuels an explosive and unbelievable chase where he, clinging to the front of a van, head-butts the windshield to get at the driver. The sequence is inventive yet visceral enough that you feel the exhaustion of the pursuer and the pursued. The grand finale in a junkyard has Luca finishing off his nemesis, once again, not with the simplicity of a pistol, but by putting him in the claws of a crane and hoisting him up in the air.

“The Boss” and “Rulers of the City” feel slight compared to the first two films in the set, but that by no means diminishes their irresistible entertainment. “The Boss” caps off the Milieu Trilogy with Henry Silva in the lead as a silent but deadly middleman. He shows us what a rocket launcher can do from a projection booth, but he also shows us what a whirlpool of revenge looks like when the water runs dry. Silva doesn’t have the personality of Moschin and Adorf from the first two films but is compelling in his own way. The same could be said for Harry Baer, the fleet-footed young lead in “Rulers of the City.” Baer is David and Jack Palance is Goliath in the film’s gangland power play. “Rulers of the City” also ends on an unusually jovial note, at least compared to the other three films in the Milieu Trilogy.

The set is housed in a nicely designed box with DVDs in slim cases similar to the Eclipse sets. But unlike the Eclipse sets, Raro provides ample supplements with each movie. Every film is accompanied by an original documentary with plenty of interviews with Di Leo himself taken only a year before he died. He’s an incredibly modest director who readily admits that he doesn’t like to work. He is quick to mention Jean-Pierre Melville as a strong influence, but he is just as quick to admit that his films don’t even come close to being as good as Melville’s. Every film includes an English dub and an Italian dub. I chose the Italian dub most of the time because it seemed a little more authentic than the English. All four films look very good and have obviously been restored with the best available means and the best available materials. That being said, only three of the four films are anamorphic. “Rulers of the City” is non-anamorphic but is still a cut above the DVD available in the US under the title “Mister Scarface.” The set itself is something to get very excited about, and signals more good things to come from Raro. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Yi Yi: A One and a Two (2000)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Edward Yang
Amazon Price: $28.99

As we continue to wait patiently for Criterion to announce the addition of the immortal “A Brighter Summer Day” to the collection, they’ve partially sated Edward Yang diehards with this Blu-ray update of the Taiwanese new-wave pioneer’s final film—and final masterpiece—“Yi Yi: A One and a Two.” Yang would sadly pass away only six years after the release of this film, and despite not being an intended career capstone, "Yi Yi" manages to nevertheless represent a full reconciliation of the director’s many preoccupations—whether marked by the presence of an ever-persevering family unit, the precocity of youth, or the vital maturation of said generation, Yang’s unparalleled sympathy with the contemporary middle class is infused into every inch of this three-hour swan song. Charting the lives of an extended family over the course of a single year, Yang weaves characters and stories with the ease of Altman and the intimacy of Ozu. In fact, this may be the most intimate epic of the last decade-plus, with each carefully drawn character imbued with enough personality and dramatic interests to potentially sustain their own individual film. "Yi Yi's" narrative sprawls forth from this humanity, depicting life in all its inherent joy and tragedy, and all this without ever once approaching melodrama. This restraint yields maximum emotional impact at carefully spotted intervals—the most devastating being the film’s unforgettable final image as the family’s young son Yang-Yang—who plays something of an audience surrogate throughout, snapping pictures of various characters while conveniently finding himself amidst various familial quarrels—pays homage to his deceased grandmother with a maturity years his senior. Criterion haven’t expanded supplement-wise on their original DVD in any way—this is basically just a ported Blu-ray—but there were quite a few worthwhile extras in that first incarnation. The one to cherish most is the commentary track by Asian film scholar Tony Rayns and Edward Yang himself; together they illuminate many of the themes and motifs in the film, and helpfully contextualize its relation to Yang’s prior work, most of which sadly remains out of circulation. The only other extra, besides a Kent Jones essay in the booklet, remains Rayns’s essential video interview regarding the New Taiwanese Cinema, in which he outlines the cinematic and political histories of this loose affiliation of directors—Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, and others—as well as the themes and styles which link them. In terms of picture quality, the film advances in all the expected areas from the DVD, with the 1080p transfer more accurately reflecting Yang’s conscious use of color while enriching black levels and tightening contrast. This is one of the essential films of the new millennium, and if you don’t own the original DVD, then an essential, no-questions-asked purchase on Blu-ray is required. Jordan Cronk

DVD/Blu-ray: Around a Small Mountain (2010)
Distributor: Cinema Guild
Director(s): Jacques Rivette
Amazon Price: $29.95

I’m continually amazed by the contemporary output of the remaining French New Wavers and Left Bankers. Contrary to the popular belief that you either burn out or fade away, directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnes Varda continue to surprise, challenge and charm. Include Jacques Rivette in that list: “Around a Small Mountain,” a film I missed in festival play and only recently caught up with on DVD is, by Rivette’s standards, a short. But its 84 minutes allow the filmmaker enough time to cast the gesture of a narrative ellipse, a formal technique he's so well known for. The film opens with an exasperated Kate (Jane Birkin) peering under the hood of her stalled Range Rover. No sooner does she see a convertible coming her way than it drives right by her. Two beats later, the car doubles back, the man gets out, silently and efficiently fixes her car and leaves. Just as quickly, this mysterious man becomes ordinary, and the ordinary woman becomes mysterious. Kate, as it turns out, is part of a circus troupe, and she invites the man, Vittorio, to the circus that night. He enters a circus with what seems to be the most unwelcoming atmosphere one could imagine, and yet he's enthralled: enthralled with this somber circus, pleasantly existential, and enthralled with the mysterious Kate, flirtatiously elusive. Kate is at an emotional crossroads; her father recently died and she's returned to the family circus after a 15-year absence caused by a tragedy Kate's yet to overcome. Death looms on the edges of “Around a Small Mountain”: the death of Kate’s father as well as the ghost of her lover, the dying art of the big top, and even the fate of the 84 year-old director. Although the film is said to be a biopic of French writer Raymond Roussel, I'm not the wiser. Regardless, “Around a Small Mountain” is a bouquet of charms that maintain an emotional hold within a theatrical ambiance. Cinema Guild has done a good job at supplementing this DVD too, with a rich commentary by Chris Fujiwara that should be very informative to both seasoned Rivette fans and newcomers alike. Fujiwara doesn’t feel the need to talk the entire time, which I don’t really mind, but the sound mix doesn’t bring the audio of the film back up during those silences, which is unfortunate. Also included is a fascinating interview with the ever-alluring Jane Birkin where she shares anecdotes about working with Rivette around the same time her daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, was working on “Antichrist.” Birkin hilariously recalls their conversations about very different trials and tribulations within their respective projects. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Au revoir les enfants (1987)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Louis Malle
Amazon Price: $28.49

“Au revoir les enfants” is one of the greatest films about children ever made. That’s not to say, of course, that it is one of the best films for children, but with its backdrop of Nazi-occupied France and the adolescent students attempting survival amidst such atrocious circumstances, it still holds the power—regardless of age—to dramatically alter one’s perception. Directed by Louis Malle, one of the more legitimate French filmmakers not to originate from the Cahiers du Cinema school of film theory, “Au revoir les enfants” marked a return to homegrown moviemaking for the director after a stint working in Hollywood, and it remains one of his most beloved films—for the reasons outlined above, certainly, but also for its extraordinary selection of performances (mostly by children), and its base humanity, all but unrivaled in late-'80s world cinema. The film, which centers on two reluctant-at-first-but soon-inseparable friends, is based on Malle’s own childhood memories, while the central thrust of the narrative—a young Jewish boy hiding out anonymously amidst his schoolmates whilst his headmaster turns a sympathetic eye towards his plight—was lifted verbatim from an actual experience. Malle, who always had an uncanny knack for characterization (see his prior film, the legendary New York talkathon “My Dinner with Andre”), instills much of “Au revoir les enfants’” power in the film’s early scenes of adolescent bonding and day-to-day scholastic camaraderie. Nothing you haven’t seen in dozens of rudimentary come-of-age stories, right? Yet when the story climaxes and the boys’ realities reveal themselves and their destinies become irrevocably altered—along with the audience quickly reconciling the film’s title with a handful of the characters’ forthcoming departures—the film elevates itself beyond mere reminiscence, and toward something approaching pure tragedy. Criterion’s new Blu-ray is another of their standard upgrades, with the picture quality making the requisite jump (texture, sharpness, and colors all transferring nicely to 1080p) and the soundtrack receiving a nice lossless rendering. As expected, the extras are duplicated from the earlier DVD edition, with a couple of informative interviews—one with Malle biographer Pierre Billard and the other featuring Malle’s wife, Candice Bergan—and a short documentary on the film’s kitchen assistant, Joseph, who was exposed for selling the school’s food on the black market. Also included is an audio interview with Malle recorded at AFI in 1988 that runs for almost an hour, and the entirety of Charlie Chaplin’s short film, “The Immigrant,” which is featured during one of the film’s lighter moments. A trailer and a handsome booklet with essays by Phillip Kemp and Francis J. Murphy round out the package, and just as is the case with most all of these straight Criterion Blu-ray upgrades, it’s more than worthwhile for those who have never added “Au revoir les enfants” to their personal home video library. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Inside Job (2010)
Distributor: Sony
Director(s): Charles Ferguson
Amazon Price: $19.99

If you bought a house in the early '00s, you probably sat across a desk from a well-dressed loan advisor at a major financial institution and were approved for a ridiculous amount of money. If you were of modest means and a level head, the absurdity was perplexing at the time. Now, not so much. The convoluted lending schemes, cooked up by financial institutions during deregulation, are at the heart of Charles Ferguson’s Oscar winning documentary “Inside Job.” Although the financial crisis is the subject of yesterday, the mores and, more importantly, the people responsible for the 2008 shit pile are still running the banks, the regulations (or lack thereof) and the oh-so-important think tanks. This is the much needed punctuation point of a somewhat predictable documentary. Ferguson’s intent, as he explains in the feature length commentary, was to provide the simple cause and effect scenario of the financial crisis of 2008, and to debunk the notion that the situation was far too complex for anyone outside of the industry to understand. On this note, “Inside Job” is a success. It follows a timeline that outlines deregulation from the '80s to the gross mismanagement and shady dealings of the last decade. It’s a fascinating tale and Ferguson delivers it very linearly and very concisely. The more insidious portion of the film—where it starts to lose its analytical grip—is the cyclical nature between the industry, government and academics. These three powers that make up our financial institution continually stroke one another while the people involved simply play musical chairs. Insiders to the death, none of these individuals seem to have a conscience for the global gravity of their complicit involvement in the financial crisis. It's so disgusting to watch how utterly out of touch these industry insiders are that the cheeky editing and calculated yarn feels justified. As much as I want to see these men try and survive on minimum wage at a menial job, I also wanted “Inside Job” to keep the even hand that “No End in Sight” maintained. Ferguson goes a little Michael Moore—a little, not a lot—and in the end, I think it hurts an incredibly important film about an incredibly important subject. Revealing these people for what they are is, in the end, not germane to the education and the empowerment that “Inside Job” could have had. Instead, it simply fed my cynicism and then wagged the Statue of Liberty in front of me. But overall these are minor quibbles. “Inside Job” is insightful and informative, especially in regards to the current administrations failures and weaknesses. The commentary with Ferguson and producer Audrey Marrs is easy to get sucked into. While I planned on only sampling bits and pieces, I quickly found myself watching the entire film over again as they revealed some of the inside story on the inside job. Ferguson mentions that longer, and more revealing interviews were conducted with many of the subjects, and it is disappointing that those couldn’t have been included among the extra features. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Distributor: Disney
Director(s): Hayao Miyazaki
Amazon Price: $24.99

There’s a line of dialogue near the climax of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” that pretty well sums up at least one important aspect of the Japanese animation legend’s thematic concerns. Speaking to a couple of prisoners in anticipation of an oncoming battle between two warring nations for control of the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the film’s title, Queen Kushana wisely declares, “The jungle is killing you, yet you want to live in harmony with it.” Far from subtle, this is still one of the film’s most pointedly allegorical moments. In fact, Miyazaki’s 1984 gem charts many of the courses that he continues to traverse to this very day. It’s tempting, then, to read this as first draft of many of Miyazaki’s later films, particularly 1997's “Princess Mononoke,” but such reductions fail to recognize ‘Nausicaä’ for the majestic display of hand-drawn artistry that it remains. The blunt new-age eco-parables surely could have been curbed, yet ‘Nausicaä’ thrives on its bombast. It’s a message film at heart, but it’s an action film on most all other levels, and the parade of colorful characters, including an impressive display of simultaneously primitive and futuristic creatures, are among Miyazaki’s most lasting creations. Walt Disney Studios— beginning with the digital release of Miyazaki’s most recent film, the charming and curiously underrated “Ponyo”—have embarked on a slow roll-out of the Miyazaki catalogue on Blu-ray. ‘Nausicaä’ is the second of his films to make the jump to HD, and like “Ponyo,” it’s a marvel to behold in this format. Textures are smoothed out, colors look brighter yet truer, and the picture as a whole looks significantly sharper, particularly in motion, which is the main drawback of animated films in standard definition. Disney also continues their commendable animated home video streak by stacking the two-disc set with near-completist levels of special features. The film is offered on both Blu-ray and DVD format (hence the two discs), and the features, which include three documentaries—the self explanatory trio of “Creating Nausicaä,” “Behind the Microphone,” and “The Birth of Studio Ghibli”—are spread across both discs. Rounding out the package is an interactive “Enter the Lands” Blu-ray feature, Japanese trailers and TV spots, and the entire film re-created via storyboards. Needless to say, this is now the definitive way to see one of Miyazaki’s most significant early works, and it bodes well for Disney’s ongoing Miyazaki Blu-ray campaign. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: The Clowns (1970)
Distributor: Raro Video
Director(s): Federico Fellini
Amazon Price: $17.49

In 2011, we are so far removed from the surreal and chaotic nature of the traveling circus—especially the kind that fascinated Frederico Fellini—that his 1970 made-for-TV documentary “The Clowns” may as well be pure fiction. Although “The Clowns” contains more fact than “8 ½,” it's no less calculated. Fellini’s investigation into the clowns that frightened him as a child but obsessed him as an adult is as much about the mechanics as it is the subject. As they track down, interview and document the legendary and the venerable of the trade, the crew gets nearly as much screen time as the clowns. Things seem to evolve naturally as a sound person accepts a glass of wine on duty and Fellini prods his assistant in front of the camera to read a prepared biography. (And in a case of six degrees of separation between films, Fellini digs up an archival 16mm short that references the act so lovingly dissected in Rivette’s “Around a Small Mountain.”) The orchestration around the aging performers and interviewees enables the project to be part documentary and part Fellini. His on-screen presence is slight, but his creative force is ubiquitous. The 90-minute feature is bookended with two circus performances in full regalia—trained ponies, jumping tigers, Amazonian women, knife throwing men, sideshow freaks, and of course the clowns. The final performance is like a go-for-broke swan song with two of the performers literally having to step outside of the ring because they were winded and not feeling well. “The Clowns” may seem like a curiosity, but it captivatingly mixes the magnificent with the pathetic without feeling overbearing. Watching this DVD makes me wonder if Fellini shouldn’t have done more films where he attacked fiction under the pretense of fact rather than the other way around. Included on Raro’s DVD is a 40-minute documentary, “Fellini’s Circus,” about Fellini, the television production and its subsequent restoration. It’s a fascinating study that uses pie charts and graphs, with absolutely no sarcasm, to examine the type of shots in the film. It’s almost as if Fellini was working some absurdity from the grave. Also quite randomly, Fellini’s contribution to the 1953 omnibus film “Love in the City,” “Marriage Agency,” is included. But chief among the supplements is a nice booklet that includes Fellini’s notes and sketches for the film. Raro is really making the most of March. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Topsy-Turvy (1999)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Mike Leigh
Amazon Price: $25.99

Released in 1999, “Topsy-Turvy” came at an interesting interval in Mike Leigh’s career. Not only was he closing out a decade which saw him release a handful of the most acclaimed films of their respective years—see in particular, 1993's seminal “Naked” and 1997's more mainstream breakthrough, “Secrets & Lies”—but was now knee deep in a period where his films were mostly touted by a select few (mostly highbrow critics), but ignored in the grand scheme of the public eye, not to mention a good deal of the indie crowd, which continues to comprise Leigh’s most devoted followers. It’s odd to think, then, that a film as ambitious as “Topsy-Turvy” could have been so under-recognized amidst the restless development of his career. True, this isn’t one of Leigh’s irreproachable classics (at least to these eyes), but it’s one of his most relaxed, free-wheeling entertainments nonetheless. Based on the Gilbert and Sullivan opera troupe of the late 1800s, and in particular on the duo’s formation of their most famous creation, “The Mikado” (which was first filmed under the same title by Victor Schertzinger in 1939, and which is being simultaneously released with “Topsy-Turvy” by Criterion), Leigh’s film unreels casually over the course of two-and-a-half hours, roping in elements of comedy, drama, opera, and musical-theater along the way. Plenty of the Mike Leigh stable of actors are featured as well, including Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall, Katrin Cartlidge, and recent “Another Year” breakout Lesley Manville, decidedly marking “Topsy-Turvy” as a film not only for Leigh devotees, but also one with the charm and the dedication to historical detail to appeal to demographics wider than originally thought. Criterion debuts “Topsy-Turvy” on Blu-ray in typically grand style, with an impressive transfer accentuating Leigh’s acute use of color and costumes—the film won Oscars for both its costume design and make-up—and really deepening the field of vision, which was already highly detailed and uncommonly lush. As for supplements, Leigh provides a droll commentary track, and also shows up in a new video interview between himself and musical director Gary Yershon. There’s a shorter making-of doc from the film’s year of release which features Leigh and members of the cast, deleted scenes, and a selection of trailers and TV spots. Leigh’s 1992 short film, “A Sense History,” is also a nice addition, and the illustrated booklet, which features an essay by critic Amy Taubin—who named “Topsy-Turvy” one of the ten best films of 1999—completes the package. I certainly won’t hesitate to recommend this release for fans of the director’s work, in addition to those with an interest in opera and theater, but one’s expectations for Leigh’s normally heavy emotional escapades should be kept in check. JC

• For more Home Movies, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Home Movies - February

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 20:48:45 -0500

Although some would have you believe the grim reaper is ready to sign their death certificate, DVDs still represent your best opportunity to see films—old and new, domestic and foreign. Streaming and on-demand services are becoming more and more prevalent, but they still have a ways to go before they turn my collection into stacks of shiny coasters. For every title I own available by alternative methods, I have ten others that aren’t. Short of having your own stockpile, now may be the time to adopt your local video store. As the ubiquitous red envelope delivery service starts slowly phasing out physical DVDs and Blu-rays in favor of streaming movies, many releases will not be available on Netflix and not yet available for streaming, as is the case with many of the selections below. Hunkering down for the next phase of home distribution most likely means that the dedicated cinephile will have to be savvy at navigating all the options, including slapping down some cash for the likes of an imported Mizoguchi box set, or a pristine Blu-ray of Visconti’s “Senso,” or simply a plain old DVD of the Swedish film “The Girl” that you can’t find anywhere else. Kathie Smith

Pick of the Month

DVD/Blu-ray: Senso (1954)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Luchino Visconti
Amazon Price: $25.99

I mentioned in our Home Movies ‘Year in Review’ column recently that the Blu-Ray format was all but made for films such as the Powell & Pressburger mid-'50s Technicolor productions, but now I’m happy to report that this is only relative to the high definition marvel of Luchino Visconti’s lavish melodramas, which are pushing the 1080p format to new heights. Last year, Criterion gave us a gift with their Blu-Ray upgrade of “The Leopard,” and not to slight that film (which has been in relatively steady availability), but their resurrection of Visconti’s seething 1954 classic “Senso” is cause for even greater praise. Previously available as only a wonky OOP Korean import, “Senso” arrives in the Collection looking as lush as it ever has, perhaps matched in vibrancy only by the film’s electric third act volley of revelations.

Telling a tale of doomed love between an Italian countess (Alida Valli) and an Austrian Army officer (Farley Granger, probably recognizable to most as Hitchcock’s put-upon pawn in both “Strangers On a Train” and “Rope”), a societal no-no in 19th century Italy, the film offers plenty of opportunities for Visconti to revel in the country’s extravagant period design and turbulent political landscape. It was also the Italian master’s first look into his homeland’s past after a series of neorealist experiments, an impulse he indulged more or less consistently from here on out, that for better or worse solidified our current perspective on Visconti as a practitioner of the period film. I do have a problem with this shortsighted designation, but in the case of “Senso,” arguably Visconti’s greatest achievement, it feels all but preordained that the genre would play such an integral role in the man’s maturation as a filmmaker.

The new Blu-Ray is equally sumptuous, with almost four hours of bonus material supplementing the film. An hour and a half of that is given over to a rarely-seen English version of the film (known as “The Wanton Countess” to an American audience who may have seen it on television over the years), which exists in slightly rougher form than the Italian print, but is interesting if only to hear Valli and Granger deliver their dialogue in English before being dubbed for the final version. There are also two documentaries—one a making-of and one exploring Visconti’s roots in the world of Opera—featuring interviews with co-cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno and assistant director Francesco Rosi, among many others associated with Visconti and the film. Rounding out the disc is an illuminating “visual essay” on the film by Bergman biographer Peter Cowie, and a 1966 BBC program devoted to Visconti’s reach across three different mediums: theater, film and opera. Coupled with one of Criterion’s always detailed and beautifully designed booklets, you’ve got one of 2011’s first essential Blu-Ray purchases and one sure to be talked about as one of the years defining releases. Jordan Cronk

DVD/Blu-ray: The Double Life of Veronique (1991)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Krzysztof Kieslowski
Amazon Price: $25.99

I have a certain amount of nostalgia for late '80s/early '90s foreign films. I was working in an independent movie theater around that time, and my experience at that theater and the films I saw had a much more lasting effect than my fledgling higher education. Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski and “The Double Life of Veronique” could easily symbolize a certain zeitgeist of European films hitting screens around that time: mysterious, romantic, earnest and, above all, beautiful. Bookended by Kieslowski’s overwhelming masterworks “The Decalogue” and 'The Three Colors Trilogy,' “The Double Life of Veronique” is a glowing bridge between the two with one foot clearly planted in Poland with his early work and the other in France with the promise of something new. Kieslowski’s first French/Polish co-production, ‘Veronique’ explores the mysterious and melancholic connection between two women: Weronika in Poland and her doppelgänger Véronique in France, both wonderfully played by the youthful Irène Jacob. Weronika is a young soprano on the verge of being discovered, but struck down by the portentous hand of destiny at a pivotal moment. As the film shifts to France, Véronique bares the invisible and subconscious burden of Weronika’s fate. Kieslowski and co-writer Krysztof Piesiewicz allow the enigmatic forces of Weronika’s presence to propel Véronique through her own music career, her romantic pursuits and her elusive emotional intuitions that drive the film towards its ambiguously elegant end. (An end that was not so ironically edited by Mr. fuckedy-fuck Harvey Weinstein for the U.S. release so many years ago.) With the aid of cinematographer Slawomir Idziak and composer Zbigniew Preisner, “The Double Life of Veronique” seems to overflow with baroque beauty. Idziak’s use of filters creates a golden hue that surrounds Irène Jacob in both her manifestations as Weronika and Véronique. It’s an aura that helps extend the story, and all its mystique, far beyond the restrictive borders of a traditional narrative. As expected, Criterion’s Blu-ray is second to none with an immaculate transfer and a bundle of extras. Chief among the supplements are four short documentaries: one made by Kieslowski’s teacher Kazimierz Karabasz entitled “The Musicians,” and three from Kieslowski himself: 1970's “Factory,” 1973's “Hospital,” and 1980's “Railway Station.” These films speak to the frank nature of his early feature films, a style that he has clearly moved away from in ‘Veronique.’ Also included is a fascinating hour-long making-of shot in 1991, featuring extensive interviews with Kieslowski and a peek at his working habits as a director. Whether a discovery or a rediscovery, Criterion’s “The Double Life of Veronique” is a release to treasure. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (2010)
Distributor: Oscilloscope
Director(s): Yony Leyser
Amazon Price: $27.49

William Burroughs was always a rock star, right up until his death in 1997, at the age of 83, and a rockstar documentary in his name is long overdue. Yony Leyser’s film “William S. Burroughs: A Man Within” dodges the compulsion to lionize this great artist, and provides a much more straightforward talking-head document of this flawed but enigmatic man. Through a series of interviews and archive footage, Leyser stirs the demons that made Burroughs an icon and brandishes the labels that he helped stereotype: poet, rebel, queer, junkie, sociopath, iconoclast and certified gun nut. Burroughs’s audacity both in his personal life and his artistic life inspired a generation of writers, musicians, artists and filmmakers who knew him, and many more who simply read his work. The godfather of the Beat Generation was also the godfather of punk. But ‘A Man Within’ is flatfooted and seems to be more enthralled with the counterculture stars interviewed than the subject at hand. Lesyer rolls out some interesting anecdotes from the likes of Peter Weller, John Waters, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Jello Biafra, Gus Van Sant, and David Cronenberg, but in most cases they end up talking about themselves loosely caged in the context of Burroughs. Much more revealing are the interviews with the people who knew him more intimately, both friends and lovers. As much as I enjoyed the visual contrast of the drunken old man swaggering around with firearms and the droll yet wicked social critic that ‘A Man Within’ provides us, this is not the William Burroughs documentary I had hoped for. It lacks some focus and allows the interviewees to guide the trajectory far too much. Burroughs influenced many people, some of them famous, but that doesn’t even begin to define this paradoxical genius. Oscilloscope packages the DVD in a nice cardboard case with a slip cover of sepia tone photos and two short essays by David Byrne and Richard Hell. The special features feel cursory, and include some outtakes from the documentary itself as well as some archive footage of Burroughs that was no doubt used in research for the film. But even after exhausting the special features, ‘A Man Within’ still keeps me longing for more. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: The Lady Hermit (1971)
Distributor: Funimation
Director(s): Ho Meng Hua
Amazon Price: $15.49

Nine years ago, Celestial Pictures acquired the 760-film Shaw Brothers library and started the arduous task of remastering and distributing some of the most revered and spectacular films in Hong Kong’s history. For fans who already have hundreds of Celestial’s candy-colored imports lining their shelves, this is old news. But the U.S. rights for these films have been bouncing around like ping-pong balls at a lottery pick, and single releases get little to none of the fanfare they deserve. “The Lady Hermit,” quietly released by Funimation in February, is a prime example of the Shaw Bothers at the peak of their game. Directed by the multi-talented Ho Meng Hua, “The Lady Hermit” is a unique Shaw martial arts film dominated by two strong female leads: Cheng Pei-Pei (her last Shaw Brothers appearance) and Shih Szu (her debut). Shih plays Cui Ping, a talented but undisciplined young fighter searching for the fabled martial arts master “Lady Hermit,” who has been in hiding since she was defeated by the Black Demon. Cui’s search leads her to the house of Master Wang, his modest housemaid Leng (Cheng), and their handsome servant Changchun (Lo Lieh). When Cui stirs up some trouble with the Black Demon himself, Leng must expose herself as the Lady Hermit to save Cui Ping. The dynamic duo team up and vow to defeat the corrupt Black Demon, but first Cui must learn the “Flying Tiger” style (that Leng brilliantly demonstrates by throwing her pet cat in the air…twice.) Although the two women are equally smitten with Changchun, they must keep their eyes on the prize: a final fight to the death with the Black Demon! Cheng Pei-Pei’s self-assured onscreen presence as the Lady Hermit is equally matched by Shih Szu’s plucky and occasionally pouty kinetic dynamism. The fight scenes are top notch, as the two women waylay hundreds of armed and unarmed men by slicing, stabbing, and decapitating as well as tossing them from suspension bridges and impaling both their eyes with chopsticks. At 92 minutes, “The Lady Hermit” perfectly balances a well-paced story with stylish bar-none action. Funimation’s DVD is no frills and its picture quality has minor issues, but combine “The Lady Hermit” with 1970's “The Heroic Ones” or 1978's “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin” and you have a Shaw triple feature that can’t be beat. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: The Stranger (1946)
Distributor: HD Cinema Classics
Director(s): Orson Welles
Amazon Price: $12.99

Orson Welles’s “The Stranger” presents something of a case study on the differentiations and limitations of certain digital mastering practices. The inherent grain in black & white Hollywood productions of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s is one of their great charms, and one at odds with modern cleaning methods such as digital noise reduction, which basically wipes clean said layer of grain to produce a glossy and sharp picture. There’s a fine line, however, between reducing visual noise and sapping a film of its aesthetic palette. So technically, “The Stranger” looks neat and sharp on Blu-ray from HD Cinema Classics, but it’s also a false picture to some extent, stripped of director Orson Welles’s rich, full bodied cinematographic intention. I don’t want to make too big a deal over this since “The Stranger” isn’t exactly a Welles masterpiece; in fact, this represents the only time that Welles would buckle to the studio system, turning in a fairly traditional film lacking in the virtuoso stylistic displays that still managed to make their way through the hatchet job inflicted on his previous film, 1942's “The Magnificent Ambersons.”

Nevertheless, this is an Orson Welles film, and the only one he made during his Hollywood run other than "Citizen Kane" that remains in totally unaltered form. Personally, I’ve always had a soft spot for “The Stranger”: the brio with which Welles dives into his portrayal of a Nazi fugitive on the lam in suburban Connecticut is just cheeky enough to be endearing; the supporting players, from Edward G. Robinson to Loretta Lynn, are believable and well-developed (from an Oscar-nominated screenplay by a team of writers no doubt ghosted and kneaded by Welles); and the climatic clock tower sequence still remains one of Welles’s most impressive set-pieces. Therefore, it comes down to this: If you own the DVD, there’s no need to upgrade as the picture quality is solid and more importantly, accurate (and the Blu-Ray offers no extras to tilt in its favor either). But if you’re looking to add “The Stranger” to your digital library for the first time, then the Blu-ray wouldn’t be a bad purchase, though the film being public domain leaves the possibility open that a more competent rendering will one day surface. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Fish Tank (2010)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Andrea Arnold
Amazon Price: $25.99

Tossing Andrea Arnold’s remarkable “Fish Tank” into the kitchen sink of dramas would be selling the film short. Arnold’s second feature does owe a great debt to the traditions of the British New Wave and Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson and Ken Loach. But there is an edge to Arnold’s work that sets it apart, much like Shane Meadows's brutal “This Is England,” and much more grounded in the world of Andrea Dunbar's amazing fiction/documentary hybrid “The Arbor.” This assessment is far easier to make with Criterion’s recent release of “Fish Tank,” which includes three short films from Arnold of bruising honesty: 1998's “Milk,” 2001's “Dog,” and 2003's “Wasp.” (The latter won an Oscar for best live-action short film.) These shorts distill Arnold’s dark and sometimes sinister nature to a heartbreaking perfection. In long form, as with 2006' s“Red Road,” and now “Fish Tank,” themes and tones become more complex and sometimes a little convoluted. And such is the case with “Fish Tank,” a tour de force that gets caught up in being both unforgiving and incredibly indulgent. Katie Jarvis gives a ferocious and unapologetic performance as Mia, a street-wise 15-year-old ready to take on the world as soon as she knows what she wants from it. She and her younger sister live with their single mother, largely unsupervised with little parental guidance or compassion. Mia spends her time swigging booze and practicing her dance moves in an empty apartment in her tenement complex. But when her mother takes up with the handsome and friendly Connor (a lithe Michael Fassbender), she is privately subdued by his charms both as the father she never had and as the mature lover she longs for. Mia’s bristly personality softens, but only for a moment, before reality pushes her over the edge. In the care of Jarvis, Mia is a vibrant character full of unpredictable impulses, but Arnold manufactures circumstances that nearly derail the film. Nearly: a subdued finale thankfully pulls “Fish Tank” back from the brink. The supplements on Criterion’s newer films often pale in comparison to their restoration of rep titles, but the three short films included here are an invaluable reference. Although there's a video interview with actress Kierston Wareing, who plays Mia’s mother, and an audio interview with Fassbender, one has to wonder: where are the interview and/or commentary with Jarvis and Arnold? KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Two in the Wave (2010)
Distributor: Fox Lorber
Director(s): Emmanuel Laurent
Amazon Price: $20.99

There has never been a camaraderie-turned-rivalry quite like the one that existed between François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. The two filmmakers not only changed the landscape of film in France, but also the trajectory of film, filmmaking and all the rhetoric that would follow. Although Truffaut and Godard were early and fast friends and eventually shared the La Nouvelle Vague throne, an irreparable rift abruptly ended their friendship with an exchange of nasty letters in 1973. Or was it abrupt? “Two in the Wave” director Emmanuel Laurent creates a very succinct just-the-facts profile of the two icons that emphasizes the amazing road they paved for the French New Wave while easing into their subtle differences and divergences. The documentary opens with the incredible splash that Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” made at the 12th Cannes Film Festival in 1959. With news reels, interviews and quotes from critics, “Two in the Wave” eludes to the fact that Truffaut and his young star Jean-Pierre Léaud were actually the first in the Wave while Godard was back in Paris. Of course, it wasn’t long after the debut of '400 Blows' that Godard made his own landmark with “Breathless.” These two films will forever be locked together in history, but this studious doc shows the subtlety of separation that started with '400 Blows' and lead up to the controversial dismissal of Henri Langlois from the Cinémathèque Française, the protests of May 1968, and Godard’s political bent that turned into a fervor. In the end it was Godard’s politics and Truffaut’s lack thereof that caused an exchange so hurtful that the two never spoke again. The personal conflict is ripe for tabloid treatment, yet “Two in the Wave” is anything but. Fascinating from start to finish, the film plays an even hand, telling the story of Godard and Truffaut’s relationship and their concurrent impact on the film world at large. Isild Le Besco acts as a sort of guide to this history, silently looking though news clippings and photos. Her presence in the film is odd, but she may be an apt symbol of the subconscious legacy of the French New Wave. The revelations of “Two in the Wave” are neither grand nor new, but it is hard to deny the gravity of this snapshot in time. Laurent packs his film with clips and interviews that will likely make even the youngest cinephile feel nostalgic. If you're looking for swag beyond the documentary itself, however, you’ve come to the wrong DVD: perhaps I overestimate how easy it would be to throw some interviews in with this release, but its surprising that nothing is included to supplement what is a very well made documentary. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: The Girl (2010)
Distributor: Olive Films
Director(s): Fredrik Edfeldt
Amazon Price: $26.99

Despite an accumulation of positive festival reviews, Fredrik Edfeldt’s debut “The Girl” failed to gather the momentum it deserved. The same could be said for kindred films such as “Ratcatcher,” “Treeless Mountain,” Nobody Knows” and “Innocence”—all subtle films that rely on the quiet certitude of young actors portraying less than perfect circumstances. These are films that reject the heavy-handed clichés of coming-of-age in favor of gentle observation, and “The Girl,” too, fits that bill. The film boldly puts young waifish Blanca Engström front and center as the Girl (her name is never revealed). At nine-and-a-half, the Girl is too young to accompany her parents and older brother on a summer humanitarian sojourn to Africa; instead, she's left in the care of her aunt, who's more concerned about booze and men than looking after an introspective niece. The Girl cleverly devises a plan to railroad her aunt into leaving for a weekend, but that weekend turns into the entire summer. The Girl discovers freedom and adventure, but also the difficult task of fending for herself. Facing the manipulations of friendly strangers and malicious friends, the Girl traverses the slippery path of social independence and relishes the secrecy of anti-social seclusion. Still a kid, merely curious about being a woman, the Girl has no one telling her to comb her hair and eat her vegetables, and, as time passes, that has an effect. Engström is a minor force to be reckoned with as the Girl; her unique and quirky character carries the film from start to finish. Her experiences rarely skew farther than expected, but the clear-eyed stoic tenacity embodied by the pale carrot-toped kid, even in the most onerous moments, is disarming. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (“Let the Right One In”) lends a quiet hand to the poetic silences and languid pace of “The Girl.” The exteriors are awash in the buttery light of the summertime sun and the interiors are cloaked in hushed shadows. Olive Films should be applauded for giving an extended life to “The Girl,” a film that would otherwise be way off most's radars. KS

Import of the Month

DVD/Blu-ray: Late Mizoguchi - Eight Films (1951-56)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema (Region 2)
Director(s): Kenji Mizoguchi
Amazon Price: £35.99

The rate of production being what it is today in American cinema, I’m personally ecstatic when a worthwhile filmmaker returns with a new film in under three years. The Japanese, being some of the most productive people in just about every facet of life compared to us, have cultivated a film industry as productive as nearly any in the history of the medium. The golden age of Japanese cinema—roughly, I’d say, from the 1920s through the ‘50s—was a breeding ground for some of the greatest directors the world has ever seen. There are therefore many candidates for the crown: Kurosawa, Ozu, and Kobayashi from the canon, Imamura, Naruse, and (from what little survives) Yamanaka from the pool of influence. But the classification for the most substantial 20th century Japanese export is, as much as any other, Kenji Mizoguchi (he of over 85 films, less than 30 of which still survive).

I hesitate to delineate any stretch of a filmmaker’s career as their best, let alone from a man so productive and wide-ranging, but the twilight years of Mizoguchi’s career—and the period covered in Masters of Cinema’s overwhelming new 'Late Mizoguchi' boxset—unquestionably produced his most popular and endearing films (at least in America). The one-shot, one-cut sequences of his early films had by this time been curbed to some degree—though there are still fascinating examples of the technique sprinkled throughout this set—while the cloistered, geisha-centered narratives are, if not absent by any stretch of the imagination, expounded upon and patterned alongside a handful of his most narratively ambitious pictures. In all, there are eight films included here (each packaged two-to-a-case, all of which have been previously available, but only last month received the box set treatment), all made over a period of just six years. And this isn't even the whole of his output during that time: Mizoguchi, in fact, made three more films during this late-career flourish—1951's “Lady of Musashino,” the 1952 masterpiece “The Life of Oharu,” and a solid penultimate feature, “Taira Clan Saga” in 1955—but for competing studios, thus they aren’t represented in this Daiei-exclusive set. What’s more interesting to note is how, even at the tail end of Mizoguchi's career—before passing away the year of his final film, 1956's great “Street of Shame”—Mizoguchi was still beholden to the demands of his home studio (unlike, say, Kurosawa, who by this time was working relatively freely after a period of propaganda efforts in the ‘40s). Thus, the set alternates between lesser, hamstrung studio-mandated films—1954's “The Woman in the Rumor” and 1955's “Princess Yang Kwei-Fei"—and unimpeachable masterpieces like 1953's “Ugestsu” and 1954's “Sansho the Baliff,” both on a very short list of the best films ever made.

This would seem to evidence an inconsistency in regards to the quality of these films, but out of the eight, at least two qualify as masterpieces, while a handful of the remaining six are all but essential viewing. Only the aforementioned “Princess Yang Kwei-Fei” is lacking for superlatives, and is in fact as lifeless as its cinematography is bold (this representing one of only two times Mizoguchi would work with color). The way Mizoguchi emboldens a few of these films that he reportedly had little inherent affinity for—particularly the exquisite “A Geisha” and the gutting “Crucified Lovers”—speaks to his mastery and affection for the medium. Those predisposed to this set probably even own “Ugetsu” and “Sansho the Baliff” (as I personally did), but it’s the remaining films in this set which paint a near complete picture of late-period Mizoguchi—without them, the kaidan permutations of “Ugetsu” and the epic familial disperse of 'Sansho' want for the grounded characterization of Mizoguchi’s self-contained societal studies.

Plus, Masters of Cinema deck out the box with contextual supplements, including lengthy film specific introductions by Japanese film scholar Tony Rayns, who also provides a commentary track for “Street of Shame,” which is great for those looking for more background on the film after viewing the barebones disc included in Criterion’s Mizoguchi Eclipse set. Also included are generously annotated and decorated booklets for each two-film set, with essays about the particulars of production and the legacy of each picture. Needless to say, this is a cornerstone collection for any serious cinephile, further evidence that if you aren’t watching in region-free than you’re hindering your exposure to some of the most interesting works in world cinema, and perhaps a vote of confidence that the extended Mizoguchi filmography will one day see the light of day in a digital format. JC

• For more Home Movies, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Home Movies - January

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:45:36 -0500

A new year, a new Home Movies. On hiatus for much of 2010's latter half, this column has decided on a few New Year’s resolutions to improve things for 2011: to catch some of the new releases we missed in the site's regular review area, to further bask in the splendor of the Criterion canon, and to obsess over every obscure necessity of your home viewing. With a little help from InRO’s Music Editor Jordan Cronk, Home Movies is back and better than ever. While compiling our (quite late) January installment, we found that the best films made available to us were genre films, both old and new. Jordan weighs in on Criterion’s two Samuel Fuller releases and I take a look at a new Blu-ray of Dario Argento’s “Deep Red” from the UK. In between we tackle the so-called Movie of the Year (last year, that is), an invaluable Alejandro Jodorowsky and a classic Sergio Leone (both now on Blu-ray). A horror film, a sci-fi upgrade, and a suspenseful gimmick round out this month’s picks. Kathie Smith

Pick of the Month

DVD/Blu-ray: Shock Corridor / The Naked Kiss (1963-64)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Samuel Fuller
Amazon Price: $21.99 / $21.99

Something of a B-movie auteur, American iconoclast Samuel Fuller carved a distinctive niche for himself through a string of some of the most subversive pre-New Hollywood films of the early ‘60s. Two of his best, 1963’s “Shock Corridor” and 1964’s “The Naked Kiss,” were also two of Criterion’s earliest releases (spine No.’s 18 & 19, respectively), and as has been their practice over the last couple of years, the distributor has upgraded their previously bare-bones packages with new, lavishly decorated Blu-rays. The films themselves, a kind of mélange of tabloid-generated taboos and bold stylistic cues, are the essence of mid-period Fuller. After a few years poking around at different genres (check Criterion’s nice Eclipse set, “The First Films of Samuel Fuller,” for a small taste of some of his early westerns and war films), Fuller found his most confident footing in the confines of the film noir with 1953’s “Pickup On South Street” (also a Criterion release). Over the next decade he would hone his approach to low-budget, studio ignorant filmmaking, and as the censors loosened their grip, Fuller continued to run even wilder, reaching a logical plateau with “Shock Corridor,” a hyper-stylized loony-bin noir that cut its wilder impulses with impassioned social and political messages. Few films from the era met racism with as much fervor, and save for his late career masterpiece “White Dog” (again Criterion—god bless you guys), no Fuller film is as effective a sociological (and, of course, psychological) critique as “Shock Corridor.”

Few could have guessed, then, that when Fuller would charge back just a year later with “The Naked Kiss”—arguably reaching his creative apex in the process—it would mark the beginning of the end of this prolific phase in his career. A startling feminist manifesto from one of cinema’s most hard-headed, masculine filmmakers, “The Naked Kiss” took pulp screenwriting to heights then-unreached. The dialogue is a high-wire act of double entendres (“I’m pretty good at popping the cork if the vintage is right” being a personal favorite) and curious cultural references, anchored in every frame by a fiery Constance Towers, Fuller’s actress of choice around this time. A damning indictment of prostitution, pedophilia and law enforcement, “The Naked Kiss” is one of the most persuasive arguments for the moral effectiveness of the B-picture ever produced. Both of these films being well preserved, it’s no surprise these Blu-ray editions look exquisite, with cinematography by Stanley Cortez—who shot two of the most visually stunning films of the previous decades, Orson Welles’s “The Magnificent Ambersons” and Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter”—rendered to 1080p and arriving in their most balanced and textured state probably since they debuted. The packages are equally noteworthy, with great artwork for both discs provided by “Ghost World” author Daniel Clowes, and extras consisting of new video interviews with Towers and a handful of vintage interview segments with Fuller. There are a number of hilariously profane Sam Fuller soundbites across these segments, but his proclamation on “The South Bank Show” that “I love it when you have ‘em by the balls and you squeeze slowly,” sums up these pulpy classics better than just about any critical analysis of either ever could. Jordan Cronk

DVD/Blu-ray: The Social Network (2010)
Distributor: Sony
Director(s): David Fincher
Amazon Price: $21.99 / $21.99

Called the “Movie of the Year” by so many media outlets it’s hard to keep track, “The Social Network” was certainly the movie everyone was talking about and probably will be the movie people still talk about in the context of 2010. But being the movie of the moment, the movie of ‘our times’ has very little to do with its very loose pseudo-Facebook story. Sure, it’s supposedly about the guys who built Facebook, but it’s also a carefully crafted analysis of identity built around an idealized group of unique young people becoming adults in the 21st century. The David Fincher/Aaron Sorkin/Jesse Eisenberg triad paints a thankless portrait that is undeniably of this moment and that is pathetically male dominated. By design? How could it not be? Whip smart, “The Social Network” is one of the tightest films made in recent history. Harvard arrogance combined with the unbearable self-importance of brilliant 20-year-olds is mitigated by the film’s ability to stitch together an engaging story. Recently nominated for eight Oscars, including a chance at the big Best Picture kahuna, “The Social Network” arrives just in time for everyone to take a first, second or even third look at the film. Everything from the incredible opening dialogue to the ‘game over’ centerpiece rowing race to the delicate dissection of immature and egocentric anxieties, “The Social Network” pulls it off just as well, if not better, the second time through. The coldhearted austerity was a tad more apparent, but so was the amazing filmmaking. The boy empire may be a house of cards, but it sure does have our attention. Sony has done what they could to supplement this release with a full two-disc package that meets the film’s overwhelming praise. There are two audio commentaries, one with Fincher and another that includes Sorkin and cast members Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer and Josh Pence. The bulk of the extra disc is an hour-and-a-half making-of that illuminates every aspect of the filming, including the process undertaken by Hammer to play both twins. Beyond that, there are plenty of interesting behind-the-scenes moments with cast and crew alike. There’s also some standalone interviews separated into individual features: editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter plus sound designer Ren Klyce; Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross with Fincher; and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth with Fincher. There’s a breakdown on the making of the club scene with Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker, and four adaptations of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” in various stages used for the iconic race in the middle of the film. Some of this feels like filler, but most is pretty engaging. It was only when I started digging into the special features that I realized the film is rated PG-13 and it became apparent that the special features also had to be PG-13. Fincher obviously doesn’t care, but the “bleeping” throughout the commentary and making-of seems slightly absurd. Parents can rest assured, however, that their kids can watch all of the special features without hearing the word “fuck.” KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Santa Sangre (1989)
Distributor: Sevrin Films
Director(s): Alejandro Jodorowsky
Amazon Price: $27.49

Sevrin Film’s Blu-ray release is nothing short of a red carpet for Alejandro Jodorowsky's “Santa Sangre,” with over five hours of overwhelming extras to supplement this wonderfully bizarre film. Taking some inspiration from Tod Browning’s “Freaks,” “Santa Sangre” is a tempest of human abnormalities. Jodorowsky, however, celebrates not only physical abnormalities, but also social and psychological ones. At the heart is Fenix, a young circus performer tormented by the chaos of his childhood: the suicide of his father and the severing of his mother’s arms. His madness drives him to murder, but the film itself is driven by Jodorowosky’s distinct take on life and the world. The film’s namesake is a bogus temple that idolizes an armless martyr, but it’s also an analogy to the “holy blood” spilled in front of Fenix’s young eyes and spilled by his own hands as an adult. In many ways, “Santa Sangre” is a companion piece to Jodorowsky's earlier “Holy Mountain,” another inquisition on public and personal faith. Produced by Claudio Argento, Dario’s brother and producer, it was an audacious attempt to put Jodorowsky back on the arthouse map. Just seeing it again—my first time in around 20 years, when I caught it in theaters—is a revelation, but the special features on this disc are the real gift. There's a commentary with Jodorowsky and journalist Alan Jones rife with amazing quotes and proclamations from the director. Jones steers the conversation in interesting directions, forcing Jodorowsky to be hilariously belligerent, argumentative and playful. In listening to the commentary you realize that scenes of absurdity juxtaposed against beauty and weirdness is really Jodorowsky’s modus operandi. The commentary is brilliant and sheds some light on one of the most idiosyncratic filmmakers alive. The feature-length making-of is just as fascinating. I love that Claudio Argento wanted to cast Jack Nicholson and Angelica Houston in a Jodorowsky film. The budget wouldn’t allow for that and Jodorowsky cast the film how he wanted to: Mexican actors, people from the street and, most importantly, his sons. Four of Jodorowsky’s sons appeared in the film, one in the lead as Fenix and three others in smaller parts. (Tragically, one of them died right after the filming of “Santa Sangre,” which prevented Jodorowsky from watching his own film for some time.) People who love this film are bound to obsess over the supplements. For those new to “Santa Sangre,” or Jodorowsky in general, this extraordinary release should serve as an inordinately thorough introduction. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Director(s): Sergio Leone
Amazon Price: $19.99

Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” is my favorite movie ever, the one I most frequently refer to when asked that question. Interestingly enough, I don’t consider Leone one of my favorite filmmakers, though I do have a great deal of respect for most everything he did and the influence he continues to have. Something about the messy monstrosity that is “Once Upon a Time in America,” however, appealed to me from my very first VHS viewing many years ago: the iconic still that graces just about every poster and home video edition of the film; the heartbreaking Ennio Morricone score; the impressive assembly line of great actors, none of whom actually turn in their best work but are perfectly cast; the indulgent 4-hour runtime; the narrative dead-end of a script. I could go on, but suffice to say that “Once Upon a Time…” remains the embodiment of the term “flawed masterpiece.” And you know what? In this case I’ll take flawed, messy and indulgent over stealth precision and efficiency, because more than most any film I can name, passion infuses every last bit of celluloid that makes up this picture. It’s obviously a vision of America as seen through the eyes of an outsider, but few films strip the American dream of so much romance. The picture quality of this new Warner Blu-Ray isn’t going to open anyone’s eyes to the merits of the film if not already predisposed, but it's a slight advancement over the standard definition, with colors tightening up and grain shrouding every inch of the screen for a very film-like presentation. The original materials probably don’t allow for much advancement beyond this, though part of the film’s charm (at least in my view), has always been its nostalgic, sepia toned ambiance. There aren’t any new features offered either, only the original DVD commentary track by Richard Schickel (which is great and very informative for the entirety of the film’s length) and, oddly, a different (and inferior) version of the film’s trailer. It’s convenient, however, to finally have the film on a single disc, as the previous editions had always been split across multiple discs or tapes. I obviously can’t guarantee a similar reaction to my own for those who haven’t yet experienced Leone’s career-capping work, but I can promise you one of the most beautiful damn things ever set to film, and a story of friendship and betrayal that’s totally universal. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: The Last Exorcism (2010)
Distributor: Lionsgate
Director(s): Daniel Stamm
Amazon Price: $15.49

On the surface, there's nothing original about “The Last Exorcism.” It not only borrows from just about every exorcism film ever made, but it also borrows heavily from “The Blair Witch Project” and every first-person faux documentary made thereafter. “The Last Exorcism” takes a basket of old tricks with familiar expectations and builds a smart, modest film that is compelling almost despite itself. Cotton Marcus is an evangelical minister who’s followed in his father’s footsteps of building a name as an exorcist. But he's grown tired of the performance and the propagation of superstitions, and he invites a documentary film crew to expose the lies and tape his last exorcism before hanging up his holy hat. Of course, this last one happens to be the real deal, but the film slyly doles out doubt and disbelief with the supernatural, just as it does moments of jolts and legitimate suspense. The two actors who play Reverend Marcus and the possessed girl, Nell, deserve accolades for precise performances within the caged facets of their characters. And while the final money shot may not be as good as “The Blair Witch Project,” it's far better than that delivered in, say, “Paranormal Activity.” Lionsgate doesn’t miss a chance to pimp horror films, forcing you to watch (or skip through) previews for “The Haunting in Connecticut,” “My Bloody Valentine 3D,” and “Cabin Fever.” Beyond that annoyance, the extra features for this small film are impressive. Just in case you're really invested, there is not one, not two, but three commentary tracks. The first a producers commentary, with Eli Roth, Eric Newman and Tom Bliss; the second, and most relevant to the film, includes director Daniel Stamm and actors Patrick Fabian (Cotton), Ashley Bell (Nell) and Louis Herthum (Nell’s father); and the third is conducted with a clinical psychologist, a deliverance minister, and a haunting victim. The last commentary feels horribly out of place in the context of ‘watching a movie,’ but perhaps speaks to the film’s desire to carry the notion of authenticity. Likewise, there’s a short 15-minute documentary about a “real” exorcism that feels like it was taken directly from late night cable. And lastly, there's an obligatory ‘making-of’ and some audition footage for three of the actors. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Bryon Haskin
Amazon Price: $31.99

Byron Haskin’s 1964 stone-cold-serious space adventure film, “Robinson Crusoe On Mars,” is a nostalgic trip down '60s sci-fi memory lane. But the film's resilient theme of solitude vs. survival and Haskin’s keen sense of detail keep it vital today, despite technical limitations. Adapted from the novel by Daniel Defoe, ‘Robinson Crusoe’ tells the story of a spacecraft diverted from its course. When its two astronauts are forced to eject over Mars, only Commander Draper and Mona the monkey survive. (Col. Dan McReady, played by Adam ‘Batman’ West, perishes in the landing.) It’s a battle of wits and fate for Draper and Mona the monkey! Conquering oxygen, food and water difficulties, Draper’s biggest enemy becomes isolation, until he discovers an escaped Martian slave who looks mysteriously like a human. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ satisfies the old school sci-fi craving with its ingenious physical sets and locations. All of Draper’s space gadgets and communication tools have a gratifying tangibility meant to spark the imagination without tempering believability. Haskin shot the film in Death Valley, a landscape almost as inhospitable as Mars. It’s impossible to watch Draper make his way across the craggy landscape and not think of “Gerry,” or to see the instructional videos on his portable device and not think of “Lost.” While moments of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ feel very dated, its landmarks are extremely contemporary. The religious overtones are a little unbearable, and the homoeroticism between Draper and the ‘alien’ slave is undeniable. Criterion remastered ‘Robinson Crusoe’ in 2007 for DVD, but this is its first Blu-ray release. It contains the exact same features as the DVD—unless you’re geeky enough to get worked up over an uncompressed monaural soundtrack—which were never anything to write home about: the commentary is less of a commentary than a series of interviews cobbled together between screenwriter Ib Melchior, special effects designer Robert Skotak and director Haskin, with actors Paul Mantee, who played Draper, and Victor Lundin, who played the slave, chiming in on the actual movie. The most interesting supplement is a collection of production stills and sketches of some of the set designs. But for those operating at 1080, the beautiful Technicolor of the ‘Robinson Crusoe’ Blu-ray is alone worth upgrading from the DVD. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Buried (2010)
Distributor: Lionsgate
Director(s): Rodrigo Cortés
Amazon Price: $19.99

Paul is an American contractor working in Iraq as a truck driver. We meet him waking up, tied and gagged, inside a box. Armed with a Zippo, his dire circumstances become very apparent. He finds a cell phone and attempts to call 911, the FBI, his wife, his employer, and his mother-in-law in a panic, and with a hilarious edge of frustration. A kidnapper finally calls demanding an unreasonable ransom for Paul’s life. “Buried” is a taut thriller that carries a hefty commentary on American diplomacy and outside intervention in foreign countries, even if it is all pretty innocent. Unfortunately, all of that is lost on the film’s need to stay steadfast to a gimmick: for the duration of the film, Paul, the camera and the audience never leave the box. Without visual proof of any of the outside forces that surround Paul, you start to wonder if this might be some sort of frat boy joke. This, in some ways, is pretty brilliant, but it starts to compound with the visual redundancy and a real lack of possibilities, both for the film and the poor schlep stuck in this box. The Blu-ray has a 20-minute making-of that focuses on…you guessed it! How they made this film in a box. Although interesting, you can really see how this film lost focus to a crew vacillating on a cool idea. At one point in the making-of, they prove that an average sized man can turn around in a box this size (which actor Ryan Reynolds does in the film.) Maybe that adds some underlying authenticity to the movie, but I hardly think it matters. I enjoyed the 180-degree shot from head to toe in the beginning of the film, but much of "Buried" seemed more about achieving a technical feat at the expense of the film itself. KS

Import of the Month

DVD/Blu-ray: Deep Red (1975)
Distributor: Arrow Video
Director(s): Dario Argento
Amazon Price: $14.99

Long after the giallo genre was first sparked by Mario Bava and fanned into a wildfire by Dario Argento in the early and mid-'60s, Argento himself came back with “Deep Red” in 1975—a visionary masterpiece among countless imitators. “Deep Red” is an incredible film propelled by creative ingenuity and orgasmic mise en scène. Add Goblin’s pulsing soundtrack and you have one of the most irresistible psychological thrillers ever made. “Deep Red” is the story of a deranged murderer set on a rampage by a telepathist who identifies the psychopath with her mind. On the trail of the murderer is a jazz musician, played by David Hemmings, and a bloodhound newspaper reporter (Argento’s partner Daria Nicolodi). Full of fetish and wild bloodletting, Argento’s garish reds and adoring close-ups never looked so good. The downside to the film is the compromised audio. “Deep Red” exists in two forms: a 127-minute Director’s Cut that played in Italy and an edited 105-minute Theatrical Cut that played in the US. Both were subject to dubs, Italian and English respectively. It seems very likely that the English dub was not made until after the film was edited. Which means, if you want to watch the Director’s Cut with the English track the edited portions are supplemented with the Italian dub. All available options are presented on Arrow’s two-disc set, but none are, needless to say, perfect. Best option for your money is the Director’s Cut with the amazing Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1—just don’t look at the actors' lips when they're talking. For this edition, we get an audio commentary by ‘Argento expert’ Thomas Rostock, not the most dynamic speaker and obviously working off a script, but nonetheless he provides interesting factoids and opinions. Also included are four special features produced especially for this release, clocking in around 15 minutes each: “Rosso Recolections” is an interview with Argento; “Lady in Red” is an interview with Daria Nicolodi; “Music for Murder” is an interview with Claudio Simonetti of Goblin; and finally a kind of silly tour of the Profoundo Rosso shop in Rome with collaborator Luigi Cozzi. Despite inherent limitations, Arrow’s release of “Deep Red” goes far beyond a guilty pleasure. KS

• For more Home Movies, see our Feature Articles section.

Feature by: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Year in Review 2010 - Top 20 Albums

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:38:26 -0500

In intro-ing my own top 10 albums only days ago, I suggested that it has to be a great year for music because there's just such a diverse crop of albums being cited as among the year's best. It was kind of a lot of bullshit. Here's a much better reason: Even an album as instant-classic as this site's own number one still had to fight for that top spot. There was only a few points difference between number one and number two; in fact, there were four albums that pulled off very high numbers in our staff poll. What's more, those four span three genres.

This then reminded how much music criticism at In Review Online has changed over the past twelve months. A few new recruits, and myself as well, have tried the best we could to expand the borders of this site's coverage beyond the underground and indie music which our Editor, god love him, is all about, and which has been more or less our focus. You see, it's increasingly hard for this writer to view all music on a Pitchfork scale, and that's not a knock on Pitchfork or the kind of music they clearly favor—it's me admitting I'd go a little insane listening to lo-fi rock, punishing noise/gentle ambient, and nothing else. I like the records from Women and Yellow Swans that made our list (two groups that fit the aforesaid descriptions), but as is often said and very true: variety is the spice of life. So I was hopeful some of that variety, of the less discussed genres on InRO, might sneak into our top 20.

They did and they didn't. A total of four hip-hop (or hip-hop-accented) albums made this list (as compared to last year's one), plus our annual nod to metal, thanks to the site's two metal-head film writers. But none of the great records from R&B and gospel artists released this year cracked even the top 25. Then again, we did get a genuine mainstream pop album into the mix (you can thank me for that one). In my eyes these are baby steps that will hopefully turn into purposeful strides as we head into next year, and as this site continues its efforts to diversify. And you know how I said that there are an awful lot of great albums out there this year? The proof is in the fact that, despite lacking something in eclecticism, the 20 records featured here are albums I have spun and enjoyed on more than one occasion in the last year. Hard not to endorse a list like that. Sam C. Mac

20. White Denim: Last Day of Summer. I can’t help but think sometimes that White Denim’s Last Day of Summer has no business being on this list. This is an album the band made while taking a break from making another album, then gave away online as a treat for fans while the quartet promised a proper third full-length soon. It’s almost like they were trying to keep it as a minor release and out of consideration for mentions such as this. Well, seemingly despite their intentions, White Denim has very quietly released the best album of their early career; combining jazz, folk, and soul influences (sometimes all at once) into their quirky pop-rock sound, Last Day of Summer is the band’s most consistent and stylistically fascinating work. Take “Some Wild Going Outward,” for instance; with Mark Knopfler-esque electric guitar over a mind-bending jazz rhythm section all serving as the backdrop for singer James Petralli’s lovely high tenor, the song is amazingly complex in its construction but goes down incredibly smooth in its execution. I can’t imagine these songs not qualifying for a proper studio release, and the 12 tracks work so well as a whole I have to think White Denim just have impossibly high standards. Chris Nowling

19. Agalloch: Marrow of the Spirit. Agalloch aren't your father's black metal band—they're your unborn grandson's. These boys are harbingers of hard rock's post-apocalyptic future, not faithful followers of the Gothenburg gospel. There's more Mogwai than Mayhem in their uncoiling soundscapes. Marrow of the Spirit, the shape-shifting collective's fourth and finest long play, is the kind you spin to convert nonbelievers. It makes your argument for you: that some of the best heavy music being made today is the kind that's as achingly, profoundly beautiful as it is savage and grotesque. The mournful cello that opens the album isn't just a classic bait-and-switch, the calm before the raging storm. It's a prologue and a promise. Melancholy is the nature of this beast, and on the five sprawling epics that follow, Agalloch temper their tantrums with delicate melodic intrusions and prog-rock feats of dexterity. Taking the improbable vantage point of some ancient deity, lead singer/guitarist John Haughm makes grandiose gobbledigook sound like cathartic confession, lending emotional conviction to lyrics as insurmountably silly as "Where have all the noble cranes gone?" No black metal band outside of Opeth has packed this much damnation and deliverance into their swelling sound—and even those giants needed two records to do it in. A.A. Dowd

18. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: Before Today. I saw Ariel Pink and his band the Haunted Graffiti perform live sometime in the summer of 2007, and it was one of the worst shows I’ve ever seen. I honestly wasn’t expecting anything more, as by that point Ariel Pink had already built up a reputation as one of the most frustratingly singular artists of the mid-Aughts. Adding to the perplexity of the evening was the fact that Beach House opened that show, drawing maybe two dozen onlookers before the Haunted Graffiti tripled that by the time they took the stage. Which is to say that the name Ariel Pink has always carried with it enough curious caché—at least amongst Los Angelenos—to attract a decent crowd, most of whom probably hope to catch a glimpse of this guy’s ever-inconsistent genius. All of which makes his first proper studio album, Before Today, such a welcome surprise. Even the best of Pink’s prior material—say, The Doldrums, a kind-of modern lo-fi magna carta—was so frustrating in its adherence to the indie ethos that many of its standout tracks failed to register above the din of crusty-eyed tape hiss. Besides this being far and away the best collection of songs Pink has ever written, it’s also the first album that rewards the listener in equal measure to what he or she would normally have needed to bring to Pink’s fascinating and highly inscrutable world of pop as a prerequisite. He may have cleaned-up his look and (mostly) dropped the provocative shtick, but this is the first Ariel Pink album where his pure love for the art of making music shines though just as bright as his art-damaged outsider persona. Jordan Cronk

17. Menomena: Mines. More than most any modern band, I get the feeling that Menomena really respect the notion of quality control. Sure, it’s easy to point at their casual release schedule for proof—three albums in seven years, and another long-form experiment that was deemed a one-off (2005's Under An Hour)—but it’s also glaringly obvious in their consideration of everything from production values to album artwork. So when it comes to their latest, Mines, it’s really no longer a question of “good” or “bad,” since we’re basically guaranteed quality at this point, but just how good this thing can possibly turn out. The short answer: really fucking good. With its increased attention to what you could call more traditional songwriting, Mines certainly ran the risk of falling limp in the shadow of such dizzying experiments as 2003's left-field classic I Am the Fun Blame Monster and 2007's kaleidoscopic Friend and Foe, but instead Menomena sound more focused than ever. It’s another distinct and distinctly Menomena-esque production, meaning there are tracks (such as the moody, piano-tinged “Killemall”) to offset the winding, horn-accented “Five Little Rooms.” There’s also “Oh Pretty Boy, You’re Such a Big Boy,” which I swear is attempting to adopt the stray-jazz strut of Clipse’s “Young Boy,” all the way down to the piano runs and squirrely bits of synth that eventually punctuate each bar. Each of these pieces reiterates just how skilled these guys are in the studio, as each piano strike is full-bodied, each guitar line richly rendered, and all manner of percussion squarely supportive of each contrasting element. There may not be a better sounding record released all year. Mines is not only further proof that Menomena hold themselves to an impressively high standard that most bands could only dream of approaching, but it’s a fantastic studio creation in its own right. For this very reason I get the feeling that in the future, as many a buzz band inevitably fall by the wayside, the music of Menomena will continue to engage and endure. JC

16. Beach House: Teen Dream. It can be hard to get excited about each and every band that populates the increasingly crowded lo-fi dream-pop scene, but in a short amount of time, Beach House have become the defining face of indie dream-pop. Then again, not every dream-pop band comes equipped with the vocal prowess of Victoria Legrand. Legrand’s vocals ground the airy wanderings of Teen Dream, an album that cements their position as one of the best indie outfits out there. The reverb-heavy guitars of “Zebra” and “Norway” flow and meld like honey around Legrand’s echoing vocals, which constantly sound like they're being sung in an old, empty opera house. Dreamy synths punctuate tracks like “Lover of Mine” and “Silver Soul,” creating a dizzying looping effect accentuated by Alex Cally’s sparse percussion. Teen Dream sounds like an album full of singles, as just about any track can easily stand on its own, but when consumed in one sitting (or multiple, which is much more likely), Teen Dream can truly be heard as a remarkable achievement of atmosphere and songwriting from a band too damn young to have had such a stellar musical revelation. Kyle Fowle

15. Taylor Swift: Speak Now. All the things Taylor Swift has achieved, at age 20—youngest winner of the Grammy for Album of the Year, highest selling digital music artist in history—make it very hard to focus on the few things she still needs to work on a bit. Of course, the cynics never quit. Yes, she's a 20 year-old woman who, at this point in her career, sings almost exclusively about relationships. Yes, her vocal ability is limited, a hindrance rarely evidenced on record but painfully obvious in many of her live performances. And yes, she frequently casts herself in an infallible light, critical of her suiters' actions and reducing them to straw-men in the songs she constructs to take them down, often in the process inflating her own ego. Thing is, Swift is aware of her limitations as an artist, at this point in her career, and she's just made an album which pushes those limitations to the brink with a greater intelligence and craft than just about anyone, while crucially never crossing that boundary which might turn eclecticism into failure. On Speak Now, Swift's third record and follow-up to 2008's blockbuster Fearless, the young singer cycles through familiar—albeit expert—country-pop for about half, then begins to artfully synthesize her aesthetic into new hybridizations: surging power-pop ("The Story of Us"), bluegrass ("Mean"), alt-rock ("Better Than Revenge"), languid blues ("Dear John"), full-on orchestral-rock (Evanescence would die for "Haunted"), and waltz-time balladry ("Last Kiss"). She succeeds at each, even selling the bombastic wail of "Haunted" with commitment to form and a near-unrivaled sense of how to write and place a hook. So sure, bitch about her still-developing voice, both lyrically and vocally, but you're missing out on one of the year's best albums. SCM

14. Spoon: Transference. Spoon's best record synthesizes all the styles the band's tried on throughout their decade-plus career, and they've tried on a few. Rifling through the Austin band's closet turns up the anthemic indie-rock of Gimme Fiction, the cerebral deconstructionism of Kill the Moonlight, and the regal pop of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Transference is better partly because the band's improved at executing each style, having already had album-length canvases to practice on, and partly because this 11 song cycle is exactly the dosage ("spoonful," if you like) that this band should be giving us. But mostly because it's just such a masterclass in studio fuckery; each song is given definition and nuance—a nuance which has lent immense staying power to this January release—while never so much as to smother the hook. "Written in Reverse" may break down like an old jalopy over its heaving four minutes, but that pounding piano melody is fundamentally indestructible. And whether it's the shivery almost-R&B of "Who Makes Your Money," the combustible riff-rock of "I Saw the Light," or mid-tempo closer "Nobody Gets Me But You," this holds true: It's a testament to the strength of the songwriting that every track here withstands and feeds off the funhouse filters they're put through. It’s the nervous tic motions of their most affected music made accessible. SCM

13. Janelle Monáe: The ArchAndroid. It’s difficult to think of Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid being imagined and executed as only an album, instead of a composition for something like a Broadway musical or film. It’s too cinematic in its scope, too ambitious in its vision and simply too bizarre to be effectively understood and contained within an album (or two, as we first heard part of this tale on her debut EP). That said, while Monáe’s futuristic, dystopian tale of android love is a lot to wrap your mind around, each of the songs here are so well crafted and the entire experience so much fun that you can enjoy the album no matter how much time you choose to devote to unraveling its unwieldy concept. This is genre-melding pop music at its best, a 70-minute opus with stunners spanning an impressive range, from the vigorously funky “Tightrope” to the smooth and sexy “Neon Valley Street.” Monáe’s energy is infectious and her talent undeniable; by readily handling such a grand debut with The ArchAndroid, it’s clear she’s not operating with any limitations in mind. And why should she be? Here’s to hoping she attacks her next project with the same mix of intelligence and unrestricted ambition as she did this one. CN

12. Women: Public Strain. Tension often breeds inspiration. Public Strain thrives on tension. Women's recent on-stage altercations lend this theory an unfortunate (though perhaps necessary) context, cluing us into the barely-contained inertia coursing through the veins of this Canadian art-rock band's uncommonly confident sophomore album. Women’s self-titled debut—one of the best and most diverse indie-rock introductions of the past half decade—sprayed forth with talent and effortless pop chops, though it was tempered with enough bits of noisy shrapnel to bare some impressive teeth, lest we think these guys intend to play by the rules. Continuing to upend expectations, the trio have used Public Strain as a plateau on which to consolidate their strengths, honing in on a tightly wound, minimalist aesthetic approach, wherein torrents of needling guitar lines intertwine with stone-faced vocals and controlled yet propulsive rhythmic accents. This is a dangerous, thrilling tightrope on which Women walk so deftly. So cold and blunted is their sound that it feels like it could cut glass if rendered psychical. Laced with ambiance, peppered with an angular, purposefully never-fully-realized headlong thrust, Public Strain is the sound of pure, bottled energy. In other words, these dudes are currently fueling their own fire. Let's just pray they keeps the embers guarded but lit, as combustion would deprive us of one of our most vital, uncompromising acts. JC

11. Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest. Deerhunter’s Halycon Digest was one of those 2010 releases that was shrouded in mystery, doubt and excitement before it even hit the shelves or the Internet. Loyal followers of Bradford Cox had worked their way through the stellar Logos from Cox’s Atlas Sound project, but were anxiously awaiting the next Deerhunter release. Once the album was released and the reviews started flooding in, it was clear that Halycon Digest was a significant step up in many ways for the band—and well worth the wait. It’s a schizophrenic record that fervently switches between infectious 3-minute pop tunes (“Revival,” “Fountain Stairs,” “Memory Boy”) and manic, chugging bouts of organized messiness (“Desire Lines,” “Helicopter”). Most importantly though, despite its conflicted personality, Halycon Digest is the most cohesive and consistent offering from Deerhunter, a band that has long been heralded as a “big indie act in the making.” With its breezy lyrical quality and sonic fortitude, Halycon Digest is both immediately listenable and deeply affecting and complex. It may not be the full-blown masterpiece that most believe Cox is capable of, but it is a giant, enthusiastic and compelling step in that direction. KF

10. Frog Eyes: Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph. Just when I think indie-rock is about to be swallowed whole by day-glo dance-pop and nostalgic synth posturing, along come a couple of purely whittled electric guitar records to shake my senses and realign my priorities. Women’s Public Strain, which I spoke of earlier, is still fresh coming off a late fall release and a small wave of good notices, but somehow lost in the shuffle this spring was an even better distillation of mainlined indie-rock from their fellow Canadian idealists in Frog Eyes. Perhaps it was inevitable that Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph, their seventh and most robust album to date, would be met with guarded admiration, as Carey Mercer is apparently unwilling to play by any sensible listener’s idea of an upwardly mobile career trajectory. After working through a series of skewed variations of the pop form on 2007's magnificent Tears of the Valedictorian, Mercer parted ways with his band’s most recognizable member (Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown), and dug his heels into long-form, loosely structured guitar parables which took raw-throated surrealism to dizzying new heights. Folding the pronounced dynamics of Tears into a more streamlined and daunting full-bodied release of pent-up aggression, Mercer tossed modesty out the window with these nine guttural dry-heaves, splaying his maniacally deployed vocal mannerisms horizontally across the boiling surface-level tensions of each of these tracks. It’s an exhausting, liberating and inspiring ride, and if they hadn’t already critiqued the results so accurately with the album title, I’d say Frog Eyes reached a new level in 2010 that no other rock band can currently lay claim to. JC

09. Yellow Swans: Going Places. The ideology of noise inherently tends to demolish anything as helpful as context, demanding the listener instead meet the music on its own terms. However, as announced well over a year in advance of its release, Going Places was to be Portland avant-noise duo Yellow Swans’ final album—after eight years and literally hundreds of self-released cassettes and limited-run-only vinyl. The title, therefore, may ostensibly be read as optimistic. But as Gabriel Salomon and Pete Swanson enter this period of transition, it’s impossible not to hang on every last aching note as a lament not only for this particular band, but for a genre that has had its signifiers liberally co-opted and utilized to very different ends by a new generation of musicians who may or may not recognize this parent movement as the revolution against complacency it was meant to embody. We can argue over things as irrelevant as approachability or diversity until we’re blue in the face, but just as it is with some of the year’s other great experimental records—Zs’ New Slaves, Kemialliset Ystävät’s Ullakkopalo, Smegma’s Mirage—determination eventually triumphs, and Going Places plants a flag atop the rubble signifying both the end of an era and hopefully a way forward for those with the tenacity to stay true to one’s principles. This is, quite simply, the most gut-punchingly visceral music of 2010, and as Yellow Swans recede into the shadows, they can take solace in that. JC

08. Four Tet: There Is Love in You. I’ve had more time than most for Kieran Hebden’s one-off’s and collaborations over the years, but even with a fairly solid full-length under his belt (2005's Everything Ecstatic), it was beginning to feel like it had been an awful long of time since the release of 2003's semi-classic Rounds, Hebden's debut under the Four Tet moniker. Building on a number of the techniques experimented with on last year’s awesome split 12" with Burial—as well as apparently ingesting entire portions of the Hyperdub catalogue—Hebden emerged last winter with There Is Love in You, a noticeably reinvigorated and consistently thrilling expansion of his formerly restrictive “folk-tronica.” Where there was once lap-top derived glitch&b, there was now sleek updates on lock-step 4/4 techno and disembodied, sample-based dubstep. For a less talented producer, these nods could have come off as tired approximations, but across the album’s nine tracks, Hebden exhibits more verve than ever before, burrowing headlong into ten-minute house epics (“Love Cry”) as effortlessly as he does more minimalist-leaning, confetti-spraying vocal tracks (“Sing,” “This Unfolds”). The emotional arc itself even reminds me of the clouds-parting revelations of Emeralds’ Does It Look Like I’m Here?. Just as that album dissolves from focused synthetic assault to heart-rending analogue expanse in its final stretch, There Is Love in You similarly strips it’s motherboard for spare parts, closing with “She Just Likes to Fight,” the single most affecting moment in the Four Tet catalogue to date. Sleek and innovative enough for forward-thinking gear-heads, but with a beating heart hidden in its extraordinary machine, There Is Love in You was one of 2010's most three-dimensional listening experiences. JC

07. Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma. The Brainfeeder collective had a massive year in 2010. Led by Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus), this crew of post-Dilla beat alchemists dabbled in everything from buoyant, waterlogged electro-pop (Baths) to luxurious downtempo (Teebs) to straight-blunted lyrical dioramas (Gonjasufi). All are impressive, but it was FlyLo and his latest expanse of world-conscious beat architecture that pushed the game to new heights—past Los Angeles and onto an astral plane where Squarepusher collides head-on with Herbie Hancock. It's Ellison's familial jazz lineage (he is, as has been documented thoroughly, the great nephew of Alice Coltrane) that leaves the greatest mark on the dense, complex, and endlessly fascinating Cosmogramma, an album infused with regard for history, but with an eye turned toward the future. This is some cerebral and calculating science by which FlyLo experiments so liberally, folded over and inward so seamlessly that even Thom Yorke gets swallowed by its unrelenting gait. Each microscopic element serves its purpose, yielding to the pulse of Ellison's equally organic and synthetic lab concoctions. Loose-limbed and running over with effortless instrumental flourishes, Cosmogramma snared outlying genres like a tractor-beam, boiling the results down into a singularly preserved statement on the future of electronic music. With so many artists using the past as a crutch for updated genre pastiche, Flying Lotus is bravely leading us into vaguely familiar yet altogether uncharted territory. Best sit back and enjoy the ride. JC

06. The Roots: How I Got Over. Just as the Roots' late '90s classic Things Fall Apart served as a State of the Union for its troubled times, How I Got Over surveys the "post-hope zeitgeist" (their words) and finds acceptance and grace by looking inward, a sign of the band members’ over-40 maturity. Musically, it's not bracingly different from their last few albums (Game Theory, Rising Down, and especially the streamlined Tipping Point), but its strength is in refining the Roots' sound to a focused 40-minute album without a single wasted moment. As ever it's the chemistry between drummer Questlove and rapper Black Thought that makes How I Got Over so vital, but—more so than on any of their albums since 2002's Phrenology—it’s Quest's carefully calibrated production that makes this, in a sense, the Super Roots Album. It spent nearly two years incubating in the studio with Quest and the boys, a gestation period to my knowledge longer than any in the Roots' discography. The result is a triumph for Quest as a producer—and something of a masterpiece for the man as a drummer. Every nook and cranny of this thing feels considered, but it's the drums that really pop, whether it be the rapid high hat on the title cut or the brush-heavy atmosphere of album standout "Dear God 2.0." The latter track in particular exemplifies the band's new brand of pathos, a departure from the uncorked rage of Rising Down and Game Theory, reaching instead for a philosophical outlook on social issues and finding that the path of perseverance can be a tough one. What How I Got Over aims to prove, however, is that it's also a rewarding one: The glass-half-empty ruminations of side-A eventually give way to the more optimistic songs of side-B, with the sassy Joanna Newsom-sampling "Right On" and the anthemic John Legend-assisted "The Fire" offering a greater rejuvenating catharsis than any Roots album to date. SCM

05. The Tallest Man On Earth: The Wild Hunt / Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird EP. In a year all but defined by excess—and in stark contrast to my below number one album pick—modest Swedish folk singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson’s sophomore album as the Tallest Man On Earth is refreshing in its simplicity. I realize the problem with promoting an album like this in a year of so many big ideas is that I then have to defend why it is that a relatively short, traditionally-leaning folk record takes the second spot on my list over some of the more exploratory and exciting albums I alluded to in my introduction. I guess my argument would be that there’s considerable value in an artist or album that so masterfully captures the qualities of a given genre, even—occasionally—at the expense of branching out into previously unexplored territory. Add a beautiful five-song EP, Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird, to his 2010 list of accomplishments and I have no trouble promoting Kristian Matsson as one of this year’s most noteworthy artists, regardless of the competition. CN

04. Arcade Fire: The Suburbs. Arcade Fire's debut, 2004's Funeral, is one of the most acclaimed album's of the last decade. The band's latest, The Suburbs, is like three times better. Catch is, I'm mixing two opinions here: Funeral's widely recognized classic status has been perpetuated by numerous publications naming it among the last decade's best, while The Suburbs' strengths I'm basing on personal opinion. Which is a bullshit way of saying I think Funeral is one of the most overrated albums of the last decade, and that The Suburbs, like the band's excellent sophomore effort Neon Bible, will likely be held up against it as if it has something to prove. As if. To my mind, a listen to Funeral today reveals an incredibly earnest band high on energy and emotion but without the ideas and mastery of the studio sound so frequently evident here. Check out lead singer Win Butler's jaw-dropping "Modern Man," a masterfully calibrated, hopefully future-single that seems to synthesize the best of Elvis Costello and David Byrne down to a neat four minutes and change. These influences are nothing new when it comes to whom Arcade Fire and specifically that quivery, wiggly voice of Win's are indebted, but never has the band given us a bass line this driving, with a chorus this catchy and topical, with a guitar riff this crunchy, with a breakdown this perfectly judged…you get where I'm going here. Everything's in its right place; the result of which is pop-rock gold the likes of which this band has only flirted with before. If the worst I can say is that it doesn't quite feel like Arcade Fire have hit their ceiling, that they me even have a better album in them, I can't imagine anyone complaining about that. SCM

03. Big Boi: Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty. There are many virtues to Big Boi’s latest, but none more worthy of mention than its awe-inspiring wordplay. As one half of wrecking-ball duo Outkast, Big Boi has more than proven himself the equal of weirder counterpart Andre 3000. But even on his first solo record (the Speakerboxxx half of Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double-album), Andre's exceedingly strange experimentation made Big’s funky offering look tame by comparison. Thanks to Jive being the assholes they are, contractual obligations kept 'Dre off this set entirely, which wasn't such a bad idea: Big finally has a showcase all his own, and he uses the opportunity to spit the most absurdly inspired rhymes of his career. Rhymes like "It's after twelve, club like a Hi-V/A beehive, 'cause now everybody buzzin' around me," and "Not to flex, but to protect my neck like the Wu Tang/Self-preservation is the rule when you do aim." Nobody touches his flow—not even Kanye. Thankfully, the beats more often than not compliment the joyous mood, especially the skittering "Shutterbugg," the source of both rhymes referenced above and a triumphant return for Scott Storch (who litters the track with talkbox and Soul II Soul references). Not everything on Left Foot is this inspired, but some of it is: "Shine Blockas," my favorite song of last year that didn't really come out until this year, makes surprisingly poignant use of a then-incarcerated Gucci Mane, with another beat most any rapper would kill for. Granted the messiness of this very long record is rather easy to criticize—I would have excised the drippy "Be Still" and chosen anyone over friggin' Vonnegutt for "Follow Us"—but plenty of rap albums could use an editor, and there's too much good here to dwell on a few missteps. SCM

02. Joanna Newsom: Have One On Me. Amidst the deepest and most rewarding year for music since at least 2007, many artists reached new levels of expression and many more made breakthroughs worthy of admiration and recognition. None, however, could match the breadth, scope, and ambition of Joanna Newsom, whose epic third album re-imagined the parameters of the singer-songwriter form, refining and redefining her artistic persona, her already impressive structural and stylistic aesthetic, and her thematic concerns all in one fell, three-disc swoop. A significantly warmer and more approachable record despite its daunting runtime, Have One On Me simultaneously dropped the land-nymph daintiness of The Milk-Eyed Mender and the renaissance fair symphonic-prog dalliances of Ys and found Newsom instead settling into Laurel Canyon godmother mode, unfolding uncommonly personal multi-part suites as digestible in single-sized servings as they are satisfying in album-length individuations. The troughs, valleys and unencumbered sprawl of the record even reminds me of some of the world’s greatest of cinematic indulgences—from multi-part accomplishments like "The Human Condition" and "Berlin Alexanderplatz," to more condensed but no less unwieldy epics like "The Thin Red Line"—particularly in the way one can arrive at the album from any chosen angle or at any given moment and instantly identify with the character and/or narrator on display, both embodied here by Newsom at her most heartfelt and romantically exposed. Even at its fullest and most instrumentally robust, this can be uncomfortably intimate music, and for the first time in her six years in the public eye it feels like Joanna Newsom is a living, breathing, three dimensional woman with the amazing ability to transform antiquated aesthetics into fresh and vibrantly alive music. Have One On Me is generous beyond all rationale, beautiful beyond all attempts at emotional reconciliation, and more worthy of undying adoration than anything I heard all year. This is my beautiful dark twisted fantasy writ large and come to magnificent life. JC

01. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Where do you go after a world-beating statement like 2005'sLate Registration? If you're Kanye, you move forward, explore new territory, and endure diminishing returns as a result. You do this because your head is ever-overflowing with doubt; you have to keep stoking that ravenous ego of yours to prove—to yourself, above all—that you really are the best doin' it. And if you're Kanye, apparently that path will lead you to something beautiful, dark and twisted. This record is the culmination of everything West's done in the last ten years or more: the boom-pap production credits he racked up at the turn of the decade for "big brother" Jay-Z, the soulful and celebratory hip-hop he mastered during the College Drop Out/Late Registration era, and the introspective electro-pop experimentation he’s been dabbling in lately, all refined, but without sacrificing the wild excess intrinsic to the very concept of Kanye making music. Excess which takes the808s & Heartbreak-sounding "Runaway," on which West sings the hook, and blows it up into a nine-minute epic, complete with wordless auto-tuned coda. It's the quintessential West song, and maybe his best; a multi-faceted expression of his self-destructive personality, his contradictory inflated ego and deflating insecurity. But it's far fromMy Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's only highlight. The Rick Ross featuring "Devil in a New Dress" chops up Smokey Robinson's falsetto and sprinkles it over the Teflon Don's robust baritone. The G.O.O.D. Fridays diptych "Monster" and "So Appalled" find West communing with his peers to recognize the repulsive underbelly of their genre—the "dark" side of Kanye's Fantasy. "All of the Lights" is both a masterful example of channeling a wide array of talents into one unifying voice and that rare instance of a Kanye narrative not explicitly about the man himself. All of it sums up to a supernova of pop decadence, a ballsy bid of self-expression that’s so do-or-die that it has to be the best. Yeezy taught me. SCM

• 12.27.10 | Year in Review 2010: Sam C. Mac (Film) Sam C. Mac
• 12.27.10 | Year in Review 2010: Luke Gorham (Film) Luke Gorham
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd

Feature by: InRO Staff

Year in Review 2010 - Top 20 Films

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:08:10 -0500

We're all trying to escape something by going to the movies: sadness, boredom, discontent, longing. Spectators hunker down hoping a filmmaker will take them into a cinematic world worthy of their time, to a place away from the drudgeries of their day-to-day. In 2010, the standout moments in cinema were concerned with this same tension, namely the desire to evade reality for life in a kind of dreamscape. Whether it was the conflicted thief of "Inception" or the haunted ballerina of "Black Swan," these characters danced with a devil of their own making, temporarily subverting the consequences of their failures with an imagined happiness. So it’s fitting that many of the year’s best deal directly with this fluid relationship between escape and capture, fantasy and its eventual deterioration. The tortured American psyche, both past ("Shutter Island") and present ("Greenberg"), was represented by bravura cinematic aesthetics capturing specific human moments.

This motif came to a head in David Fincher's "The Social Network," a sobering manifesto on modern passive aggression and forms of immature escape. Many excellent documentaries ("Last Train Home," "October Country," "Exit Through the Gift Shop") also focused on real life "characters" seeking release, yet many of these subjects merely repeated the vicious cycles they wished to counter. The foreign/arthouse sector also produced especially strong films this year, picking up the extensive slack of Hollywood's glaring failures. Variations of physical and mental entrapment, be it familial ("Dogtooth"), emotional ("Everyone Else"), religious ("Hadewijch"), or ideological ("Secret Sunshine"), transformed those seeking escape into volatile human screeds against conformity. If there was one commonality, it's that each warns the pursuit of happiness isn’t a privilege, but a fight between delusion and logic, surreality and reality. Wrestling with these bitter pills of wisdom and sacrifice gave us more than enough reason to keep escaping into the dark in 2011. For that, we’re thankful. Glenn Heath, Jr.

20. Amer / Héléne Cattet & Bruno Forzani. It starts with an eye, pupil and retina stretched to magnificent widescreen and then multiplied into leering quadrants. This, we're told from the onset, will be a movie about looking. And more than any movie in memory, "Amer" embodies, with its every voyeuristic glance, the late Robin Wood's mythic male gaze incarnate. Except that these malevolent stares are met and mirrored with eyes of relentless curiosity—and the "Final Girl" is both subject and chief perpetrator of the film's unblinking fetishism. To call this gloriously inventive giallo tribute a "horror film" would be misleading. That would imply a sense of build and release that directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani willfully eschew. These quick studies pilfer the playbooks of Italian horror maestros Dario Argento and Mario Bava, straining out all extraneous traces of perfunctory plot and character, reducing a whole genre to pure, ecstatic formalism. (Forget "Black Swan": here was a kaleidoscopic death trip, co-mingling desire and dread, that resurrected the phantom specter of "Repulsion.") Technique for technique's sake? Absolutely. Also: the most boldly experimental "narrative" film I saw in 2010. A.A. Dowd

19. Another Year / Mike Leigh. Stately and considered where its predecessor felt spiky and garrulous, "Another Year" was labelled by many a critic upon its Cannes debut as Mike Leigh's antidote of sorts to his 2008 character study "Happy-Go-Lucky." That's a misjudgment made purely on the basis of tone, given that the two films, perhaps more than any other pair in the Leigh oeuvre, are clear sister works—both comedies of manners examining the effort that goes into the construction of happiness, divided only by which side of the Thames their particular gaggle of chirpy middle-class Londoners reside. The bedrock of Leigh's ensemble in "Another Year" may be Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent's happily married, patly named couple Tom and Gerri, but its lightning rod is Lesley Manville's Mary—a restlessly single semi-alcoholic whose heartbreaking front of peppy faux-cheer suggests an alternative study of "Happy-Go-Lucky's" irrepressible lead, Poppy, given an extra twenty years and a broken spirit. On first viewing, "Another Year" threatens to write a condescending essay on the virtues of coupledom and the perils of loneliness, until the more jagged spokes of its generously spread narrative start poking through. Does Imelda Staunton's unnervingly acrid cameo at the outset undercut Tom and Gerri's living, growing advertisement for marriage? Does Mary's emotional hemorrhage-in-progress make her the more or less disillusioned one? If Leigh can seem a cruel filmmaker in his best works, it's because of his reluctance to speak for his characters—in this patiently charted, mintily lensed beauty, their fallout seems to surprise even him. Guy Lodge

18. Mother / Bong Joon-ho. Bong Joon-ho’s "Mother" begins with a strange slow dance performed by an unnamed middle-aged woman (Kim Hye-ja), an improvised solitary glide up a grassy knoll. But this fleeting bout of inspiration cuts to a dire sight: A dimly lit medium shot of the dancer now shrouded in darkness, eyes staring deeply into the camera. This stark juxtaposition foreshadows a lengthy timeline of suffering, where repressed memories breed new traumas, forming an intricate procedural full of devastating delusions. When her handicapped son Yoon Do-joon (Bin Won) is accused of murder, Mother goes to great lengths to prove him innocent, yet her investigation unearths hidden skeletons. This maternal spider weaves her web with unconditional love, and this is what defines her relationship with her son and both characters’ skewed perspective. In “Mother,” time and doubt erodes all sense of self and the truth only makes matters worse. This makes “Mother” a distant cousin of "Memories of Murder," Bong’s masterpiece about the failure of state institutions to conquer evil. But where that film oozes with genre subversion, "Mother" turns into a singular exploration of pain, peeling away layers of mania to reveal the heartache underneath. GH

17. Bluebeard / Catherine Breillat. Part fairy-tale, part semi-autobiographical childhood fable, Catherine Breillat’s “Bluebeard” is a deceptively simple glimpse at the adult world through the eyes of a child. Told as a horrific bedtime story to a wide-eyed young girl, whose nascent imagination gives it a frighteningly personal power, it's a film that is as much about the power of fiction as it a retelling of the classic French tale of the monstrous aristocrat Bluebeard, who marries young women who soon meet grisly ends. Basing the film’s children on herself and her older sister, Breillat creates a world where the young insert themselves into the fantasy worlds they create, giving themselves a kind of strength they may not have in real life. It's a spot-on evocation of childhood hopes and fears, and Breillat skillfully taps into the frightened child in all of us, gleefully devouring scary stories in the dark under the covers, or huddled in the corner of a dusty attic, willfully scaring ourselves silly. “Bluebeard” is a breathless whisper, a haunting and wholly satisfying journey into the heart of human darkness as filtered through a child's eyes, in all its larger than life fearsomeness. Breillat has breathed life into an enchanting feminist fairy tale for a modern age, at once wistful and nostalgic, and eerily macabre. Its distillation of her childhood fantasies mixed with the director’s own adult sensibilities makes for something both magical and frightening. It is an engaging, layered fairytale; a beautiful gilded dagger of a film that cuts straight to the bone. Matthew Lucas

16. October Country / Michael Palmieri & Donal Mosher. A quiet, absorbing portrait of an American family as unassuming as it is unexpectedly moving, "October Country" is nonfiction filmmaking at its finest. Director Michael Palmieri—with photographer Donal Mosher (who stays off camera)—elliptically tracks the impoverished Mosher clan of Mohawk Valley, New York over roughly a year's time, from one Halloween to the next. He shifts his focus from an elderly couple to their daughter, to their daughter's daughter, who has a newborn baby of her own. While he never telegraphs his intent, his patient, observational style gradually expands our knowledge of these people, cluing us into the mistakes they've made and the specters of the past that still haunt them. Palmieri illustrates the Moshers' struggles with poetic evocations of time's passage, and of its lasting effects; he lingers on the ghosted image of fireworks and the whirring of a light fixture, the slow drift of cigarette smoke and, most achingly, an old home movie of the eldest Mosher slow-dancing with his granddaughter on Christmas morning. The filmmakers' interests here are universal; they carefully record cycles of life, linking one woman's bad decisions to her upbringing with a mother who was victim to similar patterns, and finally back to her mother's father, haunted by ghosts of the Vietnam War. The film's depiction is of a family that could only be American, their misfortunes rooted in poor economic standing and in the sacrifices they've made to protect their freedoms—as beautifully symbolized in an image of a waving American flag shot through with rays of sunshine. It's a modest film of disarming power, so precisely capturing the lives of its several characters that you'll feel like you spent a year with them yourself. Sam C. Mac

15. True Grit / Joel & Ethan Coen. While not nearly as existentially ambitious as previous features "No Country for Old Men" and "A Serious Man," nor as loosely screwball as "Burn After Reading," the Coen brothers' latest is undoubtedly their most classically entertaining in years. Arriving just before Christmas, "True Grit" is the perfect holiday diversion where recent attempts to satisfy Old Hollywood nostalgia have proven too self-aware ("Sherlock Holmes") and insincere ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"). Propelled by the Coens' predictable (and anticipated) exploitation of the Midwestern patois, the film is both respectful toward and subversive of Western genre conventions. While formally providing audiences with their share of climactic gunplay and anti-heroism, nuances such as the audible clink of La Beouf’s spurs and a ridiculous cornbread shoot-off poke fun at the usual testicularity of the genre. The remarkable Hailee Steinfeld holds the production together, and Jeff Bridges transcends his recent ubiquity with possibly his best role since The Dude. Mike Maguire

14. Black Swan / Darren Aronofsky. Perhaps the most critically divisive film of the year (and on this site), “Black Swan” finds director Darren Aronofsky working in unfamiliar territory. A journeyman director in many ways, his films are often very tough to conceive of prior to seeing them. This was supposed to be the Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis lesbian-ballet movie to which horny frat bros across the country would flock en masse. What we got instead is a psychological nightmare indebted to Hollywood’s golden age of Polanskian horror. Featuring the best performance of Natalie Porman’s career as an aspiring ballerina saddled by insecurities and timidity born of matriarchal oppression, Aronofsky’s vision differs from such classical comparisons as “Repulsion” thanks to his knowing cinephelia. Aronofsky isn’t trying to emulate the classics, nor reinvent them; more specifically, what he does here is deconstruct them, to their most basic elements, and repurposes the motifs and moods of these films in skillfully manic ways. “Black Swan” is delightfully sexy, capturing the graceful perfections and imperfections of ballet with beautifully composed shots and Clint Mansell’s genius riffing on Tchaikovsky. It's also brazenly, balls-out mad, a nightmare of absurdity, carefully mixing the overly shocking with the delicately unsettling. The film is all dark beauty and beautiful darkness, an uncommon look at the disconcerting opulence of lunacy. Aronofsky fully understands the genre he is working in, and he bravely refuses to shy away from it. “Black Swan” isn’t barmy genius, nor is it overhyped trash. Its actually something simpler; it’s the best damn genre film to come out in years. LG

13. Alamar / Pedro González-Rubio. Some fathers are born, some are made, and some were never meant to be. Jorge Machado, a Mayan fisherman, was evidently born to be a father—every motion and facial tick suggests as much under the proving stare of Pedro González-Rubio’s lens. “Alamar” (aka “To the Sea”) is a study of fatherhood as a binding maleness between generations and a force of nature, an event as sublime as a maritime sunset or storm. Its setting, its actors, its scenes and its themes are idyllic—a space filled, for the most part, with charming faces, balmy days, and connections between the living that are too sweet to exist for long. Into this context slip Jorge and his five year-old son, Natan, a devoted pair separated by circumstance. Barefoot, Jorge collects his son for an extended father-son visit on the coast, where he hopes to instruct Natan about his Mayan heritage before his Italian upbringing defines him. It’s a credit to González-Rubio that his film suggests an indeterminate reality—or an indeterminate fiction. Jorge, Natan, and Jorge’s father Nestór are real people who have allowed González-Rubio to document their very real situation. But “Alamar” barely comes off as a documentary because of its pellucid loveliness and the arc of its incidents. The appearance of an African egret, for example, is symbolically felicitous—both bird and son are destined to fly over the ocean despite being happily nurtured by local hands. Ranylt Richildis

12. Winter’s Bone / Debra Granik. The best American indie of the year was also the one that evoked a mythic notion of America, one colored both in regional specificity and a noirish breed of Southern Gothic fantasy. An internet critic recently complained about praising Debra Granik's crackling genre piece, about a wise-beyond-her-years teen (breakout star Jennifer Lawrence) searching for her on-the-lam father, solely through the prism of its distinctively desolate locales. Really, though, come on: it's impossible to extol the virtues of "Winter's Bone" without getting lost in the film's sprawling, decaying backwoods oasis. The era is vaguely undefined, but that's because this corner of the U.S. of A—an isolated, half-imagined stretch of the Ozarks, all meth labs and dilapidated houses—is a proverbial Land That Time Forgot. It's also a closed society as richly drawn and hermetically sealed as a Jane Austen novel. And as Lawrence's stubborn heroine ventures deeper into it, her every inquiry violating its unspoken, rigidly-upheld code of conduct, Granik extends her impeccable eye and ear for local culture to the stylized pitter patter of the native populace. There's more life in the margins of this picture—in the faces and voices of its actors, principles and bit players alike—than most movies manage at their energized peaks. I'll call that an extension of its "sense of place," and weather whatever charges of auto-criticism that come my way. AAD

11. Scott Pilgrim vs the World / Edgar Wright. It's not much of a love story, mostly because Michael Cera's titular combatant is too naggingly narcissistic to transmit swooning desire, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a Manic Pixie Dream Cipher too detached to inspire head-over-heels devotion. No matter—the real romance here is between writer-director Edgar Wright and his world of "disreputable" interests: trash rock, splash-panel comic books and 90s video games. Not quite a Zucker-Brothers parodist, not exactly a Tarantino fanboy, Wright is instead the superhero mash-up artist of our wildest pop-culture dreams. Like his hyper-literate characters, he's so plugged into his obsessions that his movies obliterate the line between satire and reverence. Here, he savages hipster culture—its postures and attitudes, as well as its dubious dating practices—with the same thinly-veiled affection that underlined his expert riffs on zombie onslaughts and braindead shoot-'em-ups. "Scott Pilgrim," though, is next-level good, the kind of eccentric pop-art triumph that Hollywood rarely bankrolls anymore. Wright's brand of comedy is embedded in his aesthetic mastery—his lightning-quick timing, his masterful grasp of composition and movement—and he stages Scott's epic showdowns with the manic flair of a Vincent Minnelli musical number. Is it high art? Let's put it this way: it elevates low art to transcendent new heights. AAD

10. Secret Sunshine / Lee Chang-dong. Foremost among "Secret Sunshine's" many virtues is Do-yeon Jeon's awe-inspiring performance. As a woman beholden to grief, this role could've become histrionic and monotonous very quickly; to the credit of this actress, it rarely does. Jeon, under the guide of director Lee Chang-dong (one of South Korea's premiere filmmakers), never indulges in the bombastic displays of grief that blunt the effect of John Cameron Mitchell's recent "Rabbit Hole"; the actress is given a broader canvas in “Secret Sunshine” than the actors in that stage adaptation. Jeon's single mother is seen at the start of the film as optimistic and a bit careless, a passage which establishes not only a character deeper than mere victim of a soon-to-come tragedy, but also hints at her long-standing relationship with abuse (the foundation of this film's cutting critique). When the tragedy does come—one alluded to in almost every review I've read, but fair warning: it's spoilery—and Jeon's character suffers the loss of her son in a botched ransom, Lee establishes that he's less interested in pushing sadface buttons and more so in exposing the exploitative behaviors of men. He does this by guiding his lost lamb to the doorstep of a religious community and peeling back layers of deceit, dismantling absurd morality and codes of conduct. It's a rough odyssey, but Jeon makes more of it than pain and suffering—her performance full of dimension, of emotional transcendence—and Lee's insistence that strength to overcome can't be found in a book or in any other person, only hidden inside oneself, is goddamn inspiring. SCM

09. Exit Through the Gift Shop / Banksy. Is “Exit Through the Gift Shop” a legitimate documentary or a well-executed put-on? Much discussion has been dedicated to the is-it-or-isn’t-it element of this caustic, wholly subversive work from renowned street artist and provocateur extraordinaire Banksy. The brilliance at hand, however, relies precisely on the lack of a distinction between fiction and nonfiction. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is less a documentary, or a mockumentary for that matter, and more of a direct extension of Banksy’s oeuvre: an altogether meta experiment which acts as both a complex critique of the art world and a reminder of the power of the culture it criticizes. As is the case with “Catfish,” another exceptional 2010 documentary fueled by questions of legitimacy, 'Exit' is perhaps stronger as a ruse than as a straightforward narrative, and stronger still as a product of some fusion between the two. It's also fundamentally dissident and almost preternaturally insightful, postmodern to the nth degree and sociologically fascinating on too many levels to count. Attempts to categorize or classify 'Exit' inherently disparage the complexity of what’s at play here. Like Banksy’s street art, this film refuses to offer up its ideas in an easily digestible or recognizable fashion. And really, was there any other way? A talking-head documentary or plainly fictional approach would not have created anything resembling “Exit Through the Gift Shop” in power or substance. Art can be fictional, can be false, or so Banksy would argue. Thing is, 'Exit' isn’t. Call it a hoax if you like, but none of the self-serving, ego-building debates surrounding this film can detract from the simple truths and profound insights on display in this rabbit-hole journey through the world of Capital-A art. LG

08. Greenberg / Noah Baumbach. While David Fincher and Edgar Wright were examining the social disconnection of youth culture propelled by instant access information and hurried technological advancement in "The Social Network" and "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," respectively, Noah Baumbach gave us "Greenberg," a film that showed self-conscious hang-ups and misguided romantic interactions are hardly limited to the young folks. Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig (playing Roger Greenberg and Florence Marr) are the charming center of Baumbach’s subtle, witty script. Stiller plays Greenberg with equal parts self-deprecation and egotism, while Gerwig is an understated gem as Florence, a woman equally as puzzled by social and romantic interaction as Greenberg. Baumbach’s film brims with harsh realizations, as Greenberg’s narcissistic and often pretentious nature is shown as a slowly cracking shield that hides his insistent self-doubt. Greenberg is certainly a man of privilege, however faded it may be, but around Florence, friends and family, he is merely a shell of bitter, half-hearted and incomplete philosophies. Sometimes we loathe Greenberg, but at other times, as his motivations and intentions move closer to truth and honesty, we cheer for him and for Florence. We relate to their jaded views of romance and become wholly invested in their attempt to overcome their own reservations, follies and lackluster moments of oral sex. We want them to have each other, even if it’s because no one else would want them. Kyle Fowle

07. Lourdes / Jessica Hausner. An early highlight of 2010—coming off festival prizes the year previous—Jessica Hausner's slow-moving film seems like the least dynamic of this year’s several faith-based character studies, at least in terms of its narrative structure—a slow crawl toward an unexpected revelation. But it might also be the most searing. Set in the titular commune of Lourdes, a place of pilgrimage located in the Pyrenees Mountains of southwest Europe, the film focusses primarily on wheelchair-bound Christine (Sylvie Testud). An ambivalent observer of the site's more fervent believers, Christine's modest demeanor contrasts those pilgrims devoted to their rituals of prayer and idle gossip. Without giving anything away (which is really hard), I'll say that Hausner's film takes a somewhat surprising turn in its second half, largely giving its more tedious first a greater power and sense of purposeful build. After this point, "Lourdes" begins to thrive on pointing out how earnest intentions can be corrupted by selfishness and egotism. Hausner's film becomes a kind of microcosm of this behavior, and its formalist sensibility turns it into an Altman-esque mosaic. But it's Testud's stunning headliner performance which impresses most. She commits so completely to her part's mounting contradictions and comes up with one of the most beguiling and unique screen characters of the year. SCM

06. Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl / Manoel de Oliveira. Hardest working man in showbiz Manoel de Oliveira (Portuguese centurion, very old dude, etc.) hustled out two movies this year, both championed by his fan-base. And while I'm thankful to Cinema Guild for rushing out the newer, also very good "The Strange Case Angelica" in time for polls (December 29th; cutting it close there, guys!), I'm personally far more partial to the man's streamlined parable "Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl," released early in the year (after a run of festival dates in 2009, including the one at TIFF I originally caught) and getting less attention. I half want to say I'm just less of a fan of MdO's high-concept work—and with its loopy astral projections and Jew/Catholic dynamics, 'Angelica' is certainly one of those—but then I remember "A Talking Picture" was the best not-"Dogville" film of 2004 and think, 'That can't be right.' Nevertheless, 'Eccentricities'—like 2001's minimalist character-piece "I'm Going Home"—feels scaled to perfection in ways 'Angelica' doesn't quite. It's a bit of a cliché, but seriously: not one shot is wasted in this 60-minute takedown of love at first sight. Manoel is in a sly mood here, targeting the current economic crisis even as he adapts an ancient short story and dresses his characters in weirdly old-fashioned garb. The plotting is spare, but the visuals—emphasizing the gulf between paramours with a shot-reverse-shot string of balcony scenes—and the line-perfect script make it sing. Plus the last shot is fucking brilliant: a slouching posture made darkly funny and sad. SCM

05. Shutter Island / Martin Scorsese. How can anyone who truly loves cinema, in all its sonic and visual possibilities, not get a certain hit of pure joy from "Shutter Island"? Okay, so it's basically dumb as a box of rocks: a shaggy-dog story with a twist you could predict not just from the onset of the film, but after reading a simple description of its plot. Transcending its hoary, exceedingly obvious narrative architecture, this primo pulp exercise affords Martin Scorsese, ever the playful aesthete and giddy genre aficionado, the opportunity to indulge in some of his most gloriously opulent imagery. From its opening frames, wherein a mighty vessel emerges from the thick and billowy fog of Boston Harbor, "Shutter Island" has begun to blur the line between the real and the unreal, between immaculate period detail and classic Hollywood affectation. Bad dreams commingle with faulty memories, while personal phobias—of steep plummets, of squealing vermin, of stormy weather—are inflated to grotesque proportions. In a role awfully similar to the one he coasts through in "Inception," Leonardo DiCaprio simmers and contracts with queasy conviction, grounding the film’s phantasmagoric fantasies in a wealth of genuine feeling. Okay, it'll take you minutes to guess the ending. Wait and see how long it takes you to shake off the rest. AAD

04. The Social Network / David Fincher. One of the most universally-hyped films to be released this century, “The Social Network” deserves all of the accolades that come its way. Director David Fincher approaches the trendy, techno-centric subject matter here with the same calculated precision he brought to the superb “Zodiac,” though with the benefit of more keen insight on his side this time. Once more, Fincher coaxes a handful of fantastic performances out his cast, most notably Jesse Eisenberg as the brilliant but purposefully-embittered Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield as his betrayed partner Eduardo Saverin. In all technical respects, the film is nearly flawless. Dialogue delivered as fast as it is smart dominates the film, while the narrative structure imbues a surprising layer of emotional depth within its breakneck pace. Yet it's the film’s careful scrutiny of Zuckerberg which extrapolates its real interests. It's Zuckerberg’s ambivalence toward people, his close-to-the heart defense mechanisms and developing egoism, from which Facebook, the ultimate digital age tool of human connectivity, was born. It's this idea which concerns the filmmakers, the concept of socially-aided alienation and our blindness to the potential evils hidden within. When Rashida Jones’s lawyer astutely intones in the final scene, “You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be,” we are left to consider, somewhat grandly, the implications of the technology we hold so dear and what it says about the future of our world. LG

03. Everyone Else / Maren Ade. The annals of cinema history are littered with broken hearts and shattered unions; filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer made whole, healthy careers out of tracing the rise and fall of not-so-healthy relationships. Yet I'm not sure I've ever seen a break-up movie as surgically precise as this one—every scene plays like a carefully constructed thesis on the way affection can wilt into petty resentment as the weeks, months and years tick by. "Everyone Else" is nothing if not exhaustive in its romantic autopsy, but it's rarely exhausting, mostly because writer-director Marden Ade sets her battle of the sexes on rocky, foreign terrain, during an aimlessly scenic vacation from hell. She's got the freewheeling playfulness of Cassavetes, and two superb actors—moody, lanky Lars Eidinger and damaged wild child Birgit Minichmayr—to breathe life into her mismatched combative types. Timeless in its vision of curdling l'amour fou, "Everyone Else" is also sneakily timely. These aging bohemians aren't just waking up to their fundamental incompatibility; they're waking up to the long-delayed burden of adulthood, a 21st century where starving-artist affectation gives way to bourgeoise complacency almost overnight. How they lean into or away from that impending sea change defines the fault line in their ailing affair. AAD

02. Dogtooth / Yorgos Lanthimos. It's tempting for us critics, when singling out the great movies of a given year—the ones that crept their way into our hearts and minds, that lingered in our subconscious, that returned to us in our dreams—to grasp for parallels. Those who champion "The Social Network" as the high-point of 2010 do so, at least in part, because of what it supposedly has to say about how we live, about each day spent in the here and now of this brand-new century. So what exactly does "Dogtooth" have to say about all that? What insight can you gain into 21st-century living by diving headfirst into this screaming-mad nightmare? A twisted cautionary fable about a deranged couple raising their grown children in Pavlovian captivity, "Dogtooth" takes allegorical aim at all forms of social conditioning, at the way not just our families, but our governments, our religions and our media fundamentally shape who we are. Yet the film operates on such a primal, alien wavelength—unfolding like singular science fiction, its tone wavering from dreamy to coldly clinical to vaguely menacing, often within the space of a single scene—that it eludes tidy topical allusion. Yorgos Langthimos, merciless master at the helm, has the exacting aesthetic prowess of cinema's great scolds. But he also has a wickedly-pronounced, pitch-black sense of humor. That's the ultimate provocation here—staging this madness as comedy, staring down its atrocities of infernal, parental manipulation with a bloody, broken-toothed grin of triumph. Actually, I can think of nothing more aptly 2010 than that. AAD

01. White Material / Claire Denis. "White Material" examines European colonialism in modern Africa, dissecting various traumas and their ramifications at all ends of the social spectrum. Set in an unnamed country during a rebel uprising, Denis’s film follows white coffee plantation owner Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) as she attempts to salvage her crop and homestead despite mounting violence and unrest. While whites and blacks flee from the perilous countryside en masse, Maria holds her ground, steadfast in her insistence to stay and bear witness to the chaos as it engulfs what was once her home. This isn't a character study, or even an allegory; it's a primal expression of Maria's feelings of displacement during this period of violent transition. Denis takes what could've been a linear story and deconstructs it with a serpentine narrative full of half-remembered flashbacks, elusive tangents, and hypnotic set pieces that weave each character into a volatile timeline. She connects the melodrama of Vial’s crumbling family unit with the consequences of wealth in an impoverished state. She also instills a pervasive sense of menace in every scene, thanks partially to Yves Cape’s incredibly jarring cinematography and Stuart Staples’s foreboding score, which sweeps through the trees like a mighty wind. A storm of immersive sound cues and tracking shots wash away all political posturing and stereotypes, leaving only the remnants of flawed colonial traditions. Poverty, ignorance and guilt chart this unknown country's dying soul, a map without clear borders or reference points. In the span of two years, Denis has made two very different films that have each topped our yearly best-of lists. This one’s a staggering achievement of cinematic form, but more importantly, it’s a crucial document of familiar conflicts, and of a revolution that will not be televised. GH

• 12.27.10 | Year in Review 2010: Sam C. Mac (Film) Sam C. Mac
• 12.27.10 | Year in Review 2010: Luke Gorham (Film) Luke Gorham
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd

Feature by: InRO Staff

Year in Review 2010 - Sam C. Mac (Film)

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 06:18:31 -0500

Feature by Sam C. Mac: Another year, same sob story: “There weren't enough good movies,” cried the cynical critics, and for awhile that claim seemed at least more valid than it usually does. But however frustrating the Hollywood prestige machine's continued decline—aside from Fincher’s sassy “The Social Network,” few films touted as Best Picture contenders have inspired much adoration—shifting ones gaze away from the onslaught of Oscar bait turns up some unexpected gems. I'm not just talking about foreign flicks and indies either; there was a surprisingly sturdy crop of studio pictures this year. A few of these are represented below, but be sure to also seek out Jon Chu’s celebratory, sometimes even inspirational "Step Up 3-D," which makes more innovative use of its gimmicky tech than almost any film post-"Avatar"; Wes Craven's bonkers "My Soul to Take," a revisit of his “Scream” formula, reinvigorated with hormonal hijinks; and a trio of very strong animated films including, of course, Pixar's trilogy-capping "Toy Story 3," but perhaps to an even greater extent Disney's modest but very satisfying "Tangled" and Dreamworks' action-adventure tale "How to Train Your Dragon." It was an unusually strong year for popcorn movies, especially those that set their sights on high entertainment value and didn’t let things like the inanity of their scripts get them down. Another trend was the ferrying in of festival favorites receiving belated theatrical releases. Again, we'll get to a few of these in a moment (including one from as far back as 2007, seemingly rushed out by IFC at the tail end of December for the specific purpose of filling critics’ ballots), but I'd be remiss not to give mention to Yorgos Lanthimos's darkly comic "Dogtooth," Bong Joon-ho's tragicomic "Mother," and Faith Akin's just plain funny "Soul Kitchen" (all Cannes '09 alums). Finally, let's hear it for the great films that didn't make it to theaters, but which many of us have already seen: Abbas Kiarostami's beguiling arthouse essay "Certified Copy," Apichatpong Weerasethakul's sometimes obtuse but frequently stunning "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives," and especially Kelly Reichardt's dazzling masterpiece "Meek's Cutoff," the latest in a run of stellar revisionist westerns, and set for a quarter one 2011 release. These films (and Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life," of course) make the future look bright. So I'm perfectly happy reflecting on a strong, if not quite great, 2010 at the movies.

TOP TEN FILMS

10. Unstoppable / Tony Scott. Tony Scott's rebound effort—following a frustrating remake of Joseph Sargent's 1974 thriller "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3"—returns this underrated action auteur to the fine form he was in circa 2006's temporally manipulative mind-bender "Deja Vu," the greatest example of his frenetic but spiritually invested brand of cinema to date. "Unstoppable's" plot machinery isn't all that different from that of Scott's 'Pelham,' but the key difference is in the pronounced separation between a film about a train that remains still and one about a train that travels at speeds in excess of 70mph. Even a hack like Danny Boyle can do more when he's moving, and Scott's aesthetic too finds much better use in the runaway freight context of "Unstoppable" than it did in the rudimentary hostage-thriller of his 'Pelham' redux. In addition to the usual hyper-kinetic zooms, bleached filters, and 360-degree shots that are his bread and butter, Scott calls upon an almost painterly flare for certain visuals. In one scene he captures the torrential flurry of a bursting grain car with such gritty texture as to be almost surreal, and in more than one instance he blurs the surrounding forest of autumn-hued leaves into abstraction. He grounds this visceral trip in a morally vexed portrait of working-class redemption, and coaxes two excellent performances from leading men Denzel Washington and Chris Pine—not to mention a commanding supporting turn from Rosario Dawson.

09. Lourdes / Jessica Hausner. The first of three films on this list about ambiguities of faith and questioning the presence of a higher power, "Lourdes" sits at the always-awkward nine spot possibly because I've only seen it once. An early highlight of 2010—coming off festival prizes the year previous—Jessica Hausner's slow-moving film seems like the least dynamic of these faith-based character-studies, at least in terms of its narrative structure—a slow crawl toward an unexpected revelation. But it might also be the most searing. Set in the titular commune of Lourdes, a place of pilgrimage located in the Pyrenees Mountains of southwest Europe, the film focusses primarily on wheelchair-bound Christine (Sylvie Testud). An ambivalent observer of the site's more fervent believers, Christine's modest demeanor contrasts those pilgrims devoted to their rituals of prayer and idle gossip. Without giving anything away (which is really hard), I'll say that Hausner's film takes a somewhat surprising turn in its second half, largely giving its more tedious first a greater power and sense of purposeful build. After this point, "Lourdes" begins to thrive on pointing out how earnest intentions can be corrupted by selfishness and egotism. Hausner's film becomes a kind of microcosm of this behavior, its formalist sensibility turning it into an Altman-esque mosaic. But it's Testud's stunning headliner performance which impresses most. She commits so completely to her part's mounting contradictions and comes up with one of the most beguiling and unique screen characters of the year.

08. True Grit / Joel & Ethan Coen. The Coens tap into their literary source's pathos of mortality better than the original "True Grit" did, paying attention to small but meaningful moments—augmented by a richly nostalgic Carter Burwell score—wherein a young women is unprepared for encounters with death and anger and alcohol, in a world run by hardened men. The Coens' "True Grit" serves as an expansion of perhaps the most existentially thought-provoking trend in modern American cinema: the revisionist western. In this sense, it's comparable—though far less austere in its execution—to Andrew Dominik's sprawling "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," which likewise puts under the microscope a fading braggadocio gradually snuffed out by hopelessness. Things aren't quite so bleak in the Coens' Wild West, which liberally flavors its classical western baroqueness with gallows humor—in close proximity to real gallows no less!—and zippy-smart dialogue that could make Aaron Sorkin green. It's as stylized and as identifiable as a Coens script as their last, the tragicomic "A Serious Man," but they let out a lot of their snark early on. What's left is an irony-free adventure yarn; Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon having a grand ol' time, sharpening their razor-wit on the Coens' passive-aggressive barbs; and an unexpectedly moving coming-of-age tale, arriving at the elegiac and faintly sad realization that, as the film surmises, "Time just gets away from us."

07. Shutter Island / Martin Scorsese. Let’s go there one more time: The twist isn’t the point with this one. Knowing the fate of Leonardo DiCaprio’s headstrong hero does not diminish this film’s power. In fact, I’ve found it does quite the opposite; it emboldens "Shutter Island's" tragic intensity. If you happen to be one of the three people who don't know this film's dark secret, who can't unlock it by glimpsing at its trailer or skimming its plot, I won’t spoil that for you. But understand that the warped style of Scorsese’s dreamlike film—a work of genuine feeling and impressionism Christopher Nolan can only dream he’ll one day have the imagination to pull off—is influenced by its protagonist’s POV. As the paranoiac detective in question, DiCaprio's achievement here is nearly as impressive as Scorsese's: the deterioration of his resolve lends shades of bleak sadness to his character, aiming for—and nailing—a level of emotional intensity I never thought possible from this often-histrionic actor. It’s not the first time Scorsese’s worked with Leo, but the surreality of this project gives the pair a freedom they seemed to lack working within the biopic and historical genres. The two balance each other here, Leo with the kind of emotional bedrock this wild-eyed genre riff needs to resonate on a deeper level, and Scorsese (with the aide of ace cinematographer Bob Richardson) operating on a level of freewheeling formalist invention I didn’t think he had in him anymore.

06. Secret Sunshine / Lee Chang-dong. Foremost among "Secret Sunshine's" many virtues is Do-yeon Jeon's awe-inspiring performance. As a woman beholden to grief, this role could've become histrionic and monotonous very quickly; to the credit of this actress, it rarely does. Jeon, under the guide of director Lee Chang-dong (one of South Korea's premiere filmmakers), never indulges in the bombastic displays of grief that blunt the effect of John Cameron Mitchell's recent "Rabbit Hole"; the actress is given a broader canvas in “Secret Sunshine” than the actors in that stage adaptation. Jeon's single mother is seen at the start of the film as optimistic and a bit careless, a passage which establishes not only a character deeper than mere victim of a soon-to-come tragedy, but also hints at her long-standing relationship with abuse (the foundation of this film's cutting critique). When the tragedy does come—one alluded to in almost every review I've read, but fair warning: it's spoilery—and Jeon's character suffers the loss of her son in a botched ransom, Lee establishes that he's less interested in pushing sadface buttons and more so in exposing the exploitative behaviors of men. He does this by guiding his lost lamb to the doorstep of a religious community and peeling back layers of deceit, dismantling absurd morality and codes of conduct. It's a rough odyssey, but Jeon makes more of it than pain and suffering—her performance full of dimension, of emotional transcendence—and Lee's insistence that strength to overcome can't be found in a book or in any other person, only hidden inside oneself, is goddamn inspiring.

05. Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl / Manoel de Oliveira. Hardest working man in showbiz Manoel de Oliveira (Portuguese centurion, very old dude, etc.) hustled out two movies this year, both championed by his fan-base. And while I'm thankful to Cinema Guild for rushing out the newer, also very good "The Strange Case Angelica" in time for polls (December 29th; cutting it close there, guys!), I'm personally far more partial to the man's streamlined parable "Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl," released early in the year (after a run of festival dates in 2009, including the one at TIFF I originally caught) and getting less attention. I half want to say I'm just less of a fan of MdO's high-concept work—and with its loopy astral projections and Jew/Catholic dynamics, 'Angelica' is certainly one of those—but then I remember "A Talking Picture" was the best not-"Dogville" film of 2004 and think, 'That can't be right.' Nevertheless, 'Eccentricities'—like 2001's minimalist character-piece "I'm Going Home"—feels scaled to perfection in ways 'Angelica' doesn't quite. It's a bit of a cliché, but seriously: not one shot is wasted in this 60-minute takedown of love at first sight. Manoel is in a sly mood here, targeting the current economic crisis even as he adapts an ancient short story and dresses his characters in weirdly old-fashioned garb. The plotting is spare, but the visuals—emphasizing the gulf between paramours with a shot-reverse-shot string of balcony scenes—and the line-perfect script make it sing. Plus the last shot is just fucking brilliant: a slouching posture made darkly funny and sad.

04. Hadewijch / Bruno Dumont. The last of these Bressonian religious inquiries to make my list this year, "Hadewijch" is also the most ambitious. Bruno Dumont's high-concept film imagines a feminine kind of religious fanaticism that causes his extreme character (Julie Sokolowski, in another of the year's great performances) to view her relationship with God as one would a lover, divorced of the idea of ever knowing a man's touch, and saving herself for God only. We find this peculiar person, Céline, living in a convent, where she's even pissed off her Mother Superior with her zealotry. Soon, she's cast out of this rural sanctuary—a regular Garden of Eden—and sent home to her parents' lavish but empty mansion in Paris. It's here where Céline meets the captivating Yassine, and eventually Yassine's radical Muslim brother Nassir. In an incredibly ballsy move on Dumont's part—arguably even more ballsy than the sadistic ending of his "Twentynine Palms"—he suggests that Céline's adoption of this other form of extremism, that her decision to sacrifice herself in the name of Islam, is her attempt at earning back her true God's affections, and at regaining entrance into His garden. And Dumont follows that logic, the beguiling final chapter of his religious melodrama returning to the convent—suggesting that she didn't go through with her fatalistic plan, though that's never made clear—and eventually leading to…a surprise. This notoriously violent, pessimistic filmmaker arrives at a true symbol of hope, a show of some faith in the goodness of humanity. How 'bout that?

03. White Material / Claire Denis. After adopting a more intimate approach to her sensual style for last year's Ozu riff "35 Shots of Rum," Claire Denis returns to the bottled aggression of her "Trouble Every Day" and "The Intruder" for this radical take on the old protect-the-farm narrative. Starring a cold and stubborn Isabelle Huppert, as a coffee plantation owner in an unnamed African country, "White Material" is a gritty examination of French/African frictions that also returns Denis to the subject of her underrated debut, 1988's "Chocolat." But unlike that film, a linear narrative based loosely on Denis's upbringing in Cameroon, "White Material" is timeless and set in no place in particular—it's a heavily symbolic film that grapples, rather thrillingly, with its own contrived intangibilities, ultimately coming off more like an extremely stressed woman's fever-dream of absolute collapse than a reference to the specific social issues which inspired it. This struck me as a flaw on first go-around, but a second look brought the chaos into clearer focus. Huppert's resilient and shrewd heroine finds herself in a hell of her own making, the bastion of civilization and ethic she's carved out into her rural home gradually overtaken by the bitter feud between Western-corrupted military officials and a growing revolutionary force taking refuge in the jungle that surrounds her property. Denis renders this conflict as reverie, with snatches of impromptu flashback, a rotating cast of characters, and of course her usual aesthetic of fragmented image and vaguely menacing Tindersticks score. I won't complain; this is every bit as intoxicating as her best films, and the most coherent in this vein since "Beau Travail."

02. Everyone Else / Maren Ade. I'd gladly toss out every Amer-indie relationship movie released in the past year if it were somehow necessary to preserve this Scandinavian gem. Which is to say, fuck "Greenberg" and its familiar wallowing-asshole-meets-girl-who-totally-gets-him arch; Maren Ade gives us a balanced portrait of two unbalanced individuals, as full of idiosyncrasies and contradictions, as full of life as any characters written for the screen. Hers is without question the greatest script of 2010, hunkering down with warring lovebirds—who vacillate between greatly affectionate and greatly annoyed—and scratching at the surface of the keeping-up-appearances bullshit that dilutes the honesty of their interactions. Ade does this by pitting her Gitti and Chris (Brigit Minichmayr and Lars Edinger respectively) against an older, jaded couple, and watching the sparks fly. It’s devastating: an extended get-together at Chris's family’s house between the two couples results in the perversion of a very sacred place (a gaudily decorated room where Chris once danced to Willie Nelson's drippy ballad "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," much to the amusement of Gitti), and one's insulting condescension of the other. So incisive is Ade's writing that neither of these lovers is necessarily more right than the other; Chris can be a dick, sure, but Gitti's expectations for him are almost unrealistically naïve. This slippery dynamic keeps "Everyone Else" tense and surprising over its two-hour plus runtime—and its playful, funny, sad and altogether inspired ending makes it absolutely unforgettable.

01. October Country / Michael Palmieri & Donal Mosher. A quiet, absorbing portrait of an American family as unassuming as it is unexpectedly moving, "October Country" is nonfiction filmmaking at its finest. Director Michael Palmieri—with photographer Donal Mosher (who stays off camera)—elliptically tracks the impoverished Mosher clan of Mohawk Valley, New York over roughly a year's time, from one Halloween to the next. He shifts his focus from an elderly couple to their daughter, to their daughter's daughter, who has a newborn baby of her own. While he never telegraphs his intent, his patient, observational style gradually expands our knowledge of these people, cluing us into the mistakes they've made and the specters of the past that still haunt them. Palmieri illustrates the Moshers' struggles with poetic evocations of time's passage, and of its lasting effects; he lingers on the ghosted image of fireworks and the whirring of a light fixture, the slow drift of cigarette smoke and, most achingly, an old home movie of the eldest Mosher slow-dancing with his granddaughter on Christmas morning. The filmmakers' interests here are universal; they carefully record cycles of life, linking one woman's bad decisions to her upbringing with a mother who was victim to similar patterns, and finally back to her mother's father, haunted by ghosts of the Vietnam War. The film's depiction is of a family that could only be American, their misfortunes rooted in poor economic standing and in the sacrifices they've made to protect the freedoms of this country—as beautifully symbolized in an image of a waving American flag shot through with rays of sunshine. It's a modest film of disarming power, so precisely capturing the lives of its several characters that you'll feel like you spent a year with them yourself.

TOP FIVE PERFORMANCES

01. Do-yeon Jeon (“Secret Sunshine”). It was the best performance of 2007, when no one released this film, and three years later I finally get to give it its due. A wrenching depiction of grief, dependence, and finally transcendence. Lee's film might not've been as great without her.

02. Brigit Minichmayr & Lars Eidinger (“Everyone Else”). Two halves of the most honest, dysfunctional, loving and destructive couple seen onscreen in 2010. Maren Ade's nuanced and precise script gave them great material to work with, but their instincts and chemistry together keep the her vacillating tone in check.

03. Katie Jarvis (“Fish Tank”). "Fish Tank," the movie, veers into problematic territory it never quite recovers from in its oddly thriller-ish second half, and its symbolism is eye-rollingly heavy-handed on multiple occasions. But Jarvis navigates all of it, and her performance in the lead is one of the most honest and shattering coming-of-age depictions I've ever seen.

04. Neil Young (“Neil Young Trunk Show”). A cheat, but who cares: It really is a testament to the versatility of Neil as a performer that he can pull off a fast-and-loose set like the one captured here and a focused, understated acoustic showcase like the one in that other great Jonathan Demme Neil doc, "Heart of Gold."

05. Leonardo DiCaprio (“Shutter Island”). If someone told me my willingness to follow Martin Scorsese down his trippy genre rabbit hole would largely depend on my ability to buy into the depths of tragedy echoed in a Leo DiCaprio performance, I would've been very worried. Turns out, there would've been no reason for it.

• 12.27.10 | Year in Review 2010: Luke Gorham (Film) Luke Gorham
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd
• 12.21.10 | Year in Review 2010: Home Movies Kathie Smith & ordan Cronk

Feature By: Sam C. Mac

Year in Review 2010 - Luke Gorham (Film)

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 03:16:39 -0500

Feature by Luke Gorham: Each year the critical rallying point seems to be atop the cynical high-horse, as if the profession’s mantra was an antithetical Beatle’s croon: you got to admit, it’s getting worse. Admittedly, my tastes often prove symptomatic of this mindset, denouncing the disappointments when I should be singing praises of the exceptional. While 2010 was no 2005, it was no slouch either, offering up wonderful films in oft-overlooked or underserved sectors of the cinematic landscape. Animated features were particularly pleasant this year, with four stunners in “Toy Story 3,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” “Tangled,” and “The Illusionist.” Likewise, outside of the two featured on the below list, exciting documentary offerings ranged from bizarro performance art (“I’m Still Here”) to digital-age, Lifetime-styled obsession (“Catfish”) to brutal portraits of global and human crises (“Mugabe and the White African,” “Last Train Home”). However, perhaps most impressive, though underrepresented in my top 10, were the mainstream films that hit theaters just a year after the disappointment that was Hollywood 2009. “Shutter Island” provided Martin Scorsese the opportunity to cut his teeth on an emotionally-substantive genre flick, while “Unstoppable” found Tony Scott positioning a runaway train as the greatest action flick force of the year. Meanwhile, “Inception” earned the scorn of many a reactionary critic despite its genuinely heady blockbuster material and its suffusion of meaningful feeling. There was also plenty of room for the darkly, comically provocative like the inane Jihadists of “Four Lions” or the oppressively sadistic familial relations on display in “Dogtooth.” Considering the cynicism and smugness that often defines our profession, true contentment in any given year is a pipe dream at best. So while 2010 may not have been a year par excellence across the board, it was far from a disappointment and shows the industry’s ability to correct its mistakes. As long as this remains the case, and “The Tree of Life” finally gets its release in 2011, I’ll suspend my cynicism for one more year.

TOP TEN FILMS

10. True Grit / Joel & Ethan Coen. The modern western genre is one of the most intriguing in cinema today. The Coens’ other western, “No Country for Old Men,” is a staple of the revisionist western, a genre perhaps most notable for turning a keen eye on the parallels between modern moral relativism and the Old West. The duo’s newest western, however, is more classical than revisionist, though still featuring the definitive Coen stamp of typically black humor. Here, young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is forced into adulthood too fast (though she doesn’t think so), forced into an amoral world where her quick wit and quicker tongue are no aid for true understanding. Her desire for vengeance is both wholly earnest and painfully naïve in this rugged land of the lawless. After hiring marshall Rooster Cogburn, a likable grump whose darker side is never dismissed under the Coens’ careful attention, the new “True Grit” commits to the rousing adventure tale at its core, fully sincere in its proceedings and full of genuine affection for the genre. And when an older Mattie offers the film’s final utterance (“Time just gets away from us”), we can’t help but feel the magnitude of what the western, in all its glory and lack thereof, represents.

09. The Social Network / David Fincher. One of the most universally-hyped films to be released this century, “The Social Network” deserves all of the accolades that come its way. Director David Fincher approaches the trendy, technocentric subject matter here with the same calculated precision he brought to the superb “Zodiac,” though with the benefit of more keen insight on his side this time. Once more, Fincher coaxes a handful of fantastic performances out his cast, most notably Jesse Eisenberg as the brilliant but purposefully-embittered Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield as his betrayed partner Eduardo Saverin. In all technical respects, the film is nearly flawless. Dialogue delivered as fast as it is smart dominates the film, while the narrative structure imbues a surprising layer of emotional depth within its breakneck pace. Yet it's the film’s careful scrutiny of Zuckerberg which extrapolates its real interests. It's Zuckerberg’s ambivalence toward people, his close-to-the heart defense mechanisms and developing egoism, from which Facebook, the ultimate digital age tool of human connectivity, was born. It's this idea which concerns the filmmakers, the concept of socially-aided alienation and our blindness to the potential evils hidden within. When Rashida Jones’s lawyer astutely intones in the final scene, “You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be,” we are left to consider, somewhat grandly, the implications of the technology we hold so dear and what it says about the future of our world.

08. Everyone Else / Maren Ade. Much like the other relational drama on this list, Maren Ade’s “Everyone Else” traces the strain-in-evolution which exists between Gitti, an independent but devoted girlfriend, and Chris, her insecure and uncommunicative boyfriend. While Derek Cianfrance lets his “Blue Valentine” develop through the shared history of his couple, played out through words and exceptional acting, Ade’s couple is explored over a short period of time (an Italian vacation) much more visually, using body language as the chief facilitator of discourse. Their entire relationship, in fact, plays out like an extended dance, with each partner offering moments of openness countered by bitterness and doubt. The words offered are always right, but in a Herculean feat of acting, the two leads are able to illuminate what is simmering just beneath the surface of their seemingly scripted relationship. When a second couple enters into the picture, Gitti and Chris, once an imperfect but sweetly appealing couple, give rise to conflicting emotions, devastatingly delivered with subtle gestures and growing unease. The final act of “Everyone Else” finds the dance coming to a close, forcefully and maddeningly, beginning in the attic and fittingly ending in an unwanted dip in a pool. As Gitti emerges and stares at Chris, soaking wet and void of any façade, we see the dance entering its final steps, not quite finished but passionless as the music fades. Ade guides this dance to its rigid and resolute end, betting on her actors’ ability to convey the inestimable complexity of relationships through looks and movements alone. The result is truly remarkable.

07. Black Swan / Darren Aronofsky. Perhaps the most critically divisive film of the year (and on this site), “Black Swan” finds director Darren Aronofsky working in unfamiliar territory. A journeyman director in many ways, his films are often very tough to conceive of prior to seeing them. This was supposed to be the Natalie Portman/Mila Kunis lesbian-ballet movie to which horny frat bros across the country would flock en masse. What we got instead is a psychological nightmare indebted to Hollywood’s golden age of Polanskian horror. Featuring the best performance of Natalie Porman’s career as an aspiring ballerina saddled by insecurities and timidity born of matriarchal oppression, Aronofsky’s vision differs from such classical comparisons as “Repulsion” thanks to his knowing cinephelia. Aronofsky isn’t trying to emulate the classics, nor reinvent them; more specifically, what he does here is deconstruct them, to their most basic elements, and repurposes the motifs and moods of these films in skillfully manic ways. “Black Swan” is delightfully sexy, capturing the graceful perfections and imperfections of ballet with beautifully composed shots and Clint Mansell’s genius riffing on Tchaikovsky. It's also brazenly, balls-out mad, a nightmare of absurdity, carefully mixing the overly shocking with the delicately unsettling. The film is all dark beauty and beautiful darkness, an uncommon look at the disconcerting opulence of lunacy. Aronofsky fully understands the genre he is working in, and he bravely refuses to shy away from it. “Black Swan” isn’t barmy genius, nor is it overhyped trash. Its actually something simpler; it’s the best damn genre film to come out in years.

06. Waiting for ‘Superman’ / Davis Guggenheim. Much ballyhooed by some critics for its lack of definitive answers, Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for ‘Superman’” is an inciting though contemplative look at the American education system. More even-handed than some give it credit for, this documentary assesses the flaws in education while simultaneously exploring the benefits offered by choice charter schools. This does not make charter schools the saviors of the system, nor does Guggenheim posit as much; rather, these schools are presented as one alternative to the immediate problem, not a long-lasting or all-encompassing solution by any means. Guggenheim knows this, and instead uses his documentary to expose the hypocrisies and paradoxes that are too often swept under the rug. One depressingly hilarious bit explores the United States’ global test score rankings, which are very low, alongside its academic confidence ranking (number one). This tiny morsel of data speaks volumes about the distance our social conscience must travel before we can enact much-needed educational change, but also firmly positions Guggenheim’s documentary as a call to arms rather than a problem-solving exposé. A large-scale shift of perspective must occur before realistic problems can responsibly be campaigned, and it is this concept with which “Waiting for ‘Superman’” primarily concerns itself. Additionally, perhaps learning from his missteps with the mildly attention-grabbing but mostly dull “An Inconvenient Truth,” Guggenheim here imbues his issues with a tangibility, tracking nearly a dozen underprivileged or in-need kids hoping to hit the jackpot in the charter school lottery. By following these children and their always-concerned but often powerless parents, Guggenheim adds both resonant suspense and genuine emotion to his critique. By putting a face, or in this case a few faces, to the education crisis, the ostensibly daunting issue becomes more urgent and heartbreaking.

05. Winter’s Bone / Debra Granik. Unlike last year’s mass hit “Precious,” which got down and wallowed in the gutter with the misery of its characters, “Winter’s Bone” is directed knowingly and objectively by Debra Granik. The backwoods, Ozark culture that provides the setting for Granik’s film isn’t to be pitied, but rather to be understood. The characters which populate the film aren’t aching for a way out, but rather to simply be. That isn’t to say the film isn’t bleak, but it is no exercise in bleakness, and, to borrow words from apropos poet Robert Frost, that has made all the difference. Jennifer Lawrence stars as Ree, a proto-feminist teen who embodies self-reliance nearly as much as she does bravado. In a place where upsetting the status quo results in devastating consequences, Ree dives Orpheus-like into the very underbelly of her world for lack of options. Shot in a monochromatic palette which echoes the cold but unwavering lifestyle of the meth-producing region, and featuring a Haneke-like approach to narrative violence, “Winter’s Bone” consistently and successfully undermines the overreaching exuberance that could have been expected from that ‘Ozarks mafia movie from Sundance.' Jennifer Lawrence absolutely shines in her assured and subtly fearful performance, but it's John Hawkes as her lanky and fiercely menacing uncle Teardrop, a nightmarish man-on-the-verge more intimidating for his lack of physicality, who turns in one of the best performances this year.

04. Fish Tank / Andrea Arnold. The clichés that too often abound in cautionary coming-of-age tales, and which too easily could have plagued the relatively familiar subject matter of “Fish Tank,” are thankfully turned on their head under Andrea Arnold’s acute eye. The grittiness of Mia’s (the revelatory Katie Jarvis) milieu is bracingly unsentimental. Throwing a likable but troublesome teen into a socioeconomic and familial maelstrom is an oft-used and undeserving tactic in itself; Mia’s determination not to necessarily rise above, but simply find her place within this chaos is a rather disarming and affecting choice then. Her insecurities run so deep and true that even her hard-partying and inattentive mother is a reminder of what little she has, not a force against whom to form a reactionary route. However, it is the awkwardness of her character which truly shines a light on the internal struggles at work. When Mia heads to her makeshift dance studio/abandoned room to simultaneously practice her art and get sloshed, both acts aimed at numbing the pervasive frustrations of her life, Jarvis’s amateurism becomes clear in the most brilliant ways. Her moves are disjointed and partially arrhythmic, establishing an unsettling brush with voyeurism (as in the film’s title) that evinces one of Mia’s few vulnerable moments. This is no “Step Up” though, and as we see Mia struggle between the mirror and the bottle, “Fish Tank's” chips are put on the table as the spectrum of Mia’s future becomes clear. Featuring Michael Fassbinder in a role rife with delicious moral ambiguity, his presence becomes essential to Mia’s third act desperation as the film’s title comes into crystal-clear perspective: how many ways are there to escape?

03. Valhalla Rising / Nicolas Winding Refn. A delirious journey straight to Hell is the course set in Nicolas Winding Refn’s fever-dream Viking saga of violence and redemption. Following the path of a one-eyed Viking gladiator, his enslavement, his blood-soaked overthrow of his captors and his ill-received time spent with Crusaders en route, “Valhalla Rising” is all tone and atmosphere. Utilizing a distinct color palette and spare but harsh landscapes, the film seeks to examine the most primitive of the physical world and of human nature. Far less akin to historical epics of either the classical era or modern reinventions, Refn’s film plays out like a horror movie version of a Terrence Malick film, reveling equally in the beauty and the unabated dread of nature. Nearly wordless throughout, and featuring a dynamite performance of pure intensity and waning rage from Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, “Valhalla Rising” sears as it enters its final stretch, a metaphoric climb up a forested prominence accompanied by a booming score as operatic as it is metallic. As Mikkelsen’s One-Eye makes his final stand, gruesome in his ability to appear both cherubic and hell-borne in an instant, we can’t help but feel that the entire human condition, both external and internal, has just played out before our eyes, jarring in all the beauty and misery it entails.

02. Blue Valentine / Derek Cianfrance. Derek Cianfrance’s debut covers territory we have see countless times before, particularly from the independent sector. Simply put, the difference is that he does it better. More specifically, Cianfrance displays both an unerring affection for his characters and a devotion to the brutal truths that define modern relationships. In an increasingly narcissistic world, it stands to reason that sustaining meaningful relationships, the ultimate act of selflessness, would be a near impossible task. The irony of our world lies in the difficulty of possessing self-knowledge when all social constructs and technological mechanisms are designed to bring attention back to the self. As autonomous individuals, we are beginning to lose true social identities, the ones which mirror ourselves back to us. The brilliance of “Blue Valentine” and its amazing lead performances (from Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling) lies within this idea, featuring two characters so far from at-home in their own skin they begin to feel like strangers within their relationship as well, a realization that shakes them to the core. Emotionally raw and devoutly unsentimental, each scene feels like a revelation, the definitively honest version of every domestic drama you’ve ever seen. The structure of the film is likewise perfect, treating the relationship as the delicate organism that it is, studying it nearly anatomically without paying attention or adding pretension to such circumstantial minutiae as chronology. There will be some for whom the been-there-done-that superficial connections will be off-putting, but for those willing to confront the brutality of a dying relationship between two decent people, be warned: your heart may just break alongside theirs.

01. Exit Through the Gift Shop / Banksy. Is “Exit Through the Gift Shop” a legitimate documentary or a well-executed put-on? Much discussion has been dedicated to the is-it-or-isn’t-it element of this caustic, wholly subversive work from renowned street artist and provocateur extraordinaire Banksy. The brilliance at hand, however, relies precisely on the lack of a distinction between fiction and nonfiction. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is less a documentary, or a mockumentary for that matter, and more of a direct extension of Banksy’s oeuvre: an altogether meta experiment which acts as both a complex critique of the art world and a reminder of the power of the culture it criticizes. As is the case with “Catfish,” another exceptional 2010 documentary fueled by questions of legitimacy, 'Exit' is perhaps stronger as a ruse than as a straightforward narrative, and stronger still as a product of some fusion between the two. It's also fundamentally dissident and almost preternaturally insightful, postmodern to the nth degree and sociologically fascinating on too many levels to count. Attempts to categorize or classify 'Exit' inherently disparage the complexity of what’s at play here. Like Banksy’s street art, this film refuses to offer up its ideas in an easily digestible or recognizable fashion. And really, was there any other way? A talking-head documentary or plainly fictional approach would not have created anything resembling “Exit Through the Gift Shop” in power or substance. Art can be fictional, can be false, or so Banksy would argue. Thing is, 'Exit' isn’t. Call it a hoax if you like, but none of the self-serving, ego-building debates surrounding this film can detract from the simple truths and profound insights on display in this rabbit-hole journey through the world of Capital-A art.

TOP FIVE PERFORMANCES

2010 offered many memorable performances, ones which would be worthy of recognition in any year. Yet I’m going to cheat with my 5 picks a bit, chiefly due to the awe-inspiring strength of some of this year’s ensembles. Twosomes were the story of the year for me, whether playing couples or just two actors riffing off each other, I found the greatest power in collaborative acting. A trio of films from my list find their actors showing up here, too. As a couple powerless against the forces working toward their relational demise, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling both exude honest strength of character and crushing hopelessness in their slow-burn to the brink. Across the pond, Katie Jarvis is a revelation in “Fish Tank,” all urban inelegance and timorous brashness. Nowhere does she shine more, however, then when sharing a screen with Michael Fassbinder as a man who would be her antithesis but for the distinctly unscrupulous lurking right beneath the surface. Jennifer Lawrence offers up a similarly determined yet disadvantaged portrait of disrupted teenage ennui, a performance of fierce nuance upstaged only by John Hawkes as her uncle Teardrop; his unassuming appearance only heightens the menace evinced by his vesuvian temperament and startlingly inked face. A complete one-eighty of the “Winter’s Bone” milieu trains our eye within the comfortably middle class lives inhabited by Ruth Sheen and Jim Broadbent in Mike Leigh’s “Another Year.” Much attention has been given to scene-stealer (and admittedly-deserving) Leslie Manville, but it’s Sheen and Broadbent who offer affecting, toned-down performances of middle class contentment and selfishness, both righteous and otherwise. Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart likewise offer performances steeped in middle class-ness, but to much more concretely tragic effect. Taking what could have been very obviously depressive roles, these two thesps deliver the near-best performances of their respective careers, each as half of a grieving couple unable to entirely process or commiserate in their truly burdensome emotions.

• 12.27.10 | Year in Review 2010: Sam C. Mac (Film) Sam C. Mac
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd
• 12.21.10 | Year in Review 2010: Home Movies Kathie Smith & ordan Cronk

Feature By: Luke Gorham

Year in Review 2010 - Jordan Cronk (Music)

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 18:00:55 -0500

Feature by Jordan Cronk: I make blanket statements like anyone, but when it comes to the inexhaustible reserves of new music we're confronted with, I try not to qualify each year as "good" or "bad." That said, if you didn't find quality music in 2010, you didn't look hard enough; this year provided what I would consider the deepest and most rewarding twelve months of album consumption I’ve experienced in a long while. From my vantage, there was genuine ground broken by a number of artists in various genres, and as we embark on the second full decade of the new millennium, it’s safe to say that the nine remaining years have a high standard to shoot for. Living as we do in the internet age, you may notice a lack of what one might call 'trend records' on this list. I would like to say I’m unsusceptible to the trend culture and the hyperbolic proclamations that often go along with it, but in truth a lot of great music comes via these micro-movements (see: witch-house, chillwave, post-dubstep, etc.). Problem is these fresh-faced, excitable artists are often prone to indulgence, and so unsurprisingly very few have produced what I would consider a great album proper. Considering this disconnect—along with my personal inability to divorce a great deal of songs from their parent albums—I’ve allotted a few of the slots on my Top Five Songs list to tracks that in many cases more accurately represented the year in music from where I sat, as opposed to what I would consider the quote-unquote best of the year. As a result, none of these songs come from any of the album’s you’re set to read about, which should also help to validate my claim that there was a near-bottomless well of worthwhile music this year. Keep that in mind as you scroll through the list, pondering just how I could have forgotten Kanye.

TOP TEN ALBUMS

10. Emeralds: Does It Look Like I’m Here?. I never wrote a full review for this one, but my initial thoughts were out there for those who cared to look or listen for them. The gist of it was that I found myself frustrated by publications that praised Cleveland drone warriors Emeralds—far and away my favorite discovery of 2009—for forgoing their sprawl, tightening their approach and emerging with a record that flirts with something close to pop structures. My frustration, at least partially, came from knowing that some of the outlets in question never even bothered to acknowledge the group’s phenomenal 2009 album, What Happened. Nevertheless, all this turned out to be an important lesson for me: I learned that it's possible to both love a band dearly and be resistant when the hype train inevitably comes for them. Secondly, I realized that my expectations for this band in particular needed to be adjusted—truth is, they've never stayed in one place for long. That said, my initial reaction to Does It Look Like I'm Here? (delivered via twitter—this is 2010, after all) wasn't entirely misguided. I believe I said something like “Ugh, not their best album,” and you know what? I still don't think it's their best album; I preferWhat Happened, which will always carry a kind of romanticized aura of discovery. Nevertheless, divorced from the chatter, Does it Look Like I’m Here?, one of the most focused, concentrated assaults to emerge from the underground in quite a while, finally started to bowl me over. It’s so pinpoint precise in fact, that when the hypnosis is eventually broken in the record’s acoustic-abetted denouement, it feels more like those first dawn-breaking steps as one emerges from a night of suspended stupor than what it actually is: the year’s best aural-induced hangover cure.

09. Swans: My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky. Over the last three months, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky has gone from being one of my favorite records of the season, to one of my favorite recent Michael Gira albums, to one of my favorites of the year, to now, one of my favorite Swans albums, period. Reigniting the Swans brand was certainly a risky proposition after not only a decade of dormancy, but particularly after an impressive run guiding the Angels of Light, which seemed to leave Gira sounding satisfied with soundtracking societal despair from a comparatively resigned, contemplative vantage. However, the mind-flaying ten-minute onslaught of My Father opener "No Words/No Thoughts" immediately put to rest any and all notions that Gira had subsumed his confrontational streak. Instead, Swans (now inclusive to not only its original members, but also folks from AoL and Shearwater as well) have reemerged in their most sonically extreme state, a cacophony which the band spend most of this new album’s runtime trying and mostly failing to emerge from. This is no posturing, no bullshit rock music—not hung up on erectile dysfunction (looking at you Grinderman), nor the travails of love (looking at, well, most everyone else). It's grandly apocalyptic and impassioned in ways far too many modern guitar bands fail to ever engage. Whether this is a one-off return or the beginning of another phase in the Swans legacy, Gira's message seems clear: your shit will not stand, and, like it or not, you will lose. Amen.

08. Nina Nastasia: Outlaster. We're past the point where Nina Nastasia can even be considered "underrated." Frankly, it's downright criminal how overlooked she's been and continues to be, and with this, her sixth, most expansive and arguably best album to date, she's entered a rarified category where each new direction she takes not only yields impressive standalone results (by my count, this marks her third stone-cold classic), but adds stature to her catalogue as a living, breathing entity, one on par with those of even the greatest working songwriters. Again recorded in collaboration with longtime producer Steve Albini, Outlaster continues to add new wrinkles to Nastasia's ever tactile sonic tapestry, here accented with consistently bold string arrangements, complementary guitar texture from Tortoise's Jeff Parker, and a full instrumental expanse barely hinted at in the negative pockets of space highlighting much of her recent work. Nastasia's most powerful weapon, however, continues to be her inedible voice, dramatic and robust as she wrestles with her band for leverage amidst these dark and often disquieting tales. The album title is thus rather apt: as the years pass, and singer-songwriters of many persuasions taste fleeting moments of recognition, Nastastia will have persevered, her songs nagging at one's soul like a forsaken deity more than willing to offer comfort and enlightenment for the price of a little faith. Indeed, we shall all be healed.

07. Oneohtrix Point Never: Returnal. One of the major stories in experimental circles this year was the rejuvenation of the Editions Mego label, an imprint which (as simply Mego) helped popularize laptop-based electronic and drone in the early part of the Aughts. It was their recent influx of synth-devouring progressives, however, who helped make inroads to curious ears less accustomed to the extremes of the underground. Emerging as the de-facto leader of this movement was Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never, a Brooklyn-bred vintage synth enthusiast whose steadily growing discography culminated in this year’s expansive Returnal. Extending far beyond the magnetic, arpeggiated pinwheels of his more recent output, Returnal instead finds Lopatin looking to the extremes of both the ambient and noise spectrums to build an LP of drifting plateaus and shrill, galvanizing peaks. Rare is the artist brave enough to try their hand at such diverse, beloved forms; rarer still is the mind capable of stitching the results into one seamless, staggering whole. Along with his playfully reverent synth-pop side project Games, Lopatin arguably made the greatest inroads this year of any experimental musician since Jim O’Rourke began entertaining the notion of making pop records. And based on his 2010 output alone, Lopatin looks to have the same keen ear for production and genre adaptability, assets which should go a long way toward not only helping him carve out a reputation equal to someone like O'Rourke, but also matching his own sizable accomplishments.

06. Women: Public Strain. Tension often breeds inspiration. Public Strain thrives on tension. Women's recent on-stage altercations lend this theory an unfortunate (though perhaps necessary) context, cluing us into the barely-contained inertia coursing through the veins of this Canadian art-rock band's uncommonly confident sophomore album. Women’s self-titled debut—one of the best and most diverse indie-rock introductions of the past half decade—sprayed forth with talent and effortless pop chops, though it was tempered with enough bits of noisy shrapnel to bare some impressive teeth, lest we think these guys intend to play by the rules. Continuing to upend expectations, the trio have used Public Strain as a plateau on which to consolidate their strengths, honing in on a tightly wound, minimalist aesthetic approach, wherein torrents of needling guitar lines intertwine with stone-faced vocals and controlled yet propulsive rhythmic accents. This is a dangerous, thrilling tightrope on which Women walk so deftly. So cold and blunted is their sound that it feels like it could cut glass if rendered psychical. Laced with ambiance, peppered with an angular, purposefully never-fully-realized headlong thrust, Public Strain is the sound of pure, bottled energy. In other words, these dudes are currently fueling their own fire. Let's just pray they keeps the embers guarded but lit, as combustion would deprive us of one of our most vital, uncompromising acts.

05. Four Tet: There Is Love in You. I’ve had more time than most for Kieran Hebden’s one-off’s and collaborations over the years, but even with a fairly solid full-length under his belt (2005's Everything Ecstatic), it was beginning to feel like it had been an awful long of time since the release of 2003's semi-classic Rounds, Hebden's debut under the Four Tet moniker. Building on a number of the techniques experimented with on last year’s awesome split 12" with Burial—as well as apparently ingesting entire portions of the Hyperdub catalogue—Hebden emerged last winter with There Is Love in You, a noticeably reinvigorated and consistently thrilling expansion of his formerly restrictive “folk-tronica.” Where there was once lap-top derived glitch&b, there was now sleek updates on lock-step 4/4 techno and disembodied, sample-based dubstep. For a less talented producer, these nods could have come off as tired approximations, but across the album’s nine tracks, Hebden exhibits more verve than ever before, burrowing headlong into ten-minute house epics (“Love Cry”) as effortlessly as he does more minimalist-leaning, confetti-spraying vocal tracks (“Sing,” “This Unfolds”). The emotional arc itself even reminds me of the clouds-parting revelations of Emeralds’ Does It Look Like I’m Here?. Just as that album dissolves from focused synthetic assault to heart-rending analogue expanse in its final stretch, There Is Love in You similarly strips it’s motherboard for spare parts, closing with “She Just Likes to Fight,” the single most affecting moment in the Four Tet catalogue to date. Sleek and innovative enough for forward-thinking gear-heads, but with a beating heart hidden in its extraordinary machine, There Is Love in You was one of 2010's most three-dimensional listening experiences.

04. Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma. The Brainfeeder collective had a massive year in 2010. Led by Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus), this crew of post-Dilla beat alchemists dabbled in everything from buoyant, waterlogged electro-pop (Baths) to luxurious downtempo (Teebs) to straight-blunted lyrical dioramas (Gonjasufi). All are impressive, but it was FlyLo and his latest expanse of world-conscious beat architecture that pushed the game to new heights—past Los Angeles and onto an astral plane where Squarepusher collides head-on with Herbie Hancock. It's Ellison's familial jazz lineage (he is, as has been documented thoroughly, the great nephew of Alice Coltrane) that leaves the greatest mark on the dense, complex, and endlessly fascinating Cosmogramma, an album infused with regard for history, but with an eye turned toward the future. This is some cerebral and calculating science by which FlyLo experiments so liberally, folded over and inward so seamlessly that even Thom Yorke gets swallowed by its unrelenting gait. Each microscopic element serves its purpose, yielding to the pulse of Ellison's equally organic and synthetic lab concoctions. Loose-limbed and running over with effortless instrumental flourishes, Cosmogramma snared outlying genres like a tractor-beam, boiling the results down into a singularly preserved statement on the future of electronic music. With so many artists using the past as a crutch for updated genre pastiche, Flying Lotus is bravely leading us into vaguely familiar yet altogether uncharted territory. Best sit back and enjoy the ride.

03. Yellow Swans: Going Places. The ideology of noise inherently tends to demolish anything as helpful as context, demanding the listener instead meet the music on its own terms. However, as announced well over a year in advance of its release, Going Places was to be Portland avant-noise duo Yellow Swans’ final album—after eight years and literally hundreds of self-released cassettes and limited-run-only vinyl. The title, therefore, may ostensibly be read as optimistic. But as Gabriel Salomon and Pete Swanson enter this period of transition, it’s impossible not to hang on every last aching note as a lament not only for this particular band, but for a genre that has had its signifiers liberally co-opted and utilized to very different ends by a new generation of musicians who may or may not recognize this parent movement as the revolution against complacency it was meant to embody. We can argue over things as irrelevant as approachability or diversity until we’re blue in the face, but just as it is with some of the year’s other great experimental records—Zs’ New Slaves, Kemialliset Ystävät’s Ullakkopalo, Smegma’s Mirage—determination eventually triumphs, and Going Places plants a flag atop the rubble signifying both the end of an era and hopefully a way forward for those with the tenacity to stay true to one’s principles. This is, quite simply, the most gut-punchingly visceral music of 2010, and as Yellow Swans recede into the shadows, they can take solace in that.

02. Frog Eyes: Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph. Just when I think indie-rock is about to be swallowed whole by day-glo dance-pop and nostalgic synth posturing, along come a couple of purely whittled electric guitar records to shake my senses and realign my priorities. Women’s Public Strain, which I spoke of earlier, is still fresh coming off a late fall release and a small wave of good notices, but somehow lost in the shuffle this spring was an even better distillation of mainlined indie-rock from their fellow Canadian idealists in Frog Eyes. Perhaps it was inevitable that Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph, their seventh and most robust album to date, would be met with guarded admiration, as Carey Mercer is apparently unwilling to play by any sensible listener’s idea of an upwardly mobile career trajectory. After working through a series of skewed variations of the pop form on 2007's magnificent Tears of the Valedictorian, Mercer parted ways with his band’s most recognizable member (Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown), and dug his heels into long-form, loosely structured guitar parables which took raw-throated surrealism to dizzying new heights. Folding the pronounced dynamics of Tears into a more streamlined and daunting full-bodied release of pent-up aggression, Mercer tossed modesty out the window with these nine guttural dry-heaves, splaying his maniacally deployed vocal mannerisms horizontally across the boiling surface-level tensions of each of these tracks. It’s an exhausting, liberating and inspiring ride, and if they hadn’t already critiqued the results so accurately with the album title, I’d say Frog Eyes reached a new level in 2010 that no other rock band can currently lay claim to.

01. Joanna Newsom: Have One On Me. Amidst the deepest and most rewarding year for music since at least 2007, many artists reached new levels of expression and many more made breakthroughs worthy of admiration and recognition. None, however, could match the breadth, scope, and ambition of Joanna Newsom, whose epic third album re-imagined the parameters of the singer-songwriter form, refining and redefining her artistic persona, her already impressive structural and stylistic aesthetic, and her thematic concerns all in one fell, three-disc swoop. A significantly warmer and more approachable record despite its daunting runtime, Have One On Me simultaneously dropped the land-nymph daintiness of The Milk-Eyed Mender and the renaissance fair symphonic-prog dalliances of Ys and found Newsom instead settling into Laurel Canyon godmother mode, unfolding uncommonly personal multi-part suites as digestible in single-sized servings as they are satisfying in album-length individuations. The troughs, valleys and unencumbered sprawl of the record even reminds me of some of the world’s greatest of cinematic indulgences—from multi-part accomplishments like "The Human Condition" and "Berlin Alexanderplatz," to more condensed but no less unwieldy epics like "The Thin Red Line"—particularly in the way one can arrive at the album from any chosen angle or at any given moment and instantly identify with the character and/or narrator on display, both embodied here by Newsom at her most heartfelt and romantically exposed. Even at its fullest and most instrumentally robust, this can be uncomfortably intimate music, and for the first time in her six years in the public eye it feels like Joanna Newsom is a living, breathing, three dimensional woman with the amazing ability to transform antiquated aesthetics into fresh and vibrantly alive music. Have One On Me is generous beyond all rationale, beautiful beyond all attempts at emotional reconciliation, and more worthy of undying adoration than anything I heard all year. This is my beautiful dark twisted fantasy writ large and come to magnificent life.

TOP FIVE SONGS

05. oOoOO: “Burnout Eyess.” Last year it was chill-wave, this year witch-house—or rape-gaze or drag or whatever questionable label you want to apply—that took the brunt of the hipster-derived backlash. But genre tags are often times more dubious than music they apply to, and witch-house in particular had a fascinating twelve month rise to prominence. My number five track, therefore, could have gone to Salem or Balam Acab or a few others, but “Burnout Eyess” by the mysterious oOoOO (pronounced “Oh”) impressed me the most with its contrasting planes of creeping low-end pulsations and heavenly female vox.

04. James Blake: “I Only Know (What I Know Now).” Far and away the single most promising artist to emerge in the last twelve months was London-based post-dubstep producer James Blake. If you combine his three EPs—all from this calendar year—you’d have an album to rival nearly anything on the above list. “I Only Know (What I Know Now),” from his recent Klavierwerke EP, sees Blake abandoning the R&B sampling of his prior work for a more organic conflation of piano and his own mournfully manipulated vocals. With his debut full-length due in the first quarter of next year (and early word suggesting something very special), expect his name to remain in the conversation for a long while to come.

03. Grouper: “Hold the Way.” “Hold the Way” comes from Grouper’s split 12” with Roy Montgomery, released last January. I told myself then that I would not forget this song when I was inevitably forced to narrow my song selections down into a list, and what do y’know, I haven’t. In fact, Liz Harris’s eerie blend of gray horizon ambiance and that aching, wordless vocal refrain have so consistently haunted my memories for the past eleven months that it’ll be years before I forget hearing it for the first time in a New York hotel room, overlooking the Manhattan skyline.

02. Liars: “Scarecrows On a Killer Slant.” As much as I admire Sisterworld, it was nevertheless the first Liars album that disappointed me to a degree. And some of the record’s slighter moments are only accentuated by “Scarecrows On a Killer Slant,” one of the most straight-up face-melting slabs of revving aggression these guys have ever produced. Sisterworld’s release nearly coincided with my move to Los Angeles, and this track’s scalp-flaying riff, coupled with its murder assailant narrative, made the transition as scary as it was exhilarating.

01. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: “Round and Round.” What follows is a recent AIM conversation between InRO’s Editor-in-Chief Sam C. Mac and myself:
iWANNAbeYOURdog1 (Jordan): And how many songs do I have to write-up for this thing, five?
HalPhilipWalker (Sam): Yeah, 5 songs. 1 or 2 sentences on each.
HalPhilipWalker: You've known about all this for a month.
iWANNAbeYOURdog1: This is a ridiculous amount of writing when you couple that with the albums.
HalPhilipWalker: You agreed to all this dude.
HalPhilipWalker: I will say that I think, once it's done, you'll be happy you did it.
HalPhilipWalker: Also don't forget the intro, which can be short. I guess about 150 words.
iWANNAbeYOURdog1: Bah and an intro!?
HalPhilipWalker: It’ll be nice to have this years down the road—a write-up of your 10 favorites from this time.
iWANNAbeYOURdog1: Probably. I just don't like the format
HalPhilipWalker: By format, I assume you mean the songs thing? 'Cause honestly, you're the only one who doesn't like songs. Which has never made sense to me anyway considering, y'know, End of Radio.
iWANNAbeYOURdog1: It's not just the songs—though yes, those are lame. I mean, these are my ten favorite albums, right? Figure it out.
iWANNAbeYOURdog1: And everyone knows "Round and Round" is the best song of the year anyway. What can I seriously add to that?
iWANNAbeYOURdog1: Screw it, I may not even do it.
HalPhilipWalker: Oh for christsakes, just write the blurb.

• 12.24.10 | Year in Review 2010: Chris Nowling (Music) Chris Nowling
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: Sam C. Mac (Music) Sam C. Mac
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd

Feature By: Jordan Cronk

Year in Review 2010 - Chris Nowling (Music)

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:25:00 -0500

Feature by Chris Nowling: Recently, while listening to an indie radio station, I heard a DJ ask listeners whether they thought 2010 would later be known as the year of “chillwave” or “rape-gaze.” I’m still not sure what that second term means and I don’t really care to find out, but as I see it, those are pretty terrible options—the past year didn’t really belong to micro-genres or emerging trends anyway. I don’t mean to be dismissive here; I know plenty of these rising indie newcomers are highly regarded among critics and I’ve praised a few of them myself. But to say that any minor movement defined 2010 is absurd. The problem with such thinking is simply that it discounts the important—even essential—albums that were released this year everywhere from mainstream pop to experimental electronica to traditional gospel. There was just too much great music unloaded in 2010 to narrow it down to any one category. My personal preferences and limited space exclude many notable releases from this list, so it would be difficult to argue that these ten albums I’ve selected are the absolute best the year had to offer. But in looking back over the past 12 months of music, there was certainly a theme which seemed to establish itself for 2010, it just had much more to do with the ambition and scope of the year’s most vital albums than it did with their genre. Kanye West’s overblown hip-hop epic, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Janelle Monáe hyperactive debut The Archandroid, and my own number one album of the year are all representative of the explosive creativity and genre-defying attitude of the artists and albums that demanded our attention in 2010. There were notable exceptions, but those artists who refused to give in to convention or expectation, who sought to expand beyond their previously established borders and produce something unexpected were those who helped shape this fantastic year in music.

TOP TEN ALBUMS

10. Josh Ritter: So Runs the World Away. Sometimes I fear I’m a bit too loyal my favorite artists when it comes to year-end lists. So, due to my positively biased feelings about Josh Ritter, I was extra cautious with my evaluation of his latest, So Runs the World Away, an album I was fairly certain I would love even before I heard it. Well, I did love it and I still do, and really I haven’t found any reasons why this shouldn’t be considered among the best records released this year. Ritter is a phenomenal storyteller and has recently grown much more ambitious in his stylistic exploration. On So Runs the World Away he successfully stretches himself to the limits of his musicianship. Whether unfolding the story of a mummy and his archeologist lover in “The Curse,” picking through a Paul Simon-esque guitar line in “Lark” or pounding out a rock riff in “The Remnant,” he’s never sounded more inspired or confident. Combine his impressive songwriting with what is easily the sharpest production featured on any of his albums, and So Runs the World Away becomes a career highlight for this already very accomplished musician.

09. White Denim: Last Day of Summer. I can’t help but think sometimes that White Denim’s Last Day of Summer really has no business being on this list. This is an album the band made while taking a break from making another album, then gave away online as a treat for fans while the quartet promised a proper third full-length soon. It’s almost like they were trying to keep it as a minor release and out of consideration for mentions such as this. Well, seemingly despite their intentions, White Denim has very quietly released the best album of their early career; combining jazz, folk, and soul influences (sometimes all at once) into their quirky pop-rock sound, Last Day of Summer is the band’s most consistent and stylistically fascinating work. Take “Some Wild Going Outward,” for instance; with Mark Knopfler-esque electric guitar over a mind-bending jazz rhythm section all serving as the backdrop for singer James Petralli’s lovely high tenor, the song is amazingly complex in its construction but goes down incredibly smooth in its execution. I can’t imagine these songs not qualifying for a proper studio release, and the 12 tracks work so well as a whole I have to think White Denim just have impossibly high standards.

08. Mavis Staples: You Are Not Alone. It’s been three studio albums since her return to music in 2005 and Mavis Staples isn’t just going strong, she’s getting better. The 71-year-old soul singer’s latest, the gospel-heavy You Are Not Alone, is so much more than a graceful late addition to a storied life and career; it’s a dynamic, beautiful and surprisingly relevant statement that needs no history or Bible lessons to be appreciated. Sure, not everyone will enjoy or identify with songs like “In Christ There Is No East or West” or “Wonderful Savior,” but the record’s central theme, of hope in troubled times and the strength found in togetherness, is more widely relatable than you might initially assume. Credit producer Jeff Tweedy for putting together such a winning song selection that perfectly blends gospel, blues, soul and pop elements without stretching the album too thin, and for writing two of the record’s highlights, the title track and “Wrote a Song for Everyone.” Between Mavis’s stellar vocal performances and Tweedy’s lively production, there’s not a dull moment or missed opportunity here. You Are Not Alone is one of the most honestly joyful and uplifting records I’ve heard in some time, and I contend that’s something to be cherished.

07. The Black Keys: Brothers. It’s hard to believe that, eight years after their debut, the Black Keys have not only avoided fading from the spotlight, but have somehow increased their relevancy in today's rock ‘n’ roll—which sees so many imitators and flashes in the pan. When things started to feel a bit stale a few years ago, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney went to work on solo projects—an alt-rap side gig, and an album recorded with Danger Mouse—that showed, at the very least, the lengths these two would go to stay ahead of the game. With their 2010 release, Brothers, they seem to have harnessed their ambitions and focused them into making perhaps the best album of their career. The key here isn’t really the excellent production (though it certainly adds to the appeal), it’s that these songs feel fresh from the ground up: from Aurbach’s soulful falsetto croon on “Everlasting Light” to Carney’s oddly funky beat on “Sinister Kid,” the Black Keys show more inspiration on Brothers than they have since 2004’s Rubber Factory. If there was a better rock ‘n’ roll record released this past year, I didn’t hear it.

06. Owen Pallett: Heartland. After several years of recording under his Final Fantasy moniker, Owen Pallet at last (due to legal pressure from the makers of the "Final Fantasy" video game series) switched to his own name on third album Heartland. But that's not all he changed; Pallett’s masterful violin skills and clear tenor remain identifiable signatures throughout Hearland, but the record moves well beyond his established sound, combining striking string arrangements with beautiful vocal harmonies and an array of digital textures to produce something captivating and new. Add the high-minded concept of a relationship between a farmer, Lewis, and an all-knowing narrator appropriately named Owen, and it becomes clear that Pallett is attempting to elevate his game here. Fortunately, what could have been an overcomplicated mess in someone else’s hands, Pallett is able to pull off gracefully, moving from harmony-drenched pop on “Lewis Takes Action” to anthemic orchestral rock on “Tryst With Mephistopheles” without losing momentum or the interest of the listener in the process. Heartland can be a challenging listen due to the oddness of its lyrical content, but as outlandish as Pallett can be with his songwriting, he’s obviously invested a great deal of time into crafting an album that is as melodically accessible as it is emotionally engaging.

05. Will Stratton: New Vanguard Blues. Another of this year’s quiet gems, Will Stratton’s New Vanguard Bluesis the best 2010 album you’ve heard nothing about. Recorded over a weekend this past summer and self-released online weeks later, Stratton’s third effort wasn’t so much overlooked as it was hard to come across. But New Vanguard Blues isn’t just a minor addition to Stratton’s outstanding early catalog; it features his finest songwriting and certainly his best guitar playing to date. Performed and recorded almost entirely by Stratton himself, this unadorned set takes a step away from the fuller arrangements of the artist’s sophomore effort, No Wonder, and it only increases the potency of his increasingly impressive lyricism. It’s truly difficult to comprehend this entire album being recorded in just two days, especially when you appreciate the complexity of the guitar arrangements that help make tunes like the title track and “Lying in the Dark” so captivating. But then, I can’t imagine these songs would have been any better had Stratton given himself six months to record them. With so much wonderful material on New Vanguard Blues, Stratton continues to prove he’s more than deserving of the attention he’s been denied thus far.

04. Arcade Fire: The Suburbs. I’ve seen several “best of” lists make a big deal over not including Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs among their favorites. I understand the thought, I guess, but I can’t say I feel any shame in spotlighting such a fantastic record, regardless of how much praise it’s received. The group’s ability to conceptualize and execute the grand design of records like The Suburbs is what made them noteworthy in the first place, but the insight and maturity with which Win Butler tells these stories—inspired by his youth spent in Houston, Texas—makes his writing more relatable and engaging than it’s ever been. The Suburbs is also the band’s most musically accessible collection of songs to date, often moving further into pop territory and away from the “indie rock” label they’re so often given. Whatever the genre, songs like the triumphant “Sprawl II,” the reflective “Modern Man” and the heartbreaking “Suburban War” are among the most thoughtful and emotionally effective songs the band has ever released. If The Suburbs isn’t better than Funeral, it’s damn close—and to my mind that’s quite an achievement.

03. Janelle Monáe: The ArchAndroid. It’s difficult to think of Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid being imagined and executed as only an album, instead of a composition for something like a Broadway musical or film. It’s too cinematic in its scope, too ambitious in its vision and simply too bizarre to be effectively understood and contained within an album (or two, as we first heard part of this tale on her debut EP). That said, while Monáe’s futuristic, dystopian tale of android love is a lot to wrap your mind around, each of the songs here are so well crafted and the entire experience so much fun that you can enjoy the album no matter how much time you choose to devote to unraveling its unwieldy concept. This is genre-melding pop music at its best, a 70-minute opus with stunners spanning an impressive range, from the vigorously funky “Tightrope” to the smooth and sexy “Neon Valley Street.” Monáe’s energy is infectious and her talent undeniable; by readily handling such a grand debut with The ArchAndroid, it’s clear she’s not operating with any limitations in mind. And why should she be? Here’s to hoping she attacks her next project with the same mix of intelligence and unrestricted ambition as she did this one.

02. The Tallest Man On Earth: The Wild Hunt / Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird EP. In a year all but defined by excess—and in stark contrast to my below number one album pick—modest Swedish folk singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson’s sophomore album as the Tallest Man On Earth is refreshing in its simplicity. I realize the problem with promoting an album like this in a year of so many big ideas is that I then have to defend why it is that a relatively short, traditionally-leaning folk record takes the second spot on my list over some of the more exploratory and exciting albums I alluded to in my introduction. I guess my argument would be that there’s considerable value in an artist or album that so masterfully captures the qualities of a given genre, even—occasionally—at the expense of branching out into previously unexplored territory. Add a beautiful five-song EP, Sometimes the Blues Is Just a Passing Bird, to his 2010 list of accomplishments and I have no trouble promoting Kristian Matsson as one of this year’s most noteworthy artists, regardless of the competition.

01. Joanna Newsom: Have One On Me. There are plenty of great albums released each year that are all too easy to miss. Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me isn’t one of them. Having made a name for herself as a beguiling songwriter with grandiose ambitions, Newsom took that up a couple notches on her third effort, releasing a three-disc, two-hour epic that inspired both awe and intimidation. So much material seemed overwhelming to me upon first listen, but Have One On Me quickly reveals itself to be Newsom’s most inspired album, one that I could only label as the best this year had to offer. Within the record you’ll find elements of Newsom’s pop-folk debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender, and her densely fantastical sophomore effort, Ys, but you’ll likely be unprepared for the breadth of styles and influences she so masterfully and subtly weaves together here. It’s also impossible to overstate the beauty with which Newsom sings her captivating melodies, shedding much of the child-like whine which defined her former material for a lovely croon. It’s a shame that many will inevitably be unwilling to take the time discover the many treasures this album has to offer, because I’ve been digging all year and I’m still finding more to love here.

TOP FIVE SONGS

Note: In order to give exposure to as many of the excellent albums of 2010 as possible, I’m only considering songs from albums that don’t appear in my top 10, which probably would've filled this brief list.

Robyn: “Dancing On My Own.” I wanted to come up with a unique pick off Body Talk as there are many solid options, but “Dancing On My Own” rose above the competition; the fantastic production, the perfectly heartbroken lyrics, everything about this song is evidence of Robyn’s mastery of pop music.

Baths: “Plea.” Will Wiesenfeld, the 21-year-old digital composer recording as Baths, crafted an excellent debut this year, and “Plea” is my favorite track off of it. The combination of his soaring vocal refrain with skittering beats, twisted synths and drowned guitar lines is nothing short of electrifying.

Menomena: “Killemall.” Brent Knopf is my favorite singer in Menomena and he came with a stunner in “Killemall,” from an album just outside my top 10 of the year. As is par for the course with Menomena, the instrumentation on this song is unbelievably great and the vocals are some of Knopf’s best.

Wolf Parade: “Cloud Shadow On the Mountain.” Probably my favorite opener of 2010. The recently disbanded Wolf Parade’s Expo 86 got a lukewarm reception this year, but Spencer Krug continues to be unstoppable and the fierceness of “Cloud Shadow On the Mountain” is generous proof of just that.

Maps & Atlases: “The Charm.” I can’t described exactly what it is about “The Charm” I find so, uh, charming, but I’ve returned to it time and time again this year. Something about the emotional intensity Maps & Atlases pound from the combination of percussion and vocals is thrilling to me on each listen.

• 12.24.10 | Year in Review 2010: Jordan Cronk (Music) Jordan Cronk
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: Sam C. Mac (Music) Sam C. Mac
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd

Feature By: Chris Nowling

Year in Review 2010 - A.A. Dowd (Film)

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 19:03:59 -0500

Feature by A.A. Dowd: The ballots have been cast, the votes have been tallied and the results are in: "The Social Network" is the supreme cinematic achievement of 2010. That, anyway, appears to be the overwhelming consensus among those who make a living declaring such things. Color me dismayed though scarcely surprised. Nothing against the movie, per say—David Fincher's biopic, about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook, is a slick and witty entertainment, if hardly the era-defining manifesto it's been championed as. What irks me is the unanimity of its support, an excessive showering of accolades that speaks less to the film's (real but modest) charms and more to the way that mainstream movie culture continues to shrink with each passing year. (It certainly wouldn't take 127 hours to get through the scant few flicks most "established" critics have rallied around this season.) Which is not to say, of course, that the ten pictures cited after this cranky preamble are exclusively left-field selections. They're just pricklier ones, less concerned with catharsis of the zeitgeist, more with private purgatories. Who has time to please (or soothe or unite) crowds when you're staving off a 21st-century meltdown? These filmmakers, they picked at their own wounds, as if the only way to face this scary new millennium was to go inward—to dreams and nightmares, to memories, to the truth in a film lovers' subjective history. (It was, to be sure, a great year for genre pastiche and re-appropriation.) To that end, the best movie of 2010 was not the one about the roots and perils of post-modern interconnectedness. It was the one about what happens when no one's looking.

TOP TEN FILMS

10. Shutter Island / Martin Scorsese. How can anyone who truly loves cinema, in all its sonic and visual possibilities, not get a certain hit of pure joy from "Shutter Island"? Okay, so it's basically dumb as a box of rocks: a shaggy-dog story with a twist you could predict not just from the onset of the film, but after reading a simple description of its plot. Transcending its hoary, exceedingly obvious narrative architecture, this primo pulp exercise affords Martin Scorsese, ever the playful aesthete and giddy genre aficionado, the opportunity to indulge in some of his most gloriously opulent imagery. From its opening frames, wherein a mighty vessel emerges from the thick and billowy fog of Boston Harbor, "Shutter Island" has begun to blur the line between the real and the unreal, between immaculate period detail and classic Hollywood affectation. Bad dreams commingle with faulty memories, while personal phobias—of steep plummets, of squealing vermin, of stormy weather—are inflated to grotesque proportions. In a role awfully similar to the one he coasts through in "Inception," Leonardo DiCaprio simmers and contracts with queasy conviction, grounding the film’s phantasmagoric fantasies in a wealth of genuine feeling. Okay, it'll take you minutes to guess the ending. Wait and see how long it takes you to shake off the rest of the thing.

09. I Love You Philip Morris / Glenn Ficarra & John Requa. While critics spent most of the past year fawning over "The Kids Are All Right," an agreeable portrait of gay marriage, this braver and much funnier queer romance sat in release date purgatory for months, finally opening, to little fanfare, a few weeks ago. No small wonder they polled a little differently: the former wines and dines with a charming, sitcom-dysfunctional lesbian couple, while the latter basically commences its hijinks with a big reveal of Jim Carrey reaming another man in the ass. Politically incorrect to its kinky core, "I Love You, Phillip Morris" is a rebel from the waist down. In damn near the performance of his career—it's this, "Eternal Sunshine" or the stupid-brilliant "Dumb and Dumber"—Carrey comes close to realizing the transgressive aims of Sascha Baron Cohen's "Brüno": to break down the closet doors in plain daylight, to push an out-and-proud (and sexually active) gay extrovert into mainstream multiplexes everywhere. The film itself is a zippy Hollywood farce with a disarmingly sweet, unapologetically sincere love story at its center. And it culminates with an uproariously daring third act twist, one that shatters Tinseltown's enduring insistence that onscreen gay romance end in death, disease or heartache. If but all sly political missives could be this gut-bust hilarious.

08. Wild Grass / Alain Resnais. Time makes fools of us all, even those of us that qualify as bona fide master filmmakers. For every old pro sinking gracefully into his august years there's a creaky old coot diminishing his legacy with each bloodless new picture. So thank God for Alain Resanis: at 88, the New Wave stalwart is as bat-shit crazy as ever—and, more pointedly, as crazily inspired. His latest isn't a house-of-mirrors abstraction like "Last Year At Marienbad," but it runs on the same fever dream logic, the sense that the picture could collapse in on itself at any moment without sacrificing its jagged emotional center. "Wild Grass" has more dadaist non-sequiturs than an Adult Swim marathon: a murderous past that's alluded to and then never mentioned again; a movie-within-a-movie that's conveyed entirely in an expository text cutaway; and the biggest what-the-fuck ending in recent memory. The method to all this madness is an improbable, hilariously sardonic critique of genre convention. With a mere tweaking of mood, Resnais demonstrates how behavior we find charming in romantic comedies is, if you look closely enough, not really so different than the disturbingly obsessive advances of a lovesick stalker. No offense to this living legend, but he certainly knows his crazies.

07. Rabbit Hole / John Cameron Mitchell. I can't fathom how exactly this bittersweet eulogy, set in the gauzy aftermath of unspeakable tragedy, has failed to garner attention from either audiences or awards groups. It's the rare American drama that feels "middlebrow" in all the right ways—an accessible portrait of parental grief, with a warmly honest interest in extending coping-method condolences. Leaving his funky-fresh affectations at the door, "Shortbus" director John Cameron Mitchell digs deep into David Lindsay-Abaire's celebrated play, emerging from the darkness with a pointedly un-stagey interpretation. Preciously low on histrionic theatrics, "Rabbit Hole" lingers on quiet and inherently cinematic gestures of grieving and recovery, with Mitchell demonstrating a patiently observational interest in daily routines, and in the tempests of emotion bubbling almost imperceptibly beneath their placid, wordless surfaces. Nicole Kidman, in one of her great, unglamorous performances, constricts with existential rage, while Aaron Eckhart sinks deeper into the middle-aged melancholy that's made him such a convincingly damaged leading-man. It's Diane Wiest, though, as an elderly mother slowed by the dull throb of a more distant loss, who carries the weight of the film's cleansing catharsis. By the end, you'll want to shoulder the burden of her feeling, and let the film's empathy echo in your bones.

06. Winter’s Bone / Debra Granik. The best American indie of the year was also the one that evoked a mythic notion of America, one colored both in regional specificity and a noirish breed of Southern Gothic fantasy. An internet critic recently complained about praising Debra Granik's crackling genre piece, about a wise-beyond-her-years teen (breakout star Jennifer Lawrence) searching for her on-the-lam father, solely through the prism of its distinctively desolate locales. Really, though, come on: it's impossible to extol the virtues of "Winter's Bone" without getting lost in the film's sprawling, decaying backwoods oasis. The era is vaguely undefined, but that's because this corner of the U.S. of A—an isolated, half-imagined stretch of the Ozarks, all meth labs and dilapidated houses—is a proverbial Land That Time Forgot. It's also a closed society as richly drawn and hermetically sealed as a Jane Austen novel. And as Lawrence's stubborn heroine ventures deeper into it, her every inquiry violating its unspoken, rigidly-upheld code of conduct, Granik extends her impeccable eye and ear for local culture to the stylized pitter patter of the native populace. There's more life in the margins of this picture—in the faces and voices of its actors, principles and bit players alike—than most movies manage at their energized peaks. I'll call that an extension of its "sense of place," and weather whatever charges of auto-criticism that come my way.

05. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World / Edgar Wright. It's not much of a love story, mostly because Michael Cera's titular combatant is too naggingly narcissistic to transmit swooning desire, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a Manic Pixie Dream Cipher too detached to inspire head-over-heels devotion. No matter—the real romance here is between writer-director Edgar Wright and his world of "disreputable" interests: trash rock, splash-panel comic books and 90s video games. Not quite a Zucker-Brothers parodist, not exactly a Tarantino fanboy, Wright is instead the superhero mash-up artist of our wildest pop-culture dreams. Like his hyper-literate characters, he's so plugged into his obsessions that his movies obliterate the line between satire and reverence. Here, he savages hipster culture—its postures and attitudes, as well as its dubious dating practices—with the same thinly-veiled affection that underlined his expert riffs on zombie onslaughts and braindead shoot-'em-ups. "Scott Pilgrim," though, is next-level good, the kind of eccentric pop-art triumph that Hollywood rarely bankrolls anymore. Wright's brand of comedy is embedded in his aesthetic mastery—his lightning-quick timing, his masterful grasp of composition and movement—and he stages Scott's epic showdowns with the manic flair of a Vincent Minnelli musical number. Is it high art? Let's put it this way: it elevates low art to transcendent new heights.

04. White Material / Claire Denis. Only a filmmaker as consistently challenging as Claire Denis could make a movie this loaded with sadness and outrage and ethereal beauty, and then get accused of playing to the cheap seats. A political drama in the same way that "Trouble Every Day" is a horror movie, "White Material" finds Denis diving yet again into the war-ravaged Africa of her childhood, this time like a trauma patient sifting through repressed memories. Just as she did in last year's superb "Home," Isabelle Huppert sleepwalks through as a half-mad matriarch clinging stubbornly to her property. The movie seems to exist in her ambivalent headspace—it unfolds in a haze of oblivious entitlement, its visions of violence relegated to the peripheral. Like some wandering symbol of colonial arrogance, Huppert very gradually awakens to the nightmare around her. The horror of it slinks in like an alarm in the night, shattering the dream space: warning signs blink faintly in the foliage, assassins creep through tall grass, and throats are cut with the quiet of the wind. If this is Denis going "conventional" on us, let's hear it for convention—and for a filmmaker so in control of her bewitching craft even "minor" efforts feel staggeringly major.

03. Amer / Héléne Cattet & Bruno Forzani. It starts with an eye, pupil and retina stretched to magnificent widescreen and then multiplied into leering quadrants. This, we're told from the onset, will be a movie about looking. And more than any movie in memory, "Amer" embodies, with its every voyeuristic glance, the late Robin Wood's mythic male gaze incarnate. Except that these malevolent stares are met and mirrored with eyes of relentless curiosity—and the "Final Girl" is both subject and chief perpetrator of the film's unblinking fetishism. To call this gloriously inventive giallo tribute a "horror film" would be misleading. That would imply a sense of build and release that directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani willfully eschew. These quick studies pilfer the playbooks of Italian horror maestros Dario Argento and Mario Bava, straining out all extraneous traces of perfunctory plot and character, reducing a whole genre to pure, ecstatic formalism. (Forget "Black Swan": here was a kaleidoscopic death trip, co-mingling desire and dread, that resurrected the phantom specter of "Repulsion.") Technique for technique's sake? Absolutely. Also: the most boldly experimental "narrative" film I saw in 2010.

02. Everyone Else / Maren Ade. The annals of cinema history are littered with broken hearts and shattered unions; filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman, Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer made whole, healthy careers out of tracing the rise and fall of not-so-healthy relationships. Yet I'm not sure I've ever seen a break-up movie as surgically precise as this one—every scene plays like a carefully constructed thesis on the way affection can wilt into petty resentment as the weeks, months and years tick by. "Everyone Else" is nothing if not exhaustive in its romantic autopsy, but it's rarely exhausting, mostly because writer-director Marden Ade sets her battle of the sexes on rocky, foreign terrain, during an aimlessly scenic vacation from hell. She's got the freewheeling playfulness of Cassavetes, and two superb actors—moody, lanky Lars Eidinger and damaged wild child Birgit Minichmayr—to breathe life into her mismatched combative types. Timeless in its vision of curdling l'amour fou, "Everyone Else" is also sneakily timely. These aging bohemians aren't just waking up to their fundamental incompatibility; they're waking up to the long-delayed burden of adulthood, to a 21st century where starving-artist affectation gives way to bourgeoise complacency almost overnight. How they lean into or away from that impending sea change defines the fault line in their ailing affair.

01. Dogtooth / Yorgos Lanthimos. It's tempting for us critics, when singling out the great movies of a given year—the ones that crept their way into our hearts and minds, that lingered in our subconscious, that returned to us in our dreams—to grasp for parallels. Those who champion "The Social Network" as the high-point of 2010 do so, at least in part, because of what it supposedly has to say about how we live, about each day spent in the here and now of this brand-new century. So what exactly does "Dogtooth" have to say about all that? What insight can you gain into 21st-century living by diving headfirst into this screaming-mad nightmare? A twisted cautionary fable about a deranged couple raising their grown children in Pavlovian captivity, "Dogtooth" takes allegorical aim at all forms of social conditioning, at the way not just our families, but our governments, our religions and our media fundamentally shape who we are. Yet the film operates on such a primal, alien wavelength—unfolding like singular science fiction, its tone wavering from dreamy to coldly clinical to vaguely menacing, often within the space of a single scene—that it eludes tidy topical allusion. Yorgos Langthimos, merciless master at the helm, has the exacting aesthetic prowess of cinema's great scolds. But he also has a wickedly-pronounced, pitch-black sense of humor. That's the ultimate provocation here—staging this madness as comedy, staring down its atrocities of infernal, parental manipulation with a bloody, broken-toothed grin of triumph. Actually, I can think of nothing more aptly 2010 than that.

TOP FIVE PERFORMANCES

It was a landmark year for women in film. Not only were several of 2010's strongest pictures directed by ladies, many featured breakout performances by a master class of actresses, young and old. Here were just five of many eye-opening turns: As the titular mother of "Mother," Hye-ja Kim invested procedural proceedings with maternal rage and compassion—hers the year's most compelling performative invention. While critics celebrated her cozier work in "The Kids Are All Right," Julianne Moore rendered palpable the hot-house passions and mid-life malaise of a suspicious housewife in "Chloe." Just as she did in the final moments of "Summer Hours," French ingenue Alice de Lencquesaing grappled with loss and change, navigating a painful pilgrimage into sudden adulthood in “The Father of My Children.” Katie Jarvis located a prickly poignancy in the coming-of-age cliches of "Fish Tank." And with very slight modulations of tone and expression, Sylvie Testud traced a disabled young woman's overnight transformation from humble wallflower into self-involved starlet in "Lourdes."

• 12.21.10 | Year in Review 2010: Home Movies Kathie Smith & Jordan Cronk
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd
• 12.24.10 | Year in Review 2010: Jordan Cronk (Music) Jordan Cronk

Feature By: A.A. Dowd

Year in Review 2010 - Sam C. Mac (Music)

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 05:06:53 -0500

Feature by Sam C. Mac: For the first time in a while I can say it's been a great year for music. I know this because many critics I admire are saying the same and stumping for ten entirely different records than the ten I've listed; and because, to my surprise, I can't blame them. It comes down to genre preference—mine tends toward hip-hop, pop, R&B and soul—because there was no shortage of albums I could get behind this year. For example, three indie-rock outfits released rousing, confident records that each represent their greatest achievements to date, thanks either to meticulous studio detail (Spoon), newfound maturity and thematic focus (Arcade Fire), or just plain dynamic and endearingly off-the-cuff delivery (Deerhunter). Their absence from this list should speak much less to the quality of their work and more to my own taste. It was gospel and hip-hop I seemed to gravitate to most this year: Several of the biggest names in rap found great success in filtering their larger-than-life personas through a variety of stylistic influences, either retro-fitting sounds from the '60s and '70s or synthesizing a wider array of inspirations into a form of kaleidoscopic self-expression. In the case of gospel, you saw a similar dichotomy: There were the old pros (Mavis Staples, Aaron Neville) who proved capable of revitalizing their sound, even in this late stage of their careers, and there were younger artists, who thankfully saw the genre as more than some old relic to be polished and respected, who were willing to re-appropriate its power by mixing in their own folk and R&B sensibilities. Rounding out my list of the year’s best albums is a combustible look at the headspace of a reluctant pop star; a throwback to long-form jamming from one of the figureheads of Nigerian afrobeat; and a pair of instrumental LPs performed exquisitely by some of the world’s most accomplished musicians. Below, I’ve done my best to explain why.

TOP TEN ALBUMS

10. John Legend & the Roots: Wake Up!. Blame this record’s ambivalent reception on a few things. For one, it's a covers record, and these days those are only accepted from very old artists covering other very old artists. Two, it's John Legend, a guy who's been gravitating away from critical favor and toward the standard of mediocrity set by the Grammys at roughly the same speed as Alicia Keyes, shoring up his adult-contemporary R&B with the most bland production this side of…Alicia Keyes. Three, producer Questlove, "Legendary Roots Crew" in tow, has no interest in modernizing the sound here; not even a handful of rap features can distract from the fact that this restoration of '60s and '70s soul is more faithful to its source than soul songbirds twice Legend's age (Mavis Staples and Betty LaVette) have recently managed. Which is the point: Just as the Roots do on their latest (which I'll get to in a minute), Quest and Legend look to a troubled past to better understand their own hard times. That's one side of it anyway. The other is recognizing that this record is a love-letter to an era of music dear to the encyclopedic Questlove's heart, and to Legend's as well. Together the two hit on rock, reggae, the R&B-gospel of Marvin Gaye, and most galvanizing of all, Bill Withers's wartime tragedy "I Can't Write Left Handed," here transformed into a roaring 11-minute anti-war screed. Knowing Questlove, the brilliance of the production was a given—Legend was the wild card. An occasionally gimmicky singer, overly reliant on vocal acrobatics his idols wouldn't dare indulge in, Legend owes Quest a debt of gratitude for reigning in his performances here. It all results in the best vocals he may ever lay to tape.

09. Dave Holland & Pepe Habichuela: Hands. Like most years, 2010 saw many cross-cultural and genre-bending recording sessions between the world's most celebrated and influential musicians. Among those that received the most ink, a handful of living Malian masters got down with a few aging Cuban luminaries, 16 years later than planned, to cut the record which the Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club was originally intended to be (before the African musicians invited discovered they wouldn't be able to obtain their visas, and producer Nick Gold had to improvise). They called the baby Afrocubism, a fusion of West African rhythms and the Cuban traditionalism that heavily influenced the former. But there was another such meeting this year, between celebrated jazz bassist and one-time Miles Davis collaborator Dave Holland and flamenco guitar player Pepe Habichuela (of whom I'd never heard prior to this recording), and this one, to me anyway, proved to be an even more astonishing twist on two culturally specific styles: a duets record between Dave's agile upright and Pepe's mesmerizingly intricate guitar figures that disregards the boundaries of either artist's respective genre. You'd be forgiven for thinking all of this sounds like world music easy-listening, but wade through the more serene first half of "The Whirling Dervish" and just watch that opinion change. It's one of many cases where the set's two percussionists take over, whipping up a typhoon of energy on a par with afrobeat's famed "talking drums," and intuitively playing off Holland's thumping bass lines. Equally transcendent but less showy is "Camaron," a flamenco composition Holland augments by playing what would normally be the vocal part. All small pleasures, but their sum is some truly inspired musicianship.

08. Big Boi: Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty. There are many virtues to Big Boi’s latest, but none more worthy of mention than its awe-inspiring wordplay. As one half of wrecking-ball duo Outkast, Big Boi has more than proven himself the equal of weirder counterpart Andre 3000. But even on his first solo record (the Speakerboxxx half of Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below double-album), Andre's exceedingly strange experimentation made Big’s funky offering look tame by comparison. Thanks to Jive being the assholes they are, contractual obligations kept 'Dre off this set entirely, which wasn't such a bad idea: Big finally has a showcase all his own, and he uses the opportunity to spit the most absurdly inspired rhymes of his career. Rhymes like "It's after twelve, club like a Hi-V/A beehive, 'cause now everybody buzzin' around me," and "Not to flex, but to protect my neck like the Wu Tang/Self-preservation is the rule when you do aim." Nobody touches his flow—not even Kanye. Thankfully, the beats more often than not compliment the joyous mood, especially the skittering "Shutterbugg," the source of both rhymes referenced above and a triumphant return for Scott Storch (who litters the track with talkbox and Soul II Soul references). Not everything on Left Foot is this inspired, but some of it is: "Shine Blockas," my favorite song of last year that didn't really come out until this year, makes surprisingly poignant use of a then-incarcerated Gucci Mane, with another beat most any rapper would kill for. Granted the messiness of this very long record is rather easy to criticize—I would have excised the drippy "Be Still" and chosen anyone over friggin' Vonnegutt for "Follow Us"—but plenty of rap albums could use an editor, and there's too much good here to dwell on a few unfortunate missteps.

07. M.I.A.: /\/\ /\ Y /\. This isn’t an easy record to defend. Not because it's anything less than superb—it may not be the revelation Kala was, but it may also be M.I.A.'s most consistent full-length to date. The reason is really the same reason people dumped on it so hard when it came out: M.I.A. is kind of annoying. I say that as someone who doesn't give a shit about the contradictory nature of some of her political views, but who's getting a little sick of flagrant displays of hyperbole that discredit even her most pointed critiques of the media and its biases. But it's not Maya's fault she isn't John Stewart, and what her increased and often toxic presence on social networking services unfortunately eclipsed this year was a record that, while challenging and dense, gets more and more thrilling the deeper you dig into its hectic soundscapes. Unfortunately, mounting frustrations with M.I.A., the pop culture figure, didn't really permit much patience for her music. But for the few faithful who stuck with this manic vision of a society drowning in technological excess, emerging from the din was a critique of our culture more personal than Maya's blind-rage Twitter tirades suggested it would be. The songs here take aim at media distortion ("Lovealot," which slurs its titular refrain with the more incendiary "Love Allah"), the almost-inebriating effects of too much tech (the instrumental cluster-fuck "Teqkilla"), and the frictions of being denied freedom in a land built on its very promise ("Born Free"). Maya isn't an entirely coherent individual, but who is? Unlike Kala and the more streamlined Arular, records named for her parents, this one (its alternating back and forward slashes spelling her own name) spends a good chunk honestly expressing confusions about herself. It's an identity crisis album, and its confusion results in liberal experimentation and some of the most dynamic and unique sounds of her career.

06. Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté: Ali & Toumani. It would be boring and a touch disingenuous to praise Ali Farka Touré's music without some reservations. The Malian guitar virtuoso's influence on blues music is incalculable—as Martin Scorsese and countless others have made clear—but as Robert Christgau once wrote, describing Touré's final posthumous solo album (2007's Savane), the man was stubbornly "grave to the grave"; even Touré’s agreed-upon classic, 1991's The Source, gets tedious as the clock ticks on its longest and most sparse compositions. And the same could be said of Toumani Diabaté’s work. By most accounts the finest kora player in the world (though personally I prefer his cousin Mamadou), Diabaté’s skill is unquestionable, but he also very often settles for the kind of practiced professionalism that doesn't allow for much vim and vigor in his playing. Unsurprisingly, the previous collaboration between these two laid-back dudes, 2005's fitfully engaging and sleepy In the Heart of the Moon, feels almost dutiful, rarely like the work of two great musicians basking in the joys of playing together. Thankfully, Ali & Toumani is different. Maybe it's a laugh in the face of approaching death—Touré suffered from bone cancer during these sessions and had only a few months left to live—or maybe it's something less transcendent, like a newfound comfort in each other's presence or in London's Livingston Studios, where Nick Gold got them together for one last time. Either way, this record is positively buoyant; it's the sound of fun being had, of good times and knowledge shared and passed down from one generation of Malian master to the next. And yes, damn good musicianship.

05. Lizz Wright: Fellowship. It's hard to think of another record that negotiates the gap between gospel and contemporary R&B as gracefully as Lizz Wright's Fellowship. Wright's voice has always been powerful and distinctive, a sultry alto reminiscent of Tracy Chapman at her peak, but her earlier records never seemed to know what to do with it. Her last one, 2008's The Orchard, seemed to be getting there; a few of its songs strip away the folksy production and letting her voice ring with authority and beauty (most notably on "Hey Mann"). But these were occasional glimmers of real potential adrift in another uneven set. Fellowship reshuffles the deck. Wright's focus this time is gospel music, even when it isn't: Eric Clapton's "Presence of the Lord" and Jimi Hendrix's "In from the Storm" may've once been rock songs, but here they're sermons. And this slight shift in genre focus, in addition to co-producer Toshi Reagon's greater presence, gives Wright the push she's needed to go from a great singer to a great recording artist. Her piano and choir take on Gloria Griffin's "God Specializes" is shattering, and the nine-minute 'Gospel Medley' that follows calls to mind Nina Simone's classic 1972 live record Emergency Ward. Arguably even more impressive are the contemporary-sounding jazz workouts here, like the thoughtful and nuanced Me'Shell Ndegeocello-composed title track, and "Oya," which features African-style percussion and vocals from Angelique Kidjo. Bonus points for recording a version of "Amazing Grace" which not only doesn't make me want to shove pencils in my ears, but which I'd argue ranks in the upper tier of that done-to-death standard's renditions.

04. The Roots: How I Got Over. Just as the Roots' late '90s classic Things Fall Apart served as a State of the Union for its troubled times, How I Got Over surveys the "post-hope zeitgeist" (their words) and finds acceptance and grace by looking inward, a sign of the band members’ over-40 maturity. Musically, it's not bracingly different from their last few albums (Game Theory, Rising Down, and especially the streamlined Tipping Point), but its strength is in refining the Roots' sound to a focused 40-minute album without a single wasted moment. As ever it's the chemistry between drummer Questlove and rapper Black Thought that makes How I Got Over so vital, but—more so than on any of their albums since 2002's Phrenology—it’s Quest's carefully calibrated production that makes this, in a sense, the Super Roots Album. It spent nearly two years incubating in the studio with Quest and the boys, a gestation period to my knowledge longer than any in the Roots' discography. The result is a triumph for Quest as a producer—and something of a masterpiece for the man as a drummer. Every nook and cranny of this thing feels considered, but it's the drums that really pop, whether it be the rapid high hat on the title cut or the brush-heavy atmosphere of album standout "Dear God 2.0." The latter track in particular exemplifies the band's new brand of pathos, a departure from the uncorked rage of Rising Down and Game Theory, reaching instead for a philosophical outlook on social issues and finding that the path of perseverance can be a tough one. What How I Got Over aims to prove, however, is that it's also a rewarding one: The glass-half-empty ruminations of side-A eventually give way to the more optimistic songs of side-B, with the sassy Joanna Newsom-sampling "Right On" and the anthemic John Legend-assisted "The Fire" offering a greater rejuvenating catharsis than any Roots album to date.

03. Erykah Badu: New Amerykah, Pt. 2: Return of the Ankh. This giddy opus is a playful meditation on relationships as full of love as it is tentative about giving it up. Like the Roots' latest, and to an extent Big Boi's, it's a headphones record, bursting with groovy funk and swirling synthesizers and an attention to detail every bit as thorough as that found on her last record. The difference this time is thematic, or in Badu's words, cerebral: She saw the pained political screed of the first installment in her will-be trilogy as a "right brain" record (which doesn't really make sense), and this warmer, song-oriented effort as a "left brain" record (also a strange designation to make). Truth is, Badu may not entirely understand the mechanics of the brain (no more than the Roots did when they made Phrenology, I'd wager), but she certainly knows how to express herself through the adventurous music she makes. More than anything else, that's what these records—both adorned with portraits of her face and 'fro on their covers—set out to achieve. The first one, 4th World War, is already a recognized classic, but for my money it's this one that deserves the most credit. Take your pick: Righteous anger and frustration over trying times, or comic kiss-offs and come-ons to a host of suitors? Go for the "serious" one if you want, but know you're missing out on songs like the one that slyly turns Eddie Hendricks' lovey-dovey "Intimate Friends" into a song about the disillusions of romance, or the one that features Lil Wayne rhyming "Danish" (as in donut) with "vanish" (as in "into thin air"), or the one that functions as a cover of Sylvia Striplin's "You Can't Turn Me Away" and a homage to the Junior Mafia song that sampled it—which is to say, an embrace of both the classic funk and hip-hop she has equal places for in her heart.

02. King Sunny Adé: Bábá mo Túndé. This music education business is never-ending, and doubly so when you turn your ear toward music from beyond the borders of English-speaking countries. So forgive this still-young soul for having never heard a record by King Sunny Adé before hearing this one. I'd heard of the guy—mostly in conversations about Fela Kuti, the Nigerian superstar who, with his politically conscious jam-band, blazed a trail to an international stage around the same time Adé (also Nigerian) was doing the same. Both play variations of afrobeat, but Adé's is called "juju." (Say it rapidly, in a deep voice, to get an idea of the sound.) Fela's name has aged well—if you live in NYC and ride the subway you've more than likely seen a poster for the Broadway show based on his life and music. Adé, who's still with us, hasn't seen that recognition, at least not outside those circles devoted to this stuff. But on the evidence of this incredible new disc of material (his first in 10 years)—a nearly two-hour double album, one of its seven pieces stretching past the 30-minute mark—Adé seems eager to remind us he's every bit as deserving of such widespread awareness. Maybe even his own Broadway show. So packed with transcendent grooves and melodies is Bábá mo Túndé that it nearly eclipses recent work from other African groups like Orchestra Baobab and Les Amazones de Guinée. Adé doesn't have the voice of a Rudy Gomis and certainly can't hold a candle to Youssou N'Dour, but then, he's also not playing the accessible Afro-Cuban style those names popularized. The epic length of these psychedelic jams makes Kuti the only real reference point—well, Kuti or Phish—and increasingly, it feels like Bábá mo Túndé stands up rather well to very, very long classics like Zombie and Army Arrangement.

01. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Where do you go after a world-beating statement like 2005'sLate Registration? If you're Kanye, you move forward, explore new territory, and endure diminishing returns as a result. You do this because your head is ever-overflowing with doubt; you have to keep stoking that ravenous ego of yours to prove—to yourself, above all—that you really are the best doin' it. And if you're Kanye, apparently that path will lead you to something beautiful, dark and twisted. This record is the culmination of everything West's done in the last ten years or more: the boom-pap production credits he racked up at the turn of the decade for "big brother" Jay-Z, the soulful and celebratory hip-hop he mastered during the College Drop Out/Late Registration era, and the introspective electro-pop experimentation he’s been dabbling in lately, all refined, but without sacrificing the wild excess intrinsic to the very concept of Kanye making music. Excess which takes the808s & Heartbreak-sounding "Runaway," on which West sings the hook, and blows it up into a nine-minute epic, complete with wordless auto-tuned coda. It's the quintessential West song, and maybe his best; a multi-faceted expression of his self-destructive personality, his contradictory inflated ego and deflating insecurity. But it's far fromMy Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's only highlight. The Rick Ross featuring "Devil in a New Dress" chops up Smokey Robinson's falsetto and sprinkles it over the Teflon Don's robust baritone. The G.O.O.D. Fridays diptych "Monster" and "So Appalled" find West communing with his peers to recognize the repulsive underbelly of their genre—the "dark" side of Kanye's Fantasy. "All of the Lights" is both a masterful example of channeling a wide array of talents into one unifying voice and that rare instance of a Kanye narrative not explicitly about the man himself. All of it sums up to a supernova of pop decadence, a ballsy bid of self-expression that’s so do-or-die that it has to be the best. Also, Nicki Minaj.

TOP FIVE SONGS

01. Kanye West: “Devil in a New Dress (Feat. Rick Ross).” Or: the best song of the year that isn’t “Runaway”—which should be Song of the Year for anyone with half a brain and even minimal levels of Kanye tolerance. Because when I’ve exhausted listening to that one’s gripping self-deprecation narrative, its swooning strings and wrenching auto-tuned exorcism of a coda, the ascending piano figure, chopped-up Smokey Robinson sample, and booming Ross verse of this gem give me nearly as many goosebumps.

02. Arcade Fire: “Modern Man.” 2010 was the year I genuinely liked an Arcade Fire album. Credit, I don't know, about 70% of that to the band’s newfound maturity, their ability to express their uneasy transition into adulthood in a more compelling way than they did their confused and angry youth. “Modern Man” makes up the other 30%, in addition to perfectly articulating my previous point. Win Butler, in his finest hour as a lyricist, achingly sums up everyone’s yearning for escape from the tedious daily grind: “I had a dream I was dreaming.” Your move, Matt Beringer.

03. Lindström & Christabelle: “Lovesick.” Wonky vocal exercises and that stupid-on-purpose title give us our first impressions of Real Life Is No Cool, producer Lindström and vocalist Christabelle’s collaborative debut. But the disc is actually a lot more accessible than Lindström’s usual space-disco head-trips, and sexy as hell: from Chris's cooing vocals to the flirty bounce of Hans’s neu-disco production, “Lovesick” sets its sights on being the best post-disco lament for love-as-physical-ailment since Hercules and Love Affair lost theirs.

04. King Sunny Adé: “Emi Won N’lle yi O (Sa Jo Ma L’owo L’owo).” Perhaps not the towering achievement Bábá mo Túndé’s 30-minute title-track is, this one nonetheless proves valuable for its distillation of everything great about Adé’s band—talking drums, snaking guitars, and effervescent pop melodies—into just eight minutes. Despite the bemoaning over jams cut down by fussy record labels during Adé’s heyday, this need not be a second longer.

05. Spoon: “I Saw the Light.” Spoon’s Transference was knocked from this list at the last second, so it felt necessary to give mention to its best song. OK, it’s best song right now; the mournful “Out Go the Lights,” R&B-leaning “Who Makes Your Money” and twitchy “Nobody Gets Me But You” have all held that title at one time. “I Saw the Light” feels like the set’s real stunner though, mainly because it utilizes all the tools in the band’s arsenal at this moment: foregrounded drums dueling fuzzy riffs, and subsiding for weird, but weirdly right, piano breakdowns. Also, no other song ostensibly about being ‘saved’ rocked as hard as this one did in 2010.

• 12.24.10 | Year in Review 2010: Jordan Cronk (Music) Jordan Cronk
• 12.24.10 | Year in Review 2010: Chris Nowling (Music) Chris Nowling
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd

Feature By: Sam C. Mac

Year in Review 2010 - Home Movies

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:29:49 -0500

Feature by Kathie Smith & Jordan Cronk: There's truth to the adage that home distribution killed the theater-going audience. For those equipped with the Internet and a region free player, the world becomes a playground of recent and classic cinematic treasures. Many distributors, most notably Criterion in the US and Masters of Cinema in the UK, have not only met the demands of the savvy cinephile but also the demands of the all-important 1080p picture quality. As has been the trend, 2010 gave us many a reason to keep our butts firmly planted in our home theaters. Below, InRO staff writers and compulsive DVD and Blu-Ray consumers Jordan Cronk and Kathie Smith offer up some of the best releases available worldwide.

Note: All Region 1 DVDs, Region A Blu-rays and Region free Blu-rays will play in any US player. Other regions, including the Region B Blu-rays mentioned, require that you have a player capable of playing multiple regions.

PICK OF THE YEAR!

DVD/Blu-ray: Letters from Fontainhas (1997-2007)
Distributor: Criterion [Region 1]
Director(s): Pedro Costa
Amazon Price: $43.99

There may be some debate amongst Kathie and myself over the best Blu-Ray release of the year, but I’m confident that we both recognize “Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa” as the most important and essential DVD set of 2010. Arguably the most rigid formalist amongst current arthouse luminaries, Costa’s extreme neo-realist portraits of the impoverished and since demolished Lisbon slum known as Fontainhas are the stuff of festival legend, and only with the arrival of this Criterion set have these features attained Stateside availability. 1997's “Ossos” is the most narratively traditional of the trilogy, detailing the disquieting relationship between a desperate young couple and their newborn child; it was the arrival of 2000's “In Vanda’s Room”that announced the importance of Costa, the international artiste. With its strict, almost documentary formalism, the film saw Costa recruiting actual Fontainhas residents—including the titular Vanda—to more or less live their daily existence in front of his patient, probing lens. One of the few directors to internalize Abbas Kiarostami’s method of disintegrating the space between documentary and narrative filmmaking, Costa would refine these techniques with 2006's “Colossal Youth,” which turns its focus to the deity-like Ventura, who haunts the abandoned remnants of the town with a magnetic solemnity that resolves as a kind of lament for this troubled but vivid area of third world Portugal.

This box set is nearly as impressive as the films within it. Criterion has gathered together multiple interviews with Costa and Jean-Pierre Gorin about each film’s development, video chats with a handful of critics and crew members, a documentary on Costa's return to the demolished Fontainhas, a video installation piece, and two short films, among other things. While a great deal of ink gets spilled every year on resurrected classics entering the digital realm, it's equally important to be aware that some of the most substantial current works in cinema have trouble reaching our shores. Considering this, “Letters from Fontainhas: Three Films by Pedro Costa” is a love letter not only to the lost region it chronicles, but also to modern cinephiles, who thrive on packages as complete and indispensable as this one. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: America Lost and Found: The BBS Story (1968-1972)
Distributor: Criterion [Region A]
Director(s): Bob Rafelson, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Henry Jaglom, Peter Bogdonovich
Amazon Price: $87.49

In retrospect, American film in the 1970s seemed like a brilliant flash in pan, a glimpse into what was possible that disappeared as quickly as it arrived. Daring independent films belayed by actor’s actors became the status quo, but not without the pioneering efforts of Bob, Bert and Steve—otherwise known as Rafelson, Schneider and Blauner, BBS Productions. Although the production company survived on the money that Schneider and Rafelson made in producing the television show “The Monkees” and the respective fame of the band, they invested in a new direction with new ideas. Their films were at the heart of what is now considered the New Hollywood, and they are also the centerpiece of the Blu-ray box set of the year—America Lost and Found: The BBS Story. From the critically acclaimed “Five Easy Pieces” to the award-winning 'Last Picture Show,' from the obscure and unreleased “Drive, He Said” and “A Safe Place” to the iconic “Easy Rider,” and from the silly and wildly hilarious “Head” to the dark and somber “The King of Marvin Gardens,” Criterion packs BBS Productions’ seven films, some major and some minor, into one set of tremendous resonance. Digging into the special features (over 20 hours worth!) is like discovering a gold mine hidden in the idealism and eventual pessimism of the era. Having seen many of these films repeatedly over the past 20 years, I'm continually surprised how they, seemingly locked into a very specific era, have not only fared the test of time, but have grown even richer. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Profound Desires of the Gods (1968)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema [Region B]
Director(s): Shohei Imamura
Amazon Price: $38.99

A lot of the films you’ll be reading about in this feature will have made the cut because of pristine picture quality and/or their immersive breadth of extras. While Eureka’s resurrection of Shohei Imamura’s grandiose 1968 epic “Profound Desires of the Gods” does in fact sport a wonderful transfer, the simple fact that this film is arriving in digital format in, honestly, any fashion is a remarkable occurrence. (A subtle excerpt from Glenn Kenny’s Blu-Ray review: “Holy s**t. Yes, holy s**t. As in, holy s**t.”) Arriving hot on the heels of his awesome run of mid-'60s Japanese new-wave classics—consult Criterion’s indispensable early Imamura box set from last year, “Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes,” for further reference—“Profound Desires of the Gods,” with its taboo-busting incest subplot, gaudy color schemes, and indulgent three-hour runtime, effectively thwarted Imamura’s rise to popular prominence. His next narrative, 1979's “Vengeance Is Mine” (also released this year by Eureka and equally essential viewing—think of this as a vote for both) wouldn’t arrive for eleven years. But in many ways this feels like the culmination of Imamura’s initial burst, exaggerating all the tension (“Intentions of Murder”), irreverent humor (“Pigs and Battleships”) and fetishistic sexuality (“The Pornographers”) that so defined his early work, and this ‘Masters of Cinema’ package does right by that legacy. The film is augmented with a nice interview by Japanese film scholar Tony Rayns, who also provides a typically fantastic essay for the lavish, 44-page booklet. Unfortunately for North Americans, the disc is Region B locked. If ever there was a reason to indulge in a region-free Blu-ray player, this is most certainly it. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: The Only Son/There Was a Father (1936-1942)
Distributor: Criterion [Region 1]
Director(s): Yasujiro Ozu
Amazon Price: $28.99

A frequent misconception about the Yasujiro Ozu style is that the great Japanese director’s career built towards—or eventually arrived at—the level of strict rigidity that we so commonly identify with the master’s later and most widely seen work. As more and more of Ozu’s early work begins to surface on DVD, however, it’s easy to see that, despite a few more traditional camera movements, or the use of dissolves, or even just a more liberal utilization of original music, the basic aesthetic—mostly static, tatami-level angles; perfectly balanced, geometric compositions; and direct, conversational eye-line defiant character placement—was intact. Criterion continued their efforts to rescue as many surviving Ozu films as possible with this two-film set, which collects 1936's masterful “The Only Son” (his first talkie) and the devastating “There Was a Father,” from 1942. Extras are slim but essential with scholars David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Tadao Sato all offering thoughts on the films in interview segments. But while this set is the most readily available for North American fans, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that for those not currently region-locked, the BFI began an impressive duel-format roll-out for Ozu films this year as well, packaging each as a double feature—look especially for “Tokyo Story”/ “Brothers and Sister of the Toda Family,” “Late Spring”/“The Only Son,” and coming early next year, “Good Morning"/“I Was Born But…,” among others. You can’t lose either way. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Metropolis (1927)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema [Region B]
Director(s): Fritz Lang
Amazon Price: $21.99

Few films have a history as fabled and mysterious as Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis.” With more scores and runtimes than you can shake a Utopian sci-fi stick at, the iconic masterpiece has been edited and restored to death. It seemed we had finally seen the definitive restored version of this film in 2001, but “Metropolis” turned a new page in 2008 when a tattered 16mm print of the original cut was found in Buenos Aries that included 25 minutes of lost footage. Fans and historians alike were bubbling with excitement about the possibility of reconstructing the film to its original 153-minute runtime. And although it's taken over 80 years and thousands of hours of work, “Metropolis” finally has returned to a state that is as close to Lang’s unfettered intentions as we're ever likely to get. Masters of Cinema’s new Special Edition Blu-ray of “Metropolis” goes the extra mile for authenticity by including the original German intertitles with optional English subtitles. Masters of Cinema also sweetens the deal by including a new full-length commentary by David Kalat and Jonathan Rosenbaum and a 56-page booklet full of interviews, reviews, articles and notes. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Dust in the Wind (1986)
Distributor: Central Pictures/Sony Music [Region Free]
Director(s): Hou Hsiao-hsien
Amazon Price: $31.99

The arrival of Hou Hsiao-hsien on Blu-ray this year was not only unexpected, but darn near unfathomable; most all of the Taiwanese master’s greatest continue to toil in digital obscurity. The only US-friendly package close to being in circulation—which is to say, not at all, as it’s now OOP—is the eight-film “Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Classics” set, which, to say the least, left something to be desired as far as A/V quality is concerned (still, get your hands on it if you can [I did -Ed.]). In other words, we would've been satisfied with a competent DVD rendering of, say, any of Hou’s earliest, let alone a revelatory Blu-ray of arguably his most heartfelt and accessible. In fact, the only criticism I could throw at this edition of “Dust in the Wind” is that it’s transferred at 1080i as opposed to full HD 1080p. Imperceptible interlacing aside, the picture quality takes a gigantic leap forward, presenting this formative work in its most glorious rendering yet. Also, those hesitant about the Japanese import accessibility can rest easy as this is, amazingly, a region free disc. Arriving ahead of Criterion’s long-rumored debut of Edward Yang’s “A Brighter Summer Day,” this is the first glimpse of the Taiwanese new-wave on Blu-ray. I’m happy to say that future discs—fingers crossed—have a lot to live up to. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Thirst (Director’s Cut) (2009)
Distributor: CJ Entertainment [Region A]
Director(s): Park Chan-wook
Amazon Price: $36.99

After Focus Features fumbled the theatrical release of Park Chan-wook’s “Thirst” by pulling it from its ambitious schedule and quickly shuttling it to DVD, Park’s overwhelming bloodletting drama died a very quick and inconsequential death in the US. Thankfully, CJ Entertainment in South Korea (as well as distributors in other countries including France and Canada) not only released this beautifully shot film on Blu-ray, but also blessed those of us trying to make sense of it with an extended director’s cut that adds an extra 12 minutes. That's not much when you hit the snooze on your alarm clock, but when it’s 12 minutes of scenario by Park Chan-wook, it’s like another world. The extra time allows the film to flesh out (pun very much intended) some focus without losing its chimerical body. I’ll be the first to admit that a great film shouldn’t take three viewings to be great, but “Thirst” is a film overflowing with motifs and filmic grandeur there for the taking. Prepare to practice your Korean if you plan on enjoying the ample extras because, although the film is equipped with English subtitles, none of the extras are. There is however a fantastic short animated film titled “Dust Kid” included under “Director’s Choice” that seems to be just that: a film that Park likes enough to randomly include. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties (1967-68)
Distributor: Eclipse [Region 1]
Director(s): Nagisa Oshima
Amazon Price: $37.99

One of the shrewdest moves Criterion's made in recent years was the launch of their Eclipse DVD line. Dedicated to highlighting fringe or under-recognized titles, Eclipse contextualizes movements, genres, studios, or in the case of “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties,” a single director’s formative work. Arriving just a year after their awesome back-to-back releases of Nagisa Oshima’s landmark '70s films “In the Realm of the Senses” and “Empire of Passion,” “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties” sees Criterion continuing to shed light on some of the key works of the Japanese new-wave. As this one's title implies, the five films featured here are bold and daring, both thematically and structurally, favoring swift editing and restless cinematography, mirroring many of the off-color protagonists Oshima tends to favor. As Kathie said in her original piece on the set, the jewel of the collection is 1967's “Japanese Summer: Double Suicide” (rare even amongst these films). But each is worthy in its own right, with 1967's “Sing a Song of Sex”—and its pointed melding of the erotic and the political—and 1968's elliptical “Three Resurrected Drunkards” each pointing the way most accurately to the work Oshima would do in the coming decades. With sets such as these—and other releases like Eureka’s “Profound Desires of the Gods” Blu-ray—the groundbreaking work by some of Japanese cinema’s true progressives can finally be recognized alongside the names—Kurosawa, Ozu, Naruse, Mizoguchi—that this movement was attempting to spiritually snuff out (“My hatred for Japanese cinema includes absolutely all of it,” Oshima has memorably stated). Lucky for us, we don’t have to choose one or the other, and “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties” proves that the reserve is all but endless for those films looking for canonical reverence. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: Red Desert (1964)
Distributor: Criterion [Region A]
Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni
Amazon Price: $33.99

“Red Desert” was Michelangelo Antonioni’s first color film, and he made every hue and tint count. It's a surreal technicolor dream that contrasts dystopian industrial pallor with manmade primary and secondary colors. Stuck in the middle of this existential nightmare is Guiliana (Monica Vitti,) a modern woman who fluctuates between the roles of victim and survivor. Guiliana aimlessly wanders to and fro, between her clueless husband and the helpless Zeller (Richard Harris), confronting moments of escapism and thoughts of suicide. Abstract, beautiful and foreboding, “Red Desert” is a modern masterpiece that shamefully only existed in crappy bootlegs and subpar imports until very recently. BFI beat Criterion to the punch by releasing “Red Desert” on Blu-ray over a year ago, but Criterion understands the power of patience, and the assemblage of the special features. In addition to a commentary track by David Forgacs, Criterion offers a vintage interview with Antonioni, a 1990 interview with Monica Vitti, an interesting cache of dailies from “Red Desert” and two short films that Antonioni made in the '40s, “N.U.” and “Gente Del Po.” Even the booklet goes above and beyond, providing the typical essay along with a 1964 interview that Jean-Luc Godard did with Antonioni for Cahiers du cinéma. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: House (1977)
Distributor: Criterion [Region A]
Director(s): Nobukiko Obayashi
Amazon Price: $29.99

Unearthed from the bowels of film phantasma, “House” is Japanese horror born from the experimental ingenuity of the '60s and the giddy pop sensibilities of the '70s. The result is a completely original teen-pop fantasy filled with likes of decapitated heads, severed arms, lonely ghosts, giggling pubescent girls, a demonic cat and a man who turns into a pile of bananas. Experimental filmmaker and advertising genius Nobuhiko Obayashi was invited to make a film that would do in Japan what “Jaws” did in the US. The B-list hit made its mark and then disappeared, becoming a thing of lore, kept alive by people who had seen it and who wanted to see it. Thankfully, this audacious and mesmerizing film has been resurrected from obscurity with the respect it deserves by Janus Films and released on Blu-ray by Criterion. “House” could have easily been tossed off as a silly cult sideshow if it weren’t for Obayashi’s hellacious craft, restored to perfection, and the film’s undeniable context, supplemented from all angles. Criterion includes Obayashi’s 1966 experimental film “Emotion,” as well as a lengthy interview with the director and his daughter who, at the age of 10, helped him construct the uninhibited story of “House.” Chuck Stephens also puts this cult classic in perspective with an essay included in a colorful booklet. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: The Red Shoes (1948) / Black Narcissus (1947)
Distributor: Criterion [Region A]
Director(s): Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Amazon Price: $29.99, $23.99

It’s obviously great to see so many world cinema classics and obscurities continue to make their way into the home viewing landscape each year, but with so many riches out there to discover, it can be easy to overlook widely-considered classics which have also arrived in their definitive editions. Two such examples are the new, updated Criterion Blu-rays of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s late-'40s classics “Black Narcissus” and “The Red Shoes.” Quite frankly, these technicolor marvels are the reason Blu-ray exists in the first place, and the restorations by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation are literally and appropriately breathtaking. Legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff is rightly profiled and lauded amongst the extras on both discs, and I have little doubt that these transfers have the films looking as good as they ever have. Also included is a fascinating look at Scorsese's extensive restoration of “The Red Shoes,” multiple interviews with folks associated with each production, audio commentaries, documentaries, and typically hefty booklets containing various essays and interviews. With the Film Foundation reportedly in the midst of a couple other Powell & Pressburger restorations—for 1943's “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and 1946's “A Matter of Life and Death”—it’s a great time to be an Archers fan, and an even better time to be fan of classic British cinema. Criterion had a banner year in 2010, and these are cornerstones of the past year's collection. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: The First Films of Akira Kurosawa (1943-45)
Distributor: Eclipse [Region 1]
Director(s): Akira Kurosawa
Amazon Price: $32.99

Although there's no frills to speak of, the Eclipse set of "The First Films of Akira Kurosawa" collects each of the four unreleased films that made last year’s "AK 100: 25 Films of Akira Kurosawa" so invaluable. After Kuorsawa ditched his plan to become a painter, yet before he staked out his territory with post-war classics like “No Regrets for Our Youth” and “Drunken Angel,” the director made 1943's “Sanshiro Sugata,” 1944's “The Most Beautiful,” 1945's “Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two,” and 1945's “The Men Who Tread On the Tiger’s Tail,” proving his muster right out of the shoot with brash styles he would later hone to a fine art. His first solo project, “Sanshiro Sugata,” was based on a martial arts novel pitting judo against jujitsu. It offered a reprieve from the heavy-handed propaganda films of the time and became a great success domestically—so much so that Kurosawa was allowed to make a sequel. The final exhilarating fight sequences in both films underscore how much Kurosawa influenced an entire league of action filmmakers. Sandwiched between the two was Kurosawa’s call to arms and somewhat unapologetic contribution to the waning war effort, “The Most Beautiful.” While the last in the series, “The Men Who Tread On the Tiger’s Tail," displays Kurosawa’s flare for theatrical period pieces that he would return to over and over again in his career. Considering the time and the fact that no one could have guessed the importance of this fresh new filmmaker, it’s a miracle that any of these films have survived. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Une femme mariee (1964)
Distributor: Masters of Cinema [Region Free]
Director(s): Jean-Luc Godard
Amazon Price: $44.99

The purpose of features like this should be outlining each releases' importance, but in the case of Eureka’s vital resurrection of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 masterpiece “Une femme mariee,” the legwork’s been done. Check the detailed description on the disc's back cover: “Long out-of-circulation and unavailable for home viewing, 'Une femme mariee' has, until now, represented the ostensibly ‘missing’ link from the zeitgeist-defining phase of JLG’s filmography.” What I can add to that, contextually, is that the film’s significance reveals itself in relation to Godard’s later work. “Une femme mariee’s” subtitle, “Fragments of a Film Shot in 1964 in Black and White,” acknowledges not only the film’s construction—which alternates between disorienting bodily close-ups in its bookending segments and impressively held head-shots in its interview-style mid-section—but also its inquiring relationship into the cinema itself, with visual and thematic references to Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Alain Resnais, among others. Looking back, it’s a pretty obvious precursor to his more cerebral late-'60s work (particularly 1967's “2 or 3 Things I Know About Her,” which would bring this approach to its fullest realization), as well as his first flirtation with the essay-film format and the most erotically charged of his flabbergastingly productive first decade. The disc’s lone extra is Godard’s personally cut version of the film’s trailer, but this is made up for with an intimidatingly dense 85-page booklet, featuring a roundtable critic’s discussion, multiple essays on the film itself, and the most ridiculously anti-self-reflexive self-reflexive “overture” introduction by Luc Mollett that I’ve ever read. And it’s region free; there’s no reason any serious cinephile should be without it. JC

DVD/Blu-ray: A Man Escaped (1956)
Distributor: Gaumont [Region Free]
Director(s): Robert Bresson
Amazon Price: $19.71

I’m not about to argue which film was Robert Bresson’s best, but “A Man Escaped” certainly qualifies as one of his most highly regarded. Based on the memoir of French Resistance fighter André Devigny, Bresson’s galvanizing drama finds a rich balance between the physicality and the meditation of life. Suspense is intermingled with the ever-present psychology of a man meeting and rendering his fate. “A Man Escaped” was Bresson’s first film using an entirely nonprofessional cast, a technique he would continue to perfect and eventually insist upon. It was also the second in an informal trilogy that included “Diary of a Country Priest” and “Pickpocket,” all relying heavily on voice-over narration. The film’s spare realism has been beautifully captured on this French Blu-ray. Those impressed by the better-late-than-never release of “A Man Escaped” on DVD in 2004 will be shocked by this transfer. You can feel the film grain on the screen in powdery whites and textured blacks. The main extra, a 45-minute documentary titled “L’essence Des Formes,” is unfortunately for Francophones only. KS

DVD/Blu-ray: Close-Up (1990)
Distributor: Criterion [Region A]
Director(s): Abbas Kiarostami
Amazon Price: $35.99

For such an internationally lauded, influential and groundbreaking director, it’s surprising how underrepresented Abbas Kiarostami is on the digital front. Sure, Criterion has the Palme d’Or-winning “Taste of Cherry,” but it's spine #45—not exactly what anyone would consider definitive. These slights were corrected in a big way this year, however, as Kiarostami’s landmark 1990 docu-fiction hybrid “Close-Up” made the restoration rounds before landing on Blu-ray in a stacked edition from Criterion. Along with the original feature—to my mind (and many amongst our staff) one of the greatest cinematic accomplishments of the '90s—the extras-stacked package includes a new interview with the director himself, two documentaries (one on the film’s main character, six years after the events recreated in the film, and one on Kiarostami), an audio commentary by the two foremost Kiarostami experts, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, and most generously, the director’s first feature-length narrative film, 1974's “The Traveler” (something of a classic in its own right). With interest in the director’s work at an all-time high (his new film “Certified Copy” is—spoiler alert—an instant classic), hopefully this release prompts the future resurrection of such comparable Kiarostami classics as “Where Is the Friend’s House?,” “Life, and Nothing More…,” and “Through the Olive Trees”. JC

• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: A.A. Dowd (Film) A.A. Dowd
• 12.22.10 | Year in Review 2010: Sam C. Mac (Music) Sam C. Mac
• 12.24.10 | Year in Review 2010: Jordan Cronk (Music) Jordan Cronk

Feature By: Kathie Smith
Jordan Cronk

Festival Coverage - Vancouver 2010 - Dispatch 2

Thu, 2 Dec 2010 02:36:02 -0500

Feature by Kathie Smith: If the Vancouver Film Festival is known for one thing, it's the "Dragons and Tigers" program: a diverse series spotlighting established and up-and-coming Asian filmmakers, its been home to the debut features of such luminaries as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Hong Sangsoo and Jia Zhang-ke, who all received a notoriety at VIFF that helped launch their respective careers. The series has benefitted from years of programming curated by Tony Rayns, and has recently added Shelly Kraicer, a Mainland maverick, to its programming team. Like a kid in a candy store, I saw 35 of the 44 selections this year, and many I will carry with me for years to come regardless of their eventual Stateside distribution. This year felt like a particularly good year for this Asian sidebar, with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” leading a strong charge of critically lauded films from major filmmakers.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
/ Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Anticipation is a dangerous thing, and as I walked into VIFF’s sold out screening of “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” I worried my own would present a problem. Ever since I first saw “Mysterious Object at Noon” nearly ten years ago, my enthusiasm for Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul has grown with each film he's made, and I've yet to be disappointed. But this is his moment: ‘Uncle Boonmee’ won highbrow accolades and the Palme d’Or at Cannes and scored some hometown success during an early theatrical run in Bangkok. Now making the festival rounds before its early 2011 US release, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ continues to earn heaps of critical praise, and I’m not going to do anything to change that. I'm going to add to it: at a comparatively short 114 minutes, Weerasethakul’s latest succeeded in skewing my expectations and in wholly satisfying my desire for an enchanting cinema. Where his previous films required the audience to let go of preconceived notions of narrative structure, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ asks the audience to let go of preconceived notions of the physical world. Inspired by a book of the same name that Weerasethakul picked up from a monk, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ is a relatively straightforward account of a man nearing death. What's unique is its setting—the jungles of the Khon Kaen region of northern Thailand, which evoke the supernatural.

The soft-spoken Jen travels to the countryside to visit her brother-in-law Boonmee, who tends to his tamarind grove and bee houses. Jen's nephew, Tong (played by Weerasethakul regular Sakda Kaewbuadee), accompanies her. Although Boonmee seems at first to be in good health, we soon learn of his kidney disease through an early scene depicting his dialysis. While Jen, Tong and Boonmee eat dinner, surrounded by the darkness of the jungle, Boonmee’s wife (and Jen’s sister) Huay, who's been dead for 19 years, magically appears at the table, followed by Boonmee’s son, Boonsong, who went missing 13 years ago. Boonsong, however, appears in the form of a monkey ghost, hauntingly coming up the dark staircase with glowing red eyes. The surprise of their arrival quickly passes and the costumes and effects hardly matter as the five settle into a conversation that ponders the special circumstances of their meeting. Jen asks Huay if she received the offerings that she left for her; in a touching confession representing the connection between the living and dead, she says that she did and that she felt the presence of the offerings and their prayers. Weerasethakul counters some of this seriousness with humor; when Jen tells Huay she had to chase her husband out with a butcher’s knife, Huay laments to Boonsong: “Son, earthly matters never cease to surprise, right?” Unease, comfort and joy are all handled with a resolute calm and the unspoken knowledge that the arrival of these spirits is related to Boonmee’s health.

On the periphery, the echoes of Boonmee’s past lives rumble and reverberate into the story. A water buffalo breaks away from the tree to which it's tied and wanders into the jungle, giving us our first glimpse of the monkey ghosts we see later on and then obediently returning to the field from whence it came. A similar diversion occurs when an ancient princess is carried through the jungle by sedan chair; mourning her imperfect features near the edge of a roaring waterfall, she forms a bond, so to speak, with an all-knowing catfish, requesting a youthful beauty. But the anchor of all this is a series of snapshots referencing the military past of Khon Kaen (and Boonmee’s karma), photos that depict soldiers who hold one of these monkey ghosts captive. Perhaps the ghost is Boonmee or perhaps it's Boonsong—either way these images resonate with an eventual fall from grace, possibly spiritual and possibly political in nature. There's an undeniable physicality to Boonmee’s peritoneal dialysis but it's gently extrapolated alongside mystical apparitions of reincarnation. ‘Uncle Boonmee’ is a rare comment on death and spirituality that is completely original in film, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes the bold assumption that his audience is as adventurous as he is. With an ending best discovered, ‘Uncle Boonmee’ flaunts Weersethakul’s poetic license and his desire for us to interpret the meanings in his films ourselves.

I Wish I Knew / Jia Zhang-ke
Jia Zhang-ke's “I Wish I Knew” plunges into the depths of Shanghai's living history with artistry and humanism. Politically bold and socially rich, “I Wish I Knew” represents a compassionate search for the heart of a city now defined by its modernity and its booming economy. Since opening its ports to foreign trade, Shanghai has maintained the aura of a European city, even in China's most xenophobic moments. As a symbol of the country's ills and advances, Shanghai was built by its trade prowess, but defined by war. Although under constant threat from the Japanese for nearly 15 years, it was the brutal battles between the Communists and Nationalists that posed the threat which so effected Shanghai's residents, physically and emotionally. It's this fragile moment in the 1940s that Jia excavates, culling stories from people who still reside in the Paris of East and others flung by fate to either Hong Kong or Taiwan: the daughter of a gangster, the son of a KMT officer, and the son of a Communist officer. Most recall moments from their childhood and the trials their parents endured. But Jia also interviews the son of actress Shangguan Yunzhu (“Two Stage Sisters,” “Crows and Sparrows”), the daughter of director Fei Mu (the original “Springtime in a Small Town”), and actress Wei Wei (also making an appearance at VIFF in the premiere of Freddy Wong's “The Drunkard”). Jia spends time with Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsein as well (their interview takes place in the last car of a train, of course), and eventually turns his camera on the new generation of Shanghai residents, represented by the hugely popular writer/blogger/race car driver Han Han. Each interview, as one might expect, is beautifully staged, intercut with elegiac scenes from the city that recall moments of Jia's “24 City.” But unlike that film, “I Wish I Knew” firmly remains a documentary, with only brief interludes featuring Jia’s muse Zhao Tao. The English title, “I Wish I Knew,” is an epitaph for Shanghai's history, buried beneath modern wealth and privilege. It also seems to describe the desire of a director trying to understand a city that defines his country. The Chinese title, “Hai Shang Chuan Qi” “海上传奇” (with the characters for Shanghai inverted like Hou Hsiao-hsien's “Flowers of Shanghai”), literally translates to "Legend on the Sea," and certainly has similar connotations as the English title. "Legends," at least in China, hail from the days of the Tang and Song Dynasties—and to the people in this film, their memories are nearly as distant. Commissioned for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, “I Wish I Knew” is an elegant tribute to the city this city once was.

Note: VIFF screened the 138-minute cut of “I Wish I Knew”; a subsequent cut runs 118 minutes and edits out sequences the Chinese Government felt portrayed China poorly. In essence, three interviews were cut, including a heartbreaking interview with Shangguan Yunzhu’s son. Unfortunately, it's the truncated version, edited for the Shanghai Expo, that is currently set to play in the U.S.

Hahaha / Hong Sangsoo
Hong Sangsoo had two films at VIFF this year, but where the newer "Oki’s Movie" feels like a rehash, “Hahaha” possesses a startling lightness that, unexpectedly, does not recall other Hong movies; as humiliation and introspection collide and congeal, Woody Allen is far more prescient than Eric Rohmer. Pitched with cutting dialog and featherweight humor, “Hahaha” involves farcical attempts at human connection (usually between the opposite sex) and large amounts of soju. Friends Munkyung and Jungshik discuss recent events over drinks, trading stories of their respective trips to Tongyung, on the southern coast of Korea. What we realize and they don’t is that their tales of debauchery run parallel to each other. Munkyung is a recently fired professor who now calls himself a film director (even though he hasn't yet made a film), and who's planning to immigrate to Canada and help his aunt run a photo franchise. His mother runs a globefish restaurant in Tongyung which Munkyung visits frequently. Meanwhile, Jungshik has traveled to Tongyung on the pretense of visiting a friend, but in fact he's there to spend time with his mistress. Although the two friends' paths never cross, they visit the same places and socialize with the same people. The action in “Hahaha” takes place in segmented flashbacks joined together with black-and-white photos of Munkyung and Jungshik in the present, their inane drinking narration overdubbed. ("Wow. You were really great!" "Yeah." "Cheers!" "Cheers." "Hahaha.") Munkyung is played to pathetic perfection by veteran Hong actor Kim Sangkyung; a mama's boy prone to weeping, Munkyung is a Hong-ready everyman, but Sangkyung is given the space to indulge in conventional character tropes including a surreal dream sequence and a very funny fist fight. His character is balanced by Moon Sori's performance as Seongok, an odd and irreverent museum tour guide that Munkyung woefully takes to chasing. Hong toys with his characters, pushing them into situations that nearly pull the rug out from under them. But Hong remains gleefully audacious and pulls off this farcical comedy gracefully. There's a certain formal and tonal restraint to Hong's films, and just a touch of that restraint falls away in “Hahaha,” easily making it one of the most enjoyable films this great talent has made.

Cold Fish / Shion Sono
In this follow-up to 2008's megalomaniacal 3½-hour epic “Love Exposure,” Shion Sono delivers a far more focused and fleshed out film. “Cold Fish” is more somber in its damnation of family culture and modern social schemas. Dubiously based on a true story, it charts an emasculated man's journey to the edge of his violent misogynistic psyche. Shamoto is a mild-mannered fish shop owner psychologically beaten down by his unresponsive teenage daughter and his frigid wife. Soon we find out there is a seriously twisted hierarchy in the household that seems to be careening out of control. Until Murata steps in, that is. A competing but much more successful fish shop owner, Murata wants to set the patriarchal record straight and takes Shamoto and his family under his sadistic wing. Nothing that happens will come as a surprise to those familiar with Sono's films, but the dark mood just gets darker and the humor less humorous. A brutal yet symbolic ending is likely to have any audience squirming, but Sono tightens the screws with unexpected efficiency. The opening montage is an efficient visual allegory to the barbarity that lies just beneath the surface of modern domestication. “Cold Fish” feels like a transition into serious filmmaking for Sono, with gravitating performances and solid production. At over two hours, it's a rigorous and unrelenting experience.

Winter Vacation / Li Hongqi
My personal favorite film at VIFF, “Winter Vacation” is a perfect mixture of Chinese specificity and avant-garde bravado. An incredibly austere set piece, it never concerns itself too much with drama or realism, but instead builds a laconic daydream filled with irony and surrealistic flourishes. It's set during winter break, which normally coincides with the Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year), a season characterized by lively family gatherings, bountiful food and firecrackers. But Li Hongqi paints the antithesis of this vision, with youth standing around dispassionately and occasionally spouting slurs at one another; their guardians do much of the same. “Winter Vacation” is anchored by two sets of characters: five apathetic teenage boys, and an antagonistic grandfather and grandson sitting at opposite ends of a couch, trading jabs. The film cycles through the non-events in the town—a thug extorting money from a kid, a woman buying cabbage, a couple getting a divorce—but always returns to the aforementioned groups. At first these individuals seem oblivious to the surrounding absurdity, but it's slowly revealed that they're more than aware of their sardonic setting. One of the boys has decided not to return to school, and when asked what he plans on doing, he replies with a popular communist slogan, “Continue to build socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The slogan is as empty as the emotion behind it. Earning comparisons to Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Winter Vacation” functions on an economy of words, but the minimal dialog is scripted with perceptiveness and delivered with deadpan perfection. This whip-smart rhetoric and ironic humor are complimented by a stylistic verve that feels completely unique to Mainland Chinese film: Li punctuates beautifully sparse imagery with a subtle soundtrack by experimental composer Zuoxiao Zuzhou (who has also contributed to soundtracks for Jia Zhangke, Zhu Wen, Yang Fudong and Ai Weiwei). The film ends with a befuddled schoolteacher delivering a hilarious diatribe to his apathetic students, telling them they're the soul of the universe but that they know nothing. The insults keep flying until another teacher informs him he’s in the wrong classroom. The new teacher then informs the students (in English), who have the same blank looks on their faces, that they will discuss “How to be a good person in society.” "Winter Vacation" is that rare social commentary that is not intended to draw tears or pull heart strings, but to tickle our funny bones.

• 11.23.10 | Vancouver 2010: Dispatch 1 Kathie Smith

Feature By: Kathie Smith

Festival Coverage - Vancouver 2010 - Dispatch 1

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:35:15 -0500

Feature by Kathie Smith: Although the Vancouver International Film Festival could feasibly be described as the neighboring Toronto Fest’s kid brother, it touts its own share of high-profile screenings. After taking in close to 50 of these films, I emerged from the flickering lights of the Hollywood North trying to discern between the good, the bad, and the weird. Digesting everything took time, and so did writing this feature—which will be presented in two installments for In Review Online. Ultimately, many films at VIFF left me with the impression that the sum of their parts were greater than the whole (Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats” and Catherine Breillat’s “The Sleeping Beauty"), while others (Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” and Michael Rowe’s “Leap Year”) have just as immaculate moments, but impress even more for what they cumulatively accomplish. As for Raul Ruiz's epic 4-hour-plus “Mysteries of Lisbon,” both the parts and the whole are too overwhelming to compare. Check out my take on these below, and check back later this week for my thoughts on the Asian highlights of the festival.

Certified Copy / Abbas Kiarostami
After spending nearly a decade away from narrative features, Abbas Kiarostami returns in a big way with a film that's engaging both intellectually and emotionally. Under the auspices of exploring artifice, “Certified Copy” explores esoteric notions of love, life and art on the coattails of a wandering Tuscan tête-à-tête. In this case, the two wanderers are the beautiful and charismatic Juliette Binoche (Best Actress winner at Cannes this year) and the handsome and stately William Shimell (a British opera star more than holding his own in his first film appearance). The couple's relaxed and poignant conversations (which recall Kiarostami's “Ten”) delicately skirt philosophy in order to tackle more volatile affairs of the heart. The film opens as author James Miller (Shimell) holds a lecture on his book, “Certified Copy.” In the audience is Elle (Binoche), looking the part of an enamored fan but distracted by her petulant son. Elle owns a gallery and has a vested interest in James’s research into the nature of authenticity in art. James and Elle soon embark on a friendly but professional afternoon excursion to a nearby village. Their ever-shifting debate flows and stutters with the awkwardness of unfamiliarity and the defiance of middle-age. But are we mistaking the awkwardness between strangers for more complex emotions shared by former companions?

Midway through "Certified Copy" the nature of James and Elle’s relationship is called into question. Throwing the literal structure of the film out the window has the effect of freeing up every other aspect of this loose yet very grounded narrative. Under the premise of James’s essay, “Certified Copy” becomes a hall of mirrors where James and Elle’s ambiguous relationship—or more accurately, Shimell and Binoche’s ambiguous relationship—is grounds for something far more fallible and beautiful than a mechanical reproduction. By using the components of a European art film, Kiarostami has elegantly replicated while pointing out the replication. “Certified Copy” is Kiarostami at his best, and perhaps better than we have ever seen him before. He writes dialogue in three languages and casts an operatic baritone as the individual who can’t speak Italian. He builds an aura of mystery as he simultaneously points out there is really no mystery. He meditates on classic Italian art while polishing the tarnished halo of film-as-art. He takes an academic subject and fills it with the pulse of life. He casts the biggest star in Europe and allows her to playfully explore a range of emotions found in herself as well as his script. And he casts us, the audience—his audience—as the mirror, the ultimate reflection of his film. “Certified Copy” opens in the U.S. in March, and it’s already one of the best films of next year.

Mysteries of Lisbon / Raúl Ruiz
Raúl Ruiz’s richly detailed adaptation of Camilo Castelo Branco’s novel is a swoon-worthy brocade epic that immediately takes hold and doesn't let go for its mammoth 272-minute runtime. A patchwork of narrative yarns that sprawl out like pastoral landscapes, “Mysteries of Lisbon” magically sustains its intrigue throughout. (So much so that I'm envious of an even longer version set to appear on Portuguese TV.) It's a kaleidoscopic dream of a film, with young João at its center—an orphan plagued with not knowing the identity of his mother and father. João's personal mystery is the catalyst that sets the narrative in motion, spawning one character after another and their individual tapestries of misfortune and mystery. Father Dinis is one of these characters, a messiah-like figure who turns out to be something of a master of disguise. Dinis is mentor, teacher, caretaker and savior, not only to João but (if you are to believe the implications of this story) to many others as well. He's also our narrator, and his vocal intonation carries the secrecy and scandal implicit in this story—you never have to look far beyond the frame for a symbolic gaggle of eavesdroppers or peeping toms. It's one of many story-telling devices; there's also a handmade miniature stage for puppets, a prized possession of João’s and a means for creating clever visual interludes. Ruiz, 69-years old and reportedly in poor health, has outwardly admitted that “Mysteries of Lisbon” may be his last film. In this context, one can’t help but see its final scenes as a personal statement from Ruiz. Finality, a harsh sever between film and audience, is announced with yet another mystery, this one more metaphysical, resting on the conscience of the viewer.

Leap Year / Michael Rowe
Michael Rowe’s “Leap Year” is the bravest film I saw at VIFF, and also one of the toughest. Watching a young, emotionally placid woman subject herself to untold degradation is divisive, disconcerting and understandably not everyone’s cup of tea. But Rowe, a Mexican transplant via Australia, orchestrates an austere character study with one of the most fearless performances I've ever seen. Laura is a young freelance writer whose solitude is punctuated by one night stands. As the film opens, she turns her calendar to February and colors the 29th day in red. Her past is at this point unknown to us, but her activities seem to anticipate the elusive date of the film's title. Laura also carries with her a strange confidence and complacency toward her somewhat oppressive isolation. It's only when she meets Arturo—a man of sadistic verve—that her damaged but dominant psyche is exposed. The path that “Leap Year” starts to travel down is horrifying, but allows for complex ruminations that rarely grace the screen. Laura’s character challenges the meanings of terms like "victim" and "survivor" by seizing a perverse control over her own fate. Rowe is careful not to tip his hand, allowing Laura to define herself through her unpredictable actions. Shot entirely within the confines of Laura’s apartment, the film has an alarming intimacy that intensifies its feelings of claustrophobia. There's no escape from our curiosity or our dread. A likely successor to Breillat-like bravado, Rowe defies both his gender and nationality through uncommon sympathy and tough love of the most unsettling kind.

The Sleeping Beauty / Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat tackles her second fairytale in as many years with surreal and abstract panache. While her previous film, “Bluebeard,” wore its sinister connotations on its sleeve, “The Sleeping Beauty” is more sublimely whimsical. Coming at this film with only Disney as your context isn't going to help anyone; even full knowledge of Charles Perrault's original tale may not help to navigate Breillat's obscure intentions. Lavishly detailed but highly deviant, “The Sleeping Beauty” is a conceptual minefield that will leave few interested in traversing it more than once. As in the original text, Breillat portrays a young princess with a cursed destiny to fall into a 100-year slumber. But the film parts ways with Perrault’s text when Breillat begins to freely improvise a surreal world that feels merely inspired by the fairytale, not faithful to it. The film opens with the abrupt cut of an umbilical cord (the first of three I witnessed at VIFF), and quickly juxtaposes this with three nude vixens playing in a pool of water (a sequence that could only be crafted by Breillat). The fate of princess Anastasia is decided the moment she impales her hand on a spindle: she falls into a deep sleep, which bleeds into a mythical dreamworld. Anastasia’s often elusive journey is either a rite of passage or simply the product of a young girl’s imagination. The film makes use of the innate charms and charisma of Carla Besainou, the actress who plays the young Anastasia and whom also played one of the sisters in “Bluebeard.” Her presence is delicately tied together with some striking images, especially one in which she rides a deer through a snowy landscape. Unfortunately, the meaning of all this is confounding and tedious, and the story too ambiguous. Fairytales, and their perverse subtexts, seem the perfect match for Breillat's socio-sexual themes, but this one is too drawn out, even for this fan.

Heartbeats / Xavier Dolan
Xavier Dolan emerges from his Cannes wunderkind spacesuit to reveal he’s no rocket scientist, but just another up-and-coming filmmaker. “Heartbeats,” his sophomore effort, is both incredibly self-assured and painfully self-conscious, buckling under the enormous weight of its superficiality. Best friends Francis (Dolan) and Marie platonically fall for the Dionysian Nicolas from across the room. Denying their feelings to each other, they both attempt to cultivate a friendship with the aloof Nicolas, risking their own. “Heartbeats”—with its perfect hair, smart outfits and cooler-than-thou soundtrack—aims to swoon, and it may have won me were it not for the absence of sincere affection. The only hints of passion-beyond-preening are portrayed through oblique portrayals of mornings-after and a desperate but honest fit of masturbation. The tenderest moment in the film is when Francis and Marie fly into a catfight, like a necessary mutual catharsis for their frustration and regret—and the first and only glimpse of honesty behind the characters’ composed façades. The pains of being pure at heart are written in code with little or no substance to decipher them with. Rejection and heartbreak linger but with little gravity. Dolan’s camera, however, certainly doesn’t shy away from intimacy, leaving me not only with a lasting impression of the shape of Francis’s neck and the curve of Marie’s hips, but also with glimpses of their more mortal qualities, such as chewed fingernails and clotted mascara. Dolan undersells his generation as shallow scenesters looking for love in all the wrong places, but chances are he doesn’t want to be a generational spokesman. “Heartbeats” is a portrait of the fragile and the fashionable where, for better and for worse, beauty and infatuation truly only runs skin-deep.

• 12.02.10 | Vancouver 2010: Dispatch 2 Kathie Smith

Feature By: Kathie Smith

Festival Coverage - Toronto 2010 - Dispatch 4

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 02:50:55 -0400

Feature by InRO Staff: Even as other major fall film festivals divert our attention (hello dere, NYC and Chi-town), we’re still plugging away at these Toronto reviews. In this Dispatch, we have capsules on Frederick Wiseman’s doc “Boxing Gym,” Lee Chang-dong’s character-driven drama “Poetry,” and a longer take on Master of Horror John Carpenter’s first film since 2001’s ‘Ghosts of Mars,’ Midnight Madness selection ‘The Ward.’ Sam C. Mac

John Carpenter’s The Ward / John Carpenter
Poor John Carpenter. The one-time maestro of malevolence cooks up his first feature-length fright flick in a decade and ends up inadvertently playing second fiddle to Martin Scorsese. It's bad timing and worse luck—don't blame Carpenter for the eerie, unflattering similarities between his latest and the year's other '60s-set insane asylum thriller. Blame him instead for everything willfully derivative about this uneasy cocktail blend of tired ol' genre tropes. One part supernatural slasher flick, two parts shaggy dog ghost story, ‘The Ward’ commences with a baptizing fire, the farmhouse blaze set by brainy beauty Kristen (Amber Heard). Her mysterious act of arson gets her thrown into the girls-only loony bin, where she grapples with both primitive practitioners of mental health (led by an amusingly evasive Jared Harris) and a murderous spectral hag. What do her fellow, marked-for-death patients know that they're not letting on? And what connection is there between this rousing round of "Ten Little Indians" and Kristen's own troubled past?

If you can't put the pieces together faster than this amateur Nancy Drew, chances are the baldly-telegraphed big reveal of "Shutter Island" snuck up on you, too. Thing is, that hoary bit of hokum, predicated though it was on an exceedingly predictable twist ending, at least offered a boundless bounty of virtuosic aesthetic wonders. The same can't really be said for ‘The Ward,’ which is handsomely made but completely bereft of memorable set-pieces. Working again in theatrical widescreen, Carpenter glides through the halls and the corridors of his haunted hospital—a fairly convincing period milieu, achieved on a very restricted budget—with the voyeuristic guile of Michael Myers. If but he had such a dread-inducing boogeyman at his disposal; this generic ghoulie evinces scarcely a shudder, and JC reduces her paranormal activities to a series of dully repetitive jump scares. Like Dario Argento, another over-the-hill prince of darkness, he seems to have lost the maliciously magic touch. Which is a shame, because there's enough potboiler potential in Carpenter's basic set-up—and enough gumption in his game cast of inmates-cum-victims, an all-girl variation on the usual cuckoo's nest of eccentric basket cases—to inspire visions of the enjoyable shlock that could have been. Forget "Shutter Island"; I would have settled for the passable pleasures of "Halloween 2." A.A. Dowd

Poetry / Lee Chang-dong
Following a string of brilliant character studies, Lee Chang-dong notches down the excellence just a touch for his latest. "Poetry" is Lee's second feature since completing his duties as minister of Culture and Tourism in South Korea, and like "Secret Sunshine" before it (along with the earlier "Peppermint Candy" and career-peak "Oasis") it's a psychologically rich and probing drama. Under the microscope this time is Mija, played by award-winning actress Yoon Jeong-hee, whom Lee wrote the part for (her first major role since retiring in the mid '90s). She's fantastic, blending a compassionate warmth and soulful remorsefulness which earn "Poetry" its richly melancholic tone. Mija's a woman on the verge of a communications breakdown: She struggles to recall nouns, then verbs—the onset of Alzheimer's, say the doctors—and is guardian to a rude teenage grandson who refuses her every display of affection and concern. She also takes a poetry class, and when the ugliest of life's misfortunes threatens the simplicity of her existence, Mija looks to her prose as an expression of her innermost feelings. The vagueness employed here is intentional—no sense in spoiling the power of experiencing "Poetry's" methodical and controlled progression for yourself. What can be said is that the central conflict in many ways refracts that of Bong Joon-ho's "Mother" (which likewise played both Cannes and Toronto), subbing out Kurosawa-esque procedural movements for something along the lines of an understated meditation on communal and family relationships, closer in its unhurried style to Ozu or Mikio Naruse. But where "Mother" and "Poetry" really dovetail is in their handling of a late-film moral crisis—instead of descending into vigilantism, as Bong's film does, Lee arrives at something more poignant, an affecting finale which utilizes actual poetry in a better, non-pretentious way than near any film this writer can think of. SCM

Boxing Gym / Frederick Wiseman
What Frederick Wiseman is doing barely constitutes as documentary filmmaking anymore—there's no talking heads, no narration, all sound is diagetic, and only bare bones context is provided. His camera seems to observe interactions between people instead of instigating them, and while that commitment to realism is an admirable one, it's also inherently flawed: We never can be sure that the people on camera would act the same without a camera present. Thankfully, this doesn't lessen the intensity, the near hypnotic power, of watching patrons at Richard Lord's Boxing Gym partake in their physical routines. Newbies to the gym are instructed to bounce a sledge hammer against a rubber tire (a means of finding a comfortable rhythm for them), while more accomplished athletes spar with each other inside the ring, and bodies of all builds and experience test their limits and work to surpass them. The pleasures of "Boxing Gym" are almost entirely elemental: repetition becomes ritual, representing human resilience, body and soul. "Boxing Gym's" greatest failing is that most are more familiar with the atmosphere of a gym than, say, the interiors of a ballet school, as chronicled in Wiseman's previous film, "La Danse." Thankfully, Wiseman's latest is half the length of that three-hour document, but it still doesn't offer much in the way of insight beyond such startling truths as "Hey, just 'cause they all throw punches 'n stuff doesn't mean they're, y'know, actually violent." In other words, if you go to a gym yourself there's really nothing new here. As a friend suggested just before our screening, "It's Wiseman. You know exactly what you're in for." While efficiently engaging and even memorable, it's tough to deny that the film in our head before seeing "Boxing Gym" is nearly identical to the one in there now. SCM

• 09.15.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 1 InRO Staff
• 09.21.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 2 InRO Staff
• 09.27.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 3 InRO Staff

Feature By: InRO Staff

Festival Coverage - Toronto 2010 - Dispatch 3

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 02:14:50 -0400

Feature by InRO Staff: When you go to film festivals, you watch movies. When you’re not watching movies, you’re usually either a.) resting or b.) eating—not coincidentally, two of the things most necessary to stay awake and alert while watching movies. All three of our correspondents did sporadic writing during the festival (see dispatch #1 and #2), but we mostly found ourselves without the time and focus necessary to turn our thoughts into copy. This isn’t a bad thing; operating on four hours sleep, with barely any food in you isn’t the ideal state for writing. Instead, as was the case last year, we’ll be filing our thoughts in these couple weeks following the festival’s close, aiming to post a few more dispatches, and culminating with a podcast our team recorded, during which we discuss the best and worst of the festival, along with its most buzzed about titles. For now though, check out our review of what we unanimously agree to be the best narrative film at TIFF ’10; our take on the latest from the “Slumdog Millionaire” auteur; and another look at the festival’s magnificent Wavelengths program. Sam C. Mac

Meek’s Cutoff / Kelly Reichardt
"Meek's Cutoff" registers as a quantum leap in artistic vision for Kelly Reichardt. The American indie filmmaker's previous two features, "Old Joy" and "Wendy and Lucy," are both achievements in their own right—minimalist character studies with modest social commentaries—but neither suggested a work this accomplished, this thematically dense and flat-out awe-inspiring in its clarity. It gathers together spare facts about the titular wagon train of 1845—an ill-fated branch of the Oregon Trail—and whips what little historical knowledge is available into something more impressionistic and surreal. It's well on its way to American Classic status, and following deservedly enthusiastic reception at both its Venice and Toronto premieres, it's already been subjected to the numerous comparisons any major work would be. Among those names tossed around are Terrance Malick's and Gus Van Sant's. In the latter's case, the point of comparison is "Gerry," with which "Meek's Cutoff" shares not only a milieu but a certain beguiling ambiguity. As for Malick, it could be said that "Days of Heaven" reflects a picaresque portrait similar to Reichardt's: the midwest during a time of cross-country migration. But it's important to note that Malick's method puts emphasis on cinematographer Nestor Almendros's lushly romantic images and sweeping grandiosity. Different strokes for different, painterly filmmakers; Reichardt is more interested in stark formalism as a means of exploring her harsh, barren landscape's visceral unforgivingness. An essentially rugged and un-romanticized vision of the midwest, this filmmaker's images are only as picaresque as they need to be to lure her weary travelers further into a vast, endless prairie.

Dust and dirt cake the faces of Reichardt's men and women of hope and heavy hearts. They pull their rickety caravans across miles of cracked, parched earth and long for the land of good fortune their guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood, in a broadly iconic performance), promises them. From this lucid premise Reichardt evinces a palpable, if subtle, tension. She exploits the earthly needs of her travelers in their journey through the nothingness: the search for water, the attainment of shelter, the question of who to trust and who to blame when and if that trust is misplaced. A superficial assessment of "Meek's Cutoff" might suggest that nothing much happens, that the film—in its brilliantly allegorical conclusion, which may as well have the words "no end in sight" writ large across the screen—winds up exactly where it began. But a deeper scan reveals an acute understanding of the way a hive-mind reacts to the pressures of extreme circumstance, and an intuitiveness to the way Reichardt directs her shrewd lead, Michelle Williams, along with a colorful supporting cast that includes Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan and Shirley Henderson. Attentive viewers will find in Jonathan Raymond's impeccable script a tautness that never lets inaction become tedious, nor its prose become pretentious. "Meek's Cutoff" is a refinement of the revisionist western, its themes of flagging optimism, of American idealism, of greed and destructiveness and rivalry. It distills films like "The Proposition," "There Will Be Blood," and ‘The Assassination of Jesse James’ to their incantatory essence. While it's always difficult to guess how a film will be viewed in the years to come, it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that such a finely honed masterwork may end up being the defining film of its movement. SCM

127 Hours / Danny Boyle
In the summer of 2003, Aron Ralston, a young mountain-climber hiking alone through the deserts of Utah, fell feet-first into a narrow canyon. His arm pinned in place by an enormous boulder, Ralston spent several days alone in the darkness, fighting off dehydration and starvation, until... well, either you know how this incredible true story ends or you don't, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spoil it for you. It basically comes down to a dude, a rock and the barren, unforgiving desert—hell of an elemental yarn, but also not a particularly cinematic one. I can think of a select few filmmakers I'd entrust with adapting this trial of darkness to the screen. Imagine the man vs. nature(/self) parable Werner Herzog could spin out of Ralston's headlining hardships, or the "Gerry"-esque existential nightmare Gus Van Sant might’ve cooked up.

There's one name, though, that my mind would never leap to. One director whose modus operandi seems fundamentally at odds with the dreadful stasis of Ralston's ordeal. That would be Danny Boyle, everyone's favorite ADD-inflicted auteur, fresh off the endless round of high-fives he earned for his supremely overvalued (and Best Picture winning) "Slumdog Millionaire." Danny Boy, you see, he's a runner. The guy can't sit still. One of modern cinema's premiere speed freaks, Boyle gets off on bodies in motion, on foot races, on the fevered pursuits of junkies, hood rats, and murderously mad ghouls. He can't even tell a story at a normal clip; he's always skipping forward and backward in time, getting lost in daydreams and digressions. The mere notion of Boyle training his jittery, impatient gaze on someone literally stuck in place boggles the mind. But here it is, his "127 Hours." There's half a really good movie here. The other half's a Danny Boyle movie.

It starts like some kind of 'Slumdog' victory lap, in song and dance and color and commotion. Boyle got the whole gang back together—this new paean to perseverance shares a screenwriter, a composer, a cinematographer and lord knows who else with its celebrated predecessor. Ralston, played by a never-better James Franco, enters the film like he's training for the X Games. Boyle, meanwhile, seems to be auditioning to direct Mountain Dew commercials. So obnoxiously boisterous is the film's protracted prologue that when Ralston finally takes his fated plunge, and then is greeted at the dusty bottom by the delayed arrival of a title card, the sudden stillness is genuinely jarring. (We're as shocked as he is.) It's enough to instill hope that this might morph into the meditative one-man-show it begs to be.

In fits and starts, it seems to almost get there. Stuck, to paraphrase the nonfiction novel in which the film is based, between a rock and a hard place, Ralston goes into problem-solving mode. But the more he tries to think his way out of the situation, the more it dawns on him what dire straits he's in. There's a breathless fascination to these scenes, one owed almost exclusively to the fortitude of Franco's performance. He plays Ralston as a kind of cocksure broheim—amiable and resourceful, but also so invested in his loner-chic self-image that his wilderness adventures read as a handy way to keep a safe distance between himself and those around him. Simon Beaufoy's screenplay underlines this subtext with a bit too much clarity; like outdoorsy half-cousin "Into the Wild," "127 Hours" defaults to no-man-is-an-island truisms in its heart-tugging homestretch. Franco, striking an impressive (and precarious) balance between good-natured goofiness and suppressed panic, anchors the film's pretensions. "Sweet!" he declares to himself after retrieving, via inventive quick thinking, a dropped instrument. Our sentiments exactly.

The chief problem here is that Boyle can't not be Boyle, and his usual tics and tricks, trotted out for no good measure, register as pure distraction. We should be stranded down there in the dark with Ralston. We should feel the minutes, the hours, the lonely days spent in that private prison, that pit of despair. Boyle instead slices and dices the action into fevered montage. He offers us constant, bet-hedging reprieves: a fantasy sequence here, a flashback there, any and every opportunity taken to skitter out of that cramped space. The director's incessant need to turn every stand-alone moment into a toe-tapping music video undercurrents the suffocating intensity of Franco's tour de force. It's auteuristic self-sabotage at its most egregious.

If there's one single moment where the separate aims of performer and director seem to converge, it's the visceral climax. Boyle slyly foreshadows this last act of desperation, and he pulls no punches when it comes to executing the deed, in all of its peer-through-closed-fingers graphicness. It's beastly catharsis—in no small part because Boyle lets us feel Franco's pain, and his steely conviction. I wish that he didn't slumdog all the rest; somewhere out there, in the ragged raw footage of Franco at the bottom, is 127 hours of the movie that could have been. But we will have to make do with this curiosity: an unapologetic crowd-pleaser about a guy who gets trapped under a boulder and, in a mad grasp for survival, resorts to... well, either you know or you don't. A.A. Dowd

Wavelengths 3 / James Benning
"Challenging," is how a slightly tipsy James Benning introduced his new film, "Ruhr," to a packed house on the second night of Wavelengths. "I'm not really ready to watch it again," he confessed, before ducking off into the night. Curious, that none of us took pause; we couldn't say we hadn't been properly warned. When the director himself has expressed wariness about rewatching his own movie, you know you're in for something... less than immediately accessible. And "Ruhr," Benning's followup to the much more kinetic "RR," is one of those rigorous formal exercises that seems to come to life only in the subsequent essays, arguments, conversations and theoretical elucidations it inspires. Only afterwards, when freed from the shackles of the film's punishingly unbroken gaze, does artistic engagement seem possible. But during? All you can do is gawk—in stunned fascination, in mind-melting tedium, or in some unholy combination of the two.

And I'm a James Benning fan. The documentarian as endless explorer/negotiator of cinematic space, he orchestrates movement and action within static frame lines better than anyone since Tati. That he does it without actually really orchestrating anything—his focus is always on real human objects interacting with real spaces, ostensibly free of intervention—marks him as one of the most sophisticated visual artists working today. His compositions are the filmmaking: how and where he sets up, from what angle and for what amount of time. He is, in essence, bending unfiltered, un-staged reality into clockwork poetry. There's no one in the modern doc scene doing anything like this.

As in "RR," Benning's endlessly inventive ode to trains and tracks and locomotive disruption, "Ruhr" unfolds as a series of lengthy, meticulously-composed still shots. Its locations are all real places: an expressway underpass; an industrial factory; a woodland overlooking an airport; a Muslim mosque; a graffiti-tagged wall; a quiet residential street; and a chemical plant, spewing noxious gas every twenty minutes or so. The connective tissue is supposedly the steel industry; all of the sites patiently looked upon here are somehow related, directly or tangentially, to the production of the precious metal. Benning may be intensely interested in processes—he's as obsessed with the inanimate as Frederick Wiseman is with the craft of flesh and blood people—but his work is far less intent on presenting information than it is in changing the way we look at things.

In "Ruhr," Benning encourages us to approach the movie screen like one would a painting in a museum. By excising all but the most infrequent traces of movement—neither the frame lines nor the objects contained within them move much—he forces the audience to begin studying every corner, nook and cranny of a shot, for lack of anything else to occupy its attention. The element of time takes this a step further. You can walk away at any point from a picture in a museum; the captive moviegoing audience has no such escape, short of simply calling it quits and walking out of the movie. (Which wouldn't be a first at a Benning screening.) When there is movement in "Ruhr," it arrives with the appetite-satiating enormity of an action set-piece. The director lulls us into a dazed stupor, only to disrupt the quietude and stillness with a sudden intrusion. (A car zooming by, an airplane flying over, etc.) Benning is after a radical redefining of how we watch movies.

At just seven shots, there are about six times less cuts in "Ruhr" than there were in the comparably dynamic "RR." This makes an enormous (relative) difference; even a viewer wowed by the compositional wonders of the earlier film might balk at the lingering languidness of this new vision. Where Benning stumbles—or, as some will stubbornly insist, gloriously triumphs—is in the endless second hour. Having dispensed with his first six locales at the 60 minute mark, he devotes an equal amount of time to one single shot: that coke plant, looming large roughly in the center of the frame, ever so occasionally releasing a billowing cloud of yellow fumes.

It's a beautiful image—and, for all but the most patient of zen cinephiles, one hell of an endurance test. If the first half of "Ruhr" succeeds in training us to look longer, harder, and with more clarity, the paralyzingly static second half abuses that imperative. Look at something for too long, for this long and it tends to lose all shape and meaning. Trapped in a filmic purgatory—Benning's "Empire," in Warholian terms—my only solace was the shared disbelief of my fellow filmgoers. I can't speak for the whole lot of them, but I heard a lot of asses shifting in seats. And this, mind you, was the same crowd that hungrily devoured the first two programs in this uncompromising series. James Benning: brilliant artist, complex thinker and equal opportunity patience-trier. AAD

• 09.12.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 1 InRO Staff
• 09.15.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 2 InRO Staff
• 09.27.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 4 InRO Staff

Feature By: InRO Staff

Festival Coverage - Toronto 2010 - Dispatch 2

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:23:14 -0400

Feature by InRO Staff: Doesn’t look like we’ll be getting these festival dispatches up quite as frequently as we had hoped we would, but rest assured that they’re coming—especially as we all run out of cash for cabs and start to see sleeping in and hunkering down to do write as, at the very least, a cheaper alternative to making that early morning screening. At this halftime juncture, we can’t say as we’re particularly impressed by what we’ve seen, generally speaking, but that doesn’t mean there films that we’ve been championing, pushing the rest of the team to go check out if they weren’t already penciled into their schedules. In this dispatch you’ll find one such film, along with a mixed-to-positive take on the new Clint flick, and another piece on TIFF’s 6-part Wavelengths. Sam C. Mac

Hereafter / Clint Eastwood
Just as Woody Allen keeps depressingly reiterating his desire to leave behind a legacy of quantity over quality, America's other favorite Great Director, Clint Eastwood, now also seems intent on putting out as many movies as he possibly can before he heads for the hereafter. The strategy paid off in spades around the first half of the last decade when, after over five years of misfires like "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "Blood Work," the filmmaker reasserted his formalist and dramatic chops, first with the operatic police saga "Mystic River" in 2003, and then in a powerhouse return to the screen a year later, with his Best Picture winner "Million Dollar Baby." For a minute there, it looked like Eastwood had returned to the glory days of his mid-'90s artistic high, seemingly recreating the muscular/melancholy diptych of his "A Perfect World" and "The Bridges of Madison County."

Eastwood would manage to leverage his triumphant return into another career-defining work (if not maybe one of his best), the 'Iwo Jima' twosome "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letter from Iwo Jima," then spend the next few years, like Allen, pumping out a string of duds, including last year's ham-fisted Obama allegory "Invictus" and the hysterical cluster-fuck that is "Changeling." The most frustrating thing about both these films is that, unlike the 'Iwo Jima' block, you can't really blame their flaws on Clint's screenwriters exclusively—"Invictus" climaxes in one long sports cliche that grossly undercuts its attempted emphasis on communal catharsis, and "Changeling" is a wretched cocktail of tonal fissures and narrative digressions, moral inconsistencies and truckloads of didactic tedium. One should be excused for having severely lowered expectations at the news that Eastwood's next picture would be a Peter Morgan-scripted supernatural romance mosaic, with plot descriptions summing up some ungodly fusion of "Phenomenon" and "Crash."

But here's the thing about both Eastwood and Allen: for all the maddeningly dumb techniques in their arsenal, there are certain motifs and recurring themes that endear them to us, and there's an appeal to that which not even volumes on auteur theory could entirely elucidate. "Hereafter" drops the dense plotting of "Changeling" and the sandwich-board politics of "Invictus" to expose the resonant, character-to-character dynamics that have been the hallmark of Eastwood's best films over the last decade-plus. The director hasn't been this tender and non-confrontational since "The Bridges of Madison County," and while some will find this script's relative uneventfulness (the main action takes place in the first reel) to be "Hereafter's" greatest failing, there are few filmmakers that do somber reflection and melancholy quite like Clint. The film is sentimental to a fault and, as is almost always the case, Eastwood is working with severely sub-par material, but he invests it with such world-weary humanism that it cuts deeper than it really has any right to.

"Hereafter" is essentially a treatise on accepting death, dealing with three parallel stories of grieving and eventual catharsis. Matt Damon has gotten the lion's share of attention, but his thread, about a San Francisco psychic who forsakes his lucrative gift when he realizes it's ruining his life, shares equal screen time with the other two. The least successful of these is built around French TV journalist Marie (Cécile de France), who survives a near-death experience during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, while on vacation with her producer boyfriend (Thierry Neuvic), and becomes obsessed with leveraging her celebrity into a book deal, hoping to meet others who may have seen the same divine images as herself. This thread is more remote and privileged than the other two, and de France is so wooden that the emotional momentum Eastwood hopes to gather in her narrative never quite materializes. More successful is the third story panel, which finds eight year-old Marcus mourning the untimely passing of his brother, Jason (real-life identicals Frankie and George McLaren, respectively), and searching for a medium who can open a line of contact between the siblings. Unsurprisingly, these three threads eventually converge in a series of transcendental encounters that say about as much about the human condition as the communal pity party at the end of "Crash." But it's what Eastwood does to get there that stays with you.

Offsetting its supernatural hokum—recurring graphics that look like something out of TV's "Medium," if not "Casper the Friendly Ghost"—Eastwood's greatest conceptual bid posits that the "hereafter" of his film's title refers to a purgatory state the grieving wait in until they're ready to pass on into the next stage of life. Think of "Hereafter" as a miniature take on the last season of "Lost" that never explicitly spells out that series's symbolic conclusion. It's a technique that only gradually reveals itself as the film goes on, through Eastwood's use of visual motifs (all three principals are, at least at one point, shot against a looming sky), and through the nuances and shades of melancholy the filmmaker evinces. Damon seems perfectly in sync with this, turning in his most somber and reserved performance while mostly sidestepping histrionics. It's the second time he's elevated an Eastwood movie, after more or less nailing his role in "Invictus." This isn't really awards-caliber acting, but it's the kind of performance that lends itself to the tonal strengths of Eastwood's aesthetic.

It's great to see Eastwood getting back to a more intimate mode, and it's refreshing to see a film with spiritual inclinations largely avoid the topic of religion, but even the most staunch Eastwood defender won't deny "Hereafter" is severely compromised. It's failed by a frequently inept screenplay, especially in its final act, and by plainly generic dialogue (not once but twice does Damon's character espouse the angst-ridden cliche, "It's not a gift, it's a curse!"). Not even with a reliably strong score and evocative use of shadow and contrast can the director consistently make his roundelay narrative as engaging as it needs to be. But the good news is it may be too early to put Eastwood's trajectory of decline into the same class as Woody Allen's. While the latter has alternated between the same two templates for the better part of two decades, Eastwood continues to actively pursue diverse material, bringing at least a distinctive directorial identity to everything he involves himself with. There's been a few good ones and, recently, quite a lot of bad ones, and if "Hereafter" isn't quite applicable to the former category, it also doesn't deserve to be grouped with the dregs of Clint's filmography. Instead, it lies somewhere in between. Which would seem appropriate. SCM

The Four Times / Michelangelo Frammartino
It's one of the incomparable pleasures of attending a major film festival: walking in blind to something you know virtually nothing about and being completely floored by it. In an age of media saturation, where even a no-budget oddity like "After Last Season" can get trailered on Apple.com, the ground zero of a fest screening is the closest one gets to filmgoing in a vacuum. I'm being a touch misleading: "The Four Times," which I caught yesterday afternoon, isn't exactly an out-of-nowhere transmission. It played the Director's Fortnight at Cannes, where it delighted and entranced enough folks to earn some screenings here, as well as a few at Telluride and NYFF. Thing is, that's all I knew about the film going in. Coming out of it, my brain curled around a number of nagging questions, not the least of which was: Who the hell made this thing?

That'd be Michelangelo Frammartino, an Italian filmmaker whose only previous credit appears to be a Euro-festival fave called "The Gift." He seems here to have emerged from the artistic womb fully formed; there is a grace, confidence and aesthetic prowess to this beguiling little picture that belies its "new director" pedigree. Blurring the line between pin-drop-quiet character study and observational documentary, Frammartino hones in on a quiet village in southern Italy, where a lonely old shepherd inches closer and closer to the grave. Where the film goes from there I won't say, except to note that it bears a superficial resemblance, in pure premise at least, to another TIFF entry playing later in the week.

Once you figure out what "The Four Times" is up to—and I did in a single shot, the first point of fissure, the transition between the first and second "time"—you realize how simple its narrative/structural gimmick is. And how radical: the film's break into two isn't just a jarring POV shift, it's a disruption of the secular "realism" that the movie has heretofore clung to. (Any suspicion that this might just be an unassuming docu-sketch of a dying old man goes straight out the window with the introduction of the second and—especially—the third "protagonists.") And though Frammartino is exploring a very specific tenet of a very specific faith system, he intersects the film's arc-as-spiritual-journey with small, clever allusions to eastern and western theology––a passion play on the march, cover taken under a giant tree for many seasons, etc. Such mixing and matching of religious signifiers speaks to a rather endearing faith in the shared links between our creation myths.

In the age of Carlos Reygadas and the Dardennes—who make punishing "spiritual" allegories aimed at atheist film critics, the Reverse Shot once quipped—Frammartino's non-denominational parable hits you like a warm breeze. This may be the most playful religious picture since Rossellini's "The Flowers of St. Francis." And the audience ate it up, spellbound by its quiet stretches and totally tickled by its inspired comic intrusions. (There's a long take involving a dog, a truck and the aforementioned marching passion play that ranks among the funniest and most ingenious single moments I've seen in years.) That a mixed crowd at a public screening sat utterly enraptured through this strange and completely wordless picture is a testament to its otherworldly power. Now why hasn't it been picked up yet? A.A. Dowd

Wavelengths 2 / Vincent Grenier; John Price; Christopher Becks; Philipp Fleischmann; Helga Fanderi; Jem Cohen; Madison Brookshire
If there's any kind of connection to be made between Friday and Saturday's Wavelength programs––beyond, of course, the studio-free singularity of their visions––it lies most clearly in differing concepts of "home." Wavelengths #1 took the longview: the city as home, a sprawling space shared among strangers, a looming landscape of glass and steel and mortar that our souls themselves get tangled up in. The films of Wavelengths #2, subtitled "Plein-Air," found home in smaller places: in an old barn, in a cluttered workspace, in the smile lines of lovers and kin. If these works felt less major, less immediate in their impact than those of the previous program, it's because they were scaled to concerns of a more personal pitch. This was cinema not of grand ambition, of statement or bold declaration, but of fleeting, flickering emotion. No rising or falling buildings here, though a bush did burn, loudly if only abstractly.

In so much as there was a "headline attraction" among these endearingly compact pictures, Canada's own John Price deserved marquee top-billing. His aptly titled "Home Movie" was a jittery, overstuffed scrapbook tribute. There's a whole subset of avant-garde cinema devoted to the adorable offspring of experimental filmmakers; Brakhage's odes to his children are some of his most tender and vibrant works. Price, shooting on all old Russian camera, serves up an anything-goes smorgasbord of restless techniques. He keeps trying new things: mixing stocks, speeding up and slowing down the frame rate, solarizing the images, etc. On the soundtrack, volume seems to peak and flatline depending on how close Price's intrusive lens gets to its subject. (When he zooms in on the family cat, the beast's purr rumbles like a motorboat.) At the center of this lengthy sensory feast is Price's young children, their voices perpetually caught in song, their faces superimposed in the grain, as if burned into the very soul of the celluloid. It's a deeply sentimental picture––how could it not be? Still, Price's affection is tinged with a bittersweet aftertaste. The expired film stock he shoots on reflects the transitory nature of things; these kids will grow up sooner than later. Filming their childhood actually creates a record of its imminent passing.

That fleeting, ephemeral sense of time and place––that feeling that what we're watching could dissipate in the open air if we look away for even a second––similarly informs the other major highlight of the program. "Portrait, Teetrinken, Roter Vorhang," a Super8 mash note from Helga Fanderi, seems to operate as a blinking collection of stolen glances. It unfolds in a rapid succession of jump cuts, each brief shot capturing a different, impossibly specific tic or mannerism. Add them together and you've got an emotional spectrum in fast forward. You've also got little more than the ghost of a person––only who this man was in the then and there in which Fanderi shot him. No buildings crumbled or fell over these 80 odd minutes, these seven scraggily intimate films. It was mostly just lives that disappeared into the ether, shot by shot, frame by frame. Phantoms of a subjective past, welcoming you home. Or whatever remains of it. AAD

• 09.12.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 1 InRO Staff
• 09.21.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 3 InRO Staff
• 09.27.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 4 InRO Staff

Feature By: InRO Staff

Festival Coverage - Toronto 2010 - Dispatch 1

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 08:44:13 -0400

Feature by InRO Staff: Bit of a late start this year, but Film Editor Luke Gorham, Staff Writer A.A. Dowd and myself have finally settled in for a long haul here at the Toronto International Film Festival. And we’re already packing in way more movies a day than any doctor would recommend, sleeping way less than we should be in order to offset the time we don’t have to write these dispatches, and using mass amounts of caffeine as a corrective to that ill-advised equation. As ever, it’s a process—a matter of balance, of staying awake and alert enough to deliver as thoughtful a first impression of these films as we possibly can, but also not missing out on the quantity of films this great festival offers each year. This year is no different, as TIFF has rounded up the latest works from some the world’s greatest filmmakers. Especially exciting to this group are those from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, James Benning, Thom Andersen, Catherine Breillat, Errol Morris, Manoel de Oliveira, Mike Leigh, Lee Chang-dong, Mark Romanek, and Clint Eastwood (just the tip of the iceberg, obviously). As in previous years, we’ve teamed with our friends from The Playlist, so expect to see some of their reviews reposted here and ours over there. And with that, here’s our first of (we hope) many dispatches from the 35th Toronto International Film Festival. Sam C. Mac

Wavelengths 1 / Tomonari Nishikawa; Dominic Angerame; Thom Andersen; Callum Cooper; Eriko Sonoda; Basma Al Sharif; Oliver Husain
"This is my favorite program of the festival," says 67 year-old Thom Andersen, standing onstage alongside five of the other six contributors to this year's first Wavelengths presentation. He adds, for sardonic good measure, "these are the real movies." It's vintage cantankerous wit from the director of "Los Angeles Plays Itself," that outstanding, three-hour ode to the titular, misunderstood metropolis. It's also, more than likely, a dead on assessment. While scores of festival-goers flock to star-packed gala screenings and high-profile Hollywood premieres—many for movies that will be released commercially in the coming weeks or even days—TIFF's avant-garde showcase, now in its tenth year, seems like the fest's first and last stop for genuinely radical/challenging cinematic fare.

Last night was just the first of six such screenings, all taking place in the cozy contours of Jackman Hall, located within the Art Gallery of Ontario. (Fellow wayward Chicagoans take note: as with our very own Gene Siskel Film Center, the front row's got the best seats in the house.) Aptly dubbed "Soul Of the City," 'Wavelengths #1' is a mostly-stellar collection of urban mosaics, vastly disparate in tone and execution, but possessed of a shared interest in space and movement within architectural frame lines. Parallels between these seven movies range from the thematic (outrage regarding gentrification and the destruction of old buildings) to the formal (dividing the city of choice into squares and rectangles, into windows and pockets).

Andersen was, of course, the closest the program slate got to a household name, even among avant-garde enthusiasts. "Get Out of the Car," his 30-minute dissertation in miniature, played third—pity the films, just a bit, that had to follow this funky scrapbook/mash note to a forgotten city. Andersen picks up where he left off in "Los Angeles Plays Itself," chronicling a part of L.A. the movies rarely depict or acknowledge—desolate streets, abandoned buildings, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, body shops that looks like strip clubs, strip clubs that look like body shops, etc. He trains his lens chiefly on signs and billboards, some of them weathered and faded and torn, others left miraculously intact despite the fact that the business they're advertising has long since gone under. The soundtrack is a jukebox shuffle of street sounds and 60 years of L.A.-based music, ranging from Dylan and Guthrie to obscure blues and mariachi records. (Knowing Andersen, all of these were probably used without permission; maybe the short will be included on the "Los Angeles Plays Itself" DVD, scheduled to be released sometime between now and never.)

Funny and bittersweet, "Get Out of the Car" eventually reveals itself to be a sly tirade against the white-washing of local color and culture. Andersen fights back through empowering fantasy: we see nary a glimpse of the "new L.A." he's implicitly raging against, just oddly anachronistic signposts of a Land That Time Forgot. (Though most of the footage was shot in 2009, this could very easily be L.A. circa 1989.) Andersen's talent for digging up elaborate, hilarious, and oddly beautiful mural-style storefronts—most of them in predominantly Latin American neighborhoods—makes this a more sincere ode to street art than "Exit Through the Gift Shop." It's also a loose and self-deprecating corrective to Thom's reputation as a cranky old cinephile. Caught filming a bare billboard, he offers up some vague missive about the power of absence, to which the bemused passerby quips "You make a movie about something, you give me a call."

"Get Out of the Car" arrives like a jolt of joyous, jazz-infused adrenaline—especially right on the heels of Dominic Angerame's silent, morose "Soul of Things." I know one film critic who thinks this is the dirty dog of the program; it feels to me too modest in its melancholia to register as any kind of offense. The only silent and black and white picture of the bunch, Angerame's short—a docu-sketch of a construction team at work, tearing down and building back up—is also the only selection that actually, historically embodies the "city symphony" mission statement of the program. It's roughly, perhaps even clumsily assembled but hypnotic in its solemnity. Its images of construction and destruction evoke the devastation of post-war landscapes. That aligns it neatly, thematically with both Andersen's film and "Everywhere Was the Same," a dread-infused lament for Palestine from Basma Al Sharif. She was the only filmmaker not in attendance—a pity, as this was maybe the film most in need of some serious elucidation. Its textual juxtapositions, setting vacation picture slides of abandoned buildings to the poems of an oppressed people, reminded me a great deal of latter day Godard. Anyone miffed that "Film Socialisme" screened without subtitles might have gotten their baffling and/or dazzling fix of poeticized politicks right here.

Callum Cooper's "Victoria, George, Edward & Thatcher," a speed-demon portrait of a neighborhood shot entirely on an iPhone, passes in an intoxicating blink. The most formally adventurous of the bunch was probably "Landscape, semi-surround," by Tokyo-based filmmaker Eriko Sonoda. I'm really not qualified to explain exactly how the hell Sonoda achieved the effect that she did here. A lingering look out the window of a moving train is multiplied by 16, neatly aligned into a block of squares, hung on a wall like paintings in an art gallery, painstakingly painted over frame by frame and toggled forward and backwards. So complicated is this formal experiment in frame manipulation that Sonoda herself, speaking during the Q&A session via a game translator, seemed rather unsure of how to explain her process. No matter: one could get lost in the stunning effect without understanding the cause. When the film suddenly and awesomely began to shift into a complicated musical number, you could hear minds blowing all across the packed, hushed auditorium. (As to how this is mostly rural travelogue qualifies as a "city symphony": search me.)

I assume home town pride was the driving force behind making Oliver Husain's "Leona Alone," the closing chapter of this unusually strong program. After all, it's the only one of the seven films to hone its peepers on the city of Toronto. Ironically, it's more of a haughty, accusing glare than an adoring gaze; self-described "Euro snob" Husain inserts an ornate glasswork between himself and the gentrified neighborhood he scowls upon. It struck me as a fairly obvious piece of work, long before Husain plainly explained it to all of us on stage. Andersen's would have made a more fitting climatic number.

Or Tomonari Nishikawa's. "Tokyo - Ebisu," which opened the program (and was thus the first movie I saw at Toronto) may have been the most spellbinding of the entire group. Using 29 mattes—one for every station in Tokyo—Nishikawa turns the daily commute into a bustling collision of bodies and trains, ghostly superimpositions creating multiple planes of overlapping human traffic. (Ozu would approve. As would James Benning, whose "Ruhr" plays in this same theatre later in the festival.) I often feel as though I've spent half my adult life on commuter trains. The jaw-droppingly beautiful "Tokyo - Ebisu" speaks directly to that impression. Among these city symphonies, it's the one that most evokes what it actually feels like to live in a big city. On my first night of ten in an alien metropolis, it danced its way into my dreams. Top that, TIFF. A.A. Dowd

Guest / Jose Luis Guerin
Spanish filmmaker Jose Luis Guerin is a watcher. In his previous film, the extraordinary (and criminally underrated) "In the City of Sylvia," his male protagonist spends near the entire duration observing women with a longing gaze, first at a cafe where he sketches their gorgeous faces on his notepad, then throughout a breathless slow-motion chase down winding, Escher-like alleyways, in pursuit of one woman he may or may not know. Guerin's latest, "Guest," is something of an offshoot of his last one, and it's a documentary that's no less of a fiction than his narratives are partly nonfiction. It follows Guerin as he tours the festival circuit for a period of one year, but before you go accusing the filmmaker of "Slacker Uprising" levels of narcissistic self-promotion, understand that he himself never appears on screen, and that while we do get a glimpse inside the Venice Film Festival (both in 2007 and 2008, the first being 'Silvia's' premiere, the latter serving as "Guest's" proper bookend, replete with cameos from Chantal Akerman and Abbas Kiarostami), the bulk of the film instead chooses to focus on Guerin behind the camera. The filmmaker roves through the streets of various Latin American countries, interviewing the people he finds there—or, more accurately, offering them a forum for their stories, however long-winded and sometimes incomprehensible they may be. In the process, Guerin engages with socio-political and religious tensions, as well as more elusive truths about cultural identity.

But unlike other filmmakers who straddle the line of fiction and nonfiction—such as Jia Zhang-ke, Pedro Costa, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (whose "Mysterious Object at Noon" may be "Guest's" closest cousin)—Guerin is less interested in how his subjects' stories feed into any kind of unifying theme or narrative than he is in the faces and physical features of those telling them, captured in vivid black and white. While seemingly an odd choice at first, the black and white lends itself well to Guerin's intended role as a portrait artist, and he uses his unconventional approach to characterize his subjects in ways more intangible and enigmatic than a simple interview may render. In the film's most telling moment, Guerin asks an actual portrait artist he meets on the street, "What's the secret of a good portrait?" To which the woman responds, "There are many secrets." For all the clarity and beauty Guerin illuminates in this fascinating humanist snapshot, it's his willingness to accept and revel in life's unknowable mysteries that is perhaps most striking about his film. SCM

Erotic Man / Jorgen Leth
Jorgen Leth’s latest docu-fiction blend, "Erotic Man," exists much in the same realm as his previous work, "The Five Obstructions." It utilizes its own mini-narrative as a jumping off point for Leth's documentarian queries, hoping to explore the mechanics of, and the tenuous relationship between, man and his own erotic nature. Sadly, unlike 'Obstructions,' this latest experimental doc fails to elucidate its commentary on man’s nature, instead addressing only what is specific to Leth’s own human condition. Leth inserts himself, not simply as a guiding hand or a voice, but as a part of the process. He allows his films to grow organically and evolve while he puts on his reflecting hat and waxes philosophical. And it works, usually.

With "Erotic Man," Leth’s inspiration is an affair he had some twenty years ago, an experience that equally haunts him and contents him to this day. Unfortunately, the intimacy of his subject matter, which easily could have been a strength, prevents Leth from generating the perspective he seeks to capture. Early on in the film, Leth questions the power of eroticism, comparing the potency of the most idyllic love affair that lasts a night with that of an enduring, and long-suffering, love that lasts a lifetime. As a man, Leth knows what answer he would like to give and what answer would be expected of him, but on a more guttural level, he fears this expected answer is likely a lie.

"Erotic Man" continues from this introductory soliloquy with the professed goal of uncovering exactly what drives erotic power and to what extent it defines us as men. His plan? Film beautiful women all over the world, almost always naked, pining over a lost love (Leth’s stand-in) while reading Leth’s prepared poetic musings. Regrettably, what Leth has delivered is a film that, while perhaps not narcissistic, is nonetheless blinded by its solipsistic message. It lacks focus, is ceaselessly repetitive, and becomes little more than a pedantic outlet for Leth’s preoccupation with feminine beauty. While its clear why Leth felt compelled to make "Erotic Man," and while the film is not without its strengths (including a perfectly melancholic score and gorgeous photography of the women), let’s just call this what it is: Leth's personal, visual, for-his-eyes-only catharsis, more appropriately titled "Erotic Jorgen." Luke Gorham

• 09.15.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 2 InRO Staff
• 09.21.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 3 InRO Staff
• 09.27.10 | Toronto 2010: Dispatch 4 InRO Staff

Feature By: InRO Staff

Home Movies - Summer Round Up

Wed, 8 Sep 2010 07:26:10 -0400

Feature by Kathie Smith: It’s hard to look at the last four months of releases and not just gush over Criterion’s lengthy list exclusively (and gloat over how many I bought), but instead, I’ll just gush over some of those releases and be more pragmatic about newer films that hit the streets while we were playing in the sun. The summer’s real show stoppers were an almost textbook trio of pre-modern, modern and new wave Japanese cinema offerings in the form of sets from Ozu, Kurosawa and Oshima—easily three of the year’s best releases. Aside from those obvious inclusions, compiling this short list, and covering four months, proved to be impossible without leaving numerous gaps, and I’ll admit they are pretty huge. Painfully passed over, but not forgotten, are eclectic offerings that range from “The Red Shoes” to “Crumb,” “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” to “Tokyo Sonata,” “Three Silent Classics by Josef Von Sternberg” to “The Magnificent Seven Collection,” and on and on and on.

PICK OF THE SUMMER MONTHS!

DVD/Blu-ray: Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties (1965-1968)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Nagisa Oshima
Amazon Price: $55.49

Supplementing Criterion’s editions of “In the Realm of the Senses” and “Empire of Passion,” Eclipse unveils five films from Japanese iconoclast Nagisa Oshima. “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties” includes five of the most elusive films in the filmmaker’s oeuvre: 1965's “Pleasures of the Flesh,” 1966's “Violence at Noon,” 1967's “Sing a Song of Sex,” 1967's “Japanese Summer: Double Suicide,” and 1968's “Three Resurrected Drunkards.” All exemplify Oshima’s singular, uncompromising style, despite comparisons to Godard that dogged him at the time.

A filmmaking outlaw throughout his entire career, Oshima pushed social, political and artistic boundaries to their quasi-commercial limits, and even that is an understatement. This was especially true for his films in the late '60s, when Oshima broke away from the studio system and set out to independently make films—an anomaly in 1960s Japanese film. Establishing his own production company, his ‘Outlaw Sixties’ are symbolic to his own artistic freedom as a filmmaker, irreverently tying his camera to his hand—as a samurai to his sword.

With “Pleasures of the Flesh,” which masquerades as a soft-core drama, Oshima attacks social ills with fearless zeal, mounting a critique of the desire for excess and the ultimate fatalism of a soulless society adopted from Western influences. Oshima often viewed his endeavors as a filmmaker as an extension of rebellion and activism: an artist pushed to his limits. As a result, he found a rebel’s sympathy with the criminal element, propelled by a social failure rather than a lack of moral values. Deviants were ripe symbols and the unrepentant heroes of “Violence at Noon,” a searing and stylish portrait of a serial rapist, and ‘Double Suicide,’ a surreal noir as abstract social comedy. Both films portray their social outcasts in a heroic everyman light. Rarely screened and never released, ‘Double Suicide’ is the crown jewel of “Oshima’s Outlaw Sixties” and shows Oshima at his most audacious.

The remaining two films in the set, “Sing a Song of Sex” and “Three Resurrected Drunkards,” are allegorical romps that Oshima used to voice his concerns about the treatment of the Korean minority living in Japan and were comedic preambles to his more well known Brechtian “Death by Hanging.” All five films are crazed masterpieces of the moment that beg for contextualization that, due to the lack of extra features, you will have to find elsewhere. With the passing of actor Sato Kei, featured in four of these films, Eclipse’s ‘Outlaw Sixties’ is a reminder that we need to refer to Oshima as a living legend while we can.

DVD/Blu-ray: Red Desert (1964)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni
Amazon Price: $30.99

Long unavailable in the US through traditional means, “Red Desert,” Antonioni’s first color film, was in desperate need of a legitimate release. When it came out on Blu-ray with a brand new restoration from BFI in the UK last year, I had to bite my pillow in order to keep from immediately buying a region free Blu-ray player. My patience and pillow biting paid off and Criterion one-ups BFI in the supplements department. In addition to the commentary by David Forgacs, Criterion offers a vintage interview with Antonioni, a 1990 interview with Monica Vitti, an interesting cache of dailies, and two short films that Antonioni made in the ‘40s, “N.U.” and “Gente Del Po.” Even the booklet goes above and beyond, providing the typical essay along with a 1964 interview that Jean-Luc Godard did with Antonioni for Cahiers du cinéma. The film itself is a monster of a psychological Technicolor dream that contrasts the dystopian industrial pallor with manmade primary and secondary colors. Stuck in the middle of this dream—or nightmare—is Guiliana (played by the alluring Monica Vitti) who fluctuates between being a victim of her surroundings and a survivor of her circumstances. Vitti aimlessly wanders to and fro, between her clueless husband and the helpless Zeller (played by Richard Harris) with moments of escapism and suicide mixed in. The film ends with a note of resignation as Guiliana’s son asks her why the smoke coming from the factory is yellow and she offhandedly says, “Because it's poison.” “Red Desert” is a stunning masterpiece that has been lovingly restored to near perfect quality.

DVD/Blu-ray: The White Ribbon (2009)
Distributor: Sony
Director(s): Michael Haneke
Amazon Price: $38.49

On a second viewing, it is completely unconscionable that Michael Haneke’s richly nuanced “The White Ribbon” lost the Oscar for Best Foreign Film to the flat-footed “The Secret in Their Eyes.” Haneke chooses his setting (northern Germany, on the brink World War I) with the specificity of a cultural lab scientist studying the larger implications of his microcosm. He’s a master of the slow burn, and this tale of a village oppressed by patriarchal tyranny is no different. As the pastor, doctor and landowner hold psychological court over the village, the children transform into a reflection of the complicit brutality. The expert pacing of this film is something I still don’t quite understand—it’s like a roller coaster without any ascents or descents. “The White Ribbon” fries some very big fish, pinpointing the seeds of radicalism while acknowledging failings (and potential failings) as a way of embracing our humanity. The picture quality sparkles in HD. Haneke has created an atmosphere that has the aura of artificial light and the velvety depth of a detailed daguerreotype. The release comes with a host of extras that not only illuminate the process of “The White Ribbon” but also the fascinating persona of Michael Haneke. (If you thought the child actors in the film were oddly perfect, the making-of reveals that over 7000 children interviewed.) Also included is one hour documentary “my life”—perhaps softening that egocentric title with no caps—that is comprised of interviews with people who have worked with Haneke, including Juliette Binoche who recalls a hilarious story and laughingly calls Haneke a “swine”!

DVD/Blu-ray: Tony Manero (2009)
Distributor: Kino
Director(s): Pablo Larrain
Amazon Price: $26.99

Pablo Larrain’s “Tony Manero” is far from perfect, but it is an absolute one-of-a-kind in its allegorical treatment of the repression of Augusto Pinochet’s regime through the unlikely ideogram of “Saturday Night Fever.” The film exudes an ambience that is sleazy and dark, just like the main character Raúl Peralta who is perversely obsessed with John Travolta’s character in “Saturday Night Fever.” He spends almost all of his time honing his Tony Manero skills by either watching “Saturday Night Fever” and pitching his lines in a perfect accent or practicing his moves in a ragtag club where he performs. Raúl has another pastime, however, that manifests in sporadic fits of violence and anger. So when he signs up for a Tony Manero look-alike contest with looks and moves that are slightly unimpressive, you know things are not going to turn out very well. The political metaphors provide the brains of “Tony Manero,” but Raúl’s ominous and confounding character provides the brawn. Loathsome and completely unrepentant, he moves through this film like a mysterious creature motivated by joyless obsession. In a riveting performance, Alfredo Castro plays the man we can’t take our eyes off of. Although the DVD has very little to offer in the way of extras, it’s a timely release in anticipation of Larrain’s newest film, “Post Mortom” (also starring Castro), premiering at the Venice Film Festival.

DVD/Blu-ray: Shutter Island (2010)
Distributor: Paramount
Director(s): Martin Scorsese
Amazon Price: $19.99

One of the best films of 2010? I’d like to convince you it is. But now’s your chance—either re-watching it or seeing it for the first time—to judge for yourself. For my money, “Shutter Island” is the best film Martin Scorsese has made in 20 years: Even at a bloated 138 minutes, this thriller, based on a novel by Dennis Lahane, is an elegantly choreographed modern dance that engages from start to finish. With its carefully chosen cast and soundtrack, “Shutter Island” has just as many lurking devils as there are sedulous details. Brooding and atmospheric, its mystery is not nearly as interesting as the journey. Leonardo DiCaprio is perfectly cast as the emotional Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall sent to investigate a possible escape from Shutter Island, a compound for the criminally insane. The motives of the characters (and even Scorsese) remain hidden under a thin whodunit veil until a bold final chapter reveal full of panache. An encounter and conversation with Patricia Clarkson, in a cave no less, sent all kinds of allegories swimming in my head, but, alas, it seems as though Scorsese simply has genre-engulfed entertainment on his mind. Although special features are lacking on this release, wow, does “Shutter Island” look amazing on Blu-ray! The warm color palette is even richer than I remembered it from the theater and every shot is a visual seduction of detail and texture. If you’re still looking for a reason to upgrade, look no further.

DVD/Blu-ray: The Secret of the Grain (2008)
Distributor: Criterion
Director(s): Abdellatif Kechiche
Amazon Price: $30.99

Abdellatif Kechiche’s “The Secret of the Grain” is a film that is experienced rather than watched. Teeming with life, ‘Secret’ pulls you into the extended French-Arab family that fans out below a silent patriarch, Slimane, and his food-nurturing ex-wife, Souad. The whirlwind of family drama that ensues is less a gimmick than a perfectly poised window into a slice of tumultuous life. Earthbound joy and sympathetic suspense have never existed with such on-screen poetry and vigor than in Kechiche’s third feature film. Whether it is the warmth and cacophony of a Sunday family dinner or the frustration of the untimely venting of a daughter-in-law, “The Secret of the Grain” grabs you by your emotional lapels and drags you along for the ride. In this case, the "grain" is couscous and the "secret" is in Souad’s preparation of it with sauce, vegetables and mullet. The tensions that lie just beneath the surface come to a mounting crescendo in a finale saturated in contradictory emotions, desperation and confidence. Criterion provides the much-better-late-than-never release with typical five star supplements, the best of which is an extended belly-dancing sequence (if you can imagine) re-edited by the director. Wesley Morris’s informative essay brilliantly tallies the triumphs of ‘Secret’ and effortlessly, with a mere mention, smothers “Slumdog Millionaire” in comparison.

DVD/Blu-ray: Two Films by Ozu: (1936-42)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Yasujiro Ozu
Amazon Price: $31.99

Criterion’s newest Ozu entry should be titled “Two Very Rare Films by Ozu That You’ve Probably Read About But Never Seen.” 1936’s “The Only Son” and 1942’s “There Was a Father” were released during Japan’s volatile years of extreme nationalism and militarism, one on the upswing and one on the downswing. Although silent about his views on the war, Ozu, like everyone at the time, was not untouched and was drafted twice, once in 1937 and again in 1943. The influence that these years had on his worldview is revealed in the simultaneous artistic transition in these two films. “The Only Son” might be the most momentous, but “There Was a Father” is the more powerful, in that steady, aching way we’re familiar with in Ozu’s post-war films.

Bowing to pressure from the studio, “The Only Son” was Ozu’s first talkie. Whether it was the escalation of his home country’s military escapades or the adoption of sound or a combination of the two, the tenor is decidedly more somber than his previous (available) silent films. The film opens in 1923 with a single mother who hesitantly decides to financially make her young son’s education a priority. Flash forward to 1936 when the son has moved to Tokyo for work, but has failed to succeed in the way the mother had hoped and sacrificed for. It’s a timeless story, but one specific to the socio-economic times. A quote that prefaces “The Only Son”—“life’s tragedy begins with the bond between parent and child”—carries over thematically to “There Was a Father.” And although you can feel the weight of Japan’s 1939 Film Law that strictly governed content, the symbolic bond and duty of father and son is treated with such emotional sensitivity that propaganda hardly registers.

Both films here are remastered from surviving 16mm prints with obvious artifacts in image and sound, immediately explaining why these two masterpieces were not released on Blu-ray. Criterion makes up for it in the beautiful artwork that adorns the two DVDs and their slipcovers. Chunky booklets contain essays from Tony Rayns, Donald Ritchie and a short essay by Chishu Ryu (who played the iconic title role in “There Was a Father”) before he passed away. Included on the DVD are interviews with David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson and Tadao Sato.

DVD/Blu-ray: The First Films of Akira Kurosawa (1943-45)
Distributor: Eclipse
Director(s): Akira Kurosawa
Amazon Price: $45.99

If you couldn’t afford Criterion’s mega Kurosawa boxset (or convince anyone you were worthy of such a gift) Eclipse offers up the four films from that set that were previously unreleased in a no-frills package. “The First Films of Kurosawa” is just that: the films he made after he ditched his plans to become a painter, yet before he staked out his territory with post-war classics like “No Regrets from Our Youth” and “Drunken Angel.” All four films, 1943's “Sanshiro Sugata,” 1944's, “The Most Beautiful,” 1945's “Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two” and “The Men Who Tread On the Tiger’s Tail” prove that Kurosawa was a daring director right out of the gate, using brash styles that he would later hone to a fine art. His first solo project, “Sanshiro Sugata,” was based on a martial arts novel pitting judo against jujitsu. The subject matter sounds more Shaw Brothers than wartime Japan and it met the disapproving eye of the censors who saw the film as too Western. (The film famously got its eventual green light only at the intervention of Yasujiro Ozu.) Western or not, it offered a reprieve from heavy-handed propaganda films and became a success. So much so in fact that Kurosawa was allowed to make a sequel in which the villain, originally a symbol of Western imperialism, is turned into a hero. The final exhilarating fight sequences in both of these films underscores how much Kurosawa influenced an entire league of action filmmakers. Sandwiched in between the two ‘Sanshiro’ films is Kurosawa’s call to arms and somewhat unapologetic contribution to the waning war effort, “The Most Beautiful.” A staid but effective film focusing on the sacrifice of women in a factory manufacturing glass for binoculars and scopes, it was auspicious in Kurosawa’s personal life. Despite the fact that the country was collapsing around him, “The Most Beautiful” was the film which led Kurosawa to his wife, actress Yoko Yaguchi, who played the emotional center in the film. The last in the series, “The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail,“ displays Kurosawa’s flare for the theatrical period pieces that he would return to over and over again in his career. Kurosawa uses a classic Japanese tale, of Trojan horse likeness, to infuse a sense of humanity and humility in the heroics. Finished on the cusp of Japan’s defeat, ‘Tiger's Tail’ was lost in the diplomatic shuffle and did not receive a proper release until 1952. Considering the time and the fact that no one could have guessed the importance of this fresh new filmmaker, it’s a damn miracle that any of these films have survived. That being said, the prints have suffered, most notably in the form of a missing portion of “Sanshiro Sugata.”

DVD/Blu-ray: October Country (2009)
Distributor: Carnivalesque Films
Director(s): Michael Palmieri, Donal Mosher
Amazon Price: $24.99

Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s understated but incredibly moving documentary “October Country” is an uncompromising portrait of a struggling working class American family and one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in a very long while. It was filmed for one year, from Halloween to Halloween, during which the Moshers selflessly share their personal struggles with abuse, crime, pregnancy and the ghosts that haunt their past and future. Dottie is the pragmatic mother who anchors the family with optimism; Don, the father, a war veteran whose pain resides behind his silence; daughter Daneal a single mother who can’t seem to end a cycle of abusive relationships; and the young and spunky Desi watches with a perceptive eagle eye. The secret weapon, however, is Donal, co-director as well as son and brother, who stays off screen but elicits an intimacy that fluidly translates. Economic statistics and social demographics would love to cage the Moshers as the working poor trapped in social cycles that are beyond their control, and most documentary films would do the same. But “October Country” is that rare doc devoid of manipulation and infused with respect, not only for the subject but also the audience. Without pandering or exploitation, “October Country” poignantly turns this very personal microcosm into a shared dissection of the fucked up 21st century American Dream. It’s is available on DVD directly from the film’s website, or you can save it in your Netflix queue and let the market forces take over.

Feature By: Kathie Smith