Now, on to the movies.
The One-Armed Swordsman (
Cheh, 1967)
This classic wuxia film was the source for one of my favorite remakes in Tsui Hark's 1995 film, The Blade. In Tsui's version the narrative becomes almost a martial arts version of Pale Fire where the seemingly-insane daughter of a sword school tries to narrate herself into the role of femme-fatale lover for the one-armed swordsman played by Chiu Man Cheuk. This version is played as more of an unselfconsciously omniscient melodrama where the girl herself bizarrely chops off the arm of the guy she likes at the end of the first act. The swordsman is played by Jimmy Wang Yu, who seemingly got typecast into one-armed roles with the sequels to this and the unrelated One-Armed Chinese Boxer series (which includes the camp-classic "Master of the Flying Guillotine.")
Anyway, there is a lot of stuff that is pretty weird in this entertaining and nice-looking old martial arts movie and I thought it was pretty good on it's own as well.
Contempt (
Godard, 1963)
A French play-write is hired by a big-headed, obnoxious American producer to rewrite the screenplay for a troubled Fritz Lang film of The Odyssey. Meanwhile he has trouble of his own with his ultra-sexy wife, who inexplicably started hating him sometime between when he woke up and when he got offered the writing gig. Much of the movie is taken up by their bickering, and bickering about their bickering, and so on in a sort of helpless self-referential morass that is reflected in the generally frustrating and opaque film-making experience Godard seems to lament in this film. I thought this was okay, but I probably won't come back to it until I've tried some others of his films.
Cover Girl (
Vidor, 1944)
I found this a pretty interesting movie for a few reasons. For one thing it's a 1940s musical with a good dance scene by Gene Kelly. Another is it's a movie that tries to sell us Rita Hayworth and that's what the plot is about, trying to sell Americans a Brooklyn Nightclub dancer as a magazine cover girl. The movie itself seems to want to reverse that because it has her choosing the dancing career in Brooklyn (which I think would have been understood at the time to represent ethnicity and the ghetto) with Gene Kelly over the upper crust WASPy Manhattan life. A couple more interesting and worthwhile things: there's an audition scene early on where Rita seemingly flubs her big break by "acting" too energetic when they want someone demure and quiet to model a bridal gown (funny joke: "I should have known better than to try acting. I'm a dancer.") Later the editor of the magazine sees her dancing at the night club, with a bunch of other girls. She really does have a lot of energy -- a physical presence that stands out from the other girls in that scene -- that may have been very studied but seems effortless now; the magazine editor instantly falls in love with her. This has a pretty simplistic bit about "love" vs. "money" but overall is well worth seeing.
Piranha 3D (
Aja, 2010)
A local teen at Lake Victoria (in a fictional American South West rather than the real one in Africa) signs on to take a visiting Girls-Gone-Wild-esque film crew around during spring break. Meanwhile an underwater earthquake unleashes prehistoric, subterranean piranhas into the lake. The Piranhas of course start to bite everyones' boobies and junk. This sort of genre exercise is so thoroughly mined by now that I think it would take a lot more than this -- even the corny lampooning of its own exploitation-status -- to make something even remotely interesting. Scream 3 did a little bit better with the slasher genre, but I'm having trouble to think of any great post-Gremlins creature movies.
The Phantom of the Paradise (
De Palma, 1974)
Brian de Palma retells The Phantom of the Opera as a rock opera, with a lot of deliberate camp that I think hits the mark more than it doesn't, but really comes through with the psychedelic finale. It's a really awesome tragic hallucinatory combination occult-ritual/rock show/wedding and by far the catchiest song in the film's Paul Williams soundtrack.
The story of course is an emotionally loaded one about an idiosyncratic visionary composer who just wants the show done
his way with
his lead. He runs up against Paul Williams (the actual composer for the film) as a bizarre ultra-vain satanic munchkin record-promoter who wants everything for himself.
The Playhouse (
Keaton, 1921)
Awesome Buster Keaton short featuring an amazing "all-Keaton" dream show in which he plays every role as well as directs, and writes. The plot is very lose and seems to be just a thematic rack on which to hang lots and lots of innovative gags. For a 21-minute film there is a seemingly endless list of funny bits in this movie. The two old one-armed guys in the front row, who have to combine their hands to applaud and can never agree on when to clap and when to hoot are great.
+
The Stunt Man (
Rush, 1980)
On the whole I liked this movie but thought it could have been even better. Especially the acting which for the most part seemed little more than emoting by the lead. Some of it seems a little too sly and chummy for me, like the final line of the movie, and the war-movie and Vietnam vet headcase stuff is unsatisfying in spite of the lengthy attention it's given. It's interesting enough though and has a few tremendous scenes that exploit the parallel realities of the movie we're seeing and the movie the characters in the film are making (as well as the paranoid fantasy of the protagonist). Could have been something really exceptional for me but as is it's still pretty good.
+
The Innocents (
Clayton, 1961)
Extremely effective ghost story that makes excellent use of shadows in building it's mood. Also very cleverly exploits the unreliable narrator heroine played by Kerr who is truly obsessive. I would say this is left deliciously ambiguous as to whether this is a story about sinister ghosts acting out their abusive sexual relationship using two child bodies or whether the ghosts are an imaginative and untrustworthy part of the woman's personal explanation for how the childrens' past experiences have affected them. The ending does seem to imply the supernatural but it's hard to say to what end...
I think I owe mark a discussion on this in his Innocents tread(s!), but after just one viewing I might have a hard time coming up with something that hasn't already been covered there. This one is also something I suspect will be highly worthy of multiple viewings.
+
A Matter of Life and Death (
Powell & Pressburger, 1946)
I didn't really get into this movie, which is admittedly pretty complicated. There's a framing narrative from heaven that tells you (I think) that this story takes place partly in a facsimile of the real World War II world, and partly inside the mind of a fighter pilot who jumps from his crashing plane with no hope for survival. He miraculously wakes up alive and picks up an American woman who he fell in love with over the radio. I think you can interpret what happens thereafter either literally as a visit from heaven or as a metaphoric (and very elaborate) sort of explanation and negotiation fantasy he has with himself perhaps while in a coma. I'm not entirely sure. There's a scene at the end that is about 20 minutes or so and seemed much longer to me because of the clumsy way it squeezes in a political love story that extends the romantic one the movie started out to tell, this time between all America and all Britain. It's interesting but ultimately left me kind of cold.
Green for Danger (
Gilliat, 1946)
Another post-war British war movie, this time a murder mystery. Has a cool dark look and setting in the odd corridors and grounds of the seemingly-makeshift hospital and there's kind of a clever nod in the solution of the mystery involving covering colors with black and white paint (I think this is hinted at overtly through narration so it shouldn't be much of a spoiler). The set-up was a bit slow for me so I think I missed some details but by the end it had won me over, including the narrator detective who goes to some pretty funny lengths to rile his suspects up (and let them know he's doing so).
+
The Club of the Laid Off (
Barta, 1989)
At first it seemed like this Czech stop motion mannequin movie (about 25 minutes I think) was going to be like some of Jan Svankmajer's more anal exercises in repetition but it actually went in a pretty good and unexpected direction. There's some pretty sad and funny stuff in this short "actorless" film.
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I also watched two discs from vol.3 of the Looney Toons golden collection
which has cartoons from the 30s, 40s and 50s that vary a lot in entertainment.
A couple faves include Hare Tonic (where Bugs tricks Elmer Fudd and the audience into thinking we have Rabbititis) and A Hare Grows in Manhattan. Some of the 50s tv parody episodes such as The Honey-Mousers and The Mouse That Jack (Benny) Built weren't as interesting for me.
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When I have more time, I'll discuss some of the others.
