Another big backlog. This time I thought I’d arrange them topically (since most of these belong to one collection on the Criterion Chanel or another).
Bad Spaniard: 11 Scathing Satires Directed by Luis García Berlanga —
The Executioner (1963) — A clever examination of “the invisible traps that society sets up for us,” the film follows an unwilling Executioner as he tries to do whatever he can to get out of killing a condemned man. It’s probably my favorite of Berlanga’s movies that I’ve seen so far, and easily feels like the most polished of his work.
French New Wave —
Paris Belongs to Us (1961) — it kind of plays out like a more dramatic, proto-
Suicide Club, which I deeply respect and find endlessly fascinating. I only wish that the filmmaking (and especially the script) lived up to its incredible premise. Also, at 2 1/2 hours, the film quickly outstays its welcome.
Italian Neorealism —
Rocco and His Brothers (1960) — While not quite “the apotheosis of Italian Neorealism” that I was promised (that honor would still go to
Bicycle Thieves), it is a rather excellent encapsulation of that moment in Italian filmmaking.**Much more polished than earlier entries in the movement, it follows a larger cast of central characters than these kinds of films usually do, delving into the various struggles they face along the way. This would be an excellent Neorealist entry point for the otherwise uninitiated.
Girl in the Window (1961) — While I always love the idea of it, few films can pull off the 180° midway turn into a completely different genre. This movie is hardly the exception to that rule, although it comes closer than most at accomplishing it. Personally, I was much more interested in all the mining business at the beginning than everything that comes after it, but the love story that it eventually turns into isn’t half bad either.
Il Posto (1961) — Focussing on the trials and tribulations of hunting for and keeping a job, this movie is pretty much spot-on as regards my own post-bachelor’s job hunting (right down to be given busywork to do on the down low, because while they didn’t need me right then, they would need me eventually and if anybody higher up found out I actually had nothing to do as a temp, I would have been let go). A stronger Italian Neorealism entry than most, it bears a striking resemblance to
Bicycle Thieves in both form and function. Any fans of that film will doubtless find plenty here to enjoy.
Sundance Class of ‘92: The Year Indie Exploded —
A Brief History of Time (1992) — A pretty bog-standard “talking heads” documentary. It didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know and presented things in the most stock way possible. It was fine, I guess, but I was hoping for something more from it.
Brother’s Keeper (1992) — I’ve seen a lot more indie documentaries in this collection than I expected to going into it. This is one of the better ones, granted, centering on a more-compelling-than-usual story of wrongful prosecution, but it’s nothing all that special in the end. Like most of these, it outstays even its modest runtime and doesn’t do much interesting filmmaking in the margins. Overall, it’s just kind of okay.
Danzón (1992) — Of a kind with something like
Shall We Dance. It’s a solid, if standard, drama with the nominal focus of centering dancing hobbyists. It doesn’t do anything unexpected, but it was fairly enjoyable on the whole.
Edward II (1992) — I’m not as familiar with Christopher Marlowe as I am with his contemporary William Shakespeare, so I can’t say how much of a deviation this is from the original text. The settings could have been dressed up a bit more and nobody’s quite so good of an actor as they really needed to be, but it’s a compelling, nakedly queer story that I personally found more to my tastes than
My Own Private Idaho.
Incident of Oglala (1992) — Another pretty standard, talking heads documentary that did little more than straightforwardly talk about a historical event. Still with a subject as compelling as this, I can at least walk away having learned something interesting.
Intimate Stranger (1992) — When all is said and done, it was a not a very interesting story that was not very well told. It was too short to really build up a compelling narrative, but somehow felt needlessly padded at just 60 minutes. It made some interesting pacing / editing choices, though, even if they kind of disappeared in the second half hour.
The Living End (1992) — I’m not sure exactly how much of this
Thelma & Louise-alike is meant to be campy and how much just wasn’t good; this seemed to level off as it went on, though, and I was really feeling the movie in its final stretches. There were also a few really fun parts sprinkled throughout (and I certainly learned a few fun new ways to say “penis”).
Night on Earth (1992) — I’m normally not a fan of either Jim Jarmusch nor episodic vignettes, but I actually enjoyed this one quite a bit. The individual stories were compelling and didn’t outstay their welcome. The change of scenery succeeded at keeping things fresh and the cast was a lot better than I would have suspected going into it.
Shoot for the Contents (1992) — An extremely interesting and densely layered documentary about the state of the invariably nationalized art industries in then-contemporary China (for which I was surprised at just how much context I already had for the subject going into it), the film was a pretty compelling, if straightforward, treatment of its topic. Given how Hong Kong’s heretofore “independent” film industry has been increasingly put under the thumb of mainland China of late, it still feels incredibly topical.
Where Are We? Our Trip Through America (1992) — An interesting tour through 90s America that unfortunately frontloads
a lot of homophobic “man on the street” interviews. It gets better in that regardas it goes on, but it kind of soured me on the project from the outset. Otherwise, it’s colorful, nominally interesting and probably the best documentary yet from this Criterion Channel collection.
Zebrahead (1992) — The movie’s heart was in the right place, but the level of execution wasn’t quite there. The issues surrounding both cultural appropriation versus earnest fandom as well as miscegenation deserved better than this movie had to offer. It also can’t help but pale against other urban dramas released around the same time as it (e.g.,
Boyz n the Hood, Menace II Society, Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., etc…). Still, it’s a decent, if dated movie that sometimes hits its mark.
The World of Guru Dutt —
Baaz (1953) — A fun, fairly lightweight action-adventure-musical. It’s my first Guru Dutt-directed film, so I don’t know how it’ll measure up against the rest of his filmography, but I don’t feel that it quite measures up compared to the work of contemporaries Raj Kapoor (a personal favorite of mine) or Bimal Roy.
Misc. —
The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985) — In college, the infamous “kids meet Satan” scene did the rounds as a sort of “you won’t believe how messed up this scene from a kid’s movie is.” The thing is, though, that pretty much the
entire movie is exactly as messed up as that one part. It includes a kind of “Darth Twain” and a version of Injun Joe that looks like he’s tweaking on bath salts. I don’t know if I needed 80 more minutes of that one initial scene, but I sure won’t be forgetting it any time soon.
Drunken Dragon (1985) — While I would have been fine with the one-and-done viewing I had for this movie a while back, my spouse
really wanted to see it again. And, honestly, it’s not hard to see why. Horrible, horrible dubbing aside, it’s a fun action-comedy with some hilarious madcap fights (including one where a fighter spends the entire time on a wheeled “land boat”) and a really fun female fighter (who, unfortunately, is really there to be the expected target of fat jokes and garden variety misogyny). Still a really fun time.
Species (1995) — It’s not quite the mainstream audiences’
Under the Skin that I was expecting it to be, and it’s not especially good when push comes to shove, but it is an intermittently fun sci-fi thriller that is unfortunately nowhere near clever enough to pull off its overly-ambitious “battle of the sexes” social commentary. At the very least, I had some fun with it, so take that for whatever that’s worth.
Muppets from Space (1999) — Growing up, it was my grandmother who was really into the Muppets in my family, so I always thought of it as “that old people’s show” instead of a happy puppet variety show aimed explicitly at children. I weirdly first started getting into them with the 2011 movie, and because my kid seems to love them so much, they’ve been added to the general rotation of things we watch as a family (mostly the YouTube shorts, but we’re quickly expanding outwards). This one was fun, but didn’t quite have the extra “umph” of some of the other ones I’ve seen.
Ghosts of Mars (2001) — It’s hard to believe that John Carpenter of all people was in charge of this mess. Basically “
Doom, but as a Western,”
Ghosts of Mars gives into every horrible, slapdash, turn-of-the-century horror genre impulse (only here swapping out the expected blue / green filters for a red one). A fun idea, granted, but obviously quickly and cheaply made with heavy studio oversight.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) — I knew that this one was supposed to be bad, and that it was one of the blockbusters that came out in the disruption caused by the writer’s strike, but I didn’t expect this choppy and badly acted of a film. It **has** to be the direction, because I’ve never seen Michael Clarke Duncan this utterly lost in a scene (and he’a not alone in that regard). The script being in such shambles didn’t help things along, either. I honestly still don’t know what happened during half of this movie.
Moana (2016) — Rewatched because my kid loves it and just got one of those sound effect / button pad books that ties into it. One of my favorite Disney animated movies, I really wish that they would have had the courage of their convictions at the end when they took Maui’s hook away (instead of immediately giving him a mew hook after he learned that “hook [or] no hook, I’m still Maui,” directly undermining his character arc).
Encanto (2021) — Another rewatch because my kid saw me scrolling past it and shouted / pointed at it excitedly as I did so.**He might not fully demand that we watch only one movie all the time, but he still has rather emphatic opinions on the matter. And for somebody who normally doesn’t rewatch movies very often, this is the 21st time that I’ve seen this one.
Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning (2021) — I don’t think that I’ll ever understand the bizarre decision to make the final entry in this film series a prequel. That being said, it’s pretty much as good as the found movies that preceded it, and finally being able to see the protagonist cut lose and kill a **lot** of people was a fun thing to see (in one instance, by wielding a sword in his mouth while his hands are tied up). Going out on a sweet ending that echoes a similar scene in
The Final, this was still a lot of fun.
The Sadness (2021) — For pretty much the entire last year, I’ve been warned of this ultra-intense, ultra-gory,
Crossed-inspired Taiwanese zombie movie, which promised to be about as grisly to watch as it was excellent. And, yeah, now that I was finally able to get around to it, every last thing I heard about this movie was 100% warranted. Kind of a mash-up of
28 Days Later and the New French Extremity, this raises the bar for what the subgenre is capable of showing on-screen. And, being made in the thick of the pandemic, I found the set-up for the eventual outbreak to be surprisingly stressful in its own right. It would also make for a great double-feature with South Korea’s
#Alive.