Death Laid An Egg 1968

I told myself while watching this, "this is one heck of a movie".

I was usually so caught up in the impeccable camerawork or stunning use of montage to make sense of the plot. But I think I understand it: a man is driven insane from the numbing experience of working at a chicken farm with 2 women who are fighting over him. The plot is extremely loose and a bit absurd but its full of clever metaphors for the social factors in his breakdown.

 Gian Piero Brunetta, author of The History of Italian Cinema, considered the film to be "worth remembering", comparing it to the works of Luis Buñuel and Michelangelo Antonioni. Brunetta felt the film held several thematic undercurrents, dealing with the conditions of farm labourers and the changing social attitudes towards the class system in Italy

I want to compare it to the work of Jess Franco because its so jazzy, surreal, sexy, psychological and obtuse... yet commercial. Its actually more polished and entertaining than the typical Franco film by a long shot and has the added poetics, social commentary and New Wave sensibility of maybe a Jean Rollin film. But this baby doesn't come from Spain or France. Its Italian. One of the most extreme Italian films I've seen from the period. Its somewhere between a Fellini & Bava, art & exploitation. Its a beautiful experiment in contrasts. A marriage of high and low art. Aesthetically and politically its very similar to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so that details its pedigree.

Essentially you want to see this if you love giallo AND "acid cinema". I imagine it was inspired by the radical commercial experimentation in the previous year's "Bonnie & Clyde", but "Death" manages to outdo it in sheer stylish lunacy.

Numero Deux 1975

I'm getting back into Godard. "Breathless" totally opened up my world when I downloaded it from an old file-sharing network as a teen. I remember thinking this is the coolest and hippest B&W film I'd ever seen.  Its unbelievable that that film was made in 1960. It just happened to be French & low budget too, so I felt like I was now a true cinema hipster. I haven't looked back since, but my other experiences with Godard's work have been shaky. I thought Alphaville was intriguing, Masculin Feminin was cute but underwhelming & Weekend was as astounding as it was frustrating.

Number Two is the most extreme thing I've seen from him & I really enjoyed the experience. I know much more about where Godard was coming from politically and I have a better appetite for challenging, non-commercial art.

The whole thing is one big gimmicky experiment where we join Godard in the editing room as he watches footage on TV moniters of a poor French family speak their minds in a candid but decidedly lyrical style. The family are unhappy with their roles but also desperate to fit in the "machine" that is their family. The parents wrestle with philosophical questions from the mundane to the familial to the political to the existential. There's no plot or action or character growth. Its a stream of Godard's consciousness spoken through 1-dimensional people, making the audience aware of the transference we place from auteur to actors. Another fun game Godard plays is filling the screen with 2 or more images in a frame, letting us edit the footage ourselves. Godard shows that the film is already a film before its "properly" edited and sometimes a rawer experience in this way. Indeed it does create an intimacy with the films within the film. Godard is between his film and us. We are removed from the "story" that we can properly deconstruct it as pure communication.

This is a cool, conceptual piece that will bore newcomers to Godard but will satisfy anyone who likes interacting with or decrypting their cinema. Its self aware pretentiousness and its preaching to a very radical choir, but its definitely art and good art too.

Anaconda / The Barefoot Contessa / Empire of the Sun / Dr. Strangelove

"Anaconda" is a blatant reworking of Creature/ Black Lagoon. The channel I caught it on even played them back-to-back. Its an essential piece of filmmaking as a clever camp deconstruction of a classic but largely dated film & as a pioneer of CGI effects. The FX in Anaconda aren't just wildly creative and eye-catching, but they are merged with live stunts giving the film a uniqueness. What has to be praised is Jon Voight's excellent over-the-top villain acting, the diverse cast of young stars like Ice Cube, Owen Wilson and J. Lo in very revealing performances. Its a largely by-the-numbers film but it doesn't have the woodenness of "Black Lagoon". Even though the racism is simmered down, its still there. How is Eric Stolz MIA throughout the entire conflict but gets the girl and rides into the sunset as the leader & main viewpoint for the audience? A good genre film for 1997, but its still behind the cultural evolution of today. A multi-million dollar exploitation film. At least it wasn't a remake.

"The Barefoot Contessa" is the best kind of 1954 Hollywood entertainment: A melodramatic Technicolor dream about Romantic women with a sly feminist/communist/leftwing edge. Yet totally supported by & amplifying the best of the conservative post-WW2 climate. Its somber and introspective as it is elevated & artificial. Painterly. Films like this feel painted by a modern master. Written & directed by the very successful Joseph L. Mankiewicz who is well-versed in creating a universally accepted product for what was then a booming economic upswing & prolonged patriotic pride.It seems like a tribute or farewell to a glorious but outdated style or genre. Also it feels inspired by the garish theatrical "prestige" films that brought in color. High in emotional characters, visual splendor & well-paced storytelling. It was a time where standards were changing on-screen positively, merging filmmaking with filmwatching in this great shared human experience of art & reality within it and without it. These films were usually about the sense of living wildly and vividly. That restored peace after tumultuous war and all its suffering and bitter victories. People were relieved but appreciated drama more than ever. I put over so much of the style because this film encapsulated that vibe strongly. It is so much style and commentary on style, but like a Gone With The Wind or even the black & white Casablanca, "Contessa" works because we love a film which delivers a message of substantial equality, justice, honesty and reality.

Its an honest work of smart entertainment from an early fan of cinema. But it does have holes and moral failings that may seem obvious in our far removed point in time.

There is the question if the film's plot is correct politically for being a tragic depiction of a Latin woman's sexuality, a longstanding and generalized knock against the spread of minorities in white cultures. I think it works for 1954, but today's young Latin women will find it either incredibly respectful & relating or supremely presumptuous, "damsel" victim-worshipping & unfairly sexualizing of this "ideal" women of color. It serves a very white racist agenda of "us Vs. them". But like the other great retro films of the earlier ages, it has aged, shown outdated rhetoric and social programming. Thats just a part of our collective race's slow development of unity and move against intolerance.

Like Hollywood's first superstar director D.W. Griffith, the major films of yesteryear (and the future films inspired by them) are very bogged down in offensive ideas, views and propaganda. LUCKILY, "Contessa" allows us enough vagueness and context that any mature viewer can handle and appreciate the story as a universal story of femme fatales, sexual victims, troubled women & feminist martyrs. Unfortunately this stereotyping typically cast "exotic" women, minority women and non-Aryan brunette actresses. Ex: Carmen Jones, Imitation of Life, Pandora's Box and most versions of Wedekind's Lulu.

It fulfills an almost Nazi post-WW2 complex through younger Americanized goggles, while masked in sophomoric cultural appropriation & subtle brownface. Its damned by all of these things, but they were the rule for popular entertainers and public conformity. The problematic and unevolved sentiment of this still-extravagant film is that it tried to be more sympathetic and liberating from its rigid origin, than other films of its ilk. And its inspired more learned and accepting fans to make art that finishes its sentences. This very infantilized work of modernism, pop culture & democratic morality will impress with its foresight even if its offensive in its dated-ness.

Mankiwicz crafts a film that relishes in the high standards of its day and embraces a less strict Conservatism that seems quaint, romantic and even a bit leftist in today's darkly radical political stratus. This is just a movie, but films like these pushed hard politics and now we must view it as a political tool to be tempered like steel into a universally benefiting social infrastructure for education, ever-evolving technological/artistic tradition and a public showcase of creative brilliance. "Contessa" is mostly that. A product of an offensive time with some marks to prove it, but a film with its heart in the right place and enough smarts to not be too irresponsible. The film shows much respect for women of color, you only wish it had input or education about the humanity and reality of them.

"Empire of the Sun" boosts Spielberg in my eyes even higher than he already was. His films always show a deep admiration for the forefathers of cinematic history, but he's always right on the cutting edge of thought-provoking and positive social healing. "Empire" comes from Spielberg's period of adult maturation and works a kind of re-affirmation of this "kid" director as a filmmaker with as much philosophical deepness & genius computation as you could ask for. Especially in comparison to every directors ever, save for Hitchcock & Kubrick. He capitalizes on his massive ego, power, talent and ability to give back as much as he can. His haters distrust this sense of love in his films. They cowardly write him off too easily as a lofty idealist, totally unrealistic and unwise on global messages or lacking some cynical scope to process real tragedy and grief. His earlier films dispute this and Empire flat-out refutes it. This is a film that is both an answer to critics and a darkly reflective journey for Spielberg. He faces so many recurring personal themes through a very specific historical text because he sees the universal ingredients to life.

He melts away division and cowardice to leave only the truth as best as he can show it. But he asks "Why not make it still funny and cool?". Every inch of the movie is an intelligent bit of serious drama that never bogs down in navel-gazing or pretentiousness. While his critics will snidely comment that his vision is too pre-conceptualized or pandering, they will miss that preparation and audience-pacification is the correct job of a major filmmaker. And to Spielberg's artistic credibility, he creates so much in-camera or in acting moments or with subtle inflections of tone, subtext, reference and respect. This is the exact kind of review Spielberg achieved the film for and I can't say he doesn't earn it. But I can admit it may be disheartening that he made these films for such a trivial prize as an Oscar or a glowing Ebert review. But he's avoids exploiting the audience or the subject matter for anything cheap, tasteless, unlikable or mean.

Maybe he cops out by making it a white male child's experience of what was a horrifying moment in specifically Chinese history, but that artistic choice draws the type of audience who needs to see it most. Spielberg is de-powering the over privileged and softening the most hard-hearted of Westerners. The guy is so tuned in to what film-directing encompasses and its astounding how he sustains so much taste and professionalism on such a grand scale with what feels like ease. Maybe he just loves cinema more than the other directors. Like his protagonist here, Steven accepts the responsibility and guilt of the privileged life he has within and before Hollywood and makes an extended hard journey to write the wrongs of the world with a smiling soul and commitment to quality work.

As I type this, America is experiencing the greatest federal investigation of an elected official ever. Our current president is morally bankrupt, sexually juvenile and essentially heartless warmonger who is escalating nuclear arms tension to apocalyptic levels without any management or contact with reality. Stanley Kubrick predicted these factors precisely in "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" and its a haunting thrill to experience such a topical film with such relevancy. Unfortunately the circumstances have made our connection with the bleakest and most deadpan comedy imaginable.

Kubrick holds back nothing. It is a grotesque reflection of the artificial intelligence that amateurs to govern our cosmic fates, country to country. Kubrick doesn't have to make a cartoon out of his target. Only to present them factually and let the audience see the Emperor has no clothes. Kubrick sees the Cold War as the ultimate meltdown of the white male majority's neuroses and self-destructive psychosis. He knew then what every progressive knows now and what the politically bankrupt are slowing learning. We are heading to a Nazi's wet dream of destruction

Absolute power is lampooned and Kubrick laughs at this God complex that keeps us nothing but hilarious apes in nice suits. No other director could use the depressive, oppressive, "square", drab and ultimately sick in such a beautifully arranged design to say something profound in still simple visual and auditory terms. This film is a masterpiece, one of the first I ever watched, and it will continue to serve this world long after I'm gone (I hope).

Hannah & Her Sisters 1986

Woody Allen married his ex wife's adopted daughter. This was my only knowledge of him as a child in the 1990s. In 2017, he's now infamous for allegations that he molested another adopted daughter when she was 7. And the case don't look good: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts Honestly, there's still a shred of possibility that this is some misunderstanding that never should've gone public, but is it possible for his filmography to really shine light on this man's innocence or lack thereof?

Hannah & Her Sisters is an ambitious, warm and very successful Woody movie. Its a clever reworking of his dramatic film "Interiors", combing that film's Ingmar Bergman-esque angst with Allen's more popular comedic stylings. Of course he does it in a conceptually intellectual way: the film is told in 3 stories that flip-flop between mellow tragedy & mellow comedy. Allen had far outgrown his extreme comedy and wouldn't approach extreme tragedy again for a while. The combination was so influential that the film plays like an HBO series more than an Academy Award winner. From Tod Solondz' Happiness to Curb Your Enthusiam to Wes Anderson, many have expounded on Allen's vision of cinema.

And Allen's real genius is in creating a form of cinema so tied to dramatic theater, arthouse cinema, sitcom, vaudeville, standup, literature, poetry and even music. The stories are very grounded and would be boring in any one medium, but work in the context of this film. Allen is a director who understands film completely and has personalized the technology to suit his tastes & needs.

Exploring the narrative, Allen creates a dysfunctional family of males & females, Jews & gentiles, who all represent different parts of himself. He wants us to know that every character is him. He has Michael Caine & Max Von Sydow making Jewish references. They are Woody. And Mia Farrow's performances in Allen's films are always a female impression of Allen. I can't tell if thats stylized or if he really molded her into his image in their personal lives. The whole thing is a Freudian headtrip, with the audience as Woody's paying analyst. This sounds indulgent & morose, but the film is light & upbeat throughout. But there is a dark side of Woody Allen that is always beneath the surface. There is a joke about child molestation here, multiple references to his problems with Farrow and her adopted children & so much inappropriate sexual-romantic behavior that is just chalked up to "normal mid-life crisis". There's nothing damning in the text but it raises questions.

Is Allen the victim of circumstance? Or he a predator? Was Mia Farrow being overly protective of her adopted children or not protective enough? Is Dylan Farrow a victim or a very disturbed person? Maybe Farrow used her daughter's claim simply to win a divorce against the man who stole her other daughter. Judging from a film made YEARS before the scandal, you could argue the case for all of this contradictory stuff. But humans are contradictions, Allen being a textbook case. But being a mixed up, complex, dirty, weak-willed guy isn't an admission of guilt to a horrible, horrible act.

Whatever the truth is, Woody is still a pioneer and masterful artist/entertainer. He has helped our culture tremendously - as much as a film comedian can I suspect - and that much can't be argued. Because we don't know what happened, I still recommend this man's films. And if he turns out to be a real monster, he should have to suffer more than he has... but the films are still good.

THX 1138 (Director's Cut) / Urban Cowboy / Night of the Demon

Watched the good part of THX 1138, the re-edited version from the 2000s. I didn't like my experience but I'm intrigued by the original 70s footage. I haven't seen the original film (but I do like the short film that inspired it), but this seems like a warped experience of a decent esoteric "futurist" film. A lot of it is lost with too much deleted footage of nothingness and pretty shiny objects. Very Kenneth Anger. Obviously very similar to Lucas' student films of cars driving. He's a technician who writes about technology so he can film technology. Thankfully he writes about the dangers to be avoided. He tries to make some political statement. Its topical, generational and not evergreen humor or referencing, but the rest of the film is so innovative and oddly moving, that I give it a pass. Hopefully the 70s cut is more watchable and less ridiculous and pretentious. Like WB took the film from Lucas when they saw how extreme & crazed his vision was. So this new version is the matured, successful, commercialized Lucas trying to correct his old mistakes or insert new theories. He's a fascinating director. As experimental as can be, yet as commercial as can be. I might re-review the Lucas remix after watching the original.

Urban Cowboy was a bore for me because it too predictable in its wholesomeness. And its wholesomeness seemed a bit cheated and dishonest. It tries to be Earthy and only erects a Broadway style of artificiality that is aesthetically tranquil but also lifeless dramatically. The plot is low on conflict and the resolution is ambiguous, tame and not even hopeful. The concept of the plot is good: two people marry quickly and then wonder if they should get divorced. They both find the ideal partner they've always lusted, but realize its better to settle for less because they belong together.

Both characters are written as dumb, impulsive, naive, selfish, incompetent and unaware of love's meaning. But they find love together. Thats a warm romantic type plot of the 1950s. But its dressed up in the culture of honky tonk big city cowboy culture. It paints a picture of accepted hopelessness and insulated ignorance. But its never satirical or cruel to them for being so imperfect. The kinds of films Robert Evans and other Hollywood filmmakers were starting to make after Coppola's Godfather were based on the realism and post-structuralism of the arthouse. But few grasped the original Neorealist movement and interpreted badly, Urban Cowboy being one.

Its glossy, crafted simply and somewhat true to its sources. But its not provoking thought, addressing issues or mining for truth outside of its inherited tropes & cliches. There are lots of films like this where Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney types, "All-American kids" triumph over the complex, damaged, truly vulnerable figures explored in foreign films. This is rightwing propaganda made in reaction to true art of radicals who were fighting oppression and economic ruin elsewhere. Hollywood films like this are sour and it highlights the drastic decline of quality after the 70s boom. Where everything became dumbed down beer for the masses to sleep easier. Lets study films like these but not give them too much credit beyond "pretty, watchable pap".

My horror pick was Night of the Demon (Curse of the Demon in America because they still missed using the N-word). I've watched this film a few times as I've aged and it only grows bigger and better. This is a very, very classy, thoughtful, open-minded, fair study of the power of dark occult knowledge. Unfortunately, it was sold as a money-making popcorn horror film and the producer inserted some gratuitous, extremely dating monster footage in what was a pretty undated work of cinema from Jacques Tournier of "Cat People" fame. This truncated version isn't at all bad because of it, but you thirst for the original vision, especially when the significant edge of the final scene is lost because of too many dollars thrown at the screen. Check it out the UK version first and then move on to the U.S., trust me!

Curse of the Cat People 1944

This review ties into my recent musings on sequels & reboots. Here is a sequel made 70 years ago that stands perfectly as its own film AND as an original continuation.

"Curse" was commissioned because Cat People was a massive low budget hit and producer Val Lewton saw a great opportunity to use the publicity of the first film to make something even more radical and personal. Its so far removed from the first Cat People in genre, structure, casting and message. Its the opposite of the carbon copy reboots we are subjected to now.

The original was an erotic thriller about "the were-cat" that kept its supernatural elements ambiguous. The sequel is a sentimental ghost story/character study about children that also keeps its supernatural elements ambiguous. Curse never contradicts or reduces or copies the original. The best way to look at it is an origin story told through another character. Both of these protagonists are damaged young women and while the first is an epic tragedy, the sequel is an epilogue that offers some redemption for our fallen heroine.

Ya know, factoring in Paul Schrader's remake from the 1980s, Cat People is the most artful and rewarding franchise in horror. All 3 films are delicious, respectful exercises in film poetry that redefine their expected place in canon. Its also one of the few franchises that has some basic aesthetic lineage throughout the films, probably because it takes a higher class of filmmaker to make them & we weren't bogged down in endless, exploitative entries.

Check this one out. Not your average horror film. Its flawlessly shot, lovingly produced, competently directed, etc etc. It fits in with The Godfather 2 & The Road Warrior as one of the most perfect sequels yet made. 

Leatherface 2017

I caught this last month and let it gel in my psyche a bit. The film was shot in 2015 and the anticipation was unbearable for me. I love the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as much as I love any film and I have issues with all of its sequels/side-quels/requels/reboots/remakes/pre-boots. Can you believe this is TCM 8? Sigh.

So its an atmospheric, sadistic, kitschy, pretentious type of horror movie. Thats actually not that unusual these days. I actually wished they kept the uber-modern "popcorn" Saw vibe of TC3D, but no go. Stylistically this is the film that the franchise needed a few movies back. Its got way more teeth & class than the influential but numb 2003 remake. And its actually a psychological thriller unlike half the damn movies. Most important, Leatherface has the most original Chainsaw plot since the original. All of the other films are light remakes with varying degrees of original execution. LF fails on that front. It could've worked commercially or artistically if it had a more unusual approach instead of the "let's be 1970s! lets be as faithful as possible!" thing.

Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury are a pair of remodernist fanboy directors from France. They make Alexandre Aja style gore films (a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox...), each a take off of some great horror director. They made a really crappy Tobe Hooper-inspired film called Among the Living, so they got this job. If you've seen their Argento-inspired film "Inside" or the... Argento-inspired "Livid", you know these guys are great stylists who have no concept of realism, logic or storytelling. But they can light the Hell out of a scene and squirt blood everywhere. Oddly, even with a semi-Hollywood budget, this is not the bloodbath or visual feast I expected. Bummer.

Redeeming it is the script by some Millennial screenwriting teacher. Its more of a deconstruction of modern teen horror, backwoods slashers and "Badlands" style hostage films. Yeah, its basically a poor man's Devil's Rejects, which wasn't a good film itself. At least this film isn't so gimmicky. Or its gimmicks are more interesting. This is a very nasty film. Lots of gross setpieces and inexplicably evil or stupid cartoon characters everywhere. Maybe its just the lifeless interpretation of the directors tho. Apparently the film was supposed to end with an elaborate massacre inspired by Peter Jackson's Dead Alive. So it was supposed to be campy. The whole thing would've worked if it didn't try to make a serious film out of such a tired and illogical premise. Again, this is hardly based on TCM. You get the impression it was an original script that had Leatherface & fam shoehorned in. That actually worked with a couple Hellraiser sequels and could've worked here if the writer were more original and the directors camped it up.

Fanboy note, the origin given is hilariously lame but also effective in the sincerity of its "14 year old at Hot Topic" angst. This is going to become a bonehead classic to the next generation of horror fans and thats serviceable. Tobe Hooper died the week that this thing debuted which is meaningful in some way. Maybe this is the last Massacre. Eh, I'm cool with that.

*In retrospect, I'm quite fond of this modest low budget film. Mainly for its style and production, but also the hammy acting, the muddled occult references and a genuine obtuseness that shines compared to something like "Amityville: The Awakening". Leatherface is a mixed bag with some great parts and hopefully its enough to re-energize the franchise and get these directors some real work.