Weekend Stream for 8/30/13

The Weekend Stream is a weekly feature curating content for you to watch this weekend from the current selection on Netflix's US streaming service. Since titles can disappear with little or no warning, there's always a chance a title will no longer be available by the time you read this, so you'd better act fast, pal!

Weekend Stream for 8/30/13

This edition of the Weekend Stream features two very different performances by Henry Fonda, and a Steve Coogan TV show (but not the one you probably think).

First, we have 1941's The Lady Eve, a witty screwball comedy from writer-director Preston Sturges. Sturges was one of the very first high-profile screenwriters to make the jump to the director's chair, and during a period in the 1940's, he and his stock company of actors produced some of the very best classic screen comedies. The Lady Eve stars Henry Fonda as the hapless, hopelessly naive Charles Pike, heir to an ale fortune, and Baby Face's Barbara Stanwyck as Jean Harrington, a flirty con artist attempting to seduce Pike out of his money. Fonda's "good guy" persona suits him like nobody's business when it comes to playing a sap, and Stanwyck is always at home playing clever, seductive types. But Sturges's favorite bit players (like William Demarest and Eric Blore) steal the show in their hilarious supporting roles. Filled with Production Code–pushing gags, quippy dialogue, and loads of physical comedy, The Lady Eve is one of the cinema's great pleasures.

FI: The Headless Woman

The Headless Woman/La mujer sin cabeza
Argentina, 2008
Written and directed by Lucrecia Martel

Deliberately obscure and oblique, Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman is the sort of movie that could, depending on one's mood and mindset, provoke anything from indifference to rapture. This is partly because, for the majority of its running time, the film has a void at its center. You see, early on, Verónica (María Onetto) hits something with her car, banging her head in the process. For some reason, she doesn't stop right away. By the time she does, she is no longer sure whether she's hit something or someone, a dog or a person. It's an ambiguity we think we can clarify, but one the film will only settle for us in tangent.

Whether because of the physical or psychological trauma of the accident, Verónica spends a good amount of the film in an affectless daze, barely able to function or even remember who people are and how they relate to her. Martel frequently films her from behind, at a 3/4 turn, her blonde hair obscuring parts of the frame. Because this ties us so closely to Verónica's perspective, much about the picture remains fuzzy and opaque. Events happen to her, people take her places or suggest things that she goes along with, and there rarely seems to be a story reason behind any of it. Almost no-one seems too concerned that she's having some sort of breakdown, and even fewer take her seriously as she becomes increasingly convinced she killed someone on the road that day. As Verónica, Onetto is magnetically enigmatic, her face vacant but warm, like someone bluffing their way through an awkward encounter with a person they know they should recognize, but don't.

Martel creates an uneasy tension through unbalanced compositions and an editing style that embraces discontinuity and abrupt jumps in time, signifying Verónica's damaged mental state. The closest filmic point of reference would be Antonioni's L'Avventura, but while his focus was on alienation, Martel is interested in class disparity. The film has much to say about the gap between the upper-class dentist Verónica and her affluent family, and Argentina's "invisible" majority of lower class workers who they barely even notice. But none of this is said outright, it all just creeps in at the margins and haunts the background, should you look for it. In that way, The Headless Woman is a fascinating film, but one that requires your careful attention. You may not be willing to give it should the film's atmosphere not grasp you from the start—I myself never finished it the first time I tried, some years ago, though I always meant to return to it. Now that I have, I don't regret it.

Bellflower: Mad, Muddled Max

Bellflower
US, 2011
Written and directed by Evan Glodell


Let's play a game:

Imagine, for a moment, that I'm not a fake internet critic, but rather an average indie film fan, one who doesn't much research the movies he sees, but takes recommendations gladly. He's flipping through Netflix's streaming selections, and chances upon Bellflower, the debut feature from Evan Glodell. It sounds intriguing, so he puts it on. Now, this Hypothetical Me isn't going to be aware that Glodell designed a special camera for the film, one that fuses digital tech with old, archaic analog bits. He might appreciate elements of Joel Hodge's cinematography, its unsteady focus and grungy, retro look that feels like an Instagram come to life, but that's it. He might also grasp that the film was likely made on a low budget, but he wouldn't know just how low, nor necessarily concern himself with how much value the film got out of that budget. Hypothetical Me isn't giving any bonus points for ingenuity; he's just going to be thinking about the text of the film itself.

FI: Robin and Marian

Robin and Marian

UK/US, 1976

Directed by Richard Lester

Robin and Marian is a film about people trying to carve out space to do as they please, whether by conquest, claiming dominion, or popular acclaim. Richard the Lion-Heart (Richard Harris) sets the theme early on: Despite the best counsel of Robin Hood (Sean Connery) and Little John (Nicol Williamson), he attempts to claim a French castle garrisoned only by unarmed women, children and a one-eyed man, in the name of an ultimately illusory treasure. Later, we see Richard's successor, King John, claiming dominion over England's religion in his feud with the Pope, which turns the former Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn), who has carved out her own space as the head of a convent, into a fugitive. We see the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) claiming autonomy within his county over the objections of King John's noble representative Sir Ranulf (Kennth Haigh). And we see Robin claiming Sherwood for his own, to live in with Marian and the remaining Merry Men. All of these people, even the altruistic-seeming Robin, do this for their own ends, be it power or glory (as in the songs Robin wishes to be sung about his life). But there's always someone more powerful, and even if you avoid or overcome them, age and death are more powerful still; from them there is no safe space.

That sounds weighty, but this is a Richard Lester film, so you might expect that any thematic heft will be leavened by a bit of silliness and physical humor. There's less of that here than in Lester's Three Musketeers or its sequel, but his deftness of tone is evident even around the more serious subject matter. The film is set largely after Robin and Little John return from Richard's campaign in France, some twenty years after their most famous run-ins with then-Prince John and the Sheriff. Everyone involved has aged, and though they may pretend otherwise, none of them has truly moved on. As such, James Goldman's script walks a delicate line, handling the later years of these forever-young icons with a light, almost melancholy touch. For some of them, the safe space they are attempting to create is one they are trying to reclaim out of nostalgia for their youthful exploits. For others, it's a space they need as a buffer from a past that hasn't quite left them behind.

Lester isn't exactly known as an "actor's director," but here he coaxes fine performances out of his cast, who lift the material above what amounts to a fairly slight story. The chief standouts are Shaw's older, wiser, Nottingham, who seems to have learned a new respect for Robin during his adversary's absence, and Williamson's big-hearted Little John, whose relationship (romance?) with Robin is almost more moving than Robin and Marian's. Connery himself does fine work as the belligerently roguish Robin. Indeed, one of Robin and Marian's triumphs is how, despite being a Robin Hood film,  it mocks heroism and bloody-mindedness by turning Robin into a tragic fool via his battle-lust and need for glory. This is of a piece with a lot of Lester's work, where the futility of combat is shown through absurd humor. That's a lot to unpack for what is essentially a trifle, but this unexpected, bittersweet depth is what makes Robin and Marian such a pleasure.

FI: Trance

Trance
UK, 2013
Directed by Danny Boyle

Danny Boyle has long been one of our most kinetic filmmakers, though that sense of flash and motion has been put to "nobler" uses in recent years with award-winning films like Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours. With Trance, Boyle seems to be returning to the grimier, smaller-scale material he used to visit in films like Shallow Grave or Trainspotting. Here, Simon (James McAvoy) is an auctioneer with a gambling problem who teams up with Franck (Vincent Cassel) and his criminal organization to steal a valuable Goya painting. Only, for reasons he can't explain, Simon removes the painting from its frame before Franck can get it, and after a blow to the head, can no longer remember where he put it. Franck and Simon enlist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), a Harley Street hypnotherapist, to try and recover the memory. Soon, the three are tied together in trying to unravel the mysteries of Simon's mind in a game of cat and mouse where everyone's motivations conflict and, as the cliché goes, nothing is as it seems.

Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle shoot in a hyper-stylized, color saturated palette, with scenes resembling the giallo films of Dario Argento or Mario Bava in their use of colored light and limited tonal ranges. Locations and sets have a dreamlike quality, which isn't helped by their subsequent appearance in Simon's mind during hypnotherapy sessions. All of this combines to let us know we're on shaky ground, as far as the reality of what's on screen is concerned. Throughout, the script by Joe Ahearne and John Hodge twists and turns in an attempt to fool us and subvert our sympathies. With the clues they plant early on, we might come close to guessing some of the film's revelations on our own, though the ultimate direction the film takes seems forced and more than a little preposterous.

Even so, there's nothing too terribly wrong with Trance. It's entertaining enough while it's on, though it suffers in comparison to something like Inception, which played in mental landscapes without letting its twists and ambiguities feel like authorial interventions rather than organic parts of the story being told. I had some issues with the film's psychology and gender politics, and I'm not sure whether another viewing would clear those things up or make them stand out even more now that I know the end game. Still, all three leads do well with their problematic roles, with Cassel and Dawson coming off the best. It's not bad for a film made during Boyle's down time while directing the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics, and I can only hope he keeps returning to smaller, nastier fare like this even as his global profile soars.

Criteritron #5

The Criteritron is an occasional series in which I take a look at The Criterion Collection's vast offerings on HuluPlus and recommend a title (or, in this case, titles) to watch.

The Criteritron #5: Six Moral Tales
The Bakery Girl of Monceau (short, 1963)
Suzanne's Career (short, 1963)
My Night at Maud's (1969)
The Collector (1967)
Claire's Knee (1970)
Love in the Afternoon (1972)
France
Directed and written/co-written by Éric Rohmer

What is it?: A set of films united by a common theme. In each, a male protagonist makes a choice between two (or more) women: the one he's chasing or currently in a relationship with, and the one(s) who might tempt him to go astray. While that could seem like a recipe for patriarchal nonsense, it's fairly clear that Rohmer is never fully on-board with the self-justifying morality of his protagonists. He's simply interested in the process by which they convince (or delude) themselves of the righteousness of their actions, regardless of self-contradiction and hypocrisy. Some of the heroes (like Barbet Schroeder's lead in The Bakery Girl of Monceau) seem less tolerable than others, though they're all at least a little douchey, which gives Rohmer a lot of room to play with shading and nuance. Though each of the films takes a different approach—morally, philosophically, and ethically—they all share a methodical pace, literary dialogue and narration, and an obsession with inner lives.

Why Watch It?: Because, apart from anything else, the films have had a huge influence on filmmakers to this day. Rohmer may have been the least flashy member of the French New Wave, but his hallmarks can be seen nearly as often as those of Godard or Truffaut. While Bergman and Fellini are usually seen as Woody Allen's main points of reference, it's hard not to see something of Rohmer in his intellectual preoccupations and frequent love triangles (particularly in Manhattan and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which feels more like a Moral Tale than any other). Even Chris Rock (and co-writer Louis CK) remade Love in the Afternoon as I Think I Love My Wife in 2007. But leaving aside influence, the films are worthwhile in and of themselves. The four feature-length pictures were shot by legendary cinematographer Néstor Almendros (an Oscar winner for Days of Heaven), and his eye adds a beautiful visual complement to Rohmer's wordiness and inward focus. Furthermore, the Moral Tales possess an intelligence and rigor that is rare in modern films, though they are self-aware enough to mock their characters' pretensions— which might be the only way some audiences could get past the sort of privileged academic wankery in which these characters indulge.

If I had to recommend a single one of the six to watch, I'd go with My Night at Maud's, which stars Amour's Jean-Louis Trintignant as a Catholic man who spends a long evening philosophizing with an old friend and her liberated divorcée pal Maud (Françoise Fabian). The tenor of the debate, the (comparative) decency of Trintignant's character, and his easy chemistry with the seductive Maud make this the most accessible of the Moral Tales—and the only one nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. It's fun to watch Jean-Louis tie himself up in knots to make room in his worldview for a woman like Maud, but at the same time, the film itself clearly sympathizes with Maud and not how the world sees her.

If you prefer to start at the beginning of the series, that's fine, although there's no serialization and no thematic reason to do so. The two shorts, however, are by far the weakest entries in the series, so you don't miss too much by beginning with Maud as I suggest.

The Six Moral Tales are available for purchase on DVD in a Criterion box set, and each can be rented individually from Netflix. You can also stream all six via HuluPlus on any compatible device. My Night at Maud's can also be streamed through the embedded player below the cut.

FI: Shotgun Stories

Shotgun Stories
US, 2007
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols

When we first meet Son Hayes (Michael Shannon), he's shirtless, a scatter plot of scars across his back telling us he once took a shotgun blast, though it's a long time before we find out why. Shotgun Stories has a lot of that sort of confidence in its audience. It does not announce its intentions or waste much time on exposition, preferring to let us fill in the gaps as it ambles along. The film eases us into the ambiance of the rural Arkansas town where Son and his brothers Kid (Barlow Jacobs) and Boy (Douglas Ligon) live. We eventually realize that their generic names are likely a gift from their deadbeat father, a way to show how little he cared before finally leaving them and their vindictive mother (Vivian Morrison Norman) to start another family he liked better across town. But now he's dead, and a dust-up between Son and his hated half-brothers—all of whom have normal names, to add insult to injury—at their father's funeral leads to an escalating series of violent clashes. This cycle of inherited enmity, of parents poisoning the future for their children, is at the film's heart.

Shotgun Stories is the feature debut of writer/director Jeff Nichols, who would go on to work with Michael Shannon again in the excellent Take Shelter and this year's Mud. Nichols's films show an understanding of the turbulent inner lives of taciturn Southern men, men who were taught to do right by their families at all costs. Here, he captures the sense of pride and inevitability that keeps the two Hayes families fighting even when they know they shouldn't. Along the way, Nichols creates a strong sense of place, evoking the isolated, entrapping nature of the town through pacing and imagery without having to say much about it. It's a place where degrees of poverty matter, where even a bit more prosperity makes a huge difference. It's all on the screen, but it's up to you to look for it.

In that way, Shotgun Stories is more mental than physical, more interested in the potential for violence and the traces—both psychic and tangible (like Son's shotgun scars)—that violence leaves behind. Nichols has crafted a tone piece, populated by believable characters who give that tone color and shade. A lot happens in the interstices, either off-screen or before the film begins. Between this, and the closed-off nature of its characters due to Nichols's vision of stoic masculinity, the film may feel a little cold and slight as it approaches its conclusion. Still, Shotgun Stories is an admirable start to a promising career, and repays your careful attention if you give it half a chance.

Should you wish to see for yourself, Shotgun Stories is currently streaming on Netflix in the US.

Weekend Stream for 08/23/13

The Weekend Stream is a weekly feature curating content for you to watch this weekend from the current selection on Netflix's US streaming service. Since titles can disappear with little or no warning, there's always a chance a title will no longer be available by the time you read this, so you'd better act fast, champ!

Weekend Stream for 08/23/13

For this edition of the Weekend Stream, we've got a documentary that comments on (or, perhaps exploits) some of the same themes from today's review of Amour, a throwback Japanese samurai epic with one of the greatest battle scenes ever staged, and a critically-beloved yet underwatched detective show.

First up, that documentary. Young@Heart is about the Young@Heart Chorus, a senior citizens' singing group led by director Bob Cilman. In Stephen Walker's film, we get to watch as the volatile Cilman demands the best out of his elderly performers, getting them to put on a show featuring a mix of oldies and modern pop/rock tracks. We're privy to the specific challenges of working with that demographic, from forgetfulness, to physical limitations, to all the illnesses, injuries, and deaths that the performers wind up confronting. There's a certain amount of objectifying cuteness inherent to the project that seems like it could almost sink the film, but ultimately we're won over by the group's dedication and the love they clearly have for performing (and for each other). A moving, inspiring look at the elders who our society too easily shunts aside, Young@Heart shoots straight for our hearts, and hits us dead-on. Bring tissues.

Amour: Real Love

Amour
Austria/France/Germany, 2012
Written and directed by Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke can be a difficult director to like. His work is challenging, often provocative, and occasionally confrontational to the point of feeling like a lecture. But Amour, which won Haneke his second Palme D'Or at Cannes, might be his most tender and accessible work yet. It's not all light and rainbows, by any means, but the film is less concerned with audience-baiting and social problems, and more interested in painting an intimate, unsentimental portrait of what it means to follow the standard vows "in sickness and in health [...] 'til death do us part" to their logical conclusion. It is a love story, as the title suggests, but one set in neither the demographic nor the mode of Hollywood romance, where love is a product to sell or a quirk looking for its complement. This is the maturity of love, when the word itself becomes synonymous with coexistence, commitment, and mutual responsibility. This love hurts, but in a very different way than the songs tell us.

An Apology

I just wanted to take this opportunity to apologize to you, dear readers, for a personal failing. In this space, today, you were supposed to have gotten my First Impressions piece about Carlos Reygadas's Post Tenebras Lux, which I watched Tuesday night. But I am unable to deliver that piece to you because I don't feel that what I could tell you about the film would be helpful in any real sense.

Simply put, I did not connect with the movie at all.

I've reviewed films like this before, and I'm sure I could again put together a convincing piece, summarizing the plot and the film's stylistic tics, then detailing my problems with its execution. But I don't think blaming the movie for my own reaction to it would be ethical, in a critical sense, here. In this case, I'm certain that Post Tenebras Lux has merit. It has craft. It plays with ideas and the art form itself. It has received praise from several respected critics, and even I felt as though there was something worthwhile in it. But I had neither the wherewithal nor, more importantly, the desire, to ferret out what that was.

Obviously, were I being paid to write these little reviews, I would have given the film another shot. Perhaps I would have focused better or been more compelled to care. But that's not fair, either. I'm a cinephile. I love movies. I don't watch them because it's profitable to do so—it is, in fact, costly in both money and time. While a paycheck might have motivated me to give you better work, I don't think it would have changed my engagement with the film itself.

The problem, here, is me.

The Bay: Brackish Water

The Bay
US, 2012
Directed by Barry Levinson

The fever of found footage films that followed in the footsteps of Paranormal Activity's revival of the genre had mostly run its course by the time Barry Levinson's The Bay came out last year. Despite its late arrival, The Bay does attempt to do something different with the conceit, crafting "found footage" culled from a range of sources into an issues-based "documentary" with clear authorial intent. It also manages to credibly turn the sight of water into an anxiety-laden potential threat—something The Happening never pulled off with its killer plants. Unfortunately, that's where the positivity ends. Though shot and put together well enough to overcome the audience's genre fatigue, The Bay squanders its potential, suffering from a lack of focus and a repetitive, over-obvious script.

FI: George Washington (2000)

George Washington
US, 2000
Written and Directed by David Gordon Green

Given that writer/director David Gordon Green is back in cinemas with Prince Avalanche, which some critics are calling a return to form following Green's work on stoner fare like Pineapple Express and Your Highness, I thought it was about time for me to see what sort of form Green is meant to be returning to. To that end, George Washington, Green's debut feature, is a quiet, occasionally-Malickian slice-of-life story set among a group of friends in an impoverished Southern town. The most notable thing, perhaps, is how George Washington uses real settings and non-professional actors to give a voice to people often erased from mainstream media. The narrator, Nasia (Candace Evanofski), is a teenage, lower-class, rural black woman, and most of her friends are from the same background. Simply put, they don't make very many movies about people like Nasia, and Green manages it with sensitivity—and without "worthiness," condescension, or self-importance.

The story takes place over the course of a single summer, during which Nasia breaks up with her boyfriend Buddy (Curtis Cotton III) and starts hanging out with George (Donald Holden), a quiet boy with an unfused fontanelle that renders him unable to go underwater or withstand blows to the head. The group, which also includes tough, loyal Vernon (Damian Jewan Lee) and little thief Sonya (Rachael Handy), spend time together making their own fun in the way that kids without possessions or supervision tend to do. There are moments of tragedy and moments of triumph, and Green and cinematographer Tim Orr capture it all in beautiful, often slow-motion images that help elucidate the children's dreams and inner lives. Nasia dreams of growing up, George dreams of making a difference, and Vernon and Sonya just want to get out. The children's story is intercut with scenes involving adults like George's irascible uncle Damascus (Eddie Rouse) and his fellow railroad employee Rico (Paul Schneider), always serving to show how the entrapping nature of life in these poor, out-of-the-way places can crush those dreams and that idealism.

George Washington is somehow both elliptical and frank, both poetic and realistic, but never feels anything less than genuine. Tone, not story, is its primary concern. It is leisurely paced, even given its ~90 minute running time, and yet makes time to depart from the main story for sequences or montages that color the whole without diluting the film's emotional impact. It is a film that makes no overt political argument, yet still somehow challenges orthodox views about American prosperity. It may frustrate some with its lyrical camera and loose plotting, but it is worth the effort. If you'd like to see for yourself, George Washington is streaming via HuluPlus's Criterion Collection channel.

Criteritron #4

The Criteritron is an occasional series in which I take a look at The Criterion Collection's vast offerings on HuluPlus and recommend a title to watch.

The Criteritron #4: Victim
UK, 1961
Directed by Basil Dearden

What Is It?: A call for social reform loosely disguised as a blackmail thriller. Through the story of lawyer Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde) and former lover "Boy" Barrett (Peter McEnery), who run afoul of a criminal extortion plot, Victim shows how the laws that made homosexual acts illegal in the UK left people vulnerable to blackmail, forcing them to pay up to prevent prosecution and blackballing lest their "secret shame" get out. As Farr attempts to root out who is targeting him and Barrett, Dearden and screenwriters Janet Green and John McCormick use the tropes of a standard crime thriller to keep us anxious and involved. In the process, the film wraps us up in the complicated emotions a man in Farr's situation must feel, the tremendous shame and paranoid need for self-protection. Victim presents what was (for the time) a relatively novel, compassionate argument for tolerance and liberty that even cuts across Britain's entrenched class boundaries.



Why Watch It?: Because the world can always use more tolerance. The situation today in Russia, many parts of Africa, and even here in the US demonstrates what happens when the political establishment kowtows to the irrational fear some still have towards LGBTQ people. While Victim isn't exactly a paragon of social justice—there are a few decidedly camp characters, as well as an insistence that Farr isn't SO bad because he and his lover never actually had sex—it nonetheless takes a stand against legislating morality between consenting adults. And Victim is considered a landmark film, in that many point to it as a prime factor in changing public perceptions of homosexuality, contributing to the eventual partial decriminalization of homosexuality in England and Wales in 1967. It's hard to say just how much Victim had to do with this, as pushes for some form of decriminalization were already in the zeitgeist, but as a record of the damage that such unfair laws can inadvertently cause, Victim's importance cannot be overstated.

Victim is available for purchase on DVD in Eclipse's Basil Dearden's London Underground set, or to rent from Netflix. You can also stream Victim via HuluPlus on any compatible device or through the embedded player below the cut.

FI: Persona

Persona
Sweden, 1966
Written and Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Though more commonly known for his intimate, personal dramas and minimalist spiritual musings, Ingmar Bergman was as much of a cinephile as anyone from the nouvelle vague, and occasionally that love of movie-making led to self-awareness within his films. In Persona, there are several moments that remind the audience that they are watching a movie. Its intro calls attention to film projection and rapidly cuts in frames seemingly culled from silent films. Later, near the climax, the physical film itself appears to tear and burn and blow out to white. What all of this means, exactly, and how it relates to the meat of the film, is open to interpretation. Given all of Persona's commentary on doubling and transference, perhaps Bergman is just saying "This is a film, and though it may look like reality, it is just reality's double." Or perhaps not.

As for Persona's story, it concerns a nurse, Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson), tending to a post-breakdown actress, Elisabet (Liv Ullmann), who is cleared as physically and mentally healthy, but who stopped speaking during a performance and hasn't said a word since. The head doctor sends Alma and Elisabet away to her summer house by the sea, where the nurse can see to the actress's recovery in a more comfortable, less anxious environment. From here, the film becomes a two-woman show, with Alma chatting almost non-stop and Elisabet reacting, at first politely, then more intimately as the pair become friendly. If the tone of the film and the tenor of Alma's monologues have you questioning just who is in therapy, well, maybe that's the point. Bergman uses the women's closeness and physical similarity to play out ideas of transference and duality.

Bergman's images, brought to life by Sven Nykvist's stark, high-contrast black and white cinematography, are among cinema's most copied. A famous shot, with Ullmann facing the camera and Andersson in profile, their mouths aligned, is one of the most striking visualizations of the women's merging personalities. Both actresses are superb; though Andersson's emotive speeches give her slightly more opportunities to shine, Ullmann nonetheless dominates in spite of being functionally mute, which is some feat. If I said I know exactly what Bergman is trying to say, I'd be lying. There are comments and incidents that suggest a critique of the roles women are societally expected to perform, but that's only part of the story. Yet I was fully engrossed, to the extent that questioning what it all "meant" was secondary to simply experiencing the film as it is.

Weekend Stream for 8/16/13

The Weekend Stream is a weekly feature recommending content currently available on Netflix's Watch Instantly service in the US for you to watch this weekend. Since titles can disappear with little or no warning, there's always a chance a title will no longer be available by the time you read this, so you'd better act fast, bozo!

Weekend Stream for 08/16/13

For this week's picks, I've got a fascinating foreign time travel misadventure, a film featuring the next Doctor in his most famous role, and a British TV series you really ought to have watched by now.

First up, we have Timecrimes, a Spanish sci-fi film by director Nacho Vigalondo. Héctor (Karra Elejalde) is a normal guy who finds himself stabbed and pursued by a mysterious figure with pink bandages covering his face. After taking refuge in a mysterious institute near his home, he winds up traveling back in time. Unlike a lot of time travel films, this is no epic, years-spanning yarn; Héctor only goes back a few hours. Instead of the pleasure of imagining the distant past or future, Timecrimes involves us in a simple mystery whose complexity expands as the layers pile up. Vigalondo keeps us invested, balancing tension with just the right amount of wry self-awareness. Héctor is largely a comic figure, and Elejalde captures his buffoonery and thickheadedness well, displaying an aptitude for physical comedy. Understanding Timecrimes's plot probably won't require multiple viewings, and though there's more to appreciate on subsequent watches, I found it thoroughly satisfying even the first time through.



Next, there's In The Loop, the film adaptation of Armando Iannucci's British political satire The Thick Of It. Starring future 12th Doctor Peter Capaldi as poetically foul-mouthed Whitehall spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, In The Loop is about the inherent absurdity of the political process. An unimportant Cabinet Minister (Tom Hollander) makes a minor misstatement to the press, and winds up both the target of Tucker's ire and a pawn in an international warmongering agenda. Featuring strong supporting turns from James Gandolfini and My Girl's Anna Chlumsky (who would later return to Iannucci's stable for the similarly-themed HBO show Veep), In The Loop is the sort of biting satire that you hope is not as true-to-life as it probably is. Iannucci and his cowriters know their subject, and understand how to milk humor out of cringeworthy moments and out-and-out farce. The jokes come fast and furious, so this is definitely not the sort of movie to put on in the background.



Finally, we have Spaced, a now-classic British comedy series from writers Jessica Stevenson and Simon Pegg, and director Edgar Wright—all of whom (along with Nick Frost, who appears in a supporting role here) would later go on to be involved with breakout hit film Shaun of the Dead. Ostensibly the tale of near-strangers Tim (Pegg) and Daisy (Stevenson) pretending to be a "professional couple" in order to qualify for a flat in Marsha's (Julia Deakin) house, Spaced is really a playground where the writers and director can stick all of their pop culture references on a roundabout and spin them until they fall off in interesting combinations. Wright's hyperactive directorial style is already in effect, as is his love of well-intentioned genre parody. But the most important thing about Spaced is that, even with its references and post-modern verve, it still has a huge, emotional, beating heart at its center. There are only fourteen episodes, but I don't recommend binge-watching. You're better off parceling them out like a sweet to be savored after supper.

.

So there you have it for another Weekend Stream. I realize this edition was weighted towards British "humour," so my apologies if you're not really into that—though I think both In the Loop and Spaced have strong enough comedy chops that they'll connect for you anyway. In any case, we'll see you next week!

FI: The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
Canada/France, 1977
Directed by Nicolas Gessner

When you were young, did you have a friend whose parents you just never met? Maybe they were always working, or just popped out for a jog, or were otherwise conveniently occupied whenever you came over. Maybe your friend seemed a bit nervous whenever you mentioned this, to the extent that you kinda thought they didn't have parents at all? Well, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane basically takes that as its premise, feeling like the anxiety-filled flip side to one of Hal Ashby's outsider comedies. Here, resourceful 13-year-old Rynn (Jodie Foster) keeps up appearances in an attempt to fool her small Long Island village into thinking she's not living by herself. Unfortunately, Rynn's façade begins to crack when landlady Mrs. Hallet (Alexis Smith) and her predatory adult son Frank (Martin Sheen) come calling, leaving her in a dangerous situation.

As a sort of exploitation film where most of the exploitation happens off-screen, Little Girl lives and dies by the creepiness and discomfort it instills in its audience. Director Nicolas Gessner holds shots for just a little too long, or leads with the camera in ways that makes you anticipate bad things before they actually happen. The script, adapted by Laird Koenig from his own novel, focuses on these psychological thrills, and on the games of cat-and-mouse Rynn plays to protect her secrets. But it also holds back details and builds a mystery around just how and why Rynn has wound up alone. That mystery's resolution may or may not feel satisfying, but it is intriguing while it lasts.

Little Girl derives the majority of its creep-factor from its universally-excellent cast. Sheen's oily, sadistic performance is matched by Smith's embodiment of WASP-y, self-important small-town royalty; though both characters strain credibility, they are of a piece with the film's tone, and both actors keep them just recognizable enough to remain grounded. In the lead role, Foster belies her age with a cold, business-like dedication to doing whatever it takes to remain independent. With a less effective young star, this would fall apart, but Foster has the impetuous spunk and precocious intelligence to drive the film's action and fuel its mysteries. It may seem a little slight, even for its 91-minute running time, but Little Girl is pulpy and entertaining enough to overcome its issues.

FYI: If you'd like to judge for yourself, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is available to stream on Netflix Watch Instantly (at the time of publication).

FI: The Deal

The Deal

UK (Channel 4), 2003

Directed by Stephen Frears

Originally aired on television in the UK,  The Deal is the first outing by the creative team that would later make the theatrically-released The Queen (with Helen Mirren) and BBC2/HBO's The Special Relationship (with Dennis Quaid as Bill Clinton). Here, writer Peter Morgan, director Stephen Frears, and star Michael Sheen (as Tony Blair) come together to tell the story of the battle for the soul of the Labour party between Blair and Gordon Brown (David Morrissey, best known in the US as The Governor on The Walking Dead). The two men enter Parliament at the same time in 1983, with Labour in the weeds during Thatcher's reign, and each has his own ideas as to how to "modernize" the party.

From the restaurant where the titular deal—Brown standing aside to let Blair contest the party leadership—takes place, Morgan's script flashes back to the pair's early days as Labour backbenchers, highlighting the men's friendship in spite of their differing public personae. Brown is an intellectual, fiery, sharp-tempered Scot seen as the party's rising star, while Blair is a politically savvy, smooth-yet-dangerous centrist derisively called a Tory for his heterodoxy. Both actors do well to embody their characters' core traits without resorting to impersonations of the men on whom they're based. Brown is the film's focus, up to the point where Blair rises to steal the spotlight (and the party leadership) from him. But the breakout performance, here, comes from Paul Rhys, whose Machiavellian turn as Peter Mandelson enables the film's major conflicts.

But, aside from its performances and its putative "behind the scenes" look at how an era of British politics came about, there's not a ton(ne?) here to make the film worth revisiting now from a cinephile's perspective. Due perhaps to its televisual origins, The Deal is a very short, not terribly flashy film. As is his wont even in his theatrical pictures, Frears lets the material speak for itself, eschewing stylistic flourishes in favor of clarity and economical, engaging storytelling. That he and Morgan make parliamentary politics as interesting as they do is definitely to their credit, but as the Blair/Brown era recedes into history, so too does the film's relevance. Perhaps the deal Nick Clegg and David Cameron made to resolve a hung Parliament and ultimately remove Brown from the office he waited so long to take would make an interesting sequel?

To the Wonder: Intimacy and Distance

To the Wonder
US, 2012
Written and Directed by Terrence Malick

Wikipedia classifies To the Wonder as a "romantic drama" film, but that's a very misleading description. Love Story is a "romantic drama." Casablanca is, too, as are a good many films noirs and melodramas. To the Wonder is something else entirely. Most films do one of two things: reveal plot through character, or illuminate character through plot. I'm not sure To the Wonder really qualifies as having either characters or plot. Instead, it seems to be a film that exists to reveal emotion through film style, and perhaps to convey director Terrence Malick's thoughts on his own struggles with love and faith.

The film focuses on a couple, played by Ben Affleck and the luminous Olga Kurylenko. Their names don't matter much, nor does much else about them. They meet in Europe, where she lives with her young daughter (Tatiana Chiline), and fall in love. Eventually she and her daughter move to Oklahoma to be with him, but, like any relationship, what starts white-hot slowly cools—especially when an old flame (Rachel McAdams) enters the picture. Also in Oklahoma, there is a lonely Spanish priest (Javier Bardem) who struggles with that old Bergman conceit, "God's Silence," even as he attempts to console the downtrodden, infirm, and incarcerated. As far as plot and character go, that's more or less it.

The film's focus is elsewhere, on the aesthetics of its shot selection, on Emmanuel Lubezki's unbelievably gorgeous cinematography and ceaselessly-moving camera, and on Malick's trademarked hushed voice-overs, provided here by several castmembers. Because so little of who these people are gets conveyed through traditional means—the film has very little audible dialogue and few dramatic scenes—these bits of internal monologue bring us as close to the characters as we are going to get. Which, sadly, isn't very close at all. Bardem's character feels like he's in a different movie entirely; in spite of his occasional interactions with our central duo, he just never connects. And while, yes, disconnectedness is one of the film's primary themes, this feels more like a lack of focus in the original concept—an assertion backed up by the number of actors who filmed sequences that were eventually excised in toto from the film. This gives the impression that, although Malick clearly had emotional and tonal aims, here, the story was always secondary.

Once you sweep past the beauty of To the Wonder's images (and, indeed, they are some of the most beautiful I've seen in years) and the small, affecting moments Malick captures on his actors' faces, it's hard to say how much is really going on. There's a lot of imagery suggesting loneliness, isolation, and the inability to truly know another person, though its deployment is far from efficient. Still, if you're stirred by the impressionistic collage of elliptically-edited shots of Kurylenko frolicking or moping while Affleck places a firm, paternal hand on her shoulder—without that paternalistic vibe putting you off—then Malick has probably achieved what he wanted. But if you`find yourself struggling to relate to these people, or overwhelmed by the voice-over's philosophical wankery, or simply looking for a narrative hook to hang your hat on, well, firstly, why are you watching a Terrence Malick movie? And secondly, you're not wrong.

This isn't a film that will work for everyone, or even for most people, and that's not because it's something sublime that goes over everyone's heads. It's because not everyone works in this poetic/emotional/spiritual register, and Malick isn't interested in using standard narrative techniques to bridge the gap. That's not to say the film is flawless, even to those people for whom it does work. It's draggy, repetitive, and simultaneously sexualizes, infantilizes, and idealizes its female lead. It's somehow less plot focused, and, therefore, more difficult to grapple with, than the similar (and better) The Tree of Life. And it is a film about intimacy that never invites us to become intimate with the people who drift through its scenes. These are legitimate issues. Whether or not you can look past them is on you. For me, I admired To the Wonder's vision and visuals without ever finding that they touched me, in mind or in spirit.

FI: Touchez pas au grisbi

Touchez pas au grisbi
France, 1954
Directed and co-written by Jacques Becker

A great sense of atmosphere suffuses the methodical, noir-tinged gangster movie Touchez pas au grisbi. Most of this atmosphere is conveyed by the combination of director Jacques Becker's stark compositions and deliberate pacing, and Pierre Montazel's low-key cinematography. But so much of the film's tone is set solely by star Jean Gabin's face. Gabin had been one of France's biggest stars in the '30s, but by 1954 that star had waned somewhat, and his hard-lived years had begun to show. Here, however, Gabin uses his wrinkled, puffy visage as an asset in conveying old-school gangster Max's slow, weary detachment from the lifestyle that used to thrill him. Touchez pas au grisbi is less about dashing gangsters committing crimes and plotting heists, and more about attempting to age with dignity and class while protecting and caring for what's yours—whether friendships, relationships, ill-gotten gains, or even your self image.

Prior to the film, Max and his friend Riton (René Dary) have committed a daring "last heist" of eight massive gold bars, keeping their own involvement hidden from everyone, including associates Angelo (Lino Ventura) and Pierrot (Paul Frankeur). But the impulsive Riton blabs to his showgirl girlfriend Josy (a young Jeanne Moreau), unaware that she's having an affair with Angelo. Once Angelo finds out about the gold, Max is again forced to cover for his friend while protecting their retirement nest egg at any cost. The film's central conflict then becomes one of the old school—Max, Riton, Pierrot— who prefer loyalty and due diligence, versus the youthful Angelo and his disrespectful, corner-cutting crew.

The film's slower moments might throw you off, but they are used to establish Max's thoroughness and love of doing things properly, contrasting his patience with the younger characters' poor planning and impulsive violence. The film is also concerned with image and perception: Max wants to seem benevolent and legitimate, Riton wants to seem younger and flashier, and Angelo wants to be the baddest guy in town, and their conflict brings out the distance between each man's image and reality. In spite of his image, Max is no angel, and the film demonstrates how even your meticulously-planned "retirement" can be thrown off track by the same violent methods you previously employed. Violence is fact of life for gangsters; the things that motivate its use may change, but it never goes away. It's this fatalism, rooted in the noble futility of doing the right thing, that makes Touchez pas au grisbi special.

Criteritron #3

The Criteritron is an occasional series in which I take a look at The Criterion Collection's vast offerings on HuluPlus and recommend a title to watch.

The Criteritron #3: F for Fake
France/Iran/West Germany, 1974
Directed and co-written (with Oja Kodar) by Orson Welles

What Is It?: An "essay film"—neither a straight documentary nor a straight fiction—in which the iconic Orson Welles opines on the nature of authenticity, forgery, magic, and art. Welles uses the example of notorious art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving—who was, himself, be embroiled in controversy during filming over his forged autobiography of Howard Hughes (as depicted in The Hoax)—to expound upon the place of lying and trickery in art. Along the way, Welles discusses his own famous "War of the Worlds" hoax, and questions the merits of using authorship and "expertise" to determine a work's value. The whole thing is shot through with Welles's stentorian narration and lightly ironic, winking charm, yet occasionally becomes touchingly profound, as in this famous scene:

Why Watch It?: As the last major completed film of Welles's directorial career, F for Fake is essential viewing for cinephiles and completists alike, but that is sort of a boring reason, no? Really, you should watch F for Fake because it manages to be engaging, insightful, and hilarious all while making us think and question our perspective on life, film, and art. Welles and editors Marie-Sophie Dubus and Dominique Engerer cut the film together from a range of sources, fusing existing footage, recreations, newsreel, newly-shot sequences, and Welles's direct-to-camera addresses into a cohesive argument. In some ways, F for Fake is the ur-text for the sort of documentaries we're seeing in the form's renaissance today—it's hard to imagine things like Man on Wire or The Impostor existing without Welles's influence. The film offers a rare chance to watch a master use all of the tools of his mastered art form to bend the medium to his will and make it organically express his opinion, without seeming to lecture or finger-wag. And, even after all providing so much intellectual exercise, F for Fake is just plain fun to watch, especially when Welles begins to pull back the curtain on his own trickery along the way.

F for Fake is available for purchase on DVD, or to rent from Netflix, but can also be streamed via HuluPlus on any compatible device or through the embedded player below the cut.

FI: Baby Face

Baby Face (Pre-release Version)
US, 1933
Directed by Alfred E. Green

When I saw that Netflix's DVD of Baby Face originated from a box set called Forbidden Hollywood, I should have known what to expect, but I had no idea just how risqué and taboo-breaking this film would be. Baby Face tells the story of Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck), a young woman more or less forced into prostitution by her speakeasy-owning father. She takes advice from an older, Nietzsche-quoting friend (Alphonse Ethier), who suggests she use her sexuality to take what she wants from men. Eventually she leaves town with her friend Chico (Theresa Harris)—in an example of an almost-unheard-of, at the time, cross-racial screen friendship—and begins to sleep her way to the top of a Manhattan bank.

This sort of scabrous plotline was only possible in the Pre-Code era. While nothing explicit is shown, what's going on is made fairly clear. Once Joseph Breen began enforcing the Production Code, any implication of premarital (or extra-marital) sex in films had to be eliminated, punished, or moralized away. While there is some moralization here—and the version of Baby Face that was actually released in 1933 was edited to be even more judgmental—Lily is still portrayed sympathetically, if a bit coldly, despite her siren-like ways and insatiable appetite for sex and status. Though we aren't meant to approve of her methods, the film never puts us into a position where we feel too badly for her victims—including a young John Wayne!—even when we see the deep toll her actions can take on their lives. Lily is an antiheroine out of the same mold as today's TV antiheroes like Don Draper and Tony Soprano. She's a uniquely strong female character whom the film never objectifies, whether as a youthful victim or an adult victimizer, and Stanwyck is perfectly cast in the role.

The script, pseudonymously written by future 20th Century Fox head Daryl F. Zanuck, crackles with wit and takes a certain grim pleasure in Lily's various seductions. Director Alfred E. Green builds in visual and aural motifs to signify her rise and the means by which she achieves it, but keeps the tone light to match the script's dark wit. Baby Face may not be a "great" film, for a variety of reasons, but it is an important one, a frankly sexual, bizarrely empowering look at the scant options available to a lower-class woman in the '30s. Plus, it's the source of one of my favorite animated GIFs on Tumblr, so how can you really go wrong?

Weekend Stream for 8/09/13

The Weekend Stream is a weekly feature recommending titles currently available on US Netflix's Watch Instantly service for you to watch this weekend. Since titles can disappear with little or no warning, there's always a chance a film will no longer be available by the time you read this, so you'd better act fast, bozo!

Weekend Stream for 08/09/13

This week's picks include two movies that play with genre, and a great underwatched TV series. First up is Steven Soderbergh's Haywire, a beat-em-up action flick that is just self-aware enough to point at its own exploitation film conventions without tipping over into parody. The other main twist, of course, is that the film's protagonist and prime beater-upper is a woman, MMA fighter Gina Carano. Carano is not the greatest actress, but she is definitely the most convincing action star I've seen in ages. One of the film's chief pleasures is watching her fight macho guys like Channing Tatum and Michael Fassbender knowing that she's really taking it easy on them. While the film is definitely light on plot, it's still an engaging piece of kinetic cinema, and Soderbergh keeps things breezily moving along (as he always does). Action films are rarely intelligent without taking themselves too seriously, but Soderbergh manages it here with panache.

FI: The Insider

The Insider
1999, US
Directed and co-written (with Eric Roth) by Michael Mann

A film like Michael Mann's The Insider is a rare thing: it takes an issue that could seem boring or uninteresting—Big Tobacco's pretense of plausible deniability regarding nicotine's addictive properties—and, without resorting to cheap cliche, finds a way to build a compelling, propulsive thriller around it. It's not a thriller of action, or of physical peril, but a thriller about a truth in danger of being smothered by power, money, and fear. But while that truth revolves around a tobacco whistleblower, the story at the film's heart is about the death throes of journalism in the face of media conglomerates and infotainment.

The Insider tells the true story of recently-fired scientist/executive Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) and 60 Minutes journalist Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), who work together to find holes in Big Tobacco's legal strategy and expose the industry's complicity in its products' health risks. Mann does well dramatizing the chess match between both sides, with all of its attendant procedural beats, and his and Eric Roth's script ramps up the stakes as the drama requires. Mann's handheld cameras and claustrophobic angles help us feel Wigand's vulnerability and paranoia as the industry's mind games destabilize his life. Crowe was the Oscar nominee, here, and deservedly so, but all of the performers are at the top of their games—both the leads and the stand-out supporting cast like Christopher Plummer as the legendary Mike Wallace and Bruce McGill as fiery attorney Ron Motley.

But beyond the legal struggle, the film is about how we get information, about who we can trust and whose interests the "truths" we receive might really be serving. The Insider lets us into the world of TV journalism, and we see both the egos at play and the shifting power balance between diligent reportage and corporate oversight. Though some of these concepts are well-worn—one of my favorite films, Network, satirized similar issues in 1976—it never hurts to be reminded of the forces arrayed against letting the truth get out. Despite a bit of excess in its 2.5-hour running time, The Insider remains a taut, magnetic film, and a powerful reminder of the personal and professional cost of going against the grain for the greater good.

FI: The Shop on Main Street

The Shop on Main Street / Obchod na korze
Czechoslovakia, 1965
Directed and co-written by Ján Kadár

In America, central Europe remains a forgotten front as far as media representation of World War II goes. If it's not the Battle of Britain, Dunkirk, occupied Paris, D-Day, or some tale of US liberation, odds are we haven't learned much about it in schools or seen it on our screens. That's just one of the things that makes Ján Kadár's The Shop on Main Street remarkable. Produced in the then-Soviet former Czechoslovakia, the film depicts the Nazi occupation of the Slovak state not so much as a foreign power conquering from without, but as a corruption of collusion destroying a small town from within. The "bad guys" aren't Germans, but ambitious, power-seeking Slovaks, which makes it easy for the town's citizens to write them off. But like a cancer, they are a problem ignored at one's own peril.

Our focus in the story is Tóno (Jozef Kroner), a work-a-day carpenter struggling under the new Fascist regime, a regime he doesn't agree with or expect to last. He's henpecked by his wife (Hana Slivková) and condescended to by his brother-in-law Kolkotský (František Zvarík), whose collaboration has led to a promotion to Town Commander. Under the regime's Aryanization policy, Kolkotský assigns Tóno to work as the Aryan manager of one of the town's Jewish shops, run by the elderly widow Lautmannová (Ida Kamińska). Through Tóno's relationship with her (and the underground Jewish organization that supports her shop), the film examines how even a culture integrated with and largely indifferent to the Jews could find itself swept up in creeping Nazism without grasping its ramifications until far too late.

Kadár performs something like a magic act in the way he subtly plays with and shifts The Shop on Main Street's tone. Tóno, perpetually accompanied by his faithful dog Essenc, is presented to us as the comic archetype of the browbeaten, underachieving husband. His sarcasm, boozing, and self-justification are comedic indicators, and Kroner plays the character with aplomb. While Zdeněk Liška's score lampoons nationalistic pride with repeated, triumphal refrains, it also strikes discordant, eerie notes throughout. Slowly, the film shifts registers until its tone matches the score, and (much like the Slovak village Main Street depicts), we come to realize too late that what we thought was a comedy was, in fact, the darkest of tragedies all along.

FI: Pulp

Pulp
UK, 1972
Written and Directed by Mike Hodges

Mike Hodges's first feature, the gritty Michael Caine revenge picture Get Carter, is a strong, impressionistic, tightly-wound thriller, now widely considered a classic. In that light, his next film, 1972's Pulp, seems a strange choice for a follow-up. A tongue-in-cheek detective parody, Pulp also stars Caine as Mickey King, a writer of trashy gangster stories under a range of baudy pseudonyms. One day, King receives a rich offer to ghostwrite an autobiography for a mysterious celebrity, and undertakes a journey to Malta to meet with his subject. Along the way, he gets embroiled in a complicated plot of murder and sex that wouldn't feel out of place in one of his pulp tales.

Caine is, as ever, an enjoyable screen presence, and Mickey Rooney does well in his brief turn as King's benefactor, a retired has-been actor with mob ties. But, as winning as those two are, there's just no getting around the film's curious lack of drive. Hodges struggles to meld Pulp's comic and serious elements into a cohesive whole. Caine's narration is a bit too on-the-nose and arch, an apt demonstration of King's lousy writing, but this quality makes it an ineffective storytelling crutch for Hodges to lean on as often as he does. The film also suffers from extreme pacing problems; the central mystery King needs to solve doesn't kick in until over an hour into Pulp's ninety-five-minute running time. It's easy to read even these flaws as further meta-commentary about King's lack of authorial chops, but the whole affair is too frightfully dull and inconsequential for the gag to come off. By the time Pulp reaches its abrupt, unsatisfying conclusion, you'll likely be left wondering just what the point was. Not funny enough to be a comedy and far too slight to be a thriller, Pulp loses itself in the middle ground and never recovers.

FI: Starbuck

Starbuck
Canada, 2011
Directed and Co-written (with Martin Petit) by Ken Scott

Perhaps its a reflection of our recession-struck times, but American comedies today largely focus on 30/40-something manchildren facing crises that force them to grow up over the course of the film. It's interesting, then, to see this arrested development trope translated to other cultures. With Starbuck, we get a chance to see a French-Canadian take on these themes, which lends a slightly new, charming flavor to a concept that's largely gone stale here at home.

Starbuck is about David Wozniak (Patrick Huard), a kind but ambition-free fellow who ineptly toils as the delivery man at his family's butcher shop, a job which he'd almost certainly have lost if he weren't in the family. David is deeply in debt to some gangster-types, and it seems unlikely that his dull schemes will ever solve his problems. His girlfriend Valérie (Julie LeBreton) is pregnant, and she isn't sure David is mature and stable enough to be a parent, which is where the film's gimmick kicks in: some 20-odd years earlier, David lived next to a sperm bank and made frequent donations for cash under the codename "Starbuck." Now, a lawyer from the clinic informs David that his sperm was somehow given to every client, resulting in over five hundred children, a sizable portion of whom are suing to discover Starbuck's identity. At first apprehensive, David begins reading the files of the class action kids and anonymously insinuating himself into their lives like some sort of guardian angel, believing this to be his true calling. Though we (obviously) only have time to meet a handful of the children, David's encounters with them range from sentimental and cutesy to genuinely touching. He continues protecting his identity in the hopes of winning enough in a counter-suit to cover his debts, but it's clear from the glow on his face that David enjoys his progeny and wants the connection to be mutual.

Scott and co-writer Martin Petit's script relies a little too much on narrative convenience, hitting extremely familiar beats, and the end result of each story thread is fairly predictable from early on in the film. But even as I ticked off the requisite manchild-to-man boxes, Huard's goofy charm and the occasionally quite witty dialogue helped keep the endeavor afloat. Scott keeps the tone light and brisk, even if the film could stand to lose maybe 20 minutes without sacrificing much. Still, Starbuck is an unapologetic crowdpleaser, and its enthusiasm is contagious. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I found myself won over in the end. As a final note, I would recommend watching it now before the forthcoming, Vince Vaughn-starring American remake The Delivery Man buries the original's charms under Vaughn's lazy shtick.

Criteritron #2

The Criteritron is an occasional series in which I take a look at The Criterion Collection's vast offerings on HuluPlus and recommend a title to watch.

The Criteritron #2: House / Hausu
Japan, 1977
Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi

What Is It?: A campy, tripped-out, surreal teenage horror fantasy, described on Criterion's website as "[a]n episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava." When teenager Gorgeous's (Kimiko Ikegami) summer holiday plans are thwarted by her father's unexpected elopement, she and her friends decide to visit her elderly aunt in her large, remote house. But almost immediately, they become aware that something very disturbing is afoot. Slowly, the house begins to kill, trap, consume, or possess them all, with all of the exaggerated gore, shoddy special effects, and demon cats you could possibly desire. Despite influences as wide ranging as Japanese folklore, animation, and 60's psychedelia, House is truly one-of-a-kind.



Why Watch it? House is shot as though its director, Nobuhiko Obayashi, had never before seen, let alone made, a film, but figured he could just pick it up as he went along. In truth, Obayashi was a successful commercial director and experimental filmmaker, so all of his bizarre choices (superimposed close-ups rather than the more standard shot/reverse shot, random interludes with music, humor, and stop motion, cartoonish violence) were deliberate. Chiho Katsura's script was based on ideas Obayashi gleaned from his young daughter's dreams and fears, and this sense of childhood naievete—characters named things like Kung Fu, Sweet, and Fantasy—and juvenile fear (such as Gorgeous's immediate rejection of her father's pleasant-seeming new wife, or the house's many malicious inanimate objects) permeates the film. And while House is alternately amusing, exhilarating, and scary, its main pleasure comes from its audacious weirdness, which leaves the audience simultaneously laughing at AND with it. While definitely best experienced with shell-shocked strangers in a crowded theater, House also makes a perfect choice for your next movie night with friends.

House is available on DVD or Blu Ray from Netflix, but can also be streamed via HuluPlus on any compatible device or through the embedded player below the cut.

FI: Capturing the Friedmans

Capturing the Friedmans
US, 2003
Directed by Andrew Jarecki

One of the best things about documentary films is how reality makes its presence felt, how directorial intentions and the story the director ultimately documents can change significantly more over the course of production than is possible with feature films. I think about how Werner Herzog narrowed the scope of Into the Abyss, or the way the tragic events of Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary turn it from a missive about a lost friend into a quest for justice. In Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans, what was originally going to be a film about clown/magician David Kaye (né Friedman) and other popular NYC birthday entertainers, ended up focusing solely on the skeletons in David's family's closet.

In the 1980s, David's father Arnold (a retired teacher) and youngest brother Jesse were arrested in a child pornography and molestation sting. Jarecki uses the family's extensive home video footage from before, during, and after the arrest and trial, along with present-day interviews with the family, investigators, victims, and others, to document the toll these events had on the family. In the process, he discovers something about the impact of mass hysteria on a close-knit community, and the ways in which the stories we choose to believe can alter our perception of reality and our relationships with one another.

Though he tries to hide it, Jarecki clearly has his own opinions about Jesse Friedman's guilt or innocence (Arnold, who died in prior to the film, gets slightly less sympathetic treatment). But even so, Jarecki's choices and those of editor Richard Hankin do a great job demonstrating the fogginess of truth, making excellent use of the available footage for maximum emotional power. And, by and large, Capturing the Friedmans is less concerned with guilt than it is with the family's complicated dynamics and the web of deceit and self-deception the crime exposes. There's an intimacy, a sense of reality rarely seen in films, here, that underscores the Friedmans' pain without mitigating the horrors that Arnold and Jesse may have perpetrated. The film stands as a document of darkness, both the darkness that can hide within a "normal" family, and the darkness that can emerge from small-town America when faced with a perceived threat. Quite a philosophical place to wind up, considering the film's birthday entertainment origins, but I doubt we'd still be talking about this movie if it were about a clown.

Weekend Stream for 8/02/13

The Weekend Stream is a new (hopefully) weekly feature where I recommend interesting selections from the library of titles currently available on Netflix's Watch Instantly service for you to watch this weekend. Since titles can disappear with little or no warning, there's always a chance a film will no longer be available when you read this, so you'd better act fast, bozo!

Weekend Stream for 08/02/2013: The films of Shane Carruth

Texas filmmaker Shane Carruth basically embodies the do-it-yourself ethos of independent film. His first feature, 2004's Primer, was an exceedingly low-budget affair. Carruth himself wrote, directed, produced, edited, scored, and starred in the film, using locations in and around his home town and employing his friends and family as its cast and crew to save money. But what Primer lacks in production costs, it more than makes up for in production value; the film looks and sounds far more professional and assured than its budget and Carruth's lack of experience would lead you to presume.

Primer is about a group of engineers who, in their spare time, run a side business and research new technologies. In the process of attempting to devise a way to decrease an object's weight, they inadvertently stumble upon a functional method of time travel. Soon, the discovery brings all of the group's tensions to the surface, and as the timeline becomes increasingly blurred, questions of ethics and greed abound.



Primer is a very wordy film, filled with complicated technical talk that grounds things in a sense of reality. This isn't some jaunty, impossible adventure; everything follows a set of rules and internal logic. But don't expect to understand everything on one viewing. Nothing here is simple, and the film functions in loops that won't fully make sense except in the light of the whole.

If Primer has any major fault, it's that the film is a largely cerebral exercise, and its dearth of emotion can feel cold. Similarly, some people might not enjoy its puzzling structure, and while it trusts its audience to follow along, it'd be easy to disengage and give up. But Carruth's follow-up, 2013's Upstream Color attempts to rectify both of these issues without losing any of Primer's complexity and thematic depth.

In Upstream Color, a woman, Kris (Amy Seimetz), falls prey to a conniving thief (Thiago Martins) and, after losing everything, finds herself entangled in the life cycle of a bizarre psychoactive parasite. Eventually Kris meets Jeff (Carruth), who may have been through a similar ordeal, and the two seem to bond due to forces neither completely understands. The two come together, helping each other deal with their trauma-shattered lives and find some sort of peace.



Like Primer, Upstream Color demonstrates an immense trust in its audience, but while not all aspects of the story make immediate sense, it has a greater narrative cohesion and stronger emotional throughline than the former film despite being dialogue-free for huge stretches of screentime. At its heart, it's a simple story about the complex interconnectedness of life, the fallibility of memory, and the way in which we never know just what has influenced us and what we influence in turn. It is a film that offers you many opportunities to read your own meaning into the text, and its haunting atmosphere will likely linger with you for some time.

Both films are available to stream or rent on DVD from Netflix right now, and I can't recommend them highly enough. Carruth is an auteur in the truest sense, and his singular vision and love for his projects comes through in every frame of his unique, unforgettable films. If you're looking for something thought-provoking to watch this weekend, it's hard to go wrong with either of these.

FI: Deadgirl

Deadgirl
US, 2008
Directed by Marcel Sarmiento

As the genre's name suggests, exploitation films are supposed to be trashy and squirm-inducing. The best of these movies cross lines, evoking great fear, shame, discomfort, and perverse laughter in the process, yet do so with a carefully-managed tone that lies somewhere between camp, schlock, gut-level revulsion, and absurdism. As for the worst, well, there's Deadgirl. This joyless, tone-deaf horror film about a group of teen boys who find a nude, undead woman strapped to a gurney in the basement of a long-abandoned asylum is never anything but morally repugnant and unbearable. Rather than commenting on or condemning the leery, violent rape culture that is its ostensible target, Deadgirl instead makes light of abuse while supporting the "nice guy" trope in disgusting ways.

Deadgirl's resident "nice guy" is Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez), a sullen, mopey teen who moons after longtime crush Joann (Candice Accola). He and his lowlife pal JT (Noah Segan) stumble upon the titular Deadgirl (Jenny Spain), who JT immediately wants to rape, as though that would be the first thing on anyone's mind in this situation. Rickie, for his part, is not interested, and more than once attempts to save Deadgirl, to no avail. JT and his fellow degenerate Wheeler (Eric Podnar) regularly rape and abuse her in scenes the film takes great pleasure in showing us in graphic detail, scenes it often tries and fails to play for comic effect. This sort of misjudged tone suffuses writer Trent Haaga's script, where dialogue he clearly finds funny just sounds juvenile and unrealistic instead. Segan's JT sometimes seem villainous, but more often comes across as stupid, prattling, and stubbornly free of insight, while Rickie, our "hero," is ineffective, dull, and creepy. At no point do we ever feel like we should care about either of them.

Director Marcel Sarmiento never met a scene he couldn't stretch past its breaking point, and several key moments just drag on and on even though what's about to happen is telegraphed far in advance. He aspires to something like the tone of Lucky McKee's May, but never anchors the film to anything resembling a heart or moral compass. Beyond that, the film is a structural shambles, and this disorganization hurts whatever ambitions towards scares or laughs Deadgirl may have had. Even if we forgive all of that, the bigger issue is the film's morality. As I said, we should expect transgressive content from an exploitation film. That's fine. I could accept some of Deadgirl's content were it handled better or grounded in something resembling a moral framework. But because of the casual, offhand way the film seems to laugh at sexual violence against women, Deadgirl never rises above being simply risible.

FI: Into the Abyss

Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life
US/UK/Germany, 2011
Written and Directed by Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog's philosophical narration style is so iconic, it has spawned viral videos and inspired a regular character in comedian Paul F. Tompkins's arsenal. But in Into the Abyss, Herzog's examination of the death penalty through the prism of a Conroe, Texas murder case, his voice takes a back seat, mostly appearing when Herzog questions one of his subjects. That doesn't mean the film isn't shaped by Herzog's authorial voice, as his interest in the dark spots on humanity's soul and his compassionate humanism are both evident throughout the film. He makes his anti–death penalty sentiments clear early on, but the film itself is not polemical or hectoring. It simply spells out the details of a single case—one of hundreds of capital cases tried every year—using crime scene footage, evidence, and interviews with police, the criminals, the victims' family members, and various people who work in the death house.

The case at the heart of the film involves two men, Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, each convicted for separate incidents within the same series of crimes: The two broke into the home of Sandra Stotler (an acquaintance's mother) and murdered her in order to steal her car. Later, they killed Stotler's son and his friend in a failed attempt to cover their tracks. They were eventually captured in a shoot-out, tried, and convicted, with Perry receiving a death sentence for Stotler's murder and Burkett getting life for the other two. Neither the heinous nature of their actions, nor their guilt or innocence—despite Perry's protestations—are ever really in question. Herzog is more interested in their stories, the feelings of the victims' families, and what their experiences say about one of the thorniest issues in American politics. Ultimately, the film is not so much about crime and punishment as concepts as it is about the trauma both have on actual people in the real world.

Into the Abyss was originally intended to cover several cases, but Herzog increasingly focused on Perry as his time grew short—Perry was scheduled to die only eight days after his interview. The other footage became a series of short films—eventually airing on Channel 4 in the UK and on Investigation Discovery as Werner Herzog's On Death Row—and, at a screening of Aguirre, The Wrath of God that I attended in June, Herzog indicated another set of films would be forthcoming. Even without having watched the shorts, it's easy to see why this topic fascinates him so much. He seems to be seeking for a deeper truth, one about American society, poverty, violence, justice, and the sanctity of each individual life. I'm not sure he's found it, here, but that doesn't detract from the experience of watching the Into the Abyss. It's not a film about answers, only questions of the most profound, troubling sort.

Edited to add: If you're interested, Into the Abyss is available for streaming via Netflix in the US.