“Heads or tails, either way we always lose…” 

Unless you’re keeping track of this years White Elephant Blogathon! The only blogathon where film enthusiasts dig deep into their repertoire of film knowledge to trade film viewings with a randomly selected moviegoer. Be they trash or treasure (or like my first selection for someone else, deeply, deeply mediocre) the experience will always be interesting. Take the film selected for me this year, 1950′s Caged,a film directed by John Cromwell, and more compellingly, in Fast Times at Ridgemont High fashion, written by Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld, the former of which went undercover into an actual womens prison in order to develop realistic story. Or at least as realistic as the Hays Code could let a film of the time be.

This was actually my second time watching Caged, and but my first since I’ve had a personal come-to-jesus-moment with 50′s style melodrama (a long story involving masterpiece Johnny Guitar) which has made me much more conscious to be empathetic to the stylized performances and big emotions that seem to provoke laughter from less sophisticated individuals (but THAT is a matter for a different time). I myself thought on first viewing that this was rather campy fun when it just focused on the convicts drama and found tedious when it’s focus is on didactic scenes involving the progressive warden struggling to improve conditions in her prison. On second look I am softening on my camp stance, at least in regards as to most of the scenes involving inmates and labeling the preachy (if well meaning) warden scenes as camp silliness. Overall the drama with the inmates suggests a gender reversed Hawks film, and all of the snappy zingers and broad characterization play as actual fun, not unintentional. And the two big performances of the film are two high marks in the films favor, with Elanor Parker, staring as a young pregnant 19 who was an unwilling accessory to armed robbery, on her way to being a hardened (as they might say in Raising Arizona) repeat Oh-fender, projects shattering innocence in a few devastating closeups, before transforming into a rather cool savvy character, (particularly in the Hawksian scene where she demonstrates for a crowd on inmates that she could boost something from a store if she so desired), but as far as I’m concerned the film belongs to Hope Emerson. A great beautiful tree of a woman, she plays a cruel and corrupt prison matron, looming above everyone else in every scene she is in, she deals in casual cruelty, tormenting the prisoners that bug her with harsh beating and head shavings, and everyone else with a high level of condescension. The character is the best tool the screenwriters came up with to suggest the dehumanizing realities of prison and Hope Emerson has so much screen presence that she steals half the film. 

Unfortunately she can’t save the film after her character’s untimely, though arguably well deserved death by fork, and the last portions of the film suffers for it. Deserving of the label of camp is the tidiness and ease with which the Parker’s young naif turns on a dime in solitary from innocent but tough, to a cold, hardened future recidivist. It is the crux of what the film is preaching and it’s suddenness and the lack of complexity drains it of any serious emotional impact beyond amusement.

Were I more prepared (financial and personal events in the recent weeks had me watching the film only just last night) I might dig a little deeper into what makes this film seem unique today, like the almost all female cast, or the way in which the film constantly positions off-screen and onscreen males presences into completely antagonistic forces, dragging women down, or working to keep them down. And Cromwell’s direction often makes the most of what is a very limited series of sets (lots and lots of toying around with shots involving the ), and wisely limits our impressions of the physical world outside the prison to a view from the tiny window of a police car at the start of the film, the smoke of a passing train over the prison wall before the camera briefly sets foot off the prison in the final moments.

All in all I got off pretty easy this year, even if most of what I got from the film is to keep an eye out for the two above mentioned ladies in my future cinematic travels.

56/100

I suppose you could call me an Eli Roth apologist, at least enough of one that the prospect of watching a reviled film with him producing and writing and starring (and in general, in advertisements and the actual credits of the film itself, all being plastered with his name as a seal of approval) seemed as much of an opportunity to relish in his unique sensibility, and maybe find a clever socio-political angle to the project (his three films I’ve seen, CABIN FEVER, HOSTEL and HOSTEL: PART TWO much like this film center around ridiculous stereotypes of dumb, entitled upper middle class people, often white, that stomp and party around some foreign-to-them local, before the over the top gore happens) that would make viewing feel worthwhile. And of course as I’ve lately come to learn reviled/ignored straight to VOD/DVD films can in their own right be a treasure trove of, if not bold art at least efficient entertainment.

How successful the film is feels almost irrelevant, but I’ll just admit that it’s mostly tedious, humorless, dramatically inert, and not even a little bit scary, but what really fascinates me is what kind of film director Nicholas Lopez and Eli Roth thought they were making. The basic synopsis is a multi-cultural group of tourists, trying to find the real third world Chile try to maneuver their way to safety during an earthquake, it’s aftershocks and an impending tsunami. Whether they were convinced they were crafting a thrilling disaster film, a tongue in cheek gore filled horror-comedy, a deadly serious story about privileged people dealing with actual tragedies, or a brilliant amalgamation of all of the above is truly anyone’s guess (mine is, knowing Roth, that he was pretty sure they were nailing all three).

The dirgey, serious element kicks off of the opening credits, like something out of a Bela Tarr film or Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON, we’re invited to sit in quiet contemplation of a few minutes as white text illuminates a black background, with very little in the way of sound or music until the credits are almost over. We then get our first taste of ‘humor’ by meeting Roth and our other two male protagonists (both of whom are Spanish speakers and in one of the few interesting touches, unless something was wrong with the copy I watched, was that none of the Spanish dialogue, of which there is a generous amount, is subtitled, putting the non spanish speaking audience in the same position as 4 of the 6 main characters) Pollo, a guy whose ambiguiously rich because of his father, and heartbroken Ariel, a guy constantly stakling his ex on twitter. We join them as they’re goofing around vineyards, laughing at a tour guides Wu-Tang Clan tramp stamp, and eventually partying with our three main female characters, the party animal, her sister a major buzzkill that stops her from drinking and having fun, and a Russian model. This group has a lot in common with the main groups of Roth’s other films with the exception that there is very little to actually laugh at here, the characters largely being treated as affable and friendly, which combined with how mildly douchey they are in reality renders them as mostly boring and personality free (nods to the personal struggles are brief and head slappingly broad like there Party Animal spills the beans about her sisters abortion, or when Eli Roth places a call to his daughter , and the daughter ends the call by saying loudly ,“Bye Daddy, Tom’s here, mommies new boyfriend, BYE!”)

Eventually Rothian douchey calm/party scenes before the storm are interrupted by much camera shaking, lights flashing, running around and pieces of set and rubble falling from the sky as a devastating earthquake hits Chile. This set piece includes numerous people unexpectedly getting comically clobbered by pieces of ceiling suddenly falling on them, once they think they’re safe of a second, Ariel, losing his hand, dropping it and having it get kicked around like the opening set piece from TEMPLE OF DOOM, and a cleaning lady (uptight girl was nice to her earlier so she takes the group to an underground tunnel in the night club that leads to a ladder up to a manhole outside of the club, because sure, why not) getting her face erased by a speeding bus after sticking her head out of a manhole. Which as poorly executed as all of these gags are, they might have made the rest of the film mildly diverting, but just as soon as they’re out of the way the film throws in constant grim reminders of how serious this destruction is (for example, a statue of Jesus Christ on the cross toppling over during an aftershock, and my favorite long shot of the bloody corpse of a child in a car seat in a totaled car… and why exactly this child, with zero debris on him is a bloody pulp, in a not that wrecked car is a mystery, just like it’s a mystery why all of the streets in this film are liked with rubble and destruction, despite off of the visible building on every street not missing any walls or being demolished).

AFTERSHOCK them enters serious mode and begins to dispatch it’s characters in gruesome ways, as you would except a horror film to do, but each death is drawn out and treated like a great dramaric tragedy (the first one actually has maybe the only truly amusing moment as Ariel perishing in a gondola lift accident gets eulogized by Pollo, who is crying and drooling in the way actors do when they try to cry in a very ugly manner, and his earnest speech is punctuated by Roth saying, in the same hushed tones, “I don’t speak Spanish. None of us do. No one speaks Spanish.”) to the point that the last 40 minutes of the film feel like watching a clip reel of all of the characters on LOST dying, except none of the people dying here are well enough established for it to be anywhere near as dramatic as it’s being treated.

Ultimately in the home stretch the film seems to decide it’s been about the uptight girl that was referenced to have had an abortion prior to the film and sends her into the catacombs beneath a church with her sister and a prison escapee pretending to be a fireman (it being hard to have people run away from earth quakes, most of the third act consists of them running away from prison thugs that are strolling around, casually trying to rob and rape them, because you know, prisoners don’t care about seeking shelter of impending tsunamis), where, once it’s found out he’s a prisoner (because he has tattoos under her jacket, you know the way no real fireman would ever do) he stops being some blandly helpful character and assumes a chin-lowered-to-chest 1000 yard stare and kills Party Animal. Up Tight gets her revenge by over powering him and crunching an ax into his chest, before she walks into a wall filled with the aborted fetuses of tons of babies, in various states of decay, before an earth quake caves the place in, leaving her to crawl out of some kind of tunnel into towards a light, out of a round opening where she falls onto the beach screaming. And in case it seemed like the film settled into some kind of ill conceived tone, the final moment of the film meets her apparent thematic triumph by revealing the tsunami coming right for her, as mental 'sad trombone’ sounds in the viewers head.

So there you have it, AFTERSHOCK is just tedious enough to keep it from being compellingly inept, and more than earnest enough in it’s conviction that it’s about something and is some kind of statement about tragedy, that it’s hard not to be activly embarassed for everyone involved, before it starts to become apparent that one of the main reasons for this movie to exist is the same reason the GROWN UPS films exist, in that it gives wealthy people an excuse to get paid to hang out somewhere they can already afford to go.

Historically I don’t have a good track record with black comedies (not meaning Beetlejuice or Dr. Strangelove, but comedies usually by black directors, featuring black characters and aimed at black audiences). I haven’t seen any of the Friday films, none of the Tyler Perry movies, Wayans Brothers films. I’m well read enough in Eddie Murphy films, but I don’t know that those count as much considering they’re not really ~about~ black people, as much as they are about race relations (Murphy in the 80’s especially mostly was doing buddy films, usually with the other buddy being white). I know that there have been lots of films centered around black characters in history but many of those are inherintly dramatic and frequently based around the issue of race, as opposed to simply being movies about people doing normal stuff, but they’re black. House Party, for all it’s many, many faults, is impressive simply for how unconcerned it is about race, than it is in simply about having black characters simply do stuff, like in real life. It may sound regressive of me to focus in on race so much in this movie, but it’s handeling of the topic is really the only notable thing in it. The characters are black, they’re basically normal high schoolers, they’re not violent are adicted to drugs, in general they’re interested in what a black high schooler would be into, but it’s never actually ~about~ how it’s about this. The significant and impressive thing is that race really is a non issue for the most part. It’s their cultural identity but not a character trait to cause conflict. I can’t say for certain that this movie paved the way for future comedies centered in black communities, but it feels like a very fresh, mature handling of something you still see very little of of many American films being produced then and now.

House Party revolves around two best friends, Kid (played by hip hop preformer Kid from Kid n’ Play) and Play (played by hip hop performer Play from the same group. n’ is notably absent from this one) and Play’s parents are out of town, so he’s throwing a house party that night. Kid gets into a fight with some bullies and his father recieves a letter infomring him and thus he grounds Kid and forbids him to go to the party. That latter point might seem cliched, but Kids father is far from it and is actually the most interesting character in the film. He’s a put upon widower that works long hours to support his son, but he’s also very caring still making time to make breakfast and renting Dolemite to watch while spending a night with his son. It’s a nice portrayal of a type of working class parent that’s loving but stern, that’s mostly taken seriously, with the exceptions of when his protectiveness is exaggerated and played for laughs, most of which fall flat due to the jokes being unfunny, and because it’s not a terribly good performance (it’s a conundrum, I liked the character on paper but in reality it was poorly executed. But I still like that it’s attempted).

To continue on with the story Kid sneaks out, goes to the party, has fun, hangs out with some girls, and things go well and he starts a relationship with one of them. I really liked that movie. It’s wasn’t always well directed or preformed, but that’s a kind of sweet low key hang out movie. Kids throw a party. I should mention as you’d probably assume this isn’t a party for graduation. It’s not so Kid and Play becomes popular. Or lose their virginity. Or even a birthday. It’s just some fun. They’re a pretty amusing dance off (very dated, but it adds to the amusement) some guys hitting on girls, and there’s a rap off, that doesn’t lead to much other than Kid and Play trying to out rhyme each other and basically coming out even. The cops never show up. No windows or vases get broken. No ones doing drugs or getting shit faced (well only one dude). The party ends and everyone goes home. I found all that pleasing enough.

Say what!? That’s only a third of the movie!? You’re telling me that the film is called House Party and it’s barely about a party? That’s about the size of it. You see, there is a large subplot about the bully from school and his friends trying to find and kick Kid’s ass, which leads the film down a whole lot of pointless and unfunny alleys. Kid get’s alternatingly harassed and helped by some racist cops (the point of these cops is beyond me. They mostly just harass black people minding their own business, but if not for them, Kid wouldn’t gotten the shit beat out of him. Also at one point that arrest the bully and gang trying to catch kid and mercilessly beat them down at the dock. Off screen. Is there a moral here besides police are assholes, even if they help you accidently sometimes?). Crashes an uptight dinner party and attempts to do a mini rap show there. Hides from the bully and sees a guy having sex with a woman and then he gets shot at. He also ends up in jail at one point, where he is threatened to be mercilessly gang raped by a bunch of men, and he starts running around the cell rapping about it for some reason (he’s bailed out in the nick of time). It’s like a terrible unfunny into-the-night kind of adventure movie, that’s for some reason been built around a small likeable movie about a fun party. The explanation I assume is that this movie is based on director Reginald Hudlin’s student short film of the same name. As a short this might have been a nice slice of life about young black people just having fun, but he clearly has no idea how to pad any of that out without diluting it, so he adds a really bad farce in the very large margins.

It’s all a noble undertaking, but all of the good is far too fleeting, and even it is held back by weak performances  and way too many side characters, and most of all a lack of any funny jokes. If you were to take away the burden of it being a vehicle for Kid n’ Play, and cut out all of the excess material, you’d still have something a little wooden, but it would keep the base of honest naturalism, that holds the picture up as much as it does. Really this probably should have stayed a short.

Grade: 37

Additional Thoughts:

• I find it astounding that this won the Dramatic Filmmakers Trophy at Sundance, and even more so the cinematography award. They’re both pretty weak at best, and when the film really tries to pull out different techniques it feels pointless and showoffy. Give me Metropolitan in both departments either day. Or possibly some of the other Sundance films I’ve got coming up soon.
• Nothing of note here getting looked at for any catagory in my top tens. The dance and rap scenes stand out, but I doubt either is fun enough to stand up through the rest of 1990.

Up Next: 

The Match Factory Girl

Brain Dead

Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down

Watched for the 2013 White Elephant Blogathon

(The premise being that bloggers and film writers online all pick a film, generally one that’s a bit less than a classic, and another writer is assigned to review the random movie they picked)

http://opalfilms.blogspot.com/

When I was first assigned Goodbye Uncle Tom for the the White Elepant Blogathon, I was pretty excited. I wasn’t expecting to get something in which I didn’t have the first idea what it would be. Some kind of hidden gem on race? Some piece of crap Roots knock off? So naturally, like anyone just assigned a random film to write about I checked out the wikipedia page. And then my stomach dropped. As soon as I saw the poster I knew exactly what I was gonna be watching. Garish colors depicting acts of violence, topless black woman, a man hung upside down, his face twisted in anguish. I was looking at the poster for an Italian exploitation film. Which honestly isn’t exactly what made my stomach drop. I can handle excessive violence and all kinds of twisted shit, but while checking wikipedia I was also looking it up on Netflix, and the first word to jump out at me from the synopsis was the word MONDO. If italian exploitation films are a blind spot I had always been okay with filling in at some point, Mondo documentaries, have been a blind spot I was mostly content to ignore. My closest brush up against them  and their ilk are hearing friend’s older brothers talk about how cool Faces of Death is, reading about cult cinema in high school, and Keith Phipps’ Secret Cinema entry about Mondo Kane. The idea of a series of documentaries both exploiting and misrepresenting things (and occasionally plain making shit up) for maximum shock effect, doesn’t sound artistically redeeming in any way. It always seemed like the kind of thing young people dared each other to watch, or shameless rubberneckers ogled  and then argued was camp. The idea of watching real and fake footage of fucked up acts, just to be looking at fucked up acts, has always made me queasy, and the premise of Goodbye Uncle Tom, that a group of Mondo filmmakers travel back in time to record the various brutal acts inflicted on Africans because of the slave trade, while interesting in it’s possibly unflinching look at how inhuman slaves were treated, it just as much seems like it’s gonna be an excuse to stage a variety of sick, twisted set pieces (although thankfully all blatantly fake). So now that I’ve seen Goodbye Uncle Tom (twice!), was the sick feeling I got a premonition, or is there something actually worthwhile here (and possibly the entire genre?)

And well, as usual the answer is kind of all of the above. The actual sex and violence is largely stomachable of only because it’s less graphic and leering than I would have thought, and also because of how relatively white washed slavery is in many depiction in the media, in that we mostly think about lynching and whipping and sheer labor in shows like Roots when we think about the degradations of slavery, so there is something seemingly very bold in depicting slavery as vile as the reality is. But the problems with intent undeniably kind of butt heads with the rest of the film.

Grade: 68 out of 100

January is well known to be the dumping ground for studios unwanted refuse. The movies that looked great on paper, but when the finished product comes in it’s usually not exactly what the studio was hoping, and so they try to hide it in the months right after award season (during award ~giving~ season) hoping that they might turn an okay profit, or even if not, it’s not as though they’re doing too much harm (famous examples are those parody movies they keep making for change found under the sofa, and the classic, PAUL BLART: MALL COP). And best case, an unusual star vehicle might gain good word of mouth and clean up due to there being no competition. That TREMORS was unceremoniously dumped in January AND failed to gain any immediate attention (it slowly gained some attention, and finally got the attention it deserved on home video) is blatant mishandling on the part of Universal.

While what they may have had might have seemed like nothing more than a horror comedy rip off of JAWS-but on land!, is better than anything so dumb deserves to be. It’s a genuine crowd-pleaser of the first order, and a damn well constructed one at that. I can’t see why this would have failed had they held if off for the summer release it deserved. Hell after at least the critical praise and the draw of Kevin Bacon this could have competed in June with the likes of ROBOCOP 2, DAYS OF THUNDER, and GHOST DAD. The central premise is an obvious red flag, that giant carnivorous worms are attacking the inhabitants of a small Nevada town, which is as I said, a pretty blatant Jaws rip off, although with the cleverness of cheating the one oft mocked flaw of Jaws, that if people stopped getting in the water, no one would be dying, despite JAWS constantly trying to throw out tourism as lampshade to hang on that problem. Here there is literally nowhere to go, and once the characters realize their predicament, they immediately attempt to leave (a frequent peeve of many horror movies fans cleverly twisted here). But the screenplay, especially as interpreted by Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward and a community of character actors, is so immediately funny and disarming it justifies what could look like a cash in.

Really it’s the balance of horror and comedy that’s key here. The horror scenes are played largely straight, and the comedy is the grease that keeps the wheels of the plot moving smoothly. Val and Earl as played by Bacon and Ward have an easy chemistry and dusty charm, are down on their luck handy men that decide to try their luck else where when stumbling onto a couple of bizarre corpses (“There’s a murderer! He’s cutting people’s heads off!”). This leads to them trying to get away and dragging part of a dead creature back to town, and once there they try to figure out what it is, and of course also start haggling with the general store owner over the body (they start at 20 bucks). Therein lays what makes Tremors work. There isn’t anything funny about the creatures or the killings, it’s all in how goofy the townsfolk are and how ridiculousness the situations around them trying to survive are. For example after purchasing the corpse the shop owner quickly sets up a photo op tourist trap, and after realizing the creatures are attracted by vibrations on the ground, immediately a little kid goes by on a pogo stick. But after that quick gag the Bacon sprinting to save the kid isn’t played wacky, it’s executed as a thrilling scene in what’s an inherently absurd predicament. 

With as much that goes right I’m somewhat at a lose for things to criticize Tremors for. It’s works near perfectly for what it aims to do, amuse and thrill. The biggest knock is that it lacks much of a point or justification to anything that happens. There is no discernible subtext that I can identify (nor can I find someone try to argue that there is one) and even trashier horror films like They Live can find some unifying theme to make it less hollow. But despite that, I’d much rather have a Tremors free of an attempt to provide some kind of ideological weight or theme, than a hamfisted moral. Nothing can stop a dumb-fun movie in it’s tracks faster than portentous  themes, forced sentiment or romantic subplots (Tremors almost falls for that one, but probably spends about 2% of the movie having Bacon and Finn Carter, playing a visiting geologist, actually having dialogue not involving their surviving a giant worm attack. It even strands them a top separate structures to assure we basically only get 3 scenes of them that involve sexual tension. And despite the perfunctory nature of the romance they’re both pleasant enough it never offends). Tremors even makes fun of movies that try to tack on the monster attack to some environmental source or aliens or the government (I believe they stop caring as there are more pressing concerns, and their origin is never mentioned again). A remake or more serious version would neuter what makes this film work by probably looking at the premise and trying to really horrify you, and seriousness is the last thing we need. Why can’t fun movies just aim for fun and leave the rest to people trying to make art.

Additional Thoughts:

• I’m sure you can guess that I’ve been thinking a lot about how dour and tedious movies attempting to be dumb fun can be. I’m looking at you PREMIUM RUSH and you’re shitty work visa subplot.
• I’m keeping a list of the best actors, directors, screenplay, and scenes from each of the movies I’m watching and this has 3 contenders for scene. The pogo stick scene, the jackhammer scene, and of course the obvious favorite the rec room scene, in which the two survivalist/gun nut characters have a worm crash into their basement and (in a clever bit if direction) it’s revealed they have a wall COVERED with guns (including an elephant gun) which they proceed to unload into the worm, very graphically. 
• Fred Ward is also a likely contender for the best supporting actor top ten, and i’m considering Bacon in lead, and the screenplay, but don’t hold your breath on any of those doing so well when I’m done with 1990.

Up Next:

House Party

The Match Factory Girl

Brain Dead

GRADE: 89 out of 100

The 90’s really had to be a a great time to be a first time director, especially post-Steven Soderbergh coming out of nowhere with sex, lies and videotape and walking away from Cannes and Sundance with the Palm d'or and the Audience Award respectively. Independent film before the late 80’s mostly seems like established directors taking their ball and going home when they didn’t want the studio system breathing down their neck, or super low budget indies like Killer of Sheep, that had little hope of any attention or distribution. But now we have more unique smaller dramas and comedies getting attention from mainstream audiences and becoming viable competition for studio films. While it was always possible for any old weirdo to get a camera and make movies (Herzog for example) now they’re getting attention and more importantly, money that legitimately sets them up as competition for A-list dramas and prestige films. Not that writer/director Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan is one of those films, but it’s still important to note the amazing circumstances that allow a comedy so small and singular can get as much attention as it had at the time (and allow for it to gross a decent, for the budget of $225,000, near $3 Million, a little more than $5 million considering inflation).

And what exactly drew so many people in about Metropolitan then, is exactly what makes it as compelling today, namely it’s sense of place and character as conveyed through the droll hyper-articulate banter of young rich kids. The dialogue cuts like a knife and comes flying at you via snippets of conversations held throughout the after parties of a group of debutante ball enthusiasts (known as the SPRP, Sally Fowler Rat Pack, after the host) held in Manhattan, “Not so long ago”, during their freshman year of college over Christmas break. The dialogues is of the very self important/oblivious kind, where the they’re generally impressed with their own insight, and marks the speakers as both vapid and well read Preppies. This group soon has a interloper among them (whom they basically force initially to tag along) in Tom a young liberal man of less means (although he clearly grew up with money) that opposes bourgeois lifestyle and the debutante scene, but still exchanges in the same high minded speech, and as he really has nothing better to do, he accepts their invitations for further gatherings. The film simply follows this group over a series of parties over a couple of weeks, focusing in on their relationships and romances.

The keen dialogue serves as a great take down of a very particular brand of snobbery and lack of awareness of the upper class, marking this as a class satire (even going so far to give this particular brand of upper class a dumb name, the UHBs for Urban Haute Bourgeoisie,“Is our language so impoverished that we have to use acronyms of French phrases to make ourselves understood?” ) , but there is so much more at play here as well. For as much as Stillman clearly thinks idiots of his characters, he could only really embody them by having been part of this crowd and know them inside and out, he recognizes their flaws but genuinely has a great amount of affection for this bygone era of sophistication, and it is infectious. It helps that the characters are all young and finding themselves, and are basically posturing to displace their fears and anxieties that every young adult has, their posturing simply involves tuxedos, and discussions of literary criticism and the downfall the bourgeois lifestyles (and their unfair portrayal in surrealist films). They’re all a bit vapid, but they’re self aware enough to realize that none of them are ambitious enough to sustain their lifestyle forever (it’s put into perspective by a villain who is even dumber and more privileged than our central group) and that they’re all doomed to mundanity compared to the lower class social climbers that are bound to replace them, (“I’ve always planned to be a failure anyway, that’s why I plan to marry an extremely wealthy woman.”) I found the interest in how doomed this class is more obvious this time, my second time watching this film, and i’m surprised by how often the doomed nature of these characters is played up in all the advertisements for the film. I must assume this is a bid to make some a movie about WASPy, young, rich people more sympathetic.

The style of their teen angst is different, but it’s the same product, except here it’s all really quite charming. Stillman's portrayal of endless parties follows in the long tradition of hang out movies, and more specifically novels like The Great Gatsby and the works of Jane Austin. The upscale clothes and urbane, articulate dialogue is endlessly easy to listen to and dresses up the coming of age story in a facade of sophistication that only becomes more charming as the line dividing these young people and your average college freshman blurs, as for example, when the most outspoken and whiny member of the group very cutely confesses a crush on one of the young women of their SFRP, or a very slumber party-ish game of truth. Even a dumb romantic gesture (I was very happy when my girlfriend turned to me and unironically said “That is SO romantic!”) involving a very large cab fare. I can’t help love them as much as I want to laugh at them, and it leaves Metropolitan in the position of being among the most charming comedies ever made.

If I were to complain about anything it would be that the romantic female lead, Audrey is too passive, but I find that both nitpicky and defensible as her quiet nature draws a line between her and the Jane Austin heroes she loves so much. And I know some people are down on Whit Stillman’s very deliberate straight forward direction style, but the focus here is very much on the script, and the direction being tight and to the point fits the film to a tee. Although I can see the plainish look being a reason why Stillman seems to have gotten a bit short changed in the recognition department, as he clearly paved the way for mannered directors like Wes Anderson (whose Max Fischer is pretty much a lower class, more ambitious version of Tom), who in particular has a much more eccentric eye for style and is all the more memorable because of it.

Which, by the way, I find rather melancholy, that such a great singular debut film (pretty close to a masterpiece I reckon) has relatively fallen between the cracks, mostly discussed as a fond memory by critics and cinephiles while more outlandish indies outshine it. I suppose that’s part of my goal, to dust off the gems seldom brought up to my generation (i’m not saying Metropolitan is some obscure film, but try imagine how much anyone younger than 25 probably has to go looking for a movie like this that’s not playing near constantly on TV and wasn’t stocked in the now vanished rental stores of out youth) and champion them in my quiet corner of the internet. Although the irony of a movie so out of time not connecting with the popular imagination (“does the popular imagination even exist?”)

Additional thoughts:

• I’d have talked about how great the cast is, especially considering the dialogue, but I don’t know if I could have made a paragraph out of it, and I’d only want to talk about Nick.
• Nick, by the way, is a lock for my top ten of the best supporting actors of 1990, lists i’m gonna make after i’m finished with this year. Also very likely are the screenplay and direction. But Nick is really just incredible creation. He’s charming, he gets all the funniest lines, and he’s brutally honest about his reality, making him the most self aware character in the film. He admits to lying and snobbery, but he recognizes how fleeting his scene is in a way that’s very sweet. And if his performance wasn’t perfect the character would kind of collapse and the film would have a void in it.

Up Next:

Tremors

House Party

The Match Factory Girl

Not meant to be some kind of thesis, although I’m optimistic I might be able to develop one during this gargantuan undertaking. The idea is simple enough: Watch or re-watch every thing of interest from the decade of my birth, when I was too young to be aware of what was happening around me. The origin of this desire has it’s roots in my semi-recent discoveries of IRMA VEP, MIAMI BLUES, METROPOLITAN and EXOTICA. Many of them are movies you hear about if you’re interested in film criticism, but not a one is particularly easy to stumble upon unless you were very specifically looking for any one of those. And it’s frankly kind of mind blowing to realize how films as great as those can slip under the cracks, especially considering they’re all as old as me. Even more strange is how it leads to there being a large gap in my film knowledge. I can name dozens upon dozens of recent great films and masterpieces, and hundreds from 89-1910, but the 90’s has always seemed to be the home of PULP FICTION, JURASSIC PARK and GOODFELLAS, as well as many of the crummy films of my youth. and as great as many of those movies are they don’t have any other tie to any of my recent discoveries besides sharing a decade of release.

I hope that in meticulously going year by year, and researching notable/acclaimed/high grossing films that I can start to assemble the landscape and the dominating styles and themes and tropes of the 90’s, as well as serve as an excuse to rewatch favorites and movies i dislike in a sort of context to on another. And most of all, I’ll finally have an opportunity to buckle down and search out those other oft mentioned on older reviews and top ten masterpieces (looking forward to Lone Star, The Day a Pig Fell in the Well, and The Sweet Hereafter most of all), that seem to go unmentioned and forgotten today, possibly even discover a few hidden gems myself.

Of course, the purpose of creating a tumblr with this in mind is to write some kind of review or essay after watching every film, and my hope is that I’ll be keeping up a pace of at least 3 films a week and I’ll spend about a two thirds or more of every month exclusively watching 1990 films.  (i might even just maintain that pace and write ahead several entries and just release them over a week where I take the occasional week to myself to watch older non-90’s films or even just to loaf around and catch up on TV)

As for the order, I’ve rounded up a list of all the intereting films from the year 1990 (i’ll be going year by year mostly, going by the world premiere of the films) which i then sorted from earliest premiere date to latest. As I won’t always be able to keep up that order due to availability of DVD’s it will be more of a guide line, and in some cases when multiple films premiere on the same day I’ll go by preference. 

My starting queue is as follows:

Metropolitan

House Party

Tremors

The Match Factory Girl

and To Sleep With Anger

In closing i’ll say obviously those are possibly subject to change, but i’ll keep a queue at the bottom of each post to remind myself what I need to get ready. Anyone out there reading with any suggestions for lesser known 1990 films or 90’s films in general, can send suggestions to my facebook page and any criticisms on the quality of my writings are openly invited, unless you’re one of Sierra’s idiot friends, as well as advice or opinions on 90’s cinema (I plan on doing quite a lot of research on many of the films i’m reviewing and the quality of the reviews will undoubtedly become better the more prepared I become over time. And occasionally I may even turn over some of my reviews to my girlfriend as I’ll be watching many of them with her, as she’s smart and she usually agrees with me.

Those in the know can take one look at my avatar and get the title The Long Take, but for those unfamiliar with Bela Tarr, it’s a reference to my reverence and general preference for films featuring unedited long takes (in some cases ones featuring almost exclusively long takes) . My favorite film, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and films like JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES and MEEK’S CUTOFF, CHILDREN OF MEN and the works of Bela Tarr, especially SATANTANGO.

As for my grading system (as mentioned previously, stolen from Mike D'angleo, and many Skandies voters) is a little unusual for some people. I work off of a 100 point scale. So a movie review is always accompanied by a number at the top expressing my initial enthusiasm for the film. The higher the number, the more enthusiastic, the lower the less. A 100 (which I’ve never given, but I’m sure I’d give 2001) would be flat out perfect masterpiece, and a 1 would be the worst, most infuriatingly offensive movie ever made (why I’d watch such a movie all the way though is beyond me). I only grade movies I’ve seen all the way through, and only after recently seeing them, never older movies based on memory of enjoyment alone. A rough outline of what the various grades mean is below (with examples in parenthesis, I've decided to include the most famous and releasable of the movies I've graded)*:

100 - PERFECT, a once in a lifetime film

99-90 - A Masterpiece, rare/unusual (DR. STRANGELOVE, ERASERHEAD)

89-80 - A Great film, I’m very entertained and impressed with minor reservations (THE GODFATHER, HALLOWEEN)

79-70 - Terrific, very recommended  and most likely locked in for my top ten or runners up (THE GODFATHER PART II, THE PRINCESS BRIDE)

69-60 - Good, recomended as it’s probably very solid and worthwhile (SCREAM, THE SCHOOL OF ROCK)

59-50 - Fine/Okay, interesting in many respects, and often solid but held back by some unfortunate flaws (BATMAN BEGINS, ARGO)

49-40 - Meh, it’s a film. Frequently flawed or plain mediocre, but not quite punishing (SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, THE WRONG MAN)

39-30 - Bad, inept, offensive, stupid, yet possibly not entirely unwatchable. Don’t bother unless you’re curious (PROMETHEUS, KILLER JOE)

29-20 - Probably seems like it’s 4 hours long, in reality it’s probably 80. I’m checking to see if it’s over after every scene/often watched broken up in several sessions. You’d better avoid it (DARK SHADOWS, RED STATE)

19-10 So fucking terrible that I’m likely genuinely furious about it. One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen (AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET CAPTAIN KIDD)

9-0 I doubt i’d even make it through a film this bad, but probably one of the most loathsome movies ever made. Beyond ineptitude, most likely personally offensive beyond belief.

So for the record when I grade the first digit is pretty obvious, and the second sometimes just comes to me arbitrarily after deliberation, and occasionally after referencing other movies I've graded. It’s all very complicated and arbitray but once you start thinking in terms of it, it’s pretty appealing. Just think of it like a 1-10 scale and consider say a 73 as a 7.3.

I don’t know exactly what to tell people my goals are with film viewing. I know that I want to see as many films as possible (hopefully mostly good ones), and that I want to understand and be aware of as many facets of cinema as possible, and as of recently I’ve wanted to write about every experience I’ve had with film. I’ve been doing this since May of last year after I saw Certified Copy, and I don’t know what moved me other than sharing with Facebook a stunning movie that I doubt any of that would watch even on my recommendation. Likely this is a mimicking of many of my favorite critics in particular Mike D’angelo, a critic who has inspired me too much that I even stole his outwardly infuriating 100 point rating system, that frequently seems much more harsh than it’s intended, but honestly makes so much sense to me that my girlfriend and I frequently discuss our opinions of films with it, it’s become so ingrained in my brain.

But since starting a film journal, or a viewing log, or writing criticism (the last one I try never to use, as my worst writings are can be rushed and aren’t very focused or pointed as criticism in this neurotic lone wolfs head, at the very least. I prefer journal.) I’ve often wondered what I plan to do with this. Am I auditioning to be another wannabe on Letterboxd trying to gain as many followers as possible by making fun of bad movies as best as possible? Am I trying to zero in on a critical voice, and hone my writing abilities so that I could try to shame some low rent small town site to let me review movies for them? Or am I just trying to get all my thoughts down at the moment so I can return later and refresh my memory, and ultimately become a more knowledgeable well read (seen?) cinephile. I lean towards the latter, and day dream about the middle, but the fact is if someone was paying me or not, I still want to see every seemingly interesting film that comes out every year. I still ache, because I’ve still yet to see Woman in the Dunes, Deathdream, Man with the Movie Camera, or Yi Yi. I hope to use this tubmlr both as a place to refocus my energies on specific film viewing projects to expand and deepen my understanding of cinema history, one in particular I will start at the beginning of next month assuming I can locate he movies I need, also as a place to indulge in my top ten list fetish, but secretly I would like to sharpen my skills and better emulate the critics like Scott Tobias, Mike D’angelo, Matt Prigge, Sheila O’Malley and (god help me) even Roger Ebert (who isn’t a little fascinated with him?) that I admire, while finding my own distinct style so that maybe something might be able to come of the thousands of words on films I’ve written already, and the millions I’m sure I’ll be writing in the years to come. Hopefully I might even become insightful enough and entertaining enough to get some people reading this sight that aren’t just my girlfriend and three Facebook friends. (of course also beware of the inevitable Academy Award moanings, and ramblings that blogs are known for)