New York Film Festival 57 Screenings 1

First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
Coming after Certain Women (2016), certain to land on my decade top ten list, First Cow was bound to disappoint. In fact, it may be Reichardt's worst film to date which still makes it a quite fine film indeed. Adapted from Jon Raymond's novel The Half-Life, First Cow observes the blossoming of an unlikely friendship between a dirt-encrusted cook, Cookie (John Magaro), and a Chinese sailor, King Lu (Orion Lee), in 1820s Oregon. Cookie plays Walter Brennan to the more enterprising King Lu, arranging flowers and sweeping as the two set up house (or, more precisely, barely standing cabin). They seem destined to wind up totally lost to history until they hit on a money-making scheme - selling fried dough made with milk stolen from the area's first cow to the inhabitants of a muddy settlement.

"History isn't here yet," says King Lu, conveying the film's theme with a helpful concision. And yet, that very compactness turns out to be the problem with First Cow - it all feels a bit too pat, too obvious. Missing are those poetic ellipses that allow us to di(v)e into Reichardt's films, e.g., the delicate, porous Michelle Williams section of Certain Women. As the two principals try to make a name for themselves in a burgeoning (and white) America, the film takes on the conventional shape of a heroic narrative, decidedly not Reichardt's forte. Still, this is a brave attempt to snatch the writing of history from the capitalist victors, here, in the form of Toby Jones' representative of English landed gentry from whom Cookie and King Lu steal the milk. The central friendship is etched with a moving intimacy; in the Q & A, Reichardt explained that she shot the film in Academy ratio and avoided grand long shots of the wilds in order to highlight the closeness of the two buddies. And the secondary characters do provide those poetic ellipses, especially a lost-looking René Auberjonois and the incomparable Lily Gladstone.
Grade: B+

Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s

My review of Elena Gorfinkel's excellent book Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s is in the latest issue of Jump Cut here.

The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006 [that long ago??])

If I had guilty pleasures, The Devil Wears Prada would be one. Whenever I rewatch, though, I totally skip the non-Miranda scenes which is to ask, "Adrian Grenier was in this?"

A Virus Knows No Morals (Rosa von Praunheim, 1986)

I dug it way more than It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives (1971). Same hectoring tone. But Praunheim uses a skit structure here. So the film shifts gears every few minutes and comes off far more charitably for it. Irreverent as all funk too, natch. I can imagine this ruffling feathers in the mid-1980s as it damn well should have.

The Wind Is Driving Him Toward the Open Sea (David Brooks, 1968)

The Wind Is Driving Him Toward the Open Sea is a quietly lovely film with undertows of entropy due in part to a ever-zooming, ever-twirling camera. I wondered if Terence Malick ever saw this because I could feel some of his bucolic reveries at moments. But it's much more varied than that suggests. There are bits of vérité interviews with people discussing a Vietnam vet named Chandler, an artist whom the war has left directionless at best. There's also a kick the can game near Walden pond starring Stanley Cavell, Sidney Morgenbesser, and Arthur Danto (Brooks was his student). The soundtrack features an early version of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" which will probably prevent it from ever getting a DVD release. And it's all over in a quizzical 52 minutes. Brooks died at 24 in 1969 in a car accident.

Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018)

As a portrait of grief and (a less reported on aspect) work, Hereditary strings you along something fierce. Great acting and great score too. But, of course, a silly-ass devil story must intervene and even that's not handled with any elegance. Several moments do far too much narrative heavy lifting such that you stop caring about the precise contours of the Baphomet (or whoever) story. And then the ending. Yet again, people, feel-bad films are just as banal as feel-good films. (POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD) I would love a sequel in which the devil's disciples are disappointed in The Chosen One because all he does his mope around and smoke weed. Wouldn't that seriously be a much more fascinating, even profound film?

Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)

Mann's films (even more so than Fritz Lang's) are the ones I choose for people who think the classical Hollywood cinema was all rainbows and lollipops. Thoroughly unpleasant throughout, it has a feel for verticals in a wide landscape populated by evil psychos. The crane shots are doom-laden and there's a climactic shootout that takes place with the principals on top of one another. A stunner to the last non-formation of the heterosexual couple.

Where the Boys Are '84 (Hy Averback [!], 1984)

Far more competent than Voyage of the Rock Aliens from the same year but way less compelling as a result. Just a standard-issue 1980s beach film. Featuring two performers from Grease 2 (including Lorna Luft, Judy Garland's daughter), Lisa Hartman looking (and acting) way too old for the role even though she wasn't, Alana Stewart (fresh from a divorce from Rod), and a blowup doll.

Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1949)

The problem with Under Capricorn isn't that it's not a suspense film; it's that it doesn't work by Hitchcock's dictum about suspense. The audience needs more information, not less, to feel suspense. Here, we don't know why Lady Henrietta (Ingrid Bergman) has become an alcoholic until the climax of the film. In fact, the Wikipedia plot synopsis is incorrect because it tries to work by Hitchcock's dictum in having Lady Henrietta reveal the plot twist well before she actually does (and to the wrong person). So it fails the classical Hollywood requirement of clear motivations and consistent character traits. BUT. That just means this is a de facto art film. You can *feel* the suffocation with Hitchcock's astonishing long takes, each the equivalent of holding your breath for several minutes. It's a film that demands at least a second viewing to reveal its tense pleasures. And many of the Hitch hallmarks are present - the doubled couples, the female Oedipal trajectory, the repression, etc.

A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966)

A Man for All Seasons was better than I remembered. The main problem is, lawd, it takes FOREVER to get going. Just over five minutes go by before Sir Thomas More finally receives the damn letter that launches the story. And it fosters a belief in The Great Man, an effect achieved in part by ignoring the fact that More burned several Protestant "heretics" at the stake. But there's lots of impressive staircase wit, especially in the climactic courtroom scene between More and Cromwell and later between More and his daughter Margaret. So a relatively painless evening of Classics Illustrated.

The Great Waltz (Andrew L. Stone, 1972)

I crossed off an item from my Dying To See list - The Great Waltz (Andrew L. Stone, 1972). Dying to see for *purely* professional reasons, that is. It's godawful. BUT. It is more watchable than Stone's previous horror Song of Norway (1970) which remains my choice for the worst film musical of all time. This one benefits from some Strauss père/fils tension at the beginning, Mary Costa's campy arias, and a hilarious singing voice-of-God narrator dropping such narrative nuggets as "In 43 days locked in this house/Johann Strauss composed Die Fledermaus." Lawd! Horst Buchholz (didn't know he was bisexual!) stars as Johann Jr. I'm embarrassed for both of us.

Thanks to the amazing Rarefilmm site for allowing me to finally see this although several minutes are missing probably due to a faulty broadcast or rip.

The Spirit of St. Louis (Billy Wilder, 1957)

The Spirit of St. Louis has got to be one of Wilder's least personal projects. He evinces little affection for the material resulting in a lumpy narrative. The awkward voice-overs and soliloquies (handled about as well as possible by the incomparable James Stewart) suggest that maybe the story resists dramatization. Still, shit my pants I did during Lindy's flight when it wasn't being interrupted with weak-minded flashbacks. P. S. It was a flop.

A Bread Factory (Patrick Wang, 2018)

It's a four-hour film (in two parts that we had to pay for separately at BAM, hmph!) about the survival of a small-town community arts organization. Not all of it worked. Several moments reminded me that satire is what closes on Saturday night. But overall, it achieves beauty in delineating a community--John Ford would be proud. No single figure dominates. The length gives characters time to soliloquize. And it aims to transcend boundaries of sex, sexuality, race, age, and friendship. It deserves your four hours.

To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985)

Friedkin didn't seem all that interested in a story with no heroes and no outside to Crime (Reagan shows up in several guises, once blathering on about taxation without representation on the radio). So he uses it as an opportunity to give a FitzPatrick Traveltalk on sunstroked, long-lensed Los Angeles rot. And there are all sorts of odd narrative trills such as a naked Willem Dafoe (at his Eurotrash-looking apex) burning a bag of counterfeit money. As a non-narrative type, I much prefer it to The French Connection, The Exorcist, and Sorcerer (although I still think Friedkin has trouble directing action scenes). And for such a winningly vacuous endeavor, who else could score it save for Wang Chung (except maybe The Fixx)?

Also, I caught this on 35mm at the Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn, my first time there, and I loved the entire well-curated experience including a short film on counterfeit money and trailers for Vice Squad, Colors, and a Bruce Beresford film I've never heard of called Money Movers. Best of all was my pal Jody Beth LaFosse and her bon mots: "There's nothing more L.A. than a British musician."  

Grade: A-minus

                        

 

The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019)

Not sure why this was remade so precisely apart from generating ever more repulsive profits. And I was wondering how Diznee Inc. would broach the delicate subject of eating other animals. By not anthropomorphizing bugs, it turns out, so that they're not human/cute enough to save from consumption (although the dung beetle joins in the celebration at the end). So it would be instructive to show this on a double bill with Diznee's A Bug's Life!

Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971)

Klute looks better than ever in its new Criterion. It blew me away in undergrad and remains one of the precious few New Hollywood films I'd judge a masterpiece. And it's one of the first films to acknowledge how sound subjugates women as much as image. Everyone is working at such a high pitch here. Fonda earned her Oscar but understated performances like Donald Sutherland's rarely get the recognition they deserve.

The Chapman Report (George Cukor, 1962)

The Chapman Report would have been a mess even if the Legion of Decency and the Production Code Administration hadn't disapproved. One major character's death is treated so blithely I wasn't sure if s/he was dead! Still, it's lots of intermittent fun, especially the scenes with Glynis Johns as a tape recorder-wielding faux-nympho who lusts after beach hunk Ty Hardin. Great porny dialogue too: "There's a lot of pepper in this tomato!" 

Cactus Flower (Gene Saks, 1969)

Clever, well-plotted but everyone's kind of a jerk in this feel-good movie, no? I love the record store scenes, though! Grade: - B-minus, C+ when I fail a test on it next month. 

Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1962)

Not many films observe the texture of the daily grind with such respect. But the most moving aspect is how Olmi pulls away from the central story of a young man's entry into the dehumanizing workforce (difficult to do since Sandro Panseri is such a dreamboat!) to meditate on the lives of secondary characters, rehumanizing them in the process. If a film has me rooting for the formation of a heterosexual couple, it's gotta be doing something right! Grade: A+. 

…And Justice For All (Norman Jewison, 1979)

Lawd, what a tonal nightmare! This movie has no clue what it wants to be - a cynical look at the judicial process; a satire on same; a feel-good popcorn pic driven by American individualism (check out the hoark-inducing tagline on the poster). Pacino's lawyer-cum-Jesus is so grotesquely Correct that I expected the courtroom to stand on chairs yelling "O Captain! My Captain!" at the famous "You're out of order!" climax. And the very end is absolutely godawful, almost as bad as The Breakfast Club's - more proof the architects of this botch were baffled by their own creation. All that and Christine Lahti is wasted in her debut. Ugh! Grade: C.

Model Shop (Jacques Demy, 1969)

Hi. I prefer Model Shop to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. And 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Gunman’s Walk (Phil Karlson, 1958)

Some heavy Prodigal Son/Oedpial business here with racist rancher Van Heflin favoring hotheaded (and even more racist) son Tab Hunter (playing superlatively against type) over the more gentle burgeoning liberal son James Darren. Hunter was clearly accessing some long-burning resentment against oppressive codes of masculinity because his scenes with Heflin drip with vitriol. It may be his finest performance ever. Karlson had to be doing something right overall if he could get Columbia president Harry Cohn to weep at the end as he reportedly did during a screening of the film a few weeks before he died. I wept because its tale of lawless backstabbers feels like a documentary in the era of Drumpf. P. S. Name of the mare Hunter used in the film = Swizzlestick!

The Mountain (Rick Alverson, 2019)

For once, I'm at a loss for much to say about a film. The Mountain is the year's feature-length sorta-narrative head scratcher. Set in the 1950s (I think), it tells a skeletal impression of a story about a rudderless young man (Tye Sheridan, a doe-eyed beauty) who accompanies an oily lobotomist (Jeff Goldlbum, winningly gross) to take photographs of patients Goldblum has subjected to shock therapy and worse at various asylums. Filled with ellipses (and that includes the ending), the film works more by feel than Meaning. So if you're in the market to be creeped out for no discernible reason, then check it out. I should mention, though, that Alverson still doesn't seem to know what to do with women so it may creep you out for perfectly discernible reasons.

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)

Parasite, winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, confirms Bong as one of the finest directors of commercial cinema today. I want to say little more since the film features several outrageous twists. But I'll note that he creates unbearable tension with equal parts humor and despair (well, maybe a bit more despair) and that Parasite would make a terrific double feature with Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018). I also checked out Snowpiercer (2013) again for the first time since its first run. Solid as funk except for the ending which suggests he didn't know where to go with the story. But endings are so 2000 and late. Tons of fun (and despair).

Feel That New Hollywood Train Comin'

A double feature I call Feel That New Hollywood Train Comin'! Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966) is a Twilight Zone episode stretched to feature length. But a damn gripping one every frame of the way. More shocking than the shots of peen in the grape-stomping Bacchanal scene (since it was apparently cut from the American first run) was the mention of a microwave oven. I had no clue they were around that early even as a status symbol. Then, oh boy, Reflections in a Golden Eye (John Huston, 1967) in the version slathered with golden caterpillar guts. Lawd. I found the secondary coupling of the de facto spinster Alison (Julie Harris, incredible as always) and screaming Filipino queen Anacleto (Zorro David*) far more intriguing than Liz/Brando's gothic S/M. Not a terribly likeable film but a fascinating example of how haywire things can get (so everyone was okay with that preposterous final shot, huh?) when "dealing with" homosexuality. As for Robert Forster, dat ass! *IMDb lists this as his only film. He died on my birthday in 2008 in one city over from where I was raised!

The Host (Andrew Niccol, 2013)

The Host is garbage of the hot variety. Imagine a sci-fi Twilight with a dash of Poetic Justice and you can grasp why this flopped so badly. Part of the problem is that the alien utopia it imagines is so BORING! All the sets look like recently scrubbed pharmaceutical corporations in a world where pooping, one assumes, is no longer necessary. The humans have been driven underground where they harvest wheat with sickles (no hammers iirc). And everyone is absolutely gorgeous (one hilarious long shot of the humans looks like an Abercrombie & Fitch ad) which makes for a risible ending where one hunk immediately falls in love with an alien extracted from human host Saoirse Ronan presumably because she's just as pretty. But the narrative conceit does allow Ronan to kiss two pretty boys in one scene so it's not a total loss. Grade: Lawd!

Waltzes from Vienna (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)

Waltzes from Vienna centers on the agitated artistic temperament of Johann "Schani" Strauss II in Oedipal revolt against Strauss père. Jessie Matthews (star of that quasi-oxymoronic genre - the British film musical) is on hand to prevent Schani from pursuing his muse by forcing him to work in her father's bakery. One memorable scene has "The Blue Danube" being composed to the rhythms of bakers making bread. It's actually more solid than something like The Paradine Case (1947). But unlike that one, there's not much personality in it and it's ultimately forgettable. If you haven't seen, oh I don't know, Saboteur (1942), you should probably do that first. But this one causes little pain.

To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)

So what's Alfred Hitchcock's worst film of the 1950s (the period most critics/scholars deem his greatest decade)? I used to think it was the meringue-stuffed To Catch a Thief (1955). But having just watched it again for the first time in eons, I'm struck by its pungent view of the wealthy. If the film feels inert compared to the masterpieces surrounding it, then that's because it's primarily about rich people courting danger in the face of being so bored with all their money. In this respect, the most important character is neither Cary Grant nor Grace Kelly; it's the crass, bourbon-swilling, nouveau riche widow Jessie (Jessie Royce Landis, one of dozens of actors who gave Hitch's films so much of their depth) who's cool with her jewels being stolen since she'll be reimbursed by John Williams' beleaguered insurance man. It just might be Hitchcock's most trenchant take on class. Other positives (apart from the famous fireworks): the dollar-green night scenes, the gorgeous location shooting, Cary Grant cruising man flesh, and a typically brilliant final shot which knocks the stuffing out of the requisite heterosexual coupling. So what IS Hitch's worst film of the 1950s?

The Concorde ... Airport '79 (David Lowell Rich, 1979)

Leonard Maltin gave Airport ***1/2. But he gave The Concorde ... Airport '79 (David Lowell Rich, 1979) a BOMB which is preposterous. It's a mess with not one but two airplane disasters on the famed supersonic jet. And why anyone would get in a plane with George Kennedy (he's the only actor in all four films!) is beyond me. But the Mr. and I both found it perfectly watchable, a roided-up TV movie not all that much more awful than the 1970 entry. The worst thing about it is that Charo appears for all of 90 seconds. And she's great (of course)!

Airport (George Seaton, 1970)

Airport (George Seaton, 1970) is one of those films where the question of quality is moot because it occupies such a rich historical space. Of course, it's a soulless film, "mindlessly compelling" to borrow Nick Tosches' words, "the best film of 1944" to borrow Judith Crist's hilarious ones. "It will probably entertain people who no longer care very much about movies," said Vincent Canby in the NYT anticipating the repulsive amount of money it made, one of the most successful films of all time. Thus, a slew of related tensions come down on the thing - Silent Majority vs. The Counterculture, classical vs. New Hollywood, R (and X although Deep Throat feels million of miles away) vs. G, permissiveness vs. restraint, etc. You can feel those tensions most palpably in the frank but chaste discussions of abortion, extramarital affairs, and eating Jean Seberg's eggs. In short, Airport is an always welcome reminder that there was no damn Consensus in the late 1960s (or ever)!

All the King's Men (Robert Rossen, 1949)

Based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, All the King's Men (Robert Rossen, 1949) won the Best Picture Oscar at the 22nd Academy Awards. A barely veiled account of Huey Long's rise to demagoguery, it inches above typical middlebrow fare mostly via the hothouse, Oscar-winning performances of Broderick Crawford as the Long figure Willie Stark and the sui generis Mercedes McCambridge in her first film role! John Ireland adds some of the heat he'd later apply up against a different Crawford (Joan!) in Queen Bee. And a twenty-two-year-old John Derek is around lookin' all pretty as Stark's football player son. But as usual, if I'm praising the acting, then you know something's wrong. Like countless such topical films, All the King's Men makes you wonder why it had to be a *film* and not an informative long read. Solid, welcome, even enjoyable, but I'll forget it by December just like I did that Boston investigative journalism Best Picture winner from a few years back. Grade: B+, the dispassionate fate of so much Oscar fare. P. S. Never saw the 2006 remake which looks awful.

Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947)

Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947) tells the story of a journalist (Gregory Peck, stiff as ever) who pretends to be Jewish in order to get the real scoop on antisemitism. As usual with Hollywood (even in well-meaning liberal mode), complex social processes are reduced to the level of individual choices such that this is a film less about antisemitism than, wait for it, the formation of the heterosexual couple. Yay! The real drama here is the inability/unwillingness of Peck's betrothed (Dorothy McGuire) to rise to the level of his activism (which, again, amounts to telling off bigots rather than confronting systemic bigotry). Once she does, the heterosexual couple can be formed and the film can end. Big box office too. For me, the best scene is also the most disappointing. Sassy but lonely fashion editor Celeste Holm (in an Oscar-winning performance) has a perfectly platonic night cap with Peck. But the scene ends with Holm confessing her love for him, i.e., more heterosexuality. Bummer. It's fascinating to consider this film alongside similar but pulpier fare like Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956) and Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller, 1963), both of which were way too "trashy" for Oscar. But they wind up telling us much more about America than Gentleman's Agreement ever could. Grade: B, B-minus if you get a drink in me.

Airport 1975 (Jack Smight, 1974)

Bizarrely wooden acting in the first third. And the end was poorly directed. There’s no long shot of the plane making its final stop. But in between, pretty damn tense. And there’s actually an emotionally wrenching scene where George Kennedy talks via radio to his wife Susan Clark who’s on the doomed plane and both are suppressing tears trying to be strong for one another. Tons of stars, natch, including an ageless Gloria Swanson playing herself. Bonus: the purple-as-funk color scheme and carpet art. We watched it on Blu-Ray and while the opening scenes were too vivid in that digital way with the actors looking too sweaty and pancaked, later scenes had higher grain and made Charlton Heston look like a star rather than a gargoyle. Is it a matter of different reels? Grade: B, harmless.

Airport '77 (Jerry Jameson [who?],1977)

My least favorite of the Airports because so much of it was processual with endless shots of (admittedly sexy) Navy guys lifting the crashed plane from the ocean and rescuing passengers. Also, we got too little of the characters' stories. Who exactly were these people? And finally, the plane itself was so preposterously opulent that it didn't feel like a plane at all! Two staircases, bedrooms, a library, a bar, a piano player/lounge singer, a hutch full of presumably pricey artifacts, gambling, a tabletop Pong machine, etc. We weren't even sure the plane had taken off. If you ever wanted to know what it's like to have a night club crash into an ocean, this is your film. Intermittent fun but the coldest of the four. Grade: B-minus.

The Apple (Menahem Golan, 1980)

I finally showed the Mr. The Apple (Menahem Golan, 1980). It didn't go over too well. Part of the problem was that I just kinda pushed him into it with no prep. Another part was it was just us watching rather than one of my fabulous Apple parties complete with BIM Marks. Yet another part was the film itself in all its glorious miscalculation. In the end, he much preferred Voyage of the Rock Aliens eventually coming around to several songs even after about 400 screeching renditions by me. I'll grant that the second half is a drag (albeit a thematically appropriate one) if you grant that up through and including the legit great song "Speed" it's a Cinema of Attractions wonder! Grade for first half: A +. Grade for second half: B+

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (Pamela B. Green, 2018)

I knew who Alice Guy-Blaché (the first woman film director, for most intents and purposes) was when I was a little kid. So it surprises me that many scholars interviewed in the fine documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (Pamela B. Green, 2018) claim to have never heard of her. For sure, the film concerns the historical (i.e., sexist) processes that have rendered her far more obscure than Méliès or the Lumières. But am I jerk to assume scholars should know full well who she was? Anyhoo, the film is part investigative journalism, part just-plain-useful history, and captivating all throughout. A must-see portrait of one of the key innovators of cinema.

Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

First off, I know there's Oscar buzz re: Jennifer Lopez's performance. But I'd be surprised if she were even nominated, not because she wasn't terrific (she was!) but because it's not an Oscary performance. Second, it's a damn solid film. The strip joint scenes were electric and several moments had me doubting my well-manicured homosexuality. It's also a great sonic performance with fleet sound editing and a fantastic scene delivered through a police wire. Finally, Cardi B and Lizzo are also on board! Grade: B+ although that's sure to go up after a home viewing on headphones.

In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)

I won't say anything about the twisty story of In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018) beyond praising its bifurcated structure. But Strickland doesn't seem to know where to take his sumptuous sounds and images. In short, he has problems with his endings. I bought The Duke of Burgundy (2014) because the central relationship was so compelling and Berberian Sound Studio (2012) because sumptuousness was the chief product for sale. But In Fabric is yet another feel-bad horror film in the end. His worst so far (although I haven't seen his debut) and even at that it gets a generous B.