Change Your Image
Colashwood
Reviews
Ed Wood (1994)
The one and only Time Machine
There has been an Ed Wood DVD box on the French market for a few months now, including Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Why are these films considered as the worst ever made in Hollywood (or elsewhere) is beyond my understanding. They are very awkward ; the acting is stiff and mostly unprofessional ; and still they do convey especially Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 an eerie feeling of metaphysical dereliction the dreadfully lonely scene with the old widower in Plan 9 is outstanding in an odd way.
*** Spoilers*** I bought the box, and a few days ago I landed up with Tim Burton's Ed Wood. Ed Wood is an outstanding film, showing, of course, none of the awkwardness of Ed Wood's own creations. The cast is wonderful (Depp, Landau, Lisa Marie, Jeffrey Jones especially), the direction is so precise and subtle it lets you savor the taste of good bad cinema without a single sneer ; the music is grand (Theremin be thanked !). And there is more to it a perfect reflection of the sad, bleached light that irradiates Ed Wood's own films, (if nothing else could). The scene of the old widower now gets a poignant explanation Depp-Wood stages it without even having a film in his mind, just to reassure poor old dying Landau-Lugosi. Well, he might well have less altruistic motives, but what do we care ? Wood records the frail gait, the trembling hand, the white light reverberating on the shabby suburban home. That is the sequence that shimmers with such melancholy in Ed Wood's real own Plan 9. No wonder : death looms large. I love the fact that Burton includes this very same sequence in Ed Wood, with an ecstatic Depp lip-sync-hing the scene who mirrors who now ? Isn't Ed Wood, the man, a Burton creation, after all ; or isn't Ed Wood the film time-teleported directly from the fifties to your screen ? Who knows ? It takes the slightly too familiar faces of Bill Murray and Sarah Jessica Parker to steal you from this ravishing time wrap (Landau's and Depp's should be as familiar : but they're far greater actors, aren't they ?). Alas, you are not lost in the black and white land of your wildest dreams and there's a way back home.
*** An other spoiler, and a puzzle*** A word about Orson Welles' uncanny apparition. The smooth-skinned, handsome Welles you see here is a thing of wonder so like Kane's Welles that the mind boggles ; but then : how can he be filming Touch of Evil ? And that, my friends, is one of Ed Wood's (the film, the man) greatest and most devastatingly naive ideas.
Heisei tanuki gassen ponpoko (1994)
Tanuki rule !
Anime is not my cup of tea, and my favorite in the field is sorry for Miyazaki My Neighbours the Yamada. So I was expecting something from Pompoko but not quite what I got. There is no less genius in Pompoko than in My Neighbours the Yamada, though : and it is displayed in a wonderfully different way. I loved the watercolor aspect of the Yamada world, its beautiful night scenes and the use of haiku. In Pompoko you have much stronger colors and drawings which are more in the usual anime line. But the crazy epic mood that pervades Pompoko is rather unique. The tanuki (doglike creatures living in the forest and for some of them transforming at will) fight fiercely against human settlements. From the first battle to the last hurray, the tanuki display their splendid and wonderful art of transformation, a clearly cinematographic one. The ghostly parade over the desolate suburban city is a unique piece of cinema (and so is the sad, mad Golden boat, drifting towards an uncertain paradise). More subtle, more upsetting is the use by Takahata of several animal aspects to depict the tanuki. The cuddly ones, the feral ones, the very simple ones this is clever and puzzling, as is ultimately the film itself. But who on earth needs evidences ? (And ahem why the fuss about the balls ?)
Ame agaru (1999)
Feel-good movie with no edges
I have seen this two days after the exhilarating "Kill", by Okamoto. So ? They both feature a middle-aged ronin with a good heart and an even better sword, inns full of "the good people", poor but industrious, and rather mean and silly clansmen. And pensive wives or wives to be. But Kill is a stylish, funny, irrelevant film, with a wonderful comical Tatsuya Nakadai, whereas Ame agaru fails in almost everything it attempts. The actor playing the ronin has no body tension (all right, that's part of his technique, but it doesn't work on screen. The old master incidentally played by dear Nakadai could have taught him a few of his acting tricks.) and there is no chemistry between any of those actors. Shiro Mifune has his papa's voice, but not much more in this film at least, and the landscapes are filmed with a striking apathy. Worst of all is the drivel about "the good poor people" so damn condescending. Hadn't Kurosawa had his take on the subject with the great Lower Depths ? And there was no condescension then. For a great film on the Japanese slums (other than Lower Depths, that is), try Humanity and Paper Balloons. And well, feel-good movies are seldom good.
Kôrei (2000)
What is far worse than seeing ghosts
There are two kinds of films in the world, my friends. Those in which it is easy to find a meaning (if possible, a moral one) and those which tell a story with such devices that you, spectator, are free to construe it. Seance is such a film. I for one do not see it as a horror or a crime movie. It has the required number of supernatural events, but what is far more frightening than that is the subtle psychological illness that affects the two hapless heroes, Junko and her husband. These two are completely hollow the husband filled with noises, the wife with ghosts indeed ; they very simply do not live on the same physical plane as other people (colleagues, patrons... and the young girl who gets trapped in the husband's case) and it takes two extremely gifted actors, Yakusho and Fubuki, to convey this hollowness, this muted remoteness, as they are conveyed here. Kurosawa does not make any redundant comment on that stupendous hollowness : he merely shows it ; that indeed is his job as a filmmaker. The result is, in my opinion, one of his best films, together with Bright Future and Doppelgaenger. For yes : the doppelgaenger variation which one or two of the other commentators find so irksome (unfairly so, in my opinion : the eager student who mentions the apparition of a doppelgaenger in someone's life as a sign of impending demise isn't right* ; in literature the thing has been plaguing many a cheerless Romantic and postromantic hero for years) is back in Kurosawa's latest full length feature, Doppelgaenger (there is a Japanese DVD with English subtitles). No important message in that wonderfully quirky, eerily violent comedy (Yakusho again plays the double part). Let us rejoice about that fact : as long as a film puzzles more than it scares, it will never be remade in Hollywood.
* And he shouldn't be believed any more than the misleading psychiatrist in Cure, should he ?
Kenka erejî (1966)
Japanese Ferdydurke
* minor spoilers * Fighting Elegy is the crowning feature of a 6 DVD package of Suzuki's work (also featuring the wacky Tokyo Drifter and similar gems), released in 2003 in France (region 2, French subtitles only).
Wonderfully shot in black and white, with a swiftness and a brutality one finds more and more disturbing as the (very grim) end nears... It indeed reminded me of Ferdydurke (the book, not the film, which was rather a disappointment), with its mixture of male hysteria, repressed sexuality and elegance.
(And it is an additional pleasure to think that Suzuki Seijun is still around !)
Dai-bosatsu tôge (1966)
One of these miraculous surprises
It sometimes happens that you enter a cinema hall or pick a DVD out of mere curiosity and wind up with one of the greatest surprises of your cinematographic life. Such is the case with The Sword of Doom. I did not know what to expect at all and the raw darkness of the characters and of the cinematography cut me to the bone. I'm told the film is an oddity in his director's career; which makes me risking a (most possibly) silly, unsubstantiated comparison with The Night of the Hunter.
Make Mine Mink (1960)
Should be on the same shelf as Ladykillers, Mouse on the Moon etc.
Paris used to be the place where you can see all sorts of "rare" films. But how comes we always have Man in the White Suit and Ladykillers when it comes to British comedy ? I discovered Terry-Thomas in the Dr Phibes movies (IMDB kindly tells me he's showing as well in that great French war classic, La Grande Vadrouille. How silly of me) and, rather charmed by the gap between the teeth, bought a Terry-Thomas DVD set in London. Mark that, readers ! It contains Make Mine Mink, Too Many Crooks and Naked Truth. They're all very good but Make Mine Mink has the very special charm of its female cast, from oddly beautiful Billie Whitelaw to wonderful Hattie Jacques (and a special mention to Penny Morrell in a faultless dumb blonde part).
Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)
Sweet taste of childhood fears
Christopher Lee's recent interview in The Independent prompted me to buy a mysterious Peter Cushing DVD setbox containing four films*, of which this one is the most satisfying. Very, very charming ; slyly frightening at times, and reminding one of the feeling night has for a child.
* Available in Paris ; contains Island of Terror, Creeping Flesh, Blood Beast Terror and Dr Terror - unfortunately the four films do come either in French or in English with subtitles.
The English Patient (1996)
Sad mistake
No offense meant, but except for Binoche and Scott Thomas, the film was - for me - a huge, sad and tasteless mistake. I was so bored by the whole thing that I kept on brooding about Fiennes' unrealistic make-up and the sheer ugliness of the Italian frescoes. These parodies of life's extremes - extreme beauty, extreme pain - are as hapless as the film itself.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Overblown
I was inflicted The Shawshank Redemption in a school trip coach, where a shy girl handed the tape to the headteacher : "Sir please sir ! Can we watch it ?". And we did, gosh, we did. And heard it as well. Spoilers ahead !
A very noisy film - overblown, cheesy, sappy, with ugly slow-motions to make you understand that, hurray, at last the characters are free (and so was I, mercifully), and the bad ones have been punished (and so was I, and so was I...) Yes, at last that does make sense...
Next the students asked for Meet the parents - and - would you believe it ? Ben Stiller WAS a relief. Since that moment I've always wanted to watch Zoolander.
My Ain Folk (1973)
Quietly shivering landscapes
All right, not much votes for that sublime oddity of a film. I saw it by chance, together with the other "episodes" of Bill Douglas' autobiopic - if I may use that word.
It is quite unique. No other piece of cinema ever reached that utter sadness, ever showed those quietly shivering landscapes - except may be Dreyer's Vampyr, and possibly Straub / Huillet at their least boring. Dreyer ? Straub ? Huillet ? Yes, but you sometimes have those spectral moments, those white explosions in more mainstream, more meaty movies such as Them (just think of the beginning in the desert) or Kiss me deadly. Or, say, The Misfits, the garrulousness of which is (for me) redeemed by Monroe's silent dance around a tree in the sparkling white night.
When I hear Mr van Sant babbling about the cinema of reality and other fake highbrow concepts, I think of Bill Douglas who, 30 years before Mr van Sant, triggered the question with far more talent.
Couldn't Criterion do the world a favor and have these three films issued on DVD ?