Track the Films You Watch (2005) - Page 43

Joe Karlosi · 07-26-2005, 05:23 PM

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AT MIDNIGHT I'LL TAKE YOUR SOUL (1963),

Well, Mario, I'm positive I saw this years ago and I tried searching some old notebooks for my opinion, but unfortunately it appears I never wrote my thoughts down!
All I can tell you is, I know it wasn't great and I know I didn't think it was totally worthless -- because those reactions I'd remember!

Michael Elliott · 07-26-2005, 11:25 PM

07/25/05

Murder in the Blue Room (1944)

Forgotten Universal “old dark house” film is the second remake of their very own Secret of the Blue Room. People start disappearing within a strange room that has a history of death. If you’ve seen the earlier film then you can pretty much follow this one each step of the way knowing what’s going to happen at each and every turn. The biggest difference here is that there are many musical numbers, which are pretty dumb but some nice laughs are scattered throughout. This was originally a vehicle for The Ritz Brothers.

Crocodile Dundee (1986)

Here’s another popular 80’s film I’m just getting around to seeing. I had heard so many great things about this that I really wanted to see it but afterwards I was a bit thankful for Wal-Mart’s $5.50 bin. The opening forty minutes in Australia did very little for me and I found all of it quite dull but I guess this is due to me seeing so much of the country on various shows on television. Things certainly pick up when we hit NYC but it’s still pretty much one joke. Paul Hogan is very good in the role but that’s about it.

07/26/05

Thirteenth Chair, The (1929)

Early Tod Browning talkie has a man murdered during a psychic reading. The local inspector (Bela Lugosi) shows up to solve the case. This mystery/thriller doesn’t have too much mystery nor thrills and in the end comes off incredibly slow moving and boring. Once again, this sound film features none of the wonderful techniques delivered by the director in his silent films. As with most early sound movies, this one here simply has way too much talk and not much of it very interesting. Even though he gets sixth billing, this is certainly Lugosi’s film and he delivers a pretty good performance as the fast talking, often screaming inspector. Lugosi’s accent stands in the way from understanding a few lines but it isn’t too bad. I would have deducted another half star had it not been for the Browning weirdness showing up in the end when a dead body helps solve the murder. In the end this is only for Lugosi or Browning fans who need to see everything the men did.

My Lugosi "to see" list is getting smaller each day. Two more from the 40's, five from the 30's and three from the 1920's (the rest of the 20s are lost).

SteveGon · 07-27-2005, 08:30 AM

Mad Love (1935)

Viewed 7/25/2005 (first viewing)

Classic chiller from Karl Freund stars Peter Lorre as a mad surgeon so in love with an actress that he'll do anything to get her - including replacing her pianist husband's damaged hands with those of an executed murderer!

out of

Dark Waters (1944)

Viewed 7/25/2005 (first viewing)

Bayou noir about a young woman menaced by her aunt and uncle after the death of her parents. About as murky as the swamp it takes place in, but buoyed by a good cast.

out of

Two Thousand Maniacs (1964)

Viewed 7/25/2005 (first viewing)

Herschell Gordon Lewis' drive-in classic has three Yankee couples tricked into staying over a few nights in a Southern hamlet whose residents still bear a serious grudge over the Civil War. Lousy on a technical level and rife with atrocious acting, but saved by imaginative murders and an infectious spirit. Goes on a bit too long.

out of

Christ in Concrete a.k.a. Give Us This Day (1949)

Viewed 7/28/2005 (first viewing)

Neo-realist tale of a bricklayer trying desperately to support his family during the Depression. But how far is he willing to go? Directed by then-blacklisted Edward Dmytryk and very nearly a lost film. Double-bill this with Salt of the Earth.

out of

The Gathering (2002)

Viewed 7/28/2005 (first viewing)

Solid supernatural thriller stars Christina Ricci as an amnesiac young woman taken in by an English couple whose son shares with Ricci visions of tragedy. Do the visions foretell a future event? And what do they have to do with that ancient and mysterious church found buried under a nearby hillside? And who are all those weird people wandering around? In the vein of, and on par with, The Sixth Sense.

out of

Brook K · 07-27-2005, 02:27 PM

I own many of the films you ordered Mario and have seen a couple of others.

I own all the Fassbinders and all are at least very good. I regard In A Year With 13 Moons as among the best films ever made (how's that for a buildup?). It is an intensely emotional, moving experience but also includes a heavy dose of Fassbinder's black comedy. This was a deeply personal film for Fassbinder following the suicide of his lover for which he blamed himself. It is raw, full of rage and pain - a masterpiece.

Whity marked the first Fassbinder-Michael Ballhaus collaboration and is pretty outstanding in its own right. It's his "sauerkraut" Western, shot in Spain on old Sergio Leone sets and follows his usual themes of the exploitative aspects of love and how money subverts and controls human relationships. There is some amazing camerawork here too. Ballhaus tells the story on the commentary about how Fassbinder kept trying to trip up Ballhaus by inventing ever more difficult shots for him to do, and then being blown away when Ballhaus was able to execute all of them.

Pioneers at Ingolstadt is perhaps less notable than the other 3 Fantoma Fassbinder releases, but I think the film is quite good. Production values are lower as in a number of his early films, but the script and themes are solid, as is the acting.

The Masumura films are also fine, I own all of them. Manji is my favorite, a film about a couple who both fall in love with a woman and initiate an ever more destructive sexual relationship. Not unlike In The Realm of the Senses without the nudity and shock value, but with better direction.

Blind Beast is a fun one with a blind artist's mother kidnapping a model for her son to use for both art and sex. The main set here has to be seen to be believed, a giant, prone nude statue in the center with mannequin-like body parts covering and jutting out of all the walls.

Afraid to Die is a solid Yakuza film starring Mishima (as in the subject of Schrader's film Mishima A Life in 4 Chapters), as a gangster with the unfortunate weakness of being Afraid to Die. Also features Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura in an atypical role as a hardnosed old school Yakuza.

Giants and Toys is a comedy spoofing Japan's rapid industrialization and burgeoning economy and its effects on Japanese society. I didn't like this one as much as the other 3 but need to revist it since I only watched it once.

As for Coffin Joe I own the first film and like it. It's certainly low budget (though that should be no deterrent here with you guys watching all sorts of obscure c-list Hollywood horrors), but with loads of mood and atmosphere. The Coffin Joe character is also a good one. Completely amoral and evil. The sequels I rented and didn't care for, especially Awakening of the Beast, filmed in lurid color, but otherwise virtually unwatchable. I can't even quite remember why I thought it was so bad anymore. I've done a pretty good job of deleting it from the memory banks.

Steve, my favorite parts, other than the concept itself, are the 2000 Maniacs theme song, and the killing where they drop the giant boulder on a guy.

Armin Jäger · 07-27-2005, 04:55 PM

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The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927)
Vibrant melodrama from G.W. Pabst. After the death of her father in revolutionary Russia, a young French woman is sent to Paris to live with her uncle. She is pursued there by two men: one is a scheming lout who will stop at nothing to get what he wants, the other is her lover, who is soon framed for murder. Can she expose the real killer and save him from the guillotine? Very entertaining, but also interesting from a technical standpoint: much of the film was shot in the "Hollywood" style, but Pabst also seasoned it with German expressionism and Soviet montage techniques.

The strange (and not very successful) mixture of styles between nouvelle vague like passages and Soviet cinema is the main attraction in this film not the story. But it really really isn't expressionistic. Whoever invented this term should be shot beacuse aside of Caligari and some other less known films German silent film has nothing to do with expressionism.

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The Murderers Are Among Us (1946)
Somber drama from post-WWII Germany. A man and a woman, she a concentration camp survivor, he a guilt-ridden German Army surgeon, share a Berlin apartment after the war. They eventually find a measure of peace in each other's company, until his past catches up with him. A haunting film, shot on location in the ruined neighborhoods of Berlin.

You'd never guess that Hildegard knef was in a concentration camp, her angelic understanding character is the biggest fault of a movie which makes many other things right. MURDERERS was often critizised for not analysing the Third Reich. Well that's right but it states quite courageously that the German army was as evil as the SS and that the murderers could continue to live successfully in the FRG and rebuild the country.
Come on Criterion if you're bored with Godard and the other usual suspects do a nice Staudte box!!!

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Classic adventure film has Gary Cooper and the famed British regiment protecting India from Islamic invaders. Top-notch all the way.
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) 9/10
I'm with Steve on this one, great rousing colonial entertainment in the old-fashioned keep-the-wogs-in-their-place manner.

am i the only one who thinks these "glory of British empire" films are as tasteless and dumb as BIRTH OF A NATION?

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These include FRITZ LANG'S INDIAN EPIC 2-Disc Set - comprising THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR (1958) and THE INDIAN TOMB (1959; strangely enough, I've watched only the second part of this saga,

Mario there's really no need to see EVERYTHING

and Lang's Indian epic is ... ugh ...

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I own all the Fassbinders and all are at least very good. I regard In A Year With 13 Moons as among the best films ever made (how's that for a buildup?). It is an intensely emotional, moving experience but also includes a heavy dose of Fassbinder's black comedy. This was a deeply personal film for Fassbinder following the suicide of his lover for which he blamed himself. It is raw, full of rage and pain - a masterpiece.

Seen almost all Fassbinder's and certainly don't feel the drive to see them again. 13 MOONS is very experimental, shrill in the tragedy in the dark comedy and the style.

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Whity marked the first Fassbinder-Michael Ballhaus collaboration and is pretty outstanding in its own right. It's his "sauerkraut" Western, shot in Spain on old Sergio Leone sets and follows his usual themes of the exploitative aspects of love and how money subverts and controls human relationships.

Yup, it's not really a western and as all 1969/1970 a rather monotonous affair. And to have such a beutiful girl as Katrin Schaake and to make her up so horribly is a crime

Mario Gauci · 07-27-2005, 05:06 PM

Brook,

Although I didn't mention you by name, I knew you'd be replying since you're such a Fassbinder fan

.

Those are big words you used in connection with IN A YEAR WITH 13 MOONS (1978) but, at least, now I'm looking forward much more to it; I kind of expected this to be dreary, depressing and sentimental but I'll take your word for it that it's also a black comedy and a masterpiece

!

I've been intrigued by WHITY (1971) since its original DVD release and have read a few positive online reviews; again, PIONEERS IN INGOLSTADT (1970) doesn't exactly sound like my cup of tea but, at least, it's got Hanna Schygulla

!

Of course, I've watched a few Fassbinders myself over the years - THE AMERICAN SOLDIER (1970), MARTHA (1973), THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979), THE THIRD GENERATION (1979) and BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980) - so, in a way, I know what to expect from the three titles above; however, even though I'm interested in watching many of those which are available on DVD, I can't say I've been bowled over by any of his films so far!

Thanks also for the insight on the Yasuzo Masumura films; although I had never heard of him prior to the original release of these 4 Fantoma DVDs, I've read several positive online reviews and, if the information on the NFT booklet is anything to go by, the rest of his films are in the same class (and, in some cases, better) as these 4! Incidentally, since you mentioned Nagisa Oshima's IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976) in connection with MANJI (1964), Oshima himself declared upon watching Masumura's debut feature, KISSES (1957), that "a powerful irresistible force has arrived in Japanese cinema"!

As for the Coffin Joe films, I'm keeping my fingers crossed...

Armin,

Thanks for the input as well.

Since Fritz Lang is one of my favorite directors, I guess I can be forgiven for wanting his Indian diptych in my collection - although, at least 1 film critic, Pierre Rissient (as had Jean Douchet years before) did include it his Top 10 in Sight and Sound's 2002 Poll

!

Michael Elliott · 07-27-2005, 05:08 PM

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am i the only one who thinks these "glory of British empire" films are as tasteless and dumb as BIRTH OF A NATION?

Some, myself included, might not find them tasteless and dumb?

george kaplan · 07-27-2005, 05:30 PM

am i the only one who thinks these "glory of British empire" films are as tasteless and dumb as BIRTH OF A NATION?

I find some of them to be bad films, but none (that I've seen) approaches Birth of a Nation. It's a far cry from reflecting a historical time period (even from a purely anglo viewpoint), to the outright racism of BoaN. There may have been racist aspects to the colonization itself, but that doesn't make the films racist, at least no more so than most films (including German and French films) of that period.

I would certainly disagree about some of the films in the genre, such as Gunga Din, which is great.

BTW, do you think Pepe Le Moko, and other "glory of the French Empire" films or Alexander Nevsky and other "glory of the Russian Empire" or Aguirre, The Wrath of God and other "glory of the Spanish Empire" films are as tastelss and dumb as BIRTH OF A NATION?

Joe Karlosi · 07-27-2005, 07:57 PM

I still need to see BIRTH OF A NATION, since it's such a controversial film.