Race with the Devil *

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 6, 2013)

Image result for dirty mary crazy larry

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry/Race with the Devil – Shout! Factory Blu-ray

Talk about a guilty pleasure! This is a real deal low-budget “grind house double feature” from the actual era that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez spent $53 million attempting to recreate with their 2007 mock-up. Jack Starret’s 1975 occult thriller Race with the Devil was the primary reason I picked up this “two-fer” Blu-ray . Peter Fonda and Warren Oates star as buds who hit the road in an RV with wives (Lara Parker, Loretta Swit) and dirt bikes in tow. The first night’s bivouac doesn’t go so well; the two men witness what appears to be a human sacrifice by a devil worship cult, and it’s downhill from there (it’s literally a “vacation from hell”). A genuinely creepy chiller that keeps you on the edge of your seat to the end.

John Hough’s Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is another Fonda vehicle, co-starring my first major teenage crush Susan George (*sigh*) and Adam Roarke. Fonda and Roarke play car racing partners who take an ill-advised detour into crime, robbing a grocery store in hopes of getting enough loot to buy a pro race car. They soon find themselves on the run from the law. A shameless rip off of Vanishing Point; but muscle car enthusiasts will dig the ride (and that cherry ’69 Dodge Charger). The extras include recollections by Fonda and George.

Animated, Family Issues, Fantasy

Blu-ray reissue: My Neighbor Totoro ****

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 6, 2013)

My Neighbor Totoro – Disney Blu Ray

While this 1988 film was anime master’s Hayao Miyazaki’s fourth feature, it was one of his (and Studio Ghibli’s) first international hits. It’s a lovely tale about a young professor and his two daughters settling into their new country house (a “fixer-upper”) while Mom convalesces at a nearby hospital. The rambunctious 4 year-old goes exploring and stumbles into the verdant court of a “king” nestled within the roots of a gargantuan camphor tree. This king rules with a gentle hand; a benign forest spirit named Totoro (a furry, whiskered amalgam of every cuddly toy you ever cozied up to as a child).

Granted, it’s Miyazaki’s most simplistic and kid-friendly tale…but that’s not a put down. Miyazaki’s usual themes remain intact; the animation is breathtaking, the fantasy elements magical, yet the human characters remain down-to-earth and easy to relate to. A charmer. Disney’s HD transfer is excellent; all of the extras from the SD edition are ported over.

60's Counterculture, Journalism, On Politics

Blu-ray reissue: Medium Cool ***

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 6, 2013)

Medium Cool- The Criterion Collection Blu-ray

What Haskell Wexler’s unique 1969 drama may lack in narrative cohesion is more than made up for by its importance as a sociopolitical document. Robert Forster stars as a TV news cameraman who is fired after he complains to station brass about their willingness to help the FBI build files on political agitators via access to raw news film footage and reporter’s notes.

He drifts into a relationship with a Vietnam War widow (Verna Bloom) and her 12 year-old son. They eventually find themselves embroiled in the mayhem surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention (in the film’s most memorable scene, the actors were actually sent in to improvise amidst one of the infamous “police riots” as it was happening). Many of the issues Wexler touches on (especially regarding media integrity and journalistic responsibility) would be extrapolated further in films like Network and Broadcast News.

Criterion’s Blu-ray sports a beautifully restored transfer, and insightful extra features.

Drama, War

Blu-ray reissue: The Duellists ***1/2

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 6, 2013)

The Duellists – Shout! Factory Blu-ray

If you can get past Harvey Keitel’s anachronistic Brooklyn wise guy stance and Keith Carradine’s oddly mannered take on a 19^th-century “popinjay”, there’s a lot here in director Ridley Scott’s sumptuously photographed 1977 debut (adapted from a Joseph Conrad story) for cineastes to revel in. Keitel and Carradine play a pair of officers in Napoleon’s army who engage in a series of duels spanning three decades (some people just don’t know when to “let it go”).

Happily, the existential futility of this purloined stalemate becomes moot, as it is cloaked in one of the most visually stunning period pieces you’ll ever feast your eyes upon this side of Barry Lyndon (all the more impressive when you consider the $900,000 budget, which is coffee and a doughnut compared to the $130,000,000 spent on his dreary-looking Prometheus). Shout! Factory’s Blu-ray skimps on extras, but this long-overdue HD transfer is most welcome.

Film Noir

Blu-ray reissue: The City That Never Sleeps **1/2

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 6, 2013)

The City That Never Sleeps – Olive Films Blu-ray

The original studio tagline for this 1953 noir from director John H. Auer teased a sordid thriller that took you “…from the honky-tonks to the penthouses” of Chicago, where “…the creeps, the hoods, the killers come out to war with the city!” Gig Young stars as a life-tired cop who has burned out on both work and marriage. He finds some solace with his mistress (a stripper) but is having commitment issues with that relationship as well. Collusion with a corrupt lawyer could be his ticket out…but as anyone familiar with noir tropes might guess, it’s likely to be a bumpy ride.

While it admittedly falls a little short of turning the Windy City into The Naked City (from a narrative standpoint), it is redeemed by atmospheric nighttime photography by John L. Russell (who served as DP on Hitchcock’s Psycho). I’m developing a love-hate relationship with reissue specialists Olive Films. While commendably digging up and releasing coveted rarities in HD, so far they demonstrate zero interest in restoring them.

Drama

The winds of Var: The Well Digger’s Daughter ***

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 21, 2012)

There is an unbilled co-star stealing nearly every scene in the latest film adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s novel, La Fille du puisatier; it’s the immutable breeze that rustles the verdant forests, fields and groves of France’s Provence region.

It’s no coincidence that this is the same intoxicating locale that informed two of the most acclaimed Pagnol film adaptations, Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. It’s also no coincidence that the first-time director overseeing The Well Digger’s Daughter is veteran actor Daniel Auteuil, who played one of the major characters in Berri’s 1986 diptych.

Auteuil casts himself as the father of the eponymous young woman. The story begins on the eve of WW I. Pascal is a working class widower with six daughters, literally scraping to get by. His eldest, 18 year-old Patricia (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) has in essence filled her late mother’s shoes, selflessly devoting herself to attending to the welfare of her father and younger sisters.

Patricia is special in another way . When she was 6, a wealthy (and childless) Parisian woman on a countryside visit was so taken with the angelic young girl that she offered to take her back to the city and become her guardian. Seeing this as an opportunity for one of their daughters to have a shot at a better life, her parents agreed. But when her benefactor died, Patricia returned home at 15, now carrying herself with a certain air of refinement that set her apart from her peers.

Patricia’s trifecta of beauty, carriage and saintliness has certainly not been lost on at least two potential suitors. One is Felipe (Kad Merad). Felipe, a kindhearted bachelor in his mid-40s, is Pascal’s closest friend and sole employee (Merad’s characterization reminded me of Karl Malden’s turn as the quietly desperate, romantically awkward but well-meaning Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire).

When Felipe begins dropping not-so-subtle hints about his intentions, Pascal gives his blessing, mostly for pragmatic reasons; Felipe’s house is nearby, so he wouldn’t “lose” his beloved daughter, and it would be one less mouth for him to feed. Still, it would be up to Patricia, who, while fond of Felipe, has no romantic feelings for him.

Patricia’s introduction to her second suitor is straight out of Red Riding Hood. While cutting through unfamiliar woods one day to bring some lunch to her father and Felipe at their well dig, she encounters a somewhat over-confident (yet undeniably seductive) young man (Nicolas Duvauchelle) who introduces himself as the son of a local well-to-do store owner.

It’s love at first sight; although Patricia doesn’t realize it yet. By the time she does, the young man, a military pilot, is called to serve at the front, and she is left with a child on the way and a disappointed and conflicted father.

If that sounds like the setup for an old fashioned romantic melodrama, you would be 100% correct in that assumption. And I mean that in the best possible way (as I have never had an opportunity to see Pagnol’s own original 1940 film version, which doesn’t seem to be readily available on any home video format, I can’t address comparisons).

This is a magnificent “old fashioned romantic melodrama” in the tradition of Ryan’s Daughter; a beautifully acted, sensitively directed, emotionally resonant film, with lushly photographed scenery (by Betty Blue DP Jean-Francois Robin) that becomes a palpable character in the story.

Auteuil plays his Noble Peasant with a sense of aplomb that reminded me more than a little of Gerard Depardieu’s performance as the hunchback in Jean de Florette (I did have to chuckle though, when I recalled the late Pauline Kael’s droll assessment in her review: “…Depardieu wears ‘GOOD MAN’ in capital letters across his wide brow; in smaller letters we can read: ‘He has poetry in his soul.’).

As a bonus, Berges-Frisbey (radiantly lovely) and Duvauchelle (vibing the young Alain Delon) make great eye candy. Tired of superheroes, aliens and car crashes? This is your cure for the summertime blues.

Drama, Journalism

The owl and the pussycats: Elle **

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 5, 2012)

Let’s face it. At some juncture, we’ve all been whores. Take me, for example. I used to be a rent boy. OK, “stand-up comic” (same thing). I think it was Jay Leno who once drew some astute parallels. I’m paraphrasing, but it was along the lines of: “You degrade yourself entertaining strangers, but it’s over in 20 minutes and you get fifty bucks.” Or, have you ever had a job that you despised, but didn’t quit because the money was too good? If you answered “guilty”, I submit, sir or madam, that you have prostituted yourself!

Social observers have gleaned similar parallels with (smelling salts and fainting couch on standby?) marriage. In her book Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter posits: “What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many?” The great Emma Goldman once offered this: “To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.”

And so it is that Polish writer-director Malgorzata Szumowska has dusted off this somewhat, erm, hoary feminist conundrum for reexamination in Elles: If a woman chooses to profit from her sexuality, is she empowering…or enslaving herself?

Juliette Binoche portrays Anne, a writer for ELLE magazine. She is working on an investigative piece profiling two young Parisian women (Anais Demoustier and Joanna Kulig) who are “working their way through college” as call girls.

At first, Anne maintains professional distance; however as she delves deeper into their lives, she transmogrifies from objective journalist into giggly confidante. Intoxicated by their youth, independence and sexual candor, Anne is copping something akin to a mainline rush as the women regale her with intimate details about their work. On the down side, the interviews are plunging Anne into an existential crisis.

On the surface, Anne’s lot in life doesn’t appear to be analogous to that of the two young women; in fact it is the very antithesis. Anne is older, financially secure, and settled into a comfortable bourgeois life with her husband and two children. What reason would she have to envy them?

Perhaps, when Anne contrasts the relatively adventurous lifestyles of the prostitutes with her own daily drudge of familial obligations and job deadlines, she discerns a sort of empowerment (not unlike Catherine Deneuve’s bored housewife ‘Severine’ in Luis Bunuel’s 1967 film, Belle de Jour).

Arguably, any true empowerment there is purely academic. That is, unless you feel “empowered” by allowing someone to urinate on you, or (even worse) sexually violate you Fatty Arbuckle style (as demonstrated in the two most disturbing and unnecessary scenes in the movie).

No, what Anne is really questioning is her role as wife and homemaker, which comes to a head as she prepares a dinner party for her husband’s boss. She has likely done this many times before, but suddenly the whole concept is anathema to her (much to her husband’s chagrin). Why is it so important she doll herself up and play the perfect little hostess, anyway? Just to “please” her husband? What am I, his whore? Oh, the humanity! Cue the meltdown.

When the film makes this awkward turn into Diary of a Mad Housewife territory, it loses credibility. Are we supposed to believe that all it takes is several interviews with a couple of student hookers for this woman, who has a great career, loving family and a fabulous Parisian apartment, to suddenly determine that all men suck and that her life is total shit? I’m just not buying it.

That being said, when you’ve got Binoche on board (one of the finest actresses currently strolling the planet), you can almost forgive the film’s weak script and narrative flaws. Frankly, she is the sole reason to watch it (if you’re looking for a reason). Binoche can hold your attention by simply staring out of a sunlit window (there’s a lot of that). If not for her presence, I would have summed up the film thusly: Eat Pray Love with an NC-17.

Drug Culture, Neo-Noir

The story of O: Savages **1/2

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 7, 2012)

“Just because I’m telling you this story,” cautions the narrator in the opening scene of Oliver Stone’s Savages, “…doesn’t mean I’m alive at the end of it.” While this may conjure up visions of William Holden floating face down in Gloria Swanson’s swimming pool in Sunset Boulevard, this isn’t Hollywood hack Joe Gillis’ voice we’re listening to; rather it’s a young woman named “O” (Blake Lively). Blonde, Laguna Beach tanned, and, erm, quite “fit”, O could have materialized directly from Brian Wilson’s libido. However, hers is not a happy story of sun and surf…it’s a darker tale about guns and turf.

No stranger to dark tales about guns and turf, Stone takes the ball that novelist Don Winslow tossed him with his 2010 pot trade noir, and not only runs with it, but ratchets it up six ways from any given Sunday; transforming it into Scarface 2.0 for Millennials, with a touch of Jules and Jim. Indeed, it’s only five minutes before he has someone revving up a chainsaw (and not to cut wood). The power tools star in an exclusive (and gruesome) webcast targeting O’s two lovers, Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch).

Ben and Chon are 20-something BFFs who run a thriving business selling weed touted “the best cannabis in the world.” It seems a Tijuana drug cartel, led by a ruthless widow (and prolific widow-maker) named Elena (a scenery-chewing Salma Hayek), wants a piece of their action. Her message is very clear: Use your head, or lose your head.

That sounds like a plan to Ben. A Berkeley alum with a business degree, he’s the brains; idealistic, California mellow, never fired a shot in anger, we can work this out, etc. His bud Chon, an ex-Navy SEAL, is the brawn. Fuck these guys, I’ve already got one in the chamber, let’s rock’n’roll, etc. He is also an Afghanistan war vet, with issues. As O helpfully clarifies in the voice-over, she “…has orgasms,” (when Chon makes love to her) whilst he “…has wargasms.” (And they said Sniglets were dead).

Chon wants to call their bluff. After a meeting with Elena’s negotiator (Demian Bichir) ends in a stalemate, she sends in her enforcer, Lado (Benicio Del Toro) to use more “persuasive” methods. Ben and Chon brainstorm and continue to play for time, until Lado and his henchmen take O as a hostage. From that point, our intrepid duo decides that when Kush comes to shove, they will not be intimidated; so they call in favors from a crooked DEA agent (John Travolta) and a few of Chon’s ex-SEAL buddies.

In real life, one suspects that Ben and Chon would end up starring in one of Elena’s snuff videos somewhere around the end of the first act (I’m not even sure they could locate their car after a Phish concert). I know… “It’s only a movie!” But I still advise you be prepared to suspend disbelief regarding what ensues in this rote (if slickly made and beautifully photographed) Elmore Leonard-esque tale of double-crosses, triple-crosses, and ultimately, a lot of white crosses (although to be fair, Stone’s body count here isn’t as high as in Natural Born Killers). All the Stone trademarks are here, except for the passion; not that he’s required to provide political subtext every time out, but this is uncharacteristically joyless film making.

The cast does its best with woefully underwritten parts, but by the muddled third act, everyone’s acting in a different film. Travolta and Del Toro, who usually liven up things, regardless of script quality (especially when playing heavies) look too bored to even go for camp. None of the characters are particularly likable (even our heroine is a whiny ditz). Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by the All-Star Dutch Treat quality of Showtime’s Weeds and AMC’s Breaking Bad, but this narrative (independent entrepreneur outwits the big bad cartel) has been done to death…and frankly, with more originality and élan.

Big Money, Drama, Family Issues, Up the Workers

Crimes and misdemeanors: Elena ***

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 14, 2012)

Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

-Anthony Burgess

It quickly becomes apparent in the opening scenes of Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena that you are settling in to watch a film wherein nothing is going to quickly become apparent.

He holds a static shot of a tree bathed in the cool light of dawn for what must be at least three minutes. Aside from the cackling of crows, there doesn’t seem to be anything of particular significance going on.

Wait a minute…is that a window, beyond the branches? It is, in fact, a balcony window, but we can’t quite see in; the glass only reflects the burgeoning sunrise. And (crows aside) it’s quiet…too quiet. This gives the viewer ample time to ponder: What’s going on behind that window? Are those crows an omen?

Interior shots reveal a decidedly less sinister scenario; a well-appointed luxury apartment, where a plain, unassuming middle-aged woman shuts off her alarm and gets out of bed. Again, the director takes his time, documenting the minutiae of her morning ablutions. Just when we are about to assume she lives alone, she enters a different bedroom, drawing the curtains open to awaken a gentleman who is a number of years her senior. There is minimal verbal exchange.

As she diligently begins to prepare breakfast, new questions arise. Is she his live-in housekeeper? Or maybe a caregiver for an elderly relative? While arguably a bit of both, turns out she’s technically neither. Despite their undemonstrative behavior, they are married. Vladmir (Andrey Smirnov) is an aloof, well-do-do patrician, and Elena (Nadezhda Markina), a retired nurse, hails from a working class background.

Mundane breakfast chat reveals that Vladmir and Elena each have an adult child from previous marriages. Vladmir has a daughter, with who he is rarely in contact with. According to him, she is a self-centered “hedonist”, who “takes after her mother”. Still, he spoils her; sending her money to support her party girl lifestyle.

Much to Vladmir’s chagrin, Elena is off after breakfast to visit her son Sergei (Aleksey Rosen). Sergei, who is unemployed, relies on the money Elena funnels him from her monthly pension check to support himself, his wife, infant and teenage son.

Vladmir, despite his wealth, refuses to give Elena’s son financial support; to him, Sergei is a useless lay about who needs to “get his ass off the couch” and provide for his family. Elena, who has heard this tirade before, absorbs it all with quiet resignation.

Then, she’s off on a long slog via bus, train and shoe leather express to just beyond the outskirts of urban renewal, where Sergei and his family live in a drab, rundown beehive apartment complex (which, with its twitchy youth gang skulking about the stoop and trashed, graffiti-scrawled lobby, is reminiscent of the building where Alex and his droogs held their confabs in A Clockwork Orange).

The stark contrast in living quarters, along with Vladmir and Elena’s disparate social backgrounds are metaphors for the central themes of Zvyagintsev’s screenplay (co-written by Oleg Negin): the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, and instinct vs. morality (echoes of Kurosawa’s High and Low).

All the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out when Vladmir suffers a sudden heart attack. He is visited in the hospital by his estranged daughter (Elena Lyadova, in a standout turn). Despite her nihilist stance regarding Vladmir’s situation, father and daughter unexpectedly reconcile, inspiring Vladmir to make changes in his will.

This decision leads another character to make a moral choice that profoundly changes the family’s dynamics. When this decision occurs, it is so subtle and reflexive that you might miss it; but such is the banality of evil.

Zvyagintsev has served up a complexly flavored filet of dark Russian soul, spiced with a hint of Dostoyevsky, a sprig of Burgess and a dash of Hitchcock. You could describe his film as a “noir-ish thriller”, but not in the traditional sense.

For one thing, there are no suspenseful musical cues. In fact, save for a solitary Philip Glass piece that makes several brief appearances on the soundtrack, there’s no music to speak of (thankfully, the director is astute enough to realize that a little bit of Philip Glass goes a long, long way).

The deliberate pacing could be a deal-breaker for some; I’ll admit I found myself struggling a bit through the first hour or so. But if you are patient, you will come to realize that there is a Kubrickian precision to the construct. And you will finally grok what’s going on behind that window…it’s a primordial dance as old and familiar as human nature itself.

Historical drama, Royal Intrigue

Start the revolution without me: Farewell My Queen **1/2

August 31, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 28, 2012)

From family trees the dukes do swing: Farewell, My Queen.

Benoit Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen is the type of period film that critics love, because it gives them carte blanche to drop descriptive phrases like “handsomely mounted” and “sumptuously detailed” with abandon. OK, so it is a handsomely mounted, sumptuously detailed period film that achieves verisimilitude by occasionally soiling the hem of its petticoats with (to paraphrase from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) “lovely” (and authentic!) 18^th century filth.

That’s exactly what happens when an otherwise poised young lady named Sidonie (Lea Seydoux) goes unceremoniously ass over teakettle while scurrying to attend to the whims of one Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). The year is 1789, and that would be the same Marie Antoinette who was Queen of France at the time. As any history major would tell you, 1789 wasn’t the best year to have that particular gig. Indeed, it is July of 1789, and there’s a sizable coterie of disgruntled (and filthy!) 99 per centers days away from donning tri-corner hats and brandishing pitchforks to storm the Bastille.

But the Queen currently has more pressing concerns. For example, where oh where is her “finery book”? She’s just had an epiphany for a new dress design, while Sidonie (her personal reader) reads an article aloud to her from a fashion magazine as Marie wistfully ogles the pictures (you have to understand, they didn’t have cable back then). You are probably getting the picture that, despite the fomenting revolution on the streets of Paris, life within the Société Particulière de la Reine is continuing unabated. At least at first glance.

Through Sidonie’s eyes (she is one of the Queen’s primary “ladies in waiting”) we are given an upstairs/downstairs peek at the doings at Versailles during the waning days of the French monarchy. In the drawing rooms, it’s all curtsies and hushed deference, but as we move farther out of royal earshot and closer to the servant’s quarters, gossip and rumors rule (as well as furtive bodice-ripping).

It’s nearly impossible to observe the disconnect of these privileged aristocrats carrying on in their gilded bubble while the impoverished and disenfranchised rabble sharpen up the guillotines without drawing parallels with our current state of affairs (history, if nothing else, is cyclical). The director seems sharp enough to “know that we know” this already, so he doesn’t hit us over the head with it. His screenplay (co-written by Gilles Taurand) manages to contemporize the emotional life of the characters, whilst managing to avoid the anachronistic conceits that plagued Sofia Coppola’s 2006 misfire, Marie Antoinette.

The film is carried primarily through earthy, believable performances fby Seydoux and Kruger (who also worked together in Inglourious Basterds). Kruger conveys Marie’s spoiled frivolousness, but avoids broad caricature; there’s a resigned melancholy lurking beneath the veneer, adding an interesting layer to her performance. Kruger’s subtlety is particularly highlighted in a memorable scene where she confides to Seydoux regarding her “special” friendship with Gabrielle de Polignac (a duchess in the Queen’s court rumored to have been her lover). The dialog is strictly innuendo, but Kruger’s delivery and facial expressions say it all (it’s quite reminiscent of Laurence Oliver’s infamous “snails and oysters” conversation with Tony Curtis in Spartacus). This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this story, and it won’t be the last, but somehow…I never tire of watching the oligarchy crumble (pass the popcorn!).