I was sat­is­fied with this per­for­mance-cap­ture ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the Beowulf epic. It does­n’t have much to do with the orig­i­nal Anglo-Sax­on epic, but mythol­o­gy is, by its very nature, open to any muta­tion the re-teller cares to make. Who the hell knows what trans­for­ma­tions the sto­ry expe­ri­enced before our “lit­er­ary” ver­sion appeared? No one object­ed when Allan Gard­ner turned the sto­ry on its head in his nov­el “Gren­del”. This ani­mat­ed ver­sion is an even greater depar­ture, but it held my atten­tion and was visu­al­ly pleasing.

Buster Keaton in Out West (1918)…

… and near­ly a half cen­tu­ry lat­er in The Rail­rod­der (1965)

I acknowl­edge Char­lie Chaplin’s genius, but I have to say that his screen per­son­al­ity nev­er appealed to me, and I appre­ci­ate his films with a detached, tech­ni­cal eye. Buster Keaton is anoth­er thing entire­ly, for me. His com­ic genius touch­es me direct­ly. I laugh when I see Keaton’s silent clas­sics. I was first exposed to his work as a child. The last film he made, before his death, was a short pro­mo­tional film for the CNR”s coast-to-coast pas­sen­ger ser­vice across Cana­da. His stone-faced char­ac­ter cross­es the coun­try on a rail­way hand-car. Keaton was as bril­liant in it as in any film he had made a half-cen­tu­ry before. Read more »

Hal Hol­brook’s one-man stage show, in which he repro­duces Mark Twain’s nine­teenth cen­tu­ry stage appear­ances, is per­haps the most exact and sub­tle rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any pre-cin­e­ma era his­toric fig­ure under­tak­en by any actor. It’s not just Hol­brook’s tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty, but the taste and intel­li­gence with which he select­ed from Twain’s writ­ings that makes the per­for­mance unfor­get­table. Much of this mate­r­i­al is high­ly rel­e­vant today. Twain was not a sim­ple man. His ambi­gu­i­ties have fas­ci­nat­ed both his­to­ri­ans and lovers of lit­er­a­ture since he left the world’s stage (just as he entered it) with Haley’s comet. Hol­brook cap­tures this. The 1967 CBS broad­cast of the Broad­way show must have been one of the most amaz­ing tele­vi­sion events of its time. It’s avail­able from Kul­tur, a com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in pre­serv­ing notable stage per­for­mances on DVD.

This is a slow-paced psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma, styl­is­ti­cal­ly influ­enced by Tarkovsky. It holds atten­tion because the act­ing is superb, the psy­cho­log­i­cal nuances real­is­tic. One scene, for exam­ple, involv­ing a lost watch, stands out for the fine-tuned per­for­mances of the two lead actors, Muzaf­fer Ozdemir and Emin Toprak. Sad­ly, Toprak died in a car crash short­ly after learn­ing he had received his award at Cannes. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is first rate, with Istan­bul buried in snow form­ing a grey back­drop to the claus­tro­pho­bic inte­ri­or shots and tight­ly repressed rela­tion­ships of the char­ac­ters. It’s a grim film, but the sym­pa­thy of the script makes this tol­er­a­ble to the view­er, and the cam­era con­veys both the beau­ty and the bleak­ness of a Turk­ish win­ter.

A well-craft­ed sus­pense film employ­ing some of the for­mu­las of Hitch­cock. Despite the title, it’s a Span­ish film. The main char­ac­ter is a Por­tuguese video dis­trib­u­tor, on a car trip from Spain, going home. He picks up a mys­te­ri­ous woman, and gets tan­gled in a web of mur­der. Well-trod­den mate­r­i­al, but direc­tor Her­nan­dez han­dles it well, and the odd­ly low-key end­ing is original.

“Oh, no! Not the BEES!!”

Okay, I’ve final­ly seen it. When I heard there was an Amer­i­can remake of the clas­sic 1973 British film I knew it would have to be bad. When it came out, every­one who saw it assured me that it was not just ter­ri­ble, but an absolute atroc­i­ty. But still, I was not pre­pared for how unbe­liev­ably bad this film is. It’s sick­en­ing­ly, loath­some­ly, hor­ri­bly, hideous­ly, insult­ing­ly bad. Not even the hilar­i­ous sight of Nicholas Cage punch­ing an Evil Wic­can Fem­i­nist while dressed in a bear suit can make it seem charm­ing­ly bad, like an Ed Wood movie, or Robot Mon­ster. The insult to the orig­i­nal film is sim­ply too mon­strous to per­mit that kind of plea­sure. This was made by morons who under­stand noth­ing. The best way to watch it, if you must, would be to be dead drunk, stoned out of your mind, or, bet­ter yet, in a clin­i­cal coma.

Richard Lin­klater’s Dazed and Con­fused (1993) has an endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. It was an ensem­ble piece, focus­ing on a dozen char­ac­ters, all young, unknown actors at the time. Ben Affleck, among them, went on to a major film career. But when­ev­er I dis­cuss the film with any­one, they always fix on one per­for­mance, that of Wiley Wig­gins, who played an amaz­ing­ly lik­able char­ac­ter that saved the film from being too pat­ly cyn­i­cal. Lin­klater wise­ly employed Wig­gins again to play the cen­tral char­ac­ter in Wak­ing Life. This off­beat 2001 film employs a com­bi­na­tion of roto­scope and com­put­er ani­ma­tion. Roto­scop­ing is a tech­nique that is usu­al­ly annoy­ing, but here it works per­fect­ly to put across the idea of lucid dream­ing. The sto­ry line involves a char­ac­ter who is trapped in a dream about being trapped in a dream, and sus­pi­cious that he is actu­al­ly dead. He con­stant­ly encoun­ters char­ac­ters who lec­ture him on var­i­ous con­ven­tion­al philo­soph­i­cal notions ― the stan­dard reper­toire of Exis­ten­tial­ism, Post­mod­ernism, etc, the kind of stuff that usu­al­ly makes me cringe. But the warmth of Wig­gins’ per­son­al­i­ty (his char­ac­ter is nev­er named) makes it all work, and the ani­ma­tion’s shift­ing styles and visu­al jokes are per­fect for por­tray­ing dream states. Some of the seg­ments are quite beautiful.

This is a film clas­sic that holds up rather well. John Buchan’s spy thriller, pub­lished in 1915, formed the tem­plate for hun­dreds of future sto­ries. It cer­tain­ly pro­vid­ed the for­mu­la that Hitch­cock repeat­ed in many of his films: an inno­cent man, ordi­nary enough, but cheer­ful, resource­ful, and mod­est­ly brave, acci­den­tal­ly gets entan­gled in a com­pli­cat­ed espi­onage scheme, gets framed for mur­der, goes on the run, and has to foil the spies to clear his name. The chase takes him across coun­try, a pil­grim’s progress through a sequence of encoun­ters with com­i­cal and sin­is­ter char­ac­ters, and finds love along the way. Hitch­cock made exact­ly the film again in Sabo­teur and North By North­west. Robert Donat played this kind of hero to per­fec­tion, so charm­ing­ly that you for­get the famil­iar­i­ty of the plot. Hitch­cock moved the sto­ry up from 1915 to the time of film­ing, and made the hero, for some rea­son, a Cana­di­an, but the for­mu­la works in any time or place.

Mar­lon Bran­do’s per­for­mances were stun­ning in sev­er­al fine films of the 1950’s (On The Water­front, A Street­car Named Desire, Julius Cae­sar). But some films just don’t trav­el well through time. What­ev­er it was that peo­ple saw in this film, wide­ly regard­ed as a clas­sic, has evap­o­rat­ed. Bran­do’s per­for­mance mes­mer­ized audi­ences at the time, who seemed to see some kind of pul­sat­ing ani­mal mag­net­ism in it. But Bran­do was already get­ting pudgy, and the char­ac­ter now just seems to be a com­plete nitwit. You start laugh­ing in the open­ing cred­its, as you see a motor­cyle gang “rid­ing” fake motor­cy­cles in front of a pro­ject­ed back­drop. They’re about as men­ac­ing as the Brady Bunch. They ter­ror­ize a small Cal­i­for­nia town with a reign of impo­lite­ness. Bran­do has ani­mal mag­net­ism, alright — he looks like a chip­munk in a leather jack­et. What­ev­er this film had then, it just does­n’t work anymore.