Scors­ese is a high­ly cul­tured, lit­er­ate and civ­i­lized man, with­out pre­ten­sion and remark­ably free of snob­bery. In this study of the Amer­i­can films that enter­tained and influ­enced him, he opens our eyes to the artistry of many Hol­ly­wood films ― west­erns, gang­ster films, musi­cals, and low-bud­get thrillers ― that film his­to­ri­ans and crit­ics would sneer at. This four hours long doc­u­men­tary under­mines that obnox­ious ten­den­cy in all the arts, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of an offi­cial canon of “clas­sics”. His analy­sis of films by for­got­ten and under­rat­ed direc­tors is sharp, but affectionate.

I don’t under­stand what moti­vat­ed Polan­s­ki to make this mud­dled super­nat­ur­al thriller. It’s the sort of thing that works fine in a book, but makes a ter­ri­ble movie. You can sort of guess what is going on at the end, but doubt­less most of the audi­ence left the the­atres scratch­ing their heads. A pity, because John­ny Dep­p’s per­for­mance is, as usu­al, extreme­ly pro­fes­sion­al. He wrings as much out of the emo­tion­al­ly ambigu­ous char­ac­ter as he can. Most of us who love books would have been charmed to see an enter­tain­ing film in which rare book col­lec­tors and deal­ers are giv­en a fic­tion­al life involv­ing mur­der, intrigue, and hot sex, how­ev­er inac­cu­rate­ly the tech­ni­cal details of book col­lect­ing are pre­sent­ed. But this film does­n’t enter­tain. Half-way through, one becomes bored with the enig­mas, sens­ing, cor­rect­ly, that they will not lead to any inter­est­ing conclusion.

While this corny Hol­ly­wood biopic is high­ly inac­cu­rate, Fred­er­ick March is absolute­ly per­fect as Twain, able to play him equal­ly well as a young and an old man. The Max Stein­er score is one of his finest.

I rather like this attempt at a Shya­malanesque thriller by direc­tor Manon Briand. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s way too slow-mov­ing to sat­is­fy a big audi­ence, and it telegraphs its end­ing. It focus­es on a seis­mol­o­gist, long exiled to Japan, who returns to the town of her birth, Baie-Comeau (on the remote North Shore coast of Que­bec) to inves­ti­gate some anom­alies. The town is haunt­ed by the death of a woman in a freak acci­dent, and is full of psy­cho­log­i­cal, as well as phys­i­cal anom­alies. While the film is weak as dra­ma, it is delight­ful visu­al­ly and sen­su­al­ly. Both the hero­ine, Alice Bradley (played by Pas­cales Buis­sière) and her jeal­ous les­bian friend (played by Julie Goyet) are extreme­ly beautiful. 

It may come as a sur­prise to film buffs, but Stephen Low’s 1988 doc­u­men­tary film about the life of a fam­i­ly of beavers in Alber­ta is the most suc­cess­ful Cana­di­an film of all time. With a bud­get of one mil­lion dol­lars, it grossed over 80 mil­lion play­ing in 230 IMAX the­atres. Low’s Mon­tre­al-based pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny has pro­duced most of the top IMAX for­mat films. His much more recent film, Vol­ca­noes of the Deep Sea, was not run in many U.S. the­atres because it con­tains ref­er­ences to Evo­lu­tion (yes, rub your eyes and gasp, but that is the lev­el of imbe­cil­i­ty that things have sunk to, there). Now, noth­ing could be more quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Cana­di­an than a doc­u­men­tary about Our Friend the Beaver ― we all had to endure them repeat­ed­ly in grade school. Beaver doc­u­men­taries are prob­a­bly the equiv­a­lent for Cana­da of the West­ern for Hol­ly­wood, and the samu­rai epic for Japan. But noth­ing pre­pared me for this. The film is bril­liant. It is pow­er­ful, emo­tion­al, mov­ing. It is inspir­ing. It is beau­ti­ful. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is bril­liant. Some of the shots, if they had been devised by Kubrick or Felli­ni, would be stud­ied in film schools. The com­po­si­tion, colour, and edit­ing are superb. And the act­ing, by beavers who are appar­ent­ly pro­fes­sion­als trained at Strat­ford, is top-notch. The love scene, with young amorous beavers danc­ing in the moon­light, is among the most roman­tic ever filmed.

And it’s a doc­u­men­tary about beavers.

Hon­est. I kid you not.

Why on earth was this nom­i­nat­ed for Best Pic­ture in its year? It’s glossy, and could be rea­son­ably enter­tain­ing to some­one who does not know what a trav­es­ty of his­to­ry it is, but it isn’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly out­stand­ing film. The con­test between Catholi­cism and Protes­tantism dur­ing the Ref­or­ma­tion (in which both sides were relent­less­ly fanat­i­cal and vicious), is still played out in Eng­lish film and lit­er­a­ture to this very day. This par­tic­u­lar film is pret­ty obvi­ous in its par­ti­san­ship: Protes­tantism (sym­bol­ized by Eliz­a­beth) is good and Catholi­cism is bad. In Eng­land, there is still a kind of anti-Catholic sen­ti­ment which is played out in car­toon form in films such as this. Every cliché is there. For­eign Catholic priests skulk around in the shad­ows with sin­is­ter, swirling robes, and look like demons. A French noble­man is a scream­ing fag, minc­ing about. Eliz­a­beth spouts anachro­nis­tic sen­ti­ments of self­less patri­o­tism and “indi­vid­ual con­science”. Her exe­cu­tions and per­se­cu­tions are explained away as unfor­tu­nate zeal by sub­or­di­nates, or under­stand­able reac­tions to treach­ery, or nec­es­sary steps in a grand plan to build the future glo­ries of Eng­land (cue the Elgar march­es). Essex doesn’t real­ly mind hav­ing his head chopped off — it’s all part of true love. Mary Queen of Scots is men­tioned, briefly, but there’s no fol­low up. Such side-tak­ing is com­mon enough, and there are pro-Catholic inter­pre­ta­tions that are every bit as sil­ly. But in this film, his­tor­i­cal facts are so gross­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed that no amount of act­ing or cos­tume splen­dour can make it worth watch­ing with­out bel­ly laughs. Siskel & Ebert loved this film, but I don’t think they paid much atten­tion in high school his­to­ry class.

H. G. Wells par­tic­i­pat­ed direct­ly in this pio­neer Sci­ence Fic­tion film of 1936. The film is visu­al­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. No expense or effort was spared in it’s art direc­tion, to put across the 1930’s vision of the future, with it’s mov­ing side­walks and colos­sal shoul­der-pads. It is also imbued with the total­i­tar­i­an atmos­phere of that era. Wells envi­sions a world war com­ing (he places it in 1940), which drags on for decades until the world is reduced to bar­barism. Then a tech­no­crat­ic force of sci­en­tist-air­men takes over the world and builds it into a “utopia”. It is all white walls and glass tub­ing. One char­ac­ter explains that their sav­age ances­tors lived “half-out-doors” before they learned the supe­ri­or­i­ty of arti­fi­cial light. Final­ly, in 2036 AD, an expe­di­tion is sent to the Moon, despite the attempt of an “anti-progress” artist to sab­o­tage the project. Read more »

I just recent­ly dis­cov­ered the fic­tion of Wal­ter Mosley [see review of “47”].  I haven’t yet read any of his “Easy Rawl­ins” series of mys­ter­ies, but I just saw this film,.made from the first one. Why had­n’t I heard of this film? It’s a superb Chan­dleresque thriller, with fine act­ing in every role. The scenes between Den­zel Wash­ing­ton and Don Chea­dle are par­tic­u­lar­ly fine. The set­ting, Los Ange­les in the 1940’s, when thou­sands of African-Amer­i­cans had recent­ly migrat­ed from the Deep South to work in the air­craft plants, is metic­u­lous­ly recre­at­ed.

It’s doubt­ful that any­one will ever match the charm that Errol Fly­nn brought to the role of Robin Hood in 1938. The film still holds up well as an enter­tain­ing adven­ture, after 68 years. It helps that it was done in the superb colour process of that era — bet­ter, but more expen­sive, than the process used in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The Robin Hood tales are sup­posed to take place in the Twelfth Cen­tu­ry, but they first appear in a series of folk bal­lads that emerged cen­turies after the time, though Piers Plough­man, writ­ten in 1370, refers to “the rhymes of Robin Hood”. The Robin Hood of the film, our Robin Hood, is essen­tial­ly the one cre­at­ed by the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry chil­dren’s writer and (bril­liant) illus­tra­tor, Howard Pyle. The film is fair­ly con­sis­tent with Pyle’s Robin. But for mil­lions of peo­ple around the world Robin Hood will always be Errol Fly­nn, and the myth­i­cal hero of Britain incar­nate in a rogu­ish and rib­ald Tasmanian.

(Lein­er 2000) Dude, Where’s My Car?
(Scott 2005) King­dom of Heaven
(Dou­glas 1954) Them!
(Lester 1966) A Fun­ny Thing Hap­pened On the Way To the Forum
(Arm­strong 1999) Mid­Somer Mur­ders: Ep.9 — Blood Will Out
(Page 2002) Into the Great Pyra­mid [doc­u­men­tary series]
(von Scher­ler May­er 2002) Guru
Read more »