Tue Dec 01 2015 22:17 November Film Roundup:
I remember this month's movies being meh-ful, but when I went back to the list there were three really good movies, and I'd just allowed my memories to be overwhelmed by the underwhelming movies, because I saw the three really good movies all in a row. No more! Let joy be unconfined!
- Aparajito (1956): I believe this movie was bankrolled by Indian moms looking for effective ways to guilt-trip their children. I saw this while Sumana was out of town. Sumana really wants to watch the Apu trilogy, and I'm happy to watch these movies with her, but it's the kind of episodic character study stereotypically associated with foreign film and it's not a great way for me to spend my alone time. PS: Call your mother!
- My Name Is Nobody (1973): An attempt to deconstruct the spaghetti western a la Sergio Leone, the way John Ford deconstructed his own work The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I don't think it works very well. Ford's films are full of humor and in Liberty Valance he uses that humor to fuel the dramatic irony. I find spaghetti westerns effective insofar as they're bleak and kinda humorless, and this film pours on the humor to create a satire of the genre. Admittedly this was (barely) pre-Blazing Saddles, so I understand why this movie was made, but between Blazing Saddles on the lowbrow end and Liberty Valance on the highbrow, the western is pretty well deconstructed by 1974.
This movie contains an awesome sight gag involving more pool balls on a pool table than I've ever seen before. I'll always remember that sight gag and I've already forgotten most of the rest of this movie. On IMDB for this film Sergio Leone is credited with "idea", and I hope his idea was "you should do a gag with a bunch of pool balls on a pool table" and not "what if you made a film that exposed the shallow conception of heroism in the western?" Because John Ford already had that idea.
- 1776 (1972): Among movies whose titles are years, the one with the largest delta from the year the movie was made is probably One Million Years B.C. (1966), and the smallest is Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). In between we have... this fine movie. You may know that Sumana is obsessed with Hamilton, but I don't want to listen to the soundtrack until I've seen the play, so we saw 1776 together as a compromise move because our Hamilton tickets aren't until next year.
Sumana found it a learning experience since 1776 was a big influence on Hamilton. We agree that it's incredibly ahistorical and that the songs are overall not great (Sumana: "Do we really need a song about how Jefferson plays the violin?"). The villains (i.e. the Southern reactionaries) have the best songs, like the one that exposes New England's complicity in the slave trade. Howard da Silva does a great job playing Benjamin Franklin as I've always pictured him: as America's wacky Falstaffian uncle. According to IMDB da Silva also portrayed Franklin "in a National Park Service film presented in the 70s and 80s at Ben Franklin's home at Franklin Court, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania," making this also the federal government's official portrayal of Franklin.
- Johnny Guitar (1954): Didn't find it that enjoyable, and in retrospect I mainly wanted to see this because everyone in the screenshots looks like Jeff Goldblum in Buckaroo Banzai. Not a good reason to see a movie. I did like Joan Crawford being real brassy. Just a hunch, but I think this movie is a lot better if you're a forty-year-old gay man. I feel that's the approximate shape of the thing I don't understand here.
- Out of the Past (1947): Stereotypical film noir with a character named Leonard! Boosts my hypothesis that Leonard is a perfect film noir name. For heroes, villains, thugs, cops, society gents or skid row bums... "Leonard" always works. Consider naming your next noir character Leonard!
Oh yeah, everything else about the movie. The first few scenes defied convention with their setting and mood, but it settled in to the familiar pathways pretty quickly. Overall... popcorn noir, recommended, but not highly.
- Nightmare Alley (1947): Now this is some noir. It starts at a carnival, the place where all happiness is false and misery is paraded as entertainment. And it all goes downhill from there, and you're along for the ride. Great stuff. In particular the portrayal of a ruthless woman psychiatrist who sleeps in a Ruth Bader Ginsberg outfit seems unusually progressive for 1947.
- Clueless (1995): One of Sumana's all-time favorites, and an entry on our "women directors" watchlist. I saw it for the first time this month and I gotta say this is a great movie. The characters change over the course of the film, they avoid being John Hughes teen stereotypes, and the only real villain is dispatched pretty early on, allowing for plenty of conflict that's not predicated on someone being the antagonist. Lots of laugh-out-loud moments for me.
One weird thing: the cell phone jokes don't land anymore. You can see them happening, you know they are jokes, but everyone has cell phones now so the jokes don't do anything. They're like the ghosts of jokes.
- The Crimson Kimono (1959): Wow, what an unusual movie. It's resembles noir, but it's too procedural, too earnest, and it has a happy ending. None of the cops are crooked; they just have personal problems that get in the way of their work. It goes overboard showing that Japanese-Americans are good, patriotic Americans. In general, it has too much faith in humanity to be film noir. But it was more daring in its time than more cynical movies, and it's the rare movie that makes me want to seek out more of this director's vision. Really glad I saw this one.
- It's the Old Army Game (1926): At this point I gotta say that W.C. Fields, like Jerry Lewis, is one of those comic legends I just don't find funny. A misanthropic loser can be a hilarious character, but I only laughed at some of the physical comedy (like the Stooges but more highbrow). The best thing about this movie was that the Zeppoish love interest resembles Derek Waters from Drunk History, allowing me to pretend that the whole thing was a Drunk History vignette gone wrong.
This silent film includes a title card containing must be the ultimate W.C. Fields line: "I'll hit him in the face with this kid!"
- In honor of Clueless, this month the Television Spotlight focuses on Square Pegs (1982), a really smart television show about high school girls, created by SNL writer Anne Beatts. It's clever and funny in the same way as Clueless, but it's even better because it focuses on the misfits rather than the popular kids. Watch it today! Includes Devo.
