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Gaspar Noe, the ballsy filmmaker behind such light comedies as I Stand Alone and Irreversible has turned his attention to The Tibetan Book of the Dead and entheogens such as datura and DMT. The result is Enter the Void, which is a delightful cocktail made from equal parts Jacob's Ladder and Naqoyqatsi.

Like all of Noe's films, Enter the Void is technically beautiful and powerfully moody; also like his other films it rubs your nose in the dismaying dogshit of life. But it's beautiful too, and is perhaps the most lush visual treat I've experienced since In the Mood for Love. Highly recommended.

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This interesting doc was recommended to me by Silenus, and I am going to recommend it to you because Timothy "Speed" Levitch is worth spending time with. I liked it almost as much as I liked My Dinner With Andre, and that's saying something.

Of course "Speed" is the main narrator of the doc and its focus, but the Big Apple is the main character.

I'd encountered "Speed" elsewhere and not known it: in Waking Life, and in a TV show I saw on the Cartoon Network whilst under the influence of skunk bud. A cop named Hoop asked the question "Why is 'seedy' bad? Seeds are miraculous!" That was "Speed."

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Our latest HBO TV series via Netflix project, and we're hooked. Seems silly to keep watching these shows we know got cancelled before achieving fruition, but what they hey? Gotta kill time somehow.

An avatar is found by a roving band of carnies during the Great Depression. Like most avatars, Ben Hawkins doesn't really understand his gifts or his role. Lots of creepy mutants, mystical visions, supernaturally gifted weirdos, and hot chicks. And Tarot symbolism.

Plus, it's good to see Michael J. Anderson in something other than a David Lynch production:

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Cecil B. DeMille's Sign of the Cross is on DVD at last. Unfortunately you can only purchase it as part of the above boxed set, but Netflix has each disc individually. Now you can freeze frame those wonderful pre-code shots of Empress Claudette Colbert's bosoms in a milk bath. Ah, technology. Charles Laughton plays Charles Laughton playing Nero, and the Christian corpses pile up quickly. Gloriously made, and fantastically trashy. Love it. Brings to mind old H.L. Mencken, who said somewhere that Christians were not persecuted in ancient Rome for their beliefs, but rather because they were a public nuisance.



I've enjoyed other Peter Weir films, but found Gallipoli curiously unmoving despite its anti-war theme. Curious to note that Mel Gibson once was a young and attractive and charismatic performer. Now Mel mumbles into his beard in his own dour cathedral, flagellating himself. Watch Picnic at Hanging Rock, or even Witness again instead.

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I read a review recently of books about reviewing books. Its subject, I suppose, and its purpose, was to criticize the criticism of critics criticizing criticism. The author of said article belittled the standard practice of using this formula in reviews:

A is like B meets C, as in:

Donnie Darko is like The World According to Garp meets Edward Scissorhands.

Belittlable or not, I'll continue using this formula, because for an intellectually curious and fundamentally lazy person like myself, it helps express what I want to say about a film or book quickly. In fact, I'll say that Donnie Darko is like The World According to Garp meets Edward Scissorhands with a bit of Evil Dead thrown in (A is like B meets C plus D). Not because Donnie Darko has any technical or thematic association with Sam Raimi's brutally original horror flick*, but because some characters in Donnie Darko actually go to see Evil Dead, and there are literally bits of Evil Dead seen in the film.

I shan't recommend Donnie Darko. Mostly my response was "whatever," though occasionally it improved to "eh." Patrick Swayze's role was a surprise at least.

*There is, of course, a dead character in Donnie Darko who is evil. Or whose behavior seems to be evil. I'm sorry if that's a spoiler. Whatever.

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I really enjoyed this. I think Dick's novel--inspired by the amplified paranoia surrounding Nixon's late phase--is perfectly timed for today's descent into Bush's amplified mimicry of Nixon's late phase paranoia. And Linklater's film does Dick's book justice.

Of course no actors playing burnout paranoid drug abusers could be more unbelievable in the role than Robert Downey, Jr., Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, and Keanu Reeves. Am I being sarcastic? Who knows any more, to paraphrase an old Simpsons episode.

The animation is beautiful and jarring. I'd of course not know from experience, but would imagine that looking at oneself in the mirror blasted on mescalin or psilocybin might be similar to looking at the shimmering features of these actors given whatever special technical treatment they received in order to jazz up the imagery. And Winona's cartoon boobs are nice.

Yes, Keanu does say "Woah" at one point. His fans shan't be disappointed in that regard.

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Ian Holm uses an uncanny likeness to the Quaker Oats Dude to mesmerize 18th-century lunatics. Pancaked babes in powdered wigs and bustles provide the King's guardsmen discreet handjobs in ornately decorated galleries so that Helen Mirren can sneak into an asylum. The King's water is blue but his stools are copious and solid. God save the King's stools.

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Whatever your feelings about its noir plot, Mildred Pierce is a beautiful film. The transfer is spectacular, and every frame is crisp and clear. The opening sequence is wonderfully shot--no pun intended. The lighting and set design and performances are great too. Joan Crawford moves through the story like an iceburg through the North Atlantic.

The story? Eh. I wasn't much moved by Mildred's battle to provide for her awful daughter Veda. She should have noticed sooner that Veda was an amoral brat and kicked her to the curb. Of course Joan Crawford treating a daughter badly has been done in another film. Veda would likely have benefited from a wire hanger whooping.



[image courtesy DVDBeaver]

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I enjoyed Peter Weir's disturbing and atmospheric masterpiece Picnic at Hanging Rock. It was a troubling and ambiguous film, almost like a collaboration between David Lynch and Merchant Ivory.

The Last Wave is no masterpiece, but I liked it a great deal. This one is more a combination of George Romero's Season of the Witch and Yeelen.

The late Richard Chamberlain plays a corporate barrister named David who takes on pro bono work in defense of a group of Aborigines charged with the murder of one of their own. The crime makes little sense because the victim drowned in about a cup of fresh water. As he works on the case, David's dreams become strangely prophetic. Meanwhile, a series of Biblical plagues--hail, clear sky thunderstorms, falling frogs and petroleum drizzle--plague Sydney. David finds himself battling an Aboriginal sorcerer in a contest the result of which could immanetize the escaton. But which side is David fighting for? Do his labors aid those who wish to prevent apocalypse, or those who wish it to succeed?

Strange to note that this film popped into the Amazon recommendation software just as I began reading about shamanism and myth again after a long hiatus.

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I very much enjoyed this reminiscence of Carl Jung by fellow analysts, former patients, and his family and friends. I particularly enjoyed the footage of his house and tower at Bollingen, and the clips of Carl digging tiny springs in the sand by Lake Zurich.

I spent five years working through Jung's Collected Works, and got a third of the way into his Mysterium Conjunctionis before admitting defeat.

What brought me to Jung? Dreams. Dreams of dismembered horses bleeding in cauldrons. Dreams of Egyptian gardens and the presence of precious stones in my hands and feet. Dreams of black-hooded figures engaged in bloody fights, and of ethereal crystalline palaces against night skies, deep black with stars. Dreams of crabs and goats and twins and archers and bulls...My junior English paper in high school was about Jungian symbolism in the dream fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.

Whether you buy his theories or no, Jung was amongst the greatest of the 20th century's intellectuals, and inspired not only psychoanalysts but artists and musicians and writers and occultists and politicians and even physicists. What I'd give to hear recordings of his dinner chats with Albert Einstein!

Matter of Heart can get a bit cultish now and again, portraying as it does the gushing admiration of Jung's closest associates. But the filmmakers also engage his naughty affair with a patient during transference, a great moral failing that nevertheless resulted in a fecund period of creativity. There's no hint, however, of Jung's brief enthusiasm for German fascism...

I recommend it if you're into old Carl. Otherwise you'd be bored silly. Also included is a remarkable BBC interview from the '50s series Face to Face, and a 20-minute film about Maud Oakes and her individuation work with a stone Jung carved for his 75th birthday.

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Loved it. One of the best films of its--or any--kind. Scofield as Thomas More is perfect in every way. John Hurt's Richard Rich is fantastically twitchy, and Leo McKern absolutely kills as Cromwell.

Of course most people know the story going in, but nevertheless More's inspiring and costly folly is heart-breaking to watch. Like the Duke of Norfolk in the film, one wants to reach through the screen and choke More, shouting "just sign the damned oath already! Spare yourself!"

Fred Zinneman's direction isn't particularly interesting or artful, but the costumes and sets are magnificent, and the absence of an "activist judge" behind the camera allows the viewer to concentrate on what is being said, and how it is being said, which is what matters here. Directorial innovation and stylistic intrusions can distract rather than illuminate in certain sorts of films, and A Man For All Seasons benefits from Zinneman's cool absence. I call it the "Merchant Ivory School of Filmmaking," though this of course predates Merchant Ivory.

I enjoyed it even more than The Lion in Winter with its much more adventurous actors. And I adored The Lion in Winter.

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Yes, children, there was a time when pornographic films didn't grow on trees. They were hard to come by (ugh) indeed. Deep Throat changed everything, and made athletic fellatio the ultimate fantasy for hetero males. The film grossed a ridiculous amount of cash, made porn briefly mainstream (my mother saw it, for Christ's sake--in a small-town PA theater), and resulted in equally venomous feminist and Fundamentalist backlashes. The stars became global celebrities and suffered terribly as a result. Linda Lovelace claimed she was coerced and forced into porn, joined forces with Gloria Steinem, then disavowed her coercion claim and started doing photo shoots in her fifties again. She died tragically in a car accident shortly thereafter. Harry Reems nearly drank himself to death before becoming a minister. The director and producers spent decades fearful that their mob financiers might decide to break legs--or worse.

Here is the whole sordid story, with the usual cast of innalectshuls commenting: Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Dick Cavett, Erica Jong, John Waters, Doctor Ruth. My favorite is Helen Gurley Brown discussing how wonderful it is to witness a spurting penis, and how rubbing ejaculate on your face is really good for you. Thanks, Helen, for the crippling and unforgettable image of you miming this behavior, talking about proteins and hormones. I can't get it out of my mind now.

Warning: the documentary features clips from the original, including Linda's trademark technique (which seems a bit quaint nowadays). If you object to such footage, stay away.

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I thought Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers was a spot-on critique of propaganda and media manipulation during wartime. I had problems with the way the narrative jumped around; the flash-forwards and -backs and -betwixts were clumsy and jarring and exhausting, but nevertheless it was a brave and timely film, and demonstrated that Eastwood the auteur is not afraid to use his art to teach us something about where our country is right now. I got the sense that Flags of Our Fathers was an excellent film trapped inside a good movie.

Letters From Iwo Jima is an almost flawless companion piece. Here the primary themes--again brave and timely--are valor and the senseless waste of human beings. Like any resource, valor can be misappropriated and spent pointlessly. Valor can be used to hush criticism of foolhardy strategies and policies. Eastwood focuses on the Japanese soldiers who wait for an American invasion of Iwo Jima. The soldiers write letters home to their families. Everyone knows their mission is pointless, from the Emperor on down. Everyone understands that America's victory is inevitable. And yet the soldiers are asked to fight to the death, and many willingly and fanatically do so, in a catastrophic waste of life and resources.

Eastwood's decision to make such a film now is certainly no accident. This is no 'Hollywood liberal' cinematically attacking the Iraq debacle from a peacenik perspective. This is a sophisticated film-maker using the past in an effort to make us think about what's going on right now. You should see it today.

Strange to think that this is the same guy who starred in Every Which Way But Loose.

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Apocalypto proves that Mel Gibson has more in common with Leni Riefenstahl than anti-Semitism and a penchant for Fascism. Gibson also shares her keen eye for capturing the athletic human form in aesthetically pleasing and sumptuous ways. I found the film at once shockingly beautiful and troubling, and enjoyed it more than The Departed, The Queen, or The Last King of Scotland.

Gibson may be a raving lunatic at times, but whatever demons he's wrestling don't prevent him making interesting films. Upon its release, A.O. Scott wrote a review in the New York Times which was backhandedly enthusiastic. Scott simultaneously praised Apocalypto and damned it as more interesting than good. I'd agree with that assessment, but found Apocalypto very interesting--definitely interesting enough to overcome its plot shortcomings. I think Scott complained about the pornographic violence, while admitting the film was technically superior. It's a stirring evocation of a lost culture, an imaginative and brutal achievement, and was perhaps intended as a visionary plea for ecological sense and against imperial hubris.

Would I call Gibson an artist? I don't know. He's tackling vital current issues* in this film, which is his best directorial effort--much better in fact than the oft-lauded Braveheart. The story? Mostly forgettable, but I was enthralled throughout. As a recreation of a lost civilization it's on a par with another underappreciated masterwork, Fellini's Satyricon. The sequence in the Mayan city is brilliant. The Mayan religion at last has its own Sign of the Cross. And no, it is no exaggeration to compare this film to a Cecil B. DeMille classic.

Good Lord, perhaps I am calling Gibson an artist.

*Gibson opens with a quote by Will Durant, something to the effect that internal decay defeats an empire before external threats can. Is this the standard right-wing twaddle about moral decadence leading to God's wrath? Gibson's film does imply the Mayans had it coming when the Spaniards arrived to wipe them out. Their naughty and brutally repressive political and religious classes are wonderfully portrayed in the film. I think, intentionally or not, that Apocalypto is richer and more subtle than one would expect, knowing what we know about Mel's personal belief system.

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A good one. Beatty nails this role with the appropriate warmth and intensity, and even shows off an exquisite comic timing. Diane Keaton is also excellent in what amounts to the most substantial role I've seen her play. Jack Nicholson is superb as the brutal cynic Eugene O'Neill, and Paul Sorvino, Gene Hackman, Jerzy Kosinski, and Maureen Stapleton round out a great cast.

Reds is not only about John Reed and the American socialist/communist Left leading up to and following the Bolshevik takeover in Russia--it is also a powerful romantic film. What Louise Bryant went through to try and rescue her husband from a Finnish jail is truly harrowing.

The entire history of America's response to the Bolsheviks is here: the Palmer Raids, the witch hunt trials and Congressional investigations, the jailing of dissidents, the little-known active military campaign against Russia after Lenin and his cohorts siezed power. At 3 hours plus the film is not wearying, which is an achievement in itself. Beatty impresses as writer/director; this is an enormous epic, and it stands the test of time.

Mixed into the narrative are documentary snippets featuring reminiscences by veteran reds and fellow travelers. These old souls, dessicated by an idealism gone monstrously wrong, remain largely unrepentant, and add an interesting historical backdrop. Henry Miller talks about fucking then and fucking now. Now, of course, being 26 years ago.

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Follows the old cinematic dictum: If you show a wolf trap early in a movie, someone had better get caught in it by the end. A truly terrible film. Wretchedly bad. Dustin Hoffman's performance is goofy and amateurish.



Even worse than Straw Dogs. Abysmal. Couldn't make it through to the end.

Monty Python's send-up of Sam Peckinpah:

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The DVD wouldn't play on my old Panasonic, so we had to borrow an LCD projector from Cha's office and watch it using a laptop. That was fun, like a drive-in movie in the house.

Forest Whitaker kicks ass. Loved him in Bird, Smoke, Platoon, and most particularly in Ghost Dog. His performance in that craptastic schlock The Crying Game was heart-breaking, and remains the only memorable thing about that movie.

This is not your cuddly intellectual Forest, however. In playing Idi Amin he's tapped himself into some deep-seated vein of pure malevolence, made himself into an entirely different creature. Whitaker's Amin is charming and witty one second, and coolly oversees torture and massacres the next. Childish vulnerability, obsequiousness, monstrous apathy, paranoia--this bundle of sociopathologies is a smorgasbord for any actor, and Whitaker is up to the task. A great performance.

The movie, however, is only so-so. I didn't much like the story, wherein some Ewan McGregor clone recently awarded his medical degree in Scotland runs off to Uganda to "make a difference." Apparently "make a difference" means shag the locals and drink. I suppose this is meant as a commentary on post-colonial British/English/European meddling in African affairs, but it's clumsily handled. I disliked entirely the character Dr. Garrigan, whose naivite is beyond profound. Garrigan is rightly sickened by the English and their scheming: they help Amin to power because perhaps they can use him to continue exploiting Africa, and then they want to get rid of Amin because he's uncontrollable. But if anyone deserved to be got rid of, it was this butcher. By the end of the movie Garrigan--who has aided and abetted Uganda's dictator--is awakening to Amin's true nature, and one is supposed to sympathize with his plight. Um, no. He should be hung for crimes against humanity. [Spoiler alert: We get some satisfaction along those lines.]

The Last King of Scotland is basically a thriller with a political/espionage backdrop, wherein a young idealist is perverted by power and wealth into enabling a genocidal maniac. Perhaps the novel is better? Maybe I'll find out some day.

The director Kevin Macdonald made the documentary Touching the Void, which I enjoyed a great deal.

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In June of 1994 Cha and I were on a bus from Heathrow Airport into London on our honeymoon. On a long flat highway amongst green pastures we cruised along, the driver occasionally pointing things out and discussing them. Then an absurd fairy tail automobile appeared coming toward us in the right lane, a confection of glass, wood, and polished metal. Seated inside in an elevated rear compartment was a hat the size of an extra-large New York pie, drooped at a saucy angle. The Princess of Wales without escort, without fanfare. She passed within two meters of me, her seat somehow as high as mine in that carriage of hers. The bus driver murmured something about the Princess of Wales not bothering to wave at us after he waved at her. "At the least her driver could acknowledge one of his own," he said.

I never much bought into the fascination with the monarchy, but had friends who went NUTS over the Diana/Charles wedding and subsequent scandals. All of that seems rather quaint now, given the tragedies to follow. It's also hard to think of Diana's death without the maudlin grotesquerie of Elton John's "Goodbye England's Rose," which thousands of ghouls lined up to purchase at the bookshop.

Helen Mirren rules, and I'm glad she finally got recognition. She is a one of my very favorite actors, and nails Elizabeth in this charming soap opera. Almost as good is Michael Sheen as Tony Blair. Sheen perfectly captures the unctuous Labour PM with uncanny political instincts. Again, it's hard to remember how energetic and fresh Blair seemed when he took over English governance from the wintry John Major. Now he's just another hack, a Bush toady, and he's gone in a few weeks.

The Queen is slight, and could easily have wandered off into made-for-TV-movie territory. The actors give it substance, however. I recommend it.

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I've only watched The Great Ecstacy of the Sculptor Steiner so far. Took me right back to ABC's Wide World of Sports and Jim McCay's "the agony of defeat," repeated weekly over footage of a ski-jumper crashing off the end of the ramp. Jim McCay lives in Parkton, near where I went to high school. I used to help him load his groceries when I worked at Graul's Superthrift grocery.

But back to Steiner and Herzog. Steiner effortlessly breaks ramp records wherever he jumps, and despite passing the safety limit and regularly falling he keeps doing so. Herzog ties Steiner's urge to fly to his wood carvings and the pent-up energies the sculptor sees stored within uncut chunks of branch and stump. There is a lot of beautiful footage of athletes soaring in slow-mo, and there are several disturbing crashes. Steiner in flight gapes with his mouth wide open in an obvious state of transcendence. What mysterious force drives people to launch themselves more than 150 meters down a hill? Steiner recites a story about a raven he raised as a child which was eventually tormented by other ravens, but I suspect this might be a Herzog script inserted into the documentary--he's been known to do that. Perhaps not. It seemed too 'perfect' somehow, the way it mirrors Steiner's torments as undisputed master of his craft.

I look forward to the short documentary about my home state of Pennsylvania.

Harper's had an interesting article about Herzog a few months back that I forgot to mention here. I like the way it closes:

...I told Herzog how much I admired him, and how thankful I was that he had agreed to see me. Herzog seemed neither surprised nor pleased by my effulgence. Instead he looked at me for a disarmingly long time--so long, in fact, I began to feel like a character in a Werner Herzog film. Finally, he said: "There is a dormant brother inside of you, and I awaken him, I make him speak, and you are not alone anymore." We shook hands and he was gone. I walked outside, through a curtain of Los Angeles sunshine, to the street's edge, where I stood for a long time, ecstatic and not quite alone.

Tom Bissell, December 2006

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Babel is similar in tone and structure and quality to the recent Crash movie, which I gave a pass on this site because I was still teaching ENGL102. I thought its sledgehammer subtlety in dealing with race and class made it a perfect teaching tool for dimwitted college freshmen.

I'm no longer teaching dimwits, so I can call Babel what it is: manipulative, meandering, and at times egregiously bad. In attempting to make us all feel collective guilt at the unintended consequences of our actions, the filmmakers spread their thin soap opera plot across three continents and 2 and a half hours. Brad Pitt is still a two-trick pony who recites his lines granite-faced or contorts himself into a physical gesture that means rage/hatred/anguish depending on the context; you know Pitt's really trying to emote when he busts out the finger pointing/wagging. Cate Blanchett is a fine actress who phones in her performance here and spends much of the film lying on a carpet.

Babel is not a total loss, however. Rinko Kikuchi is excellent, as are all of the Moroccan, Japanese, and Latin actors. The theme is handled inelegantly, but at least it's handled; as the world grows smaller communication becomes easier and misinterpretation more common and more critical. This may be a belly-flop into the pool rather than a reverse three-and-a-half somersaults with tuck, but at least we get wet.

My favorite parts were silent moments--a Tokyo disco from a deaf-mute perspective. The Tokyo skyline at the end. Dogs eating waste at dawn after a Mexican wedding party. These are beautiful sequences. Perhaps 45 minutes of cuts would have made this a more positive review? Director Alejandro González Iñárritu has talent and grand ambitions; I expect marvelous things from him down the line.

Next up? The Last King of Scotland.