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Set Your DVR! December 22 - 29, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I don't know if your Christmas week is anything like mine (if you even have a Christmas week, that is), but every year, I spend an inordinate amount of time on the couch. It's a good way to be with family without having to, y'know, talk with anyone. I usually lay there, using my mind only to ponder how full my belly is and wondering how long it will take me to digest enough to make room for another slice of pecan pie. But this year, instead of mindless entertainment, I intend to engage with some movies! Maybe that will take my mind off of food. For a little while, at least. Here's what's good this week, in the central/eastern format. I'm also moving overnight movies to the prior day write-up, which is my policy from here forward.

Monday, December 22:

Monday offers two flicks about evil and naivety! What could be better than considering evil during the final weeks of the year? Au Revoir, Les Enfants is Louis Malle's examination of life in a French boarding school during the Vichy occupation. Our young protagonist seems to be going through normal kid issues, but his innocence is threatened by the War and his growing suspicion that a schoolmate might be a hidden Jew. The Quiet American is based on Graham Greene's novel about a not-so-well meaning journalist encountering a CIA agent in 1950s Vietnam. Strangely enough, the CIA agent may be the more naive of the two.

12:30/1:30 pm: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.
2:30/3:30 pm The Quiet American on IFC.
2:30/3:30 am: Enemy Mine on AMC.
5:05/6:05 am: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.

Tuesday, December 23:

Tuesday's full of anti-war sci-fi in the AM! Maybe it's not great sci-fi, but it's (probably) worth a viewing, especially with impressionable young minds around you. Enemy Mine, one of my favorite movies when I was 13, is about setting asides differences in the face of a hostile universe. I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I recall that it had a strong anti-war and pro-cooperation message. A far better movie (with far less latex and, well, mostly the same message) is the original The Day The Earth Stood Still, an untouchable classic that only a fool would attempt to remake. Finally, The Day After is a good way to wrap up the morning with some schlock that originally aired on TV when I was exactly the right age for a nascent political awakening (that would be 1983, when I was 11). In light of the dramatic depiction of the harshness of life after a nuclear attack on the US, I remember my shock and disbelief when I overheard President Granddaddy Ronald Reagan on TV pushing for more nuclear weapons. He lost my vote that day.

In the afternoon, there's John Ford's 3 Godfathers, which is like a Western version of Three Men And A Baby, only with death and despair. Awesome! Then Roman Polanski's The Pianist offers a little more death and despair. And finally, as a salve to all of this suffering, Lubitsch's The Shop Around The Corner is the sweetest and bestest romantic comedy that ever graced celluloid. (Note: the overnight movie discussed here rather than on the prior day for thematic purposes.)

2:30/3:30 am: Enemy Mine on AMC.
7/8 am: The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC.
9/10 am: The Day After on SCIFI.
3/4 pm: 3 Godfathers on TCM.
4:30/5:30 pm: The Pianist on IFC.
5/6 pm: The Shop Around The Corner on TCM.
2/3 am: The Shop Around The Corner on TCM.

Wednesday, December 24:

Christmas Eve brings more despair! I recommend that you choose wisely and then go volunteer in a soup kitchen. Nobody Knows is a 2004 Japanese film based on a true story about children who were horribly neglected by an unfit mother and then abandoned to survive on their wits alone. Guaranteed to make the hardest heart break down and openly weep. Brother's Keeper is the uplifting documentary about a rural community that rallies around a near-feral farming family when one brother is accused of murdering another. The Delicate Art of the Rifle is a microbudget indie about a sniper on a college campus. Death and the Maiden is Roman Polanski's film (of the Ariel Dorfman play) in which a woman (Sigourney Weaver, who has never been better) is convinced that the man who gave her husband a ride home was the man who tortured and raped her while she was a prisoner of the previous brutal regime. It is stunningly good and sadly underappreciated. Finally, Bad Santa is the salve for all that ails us.

6/7 am: Nobody Knows on IFC.
8:30/9:30 am: Brother’s Keeper on IFC.
10:30/11:30 am: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.
12:05/1:05 pm: Nobody Knows on IFC.
2:45/3:45 pm: Brother’s Keeper on IFC.
4:35/5:35 pm: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.
6:15/7:15 pm: Death and the Maiden on IFC.
10/11 pm: Bad Santa on Comedy Central.

Thursday, December 25:

Tidings of comfort and joy for all: TCM has a film fest of Bogie's most iconic movies on Christmas Day. That'll deck your halls with boughs of something. Note that it runs all night.

7/8 am: 3 Godfathers on TCM.
2/3 pm: Bad Santa on Comedy Central.
7/8 pm: Casablanca on TCM.
9/10 pm: The Big Sleep on TCM.
11 pm/12 am: The Maltese Falcon on TCM.
1/2 am: The African Queen on TCM.
3/4 am: High Sierra on TCM.

Friday, December 26:

Back to our regularly scheduled holiday sadness! George Washington is a must-see film about youths who can't see a future for themselves in their quiet North Carolina town. Elephant is about youths whose future is brutally taken away for reasons unknown. And The Honeymoon Killers is about hideous sociopaths who love each other and brutalize the world. Happy fucking Boxing Day!

9/10 am: George Washington on IFC.
10:35/11:35 am: Elephant on IFC.
2:05/3:05 pm: George Washington on IFC.
3:35/4:35 pm: Elephant on IFC.
5/6 pm: The Honeymoon Killers on IFC.
3:35/4:35 am The Honeymoon Killers on IFC.
5:25/6:25 am: George Washington on IFC.

Saturday, December 27:

Saturday is about Japan. First up is The Greatest Story Ever Told, aka The Seven Samurai. I believe I recently wrote here that The Wild Bunch was the best film ever. That's only half-true, because The Seven Samurai is its equal. Damn, this movie is good. Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon isn't even close to the same league, but it's pretty great on its own. Finally, Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is not the best Miyazaki movie, but it's wonderful and highly, highly recommended.

7/8 am: The Seven Samurai on IFC.
10:30/11:30 am: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on IFC.
2:30/3:30 pm: Howl’s Moving Castle on IFC.
4:30/5:30 pm: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on IFC.

Sunday, December 28:

Wait, Sunday is about Japan. Rashomon, another film by Akira Kurosawa, is iconic and a must-see for fans of cinema, although it isn't quite as great as his best movies. The Bad Sleep Well is Kurosawa's corporate office take on Hamlet. Of his three Shakespeare adaptations (the other two are Throne of Blood/MacBeth and Ran/King Lear), it is the least, but it's full of his distinct sensibilities and very enjoyable. Finally, Malick's The Thin Red Line is half-war movie and half-nature documentary and all about the human soul. Overnight, there's Tati's utterly delightful Mr. Hulot's Holiday, which is full of wit and pratfalls.

7/8 am: Rashomon on IFC.
8:30/9:30 am: The Bad Sleep Well on IFC.
8/9 pm: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
2/3 am: Mr. Hulot’s Holiday on TCM.
2:30/3:30 am: The Thin Red Line on IFC

Monday, December 29:

Dreary Monday! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a film based on a play that delights in its own postmodernity. If you watched The Bad Sleep Well, definitely follow it up with this. And then put off whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing. Kiss of Death is one of the great film noirs. The Sweet Hereafter, Atom Egoyan's film based on Russell Banks's devastating novel, will ruin you in a good way. And The Player is Robert Altman's great tribute/kiss-off to Hollywood.

6:50/7:50 am: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on IFC.
9/10 am: Kiss of Death on FMC.
1:30/2:30 pm: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on IFC.
9/10 pm: The Sweet Hereafter on IFC.
11 pm/12 am: The Player on IFC.

Set Your DVR!: December 15 - 22, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

What a great week for movies on cable! Here’s what’s coming up that’s worth your time. In the spirit of the holidays, I’ve even gotten a little expansive. But this week brings another embarrassment of riches.

The times are, as always, in Central/Eastern format. Also, as always, please let me know in comments if you see something coming up that I’ve missed. I’ll try to add it to the regular column if I can, but my time will be tight in the next few weeks, so please don’t be too disappointed if I don’t get to your recommendation.

Monday, December 15:
2:45/3:45 pm: Mystery Train on IFC. Jim Jarmusch’s triptych about the strange charms of Memphis, TN.
6:25/7:25 pm: George Washington on IFC.

Tuesday, December 16:
3:25/4:25 am: Mystery Train on IFC.
6:50/7:50 am: George Washington on IFC.
7/8 am: Decision at Sundown on TCM. A Randolph Scott & Budd Boetticher Western, and that means good.
7:30/8:30 am: Batman on AMC. This is the 1966 Batman, the very definition of campy.
10:25/11:25 am: Howl’s Moving Castle on IFC. Miyazaki’s great animated film about war and magic and love and identity, presented here in the original Japanese with subtitles.
12:30/1:30 pm: George Washington on IFC.
4:05/5:05 pm: The Thin Red LIne on IFC. Malick’s unconventional anti-war drama is a force of nature.
5/6 pm: The Cincinnati Kid on TCM. What could be more exciting than Steve McQueen playing high-stakes poker?
7/8 pm: Shadow of a Doubt on TCM. Great little second-tier Hitchcock film that ought to be in the first tier.
11 pm/12 am: The Third Man on TCM. If you like movies and haven’t seen this, you MUST rectify your oversight immediately.

Wednesday, December 17:
8:30/9:30 pm: Death on the Nile on TCM. A Hercule Poirot mystery that was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. The nonstop excitement practically screams “heavyset Belgian detective!”
8/9 pm: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
11 pm/12 am: The New World on IFC. That's a lot of Malick for one sitting!

Thursday, December 18:
1:30/2:30 am: The Thin Red Line on IFC.
4:25/5:25 am: The New World on IFC.
9:15/10:15 am: The Naked City on TCM. One of the greatest film noirs.
10:30/11:30 pm: Blade Runner on SCIFI. Always worth a viewing.
11 pm/12 am: Vanishing Point on FMC. As the Zen koan says, -There is no why. There is only Kowalski driving through the desert.

Friday, December 19:
12/1 am: Before Sunset on WE. I try not to mention movies that will be broken by commercials, but this one, a sequel to 1995’s Before Sunrise, has a certain charm in its older, wiser take on young love.
1:30/2:30 am: Elephant on IFC. Dreamy Van Sant flick about high school snipers.
3/4 am: Vanishing Point on FMC.
8:45/9:45 am: Paths of Glory on TCM.
5:30/6:30 pm: The Others on OXYGEN. Pleasantly creepy ghost story starring Nicole Kidman.
6:15/7:15 pm: The Player on IFC. Altman’s tour de force “conventional Hollywood” film, which starts with an extended homage to Touch of Evil and proceeds to tear down the walls of Old Hollywood.
8:30/9:30 pm: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou on IFC. Many Wes Anderson fans felt that this was the moment when his whimsy and prop fetish finally overwhelmed his ability to tell a story. I think there’s a beating heart in this story, but The Darjeeling Limited was an unpleasant stillborn mess.
11 pm/12 am: The Face of Another on IFC. Brilliant and creepy Japanese horror film about the slippery nature of identity.

Saturday, December 20:
2/3 am: The Face of Another on IFC.
5:30/6:30 am: The Ox-Bow Incident on AMC.
7/8 am: The Hidden Fortress on IFC. Akira Kurosawa’s tale of a princess in peril, swept away by war, protected by her loyal general, and kept constantly on the verge of trouble by a couple of bumbling peasants. Reportedly one of the major inspirations for Star Wars.
7/8 am: The Others on OXYGEN.
7:15/8:15 am: My Darling Clementine on AMC. Iconic John Ford Western about the shootout at the OK Corral.
2:30/3:30 pm: 8 Women on LOGO.
5:35/6:35 pm: Gosford Park on IFC. Robert Altman’s brilliant upstairs/downstairs Edwardian murder mystery.
8:30/9:30 pm: Mulholland Dr. on LOGO. One of David Lynch’s best films, propelled by dream-logic and horror.

Sunday, December 21:
8:45/9:45 am: Kiss of Death on FMC. Top-notch film noir. Unfortunately, it’s playing at the same time as...
8:45/9:45 am: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse on IFC. Fritz Lang’s 1933 thriller that didn’t just invent the procedural, but built it on a parable about a crime boss able to mesmerize his subordinates with his words and imagery. Lang fled the Nazis for America almost immediately after its release. The ability of many of the scenes to retain their shock value today is a testament to this movie's sheer brilliance.
12:15/1:15 pm: Gosford Park on IFC.

Monday, December 22:
2:45/3:45 am: The 400 Blows on TCM. Francois Truffaut’s incredibly powerful ode to child neglect and juvenile delinquency.
7/8 am: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC. Fantastic Louis Malle flick about a boarding school in France during the Nazi occupation that’s hiding a young Jew.
11 am/12 pm: Bringing Up Baby on TCM. A screwball comedy classic that everyone should see at least once in this all-too-short life.
12:30/1:30 pm: Au Revoir, Les Enfants on IFC.

Thursday Poll for December 11, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Last week, the Thursday Poll took a look back at the recent films of Gus Van Sant to commemorate with the release of his latest film, Milk. In the process we made one unmistakable discovery- you folks like your Van Sant movie arty. To wit: of Van Sant’s last five movies, your favorite (and mine too) was 2002’s minimalist slackers-in-the-desert saga Gerry, which simultaneously won the week and conquered Thebes with a 44% showing. In our closest showing in a while, Van Sant’s Cannes prizewinner Elephant finished with a strong 38%, followed by Last Days with 13% and the sadly underrated Paranoid Park with 6%. And while awards-giving bodies will no doubt show plenty of love for Milk, its more mainstream style didn’t make much of an impact with our readers, garnering not a single vote. But hey, it’s better than Finding Forrester, right?

This week, in conjunction with the upcoming release of Frost/Nixon, the latest bit of middlebrow Oscar-bait from the guy who narrated Arrested Development (the best thing he ever did, by the way), we take a look at the varied cinematic portrayals of the Trickiest Dick to ever inhabit the White House. So, who’s your favorite big-screen Nixon?

Who's your favorite big-screen Nixon? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open. We'll see you next week, provided nobody Gerries the rendezvous. Don't forget your shirt-basket!

Set Your DVR!: December 8 - 15, 2008

Hayden Childs — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT

First off, many apologies for my absence last week. With houseguests (I call them “Mom and Dad”) around for a few days past the weekend, I didn’t have any time to do the research or write the column, and I figured that very few of you want to read me repeating variations on “I got nothin’ but I sure like booze.” Because I’m all about keeping the high standards around here.
So to change things up a wee bit, I’m going to list a schedule and then write about sentence or two about the movies at the end. Or a few of them, at least. Here’s what’s worth watching in the upcoming week!

Monday, 12/8:
Well, I got nothin’. But I sure like the booze.

Tuesday, 12/9:
5/6 am: Out of the Past on TCM.
5:25/6:25 am: Les Enfants du Paradis on IFC
8:40/9:40 am: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.
12:05/1:05 pm: Les Enfants du Paradis on IFC.
3:35/4:35 pm: The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC.

Wednesday, 12/10:
5/6 am: Cat People on TCM.
6:30/7:30 am: Curse of the Cat People on TCM.
6:35/7:35 am: The Quiet American on IFC.
1/2 pm: The Quiet American on IFC.
2:30/3:30 pm: 2001: A Space Odyssey on TCM.
3/4 pm: Vanishing Point on FMC.
5/6 pm: 2010 on TCM.

Thursday, 12/11:
7/8 pm: The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC.
11:30 pm CST/12:30 am EST: CQ on IFC.

Friday, 12/12:
3/4 am: Cop Land on TNT.
2:30/3:30 pm: The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC.
8:45/9:45 pm: Death and the Maiden on IFC.
10:30/11:30 pm: Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster on VH1CL.

Saturday, 12/13:
8:45/9:45 am: Brother’s Keeper on IFC
2/3 pm: Brother’s Keeper on IFC.
7/8 pm: Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster on VH1CL.
11:30 pm CST/12:30 am EST: Elephant on IFC.

Sunday, 12/14:
5:30/6:30 am: Elephant on IFC.
7/8 am: Jules et Jim on IFC.
4/5 pm: The Wild Bunch on AMC.
8/9 pm: Dead Calm on CHILLER.
9:30/10:30 pm: The Wild Bunch on AMC.
11 pm CST/12 am EST: Dead Calm on CHILLER.
11 pm CST/12 am EST: The Godless Girl on TCM.

Monday, 12/15:
1:15/2:15 am: Das Boot on TCM.
9:35/10:35 am: Mystery Train on IFC.
2:45/3:45 pm: Mystery Train on IFC.
6:25/7:25 pm: George Washington on IFC.

The Movies:
2001: A Space Odyssey on TCM: 12/10 at 2:30 pm CST. Do you need a blurb about this movie? I doubt it.

2010 on TCM: 12/10 at 5 pm CST. I don’t think this is a great movie, but my god, it’s full of stars.

Brother’s Keeper on IFC: 12/13 at 8:45 am and 2 pm CST. Fantastic documentary on sibling murder and rural family values.

Cat People on TCM: 12/10 at 5 am CST. Val Lewton & Jacques Tourneur’s no-budget horror/suspense flick.

Cop Land on TNT: 12/12 at 3 am CST. I hate recommending movies that have almost definitely been cut for cable broadcast, but Cop Land is fairly surprising, being a Sylvester Stallone movie that’s actually pretty decent. I could be grading on a curve here.

CQ on IFC: 12/11 at 11:30 pm CST. Roman Coppola’s love-letter to the films of the 60s is not as bad as some argue, although it’s nowhere near as good as it could have been. Jeremy Davies may be the reason for both. I like the scene that copies a scene from La Dolce Vita from another angle.

Curse of the Cat People on TCM: 12/10 at 6:30 am CST. What’s that? Can’t get enough Cat People? Well, here’s a second helping.

Das Boot on TCM: 12/15 at 1:15 am CST. Shockingly, it's not actually about shoewear.

The Day The Earth Stood Still on AMC: 12/11 at 7 pm CST and 12/12 at 2:30 pm CST. Fuck a bunch of Keanu Reeves and his entirely unnecessary remake.

Dead Calm on CHILLER: 12/14 at 8 pm and 11 pm CST. Claustrophobic little suspense movie that takes place on one little boat out in the middle of the ocean.

Death and the Maiden on IFC: 12/12 at 8:45 pm CST. People may ask: why are Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley considered such great actors? Well, they made this movie, an underappreciated Roman Polanski film about torture and its consequences.

The Delicate Art of the Rifle on IFC: 12/9 at 8:40 am and 3:35 pm CST. I saw an early showing of this when I lived in North Carolina, some ten years ago. It’s a micro-budget indie based on the Charles Whitman shooting at UT, and I seem to remember thinking that it was pretty good, although it went off the rails towards the end.

Elephant on IFC: 12/13 at 11:30 pm and 12/14 at 5:30 am. See Leonard’s write-up.

George Washington on IFC: 12/15 at 6:25 pm. Somewhere between Days of Heaven and Killer of Sheep.

The Godless Girl on TCM: 12/14 at 11 pm. Cecil B. DeMille’s last silent film from 1929. That’s all I know.

Jules et Jim on IFC: 12/14 at 7 am. Confession: I can’t stand this movie. Truffaut directed a number of the finest films of the French New Wave, but this one drives me nuts. This shouldn't keep you from seeing it. There's a reason so many people like it; I'm willing to accept that it's my blind spot that's the problem. But GOD I hate this movie.

Les Enfants du Paradis on IFC: 12/9 at 5:25 am and 12:05 pm. One of the great films of French cinema.

Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster on VH1CL: 12/12 at 10:30 pm and 12/13 at 7 pm. Entertaining even for non-fans of Metallica. Maybe even more so. This is what happens when multi-gazillionaires have trouble coming up with something to bitch about for their fans’ pleasure.

Mystery Train on IFC: 12/15 at 9:35 am and 2:45 pm. Mostly great Jarmusch flick about the creepy goings-on in a Memphis hotel overseen by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

Out of the Past on TCM: 12/9 at 5 am. One of the blackest and bleakest film noirs, starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas. Directed by the great Jacques Tourneur.

The Quiet American on IFC: 12/10 at 6:35 am and 1 pm. Decent film about Vietnam and betrayal starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser and based on a book by Graham Greene.

Vanishing Point on FMC: 12/10 at 3 pm. Must-see little existential car chase movie.

The Wild Bunch on AMC: 12/14 at 4 pm and 9:30 pm. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is the best American movie, period. It's possibly the best movie made by anyone. On one level, it’s about bad men in bad times with a bad end coming at them fast. But that’s only one level.

Take Five: Van Sant

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Gus Van Sant is certainly one of the most curious figures in contemporary American cinema. He pioneered a very specific breed of indie filmmaking before it even had a name, but his forays into mainstream cinema have alternated between clever successes and embarrassing failures. He gives some of the oddest interviews in Hollywood (compared to him, David Lynch is a downright pedestrian chit-chatter), and he's as dedicated to constant reinvention -- or at least refinement -- as anyone in the industry. And his career would seem downright schizophrenic if it weren't so marked by intensely personal qualities; he's done everything from big, Oscar-baiting biopics (such as Milk, his take on the rise and demise of openly gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk) to small, artsy, improvised tales with almost no commercial potential. He's equally capable of having his characters spout unadulterated Shakespeare and having them say nothing at all for endless minutes of screen time, and make both choices seem perfectly natural. He has a curiously critical eye towards his own work -- that is to say, it's not curious that he is self-critical, but rather it's curious how much he talks like a film critic; many of his longer discussions with journalists have sounded more like a well-informed film critic discussing Gus Van Sant's work than it does a director talking about himself. His stabs at mainstream credibility have yielded decidedly mixed results; his successes have been noteworthy (see below), but his failures, especially flattened-out duds like Finding Forrester and Good Will Hunting, and an utterly pointless remake of Psycho, have been spectacular. Through it all, he's remained one of the film industry's hardest men to figure out, but it seems no one ever tires of watching what his next move will be. Here's five of our favorites by the Prince of Portland.

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991)

Mala Noche was the movie that made the underground sit up and take notice of Gus Van Sant's talent; Drugstore Cowboy won over the burgeoning indie world and made him a critic's darling. But the daring, explosively risky My Own Private Idaho was the movie that convinced me that I was seeing the work of an American genius in the making. The story of two sad, sincere male hustlers (played by River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves), it blended elements of Shakespearean drama, class warfare, transgressive queen cinema, and pure street poetry in a way that so clearly shouldn't have worked that it's downright amazing how well it did. Van Sant crammed the movie with real characters from his beloved Portland and made an intensely personal film that nonetheless hit everyone who saw it right where they lived.

TO DIE FOR (1995)

Gus Van Sant's first stab at commercial credibility was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which, despite a plethora of good intentions, was his first major dud. In fact, its ineptness in spite of itself might be noted as a pattern that the director would follow in much of his mainstream work, if it wasn't for the existence of his follow-up film, To Die For. Working from Buck Henry's sharpest, nastiest script in decades, Van Sant directs a movie that almost invisibly echoes some of the themes of his previous work, especially in those scenes featuring lovestruck, dimwitted local teen Joaquin Phoenix and his crew. Van Sant rarely overreaches, and manages to let the black comedic tone of the script do its work; his greatest accomplishment is to get a truly memorable performance out of Nicole Kidman, who's better here than she would be again for some time.

GERRY (2002)

In 2002, Van Sant was on the tail end of a bad time. Hollywood hadn't been good to him over the previous half-decade, but to be fair, he hadn't been very good to it, either, with Good Will Hunting, Psycho and Finding Forrester gunking up his resume. Returning to his strange interiors for another shot at indie filmmaking, he released the first of his "Death Trilogy", the underrated Gerry, and a lot of critics were ready to call it his fourth disaster in a row: it's static to the point of tedium, its improvised dialogue (by two actors not especially beloved by highbrow reviewers) was sometimes silly and sometimes impenetrable, and it had nothing resembling a plot. But Gerry was a quiet triumph, a movie that builds almost unnoticably and marks a return to greatness by a director who can do very much with very little.

ELEPHANT (2003)

Van Sant followed up the surprising and effective Gerry with the triumphant Elephant, the best film of 2003. The second of his death trilogy takes an almost transcendently naturalistic look at a small high school on the day of a Columbine-style murder spree; the dialogue, again largely improvised, and the endless, unintrusive tracking shots make Elephant a brilliant contradiction: a movie so banal that it's almost mystical. Through the whole event, from boring ordinariness to life-shattering violence, Van Sant's particular genius is to steadfastly refuse to lead the viewers to anything resembling an explanation for the horror. Forcing us to view everything from the eyes of those who don't understand why they have to die, Elephant reflects our own maddening desire to have random violence made explicable -- and the world's refusal to comply.

PARANOID PARK (2007)

A strangely stirring and deeply affecting film, 2007's Paranoid Park -- based largely on a successful young adult novel -- finds Gus Van Sant returning to Portland and making a key transition from the relentlessly bleak indie sensibilities of the Death Trilogy to the artsy mainstream appeal of Milk. Once again trusting an amateur cast (many of whom were recruited off of MySpace) and a good deal of improvised dialogue to carry the tone of the film, Van Sant also lays in a heavy, dark directorial touch that nails the mood of the story perfectly. He's greatly aided in this attempt by the gorgeous cinematography by Wong Kar-Wai's cameraman, Christopher Doyle, and the Zoo-York-clad Gabe Nevins as the affectless skateboarding protagonist. Paranoid Park is a perfect bridge between To Die For and Elephant.

Related Posts:

Screengrab Review: Milk

Gus Van Sant and Paranoid Park: 'It's the End of a Certain Way I Was Making Films'

Take Five: HBO

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:45:00 GMT

Sex and the City: The Movie opens everywhere that Cosmopolitans are sold today, and the odds are pretty good that it will make enough money to keep Sarah Jessica Parker in sundresses for the rest of her life. There is little doubt as to whether or not the movie -- based on the inescapable HBO original series -- will be successful; the real question is whether or not it's going to be any good. One thing is for sure: it will at least make more money than the other films that have been made out of HBO's original television programming. They're a pretty dismal set of money-losers and critic-displeasers, ranging from the not good (Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny) to the very bad (the Mr. Show movie, Run Ronnie Run) to the completely awful (the Tales from the Crypt spin-off Bordello of Blood). If the long-rumored Deadwood movie ever gets made, or if the Sopranos movie doesn't turn out to be a disappointment, this may change things, but in the meantime, HBO's television shows have yet to produce a movie worth watching. Less known, however, is that HBO has a production arm that has put out a number of worthwhile films, many of which had theatrical releases prior to their run on the pay cable network; some of them, in fact, were released exclusively for theatrical release through HBO Films or their sister company, Picturehouse FIlms. With their overseeing company, New Line Cinema, dead, the future of HBO Films is uncertain, but given the quality of their past releases, they're sure to find a new home somewhere with parent company Time/Warner. Here's five fine films that were released under the HBO Film distribution banner.

AMERICAN SPLENDOR (2003)

The first, and arguably the best, of a rash of terrific film releases by HBO Films in the mid-2000s, Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's inventive (and sometimes elusive) documentary about underground comics writer Harvey Pekar stands alongside the remarkable Crumb as a compelling, if sometimes troubling, look at an American original. The comparison is by no means coincidental: legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb is a longtime friend of Pekar's, and the man he first recruited to illustrate his stories of the struggles, victories, humiliations and triumphs of everyday life. If it's a little disengenuous to claim that Pekar is the indestructably normal person he claims to be (and it is -- normal people, after all, do not compulsively and sometimes brilliantly catalog the minutia of their lives in autobiographical comics), there's nothing at all phony about Pekar, his everyday heroism, the skewed attitude and refusal to surrender to the diificultues of an ordinary life, or his irascible and cynical -- if never openly cruel -- sense of humor.

ELEPHANT (2003)

The first of a series of collaborations between HBO Films and director Gus Van Sant, Elephant is the best of the lot -- and may in fact be one of the finest films of the decade. Inspired by the horrific mass murder at Columbine High School, the fragmented, almost dreamlike story of a pair of alienated high school students who go on a shooting rampage is a meditation on violence unlike any other in recent cinematic history. Elephant is a quiet, open, almost meditative film, breaking off to follow one character after another in order to present the day of the shooting as resolutely normal; but its greatest trick is to constantly dangle in front of us tantalizing 'clues' to the motivation of the killers, only to have every one of them lead to an unproductive, uncomfortable dead end. After the final bloodbath, we have an almost tangible need to know the whys and wherefores of the senseless killing, but the movie is wise enough to deny us an easy solution to an impossibly difficult question, and is brave enough to believe in its director's vision and leave us hanging without a quick fi or an easy scapegoat.

DEATH IN GAZA (2004)

One of the least partisan -- and most tragically unbearable -- documentaries about the Israeli-Palestine conflict was the 2004 film Death in Gaza, which concentrated largely on the impact the war had on children in the area. Focusing on a quartet of Palestinian kids, all in their early teens or younger, who take up arms against their occupiers, Death in Gaza neither exculpates the bad behavior of the kids (their anti-Semitism is extremely uncomfortable, especially from children so young) or glosses over why they might be so driven to militancy and violence (we are constantly exposed to the insufferable living conditions into which they are born and raised, and every one of them has a jaw-dropping horror story about the death of a friend or relative). What makes the move especially harrowing is that its 34-year-old British director, James Miller, was himself killed by the Israeli Defense Forces while filming in Gaza at night, a typically stupid, futile, and enraging event that is captured on film and shown matter-of-factly during the course of the documentary. Powerful and sad.

MARIA FULL OF GRACE (2004)

Joshua Marston's feature about a young Colombian teenager who becomes a drug mule in order to raise money for her impoverished family is filmed in such an effective, simple neorealist style -- and manages to so effectively encapsulate one of the most degrading yet banal aspects of the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism -- that it's hard to avoid comparisons to De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. And while it's not even remotely in that film's league, it's still very much a movie worth watching, updating De Sica's themes for a post-socialist age, and it does at least have one advantage over its spiritual forebear: the presense of the heartbreaking, compelling, fascinating lead actress, Catalino Sandino Moreno. The then-17-year-old Moreno turns in one of the most watchable yet tragic performances in recent memory as a headstrong, intelligent girl who has nonetheless begun to move in circles who will shape her into something she cannot control; it's almost impossible to take your eyes off her from the beginning of the movie to the end.

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE (2005)

The Notorious Bettie Page, a serviceable if never stunning biography of the legendary 1950s pin-up queen, was brought to us by the writer/director team of Guinevere Turner and Mary Harron. The duo also was responsible for the highly problematic American Psycho, and Harron also directed the truly discomfiting I Shot Andy Warhol. While its problems are different (a lack of depth and a somewhat flat visual style, neither of which were the difficulties with Harron's other movies), it does reflect the curate's egg nature of all three films. Clearly, it wasn't a movie made to do nothing more than titillate, but by the same token, we walk out of the theater knowing precious little more about the notorious Bettie Page than we did when we came in. That said, it shares with the other films a great deal of energy and feeling, and is supported by the sort of tremendous central performance Harron seems to coax so easily out of her stars -- Gretchen Mol is easily the equal of Christian Bale or Lili Taylor, and it's her charm and control in the role that makes this a movie worth watching.

The Ten Best Murderous Duos in Movies, Part 2

Phil Nugent — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) & Vincent Vega (John Travolta), PULP FICTION (1994)

For all the talk about the brilliance of Quentin Tarantino’s filmmaking, his resurrection and reanimation of ‘70s pop culture, and the way he redefined the crime drama for a postmodern generation, there’s a profound misunderstanding of why his two most famous creations – the black-suited hitmen Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega – are so enjoyable to watch. It’s not the hip pseudo-philosophical dialogue; it’s not the bad-ass speechifying; it’s not even the rapport between Samuel L. Jackson and born-again-hard John Travolta that makes Jules & Vincent so downright charming. No, what really makes them work is that Tarantino manages to do what no one else had ever done: he transformed the story of two murderous assassins into an engaging workplace comedy. When you get right down to it, Jules & Vincent are just two working stiffs whose job happens to be a tad idiosyncratic. When they’re not filling some rip-off artist full of hot lead, they’re just like any two likeable jerks at the office or factory of your choice: they swap vacation stories, they get annoyed at each other’s long-established social tics, they blame each other for workplace fuckups, they laugh at each others’ jokes, they eat junk food together at break time, and they drive around aimlessly between jobs trying to think of something to do, whether it’s fall in love with the wrong girl or have a profound religious awakening. For all the goofy trappings, from the automatic weapons to the mysteriously glowing box to the wallet that says BAD MOTHERFUCKER, we relate so strongly to Jules & Vincent because, despite their bloody way of making a living, we recognize in them the comfortable familiarity of workplace ritual. If anyone tells me that their scenes with Harvey Keitel’s Mr. Wolfe are anything but extremely well-done sitcom detritus, we'll call them a liar to their face.

Ray (Billy Bob Thornton) & Pluto (Michael Beach), ONE FALSE MOVE (1992)

One of the scariest of the many scary moments in Carl Franklin's modern backwoods noir (which Thornton co-wrote) comes when the intelligent and more calculating member of the duo, Pluto, instructs the more volatile Ray not to flip out when they're stopped by a highway cop: "We don't want to kill him if we don't have to." Ray takes Pluto's advice on this one because he understands that Pluto is smarter than he is; it's not as if the idea that there might be reasons not to simply kill someone who poses an inconvenience to him is something he understands on any deeper emotional level. Both men are prepared to do whatever it takes to keep them free and on the move, and to pick up a little scratch on the side as they go, and both are useful to the other, though it's Pluto's genius for sizing up a situation and deciding that it's time to wipe somebody out that keeps them free and on the move for as long as they are. The fact that they're a biracial team adds sauce to the mix, even as the redneck live wire (with the black girlfriend from the South) and his cucumber-cool partner resist the urge to ever acknowledge it.

Sappensly (Robert Webber) & Quill (Gig Young), BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)

If Fante and Mingo had lived to middle age, smartened up their wardrobes, and gone freelance, they might have ended up like these guys. Alfredo Garcia, a bizarre modern Western with white men in suits, equipped with planes, cars, and machine guns, tearing around Mexico in search of a guy's rotting melon that has a million dollar bounty on it, is the director Sam Peckinpah's scurviest film, a response to Hollywood's refusal to let him make the kind of movies he wanted to make, and Sappensly and Quill are probably meant as his fuck-you note to the studio executives he regarded as no better than manicured hyenas, gutless wonders, amoral killers. Peckinpah always had conflicted feelings about his characters and everything else he put on screen, and there's an unexpected, and unexpectedly affecting moment, when Quill is killed; Sappinsly looks at his body, utters his name in a voice cracking with grief, and then turns his gun on the movie's hero (Warren Oates) in what may be a desperate need to lash out at a world in which he's suddenly found himself alone or what may be a gunman's (successful) bid for suicide, forcing Oates to put him out of his misery. It's the closest thing to a moment of warm feeling in the movie.

Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) & Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith), DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971)

Neither of these guys looks like much of a threat; in fact one of them looks like the love child of David Crosby and Gallagher. (Putter Smith, who made his film debut as Mr. Kidd, made only a couple of other films and is actually best known as a jazz bassist. Bruce Glover played one of Jack Nicholson's "associates" in Chinatown but may now be best known as Crispin Glover's father.) Yet they manage to achieve memorability just on the basis of their archness, and for serving as the James Bond series' concession to the value of teamwork. Oddjob or Jaws would probably beat the shit out of either of them if one tried to sit at next to him in the villains' commissary, but so long as they stick together, respect must be paid: you never know what one of them might be up to behind your back while you're throttling the other. As for the homoerotic element alluded to elsewhere in this feature, it's there for sure, but it's best to not dwell on it, and not just because nobody wants to picture these guys kissing. (And make no mistake about it, we don't just mean that nobody wants to picture them kissing each other.) For all its charms, the Bond series has seldom been out front in terms of images of social progress, and the close-up of Mr. Wint appearing to leer pleasurably as Sean Connery literally shoves a bomb up his ass is not 007's proudest moment.

Eric (Eric Deulen) & Alex (Alex Frost), ELEPHANT (2003)

Standing in marked contrast to most of the murderous duos on this list are the teenage killers in Gus Van Sant’s impenetrable, elegiac evocation of the Columbine massacre, Elephant. Though one of them shares a name with the real-life Colorado school shooters, it’s not by design; like most of the characters in the film, actor Eric Deulen lends his name to his creation. Alex (played by the revoltingly compelling Alex Frost) is the dominant member of the twosome, plotting the massacre during class and delivering its terrifying final lines, but unlike most big-screen killer combos, there’s nothing flashy, clever or even wickedly likable about Eric & Alex. Though their actions are, in the end, far more costly in human lives than other big-screen killers, they are meant to be neither nightmarish horror-film bad-asses or appealing anti-heroes. In keeping with the tone of this wonderful, frightening film, they are ciphers: we know little more about them when the movie ends than we did when it began, and it’s easy to see that Van Sant made the movie not to explicate Columbine, but to mock our pretense that Columbine was explicable. A number of viewers detected an element of homophobia in the scene where the two kiss in a shared shower, but Van Sant no more suggests that repressed homosexuality is to blame for the boys’ rampage than video games, social isolation, or any one of a dozen red herrings he throws out. We greedily devour every one, so hungry are we for some hint, any hint that such a horrid, pointless waste of human life must have an explanation, any explanation. But in the end, we are left only with a lot of bodies and a pair of enigmas. That’s murder for you.

— Paul Clark; Phil Nugent; Leonard Pierce

Click here for Part 1.

Gus Van Sant and "Paranoid Park": "It's the End of a Certain Way I Was Making Films"

Phil Nugent — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Sam Adams writes in The Los Angeles Times that Gus Van Sant sees his new film, Paranoid Park, as "a transitional film, moving him once again toward the mainstream." The first thing to say about this is that, compared to the so-called "Death Trilogy" of films that Van Sant has made since 2002 (Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days) while under the influence of director Bela Tarr, he may be right. The second thing is that Van Sant's notion of the mainstream and Michael Bay's may barely be on speaking terms. It's not clear that it has all that much in common with the Van Sant of Good Will Hunting or Finding Forrester, either. The new movie differs from his other recent work in that it had an honest-to-goodness script (based on Blake Nelson's young adult novel). But as Mike D'Angelo noted here recently, it has many of the trademarks of Van Sant's forays into experimental filmmaking: nonlinear storytelling, long, long takes, even oddball music choices. The teenage skateboarder hero, who is carrying a secret that's killing him inside, strolls down a high school corridor on his way to a sit-down meeting with a police detective as Billy Swan's lovably woozy "I Can Help" ("It would sure do me good/ To do you good") wobbles on the soundtrack.

Back in the late 1980s, Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy made Van Sant the great hope of the indie movement before the movement itself really had a star system and an identity. After the ambitious My Own Private Idaho, his adaptation of Tom Robbins's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues turned out to be the kind of disastrous conflagration that can turn a filmmaker's reputation to ash in one puff. Even those who thought the director needed to re-invent himself were surprised at how thoroughly he dug in as a Hollywood pro, first with the commercial-indie black comedy To Die For and then with Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester. If Van Sant sees these kinds of films as marking distinct stages in his career — he has said that with the Death Trilogy and Paranoid Park he has reached "the end of a certain way I was making films" — he's always worked hard at doing the best job he can and is fluid in his notions of what collaborators belong on which projects. Harris Savides, his cinematographer on Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days, first teamed up with him on Finding Forrester. Now they're working together on his next movie, Milk, starring Sean Penn as the martyred, openly gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, a large-scale period drama that will give the director the chance to recreate San Francisco in the 1970s, in the first full glow of gay liberation — what Van Sant himself describes as "the creation of a gay class of people, from nothing, or from a subclass that was below the surface." The new project, the realization of a long term dream of Van Sant's, returns him to the general subject of Elephant, et al. — death in the public sphere — with a "more conventional" storytelling approach, but for Van Sant, conventionality remains something with which he has to make his uneasy peace. "You can never really get there," he says of such concepts as "the real" Harvey Milk, "So you might as well have an analogy rather than a biographical depiction."

Screengrab Review: Paranoid Park

Peter Smith — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Review by Mike D'Angelo.

Taking a brief and very welcome break from memorial filmmaking — Columbine, Kurt Cobain, a forthcoming Harvey Milk biopic — Gus Van Sant achieves thrilling new heights of lyrical expressionism with Paranoid Park, his fractured adaptation of a young-adult novel by Blake Nelson. Frankly, I was so certain that I never wanted to see this particular director set foot on a high-school campus again that I contemplated a restraining order. But this brilliantly schizoid character study — structured as the letter-cum-journal entry of Alex, a skate punk with a guilty conscience (sensational newcomer Gabe Nevins, found via MySpace) — digs into the teenage mindset with a clarity and eloquence that Elephant, with its distracting (and, to my mind, obscene) echoes of real-world tragedy, couldn't possibly achieve. Ostensibly, the plot concerns Alex's involvement in the accidental death of a security guard. But since this act of involuntary manslaughter (briefly seen in gruesome detail) is wholly fictional, Van Sant and Nelson's appropriation of it as an overarching metaphor for the furtive, free-floating sense of shame that accompanies puberty feels bold and incisive rather than deeply disrespectful.

Meanwhile, Van Sant's formal dexterity just grows more and more astounding. He sometimes rivals Alain Resnais here with his conflation of editing and memory, skipping back and forth in time in a dissociative frenzy that has no use for conventional signposts or explanations. And even when Van Sant flirts with cliché, he does so in a way that's forbidding and strange: You've seen the scene where the distraught protagonist sublimates his/her grief in the shower a hundred times — but never like this, with the contrast cranked up to near-abstraction and the camera intently focused on the rivulets of water that flow from Alex's long hair as he stands silently, head bowed. I could have done with a bit less emphasis on Elliott Smith on the soundtrack, perhaps, but the film's other musical choices, ranging from Billy Swan's "I Can Help" to snatches of Nino Rota's score for Juliet of the Spirits, are magnificently contrapuntal. This is still very much a mood piece, but Van Sant, after two consecutive films centered on sacrificial lambs, has made an overdue and welcome return to recognizable human beings.