The Screengrab : michelangelo antonioni

Th-Th-That's All Folks! The Best & Worst Endings Of All Time! (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT

REPO MAN (1984)

Mike18xx, the nice fellah who posted the clip above, notes in his YouTube comments that “Seeing the ending won’t actually ‘spoil’ the film if you haven’t seen it before,” which is absolutely true. The plot of Alex Cox’s first, best film (involving aliens, car thieves, secret government shenanigans and the search for a very special 1964 Chevy Malibu -- what Mike18xx rightly calls the best McGuffin in film history) isn’t nearly as important as the overall vibe, a pleasant reminder of a more innocent pop culture moment when punk and indie weren’t just corporate flavors and Emilio Estevez was actually kinda badass (although, judging by a recent feud unwittingly instigated by our own Scott Von Doviak, it seems both Cox and the Mighty Duck still have at least a little piss left in their vinegar). Plus, like all the best endings, Repo Man features an effective curtain call of characters and themes, as well as a memorable epigraph for my own particular hipster doofus generation: “The life of a repo man is always intense.” (AO)

ZABRISKIE POINT (1970)

Love him or hate him -- and there are plenty of cinephiles in both camps -- it’s hard to deny that nobody could end a movie quite like Michelangelo Antonioni. With plenty of wonderful conclusions in his work, it was hard to confine ourselves to just one Antonioni film (or even two, as we ended up doing), but ultimately we couldn’t possibly overlook the finale of this, his most critically-savaged work. Taken as a whole, Zabriskie Point is a scattershot vision of late-sixties America -- sometimes visionary, sometimes ponderous, often both. But even if you aren’t a fan of the movie, the ending packs a wallop. Sure, it’s somewhat obvious what Antonioni’s up to here, blowing up a gaudy “modern” house that has intruded on the natural majesty of the desert, even showing the explosion from multiple angles for extra emphasis. But it’s how he does it that turns the scene from sledgehammer symbolism to transcendent cinema (besides, this is relatively subtle compared to Antonioni’s other proposed ending, which involved an airplane writing “Fuck You, America” across the sky). As Antonioni shifts the film into some of the slowest slow-motion the cinema has ever seen in order to capture the explosions in exhaustive detail, he manages to exact his cinematic revenge on consumer culture -- watch as he blows up a television, a refrigerator, even a loaf of Wonder Bread -- while simultaneously transforming the destruction into something beautiful, with an assist from a modified version of Pink Floyd’s “Careful With That Axe, Eugene.” For lack of a better phrase, it’s pure cinema. And if that’s not good enough for you, there’s the notion that even a director as art-damaged as Antonioni knows sometimes his hardened audiences just want to watch stuff blow up real good. (PC)

PLANET OF THE APES (1968) & BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

Sorry to ruin it for you, but the planet of the apes? It was Earth all along! Charlton Heston sure feels silly now. But not as silly as he’ll feel when he finds himself the prisoner of underground mutants in the sequel. Now he’s really had enough, and it’s hard to blame him for overreacting. I’ve told this story before, but one more time before they turn out the lights: Having had quite enough of talking apes and telepathic mole-people, Heston unleashes a mighty cry of "You bloody bastards!" and plunges onto the detonator with his dying breath. And you can pry it from his cold, dead hands, if you can find them, which you can't because, indeed, the planet explodes. Or as the abrupt final line of narration has it: "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead." Hey, thanks for coming to the show, ladies and gentlemen! Drive home safely! It's an ending that provokes laughter in your modern sophisticated audience, much to the bafflement of a gentleman who was sitting behind me at a revival house screening some years ago. "I dunno what everyone's laughing at," he muttered. "It's gonna happen." (SVD)

WEEKEND (1967)

By the end of the ‘60s, it was clear to everyone that Jean-Luc Godard was through fucking around. He was using cinema less as a means of communication and more as a weapon, but how deadly serious he was about deploying that weapon didn’t become clear until the final scenes of his dizzying film Weekend. The circumstances are brutal enough; the bourgeois couple we’ve followed throughout the film, cheated of their inheritance, resort to murder and end up in cahoots with a pack of radical revolutionaries with a taste for human flesh. But throughout Weekend, Godard was operating on a higher level: it’s full of meta-reference, and the director makes no bones about his characters being tuned into their own artificiality at every juncture. He planned it not as a mere statement, but as a command: this art form, he said, is dead; leave the theatre not to discuss it, but to seize and tear down. It was a powerful message, and a prescient one a year before Paris exploded into a nearly miraculous revolution. But even in that atmosphere, only Godard would have had the balls to give Weekend its famous ending: a simple title card reading “END OF CINEMA/END OF WORLD.” (LP)

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY (1966)

Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Leone's, aren't concerned with Western realism, but the myth of the West, which they blow up like Greco-Roman gods. This might be the most iconic and expressionist movie ending outside of, y'know, German Expressionism. The clip above starts after Tuco and Blondie find the graveyard, with the camera spinning through the graves as Tuco races through the rows, looking for the right name. Then Blondie forces him to dig. Angel Eyes appears and there's the first double-cross: the grave Tuco is digging up has bones rather than money in it. The Mexican standoff. The second and third double-cross: Tuco's gun is empty and Blondie didn't write anything on the rock. Tuco digs at the right grave, but as soon as he strikes the gold, there's the fourth double-cross: Blondie has hung a noose over his head while he was working. The camera stays with Tuco as Blondie rides away, and we all watch him disappear, thinking, "wait, that one is The Good?" But he returns and frees Tuco, calling back to an earlier scene of camaraderie between them. It sounds like a story from The Odyssey even as I describe it here. If there had been such a thing as a Mexican standoff when Homer was writing, I'm certain that Odysseus would have found himself at one point of the triangle, one step ahead of the others. (HC)

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Paul Clark, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Hayden Childs

DVD Digest for May 26, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:00:00 GMT

In advance of the upcoming shuttering of The Screengrab- just four more days, folks!- the DVD departments of Disney, Paramount, and Fox have graciously decided not to put out any recent releases this week in protest. Thanks for the support, guys!

Unfortunately, this boycott leaves us with precious little to report in regards to recent movies. Put it another way- when your highest-profile recent release coming to DVD is the forgotten Renee Zellweger/Harry Connick Jr. rom-com New in Town (Lionsgate), the phrase “slow week” doesn’t quite cover it. If you’re looking for Asian fare, this week also brings Mamoru Oshii’s animated The Sky Crawlers (Sony, also Blu-Ray), as well as two Wayne Wang indies, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Magnolia) and Princess of Nebraska (Magnolia). And let’s not overlook the much-anticipated How to Give Pleasure to a Woman by a Woman (Pacific Media).

Thankfully, there’s a little more of interest in the classics department, although that’s kind of a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that Warner is releasing titles from Michelangelo Antonioni, David Cronenberg, John Boorman, Hal Ashby, and Hugh Hudson. The bad news is that this week’s releases include some of these estimable auteurs’ worst films. Now, I’m aware that Zabriskie Point and M. Butterfly have their defenders. However, I’m not sure people were exactly clamoring for a DVD of Beyond Rangoon or director’s cuts of Revolution and Lookin’ to Get Out, no matter how excited Jon Voight is about the latter. At least they’re not in a box set, so you Zabriskie fans can finally watch stuff blow up real good at the end without having to buy a DVD of Al Pacino fighting the Redcoats as well. Also this week: Falling Down Deluxe Edition (Warner).

Now that Hollywood has seen fit to make Land of the Lost into an expensive summer movie, it was inevitable that Land of the Lost: The Complete Series (Universal) would be hitting stores in advance of that. Or if you’re more into the whole cop-show thing, this week also sees the release of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: The Ninth Year (Universal) and The Closer: Season 4 (Warner).

Finally, this week’s Blu-Ray only slate includes perhaps the “man”-liest triple feature around, with new Blu-Rays of Children of Men (Universal), Cinderella Man (Universal), and Inside Man (Universal) hitting stores today. Also this week: Field of Dreams (Universal), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves Extended Cut (Warner), Seabiscuit (Universal), Spy Game (Universal), and True Romance Unrated Cut (Warner).

In the words of Annette Hanshaw, “that’s all.”

Reviews By Request: Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini)

Paul Clark — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

As always, voting for my next Reviews By Request column can be found at the end of this review.

The “late period” films of Federico Fellini are one of the major blind spots in my moviewatching history. I’ve seen nearly all of his earlier works, up to and including the “transitional” work 8 ½, which remains my favorite of his films. However, the only Fellini films I’ve seen after this are Amarcord (which I love) and Satyricon (which I don’t), but I was certainly familiar with these films’ critical reputations, which tend to echo the sentiments expressed by the loudmouthed intellectual in the movie line in Annie Hall.

Having just seen Juliet of the Spirits for the first time, I can’t argue with the opinion that it’s an “indulgent” film, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, since it reveals aspects of their maker that his more disciplined films could not. Supposedly, Fellini intended Juliet of the Spirits to be a tribute to his wife and frequent leading lady, Giulietta Masina. If this is the case, it’s a funny sort of tribute. Yes, Juliet (played by Masina) sticks to her principles when her husband cheats on her, and eventually finds escape from their marriage. But for most of the film, she is portrayed as a hapless victim, carried along by the whims of the film- and those of her husband.

Consider the way that she is portrayed visually. Juliet never seems to fit in no matter where she is. From the beginning of the film, when her husband (played by Mario Pisu) hosts an impromptu dinner party, the guests are garishly dressed and glamorous, while Juliet wears a simple dress and a matronly brown wig. This will be a trend throughout the film, as Juliet clashes with her more decadent surroundings. Likewise, throughout the film Fellini accentuates the Masina’s petiteness, often showing her amidst people (even her own mother) who tower over her. In other hands, Juliet’s inability to fit into the film’s world would be a defiant statement, but Fellini’s feelings about it seem to be more complicated than that. One can see that he feels affection for his wife, but he can’t resist being drawn toward the decadence that had become such an integral element of both his life and his work.

And what is one supposed to make of the way Juliet is treated by the film after discovering her husband’s infidelity? A more conventional film might have taken the husband to task for his cheating, but not Fellini, who kept mistresses throughout much of his adult life. Instead, one character after another tells Juliet that in order to win her husband back, she needs to embrace her sexual side- to be more like, say, her buxom, sexually liberated neighbor Suzy, played by Sandra Milo, who by her own admission put in time as one of Fellini’s mistresses. Needless to say, Juliet has some trouble with this advice, especially as it relates to her own Roman Catholic upbringing.

The worldview we see in Juliet of the Spirits is a decidedly pre-feminist one, and one that’s a little hard to stomach. But at the same time, one needs not agree with what a film is saying to appreciate the film itself, and Fellini uses the framework of this story to lay bare his own ideas about marriage, sexuality, and the female gender in general. Because these ideas run so contrary to more “enlightened” points of view that have found their way into most contemporary works of art, Juliet of the Spirits is more thought-provoking than a more politically correct film might have been.

And even if you’re not down with Fellini’s worldview in Juliet of the Spirits, it’s hard to argue with the sheer visual splendor of the film, Fellini’s first in color. Many of world cinema’s greatest filmmakers first made the transition to color during the 1960s- Bergman and Antonioni had already made the switch, with Buñuel and Kurosawa still to come. What these filmmakers had in common is that they didn’t simply make the change for commercial reasons, but treated color as another filmmaking tool to be used wisely. In Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini uses color to create images that would not have had the same impact in black and white, as when he painted the walls red to create unease during a scene in which Juliet visits a mysterious healer. Also striking is the full spectrum of colors found in Suzy’s cavernous home (reminiscent of a fantasy version of a brothel), which contrasts with Juliet’s memories of her Catholic upbringing, which are full of solid shades of red and grey, with innocent white on the children and the almost impossibly dark violet (not black) of the nuns’ robes. Juliet of the Spirits is a feast for the eyes- and, with Nino Rota’s mindbending score, for the ears as well.

In doing research for this review- which must no doubt seem as rambling as the film itself- I came across the following quote from Fellini:

“We don't really know who woman is. She remains in that precise place within man where darkness begins. Talking about women means talking about the darkest part of ourselves, the undeveloped part, the true mystery within… [The] problem for man is to reunite himself with the other half of his being, to find the woman who is right for him-right be she is simply a projection, a mirror of himself. A man can't become whole or free until he has set woman free-his woman. It's his responsibility, not hers. He can't be complete, truly alive until he makes her his sexual companion, and not a slave of libidinous acts or a saint with a halo.”

Perhaps this quotation is the key to what Fellini was attempting with Juliet of the Spirits- not simply translating these ideas into cinematic form, but also struggling to reconcile them with his own weaknesses and deeply-ingrained ideas of what women meant to him in his life. Of course, it’s hard to say what Masina really thought of all this, but that’s part of what makes the movie so darn fascinating, isn’t it?

When coming up with a theme for the next Reviews By Request selection, I kept thinking back to this week's DVD release of The Wrestler and reflected on the fact that I've seen only a handful of movies from the eighties salad days of Wrestler comeback kid Mickey Rourke. So the next Reviews By Request will attempt to remedy this. Some of the titles I've listed below have solid reputations, others not so much, but I haven't seen any of them. That I've seen not only 9 1/2 Weeks but also Wild Orchid (not to mention Double Team) says a lot about me as a moviegoer, but that's a topic for another time. Anyway, which of these should I review next?

Online Surveys & Market Research

Due to a software snafu involving the new polling software, the above poll may be displaying too small to be easily readable, so here are the options in chronological order: Rumble Fish, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Year of the Dragon, Angel Heart, and Johnny Handsome. Hope that helps. And ss always, feel free to sound off in the comments section below. See you in two weeks!

Set Your DVR!: February 14 - 16, 2009

Hayden Childs — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

What promising movies, you may well ask, does TV have to offer this weekend? Well, I may well answer, there's the second part of a samurai epic, there's Tom Stoppard's deconstruction of Hamlet, and then there's a meditation on alienation in Swinging London! Wowee!, you may exclaim. Keep it down, I might reply, people are trying to blog in here. Perhaps you could tell me more, you may ask. Pushy, I might think, aren't you? But I would tell you anyway. And, as long as we're speaking in hypotheticals, this is what I might say:

First up is Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple on IFC Saturday morning (that's 2/14) at 7 am central/8 am eastern. If you caught Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto last week, you know that this is a must-watch trilogy. If you missed it, go ahead and start here. I think you can pick the story up easily enough. Starring Toshiro Mifune. I should point out that the above clip is far murkier than the cinemascope colors in the actual movie.

On Sunday, IFC is showing Tom Stoppard's comedy Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead twice: first at 7 am central/8 am eastern and then again at 1:05 pm central/2:05 pm eastern. I'm sure you're aware of this movie or the play behind it, but just in case you need a refresher, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters in Hamlet who are convinced by Claudius (that's Hamlet's uncle, the King) to transport him to England, where Hamlet is to be executed. Hamlet escapes, but not before modifying the letter to the King of England so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern will be executed in his stead. At the end of the play, a messengers arrives at the Danish court to inform Claudius that R & G are dead, only to find the Hall full of bodies (uh, spoiler?). Anyway, Stoppard's play and movie assume that the viewer has more than a passing familiarity with Hamlet and Beckett's Waiting For Godot. The events in the story are greater than R & G can understand, leading them to muse on life and fate and roles that people must play as they rush headlongs towards their fates.

Finally, on Sunday night (technically Monday morning) at 1 am central/2 am eastern, TCM is showing Blow-Up, Antonioni's strangely meditative film about the nature of reality. As in other Antonioni films, the central mystery of the film is unanswerable, but it causes an existential crisis in the lead character, who in this case is a fashion photographer who believes that he has photographed a murder. Antonioni injects an extra layer of cool by setting the time and place in mid-60s Swinging London, and the cast includes David Hemmings, a shockingly young Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Birkin, and the Yardbirds in full swing with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, who steals Pete Townshend's guitar-smashing schtick for the film. The clip above appears towards the end of the film, but I had to include it because of the lovely symmetry with the fake tennis match in the clip from Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead. Tennis matches: with a ball, they're only a game, but with no ball, they are metaphors for life.

Cannes Rundown, Days 10 and 11- I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool.

Paul Clark — Sun, 25 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT

As the Cannes Film Festival enters its final days before the announcement of awards on Sunday, here’s one final roundup of reviews. We begin with Charlie Kaufman’s highly-anticipated (by me, anyway) directorial debut Synecdoche, New York. Would Kaufman’s inexperience behind the camera cause him to become timid and soften his edge? If reviews are any indication, don’t bet on it.

AO Scott in the New York Times- “Mr. Kaufman, the wildly inventive screenwriter of “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” has, in his first film as a director, made those efforts look almost conventional. Like his protagonist, a beleaguered theater director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, he has created a seamless and complicated alternate reality, unsettling nearly every expectation a moviegoer might have about time, psychology and narrative structure.”

But not all were so impressed. J. Hoberman in the Village Voice- “Collapsing in sodden self-reflexivity after a promising 40 minutes, Kaufman’s arch, interminable phantasmagoria—with Philip Seymour Hoffman as a Job-like theater director—retroactively improved all but the most miserablist movies I saw at Cannes.”

Other competition titles:

Jeff Wells on Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo- “I knew I was seeing something intensely audacious and stylistically exciting, but the political arena it depicts is so dry and complex and wholly-unto-itself that gradually the film makes you feel as if you're lying in an isolation tank.”

Laurent Cantet’s The Class/Entre Les Meurs, according to Time Out’s Geoff Andrew- “Everything rings absolutely true in this film, and everything is utterly engrossing from start to finish, despite the apparent lack of a straightforward narrative during the first hour… There are no easy answers proffered to the various questions raised about education, schools and society, but the film makes for admirably lucid, subtle and thought-provoking drama throughout. And the kids are terrific.”

Cinematical’s James Rocchi tears into Wim Wenders’ latest, The Palermo Shooting- “After Palermo Shooting ended (with a title card offering the film as a tribute "To Ingmar (Bergman) and Michelangelo (Antonioni)," which made me imagine Bergman and Antonioni saying Uh, thanks, but. ... from the next world), the Cannes press audience booed and laughed and stumbled out into the streets for detailed digressions and discussions on how, exactly, Wenders had, as our British friends say, lost the plot. Palermo Shooting goes fairly off the mark, or fires blanks, or has a damp fuse; I'm not sure about which firearm metaphor applies here, and if Wenders can't be bothered to have any cohesion to his signs and symbols, why should I?... It's still a little sad to see a major filmmaker make such a series of major mistakes in the name of a fairly minor film.”

While I certainly admire Cannes’ devotion to Wenders, perhaps the competition would be better served if, instead of reserving spots for ex-Palme winners past their prime, the selectors would give some love to gifted up-and-comers who deserve a higher profile People like, say, Kelly Reichardt, whose Wendy and Lucy played in Un Certain Regard. Here’s ScreenDaily’s Mike Goodridge- “Reichardt's films are quiet and detailed, and in Wendy And Lucy , she provides an all too believable picture of how fine is the line between getting by and becoming homeless and destitute… Unlike Old Joy, which was a two-hander, Wendy And Lucy is told entirely from the point of view of one character - and her dog, of course. The beauty of the film is not only in telling a story with so few words but in showing the wordless tenderness that exists between woman and dog in a society which has cast her onto its fringes. “

Also of note was the Un Certain Regard prizewinner, Tulpan. Here’s ScreenDaily’s Jonathan Romney on the film- “Shy courtship, stark landscapes and a spirited supporting cast of livestock make Tulpan a vivid, intensely enjoyable debut feature from former documentarian Sergei Dvortsevoi. The Kazakhstan-set film hardly breaks new ground, in both setting and mood pitching its tent very close to The Story Of The Weeping Camel. But it similarly blends intimate, gentle fiction with a strong dose of ethnographic observation, to immensely charming effect.”

Justin Chang in Variety on Albert Serra’s Birdsong- “Patience was no doubt required of the Three Wise Men as they made their way toward Bethlehem, and the same will be required of auds who seek out "Birdsong," Albert Serra's minimalist reinterpretation of the Magi's journey. Hushed, contemplative but often quite droll experiment offers beautifully sculpted images on a black-and-white canvas across its sometimes hypnotic, sometimes tedious runtime.”

Wendy Ide praises Eldorado in the London Times- “This off-beat tragicomic road movie from Belgium is one of the sleeper hits of the festival. Screening in the Director’s Fortnight sidebar, it’s a far cry from the dour, grey perception of Belgian cinema fostered by the work of people like the Dardenne brothers…The landscapes and soundtrack choices evoke American road movies of a bygone era; the sensibility is definitely European.”

Abel Ferrara’s Chelsea on the Rocks, according to Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times- “Abel Ferrara's new film, "Chelsea on the Rocks," represents a kind of homecoming for the Bronx-born director and longtime chronicler of the New York City underbelly. Ferrara, best known for urban tales of damnation such as "Bad Lieutenant" and "King of New York," moved to Italy several years ago, fleeing a city transformed by the Rudolph W. Giuliani regime and the Sept. 11 attacks, not to mention a cultural and economic climate that had grown more hostile to maverick filmmakers.”

Finally, here’s a link to Karina Longworth’s live-blogging of Quentin Tarantino’s Film Lecture at Cannes. I’ve seen how fast that dude talks, and my fingers are hurting just thinking about it. Bang-up job, Karina.

Cannes Rundown, Day 4

Paul Clark — Sun, 18 May 2008 06:06:00 GMT

Cannes continued today with a number of notable films, including the premiere of the latest film by acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-ke, entitled 24 City. Here’s Time’s Mary Corliss on the film:

“24 City is eloquent testimony to a China that is vanishing with each swing of the wrecking ball. But the memories of the workers in their factory microcosm, and telling documentaries like these, keep the past alive, so that later generations will know what once was, and what's been lost.”

Also in competition is Linha de Passe, the latest film from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) and collaborator Daniela Thomas. ScreenDaily’s Jonathan Romney writes: “The sheer hustle of Sao Paolo comes across vitally in the traffic scenes, with Denis risking his neck - and eventually others' - on the city highways. Brazil 's polarity between rich and poor is subtly handled in the scenes set in the household where Cleuza works as a maid. Above all, the film comes across as a film about religion - that is, Brazil's true religion of football. Salles and Thomas use on-field action to urgent effect.”

Boyd van Hoeij on Moscow, Belgium- “Especially during its first hour, the Flemish boxoffice sensation toys with cliché material with such an assured sense of direction and such a strong screenplay that it simply is a pleasure to watch. The closing 40-odd minutes do not sustain this sense of wonderment over the near-perfect almost-familiar, but thanks in large part to a wonderful cast led by Barbara Sarafian the film is still something that might light up screens elsewhere in Europe.”

Finally, Variety’s Leslie Felperin on Soi Cowboy- “As it happens, "Cowboy" is chock-full of allusions to Clay's pantheon of auteur heroes, including not just Antonioni and Lynch and many other Europeans, but also notable and newer Asian helmers like Hou Hsiao-hsien… and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Although Clay manages, just about, to keep these references in service of his story, it not yet clear what his own directorial voice looks like, or what exactly it is he wants to say.”

DVD Digest for April 22, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a cinematic master gets the Eclipse treatment, and a viral-marketing-phenom makes its DVD debut.

DVD of the Week: In the past few years, a number of Yasujiro Ozu films have made their way to DVD, but he was so prolific that there are still many films missing, especially from his earlier work. For this reason alone, the arrival Eclipse Series 10: Silent Ozu- Three Family Comedies is cause for celebration. Comprised of three films made between 1931 and 1933, the Silent Ozu box has no extras to speak of (Eclipse doesn't really do extras), but each film features a brand-new score by silent-film composer Donald Sosin, as well as the high-quality transfers we've come to expect from the Criterion family. To date, I've only seen the box's centerpiece film, I Was Born, But..., but that film and the other Ozus I've seen have been so delightful that I have no reservations about recommending the other films- 1933's Passing Fancy and 1931's Tokyo Chorus- as well. Here's hoping that Eclipse continues to do right by Ozu in the years to come. He's certainly worth it.

Releasing today from Criterion itself is Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bardem's seminal, long-overlooked melodrama Death of a Cyclist. The class-oriented of a respected professor whose life goes into freefall when after a hit-and-run accident, the film is at times heavyhanded but always striking and beautifully shot. In addition, the film should provide a fitting introduction for many moviegoers to the charms of leading lady Lucia Bosé. An Italian stunner with screen presence to burn, Bosé was a mainstay of the early films of Michelangelo Antonioni, as well as appearing in work by Buñuel, Fellini, and Marguerite Duras. The DVD also includes a featurette on the life and work of Bardem, but the real story is the film which, like its female lead, is ripe for rediscovery.

Also of note on the classics front is the release of four comedies from Universal's Cinema Classics series. The four films are: the Mae West/Cary Grant vehicle She Done Him Wrong; Billy Wilder's early film The Major and the Minor starring Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland; and two films from director Mitchell Leisen, 1939's Midnight starring Claudette Colbert, and 1937's Easy Living with Jean Arthur. Each film is a gem, but of particular note is Easy Living, perhaps the greatest film written by Preston Sturges before he reigned over Hollywood comedy in the 1940s. And if it's sexy action you want, check out Image's new DVD of the Shaw Brothers cult classic Intimate Confessions of a chinese Courtesan, a movie I'm pretty sure I dreamed one night.

Compared to this week's selection of classics, the new titles can't help but look a little paltry. The big-ticket DVD this week is of course Cloverfield (Paramount), the Matthew Reeves/JJ Abrams rampaging-monster movie. For me, the film was never so much fun as when I first saw the trailer before Transformers, but the DVD should give people a chance to approach the film separated from all the hype. This week also brings a Philip Seymour Hoffman double feature, with Hoffman hitting DVD shelves with Tamara Jenkins' The Savages (Fox)- in which he appears opposite Laura Linney- and his caustic, Oscar-nominated performance in Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War (Universal), which also features mediocre turns by Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and a pretty hot scene in which Emily Blunt slinks down the stairs wearing only a man's dress shirt.

In addition, there's a trifecta of indie releases hitting the market today: Andrew Wagner's Starting Out in the Evening (Lionsgate), which garnered awards buzz for the ever-dependable Frank Langella; Paul Schrader's The Walker (ThinkFilm), featuring Woody Harrelson as a too-helpful escort for society women; and Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs (Genius Productions), starring "mumblecore" darling Greta Gerwig. Also worth mentioning are the second season of Friday Night Lights (Universal), J.A. Bayona's supernatural chiller The Orphanage (New Line, also Blu-Ray), and the mostly-ignored Hollywood remake of One Missed Call (Warner, also Blu-Ray). Mind you, the latter is only worth mentioning for the sake of completism, but there you go.

Finally, David Huddleston would like the announce that there are no HD-DVDs hitting the market today. Frankly, he couldn't be happier.

When Good Directors Go Bad: Ishtar (1987, Elaine May)

Paul Clark — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I don’t have a set method for choosing the subjects of my When Good Directors Go Bad columns. Occasionally, I’ll try to spotlight a director who recently released a new film, and once I even used an acclaimed filmmaker’s death as an excuse to re-examine his most notorious work (sorry, Michelangelo). But most of the time I’ll just write up whatever I can get my hands on in time. However, when I wrote a piece on Mike Nichols a few weeks ago, I knew there was only one logical follow-up: his former onstage partner Elaine May. And Elaine May meant one thing: Ishtar.

Elaine May was one of the great unheralded filmmaking talents of the 1970s. While guys like Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg were turning Hollywood upside down, May carved out a fascinating niche for herself. All three of her 1970s films — A New Leaf, The Heartbreak Kid, and Mikey and Nicky — were characterized by May’s probing curiosity about the male psyche and her ramshackle directing style. But if May appeared slapdash behind the camera, she was a perfectionist in the editing room, and both A New Leaf and Mikey and Nicky were taken out of her hands at various points in post-production.

Ishtar was May’s first effort behind the camera in a decade, and it seemed a strange project for her, considering her previous work. Gone was the misanthropic view of relationships found in A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid, and the caustic portrait of friendship in Mikey and Nicky. Instead, the film’s protagonists are a pair of chummy, not-too-bright aspiring singer-songwriters, Rogers (Warren Beatty) and Clarke (Dustin Hoffman). They’re lousy, but they’re endlessly enthusiastic about their work ("Shit, man," says Clarke to Rogers when they’re hammering out a new song, "when you’re on you’re on!"), and this attitude extends to their friendship.

Ishtar has amassed a cult following over the years, and watching the film’s opening half hour it’s easy to see why. When Rogers and Clarke sing songs like "(I’m Leaving Some) Love in My Will" before dumbfounded audiences, the movie is pretty priceless. The wonderfully awful songs were penned by Paul Williams (assisted by May and Hoffman), and Hoffman and Beatty are wonderful playing against type, with Hoffman as the would-be lothario and Beatty as a romantic sadsack. Had May simply made a film about these two guys trying to make a name for themselves as musicians, composing songs and performing, it might have been a comedy classic.

Alas, the movie isn’t called Rogers and Clarke. It’s called Ishtar, and before long the film drops its heroes off in the titular (fake) North African country, and drops most of the laughs with it. As the film progresses, Rogers and Clarke become pawns in a civil war involving a CIA agent (Charles Grodin), a band of revolutionaries led by sexy Isabelle Adjani, and an ancient map. Oh, and a blind camel.

Much of the film’s then-notorious $55-million price tag went to the scenes in North Africa, but almost nothing about these scenes works. I can’t decide if May simply miscalculated her strengths as a filmmaker, or if she decided sometime during production that her heart really wasn’t in the civil-war material but figured she might as well grit her teeth and finish anyway. Either way, it’s a little heartbreaking how far astray Ishtar has gone by the time Beatty, Hoffman, and Adjani are firing machine guns at a pair of CIA helicopters in the desert. If there’s any truth to the belief that a big budget is the enemy of comedy, then Ishtar is Exhibit A.

Most of the filmmakers I’ve spotlighted in this series have rebounded from their films to recapture their reputations, or at least to continue having productive careers. But Ishtar effectively torpedoed May’s career as a director — due both to its budget overruns and to May’s unwillingness to make nice with Hollywood — and she’s worked exclusively as a screenwriter and occasional actress since. It’s a shame, since I for one would love to see May direct another film. At a time when even "edgy" comedies like Juno are essentially warm and fuzzy, we need her prickly comedic sensibility more than ever.

Forgotten Films: "Modesty Blaise" (1966)

Phil Nugent — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

With the death of Michelangelo Antonioni last summer, the time is ripe for revisiting the Italian films that made his name in the 1960s. One happy by-product of this is revisiting Monica Vitti, the spectacular flinty beauty who starred in L'Avventura, La Notte, The Eclipse and Red Desert. Unfortunately, Vitti, a major star with a long, varied career in Italy, is virtually unknown in America except for her work with Antonioni, an important but smallish part of her work that barely hints at her comedic gifts and her capacity for giving pleasure to audiences. During the period when she was a fashion icon and a big name to American moviegoers interested in foreign films, Vitti made only one Hollywood movie, Modesty Blaise, a 1966 spy spoof based on Peter O'Donnell's comic-strip heroine. The movie was a commercial disappointment and was as badly reviewed as any big release of its day, and Vitti would make only one other English-language movie, Michael Ritchie's An Almost Perfect Affair, thirteen years later.

Today, Modesty Blaise would be worth re-examining if only for the chance to see Vitti in her prime, being funny and tantalizing and modeling a succession of outre sixties-knockout outfits. As it happens, it does have more than that to recommend it. The film was directed by Joseph Losey, right at the moment when he was making creepily sophisticated, perversely kicky movies for the art house trade such as The Servant and Accident and before he went over the edge into overdesigned goop like Boom! and Secret Ceremony. Modesty Blaise is a transparent attempt by Losey to have his cake and eat it too by making a commercial, comic-book action flick that's also a satirical jab at the James Bond movies and their other imitators. Given how stylish and witty the best Bond movies managed to be while wearing their commercial calculations on their sleeve, Losey's efforts to undermine them are — well, totally pointless, yet this movie itself is funny enough, and has so many striking moments of creative editing and design that it's thoroughly entertaining anyway. It's one of the very few "comic strip" movies of the Warhol era that actually deploys a Pop Art style with some edge and aesthetic sense, and that's campy in a way that isn't harmless, but has some bite.

It may have had more bite than many people wanted to deal with in 1966; like James Bond, Modesty and her sidekick Willie (Terence Stamp) and their arch-enemy Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde) are amoral, self-interested, and pleasure-seeking, but unlike him, in the end they don't even have the excuse of fighting for queen and country. If you like them, it's for the real reason you like the stars in a movie like this — for their sexiness and style. The movie makes you aware of the stargazing impulses that cheap movies play on in viewers and treats them as a joke. Losey's sense of humor basically dried up in his later work, and he may not have had too many chuckles making this one; he later said that it was hell working with Vitti because Antonioni, insecure about her striking out without him, kept in touch with her during the production and did everything he could to undermine her confidence. Losey also said that Dirk Bogarde came to regard Modesty Blaise as "something we won't talk about", big words from a guy who went on to make The Night Porter. Losey himself would work for almost another twenty years, most of them soent in hard-art-film mode. In all that time, he made a lot of movies more respectably literary and more honorably ambitious in intent than Modesty Blaise. He just never made a better one.