Dogs Bark

Every Which Way But Less - - The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1968) - - 21 August 2010

Not recommended. It’s not really a bad movie. I revisited it because I just couldn’t believe that Sondra Locke had been nominated for an Oscar. She plays the Carson McCullers character, quite different from the ingénue of The Outlaw Josey Wales, more like the little sister of the hooker in The Gauntlet. Locke always had a peculiar appeal, despite her limited acting talent. When directed by boyfriend Clint Eastwood, her gawky, brittle style was often perfect for her character. In The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, she plays off Alan Arkin’s Oscar-winning deaf-mute.  A nice job, but neither deserves an Academy Award. Stacy Keach does as good a job in his first feature and Percy Rodrigues, one of the best Black character actors of 60’s television, outshines them all. The story rambles about Selma, Alabama, with a nod to 60’s race relations but in the end seems forced and inexplicable.

Killing Bill - - The Limits Of Control (2009) - - 17 August 2010

Recommended. The same critics who thought that Christopher Nolan’s dream life (Inception) was bourgeois, probably also felt that Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits Of Control was nuts. Oh wait, that's just New York Magazine’s David Edelstein. Yes, Dave, the movie is soporific. In fact, there were moments watching this film where I became so sleepy that I wasn’t sure if I was still watching the movie or imagining it. But I wasn’t bored; in fact, I found the spiraling swoop of Isaach De Bankolé’s Lone Man upon his prey to be weirdly fascinating. Jarmusch based the character partially on Lee Marvin in Point Blank but here . . . emotionally dead. Along the way, the Lone Man is assisted and preached at by various oddballs, including a perpetually, and delightfully, nude Paz de la Huerta (as The Nude). If you make it to the end, the victim will amuse you.

This Dog Don’t Hunt - - Ginger Snaps (2000) - - 13 August 2010

Not recommended. It’s a cute idea. A troubled young goth gets her period and a bite from a werewolf on the same dark night. The Curse, get it? But like most modern horror, there’s little music beyond the obviously clever note. Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be cult parody, the girly version of An American Werewolf In London, but that excellent movie was hysterically funny and scary, simultaneously. Add in The Howling and the bar has been set mighty high for lycanthropic laughs. I’ll admit, there’s a certain charm to the Fitzgerald sisters, Brigitte (Emily Perkins, Juno) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle, Insomnia); Although Emily Perkins got monotonous, Isabelle’s snappy sexuality was well developed. But when letting her dog out, I found the make-up distractingly stupid. Her final incarnation, as a hairless, albino Rottweiler, was just gross. This movie dropped a litter of pre- and sequels. I’ll pass.   

Regular Army Clowns - - You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) - - 7 August 2010

Recommended. But only for the Fred Astaire/Rita Hayworth dance numbers. They only made a few pictures together but their dancing was superb. This film, using songs by Cole Porter and choreography by Robert Alton (The Pirate, The Barkleys of Broadway), kicked up Astaire’s career after breaking with Ginger Rogers and made a star of Hayworth. Her body and sex appeal were so overwhelming that her phenomenal dancing talent became eclipsed and Harry Cohn, then husband Orson Welles, frittered her away during the remainder of her apogee. Her opening tap number with Astaire to is one of the best ever filmed. One of the Porter numbers, ‘So Near And Yet So Far,’ uses a Latin beat to showcase Hayworth’s Spanish roots.   Absent Rita, even Fred can’t carry this leaden story about pre-WWII army life. Robert Benchley, founding New Yorker, seems also stricken and double talker Cliff Nazarro is just irritating.

Snoring On A Summer Night - - Das Weisse Band [The White Ribbon ] (2009) - - 5 August 2010

Not recommended. This multiply honored, well-photographed (Christian Berger) movie was a big disappointment. Director Michael Haneke, in an interview with Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com, says that he intended the black-and-white camerawork, in part, to distance the audience from the story. He was wildly successful in my case. My near lack of interest or sympathy for any of the characters begged the question, “Why am I watching this?” No answer coalesced from the stark, lovely pictures and horrific plot twists during this 2-hour plus visit to a 1914 German village on historical edge of Armageddon. Many of the children are luminous and unearthly, particularly Leonard Proxauf and Maria-Victoria Dragus, but they never assume human identities.  The White Ribbon is elsewhere compared to unspecified Bergman films - - Nordic hipsters and their existential whimperings. Did the repressive, dogmatic parenting of rural, pre-war Germany engender the Third Reich? Ich weiß nichts, Colonel.