Dogs Bark

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Clodagh? - - Black Narcissus (1947) - - 28 July 2013

Recommended. Something there is in pictures that doesn’t love a nun. From Audrey, to Julie, to Deborah Kerr (From Here To Eternity) movies imagine Catholic nuns a roiling porridge pot of passion. Despite this, most nuns I know seem pretty calm and cool. Maybe tending soup kitchens is just lousy box office. Black Narcissus is the story of a sisterhood who moves into the foothills of the Himalayas and goes, well . . . rather mad. Kerr plays the too-young sister superior, Clodagh, who just dreams about the auld sod. Her underplaying is more than compensated by the delectable loonyness of Kathleen Byron (Saving Private Ryan) as the way-over-sexed Sister Ruth. and then there’s lush Jean Simmons (Elmer Gantry, Spartacus) as the village Lolita, Kanchi. The production is from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes) and is a truly unique, beautifully made movie, well worth the hot-house exotica of the plot.

Jung At Heart - - Sleeping Beauty (2011) - - 23 July 2013

Recommended.  This twisted and darkly funny story, written and directed by Aussie tyro Julia Leigh, owes more to Maria Luisa von Franz than Walt Disney. The luminous Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) plays a dissolute student and sometime b-girl who takes a third job with a high-end, in-call service. Browning is drugged unconscious while men fondle her (“no penetration”) for a large fee. This continues until her trepidation and curiosity becomes too much and she hides a camera in the room. Since Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale, the surreal tenor of the story is not hushed and the Kubrickesque camera work (Geoffrey Simpson, Shine) and Ben Frost’s frigid score support that theme. In my opinion, the point is the way youthful women are objectified and then economically coerced by powerful men into providing decoration for this decadent world.  So far, so good . . . until they wake up next to a corpse.  

 

Madder Men - - Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru [The Bad Sleep Well] (1960) - - 7/13/2013

Recommended. If you’re a Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samari) devotee, you’ll enjoy The Bad Sleep Well. It’s the lesser-known member of Kurosawa’s trio (with Throne Of Blood and Ran) of Shakespearean re-imaginations . . . here, Hamlet. It’s also a good example of shakai-mono, Japanese movies about social problems. That’s all covered at length on the Internet. I keyed on the way that the Japanese business hierarchy in this story mimics Kurosawa’s samurai code. The corrupt executives chased down by a vengeful Toshirô Mifune (Seven Samurai) are cut from the same silk cloth as the village bosses in Yojimbo. Kurosawa even cast his old pal, Takashi Shimura (Yojimbo, Ikiru) as one of the bad guys. Kô Nishimura (Lady Snowblood) has a memorable part as an incrementally deranged crook.  The middle is little slow and the ending . . . a little rushed, but The Bad Sleep Well is an interesting picture.

Few Easy Pieces - - De Rouille Et D'Os [Rust And Bone](2012) - - 7 July 2013

Strongly recommended. Rust And Bone reminds me of the best Hollywood movies of the 70’s, in which morally questionable characters, Nicholson or Hackman, negotiated ethically tectonic terrain through grave danger to an ambiguously safe haven. The irony is that these movies were re-imaginations of French New Wave films based upon American 50’s noir. So am I admiring here a French Newer Wave? Writer (with Thomas Bidegain)/director Jacques Audiard has the pedigree and the props (A Prophet, The Beat That My Heart Skipped) to be major part of the tsunami. He elicits immensely satisfying performances from two ethereal actors, Marion Cotillard (Inception), as a legless, former trainer of show orcas and Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead) as her bare knuckle lover. Cotillard delivers a nuanced, never sentimental, portrayal of whole-person rehabilitation; while Schoenaerts’s quiet authenticity reduces most Hollywood action stars to total posers. Rust And Bone is one of last year’s best films. 

 

What Immortal Hand Or Eye - - The Life Of Pi (2012) - - 6 July 2013

Recommended. No doubt, The Life Of Pi is a beautiful movie. The visual effects during the scenes at sea are gorgeous and the tiger is splendid. I suspect I should have seen it in 3D, as the film has been praised as the first recent effort that justifies the novelty; however, something about the early chatter on the movie put me off. I admire Ang Lee, who from this picture gained his second Best Director Oscar, but I’ve never warmed to his, in my view, rather bloodless approach. And so it was with The Life Of Pi, where again I found the characters and story a bit anemic. I also found the implicit theism of the story foolishly glib. Ditto putting this condescension in the mouth of actor Irrfan Khan, whom I admire even more.   Pi, the number, may be transcendent but the movie, despite its visual appeal . . . not so much.

 

Insufficient Cowbell - - Seven Psychopaths (2012) - - 3 July 2013

Not recommended. To quote Christopher Walken, “You're the one . . . thought psychopaths  . . . were so . . . interesting, but they're kinda . . . tiresome after awhile  . . . don't you think?”  Yeah, if there’s like, a bunch of them and they’re stumbling around like drunk-ass abominable snowmen because the movie has NO FREAKIN’ PLOT! I mean, I really want to have been a fly on the wall when Martin McDonagh looked at his laptop and said, “Well yes . . . that’s done, I reckon.” That was the first ending, I guess, because that’s a FALSE ending because one more psychopath (Tom Waits) needs to be wrapped up (no, actually . . . he doesn’t). Also, I’m not sure about math because the two chick psychopaths, Abby Cornish and Olga Kurylenko, aren’t even disturbed, just understandably pissed off at the certifiably tiresome, Sam Rockwell. But based on Seven Psychopaths and the less-so but still stupid, In Bruges, the final delusional madman is obviously Martin McDonagh.