Adventures in Downloading!! Part 2

 
Disgraced! (1933)
Pre-Code films continue to be some of my favorite movies made during the classic Hollywood studio era, so when an obscure one pops up from a studio that doesn't readily make its catalog available (i.e., Paramount, Universal, Fox Studios), it's cause for celebration, even if the film is a disappointment. Paramount's Disgraced! actually stars a relatively disgraced star, Helen Twelvetrees, who fell from stardom shortly before this film was shot. A long-term contract player at Fox, she floated over to RKO and then Paramount for a handful of features after 1931, when she was accused of trying to kill her suicidal husband. She rose to slight prominence in the early talkie period when she moved from stage to screen, as she had a proper voice for the new sound technology. But she never really made a huge splash in Hollywood and at 49 took her own life with a pill overdose. Here she plays a typical Twelvetrees role, a sprightly affluent blonde model named Gay. Bruce Cabot (in King Kong the same year) is freewheeling cad Kirk, engaged to boozy flirty Julia (Adrienne Ames, who steals the movie), but with his eyes firmly set on the alluring Gay, who he meets as she models the latest fashions for Julia. Their romance seems made in the heavens, especially when Kirk buys her a house on the beach. But it turns out that he intends to go through with his marriage to Julia, discovered by our heroine when she unwittingly models a wedding dress for the other woman! This is when things (finally!) heat up, as Gay goes gun crazy on Kirk and when he calls the police for help...the cop that shows up is Gay's father. Surprise!

This is not one of the better pre-Code offerings from Paramount, I'm afraid, but blame can't be placed squarely on Twelvetrees. She's done good 1930s sinful melodramas. This just isn't one of them. It's a brisk 63 minutes, but where films of that length at Warner Brothers are splendidly paced and overflowing with excitement and intrigue, this one suffers from both poor pacing and a cast of characters we care nothing about. Gay is too simple and naive for us to root for, Kirk is a slimy smooth talker, and there simply isn't enough Julia to save the film from the doldrums. Maybe if, say, Ruth Chatterton had been cast here instead of Twelvetrees...but then Chatterton was always a no-nonsense type, and couldn't have made Gay's doormat behavior any more believable. At least things get lively in the last 15 minutes, but that's a mere 1/4 of the film worth seeing. It's kind of fun to see Charles Middleton (aka Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon) in a character role, and there are some nice swooping camera moves through the courtroom in the finale.

Should Ladies Behave (1933)
Another obscure pre-Code film, this time from MGM, producer of some of the dullest and dated films of the 1930s. Try watching The Divorcee (1930) or A Free Soul (1931) sometime, and enjoy the ensuing nap. This one stars Louis B. Mayer's favorite actor, Lionel Barrymore, who was on the MGM payroll all the way up to his death, pairing him with always-wonderful Alice Brady (My Man Godfrey) as Gussie and Laura, a middle-aged couple with a beautiful daughter, Leone (Mary Carlisle), whose beau Geoffrey is fed-up with her naivete. We also meet Laura's sister Winkie (Katherine Alexander), who is having an affair with the stuffy Max. Max is the key figure in a not-very-believable love triangle (or is a square?) with Winkie, old flame Laura, and anxious-for-experience Leone.

The big problem with MGM pre-Code films is that the studio had a taste level that was considered high-class and extravagant. Dealing with sordid subjects such as drugs, gang violence, prostitution, and white slavery simply didn't mix with the established house style. The kind of proposed sophisticated romance among the rich seen here is typical of MGM in this period, the Thalberg era, and has aged poorly. For more lurid studio fare, one would do best to stick with Warner Brothers, and to a lesser extent Columbia, Paramount, and Universal. At least the cast is enjoyable, and the 30s gowns are fabulous (thank you, Adrian). Brady is marvelous, as usual, and Barrymore takes on his expected grumpy old man persona. As Max, however, Conway Tearle is nowhere near as enticing as a man who has three women wrapped around his finger should be. William Powell would have been a better casting choice.

Mimsy were the Borogoves (1970)
The BBC made some stellar children's fantasy films in the 1970s and 1980s, including favorites like The Box of Delights (1984), Children of the Stones (1977), and The Clifton House Mystery (1978). Apparently the French were doing the same for their TV-watching children, as evidenced with this unusual low-budget telefilm. The 2007 non-hit The Last Mimzy is based on the same short story adapted here.

Brother and sister Philippe and Sylvie, who live in a hotel run by their mother, are fascinated with the stars and the planets. Naturally they are delighted when Philippe finds a mysterious extraterrestrial orb while out in the snow one day and gives Sylvie the weird-looking doll he finds inside, who she names Alice. The young boy discovers that the monitor inside, that resembles one of those mini-TV's that were kinda popular in the 90s, can broadcast unusual scenes on its screen, tapping into the user's thoughts and showing what they subconsciously wish to see. The siblings see weird scenes like a malicious teacher being burned at the stake, a nasty elderly hotel guest forced to drag a sleigh behind her, their mother offering them pie, and tremendously trippy bits like Sylvie getting into a red compartment in a giant eye and a mirror exploding into flames. They also discover that they can question the doll and it will flash its eyes in rhythmic answer, two for yes, three for no. The children's father wants them examined by a psychiatrist for their unusual games with these mysterious toys, but Mom finds their imaginative playing a positive thing and encourages them to continue.

Borogoves would have benefited from a larger budget to allow for better special effects and at least a more believable doll, but it plays like an extended episode of "The Twilight Zone", running a mere 75 minutes, and takes a rather dark turn after most of the film is filled with whimsy and wonder. It wouldn't give BBC any sleepless nights in the children's fantasy department, but is a decent way to spend an afternoon. The child actors, Eric Damain and Laurence Debia, are quite good, as is Madeleine Ozeray as a spirited hotel guest who shares Sylvie's wide-eyed enchantment with other worlds.

Skihasen-Report (1972)
I'm a sucker for German sexploitation films, as they take me back to my adolescence sneaking peeks at them on late-night TV when I lived in Berlin. The most popular genre titles seem to be the Schulmadchen-Report films, and for good reason. They represent everything that is well-loved and remembered of the genre, and all within the faux context of an educational report on the youth of Deutschland. Report films followed like crazy, portraying the shocking sex lives of housewives (Hausfrauen-Report), nurses (Krankenschwestern-Report), stewardesses (Der Hostessen-Sex-Report), travel agents (Urlaubsreport), therapy patients (Sex-Traume-Report), virgins (Jungfrauen-Report), keyholes (Schlusseloch-Report), and even entire cities/regions (Der Ostfriesen-Report). The key directors of the genre were Ernst Hofbauer and Walter Boos, neither of whom was responsible for Skihasen-Report...which should tell you something about its quality. Franz Vass is the one responsible for this one, and it's one of the poorest examples of the genre. Fritz and his girlfriend Else decide to vacation at a ski resort and while there tell each other or hear stories of other sexual vacation encounters. A black woman picks up a German man buying postcards, a rich married redhead on vacation alone considers all the men around her weak and emasculated until the hotel piano player rocks her world (this is the one scene with any sexual heat), a model in a sleigh whisks a young student out of the snow and takes his virginity for sport, an older married man cheats on his wife with a sprightly young blonde hooker, said hooker crashes into two American cowboy types who respond in English to her German dialogue, and a depressed redhead connects with a youthful stud at a weird musical almost-orgy. The manager of the resort is a flaming gay man with an unhealthy relationship with his dog. Herbert Fux (Mark of the Devil) shows up briefly as a drunk in the opening scene. And that's about it. It's only available in German.

Adventures in Downloading!! Vol. 1

I honestly don't know where I'd be without Cinemageddon or TV Vault, two invite-only torrent sites that provide a never-ending smorgasbord of entertainment for the simple and cost-effective price of maintaining a fair download ratio. I maintain one major rule when downloading: I only download titles that are not commercially available on region 1 DVD. I have a preference for rare VHS rips, fan-subbed international titles, and obscure TV movies and shows that will probably never see the light of day on DVD or download.

The Great American Beauty Contest (1973)
Ah, the days of the ABC Movie of the Week. Ever reliable TV trash icons Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg bring us this brisk 75-minute look into the beauty pageant world, pre-dating the 70s classic Smile by two years. It's not nearly as much campy fun as the later TV-movie offering Miss All-American Beauty (1982), with Diane Lane hamming it up as a stressed out teen queen, but features enough interesting casting choices and memorable dialogue exchanges to make it
well worth seeking out. Eleanor Parker (so good in the previous year's Home for the Holidays, also for Spelling-Goldberg) stars as Peggy Lowery, a former Miss American Beauty winner who is now running the show and gearing up for one of the most exciting competitions in years. Her right-hand man Dan (Robert Cummings, looking and acting like Tony Randall) is nervous about a fix in the works, but Peggy assures both him and the press that such a thing simply isn't possible. Slimy Hollywood producer Ralph Dupree (Louis Jordan in his slumming years) is a surprise returning judge, and has his eye out for new promising talent while also reminding Peggy how she won years ago... The story conflicts are lightweight, but with plenty of pretty girls parading around and sordid peeks into the cheesecake pageant scene, what's not to love here?

The best part of watching 70s TV movies is spotting all the wonderful familiar faces and names! Take a gander at this line-up! JoAnna Cameron, the mighty Isis herself, is Gloria Rockwell, Miss Oklahoma, a closet feminist planning to make a political speech if she wins, flanked by women's lib pals Carol Bagdasarian (daughter of Ross) and Julie Mannix. Patricia Barry (the irritating family friend in Kitten with a Whip) is her matronly chaperone. The oddly-named Christopher Norris (Ron Howard's girl in Eat My Dust) is naive Janice Brock, Miss Utah. Myrna Fahey (Madeline Usher in Corman's House of Usher) died the same year she appeared here as Janice's chaperone. Striking Tracy Reed (Fred Williamson's squeeze in No Way Out) is Pamela Parker, the bitter wise-cracking black Miss New Jersey. Kathy Baumann (a long way from Chrome and Hot Leather and The Thing with Two Heads) is the nervous Melinda, Miss Ohio. Baumann is actually from Independence, OH, where her character is from. Susan Damante, one of Corman's Student Teachers (1973), is Angelique Denby, Miss Maine, tearfully hoping her businessman father will show up to support her. Farrah Fawcett (pre-Majors) is T.L. Dawson, Miss Texas, supported by hick boyfriend Larry Wilcox ("CHiPs"). "Match Game" royalty Brett Somers shows up to be her chaperone! Sexploitation regular Mady Maguire makes a bid for legitimacy as a women's libber, and Hugh Hefner squeeze Barbi Benton plays Miss Iowa, supposedly, but I didn't notice her.

La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (1996)/The Birth of Aphrodite (1971)
The real reason I grabbed this title was because it included the Leland Auslender short film The Birth of Aphrodite (1971), generally regarded as the screen debut of cult icon Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith in the title role. But first the French short film, running 50 minutes, directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic and co-photographed by her frequent collaborator and husband Gasper Noe (Enter the Void, 2004). After her mother attempts suicide when her lover walks out on her, young impressionable Mimi (a superb one-off performance by Sandra Sammartino) is forced to move in with her aunt Solange. Solange has a new boyfriend, Jean-Pierre, who Mimi first sees as the two make passionate love in the middle of the night. It's a strained living situation made all the more difficult one day when Solange leaves Jean-Pierre and Mimi alone, and the film takes a turn into unnerving territory. Special close-up attention is paid to the ingesting of pills, which occurs five times in the film, and there is no real resolution to the story, but Hadzihalilovic's trip into the world of a troubled young girl completely deserved its official Cannes selection. Apparently there is a scene cut from this version of Mimi topless in the shower, but I can honestly say I don't need to see that.

Birth of Aphrodite is a far lighter piece, and shorter at 10 minutes. In addition to the luminous Smith, the small cast also includes Gwyneth Cooper (who?) and TV actress Patricia Hyland, who also contributes her vocals to the musical score. Auslender's film is best described as an experimental short, playing with visual effects, polarizing and negative technology, swirling colors, and stylistic editing. The film's most noteworthy claim to fame was its nomination for the Palm d'Or - Best Short Film at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival. And who is better casting as Aphrodite than Cheryl Smith, with her ethereal beauty and free-love spirit?

Nudity Required (1990)
At one point or another, just about every adult filmmaker in the 1970s and 1980s attempted to cross over into the R-rated market with low-budget horror and sex comedy titles that generally went straight to video. The most "popular" attempts must be from Chuck Vincent, though Armand Weston, Roberta Findlay, Cecil Howard, Svetlana, Edwin and Summer Brown, Joe Gage/Tim Kincaid, and Joe Sarno all tried to break out of the X-rated field. Then there was John T. Bone (John Bowen), the one-time husband of personal favorite Misty Regan responsible for a number of atrocious shot-on-video porno efforts before making this goofy R-rated comedy. Bone's films are a sorry lot, so expectations for Nudity Required were low. The film opens with Misty Regan dancing at a strip club, so off to a good start! Oh how low we go...there are zero successful laughs, but if it's 80s chicks topless you're after, this one should fit the bill. That said, there are better examples of this tired genre to be enjoyed.

 Vinnie DeBlasio (Alvin Silver) is the tough-talking mobster narrator who relates the thoroughly confused story of Buddy and Scammer (the talent-free duo of Billy Frank from Hobgoblins and Brad Zutaut), a pair of numbskulls on the run from a Mexican hothead. Why? I'm still not sure. Something about running out on his sister at her wedding? They somehow get involved with both Vinnie and his thieving henchmen Mick and Rhino and Soviet visitor Irina (Julie Newmar, at the lowest point of her career imitating Garbo in Ninotchka), and pose as movie producers to audition girls in a rented mansion belonging to Vinnie. The title of the movie is a line from the ad they place seeking talent. Troy Donahue, introduced having a shuddering orgasm in what must have been a proud acting moment, plays Jack, a legit movie producer. At 54 he looks all of 72. Ty Randolph is the sole cast member giving a good performance as Jack's assistant Brenda who, after he fires her, goes looking for work producing the boys' fake movie. Rhonda Gray (Twisted Nightmare) is a tough-as-nails lady director, and Russ Meyer's ex-wife/starlet Edy Williams shows up as a diva actress (fiction mirrors reality).

Wooden beauty Heidi Paine shows up as a Christian missionary (don't ask), David Hasselhoff's future wife Pamela is amusing as Vinnie's dim bulb bride, and among the auditioning beauties are British bombshell Gail Harris (Sorority House Massacre II, Hard to Die), Becky LeBeau (Beverly Hills Girls, Hollywood Hot Tubs), and a bunch of one-shot wonders that provide satisfying eye
candy. Bone's porno connections guarantees plentiful babes prancing in front of the cameras, but few of them are recognizable from the X-rated biz. Only Regan and Debi Diamond are familiar from their adult video work. For those who keep score of things like that, Newmar does a nude shower scene with Frank and Williams (who had already done porn by this point) pops her top for an S&M dungeon scene.

Red Hot Shot (1970)

A mystery killer shoots world-famous neurologist-turned-pharmaceutical tycoon Mac Brown in broad daylight on Wall Street and the press has a field day with the murder, pondering if Brown was involved with organized crime. His daughter Monica (always stunning Barbara Bouchet, in a black wig) offers a $250,000 reward for the truth behind her father's death, and disgraced detective Frank Berin (no-name Michael Reardon), who had been investigating Brown's mysterious past, is asked to return to the force to work the case. A police informant is knifed at a far-out hippie gathering, where the participants in white robes bounce around big black and white balloons. Was Brown involved in the drug trade? Do we care? This giallo-poliziotteschi hybrid is the sole directorial effort from Piero Zuffi, a production designer who worked with major greats in Italian cinema like Rossellini, Antonioni, Fellini. He has brought none of his talent to this film, a painfully slow time waster perhaps most noteworthy for its strong anti-drug message. Naturally that gets tiresome after a while, even when Berin treks to Mexico to follow a lead and discovers a girl blinded by heroin experiments performed by Brown and his associate Dr. Gam. Berin then sleeps with this girl. How ethical! Oh and he also goes undercover as a biker in a gay bar (shades of Cruising), Monica is abducted and held hostage by a cackling madam (Isa Miranda from A Bay of Blood), and there's a kinda surprising twist ending. Even with all of that happening, it's still a snoozer. It's a surprise to see the late David Groh, best known as Valerie Harper's husband on "Rhoda", as Bouchet's mobster boyfriend in this Italian exploitation flick, introduced sweaty and shirtless in a jacuzzi. Piero Piccioni's lounge score is one of his most ridiculous. There's at least some fun footage of 1970 New York, including a peek at the Empire theater and a ride on the subway (plus a stop at Queensboro Plaza).

Favorite films of 2013...so far

Six complete months into 2013, it has not exactly been a slow or unsatisfying movie year. While awards seasons of years past may convince you that the best movies only come out in the second half of the year (specifically November and December), there are in fact a number of films from the first half of the year that are already strong contenders for best of the calendar year. My #1 pick on this list will doubtless make my #1 spot on the end-of-the-year round-up. I haven't seen a film in theaters 4 times since Grindhouse (2007). Unfortunately, as is often the case, the best movies theatrically released these days are not given the wide exposure they warrant. I'm not sure most of these played anywhere near you this year, but thanks to the widespread availability of films on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, iTunes, and on-demand, many of them might be ready for you to watch immediately after reading this. Happy hunting!

The following films were released theatrically, wide or limited, between January 1 and June 30. Films screened at festivals without a distributor or an official release date between those dates are not eligible.

20. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks
Alex Gibney, one of the most consistent working documentary filmmakers (Enron: The Smartest Men in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side), initially gives the impression that his film is going to live up to its title and stick to the genesis of Julian Assange's notorious website. But frankly that wouldn't be much of a documentary. Where his storytelling excels is in relating the tale of Bradley Manning, the lonely Marine whistle blower who simply trusted the wrong people, and juxtaposing his story with that of Assange, who morphs from freedom of information crusader to reclusive entitled jerk.

19. Berberian Sound Studio
Where the contemporary horror genre is almost entirely focused on the horrific assault of the visual, director Peter Strickland's well-done homage to Italian horror of the 1970s (specifically Argento's Suspiria, and not the giallo as claimed in many reviews) refrains from showing any of the chilling violence captured in the lurid shocker that British sound engineer Toby Jones has been hired to work on. The film's effectiveness is in the sound design and mixing. Ripe fruit is stabbed and ripped apart to simulate the sounds of knives piercing flesh and dialogue artists scream in sound-proof booths over and over. Fact melds with fiction, the supernatural storyline of the film begins to bleed into reality, and while the film does not reach a particularly satisfying conclusion, it's almost the perfect climax to the best horror film to use sound so vividly since The Haunting (1963).

18. The Painting
Currently the best animated film of the year, this imaginative French feature peeks inside the world of  the paintings of a reclusive artist who has vanished, leaving figures incomplete and desperate to be finished so they can escape persecution by an upper-class composed of completed figures. It runs a brisk 75 minutes, and its smart script is complemented by a warm and absorbing visual palette. Jean-Francois Laguionie's exploration of art and its creator works just as well in its English dubbed version as it does in the original French language.

17. Koch
One of the most controversial public figures in American politics, New York City mayor Ed Koch is not completely lionized in his biopic. He participated in the making of the film, which was released shortly after his death, but a generous amount of time is spent speaking to people who don't have the most pleasant things to say about the polarizing conservative. It doesn't go as deep into the man as a biographical documentary might, but it's full of great news reports and stock footage of New York pre-Giuliani and features a photograph of gay porn star Keith Anthoni on the AIDS crisis battle front that moved me to tears.

16. Before Midnight
It helps if you've seen the first two films in the Before trilogy before you approach this proposed final installment in the filmmaking collaboration between director Richard Linklater and actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. That said, it isn't necessary to appreciate the long single takes of seemingly improvised conversations between a couple connecting through memory and attempting to determine if they are still in love or not. Both characters are not completely likable, but this contributes to the . There is a scene of Delpy simply walking around a hotel room, talking on her cell phone, arguing with Hawke, with her breasts exposed. It's reminiscent of Julianne Moore's similar below-the-waist scene in Altman's Short Cuts, and both scenes have a feeling of voyeuristic realism that is practically lost in today's cinema. Where the film shines is in the dialogue, co-written by Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy, and that is what will leave you either loving or hating this film.

15. Museum Hours
Jem Cohen's newest feature-length wonder is so quiet it will be inaccessible to a good number of viewers. At the IFC Center screening I attended on opening day, people left the theater complaining that it was "pretty but boring". This would sum up Cohen's film work to the less patient moviegoer. He works with the eye of a photographer or, appropriately enough here, a painter, planting his camera for long uninterrupted single shots and savoring the details of his composition. This must all sounds very pretentious, but it all somehow works. The film features a sparse narrative: a middle-aged woman receives word her last living relative, a cousin in Vienna, is in a coma, so she travels to the foreign land to see the family member she hazily remembers. She connects with a friendly art museum guard, who buys her a member pass so she can enjoy the museum when not visiting her cousin. There are no hints at romance, or any major plot twists or revelations. The story is simple, and even takes a backseat to a fascinating diversion into a tour group guided by an art scholar. Cohen's camera captures the sublime pleasures of art and, frankly, of people and the world around us. Yeah, yeah, pretentious. But there is no other movie like this one. A completely original and unique vision.

14. Call Me Kuchu
This gay rights documentary came and went from the Quad Cinema, but deserves a wider audience. We all know about the struggle for queer acceptance and tolerance in Uganda, a nation that proposed a "kill the gays" bill. Ironic that public figures there claim homosexuality is an example of colonial residue, rejecting its supposedly western origins, but embrace the western-originated Christian faith with such a passion they pervert it into a following of hatred. Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall's film was several years in the making, covering at least the last 4-5 years of unrest for Ugandan queers, many of whom are shown here in bold declarative interviews, seemingly unafraid of the consequences of going public. The film climaxes in tragedy, but hints at greater hope in the future for equality in Uganda. How they will achieve that equality has yet to be determined.

13. What Maisie Knew
The greatest child actor performance of the year is in this film: little Onata Aprile in the title role, a young girl whose parents divorce and use her in an ongoing battle against each other. Maisie becomes a possession, an accessory to her parents, but she connects lovingly and on deeper levels with Mom and Dad's new partners, her former nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham) and youthful bartender Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgard). Both of these adult performances, together with Aprile's, anchor the film, and keep it from being a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Entertainment Weekly's review gave this film poor notice, primarily based on how unlikable both Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan are as Maisie's parents. This is true; the proposed stars of the film play one-dimensional characters, as they were in Henry James' source novel. But the film soars when it focuses on Maisie, her quiet sorrow and winning happiness, and the adults in her life who provide a stable foundation in her world.

12. Evocateur: The Morton Downey, Jr. Movie
Before Springer, before Limbaugh, before Beck, there was Downey. Some might say that isn't necessarily something to be proud of. While Donahue and Sally Jesse and Oprah were relatively light-weight talk show fare, Morton Downey, Jr., the failed singer son of famous vocalist Morton Downey, found his niche in the daytime circuit by embracing conservative Reagan-era values and the blow-hard tactics of Howard Stern. Fusing those two very different types of entertainment together resulted in a loud, violent, temperamental show, one that frequently found both the host and his encouraged audience to verbally attack and in some cases physically threaten his guests. Sound fun? A brief clip is shown near the beginning from his porn star panel with Gloria Leonard, Candida Royalle, and Seka, but the incident of Seka walking off is not. Go to YouTube to find that and other infuriating jewels from the Downey show. The film also attempts to inform us who Downey really was, from his very liberal beginnings to his crazed downfall, and though it's missing interviews with some key figures in his life, it does an admirable job.

11. Stories We Tell
Sarah Polley has impressed with her two previous dramas, Away from Her (2006) and Take This Waltz (2011), but with her newest film, she tackles a very personal subject, namely the skeletons in her family closet. Threading together interviews with her family and friends, 8mm home movie footage, and family photographs, Polley reveals her darkest family secret: she is the product of her mother's extramarital affair with a mystery man. To reveal too much would detract from the overall experience of becoming a privileged part of her family for the duration of the film, but it is a wonderful and moving watch. It is not just an exploration of family dynamics and connections, but also a quest for her identity. Polley is one of few directors whose every film I look forward to.

10. In the House
Francois Ozon's latest is another of his consistently crafty thrillers, this time casting Kristin Scott Thomas in one of her many recent French-language roles, and giving one of her best subdued performances. Fabrice Luchini is a jaded English professor who finds himself drawn into the inspired writing of new student Ernst Umhauer, whose fixation on a classmate and his seemingly perfect family develops into a series of essays proposing a sordid underbelly to their suburban facade. Scott Thomas is Luchini's wife, and the pair find their marriage tested by the interweaving of their personal life with the perhaps not so fictional pieces Umhauer delivers to Luchini daily. We are thrown several curve balls throughout, typical of Ozon's superb scripting, and the climax is just perfect. The very busy director has another film coming out this year, but he's already won me over with this one. P.S., thank you Denis Menochet for doing nudity in this film :)

9. Sightseers
Ben Wheatley is one sick bastard. With his background in television comedy, few predicted that he could deliver intense violent thrillers like Down Terrace (2009) and Kill List (2011). With his newest feature, the director combines his talent for both comedy and violence into the wickedest black comedy of the year. So funny and yet so so wrong, Sightseers follows its title characters, Tina and Chris, a mismatched couple of socially awkward losers who leave Tina's clingy mother at home alone and trek on a cross-country camping trip. Chris begins to reveal an angry side to his new girlfriend, resulting in an "accidental" death that develops into the wackiest blood-spattered romantic coupling since Clarence and Alabama. The film recalls the best work of early Peter Jackson, without the zombies and puppets, but with all of the moist grue and bad taste laughs An irresistible treat, best appreciated by those with a strong stomach and a liberal sense of humor.

8. The Source Family
The second-best documentary of the year is one of the most outrageous stories you've never heard. Recalling the Manson Family with a religious vegetarian streak instead of homicidal nuttiness, the Family built up around Jim Baker, the owner of the Source restaurant in Los Angeles. Initiating his own religion, combining the best philosophies of every key world faith, Baker attracts devoted followers (mostly beautiful young women, natch) who surround him in his sprawling mansion. He changed his name to Father Yod, and then YaHoWha, assigned new mystical names to the Family members, and even started a band that played local high schools and recorded one album after another. Making the story that much more compelling is the impressive archive of home movie footage and audio recordings, collected and preserved by official Family historian Isis Aquarian, assigned the job by Father Yod himself. The film's soundtrack is entirely made up of Source Family recordings, all of which are available on iTunes. The soundtrack album is a must-buy.

7. The Attack
One of the best films about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, deftly maneuvering through the political landmines attached to both sides and emerging with a fascinating and surprisingly well-balanced take on the human aspect of it all. Revered doctor Amin Jaafari rises to the occasion when a suicide bomber attacks a restaurant, sending critically injured victims to his hospital, but his life is shattered when it is revealed that his wife was the culprit. Determined to learn if his entire marriage was a lie, and to better understand her motives, Amin searches for the terrorist organization she was involved with to find answers. Beautifully acted by Ali Suliman and a tremendous supporting cast, this compelling and unsettling story has some of the most memorable moments in any film of the year so far. The final scene is a heart breaker, and special note must be made of the emotional score by Eric Neveux.

6. Ginger and Rosa
A star is born. Her name is Elle Fanning. While she has been around for quite some time as a child actress, delivering solid work in the shadow of her overrated older sister, Dakota, Elle gives the best performance by a young actress this year. She is Ginger, an inquisitive teenager in early 1960s London fretting about nuclear war and flirting with activism. Her best friend, Rosa, raised by a single mother, encourages her to rebel against the system and her parents, but the two begin to grow apart as one pursues her sexual allure with disastrous results and the other finds herself torn between friendship and family. Christina Hendricks is wonderful as Ginger's mother, and always-sexy Alessandro Nivola appropriately caddish as her father. Other visiting Americans, Oliver Platt and Annette Bening, as well as familiar character actor Timothy Spall, are equally good as Ginger's sole allies. Another triumph from Sally Potter.

5. 20 Feet from Stardom
The best documentary of the year so far. While other films may tackle important social issues and more dramatically profound subjects, Morgan Neville's ode to the background singer is the most pleasurable and satisfying non-fiction feature you could hope to see. I wrote an in-depth review of it here. If you love music (and that covers basically every human on earth), you need to see this movie.

4. Starbuck
It took a year for this film, which I first saw as part of MoMA's Canadian Front film series, to get a U.S. theatrical release. From what I can tell, it came and went, most likely to ensure no distractions from the upcoming English-language American remake (from the original's director, Ken Scott). But there are few funnier, warmer, more charming comedies than this delightful surprise from Quebec. Dashing Patrick Huard is a drifting thirty-something butcher whose gambling problem years previous resulted in him donating plentiful sperm to pay his debts. In a scenario inspired by fact, the sperm bank used an overwhelming amount of his product, resulting in several hundred children, many now joined together in a class action suit seeking the identity of their father. Ashamed of his slovenly lifestyle, Huard resists revealing himself, but does get his hands on a list of the children participating in the suit and begins visiting them as a kind of mystery guardian angel. I can't imagine how the remake could top this.

3. Mud
Director Jeff Nichols scores again with his third film; all of them have been great, but they improve with each successive story. His grasp of Southern atmosphere and characterization recalls the works of Flannery O'Connor and especially Carson McCullers, bringing the Southern gothic to vivid life on the screen. Matthew McConaughey, going for greater legitimacy as an actor and not a shirtless tabloid star, plays the title character, a mysterious drifter discovered living on an island by teen friends Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland. The boys agree to help him reunite with his long lost love Reese Witherspoon, being tracked by the family of her violent ex-boyfriend. Of course there are complications keeping them apart. While McConaughey's Mud might seem to be the central character, the film actually belongs to Sheridan, giving the best performance by a young actor this year. Nichols paints a striking coming-of-age story at the core of the narrative, as Sheridan is surrounded by crumbling relationships and struggles with losing his faith in people and the way life works. This young man is bound to go on to great things in his career. Nichols' favorite actor, Michael Shannon, appears in a brief supporting role as Lofland's uncle, and Reese Witherspoon (another actor in sore need of serious career rejuvenation) is quite grand here. It's also a hoot to see Joe Don Baker, well-cast, as the dangerous patriarch of the family eying Witherspoon.

2. No
The best international film of the year, and one that has already been nominated for the 2012 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. In a weaker year, it very well could have won, but it didn't stand a chance against Haneke's universally praised Amour. With this gripping true-life story of a media battle for control of Chile, director Pablo Larrain completes his unofficial trilogy of political unrest films begun with Tony Manero (2008) and Post Mortem (2010). Each film has been better than the last, and No is his masterpiece. In 1988, the Chilean military regime bowed to international pressure and decided to allow its citizens to democratically vote "yes" or "no" to keep Pinochet in power. Each side was allotted 15 minutes a night on national television to persuade viewers to make the right choice. On opposing sides are Gael Garcia Bernal and his boss, advertising wizards who create compelling skits and emotionally charged rhetoric to ensure their client wins. Of course, what is at stake here is far more important than selling, say, soda, as we see in the opening scene. But turning the mere words "yes" and "no" into products to sell to the public brings out a variety of creative marketing techniques, some so successful that threats of violence begin pressuring the "no" campaign workers.
Larrain's decision to shoot the film in low-def video, to look as if it was actually produced in 1988, is a stroke of genius, and allows the contemporary footage to match flawlessly with genuine television advertisements from the "yes" and "no" campaigns, as well as disturbing news coverage of the riots that rocked the streets of Santiago.

1. Frances Ha
The best film of the year so far. I wrote an in-depth review of it here. See this movie.


Runners-Up (in order of excellence) :
Dirty Wars
Eden
Room 237
56 Up
From Up on Poppy Hill
The Sapphires

Also Seen (in order of excellence) :
The Monk
Renoir
Caesar Must Die
Like Someone in Love
Post Tenebras Lux
Shadow Dancer
Star Trek Into Darkness
Hannah Arendt
Welcome to Pine Hill

Still Need to See :
Birth Story (Jan. 18)
The Girl (March 8)

My Brooklyn (Jan. 4)
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (April 26)
Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film (June 21)
Trash Dance (April 26)
among others

Movies viewed in January

I am inspired by one of my favorite blogs, Video Junkie Strikes Back from Beyond the Grave, to list the films I watched every month. Because I often revisit films I've seen, these are just the films I watched for the first time in January. These marked in gold are the films I enjoyed the most. Looking at the other titles below may give you a good idea of how many films I wade through to find the great ones.

Great Capers:
My write-ups of Bob le Flambeur (1956) and Seven Thieves (1960) are available here.

Loretta Young:

My write-ups of Play-Girl (1932), Employees' Entrance (1933), The Hatchet Man (1933),
She Had to Say Yes (1933), and Born to Be Bad (1934) can be found here. But in addition to these, I also saw two more of her pre-Code films, Life Begins (1932) and Taxi! (1932), and a compact little thriller produced before she began her well-remembered TV show, Cause for Alarm! (1951). I intended to cover every Loretta Young night on TCM this month, but I honestly lost interest after the network moved past her 1930s performances into the 1940s and 1950s. For my money, Young's best work was during the pre-Code era, when she played strong-willed working women, roles that she didn't approach very often after 1934. To be fair, in Taxi!, she plays second fiddle to star James Cagney, as his star was taking off, playing a hot-headed taxi driver who won't take organized crime hassling independent cab drivers laying down. But she is given much more interesting material to work with in Life Begins, a melodrama taking place entirely in the maternity ward of a metropolitan hospital. We meet a variety of women, including a prostitute expecting twins she hopes to sell to the highest bidder, a middle-aged woman adding yet another addition to her overgrown household, and Young as a woman in prison for life on a murder charge expecting her concerned boyfriend's child. There are some over the top moments, to be sure, but for the most part the performances are spot-on, including always-wonderful Aline MacMahon as the head nurse and blonde bombshell Glenda Farrell as the lady of ill repute. This being the early days of sound film production, the stage-bound origins of the source material (a play by Mary McDougal Axcelson) are a little obvious at times, avoiding a dynamic mise-en-scene and giving characters lengthy monologues. A superb little film.

Not to gloss over Taxi!, though; everyone in this film is tough and street wise, including Young, introduced as the head strong daughter of a cabbie who won't take being muscled out of business and uses a pistol to right the wrong done him. At first she and Cagney butt heads, but of course they find love and compliment each other beautifully in a marriage tied together by their mutual drives to succeed.

Cause for Alarm!, clocking in at 74 minutes, plays almost like a slightly super-sized version of an episode of a 50s television anthology, with "special guest star Loretta Young" as Ellen Jones, a nervous woman dealing with her new husband's building mental illness. This might sound like an overwrought melodramatic plot device, but it transforms into one of edgy tension as Ellen is wrongly accused by hubby of trying to kill him and spends the greater part of one bright sunny day attempting to stop an incriminating letter from reaching the district attorney describing her alleged murder attempts. At this point Young was an Oscar-winner (for 1947's The Farmer's Daughter), and she brings a lot of talent and moxie to this performance. You give a damn what happens to Ellen, as her cuckoo husband accuses her of infidelity and her nerves are run through the wringer for the better part of the film. In an interesting twist of production history, producer Tom Lewis, who was also Young's husband at the time, wanted Judy Garland for the leading role, and our Loretta actually took her husband to court for casting discrimination and won! Hmm...that must have been an awkward home life, not to mention movie set, in the aftermath, though there must have been no lasting effects because the pair collaborated on her famous TV show almost directly after production of this tremendous nail biter!

Columbia Classics:

The TCM Vault Collection released a collection of six films in the DVD set Columbia Pictures Pre-Code Collection, and unfortunately most of them are duds. The best of the group, and one of the finest pre-Code films of all, is Virtue (1932), a street-wise melodrama starring Carole Lombard and Pat O'Brien, both borrowed from other studios, as a reformed prostitute and the wisecracking taxi driver who falls in love with her. The pair are given some fine one-liners during their unlikely courtship, but are also compelling when the film calls for their marriage to be disturbed by the discovery of Lombard's past. Lombard, one of the most versatile actresses of the 1930s, is best-known for her screwball comedies, but proves here that she could balance comedy and drama in one film.

Columbia, for a long time considered a B-studio, even after its films began sweeping the Oscars, was responsible for some of the most entertaining quickies of the studio era. Two of these are prison pictures separated by a decade, Convicted Woman (1940) and Convicted (1950). The earlier film stars Rochelle Hudson (no relation to Rock, but a marvelous actress none the less), as an unemployed woman who, while in a department store applying for a job, is mistaken for a thief wearing her same outfit and with the same haircut. She is railroaded into women's prison, where there aren't lesbians to be found (this was between pre-Code films of this type and 1950's Caged), but she becomes a bitter cynic after butting heads with an icy blonde inmate who lures our heroine into an escape attempt and rats on her to get in good with the female guards. Hudson's lawyer becomes the new warden of the prison, intent on making it a house of rehabilitation and not a place of punishment.

Convicted seems developed as a star vehicle for Glenn Ford, still a reliable, if not bland, character actor who was also in Convicted Woman, but the film belongs to gruff Oscar-winner Broderick Crawford as the district attorney who unsuccessfully tries to stop Ford from being imprisoned for an accidental death following a bar brawl, and then becomes the warden of the prison where Ford is serving time. This is no revenge tale, though, as Ford's droopy dog character is perked up by interactions with Crawford's daughter, Dorothy Malone (before her vivacious Oscar-winning turn in Written on the Wind). In fact, these two films are oddly similar, with their wrongly convicted protagonists being confronted in prison by people from their courtroom pasts, and make for an interesting double feature. However, while the Ford-Crawford film will be coming to DVD in a couple of months as part of a TCM Vault Collection, Convicted Woman is one to watch for when it airs on TCM, usually during the morning hours.
 

I'm familiar with Anthony Mann's films noir, but his westerns are new to me. They have always intrigued me because of their casting Jimmy Stewart, light years from his Capra days, as angry wanderers with a dark side. Sony's on-demand movie channel is where I finally caught up with The Man from Laramie (1955), and if this is what all Mann's westerns are like, I am in for a viewing binge. Stewart is Will Lockhart, a man with a mission, namely to find the villain who was behind an Apache attack that killed his brother outside of a town run by the Waggoman family. The Waggoman family patriarch, Alec (Donald Crisp), is having trouble with his hot-headed egotistical son Dave (Alex Nicol) and his ranch's foreman, Vic (Arthur Kennedy), who believes the ranch will be his when Alec passes on. At 104 minutes, the pacing is quick, the emotions highly volatile, and photography, sound, and editing top-notch. It's a pleasant surprise to see Aline MacMahon, a character actress extraordinaire in the 1930s (see Life Begins above), as a fierce female owner of a neighboring ranch with a romantic past involving Waggoman. It's high time to check out the rest of Mann's work.

International Exploitation:

The sequel to a low-budget Mexican superhero flick, based on a popular comic book series, Kaliman and the Sinister World of Humanon (1976) is a cheap gaudy delight. Kaliman and his pipsqueak child sidekick Solin are invited to Brazil to speak at a convention (the subject? who knows), but learn that a series of murders of scientists in the area is connected to a mysterious super villain, Humanon, who hides out in the jungle with a comic relief dwarf assistant. Most of the film takes place in the wilderness, with goofy wannabe kung fu fight scenes clashing with "cute" moments of Solin playing with his adopted monkey pal. Oh yeah and the female love interest is some kind of Muslim hybrid who must hide her face "because of her religion" but can still go to the beach in a revealing bikini. When Kaliman reveals his sinister work reanimating the dead and creating monsters, the film kicks into high gear and never lets up. Tremendous fun, which is all you can ask for from any exploitation film. This is a prime candidate for Mondo Macabro treatment, if that company is still around...

Of the surprisingly lucrative European exploitation subgenre of Nazisploitation, it may be difficult to pick the most unbelievably tasteless entry. I submit Liebes Lager (1976), a black comedy (yes, that's right) set in a Nazi concentration camp for political prisoners. "Hogan's Heroes" this ain't. There are hangings, rapes, murders, and an almost Animal House-esque scheme to pimp out female prisoners to paying officers as a way to earn money to escape the Allies when the inevitable end of the war comes knocking at the gates of the camp. It's an uneasy mix of gallows humor (in several scenes, literally), Nazi violence, and, believe it or not, sociopolitical commentary that is very difficult to see, but worth the search. It showed up in Italian TV at some point and that is the version that has been making the rounds over the years. If you're a member of Cinemageddon, some kind soul there added subtitles to it.

With a sizable cult following, Cornel Wilde's No Blade of Grass (1970) is perhaps most notorious for footage that is often cut in video versions: a vicious rape of mother and daughter by bikers and a live childbirth. If that perks your ears up, this movie is for you. Wilde revisits the post-apocalyptic themes found in fellow actor Ray Milland's Panic in Year Zero! (1962), but with much more liberal doses of sex and violence, as well as a bleak vicious streak familiar from other films of the Vietnam era. An architect and his family, including neurotic wife, virginal teen daughter (future Mrs. Peter Sellers Lynne Frederick), and adolescent son, flee from the city during a worldwide food epidemic and pick up an irritable gunman and a gaggle of other survivors en route to a family estate in Scotland. The editing is awkward (and in some spots obviously inspired by the flash-forward moments in Easy Rider), the performances and characterizations inconsistent, and the message heavy-handed, but Hell if this isn't one of the best modern science fiction action films.

  
Other Favorites of January:
Cleanflix (2009)
Pitch Perfect (2012)
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) (review here)

Le magnifique (1973) [Sure I would have loved this better in French with subs vs. the English dub I saw]

The Abduction of Kari Swenson (1987)
Adventure in Baltimore (1949)
Arizona (1931)
The Betrayal (1957)
Beverly Hills Vamp (1989)
Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
Blood on My Shoes (1983)
Born Reckless (1938)
Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
California Split (1974)
Chain Lightning (1950)
The Connection (1962)
Cry Danger (1951)
Cry Tough (1959)
Danger Route (1968)
The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960)
Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966)
Deep Space (1988)
The Devil's Bed (1978)
The Devil's Eight (1968)
Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970)
Fanfare for a Death Scene (1964) 
5 Against the House (1955)
Five Golden Dragons (1967)
The Flight That Disappeared (1961)
The Frisco Kid (1935) 
From Headquarters (1933)
Gaily, Gaily (1969)
Girls Town (1996)
Greetings (1968)
The Guns of Fort Petticoat (1957) 
Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939) 
How to Score with Chicks (1994)
Hong Kong Emmanuelle (1977)
Hot Rod Gang (1958)
Hyena in the Safe (Una iena in cassaforte) (1968)
I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973)
The Idol (1966)
The Immortalizer (1990)
Is There Anybody There? (1975)
Kaleidoscope (1966)
The Killer is Still Among Us (1986)
Lady in a Corner (1989)
Land Raiders (1969)
The League of Gentlemen (1960)
Legion of the Nile (1959)
Lost Flight (1970)
Midnight Mary (1933)
Mixed Company (1974)
Monique (1970)
Moonfire (1970)
The Mudlark (1950)
The Murder Clinic (1966)
Mutiny in Outer Space (1965)
Naked Over the Fence (1973)
The Neon Ceiling (1971)
New Prison Walls of Abashiri 3 (1969)
Night of the Scarecrow (1995)
The Obscene Mirror (1973)
Ocean's Eleven (1960)
Oh Those Nurses! (1982) [adult]
Once Upon a Spy (1980)
Parents (1989)
Pleasure Island (1975) [adult]
Possessed (1983)
The Prime Minister (1941)
The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960)
Pull My Daisy (1959) 
The Racketeer (1929)
Revolt of the Zombies (1936)
Riffraff (1936)
The Rites of Fall (1989) [gay adult]
Rottweiler: Dogs of Hell (1982)
The Ruling Voice (1931)
The Scarf (1951)
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)
Sexsations (1984) [adult]
Shopworn (1932)
The Spooky Bunch (1980)
Teenage Cowgirls (1973) [adult]
Ten Cents a Dance (1931)
Tenth Avenue Angel (1948)
That's Adultery (1975)
They Call It Sin (1932)
The Thief (1952)
Tiger Shark (1932)
U.N.C.U.T. Club of Los Angeles (1986) [gay adult]
The Unnamable (1988)
The Vampire's Ghost (1945) 
Ways to Strength and Beauty (1925)
The Witness Chair (1936)