The Holy Mountain (1926)

This is not the Jodorowsky cult pic of the same title, but a German silent which has its own place in cinema history.  Back in the late 20s/early 30s, the Germans thrilled to a series of mountain-climbing movies of which this is one of the first.  While it would be notable in itself for the spectacular photography, its real claim to treasured-status is as an early starring role for Leni Riefenstahl, later known as the "Fuhrer's Filmmaker", infamous for her Nuremburg and Olympics documentaries -- both brilliant in their perverseness.  Here she plays a dancer who is loved by two mountain-climbing friends;  when the elder believes (incorrectly) that she is dallying with the younger, the pair go off on an impossible climb in inclement weather.   The mountains have a mystical meaning here as some sort of metaphor for friendship and loyalty which adds to the weird but dated feel of the story.  Incidentally Riefenstahl, who is no beauty, dances only slightly more appealingly than a pregnant hippopotamus (or maybe that's being just a little bit unkind) and we are treated to an inordinate number of her performances.

War of the Worlds (2005)

Last year's big summer blockbuster provides ample evidence of director Spielberg's technique, but is emotionally a busted flush.  The special effects of aliens and their tripods attacking the world and destroying our population to provide fodder for their own food crop is spectacular and terrifying, but the human element is unfortunately vested in Tom Cruise's deadbeat Dad, whose two children have been left with him for the nonce by his divorced wife, now remarried and pregnant and off to visit family.  While Cruise no doubt views himself as a heroic figure in today's cinema, he spends most of the movie on the run -- scared to death as most of us would be -- and only somewhat belatedly eager to protect his kids.  His ultimate survival, ignoring his having become a murderer in the process, and the final reuniting of the complete family defies belief -- but he is Tom Cruise after all.  While, in a way, it is nifty to observe the action effectively through one pair of eyes, this technique does drag things down to a crawl at times and I for one craved the broader picture.  Despite the elements of the tale now being familiar to us from countless other "invasion" flicks, this is only the second film version of Wells' book.  The first was back in 1953 and is fondly remembered 'though, truth to tell, it is a little primitive by modern standards.  The leads of that film, Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, have a small cameo in this one as a footnote to movie history.

36 (2004)

The full title of this French film is 36 Quai des Orfevres which is the address of the Criminal Investigations Division in Paris, the equivalent of Scotland Yard, and it is one truly terrific policier.  Starring Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu as detectives and former friends who are both seeking the top job on the retirement of their immediate superior,  it has been implied that whichever of them captures the crims who have perpetrated a series of bloody security vehicle holdups over the last year will be the victor.  Auteuil is the rogue cop who with his faithful team will flirt with unethical methods to achieve his ends, whilst Depardieu who appears to work through the system is, if anything, even more unethical in his scheming.  When Auteuil has the villains within his grasp, Depardieu compromises the operation, which results in the death of a popular member of Auteuil's team.  To avoid allowing the latter to testify against him in the hearing to follow, Despardieu uncovers evidence which lands Auteuil in pokey for seven years and is even responsible for the death of Auteuil's wife, Valeria Golino, with whom he shares some past undisclosed history.  Depardieu achieves his goal in the short term, but eventually the past catches up in a totally unexpected but satisfying way.  Good stuff!

L'Auberge Espagnole (Pot Luck) 2002

People seem to think highly of this French euro-pudding of a film, but perhaps its pictures of student life rang more bells with them than they did with me.  Rising actor Romain Duris has had some good press of late, but he plays such a little shit in this film that his story left me cold.  Advised to spend a year studying in Spain to further his ambitions for a government post, he goes to lovely Barcelona, leaving behind his hippy mom and his long-term squeeze, Audrey Tatou.  We are shown the troubles he has finding somewhere suitable to live before ending up sharing with a mixed bunch of sexes, orientations, and nationalities.  (Much of the dialogue is per force in broken English, since the flatmates have varying fluency in Spanish and little knowledge of the other tongues).   He begins an affair with the lonely wife of a doctor who has been kind to him, while still stringing Tatou along, and generally embraces the carefree student life; apart some complaints about the lectures being in Catalan rather than Castilian, his school hours are just about irrelevant to the rather thin plot.  However on his return to France and the coveted job, he runs away from any such adult responsibility to embrace the "freedom" of a writer's life, one way of recreating his easygoing student days.  I felt like shouting "grow up".  The only thing in  favour of this movie from my point of view is that it ran 20 minutes shorter than it said on the DVD case! 

Malefique (2002)

The good folk who organise the FrightFests that I attend (although I must admit to missing their most recent all-nighter -- I'm getting past that sort of thing) have started their own DVD label to offer worthwhile movies which might not see the light of day elsewhere.  This French film, the first feature from director Eric Valette, is a worthy case in point and a movie that I am pleased to have discovered through their efforts.  It concerns four cellmates: a businessman shopped for fraud by his untrustworthy wife, an elderly literary type who has indeed killed his wife, a tough butch transvestite whose crime is not detailed, and a simpleton raised with pigs on a farm who has literally eaten his six-month old baby sister.  They discover a book hidden in the walls of their cell by a previous inmate who has somehow tapped black magic to effect an escape.  They try to understand its mysteries with unexpected results.  The idiot who attempts to eat the book is destroyed by it, as it seeks to protect itself; the other three after a visit by a mysterious new cellmate think they have discovered the secret, only to end up in a new and grimmer cell.  Ultimately they come to understand the book's real power which comes as something of a surprise to both the characters and the viewer.  Filmed on a small budget with actors unknown to me (all of whom were absolutely first-rate), this movie achieves its chills effectively.

In Memoriam:  R.I.P. Robert Altman.  Regular readers of this journal may recall that this director was a firm favourite of mine and that "Nashville" will always figure in my ever-changing top ten.  His influences on movie-making -- ensemble casts, overlapping stories and dialogue -- are indelible.  Yes, his output was madly inconsistent with some critical duds amongst the gems, but I never found any of his films uninteresting and the best of them will stand as his memorial, hopefully forever. 

Jigoku (1960)

This was my third visit to the Wild Japan season at the NFT and a more schizophrenic film I have yet to see.  Although recently released onto DVD in the States, this movie has long been regarded as a lost classic from director Nobuo Nakagawa, a horror specialist.  Unfortunately it is not quite the gem I was expecting, although not without interest.  The title translates as "Hell" and the movie falls into two related but discrete halves.  In the first part, a happily engaged student sees his life collapse under the influence of a mysterious colleague who involves him in a hit-and-run crime.  Then, by a series of unlikely coincidences and catastrophes, he and vitually every other of the numerous characters ends up dead.  The film now moves into its second half which recreates the Buddhist view of the eight circles of hell in gaudy colour and lurid images.  It takes the line that we are all sinners and even so-called innocents, which includes children who die before their parents and unborn babies, must suffer eternal damnation.  The schizophrenia stems from the rather draggy first half morphing into the phantasmagoric second half without blinking.

I don't know whether I'm getting fed up with blogging -- I certainly used to churn out more reviews per week -- or whether there seem to be a growing number of movies that I have no inclination to cover.  Some examples from the last few days: "Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo" with the embarrassing Rob Schneider pushing the boundaries of good taste to bursting point and with respected Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbe slumming for a pay cheque.  Then there was"The Constant Gardener", about as worthy a film as you could hope to view about illegal drug tests in Africa, but one that seemed to be hitting the viewer over the head with its message.  I know Rachel Weisz won a best supporting Oscar for her role in this, but I was in no way inspired by or in awe of her performance.

Lord of War (2005)

However you slice it, I do believe that Nicolas Cage has been one very lucky actor.  Far from being a conventionally good-looking lead, he manages to attract starring roles.  I have nothing particularly negative to say about his skills as an actor, despite his occasional blatant miscasting (Captain Corelli springs to mind), but his acting chops do not strike me as being top of the class, just better than average.  So like I say, he has been lucky.  In this film he plays Yuri, the son of Ukrainian immigrants living in Brooklyn's Little Odessa, who early on gets seduced by the potential richness of the arms-dealing life -- and he is very good at it.  He does not attempt to justify the ends which his weapons provide nor does he try to adapt a holier-than-thou approach despite the violence he encounters; it's just business to him and a means of supporting his wife and son.  The moral antitheses are provided by his more sensitive brother, Jared Leto, and an interpol agent who is trying to nail him, played by a smug Ethan Hawke.  I suppose it could be said that Cage gives a powerful performance, but the really scary moral coda is that dealers like him are but a drop in the bucket; the main providers of arms to the world are the seven nations that sit on the UN Security Council!

Manderlay (2005)

I've really liked a number of mischievious Danish director Lars von Trier's works, but found myself struggling with "Dogville" (2003), the first part of a proposed American trilogy of which this movie is part two.  Well that film was a doddle in comparison, as huge chunks of "Manderlay" are ponderously unwatchable.  Despite this, the overall feeling at the end is that one has seen something worthwhile, despite ones reservations.  Part of the problem is that Bryce Dallas Howard, a very mumbly actress, has taken over from Nicole Kidman in the lead role and her papa is also now a different actor.  Yet much of the cast from the first movie appear in the second as completely different characters, which is also confusing.  The story concerns the heroine's blundering into a feudal situation at a Southern plantation where slavery is still the norm and trying in her do-goodish way to "free" the slaves.  That she only manages to create chaos is pure Von Trier.  The director has never visited the States and has been accused of blatant anti-Americanism in both films.  There is indeed much in this movie to upset the average American viewer, especially since the heroine lusts after their bodies, but there is also a strong case for blacks and the problems that they face.  I shudder to think what the third part of this trilogy will bring. 

Man Dancin' (2003) & The Business (2005)

I always force myself to watch British gangster flicks on the grounds that it is part of my continuing education, but since I seldom enjoy them, you might say that it is part of the penance that I pay for my obsession with movies.  These two, neither of which are outstanding, are a good case in point.  The first presented a oft-incurred problem with this genre: inpenetrable accents -- but at least I could rely on subtitles to follow the story set in Glasgow.  The lead was played by Alex Ferns, an actor from television, as a released-after-nine-years con who tries to withstand the temptations of his old gangster life, particularly hoping to move away after his probation to save his younger brother from the same easy option.  But Mr. Big (James Cosmo -- he always seems to play such roles) still considers him one of "his boys" and won't let go.  Ferns finds a kind of salvation, after rescuing several girls from prostitution, in the neighbourhood church's nativity play, which he rewrites to reflect local and modern politics.  Cosmo puts pressure on the tame detective who is on his payroll to teach Ferns a lesson, but his various efforts backfire (including killing off the one really likeable character) before the disastrous yet presumably uplifting finale. 

"The Business" was a far more conventional Britflick starring Danny Dyer as a would-be mobster who runs an errand to the Costa del Sol where he is taken up as a protege of the local big man, played interestingly enough by Tamer Hassan (whom I assume comes from an ethnic background).  The movie is set in the '80s and they are involved in drug-running, initially pot from Morocco but later cocaine from Columbia.  Dyer finds himself more and more seduced by the easy riches and available sex, until the whole gang comes a cropper by falling foul of the local mayor.  Dyer is by now totally immoral and works out a plan to extricate himself; the whole movie seems set up for the amusing but ultimately bad pun on his future during the end titles, where the fate of each main character is revealed.

By and large I probably prefered the first of these two because of its less usual storyline, but the second was probably the better-made film.  However I doubt that either movie made much impact at the UK box office and they would stand little chance of success elsewhere.  Yet people keep churning out films like these two -- where does the finance come from?  

Tube (2003)

If we lived in a country that didn't turn its nose up at subtitled movies or if we could (God forbid) accept dubbed movies, I really believe that Korean cinema would be replacing Hollywood movies in our affections.  This first feature by director Baek Woon-Huk really outdoes the Hollywood product in its violence, professionalism and fancy visuals.  While he possibly took his cue from a film like "Speed" or his fearless single-handed cop hero from the "Die Hard" series, the director has turned out something quite exciting and different.  After an airport massacre, a rogue agent seeks revenge on his former masters and hijacks a modernistic subway train packed with high officials and innocent passengers.  Despite the high-tech control-room resources, only one lone cop can stop the train and save the day, despite some help from the young pickpocket who fancies him.  But unlike what we would expect from an American movie, his survival is far from a sure thing.

Hausu (House) (1977)

This was the second of the films I chose from the NFT's Wild Japan series and while I can certainly report that the movie was indeed wild, I would be hard-pressed to write that it was good as well.  In a plot familiar to us from (much later) Western films, a group of innocent schoolgirls go for a holiday at their friend's aunt's house in the countryside and are one by one devoured by the house.  The aunt is in fact dead and survives through her sexual frustration which eats virgins -- or something like that.  While the plot itself is slow to develop and not just a little confusing with some occasionally unrelated scenes, the presentation is what makes this movie unique.  This was the director Nobuhiko Obayashi's first film and I understand that he is something of a cult figure in his native country.  Made well before the availability of computer-generated effects, he employs a mixture of double exposures, cell animation, stop-motion animation, split screens, fast and slow motion -- you name it, it is part of his potpourri in achieving his spooky images, most notable of which is one of the girls being consumed by a grand piano.  Combined with dancing skeletons, twinkly-eyed malevolent cats, and an infectious tinkly score, this film is certainly one of a kind.  But I still can't write that it was good or even particularly scary. 

3-Iron (2004)

This was an absolutely amazing film and not at all what I expected from the little I knew about it in advance.  I have seen two of the Korean director Kim Ki-duk's earlier films "The Isle" and "Spring, Summer...", both unusual and beautifully filmed, but completely unlike this one.  The story concerns a young drifter who has a way of determining when houses or flats are likely to be unoccupied and who breaks in to live in these for a day or two, usually doing some small service like washing dirty laundry or mending broken clocks as an exchange.  At one mansion he is observed by a battered wife who eventually lets her presence be known.  When her abusive husband returns, our young hero deals with him with the golf club of the title and the lady leaves with him, joining him in his precarious way of life.  Eventually the police catch up with them -- he is thrown in gaol, she returns home.  But gaol is no prison for a free spirit and the young man keeps taunting his guards who threaten him with more and more and presumably fatal violence.  However his spirit returns to the places he has been before and ultimately to the home where he found true love.  Like Scorpion reviewed below, he has absolutely no dialogue and the wife speaks only once in the entire film, but so much is expressed between them in non-verbal ways.  The golf club motif returns, not only as a tool for violence by the husband as well, but as a skill which our hero thinks he can control, but which can backfire when least expected.   Very highly recommended.