MOVIES

When Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life was released back in 2011, I noticed a few of the film’s most glowing reviews were saying that the film was groundbreaking. Some people felt that Malick had created a new form of movie making, and that the film’s meditative leanings would lead to more mainstream films that were edited in a similar fashion. I actually dismissed these claims at first, as while I felt Tree of Life was an interesting experimental film, I didn’t think it would connect with audiences in a way that would see similar films come down the pipe-line anytime soon. Thing is though, in the two years since that’s film’s debut I’ve noticed that the “Malickian” style has indeed been emulated for better or worse. Harmony Korrine’s Spring Breakers used a deliberately hazy narrative as well, and there’s already been much talk about a Sundance-premiere this year called Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, with people seeming to unanimously be dubbing it “The Lost Terrence Malick  Film”. Shane Carruth’s new film Upstream Color  (currently playing at The IFC Center) continues this dialogue still, but doesn’t make it anymore comprehensible.

To give a synopsis for this film is akin to explaining to a three-year old what exactly pornography is. The film isn’t just abstract in what it’s trying to communicate, but viewers are likely to be in befuddlement as to what’s happening within the film’s first few minutes. We apparently are introduced to a man(Thiago Martins, whom the credits refer to as “Thief”) who performs experiments on a particular breed of maggot, and then uses this insect to infect a woman (Amy Seimetz). We then see this woman is taking back to the man’s house where she appears to be under a trance. The man has the woman take out her life savings for him, and then she is sent to another man(Andrew Sensenig, “Sampler”), who performs a form of surgery that removes the evolved maggot from her body and into that of a pig. The rest of the film involves this woman meeting another man who went through the same experience (played by Shane Carruth himself), while we also see the Sampler character receiving telepathic information amidst his farm of pigs.

As bizarre a summary as this sounds, I couldn’t have really done that good a job of describing the film if I hadn’t done some Google-searching before hand. Upstream Color is indeed similar to Tree of Life, in that it is very reliant on montages, overflowing imagery, and it’s minimal dialogue serves more for symbolic purposes than to drive the narrative forward. This film, however, is even more rapid in it’s cutting, with scenes tending to be brief, and exposition kept to a bare minimum. The film can feel like an impenetrable Rubik’s Cube at times, and while I believe the film is composed in a chronological order, I can’t help but feel that the editing process was more concerned with making the film appear dense over anything else. The final act contains no dialogue at all, and contains many parallel shots to earlier ones in the film.

That said, Upstream Color is undoubtedly the work of a true artist as well. Bathed in a luminescent glow, the film carries a special aura to it at all times, one that I might even refer to as fetal. The film certainly shows that digital cameras have the capability to capture beautiful cinematography, something I feel Carruth might be trying to comment on, which is why we see early on in the film that our female protagonist appears to be working at a company that produces artistic CGI films. While it is a product of the internet age, Upstream Color also has a strong semblance of nature to it. Besides the aforementioned use of animals (maggots and pigs), Carruth also captures some dazzling shots of flowers, stones and trees, perhaps suggesting that beauty is still present amidst society’s influx of technology. The film is also rather interested in the human body, which leads to some rather disturbing moments. A sequence near the beginning of the film that involves Amy Seimetz character cutting herself is probably more intense than any of the gore in the new Evil Dead remake.

I have actually made some sense of what the film is trying to say after reading an analysis and giving it more thought, but I feel that sharing my thoughts would be a disservice. Half the fun of art is that it should be subjective, and provoke thought in the viewer based on their life experiences and views. Some people will find the film maddening, or even a gratuitous lesson in art-school film theory that isn’t concerned at all with delivering a message. What ever the case, Carruth has made a challenging film that’s tone is all to rare in American cinema. I often feel that most “surreal” American filmmakers fall into two camps: Lynchian and Cronenbergian. Upstream Color, however, doesn’t feel anything like something that David Lynch or David Cronenberg would envision.

Alright, I’ll admit it right here at the start: I went into Spring Breakers with a bit of a biased attitude towards it due to my feelings about director Harmony Korine. While I do admire the film maker as his entire movie career has been based around making incendiary arthouse releases, I also fell that all of his films have been missed opportunities. His films (such as Kids and Gummo) have always attempted to be stirring social commentaries, but are rendered useless due to the fact that Korine is more interested in focusing on depravity and graphic content, rather than on addressing the difficult questions he brings up. Still, despite my prior knowledge to Korine’s work, it’s hard for me to imagine having liked Spring Breakers anymore than I did had I not. The simple matter is that Korine hasn’t so much made a movie here, rather than an on-screen imitation of a drug binge spent watching MTV and pondering American society’s popularization of excess. The worst part is though, I don’t actually think that’s a bad concept at all.

The film’s plot is skeletal, but it’s there. It’s about four college-age girls played by Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgins, and Rachel Korine (yes, she is the director’s wife), who inexplicably decide to commit a crime so they can afford a spring break vacation. Afterwards, they travel to Florida where they take part in the ugly party culture there, before they are arrested. Fortunately for our protagonists, however, they are soon bailed out when a career criminal (James Franco) takes interest in the four-some. Next thing you know, he’s got himself a group of bikini clad thugs to help him take down the mandatory rival drug lord (Gucci Mane).

The advertising for Spring Breakers has been making the movie look like a crime film with hot chicks, but this isn’t really that kind of film at all. Harmony Korine gives the film what he terms a “liquid” narrative, and there’s virtually no scenes in the movie that could be called straight. Pretty much every scene is montage-esque, filled with hyper-stylized editing that showers the viewers with images (not necessarily in chronological order), and usually accompanied by bizarre narration or ironic use of pop music. It’s a tactic that was perhaps used to mirror the music video raised generation that the film is showcasing, the thing is…it’s almost immediately overwhelming!

It’s no secret that Spring Breakers already has an out there concept, and one that immediately got the attention of media circuits once they heard that Korine had cast Disney Channel starlets for it. I just feel that it was unnecessary than for Korine to use such an experimental narrative for the film, as isn’t it strange enough that we’re watching a film about a dread-locked James Franco employing a bunch of hot-bodied young girls to perform crimes for him? The added layer of weirdness comes off as pretentious and frankly annoying.

Worse though, Korine once again fails to give empathy towards his characters or world. Right from the start, Spring Breakers depicts it’s characters as vulgar and shallow miscreants (that also happen to love Brittney Spears), and they only get worse. Korrine tries to suggest they have glimmers of humanity in a few scenes that see the four girls playing in their dorm hallways while bathed in a bright white light, or inserting a few shots that show them embrace Franco’s character. It ultimately falls on deaf ears though, as none of it is developed in a way that makes us care for these girls, who are doing really fucked up things 95% of the film’s running time. The film’s climax is also predictable, and implies that Korrine really doesn’t know the first thing about story payoff, or perhaps doesn’t care in the first place.

 As mentioned before, the film’s casting is certainly interesting, but there are some disappointments here as well. The film’s saving grace could have been in Selena Gomez’s character, who is actually frightened by the criminal acts she sees her friends perform. She could have been the human notion that the film really needed to communicate (assuming Gomez could give a convincing performance), but the character is all but abandoned before the film’s third act. James Franco turns out to be the film’s highlight, though. He was obviously cast as such a vile character due to his public persona as a sweet-natured young man with an established taste for the fine arts. We see the character take part in all sorts of aberance such as using the term “double-penetration”, or performing oral sex on hand guns, but behind the grit there’s still the awareness that this is the guys who is also starring in Oz: The Great and Powerful. An interesting tactic, and one that should have been applied to more screen time for the character, as Franco gives plenty of bravura in his performance, along with a sprinkling of his nice-guy nature.

On one hand, there is a part of me that doesn’t understand why I disliked this film. Some of my favorite films of the last few years, like Drive and The Master, have proven so intoxicating for me in the way that they acted as mainstream films while still using a highly unconventional narrative structure and leaving plenty of story gaps. Those two films, however, gave the viewer enough material to grasp some inkling as to why the characters were motivated the way they were, and never felt excessive or showy in their style of film making. Spring Breakers is a fine example on how delicate the blending of indie/commercial sensibilities are, and that film makers really need to be aware of when it’s time to say no. Had Harmony Korine given his film a more familiar story structure (perhaps even finding a veteran crime fiction writer to collaborate on the script with him), Spring Breakers really could have been the potent piece of social commentary he was aiming for, and even retained all it’s sex, drugs and violence. Instead, it’s a film more likely to leave viewers leaving the theater befuddled, infuriated, or just plain exhausted

Decided to do something a bit different for this latest entry of Netflix’d. As those of you that know me (all two of you), you know I’m a fond appreciator of film noir, to the point that I’d even call it my favorite style/genre/era of movie-dom. Seeing that Netflix has such a good batch of quality noir titles, I was thinking about finding a particularly great one and then writing about it. Then a better idea struck me: Why not just review em’ all in one fell swoop? They’re all pretty much the same film anyway! Therefore, welcome to the Film Noir Edition of Netflix’d where I’ll be discussing my 7 favorite Film Noirs that are currently streaming on Netflix. I’ve listed them in chronological order, so feel free to interpret this as a timeline for the film style’s.

Double Indemnity

Date: 1944
Running Length: 107 minutes
Director: Billy Wilder
Writer: Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson

Synopsis: A insurance sales man (Fred MacMurray) starts an affair with a femme fatale (Barbara Stanwyck), and then the two start to ruse a plot to murder her husband in order to amass his immense wealth.

Review: One of the most influential film noirs, in terms of setting character archetypes and visual motifs. Many of the plot elements have become common place for the genre, such as a murder plot that goes wrong, and first-person narration that lets the viewer know the main character is doomed from the start. Adapted from his own novel, Chandler gives the screenplay sparkling dialogue and plenty of seedy twists to make this possibly the most realized film based on one of his novels. Billy Wilder also gave the film a look that can now be called paradigmatic for film noir, with it’s great use of shadows, eerie lighting, and L.A. setting. If there’s anything that appears to be dated about the film, it’s only because it was a massive trend setter.

Detour

Date: 1945
Running Length: 67 minutes
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Writer: Martin Goldsmith and Martin Mooney
Cast: Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund MacDonald, Esther Howard

Movie Synopsis

A New York City piano player decides to travel cross country to reunite with his girlfriend in Los Angelas. With a limited amount of money he decides to hitch hike across the country where he’ll meet two seedy characters (Edmund MacDonald and Ann Savage) that will make the trek really not work it

Movie Review

Pretty much a classic, despite it’s low-budget, brief running time, and conventional camera work. There’s a bit of suspension of disbelief needed for the film, as the story relies heavily on coincidences, but there’s no denying how dark it all is. Ann Savage makes for a particularly nasty femme fatale also who is almost masculine in her delivery. At just over an hour in length, Detour is a breezy and satisfying ride through the classic style.

Scarlet Street

Date: 1945
Running Length: 103 minutes
Director: Fritz Lang
Writer: Dudley Nichols
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennet, Dan Duryea

Movie Synopsis

A lonely man (Edward G. Robinson) becomes infatuated with a femme-fatale (Joan Bennet), and eventually gets wrapped into the con-artist ways of her boyfriend (Dan Duryea).

Movie Review

German Expressionism is often referred to as the clearest starting point for film noir, so it makes sense that Metropolis director Fritz Lang would be able to construct such an essential entry to the canon. Reuniting the same trio of principal actors that he filmed in The Woman in the Window (also available on Netflix), Scarlet Street is definitely a more mature and fulfilling film than it’s predecessor. While occaisonally meandering during it’s first two acts, the final third is one of the most intense in all of film noir. It’s an ending so bleak and haunting, that Scarlet Street was actually banned by the censor boards in New York, Milwaukee and Atlanta around the time of it’s release, despite it’s “crime does not pay” message. Possibly Fritz Lang’s best Hollywood film.

The Naked City

Date: 1948
Running Time: 96 minutes
Director: Jules Dassan
Writer: Albert Waltz and Malvin Wald
Cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart

Movie Synopsis

A crime scene investigation into the murder of a woman unfolds into a case involving a diamond heist

Movie Review

While Los Angelas is frequently considered the pre-eminent location for film noir, the “concrete jungle” of New York is undoubtedly an effective location as well. Narrated by Mark Hellinger, the film has a quasi-documentary feel to it, as he explains plot points and New York traits for the viewer. Filmed on location, The Naked City probably remains the single film noir to take such valuable use from Manhattan, filming great scenes in the Whitehall Building, and on the Williamsburg Bridge. Also, if you like this then I strongly recommend that you check out Dassan’s later film Rififi, which I feel is the best French-language noir.

The Big Combo

Date: 1955
Running Time: 86 Minutes
Director: Joseph H. Lewis
Writer: Philip Yordan
Cast: Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace

Movie Synopsis

A police lieutenant (Cornel Wilde) looks to bring down a vicious gangster (Richard Conte) by uncovering his past.

Movie Review

Closer to a traditional gangster film than the other movies I’ve listed, yet Dark Combo is undoubtedly one of the last true film noirs (the classical era is often considered to have ended in 1958). While it contains solid acting and storytelling all around, the real reason to see this film is for it’s iconic climax. It makes brilliant use of single-source lighting for a story element, and the final image remains one of the most memorable in the noir lexicon.

The Long Goodbye

Date: 1973
Running Time: 112 minutes
Director: Robert Altman
Writer: Leigh Brackett
Cast: Elliot Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden

Movie Synopsis

Raymond Chandler’s iconic detective Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould), is out to prove the innocence of his friend Lennox (Jim Bouton), who has been accused of murdering his wife. Parallel to that, Marlowe also is hired by a blonde (Nina van Pallandt) to locate her lost husband (Sterling Hayden).

Moive Review

While Roman Polanski’s Chinatown is often considered the most important neo-noir, it also must be said that The Long Goodbye did a commendable job of introducing the grit and swagger of the 70s to the pulp elements of the classical film noir era. Playing as a more laid-back version of the character than previous actors, Gould gives Philip Marlowe the right amount of appeal and zest to really strike more of a cord with more modern audiences. Most impressive about The Long Goodbye, however, is that Robert Altman and Leigh Brackett managed to make a film that both adapted Chandler’s novel, as well as updated it. Half a satire, the film pokes fun at a lot of facets about Los Angelas at the time, including hippie culture. A very weird, and very fun genre send-up.

The Grifters

Date: 1990
Running Time: 119 Minutes
Director: Stephen Frears
Writer: Donald E. Westlake
Cast: John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening

Synopsis: A female con-artist (Anjelica Huston) decides she wants to get out of  the game. Unfortunately, her sadistic boss won’t have it, and her son (John Cusack) is farther into this dangerous lifestyle then she cares for. They make an ultimatum to pull off one last gig, but of course it all goes horribly wrong.

Review: It’s shot in color, R-rated, and has a relatively modern setting, but The Grifters certainly feel like a film noir from the classical era, rather than a glossy neo-noir. Written by crime novelist extraordinaire Donald E. Westlake, adapted from a novel by similarly renowned author Jim Thompson, and produced by Martin Scorsese, the film obviously had plenty of talent backing it up and it shows. Never letting up on the fact that film noir should focus on flawed characters doing terrible things to each other, The Grifters is intense, gritty, yet also pure movie magic. Up there with L.A. Confidential as one of the very best neo-noirs.

Headhunters

Date: 2011

Running Time: 100 Minutes

Director: Morten Tyldum

Writer: Lars Gudmestad and Ulf Ryberg

Cast: Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Synnøve Macody Lund

Synopsis: A successful businessman (Aksel Hennie) who also moonlights as an art thief gets in way over his head when a mercenary (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his wife (Synnøve Macody Lund) catch onto his occupation

Review: The Norweigan Headhunters is a potent commentary on the cutthroat nature of the business world, but the real reason to see it is that it’s such a sinful pleasure. Viciously violent, perversely sexual, but never lacking a sly sense of humor either, Headhunters is the type of neo-noir that’s all too rare: one that’s hardcore yet tongue in cheek at the same time. With an American remake in the works, I recommend seeing the original now, before the likely inferior remake makes its arrival.