Your source for film reviews, news, new and popular cinema, classic films, art house films, silent films, film noir, action movies, obscure films, documentaries, horror films, cult films, anime and animated films, Criterion films--if it's a movie you'll find it all here. I made this blog for those who believe that film is a legitimate art form and seek others to share their passion for cinema with. I update this page daily with fresh film reviews and essays.
The 400 Blows: a review of the great Francois Truffaut film!
Director Francois Truffaut's semi-autobiographical film The 400 Blows came out in 1959 as part of the French New Wave movement. This film follows the difficult life of a boy named Antoine played by Jean Pierre Leaud. The film opens in a classroom where students are secretly passing around a picture of a pin-up girl. At the precise moment that the picture touches Antoine's hand the teacher happens to look up from his desk and catches him red-handed. The teacher punishes Antoine again when he catches the boy scribbling a poem on the chalkboard. And it gets no better at home for Antoine as his young mother played by Claire Maurier and stepfather played by Albert Remy bicker about money in front of him and complain about how much he eats. Antoine can't seem to do anything right anywhere. Like school, he finds a creative outlet by developing an interest in a famous writer named Balzac. He even builds a small shrine for the writer but makes the mistake of placing a candle in it which almost burns down the apartment. The rest of the film goes on like this, broken up by little things like him skipping school and going to the carnival to spin around inside of a giant cylinder. This film is about how some people are just magnets for bad luck. The ambiguous ending invites the viewer to draw his own conclusions as to Antoine's ultimate fate. This is one of my favorite movies and despite how it sounds, there are a few light moments in the film. There's a lot of ways to look at The 400 Blows. In some ways, it's inspirational in that with all the negativity Antoine deals with that he's still resilient enough to try to have a childhood such as the carnival scene, that we were all once kids before we grew up. Criterion did a great job on this film. I have the DVD and it still looks great.
'The Battle Over Citizen Kane': a review of the documentary
There are some film documentaries that are so good that they stand on their own. The 1996 documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane is the rare instance where the appetizer may actually be better than the main course. Produced by Michael Epstein and Thomas Lennon, written by Richard Ben Cramer and Thomas Lennon, and powerfully narrated by Richard Cramer, The Battle Over Citizen Kane originally aired as an episode of the Public Broadcast System's The American Experience looking at the lives, the careers and the ultimate showdown between Hearst and Welles over Welles' 1941 film Citizen Kane.
Reportedly, Welles' weaved strands of his own life with that of Hearst's in making the film and the battleship-sized egos of the 2 in the documentary are compared, showing how each man in his own world seized power by the white-hot force of his personality and how each man eventually lost that power through excess and appetite. Estate photos and videos interwoven with interviews with journalists like Jimmy Breslin along with stock footage of turn of the century America add the color and humor that keeps this 2 hour documentary entertaining from the gate to the finish line. There are no lapses in this presentation but my favorite parts show Orson's Broadway career directing Depression Era Black actors to perform Shakespeare; then there’s the legend of Orson's famous 1938 War of The Worlds radio hoax that later went on to inspire 2 films! If you see no other documentary on a film see this 1.
Director Alfred Hitchcock's made a lot of great movies and he is far and away one of the greatest directors who ever lived. But of all of his films--and he’s directed over 70 films, at least--his artistic masterpiece is his 1958 film Vertigo starring James Stewart and Kim Novack based on Boileau-Narcejac’s 1954 book From Among the Dead. Vertigo features Stewart as Detective John Scottie who is forced to retire due to his fear of heights which results in the death of his partner. Afterwards, he agrees to help out a friend by following the man’s beautiful wife (played by Kim Novack) The husband believes that his wife is possessed by a young woman who committed suicide a century ago. What Stewart doesn’t know is that his fear of heights makes him the perfect witness to a murder! Everything in this film-- the cinematography, the acting, the locations (all around San Francisco), the color, the music (by Mr. Bernard Herrman)--is absolute perfection. James Stewart is one of my favorite actors and this is my 2nd favorite film of his besides Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder. Kim Novack is incredible playing 2 roles, that of Gavin Elster’s blonde wife Madeleine and as a Brunette named Judy Barton from Salina, Kansas whom Scottie becomes obsessed to the point of physically transforming her into the woman of his dreams. As in most of his films, Hitch makes his trademark cameo but you can't blink or you'll miss him. I really can't say this is THE greatest simply because there are so many great films. The film it's most compared with is Citizen Kane and seeing it for the first time in years this is a pretty fair comparison. I'd call it a toss up because I couldn't put one under the other, both are the great. If you have not seen this one yet, you’re in for a treat; if you have seen it like me you don’t mind rewatching it to admire its beauty and precision. Every time I see it I spot something I hadn’t noticed before.
Before The Fast and The Furious, Speed Racer, and all of today's hybrid human/cgi rendered cars and blue screen chase sequences, there were movies with real stuntmen and real gas guzzlers from Detroit that made a lot of noise. Of these films, Australian director George Miller's 1979 dystopian film Mad Max--and its follow-up, The Road Warrior--exemplifies the extinct breed of animal known as muscle cars, or, in this instance, Australian muscle!
In a nutshell, Mad Max is about a good cop named Max Rockatanski (Played by Mel Gibson) who gives in to the dark side after a ruthless motorcycle gang led by the Toe-cutter ambushes and tortures his best friend, the "Goose." The real star of this film, though, are not the many muscle cars used in this film: Max's yellow Interceptor squad car; the Kawasaki motorcycles; or The Mad Max revenge car, the Pursuit Special at the end of the film. No, the most important star of this film is the driver's seat perspective of the road itself.
Can't say enough about this film which was Director George Miller's 1st film, putting him up with the likes of Scorsese's 1973 film Mean Streets, and Christopher Nolan's 1998 film Following as among the best debut films ever. Like James Cameron's 1984 film The Terminator, Mad Max's sequel is as good if not better than the original. If you haven't seen this film in a while, you should see it on blu ray. It's like seeing it for the first time.
Director Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 anime Akira takes place in the year 2012 in Neo Tokyo following an event similar to the atomic bombs America dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A boy named Akira is the subject of secret government experiments that give him access to superhuman powers. Things get out of control when the government does the experiment on a biker named Tetsuo who becomes obsessed with his best friend's motorcycle and who has been picked on all his life for being short.
This anime, like a lot of sci fi anime reference Japanese culture after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a way of signaling the death of one age and the birth of a new age. Looking at this anime and others like Ghost in The Shell, the influence of Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner is obvious in the fusion of industrial-looking tech combined with social and environmental issues like crime, poverty, overcrowding and lots of consumer products marketed on just about every square inch of available space. These elements together describe an aesthetic known as cyberpunk. Watching Akira, it is easy to see how much Blade Runner influenced the artwork and, in a lot of ways, Akira takes it a step further. Watching it, even after 30 years since it was made, it can easily take a couple of nights just to take in everything. And, unlike most anime where only the main characters in the foreground move, everything and I do mean EVERYTHING moves in Akira. Otomo is a gear-head and his obsession with detail, particularly machines, verges on the insane. Up to the time it came out, the only animation you could find this kind of motion was Disney. But Disney was for kids in those days but Akira was aimed at adults. This, if anything else, explains the cultural perceptions that American film audiences and Japanese film audiences have about animated movies. If you have heard of anime or if all you know about it is Dragonball Z or Pokemon, seeing Akira for the 1st time is going to be somewhat of a shock to what you are used to seeing, especially the level of graphic violence including blood.
I still have my VHS copy of this film and recently, I upgraded to blu ray. This film looks incredible. The colors are popping and saturated but they don't bleed over the details. The opening scenes at night are absolutely crazy. The rainbows chasing the motorbikes, the motorbikes themselves, the clothes, the cityscape, everything looks better on blu ray.
Despite the look of this film, the dialogue is bad. Otomo shows his weaknesses in the writing department but I'm not sure how much this has to do by it being translated out of Japanese to English.
I read someplace that they were thinking about turning it into a live action movie but I don't think it'll work because the story itself is rather convoluted. Plus, I don't think that every good anime translates to live action. Look at what happened to Ghost in the Shell. I believe, too, that the sophistication of live action effects in recent years has not only equaled but has exceeded what you could only show in an animated movie. If they did make a live action Akira, I would like it to be Japanese. These films have a way of being Westernized with White actors like Ghost in the Shell was and Robert Rodriguez's upcoming action film Alita: The Battle Angel. If it is produced into a live action movie, though, I'll still go to see it.
Finishing up this review, I'm glad to say that even after all these years, as far as animation has come, Akira still looks good. I think what makes this film age well is the fact that what you see on the screen is completely organic and hand-drawn by real people. This type of anime or animation period is gone now. I even read that Hayao Miyazaki's next animated film will be all CGI. That'll be interesting.
My breakdown of Alejandro G. Iñárritu's 21 Grams
I want to share my thoughts on 21 Grams, the 2003 American drama directed by Alexandro Inarritu Gonzales starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro, and Charlotte Gainsbourg. First, though, I’d like to thank you for watching this video and I’d appreciate if you’d hit the like button at the end and subscribe to my channel for more videos.
Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu's 2003 drama 21 Grams is the 2nd film to Gonzales’ and co-writer Guillermo Arriaga’s “Trilogy of Death” series preceded by 2001s Amores Perros and followed by 2006s Babel starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. The title of this film comes from an American Scientist named Duncan MacDougall. In 1907 MacDougall wanted to prove that we lose 21 grams at the time of death and that this 21 grams is the soul leaving the body. He weighed 6 bodies at the moment of death and only 1 lost 21 grams, 21.3 to be exact. Needless to say, his test was discounted by the scientific community. In this film, 21 Grams is a metaphor for all the things that have to happen for 2 people to come together; 21 Grams is about how we are all connected; it’s about water and the many chances that we get to live; 21 Grams is about learning to accept the bad things that happen to all of us. Most of all, 21 Grams it’s about learning to see life as a blessing and not as a guarantee.
Life, death, and rebirth
Everything in nature has an opposite: 2 legs, 2 arms, 2 eyes. There’s light and darkness, hot and cold, weak and strong, male/female, left and right.
In 21 Grams, life and death complement each other.
For instance, Mary goes to a fertility doctor to have the child of her dying husband; when Michael dies his heart gives Paul a 2nd chance to live; Paul is dying in the hospital when Cristina learns that she is pregnant with his child; and Michael and his daughters are run over and killed by Jack whose birthday happens to be on that same day.
Life creates death and death creates life as Socrates put it, in question and answer form, from Plato’s book Phaedo:
Question: “Is not death opposed to life?”
Answer: “Yes.”
Question: “And they are generated one from the other?”
Answer: “Yes.”
Question: ”What is generated from life?”
Answer: “Death.” Question: “And what from death?”
Answer: “I can only say in answer -- life.”
Question: “Then the living, whether things or persons, Cebes, are generated from the dead?”
Answer: “That is clear,” he replied.
Water
We’ve all heard the saying: “cleanliness is next to godliness,” right? Nothing feels better than having a clean fresh home, clean clothes, a clean car--but none of these are possible without good clean water. But let’s think of water and clean in another sense. In the Bible, water is used to symbolize death and rebirth in the rite of baptism--death in that the person baptized has all of his or her prior sins erased (or washed) and starts over with a clean slate. This is described as being “born again,” not in the literal sense, but in that the individual has been awakened to a higher realm of consciousness. This is why water, in this sense, is an important thematic element in 21 Grams.
Let’s start with the characters’ names and how they relate to the film’s plot. Jordan--Jack’s last name--is the river in the Bible that Joshua crosses in leading the Israelites to the Promised Land; the connotation of Jack’s last name also coincides with his character arc. Jack’s “Promised Land” is him receiving a higher level of awareness:
He starts out believing that God favors him because he got out of prison, stopped drinking alcohol, and turned his life over to Jesus Christ. Religious icons such as crosses fill his truck and home for protection. He and his family attend church regularly; he is even working with a troubled teenager named Nick. But when Jack kills Cristina’s family by running over them in his truck, he undergoes a spiritual shakeup. How could something bad happen to him when he was doing everything right? How could God allow him to get in his truck and kill a man and 2 little girls? Killing Cristina’s family and losing everything humbles Jack and teaches him that doing all the right things (including being a Christian) does not exclude him from all the ups and downs of life.
Likewise, the death of Christina’s husband and 2 daughters catches her completely off-guard. Prior to giving birth to her 1st daughter, Cristina had kicked her quit using drugs and had become the perfect wife and mother. But losing Michael and her 2 daughters so suddenly is too much for her and she goes back to her drug habit. She then decides to kill Jack instead of moving on with her life and pressures Paul, who has her husband’s heart, to help her. Paul goes back to smoking which ruins his new heart. When all of the dust has settled by the end of the movie, Cristina finds out that she is pregnant with Paul’s baby and winds up in the same position she was in before, when she faced the decision to either stop using drugs or to keep using them and risk losing Paul’s unborn child.
Finally, Paul gets a 2nd chance at life by receiving Michael’s heart. But after meeting Cristina and her pressuring him to kill Jack, Paul goes back to his old smoking habit which makes his new heart go bad. His failing heart is the swimming pool he sits by at the motel; notice that the swimming pool is empty and full of garbage; his decision to help Cristina kill Jack has poisoned Michael’s good heart. Paul doesn’t go through with killing Jack but by this time, Michael’s heart is too far gone to be brought back.
When we hurt others we hurt ourselves
We don’t get away with anything. When we hurt others, everything in the universe aligns itself to keep us from being happy. Some call this God, others call it karma. There are invisible laws within us that punish us when we go against them, rising up like judge, jury, and executioner to torment us.
In 21 Grams, for instance, Paul returns to smoking when he goes in with Cristina to kill Jack. In doing this, he not only hurts himself, he also hurts Michael who continues to live on through the heart his death has given to Paul; likewise, Cristina’s drug habit not only threatens her health but also the life of her unborn child; also, after Jack completes his prison sentence for killing Cristina’s family, he abandons his own family to wallow in guilt by himself in a motel where he goes back to drinking and smoking cigarettes.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people
Life is not fair. Good people die young and bad people die of old age; fit people get cancer; selfish jerks win lotteries and good people die poor; abusers get the best girls and good guys get the cold shoulder; heroes don’t always ride off into the sunset and, contrary to popular belief, hard work doesn’t always pay off. The fact of the matter is that bad things happen to good people, too.
Likewise, in 21 Grams Jack does all the right things
He attends church
He has given up drinking alcohol
He works with a troubled teenager
He follows the Bible to the letter
And yet, he gets into his truck on a normal day, sober, feeling better about the future and getting a new job after getting fired and, out of nowhere, he ends up running over 3 people in his truck, panics, and leaves the scene of the incident!
Same thing with Cristina who also does all the right things by kicking drugs and becoming the ideal wife and mother. Yet, in a single moment, she loses everything!
Taking life for granted
Some things are just too unpleasant to think about. But death is always going to be a fact of life. From the day we are born our days are numbered. But somewhere along the way we forget how to live and settle for being alive. We learn to look forward to and place special value on birthdays, anniversaries, Valentines Days, and Christmases and we learn to take the smaller bits of our lives--the seconds, hours, days, and months--for granted like that old friend who you know will always be there. Then 1 day someone calls you out the blue to tell you your old friend is dead. Such is the case throughout 21 Grams:
When Michael, before being killed, tells his wife that he and their daughters will see her when they get home
When Michael calls Cristina who lets his last phone call go to her voice mail
When Cristina puts off buying the blue shoes her daughter wants
When Mary aborts Paul’s child and then--when he has only 1 month to live--tries to have his child through artificial insemination
When Jack kills a man and 2 little girls driving home to celebrate his birthday
We all put things off as if we can pause life like a television show and come back to it later. In the meantime we miss out on the small moments as if they are not important, as if they are a given, as if they somehow don’t count; they do!
conclusion
21 Grams begins and ends with Paul Rivers in a hospital bed connected to life support, counting each and every breath, marking time and empty space like seconds on a clock, not knowing which will be his last. But, in a sense, Paul is more alive on his deathbed than at any point in the film, even after getting a new life with Michael’s heart. I wonder, how we would live each and every moment of our lives if we realized that each one of those tiny moments had the potential to be our last.
In this video I will share my thoughts on Alita, Battle Angel which is slated for theaters in July 2018 co written by James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez and directed by Robert Rodriguez based on the 1990 manga Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro. Alita, Battle Angel takes place in a futuristic wasteland and follows a cyborg girl named Alita whose head is discovered among a pile of garbage beneath a floating utopia called Tiphares. Alita is adopted by a cyber doctor named Ido who gives her a new body but is unable to help her remember who she is. Her only connection with her past is a fighting style called Panzer Kunzt. Over the course of her journey to find out who and what she is she finds herself and, ultimately, love. This is the film Cameron intended to direct before Avatar. In a nutshell, think Mad Max meets The Bourne Identity.
