Ghostbusters (1984)

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Ghostbusters (1984) – I. Reitman

My favorite movie in high school -- how would it look 30 years later? Actually, it is surprisingly loose and funny -- full of deadpan and sarcastic reaction shots, apparently many improvised on the spot by Bill Murray and the team. Sadly we lost Harold Ramis this year but together with Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd, he helped to create a comedy that is actually funny and enjoyable, no small feat. Probably part of the success is due to the way that the ghost business is played entirely straight and the rest is due to the acting chops (and spontaneous humorousness) of the cast (including Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis). Sure, it has its slick elements (musical montages that speed the plot) but it is ramshackle enough to keep it fresh and this was perhaps the first time for some stock comedy film elements to be trotted out. A good dose of absurdity (the final form of Gozer the Destructor) is always welcome. Enough said, I still enjoyed it decades later, despite the '80s fashion and hair.

I Wish (2012)

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I Wish (2012) – H. Kore-eda

Deceptively simple, as if Kore-eda managed to “capture” reality and transmit it to us, but in actuality meticulously crafted, right down to the soundtrack which may be the key force in getting us on the movie’s wavelength.  I don’t necessarily mean the music, which is pleasant enough indie-guitar and j-pop jangling, but instead the way that the voices of the kids (there are 7 of them in larger or smaller roles) and adults (mostly oldies in larger roles) tend to overlap and join together and emerge naturally amidst the other diegetic sounds, saying natural-seeming things.  Indeed, the movie could be taken as a 1970’s Altman-esque affair, rather de-centralized in plotting (although the focus on the two brothers who wish their parents’ divorce hadn’t separated them provides the main thrust) and featuring a widening array of characters some of whom have only bit parts but still provide loads of color and emotional weight.  Of course, having been to Japan may help one to appreciate the film, making it easier to settle into its relaxed grooves, or perhaps having seen any Hollywood product starring kids will allow even the least Nihon-aware viewer to realize that this film is as far away from that cloying, over-acted, sentimental, and artificial claptrap as you can possibly get. Kore-eda’s other films (After Life, Nobody Knows, Maborosi, Still Walking) are also worth your time, if this is your jam.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

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Dallas Buyers Club (2013) – J.-M. Vallee

There’s the movie made and the movie not made.  Over at the New York Times, A. O. Scott alerts us to the movie not made by director Jean-Marc Vallee, a movie about the real fight to stay alive and the solidarity and spirit of the gay community in response to AIDS.  That would be a good and potentially provocative movie (to some audiences). However, we need to consider the movie made instead wherein a homophobic and redneck straight man becomes an angel of sorts for those suffering from HIV/AIDS by investigating and then illegally importing experimental drugs that the FDA was slow in approving.  That man (the real life Ron Woodroof) is played by Matthew McConaughey, transformed by a 50 pound weight loss into a gaunt sick man.  Jared Leto plays his transgender business partner.  As you know, both won Oscars. If there can be a feel-good movie about AIDS, then perhaps this is it.  Shot on an extremely low budget, it doesn’t show and instead manages to maintain a spirited vibrancy, sense of humour, and righteousness, even though it isn’t the movie not made.

The Burmese Harp (1956)

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The Burmese Harp (1956) – K. Ichikawa

Often moving tale of a Japanese regiment at the end of WWII that surrenders to the British in Burma.  This company is different because of their fondness for singing (often “Home Sweet Home” in Japanese, which is used for sentimental purposes but still evokes wistfulness).  One of their number, Mizushima, is nominated to encourage another Japanese platoon, holed up in a mountain fortress, to finally surrender – however, they disbelieve that the war is over and are killed by the Brits.  Mizushima himself is injured but resuscitated back to life by a Buddhist monk.  Mizushima steals this monk’s garb to make the journey back to join his regiment but the horrors that he sees (scores of unburied bodies) and remembers lead him to take a vow to stay in Burma as a real monk to make certain that all the bodies are buried.  His old squad members cannot understand. Ichikawa makes excellent use of location shooting in Burma, often showing his characters nearly hidden in the landscape (suggesting the enormity of the situation in which they are engulfed).  Some say this film ignored the real war crimes committed in Burma but it is assuredly pacifist and anti-war.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

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12 Years a Slave (2013) – S. McQueen

A horror movie in all respects -- except for the usual overt trappings of the genre.  For example, instead of creepy music, we get the dramatic cues of the typical Oscar-winning drama.  This was really the only drawback for me. Director Steve McQueen already displays the terrible realities of slavery: the brutal physical torture (hard labour but also whippings, sexual assault, and lynchings) and the chilling psychological torture (being separated from family, not knowing whether to vie for positive treatment from the master and be judged for doing so by other slaves, the constant wish to take risks to escape). But if he’d treated this like Roger Corman did his Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, it could have been even more effective – although I’ll admit it probably wouldn’t have won the Oscar. Chiwetel Ejiofor is outstanding as the free Black man who is kidnapped and sold into slavery (with Benedict Cumberbatch as the kind but cowardly master who allows evil to happen anyway and Michael Fassbender as the just plain evil master). With McQueen’s help, Ejiofor does show us the terror of the man in this predicament (amid the nicely rendered pre-Civil war environs), allowing us to imagine how we would feel and what we would do. The rest of the cast are excellent in support (including Alfre Woodard in a bit part and Lupita Nyong’o in a large but thankless one, deservedly winning an Oscar).  Still, cranking it up even further with the trappings of the horror film could have pushed this to the maximum confrontational level it deserves; it remains a humanistic classic nevertheless.   

Nico Icon (1995)

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Nico Icon (1995) – S. Ofteringer

Successful in creating a mood (of total nihilistic depression) through a portrait of the German fashion model turned Warhol Factory denizen and Velvet Underground singer turned goth junkie gypsy.  And how could director Ofteringer not be successful with Nico’s spooky droning chanteuse music as her soundtrack.  Talking heads vie with 1960s and 1970s footage to tell her story, which makes you wonder whether she became hollowed out by the early objectification she experienced and/or whether it was the drugs that brought her down so low.  You get the idea that to come into contact with her would be like feeling the icy fingers of your own death.  I’ll have to pull out her records now (and remember that art is something to live for).

The Rules of the Game (1939)

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The Rules of the Game (1939) – J. Renoir

Often cited as the best movie of all time, Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece manages to operate on multiple levels simultaneously, thereby increasing its pleasures.  On the simplest, most straightforward level, it is a tale of love and the game-playing that lovers may do (when they don’t know their own hearts or those of their lovers), to keep up appearances and to tease and confound their pursuers and the pursued – although the frankest, most sincere lovers may come up short in such spirited affairs. On the next deepest level, the film pokes at class differences, suggesting that any upstairs-downstairs distinctions (the film is set mainly at a country estate on the weekend of a grand fete) are merely an illusion, with both classes following the same rules (la regle du jeu, of course). The masters and the servants are essentially doubled, with two trios each featuring a married couple and an interloper, playing themes and variations on the plot’s strings.  Finally, at the deepest level, the film reveals Renoir’s angst at Europe’s failure to contend with Hitler’s rise, choosing to ignore or to placate him, keeping up appearances, just as the bourgeois guests at the estate prefer to ignore or overlook the harsh realities before them, not only of the hunt (a truly graphic interlude) but of the shocking behavior, including murder, that goes on but is explained away, following the rules of decorum, by the protagonists.  Truly, everyone may have their reasons – but this may only help to understand not to excuse actions. Evoking a mood of anxiety, uncertainty, and foreboding, and blending it with his interest in theatricality, Renoir has captured lightning in a bottle. This is a film of such rich carefully planned complexity, wedded somehow to seemingly spontaneous chaos, that it bears repeated viewings (this is my umpteenth time) and indeed close scrutiny and undoubtedly contains lessons for our time.

The Dance of Reality (2013)

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The Dance of Reality (2013) – A. Jodorowsky

Unmistakably a Jodorowsky film (with lots of taboo-breaking) but yet somehow more tender than his earlier films (El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre, etc.).  Perhaps this is because the 84-year-old director is in a more reflective mode, looking back at his own childhood and even appearing in person to cradle and console the actor playing his younger self at times.  This could easily be his last film.  Perhaps too Jodorowsky’s growing interest in “psychomagic” as a form of therapy has colored the approach taken to the characters, with more forgiveness granted even as the depiction of his father as a Stalinist brute shows us Jodorowsky’s real pain.  However, things are not that straightforward and there are plenty of opportunities for surrealistic detours into life in Chile at that time (or perhaps it is all fantasy?).  Oddball and slyly comic, sensitive and jarring at the same time, but ultimately the complete and real deal – no one makes films like this, but they should. 

  

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

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Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) – M. Hellman

I’m not a gearhead by any stretch of the imagination, so a flick about two dudes travelling cross-country in a hopped-up ’55 Chevy, engaging in drag racing to make money, isn’t something to which I was intrinsically drawn.  But this film (by Monte Hellman) exists in its own reality, with an aimless pace, numerous moments of quiet idleness (that some may find languorous), and the repetitive purr and whine of engines.  Warren Oates, in his yellow G.T.O. and smart cashmere sweaters (with ascot), steals the show with his cocky but somehow vulnerable older gent who agrees to race the boys to D.C.  Incidentally, the central characters are played by James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, non-actors to be sure, but evocative of a time and place now gone.  Possibly a key existential film (as so many road movies tend to be), if you choose to read it that way.

  

The Virgin Spring (1959)

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The Virgin Spring (1959) – I. Bergman

Burning with intensity, Bergman’s 21^st film is carved from an old Scandinavian ballad, lending it the quality of fable or allegory.  The setting (Middle Ages) and the striking black and white cinematography (courtesy of Sven Nykvist) serve to heighten this effect. But it is the sudden brutal and realistic violence, which is that much more confronting due to its matter-of-factness, that truly commands your gaze and asks you to contemplate the presence and nature of evil.  Max von Sydow’s response may be our first primal stab (ultimately toothless) at this foe and Bergman does not shy away from concentrating our attention on its complications.  As in the Book of Job, we and the characters in this medieval drama are led to question why any God would allow evil to exist (even as the competing Pagan spirits are still being worshipped for their power to influence and harm others). There is no simple answer but at least in this film Bergman seems to be suggesting (through symbols and story) that faith is the way ahead.  His next films offer much more doubt.

Lacombe, Lucien (1974)

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Lacombe, Lucien (1974) – L. Malle

Louis Malle has set himself a particularly difficult challenge here: to compose a character study of an inarticulate man-child.  But he has a purpose, for Lucien Lacombe is meant to represent the kind of French adolescent who might have been drawn to collaborate with the Nazis during the Occupation.  He’s not mature yet and vaguely frustrated with his lot (working at a nursing home in a small rural community) – he might be willing to join the Resistance but is turned down for being too young and unfocused.  So, he is easily seduced by the power and decadence of the collaborators.  As others have suggested, Malle (like Marcel Ophuls in The Sorrow and the Pity) has aimed to portray the “banality of evil” as produced by average individuals who, under other circumstances, probably wouldn’t have acted this way.  That is an open question for sure but the combination of person (Lacombe, Lucien) and situation (Vichy, France) may ignite to produce horrors.  When Lucien becomes attracted to a young Jewish girl, the Gestapo power he possesses allows him to act willfully and to initiate actions that have terrible consequences; we just aren’t sure whether he fully understands what he’s doing.  If this is really how evil materializes, we will all need to be on our guard.