Review: Only Lovers Left Alive

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Starring by Tilda Swinton (Eve), Tom Hiddleston (Adam), Anton Yelchin (Ian), Mia Wasikowska (Ava), and John Hurt (Marlowe)

Written by Jim Jarmusch

Cinematography Yorick Le Saux

Edited by Affonso Gonҫalves

Released in 2014

When I say Only Lovers Left Alive is a vampire movie, certain genres and styles spring to mind, regardless of their relevance to Jarmusch’s picture. The most immediate association is with horror. Undead bloodsuckers have been fodder for scary movies since the birth of the medium. Horror as a film genre was kickstarted with two tales of vampirism: F.W. Murnau’s illegal adaption of Bram Stoker’s most famous novel, Nosferatu, and Universal Studio’s sanctioned version, Dracula.  There’s not a whole lot of straight terror in Only Lovers Left Alive. The problems of acquiring blood are acknowledged, and Adam has a particularly gruesome way of disposing of “evidence”, but beyond that, comparisons to other horror films are moot. The other way vampirism is typically tackled, is an investigation of the attraction of immortality and increased prowess as can be seen in Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst, and less successfully in Twilight. Again, Only Lovers Left Alive doesn’t quite fit into that category either, although similar elements are sprinkled throughout. Instead, the film is a meditation on how an extremely long life can affect your outlook. I’ve only seen one other Jarmusch film, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, but I understand that he is known for his wry sense of humor, which is present here.

By the time we catch up with them, Adam and Eve have got their affliction figured out. They’ve both made arrangements to receive bloodbags from less scrupulous doctors. With ample money and time, they spend their days listening to and creating music, reading, and lounging about in their respective environs (Detroit for Adam and Tangier for Eve). Adam is getting antsy over his long lifespan and frets about where the world is heading. Eve seems to have come to grips with her immortality, and has a more positive, cyclical view of the world (it’s implied that she’s been around for 1000+ years, while Adam was turned sometime in the 1800s).

Only Lovers Left Alive is obsessed with the texture of objects and places. Mood and feel are given precedence over narrative. Adam refuses to go digital, surrounding himself with vinyl, tube amps, and vintage guitars. He panics briefly when he has to receive a Skype call from Eve on a computer, but quickly relaxes when he switches the feed to a CRT television. Eve speed reads through a bookshelf and the sound of her fingers rapidly turning pages and the cutting between her eyes and the books creates a hunger for knowledge. She also has the ability to tell the age of objects through touch. The film stops dead to allow Adam, Eve, and the viewer to view an impromptu street performance in Tangier. Numerous scenes are given over to the central pair driving around Detroit commenting on the state of the city and pointing out various historical facts. In one of the best scenes of the year, they drive to on old, abandoned movie theater. The camera roves around the various surfaces of the space, probing its darkened interiors as Adam describes its glorious past and laments its fate. The images onscreen and Adam’s words meld to create a third picture in the mind of the viewer of a busy night in the theater’s heyday. The scene is beautiful and sad all in one. It wouldn’t be out of place at all if Adam and Eve had stumbled upon some film stock only to watch it crumble as they held it.

Speaking of texture, Only Lovers Left Alive manages to capture a specific look that I find to be lacking in most modern films. Whenever I watched on old black and white movie, especially a silent, I’m always struck by the soft lighting and graininess. Overall, this creates the effect of an extreme delicacy. Like if I walked up to the screen and touched the surface I would feel whatever is onscreen or accidentally cause the picture to disintegrate. Cinematographer Yorick le Saux captures a similar vibe, for which I will be eternally grateful. In the digital age, this kind of filmmaking is in danger of going extinct. 

Review: Enemy

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal (Adam and Anthony), Mélanie Laurent (Mary), and Sarah Gadon (Helen)

Written by Javier Gullón adapting the novel by José Saramago

Cinematography by Nicolas Bolduc

Edited by Matthew Hannam

Released in 2014

Due to the ambiguous nature of Enemy, much of the discussion surrounding it has been focused on determining what happens on a plot level. What is real and what isn’t? Is it all a dream? What do the spiders mean? This has led to some readings of the film being far too literal. Because film is a visual medium, and we are inclined to think of anything we see as “real”, we sometimes wrongly expect all films to obey the rules of our own world. This expectation can lead to frustration when films create their own heavily-stylized reality or forego regular logic and work instead in the realm of dreams, nightmares, memories, and emotions. When discussion of such films shifts towards determining what is real, I get bored quickly. I much prefer analyzing themes or symbols or picking apart how a strong mood is created.

With that in mind, I would like to offer my own interpretation of Enemy. Nothing is real in Villeneuve’s film. Everything on screen is a fever dream/hallucination reflecting the emotional reality of main character Adam. His conflicting desires between staying a history professor and becoming an actor are represented by the appearance of his doppelgänger Anthony. Adam’s fear of marriage and having children, his worries about committing infidelity and his general sense of being trapped by the women in his life are shown in various ways throughout. The most immediate way the movie accomplishes this is through its color palette, desaturated with a sickly yellow hue poking through every now and then. The architecture of Toronto also comes into play, with Adam prominently displayed in front of ugly, minimalist buildings. There are also frequent references to spiders. The cable car lines of the city evoke spider webs. A window breaks in just the right way to create the same effect. All the women in the film are dressed in black, except for Helen (indicating she is the wife of some version of Adam). Mary even wears snakeskin heels, showing that in Adam’s mind she is a predator or temptress. Finally, Adam has a recurring dream of a giant spider and the film ends with him confronting a similar beast.

Overall, Enemy is a strange film that I am not quite sure how to feel about. From its start, it has some interesting mystery elements, and eventually morphs into a psychological horror film. The events of the film unfold very slowly in an unnerving manner. The use of smash cuts, a heightened sound design (every movement is followed by a long creek), and a discordant score help contribute to this feeling. Gyllenhaal is adequate in the dual role. His portrayal of Adam has shades of the nerdy obsessiveness he brought to Zodiac. However, there’s not much separating Adam and Anthony. Except that Anthony’s hair is a little floppier and their characteristics boil down to Adam = depressed and Anthony = overconfident and macho.

I’m typically a fan of movies that leave conventional narrative filmmaking behind in pursuit of exploring some idea or feeling in a weird way, and Enemy attempts to do that. However, that puts it in line with other doppelgänger films like Persona, The Double Life of Veronique, and Mulholland Drive, all films that have much stronger moods. Enemy also attempts to use a heightened setting to explore a common fear, in this case fear of settling down. Again, this leads to associations with better films. Primarily David Lynch’s Eraserhead, which takes place in a noir-tinged post-apocalypse and uses nightmarish practical effects to tackle the fear of fatherhood. Ultimately, Enemy suffers in comparison to its influences.

Soviet Bloc(Busters): The Loneliest Planet

A series looking at the films of Eastern Europe. 

Directed by Julia Loktev

Starring Hani Furstenberg (Nica), Gael García Bernal (Alex), and Bidzina Gujabidze (Dato)

Written by Julia Loktev adapting the short story “Expensive Trips Nowhere” by Tom Bissel

Cinematography by Inti Briones

Edited by Julia Loktev and Michael Taylor

Released in 2012

Much like the film itself, the title The Loneliest Planet is hard to pin down. It could reflect the immediate communication gap that exists between the two main characters (foreign thrill-seekers Nicah and Alex) and the native Georgians they encounter (mainly their guide Dato), or the gap that develops between the central pair as the film progresses. It may be a signifier of the indifferent, alienating, and perilous environments the characters trek through. Or it might be a simple joke on the American youth-focused travel guide company Lonely Planet.

The plot of Julia Loktev’s film can be summarized in one short sentence. Two soon-to-be-married travelers hike through the Georgian mountains with a guide and an incident occurs that tests their relationship. The film has very little dialogue, with most of what is there focused on banalities, jokey conversations between the three leads, and a few details about their backstories. Most horror or thriller movies create tension by putting sympathetic characters in rough situations and then getting us to root for their survival. Not so with The Loneliest Planet. The film doesn’t fit into either of those categories, but is bristling with plenty of tension nonetheless. Loktev, cinematographer Inti Briones, and editor Michael Taylor craft the film so that scenes drift for long amounts of time and then abruptly cut, shift between static compositions and stalker-ish handheld tracking shots, and jump between intimate close-ups and humongous vistas. The tension comes not from wondering what will happen next to the characters (although there is some of that on the first viewing), but more from worrying over how long the current scene will go on, when the next cut will be, and what type of image will come next. The Loneliest Planet manages to manipulate so well purely through its form, that if Loktev ever did make a straight horror film, I would worry that everyone who saw it would be reduced to a shivering puddle. Through these techniques the film sustains a constantly disruptive tone. It even begins violently, with a shot of Nica naked and jumping up and down trying to stay warm. The huge variance in style between shots requires constant recalibration on the part of the viewer, like having to rapidly adjust your eyes when walking from dark to light (the film literally causes this to happen at one point when the camera follows Nica too quickly out into a sun-drenched valley).

The main complaint levied against the film is that after the incident the characters don’t communicate properly. This complaint is silly for two reasons. One, I’m sure everyone has participated in conversations about what you would do in X extreme situation. And, while we all like to think we would act bravely in such scenarios, there is absolutely no way for us to be 100% certain about how we would instinctively behave. Two, the shifting mood of Nica and Alex is communicated, just not through dialogue. Again, Loktev and her collaborators show their mastery over film form by expressing the couple’s emotional confusion visually. They are helped by the subtle changes in body and facial language that Furstenberg and Bernal employ. Before the incident, Nica and Alex are usually shown together, with multiple focusing on their physical intimacy with each other. After the incident, they appear in the same frame less frequently, and when they do, there are huge amounts of space between them.

A quick example: In the first half of the film, there is a shot of Nica and Alex walking through a rocky valley as Alex runs Nica through some Spanish practice. Dato can be seen in the background of the shot. 

During the second half of the film, the same shot is repeated, but with Nica and Dato conversing in the background and Alex relegated to the foreground trying in vain to eavesdrop on them.

I’m only half kidding when I say The Loneliest Planet would make for an interesting date movie. Nica’s change in demeanor, her response to the bifurcating event, and her withdrawal from Alex and tentative steps toward Dato bring up all kinds of uncomfortable questions. Later on, Alex tries to “prove” his masculinity and make up for his response during the gun incident by rushing to Nica’s rescue when she falls in a river. That scene becomes cringe-inducing when Nica refuses to go to Alex and paws silently at Dato to continue holding her. Near the end of the film, Alex comes close to sexually assaulting Nica after listening to her awkwardly kissing Dato in a horrifying “I’m marking my territory” way.

Was it okay for Alex to hide behind Nica? Was his reaction immediate or considered? Does that distinction matter? Does Alex’s later repositioning fix his initial response? Would the tone of the scene be different if instead Nica immediately jumped behind Alex? Will this irreparably damage their relationship? Was their relationship that strong to begin with? Does Dato recognize that he is pushing Nica towards him or is he oblivious? I imagine if we could hear the characters thoughts some version of these questions would be running through their heads. Thankfully, The Loneliest Planet offers few concrete answers, and leaves both the characters, and the viewer, isolated by doubt, confusion, and uncertainty.

Review: Calvary

Directed by John Michael McDonagh

Starring Brendan Gleeson (Father James Lavelle) and Kelly Reilly (Fiona Lavelle)

Written by John Michael McDonagh

Cinematography by Larry Smith

Edited by Chris Gill

Released in 2014

Calvary is an anti-thriller. It begins with a scene of confrontation: Father James Lavelle is performing confessional and the confessor informs him that he will be murdered in one week as retribution for past sins done to the confessor by another priest. Why? Simply because Father Lavelle is a “good priest” and his death will make a statement. The camera stays firmly on Gleeson’s face during this scene. Only the confessor’s voice is heard, and the Father doesn’t leave the booth to determine who it belongs to.  Instead of becoming a religious-themed mystery film, Calvary immediately undercuts that source of tension when Lavelle states he knows who the stranger is and that he won’t be informing the police. The film then follows him as he goes about his possibly last week meeting with the members of his community and taking care of his adult daughter, who is emotionally raw after an attempted suicide. I suppose some tension is generated from the gap between Lavelle’s knowledge and our own, and the guessing game of which character will end up being the murderer. However, I don’t think Calvary works on that level either. There’s more a steadily mounting sense of dread as the week continues, Lavelle slowly unravels, and the townspeople act out more. This dread is further heightened by The Shining-esque use of the weekday titles.

Lavelle is one of the few positive portrayals of a religious leader I’ve seen. In his review, Glen Kenny points out that you would probably have to go all the way back to 1954’s On the Waterfront to find a similar character. As played by Gleeson, he’s more half-priest, half-detective, and half-guidance counselor than bible-thumper or evangelist. Most importantly, he’s all human. By the time we catch up with him, Lavelle has reached a good balance in his life, but it’s clear from his weathered appearance, conversations with his daughter, and his slightly exasperated manner around his flock, that the struggle for said balance was long and hard fought. Lavelle’s rough serenity has a strange effect on those around him. The various denizens of Sligo County seem agitated by his mere presence. As if his faith is a silent slap-in-the-face to their existence. Despite the fact that he is non-judgmental and is more concerned with his community’s well-being than their beliefs. Even the inciting incident of the film can be seen as an extreme example of this response.

McDonagh’s film engages head-on with thorny religious issues, without offering any pat or easy answers. McDonagh could not have predicted the recent string of movies By-Christians, For-Christians during the making of Calvary, but his film is the perfect antidote to the declarative nature of Heaven is for Real and God’s Not Dead. The idea of forgiveness, for bankers, for murderers, for suicides victims, for priests, is approached from all possible angles. The film even deals with the recent financial crisis, which is still ongoing in Ireland. That same willingness to tackle said issues sometimes results in rough dialogue and a few characters come close to being caricatures. That’s a small complaint though, and the spoonfuls of black comedy sugar help sell the medicine of the messaging. Also, the film anchors itself around the touching relationship between Lavelle and his daughter, grounding it whenever it threatens to veer too far away from reality.

The Sligo of Calvary has an odd texture to it. The rolling green hills, ancient ruins, and beaches are beautiful, but there’s something moody about them as well. The town is frequently overcast and the waters are constantly churning, crashing ominously into the black, rocky shoreline. It’s as if the landscape is sensing a tragedy is about to happen and responding appropriately.

Review: A Most Wanted Man

Directed by Anton Corbijn

Written by Andrew Bovell adapting the John le Carré novel

Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman (Günther Bachmann), Robin Wright (Martha Sullivan), Rachel McAdams (Annabel Richter), Willem Dafoe (Tommy Brue), and Grigoriy Dobrygin (Issa Karpov).

Cinematography by Benoît Delhomme

Edited by Claire Simpson

Released in 2014

The mismatch between the casting and setting of A Most Wanted Man raises questions that are common to commercial films set in countries where English isn’t the primary language. Namely, why is everybody speaking English? The film further compounds that problem by having characters say pleasantries in German and then switch to English. In my view, such films should either forego the accents entirely, or be performed in the language native to the setting. Why hamstring great actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Willem Dafoe with awkward German accents? I know the answer to these questions is “because money”, but that doesn’t entirely fly nowadays, not when Inglorious Basterds can be told in three different languages, make linguistic minutiae a major plot point, and do well at the box office. The film has a great cast, but surely, if it absolutely had to be set in Hamburg, excellent German-speaking actors could have been located. Again, I know the answer is that if the film has big stars it will make more money. However, A Most Wanted Man is not a James Bond-style blockbuster; it’s more in the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy/The American slow-burn spy movie mode. It is hugely focused on the nitty gritty of the spy world and its language issue hurts that sensibility. The other problem is that A Most Wanted Man isn’t really a “Hamburg” film. It doesn’t exploit its location as well as Corbijin’s last film used the Italian countryside. The film could have easily been reworked to take place in a large English-speaking city (like London or New York).

I apologize for the rant, and I know those complaints aren’t entirely fair, but they always leave suspension of disbelief-wrecking questions scratching in the back of my mind.

A Most Wanted Man concerns a secret branch of German intelligence, led by senior agent Günther Bachmann, attempting to track illegal, Chechen immigrant Issa Karpov and determine what his ultimate goals are. The plot spirals out from there to include altruistic lawyer Annabel Richter, who wants to ensure Issa’s Safety, and banker Tommy Brue, who holds the ill-gotten fortune of Issa’s father. Other German agents, and American operative Martha Sullivan, push Bachmann and his team to make an arrest. The film’s greatest virtue is that, for 99% of its running time, there are not good guys or bad guys. There are simply people with conflicting agendas trying to maneuver around each other in the safest way possible. The film tries to goose this a little by being coy about Karpov’s intentions, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that he is just a confused young man, trying to make the best of his heretofore messed up life. Another easy route would be to turn Bachmann and his colleagues into government-sponsored baddies, but that’s fortunately not the case either. They employ extralegal techniques to get what they want, but it is clear Bachmann and crew are trying to wade through the moral morass of spydom without getting completely dirty.

Everyone performs admirably. Hoffman plays the worn-down spy type well. Just by looking at him you can tell from his hunched-over posture, rumpled clothes, and unkempt hair that he values his job more than anything else in his life. Wright crafts an interesting character in a short amount of time. There’s a creepy perkiness to Agent Sullivan that masks her darker nature. And newcomer Dobrygin portrays his character’s haunted, distant nature well also. Unfortunately, McAdams and Dafoe get a bit tripped up on their accents. It also doesn’t help that they get the worst of the expository dialogue that occasionally plagues the film. I wonder if Corbijn took that “F” Cinemascore for The American too personally and decided to make this film less elusive. Speaking of The American, A Most Wanted Man does not match the visual highs of that film. There are a few nice moments, like a The French Connection­-style use of a subway and a long-take conversation set in the Hamburg harbor, but overall it would be difficult to tell that this film is from the director of Control and The American. The only time the film comes alive pictorially is during Annabel’s interrogation, where Corbijn uses shifting focus to good effect.

Review: A Touch of Sin

Directed by Jia Zhangke
Starring Jiang Wu (Dahai), Wang Baoqiang (Zhou San), Zhao Tao (Xiao Yu), and Lanshan Luo (Xiao Hui)
Written by Jia Zhangke
Cinematography by Nelson Yu Lik-wai
Edited by Matthieu Laclau and Xudong Lin
Released in 2013

Whenever I watch an older American movie with a black heart like Double Indemnity or Sunset Boulevard, my reaction is usually one of bewilderment. I often wonder how the Hays Code brigade didn’t catch and stamp out the darkness hidden within these films. I suppose they were too busy going through a checklist to notice the barely hidden themes. I got a similar vibe from Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin. The film follows four different people who are pushed to extreme actions by poverty, corporate malfeasance, and sexism. Technically, they all connect, but only in small ways, and not with the overbearing nature of other hyperlink films.

Jia's film is so angry about the state of modern China, that I’m surprised it was made at all. I know Jia is an independent filmmaker, so he isn't subject to the same rules as most Chinese films are, but I’m still not sure how the film's production went untroubled by government interference. Perhaps the censors knew that blocking Jia, an internationally-renowned filmmaker, would bring them more trouble than it was worth. Unfortunately, the film was never given a release in mainland China and the Central Propaganda Department demanded a media-blackout on the film. Also unfortunately, the film had an underwhelming run in the U.S. After doing well on the festival circuit, it won the screenplay award at Cannes, it was well-reviewed here, but was somewhat forgotten by the end of year. That’s a shame, because the film’s politics are hugely relevant to America as well. I think one reason the film did poorly box office-wise here is that there a few situations that make it seem impenetrably Chinese. While it’s true that there is a parade of Chinese symbols within the film (a statue of Mao and a portrait of Mary share the frame in the beginning, and the animals of the Chinese zodiac figure prominently), the basics of the four tales are universally understandable.

A Touch of Sin perfectly captures a troubling mood I’ve been worrying about the past year. That things have gotten so bad economically and socially, that the only way for the average person (i.e. not a politician or businessman) to enact any kind of significant change on the world is through violence. On paper, the film sounds repetitive, but Zhangke twists each tale just enough that the film remains interesting throughout its full runtime. Dahai attacks the CEO of the corporation that is screwing over his village when no one else will work with him. Zhou San has been so ground down by poverty that he shows little emotion towards his family and only livens up when committing acts of crime. Xiao Yu enacts wuxia-style vengeance after being treated as a prostitute. And Xiao Hu subverts the movie's structure by internalizing the violence. Each story walks a tricky line between cathartic and horrifying. The stereotypical action setup of the first story, complete with Dahai swaggering through town with music blaring behind him, is immediately undercut by the gruesomeness of his actions, which Jia shows in explicit detail, and the ordinary nature of Dahai's targets. The second story goes through two, whiplash-inducing shifts in tone. Yu's plight is built up in a low-key and realistic way, rockets to an unreal confrontation, and then immediately snaps back into reality, as Yu silently walks around haunted and covered in blood.

Cinematographer Yu Lik-wai transforms China into a near-dystopia. The exteriors have a dull grayness to them, and the interiors are either blandly white or bathed in neon. Ancient, crumbling houses and temples sit uncomfortably next to ultra-modern cities and train stations. Vegetation is sparse, confined to a small village overlooked by a huge city or to being sold in a half-finished airport. Everything seems on the verge of collapse or sterilization, a few obscene graffiti tags away from A Clockwork Orange or a handful of fluorescent lights away from 2001: A Space Odyssey. These settings make the characters extreme actions more understandable. Who wouldn't go crazy in a place like this? The sad thing is that these images aren't that far away from reality, if anything Jia downplayed their distressing nature. Just do a Google image search for "Foxconn" if you want to see how necessary Jia's film is.

2 Years 2 Late: Final Thoughts on the BFI Top 50

Well this post is no longer relevant, but I just recently finished my marathon of the most venerable of lists so I thought I’d chime in on the discussions that happened back in 2012.

First, it is mind-boggling amazing that all 50 of these films are easily available in one form or another. Sure, there are a few that have poor home video releases (Pather Panchali, Andrei Rublev, Stalker, The Mirror), but there are solid versions of the Tarkovsky films if you have the means to go the import route or have no compulsions about piracy. And Pather Panchali, along with the rest of the Apu Trilogy, is undergoing restoration and awaiting a Criterion release that will surely be one of the major film-related events of the upcoming year. For the most part though, these classics are available fully restored and on extras-packed Blu-rays. In addition, with the rise of disc-by-mail and streaming services these films are available at very little cost. You can basically go through the first year of film school with a few extra bucks and a lot of free time.

As much as I sometimes wish I could have witnessed the birth of cinema or been present for the various new waves that rocked the film world in the 60’s, I am incredibly glad I was born in an era where becoming a film buff is this easy. It took me about a year and a half to go through all 50 films. I could have easily cut that to a year, and possibly whittled it down to as little as six months if I had really wanted to push myself. If I was born two generations ago and wanted to do a similar project, I would have either had to have gone to film school, in which case I would be watching beat-up, incomplete 16 mm prints of the classics, or been at the mercy of repertory screenings. It would have taken me a lifetime to do this marathon.

Let’s say I was born in 1930 and died in the year 2000. There are many films on the BFI list that were banned, ignored, or partially destroyed at some point in their existence. If I had died at the end of the 20^th century it would have been totally impossible for me to see complete prints of Battleship Potemkin or Metropolis, and, unless I was an academic or film critic, the opportunity to see films never given a wide release in the U.S., such as Andrei Rublev or L’Atalante, would have been nonexistent. Basically what I’m saying is that this is an awesome time to be a film fan.

Second, I would like to defend the existence of this list. I know I’ve been using BFI and Sight and Sound as if those organizations were solely responsible for the list, that’s not true. 800+ critics, academics, and festival programmers were asked to list 10 films. There were no rules about what films could be chosen. The list is simply a consensus based around which films got mentioned the most. The common criticisms of the list are that it is stodgy, that there aren’t enough modern films, that there aren’t enough comedies and that it is unnecessary and people should be free to discover cinema however they want to. To the first charge, if you think the list is too stodgy or that the films on it are boring, then you either haven’t watched any of the films listed or mistakenly think old = boring. Any list that jumps between a tender Japanese drama, a few silent epics, a huge sci-fi spectacle, a proto-revisionist western, and strange dream movies cannot possibly be considered boring, and all that is just in the top 10. As for the other complaints, all of those are addressed if you expand the list to the top 250 or start poking through the individual ballots. Just in the top 50, there are a few modern (let’s define that as being released after the 80’s) films, such as Close-Up, Sátántangó, In the Mood for Love, and Mulholland Drive, and a handful of comedies like City Lights, Some Like it Hot, The General, and Singin’ in the Rain. Looking further down the list reveals films only a few years old such as The Tree of Life, There Will Be Blood, and WALL-E; perennially popular titles like E.T. and The Wizard of Oz; and even more comedies like Dr. Strangelove and Annie Hall. My only complaint is that there aren’t nearly enough animated films with only four in the top 250 (Spirited Away, A Tale of Tales, WALL-E, and My Neighbor Totoro). That’s a shame and I was surprised not to see any of the movies from the golden age of Disney, any of the Looney Tunes shorts (my vote would be for Duck Amuck), some more Eastern European stop motion (like Jan Švankmajer’s Alice), or some very early animation such as The Adventures of Prince Achmed or The Cameraman’s Revenge.

Finally, I know these lists can sometimes be seen as rigid or as having a monopoly on film history, but I don’t think that’s the case. The BFI list is simply a suggestion, a starting guide for people who want to learn the basics of film style, history, and criticism. And as that, I find the list useful. Setting the goal of watching everything in the top 50 forced me to watch, read about, and ruminate on films that weren’t a high priority in my personal queue. I doubt I would have seen, or even heard about, many of the films on the list if no type of film canon existed.

At the beginning of my marathon, I thought, by the end, I would reach a plateau of cinematic knowledge. That was silly. While the films listed provided a good overview of film history and a sampling of the wide variety of cinematic styles, there are still mountains of stuff I have yet to experience. For example, I have yet to view anything by the following directors (take a big breath): Howard Hawks, Alain Resnais, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Demy, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, Max Ophüls, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Terrence Malick, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Luis Buñuel, and Samuel Fuller. Every day I learn about a new film, director, or movement; hear about a forgotten masterpiece that’s being restored; or read an opposing view of a film I had dismissed. I could watch a film a day for the rest of my life and not see all that’s out there…

 Here’s to that.  

New Horizons: Sightseers

A series looking at recent films that fit into the cult, the crazy, the under-appreciated, and the just plain weird. 

Directed by Ben Wheatley

Written by Alice Lowe, Steve Oram, and Amy Jump

Starring Steve Oram (Chris) and Alice Lowe (Tina)

Cinematography by Laurie Rose
Edited by Robin Hill, Amy Jump, and Ben Wheatley

Released in 2012

Sightseers is what would happen if the dailies of a quirky indie dramedy and a slasher film produced by the same crew got mixed up and edited into one film. If the creators were crafty, they could create a trailer that falsely promises a Little Miss Sunshine-esque adventure. The hypothetical trailer would set up the film’s protagonist, Tina, as bored and unfulfilled over still having to live with her domineering, barely-there mother. The following trailer beats would show Tina and her boyfriend Chris setting out on the road to get away from it all and find themselves, and then a montage of the wacky places (tramlines, a pencil museum, a viaduct) and people (a group of shamans, an uptight author, an inventor) they meet. And the trailer could end hinting at the big, self-actualizing moment that caps the film.

Of course, in between those trailer-ready moments… murders happen. The movie shifts from a low-key, slice-of-life thing to a pitch black comedy when Chris “accidentally” backs into a man who had previously been seen littering. Wheatley shoots the scene in slow-motion in a way that emphasizes both the horror and the gross-out humor of the moment. Any problem this might cause to Chris and Tina’s road trip is resolved hilariously quickly with a shot of them walking out of a police station. Eventually, Chris’s true nature is revealed, when he murders a fellow caravan traveler for bragging about his writing skill. Tina quickly finds out about this when she picks up the camera that Chris had stolen from his victim. She transitions from confused girlfriend to willing accomplice a bit too quickly for my tastes, but Lowe’s murderous glint saves the movie from fumbling that point too badly. The film then moves into a Bonnie and Clyde/Badlands/True Romance mode with Chris and Tina going on a spree, killing people for the slightest, sometimes imagined, infraction, and generally indulging in whatever whims they have.

This is where my problems with the movie started. Wheatley wrings a lot of humor from the tension between the laid-back and genre sides of the film. In addition, the mental calculus the two main characters use to justify their crimes is often hilarious. Chris validates one killing by stating his victim is “not a person, he’s a Daily Mail reader!” He also invokes medieval feudalism as an excuse to murder current members of the upper-class, like he’s correcting a cosmic wrong by avenging a past life version of himself. However, there’s not much reason to care about the two outside of the fact that they are both serial killers. Oram and Lowe work hard to sell the material. Oram is convincing as both an unassuming dude and a righteous murderer, and has just the right face to switch easily between the two sides. In addition, the glee with which Lowe manipulates Chris and takes to her new found hobby is a sight to behold. Overall though, I left the movie feeling that the two were a bit thin, and that I hadn't been given a compelling enough reason to follow them.

Visually, the film is a bit mixed. Wheatley, and cinematographer Laurie Rose, make great use of the U.K. countryside. Through their lens, it’s either an indistinct mess of caravan spots and tacky restaurants or a foreboding mass of rocky outcrops. There are times when the film recalls Nicolas Winding Refn’s trippy Viking epic Valhalla Rising and makes the landscapes look positively sinister. And Wheatley goes all out during a few sequences of nightmare imagery. Chris’s first purposeful kill is a highlight, with the film cutting between Tina dancing with a group of pagans at night and Chris hunched over and stalking his prey while back-lit by an ominous sunrise. There's a teasing ambiguity to the sequence due to being intercut with shots of Chris and Tina in bed. Oram shows off his physical acting chops by transforming into a demonic presence with just a slight change in posture and a menacing smirk. Unfortunately, the film suffered from being shot digitally. For a film with such a dark subject matter, it often has a shiny, clean look that doesn’t quite fit. A grungier style would have been more appropriate.

Sightseers is ultimately a bit slack, with a few dazzling moments and performances that manage to keep it engaging. I will give the film credit for refusing to turn the main couple into heroes. Their attacks are meant to be more disturbing than cathartic, and their targets aren’t the easy caricatures seen in the similar God Bless America.

About the Blog

The best way for me to explain my hopes for this blog is to answer a series of questions.

Why should I listen to your opinion about film?

I don’t have a good answer to that. I don’t have a degree in film, I’m not involved in the film industry, and I have never written for a major, or minor, newspaper or website. However, I do have a passion for film, have been watching around a movie per day for the past two years, and frequently devour film writing. I also recently completed a project watching, reading about, and writing about every film in the most recent BFI Top 50 Greatest Films list. That project has given me a solid critical base on which to discuss other films, so I feel like I am ready to actually get involved in the online film criticism community.

What will you not write about?

Hopefully, I don’t come off as snobby here, but everything I’m about to mention is already done on every major website, by people more knowledgeable in those areas than me, so don’t expect to see much of the following here:

•  Film news: This includes box office reports, casting and directing rumors, and announcements of movie release dates. Plenty of websites cover that information and I don’t have much to add to the discussion.
• Lists: I won’t be doing any lists like “5 X movies you’ve never heard of!” or “10 underrated/overrated X”. Again, it’s done much better elsewhere, and I wouldn’t be able to say anything meaningful about a film in the space of a typical list blurb.
•  Grades/Scores: I won’t be attaching grades, numbers, or stars to any of my pieces. I’m not vilifying the practice entirely, but I find that scores can shift focus away from the actual content of reviews and allow people to make weird arguments like: “X movie got a B and Y movie got an A? This is an outrage!”
• Coverage of Recent Blockbusters: I’m not an official film critic, which means I won’t be invited to press screenings, which means I’m paying for whatever I review, which means I have to be highly selective about which movies I discuss (especially for films currently in theaters). I’ve had my fill of blockbusters at the moment, and if I see another CGI city get destroyed I’ll go insane.

What will you write about?

This question is harder for me to answer. I’ll give an overview of the starting series I have in mind:

• Soviet Bloc(Busters): An overview and discussion of films from Eastern Europe (mainly Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and Romania). Outside of a few select directors, this area has been underserved by popular criticism. I hope to correct that and fill in some of my own gaps. I know the name implies this category will be limited to films released between the end of WWII and the fall of communism, but it’s simply the cleverest name I could come up with. I’ll be talking about everything from silents to contemporary films.
• New Horizons: In the spirit of Scott Tobias’ excellent series The New Cult Canon, here I’ll be covering the cult, the oddities, the underappreciated, and the just plain weird. I’ll mainly stick to films released from 2010 and beyond, because the latest entries in Tobias’ series are from 2009 and I want to delve into uncharted territory. However, I’ll probably dip into the aughts and the nineties if I find my limitation to the current decade too restrictive. Also, if I stumble across bizarre, older films, and they haven’t been extensively discussed already, I’ll consider reviewing them as well.
• Personal Odyssey: I watched film historian Mark Cousins’ documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey about a year ago. The series has received some criticism for being too broad, drawing a line between commercial and artistic filmmaking, and for Cousins’ voice, which I find charming. However, the series does an admirable job of shifting the focus of film history away from America, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and Italy. Cousins brings up multiple films I’d never heard of, sometimes from countries I stupidly didn’t realize had a film industry. This series will be a chance to catch up with those films, and will give me an excuse to cannibalize some of the reviews I wrote for my BFI project, which are currently too scattered to post as is.  
• Interactive Cinema: Comparing films to similarly-themed videogames and working out how the two art forms accomplish the same tasks with different tools. Example: Gravity vs. Faster than Light: How Tension is created in Film and Video Games.
• Silence is Golden: I highly enjoyed all of the silent films I watched as part of my BFI project. I want to continue discovering silent cinema here. 

Outside of those series, I’ll be doing basic reviews for films currently in theaters and recent stuff that has just popped up on Netflix or been released on home video. I’m relying on other critics to decide what is worth my time, so my reviews will mainly be focused on arthouse and foreign films with the occasional documentary, comedy, or blockbuster thrown in for variety. For basic reviews, I won’t be spoiling anything, but expect spoilers in longer pieces.

What kinds of films do you like?

That’s difficult for me to answer. I could say I don’t like horror films, musicals, or rom-coms, but some of my favorite films belong to those genres (Eraserhead, Singin’ in the Rain, Before Sunset). I know it sounds like I am unfairly harsh towards mainstream releases and I apologize for coming off that way. It’s just that one of the main reasons I watch movies is to experience something different. That’s not limited to plot or surprise twists. Through film I want to encounter different places, times, realities, characters, stories, styles, and images. I’m attracted to strong, unique visions.* In other words, I want to see the world through a new set of eyes. I hate to be mean to the mainstream, but commercial filmmaking, and blockbusters in particular, have been offering me that experience less and less.**

What’s with the name?

There’s an okay Japanese Yakuza film from the 60’s with some great moments called A Colt Is My Passport. That is clearly one of the best film titles in all of cinema history (matched only by Twitch of the Death Nerve and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key). I slapped the word “film” onto the front of that title and was happy to discover the parallels between how passports allow us to travel to different countries and how films allow us to travel to different places, times, and realities.

Finally, I’ll end with a few thoughts on general areas of film.

•  Due to the domination of narrative film, there is sometimes confusion over what exactly film is and how it is different from other art forms. Film does not technically need dialogue, characters, extensive stories, or even sound. Films create emotions and inspire thought through the construction (lighting, framing, camera movement, placement of objects and people) and juxtaposition (editing) of images. As silent and experimental films such as Man with a Movie Camera, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Koyaanisqatsi, and La Jeteé prove a memorable experience can be created without the use of the elements mentioned earlier. This is why the old Hollywood maxim is “Show, don’t tell.” and not the other way around.
•  It’s okay to be confused. Films that are ambiguous, distant and observational, or slow often get pinged for being boring or pretentious.  That’s unfair and leads to certain types of films being ignored commercially. Ambiguity can lead to more active viewing and allow for interesting post-viewing discussion. Slow, distant, or mundane films can often induce trance-like states or cause introspection, which is great, not every film needs to be hyperactive or easily digestible after a single viewing.
• Representation is not endorsement. Meaning when a film shows a person committing a crime or behaving badly, it does not mean the people behind the film endorse such behavior. Also, it can be cathartic to confront taboo or controversial issues through film. It doesn't mean a film is bad just because it deals with tough or depressing issues. 
• Subjectivity vs. objectivity in film criticism. Because everyone comes to a film with a different set of experiences, it means that all film criticism is at some level subjective. However, it is not okay to just simply post opinions. The ideal form of film criticism uses evidence within the film to to explain why a particular emotional or intellectual response was generated.

* Note, this doesn’t mean that I’m willing to give every auteur vision a pass. Michael Bay’s films have some of the strongest directorial personalities out there, and I’m repelled by them. This also doesn’t mean that a journeyman director isn’t capable of creating a strong vision. Ted Kotcheff, a journeyman director if there ever was one, created one of the most dark, twisted visions of a place I’ve ever seen in Wake in Fright

**Other note, this doesn’t mean that I like every indie and foreign film I see. If you read any website that does regular reviews, you know that three or four middling, unremarkable indie relationship dramas or horror films are released every week. If anything, I’m more upset with the state of indie filmmaking than I am with the commercial side. Indie filmmakers are usually free from corporate-restraints and are often too eager to do nothing with that freedom. Also, I really hate how I’ve used “foreign” here. When most people conjure up what foreign film means to them, they probably think of something in the social realist mode. That is false. Every type of film that exists in America exists in almost every other country. It’s just that similar films get brought over here.

Favorite Films

Here is a list of my favorite films in alphabetical order, just to provide a quick overview of my taste in movies. 

Before Sunset

2001: A Space Odyssey

A Clockwork Orange

A Touch of Sin

Apocalypse Now

Before Midnight

Before Sunrise

Before Sunset

Blade Runner

Blue Velvet

Chinatown

Daisies

Close-Up

Daisies

Drive

Eraserhead

Faces

Fight Club

Girl Walk//All Day

Hot Fuzz

House

In the Mood for Love

Letter Never Sent

Inside Llewyn Davis

Kill Bill Vol. 1

Kill Bill Vol. 2

Koyannisqatsi

Letter Never Sent

Man with a Movie Camera

Metropolis

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Mulholland Drive

My Neighbor Totoro

Stalker

Persona

Princess Mononoke

Psycho

Pulp Fiction

Punch-Drunk Love

Seven Samurai

Singin’ in the Rain

Stalker

Sunset Boulevard

Superbad

The Loneliest Planet

The Battle of Algiers

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Loneliest Planet

The Master

The Purple Rose of Cairo

The Shining

Toy Story 1

Toy Story 2

Toy Story 3

Ugetsu Monagatari

Wake in Fright

Valhalla Rising

Wake in Fright

Walkabout