The ‘Completely Indefensible Film I Happen To Love’ [Batman & Robin (1997)]

From http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/18700000/Batman-Robin-logo-batman-and-robin-1997-18774758-1280-720.jpg

Dir. Joel Schumacher

United Kingdom-USA

Film #24 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

With this review, all my credibility will probably dissipate, but I defended the film in this article regardless. Just don't call it a guilty pleasure, please, I love this film in its stupidity sincerely.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/12689/in-defence-of-batman-and-robin-%E2%80%93-1997/

The ‘Solid But Flawed Film’ of Cinema [Cutthroat Island (1995)]

From http://wallpoper.com/images/00/35/65/27/cutthroat-island_00356527.jpg

Dir. Renny Harlin

France-Germany-Italy-USA

Film #31 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

From http://www.fernbyfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/cutthroat-island-1995.jpg

Fantasy and pulp storytelling, the kind that existed before cinema and comics in literature, is a vast ocean, not to create a pun, that I have only sunk my toes in into but has provided a vast amount of imagination and sincerity that is still effecting even to someone like me from this century. Cutthroat Island was clearly an attempt to evoke fiction from the past through pirate fantasy, and it immediately brings up this fact and reminds me how all of this entertainment fully connects together in a web. It starts with mythology, once worshiped as actual religious belief from the Greeks to the Vikings, and is now at the point of superhero films in dozens in the summer season. One has to wonder however if the mass audience is aversive to films that draw on classical storytelling for the adventure genre – not coloured by current fads, no hot celebrities, no cool new band doing the soundtrack or McDonald’s tie-ins – with only the Indiana Jones, and to an extent Pirates of the Caribbean, films being the exception. Considering what happened with John Carter [Of Mars] (2012) last year, which I did see at the cinema and quite liked, it is surprising that a film like that failed miserably at the box office. Cutthroat Island has major flaws, but to think that this died so badly at the box office as it did, ending the production company Carolco Pictures through bankruptcy*, and was critically mauled is baffling. We get successful historical dramas, but pulpy, rollicking adventures with the few exceptions seem to be financial poison.

From http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/dvd/lionsgate/Cutthroat_1_lg._V219329200_.jpg

After her father dies, the daughter of a pirate captain Morgan (Geena Davis) takes control of his ship and goes on a journey to collect together three pieces of a map that will locate Cutthroat Island and the hoardings of Spanish gold hidden there. It is an exceptionally lavish production; barring some obvious (and horrifically dated) superimpositions of actors falling from large heights, which seems an odd mistake to have in the film in hindsight, this feature stands up in terms of technical and visual quality onscreen. One wishes this sort of production still existed even, with elaborate stunts and constructed sets like pirate galleons for the actors to fight in and around. It is the kind of craftsmanship that feels lost in a lot of mainstream cinema now, and it is regrettable that this sort of production value was easily dismissed back then. Great looking films are still made now, but there are many that look poor in comparison, bland, grey and/or digitally touched up. The only film I’ve seen that used current aesthetic tools properly was John Carter and that did a swan dive theatrically. If there is a major failing with Cutthroat Island, which was clearly a passion project for Renny Harlin and his wife Davis in how hard both of them work, it’s that the adventure in the film does not have enough friction or suspense to it to fully engage. This is a more realistic take on pirates – still a romp, but it doesn’t have a giant Kraken or an undead crew – and while the heroes are elaborate in their look or personalities, Davis as a strong female lead and Matthew Modine as the potential love interest in a relationship where she carries the sword, there is little threat to them to work from. While he has played two of the most evil men in history, Skeletor and Richard Nixon, Frank Langella is not given a lot to do as the evil pirate captain also after the treasure, and neither his crew or the British colonial soldiers after Morgan are much of an opposing force. Without the supernatural tone of the Pirates of the Caribbean series or the dramatic incidents every page from a good piece of adventure literature, Cutthroat Island cannot completely sustain one’s interest in the narrative.

From http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cutthroat-island-1995-frank-langella-pic-5.jpg

Nonetheless it has more virtues to it than its reputation has suggested. The sense of quality to the film is still there regardless of its imperfections. It feels sad to think that the epic yarn, rather than the historical epic that usually does well at the box office still, rarely succeeds when a new one is made or ends up being compromised to reach a wider audience. This is even more a problem as, thanks to audio books, I’m acquiring a sweet tooth for this type of storytelling but there’s few cinematic equivalents to feast on. It also feels like a perfect film to end this season on as it shows that what can qualify as the ‘worst’ can also be damned not necessarily for bad quality but because it is not in the current taste of the audience of the time, shows the follies of marketing and budget spending (I was going to cover Heaven’s Gate (1980) for this final review, but that can wait another day), and the fickleness of what succeeds and what is savaged in reviews. I am not suggesting Cutthroat Island is a great film, and I’ve yet to see a film where Renny Harlin goes beyond being a solid filmmaker and punches up into great vulgar filmmaking, but this whole season has felt more like a prodding of old pop culture to try and see what people were thinking about with cinema even in a decade (the nineties) I grew up in as a child. With Cutthroat Island it’s probably the lesser of two evils when put against some films that are far more worse, and were likely covered on this blog even outside of this season; at least Cutthroat Island has some production quality to it while I have seen some utterly unfortunate films even in my day-to-day filming habit.

*Releasing Show Girls (1995) the same year probably didn’t help either.

From http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/32500000/Cutthroat-Island-geena-davis-32511931-1200-802.jpg

The ‘Lower Rung Video Nasty’ of Cinema [Don’t Go Into The Woods Alone (1981)]

From http://c3.cduniverse.ws/resized/250x500/movie/399/6994399.jpg

Dir. James Bryan

USA

Film #3 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

The following review is another addition to my growing amount of reviews of Video Nasty films. They are a divisive group of films.

Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/12164/don%E2%80%99t-go-in-the-woods-1981-director-james-bryon/

The ‘Exploitation Movie’ of ‘Religious Versus Literary Controversy’ [International Gorillay (1990)]

From http://www.nanarland.com/Chroniques/internationalguerillas/jaquette.jpg

Dir. Jan Mohammed

Pakistan

Film #30 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

This review has been long is gestation, since last year before this season came about; I have even read the Salman Rushdie novel The Satanic Verses, central to the existence of this film, to give me background to this infamous ‘Lollywood’ film from Pakistan. When author Rushdie first published The Satanic Verses, a magic realist story that tackled the divide between someone of West Asian descent and a secondary identity of being British, and of the divide between religious belief and doubt, he provoked outrage from Muslin communities for the book, particularly a segment based on the prophet Muhammad where lines are added into the Islamic rulings of there being three goddesses who can be worshiped, the ‘satanic verses’, which are pulled out of the scripture by the messenger of Allah immediately afterwards. Along with other aspects that could be seen as damning or undermining Islamic belief, he would eventually have a fatwā placed on his head for his death by the late spiritual leader of Iran Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A film like this, when you review it, would make it difficult for some to hold their tongues about their religious beliefs or the concept of freedom of speech, but in hindsight I may have over researched for this review. Rushdie’s novel was exceptional, and it helps to know the book that caused such an outrage it lead to a murder and attempted assassination attempts, but International Gorillay is far from a serious film despite its background and the hatred within it for Rushdie. It was made merely as a commercial film and the idea of cashing on the controversy as it did makes it a true exploitation movie. It’s also demented.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1rJV3ND8iMQLzEHIMREJ8KFMxIKP599uiQzi1HO9fWOPaRDB7nQjbbM07UBZSmq81OzkUouBdzKIC2uY5XVoHxfG1AzKIosLHMKtIXaB4pSkY0SoSFBZtTE_piESeSQqzjBKf5FffNs-P/s1600/IG07.jpg

When the Islamic world is terrorised by the evil Salman Rushdie, a Bond-like villain in sharp clothes, his own personal army of goons and torture techniques including forcing the Muslim prisoners to listen to The Satanic Verses in audio book form in jails, three Muslim men of the same family, after relatives are shot down by corrupt policemen during an anti-Rushdie protest, go abroad to kill Rushdie for the sake of the Islamic (and Pakistani) people. When the title credit, in a two and a half hour film, appears fifty minutes in, you realise International Gorillay is very different from other films. It’s condemnation of Rushdie, in the countless proclamations against him to his face, may actually be awkward even for Muslin viewers who were offended by his novel, and when it’s in the content of a Lollywood film, where there are musical numbers even during the final confrontation with the villain, and action scenes that would make Italian genre films like Strike Commando (1987) look like Twilight, and it causes more problems with the message. Make the film as erratic in the technical side as it is and in the ideas onscreen as well and your brain turns into the consistency of mash potato. The version of the film I saw was atrocious, a video rip which had moments where it seemed the frame had to be fixed like one would see happen by accident in a cinema, but technically this film is off as well. This is especially the case in the editing; seconds in the narrative pace seem to be missing, where it transitions into the next explosion without any establishing set-up, and a protagonist is suddenly in another place or switches from having a gun to a crossbow to mow down henchmen. The repetition of footage in-between ongoing sequences is almost avant garde but it also baffles and undermines how one puts together images to create a juxtaposition. It’s on the opposite side of Ninja Terminator (1985), the first film reviewed in this blog season, in that the placing together of images in the film actually undermine the concept of editing and scrambles how you a as a viewer connect images to create a succession of narrative. It is the film where everyone gets a reaction shot every time something significant happens, usually with a smash zoom to their face. It is like a high budgeted version of Turkish Star Wars (1982) with far more action choreography – explosions, motorbike chases with rockets, helicopters – and even has a ‘rip-off’ aspect by having the protagonists, for no reason, attempt one of their raids on Rushdie in homemade, Adam West-era Batman costumes.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXE7JLq9SBaASTAYoj8cE6xqo-GGkGSm5378KdH9dyi8g4vz7KrwnNdCl1TLqiPv3QOkTX-x-i7tLmBWZTPd2Z1zHRcydnu0rBmrvJSCFnbh-Rj9MDV3ROb3oufd9xF1JAYl25abfBqq-v/s1600/IG02.jpg

International Gorillay and its exploitation cinema mentality against its reverence with the Islamic religion do not mix very well. It is a film where Rushdie has in his arsenal identical versions of himself, musical numbers about the ‘bullet of love’ with a gun being fired as part of the chorus percussion of one song, and guitar hot licks from the American, straight-to-video action films made around this time. This does not gel with the praise of Allah and His Prophet Muhammad at all, as would happen in a Western film which tried to have this type of tone with a heavy Christian message, or any message that is supposed to be taken seriously. The film even has comedy relief in the form of a bumbling Saudi Arabian sheik and his right hand man who work with Rushdie and have comic hijinks, including someone having giant, yellow glasses with miniature windscreen wipers on them. It doesn’t help though as well that the film is anti-Semitic, with a Jewish femme fatale with psychic eyes and her brother on Rushdie’s side, adding unnecessary fire to the real life conflict between Judaism and Islam, within a pulp film. Even something like Turkish Star Wars managed to avoid this, celebrating the virtues of Islam and Turkish heroes while not trodding on other religions for cheap effect and going as far as having Christianity part of its mythology. The ending, which I won’t spoil, is on YouTube, but its moment of divine intervention does not fully impact you unless you’ve seen the whole feature, seen the musical number beforehand proclaiming the virtues of Allah and seen it in its proper context. Then it feels like, regardless of your religious and political beliefs, like you’ve been struck by lightning yourself.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3B11IdP12YxZV4NocLMxfRiVbQLLW5sjRoclZSqsko4uqTDzR9aXqj9CaA92dtuITOzWc2CY1iXsvoCZonCwuygZgSj2Y4tD1v6kXmzLNIK0f5t8VQ8TMDsfIzHSxwSL2LYiDi4jirc-G/s1600/IG01.jpg

The British Board of Film Classification banned this film from being released in the United Kingdom at first, but it was Salman Rushdie himself who persuaded them to change the ruling, under the belief of freedom to speech even for works negative of him, and because the film was so abstract from reality that no one would take it seriously. In The Satanic Verses, one of the two protagonists is a megastar of Bollywood cinema, and while this is a Pakistani film, International Gorillay feels like something Rushdie could have created for the story depending on where the plot of that book would have went to. Historically, despite the fatwā placed on his head and protests against his knighthood in the 2000s, Rushdie is an acclaimed author, while I only found out about this film because of The Satanic Verses controversy, the only large group who think about this film a great deal being a French website called Nanarland, which I wish I could read in its French text, who celebrate ‘bad’ cinema. This review could easily, by accident, become an insulting and patronising take on Islamic religion, but while the historical background of Rushdie is important to get more out of it, International Gorillay, while trying to give some cathartic entertainment to offended people, was never meant to be taken seriously and cannot be taken seriously. It’s entertaining, certainly, but it’s also bizarre, in its own unique world regardless of its context as a mainstream film from Pakistan. It’ll be impossible to forget it from all the films I’ve seen from this season.

From http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/international-guerillas/w448/international-guerillas.jpg?1308262039

Mini-Review: The Brothers (1947)

From http://www.iceposter.com/thumbs/MOV_83241ce2_b.jpg

Dir. David MacDonald

UK

A young woman (Patricia Roc) is sent to a family, consisting of a father and two sons, to be their maid and housekeeper, only for the rivalry with another clan and the older brother’s (Duncan Macrae) obsession with her to completely effect the lives of everyone involved. Set in Scotland in 1900, it evokes the fog covered hills of the land immenselt, a closed-in community depicted rich in culture and adding layers to the film; it is unfortunate the print the UK DVD distributor Park Circus used suggests that a less-than-pristine version of this British film is all that is left. Sadly the film’s narrative – which includes clan rivalries, the bootlegging of whiskey, and strained relationships of brotherly and romantic love – feels less than fully formed in less than ninety minutes and becomes stale melodrama.

The Brothers has a lot to potentially like, but there is aspects, that appear in British cinema, which undermine its quality. It has a charm, a tone of down-to-earth bluntness (and vulgarity) which is a great virtue of my country’s cinema. The unique touches of the setting, the use of Gaelic (?) words in the characters’ speak, and how the hatred between two clans is officially settled through a ritualistic act of insulting the other family as poetically damning as possible, before going to a challenge involving rowing boats, adds character that gives the film personality beyond a narrative. That also includes a bizarre but gruesome practice by the characters involving rope and a single silver fish. Sadly, as is a great problem with British cinema, is that it feels stilted especially in the narrative and acting at times. With a deep history to work from, a nationalistic streak of matter of factness (and black humour) and a visual beauty to our isles’ landscape that shine in great films, the narrative itself doesn’t life up the weight of these qualities as well as it should, and for the great acting in the film there are also some that feel lacking in dramatic weight and somewhat cold consider the drama of the story. This sounds like a cruel view of The Brothers, but when a film like it is merely alright, ok, not great, this does come to mind and nags at it.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjADIK-H9Z55kMQXKQwm_zhhMmhW3CHWiSdcoC4KTpSUdfeQjNW_KT_oNv0vnbEPJM6_Hq7UbetGP0ap8X21LvBNrd2K3J7vqnlZyQrfHh_xURi7jj2W0Wvs-nY7nzGbmaTYlZeGDsO9c/s1600/The+Brothers.jpg

The ‘Divisive Film, in Its Physical Existence in Your Possession’ of Cinema [Mortuary (2005)]

From http://images.esellerpro.com/2195/I/229/80/abd4414.jpg

Dir. Tobe Hooper

USA

Film #29 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

From http://torrentszona.com/torrents/images/Morg_Mortuary_2005_BDRip_1285557700-123502.jpg

Reading Paul Schrader’s article for Film Comment, ‘Cannon Fodder’, which is his selected cannon of cinema’s best films and his beliefs on the canon as an idea, I ponder how one, as an individual film viewer, is supposed to treat the virtues of cinema. How do you gauge the qualities of a film? What is better, a film great in technical quality and high ideas, or one which causes you to laugh or to cry? What does one do with the idea that, as was dubbed the concept of the ‘auteur’, some directors have traits to their work that continue in their career’s work, and that it can be affected by the work environment and choices they make? Is there any virtue to a ‘bad’ film that makes it worth keeping, and what is the virtue of a film worth anyway as art and as cinema? Why am I evoking Schrader’s lofty attempt at a cinematic canon, compared to a canon of Western literature, for a review of a Tobe Hooper film that few have seen, probably all hate, and is not that good in the first place?

From http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_li6mjgAJxP1qchzcgo1_500.png

Recently I have found a way of being able to keep more DVDs in my possession and prevent my living quarters being crushed under the weight of plastic DVD cases, but this ideas is more significant for me in that it would allow me to turn my collection beyond a hodgepodge collected over the years but into a personal archive that, even if they are just material discs liable to decay, could be a codex of film history for me, the high and low brow squashed together as I have a library of cinema sculpted by what I decide to keep and what I can actually get. Entirely filmographies of certain directors are possible to keep without having the pointlessly large boxes, which had no extras let alone special packaging with them anyway, and without fear of being crushed by them like the unfortunate Japanese man who was crushed by his manga collection during an earthquake, or without getting into conflict with family members in the same house. Barren areas in genre and cinema movements, barring a film or two, can now expand providing the films are of some worth for me and if I have the funds to acquire them. However it is also something that, if my desired idea of the codex actually works, needs to be thought about more than just an excuse for more DVDs. I am a pretentious man at times, but also one who wants to grow as an individual, and as I believe cinema like anything else can help improve a person as well as entertain them, I need to think what worth such a plan would do for me, which is why I evoked Schrader’s canon, one which was purposely elitist on his part so the best films - The Rules of the Game (1939) to In the Mood for Love (2000) – was pushed to people wanting to step into cinema. This idea means just as much for cult cinema fans, for seasons like this wading through the ‘worst’ that film has to offer, and bad films from a director (Tobe Hooper) I feel is underrated, in that, from the great of cinema to the schlocky horror film, will I use such additional space to actually acquire films of worth, for entertainment and to expand my thoughts, or am I going to just use it to consume shiny discs for the sake of it like a person consumes junk food because society advertises it to us continually, so we keep buying it, and has no worth to it afterwards? Is there worth to it or am I just a product consumer?

From http://torrentszona.com/torrents/images/Morg_Mortuary_2005_BDRip_1285557700-123503.jpg

In Mortuary, a widowed mother and her two children, a male reaching adulthood and a young girl, move to a new house, a mortuary, as part of her decision to become an entrepreneuring mortician. Something sinister is under the building however and it’s more than the deformed son of the previous owners. It is a film clearly made within an erratic filmography. The film is not good. It has its virtues but suffers from being another generic film made in the 2000s onwards that has no subtlety to it, made on cheap digital camera, a generic score made for it that tries to force out elicit scares and CGI that looks mediocre. In its favour, it has a quirkiness to it, not in being random for the sake of it, but in an eccentricity I wished carried on in the rest of the film, where I can now add ‘graveyard babies’ to my new mental catalogue of bizarre slang about creepy sexual practices. It also retains probably Hooper’s greatest virtue, that exists in almost every film of his I’ve seen except Crocodile (2000), of a maddened, frightening intensity to scenes, like the film itself has become insane itself or a sharp blade is being stroked up your spinal column. This tone only appears once or twice in the film, but in scenes like the one where Hooper continues in his career to subvert the image of a happy family sitting together at the dinner table, it works immensely. It is just a shame that the film, by its end, turns into a generic horror film of young people running away from evil ghouls screaming at each other and them, the first three quarters, while not the best, at least showing a unique personality that made Mortuary a lot better than its reputation suggested. This goes back to that issue of what is worth keeping as a film, regardless of the disc it is put onto I now have more potential space for, and whether I will get anything from rewatching it continually in the future. I will keep Mortuary, unlike many of the awful films I’ve viewed for this season, but it will be under the concession that “yeah, Mortuary is not that good is it?” as I think about it at this moment. What has an interesting idea – a widowed older woman, with her children, trying to strive as a career woman in a business that could have become what Michele Soavi's Cemetery Man (1994) was but from a woman’s perspective and with Hooper’s sense of unnerving, giddily mad tone – and has some virtues to it is disappointing as what the reviews of it suggested.  

From http://www.bjwinslow.com/albums/zombiemovies/mortuary_morgue.jpg

Hooper is integral to horror cinema because of a single film – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) – but his career also shows another issue that will affect my planned codex in that it goes in various erratic directions. A director with clear distinct traits can also have a wavering career and none so more than acclaimed filmmakers who’ve worked in horror – Dario Argento, David Cronenberg, John Carpenter etc. – who have either evolved or die slowly onscreen trying to keep up but fail miserably. Hopper unfortunately, even with good films, has been beset by movies failing to reach an audience on their first release, his other famous film Poltergeist (1982) credited to producer Steven Spielberg, and increasingly lower budgets. This concept that a director can have flaws in his work means that the idea of keeping their entire filmography may involve having films you don’t actually find virtue in, or with Mortuary have some but is ultimately not that good even as entertainment. I do feel Hooper is underrated, willing to defend The Funhouse (1981) and even Spontaneous Combustion (1990). It is a filmography that has one film – The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – that has been canonised, one film (Poltergeist) which is significant because many people of a certain generation grew up with it as children, a couple of cult hits like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), and many forgotten and critically reviled creations. An example like him brings to mind the issue that Paul Schrader evoked in his article without even having to have a canonised collection of the greatest films ever, as rather than the most elitist selection of art house films, cult cinema shows the issue of judging the virtues of films and directors just as clearly as for people who have to weigh the films of John Ford against each other for their careers, the more erratic quality of films in genre cinema against art cinema more pronounced and meaning that the virtues of entertainment and artistic value are more necessary to wade through the worthless creations. For the most part, a director l hold close to heart like Wong Kar-Wai or Bela Tarr is more consistent, making most of their work, if not all of it, worth keeping in its entirety, but another I admire like Tobe Hooper who is more varied in quality brings up the issue of what worth certain films have to actually keep them. That one also has to consider whole genres and sub-genres, and film movements and countries when thinking about film history, or even cult cinema itself, and one needs to actually think about what worth there is to the movies they are keeping more so. It’s not an over thought, pretentious concern either, as is the case for anyone who finds a film, a book, a piece of clothing, or another item in their possession and wonders “Why have I got this?”, thinking about how meaningless the said item was when they first got it and yet kept the thing when someone else could have gotten something from it. It’s gaining some meaningful worth from any item, beyond just being a consumer product but as something part of the world and themselves, and if one thinks about it more, like I am doing with my DVD collection, than the simple act of spring-cleaning the house could be argued to be a manifestation of an existential clear out. 

From http://a69.g.akamai.net/n/69/10688/v1/img5.allocine.fr/acmedia/medias/nmedia/18/36/27/05/18476697.jpg

This Week... [6th to 10th of February 2013]

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3xoHI88t22xxz2kG_qX4yH9nxbALqsBIw0f6dHJyj8a191fIjPHne5eytBRPXlLWys9m-0ZCUJJIPX1iZjWw1jxF0EUiF4Dus5tYrqBNhIbQM87nFBI9tIvOIre701ZSuRnKMbSu3CBM/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-07-27+at+5.58.46+PM.png

6^th February: Bullhead (Michael R. Roskam, 2011)

The first good film for me for 2013 and a good start of the year. It is divided between being an art film and a gene crime movie, but completely avoids the dangers of both. It is not vague minimalist European cinema of this decade, its Flanders location distinct and a sense of uniqueness to the characters within it, and thankfully avoids the fetishisation of violence that exists in many films of now even if Bullhead has its cringe worthy moments. It has a welcome and surprisingly deep streak of humanity within it where, despite the repellent actions of the characters including the titular one, played excellently Matthias Schoenaerts, you can still see them as flawed human beings. Schoenaerts’ character is a literal bull, violent and mindless at times but at other moments completely sympathetic, his subplot of his traumatic childhood, rather than becoming a trite inclusion as I feared it would be, adding to the scrutinising of masculinity throughout the movie. For his debut, Roskam has started off his career perfectly with this.

From http://history.sffs.org/i/films/1967/Story_of_a_three_day_pass_T.jpg

7^th February: The Story of A Three-Day Pass (Melvin Van Peebles, 1968)

Another debut, another perfect beginning for a director’s career, but viewing this one lets me see more to a man only known by most people for Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971). Following a black American soldier in France (Harry Baird in a great performance) as he is given a three day leave to travel the country, he meets Miriam (Nicole Berger, also great but sadly, at such a young age at 32, dying in a car crash not long after this film) and embarks on a romantic relationship within those days. What could have turned into a conventional story is a breath of fresh air from Van Peebles; when it feels like it is going to turn into the most generic of narratives about race and racism, the director-writer makes it a sweet drama instead where ethnicity is tackled in a far more subdued and thoughtful way as a subtext alongside the main romance. It’s also an utterly playful film, part of the French New Wave and implementing inspired uses of jump cuts, editing and duplicating Baird to interact with himself in place of internal monologues, all of which adds to the story. I may be seeing more of Van Peebles’ work through the year, but after this film even Sweet Sweetback... will be an entirely brand new for me upon re-watching it.

From http://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/187/00787615_.jpg

8^th February: Blood Thirsty (Jeff Frey, 1999)

If you want to see the lowest of the low, this is it. A new tenant at an apartment realises the female owner has a desire for drinking blood, not as an actual vampire, but an addiction to cutting willing participants and consuming their blood through the wound. A potentially great idea, but shot on cheap video camera and with only one real set in the apartment itself, I did prepare myself for something bad yet I wasn’t expecting this. It is the dullest type of drama where for all the plot and fractured relationships between the women and the apartment owner’s boyfriend, it is just lifeless and as the plotting gets more and more melodramatic it becomes dumber and insufferable. It’s flirting with mental illness, and especially self harm, eventually becomes offensive and was the final straw to put this as one of the worst films I’ve seen. Even the potential of this being softcore, with a lesbian twist, is worthless, the sex scenes being abrupt, up-close images of arms and legs scored to some of the worst music you can hear. I am willing to see the worst of cinema, as the ongoing season shows, but I wish I could forget this one.

9^th February: In Absentia / The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer / This Unnameable Little Broom / Rehearsals For Extinct (Stephen and Timothy Quay, 2000 /1984 / 1985 / 1986)

As a Jan Švankmajer fan, I have somewhat dismissed (neglected) about the twin animators Stephen and Timothy Quay, whose influence from Švankmajer goes as far as the short film above, part of a documentary about the Czeck director. That short I’ve included helps far more so to show what the Quays’ work is like, and as I am re-seeing their filmography, they’ve shown to be a lot more rewarding for their artistry and imagination in these shorts. In Absentia, based on the real life case of Emma Hauck, a married woman who was put into a mental institution, is the best of the ones mentioned, a disturbing collage of visuals and sound that creeps under your skin as you view it. All I can really say is that you, the reader should investigate these films as soon as you can.

From http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mch88w1WDN1qzzh6g.jpg

10^th February: Vertigo (Alfred Hitckcock, 1958)

I may need to rewatch this again for a third time, but upon revisiting it Vertigo felt like an immense disappointment. It looks beautiful, and Bernard Herrmann’s score is exceptional, but its plot isn’t that interesting and takes too long to establish its narrative. Against Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and Psycho (1960) it doesn’t hold a candle to their quality upon this viewing, despite its lush melodrama and James Stewart trying to twist his well known image into something more ominous. I do wonder, even if I fall in love with this film on another viewing, whether its positioning as the best film ever made by Sight & Sound magazine may prove to have been a bad decision in hindsight, again letting another film (like Citizen Kane (1941)) become a museum piece and not really connecting to the beauty of cinema’s eclectic nature. I was disappointed by the plainness of the whole 2012 poll, only having any real interest in the odd and unconventional individual choices by critics and directors that would (sadly) never get into the top 100 list as the results were collected together. That poll probably coloured my viewing of Vertigo this time, but it has to be considered, in hindsight to the negative reaction to the film, whether canonical lists like this ever actually succeed or just completely undermine the point of cinema as an artform and entertainment. At least with individuals’ lists the writer allows themselves to open up about their personal tastes, while the overall results of a poll usually become predictable and, relaying on a numbered tally, may not necessarily mean they are the films that the voters hold the closest to their hearts. I may have been disillusioned by the American critic Armond White since last year, but his words on the Sight & Sound poll that Vertigo’s victory “merely replaces Kane to show a new era’s unoriginal taste and obsessive interest in pathology and soullessness that’s been building in certain film cliques at least since the film‘s 1996 reissue...” feels like an alarm bell in my mind warning me of the inept laziness of cinematic culture. Yes, because of the poll I rewatched the exceptional masterpiece Man With A Movie Camera (1929), deserving its day on the podium by being on that list, but the fear that this poll turns great cinema into celluloid taxidermy, with some added “herd mentality” to quote White again, is discomforting.