Celebrities (Male)   Male film actors   Mel Brooks  

Posts from the 400 Screens 400 Blows Category at Cinematical

Posts from the 400 Screens 400 Blows Category at Cinematical
Justin Henine-Hardenne  |  by www.cinematical.com. All rights reserved. 17.07 | 6:13


Paul Verhoeven's is currently playing on nine big city screens, and slowly expanding to more in other parts of the country. It's a radical departure for Mr. Verhoeven.

It's his first non-English film since (1983), and it's his first non-exploitation film in decades. It deals directly with the Nazi persecution of the Jews and it runs 145 minutes. Clearly, he's trying to say something here.

He wants us to know that, whether or not anyone liked (1987), (1990) or (1992), he never really took those films seriously.
Now, I don't think that's exactly true, but it's certainly the impression one can get. The truth is that while Black Book appears to be more important, dignified and serious than Verhoeven's other films, and while I like it very much, it actually has quite a bit less to say.

Films from the lower regions can often get away with more subversive ideas than more prestigious films. For example, Black Book demonstrates once again how awful the Nazis were and how resourceful the Jews were, but Verhoeven's (1997) sends a far more sinister message by forcing us into the perspective of the Nazi-like heroes as they try to exterminate an entire species of "bug." The film sweeps you up into a frightening mob mentality, so you cheer for death and destruction well before you realize what's actually happening.


Posted Apr 6th 2007 7:01PM by
Filed under: , , ,


A critic's job, to boil it down, is to measure the emotional response a movie has on him or her, and then figure out a way to intellectually analyze this emotional response.

Sometimes you'll hear critics explain that it's much easier to review a bad movie or a good movie than a "just OK" movie. "Just OK" movies do little to inspire an emotional response, and the critic must go about his or her duty trying to explain whether or not anyone should go see this movie that everyone will most likely forget.

I've become increasingly irritated by "just OK" movies, and it comes down to this: I would rather see a bad movie with personality than a decent movie with no personality at all.

It's far worse walking out of something passionless and mechanical than from something that tried and failed.

I just caught 's extraordinary documentary (2 screens and opening wider), about Carthusian monks living in a charterhouse in the French Alps. It runs just past two hours and 45 minutes and I would wager that no more than two hundred words are spoken throughout.

The film merely shows the monks going about their daily business: praying, chanting, caring for gardens, shoveling snow, sawing firewood, cooking, eating, etc. I have to admit part of my enthusiasm for the film stems from the fact that it contains no talking heads or clips; I was just about ready to scream if I saw one more documentary shot in that tired old PBS format. But I was also drawn to the film's meditative rhythm.


Or is it just slow? Already some of the reviews have trudged out the word "boring" to describe the film, and certainly it's a hard sell. But why?

It's apparent that Gr o ning doesn't have any particular viewpoint about the monks; he's not trying to sell us on their dignity or righteousness, nor is he trying to uncover some secret, seamy underbelly. He merely wishes to show them to us. And in his great, quiet stretches, a viewer can easily get lost in his or her own thoughts.

Indeed, I believe that Gr o ning actually prefers us to get lost in our own thoughts.





Down at the bottom of the box office charts of the past few weeks, a couple of interesting items have been floating around. Two films from the legendary Chilean-born filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky have been revived and playing continuously for seven weeks on three screens apiece, (1970) and (1973). Unfortunately, said films only played for two days each at my local repertory house, and I missed them both.

But they're both legendary in the annals of cult films as well as hard-to-see films. , who recently turned 78 and is reportedly working on a new film, had a strange start and indeed his life story would make for several interesting books (maybe a biopic?).

(Note: a new book "Anarchy and Alchemy: The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky" is due out this June.) He was a circus clown and a puppeteer. He studied mime in Paris with Marcel Marceau.

He worked with surrealist playwrights such as Fernando Arrabal. He has written comic books and is apparently a licensed psychotherapist as well as a Tarot expert. He has become both a Mexican and a French citizen.

His first film, (1967), reportedly caused a riot at the Acapulco Film Festival, during which Jodorowsky was pursued by an angry mob and saved his own life by hiding in the trunk of his car.
As far as the Oscars are concerned, the best way to get a handle on the year's best films is to look at the Best Screenplay nominees. The writers who vote for the ten films nominated in the and categories are the closest things to outsiders the movie community has.

They're generally smarter and lower paid than anyone else, and they tend not to work on movie sets, hobnobbing with famous directors and movie stars. And so they have a more objective outlook on what's good and what's not.
The screenplay category has historically shown more foresight and flexibility than its fellows.

After all, some of the past winners include filmmakers William A. Wellman, Orson Welles, Preston Sturges, Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, none of which ever had a shot as Best Director. Other nominees include Budd Boetticher, Andre de Toth, Nicholas Ray, Jacques Tati and Jacques Demy.

Certain filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone and Bill Condon won Screenplay Oscars long before their careers as directors took off. And even some genuinely legendary writers have heard their name called: William Saroyan, James Agee, Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck, Paddy Chayefsky, Vladimir Nabokov and Arthur Miller.


The World War II movie opens today on 3 screens.

That's not to be confused with another movie called Days of Glory, from 1944, or the other one from 1945. Nor is it to be confused with Hope and Glory, Paths of Glory, What Price Glory, Bound for Glory, Days of Heaven, Days of Thunder, or just plain Glory.
In the past, war movies used to be about something.

By the titles alone, you could go to a movie expecting to see Attacks, Battles, Bridges, Boats, The Big Red One, Bullets, Dawn Patrols, Dirty Dozens, Fighting Sullivans, Fixed Bayonets, Flying Leathernecks, Great Escapes, Guns of Navarone, Merrill's Marauders, and even Full Metal Jackets. Titles like these make you want to roar and holler and tear around the woods, ripping right through enemy cover with thunder and trumpets driving you on.

Read more on by www.cinematical.com. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Black Book, Alejandro Jodorowsky
Related news
Post comments
Name
Place
9 + 5 =
Comments