Andrew Sarris profile on The New York Times

O'Hara, in a less than cheerful pose

I remember my first interview of Filipino filmmaker Mario O'Hara was in this tiny dim sum shop on the third floor of Glorietta Mall in Makati City and just after a few minutes of talking, of what I thought of his work and the fact that he hasn't made a picture in two years, he laughed out loud and exclaimed (in Tagalog): "you're treating me as if I were already dead! I'm still alive, you know."

That was some fifteen years (has it been so long?!) and six films ago; far as I can tell O'Hara is alive and well, but living in his habitual mode, under the radar. Last I heard was through a niece, who passed on to me his recognition that his filmmaking days are probably over, and the young Turks with their digital cameras have taken over the filmmaking scene.

I'd love to pull him aside and yell in his ear "are you kidding? With that box full of scripts you haven't directed?" but I'm stuck here on the other side of the Pacific with no realistic way of getting in contact with him (he doesn't even have a telephone, much less Twitter). So I'm thinking violent thoughts, in the hopes of getting him off his ass and maybe working again, in any capacity (aside from directing he's a noted writer and actor, in theater, television and radio). I'm not writing him off just yet.

So it's probably premature to write off Andrew Sarris, even if in a recent New York Times profile article he's pretty much made it clear that he won't be writing for a major newspaper any time soon (though articles for Film Comment have not been ruled out). Why such a profile, now? Would like to think such people--institutions established after decades of struggle--are always newsworthy, though beneath the bravado one hears the whisper: this is a salute in honor of the man while he's still alive, and we can still do him some measure of justice.

I've never been so complacent as to think The Grim Reaper's clammy grasp would never find my neck, but there are moments--now more often than ever--when I feel those bony fingers brushing past my shoulders, reminding me that he'll be back. Nothing stops, nothing lasts, nothing remains the same; we survive, after a fashion.

Michael Jackson, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Tim Burton, 2005), A.I. (Steven Spielberg, 2001)

Talk about strange developments--saw a broadcast of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) recently and two things struck me stronger than ever before: that the dramatic center of the film belonged to Charlie (Freddie Highmore), from whom this version of Roald Dahl's book rightly takes its name, and that Johnny Depp is basically channeling Michael Jackson:

You think?

I know I'm hardly the first one to notice the similarities, but in my own blinkered way I've started to realize just how deliberate and, well, inspired the choice may be. Burton and Depp tap into Jackson's lurid reputation to give their protagonist the kind of subtext Gene Wilder's Wonka was never able to exploit. Of course the earlier version had Wilder, no mean asset, who could play an infinite variety of lunatics to perfection better than Depp ever can--but beyond the actor's considerable abilities no, no tabloid unwholesomeness.

The film's funnier this way, considering recent events; one thinks more and more about parallels to events in Jackson's life, and how they add resonance to Wonka's own story--Wonka's factory standing in for Jackson's Neverland; Wonka and Jackson's desire for secrecy competing against a pathological need for attention; the five Golden Ticket winners enjoying their tour, at any moment in danger of being invited to a sleepover at Wonka's private quarters...

And, finally, a comic justification for Burton's addition of Wonka's father, always to my mind the film's weakest element. Of course a man will suffer severe trauma, will develop into an eccentric (to put it kindly) introvert when the biggest single adult influence in his childhood is Dracula, or Joe Jackson; I for one am not surprised.

And it's not as if Burton's caricature were totally unkind. He grants Jack--sorry, Wonka--a certain amount of closure, plus the possibility of a surrogate family. It's the kind of benign ending one might have wished for Jackson, too.

Also saw again after many years (and much urging from fans whose opinions I respect) Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001). I'd dismissed it as a Spielbergian botch of Kubrick's (Philip K. Dick's?) ideas. This time around the film seems much more poignant (if still far from perfect), easily Spielberg's most ambitious and troubling work.

The film's first third (funny how Kubrick's projects--2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket come most readily to mind--tend to break down into sections of threes) is the most emotionally wrenching: a dark, domestic comedy about the sibling rivalry between boy and robot for mom's affections (come to think of it, aside from Lolita and The Shining Kubrick has done precious little drama or comedy, domesticwise--it's almost always genre fare). Here Spielberg to my mind most closely hews to the look and tone of Kubrick's films, at least in coldly recording the various emotional dislocations being inflicted on the hapless Swintons. The abandonment in the forest that climaxes this first third makes one think of the tale of Hansel and Gretel--a parent's mixed feelings of love and repulsion resulting in a scene as wrenching as anything Spielberg (or Kubrick for that matter) has ever done.

The middle third is said to be Spielberg's take on A Clockwork Orange. I don't quite see the similarity--despite the striking production designs, Kubrick's vision of future England displayed a sterility and desolation toe other can't quite match. Spielberg may be aiming for a dystopia, at least where robots are concerned, but what I see here is a vibrant, colorful tomorrow, filled with technological marvels. The man can't help being what he is, I suppose; even in Minority Report (2002), where he relies heavily on Janusz Kaminski's gray color palette to make the future look unappealing, there are 3-D ads that call you by name, a marvel of an electric car that assembles all around you, and (lovely touch) creepy carnivorous flowers that nip at your fingertips. Spielberg, unlike Kubrick, has a difficult time doing despair. There's just too much restless energy to his filmmaking, where Kubrick can sap the juice out of one's optimism through the sheer architectonic power of his images.

I questioned the high level of intelligence of the existing mechas in my article on the film. Actually, I may have missed the more complex view Spielberg and Kubrick had in mind--these robots are smart, very smart, capable of a high level of logical reasoning; what the film's diminutive hero David (Haley Joel Osment) possibly represents is a robot able to jump tracks, use imagination, connect seemingly disparate elements to form a cohesive whole. The heart of this segment--of the film's debate on what constitutes genuine intelligence, I think--is the "Dr. Know" sequence where in the space of seven questions (three of which are wasted) David manages not just to track down his Blue Fairy, but also point up the qualitative difference between his mind and other robots'. David's companion Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) may provide crucial information (where Dr. Know can be found, how much each question costs), but it's clearly David who drives the interrogation--bringing up the subject of "fairy tales," suggesting it's possible that what they're looking for is both "fact" and "fairy tale," formulating the final, crucial question that gives them their first real clue.

Later Gigolo Joe brings up a disturbing possibility--what if what David's looking for isn't real? In the face of doubt, David professes faith ("My mommy doesn't hate me! Because I'm special! And unique! Because there's never been anyone like me before, ever!")--something robots are supposedly incapable of doing. Joe replies to David: "She loves what you do for her, as my customers love what it is I do for them." Sharp observation, but that's all it is: an observation, a distillation of what he's seen and known.

Joe does conclude with these words: "We are suffering for the mistakes they made because when the end comes, all that will be left is us. That's why they hate us, and that is why you must stay here, with me." Joe turns out to be prophetic, and seems to display some evidence of affection, or need for David's companionship (true Joe is programmed to show affection--he's a love 'bot, after all--but David is presumably not in the category of clients he's supposed to show affection to). Which brings us back to my original objection, or question, or whatever: just how special is David, and why does he represent an advance in artificial intelligence?

The middle third climaxes with the presentation of the story's ostensible final solution--a solution David ultimately rejects. The last third begins with yet another of Kubrick's 'magical journeys' (think 2001), here through time, not space. On my first viewing I was unhappy with the possibility that David will hibernate through his tedious trip on low batteries; this time I managed to ascertain that David is conscious, and will be for for a possibly very long time before he runs out of batteries (But what happened to his DAS, or Damage Avoidance System, and his ability to find creative solutions? Do they just run out, like the batteries).

As for the ending (please skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the film)--yes it's sad, tragic even, but I'd love to have seen Kubrick's take. According to Spielberg, Kubrick wanted to produce the film with him to direct, but I'd love to have seen Kubrick's version (of this scene, at least). I know Kubrick intended for Strauss to play in the background (did he intend the ending to mimic so closely the final scene of 2001?), but knowing Kubrick and his handling of drama and accompanying music (see, oh, the finale of Paths of Glory, the farewell scene between Humbert and his beloved in Lolita, the climactic duel in Barry Lyndon) he would most likely have handled it in a different manner--the emotions of the scene as merely an element (a disciplined element) of the whole, and not threatening to overwhelm everything as it does here. As mentioned before, I suspect Spielberg despairs of ever doing despair properly.

Let the Right One In; The Sky Crawlers

Lat den ratte komma in (Let the Right One In, 2008) is fondly remembered, apparently, less for Tomas Alfredson's bleak storytelling than for the low-key romance that blossoms between two-hundred-year-old vampire Eli (Lina Leandersson) and twelve-year-old youth Oskar (Kare Hedebrant).

I see it a little differently, however; I see the blossoming of a low-key seduction of Oskar. I see Eli eyeballing Oskar as a possible replacement for Hakan (Per Ragnar), her adult companion and facilitator. From what I understand about the source novel, writer John Ajvide Lindqvist makes it clear that Hakan and Oskar are in no way similar, and that Eli has genuine feelings of affection for Oskar. Alfredson chose to cut out Hakan's backstory, making his relationship with Eli more ambiguous, and pointing up the parallels between Hakan and Oskar.

It's telling, how Alfredson views Oskar--basically as a serial killer-in-the-making. Central to Alfredson's take of the character is Oskar's brief scene with a knife and a tree; without a word of explanation, Alfredson makes it clear that this is what Oskar would like to be, this is how Oskar would like to treat his tormentors. Sad fact of life, but victims of bullying sometimes aren't martyred saints, but passive youths forced (by bullies, by authority) to repress their anger and frustration until they find some other outlet for their anger--or, ultimately, explode in a paroxysm of violence. In this case, Oskar finds a tree; in later years in a series of chosen victims, perhaps. I see this happening where I work.

Does Eli love Oskar? I say--why not? One can love someone at the same time one is exploiting him or her. If there's anything I don't believe in, it's a pure, untainted love. At our best we try, as much as possible, as often as possible, to think of what's best for our beloved, and hope this is enough.

Alfredson takes his cue from the cold, bleak weather and landscape; the camera rarely moves (as if frozen in place) and at night the snow seems to have its own faint glow, less fairyland than nightmare, less enchanting than chilling. Not the greatest vampire film ever made (you can see the influence of Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995), George Romero's Martin (1977), even of Ingmar Bergman at his most gothic), but easily one of the best recent examples of the genre.

Mamoru Oshii's Sukai kurora (The Sky Crawlers, 2008) is, in a word, breathtaking. Based on the novel by Hiroshi Mori, the film tells the story of a group of pilots engaged in a series of aerial battles, their struggle enveloped in an air of mystery--how this happened we don't know; why, we don't know either; for whom isn't really made clear, other than the fact that they and the pilots flying against them work for opposing companies. This is corporate warfare pushed in extremis but beyond the canny observation (how many of the world's conflicts are inspired, abetted, maintained by corporate interests?) that's not really the film's point; rather, it's the pilots' psychological state, a (as Oshii noted) state of stasis where they don't know how and why they came to be fighting, and don't really care.

I've seen these kind of people before, not in a movie but a novel--or rather, a series of novels; Oshii's film may be the first animated attempt to bring the works of J. G. Ballard to the big screen. All the hallmarks are there: the disaffected characters, the sense of alienation, of dislocation, the occasional surreal imagery against perfectly blue skies (maybe it's Magritte, but when I picture an image surreal, I picture it against flawless blue skies). The pilots don't so much gaze at each other as they do past each other, or past one another's faces at some unknowable, invisible goal; their priorities are all askew--serenity, not survival, some kind of equilibrium achieved by any means possible, seems to be the objective here.

Animationwise, Oshii combines documentarylike digital animation (3-D planes with unusual propeller designs (double propeller and canard wing configurations) with more traditional 2-D animated characters--the solidity of 3-D for the fighter sequences, the expressiveness of 2-D faces for the dramatic exposition (no, Oshii's characters are not known for being expressive, but this makes their minutest gestures all the more important--where a digitally animated human face would seem robotic, a hand-animated human face would seem to be underacting).

But one doesn't go to Oshii for seamless integration of cutting-edge technologies; one goes to him for a certain dry emotional tone, an austere look, a metaphysical sensibility. In this case, the results are what Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987) might have been like if the film were told from the pilots' point of view, totally in the spirit of Ballard's novel. An enthralling film.

Los Ultimos de Filipinas (Last Stand in the Philippines, Antonio Roman, 1945)

Last man standing

For years now Instituto Cervantes has been presenting Antonio Roman's Los Ultimos de Filipinas (Last Stand in the Philippines, 1945) and no matter how many times I have seen it it's still a hoot, a real jaw-dropper. Imagine this: it's the middle of the Philippine Revolution in 1898; the Filipinos are winning the war on land, the Americans winning the war at sea. In the town of Baler, formerly of the province of Nueva Ecija (since re-allocated to the province of Aurora), fifty soldiers abandoned by their hard-pressed government (Spain was too busy surrendering to the United States) hold out in a yearlong siege, representing the country's last stand in the country (hence the title).

Any Spaniard watching this film will probably discover a quaint but nevertheless stirring hurrah for Castilian courage; any Filipino watching will stare, wide-eyed, at the way Filipinos are portrayed--as a tireless, implacable, near-invisible enemy, quick to exploit any mistake or risks taken, and willing to wait out a desperate opponent running low on food and ammunition. To find a more recent and familiar equivalent to the picture's view of the unstoppable foe, one might look at American movies on the Vietnam War. In films like Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), and John Irvin's Hamburger Hill done a year later (my personal favorite of the genre), the enemy is faceless and mysterious, an unknown quantity that will pull down and kill the unwary given half the chance. In each of these as in Roman's film the emphasis is on the American (or Spanish) soldier, on his crisis of faith and morale, his physical and spiritual suffering, his eventually bitter Pyrrhic victory.

Strange to think we Filipinos--who are rarely implacable and who almost never give the impression of being quietly mysterious, not when there's a chance for food and drink nearby--should be seen this way; stranger still to look at the landscape behind the Spaniards as they fight their lonely, drawn-out battle. Never mind the studio sets, one can forgive those for their airless, artificial quality, but when the action moves outdoors the countryside, while recognizably hot, has plenty of palm trees--no end of palm trees, from the towering kind to the chest-high variety, roughly half of them visibly drooping. One wants to ask--where are the forests of coconut trees, with gracefully swooping trunks? Where are the banana trees with their oar-like armsand heavy necklace of fruit? Where are the mango trees with their spreading limbs and distinct spearhead leaves? One badly wants to believe the film is set in the Philippines, but every once in a while you see a palm frond with dried-out leaves and your fingers twitch, wanting to reach for a hose or watering can. Actually, American films about Vietnam look more persuasively like they were shot in Southeast Asia, and no wonder--most of them were shot in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines to be specific, with perhaps the most notable exception being Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (made the same year as Hamburger), which was shot entirely in London, with (what else?) visibly drooping palm fronds.

Still! Antonio Roman is a formidable craftsman who directed most of his thirty-plus films in the '40s, and is a friend of horror master Mario Bava. Watching the film one thinks of Michael Curtiz, and his way of advancing and retreating with the camera for dramatic effect; one also thinks of Curtiz whenever Roman uses shadows expressively--to add mood or atmosphere, or throw a cruciform shape on soldiers, suggesting the comforting presence of Christ.

The film isn't so much a war film as it is a siege drama (think Cy Endfield's Zulu (1964), only not as claustrophobically confined, and with less emphasis on siege tactics)--instead of drawn-out battles, we have men standing around, looking wearier and more dispirited with every passing minute; instead of flag-waving, we have mournful musical interludes. At one point the hymn "Ave Maria" is sung while the camera trucks past a sea of melancholic soldiers wearing a scraggly collection of 5 o'clock shadows, pans past the walls of the distinctly dilapidated church, comes to rest on the figure of the Catholic priest saying mass--again, the film reminds us of the invincible, unyielding hand of the church, sustaining its supplicants (Roman, one might dare observe, is no Bunuelian skeptic, at least not here).

A later and more affecting sequence is of a beautiful lass sitting by the window, singing a melancholic song. The camera pulls back, taking in the small nipa (dried grass) hut she inhabits, then cuts to several men in various stages of exhaustion and despair, listening to her sweet voice. Cut to the camera descending from its vantage point back to a more intimate view of the girl as she ends her song, bowing her head in quiet resignation.

I said the film is a hoot to watch, and it is; part of the pleasure is in watching a Spanish filmmaker struggle to portray a country he obviously has not once visited (and probably received little support from) during the length of production; part of the pleasure is in watching ourselves as the bad guys, the Implacable Other seen in so many Hollywood-made Vietnam war movies. But the keenest pleasure, I suppose, is in watching the Spanish ultimately hold their heads high as they leave their beleaguered fortress, finding victory in defeat and honor in humiliation; in a way it's a left-handed compliment to the Filipino freedom fighter, and the dismay he is capable of inspiring.

First published in Businessworld, 6.26.09

La terza madre (Mother of Tears, Dario Argento, 2007)

Mother of all horrors

The appearance of La terza madre (Mother of Tears, Dario Argento, 2007) on limited release in the United States, and its belated commercial screening in Metro Manila screens (undoubtedly butchered, in the approved Argento manner, by our Philippine censors), at least offers this not-insignificant revelation: Argento is back, and is as unapologetic and loony as ever.

The film is the capstone to what fans now call Dario Argento’s 'Three Mothers' trilogy, loosely inspired by essayist Thomas de Quincy’s Suspiria Profundis, a collection of essays recorded from opium-induced visions, particularly the section "Levana and the Three Sorrows." Levana, Roman goddess of childbirth, is reportedly joined by three companions: Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs; Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Shadows; and Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears.

De Quincy imagined the three mothers as figures representing human suffering; Argento re-imagines them as three powerful witches that create suffering just for, well, the hell of it. If Argento recasts De Quincy’s ideas in an altogether simpler, perhaps cruder form, he does accompany said ideas with intense and lyrical (and violent, and unhinged) visual poetry — fitting complement to De Quincy’s writing, which are often considered some of the finest examples of prose poetry ever written.

The film wastes no time introducing Argento’s visions: Asia Argento (the director’s daughter) plays Sarah Mandy, a student working at the Museum of Ancient Art in Rome. After witnessing a museum assistant being butchered (the assistant had broken the seal of a small ancient urn and — worst of all — spilled blood on it), Sarah runs from both the police and the witches pursuing her, at the same time attempting to learn the secret of the urn, and of the just-released Mother.

So far so what; the outline barely qualifies as a respectable premise, much less synopsis to a screenplay. Argento does add this much of a twist: turns out Sarah’s mother is Elisa Mandy (Asia’s real-life mother Daria Nicolodi), and that Elisa had previously battled Mater Suspiriorum; Elisa died in the battle, but Mater Suspiriorum was so drastically weakened that Jessica Harper’s Suzy Bannon managed to finish her off in Argento’s Suspiria (1977). A touch more history has been added to Argento’s sketchy mythos, and Sarah, unlike Harper’s hapless Suzy and Leigh McCloskey’s Mark Elliott (in Inferno [1980], Argento’s second film in the trilogy), has more at stake than mere survival (vengeance for her mother and the salvation of the world, for starters). And there’s a touch more logic to her continued survival than just pure dumb luck — Elisa was skilled in "white magic," and managed to pass some of her abilities on to her daughter.

But but but but--plot and characterization and least of all plausibility have never been high on Argento’s list of priorities (think of said elements as being the skeleton on which Argento hangs some of the bloodiest, most stylish hides ever harvested): a beautiful woman breaks a seal and demons promptly choke her with her own intestines; a lesbian medium admits to being a friend of Elisa and is horrifically impaled by a phalluslike pike, her lover blinded by a medieval instrument.

The film’s most elaborate deaths, to the disappointment of many Argento fans, aren’t on the level of lyrical excess of Suspiria or Inferno. But this is Argento some 30 years later, addressing the torture porn of directors such as Eli Roth and James Wan; more than repeating himself, or outdoing the single- (narrow-, small-) minded intensity of the younger folk, he seems to be instructing his artistic inferiors on the true potential of horror — not just the depiction of a single body’s violent overthrow but of the overthrow of a community, a city (at one point someone declares "the second fall of Rome"), by extension, a world. Streets are often empty in Argento’s other films; here they’re crowded, and full of the kind of violence one might find in a society at the edge of collapse. Killings in his films are often complex, violent, gory beyond belief; here Argento stages one of his most horrific scenes with the simplest of elements--a child, its mother, a bridge. To describe the Mater’s many onscreen manifestations throughout the city of Rome one has to go back to Quincy, from whom Argento has taken more than just the premise: "they utter their pleasure, not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers." Argento is allowing his sensibility to bleed into our more familiar world; purists may call this dilution but I submit that it’s more of a contamination.

The apocalyptic sensibility probably didn’t make much sense when the film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, 2007 (the economic meltdown started in earnest in July, but only deepened a year later); seen in today's more depressed, more depressing global conditions, one feels much more receptive to the idea of worldwide brinksmanship, of a darker, less certain, less hopeful planet. Argento at this point in his career doesn’t seem so much passé as he is prescient, not so much overwhelmed as he is overwhelming; it’s just that the scope of his latest is different, far wider in scope and ambition, shot on a relatively modest production budget.

And the ending, reviled by most, beloved by a few (please skip this paragraph if you have not seen the film)--the kinder critics call it a mood breaker; I say it’s a far more ambiguous moment. Sarah and her police escort emerge, alive, to laugh hard and long. But what, exactly, are they laughing at? At the joy of being alive? At the absurd intensity of the horrors they have survived? At the intense absurdity of having gone through literal hell, only to emerge into a world in apparent ruin, the end of all hopes and dreams? Yes, Argento, changed but unbowed, is back; all hail the dark lord, and may he wait only a fraction as long to produce a fourth "Mother" film.

First published in Businessworld 6.19.09

82nd Academy Awards to Feature 10 Best Picture Nominees

82nd Academy Awards® to Feature 10 Best Picture Nominees

Beverly Hills, CA (June 24, 2009) — The 82nd Academy Awards, which will be presented on March 7, 2010, will have 10 feature films vying in the Best Picture category, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis announced today (June 24) at a press conference in Beverly Hills.

“After more than six decades, the Academy is returning to some of its earlier roots, when a wider field competed for the top award of the year,” said Ganis. “The final outcome, of course, will be the same – one Best Picture winner – but the race to the finish line will feature 10, not just five, great movies from 2009.”

For more than a decade during the Academy’s earlier years, the Best Picture category welcomed more than five films; for nine years there were 10 nominees. The 16th Academy Awards (1943) was the last year to include a field of that size; “Casablanca” was named Best Picture. (In 1931/32, there were eight nominees and in 1934 and 1935 there were 12 nominees.)

Currently, the Academy is presenting a bicoastal screening series showcasing the 10 Best Picture nominees of 1939, arguably one of Hollywood’s greatest film years. Best Picture nominees of that year include such diverse classics as “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Stagecoach,” “The Wizard of Oz” and Best Picture winner “Gone with the Wind.”

“Having 10 Best Picture nominees is going to allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,” commented Ganis. “I can’t wait to see what that list of ten looks like when the nominees are announced in February.”

The 82nd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, February 2. The Oscar® ceremony honoring films for 2009 will again take place at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.


Eh.

Year One (Harold Ramis, 2009); Frozen River (Courtney Hunt, 2008); Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975)

I didn't mean to watch Year One (2009)--it seemed to be the least repugnant choice available at the local multiplex--and was surprised to learn that it was directed by Harold Ramis.

One has expectations of Ramis; one can't help having them. He is, after all, the director of Groundhog Day (1993), one of the finest films of the '90s, one of the finest metaphysical films ever made, and about as near-perfect a comedy as anything I can think of in the past sixteen years. Daunting standards to hold a man up to, but Ramis, while never quite reaching so high again, has made a few decent attempts: Stuart Saves His Family (1996), for example, takes an unpromising Saturday Night Live sketch and turns it into a quietly desperate, ultimately moving film about the pleasures and perils of self-affirmation; Multiplicity, made the year after that, posits multiple copies of Michael Keaton scurrying everywhere (a hilarious or horrifying idea, depending on how you take to Keaton). Analyze This (1999) seems like the ultimate idea of the psychiatric patient from hell--it's only halfway realized, but at least the idea had something of the absolute about it.

Judging from the cries of blood surrounding Ramis' latest (Roger Ebert gives the picture one star, spends a whole paragraph discussing the movie's poster, and sums it all up as a "dreary experience"--one gets the impression the man could barely bring himself to engage with the movie, much less like it), Ramis has failed yet again to touch the comic heights of Groundhog (But what else does?). He has failed but surprisingly, despite the unpromising trailer and the generally negative outcry, he does leave an indelible mark.

It's a cross between Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981) and Monty Python's The Life of Brian ((1979)--Brooks for the formless, across-the centuries format, Python for the subject matter (religious hypocrisy and faith). It's not laugh-out-loud funny, even if it does have more than its share of flinch-worthy gross-out moments; fact is, it's remarkably thoughtful in its treatment of and attitude towards religion and faith. It has a handsome look for a comedy, mostly burnished desert sun and torchlight interiors (checked out cinematographer Alar Kivilo, and the only work of his that stuck out were Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (1998) and some Sandra Bullock vehicle called The Lake House (2006)), and is competently edited (one expects no less from the director of Groundhog, which is all about editing).

The climax, strangely enough, bears some passing resemblance to that of Ishmael Bernal's Himala (Miracle, 1982)--I'm sure we needn't accuse Ramis of stealing from Bernal, though.

So. Find myself in the strange position of recommending a solidly Hollywood summer movie, and a comedy to boot. Goes to show how accurate 'common consensus' can be, in gauging a picture's quality--sometimes you just have to go and see for yourself.

Courtney Hunt's Frozen River (2008) is despite its bleak setting a lovely film. Hunt captures the essence of lower-class living in the colder Northern states--the prefab houses, the junked cars, the temp jobs, the pinched-face people struggling with one scam or another (as either victim or perpetrator) and earning a meager wage, all under the gray skies and endless snowdrifts of upstate New York (some of the scenes look exceptionally difficult to shoot--not only are you dealing with a whitened ground that often radiates more light than the sky, you're dealing with the shifting, often treacherous conditions of the eponymous river itself).

The two protagonists, Ray Eddy (an amazing Melissa Leo) and Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) make a good odd couple--they embody their respective social classes (poor white trash, Native-American destitute), they have a genuinely spiky chemistry that makes any possibility of collaboration or friendship seem less than certain, more the result of life's strange vicissitudes than of opportunistic plotting.

The river itself becomes a visual metaphor (a nicely unforced one) for the women's lives--for the kind of fragile, uncertain ice they skate on, struggling to keep their balance, hoping to God the surface of things holds and doesn't drop them into the cold water.

I remember Roger Ebert granting Richard Fleischer's Mandingo (1975) not one but zero stars--apparently the eminent critic, harumphing about "taste," was shocked at all the decadence and exploitation going on, not to mention the sultry, sensual ambiance.

Recommendation enough. It's a startlingly beautiful to look at and despite--or precisely because of--its trashy, melodramatic roots, full of unwholesome energy. It's also declared to be (by film critic Robin Wood, among others) "the greatest film about race ever made in Hollywood." There's always Roots, of course, which aired on broadcast television two years later, but that well-made production doesn't have the inimitable image of James Mason as Southern plantation owner Warren Maxwell, planting his feet on a black boy's belly in the hopes of drawing the rheumatism out of his aging body into the healthy child.

The film is more than the sum of its grotesqueries; Fleischer has taken a Kyle Onstott's pulp potboiler, pruned some (but not all) of the more extreme sadism, given (with the help of writer Norman Wexler) the blacks in the film a social and historical consciousness, overall fashioned a distinctly gothic tragedy. With the help of cinematographer Richard H. Kline (they've collaborated on films like The Boston Strangler (1968) and Soylent Green (1973)) Fleischer has conceived of a doomed, decadent South: the Maxwell mansion is a brooding presence full of huge, shadowy rooms and, despite their wealth, dirt-stained walls (mansions of other families, particularly those with womenfolk, are noticeably better kept); the surrounding forests are lit by dustmote-thickened sunbeams and teem with tropical plants that thrive in the Southern heat.

I can't help but think that the film's violent setpiece, a no-holds-barred bareknuckled fight between two black men with bets placed, may have been the inspiration for the duel to the death in Mario O'Hara's Bagong Hari (The New King, 1986). Other than the common premise, the two sequences couldn't be more different--Fleischer stages his fight as a claustrophobic battle, with teeming crowds on the sidelines and a handheld camera lunging in for closeup shots; O'Hara's is more of an arena event, with tiers rising above and away from the circular floor, torches bordering the battle area, and the camera confining itself to more aloof medium and long shots. Preference for one over another may be a matter of taste--I love O'Hara's cool appreciation of the desperation far below, same time as I like Fleischer's sense of immediacy; I was startled by Fleischer's bloody conclusion, same time I appreciate O'Hara's one wince-inducing moment, involving a meat hook. Both worked with small budgets (O'Hara's being the far smaller), both show a distinct flair for and understanding of violence.

At the film's center is Warren's son Hammond (Perry King), an angel-faced, ostensibly kindhearted plantation owner who at the same time feels more comfortable bedding and deflowering his black 'wenches' than he does bedding Blanche (Susan George), his upper class white wife. Yet he's not above stringing up an old black slave upside-down, and having another slave beat the man's naked bottom bloody with a paddle drilled with holes (to reduce air resistance and speed up the swing). The old slave's crime? Learning to read.

Hammond is in the classic mold of the tragic hero--like, say, Macbeth he is basically a good man, a promising catch for Southern women what with his money and his progressive attitude towards slaves; like Macbeth he never fully realizes the precariousness of his position, never learns that unlimited access to power can lead to its unlimited abuse, and eventual payback. Robert Keser in The Film Journal argues that when matters come to head, when "the crisis peels away Hammond’s velvet glove, revealing his essence as he reverts to violence," he precipitates "the final wave of tragedy." Keser goes on to conclude that "A benign despot with an attractive smile and surface compassion is a despot nonetheless."

I don't quite see it that way. Hammond's moments with his favorite 'wench' Ellen are about as touching as anything I've seen on film, his vow to her that "No one, black or white, gonna take your place" a far more real declaration of matrimony than anything he says to poor Blanche, who is in turn as much a victim as any of the wenches in the Maxwell plantation (she just has more bite, is all). I see Hammond as being an essentially tenderhearted, loving man, who unthinkingly embraces the violence inherent in the institution of slavery; any punishment he instigates is out of obligation, as in the bloodying of that old man's behind (when a cousin walks in and takes over the beating with greater relish, Hammond immediately objects). The real tragedy I think is that a loving heart is not enough; the institution victimizes blacks and their masters alike, robbing both of their humanity as Hammond is gradually robbed of his.

When push finally comes to shove, I don't see the event as Hammond reverting to a violence that was always there so much as it is a matter of a soft heart pierced to the quick, striking out in unaccustomed fury. It's a truism, I suppose, that the gentlest people when provoked express the most extreme reactions, but that's the truism I believe Fleischer had in mind for the film's climax. Hammond has the numbed face of one trying to hide his inner revulsion at what he intends to do, and he carries out his mission with the briskness of one who knows he has to do things quickly, unthinkingly--if he paused to consider, he would fail to go through with it.

In a kind of reverse trajectory, Hammond's favorite buck slave Mede (football star Ken Norton) gradually gains his humanity. He doesn't have it at film's beginning; in one of his earliest scenes, he's examined and prodded and looked over like a prized racehorse. His preferential treatment is thrown at his face time and again; fellow blacks keep pointing out that on issues that matter, his benign white masters will turn on him. When a runaway slave is about to be hanged, the condemned man looks at Mede and declares "at least I die a free man." As push again comes to shove and Mede finds himself facing the unfortunate end of a rifle barrel, his eventual recovery of the dignity he had lost makes for a stirring counterpoint, a hopeful (if faint) note to contrast against Hammond's own despairing, downward spiral. A great film, absolutely.