"Godspeed" (2007) +

A short film detailing a transman's problems with impulse control. Jim (played by co-director Lynn Breedlove) is a bike messenger who lives for the rush of speed, both in its crystal and experiential form. Jim's in swoon with intellectual sex worker Ally, who wants him to stay clean but does not trust him to do so. The 15 or so minutes of the film chart how Jim loves his job, even though he loses it because he can't resist visiting the girl he loves when on a rush delivery of a time sensitive parcel. The single requirement that Ally places on Jim is that he stay clean, which he fails to do pretty much immediately upon discovering that he's been fired (the single interaction that clarifies Jim's trans status -- as the boss, while firing him, mocks Jim by calling him Elizabeth). The film -- with simple clarity and effective production values -- details the addictive mind, presenting Jim as a speed junkie who's unable to discern between the various "rushes" that his life provides. The best part of the film is the Breedlove's voiceover, which renders Jim -- who's largely inarticulate in the diegesis -- as a kind of comic raconteur of the queer addict's consciousness. The use of the voiceover creates a surprising tension in the film which allows for an aptly comic poignancy to infuse the basically pathetic story. (The auto-narration of the "fish dance" is profound and hilarious and terrifying all at once.) Because of the voiceover, we are able to like Jim much more than his actions might warrant which -- along with the adept photography and excellent soundtrack -- make this dark film a gratifying experience. Breedlove's status as star and director of this film (while also being the frontwoman for the legendary riot/punk band Tribe8) might help explain how this little film has the best lesbo-feminist punk soundtrack perhaps ever. This soundtrack, in tandem with Jim's voiceover monologs (also likely authored by Breedlove), infuse the film with critical voice that well surpasses the banality of the narrative scenario.

25 Cent Preview (2007) -

A vaguely obtuse erotic-laconic "thriller" set amidst the skanktastic environs of male street prostitution in San Francisco's tenderloin district. The elliptical narrative skitters in the wake of Marcus (Merlin Gaspers), a pretty white man who acts like a surly teenager as he tricks and trips his way through a 24 hour period on the street. Marcus and his best street pal, the loquacious DotCom (Dorian Brockington in a frequently excellent, always vivid performance), loop in and out of each other's paths, occasionally tricking together and always looking out for one another. The relationship anchors this trippy, druggy, dazy film (the story is credited to the director and two principal actors, while the dialogue is attributed to "actors). The thematic of the film considers the cycle of victimization as one that doubles back on the victim in ways he might never see, with the final moments suggesting that the simple choice to "not perpetrate" violence or exploitation is the first step toward a kind of humanizing redemption. For the first 2/3 of the film -- at least until the reality of Marcus's anticipated confrontation with the elderly priest who molested him helps to focus the narrative action of the film -- the film is a dark, murky ordeal of partial interactions and curiously complicated scenarios that hold together only circumstantially. (A subplot of Marcus' girlfriend's brother stalking and then bashing him is just distracting -- I can see how it fits in the thematic but I don't feel how it connects to the wispy narrative). Additionally, the improvised dialogue by the actors is only occasionally apt, with only the banter between Brockington's DotCom and Gasper's Marcus elevating beyond the amateurish. Perhaps my biggest challenge with this film, though, was the absence of a director of photography and the reliance on a cinema verite style of natural/situational lite. The scenarios mostly take place outside at night, and the lack of careful lighting muddies much of the project (with the few nighttime interiors flat and unengaging). Occasional visual beauty does punctuate the film, with the climactic sequence during daylight at the shore being actually quite beautiful. I basically found the first 2/3 of the film utterly tiresome, save for Brockington's occasional flashes of excellence, but the genuinely compelling concluding sequence ended up putting me on the bubble...

Pickup on South Street (1953) +

A delightfully noir genre study in which pickpockets, stool pigeons, and loose women take up the good fight against Communism. Everybody's great. Richard Widmark and Thelma Ritter are the plucky pros you expect them to be, even when saddled with often merely adequate material. Jean Peters as the femme fatale and Richard Kiley as the ever-sweaty wannabe secret-seller are delightful (especially Kiley, who's achieves a Hitchcockian dimension of ambivalent/ambiguous menace). The film is captivating and fun, with delicious style often triumphing over the utterly conventional (and occasionally pandering) substance. I really like Fuller's camera work in this. His reverence for Widmark's easy complexity and precision, as well as his obvious adoration for Thelma Ritter (the way Fuller's camera treats Ritter's death soliloquy is the stuff of a film actor's dream), is warranted and welcome. Also, several suspense sequences -- like the awesomely beautiful dumbwaiter sequence -- are worth watching the movie for. Indeed, I quite liked it -- in spite of the essential banality of the narrative and characters and the brazen/craven redbaiting (a narrative detail that instigates an array of tone-deaf platitudes).

Hondo (1953) -

Hondo (1953)-dvd (-)
An uncharacteristically pensive deployment of the John Wayne persona, with startling touches of visual beauty and emotional complexity. The basic scenario is simple: the Apache are coming and Wayne wants Geraldine Page and her annoying son to hit the high road. The complications to this basic narrative urgency are less conventional, including a nuanced meditation on the imperative of marital fidelity and a complicated empathy for Native American ways of living. Geraldine Page gives a startlingly understated performance, one tethered to an emotional plausibility that tosses the rest of the cardboard characters into a curious relief. Though nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Page is basically/nearly a lead -- certainly the romantic lead if we approach this Western as a romance -- and her centrality to the film's emotional architecture (everything Wayne does is inspired to a greater or lesser extent by his instinct to do "right" by her and her son) elevates the whole project in a subtle but substantive way. And though the apache characters are presented as blood-thirsty savages (only the leaders demonstrate anything approaching ethical restraint), Page's character leads in according the Apache a modicum of human respect. I must say, though, that the plastic center-part wigs, the rusty face paint, the coal black body paint and THE FACT THAT THE INDIANS DON'T WEAR PANTS (despite wearing long sleeved high collar tunics) is just weird. The natural settings look like New Mexico (though 'twas apparently filmed in Mexico) but the built environment looks like SE SoCal (ala Ramona). John Wayne living up to his caricatures but, even with him, Page's intelligence and clarity provides a palpably human anchor to the generalized genre absurdity.

Near Dark (1987) +

A melancholic, existential romance set against the timeless struggle between neo-cowboys and neo-vampires. Basically, a hoot. With lots of intelligence, strong acting and cute boys to keep things extra entertaining. Kathryn Bigelow accomplishes a stealthily feminist take on things (whether she means to or not) by framing the whole drama from the instigating action of a teen guy wanting to get into a teen girl's pants and not taking "no" for an answer. Here, in what is perhaps the only AIDS reference in the piece, dogging the girl gets the guy a life sentence of struggle, hardship and physical pain. But the date rape instigation of vampirism (which is never explicitly specified in the film's narrative) is only the beginning of a more extended exploration of the dimensions of addiction, detox and recovery -- as the central character of Caleb (a dewy, delicious Adrian Pasdar) refuses to go as low as his craving demands. His refusal to become a killer in service of his painful hunger stands as a surprisingly plausible redeployment of that 80s homily: Just Say No. And through that clarity, Caleb not only reconciles with his biological family but also determines a strategy to detox from his ostensibly permanent addiction. It's a primordial struggle between good and evil, in which we get to know and appreciate evil a little bit more. But the film is smart, gory and entertaining -- with an extraordinary, unforgettable supporting performance by Bill Paxton that becomes the parallel emotional center of the piece. (Indeed, the moment when Paxton's Severen burps lightly after feeding on the stubbly neck of a biker in a skanky bar is one of the most brilliantly, most complexly comic moments in horror.) Even more, I'd put Paxton on my short list of great horror acting (along with Perkins, Laurie and Spacek) for the incredible humanity he brings to his monster, a humanity that helps to calibrate the balance and the "stakes" for this genre-fucking piece. I could talk about this movie for a long time. Unpretentious, off-the-radar brilliance at its best.

Life After Tomorrow (2006) +

An occasionally fascinating account of life as a kid performer on the Broadway stage (though the most interesting stories seem to come from the national tour). The major accomplishment of the film is the aggregation of these women -- now mostly in their thirties and only a few of whom remain in the business -- who as girls of 8-14 appeared in some iteration of the musical ANNIE. As the women reflect on the nature of the experience, a bunch of things come up: the fleeting aspects of fame; Annie as peculiar cultural phenomenon; the curiosities of being a working child; the irreality of the entertainment business for anyone let alone a kid; growing up way fast in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The main fault of the piece is that there's little in the way of structuring impulse -- just an aggregation of stories, loosely cobbled together thematically, to create an 80 minute diversion. Without an organizing event (a reunion? a revival?) to focus the proceedings, the conceit doesn't really hold together as nothing ends up getting meaningfully sustained attention. It's not really a history of ANNIE, nor is it an examination of fame, success and childhood. (Indeed, it seems some of the more incisive possible themes are blunted to permit a broader participation.) As such, some of the more meditative/spiritual accounts (ie. April Lerman & Sarah Jessica Parker) get confused by the embittered (the Kate & Allie girl), the optimistically nostalgic (the chubby mom), and the just plain weird (the pie faced blonde who got jew-baited; the crazy rocker girl). And what were the creepy collector and the Sandy handler doing there? Disappointing, mostly because I wanted it to be better, because the material's just so rich. Still a decent opener to a conversation about kid labor in the entertainment industry.

Mogambo (1953) -

forthcoming

Searching for Debra Winger (2002) -

forthcoming

Torch Song (1953) -

In the dvd extras, Janine Basinger has a funny little thing where she basically describes this film as a giant WTF, defying easy description, even/especially her own. There you have it; I couldn't agree more. Basinger also suggests that this movie is about stardom, featuring one of the most undeniable stars of the Hollywood era, and thus becomes a whole self-referential circuit about the phenomenon of stardom. This is, I suspect, the most productive way to view this turgid, defiantly unentertaining film: as a cinematic biology experiment, dissecting Hollywood stardom as a formaldehyded frog. Of course, Joan Crawford is that frog. The story is not that complicated: A self-sufficient superstar opens her heart to a man who will always remember her as she was before she got successful/bitter/old (because he's blind and can't witness the changes to her visage). It's a scenario perfect for a sentimental weepy, featuring June Allyson or Jane Wyman (or Delta Burke in the Designing Women episode that follows essentially the same plot). But with Joan Crawford, this sentimental musical melodrama morphs into something epic, something almost scientific. Crawford is amazing -- fierce, brittle, expert in her execution of every line and every moment...but, of course, she's abjectly soulless and utterly terrifying. No wonder the dog barks upon sight of her. She's a beast in this film, tearing into each scene as if she were the lion and it were the gazelle. Perhaps as a result, the movie becomes about the spectacle of Crawford, not the character or the story, and it's fascinating but joyless to behold. It's also a great example lesson of one of the most elusive aspects of the queerest camp pleasures: how it helps when the diva is "in"(to some extent) on the joke. With every turn of this screwball film, however, Crawford is utterly, seriously sincere and it's deadly to watch. There is so much camp material but few camp moments, even with a giant queen as the director. There is much queer pleasure to be taken from Torch Song, but surprisingly little to be found in it. (Though MrStinky really does like "hothouse clotheshorse" as a euphemism for a gay man.)

Smart People (2008) -

An adequately engaging comedy of manners for mildly intelligent grownups. The film benefits from a relatively undertstated approach to the sitcom scenario characters: a widowed, misanthropic and egotistical middle aged professor ignores both his precociously overachieving young-republican daughter and his sullen son who writes poetry while he fumes at the injustice of being passed over professionally, both for by his department as they select a new chair and by all the potential publishers of his new book. An unexpected health emergency coincides with the arrival of his underachieving brother and also instigates an awkward flirtation with the attending ER physician. Madcap hilarity ensues as these crazy characters rediscover in each other the power of love in making life worth living. That's basically it, and it's to the film's credit that the journey is not as noxious as might have been. The cast is nearly uniformly likable and most of the scenarios are nearly plausible. The supporting cast (Thomas Haden Church and Ellen Page especially) are generally effective and even Sarah Jessica Parker is generally effective/appealing. The main problem is Dennis Quaid in the lead role, a role that would have likely gone to William Hurt a generation or so ago. It's as if Quaid misunderstood the direction to "turn down the charm a couple notches" and undertook instead to make this embittered but decent man into a complete toad. Jack Nicholson's made something of a second career out of this kind of charming asshole role, and unfortunately it seems Quaid modeled his performance on that Nicholson style. It also doesn't help that Quaid clearly has no idea why anyone would make their career reading 19th century British literature, which debilitates the not inaccurate depictions of academic life. Quaid is the emotional and narrative center of the film and his blithely superficial performance diminishes the whole. Page and Haden Church work wonders in their scenes together, though something's been edited from the relationship which tosses it off balance. With additionally distracting gaps (the son's relationship with the father's student and Christine Lahti in a role that must have been larger in some earlier version of either the film or the screenplay), the film comes to rest on Quaid's arc -- which is the least effectively explored in the film. I basically enjoyed the film, however. And was grateful to be in the company of these kinds of characters. I just found something to be more than a little off-kilter about the general narrative balance.

From Here to Eternity (1953) -

A notably cynical war film. The basic premise of this sustained critique of bureaucratic hypocrisy is that the army really screwed up Pearl Harbor because everyone was so darn caught up in internal boot camp politics to pay attention to the real enemy. Or at least that's the alibi for a sustained, occasionally lurid portrait of GI life. The three male leads each chart a main plot narrative: Burt Lancaster plays an officer's assistant who's having a torrid affair with the officer's wife; Montgomery Clift plays an enlisted guy who refuses to exploit his abilities as a great boxer and a great bugler in order to stay just a regular soldier (he also falls in a romantic affair with a dance hall hostess in town); and Frank Sinatra a regular joe, a party boy with a big mouth who's mostly looking to have a good time in this life (who develops something of a blood feud with a bully). It's a sudsy soap, with each of the three guys curiously devoted to each other's being treated right. The women are barely realized stock characters -- the bad wife, the good whore -- who largely exist to heterosexualize the charged homoeroticism of the main relationships as well as the general scenario. Like much post-1940s moviemaking about the war, the spectacular display of homosocial fraternization in various states of physical exertion and undress makes for quite the testosteronic spectacle. Moreover, this film seems premised upon a curiously masochistic kind of narrative pleasure -- each of the male characters (though especially Clift) opt for a kind of self-abnegation, a self-denial that leads them to curiously spectacular modes of suffering. (The SM dynamics are literalized in the creepy totally electric scenario between Sinatra and Ernest Borgnine as a sadistic prison guard.) It's a strange film with little in the way of generalized pleasure or gratification, but this is totally one of those films you want to see "mashed up" or excerpted -- it doesn't take much to turn this whole movie into an oblique Querelle. The women are props, alibis for the charged erotic relations among the men -- the army a great big, semi-nude, homosocial barracks of teeming queerness. As a free-standing film, though, it's basically underwhelming. Also, Lancaster is occasionally hot but he's still Burt Lancaster. And Clift -- in what many claim is one of his most important roles -- seems a little too genteel for the everyjoe soldier he's playing. He brings a clarity and intelligence to the performance -- which flatters both the character and the audience -- but I can't help but feel he's a little too refined for the role. His uncertainties, his reluctances, his defiances all seem to emerge from a sense of internal decorum -- rather than an elementally frustrated constipation about his view of his role in society. I like Clift more here than I usually do, but I still think he and Reed would have both been more exciting in the Lancaster/Kerr roles.

Stop-Loss (2008) +

Perhaps the most intelligently empathetic war movie I've ever seen. Kimberly Pierce's film has been resoundingly praised for its opening sequence, uniformly criticized for its pacing/structure, frequently faulted for filmmaker Pierce's "good intentions" and righteously lambasted for its posterboy ad campaign. All of which seems to me to be utterly conventional commentary encrusting upon a defiantly unconventional film. And, frankly, it's beginning to piss me off. I found Stop-Loss to be a profound -- and fundamentally moving -- explication of the soldier's dilemma: the alternately existential and moral and personal challenge of staying invested in the fight. It seems to me that Pierce built this film around the oxymoronic notions of passionate ambivalence, of righteous uncertainty, of resolute confusion -- metaphors that seem as apt as any for life during wartime. Moreover, these contradictions seem absolutely real when you, as Pierce had done here, attempt to take on the subject of an ongoing war from the soldier's POV. What I perhaps admire most about the film is that Pierce allows her hero map his journey back to his own integrity: in the course of this film, Ryan Phillippe's Brandon encounters the limits to each of his rationale for "why" he fights (respectively -- 9-11; his country; his hometown; his buddies; doing the "right" thing) as he finally struggles toward a clarity about why he does anything (the love of his beloveds). Ultimately, the film's controversial conclusion underscores this simple lesson: Brandon lives for his beloveds and he elects to fight so that he might be returned to them. We know that he knows that its a might big "might" but Pierce helps us to understand that little else gives life meaning. I cried at least 4 different times in this film, for at least as many different reasons (and I'm becoming emotional again as I write these notes). All of which fuels my pissed-offed-ness at the general swirl of commentary around this film. It's all so petty -- faulting the film for its perceived flaws in narrative or stylistic coherence. Whatevuh. Pierce's film endeavors to prioritize a kind of cultural work that few artists in any media seem to be engaging. The film doesn't speak clearly for or against THIS war (though it doesn't seem to be too fond of war as a general concept), which I suspect is a problem for some viewers (on both "sides"). What this film does do is ask hard hard hard questions about what it means to be at war, what are the costs of thinking seriously about being at war, what are the costs of NOT thinking seriously about same. The film allows us into the soul of this set of contradictions and challenges us to feel our way through them, with Phillippe's Brandon and Abbie Cornish's Michelle as our guides. It's a brave piece of filmmaking, accomplished with formal precision and humane respect. I hate that the film has been so dismissed for what seem self-flattering reasons, rather than engaged respectfully as a film that's trying to use this medium as a device for critical, communal reflection. The work of the actors ranges from just fine to very fine (with Linda Emond a standout for her galvanic but quiet turn as a mother grieving her son's experience of war even before he's dead from it). And any movie that has Margo Martindale in a voiceover cameo is one to make my heart quake. But this film ain't about the performances, but rather the journey of going with these simple characters on the very complicated journey of life during wartime. I remain astonished at this movie's haunting power and long for a cinematic companion with whom I might share my unapologetic appreciation of all that this film actually DOES accomplish (in stalwart defiance of the general tut-tutting consensus that's gathered to dampen this film's power)...