Random Thoughts

Man that’s how you start a movie! Fight the Power by Public Enemy and a slamming dance routine!

I have not seen this movie since it was released (and I was 21), but I remember being all excited about it (and disappointed with almost every subsequent Spike Lee movie).

(Hm… that’s like 34 years ago… how old does that make me? *gasp* It cannot be! PUT THAT MATH AWAY)

Oh, the Lon Guyland (?) repartee…

Oh, I’d forgotten that Spike Lee acts in this, as well as being the writer, producer and directer. Très auteaur.

OK… my enthusiasm is evaporating. I guess I’ve seen a lot of American indie movies over the last decades, so what I found to be really original and interesting back then now seems kinda rote? Especially the performances — they’re kinda not all there. I mean… I guess Lee isn’t exactly going for naturalistic or anything, but the performances just seem all over the place: Some of them seem to be doing The Method, while others seem to be reading their lines off a teleprompter, and some people seem to be finding the scenery delectable and chewing it all up.

But I still love the colours.

Lee likes this angle, man.

I’m getting stressed out by these pizzas! It seems like every one in waiting around for fifteen minutes while people work out their dramas before getting delivered. THE PIZZAS ARE GETTING COLD

I’m starting to get into this again now… I was overly enthusiastic, and then crushingly disappointed, but now I’m enjoying this.

I’ve been wondering this entire time where I’ve seen the guy playing Vito last and going “well, he kinda looks like John Lurie, but isn’t, so it’s not Stranger Than Paradise”. I finally broke down and looked him up:

It’s Stranger Than Paradise!

Well… No, I’m still disappointed. I can well see people having this as their favourite movie ever, because it’s definitely got something special. Some of the scenes are really good, and it’s got a proper mood going. And I like the Robert Altmanesque so-many-things-going-on-you-have-no-idea-where-it’s-going thing.

But there’s some scenes that are just hokey beyond belief, and it loses tension that’s hard to regain.

Oh, Kenneth Branagh… that makes sense. I remember Lee and Branagh coming onto the scene about the same time, both doing ambitious movies…

There’s only one more new entry on the Sight & Sound 2022 Directors’ List to go — the top 30 doesn’t get many brand new entries; the vast majority are in #50-100, which is natural.

Do The Right Thing. Spike Lee. 1989. ⚃

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

I watched this back in 2015, but now I’ve got a 2K version of it, so I’m watching it again.

So this starts with a dead woman, and is being presented as an investigation into her life and how she ended up in that ditch.

Varda is more known for her documentaries these days than her films, and this is a kind of hybrid thing. That is, it’s perhaps the most conventional of her films I’ve seen — traditionally filmed and edited, without any major flourishes…

… except for using obvious non-professional actors and dialogue that’s not exactly naturalistic.

Should she be wearing her leather jacket while washing cars?

Anyway, the movie is about a pretty, young woman, wearing kinda cool clothes, who has no obvious problems, who’s a drifter in the French countryside. So the mystery is, of course: Why has she chosen this (hard) life?

Puppy!

You’d think in a film like this it’d be just one bad thing after another — but no, she encounters a lot of people, and most of them are pretty decent towards her? She’s not a druggie either, and doesn’t seem to have any particular trauma… She’s a rebel without a clue?

Fluffy cow!

Of course people in France giving blood get wine!

The movie loses focus after a while — we kinda get more into other people’s reactions to the vagabond than anything else. It’s a bit like Varda didn’t quite know how to follow up on the initial impetus — instead she starts devoting time to people who are sort of standins for herself: People around the vagabond who are wondering what’s going on with the vagabond?

Man, they have some odd traditions in France…

Ah yeah… I can see how this connects with Wes Anderson and Atom Egoyan…

That’s Egoyan’s list — he has a perfect score here (only films that are on the lists). All good films, really, but not very adventurous.

Wes Anderson, on the other hand, has only four films that are on the S&S lists. Hm… Clouzot? Lots of old/French stuff…

Anyway, this movie is very good, but I think I liked it better the first time I watched it? This time around, it just seemed aimless in a not very good way. But still:

Vagabond. Agnès Varda. 1985. ⚄

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

Futura!

I’ve seen this movie randomly like a handful of times — the last time was perhaps four years ago? So… I’m not super enthusiastic about watching it again now. I mean, it’s a movie that has a lot of amusing scenes and some great performances, but it’s one of those satire¹ films with a lot of plot to get through, so when you remember how each scene goes, it can get a bit annoying.

But here we go. I’m just giving you a heads up that I may be less enthusiastic here than … rationally expected.

It’s a good movie for heckling in a group… lots of memorable lines that you can shout back at the screen.

It’s a movie that’s all plot and manoeuvres…

What! Not 100%! Who are the dangerous rebels!

Oh, that’s a crank…

What’s that then?

Strangelove Drops Controversial Bomb

Feb. 20, 1964

By Philip K. Scheuer

This will be a minority report — critically speaking, at any rate. Before I was served up “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” a publicist at Columbia, which is distributing the picture, assured me it would be my “cup of tea.” After suffering through two screenings of “Dr. Strangelove,” I would sooner drink hemlock…. To me, “Dr. Strangelove” is an evil thing about an evil thing; you will have to make up your own mind about it.

Oh, it’s not a review? Er… it’s very short…

The film is kinda comforting — I mean, the depiction of the president as a rational, effective person who can get things done without significant squabbles (except from the George C. Scott character) is very fairy tale like.

Well, I’m not surprised that Oliver Stone voted for this.

*slaps knee*

It’s a very quotable movie.

I do wonder what it was like watching this in 1964. Probably not much of a shock — you’d have “subversive” humour like this for a decade and a half at least — but perhaps unusual for a mainstream audience?

I mean, it’s satire¹.

It’s… I mean, Sellers’ performance is great (sorry if I’m being controversial here). But he’s so much better at this sort of thing that the other actors feel like amateurs. George C. Scott is up to the task of chewing the scenery in a satisfying way, but Sterling Hayden, for instance, is constantly shown up by Sellers.

It’s such a memorable movie — almost every scene seems iconic.

And it’s really really exciting — as it goes along, it gets more and more like a real thriller where we’re at the edge of our seats of our sofas.

It’s a pretty unusual film in that we’re (i.e., the audience) wants these nice people (who are kind of protagonists) to get killed.

And it’s fascinating how these guys are done — no gnashing of teeth or anything, but people doing their jobs professionally. If this movie had been made in 2023, we’d have gotten all their backstories and all their daddy issues and stuff, right?

Almost despite myself, I wound up enjoying watching this movie again — especially the last third. It’s just so memorable that the first half is just scenes that you’re waiting to happen, and the satire¹ is so heavy…

But let’s go with this throw of the die:

Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Stanley Kubrick. 1964. ⚄

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

¹) “Satire” is code for “not actually funny”.

I watched this a few years ago. I was thinking about rewatching it for this blog series, but I should probably wait a bit more before rewatching it? So I’m not.

Anyway, it’s an amazing movie, so the odd thing here is that it hasn’t featured on the Sight & Sound directors’ list before. But the 2022 list has a number of more experimental films than the 2012 list, so I guess it makes sense in that context.

These are the directors that voted for it. And… Gaspar Noé and Frank Oz? Yes, I can see how both those directors would enjoy it. But now I’m wondering how Oz’s list looks like.

Hm… I guess Eraserhead is an outlier here, but perhaps it’s the puppy action that made him put it on the list?

Eraserhead. David Lynch. 1977. ⚅

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

That’s some logo!

“Uhm hm uhm uhm”

You’d think after a lifetime of watching Italian movies I’d be used to the Italian approach to sound — i.e., not recording it, but adding it in post-production. But I’m not! Every time I watch an (old) Italian movie, it comes as a fresh shock.

Well, almost — sometimes it’s done so seamlessly that you almost don’t notice it, but more often than not (like here) I doubt the lines were even written when they filmed it, so the audio doesn’t match up with the actors much. I suspect the actors are just going “rabarbaro rabarbaro melanzane” in a vague way…

And the Italians allow the sound to go to absolute silence a lot — there’s foley work, of course, but sometimes the sound goes to _________ which never really happens in most movies — there’s almost always room ambience of some kind.

This movie isn’t on the critics’ top 250, but it’s #53 on the directors’ list because these directors voted for it. Hm… Roy Andersson makes sense… Sofia Coppola? Hm…

It’s an odd film. I think Antonioni is trying to say something with these constant juxtapositions of old (sometimes dilapidated) buildings and these brand new sky scrapers?

You know… sometimes you watch a movie and it’s not connecting, but then suddenly it snaps into focus and is riveting?

This is one of those movies. All of a sudden it’s the best! movie! ever!

Of course Jeanne Moreau is great.

That’s a good-looking gas station.

All these odd angles and weird ways of framing the shot… I love it.

It’s so weird… I feel like I’ve seen this before — but not exactly like this. Like a remake of this or something. But only certain scenes, like when she was walking around in that neighbourhood, and when they’re arriving at the party…

So many odd angles…

I can see why this isn’t on the critics’ list — it’s so oddly structured, and doesn’t go anywhere you’re expecting, really. But it’s just a fascinating movie: Every scene is gripping, and the stranger it gets, the more “right” it feels. It’s a stunning, gorgeous movie, with amazing performances by Mastroianni, Moreau and Vitti.

La notte. Michelangelo Antonioni. 1961. ⚅

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.