Reviews

Ty Cobb is, by far, the most interesting and belligerently insane athlete to ever live. His baseball career was unparalleled in absurd statistics, brilliant strategy, and pure unadulterated violence. Every game he played in was a spectacle in human ability and cruelty. So of course, the film about him deals with none of that, instead focusing on the writing of his biography by author Al Stump. Now this isn't such a horrible idea in theory, as Cobb himself slid even further into paranoid dementia as years progressed and the stories of his crazed outbursts even as a senior are shocking even by today's desensitized standards. But instead of focusing on these events, which I figure were simply too interesting, the film is a pseudo fictionalized road film with a clichéd plot that will cause any knowledgeable Cobb fan to cry vinegar tears.

Tommy Lee Jones does quite well as a crotchety Cobb, but somehow manages to overplay his cartoon supervillainy. Most stories about Cobb are barely believable, but to make him even crazier seems both impossible and unnecessary. Robert Wuhl, portraying the writer Al Stump, is a dark vortex of non-talent. He sucks the life out of every scene, trying to make this film his own Nagasaki. There is a reason we never see him as a leading man anymore (Arli$$ does not count. It's barely a show). Even the played out, inevitable "role reversal" of Cobb and Stump by the end is made even worse by his pure inability to utter lines that don't sound akin to a bottom shelf book on tape narration voice.

For all the awful writing and bland film-making on display, there is one sequence which stands out as so far superior to the rest of this failure that accepting it's from the same film is near impossible. A hyper stylized flashback sequence displaying Cobb's overpowering psychology and brutal athleticism while actually playing the game of baseball is pure brilliance. The camera moves in bizarre fashion and the whole event seems like a dream due to the unique playing style of the monster Cobb. Every slide, hit, and tackle are rendered even more forceful due to enhanced sound, and Tommy Lee Jones OWNS the intensity of the master player. It makes the viewer drool over the possibilities of a true biopic of Cobb in his prime with the same actor. It's worth watching the film for this incredible few minutes alone, just to see what could have been.

I may be slightly unfair to this film due to my own knowledge of Ty Cobb and wanting it to be something it isn't, but to make such boring, neutered movie about this maniac is nonsensical. I'm glad Ron Shelton's career has slid ever since.

The garage-built cacophony Mr. Freedom truly appears to be the thematic grandfather to Trey Parker's marionette spectacular Team America. During the political tumult of 1960's America, William Klein managed to create a knock down, drag out satire so brutal that nothing came close to touching it until 2004. This is a film that refuses to just poke fun at American chauvinism. Rather, it savagely tears apart the elitism held by many of the country's under educated inhabitants as well as foreign policy that equates to "agree with us or suffer". Mr. Freedom himself (portrayed brilliantly by rare actor John Abbey) is a Stetson crowned ass kicker for America, a representation of the citizens who ride their high horse all day long, looking down upon all others and who's number one fear is the threat of communism. Incredibly this film from 1969 is more relevant than most for today's disciples of 24 hour news networks and conservative radio. Simply replace communism with terrorism and this film could have been made last week.

Only this film would never be made today. The entirety of the costumes seem like they were put together in an arts and crafts class in elementary school, which only adds to the absurdity of every situation. One of Mr. Freedom's key enemies is a massive inflatable commie chinaman. The ludicrous design of everything and homemade costumes and effects lend credit to the film's aim of showing us just how goddamned ridiculous our government's actions are. At one point Mr. Freedom even comes down with a surly case of stigmata, and the link between American extremism and Christian sensibilities is thrown into the limelight. Klein saw everything wrong with this country and attacked it with his kaleidoscopic dream imagery and a powerful wit so astute that his comments still matter and should be studied by the entirety of Washington DC 39 years after the fact.

Miklos Jansco's masterful non-narrative war film "The Red and the White" is perhaps the epitome of strictly objective war film-making. No side is taken, no side is followed, nothing is explicitly stated. While, granted, it appears fairly obvious Jansco opposes war itself as witnessed in vignette after brutally honest and distancing vignette, the viewer is never following one side in this conflict. In fact one often loses sight of which side is which, causing all combatants to meld together into a singular chaotic entity that simply fights because it must. It may be a reflection on drawn out conflict in general where the reasons for such exaggerated violence vanish and the world spins into a deranged circus of blood and flak.

The long take as engineered by Jansco helps perpetrate the voyeuristic sense in the viewer. Dolly track lines the countryside as we are forced to watch unending bouts of suffering and anguish when we want nothing more than to look away. This is a film that firmly clutches us by the chin and shouts "No! You are going to watch this!" There are no cutaways to safety here. Neither are there any close-ups, as Jansco keeps us as distant as he can so we have no individuals to sympathize with, just humanity itself. Not until the final shot does the camera move into a specific soldier's face as if to remind us after 90 minutes of savagery that yes, these people are human after all, and they must endure the repercussions for their actions.

If I learned anything from my viewing of Paul Schrader's 1979 tale of repressed anger "Hardcore", it's that George C. Scott was, and always will be, the seminal master of stressfully and disappointingly holding his forehead in his hand. This demanding and dictatorial Calvinist patriarch traverses through sin and decadence to find his missing daughter, who is discovered months later in a short porno reel. His sojourn takes him down into the pits of debauchery and sex that a firmly religious soul would, at least not admittedly, want to experience firsthand. There are multiple moments that this man is faced with situations too horrible for his own comprehension; hence the thespianic splendor of George C. Scotts stressed disappointment hands coming into play. This may seem like a joke, but he truly does appear to be so horrified and genuinely furious that he has to deal with the goons and knaves thrown his way. Scott continuously rises above the absurdly comedic and sometimes simply absurd situations that Schrader's script places him. Scott epitomizes the repressed rage of a defeated father and manages to frighten and intimidate while still gaining the sympathy of the audience on his quest.

Sometimes it can appear that Schrader simply wants to push the envelope on what was taboo for the time but the themes of repression through religion are just as relevant in today's increasingly evangelical society. Not just rage in Scott's case, but sexual repression on his part as well as his daughter. While not explicitly stated one can easily infer that the daughter's main reason for disappearing is, aside from a standard domineering religious zealot father, is her budding sexual appetite that simply could not be released under a strict Calvinist rooftop. In some ways it's a subversive coming of age tale, even though the daughter is only seen in photos and on film outside of a few short scenes. Perhaps it's one of the only off-screen coming of age tales made.

Steven Soderbergh's Solaris is the type of stripped down cerebral sci-fi that rarely materializes in this age of romper stomper robots and flagship laser cannons decimating a tiger-faced alien menace. While a remake of Tarkovsky's so called "anti 2001" (remake in the sense that they share the same source material), Soderbergh's squeaky clean medical lab future owes a lot to the visuals and pacing of the nowadays rarely viewed Silent Running. The camera creeps molasses-like through ice blue corridors exhibiting the emptiness and perhaps soulless potential of futuristic design and technology. In fact, emptiness and isolation play a large role right off the bat as the film begins with our eventual space traveler Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) wafting through the muted colors of Earth. Mostly shown from behind and in company with blurred individuals, Kelvin is isolated even around the drab public. With the way technology has been making human contact more and more impersonal over time, this seems a frighteningly accurate portrayal of how we will all feel in due time.

The heart of the story though is based in the space station hovering around the gaseous tendrils of the planet Solaris. Kelvin travels to see if he can help out a friend in a crisis, but this of course leads him on a most mysterious journey. The barren station becomes even more prison-esquire than the grimy locales we saw on Earth, with only two human inhabitants on board, as well as some characters that may or may not be so human. Soderbergh respects his audience and asks them to leave passive viewing at home so they too can try to figure out what is being presented to Kelvin. What defines us as human? If there is such phenomena occurring like on the ship, how does that figure into religious views? Kelvin is forced to question all of his previous beliefs and the film, which is just vague enough in the ideas it presents, forces us to do the same. This is a finely crafted, deliberately paced, and truly exotic experience, the likes of which is rarely seen (or funded) today.

Phantasmagorical tales throughout cinematic history have overwhelmingly failed to pull legitimate emotional reactions out of the viewer. Cheese-ventures such as Ghost pile on the schmaltz, suffocating the viewer with its heavy-handedness. One could even toss Frequency in this category of emotional cheap-shot film-making, with music swells to induce tears over the drivel on screen. Then we simply pull out our way-back machines and take a gander at Kenji Mizogutchi's masterpiece Ugetsu Monogatari and see that it doesn't have to be this way! Here there is no long lost love chiming in from beyond the grave with ephemeral kisses. In fact the ectoplasmic aspect is not the focus at all. This is a human tale about responsibility and staying faithful to family in a time of crisis; a rumination on the selfish possibilities stirred up by wealth, greed, and stature. The phantoms are only there to aid the story in presenting its points of view as opposed to being the story itself.

Mizogutchi has stated in the past that a film should "unfurl like a scroll" and his ever flowing camera makes sure to keep that thesis alive. Almost every shot is a long take with slow, fluid movement as if the viewer is a voyeur, watching the action as we pass along. Brilliant mise en scene only adds to the flavor. There is a key scene where the main character Genjuro returns home from his spectral odyssey. He strolls into his home to find no one there and makes a full circle around the house. When he enters the second time he sees his wife in front of a lit fire. This is a single, gorgeous take with the smoothest of roaming camera and tells an entire story on its own. Pure visual splendor.

In many ways Ugetsu could be seen as the anti-Ozu film in both form and story. Fluid, constantly roaming camera and a story not based entirely in the "real" world (though, to be fair, this is a debatable issue) vs. static camera for stories of social realism. Was Mizoguchi rebelling against the master of old? Whatever the reasons for his stylistic choices, he managed to create a film unlike anything Japan had seen before.

I simply cannot fathom how a film with a premise like this can fail on every level to strike one iota of interest in the viewer. What should be a dark, seedy, erotic, subversive journey through Nazi sadism and sexual obsession becomes a bland, stoic, embarrassing disaster. There is simply an unending buffet of explorable ideas with the lingering pain of concentration camp imprisonment/sexual abuse and transgression, yet somehow this film seems content with not really exploring anything. Despite this, the subject matter is never taken far enough to even be called exploitation. It's just….nothing. It feels as if Liliana Cavani saw this material as a challenge. Feeling that it was far too interesting, she would see just how much she could whittle it down until no one would care one way or the other. There is an overwhelming feeling that perhaps the material actually was too risqué or subversive for her, and as not to offend by going to any extreme, it was kept generic out of safety. One cannot say for certain.

Generic cinematography captures the lifelessness of the director's vision with dull grays pervading every shot. Watch Pasolini's Salo if you want to see how to portray decadence visually. Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde are about as interesting as cacti, lazily looking forlorn in every shot, other than when they roll around giggling and lightly humping for three minutes at a time. Rampling, in particular, gave me no reason to care at all what happened to her. She walks the world, machine-like, occasionally giving a quick shocked glare, as if the director finally admitted that she needed to do SOMETHING. Concurrently, every one else in the cast defies all reason by staunch adherence to expressing less emotion than Caligari's Somnambulist. Claiming "they are Nazi's" or "she is scarred from her past!" do not excuse lazy direction and wooden performances. These people make Bresson's actors appear radiant and full of life. There is a key scene where Charlotte Rampling dances and serenades multiple SS officers while topless, adorned with a Nazi commander's cap. This scene is not disturbing. It is not titillating or erotic. Yet it appears that the director's goal was to induce both feelings of attraction and repulsion in the viewer, perhaps to have us realize her brilliance in making us question how we could be attracted to something so despicable (though, judging from the rest of the film, Cavani may not be talented enough to create such a scene or think such a thought). What should be both haunting and beautiful turns hokey and irritating as it drags on. Overall it seems as if Cavani is desperately trying to be Catherine Breillat before there really was a Catherine Breillat. She failed.