Reviews

This film's plot and dialogue largely center on artists, designers, and their work -- paintings, sketchbooks, sculptures, and high-design furniture, display cases, armoires and vases, and the question of retaining, donating, or selling these rare and rarefied items after its owner dies.

Sophisticated visual objects are the core of the movie, yet its own appearance is surprisingly nondescript. Far more often than not, the cinematography seems haphazard or banal, as though its only purpose was to depict the actors speaking in this very talky film, or follow them around when they move. Its esthetic lacks visual ambition or a compositional point of view.

The art objects that are so important to the plot are treated indifferently -- we rarely see them depicted well or fully. No wonder that a majority of the deceased's children don't care about these treasures -- the director and cinematographer don't seem to either.

Is all this a subliminal way for the director to suggest that art is highfalutin', and less important than people?

I won't comment about the acting or plot -- there's plenty of that here already. What I'd rather do is call attention to the visuals -- the cinematography, lighting, costuming, and especially the set design.

Normally, horror films take place in ancient settings -- crude medieval fortresses and rustic castles that are dark, cluttered and gloomy. But this one is set in a perversely utopian sci-fi fantasy -- the clean lined, impeccably detailed, generously glazed modernistic and (usually) radiantly lit white-and-silver upper floor interiors of the house.

The lower floor is an expressionistic prison, also clean lined, but still dungeon-like with its windowless walls of exposed board-formed concrete. An elegant steel spiral staircase connects the two, and the angular expressionism reaches its culmination in the chamber used for the black mass.

Karloff's costumes recall Oskar Schemmer's Bauhaus-produced work -- angular, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted and elegant. Even the haircut of this man of the future in sharp and angular. His character is an engineer and architect and is given the name -- Poelzig -- of a famous expressionist German architect and film set designer of the time, who was a colleague of the director on an earlier film. The elegant futurism in carried down to the detail level, including a digital night-table clock and an abstract chess set. Much of the genius of this movie is that it breaks the horror-movie visual mold, and floods it with light, creating a fascinating tension between plot and setting.

This is currently showing at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto, as a bookend to The Freshman. Both films were made in the 1920s, are about upper-class college life, swank parties, overdressed and overaged students, and football, and feature Jobyna Ralston. After that, most resemblances end.

The Freshman is a wonderful silent film, a comedy that combines slapstick with subtlety, and Ralston brings depth, tenderness, and a delicate beauty to her role.

The College Coquette is an early talkie melodrama, ground out by a bunch of hacks. Ralston is ineffective and one-dimensional, as are the other characters. The plot is clichéd and primitive.

Usually the old films that survive are good ones, and we thus become spoiled, and assume that they represent the norm of their time. This turkey reminds us that there must have been quite a few times when Hollywood laid an egg, this definitely being one of them.

Bottom line -- this is by far the worst movie I've seen in many years.

Here's a seemingly simple fairy tale movie that's palpably beautiful on every level -- visually,emotionally, and as an unfettered act of imagination.

Giulietta Masina is the Feather Fairy (Perinbaba), a grandmotherly character whose role is to provide snow for the world. Her interactions with the young boy are loving and ripe with wisdom and compassion. She is played physically by Federico Fellini's wife, and vocally by a talented Slovak actress. Her voice-over ability to define the character is no less powerful than Masina's, so that the role is a brilliant and seamless collaboration.

The film is gorgeous to watch, thanks to the spectacular Slovak mountain landscape location, and the straightforward beauty of white feathers seen floating against a sunny deep-blue sky.

I saw this film only once, about 20 years ago, along with several other Jakubisko works at a festival of Czechoslovak films, and it seemed rather undisciplined and unstructured compared to his better efforts. When he made it, it appears that he was more the art-school denizen than the film student. Later, he was to become a consummately disciplined film maker.

I interviewed him at the time, and he said that he had been very self-absorbed in the early part of his directorial career. Perhaps that explains some of the film's basic waywardness.

All that said, this is not a work to be dismissed. It has a certain antic charm, and a certain power. The characters are strongly conceived, and the way that they are realized gives the film much of its form and merit.

The English translation of the title is inaccurate and somewhat misleading, since its last word actually means madmen or crazy people rather than merely fools.

An interesting documentary about the San-Francisco-based lesbian punk-rock band Tribe 8.

Technically, it's a bit rough-edged (it was shot on 16 mm film), but the stories of the various band members are of interest, and are at times quite moving.

There's quite a bit of performance footage (shot in San Francisco and New York, enlivened by frequent toplessness and occasional dildo-flaunting), interspersed with quite a bit of head-shot interview footage. A fair chunk of the film deals with the positive and negative ways that the band's philosophy was received by feminists at a women's conference in Michigan.

For me, it was an interesting look into a world that was previously not on my radar screen. What might at first seem like a glamorous scene proves to be a tough life filled with economic and emotional hardship.

Rise Above's modest production values are more than offset by its compelling subject mater.

This is an uneven movie, with an uneven script and uneven acting (Randolph Scott is particularly unconvincing too much of the time), but its strengths are remarkable.

She's music and sets are astonishingly good. Steiner's score is aptly suited to the twists and turns of the action, and at times it even sounds as though there's a theremin playing, although it's probably just a violin at the high end of its range. (Note/wuestion: why doesn't the spellchecker for a film website not recognize the word "theremin"? Surely that instrument has been used to notable effect in many movies.)

The "natural" sets (ice cliffs, snowy plains, and spooky caverns) are dramatic and artful, and the architectural sets, influenced by cubism, expressionism, and art deco, are among the finest pieces of design in the history of film. The abstract costumes of the inhabitants of She's kingdom (desighed by Aline Bernstein) are also breathtaking in their stylishness and imaginativeness. The lighting and cinematography is also noteworthy, and the special effects are very good for their time.

This may sound like I'm dwelling on peripheral issues, but when the score, art direction, and camera-work are this inventive, they turn an OK film into a wonderful one. Few movies have ever been such delights to the eye and ear.

What a terrible excuse for a movie. Granted, it's meant to be a tongue in cheek comedy-adventure, but the comedy (which dominates the first half) is pretty heavy-handed, and the adventure parts, which take over the second half almost entirely, are pretty lame.

There are about 2.7 cheesy gasoline-fed explosions per minute, and Sharon Stone doesn't show very much of her body. The Turkish opportunist and the German general are broad (and bad) caricatures. The film's Israeli producers must have taken great delight in introducing a bumbling German army to the script, but it's all a bit childish.

The 1950 version was much better, and I hope to see the 1937 version soon. Do yourself a big favor and avoid this turkey.

TianshingI may be confusing this 1974 made for television version with the superb 1945 original directed by Elia Kazan.

That's just a hunch on my part. I doubt that AMC would be showing the remake, rather than the original, so many times.

In any case, I recommend that anyone who has an interest in this remake should also toggle over to check out the Kazan-directed movie.

It won several Oscars, and is justly considered one of the greatest American films of its period.

It was also Kazan's feature-film debut, and showed his prodigious talent right from the very start.