Raging Bull (1980)

I'm like the donkey with the lamest leg, the largest plough and the harshest farmer when it comes to the chronology in which I should have seen Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull. Scorsese was one of the first directors (along with Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher) that I embraced as a paragon of artful cinema, back in my heady (or just uneventful) days of late high school. I got a huge rush from seeing Taxi Driver and Mean Streets around that time, my burgeoning curiosity for movies intersecting kindly with all of the stark violence, urban unrest and vibrant culture on display. After a while I was on to exploring other things, and Scorsese took a very intermittent role within my moviedom. I saw Gangs of New York junior year in high school, Goodfellas, Casio, and Bringing Out the Dead splashed into my view during a brief stint in college, saw The Departed in theaters a year later, The Aviator came three or so years later, then I finally rounded things off with a viewing of Shutter Island, a full year after it was released.

Raging Bull always seemed to elude my interest. I knew it was considered one of the director's masterpieces - a slogan hacked and coughed and fucked to death by every critic, film student and movie fan in the world. It was one of those things where I was simultaneously curious about the film's true quality, but also extremely put off by the impenetrable armor that so many people had placed upon it. So I dallied, I delayed, I forgot, I remembered and then forgot again. After enough time passed, effectively spreading me away from the film's reputation (in my mind's eye, anyway), I finally beckoned Netflix to send it to me.

Cast in an iron mold of gorgeous black and white cinematography, Raging Bull tells the story (based on actual events) of Jake LaMotta, a maverick boxer barreling down the middleweight regional circuit, undefeated and unchallenged. The man even stands toe to toe with boxing giant, Sugar Ray Robinson, and decimates him on more than one occasion. The film tracks La Motta's sharp rise to near-stardom, then his hard, slow tumble back into obscurity.

When you get down to brass tacks, Raging Bull is fundamentally structured like a million other cautionary biopics of stalwarts that buckle in the face of greatness. The film follows mid-early career LaMotta from his roots in a dysfunctional Bronx apartment where he's managed by his brother Joey, to a heated romance with neighborhood girl, Vicki, rising prestige in the ring, marriage, house, kids, etc, etc. It's not until Jake decides to take a dive in order to garner favor from his neighborhood sponsors that things turn sour, both in the ring and in his personal life.

LaMotta is portrayed by Robert De Niro, who injects a shit-storm of impotent rage and paranoia into a man never quite satisfied with his station in life or the intentions of those around him. It's a performance that helped to cement the legendary reputation (and his subsequent typecasting) of the actor. As far as how it actually plays off within the context of the film?  Honestly, there wasn't anything special about De Niro as young to early-middle age LaMotta. Not that De Niro is bad, but it's an identical performance from him, seen many times, both before and after Raging Bull. It's the same mumble-mouth wiseguy cadences and desperate moans that are well-worn in his little corner of pop culture.

When I finally landed upon the "classic" scene of him accusing his brother of cheating with Jake's wife, Jake uttering the gold-plated words, "I heard things" and "you fuck my wife?", it was a let-down of neutral proportions. The scene did it's job in shifting the drama along, but it wasn't nearly as interesting or iconic as all the parodies and stupid fan impressions would have you believe.

I'll give it to De Niro that he does do a fine job as elder Jake LaMotta - fat, washed up, life falling apart - but still desperately dry-humping the limelight, this time in the form of a lizard-haired stand-up comedian. The sense of transformation is truly palpable in the later scenes of the film, particularly where he performs at a shitty dive bar, heckled, scraping the bottom, but retaining a kind of smirking pride for the irony of his life. Of course, even this section of the film is dogged by typical beats of a biopic, particularly when LaMotta's wife drives up to Jake at his club and tells him she's leaving for good with the kids. In the prior scene with Vickie, the couple appears to be at peace in their idyllic Miami home, after an eruption of violence and anger years before, but then suddenly she's leaving him within two subsequent sequences? It feels like a lazy shoehorn, even with the undercurrent of lingering dysfunction.

The romance between LaMotta and Vickie is actually the best framed thing in the movie, at least, for the first section of it. The long, understated shots of the couple getting down to business for the first time and Jake's dominating, self-inflicted tease of her body before a fight are great stones in the river,slowing things to satisfying intimacy, if even for just a little bit.

The two things that struck me as definitively awesome were the boxing sequences and the film's music score. As the camera tracks down to the ring, a shrill set of strings wince off a melancholy that never saps up the film. Instead, it resonates with a graceful sadness. The music sometimes even cascades with the mish-mash of trick photography (not to mention the stellar sound design) that Scorsese employs for Raging Bull's boxing matches. Mixing in slow-motion, fast-motion, bulb-bursts and heavy smoke machines, the fights take on an ethereal quality, detached from the film, floating above it. These sequences are made all the sharper by De Niro's fight choreography, which punctuates and flows quite nicely to the film's dream aesthetic.

Distinctive fight sequences can't save a movie of this caliber, however. Raging Bull has always been billed as a dramatic juggernaut, and a lot of the drama feels like Oscar-blowjob. Mountainous tantrums, tearful breakdowns, a lukewarm brother relationship (that should have been explored further), marginally important supporting female roles and a moral arch that was tired long before this film was made. Sounds like Academy fodder if I've ever seen any. Scorsese injects enough of his trademark non-sequitur moments and the fight photography is absolutely worth watching, but ultimately Raging Bull is tepid. An alright film, with a handful of good ideas scattered throughout.

Drive (2011)

After hearing so many people suck the dick of Drive for about year, I finally decided to hunker down and watch it. The main thing that put me off for so long was the inclusion of Ryan Gosling, an actor who's fame and fan adoration still eludes my sense of sanity. All he has to do is be in a movie, standing around looking tough or sad, and suddenly he is god's floral embellished gift to earth. Situations like this crop up every once in a while in pop culture which really make me wonder about the populace, and, if I'm an unwitting monster or alien or in a bad coma dream that I can't wake up from. I don't know how else to fathom so many people  genuinely loving mediocre presence. Or worse, fooling themselves into loving it, because there he is right now and he looks cool and he's serious and that jacket he wears makes the movie.

On the other hand, Drive is directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, who made Bronson (an interesting biopic that starred Tom Hardy), and it includes actors of mild respectability like Bryan Cranston, Ron Pearlman and Albert Brooks. However, the second red flag (after Gosla-thon) shot up as I learned the synopsis. The story of a nameless, brooding stunt driver falling for his neighbor and getting tangled up in a local mob deal, is definitively simplistic. It's a premise where the dialogue, the characters and the pacing need to be incredibly strong in order to pull off something truly memorable. The trouble with a lot of these hyper-genre movies that call transparent attention to the types of films they are referencing, is that they often only echo the shallowest aspects of those previous films. It's as if the idea of making a good movie is thrown out in favor of people can getting their nostalgia on.

It's not to say Drive is overtly one of these hyper-genre films, it is less so than movies like Machete, Hobo with a Shot Gun, Faster, The Expendables, Not Another Teen Movie, Epic Movie, etc, but there is a specter of hard-lit, gratuitous '80s violence running throughout. Not to mention the sleazy neon synths of the pop songs that drop in now and again.

I'll admit that the beginning of Drive has hints of promise in it. Gosling isn't talking much (what he does best), his moonlight getaway is set up amidst a flashy montage and punctuated synth bass notes, the world is encased in a dreamy green-white cinematography. But even then, I could spot holes that would be torn wider and wider as the film progressed. Save for a few specific scenes, the movie is edited like any other big budget Hollywood film, with all the unnecessary jump cuts, spoon-fed character/location references and awkward leaps in time that you can chew on.

After a while, Drive starts folding in on itself, one plotline and turn-of-dialogue at a time. Whether it's the short-lived ring of the cautionary words that Albert Brooks' homicidal mob boss, Bernie Rose, gives to Gosling (mob involvement = lifetime of danger), or the anti-climatic twist/swift resolution of the driver taking revenge over a rigged pawnshop robbery, it's easy to tell that any possible narrative establishment or long-form tension has been sucked away. The "smile our way into love" interaction between Gosling and Carrie Mulligan's Irene is another example of this, the two characters literally smiling sheepishly at each other - when they meet, when the driver plays with Irene's kid, when they see each other in the hall, when Irene's husband comes home - all the way into a hyperbolic make-out scene that absolutely was supposed to be super cool and stylish, but comes off overblown and irrelevant, because who really gives a shit about this cardboard cutout of a relationship?

The movie also has a major non-sequitur that seems to hint at either extra footage being cut or the ritualistic force-fuck of an attempted cool-kid moment that was completely unnecessary. The driver retrieves a human face mold from the set he works on, implying that he is to wear it in some functional situation where he does not want to be recognized. Right? Wrong. He dons the mask in front of an Italian restaurant owned by one of the mob bosses where no one sees him, and, instead of going and pulling some trick to reach the boss, the driver waits for him to come out, then follows him faraway to his lonely demise. So, the only explanation for this man-mask is that the director wanted to drum up the idiosyncratic-scene quotient.

Even Drive's depiction of violence is nothing to guffaw at, despite the "blown-away" reaction that I've heard from so many people. The few moments of ultra-gore, like the shotgun blast to the head and the kitchen knife to the throat, are satisfying to watch for the virtue of their technical execution, but not for punctuation on the context of the story. These moments of violence come off as useless fantasy rather than weighted action, which actually hollows out the film more than it lifts it up. On top of everything, each sequence of blood and guts is edited awkwardly, pulling between a curtailed dignity (by not showing it for long) and a "money shot" moment, where you see everything, all at once.

Ultimately, the only thing I came away feeling satisfied and endeared by with Drive, was Cliff Martinez's awesome film score. His use of swirling ambient chords pushes the movie into an ephemeral space that it doesn't necessarily deserve. It's a cloak of gorgeous affection that would have served a well-crafted drama or romance, but here it just conjures up the phantoms of emotion and nothing else. It is, however, a nice relief from the contrived lyrics of the chosen pop songs, like College's "A Real Hero", which is set to the melodramatic backwash of the driver being a sensitive cool-dad to Irene's son. As the girl on the track sings "a hero, a real human being", I just about want to hang myself in the closet.

So Drive is inconsistent and nothing at all special. It can't seem to decide between wanting to be cult cool or straight-up serious, something that foils its impact throughout. Gosling certainly doesn't save the film. All his puppy dog stares and monotone dialogue show exactly what he can do as an actor. I'm sure it was a style choice on the part of Winding Refn, but the truth is, that's not a thrown performance for Gosling, that IS how he acts. Also, it's a tough guy movie where all two of the women characters are irrelevant and always outside the world of heavy things, of violent things and of crime things. Anyway you slice it, aside from the great original score, the film is a monster of style that slowly devours all substance. Of course, this particular monster thinks that if he devours enough, he'll find meaning beneath all the meat.

Jubilee (1978)

A lot of movies have been made about punk rock and most of them are terrible. The main reason for this is because punk - ever since its rise in the mid to late '70s - has been perhaps the most bastardized sub-culture on the face of the planet. Just look around today to see what I mean. Punk has infiltrated every orifice of pop culture, from baby clothes to fashion lines to faux-attitude t-shirts to a common acceptance of piercing and tattoos (metal helped with that as well) to a wonky sea-saw of derivative music (emo, screamo, grunge, pop punk, Oi!, Celtic punk, hardcore, etc, etc). Consequently, finding a meaningful connection and an accurate depiction of what punk originally encompassed is like looking for a very tiny needle in a gargantuan, burning haystack.

Most punk movies try to simultaneously glorify and reproach the wild-crust lifestyle of those who inhabit the culture. They flaunt the music, the clothes, the snarling attitude - but these films never usually penetrate beyond surface level grime or melodramatic caution. They're stuck in a limbo of cool, the culture is merely an eccentricity to sell to an audience that has a similar ignorance about punk. It's a blind leading the blind situation, and the cliff is usually not far away.  

Jubilee, however, struts about in a very different fashion. Presiding throughout the film is a deep embrace of know-it-all anarchy - a volatile, funny and effortlessly wise abandon that puts you in a strangely satisfying place. In some ways you could imagine Jubilee as an extravagant musical turned inside out. There are no breaks into song, but there are raw, impromptu musical performances. There is no grandiose story arch or moral backbone, but there is a surreal, disjointed adventure. There is no contrived cast of never-grew-up high school thesps, but the film is made up of very vivid, hilarious and obnoxious characters.

The film isn't so much a narrative as it is an insightful poem on the state of England in the late '70s. Unfurling in abstract stanzas, it jumps between Queen Elizabeth I, who wishes to observe the future of England, and a group of wayward "future" punks that live in a run-down, vandalized loft that always seems to be doused in a sea of orange, yellow and green. Connecting them is a supernatural entity (a god-man with black eyes and a leotard) that spouts off fragments of a cryptic eulogy for a Britain that already seems to have endured an apocalypse - namely, World War II.

The most striking aspect of Jubilee is the depiction of the post-war industrial landscape of England. Director Derek Jarman didn't have to dress up elaborate sets or fly off to some far-flung location in order to capture the post-civilization vibe he was looking for. He was living it everyday in the England of the '70s. Every where the camera travels there seems to be a pile of old factories, rusted fences, decrepit brick houses, abandoned storefronts and shabby loft spaces. It's surreal to look at the state of the country - it looks more like the ghettos of Blade Runner than an actual place within our time span.

But the scuzzy, broken-down landscape is populated with a wide assortment of characters, all very much alive and always looking for a bit of fun. The main group is made up of two pudgy girls in heavy pink eyeliner and colorful hair, Amyl Nitrate and Mad, two brothers with a bent for incest, a slut aptly named Crabs, a young guy, known as "the Kid", looking to make it big as a musician (played by a despondent Adam Ant) and a mute cross-dresser simply called "Chaos". They're all lead by Bod, a waifish upstart that stirs up the trouble (namely murder and dance orgies) that the group so desperately needs to cure their boredom. The actress who plays Bod, Jenny Runacre, also plays Queen Elizabeth I, adding a playful little spice of surrealism into the film's dynamic.

It's authentic acting all around, as most of the cast was actually engaged with the punk movement in some shape or form at the time. The girl who plays Amyl, mysteriously listed as "Jordan" on IMDB, particularly stands out with her precocious monologues on the woeful history of England, how art always begins as something that is alive and is then subsidized for the masses. She also reflects on art's inevitable destruction through a lack of dreams: "In those days, desires weren't allowed to become reality. So fantasy was substituted for them - films, books, pictures. They called it 'art'. But when your desires become reality, you don't need fantasy any longer, or art." There's also a particularly vivid scene in the film where Amyl performs in a theater, donning a viking outfit and lip-syncing to a dub-infused punk song. She attempts to make her movements look choreographed and even austere, but the masquerade is easily dismissed by her occasional grins and clumsy missteps. It's Jubilee in a nutshell - posturing uppity philosophy one moment, then shitting all over it the next.

This theater scene also introduces the most magnetic and bizarre character in the film, Borgia Ginz, played by a gleefully demented Jack Birkett. Swiveling his bug-eyes to and fro, baring his huge set of game show host teeth and cackling wildly like a lunatic, Ginz is the exaggerated media mogul that all the young punks who dream of recognition come to rely on. Ginz is perhaps the most perceptive of all the characters in Jubilee and becomes an embodiment of the film's primary tenants - self-destruction, chaos and manipulation.

"Without progress life would be unbearable. Progress has taken the place of Heaven...It's like pornography; better than the real thing," he says during one of his monologues, echoing the sentiment that such a volatile movement as punk was destined to burn out quickly, and all that's left is the fantasy of it. At another point Ginz exclaims, "This is the generation who grew up, and forgot to lead their lives", a very haunting statement that spells out the inevitable disillusionment that comes with an absence of responsibility.

That's the most powerful thing I took away from this inverted-glam, punk rock odyssey. Anarchy and indolence don't offer any answers - in fact, they never intended to. They are (or were), however, powerful tools of transportation, the end result just needs (or needed) to be made up of something else entirely. I think Jarman saw this with extreme clarity, knowing that one day, sooner rather than later, the party would be over. The punks would have to actually make good on their irreverent disassociation with society and shape England for the future. Unfortunately, the movement was dead before most people realized it - killed again and again by an implosive nature, mass commercialization and humorous dismissal from the general public.

But the archetype of punk persists and finds its way, albeit minutely, into our daily lives. Jubilee may sound the death-knell for a specific subculture and generation in the '70s, but punk encapsulates very timeless qualities of rebellion, rejection and strength. Long ago ceasing to be an ideology, punk has remained, foremost, a -feeling-. While it is certainly a word detached from its original significance, it is still valid when the right kind of mind is pushing it out of their lips and putting it into action.

Persona (1966)

Movies sometimes have a funny way of slipping profound context into your life, even if they echo their message from decades gone by. There is definitely a sense of happenstance to it, as the time in your life and the way you view a film vary greatly, but when the planets align just right and all the traffic lights are green, a revelatory experience waits to be unleashed in movies. It's the testament of great art in action - an audience the filmmakers never even dreamed about now enjoy their work on entirely new levels. These movies have become disembodied entities - always with the signatures of their creators - but now more of an ephemeral reincarnation, more of a personally refreshed experience.

I felt this way when I watched Ingmar Bergman's Persona for the second time in my life, just about a week ago. The film is primarily a disheartening free-fall into existential identity theft, but it carries with it many social observations on the cowardly, deceptive nature of how people interact with each other. Bergman highlights the moral dilemma of acting selfishly (and the act of never bothering to justify it), with the ultimate form of consequence - total theft of the self. Sure, a few of the technical stingers and awkward transitions don't quite hold up, but the hokey qualities of the film are vastly outweighed by a clear articulation of the pitfalls found in social complacency.

With brief, abstract bookends of flashing imagery (from spiders to old cartoons to dicks), Persona tells the story of an actress, Elisabet Volger, who chooses to be mute, and her small-minded but dedicated nurse, Sister Alma. Elisabet forces herself into silence after a stage performance, where she was unable to speak, making her feel humiliated and lost. Tasked with watching over her, Alma finds Elisbet's silence to be unnerving. Despite her reservations, Alma forges ahead and the two are sent to a seaside summer retreat for Elisabet's recuperation. Alma quickly learns that her paitent is not actually looking to recover, but to appropriate her personality as if she were studying for a role in a play or film.

Persona is a film that slithers under the skin, right into the dark recesses of the subconscious. You can tell from the sheer animosity of Elisabet and Alma that Bergman desperately had a bone to pick with the hypocritical machinations of society. Elisabet is a kind of moral abyss, choosing to remove herself altogether from the masquerades that people put on daily. Liv Ullman plays the actress with an eerily satisfying glibness, her devilish smirks and glassy-eyed desperation speak volumes above Alma's incessant barrage of complaints, desires and admissions. Bibi Andersson casts Alma in numerous masks - politeness, compassion, devotion - but quickly devolves her into a toxic mass of deceit and resentment.

In my favorite scene of the film, Alma is compensating for Elisabet's lack of speaking, by telling the actress some of her deepest held secrets. As she reclines awkwardly in a chair, Alma discusses an infidelity she never acknowledged to her soon-to-be husband. She explains that she was at the beach with a friend, laying naked in the sun, when she noticed two teenage boys spying on them nearby. Alma describes all the intimate details of the encounter, how her friend beckons the boys over and they all engage in wild, frivolous sex. Alma admits to Elisabet that it was the most pleasure she had ever known, that she had never been truly satisfied by her fiancee.

Alma's admission of deceit is made all the more palpable by the heavy silence in the beach house - the hypnotic swish of the sea in the background driving it all straight to the gut. Her confession is a disturbing realization of human impulse and weakness. There is no entity there to chide her or wrap her back around to her morals, which gradually deteriorates her mental state. In a sense, this scene exemplifies the brutal dynamic of Persona. There's a presiding feeling in the film that nothing can be done to turn people into creatures of sincerity and truth, and so Bergman eagerly opens up the path to hell.

The way Bergman applies layers of light and shadow in such a simple space as a beach house is pretty astounding when you think about it. The brooding visual aesthetic expertly reflects the conflict between the two women, as well as Alma's gradual synthesis into Elisabet's repertoire. From the sun-bleached stones of the beach, to the dense darkness barely penetrated by lamps or sunlight within the house, the location is an abstract resemblance of each woman's state of mind.

There's a scene where Elisabet quietly emerges from a bright hallway into a dark room where Alma is sleeping, which is just so powerful to watch. Elisabet takes a moment to look over Alma, then moves on, but Alma wakes up and the two gaze at each other longingly. It's just one instance (aside from the blatant scenes of Elisabet necking Alma) that points to not only an emotional attraction, but a sexual attraction between the women. It's an interesting aspect considering the issues of women's liberation at the time, but I think the sexual energy points more to the vanity of Elisabet, she's more in love (and lust) with the idea of taking on the role of this damaged, struggling woman that looks after her.

Persona also plays with time and pacing, adding a hefty helping of disorientation to the film. It starts off as a fairly straight-forward narrative, but a little while after the two women reach the beach house, scenes begin to meld into each other and break off abruptly, as well as disintegrate into abstract transitions and rear-projection tricks. Bergman plays with the idea of fusing scenes with vastly different tones and lighting aesthetics - when Alma gets upset at Elisabet in the kitchen, runs off to her room, and then the actress later comforts her - to give off a bizarre progression of time. Then there are scenes, such as Alma's breaking point in the middle of film (before she tries to get Elisabet to cut her foot on the glass), which cut-off without warning. Such uneven pacing might have caused most films to fold in on themselves, but you can tell Bergman took his time in making sure the editing reflected the mood and message he was trying to convey.

I would say the doctor at the beginning of Persona sums the film up with such a severe articulation, indicative of Bergman's (usually) fantastic writing: "I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace...you can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham".

Those sharp, painfully honest words expose the social conundrum of living selfishly, while desiring to appear altruistic, successful, stable, smart, appreciated, etc. It's a ripped band-aid off the pretense that so many people employ in their routine lives - the idea that even honesty and proactive self-awareness have been relegated to convenient social masks. It's an observation that is perhaps slightly too cynical, but it comes from a genuine place all the same. With Persona, I don't think Bergman is asking, "why are you so selfish?". I think he's really asking, "why bother pretending?".   

La Collectionneuse (1967)

With La Collectionneuse, I've now seen five of Eric Rohmer's six moral tales, which include the likes of My Night at Maud's, Chloe in the Afternoon and Claire's Knee. I've been consistently impressed by the director's ability to rattle off insightful dialogue on a whim and to craft well-rounded male protagonists. In each of his moral tales, Rohmer cast's his leading men as scientists studying the essence of women. They attempt to dissect, circumvent, adore and classify the fairer sex in order to explain their hypothesis' on love, lust, romance and obsession.

La Collectionneuse follows this same path, sketching out the story of a handsome art dealer named Adrien. Tired of being consumed by his job and at odds with his girlfriend, he takes a vacation at his friend's villa on the Mediterranean Sea. Adrien plans on doing absolutely nothing while at the villa - he desires only to take in the beauty of the area, go for morning swims and to sleep undisturbed. When he learns from his friend Daniel that a young woman, Haydee, is coming to stay with them, his temporary peace is ended. It isn't long after that a series of events push Adrien to become increasingly enamored with the girl.

The French Riviera is beautiful in and of itself, so the film was predestined to be an idyllic visual distraction. Still, the slight yellow-white tinge of the cinematography gives La Collectionneuse a very nostalgic "home movies" feel, without the grit and grain of low-quality consumer cameras. It's the same oven-baked visual aesthetic that appears in Rohmer's equally gorgeous film, Claire's Knee, which is set in a similar coastal villa. The look of the film gives off a warmth that settles you in for an evening of lazily profound reflection.

Adrien and Haydee's interactions provide a well-conceived play on relationship dynamics. With Adrien, you get to hear all of his inner-thoughts, his plans and designs, his guesswork about Haydee's ultimate intentions. Haydee, on the other hand, is an enigma like the rest of the female characters in Rohmer's moral tales. I feel Rohmer avoids meta-insight for his women as a sort of artistic expression of their unknowable intrigue. The true insight of his films comes from the perception that you can't ever truly know someone, no matter how well or how long you've been acquainted with them.

Adrien finds his interest in Haydee almost deplorable. He doesn't want to be lured in by her loose, reckless lifestyle, yet, he finds himself inextricably drawn to her all the same. Throughout the first section of the film, Adrien actively berates Haydee for her actions, attempting to get her to react and pursue him. In one scene, Adrien just flat out asks Haydee what the point of slutting it up is, when no meaningful relationships can come of it. Haydee replies, almost bashfully, that she's searching for something, but she doesn't know what it is. She admits that she wants a deeper connection with a man, but that she feels she always screws something up before it reaches that point.

It's this kind of earnestness that makes Rohmer's films so satisfying to watch. You can tell the man has labored long and hard in his own life on the subjects of women and romance, and he is baring all of it - his mistakes and his triumphs - on screen for the world to see. Rohmer loves women, regardless of any inconsistent or contrary behavior they might fall back on. He realizes that when feeling uncertain or being dragged around by impulses (instead of actively riding around on them), the women in his life would act conversely in order to guard themselves from men with the same types of impulses.

Since forthrightness between the genders is gravely disproportionate (due in part to biology and sociological upbringing), constant disingenuous validation from men only reinforces upon "revolving door" women the desire to be selfish, to skirt accountability, to forgo decency. Haydee encapsulates this kind of woman perfectly. Rohmer casts her as a naive waif, sloshing blindly through a bog of insincere men, female liberation and self-doubt. She is both assured in her adventurous lifestyle and also deeply insecure about the type of man she desires to be with.

Adrien merely bumbles his way into Haydee's life - at times successfully obtaining her attention and other times scorning her inadvertently. All of his plans and predictions about her intentions are made irrelevant by the girl's killer combo of low-esteem and a whimsical nature. Not to mention that, technically, Adrien is volunteering infidelity against his far-flung girlfriend. This works as a sort of moral backbone of the film, exposing Adrien as inherently hypocritical and undercutting any good intentions he may have for Haydee.  

Rohmer also weaves general, but very perceptive observations on social acceptance into the film, using them as venn-diagrams for the behavior of young men and women. At one point, a man speaking to Daniel remarks that the Victorian era gave rise to the idea of people creating an image of "distance" around themselves. This superficial "distance" was manifest to create the intrigue and adoration that these people so desired from others. This resonated with me quite a bit, as especially today, people utilize this passive aggressive behavior in all facets of their social life, not just romantic. To me, it's a dishonest intrigue, very selfish in nature, that does not lend itself to healthy, fulfilling relationships. Since it comes from a deeply selfish and shallow desire to be loved but to not necessarily return it in kind, Rohmer emphasizes the idea that the more self-involved people are the less happy they become, but the surface gratification is nice all the same.

La Collectionneuse may be just a bit long-winded and a touch sloppy in it's technical execution, but it doesn't detract from the meaty love philosophy that resides within. Adrien and Haydee's on and off fluctuations provide a satisfying uncertainty, where confidence is undone by recklessness, naivety foiled by intelligence and everyone is at the mercy of everyone else. You know, like reality.

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

I feel that, in order to judge a film like Breakfast at Tiffany's fairly, I need to take it at 95% face value. I think part of accurately valuing art is seeing just how it stands up to the ultimate test - time. So, how does this massively popular film, with one of the most iconic female characters in Hollywood history, stack up today? Not well. It has nothing to do with the technical elements of the film - cinematography, editing, pacing, music. The disaster lies in the portrayal of Holly Golightly, a character supposedly being criticized for her reckless spirit, but in actuality is celebrated for her idiosyncratic unaccountability and glibness.

The film centers on an upscale apartment complex in New York, where Paul, a struggling writer, moves in and meets Holly Golightly, the building's resident high school thesp (over-the-top acting is Audrey Hepburn's forte, naturally). Intrigued by her quirks and flippant socialite lifestyle, Paul begins to spend more and more time with her. The two eventually begin to confide in one another and emotions are thrown around, but Holly's tendencies soon send her flying back to her careless, gold-digging ways.

Breakfast at Tiffany's features some very well-constructed camerawork and gorgeous cinematography, that would have been better served on a character study with three-dimensional mirth. All the scenes in and outside the apartment complex have a very careful, lock-and-flow alternation that frames the meticulous set design with grace. From Holly's apartment of curiosities to the austerity of Tiffany's, the film seems to craft a diverse range of flora and fauna, all within a five or six block radius.

The film is obviously supposed to be a cautionary tale, but with the glitz of New York, an alluring actress like Hepburn filling Holly's shoes and the delightfully bizarre decorum of her apartment, I think most people are too dazzled to care. In essence, you can think of Holly Golightly as a prototype for the wanderlust pixie image that so many women have adopted and distorted over the years. Constantly strutting around like life is entitled to them, surrounding themselves with men under the pretense of "friendship" and wrapping it all up in a bow of eccentricity and tomboy elegance. Holly echoes these behaviors with her wild and superficial parties, her interest in marrying up to ease her financial burdens and her "dangling the keys" over Paul, the only man that genuinely cares about her.

Underneath that freewheeling exterior is a mass of insecurities, selfishness and a gnawing sense of hypocrisy. Holly is a woman with no direction, no direct claim on her life and she knows it. In a sense, the woman is tormented by her "nature", writing off any form of stability or authenticity as a "cage". With the right tone, Breakfast at Tiffany's could have been an extremely interesting portrait of a troubled woman, attempting to figure out how she wants to spend her life. Instead, it comes off as a shallow celebration of "wild hearted" women, with virtually no consequences to be found.

Even at the climax, where Paul, frustrated that Holly won't even acknowledge the great times they had together, finally tells her like it is: "You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself". Not moments before this, Holly was considering flying on a whim to Brazil, even after she finds out the rich suitor she was trying marry didn't want her.  And yet Paul just accepts her back? After playing the jilted fool for so long? Would she really learn anything from such a quick turnaround? So, there is this retrograde acceptance of her behavior, even when the film purports that her spontaneity has only led to unhappiness.

It would have empowered the film immensely if there were white-hot consequences for her actions - something to really drive into her skull that such a frivolous lifestyle has a wide range of pitfalls. However, Breakfast at Tiffany's fails to send up the signal flares that so deserve to be shot, leaving an audience of uninitiated women to only take away the glamor of a wild existence. I get the feeling that generations of women have mistakenly identified Holly as a beacon of women's liberation and a personification of their vibrancy, when, in actuality, she is nothing more than a mirror reflection of the most disregarding qualities of men. She is not at all an early icon for feminism, which is about equality and ethics between the sexes. It's a distinction that I feel not enough will care to make then, now or in the future.

Shame (2011)

There's a real disappointment that occurs when movies that are generally well-conceived contain one or two disparate elements that seem to unravel the envelopment which a film had previously been building. These elements, though singular and/or intermittent, cast rain clouds over a grand landscape, just enough to taint your experience. It's that kind of nag that prods at the back of your mind, the "why did they do that?" sentiment repeated over and over, forcing any good feelings you might have had to be watered down. The goodness still remains, but the badness has gradually taken over due to sheer frustration, like a fly in your soup.

Steve McQueen's Shame falls into this unfortunate situation. Looking at the film in broad strokes, it's a smart, visually precise experience that shines light on the inner-conflict of a sex addict, played by Michael Fassbender. However, there are three particular sections of the movie that seem to ram home a hammy poignancy, under the "cool" guise of the dark modern art house drama. These sections, which occur at the beginning, near-end and end of the film, act like shitty, hastily constructed bookends for an otherwise powerful experience.

The story of sex addict Brandon Sullivan is framed by camera angles that refuse to budge - be it Brandon laying in bed, his sister, Sissy, singing in a club, Brandon and Sissy having an argument on the couch - it's a satisfying and intrusive visual aesthetic that seems to presuppose the audience's judgement against Brandon's character. Equivalent to staring hard at someone who has done you wrong, Shame gladly forces you into the role of naysayer. Yet, as the movie follows Brandon through his daily work, his relationships with prostitutes and his obsession with internet porn, a portrait slowly builds of a man tormented by his impulses. Though the air of critique remains, an undercurrent of pity begins to take shape as the film goes on.

It's not to say the entire movie is all stationary shots that invade the moral compasses of the characters, though. There is fluidity in the film and McQueen applies it expertly. The best example is a gorgeous tracking shot, that dollies from a medium distance alongside Brandon as he goes for an impromptu jog in the middle of the night. Stricken by his boss and sister having sex in his apartment, Brandon decides to get the hell out of there. Throwing a gentle piano sonata on his MP3 player, he jogs down his street in the middle of New York, the early hours of the morning weighing down upon him. The camera moves along with him, never attempting to collect a close-up here or a coverage shot there. The scene doesn't end anywhere special, but the action of Brandon leaving his own place to avoid a monster of mixed emotions is all that's needed to propel the simplified sequence to great heights.

By far the most interesting aspects of Shame are Brandon's implied incestuous relationship with his sister and his attempted relationship with his co-worker, Marianne. When Fassbender and Carey Mulligan (who plays Sissy) are onscreen together, it's pure fireworks. The two play out their respective roles with a deep, underlying frustration - an active, tormenting curb to their wild instincts. In the flourishes of violent arguments, ignored phone calls, tearful admiration and joyful reposes, you can tell that they so desire a certain passion to be affirmed, but as to what specifically, they don't even know.

For Brandon, it's a frustration that feeds directly into his doomed relationship with co-worker, Marianne. When the two embark on their first date at a fancy restaurant, Marianne speaks fondly of monogamy and marriage, which Brandon promptly laughs off. He attempts to explain to her the uselessness of relationships, that the idea of devoting yourself to one person is ridiculous. Yet, it makes an impact on him. He attempts to make a clean break from his addiction and pursues something more with Marianne, but when he whisks her away to a hotel to get down to business, he finds himself impotent. It's an incredibly powerful scene that cements Brandon's inability to indulge himself in the face of responsibility.

So far, Shame sounds like an intriguing and stylish film, but it's about time I talked about those shitty bookends. Employing a montage format, McQueen drops a nuclear bomb of dramatic goo with scenes of Brandon fawning after a girl he sees on the subway and a night where Brandon goes around having anonymous sex, whilst ignoring pleading calls from his sister. These scenes are set to painfully yearning string arrangements that would make John Williams blush. Considering how downplayed the rest of the film is, these moments blast their way in and out of consciousness, and you're left wondering what the hell happened. Yes, I understand that Brandon is tormented by his addiction. No, I don't need swirly bear strings and throat-shovel montages to reinforce the already clear-cut narrative.     

It's funny, because I felt similarly when I saw McQueen's other film, Hunger. He has these great scenes and well-developed characters, but it's almost like he doesn't feel confident they'll get the message across. So, he inserts clunky transitions, heavy-handed music and little aside situations that he hopes will solidify things, but they drag his movies down instead. Essentially, that is what Shame boils down to. It's a good movie with solid performances all around and a strong visual construction, but it's brought down to a mediocre experience thanks to this insistence that we won't get the point without a good dose of spoon-feeding.

Alice in the Cities (1974)

Wim Wenders' films exhibit a power of placement. It's a power that is subtle and burns slowly, but, oh man, does it burn so good. Never one to shy away from deeply reflective and minimal journeys, Wenders has an intense interest in his characters - who they are, why they are who they are, where they are going and how they will get there. His films may float along, but they are always defined by poignant character development and gorgeous cinematography. He may have some followers amongst the "mumblecore" crowd, but he saves himself from any true association with the movement (besides his time and placement in cinema history) by recognizing that even meditation and subtly must be made interesting with a strong, permeating context.

Alice in the Cities is a great example of all these things, made immediately apparent by the way the film softly treads around German journalist, Philip Winter. It exudes such a world weary compassion that there is no doubt Wenders held a personal vestige in the character's life.

The film tracks Philip as he travels listlessly towards New York City, taking pictures of American life along the way. Lingering too long over an assignment for his European publishers, Philip finds himself forced to return home. He meets Lisa, a fellow German, and her daughter Alice at the airport while attempting to buy a plane ticket home. Spending the night in a New York hotel, Philip becomes acquainted with Lisa and Alice. The next morning, Philip finds himself left alone with Alice and a note from Lisa, asking him to take care of her daughter. Events gradually lead Philip and Alice to travel back to Germany together, where they go in search of Alice's grandmother.

In all honesty, the plot is just an excuse of happenstance, all in order to put these two characters together and to see what might happen. Philip and Alice's adventure feels like a favorite pair of old shoes - comfortable and well-worn. They quarrel and bicker constantly, but there is always a presiding sense of compassion through a shared uncertainty in their destinations. Philip must deal with the fact that he doesn't know what to do next in life, while Alice must contend with the idea that her mother has abandoned her. They are two characters that are searching, but don't want to deal with the ramifications of finding answers.

The pair's bittersweet relationship gives Alice in the Cities a vitality that engages without trespass or frustration. Alice criticizes Philip, but retains a charming wonderment about his life, especially his lack of direction. Her blunt questions about his parents and his photography force him to accept his current status in life, while the pair's continued journey gives him a good reason to just be. On the other hand, Philip becomes irritated by Alice's constant misdirection (in order to delay having to leave him), but he finds comfort in reassuring her that she's not alone.

Framing New York and Germany in sterling black and white, Alice in the Cities is shot through with small experiences that leave a resounding impact. In these experiences there is a natural blend of humor and poignancy. Scenes such as when Alice wants Philip to tell her a bedtime story, then subsequently falls asleep as he struggles to tell one, as well as when Alice asks a woman if she thinks Philip is her father, leading to Philip and the woman having sex and Alice becoming jealous, illustrates how a movie of little occurrences can be more powerful than one with a centralized structure and huge moments.

In a sense, the characters are simultaneously the most interesting aspect of the film and also simply a part of the scenery. That's the exact point where Wenders skills shine the brightest. He allows the movie to breath, but never to waste away. I feel like so many directors try to make triviality, slow pacing, reflection, meandering and quiet into something that pushes against the normal rigors of narrative films, but they end up tripping over themselves into trite idiosyncrasy and sloppy matter-of-factness. Alice in the Cities is a form of proof that Wenders doesn't take anything for granted. He says, "Hey, check out these characters, they might interest you. Please enjoy their journey", where as some other filmmakers say, "HEY, CHECK OUT HOW FUCKING WEIRD AND INTERESTING THESE CHARACTERS ARE! CHECK OUT HOW LIFE CAN BE SUCH A LISTLESS TRIFLE BUT TOTES PROFOUND AT THE SAME TIME, AHAHAHAHEEEEHAHAHA".

Alice in the Cities is such a relaxed film you could almost imagine Wenders directing it from a beach chair. With aimless characters, low-flow pace, a reflective acoustic guitar score and expressive locations, the film lingers in the best way possible. It allows you to turn off your busy schedule, to turn off the expectations of life, to turn off the constrains of a linear path and just hit the road with two endearing people. To hell with the destination. It seems like such a cliche "enlightened world traveler" sentiment, but Wenders finds a genuine articulation of the idea in Alice in the Cities.

Daisies (1966)

Over the years I've soured on '60s New Wave films - the more I see, the more I am disenchanted. I think most of the movement has been overly romanticized by a lot of critics and fans. It's as if the historical and social associations in which they came from are enough reason to keep propping them up year after year as amazing, undefeatable works of art. There's not enough focus on the content and not enough separation from the historical context to warrant a genuine reading of the entire movement. However, there are a few New Wave films that I feel successfully escaped the ravages of time. They've side-stepped the movement's inevitable irrelevance and bounded into the territory of eccentric legacy. It's always nice to discover even more of these films, especially by surprise. The Czech film, Daisies, is my most recent addition.

I can't say I thoroughly "like" Daisies, but at the same time it provides an endless amount of curiosity and unforgettable imagery. It's not so much a movie as it is an abstract narrative collage, pieced together by disparate moments, revolving camera filters and esoteric set pieces. Director Vera Chytilova goes out of her way to disorient and muddle the story of two spoiled young women as they indulge in extremely reckless, selfish, and ultimately, meaningless behavior in order to throw her audience for a loop and most likely poke holes in a male-centric bourgeois class of Czechoslovakia at the time.

The pair of women (whose names are never clearly stated) have a freewheeling appetite for destruction. They swindle old rich men out of their money, manipulate love-struck suitors into falling for them, crash fancy parties and banquets for free food and booze, lounge around in bed with scissors as they systemically destroy their own room out of boredom - all the while laughing it off without a pang of conscience to speak of. These are two girls that you hate to love - they're hyper-intense unaccountability becomes charming in a very backwards way.

You don't want to condone their lack of etiquette, you don't want to smirk at their cocky narcissism, you don't want to be endeared by their flippant disregard for other people - but you do. At least, I did. It's kind of like watching a car crash and being awestruck by the force and gravity of the event itself, rather than focusing on the horrible aftermath. These two women are demons incarnate but they are charismatic, gorgeous and, most of all, intriguing.

As it remains vehemently wild and unpredictable, Daisies is filled to the brim with small details, scatterbrained vignettes and a frothing sea of minutia. The girls' room, for example, is a testament to the intricacies of set design. It seems every time the story returns the pair to their room, it is decorated differently - always in garish, haphazard fashion - but always different. Chytilova takes time to pan slowly around the room as the two bask in the consequences of their behavior, snipping sausage links with scissors and pasting magazine cut-outs on the wall. In a sense, these are the calm moments before the storms. These are the moments where you reflect, almost in conjunction with the characters, on why they act the way they do.

But Chytilova doesn't have any answers to offer. Amidst the camera's playful flip-flops between black and white, color, blue filters, red filters and orange filters, the film never makes a point of explaining why the two women act the way they do. There are a few moments of exposition that reprimand the duo, but it concedes that they would not recognize how to change their ways, even if they were willing to.

You could perhaps construe that it's a meditation on women's liberties in the '60s, and that such behavior was seen as destructive by men in Czech society at the time, but I feel like it leans more toward the transcendental quality of cackling anarchy. I enjoyed the film because it never apologized for the behavior of the women, instead glorifying their foolishness to an absurd degree. It's perhaps an even more deviant and frightening portrait of what society might be like without responsibility and ethics thrust upon it, than the countless post-apocalypse scenarios you find all over the place in movies and books.

Daisies is a film which ultimately points out that life is a mess and sometimes there is nothing moral or meaningful to be gleaned from it. It's that sentiment in itself that makes the movie work so well. It's chaotic structure and black-humored self-awareness provide a straight shot to the gut that will definitely leave you pondering. Nothing is sacred and there are no consequences. It's just two crazy women getting trashed, smashed, sexed and stuffed - in a very evocative and satisfying fashion.

The Night Porter (1974)

It's not everyday you come across a World War II film that takes a very personal and subversive route for it's storytelling. Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter is an anomalous post-war film that goes off in wildly sexual and bizarre directions, never once thinking to bludgeon you over the head with tired WWII idioms. There are no easy, hyperbolic Nazi villains, no sad-sack accounts of Jewish prisoners, no blood-spattered Normandy beach invasions. The Night Porter is, instead, a deeply felt exploration of the sadistic relationships that form in the face of overwhelming decadence, power and cruelty.

The film is set 13 years after the war, following Maximilian, a former S.S. officer that now works as the night porter at a prestigious hotel in Vienna. One day, a former prisoner of his, Lucia, walks into the hotel. The meeting conjures up feelings of the past and the two start to fall into the sado-masochistic relationship they had during the war. Max's old comrades actively work to clear him of his past by tying up any loose ends and eliminating any witnesses to his past actions, but Max begins to worry as they set their sights on Lucia.

The Night Porter, with it's straight-across editing, features so many stark, unforgettable moments, you'll be reeling by the end of it. This is primarily because half of the film plays out in the memories of the various characters, daydreaming at a familiar sight in the present day. Cavani expertly juxtaposes the past and present, drawing a firm, dark line to show that things may change but old habits die hard. The most powerful scene of the film is constructed in this fashion, where Max and Lucia separately attend the same ballet performance.

As the dancers get underway, Max observes Lucia a few rows ahead of him, and their shared memories come gushing forth. The austere classical music of the ballet continues to rise as the scene shifts to Lucia - roughly cut short hair, pale, darkened eyes and emaciated - sitting in a musty hospital bed surrounded by other prisoners. Max approaches in full Nazi uniform, taking her away to conduct his experiments. As the memories progress, there is a visible mark of enjoyment in Lucia's eyes. The punishment and pain have turned into a pleasure of dependency and domination.

Luckily, the sexual sadism in the film is never exploited or turned into a grotesque monster. Cavani's camera provides an even-hand, framing Max and Lucia's relationship with an understated grace. In fact, towards the middle of the film, it becomes something of a bizarre love story. Max attempts to keep Lucia alive and away from the clutches of his old comrades, no matter the cost. It's because the two are inextricably bound by an obsession with punishment and dominance, an obsessive, inverted affection that is only shared between them.

Though Charlotte Rampling does a fine job as Lucia - particularly during the famous cabaret scene where she is half-naked, wearing an S.S. hat and trousers - the film is tailored much more towards Max, and Dirk Bogarde delivers in spades. Bogarde plays the ex-Nazi as a smug, cunning and quiet man who has transcended his obedience and loyalty to the Third Reich, but still revels in the twisted machinations that his given power allowed him. All the mild-mannered exchanges, punctuated by soft smirks and kind eyes, have a pitch-perfect execution, making Max simultaneously the comforting protagonist and the inscrutable villain.

The only major failing of The Night Porter is the pedestrian original score. It's a set of harmless, jazz-infused pieces that sound very indicative of the opening credits to a '70s TV sit-com. If the film had only relied on the occasional disquieting classical and opera pieces featured in several key scenes, The Night Porter's sense of solidification would be complete.

Of course, it's a rare case where the score doesn't sabotage the experience. Cavani's portrayal of the taboo, politically rapturous relationship between Max and Lucia is captured with such a clear-headed moderation, it makes The Night Porter a daringly original film, even to this day. The director's tasteful penchant for high-art visuals and ironically affecting relationships will put you in a strange, but ultimately satisfying, space. And at the end of the day, who couldn't do with a little Nazi decadence?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

I still have not read Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but if either film adaptation is a fair judge, it's a messy, convoluted mystery that meanders heavily on the personal lives of the main characters. All of this, in desperate hope of warming up the cold data streams, the dusty record books, the obscure photos and the torn newspaper clippings found therein. While the Swedish version and the American version certainly have major differences, one thing remains consistent - the emphasis on research. For better or worse, that seems to be the core of Mr. Larsson's novel.

David Fincher recently presented to the world his version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it is an adaptation that is ultimately too reckless to be great, but too tactile to be awful. The film peripherally tracks the recent disgrace of esteemed journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the sexual abuse of the young computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, as the two become involved in a 40-year-old investigation regarding a disappeared member of the wealthy, devious Vanger family.

I will say right out of the gate that Fincher paces the story much more effectively than Niels Oplev did in the Swedish version of the film. Unlike Oplev's indecisive stop-start motion, you can tell Fincher wants to get on with things, and it never stops moving forward. Unfortunately, a hefty portion of the director's trademark gravitas is sacrificed in the process. Unlike the tense build-ups, dark humor and rich characterization of his previous works - Zodiac, Se7en, The Game and even The Social Network - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo feels like it's a new luxury car being pushed out of a manufacturing plant to meet a strict deadline. The pacing may be more effective but the contents framed within don't always meet Fincher's typical standards of quality.

The best example of flawed execution are the research segments, which are littered across the entire movie. Where as in Zodiac you felt like you were an active and engaged participant in the investigation, Fincher forces you outside in Dragon Tattoo. In an effort to streamline the story's chronology, the audience becomes ineffectual bystanders, just nodding along and thinking how cool it looks to see the vague research methods employed by Lisbeth and Mikael as they uncover the truth. There are so many sequences of panning by desks filled with notes and books, shifting laptop programs and wall photo trees with indiscriminate yarn and push-pin strewn across them. You just look at all of it and say to yourself, "yes, they have been doing research". There's no personal satisfaction or epiphany, it's just, "this is the plot, this is how the plot came to be", which would be fine if the story's severity didn't come directly from all that esoteric research.

I thought all the performances in Dragon Tattoo were decent. Nothing necessarily to write home about, but the acting was solid all around. I actually preferred Daniel Craig's Blomkvist to Michael Nyqvist's in the Swedish version. Nyqvist's portrayal seemed to be more of an ineffectual buffoon, where as Craig presented some slapdash (but affecting) passion into the character. Of course, the real draw is the black leather punk, Lisbeth Salander. Rooney Mara plays her with a mousey defiance, never really raising her voice or acting out of turn, instead taking on the role of deadpan harbinger. Naturally, as a damaged 23-year-old waif with tattoos, piercings and partially buzzed hair, she embodies the assertive goth/punk/emo fantasy expertly. She certainly doesn't shy away from sex, even turning rape to her advantage at one point.

Perhaps that says something about the preferences of Stieg Larsson? All I know is that I would have rather had Noomi Rapace back in the role of Lisbeth. I feel like Rapace's more intense and volatile rendition of Lisbeth was more affecting. She still had her apathetic drawl but it always met with a fiery passion burning underneath.

So, add to all that a disappointing and misplaced music score (a big step down from The Social Network) filled with generic bells on top of wavering ambience, and you have a sloppy, sloppy film. Sloppy in its material, concise in it's form. The question really is, was this version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo even necessary? It doesn't improve enough upon the Swedish version (which is already Hollywood-ified) to justify its existence. Is the idea of not having to deal with subtitles an excuse to blow $100 million dollars?

The Silence (1963)

Ingmar Bergman's The Silence has remained at the forefront of my good graces, despite the constant influx and exposure to new movies. The film is a dark specter, it's presence has never faded. I got cozy with the film for the first time back as a sophomore in college - it was an indirect discovery, as I had purchased the movie as part of Bergman's famed trilogy of the '60s. Although I had gotten the box set for Winter Light (which remains one of my all time favorites), I discovered that The Silence remained true to Bergman's idea of stark minimalism - no music, small sets, few characters - the delivery of which was equivalent to being hit in the stomach with a bag of bricks. Naturally, I mean that in the best way, as these particular bricks are made of acute, tactile observations on the nature of sex, family, death and relationships.

It was very gratifying to revisit the two disparate sisters of The Silence, Ester and Anna. Ester, the older sister, is a terminally ill translator who is traveling home in hopes of dying in a familiar place. She is accompanied by Anna, her anxious, spiteful sister, and Anna's curious child, Johan. The three cut their journey short when Ester gets sick on the train. Laying up in a local hotel for a few days, the fragile relationship between the sisters begins to unravel. Johan is forced to create his own world in Anna's absence, exploring the hotel to distract himself from the isolation.

I often use the The Silence (along with Persona and Cries and Whispers) as an example in my theory that Ingmar Bergman was one of the best horror filmmakers in addition to being one of the best drama filmmakers. Shot in beautiful black and white, with flowing pans and very little angle movement, the film's drama is escalated by simple (but effective) elements of tension and disturbance. Brooding chimes, recurring clock ticks and darkened rooms punctuate the unraveling sanity of Ester and the vindictive sexuality of Anna. Bergman is careful to never fully reveal the source of anxiety between the sisters. Instead, he drips in little sneers and accusations, like Anna falsely confessing to a random act of sex or Ester tripping some sticky guilt on Anna, saying "Go, then. While your conscience lets you", right before Anna heads out to indulge herself.

Gunnel Lindblom does a good job portraying Anna as a devilish and distracted upstart, but it's Ingrid Thulin who steals the show as the desperate, dejected Ester. It's hard not to become enraptured by Thulin's subtle mannerisms - her rueful grins and tortured lip bites make you feel the tumorous regret in her situation. The two sisters always seem to be searching for the best way to tear each others heart out, but in each there is a deep, underlying desire to be loved, acknowledged and approved of. In one of the climatic scenes of the film, Ester confronts Anna during her sex-fest with a complete stranger. Anna barks and lashes out at Ester, telling her that her moral, intellectual lifestyle is a meaningless way to live. At first, Ester is disturbed but she soon realizes that Anna's outburst is a reflection of her insecurity, and perhaps, a cry for help.

One thing I noticed about The Silence this time around, was Bergman's second focus - Johan. Johan provides a bit of comic relief and comfort for Ester, but ultimately the boy is resigned to aimlessly wander the hotel. He interacts with a fumbling old bellhop and a troupe of performers, all of whom are little people. These are interesting diversions and some of it feeds back into the main narrative of the two sisters (Anna watches the little people perform at one point, the bellhop takes care of Ester), however, these sequences slightly dilute the power of the sister's fire and brimstone. I can understand wanting to exemplify the boy's isolation due to his mother's negligence, but the sequences take too long to resolve themselves and you find yourself wondering when you'll see Ester and Anna go at it once again.

I also noticed recurring images of tanks and allusions to a military presence in the small sweaty town where the action takes place. While I believe this was primarily to show the lack of culture and the abundance of repressive government in the town, it's hard not to draw comparisons to the tension and conflict between Ester and Anna. Unfortunately, it just seems a bit too on-the-chin, especially for Bergman in this particular portion of his career. The images are memorable, particularly the silhouettes of the tanks Johan sees on the train, but they don't provide anything that isn't already crystal clear.    

So, even with a bit of extra fat, The Silence is still an intense drama with the audio/visual decorum of a subtle horror film. I prefer the creeping disturbance of a film like this to the shlocky thrills of most "proper" psychological horror films. Bergman's first true love may have been drama, but he realized many times in his career, including The Silence, the greatest horror can manifest itself from fractured relationships.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II (2011)

Even with all the embarrassing and clowny moments that pockmark the Harry Potter films, I stuck it out and watched the series to the end. While I think the direction is oft times flawed, the characters are one-dimensional and the special effects are totally inconsistent, the Harry Potter films do retain a certain mysterious (and reckless) charm. The series is a lot like the Lord of the Rings films, the Pirates of the Caribbean films and even the original Star Wars films, where, upon close scrutiny, the movies are ultimately just strawmen with expressive faces painted on them. Each series' true purpose is to provide an esoteric - but ultimately hollow - whirlwind of thrills for the audience, subsequently setting up endless licensing for books, video games, spin-off films, TV shows, clothes, backpacks and all the rest of it. Harry Potter has done exactly this for years, but it has also allowed directors and actors to toy around with the children's blockbuster formula to a small degree.

Just look at Prisoner of Azkaban as an example. The film was helmed by Alfonso Cuaron, who had proved his unique skills with the smart and sexually adventurous Mexican arthouse film, Y Tu Mama Tambien three years prior. Not exactly a safe Hollywood choice, hiring an auteur. But they did, and, in my opinion, Prisoner of Azkaban turned out far better than the rest in the series. Cuaron's pacing of the convoluted plot and usage of a handheld, lingering camera made the movie stand out, especially when he captured a more genuine relationship between Hermione, Harry and Ron. And Gary Oldman is in it, which is automatically a good thing.

Unfortunately, even Prisoner of Azkaban is mired by hammy acting, overwrought production and a fly-by checklist of  subplots to tie up. All of the films have that double cheeseburger spectacle, where it's way too much, way too fast, except for The Deathly Hallows, Part I, which was a solidified, deeply personal adventure film. The focus was placed squarely on Harry, Ron and Hermione's evasion from Lord Voldemort and his agents, the incessant threat of danger nearly tearing the trio apart. It's this intimate focus that pushes The Deathly Hollows, Part I into interesting territory. It's not quite a children's film based on a beloved novel anymore, but it's also not a strictly-for-adults hardcore drama.

I had high hopes that The Deathly Hallows, Part II would continue in the same style as the first. I wasn't exactly crushed by a hard reality when I watched it, but at the same time I did feel pretty disappointed. Ultimately, the film veers back to its double cheeseburger strategy, heaping character after character and plot line after plot line down your throat. It's almost like The Deathly Hallows, Part II dares you to remember certain characters that had such miniscule parts to play in the first few films, then laughs at you when you see that they don't do much other than look scared (or alternately, determined) and shoot magic from their wand once or twice. After Voldemort's epic attack on Hogwart's, Harry walks through the hall of wounded and dead, looking at mangled characters we're supposed to give a shit about, but there's nothing there.

It's the same with the characters and the development that occurs throughout the film. Where, in Part I, there's cohesive character arcs abound and it's almost a standalone film within a series, Part II smashes all the players, main and secondary, back into the flat, gross little pancakes that we've become accustomed to. The search for the horcruxes is quickly diced through, Harry and company are just along for the ride until they reach Hogwart's.

Harry himself had grown up a bit in Part I, Daniel Radcliffe made a genuine effort to express a boy wizard becoming a man wizard, but Part II sees him back in the role of blank, frustrated crucible. It's the same with the fine actors that have dotted the landscape for the entire series - Alan Rickman's Snape, Helena Bonham Carter's Bellatrix LeStrange, David Thewlis's Remus, Jim Broadbent's Slughorn, Maggie Smith's Professer McGonagall - all had, at the least, interesting turns in their roles, but Part II sees them swept under the rug or out into oblivion as fast as they first appear in the movie.

Roughly 15 minutes after finishing Part II, I had forgotten or not cared about most of what I had just seen. I felt similarly when I watched Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. The most I can say about Part II is that it is a conclusion. It's not necessarily bad in comparison to some of the other films but it doesn't do anything special or memorable to act as sufficient punctuation on a bloated, uneven film series.

White Dog (1982)

I found out a long time ago that just because a movie has a fantastic cover and/or is on the Criterion Collection doesn't mean it's automatically going to be good. Criterion has a lot of great films under their wings, but they also have a lot of shit films that skate by on the very thin virtue of historical controversy. Samuel Fuller's White Dog is one of these films. It never received a wide release, due largely to the racist subject matter in the film. Potential distributors scurried off, leaving a trail of dust in their wake. And now Criterion has resurrected this terrible shamble of a movie for everyone's viewing displeasure.

The initial idea for White Dog is actually pretty intriguing - a dog trained from early in its life to distrust and attack black people, sent to a black trainer who attempts to exercise the animosity from the canine. In the hands of a more discerning director, the film might have been a stark observation on the carnal nature of racism, but as it stands, White Dog is a laughable and haphazard affair that would make any self-respecting exploitation film or b-movie scratch their head and say, "are you fucking serious?"

Kristy McNichol plays a weird grandma-face actress that finds an injured white dog on the side of a road. She takes the dog home to nurse it back to health. One night, in a truly overblown moment of ultimate plot convenience, a man breaks into the actresses house and tries to rape her. The dog chases the man off, breaking through a window in the process (you know, like dogs typically do), effectively bringing the actress and the dog closer together. Soon after, she finds out the dog attacks black people and takes it to a trainer known for calming the most ferocious of animals.

White Dog's problems begin with its plot. There were many times throughout the film, where I had to audibly wonder, "really?" and "what?" and "Jesus". The biggest example of plot failure is the utter uselessness of the relationship between between the actress and the dog. Fuller could literally have had Keys, the "maverick" animal trainer find the dog on the side of the road and cut out 30 minutes of total fluff in the process. Keys relationship with the dog would be more intense and well-paced, but no, weird grandma-face needs to act as a racial buffer. Which, in turn, introduces a trait in the dog - it's defensiveness to men in general - that is never explored or tied up after it leaves the actresses care.

The abysmal look, special effects and editing make up the rest of the White Dog shitstorm. Set against dull, sun-bleached cinematography, Fuller slops moments of crazy violence and blood at the screen - moments that never seem to follow in any logical accordance with what the dog is doing. Every scene where the dog goes to jump on its victim, there is a quick cutaway to another shot of said victim instantly bloody and properly gored. So, am I to understand that upon first contact during a dog attack, a human's flesh and blood vessels instantly fail, rip and spill out? Because that's the only explanation that would have such a visual device make any sense at all.

There is a scene in the film which I think sums up the irresponsible, overwrought clumsiness of White Dog perfectly. The dog has temporarily run off, looking for fresh black people to kill, when it comes across a black garbageman parked near a store front. The dog growls and stares menacingly at the man, but he doesn't notice. With the passenger door wide open for no reason at all, the dog jumps in and mangles the garbageman. This causes the man to somehow shift his truck out of park and drive it through the store front, leaving a path of crazy destruction. This scene has no consequence. There is no police inquiry. There is no investigation by the main characters. Just a random dead black guy and a completely destroyed clothing store in the middle of L.A. Even if you're armed with a mentality of humorous ironic spectacle, such moments are not worth the time spent watching them.

My Night at Maud's (1969)

It's not often that you find a film director who can effortlessly articulate the woes and triumphs of day-in, day-out love. Eric Rohmer is one member of this rare breed. Having only seen Love in the Afternoon prior to My Night at Maud's you could hardly call me a nerd for Rohmer films, but I can already tell why he's garnered such a prestigious reputation. The man is just so damn good at plucking buried emotions and profound realizations from the mundane existence of domestic life. His primary focus is the relationships between men and women, but he also shows how those relationships effect personally held philosophies and religious beliefs. He pulls these observations down and presents them with a thoughtful, breezy confidence that leaves you both curious and affected.

My Night at Maud's is foremost a love/hate letter to Blaise Pascal, the famous mathematician and philosopher. I'll tell you right out of the gate that I don't know very much about Pascal. I thought it would make for an interesting (and much more honest) review relating what I learned about his ideas in the movie to the narrative itself.

The film focuses on a Catholic engineer, Jean-Louis, as he tries to reconcile the whims of his romantic life with the strictures of his faith. Splitting his time between work and church,  Jean-Louis comes across a young woman, Francoise, during a night at mass. Despite knowing nothing about her, Jean-Louis is instantly enamored with Francoise and secretly vows to marry her. Before he can ask her out, an old friend, Vidal, invites Jean-Louis over to the apartment of Maud, a recently divorced woman looking for a bit of excitement.

The film has a distinct mode of pacing, going from successions of short scenes to drawn out sequences and back again. Jean-Louis' intrepid desire to marry Francoise is summed up quickly, while his night with Maud stretches its feet and lingers. Naturally, this is done to emphasize the importance of the discussions being had, rather than action driving the plot steadily forward. It's almost as if Rohmer wants to get plot out of the way so he can sit you down, pour you a nice glass of milk, and let loose an avalanche of deeply pondered ideas.

Pascal seems to always be on the tip of Jean-Louis' tongue, however, his love or hatred of the man is never made completely clear. As Jean-Louis stays up with Maud on the titular night in question, the two discuss at length the rigors of love, morality and compromise through the lens of the philosopher. Though both characters tend to be racked by dualities, Maud holds to the notion that love based on religion is a sham and she questions the validity of Jean-Louis' passion for Francoise. Jean-Louis maintains that, while he isn't a perfect Catholic due to his various affairs in the past, he knows without a doubt that love, sex and faith are inextricably bound.

Jean-Louis asserts that Pascal shunned intellectual diversions (mathematics) in favor of his faith to God, finding passion in tangibility rather than abstract ideas. In this sense, Jean-Louis' tangibility is a woman that he loves for her faith and conviction before the indulgence of her sexuality. His diversions are the women he ran with in the past, the idea that he found out too late that he was wasting his time with them when he could have been pursuing something meaningful. Maud finds Jean-Louis' ideas intriguing but reminds him that marriage is far from perfection, having gone through a divorce with an unfaithful man. The morning after provides the crux of the entire film, Jean-Louis laying next to Maud in the most defiantly platonic fashion. There is a brief moment where Jean-Louis nearly gives in to Maud's charms, going into kiss her, but at that point Maud has had enough of the indecision wrought by his conflicting morality.

This particular scene is the centerpiece and the soul of My Night at Maud's. It acutely captures the combination of stuffy intellectual posturing and poignant emotional observations that make up the bulk of the film's dialogue. Whenever the dialogue feels like it's about to go jerk itself long and hard, a heavy, tactile set of lines are delivered to anchor the whole thing back into reality. This way, Rohmer gets to express his views on religion, love, morality and Pascal while maintaining a palpable intimacy. My Night at Maud's is essentially one of the best proponents for late night conversation, where all those woozy but profoundly expressive thoughts are formed.

Blue Velvet (1986)

I feel like, after watching Blue Velvet, and a number of David Lynch's other works (such as Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive) that I can safely say he is a frustrating director. Now, I don't mean frustrating in that stupid modern art rally-cry kind of way - the "ah, it's just too fucking subversive and crazy fantastic for you to handle". I mean frustrating in a way that says "the quality of the film is dictated by a sloppy seesaw of styles".

It seems like in much of his work, Lynch is attempting to bridge the gap between consciousness and subconsciousness, where dreams meet reality and reality don't much like what ensues in the resulting collision. He attempts this balance, but always ends up cheating on reality for his true mistress, dreams (and the repressed desires contained within them). I wouldn't have nearly as big of a problem with Lynch if he fleshed out ideas exclusively in his 11th hour, ghoulish worlds, but he stumbles over himself by simultaneously filling in the shoes of a hackneyed drama coach.

Blue Velvet provides a lot of clarity on this point. The film's narrative about Jeffrey, a young man who finds a severed ear in a field, leading him to get involved with a distressed older woman and a circle of criminals, already has fundamental problems at work. Jeffrey's motivation to look into such strange circumstances is never really justified. There are no scenes that establish Jeffrey as a compassionate social servant or an overly curious junior sleuth, he's just kind of winging it the whole time. You would think that as the film progressed perhaps some insight would be shined down upon Jeffrey's intentions, but they remain vague and pedestrian throughout. Why? Because Lynch was far too interested in watching Dennis Hopper writhe on top of Isabella Rossellini, shouting "Blue velvet!" and "Don't you look at me!" to care that much about the protagonist.

And rightfully so. I didn't really give a shit what happened to Jeffrey or why he was there in the first place because I was distracted by the excellent scenes involving a pitch-perfect Dennis Hopper as the deviant sexual maniac, Frank Booth. Whether it's his unnatural fondness for the song, "Candy Colored Clown" by Roy Orbison, or his faintly homoerotic intimidation of Jeffrey, Frank is what saves Blue Velvet from becoming a giant waste of time. You could replace Kyle MacLachlan's Jeffrey with a paper lunch bag that has a frowny face drawn on it and not notice much of a difference. However, taking Hopper's Frank out of the equation would unhinge the film entirely.

The night-time hijinks of Frank and his crew provide a welcome tear away from the flaccid, melodramatic relationship forming between Jeffrey and an equally unnecessary love interest, Sandy, who is portrayed by Laura Dern's nose. I mean, Laura Dern. It was hard to even care about the affair forming between Rossellini's Dorothy and Jeffrey, even though there is a fantastic sequence where he hides in her closet only to be found out and forced into taking off his clothes. But ultimately, she's sucking the dick of a paper bag with a frowny face, so the emotions you should carry away from it don't last, only the image of it stays with you.

All in all, Blue Velvet goes quite well with my David Lynch hang-ups. In a sense, you could liken his strengths and weaknesses to a director obsessed with special effects in his or her movies. The effects may slap you in the face with their awesomeness but when someone asks you about the story, you respond with, "what story?" The main difference is that Lynch's "special effects" have enough intelligence and permeating presence that they create stories in and of themselves. So, why, Mr. Lynch, even bother with white-bread, by the numbers drama? It only gives off an uneasy, after-school special vibe in your case. Just stick to making pretentious short films about rabbit humans, selling naked pictures of your girlfriends for $500 and making blues albums with ridiculous titles like Crazy Clown Time.

The Dungeonmaster (1984)

The Dunegeonmaster, also known, hilariously enough, as Ragewar. I have to admit I had really high hopes for this clearly awful movie, what with it's esoteric poster of a heinous man looming large over a red grid with a miniature brawny man wearing cricket pads and shooting lasers from his wrist-guards. The poster had that awesome, excessive art style that has graced a plethora of '70s, '80s, early '90s movies and even early Nintendo games. I thought to myself, "well played, Netflix, I'm intrigued." And, though it sat on my queue for a few weeks, I always glanced over it in my browsing, the heinous man's cackling face watching me as I swept it aside for something else.

76 minutes of my life were thus ended upon the playing of this movie. 76 minutes I'd pay to have back. To be doing anything else, like showing up at my sophomore year Homecoming only to find that the girl I was head over heels for, Katie O'Donnell, had brought some cocksucker to the event instead of me...or, you know, sticking needles in my eyes.

To get the particulars out of the way, the movie tells the story (if you want to call it that) of a brawny computer geek, obsessed with his computer girlfriend instead of his real-life girlfriend. Despite this, brawny geek asks his real-life girlfriend to marry him. Real-life girlfriend doesn't give him an answer but still inexplicably considers his offer while aiming some crazy jealousy at computer girlfriend. Brawny geek and real-life girlfriend go to bed one night and soon find themselves transported to a sort of fantastical plane, where a pseudo-European pornstar conducts a lengthy gauntlet of challenges in order for brawny man to save real-life girlfriend.

For one thing, the movie looks like it's shot on a low-grade camcorder that the director borrowed from his mom. Wait, I take that back. There were multiple directors that steered this shit-ship, so maybe they all borrowed their mom's camcorders respectively. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why multiple directors were even -necessary- as the style remained completely the same for each sequence, that style being "absolute shit."

The plot is so laughable and convoluted that you can actually see the actors themselves become confused and tired as the film progresses. Oh, and that pseudo-European pornstar wizard that I mentioned before? That's Richard Moll. Yeah, the bald guy from Night Court. Total icing on the cake. I feel the film was conceived in a very hazy and vague manner, something like all the directors sitting around a table at a bar and saying in unison, "wouldn't it be funny if..." or "wouldn't it be crazy if..." They even have the audacity (or stupidity) to try and throw in a moral to the story. Since the dialogue is so hackneyed and robotic, it's far too difficult to even paraphrase it, but it was something along the lines of abusing power out of boredom. You know, because having pointless, shoddy fantasy fight sequences is a cure for boredom.

And yet I think the most unforgivable aspect of The Dungeonmaster is the wrist-guard that brawny man uses throughout the film. All the props, costumes and set pieces look like garbage, the barren landscapes, the caves, the dungeons, the zombies, that SHITTY HEAVY METAL BAND "WASP" - but nothing stands quite as tall as this wrist-guard, which is a mix of a Texas Instruments calculator and that electronic sequencing game, Simon.

 This wrist-guard is the blatantly convenient plot device to be measured against all other movie plot devices. It has to be the most esoteric swiss-army knife man has ever conceived. If brawny man finds himself needing to shoot lasers at enemies, no problem. If he needs to shoot lasers in multiple directions at once, no problem. If he needs a laser-generated bar to pull himself up from certain death, no problem. If he needs very small, specific lasers that unlock handcuffs, no problem. If he needs to run a background check on a criminal, no problem. If he needs to plan the trajectory of ricocheting rocks off cave walls to hit a single target, no problem. If he needs to deflect samurai swords, no problem.

Jesus, this movie isn't even worth existing. It should negative exist. This isn't even just a "bad" bad movie, it's like taking the art form of movies on a cheap date, to IHOP or something because The Dungeonmaster is too cheap to splurge on Denny's, and still expect to get the goods. Also, I cannot condone any film that supports stealing from frozen Albert Einsteins.