The Post (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Post (2017) – S. Spielberg

It would be damned near impossible not to think of All the President’s Men (1976) when watching Spielberg’s The Post (also about investigative journalism at the Washington DC paper) and, of course, Spielberg’s film pales in comparison to that great classic.  Tom Hanks might be working his best Jason Robards impression – or perhaps both were channelling the real Ben Bradlee, Editor of the Post – but can’t really get any traction in the part.  Instead, the film belongs to Meryl Streep’s Katherine (Kay) Graham, the Publisher of the Post, and her struggles as a woman in a man’s world.  Although we do get some of her backstory, the script largely focuses on the events surrounding the publication of the “Pentagon Papers” which were a top secret review of the history of American involvement in Vietnam commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara and a no-holds-barred indictment of the policy (and lying) of all the presidents from Truman to Nixon.  The New York Times was first to publish (after receiving a leak from Daniel Ellsberg) but the Nixon White House sued to stop them.  The pivotal moment here focuses on whether Graham will allow Bradlee to publish stories drawn from the leaked Papers in defiance of a court order not to.  Of course, she did – no spoiler intended – and Spielberg’s attempts to build suspense around this known outcome are destined to fail (despite John Williams’ urgent score).  But Spielberg was really hunting for bigger fish and the rousing moment when freedom of the press triumphs over governmental interference is clearly designed to castigate Donald Trump and his war on journalists and journalism.  Perhaps some need to hear this cry for freedom (an important message to be sure) – but they probably wouldn’t be watching this film anyway.  In the end, the film is average at best (despite the strong performance from Streep, as usual), taking too long to get to the point, drifting in places, offering too many faceless bit characters, and just plain not being All the President’s Men.

Sisters (1972)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Sisters (1972) – B. De Palma

Brian De Palma’s films often end up unsatisfying.  Especially in his 1970s work, he cribs liberally from Alfred Hitchcock, borrowing his themes (voyeurism), his flaws (misogyny perhaps), and here even his composer (Bernard Herrmann) – but the result is not on the same level as Hitch’s best work.  De Palma seems more grubby, although the 70s fashion, cars, and decor may contribute to that sense, perhaps a conscious choice, in Sisters.  De Palma also pushes the sex and violence further than Hitchcock did, losing something when actions and images become explicit rather than implicit.  This said, there is just enough weird morbidity in Sisters (a hint of Cronenberg perhaps) that makes it interesting.  We begin with Danielle (Margot Kidder), a French Canadian living on Staten Island who has a one-night stand that ends in murder. Reporter Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) sees it from her apartment window but the police don’t believe her.  Danielle and her weird ex-husband Emil (William Finley) clearly cover it up (as shown in split screen, while the police are on their way), but we come to believe that the murderer is Danielle’s (evil) twin.  A private detective (Charles Durning) is hired by the newspaper to investigate.  Herrmann’s score really keeps things moving, evoking the classic Hitchcocks.  But weirder things happen and what’s with the ending?  Ultimately, the sum may be more than equal to its parts – but the parts have been repurposed from elsewhere!  This might reward another viewing.

Akira (1988)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Akira (1988) – K. Ôtomo

This was really a famous anime film back in the day, perhaps the first one to be a hit in America.  I didn’t watch it back then because I wasn’t really interested; but this was before I realised how good animation could be, before those annual animation short film festivals in the early ‘90s and before we knew about Miyazaki.  Of course, Akira is absolutely nothing like Miyazaki’s work and it definitely isn’t for kids.  Imdb summarizes the plot as follows:  “A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.”  So, there are heaps of explosions, fights, deaths, a rape scene, motorbike accidents, police, army, tanks, gangs, and yes, psychic kids.  The animation itself is impressive and often beautiful in that classic Japanese style that has become so familiar worldwide now.  It is hard to place this as a 1980s film, perhaps because it takes place in 2019 (where strangely Japan is preparing to host the Olympic games in Tokyo) and the futuristic city isn’t too different from today’s cities; in other words, it feels new and current.  Yet, a little of this also goes a long way and by the time we approached the end, I was dozing off (that third beer probably didn’t help).  I think I might only dip into anime now and again, and perhaps those short sweet versions are the best dosage.    

The Uninvited (1944)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Uninvited (1944) – L. Allen

I keep returning to this film because I want it to be something that it is not.  I want it to be a spooky supernatural ghost story, along the lines of The Haunting (1963), and although it does include all the elements from the haunted house genre, the tone of the film consistently undercuts its spookiness.  For one thing, there is Ray Milland, constantly joking and not really taking the supernatural (sobbing from somewhere in the dark house, sudden cold spots or a whiff of mimosas, doors slamming) seriously at all.  His sister, with whom Milland has bought the house on the clifftop overlooking the sea on a whim, is a bit more concerned.  But the film jauntily moves along (with some mickey-mousing on the soundtrack) to focus on a burgeoning romance between Milland (aged 38) and Gail Russell (aged 20), who is the daughter of the woman who used to live in the house who died mysteriously, falling from the cliff.  It is the mother who is thought to haunt the house -- but this doesn’t quite jell because of the malevolence of the spirit toward Russell.  A seance is held to try to sort it all out and the plot thickens considerably (including the introduction of a possible lesbian subplot).  With all these classic ingredients, The Uninvited should be a spine-tingling ghost story but instead it becomes a fantasy film (save for one “angry ghost” scene), offering hope for romance if only the secret of the ghost can be worked out and Russell freed from its curse.  And approached with these different expectations, the film works.

Earlier, I wrote more pithily:

Ray Milland plays a 30-something jovial oaf who moves into a haunted house with his sister and puts the moves on a 20-year-old neighbor girl who is the target of the ghost's energies. Generally lighthearted and romantic but with some good (and not overdone) chills (room gets colder, pets won't go in there). Solving the mystery of the ghost's back-story means saving the girl.

Molly’s Game (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Molly’s Game (2017) – A. Sorkin

“Molly Bloom” is a role that would have gone to Julia Roberts in the not so distant past and somehow Jessica Chastain doesn’t seem as quite so good a fit (despite her impressive acting chops).  Having not paid much attention to the U. S. tabloid news, I wasn’t aware of Bloom at all, but writer Aaron Sorkin, in his directorial debut, fills in all the gaps in her true story.  We begin with Bloom’s olympic skiing career which ended abruptly with an accident and then jump around in time, learning about her coincidental and then hugely profitable move into hosting big stakes poker games.  These games, beginning in Los Angeles, attracted celebrities and billionaires (including perhaps Tobey Maguire, who is dubbed Player X and played by Michael Cera here).  We also see the FBI raid that took Bloom down and her interactions with her lawyer (Idris Elba).  The film seems too long and too uneven.  Sorkin may have doubled back a few too many times in the telling, although the editing keeps things going at a good clip and the acting is generally strong.  In the end, despite a focus on Bloom’s integrity (protecting the identities of her players and the confidential goss she learned about them), there isn’t much of a point to the film, except perhaps to make us all feel bad that there are billionaires who live in this world who can do whatever they want.

Happy End (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Happy End (2017) – M. Haneke

Director Michael Haneke’s latest film, his first in five years, is a chilly look at the moral failings of the bourgeoisie (or perhaps the upper class).  Isabelle Huppert is the neurotic head of a construction company, hoping to bestow this role on her son, who she constantly berates for not being good enough (an accident at one of the sites heightens this tension).  Mathieu Kassovitz is her brother, a surgeon, whose 13-year-old daughter by a first marriage (Fantine Harduin) is suddenly added to the family when her mother attempts suicide; the daughter immediately senses that her father is having an affair (and investigates this on his computer; her smartphone is always near at hand, recording things).  Jean-Louis Trintignant (now in his 80s) plays the retired head of the family, alternatively forgetful and lucidly perceptive; he seeks escape in death after having euthanised his wife several years earlier during a chronic illness (a nod to Haneke’s previous feature, Amour, 2012).  There is no linear plot to reveal; we just see the family with its various players rolling through a series of events that show their obliviousness to the suffering of the world (made a bit more overt when the son invites a group of African refugees into a fancy engagement dinner).  We do feel the tension from these events but it is enhanced by the characters’ inability to communicate with each other, to confess their own true feelings or to recognise those of each other.  (Haneke uses some cinematic tricks, such as filming from a distance so that we cannot hear what is being said, to emphasise these failures). Our social pain may be even more acute when we observe the poor tween daughter and her own constricted emotions, clearly borne of the treatment received from those around her.  As always with Haneke, there are ideas to chew on here but they seem slightly less well digested than in some of his other films.

Gomorrah (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Gomorrah (2008) – M. Garrone

Episodes drawn from the pages of Roberto Saviano’s exposé of the Camorra crime family (from which he now needs constant police protection), laid out unblinkingly in all their harshness and violence.  Little context is provided and apparently even Italian viewers needed subtitles to understand the local dialects here.  Basically, we are thrown into a world focused on a tenement slum where a brutal gang war is occurring, as the young turks aim to unseat the corrupt and greedy mob bosses.  There is a lot of collateral damage. Mostly, we follow kids caught up in the action, having fun modelling their behaviour on that of the men around them – and sometimes going too far.  When we aren’t seeing mobsters kill each other for revenge or over drug deals, we follow a subplot that reveals that the crime family also makes money by buying and illegally dumping hazardous waste (presumably for major companies).  Even more than the chaotically violent hoods, the crook in this scheme is intensely amoral/immoral; when one of his truckers is burned by chemicals and they protest, he gets a bunch of 11-year-old kids to drive the trucks full of waste instead.  Another subplot takes place in the fashion industry where the gang competes with the Chinese.  No one with a shred of decency seems able to survive in this brutal world (yet we do see cars passing on a local highway, suggesting the real world might exist a step away, unaware or turning a blind eye to the actions here).  Visceral and gripping with most of the plot arcs closed by the end but leaving the possibility that the ugly status quo continues. Later this apparently became a TV series.

Loving Vincent (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Loving Vincent (2017) – D. Kobiela & H. Welchman

Beautifully animated by 100 artists creating more than 800 original oil paintings, often involving rotoscoping of actors playing the parts of Vincent Van Gogh and his associates.  Notably, all of the paintings are in the unmistakable style of Van Gogh – and some of his works are reproduced (of course).  So, the film is amazing to look at and takes me back fondly to my memories of the Van Gogh exhibit here in Melbourne last year (the wheatfields and the crows).  The plot follows the son (Armand) of Van Gogh’s friend and subject Postman Joseph Roulin who travels to Paris after the painter’s death to deliver a letter from Vincent to his brother Theo.  When Theo turns out to be dead, Armand travels to Arles to interview the people who knew Vincent at the end, including Doctor Gachet and Marguerite Gachet (voiced by Saoirse Ronan).  He comes up with a theory that Van Gogh might have been murdered rather than a suicide; however, I’m not sure this really adds enough tension to the plot to sustain interest.  Having recently watched Kirk Douglas as Vincent in Lust for Life (1956), I knew many of the details of the painter’s life and perhaps the plot could be less clear without this background knowledge.  The remake of Don McLean’s “Starry, starry night” playing over the end credits is a nice touch. 

Game Night (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ 

Game Night (2018) – J. F. Daley & J. Goldstein

In the spirit of The Game (1997) (which saw Michael Douglas have the rug pulled out from under him as a birthday gesture), directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein try to fool Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams (and viewers) into questioning whether they are experiencing reality or an elaborate hoax (a murder mystery game night).  It’s fun, slick, and ultimately inconsequential.  I laughed a few times and I didn’t laugh a few times.  The comedy of embarrassment is always near at hand but the pacing of a thriller keeps things moving so that awkward moments and jokes are observed, accepted, and then quickly dispatched.  We are in good hands with Bateman and McAdams who have excellent timing and only rarely let things get cheesy.  The plot sees the competitive Bateman threatened by his older brother’s success (such that it affects his ability to make a baby), so when the opportunity comes to prove that they can win the murder mystery game night, he gives it his all.  Support is offered by a variety of familiar and unfamiliar faces who are either in on things or not.  Perhaps it all holds up but it may be best not to over-think things here.  Nice pulsating 80s synth soundtrack by Cliff Martinez (known for his work with Nicolas Winding Refn).  

The Ninth Configuration (1980)

☆ ☆ ½

The Ninth Configuration (1980) – W. P. Blatty

Here we have the directorial debut of writer William Peter Blatty, who had his biggest success as the author (and subsequently the screenwriter) of The Exorcist (filmed in 1973).  Supposedly, this film extends that horror film’s themes (roughly a battle between good and evil) and forms a loose trilogy as the middle film between The Exorcist I and The Exorcist III (The Exorcist II was written by someone else and disowned by all involved).  But trying to figure out how this film relates to the Exorcist thematically seems a nearly impossible challenge (there is some discussion about whether God exists, I guess that’s it).  The plot involves a castle purportedly in the Pacific Northwest of the US (but really in Hungary – and impressive) that is being used as an institution to house those members of the armed forces who have been declared mentally unfit for service.  The medical doctor in charge is played by Ed Flanders (St. Elsewhere) but he defers to psychiatrist Stacey Keach (Fat City, Mike Hammer) when he arrives to determine whether the inmates are truly insane or just escaping duty.  It is, perhaps, a meta-physical question but not really addressed here.  The general feel of the film is a sort of cross between M.A.S.H. and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – but more pretentious, less naturalistic, and more forced.  Scott Wilson plays an inmate/former astronaut who was unable to go to the moon, flaking out on the launching pad (and imdB claims that he is the astronaut for whom Regan in The Exorcist claimed “you’re gonna die up there” – the only link to the other movie, I could see).  Anyway, Keach is entirely vague and subdued in his part until a cryptic late “reveal” results in a violent bar-fight – perhaps he has been possessed by a demon or demons (or it is the evil influence of war and trauma).  Hard to say.  But by that point I had lost my patience with the film which ultimately seems amateurish and ham-fisted.  If there is something of value here, it is hard to discern.

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) – F. Francis

The first of the many omnibus horror films from Amicus Pictures, following the great tradition of Ealing Studio’s Dead of Night (1945 and highly recommended).  Amicus was clearly drawing from the EC Comics playbook (another of their films is called Tales from the Crypt) and the five tales told here are alternately silly and (trying to be) scary.  For example, one tale features a plant that has evolved to be smart enough to defend itself from humans who might want to prune it.  Another sees a disembodied hand determinedly pursuing and killing Christopher Lee, a rude art critic.  On the less silly side, we are treated to somewhat routine werewolf and vampire tales (well actually the vampire one is pretty silly too but it is notable for featuring a young Donald Sutherland).  Oh and in the fifth tale, a jazz musician tries to steal a tune from a voodoo ceremony and, of course, the voodoo gods catch up with him. The framing device for the stories is that the five men are in the same train compartment with Dr. Schreck (a.k.a. Dr. Terror, played by Peter Cushing) who then reads their fortunes using the tarot cards.  The cards reveal what will be happening to each of the men unless a fifth tarot card helps them to avoid that end – but for each of them the fifth card is Death (and then the train crashes).  Director Freddie Francis was cinematographer for some great films (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960; The Innocents, 1961; and later David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, 1980, and The Straight Story, 1999) but there is nothing really distinguished about the photography here.