The Brood (1979)

☆ ☆ ½

The Brood (1979) – D. Cronenberg

Very strange, very strange.  In fact, it is the ideas that writer-director David Cronenberg came up with that make this worth watching – the execution is lacking.  Sure, the effects are creepy/disgusting, as we all came to expect from this auteur, but the acting (even from legend Oliver Reed) is a bit flat and the slow slow build to the final climax is too dreary.  Yet, there is something in the idea that our anger might become manifest physically, either as sores or actual projections, that links this to other Cronenberg films and perhaps to the man’s deeper metaphysical or psychological concerns.  Frank Carveth (Art Hindle)’s wife is isolated in a sanatorium under the watch of psychiatrist Hal Raglan (played by Reed); he brings their 5-year-old daughter Candy to see her on the weekends.  However, when Candy returns with scratches and marks on her back, Carveth seeks answers.  A few bloody murders later and the truth is finally revealed (in the final 15 minutes) and it is very strange, very strange.  Next up for Cronenberg: Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983) which expand on these themes with even more panache.

Mrs. Miniver (1942)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Mrs. Miniver (1942) – W. Wyler

Melodrama-cum-propaganda piece created by Hollywood but purporting to show the British coping with the onset of World War II.  Wyler was already a masterful director (The Letter, Wuthering Heights, and Jezebel were under his belt with The Best Years of Our Lives, Roman Holiday, and more yet to come). He controls the action well and allows Greer Garson to take an affectionate star turn as the title character, a mum coping with a war that sees her son off to the RAF and her husband (Walter Pidgeon) contributing as a civilian at Dunkirk (not to mention her house and community bombed).  However, this is a fantasyland England where everyone bonds together and gets on with it; Garson’s family is significantly well off (with a maid) – moreover, they simply shrug off the hardships (less “stiff upper lip” and more impossible cheerfulness) until they really can’t.  But as I said this is melodrama and the major subplots involve a romance between the Minivers’ son Vin (Richard Ney) and the granddaughter (Teresa Wright) of the local aristocrat (played curmudgeonly by Dame May Whitty) as well as a flower competition that sees humble Henry Travers taking on Whitty.  Still, there were some tear-jerking moments and the rousing rallying cry, though undercut by the failure to depict the brutality of war in real terms, still comes through.  This won six Oscars (including for Garson, Wright, Wyler, and best picture) after being nominated for 12.       

Happiness (1935)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Happiness (1935) – A. Medvedkin

One of the final silent features from the Soviet Union, ultimately banned but rediscovered in the 1960s by SLON (Society for Launching New Work), a group of leftist filmmakers led by Chris Marker.  In fact, Marker was so impressed by this film and by director Alexander Medvedkin that he ultimately made a striking essay film about him and his life (The Last Bolshevik, 1993).  Judging by Happiness, Medvedkin did have a flair for the comic and surreal; the film is spiked with a few bizarre images (polka-dotted horse on a roof, a shack being stolen from within/underneath, long-bearded clergy wrestling for a lost wallet) inserted into a rollicking tale of a peasant and his journey into communism.  Initially, he envies a neighbouring rich man, despairing his own predicament enough to want to commit suicide (comically), but, ultimately, he and his wife find that happiness lies in the collective farm (kolkhoz).  I wouldn’t say the plot is as straightforward as that sentence makes it sound.  If there is a message here, selling the idea of the kolkhoz, it didn’t come across; perhaps this experiment backfired, as did Medvedkin’s “cine-train” which travelled around the USSR filming actual kolkhoz workers and showing them footage of themselves, apparently griping.  But as a picaresque and comic oddity from a very different time and place, it succeeds.

The Ax (2005)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Ax (2005) – Costa-Gavras

Black comedy that wants badly to be “delicious” but instead sputters along, dragging out its point long after we “get it”.  Not that Costa-Gavras has made a bad film here, just one that could have been punchier and more incisive.  José Garcia plays a paper company executive who is let go when his company downsizes and relocates to Romania; after being out of work for 2 years, he stumbles on the brilliant idea of collecting résumés from the competition (other unemployed ex-paper company execs) and then killing the best of the lot.  We see several of these murders staged for presumably comic effect.  At the end of the line is the current occupant of the coveted job played expertly by Dardenne Bros. favourite, Olivier Gourmet.  Along for the ride are spouse Karin Viard (trying her best to hold things together) and two kids, one of whom seems to be following in criminal footsteps.  (The family drama unfolds around the central action and sometimes distracts from it). Costa-Gavras wants us to see how inhumanely people are treated in the age of corporate competition but that joke isn’t funny anymore.  Still, there might be a sharper film buried here somewhere; Garcia is a Jack Lemmon-like figure and he carries the weight of the picture fairly well.

  

The Straight Story (1999)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Straight Story (1999) – D. Lynch

A change of pace for director David Lynch and perhaps the one true oddity in his oeuvre.  In 1993, Alvin Straight, then 73 years old but with failing eyes and legs, drove his riding mower 300 miles to visit his estranged brother who just had a stroke (cameo by Harry Dean Stanton). Maybe Lynch saw surrealism in the story or maybe his innate conservatism (championing family values) drew him to the material.  If you look carefully, you can see his style of filmmaking in the way that the camera simply observes everyone in a matter-of-fact style and the dialogue (which he didn’t script himself) is the same sort of non-ironic plain-speaking you get from characters in his other projects.  However, this is G-rated heart-warming material released by Disney, not a vision of the dark forces intruding on all things wholesome (although in the very beginning when we hear an ominous thud and the camera zooms up to a shuttered window, I wasn’t quite sure).  Only rarely do things turn a bit weird, almost as if Lynch felt it was obligatory. But these moments distract from the main story which is really about Straight (played touchingly by Richard Farnsworth, who died soon after at age 80) and his interactions with other people, including his autistic daughter, Rose (played by Sissy Spacek), and the unbelievably kind Midwesterners he meets along the way.     

In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2001)

☆ ☆ ☆

In the Mirror of Maya Deren (2001) – M. Kudlácek

There’s less analysis and more character judgment than I would have hoped in this documentary about the famed experimental filmmaker who began work in the 1940s.  However, the recordings of her own lectures do add to a viewer’s understanding of some of her work.  The talking heads are also well chosen (co-director and ex-husband Alexander Hammid, Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Katherine Dunham, Chao Li Chi, Amos Vogel).  Of course, I wouldn’t recommend this to those who haven’t seen Deren’s films – it’s kind of like reading a book review without reading the book!  Nevertheless, the brief clips of Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), At Land (1946), Meditation on Violence (1949), and The Very Eye of Night (1958) proved these films to be as beguiling as ever and an influence on so much which came afterward.  Kudlácek’s documentary is certainly well put together, dutifully reviewing Deren’s life, from immigration at age 5 to privileged upbringing, beginnings in Los Angeles, and then the bohemian art life in Greenwich Village with some intermittent visits to Haiti where she became infatuated with Vodoun and the music and culture of the people there (resulting in a book and subsequent footage).  In retrospect, Kudlácek probably made the most engaging film possible (barring full inclusion of Deren’s own shorts) with the materials at hand and the lengthy time that had passed. I guess I’m always hungering for something deeper, a key to unlock everything, which will never just be handed over -- and that’s probably for the best, since mystery is at the heart of Deren’s work.

  

Brooklyn (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Brooklyn (2015) – J. Crowley

Saoirse Ronan is engaging as the shy Irish girl who ships off to America on her own at the start of the 1950s and finds her feet in an immigrant’s Brooklyn.  A heartfelt drama from director John Crowley that stirs one’s emotions.  Perhaps more so for me because there are some personal resonances here.  For example, my own ancestors would have made this journey 50 or 60 years before this film takes place (from County Clare), although likely as a family unit and not alone (I’ll have to check with my genealogist mom).  And, of course, I’m an immigrant too, although for different reasons in a different era and a different country.  When Saoirse meets Tony, her Italian beau (warmly played by Emory Cohen), the film delights in showing young romance, only to throw obstacles in the way (a bit of screenwriting 101 from Nick Hornby) when she has to head back to Ireland to deal with family matters.  What she finds there creates a dilemma that the film could resolve either way, but ultimately chooses the way that put tears in my eyes.  I’m a softie.  The filmmakers lovingly recreated the New York City that my parents knew as kids (seemingly) with all the situations and settings that presumably no longer exist (I suspect the same is true of Ireland).  All told, there is some magic here but nothing that stretches a viewer interested in a conventional romantic drama (or a romanticized view of the past).