Ginger Snaps (2000)

☆ ☆ ☆

Ginger Snaps (2000) – J. Fawcett

It is perhaps too easy to be too hard on genre films, particularly if the genre is given to certain excesses as is the case with the teen horror film.  However, setting aside the inevitable descent into prosthetic creature masks and bloody messes, there is something different and interesting about this low budget Canadian film.  For one thing, the focus is squarely on two sisters, weird kids who don’t fit in with their peers and who have a suicide pact.  For another, the transformation into a werewolf is explicitly equated with the transformation of a girl to a woman. Yes, some of the blood on display is from menstruation. So, is this a tale of empowerment? Is female sexuality something being championed rather than shamed, exploited, or hidden away? I’m not sure the film is so clear on these points.  It may be better at representing the anxiety involved in the transition/transformation (and mother Mimi Rogers does a solid job at embarrassing the girls) than at making any political points.  (Of course, this is something that female viewers might judge better than me).  Thus, in keeping with werewolf films from the golden age, director John Fawcett (male) and screenwriter Karen Walton (female) don’t really aim for scares in the material but instead focus on the emotional experiences of the werewolf (Katharine Isabelle) and her sister who needs to stop her (Emily Perkins). Until the last 30 minutes when straight genre fans are placated (and one actress is replaced by a thing), the film actually had the makings of a weird high school flick (though not without some clichés of that genre too).  Worth a look?

  

They Died With Their Boots On (1941)

☆ ☆ ☆

They Died With Their Boots On (1941) – R. Walsh

Errol Flynn stars as George Armstrong Custer.  The film depicts a highly fictionalised version of his life from his first days as a cadet at West Point, through his Civil War heroics (on the Union side), to his time at Fort Lincoln in the Dakota Country, and finally his death at the Battle of Little Big Horn.  Raoul Walsh directs the action sequences with a certain amount of panache (lots of extras on horseback) but the film feels overlong and Olivia De Havilland has little to do as Custer’s wife (this was her 8^th and last pairing with Flynn).  As you might expect for this era (1940s), the film has a definite racist streak, particularly when it comes to portraying Native Americans; Anthony Quinn plays Crazy Horse but there are some actual Sioux men who were brought out to Hollywood to serve as extras. Hattie McDaniel also plays a maid who is superstitious in a few scenes to offer some “comic relief”.  Interestingly, Flynn portrays Custer as a bit of a delinquent who nonetheless is able to lead men in battle; his casting doesn’t quite seem right (he belongs in less weighty swashbucklers).  Speaking of unusual casting, Sydney Greenstreet appears as a Union General, with only his mutton chops and uniform differentiating this performance from The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca.  Jarring.  Arthur Kennedy is solid as the main villain.  However, you really should look elsewhere if you want to see Flynn at his best (e.g., The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938).   

  

Hidden Figures (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ 

Hidden Figures (2016) – T. Melfi

A feel-good movie about mathematics, the space race, and the civil rights struggle for African-American women – based on a true story.  Prior to the installation of their first IBM mainframe (depicted in the film), NASA used human “computers” to check and double-check calculations; the film follows a group of three of these African American women from the “coloured computer” group.  Taraji P. Henson plays Katherine G. Johnson who assisted with advanced calculations for John Glenn’s first orbit around the Earth (and subsequently the Apollo 11 mission and flights in the space shuttle era).  Henson’s experiences in the all-white NASA offices and engineering labs shown here are, as expected, sometime unpleasant (as when she is snubbed by white colleagues) but sometimes positive (as when she is supported by white colleagues, such as boss Al Harrison, played by Kevin Costner).  Janelle Monáe plays Mary Jackson who successfully became NASA’s first African American female engineer (after challenging Virginia’s segregated school’s policy).  Octavia Spencer plays Dorothy Vaughan who became NASA’s first African American female supervisor, running the IBM computer lab.  Although their stories are true, they remained largely unheralded until this film (which Johnson was alive to see at age 98) – so it is worth trumpeting their stereotype-breaking successes.  The movie itself sticks to the feel-good playbook, providing a bit of backstory to each of the characters, a little romance for Johnson, showing their lives outside of work, a few ugly incidents (racism), and, of course, some tension before everything falls into place as a result of the hard work of these women. And it’s all set to some rousing music (coordinated by Pharrell Williams).  In the end, NASA benefits, the US moves ahead of the Soviets in the space race, and best of all, these women also experience gratifying personal success.  However, this is the Hollywood version of their story, so don’t expect anything edgy or challenging.  

Prisoners (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Prisoners (2013) – D. Villeneuve

Relentlessly malevolent (and probably not the picture to watch if you are the parent of small ones), this thriller nevertheless shows director Denis Villeneuve’s talent at building and sustaining tension while abiding by the audience’s expectations. Two families see their youngest members abducted on Thanksgiving and Jake Gyllenhaal is the police detective assigned to find the abductor and get them back.  I haven’t seen Taken or its sequels, so I’m not sure how this fits into the apparent genre – but parent Hugh Jackman decides to take the investigation into his own hands and his fury means that he isn’t subtle.  I don’t think we are meant to identify with Jackman, because everything he does seems to alienate the viewer (and threaten his relationships with everyone else, including his wife, Maria Bello, and the other couple, Viola Davis and Terrence Howard).  As the hunt for the abductor continues, the clues pile up, suspects are tracked down, creepiness abounds (and tends to dominate over the sadness and disgust that would otherwise be the main feeling, since we are dealing with child abduction and possible paedophilia here).  You might catch a bit of a Silence of the Lambs vibe, I suppose.  Gyllenhaal is dogged in his pursuit of all leads, although the police action is pretty genre-consistent at best. In the end, things do get tied up with a bow, but I’ve read that an even darker ending was proposed – that probably would have made for a better film.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)

☆ ☆ ½

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) – B. Rafelson

This version of the James M. Cain novella seems grimmer than the famed 1946 version with James Garfield and Lana Turner (which is definitely a film noir) and even the 1943 Italian version (Ossessione) which is more neorealism than noir.  Jessica Lange makes a suitable Cora but Jack Nicholson seems too hangdog and beaten as Frank.  I didn’t see any chemistry and the sex scenes, supposedly necessary to undo the censorship of the ‘40s, are anything but alluring (with a sub-current of violence that is a turn-off).  The plot, set in the Depression, sees drifter Frank show up at Nick Papadakis’s petrol station/diner and decide to stay as a handyman, soon striking up an affair with young Cora behind the older Nick’s back.  Eventually, they decide to kill him in order to be together.  The subsequent court case pits them against each other and tests their relationship.  Somehow, Bob Rafelson’s direction seems to drain the action of its tension and the actors don’t really catch the screen on fire with their passion (or their conflict).  Perhaps the shift into the 1980s struck a fatal blow to the seventies drama – after all, Rafelson and Nicholson were so good in Five Easy Pieces (1970) but a decade later, they are visibly straining. Another example of a remake that shouldn’t have happened.

  

The Soft Skin (1964)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Soft Skin (1964) – F. Truffaut

Falling just after Truffaut’s masterpieces (The 400 Blows, 1959; Jules and Jim, 1962), The Soft Skin also shows the creative techniques that were the hallmark of the Nouvelle Vague.  Jean Desailly plays an author/publisher who has an affair with Françoise Dorléac, a stewardess (to use the 1960s term); the film documents, from his perspective, how he navigates the necessary secrecy and juggles the various people who can’t find out (including his wife and small daughter).  I read somewhere that the plot echoes circumstances from Truffaut’s own life (he was divorced in 1965) and the film seems sympathetic toward Desailly’s character – or at least tries to convey his emotional experiences.  Truffaut uses editing and sound magnificently to capture the excitement of the elicit rendezvous and the anxiety related to the risks and inevitable discovery.  You can see his debt and homage to Hitchcock in the best sequences here (and indeed his interviews with Hitch that formed the basis of the famous book had occurred two years earlier).  However, it is impossible to shake the sordid inappropriateness of the actions here, by both Desailly and Dorléac – our identification with them is undermined by our rejection of their actions.  One wonders how much Truffaut himself is complicit in supporting the moral transgressions on display – until the shock ending, which seems to negate everything that has gone before (or provide an easy out for that seeming complicity).  Apparently, this film was booed at the Cannes Film Festival but the craft on display makes it worthwhile even if the content matter is unpalatable.

Silence (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

Silence (2016) – M. Scorsese

How will Scorsese go down in film history (since this is one of his passions)? Will he be considered a director with a few great masterpieces (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas) who then tried his hand at everything with some middling results (e.g., John Huston)?  Or a great all-rounder (e.g., Howard Hawks)?  Perhaps he has higher aspirations? After all, Ingmar Bergman also called a film (The) Silence, 1963.  But this wasn’t the film in which a priest questioned God’s existence (that was Winter Light, 1963), as Andrew Garfield’s Rodrigues does here when he is witnessing the suffering of Christians in 17^th century Japan.  Garfield (and also everywhere man Adam Driver) is a missionary sent to spread the faith and to bolster the victims of Japan’s efforts to wipe out the religion, not unlike Liam Neeson’s Ferreira sent earlier and now presumed lost.  The story goes that Ferreira capitulated when the Inquisitor asked him to renounce Jesus/God by stepping on his picture.  However, Garfield and Driver won’t believe this.  Many trials later (this is a long movie), Neeson appears and offers a pragmatic solution.  The project seems near to Scorsese’s heart but he lets it drift along. He wants to portray men whose faith is strong enough to endure any hardship – and to characterise their internal struggle – but either Garfield is miscast (or hasn’t the acting chops) or Scorsese himself is ambivalent.  There are moments when the Japanese perspective, arguing that the colonizing efforts of the West must stop, seems to have his sympathy (not considering the bloodthirsty tortures that they wreak on all Christians here in some incredible set-pieces).  Or perhaps it is just my lack of faith that makes this particular cause seem in vain when other more important causes (social justice, more broadly) should dominate? Scorsese and his team create some shots of grand pictorial beauty in this film which must have been awesome on the big screen but he can’t match the transcendental and spiritual themes of his forebears (Bergman, Tarkovsky, Dreyer, Ozu). He’ll go down in history somewhere in the middle.