Gimme Danger (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Gimme Danger (2016) – J. Jarmusch

A master filmmaker, such as Jim Jarmusch, can really take a well-worn genre, such as the music doco, and enhance it.  The result is even better when the focus, The Stooges, is so clearly loved by the director and so clearly deserving of attention (I have their three original albums:  The Stooges, 1969; Fun House, 1970; and Raw Power, 1973).  So, even though a big proportion of the running time is Iggy Pop’s talking head, he is charismatic enough to carry the weight (as one of rock’s elder statesmen, surprisingly). Jarmusch and his team work some magic in the editing room, ladling on ace concert footage, old photographs, unusual video or musical clips (virtual asides that spring from Iggy’s comments), and even animated sequences showing The Stooges and their adventures.  We do hear from Ron and Scott Asheton (guitar and drums) and Steve Mackay (sax) who died before the film was released and from James Williamson (guitar on Raw Power) who became a Silicon Valley exec in his second/actual career.  In an interesting choice, Jarmusch opens the film with the band’s downhill slide into oblivion in the mid-70s, pre-opening credits, and then returns to tell the tale from the beginning, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and onward to Detroit and then their major label recording contracts (both Elektra and MainMan/Columbia), their dissolution, and then “reunification” (as Pop calls it) in the mid-2000s to widespread acclaim with Minuteman Mike Watt on bass (their Live in Detroit DVD is pretty great). The rapport and friendship between Jarmusch and Iggy Pop (who featured in Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, 1993, and had a bit part in Dead Man, 1995) very likely created a climate which helped to boost this beyond your usual rockumentary.  Right on!   

Chandu the Magician (1932)

☆ ☆ ☆

Chandu the Magician (1932) – W. C. Menzies & M. Varnel

Previously a radio serial, the titular magician (who learned his trade from the yogis of the East) is called to Egypt to stop evil Roxor who has stolen the plans for a death ray and plans to use it! Bela Lugosi makes a great diabolical Roxor but Edmund Lowe is just serviceable as Chandu (though not for lack of trying).  The direction by art department stalwart William Cameron Menzies (Things to Come, 1936) and Marcel Varnel keeps things moving with some surprises (secret doors and the like) and only a few dull moments.  Special effects boost the scenes where Chandu uses his magic and the sets are better than average.  There is a love interest (Irene Ware) and also a teenage daughter (June Lang) who gets kidnapped and put up at a slave auction (remember this is “pre-code”).  There are a lot of white people playing Egyptians or Indians and, if there weren’t some on both the good side and the bad side, the racism might be a bit more overt.  But fortunately, everything is played with good humour and the main source of comic relief is a drunken British ex-soldier, now servant (played by character actor Herbert Mundin, also seen in The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1939).  All told, an okay adventure story with elements that elevate it beyond the standard for the usual b-pictures of the day.

Lion (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆

Lion (2016) – G. Davis

Based on a true story, a moving uplifting story that is meant to bring tears of joy to your eyes.  Except mine.  Perhaps the film was over-hyped leading me to have high expectations. Or perhaps it suffered from a contrast effect since I’d watched an intellectually stimulating film the night before.  Or perhaps it just felt like it was trying too hard (with sweeping musical cues to tell me when to feel moved).  Whatever the reason, I wasn’t grabbed the way others have been.  That isn’t because scenes of poverty and kids in distress in India don’t affect me – Pather Panchali (1955) is one of my favourites.  Here, Sunny Pawar is adorable as the boy (who grows up to be Dev Patel) who is accidentally lost thousands of kilometres from home and then adopted from an orphanage in Calcutta by a Tasmanian couple (played by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham).  But Patel himself seems somewhat constricted, probably because the script has him ruminating about finding his real mum (a rural labourer) for a good chunk of the running time, pushing aside girlfriend Rooney Mara in the process.  Finally though, Google Earth is there to save him (and indeed Google pitched in to sponsor the film) and we get the ending we’d been advertised.  I’m sure this was incredibly dramatic when it happened to the real Saroo Brierley, but I found the narrative to be rather simplistic (even with the brother Mantosh subplot that doesn’t really go anywhere).  True, there are some beautiful Australian and Indian vistas to behold and if you aren’t curmudgeonly like me, you might feel exalted by these vistas, the music, and the stirring emotional story.

  

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Kung Fu Hustle (2004) – S. Chow

In opting for Kung Fu Hustle, I was hoping to be transported back to those days of the early 1990s when I first discovered Hong Kong cinema (Jacky Chan, at first, but then Chow Yun Fat and Jet Li).  But I guess you can’t go home again.  Technology has removed the wires that some stars (but not Jacky) formerly used to deliver flying kicks, replacing them with CGI miracles.  I never was a big fan of CGI.  However, I have to say that director and star Stephen Chow seems to have realised that the only way to use it is boldly, brashly, and in the most cartoonish way possible; in other words, what we have here is a Chuck Jones short populated by actual humans.  And that makes all the difference.  The plot is as zany as you would guess from that description.  Chow and his partner Tze Chung Lam pretend that they are part of the Axe Gang in order to try to squeeze money out of a poor community – however, they are quickly challenged by the real Axe Gang who, to their chagrin, discover that there are three aging kung fu masters retired in the town.  Or maybe there are four kung fu masters.  Or perhaps five.  Things do get out of hand (especially when the Axe Gang bring in some notorious ringers to combat them).  There are some well choreographed and over-the-top fight scenes (directed by Woo-Ping Yuen and Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, both immensely famous in their own rights) and some silly or slapstick comedy.  Things do get bloody as well (so this isn’t for kids). Yet for all those things that Kung Fu Hustle gets right, I still felt a hankering for the old school.

The Window (1949)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Window (1949) – T. Tetzlaff

A film noir to scare kids, based on “The Boy who Cried Wolf” (attributed to Aesop).  Bobby Driscoll (star of Disney’s Song of the South, 1946, and Treasure Island, 1950) is a kid who tells tall tales but then witnesses a murder – and no one will believe him.  Possibly an inspiration for Rear Window (1954) since Driscoll, aged 9 or 10, sees the murder while voyeuristically spying on the neighbours (from his NYC fire escape).  And, as in the later film, they eventually come to get him.  Despite the presence of the earnest child actor (who later came to a bad end), director Ted Tetzlaff doesn’t pull any punches (nor does Paul Stewart playing the menacing neighbour, who socks Bobby in the back of a cab).  There is some real tension here and you do believe that Driscoll could get killed.  Quite the surprise, since the rest of the ensemble, parents Arthur Kennedy and Barbara Hale and some assorted cops, play this like a family drama.  Naturally, in the end, the kid learns his lesson.

American Honey (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

American Honey (2016) – A. Arnold

I wonder if the title American Honey (2016) has anything to do with A Taste of Honey (1961) which I just happened to watch a few weeks ago?  The earlier British film follows a teenage girl who, due to neglect by her mum, ends up having to make her own way in the world, navigating the onset of adulthood (including sexual relations and then pregnancy) as best she can.  The director of American Honey, Andrea Arnold, is British and (although the new film does include a song of the same title by country group Lady Antebellum) I suspect that the use of the word honey here is no coincidence.  After all, the new film also follows a teenage girl who, seemingly abandoned by her parents and living in a kind of hell in Oklahoma, must find her own way in the world.  She joins a circus-like “mag crew” (door-to-door magazine sellers) made up of other lost kids, headed by Riley Keough (Elvis’s granddaughter), only a few years older but a tough businesswoman.  But maybe not a successful one, because it doesn’t seem as though these kids actually sell many magazines.  Instead, their life is one continuous rather chaotic party (with hip-hop the music of choice, despite the title track).  Our heroine, Star (played by newcomer Sasha Lane), observes everything with a bit of distance, some querulousness, some disdain, but a genuine desire to belong.  She is especially thunderstruck by Jake, the chief sales-dude played by Shia LeBeouf, who seems really to have no moral compass.  Indeed, Star herself displays some very poor judgment, often willingly entering situations that contain real risks, especially for a young girl.  But director Arnold passes no judgment on these kids and this is not really a cautionary tale.  The (handheld) camera hovers around Lane, detailing her reactions in close-up, allowing the viewer to soak up the sensations she experiences (and this is a very sensual film, with heightened sights and sounds).  The acting is sometimes impressive and sometimes wet-behind-the-ears.  But the film is also too long (at 157 minutes) and, if it is really meant to be a snapshot of the American experience at this point in time, emphasising the under-class (as did the British Kitchen Sink films of the 1960s), then it seems rather narrow in scope.  In the end, both sad and exhilarating.

I, Dalio (2015)/Debra Paget, For Example (2016)/Our Stars (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

I, Dalio (2015)/Debra Paget, For Example (2016)/Our Stars (2015) – M. Rappaport

You may remember video essayist Mark Rappaport from his ‘90s features, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992) or From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995), in which he used film clips to investigate a certain thesis (for example, that Hudson’s films often hinted that he was gay) or to review an artist’s work as a way of gathering insight into the culture as a whole (as he does with Seberg).  Well, Rappaport has been very active again lately (in his 70s) creating a series of short essays, that use an actor as a starting place for a certain premise and then digress all over the place.  Of the three that I watched last night (each about 30 minutes long), I, Dalio (2015), focussing on French Jewish character actor Marcel Dalio, was the best.  Rappaport’s premise is that Dalio’s Jewishness meant that he was channelled into outcast roles (such as stool pigeon, hoodlum, etc.) in France before WWII but then when he fled to the US during the war he was typecast instead as French and was granted more positive roles (such as Frenchy in To Have and Have Not (1944) or the head croupier in Rick’s Café in Casablanca, 1942).  Returning back to France after the war meant a return to villainous parts – until he was old enough to be typecast simply as “old”.  Only the great director Jean Renoir had Dalio explicitly play Jewish roles in both The Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), where his Jewishness is openly discussed and reflected upon (just before the war).  So, Rappaport’s point is that identity is a function of context and the career of Dalio is a case in point.  The premise of Our Stars (2015) is that Hollywood pairings of stars that worked during their first cinematic incarnation cannot work again years later because they can only demonstrate that the stars have aged and that their chemistry has dissipated.  He uses Gregory Peck & Jennifer Jones, Barbara Stanwyck and both Gary Cooper and Fred MacMurray, and Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster to illustrate the point.  Debra Paget, For Example (2016) seeks to use the 20^th Century-Fox contract actress of the 1950s as an example of the careers of those on the second rung who never crashed through to stardom.  Neither of these latter two films seemed as rich or deep as I, Dalio but they were still never less than entertaining, with well chosen “knowing” clips and digressions that were sometimes more interesting than the main focus.  Rappaport narrates each essay himself or instead uses actors who pretend to be the central protagonists, speaking in first person about what they might have been thinking. Of course, it’s all a fiction (or a blend of fact and fiction) but thought-provoking if film is your thing.