Ai of the Beholder

A friend of mine on Live Journal, poliphilo, recommended the above AI movie this morning. I hope he doesn't mind me picking on him, he's a really nice and insightful guy, but I can't get it out of my mind that he said the above film, The Patchwright, is like "Blade Runner- only better." I strongly disagree. To me, this statement is like saying "Oasis is like The Beatles, only better."

It's worth noting it's not an entirely AI generated film. It's not a case of someone opening an app on their phone and writing the prompt, "Make a twenty minute cyberpunk movie," and pushing a button. It has a director, presumably someone who crafted compositions and made editting decisions, as well as writers and human voice actors. Generally I find AI produces inferior product but I'm not categorically against the idea of people being able to use it to craft films of apparently quality production values at a tiny fraction of the traditional cost. But the film's story is derivative to say the least. A cyborg treasuring memories that aren't necessarily his, questioning the nature of memory and human sentiment and the significance of the individual, is Rachel's story from Blade Runner retold.

Sure, originality isn't everything, but I don't find this a better version of the story, for some reasons that may be subjective. I don't like excessive closeups and one reason I think Blade Runner does a better job at establishing a sense of a world space is that it features more shots establishing space, it has more dialogue scenes in which multiple characters are simultaneously visible and in which a majority of the screen isn't dominated by their faces but by the environment.

Patchwright favours portraying older and more grizzled characters, which seems less plausible in a world in which people customise their appearance as preferences generally lean towards more youthful looks. This has long been an aspect of computer generated imagery; weathered skin, objects with tiny bumps and pronounced textures, have tended to look more impressive for about 25 years. Youthful beauty tends to manifest in less detail rather than more.

In terms of visual design, I don't find the film more impressive than Blade Runner either. The aesthetics of the costumes, makeup, and facial prosthetics draw from very obvious influences, including Ghost in the Shell, Alita: Battle Angel, and David Lynch's Dune. Honestly, I don't think Blade Runner is even a fair comparison. Director Zack London has more in common with the makers of Alien from L.A. or City Limits or dozens of other Blade Runner and Mad Max knock-offs from the 80s and 90s. The only difference is that computers give him access to better special effects.

Though, on that subject, I remember how impressive the opening scene from Final Fantasy VIII looked when I saw it in a shop window in 1999. Now it looks pretty cheap and quaint. I suspect AI will also age poorly.

I also don't like the performances, but this may also be subjective. The facial expressions seem over-exaggerated and lack the subtle nuances of real actors. But one could accuse Baz Luhrmann films of the same thing.

Anyway. Sorry poliphilo.

Battle of the Blondes

Sydney Sweeney goes to work for a haywire Amanda Seyfried in 2025's The Housemaid. Many reviews say the first two thirds of this movie are good and the last act is ridiculous and lame. Those reviews are correct.

It kind of reminded me of the 1972 Hammer film, Fear in the Night, a gaslight movie from the point of view of a young woman who goes to live in an expensive old house with her husband in an attempt to start a new life. The first two thirds of the movie is a terrific sequence of developed tension. Then the inevitable twist changes the narrative and distances the audience from the point of view character, thereby diluting the sense of credibility in every threat it tries to establish.

The Housemaid begins with Millie (Sydney Sweeney) as a desperate young woman living in her car who can hardly believe her luck when ridiculously wealthy Nina (Amanda Seyfried) hires her to live in her home and perform general chores for Nina, her husband, and her prepubescent child, Cece. Shortly after Millie takes residence, Nina's personality flips and she becomes a psychotic, tyrannical boss. Nina's husband, Andrew (Brandon Sklenar), is the only solace and voice of reason and Millie finds herself increasingly drawn to him.

I will say I went into this movie assuming that a third act twist would somehow reveal that Nina is the true sympathetic character and that Andrew was the true psycho. I won't spoil the movie for you to say whether or not that ended up being true but it did mean I had my eyes peeled in the first two acts to spot anything that might undermine such an eventual twist. And there were many things. I won't say whether or not my prediction was accurate but I will say the last act is ridiculous and jettisons all the tension accrued in the first two acts by suddenly asking the viewer to ignore almost all of the character development from the first part of the film.

This film was directed by Paul Feig. Yes, the same Paul Feig who directed the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot almost everyone hates and who directed a slew of unpopular comedies. Somehow, the one good movie he made, Bridesmaids, has apparently made studios want to keep giving him chances. The Housemaid did well at the box office because it stars the two most beautiful blondes of the past twenty years. The idea of Sydney Sweeney in a sexy thriller was the primary draw. You know that won't stop someone from looking at all the Sydney Sweeney fans lining up to see the movie and saying, "Wow, people sure like Paul Feig."

Feig very reluctantly delivers the sexy scenes people wanted but, viewer be warned, he does his best to avoid indulging the so-called "male gaze". He goes so far as to put Sweeney in a hilariously unflattering, boxy dress for the big romance sequence. The sequence, in which she goes to a luxury hotel with Andrew, still kind of works because the threat of Nina has been well established at that point so the tension is ever present. There are many components of a good movie here.

Money in the Snow

An embarrassed young woman asks a handsome stranger to pay for her drink, not knowing he's hiding from the law in 1956's Nightfall. This low budget Jacques Tourneur film noir is a slightly delirious, cock-eyed suspense story centred on characters played by Aldo Ray and Anne Bancroft. The two have a surprisingly sweet, effective chemistry that pairs well with the film's weird, convoluted crime plot.

Ray plays Vanning, a World War II veteran who's being pursued by two tough guys (Brian Keith and Rudy Bond). Circumstances throw him and Bancroft's character, Marie, together but despite the two obviously criminal thugs chasing him, Vanning won't take Marie's suggestion that he call the police. Unbeknownst to Vanning, a man working with the cops has already been shadowing him.

The backstory is given piecemeal in intermittent flashbacks. Vanning had been up in the mountains with his friend when the two had a tragic encounter with bank robbers. There's some terrific shots of snow covered mountain scenery.

Like a lot of noirs, though to a lesser extent than in a movie like Detour, the improbable convolutions of the plot become more interesting if you read the protagonist as a not entirely reliable narrator. And Vanning has plenty of motive to add varnish to his past when he's talking to the beautiful young woman who miraculously enters his life. Ray and Bancroft are so cute together. The first time he kisses her when she's lying on his couch is so innocent and simple that it's impossible not to root for these two, whatever the truth might be.

Nightfall is available on The Criterion Channel.

He's Probably the Man You Need In Some Kind of Crisis I Think

A man of ambiguous occupation is probably the one force standing in the way of an ambiguous menace ambiguously tied to another man of ambiguous occupation in 2007's Michael Clayton. This is a good example of a movie that's a little too clever for its own good.

George Clooney stars as the eponymous protagonist. He's referred to as a "fixer". At one point, a police detective remarks that Michael has cops thinking he's a lawyer and lawyers thinking he's a cop. He works for a firm headed by a character played by Sydney Pollack and they're tied up with what Wikipedia calls an "agricultural conglomerate" called U-North who are up to some kind of shady shenanigans. Michael's colleague, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson), knows something about U-North so he's being tracked. He's also losing his mind. He strips naked during a deposition and runs across a parking lot for some reason.

Tilda Swinton plays someone involved with U-North. I wasn't really sure what her motives were for most of the movie but I think she was a villain.

There's so much cloak and dagger and double talk and people being cagey that it all boils down to people walking around and looking intense, it all kind of greys out. Star Wars was a really good thing for Tony Gilroy, Rogue One and Andor tethered him to something solid. He's obviously very clever but sometimes cleverness can fly off into the clouds and that's what happens with Michael Clayton.

Michael Clayton is available on The Criterion Channel.

Magic and Resentment

I've been watching Ingmar Bergman's 1958 film The Magician over the past several weeks, sometimes just parts of it, sometimes the whole movie. I first wrote about it back in 2019 and I don't have much to add to that review except I didn't mention how Bergman shows what the travelling magician does is an expert version of what all the other characters do in their daily lives.

The consul's house which the Magician, Vogler (Max von Sydow), visits is filled with servants, functionaries, and their wives. There's an old woman who claims to know witchcraft and gives a "love potion" to a young man which is really rat poison but provides the social lubricant necessary for him and a servant girl to sleep together, which they both already wanted to do.

Magic and stories are used as pretext or diversion. The wife of one of the officials becomes obsessed with Vogler and wants him for her lover until she sees him without the wig and false beard that everyone already knew was fake anyway. It's not the revelation of his deception that disturbs her, it's the revelation of her self-deception, her indulgence in a fantasy that he only provided an inspiration for.

But it's still primarily the obsession of Dr. Vergerus (Gunnar Bjornstrand) with proving Vogler a fake that fascinates me. Again and again, Vogler is easily proven a fake, if it weren't already clear from his wig and beard, but again and again, Vogler demonstrates his power over Vergerus. If Vergerus is so sure there's nothing to Vogler's abilities, why does he want to dissect Vogler? Why does he shrink in fear away from Vogler when he encounters him in the attic?

The most frightening thing about the film, for an artist, is how authentic it is. No matter how effective an artist is, however ingenious his ability to give the audience a valuable experience, "rational" observers with unshakeable faith in their own ability to think logically, will be there to deride the artist as a fraud and freeloader.

The Magician is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Money Eaters

A young stockbroker pursues an alliegience with a notoriously ruthless colleague in 1987's Wall Street. Director and co-writer Oliver Stone dives into the world of stock trading to tell a surprisingly simplistic moral tale. Other than a couple clever one liners, this movie's mainly entertaining for its '80s cheese value.

Charlie Sheen plays Budd Fox, a lowlife stockbroker working in a vast, noisy office of cold callers, and his father, Carl, is played by Charlie Sheen's real life father, Martin Sheen. While Budd aspires to be the deadliest shark in the tank, his father is a salt-of-the-earth union leader who don't truck with his boy's uptown dreams. The two Sheens together ham it up and make you say, "Hey, that's Martin Sheen with Charlie Sheen."

But Budd meets another father figure, a slimy bigshot named Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas, who has the film's two immortal lines; "Money never sleeps" and "Greed is good," which perhaps best sums up '80s right wing philosophy. It's that absolute faith in the idea that somehow everyone relentlessly gourging on all they can grab will all work out for the best, despite what you might think. However, things turn out exactly as you might think, if you have a halfway decent moral compass.

Now Oliver Stone's friends with Vladimir Putin. That tracks. Wall Street could almost be Soviet propaganda.

Wall Street is available on The Criterion Channel.

Everyone Deserves an Eternity in Court

Keanu Reeves takes a job at a Satanic law firm in 1997's The Devil's Advocate. I saw this when it first came out but all I remembered about it was that it referenced John Milton and that people tend to make fun of Al Pacino's performance in it. Although I agree with most people that Pacino's performances after the early 1980s are inexplicably inferior to his earlier work, I don't find his performance terribly bad in The Devil's Advocate. The movie, with a screenplay by Tony Gilroy, is also much better written than I remembered.

Reeves plays Kevin Lomax, a criminal defense attorney in Gainesville, Florida with a talent for winning unwinnable cases. When he manages to secure a not guilty verdict for a man who's clearly guilty of the child molestation he's charged with, Kevin is recruited to join a prestigious firm in New York. So Kevin moves to the city, into a vast, luxury apartment with his wife, Mary Ann (Charlize Theron).

A lot of the movie's second act is from Mary Ann's perspective as the wives of other lawyers at the firm slowly exert more and more psychological control over her. The head of the firm, John Milton (Pacino), gets in on the act when he coerces her into changing her hairstyle.

While Mary Ann's being driven mad, Kevin finds himself taking to his big city cases like a duck to water. Although the manipulations of Mary Ann are pretty blatant, I like how the story around Kevin is driven by his own compulsion to sin. When Mary Ann is ailing, Kevin refuses to step aside from the high profile case he's working on.

In addition to Pacino's Satan actually going by the name John Milton, my favourite 17th century poet is also directly quoted. Pacino's Satan also behaves like Milton's Satan to some extent. He's motivated not simply to corrupt people but to use their behaviour to demonstrate flaws in God's design.

The Devil's Advocate is available on The Criterion Channel.

Sonnet 1987

Eternal slumber beats the sugar drum.
Effective beats were melted down for grain.
A melty crust was crushed in lively rum.
A brewer's life distilled itself in vain.
Distilling juice produced a troubled drop.
For trouble boils late the flagrant fool.
A flagrant flange adorns the saucy top.
A pizza sauce absorbed the slacker's drool.
A slacker finds his peace beneath the box.
To find a card, the seekers want a deck.
A special card connects the feet to socks.
Connexions wane beneath the wooly neck.
From peerless sheep the wool was quickly sheared.
By watchful sheep the dreams of all were cleared.

The Irrepressibly Strange Home Front

This past week, I've been spending most of my days carrying things to the post office or to second hand shops, preparing to move out on Monday. To wind down in the evening, I watched 1944's A Canterbury Tale again, Powell and Pressburger's strange tale of three travellers in a small town on the road to Canterbury.

It's a strange sort of propaganda film. I mean, as with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I think Powell and Pressburger set out to make a propaganda film but they were both too interested in complicated ideas to do a proper job of it. What is the message a British soldier's meant to come away with? "Go out there and fight for the magistrates putting glue in girls' hair back home!" And then there's Erwin Hiller's haunting cinematography. You can't even see the main characters' faces in the first minutes of the film as everyone stumbles about in the dark around the train station.

The three travellers are Sgt Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), and Acting Sgt. Bob Johnson (Sgt. John Sweet). Peter's with the British army while Bob's an American and Alison's a "land girl". a part of the Women's Land Army that did work on the British home front during World War II. They meet in the small town of Chillingbourne and soon encounter the town's infamous "glue man" who pours glue on Alison's hair as he's done to several other girls. He runs off before they can apprehend him. It's not until the three take refuge in town hall that we get a good look at their faces. The film's loaded with a sense of mystery and danger but it's counterbalanced by the cheerful, affable conversation between the three people newly acquainted with each other. They meet the magistrate, Colpeper, whom Alison immediately suspects is the secret identity of the glue man.

The mystery provides a baseline of tension throughout a film that consists of Bob talking to local woodworkers about wood and Alison trying to find work around town. These scenes bring the little town to life, creating a vivid portrait of rural England. The weirdness of the mystery in the background is somehow a vital part of bringing the place to life. The mystery is not who the glue man is--it's pretty clear it's Colpeper--but rather how the gentleman who gives lectures on British history and waxes poetic on the dreamy landscape and historical significance, could possibly be the glue man. His explanation, when it comes, is hardly sufficient either and it seems likely that Colpeper himself doesn't quite know why he does what he does. The viewer will likely infer that it's a manifestation of his sexual repression and that does seem likely. He's a strange character and yet, then again, is he? How many such gentlemen led double lives, with a second life that they could hardly explain if they tried? Is Colpeper not as familiar, in a way, as the landscapes and Elizabethan inns? Certainly the original Canterbury Tales had its share of bizarre and perverted characters. How many times did people have to reconcile the respected and beloved figure of authority with his messy private life? Nowadays, a guy like Colpeper would've been cancelled but in Powell and Pressburger's vision the three protagonists still like Colpeper despite his inexplicably strange and disturbing deeds.

The first time I watched the film, I remember not liking John Sweet's performance as Bob but I've done a complete 180 on that. He's so Lynchian, especially when he's talking about wood.

It occurred to me the film is a bit like Dracula with Bob being the Quincey Morris character.

A Canterbury Tale is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Train's Various Occupants

Since I'm leaving Japan to return to America soon, and will be visiting Tennessee relatively soon, it seemed like a good time to watch Jim Jarmusch's 1989 film Mystery Train again, a film I'd not seen since high school. It's one of Jarmusch's best, probably my favourite of his films. It's an anthology film featuring three interconnected stories about foreigners visiting Memphis, Tennessee.

The first story features a Japanese couple. Having lived in Japan six years now, I was surprised at how authentic the characters seemed in terms of dialogue and performance in comparison to depictions of Japanese people from other American films. Then I read that the film was co-produced by a Japanese company and it made sense. The couple's reaction to a fast speaking American woman in this clip is not unlike reactions I've occasionally seen among students when they hear English.

That's Nagase Masatoshi as Jun and Kudoh Youki as Mitsuko. Since this movie was made decades before A.I. we can all be impressed by Nagase's skill at lighting a cigarette:

I wonder how many times he practiced that. He's so nonchalant.

Mitsuko might be classified nowadays as a "manic pixie dream girl" but I've met a lot of Japanese girls like her. They're just as fun to talk to as you might imagine but you shouldn't mistake enthusiasm for a lack of depth.

The second segment features an Italian woman (Nicoletta Brashci) stranded in Memphis and the third story features Steve Buscemi, Joe Strummer, and Rick Aviles as a trio of low-lives who rob a liquor store. Joe Strummer is the same Joe Strummer you may know as the lead singer of The Clash and I enjoyed his performance here. He's from England, of course, but Buscemi is also a kind of foreigner here, being from New Jersey. All the segments are good but the Japanese couple are by far the best. Their segment best captures the idea present in all three stories of cultural exchanges mysterious in their simultaneous intimacy and inscrutability.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins is in all three segments as the hotel night clerk and Tom Waits plays a DJ heard on the radio in each segment.

Mystery Train is available on The Criterion Channel.

Who's the Custodian of a Relationship?

Kim Novak's commented on an upcoming film about her relationship with Sammy Davis, Jr. Apparently she's unhappy with Sydney Sweeney playing her in the movie. Novak complains Sweeney "sticks out so much above the waist," and fears the movie will focus too much on the sexuality of the relationship.

"There’s no way it wouldn't be a sexual relationship because Sydney Sweeney looks sexy all the time," Novak said. There's some irony here because, in her day, Novak was criticised for being all sex appeal with no real acting talent. Even Alfred Hitchcock described her as "terrible" in his interview with Francois Truffaut while Truffaut praised her "passive, animal" quality, which may have been another way of saying she was sexy.

I think Sweeney's a good actress, I enjoyed her performance in The Voyeurs a few days ago. She certainly does "stick out above he waist" more than Novak ever did but I can't honestly complain about that. I mean, she has extremely nice breasts. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the epitome of muscularity in film, Sydney Sweeney epitomises the bust. In addition to this, her face and mannerisms don't much resemble Novak. Better casting might have been a young Christina Ricci. Jeez, can I think of anyone who's in the right age group now? Jenna Ortega? I must have Wednesday on my mind. Well, both Wednesday actresses exhibit that "passive, animal quality" Truffaut talked about. Natalie Portman or Patricia Arquette would've been good.

Kim Novak is 93 years old and it's worth noting that works of film media have become much more preoccupied with overt sexuality than they were when Novak was a major player in Hollywood. She remembers the relationship between herself and Sammy Davis, Jr. as something valuable for having "so much in common." Sex was probably a very small component of the relationship for her. On the one hand, there's a difference in generational values at play, but on the other hand, Novak is quite justified in being offended that a personal relationship of hers is being mischaracterised and potentially dismissive of the thing she felt was truly valuable in it. Instead of just saying she's old fashioned, I think it's worth pondering whether or not our society has become one that prioritises sex too much and has lost the ability to value other aspects of a romantic relationship, aspects that, in the long run, are far more important.

Living In a TV

A young man's moral crisis is experienced in a dreamlike series of events involving video tape in 1989's Speaking Parts, a Canadian film directed by Atom Egoyan. The film's subtext regarding the simultaneous distance and extraordinary intimacy of video media is fascinating and reminded me a bit of Inland Empire or Videodrome.

Lance (Michael McManus) and Lisa (Arsinee Khanjian) are housekeepers at an expensive hotel. One day, Lance finds a movie script in a hotel room and cons his way into getting an audition. Around this time, he stops speaking to Lisa, who was possibly his lover. Lisa claims Lance was her lover but it's not clear if Lisa understands reality in the same way most people do.

Lance has worked as an extra on various movies and Lisa regularly rents them at the local video store so she can watch him in the background of various scenes. Eddy (Tony Nardi), the proprietor of the video store, takes an interest in Lisa. They get to talking about Eddy's sideline as an event photographer and occasional interviewer and immediately Lisa wants to conduct interviews for Eddy. This is a job Lisa is woefully unqualified for. In her first attempt, she interviews a bubbly, happy young bride at a wedding. Lisa is a foreigner with a thick accent and unshaven eyebrows. She's clearly never spent time in Hollywood circles or even among the popular girls at school. She's an introvert and all of her questions sound demanding and uncomfortably fervent. She's the food lover who thinks her love can make her a good chef. But getting people to talk and open up is a skill one has to develop and the poor young bride starts to panic and cry in response to Lisa's existential questions, particularly a strange one about how you "feel your love" in your partner.

So from this, it's not entirely clear if Lisa and Lance were ever together or if it was all in Lisa's imagination. We never see Lance actually speaking to her as a lover.

Meanwhile, Lance gets to know Clara (Gabrielle Rose), the woman who wrote the script he found. It turns out the script is a true story about Clara's brother who donated a lung to her. However, the director wants to fundamentally alter the script so Clara implores Lance to demand changes once he gets the role.

Lance and Clara sleep together but after that they communicate almost entirely through video conference. At one point, they masturbate for each other, Lance watching her on the little CRT television. The director of the film Clara wrote the screenplay for only speaks to her through the same method, signifying the communications barrier he puts between them.

It's hard to imagine what it was like in 1989 now that we live in this world where video communication is common and porn is ubiquitous. But the movie doesn't feel irrelevant. If anything, it makes me wonder at some fundamental aspect of human perception that may have been lost or altered in the years since.

Meanwhile, Lisa begins to experience what may be full blown hallucinations involving video that somehow may make a real link between her and Lance. The line between subjective and objective becomes increasingly difficult to perceive. Which is a point well taken.

Speaking Parts is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Malaise of Dangerous Men

Terence Stamp rats on his former comrades in the London mob and is thenceforth marked for death, pursued by John Hurt and Tim Roth in 1984's The Hit. This Stephen Frears film has a surprisingly effective tone of detached, melancholic comedy.

For his courtroom betrayal, Stamp's character, Willie, is rewarded with a new life in Spain under witness protection. However, a pair of hitman working for his old crew track him down, kidnap him, and start driving him to Paris, where they expect to meet up with the boss. At this point the film becomes a road movie.

John Hurt and Tim Roth play the two hitmen, Braddock and Myron. Hurt is cool, detached, and experienced while Roth, whose first film this was, plays Myron as a naive young hoodlum. Willie is surprisingly calm and jovial and subtly starts trying to play his two captors against each other.

Braddock is experienced but he starts making a number of mistakes. He takes a woman hostage, Maggie (Laura del Sol), whom Willie observes ought to have been executed immediately. Both Braddock and Myron seem attracted to her, Myron the more foolishly, but Braddock's hesitation from harming her seems strange when the filmmakers go to such pains to establish him as a cold blooded psycho.

According to Wikipedia, this is one of Wes Anderson's favourite British films and it makes sense with the film's subtly twisted moral comment and delicately comedic chemistry.

The Hit is available on The Criterion Channel.

Who are You Watching?

Sydney Sweeney finds out there's more to spying on your neighbours than you might expect in 2021's The Voyeurs. It's basically a loose remake of Rear Window but it's quite good for that. The moral crisis Sweeney's character finds herself in in the climax is kind of exquisite.

Sweeney plays Pippa, an optometrist who's just moved into a fabulous new apartment with her boyfriend, Thomas (Justice Smith). Their apartment has massive floor-to-ceiling windows through which they can easily see into the apartment across the street. That apartment also has the massive windows but the curtains are never closed and the lights are always on. Inhabiting the apartment are a professional photographer, Seb (Ben Hardy), with a studio inside the apartment, and his girlfriend, Julia (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). The two don't seem at all conscious of the fact that their most private moments are on display for everyone across the street.

One flaw in the film's logic is that it doesn't consider the possibility of anyone else in Pippa and Thomas' building being able to see these neighbours and events proceed as though only Pippa and Thomas can see in. They are thus forced to grapple with the responsibility they have for witnessing disturbing incidents.

Some reviews say the second half of the film is ludicrous but I'd say those critics forget the fact that first part of the film is also ludicrous. It's just that the first part of the film gives us a premise we're more used to accepting in fiction. Hitchcock played with this idea in Vertigo in which the first half of the film gives us a bunch of absurd stuff we're used to accepting from movies, but then Hitchcock pulls the rug out from under the viewer. The Voyeurs doesn't do that but it does go somewhere interesting. I suspect the second half of the film was taken in a slightly different direction than what was originally in the screenplay after Sydney Sweeney was cast because it makes very good use of her famously "good genes". But it works wonderfully.

The first half of the film does a good job of slowly building Pippa and Thomas from characters who can't help watching what's very much on display to actively spying, going to complicated lengths to improve their surveillance methods. It's Pippa in particular who compulsively concocts moral justifications despite the fact that she's primarily deriving sexual gratification from the experience. This shaky moral ground leads to some scenes of impressively sexy subtext when Pippa finally meets the two neighbours, particularly in the case of Seb who, with his photographer's eye, turns the tables on Pippa. What happens to Pippa after that is a bit underplayed in my opinion. She's subjected to such severe physical and psychological violation that I feel like her trauma would've been far greater than what we see. But there is a sequence of Pippa really losing her shit and smashing things and Sweeney's performance does convey the idea of someone being stripped of both confidence in her capacity for rational thought and all sense of moral justification so. She's almost bestial, driven back to a primal motive.

The Voyeurs is available on Amazon Prime.

If You're Gonna Murder, Make It a Perfect Murder

Michael Douglas and Viggo Mortensen conspire to commit the perfect murder of Gwyneth Paltrow in 1998's A Perfect Murder, a loose remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. It certainly doesn't improve on the original but its blander title is a fitting indicator of how unremarkable but not exactly bad the movie is.

Douglas plays another Wall Street guy, this time his name's Steven, and he's married to Paltrow's character, Emily. She's having an affair with pre-Lord of the Rings Viggo Mortensen who plays David, one of those bohemian movie artists who live in a massive loft space in a major city. Let's go back to that economy, okay?

It turns out Steven knows about his wife's affair but his reaction is to offer David half a million dollars to kill her. He gradually accepts the offer after some reluctance.

Well, let's get to the obvious question. Is it a perfect murder? The plan is to have David enter the wealthy couple's luxury apartment through a service door using Emily's key which Steven leaves taped under the railing of the stairwell. Steven knows Emily takes her bath at the same time he goes to his normal poker game which puts her in a vulnerable position while he has a solid alibi. It's very similar to the plot of Dial M for Murder and goes awry in basically the same way.

What are the flaws in this plan? Steven doesn't have as much leverage on David as Ray Milland's character has on his stooge in Dial M for Murder. Steven can reveal to people in town that David has a criminal past and an assumed name, but he doesn't have the blackmail material that Ray Milland has in the Hitchcock movie. A Perfect Murder combines two characters from the Hitchcock movie; the man the wife is having an affair with and the con-man who has to commit the actual murder. This makes Steven's proposal much riskier. There's a chance that David really does love Emily, as she apparently loves him, and the two might collude to effect Steven's demise.

Direction by Andrew Davis and cinematography by Dariusz Wolski are standard fare for a '90s thriller. Gwyneth Paltrow is very pretty and gives a good performance though there's not much to her character. She's a simultaneous translator fluent in multiple languages, reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn's character in Charade.

A Perfect Murder is available on The Criterion Channel.

Movie Business

I almost forgot all about the Oscars, even though I made predictions back in January. I was right about One Battle After Another winning in most categories but I was wrong about Teyana Taylor winning Best Supporting Actress. The award went to Amy Madigan from Weapons, which I've not seen. Taylor was also accidentally barred from taking the stage by a security guard. Someone must be sticking pins in her Voodoo doll. It sounds like she was pretty gracious, too, even celebrating the actress who won.

I'd say an even bigger scandal was the absence of Brigitte Bardot from the "In Memoriam" section. If the victory of One Battle After Another didn't tell you about the Academy's political alignment, Bardot's omission makes it perfectly clear. Whatever her politics in later life, Bardot's status as someone who fundamentally changed the global film industry can't be denied. Omitting her from the "In Memoriam" is absurd.

Also this week, a trailer for the upcoming Spider-Man movie has finally been released:

I'm surprised by how prominently the Punisher is featured in the trailer. I really like Jon Bernthal's portrayal of the character on Daredevil and Punisher, I hope it'll feel like the same character.

It looks to me like Peter Parker's going to get the Venom symbiote in this movie. It looks a lot like the comics arc with Peter investigating a spacecraft and then something appears to jump from one bystander to another, altering their personality. If it is the symbiote, I guess it won't be the one from the Tom Hardy movies, despite his cameo in No Way Home.

A Convergence of Storms

I was watching Kurosawa Akira's 1946 film No Regrets for Our Youth (わが青春に悔なし) again last night. It's the first time I've watched it since reading more about the political situation in Japan in the 1930s. The beginning of the film is based on an incident in 1933 when a professor named Takigawa Yukitoki was threatened with dismissal from Kyoto University after giving a lecture deemed too radical. This sparked a reaction among the students and protests against incursions against free speech. In Kurosawa's film, the students are divided between moderate leftists and outright Communists but they're all actively opposed to fascism, Japan's invasion of Manchuria, and militarism in general. The movie was made under the auspices of the U.S. occupation of Japan so one has to take some of the messaging in the film with a grain of salt and it's worth noting that Kurosawa was unhappy with changes made to the ending of the film.

Still, his dynamic camerawork is already remarkable in this early stage of his career. The rapid sequences of shots of Hara Setsuko are electrifying as Kurosawa frames her as the wild, spiritual counterbalance to the boys' political radicalism. There are few clips on YouTube, this one has French subtitles, but the students are ironically extolling their university's virtues as a haven for free speech and freedom when they're interrupted by the sound of gunshots.

More striking than the gunshots is the angle of Hara's back as she leans on her arms, her head turned away from the camera, before Kurosawa's cut to her face as she turns to face her classmates. Later, there are energetic sequences of her playing piano, low angle shots from behind as she slams the keys, like a goddess of thunder, unable to articulate her displeasure in words. She's magnificent in this movie.

No Regrets for Our Youth is available on The Criterion Channel.

Lost in the Snow

A small community in a remote Canadian town is torn apart after fourteen children die in a school bus accident. Atom Egoyan's 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter is about as cheerless as you could imagine from the subject matter but, although it's really an ensemble film, the whole thing is elevated by a central performance by Ian Holm.

Holm plays a lawyer from the big city called Mitchel Stephens who comes to town to drum up support for a class-action lawsuit against . . . someone. For something. Bruce Greenwood plays the father of two of the kids who died. He was driving behind the bus at the time it slid off the icy road onto the frozen lake and could plainly see it was no-one's fault but bad luck. But someone has to be held responsible, right? Surely there was a screw loose in the bus or the railing was faulty. Once, when speaking with the parents of one victim, Stephens awkwardly uses the word "compensation". Even as he says it you can see in Holm's performance he's aware of how feeble the word is in this case. No-one seriously thinks "compensation" can come of this or of any effort in their power. But something must be done.

I saw an interview with Egoyan on Criterion before I watched the movie in which he said one thing that interested him in the story was the character of Nicole, one of the survivors, played by Sarah Polley. In the interview he explained that he was interested in how the entire community was aware that her father, Sam (Tom McCamus), sexually abused her but never spoke about it. In the film, for the most part, Egoyan allows the viewer to read between the lines, as Stephens has to, instead of directly explaining what's happening to her. I suppose the influence of Twin Peaks is pretty obvious and maybe, to a lesser extent, Fargo. It's almost unfortunate because until one thinks of those influences one doesn't really see the flaws in Sweet Hereafter. Both Twin Peaks and Fargo do a much better job of establishing a sense of community with idiosyncratic characters and layers of secrets and willful ignorance. One can almost hear Bobby Briggs saying, "We all knew she was in trouble."

Again, Ian Holm is amazing in the movie. His character is also dealing with his own family problem, a daughter who's grown up to be a drug addict. One moment, we watch him trying to appear compassionate while trying to convince people to join the lawsuit and in another moment wrestling with his love for his daughter and the knowledge that he can't trust anything she says. It's really a terrific performance.

The Sweet Hereafter is available on The Criterion Channel.

The Conquering Screen

One of the most spectacular absurdities of American culture is the televangelist. The often flamboyantly dressed, vociferous carnival barkers of televised faith somehow inspire devotion and millions of dollars of donation. To properly examine such a phenomenon, it might help to be a foreigner. In 1981, Werner Herzog made God's Angry Man, a documentary about the televangelist Gene Scott. It's not a moralising film that seeks to come to a conclusion about the nature of American televangelism but, instead, like all of Herzog's films, focuses on the peculiar passion of an extraordinary individual.

Herzog interviews Scott's parents as well but most of the film consists of Herzog's interviews with Scott himself interspersed with clips of Scott's broadcast. In the interview segments, Scott complains about persecution and the burdens of his vocation, even his desire to give it up. The segments from his broadcast fulfill the film's English title, showing a man raving at the camera, occasionally relieved by amateur bluegrass performances. The film's centrepiece is a bizarre tirade in which he berates the audience for not sending the final 600 dollars of a pledge drive. He precedes his rant by quietly staring at the camera for several minutes, threatening that he will remain silent if no pledges come in.

It's hard not to think this man's business owes its existence to masochism. Why else would anyone willingly send this man money? Of course, Herzog is focused on one aspect of Scott's personality. Maybe there are other times in Scott's broadcast in which he provides his viewers with comfort or insight. But Herzog doesn't provide any perspective from Scott's audience, this is not an analysis of the televangelist phenomenon but an exhibition of a bizarre personality. It's certainly fascinating. Scott's presumption of dominance in relation to millions of strangers makes it seem that his delusion is absolutely flawless.

God's Angry Man is available on The Criterion Channel.

Blu-Ray Bebop

Watanabe Shinichiro in The Criterion Closet to-day. He's the director of the original Cowboy Bebop, an anime series that's not widely known in Japan, at least not in my experience living here. I had one student a few years ago who was a fan. He was one of those students whom I wish I could have done more, for whom I wish I could have been a better, more insightful teacher. The fact that he was a Cowboy Bebop fan is enough to show how relatively isolated he was.

Watanabe's picks aren't so surprising. Maybe the Jacques Tati box set is most surprising but Watanabe's work does sometimes have the detached, deadpan quality of Tati's comedy. I didn't expect him to pick Suzuki Seijun's Branded to Kill as the only Japanese film among his choices but if I'd thought about it beforehand I probably would've predicted it. It's a stylish, postmodern gangster film, which is basically what Cowboy Bebop is. I have not met one person in Japan who's told me they've heard of Suzuki Seijun, by the way.

It's funny how the trailer promotes the film as "humanity laid bare" over a clip of one of its most absurd scenes, of a gangster dancing hysterically while under a hail of bullets. Branded to Kill is one of Suzuki's most detached, most ironic films. It's closer to some of Watanabe's post-Cowboy Bebop work than it is to Cowboy Bebop which, though it is postmodern, has warmth to it, a kind of warmth that almost seems to come through accidentally through the characters' chemistry. More like Tati, I guess.

Who's the Family To-day?

I gotta say, I'm becoming a real fan of Atom Egoyan. I watched his first movie a few days ago, 1984's Next of Kin, which is a fascinating film about performative family dynamics.

Peter (Patrick Tierney) is 23 and lives at home, quietly traumatised by his constantly bickering parents. They go to family therapy and Peter ends up sneaking into the office after hours and seeing tape of another family's session, an Armenian family whose son went missing. So he goes to their home and pretends to be their son.

Not as though he's trying to fool them. They all engage in role play and soon they're engaging in different scenarios and everyone seems to gain a kind of delight or contentment from performing an idealised or exciting family dynamic. There's an absurd, almost manic energy to the last portion of the film as though the characters are revelling in some kind of liberation. Each member of the group is very generous with the other in a way reminiscent of a good improv troupe. When one person starts something, the others support it from the point of view of what kind of emotional impact they're trying to achieve. It's a fascinating perspective on human relationships. Maybe we all ought to live life more like performance art.

Next of Kin is available on The Criterion Channel.

Sonnet 1983

Without a spark, the meaning wasn't clear.
No energy expended lit the bulb.
Conducting thoughts occured through mild beer.
More dreams distilled than little bubbles hold.
We went where dizzy crows discussed their war.
The glowing watchers know what's going down.
"It never changes," says the mutant boar.
A tragic day befell the stormy clown.
Across the beach, he chased the pranksters off.
At sea, his loopy girl was laughing hard.
Zosima told the girl she shouldn't scoff.
Alyosha held a torn and worthless card.
The curtains couldn't catch the sun or moon.
But clouds appeared to cool the heavy noon.