My 11th Miyazaki movie, and I still haven't seen one that was bad ... well, I wasn't a big fan of his first (The Castle of Cagliostro), but it's all been smooth sailing since. While each of his movies are distinctive, I repeat myself when I write about them, because his movies are recognizably his ... they are different from each other, yet unmistakably Miyazaki. It's not that he's an example of the old auteur theory; he doesn't repeat little bits of work that call back to earlier movies. To give an example of what I mean, many (most? all?) of his films include little creatures which tend to be adorable, tend to get in the way, tend to charm the audience ... but they are different each time. There's the black blobs in Howl's Moving Castle (which, now that I think of it, aren't particularly small or adorable), the white thingies with heads that crack sideways in Princess Mononoke, and my favorites, the soot thingies from Spirited Away. Totoro is enormous, of course, but he's a lot like those little creatures. And, to quote myself, Hollywood is capable of creating special effects that cause your jaw to drop, but Miyazaki creates special effects out of his brain. I spent a lot of The Boy and the Heron imagining the kind of person who could create such a movie.
Watching The Boy and the Heron, I found myself regularly in awe. I kept moving my head to see everything (and we weren't even watching the IMAX version).
And perhaps the most telling aspect of the movie, at least in terms of my appreciation for Miyazaki's work, is that while I loved it just as much as the above indicates, I think if I made a ranked list of his movies, The Boy and the Heron would be, oh, fifth-highest at best. I think any of his movies would be good as a starting point for new viewers (maybe not The Castle of Cagliostro), but I suppose Totoro is the most iconic way into Miyazaki's world. I still think Mononoke and Spirited Away are his best, but I'm just splitting hairs. Hayao Miyazaki is one of the greatest film makers of all time.
Documentary made for Polish TV in 2012, about jazz musician Krzysztof Komeda, who composed scores for many films, including several directed by Roman Polanski. Komeda is a worthy subject for a documentary, but this film isn't very captivating. We learn a bit about his life, we learn a bit about his work in jazz, we learn a bit about his composing for film, we learn a bit about Poland at the time ... but we never learn enough about any of those topics to actually illuminate them. Most importantly, we don't hear enough of his film work.
You don't get more highly regarded than Tabu. It was #307 on the most recent Sight and Sound list. It's #254 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time. It won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Floyd Crosby, David's father). Director F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, Sunrise) is an acknowledged great. I've liked every Murnau movie I've seen, and was looking forward to this one. But Tabu didn't work for me.
The Oscar for cinematography makes sense (beating, among others, Morocco with Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich). But the story, of a young couple in Bora Bora whose love is broken up by custom, didn't click. The film is stylish, but the combination of near-documentary footage and the imposed romantic story is clunky. The production was due to a teaming of Murnau and documentary film maker Robert Flaherty, but the two didn't mesh and the resulting film is now credited solely to Murnau. It's one of the last silent movies, although it does have a music score and sound effects. It's something people should see, but that's also true of Murnau's other movies, which are more than just historical oddities. Watch them first, then check out Tabu if you still have a need to see more of his movies.
On this date, 45 years ago, we saw Bruce Springsteen at Winterland. It was the final month for that lovable craphole, and Bruce was one of the artists Bill Graham signed to send it off in style. December 15 was the first of two nights ... we went to both, our 2nd and 3rd time seeing him that year, our 4th and 5th overall. Many of us think of that 1978 tour as Bruce's greatest. Maybe that's nostalgia speaking. Anyway, here is "Prove It All Night" from December 15 ... that show was broadcast live on a local FM station, and so it was easily bootlegged:
If you prefer to have some actual footage and don't care about the anniversary, here is the official release of the same song from one week prior to the above:
Depending on who's counting, there are close to 40 Godzilla movies at this point. I've now seen 11 or 12 of them. Before Minus One, I considered the 2014 version directed by Gareth Edwards to be the best. Now, I can't decide. So I'll break it down and say that Godzilla Minus One is the best Japanese Godzilla movie ever.
You can't have a good Godzilla movie without a well-made monster, and Minus One pulls that off and then some. Many (most?) Godzilla movies include other monsters with whom Godzilla fights or, occasionally, teams up with. Minus One returns to the 1954 original: there are no other monsters. I would argue that there are two keys that make Minus One such a fine movie (not just a fine Godzilla movie). One is that Yamazaki takes us back in time. Minus One begins in 1945, at the end of World War II. This returns us to the concept of Godzilla as a manifestation of the horrors of post-atomic bomb Japan. There is no explicit connection between Godzilla and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, but later in the film, Godzilla mutates to a much larger size because of U.S. nuclear tests. Also, when Japan asks for help, the Americans decline, saying they don't want to upset the tenuous relations with the Soviet Union.
The second key is the human characters. You don't realize until you see Minus One just how unimportant humans are in most monster movies. They are there to further the plot or to speechify explanations of what is happening. But Yamazaki gives us characters of depth, gives them arcs that are believable and that we care about. It's not that this part of Minus One is great ... good, sure, but this is still Godzilla we're talking about. But good character arcs are so rare in a movie like this that we get involved in their actions. When the character drama takes center stage, you don't wonder what Godzilla is doing ... you want to know how those characters are doing.
This results in perhaps the biggest surprise of the entire movie. When Godzilla Minus One comes to an end, there's not a dry eye in the house. And it's not because we feel sorry for the big fella ... there is nothing likable about this Godzilla. No, it's the people who elicit an emotional reaction that is earned, not cheap. That as much as anything is why I place Godzilla Minus One at the top of the Godzilla list.
This is the fifteenth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2023-24", "A 33 week long challenge where the goal each week is to watch a previously unseen feature length film from a specified category." This is the 9th annual challenge, and my fifth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", and "2022-23"). Week 15 is called "Condemned! Week":
In 1995, in celebration of the centenary of the motion picture, the Vatican released a list of 45 titles divided into three groups. Its "Some Important Films" list highlighted a selection of outstanding films the Papacy felt warranted inclusion into the list's "Religion," "Values," and "Art" categories. "The Church's overall judgment of this art form, as of all genuine art, is positive and hopeful," John Paul II offered.
That's not what this week is about, though.
The Pope continued, "Unfortunately, though, some cinema productions merit criticism and disapproval, even severe criticism and disapproval. This is the case when films distort the truth, oppress genuine freedom, or show scenes of sex and violence offensive to human dignity." And so, from November 2003 to July 2022, the Catholic News Service and the former Office for Film and Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops handed out an "O" rating to those movies deemed "morally objectionable."
This week we'll disregard the positive and the hopeful and turn our attention to those films that earned the church's highest level of criticism and disapproval. Will we still be able to find art? Head over to TajLV's CONDEMNED!! Films Rated Morally Offensive by the Catholic Church list and select a film that could never dream of making any future revision of the "Some Important Films" list. Good luck, sinners, and may God save your souls.
I don't know what this means ... I'm sure it's irrelevant ... but going into this week's challenge, I had seen 78 of those Condemned films (14% of the entire list). Other facts related to that list: I own 6 of the movies. I gave a rating of 9/10 to two of the films (Moonlight and Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood). And I gave a rating of 4/10 to three of the films (The Black Dahlia, Killing Them Softly, and Birds of Prey).
X lies somewhere between Moonlight and Birds of Prey. It's actually pretty good, and it delivers its exploitation values without insulting our intelligence. Writer/director Ti West has an intimate knowledge of the genre ... he has made many horror films over the years, although this is the first one I've seen. West shows the connection between the voyeurism of the porn audience and the voyeurism of the horror audience, but he doesn't beat you over the head with that connection ... he just gives you sex and violence and lets you connect the two. And it makes interesting points about aging, as well.
Fans of the genre know to look for the Final Girl (I can't help but look ... Carol J. Clover was on my dissertation committee). So it's not really a spoiler to note that X is heading to a predictable conclusion. Having said that, West does keep up the suspense by making the two most recognizable actors women, so we can't tell until the end which of Mia Goth and Jenna Ortega will still be around. Even though X came out last year, there is already a prequel, Pearl (and while franchises always smell of money, based on the plot of X, a prequel actually makes sense). The acting throughout is solid (and there's an interesting angle to the casting that would require a spoiler to say more), and the production belies the film's low budget ($1 million). I wouldn't recommend X to people who dislike the genre, but it should satisfy the fans.
I have written many times about The Rules of the Game. I have called it the best film of 1939. I have called it the best film of the 1930s. I once took a poll listing my top 10 political films of all time, and placed The Rules of the Game at the top. I listed it among my 50 favorite films in a long Facebook thread in 2011 about favorite movies. I chose it as one of top 25 films of all time in a 2021 poll on They Shoot Pictures, Don't They. Most recently, I had it among my 10 selections for the 2022 Sight and Sound poll (I wasn't a participant, of course, but I couldn't resist making a list all the same).
For all of the above, I haven't written much about the film (my longest attempt is probably here). I did once say that "I can’t put my finger on what makes it great." And I'm not going to say I finally have the answer. But I have given some thought to a particular angle associated with The Rules of the Game.
In some ways, the movies reminds me of Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. (I see that I once wrote, "In some ways, Smiles of a Summer Night reminds me of Renoir’s Rules of the Game ... I apparently have nothing new to say, only new ways to say the same thing.) Both films eventually end up at a party of ... well, they are more than bourgeoisie, upper class but not enormously rich, maybe? Bergman's film is about love, with a pretty cynical attitude towards the subject. It's a comedy, albeit also more than a comedy. The fickle nature of love among the upper classes (and lower classes ... there's a real upstairs/downstairs setting to Renoir's film) is there in The Rules of the Game, and it has many comic moments. But The Rules of the Game is ultimately quite serious. It's just that the seriousness sneaks up on you, so that I can't quite put my finger on its greatness.
But this time around, I thought about the reception Renoir received when The Rules of the Game was first released. The Parisian audience booed ... Renoir says he saw one person light a newspaper on fire, apparently hoping to burn down the theater. It was, Renoir later said, clearly his biggest failure, calling it "a great blow ... I've received a few blows in my life, but never one like that. It was complete and resounding." Renoir tried editing the film down, but that just resulted in a mangled masterpiece. It was banned, lost, and for a long time, the only version anyone saw was that edited copy. Finally, the film was reconstructed, Renoir cried with happiness, and now we can see The Rules of the Game essentially as Renoir meant it all along.
My question, which has inspired these words, is this: what was it about a film that on the surface plays like a French farce that elicited such a response from Parisians of the time that they wanted to burn down the theater? If nothing else, their reaction requires us to consider the movie in depth ... it hit too close to home for them, we in later years can't just pat Renoir on the back for his pleasant French farce. Again we return to Renoir's own words:
It was not at all my intention to shock the bourgeoisie. I just wanted to make a movie, even a pleasant movie, but a pleasant movie that would at the same time function as a critique of a society I considered rotten to the core and which I still consider rotten to the core. Because this society continues in its rottenness, and is leading us towards some fine little catastrophes.
If the satire in the film was as brutal as the above quote suggests, the audience response might be understandable. But The Rules of the Game isn't that obvious. Renoir, the great humanist of film, can not create characters who are completely bad. And so the people in The Rules of the Game are shallow and self-absorbed (the lower class as well as the upper), but Renoir paints them as real people, and he virtually forces us to see their perspective.
Ah, but people. The most quoted line in the movie is said by Octave, played by Renoir himself: "The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their reasons." Renoir allows people their reasons. He lets us see those reasons, lets us understand those reasons. But he always remembers that this is the awful thing about life.
I've avoided mentioning the context of France in 1939, but it is the clearest example of how that Parisian audience was offended. The war was imminent, a war that would leave France with the black mark of being the one country that collaborated with the Nazis. The people in The Rules of the Game act as if they are unaware of the world outside. Renoir saw that war was coming, and he sensed that his countrymen weren't cognizant of that fact, that indeed they might not have cared very much. The Parisian audience in 1939 would have understood what Renoir was saying, and they would have taken it as an attack on their way of life. A way of life that, Renoir tells us, was rotten to the core.
I watched Cooley High yesterday. Its soundtrack was noteworthy ... here are a few songs from that movie:
A song that later became a standard sung by another group was introduced in Cooley High. It was written by Freddie Perren and Christine Yarian, and in the original version was sung by G.C. Cameron:
In 1991, Boyz II Men released their debut album, with a title that paid homage to Cooley High: Cooleyhighharmony. It was a monster hit, going 9 time platinum and spawning several singles, one of which was "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday":
Cooley High is a landmark in 1970s Black cinema, and an early showcase from some top figures. Director Michael Schultz followed Cooley High with another landmark, Car Wash, and is still active today, mostly in television. Glynn Turman is one of our finest actors, and Cooley High was one of his first films ... he was later a part of the great cast of The Wire. Soon after his performance in Cooley High, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs was a frequent visitor into America's living rooms as a main character on Welcome Back, Kotter. And Garrett Morris followed up this film as one of the original members of the cast of Saturday Night Live. Cooley High is often compared to American Graffiti, and like that film, Cooley High started many careers.
I wish I liked it more. It's amiable enough, and its import with the black community is obvious. It has funny scenes, and an honesty that is as important now as it was in 1975. There's a melodramatic turn near the end of the movie that feels too abrupt ... it's not that it is out of place, but the ground hasn't been laid for it, so it sticks out in the wrong ways. Having said that, the ending is powerful.
And the soundtrack is wonderful.
In a timely but sad coincidence, I watched this just days after the death of Norman Lear, who received an enormous number of memories from people talking about his great career. Cooley High was written by Eric Monte, who had worked on several sitcoms with Lear.
For me, John Amos as husband/father James Evans on Good Times is one of the best depictions of fatherhood I've ever seen, and Eric Monte is the person who created that character.