Steven Rubio's Online Life

geezer cinema: the train (john frankenheimer, 1964)

John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, but also The Island of Dr. Moreau) had a long and varied career, with a few real highlights. The Train, like Seven Days in May, is very entertaining, with enough subtext to add depth without distracting too much from the basic intention to offer an intelligent action picture. I looked forward to seeing this movie, which seemed to have a decent reputation but which isn't talked about as much as Seven Days in May (much less Manchurian Candidate). And that reputation is deserved .... The Train isn't special, yet that gives it a retrograde enjoyment, as in the cliche of "they don't make them like that any more". Of course, they do still make big action movies, but in line with the retrograde feel, The Train is in black-and-white (reputedly the last big B&W movie), and Burt Lancaster is always good for the nostalgic angle.

Frankenheimer makes excellent use of Lancaster, who does all of his own stunts (on an off-day, Lancaster injured a leg playing golf, so Frankenheimer wrote a scene where Burt's character gets shot in the leg to explain his limp). They also used real trains throughout, no models ... when you see big trains crashing, often into each other, it's the real thing. It's perhaps especially impressive in the CGI era, when such extravagances are unnecessary.

The plot, based on a true story, is about French art treasures the Nazis have stolen. They are trying to get the masterpieces to Germany. Lancaster is a French railway inspector and Resistance fighter (as evidence of his star status, Lancaster does not use a French accent ... he's pretty much the only person in the movie who sounds like an American). The film is a combination of clever manipulations by the French to forestall the transfer of the art works and occasional action set pieces that usually involve one or more trains blowing up. The entire film is a bit long, but it holds its entertainment value throughout. The brutality of the Nazis is there but as a supplement, not the core of the film, and the general question of whether art matters more than the lives of humans is at least deep enough to make The Train a bit better than the standard war picture. Lancaster is at his action best, Paul Scofield as the main Nazi antagonist has a German accent, and Jeanne Moreau is wasted (her part is apparently Woman with a Few Scenes So We Can Say There's a Woman in the Film). #9 on my Letterboxd list of the best movies of 1964.

film fatales #202: trouble every day (claire denis, 2001)

Claire Denis (Beau Travail, 35 Shots of Rum) is a favorite director of mine, and I looked forward to Trouble Every Day, but I was aware that it is not as acclaimed as her other movies (it has the lowest Metascore, 40, of any film she has directed). I think that low Metascore is understandable, and Trouble Every Day isn't up to her best. But it's an interesting attempt to make an arty erotic horror movie ... I'm thinking of Park Chan-wook's Thirst, which is a better movie than Trouble Every Day but has a similar blend of sex and gore shown with arty excellence.

Trouble Every Day seems like it is going to be a vampire movie, but it turns into something different, which allows for subtexts that don't necessarily match those of vampire pictures. Denis shows a connection between erotic attraction and cannibalism that is unexpected. It's thought-provoking, but I'm not convinced it goes deeper than the basic connection. Once you get what Denis is doing, there's not much else to say about that connection, leaving an arty horror movie that isn't all that great.

The acting is variable. Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue) brings her idiosyncratic presence to her scenes, but Vincent Gallo is too low-key ... he struggles with what he has become, but his struggle isn't moving because Gallo is inert. There is also a big plot hole at the beginning (not that horror doesn't often have plot holes): Gallo plays a recently-married man who, we assume, has become intimate with his new wife, but given what we learn of him in the movie, it's impossible for his wife not to have noticed long before. It's hard to suspend disbelief in this case.

Despite that Metascore, the film is #793 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of all time, #103 on the 21st century list.

film fatales #198: coda (siân heder, 2021)

This is the twenty-fifth 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 25 is called "Good for Her Week":

Here at the Letterboxd Season Challenge, we support women's rights as well as women's wrongs. To quote Claira Curtis, "Is there really anything better than thinking “good for her” while a woman achieves her dreams or receives an end to her story that is actually satisfying? NO!!!"

This week's challenge is to watch a film from Claira Curtis' "Good for Her" Cinematic Universe.

Along with awards for Best Supporting Actor Troy Kotsur and Best Adapted Screenplay for director Siân Heder, CODA won the Oscar for Best Picture. By now, I've seen all the nominees, and while CODA was not the Best Picture of 2021 (that would be Summer of Soul, which wasn't nominated), there was only one nominated movie I'd place clearly above CODA (Drive My Car). (There weren't many nominees that were clearly worse than CODA, as well ... I'm a fan of Licorice Pizza, but it's not great, and I'd say the same about others, like The Power of the Dog, West Side Story, and Don't Look Up ... only King Richard of the nominees was an embarrassment in such lofty company.) Yes, as always there were films ignored for Best Picture (Petite Maman, Flee, Judas and the Black Messiah), but CODA earned its consideration ... it's a fine film.

So I have no intention of damning CODA with faint praise ... it's a successful, feel-good movie. It's easy to underestimate it, because in many ways it adheres to a formula (young girl blossoms, is held back by circumstances, but triumphs in the end). But it's really good in its formulaic efforts ... you root for the girl, you root for her family, you get choked up with emotion at the end. And none of the emotions are cheaply elicited ... CODA affects us without pounding us with obvious tear-jerking moments.

Of course, the main difference here is the representation of deaf characters (title is an acronym for Children of Deaf Adults). The deaf characters are played by deaf actors ... Marlee Matlin we know (she is herself an Oscar winner), and Troy Kotsur won an Oscar for this film. These characters are one of the reasons CODA isn't merely formulaic.

Not everyone in the deaf community was happy with CODA, but as someone outside that community, I'd say the overall response was more positive than negative. But I admit, even as I was watching it and liking it, I never thought I was watching a classic. OK, you're a fool if you think a Best Picture Oscar signifies a great movie, but I was surprised that CODA was good-not-great.

Young Emilia Jones was impressive as the girl ... she's new to me. CODA is worth seeing ... I don't want to suggest otherwise.

[Letterboxd list of my Top 15 Films of 2021]

film fatales #195: saint omer (alice diop, 2022)

This is the twenty-third 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 23 is called "New Black Film Canon Week":

In 2006 Slate published a list of the 50 best movies by Black filmmakers, curated by Black critics, scholars, and filmmakers themselves. Since then, culturally significant and seminal films like Moonlight and Get Out have been released so this year they have updated and expanded the list to 75 movies. These movies span over a hundred years, several countries, a variety of genres and styles, and encompass different sizes of production budgets.

This week let’s celebrate Black filmmakers and watch one of these artistic treasures from Slate’s The New Black Canon.

Saint Omer has already been established as one of the best films in recent years (it is currently #291 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century). Alice Diop was a director of documentaries who attended the real-life trial of a woman who left her one-year-old child on the beach to die. Taken by the story, Diop decided to make her first fiction feature, basing it on the real trial. There is a character, Rama (Kayije Kagame), a writer attending the trial in order to write a book about it, who is a stand-in for Diop at the real trial. There's a certain meta quality to all of this, but Diop doesn't just rely on a documentary style to tell this story, and the acting, which is powerful throughout, is a constant reminder that we watching fiction. Rama identifies with the defendant (played by Guslagie Malanda) to some degree, which further complicates the meta aspect (since Rama is also a version of Diop).

Saint Omer is easy to follow, but the emotional and philosophical angles are complex. As the mother says, when asked why she abandoned her daughter, "I hope this trial can give me the answer". She tries to understand what she has done, the court and the spectators also look for understanding, and we in the audience look to Diop to explain everything. But she isn't trying to simply explain. It's a mystery without a solution, but it's not frustrating. Rather, Diop convinces us that we often can't understand what others do, or even what we ourselves have done.

call me by your name (luca guadagnino, 2017)

This is the twenty-second 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 22 is called "Time Out for Romance Week":

It can be easy to balk at watching a romance movie since they all-too-often offer nothing beyond the trite paint-by-number genre trappings common to the Hallmark Channel. Sometimes they can also veer into sickeningly saccharine territory or can unrealistically portray love as a simple, lasting feeling between two impossibly witty and beautiful people that sets real-life people up for unrealistic expectations. However, since love is actually an enormously complex and powerful force that is different for every single person, it is a theme that drives many fantastic movies. The key is not to oversimplify it, but explore it for how much it can stir the soul in so many different directions.

This Valentine’s season watch one of these fantastic movies all about that complicated emotion from Time Out’s The 100 Most Romantic Films of All Time.

Call me a romantic: I've seen 79 of the 100 Most Romantic Films of All Time. It's clear why Call Me by Your Name is on the list. (It's 15th on the list, and the 4th-most recent.) It's subtle approach to love between two men may be a bit too safe, but the emotions displayed by actors Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer as the two are touching and real. Some have complained about the age difference between the two characters (one is 24, the other 17), but Chalamet is both believably 17 (he was 20 when the film was shot) and believably mature enough to make his own decisions. It's a coming-of-age story, but I didn't find it creepy.

But there's another reason that Call Me by Your Name feels differently now than it must have in 2017. In 2021, charges emerged accusing Hammer of cases of sexual abuse. Other accusations arose. Hammer was never charged, although the cases were opened for a fair amount of time. Hammer's acting career hit a wall ... he hasn't acted in a film since the accusations appeared. It's not my place here to figure out what did and didn't happen in those cases. But it definitely affects how I watched a movie about a 24-year-old man beginning an affair with a 17-year-old. That's not fair, but I can't just pretend it doesn't exist. So there's a creepiness to the film that I don't think I would have felt had I seen it in 2017.

Call Me by Your Name is #157 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They list of the top 1000 films of the 21st century.

african-american directors series: neptune frost (saul williams and anisia uzeyman, 2021)

This is the twenty-first 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 21 is called "Afrofuturism Week":

Afrofuturism is an exciting subgenre of science-fiction movies that has been gaining traction in the past few years with mainstream offerings such as the Black Panther and Spider-Verse films, as well as the TV show Lovecraft Country. Afrofuturism is all about centering and taking pride in the Black experience in alternate or imagined realities where Black people can define themselves, potentially without the influence of Western ideas or understandings. These stories can inspire people to build toward a better future and question the past and present social structures that create and maintain cultural and economic inequality between races. Common tropes include the use of African iconography, a rich color palette, and a focus on how technology and culture intersect.

This week, let’s escape the real world and venture forth into a world of new realities made possible by Afrofuturism with this list here.

From the examples I have seen, I think I had a mistaken sense of what made Afrofuturism. I'd seen the mainstream offerings, the Black Panther and Spider-Verse films and the TV show Lovecraft Country. If I'd looked at the suggested list more closely, I might have had a better feel for what Neptune Frost might be like. Touki Bouki ("unencumbered by the 'rules' of cinema"), Sankofa ("uses time travel to place a woman from modern times back into the horrors of the old South"), Fast Color ("a superhero movie, although a very low-key one that can be approached as just a mysterious fantasy"). The introduction above of Afrofuturism is a useful description of what happens in Neptune Frost: "centering and taking pride in the Black experience in alternate or imagined realities where Black people can define themselves, potentially without the influence of Western ideas or understandings" including "the use of African iconography, a rich color palette, and a focus on how technology and culture intersect."

That describes Neptune Frost, but in truth it's a film that defies ordinary description. Saul Williams and Anisia Useyman create a unique world, rooted in Burundi but taking place in a future connected intrinsically to technology. A community of young adults, dedicated to a different kind of world, use unexplained hacking skills to subvert the larger society while staying hidden (China and Russia are initially blamed for the hacks). The connection to "The Internet" eventually destroys them, or rather, the discovery of the community by the outside world allows the powers that be to destroy them. One person remains ... I don't know if this was meant as a positive ending, perhaps it's meant to be ambiguous.

Oh, and it's a musical.

Gender fluidity, colonialism, and yes, science-fiction ... it's a unique blend. Willliams and Useyman deserve praise for creating something new. Sometimes inscrutable, but always fascinating to look at ... I, at least, had never seen anything like it.

revisiting the rules of the game (jean renoir, 1939)

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.

geezer cinema/film fatales #185: anatomy of a fall (justine triet, 2023)

It's not really accurate to call Anatomy of a Fall a procedural. A good portion of the film takes place in a courtroom, and over the course of the film, we learn more and more about what might have happened. The gradual unveiling is something like an episode of the old Perry Mason show, except the courtroom and the rules of the courtroom are French, and we aren't sure of the defendant's innocence, because while writer/director Justine Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari have made a film reminiscent of past courtroom dramas, the innocence of the nominal heroine isn't guaranteed. Apparently Triet didn't tell Sandra Hüller (Toni Erdmann), who played the defendant Sandra, if the character was innocent or guilty, only telling her to act innocent.

While there is a mystery to be solved, at its core, Anatomy of a Fall is a family drama. It's not what you'd call a good date movie ... the couple at the center of the story have their problems, and the emotions get quite raw at times. The acting is stellar throughout ... Hüller will get most of the attention, deservedly so, but young Milo Machado-Graner as her son is realistically secretive, and Swann Arlaud is very appealing as her lawyer friend. The intricacies of French courtrooms were puzzling to me, but there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the representation.

There is a fascinating subtext involving language. While almost all of the characters are French (and, obviously, the courtroom proceedings are in French), Sandra is German. She speaks French, but there is a hesitancy when she does. With her husband, and with her attorney, she speaks English ... it seems that when one speaks German and the other speaks French, they meet in the middle and talk English. Giving testimony during the trial, she is required to speak French, but eventually she doesn't feel she can get the meaning of her words across, and she receives permission to speak English. (When she talks to her son, she speaks English to him and he replies in French.)

Anatomy of a Fall is engrossing despite its long length (152 minutes), getting its intensity not from wild action scenes but from interpersonal relationships.

film fatales #184: the innocents (anne fontaine, 2016)

This is the tenth 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 10 is called "Nun for You Week":

Nuns have enjoyed a rich history in film, from being featured in classics like Black Narcissus and The Sound of Music, through the Nunsploitation era in the 70s, to today as filmmakers are still fascinated by nuns as characters. Nuns are so compelling and can be featured in a wide-range of genres because they represent a fascinating dichotomy between female-empowerment and male authority. Entering a convent could signify a woman wielding her own power over herself and choosing her own path for a life absent of and free from men with other women, but a convent is still run by a man and the Catholic Church is still a deeply patriarchal system. The suppression of sexual desires is also ripe for the power of romance to overcome, for both dramatic and comedic effect, with or without men. Nunsploitation films offer taboo thrills, but also often critique and question the authority of the Catholic Church. However nuns are depicted in cinema they almost always come from the imagination of someone who is not a nun and could never know what it is really like to be one, which has allowed them to take on a mysterious and almost fantastical role that is also a part of the allure.

This week’s challenge is to watch a movie featuring a nun as a main character. Here’s a list from NunMovieFreak to help you out.

I came to The Innocents spoiler-free. I knew there would be nuns, and that's about it. I'm happy to report that it's a very good film, emotionally wrenching, based on fact, perhaps loosely. It takes place in Poland at the end of 1945. A Red Cross doctor is asked to come to a local convent, where she discovers a very pregnant nun during delivery. To say more is to spoil, but the movie is extremely intense at times, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture. I knew none of the participants ... I'm new to director Anne Fontaine, and to the cast, with Lou de Laâge as the doctor and an excellent cast as the nuns (unfair to single anyone out, but Agata Buzek is a standout). The look of the film is expansive at times, claustrophobic at others (the cinematographer is Caroline Champetier).

Fontaine places women at the center of the story, which is obvious but you never know. Most of the men, with one exception, are brutes ... you're glad there aren't more of them. Fontaine is fair to the faith of the nuns ... the doctor is a non-believer, but everyone gets their perspective presented honestly. The Innocents is a film about faith, but it's also about the importance of sisterhood (no pun intended) and community. It's not an easy film to watch, but it's worth the effort.

cold water (olivier assayas, 1994)

Cold Water is my fifth Olivier Assayas film, and I still haven't seen a bad one. Set in 1972, the movie offers what feels like an accurate portrayal of teenagers at a certain point in time and place, and in fact Assayas was the same age in 1972 as the characters in this film. Assayas gets honest work from the largely non-professional cast ... they never seem like amateurs. He also seamlessly integrates Virginie Ledoyen as Christine into the film, Ledoyen being a pro who had been a child performer. She's very natural in Cold Water, and you don't get the feeling she's a cut above her castmates in skill.

Assayas also makes masterful use of music in Cold Water. There is barely any music in the first half of the film, which focuses on a couple of teenagers and their perilous relationships with parents. This, too, is honest ... the parents aren't just authoritarian morons, the kids are far from perfect. Then, at about the halfway point, a party ensues, created seemingly out of nowhere by a community of teens who meet at an abandoned ruin. They listen to music (this is crucial), they smoke weed, they start a bonfire, they talk and talk and talk to each other, and throughout, Assayas and cinematographer Denis Lenoir snake the handheld camera through the party. We only catch fragments of the conversation, except for key scenes with Christine and her nominal boyfriend Gilles, played by Cyprien Fouquet, who as far as I can tell has never acted since. Christine and Gilles are the teens we get closest to, and the acting styles of Ledoyen and Fouquet blend beautifully. The music is appropriately of its time, and it's all in English, which is likely what French teenagers listened to in 1972. Assayas says he's drawing on his own memories. He also says he essentially used the music in the long party scene to drive the narrative.

The music had another, unforeseen, impact on Cold Water. It features Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Nico, Roxy Music, Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Uriah Heep, and Donovan, and it's a bit murky how the rights to all that music were obtained. But once the film was ready to be released in the US, whatever rights they might have had no longer held. Which is why this 1994 film didn't get a real release in the States until Criterion put out their edition in 2018.

It takes its time getting to that party scene, but it's worth it.