February 15: Oscar Nominated Live-Action Shorts (2011 -- Various)

I checked out this program with Carlos and Linda, and it was good to see what's happening in short films.  I never encounter these movies in my daily life.

We had a range of opinion on them.  Carlos liked my least favorite, Pentecost, and Linda responded to Shore, a film I had a little love for.  I most enjoyed Tuba Atlantic though.  Clearly there is something for everyone here.

★★★ Peter McDonald: Pentecost -- I find this Irish film more clever than anything else.  It's draws a parallel between altar boys who celebrate mass and a team that plays football.  We hear the priest exhorting his boys to fight the good fight.  The film doesn't go much further than that conceit, though it's humorous and warm.

★★★★ Max Zähle: Raju -- This German short packs a lot into its short run:  It gives you Calcutta in just a few shots, it portrays an entire relationship in just a few scenes, and it advocates against illegal adoption practices overall.  The lead child is cute, big-headed, and big-eyed, while the lead actor has  strikingly handsome good looks.  There is a lot packed into this short.

★★★ Terry George: Shore -- This is another effective Irish film, and like Raju, it packs a lot of info into just a few minutes.  Here we see a complex relationship among three people who have decades of history, and there is a strong sense of local color with the men living on the shore.  And there must be something about Irish humor because, like in Pentecost, humor plays a big role, though one such scene gets too much of the limited time available in the film.  It's easy to respond to the warm affirmation that this movie leads to.

★★★ Andrew Bowler: Time Freak -- I like this American film; it's a clever take on time travel and uses that spin for both humor and character development.  It's very juvenile but very fun for that very reason.

★★★★★ Hallvar Witzo: Tuba Atlantic -- This film from Norway is my favorite of the group.  While quirkiness doesn't always appeal to me, it's hard not to like these characters, and the technique here is as fun as the issues are heavy.  A grumpy old man realizes a life ambition and reconciles with his brother at the end of his life, while an archetypal teenager grows.  A little.  There's a lot in this film that resists pigeon-holing.  And it all happens in a bleak Norwegian landscape with distinct local color.  I'm sure I'll sometimes think of the Death Angel from this film when I hear the sound of a scooter.   

February 12: Rules of the Game/La règle du jeu (1939 -- Jean Renoir)

★★★★★

February 11: Moneyball (2011 -- Bennett Miller)

★★★

This is a fairly classic movie, but it completely drew me in.  It’s the beaten down outsider who throws himself against a huge institution and changes the institution, it’s the triumph of the underdog against the enemy, and it’s the leader with his own insecurities who continues to lead.  And it’s baseball.  It’s hard to be more American than this, but films like it aren’t always done well.

Moneyball is done well.  The main character here, Billy Beane, has a lot of complexity, which is not common in such sports movies.  We like as he butts heads with his own institutional scouts and his tradition-oriented manager, but we squirm a little as we see him making hard calls by firing nice people, feeling conflicted about his own failure to pursue an education and succeed as a player, and trying to be a part-time father.  There’s a mix in the character of estimable and conflicted that you don’t usually see in mainstream Hollywood, and that makes the center of the film, Billy, more interesting.

Being about baseball, this is a guy’s movie, and the guys pull it off well enough.  Brad Pitt plays in his typically limited range here, so he’s a better general manager than ex-husband or part-time dad.  His numbers cruncher Peter Brand as Jonah Hill has a similarly limited range, but that works for him, too, in the role of a young geek with authority for the first time.  In contrast to those two, Philip Seymour Hoffman owns every scene he’s in.  He is the A’s manager, an immersion that Pitt nor Brand is able to pull off.  But the acting works here; Moneyball doesn’t necessarily need more from the central roles as written.

I was very engrossed in the film, so engrossed, in fact, that I eventually came to use the highly-manipulative soundtrack to help me reduce my anxiety: minor key vibration means something bad is going to happen, major key tone means something good.  When the story suspense got too intense, I focused on the music soundtrack, and the music's helped me reduce my anxiety.  Without them, the suspense would have been harder to bear.

This is a notch above average film.  I felt I was getting a little look behind what runs MLB as well as some good, capable entertainment.

February 10: The Lady Vanishes (1938 -- Alfred Hitchcock)

★★★

With Jenny back from Chile, we decided to resurrect our movie series starting with some Hitchcock that has recently come out on blu-ray.  It’s  a mystery to me why blu releases would be available for films like The Lady Vanishes while classics like Vertigo, Rear Window and Strangers on a Train are still not available, but there is some pleasure in this 1938 outing.

For one, it’s thoroughly engaging and has a good deal of suspense to it.  Because of the omniscient camera, we know that something’s up with Miss Froy’s disappearance, but we can only assemble the clues as Iris and Gilbert find them to construct the plot behind the abduction.  And no sooner is that question answered than the film presents another: Will the heroes escape?  So the film is fairly suspenseful once the characters finally get on the train.

But before they leave the station, the expository beginning of the film is a bit long.  That said, the scenes in the hotel establish a range of characters that provide a richness in the rest of the film.  And Hitchcock uses this variety of Brits for social commentary and satire.  There’s a spineless adulterer who has aspirations of being a judge and his much clearer-thinking mistress.  There’s the comedic, stiff-upper-lip duo of cricket fans who are so ingrained in their British convention that they have no interest what’s happening around them, though when finally aroused from their nose-to-the-ground stance, they capably resist the bad guys.  A gallant, young musicologist, too, rises to the occasion by helping solving the mystery and aid Britain.  Of course, the governess Miss Froy is an understated patriot.  And a British collaborator with the forces of Bandrika takes a moral stand and joins those seeking to save Miss Froy when the evil of the Bandrikan plot becomes apparent.  It’s hard not to see a vague allegory here with the Germanic bad guys pushing around this eclectic set of Brits until the later are roused to successful resistance.

Other aspects of the movie also please.  The dialog is often snappy and witty in the way of dialog in a screwball comedy, and it’s also fun to see this early film as presaging later Hitchcock elements.  Psychology is already an interest here with the idea of hallucination as a result of a blow to the head, and the character of menacing Baroness certainly prefigures future threatening mothers and housekeepers.  There is also a love story wrapped in the thriller, and lots of play with cinematic devices like sound and reversals.  And a cameo by the director.  A lot of Hitchcock is already apparent in 1938.

The Lady Vanishes isn’t the tightest or most compelling of Hitchcock’s work, but it’s fun.  And it certainly hints at what’s to come in Hitchcock’s career.

February 8: If.... (1968 -- Lindsay Anderson)

★★★★

February 7: L’Atalante (1934 -- Jean Vigo)

★★★★★

Some classics really are classic, and this is one.  L’Atlante is touching, beautiful, and true.  At base, it’s a love story about a period in a relationship I don’t see many films about, the time right after the wooing and marriage. 

We get Juliette’s character very early in the film from listening to those in attendance at the wedding: very unsophisticated, restless, perhaps naïve.  We soon see her enrapt with the radio and allure of Paris, but along with that, we see her sweetness in the way she cares for her new barge home and its first mate, Père Jules.  Her plan to do everyone’s laundry says much about her loving spirit.

We also soon see that her husband Jean is very in love with her but inexperienced in dealing with someone in a relationship; he is as immature as she is.  He wants to please her, but his barge work continually interferes, and he’s sometimes oblivious to her or to what she might think.  And he is prone to jealousy and temper.  L’Atalante is the story of two newly-weds who are immature and are having to learn how to get along with another person in their life.

That dynamic alone would be enough for a good movie, but Vigo goes far beyond that.  One interesting addition is the old first mate Père Jules.  This crusty, irascible character has many idiosyncrasies but is basically a good man.  Despite his gruff exterior, he loves cats, which give cinematographer Boris Kaufman a rationale for having them run in and out of the frame throughout the film.  Père Jules’ little cabin on the barge is filled with exotic curios that show how much more experience he has than do the newly-weds but that also give L’Atalante visual thrills.  For example, a pair of hands in a jar, says Père Jules, is all he has left of one of his former friends.  A very touching scene in the film is when Juliette puts a skirt on the grumpy Jules so she can hem it.  This scene tells us much of Juliette’s openness, Jules’ inner softness, and the relationship between the two.  When the immature Juliette sneaks off to see Paris and the equally immature Jean gets mad and leaves her, it is Jules who treks into Paris to find Juliette and reunite these two kids who are much in love but too inexperienced to handle it.  Père Jules is not successful or handsome, but he is worldly and wise.

And there’s more still to enjoy about L’Atalante: the sheer beauty of the film.  The opening scenes alone prepare the viewer for a unique cinema experience as the bride’s white wedding dress glows in the black-and-white wedding procession out of the village.  Soon the couple is walking across fields in their formal dress and the same luminescent tone.  We also see elegant cinematography as Juliette, still in her gown, walks from the bow to the stern of the barge.  During this walk, the camera is motionless and the barge moves past at the speed Juliette walks.  This shot is a beautiful, visual thrill.

There are many other such images.  At one point in the canal in Paris, we go to a cut and see Jean managing a rope with the barge far above him in a lock, a jarring image.  Later we see a river port outside of Paris that is in its early stages of development with a few factories, skeletal building frames and makeshift establishments.  Inside one of these, a beer hall, we watch as Vigo and Kaufman give a tour de force performance of choreography and cinematography with a flirtatious salesman, dancing and dialogue.

Vigo and Kaufman also make ample use of the river mists to create almost painterly images in L’Atalante, and they revisit some underwater imagery from Taris when the lovesick Jean dives into the river to see the face of his true love.  In an eerie double exposure, the figure of Juliette floats by, creating another memorable image while creating a plot and character point.  And the film communicates the love – and desire – that the two have for each other by intercutting scenes of the two alone in bed in different locations. These shots of a buff, mostly undressed Jean and a nightgown-clad Juliette sweating and writhing with desire in their respective beds are of a daring sexiness.

L’Atalante is a true classic film, outstanding in story, characters, cinematography and direction.  It’s one highly-praised film that doesn’t disappoint.

A Familiar Ship's Bow Shot

February 7: Taris (1931 -- Jean Vigo)

★★★★

This little film is as short as it is fun.  Taris starts out as a lesson in how to swim, but Vigo is soon doing underwater shots showing Taris’ technique from below as well as well as above water shots showing the technique from the surface.  There is a beauty in the shots as well as instruction.  There is also some fun as the champion swimmer Taris manages a few cute gestures like reclining on the pool floor as the narration is giving advice.  And Vigo plays with film technique by running a diving clip backwards and forwards, creating a humorous effect as well as instructional one. 

Restrained in most of the film, Vigo’s wit breaks totally free at the end of Taris, as the swimmer is suddenly wearing a top coat and hat and, thanks to a double exposure, appears to walk out on the water.  Then down into it.  It’s as though Vigo simply couldn’t control the pleasure he had in using the medium and just cut loose.

I doubt this is a groundbreaking film, though it goes far beyond an instructional short.  I’d be interested to see how it matches up with other sports documentaries of the era like Triumph of the Will.  And it was fun to see this just before I watched L’Atalante, which includes a pivotal scene that is similar to the footage in this film.

Taris is a nice taste of Vigo.