September 5: April and the Extraordinary World/ Avril et le monde truqué (2015 - Franck Ekinci & Christian Desmares)

★★★★

April in the Extraordinary World is a smart film that is fun to watch.  Gallic wit and love of history move forward right away in a somewhat elaborate history of how this alternative era came about.  The militant Napoléon III, killed in a lab accident, is succeeded by Napoléon IV, who promptly signs a peace treaty and averts the Franco-Prussian War.  Science stagnates as leading scientists mysteriously go missing, and we soon see a 20th century world with none of the benefits of early modern scientific discovery.  As imagined by Jacques Tardi, an intelligent design reigns in the look of this alternative world.

Without scientific progress, we find the Twin Towers in this world are designed not by Emery Roth but by Charles Eiffel.  In another witty gesture, Pop’s phonograph doesn’t run on electricity, since that hasn't been discovered, but a small steam engine powers the record player.  And with no internal combustion engines, the film casts witty asides about airships and cable cars; an announcer enthuses about a mere 87-hour trip to Berlin and proclaims the opening of a bridge between France and England, tunnel-drilling equipment evidently being un-invented.  And the summit of Montmartre is now a monument to one of the Napoléons rather than Sacre Coeur.  This extraordinary world is one conceived with great wit.

There’s other cleverness at work here, too.  Darwin doesn’t have as much dialog as one might expect from a talking cat in a French movie, but he’s sharp when he appears.  Near death, Darwin describes  how he's looking forward to meeting Charles Perrault, though he says he’ll tell the author of Puss-in-Boots a few things about cats.  And Darwin is a typically aloof cat with his controlled manner, so his sudden lunges every time a rat appears are quite funny, lunges he unapologetically later explains as instinct.  Neither is he above teasing the humans, especially the not-always-sharp Julius.  “You’re in looooove,” he purrs, like a junior high kid teasing another.  And the portrayal of various famous 20th century scientists is also smart.  It’s not hard to recognize them – Einstein, Marconi –but when we see them giving their overlord lizard a massage or playing classical music in a quartet for him, there’s a humorous irony at play, and one related to a theme of the film.

In addition to having so much wit, April and the Extraordinary World is simply a pleasure to watch.  It has wonderful steampunk machines, like the house that turns into a Jules-Verne-style submarine and a walking machine with gangly, mechanically-jointed legs.  And there’s a flying aircraft that carries its legs like a fly.  The lizards have exoskeletons they’ve designed for themselves that let them walk upright on two legs.  In addition to such 19th century fantasy imagery, we see the Petit Palais as a ruin with steam machines and a giant oak growing in the middle, and when the heroes exit Paris underwater via the Seine, there’s a passing shot of a skeleton at the wheel of a sunken vessel.  This film knows its visual strength, and it borrows an idea from Up in telling April’s later story through photos hung on a wall.  There’s always something worth looking at in this film.

For all this, April and the Extraordinary World is still a children’s movie.  It approaches some heavy subjects, but it only gives passing shrift to them.  April has to learn to trust others and reach out, but that theme emerges from three mostly unconnected scenes.  The film also has an anti-authoritarian bias, but it doesn’t dwell on that idea.  There’s also an ethical warning here about science being turned to bad uses, but that idea surfaces at odd times, sometimes in an on-the-nose comment.  There’s an environmental message here, too, about over-exploitation of resources.  But this film isn’t consistently interested in any of these ideas.  It’s mostly an intelligent, visually-engaging romp, and it is very worthwhile for all it has to offer in that realm.

August 26: Anomalisa (2015 - Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson)

★★★★★

The strength of Anomalisa is way Kaufman marries his stop-motion puppet animation to the theme.  The film centers on Michael Stone, a middle-aged man mired in an existential mid-life crisis.  His world is filled with banality and repetition; nothing seems real, vital or unique to him, and the stop-motion world he lives in emphasizes this.

Most of the film is set in a bland city, Cincinnati, and most of the action transpires in a hotel-chain environment.  Everything from Michael’s taxi ride to his check-in procedure and his room décor transpires in the characterless patterns of business travel, and even the dialog sounds scripted by the hospitality industry, a fact especially emphasized when room service repeats Michael’s order back to him in embellished, corporate vocabulary.  The puppet world here is remarkably effective at highlighting the banality of this environment.  The artificial feeling of the sets as reproduced for stop-motion defamiliarizes this familiar corporate look and makes us notice it.  In addition, the puppets Michael encounters all look alike, all have the same seams and joints, and they’re all voiced by the same actor, Tom Noonan.  Even Michael himself is a part of the uniform blandness.  And when he seeks some stimulation to pierce the ennui that envelops him, he finds more of the same.  His call to his family in LA implies an unexciting home life, and when he reaches out to an old girlfriend in Cincinnati, he’s reminded of his communication failure and is again unable to have a real connection with an Other.  And in these episodes, Kaufman again uses the same puppets and the same voice, emphasizing the dullness of the world Michael sees.  Even gender differences succumb to the banality.

The existential prison that Michael has created for himself becomes clear in the episode with Lisa.  At first, her simple vitality and sincerity pierce the sameness around him.  Her voice is different (it’s Jennifer Jason Leigh), and the two ultimately have sex in Michael’s room, an intense, personal experience of the reality of the Other during which their voices merge.  However, even at this point Michael is already turning Lisa into an extension of himself, telling her what to do -- “Say something,” he directs her.  She soon becomes part of the homogeneity around him.  As they talk over breakfast that morning, she mentions the zoo, just as the taxi driver has, and we see Michael wedging her into his category of unexceptional.  Michael tells her not to click her spoon on her teeth when she eats, and soon Kaufman shifts her dialog into reverb, sonically implying her distance from Michael.  In his mind she’s no longer special, and he’s again alone in his unexceptional world.

Although he can’t see it, Michael’s stop-motion world is one of his own making.  Hair flowing as she rides in a car on the way home, Lisa writes him that their time was wonderful and special to her.  And at Michael’s surprise homecoming party, Michael’s exasperated wife tells him, “Do you realize we all love you?”  Michael, however, can’t see the world around him and the love it holds.  His is a world of stop-motion sameness though, as he stares at Anomalisa, the Japanese Goddess of Heaven that he bought for his son in a porn shop, he knows he’s missing something.  And Charley Kaufman's achievement in Anomalisa is a remarkably effective merger of technique and theme.

August 25: In the Courtyard/Dans la cour (2014 - Pierre Salvadori)

★★★

In the Courtyard is a bittersweet movie about communication.  Gustave Kervern’s stocky Antoine carries a portly sadness as he understands the pain in the people around him but is unable to soothe the pain because he can't communicate.  In particular, he’s can't help Catherine Deneuve’s Mathilde as she sinks ever deeper into a depression, but Antoine also almost unwillingly becomes friends with other wounded residents of the apartment building.  He lives in a world of pain he can see but not address.

This could be a story of great pathos or melodrama, but Pierre Salvadori enlivens it with comic touches.  From one of the earliest scenes, when a man in a park loses his temper because his protégé is unable to create large hoop bubbles, Salvadori’s humor distances us from the visceral psychic pain all the characters experience.  Lev has a dark, violent past he can’t express in language and Stéphane once had a promising soccer future cut short by injury, but Lev’s devotion to the Emissaries of the Institute of Light adds to humor to his character and Stéphane’s serial bicycle theft does the same.

Unfortunately, the shallow depth of the script holds In the Courtyard back from having the impact it could.  We see some of the personalities of both Antoine and Mathilde, but we’re not able to empathize enough with them as we watch them from the outside rather than feel what they’re feeling.  There are fun cinematic gestures in the film – witty editing in a park scene with children and a 50s-style dog-monster attack on a city – but for Salvadori to carry our hearts though the grim conclusion, we need more engagement with the main characters.

August 21: Gold (1934 - Karl Hartl)

★★★

Karl Hartl has picked all the right parts of early-30s German sci-fi to make Gold.  The technology in the film suggests Metropolis, the appearance of Brigitte Helm suggests Metropolis, and the underground chamber filling with water at the end suggests Metropolis.  There’s a lot of electricity in the air and scientific language like “atomic,” and there’s a scientist with a girlfriend and a mission.  And there are spies and bad guys who are out to conquer the world.  It should be a rollicking good ride.

But it isn’t; Gold drags as a sci-fi action/romance feature.  One of the biggest problems is Hans Albers’ inability to bring any charisma to the hero.  Werner Holk’s devotion to his martyred mentor, Prof. Achenbach, seems more dutiful than heartfelt, and it’s hard to imagine how an elegant, dynamic woman like Florence Wills, who dominates the screen whenever Helm brings her on, could be attracted to a frumpy, middle-aged man like Holk.  Michael Bohnen imparts far more range and energy to Holk’s nemesis John Wills than Albers does to the story’s lead, and the result is that the center of the film is dull.

Another problem is that script bogs down in places and unhelpfully fritters away time.  The opening section runs long in establishing Holk’s situation; the sabotage of the experiment dawdles, and the time Holk shares with his love, Margit, could have been reduced since there’s little screen chemistry between them anyway.  Too much is also made of the initial encounters between Holk and John Wills, and while the time Helm is on-screen is some of the best in the film, the long evening between Florence and Werner indeed seems long.  Then there’s an extra character introduced when Holk arrives on Wills’ boat.  Holk’s long-lost buddy has very little function in the film and even creates some confusion later when we see Holk with him at the film’s end on a boat that is different from the one he commands.  This character is a long and repeated digression.

The one part of the production that Hartl gets right is how the film looks on the screen.  With the Metropolis team, Hartl gives us a huge, flashy atomic apparatus for changing lead to gold.  There is more than ample action around this machine, which itself creates tension because it can barely contains its own power when it operates.  Other great technology includes a train-pod for underground transportation, an innovation that we see in later sci-fi, and there are massive doors and elevators.  In addition to the technology, the world of Florence Wills offers striking visuals.  Florence’s statuesque beauty dominates the screen when she has a full-figure shot, and her sculpted facial features demand our gaze when she talks in close-ups.  She may have the highest eyebrows in cinema.  Hartl adds to her visual power by dressing her in striking gowns, like the dotted one she wears when she first meets Holk and the one she wears later that has an outlandishly feathered collar.  There’s lots to look at on the screen in Gold.

Hartl also uses engaging cinematic techniques.  For example, after Holk is taken to a hospital when his experiment explodes, Hartl uses a long pan that goes from Margit and around the hospital room until it stops on Holk’s face.  The camera holds there and shot dissolves into the same pose with Holk healed and in his home office, a tour de force camera sequence.  In addition, Hartl uses rapid cuts to build up each of the major explosions in the film, creating suspense by using quick cuts to various people and places around the apparatus as the soundtrack hums and crackles.  And Hartl avails himself of the low key Expressionist lighting that is not uncommon in his time.  All these techniques create a visual interest that can engage us when the story becomes slow or the actors fail to touch us.

Although it was a major hit at the time, Gold isn’t must-see cinema.  It certainly looks good frame-to-frame, but it fails to move an audience because of its several shortcomings.  And while the film was completed shortly after the National Socialists came to power in Germany, it’s very unlikely that the party was able to exert much influence on a project that was already so far along in development.  While Gold has a slap at capitalists, especially British ones, the economic critique here is far more cinematic than it is ideological.  Gold is an interesting experience but not a necessary one.

August 20: Gilda (1946 - Charles Vidor)

★★★★

This film is a studio system star vehicle, and Rita Hayworth deserves it.  She owns the screen whenever she appears, from her justly-famed entrance flinging her hair up from the bottom of the frame to the fulfilled look on her face as she and Johnny exit the door at the end.  She brings intensity to all the aspects of her character.  She deploys her considerable sexual allure when she digs at Johnny by seductively dancing with another man early in the film, and she’s a nonchalant minx on the arm of another man when she returns home late one night to Johnny's glare.  She brings the same sex appeal to bear on her two big dance sequences, one a bare-midriff tropical performance and the other her famous club performance, wrapped in strapless, black gown with arm-length gloves.  Director Charles Vidor enhances this latter performance with a close-up that excludes the gown and by having a couple of excited men offering to help her with her dress, but it’s Hayworth’s charisma that brings the electricity here.  She knows how to tease the camera and the men who gaze at the screen.

But Hayworth’s Gilda doesn’t control all parts of her life as thoroughly as she does her sex appeal.  Beneath her meanness to Johnny is her love for him, and she alternates between mourning the loss of whatever relationship they had and openly flinging herself at him.  Hayworth brings as much intensity to these scenes as she does to her vixen play.  Her hair flies as wildly when she’s angry as it does when she seduces, and it adds to the pathos of her submission to Johnny.

The same over pressured tension that drives Gilda also drives Johnny.  The male in this 40s film has to choose between his allegiance to the other male, Ballin, or to follow his heart to Gilda.  For most of the film, Johnny chooses patriarchy and coldly busies himself with keeping Gilda at the ready for Ballin, but Gilda suspects his motives are mixed. She thinks he’s keeping her from other men because of his own repressed jealousy.  There’s more than a passing similarity between Johnny here and the aloof Devlin with his loyalty to his job in another 1946 film, Hitchcock’s Notorious.  But in Gilda, even after Ballin’s death, Johnny continues to repress Gilda, coldly seducing her into marriage and then locking her away with a portrait of Ballin dominating her new home.  The extremes of Johnny’s emotions become even more apparent when he has Gilda brought back to him after her escape and the two confess their love.  Glen Ford isn’t able to convincingly deliver Johnny’s repressed turmoil, but the scripted actions of Johnny tell the story well enough.

A lot of this film is hard for a contemporary viewer.  We would prefer to see such a powerful woman more in control of herself, and the extremes of Johnny's actions are difficult to completely accept, even when we only see them as external actions.  But Hayworth’s performance alone make Gilda a cinematic pleasure to enjoy anyway, and when the overwrought psychology of the characters and the quicksilver quality of their relationship are added to the mix, Gilda becomes an genuine cinematic pleasure.

August 19: A Touch of Zen/Xia nü (1971- King Hu)

★★★★

Kung-fu movies with their wisp of plot that lets the film move from one action scene to the next appeal to a particular audience but have trouble reaching beyond that group.  A Touch of Zen, though, easily moves beyond kung-fu formula and offers lots to interest a broader audience.

For one, King Hu maintains a lot of visual interest here.  His settings and imagery engage, whether of a monastery elegantly rising from a montane forest or of a group of people walking through a riverbed of sculpted rock.  Costumes vary by social level, but those worn by the upper classes are colorful and richly patterned, and they flow with the movements of the characters wearing them.  They are an important pictorial element.  Hu’s composition within the frame also stimulates the screen.  He clearly draws on China’s visual art tradition when he has small people move though large landscapes or when he uses sudden, graphic close ups.  And in a more cinematic vein, he uses the frame in a unique way by sometimes having only a character’s legs or torso shoot into the screen during a fight scene.  His cinema is interesting to watch simply for the visuals.

He also brings especially engaging story elements into Touch of Zen.  In the early part of the film, Hu uses perspective to keep us in the dark about a number of things that are happening.  Through the eyes of the scholar Ku, we meet a mysterious stranger, notice some members of the village acting oddly, and discover a young woman with a scanty past living in an abandoned house near Ku.  These elements don’t confuse the audience but rather involve us, drawing us along in the narrative because we want the full story of these little mysteries.  Hu’s plot also keeps us involved because the unexpected can happen at any moment.  A group of monks can be a fierce fighting team, and a character like Hsu can repent of his evil ways only to suddenly turn on the Abbot and stab him.  Other engaging elements of the story include the fact that the center of martial expertise is not our hero but rather our heroine, Yang.  And as any story, the fight between good and evil itself has an attraction since we all dread the victory of evil.  All these elements keep even a martial arts non-fan engaged in Touch of Zen.

It’s also clear from early on that Touch of Zen isn’t operating in a realist cinematic aesthetic.  Hu draws on Cantonese-style Chinese opera for this film, and a big part of the pleasure in watching it is to see how these non-cinematic elements work in cinema.  And they create a cohesive and unique cinematic experience here.  Hu has his actors perform in a highly stylized manner with long pauses and meaningful looks.  In addition, he brings in stereotypical figures, like the Abbot, and inscribes a deeply melodramatic element into their story.  Hu’s use of traditional Chinese instruments and music is another operatic element.  The music meshes seamlessly with the melodrama and acting style, especially when the music lends a particularly effective rhythm to a scene, sometimes punctuating the pivotal point.  Hu also bases his numerous action sequences on opera.  Rather than intense enactment of fighting, the combats here are choreographed acrobatic performances, including the obvious use of trampolines.  A big part of the achievement, and appeal, of Touch of Zen is the integration of Chinese opera into an engaging film.

Touch of Zen is not without its problems, though.  For one, it’s hard to find the center of the film.  For a time, the development of Ku is the primary focus, but then that focus shifts to Yang’s struggle for vindication.  Later, the movie emphasizes the Abbot and his spirituality.  Reflecting this wandering focus, the narrative can get turgid here, too.  One major flaw occurs late in the film when it seems that Ku has lost Yang, and he begins his journey home with his child and heir in his arms.   All the narrative lines are wrapped up at this point, but there’s suddenly a scene with the Abbot telling Yang that he’ll even help her defend Ku even from nirvana, and a very long series of fights soon ensues.  At this point, the film shifts from story-centered to action-centered, and there’s a very long section of the film dedicated to a series of fights.  This very long last section of the film seems tacked on since it differs so much from what has come before.

 Another problem is the frequent choppy editing, especially in action sequences when we see a piece of a movement and then jump to a different piece of another movement.  And Hu is overly reliant on low angle shots and backlighting, an appropriation of a technique that was popular in 1970 but seems dated when it’s used too much today.

Despite the drawbacks to Touch of Zen, this is a film that provides a lot of cinematic pleasure to viewers.  Much of the movie applies effective cinematic technique, and its interesting merger of a traditional art form and cinema makes it especially worthwhile.

August 18: A Little Chaos (2014 -- Alan Rickman)

★★

Alan Rickman brings a lot of good elements together in A Little Chaos.  It’s beautiful to look at, from the elaborate work of the art department to the interesting visual contrasts between the natural countryside of rural Versailles and the powdered wigs and lace of the court.  Ellen Kuras’ cinematography also generates visual interest with its moody lighting and elegant camera movement.  Samuel Karl Bohn’s music blends Baroque with contemporary minimalism, complementing the updated approach Rickman takes with this historical drama.  The performances here are also strong, especially those of Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts and Stanley Tucci.

Yet Rickman is unable to bring all these excellent elements into the happy union of a good film.  Despite the performances, the script doesn’t give us enough information to let us accept the characters’ behaviors.  It comes as a surprise when Sabine tentatively reaches for Le Nôtre’s hand as there has been no previous indication of affection, and we likewise lack understanding of Le Nôtre’s motivation through most of the movie.  His brooding lacks cause, while Sabine’s borders on cliché.  The development of the character of Louis XIV seems tangential to the main dramatic thrust of the film and feels a little like the director putting himself center stage.  And as beautiful as the film is, the long visual sequences slow the film’s pace and we find ourselves with too many court and construction scenes.  The result is a film that moves slowly and whose characters lack a cohesive arc.

For all its good points, this film moves slowly and unconvincingly.  A Little Chaos is less than the sum of its parts.