THE BROOD / TRIANGLE / THE LITTLE GIANT

So I've kind of fallen behind (again), but rather than let myself get bogged down, I'm just going to give some brief thoughts on the last three movies I watched and do my best to get back on track. They have almost nothing in common, other than the first two being horror films, but don't let that bother you.

THE BROOD

Dir. David Cronenberg CANADA 1979

I've been on a sporadic David Cronenberg kick for the last year or so. After seeing and loving Eastern Promises, I dove into his (significantly stranger) back-catalogue and haven't looked back. The Fly, Videodrome, eXistenZ and Rabid were all horrifying and thought-provoking to varying degrees, but something about The Brood missed that disturbing mark.

The plot concerns Frank Corveth, a man forced to raise his young daughter Candice by himself after her mother, Nola is committed to an experimental psychiatric institute run by Dr. Hal Raglan, who utilizes a technique called psychoplasmics to channel their mental anguish into treatable, physical manifestations (I know, right). While Nola's obsession with returning to Candice begins to intensify, Frank's life is systematically dismantled by a rash of violence and murder that seems to be focusing on him and his daughter.

Although this is the last Cronenberg film (of those I've seen) that I would recommend, I don't want to give away the ending, because it's still pretty wild. The film is extremely subdued when compared to the other films I mentioned, both in terms of body horror and violence, but the finale boasts one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen committed to film and is worth the wait if you're inclined to watch it. The 80 minutes preceding it however, are pretty spotty.

The Brood is probably most similar to Rabid, of all the Cronenberg stuff I've seen. Videodrome seems to be where he cemented his voice and style, and his early films, while still extremely interesting, come off as a the work of a talented amateur. Both Rabid and The Brood concern a young woman undergoing horrifying experiences at experimental medical facilities and both unwittingly unleash said horror on the outside world (specifically the men in their lives). But where Rabid follows the more exciting template of the zombie/vampire film, The Brood is more of a paranoid murder mystery, with a slow-burn plot and a more subtle tone of dread as opposed to outright horror. It's an interesting turn, but even at 90 minutes, the movies starts to drag a bit. Combined with the low-budget, late 70's set decoration, most of the film ends up feeling like a made-for-TV psychodrama. The acting is also pretty weak across the board, with the exception of Oliver Reed, who plays Dr. Raglan like a sinister, subdued William Shatner. Not a bad flick overall, but I'd only recommend it for Cronenberg completists.

TRIANGLE

Dir. Christopher Smith UK/AUSTRALIA 2009

Of the three films that I review here, this is the one I'd recommend the most, although it's going to be a short review. It's almost impossible to discuss the plot of this film at all without giving away some major curve balls, of which the film throws many. It's a horror film. Sort of. About a group of friends who go for a sailboat ride. Melissa George plays the lead. That's honestly all I feel comfortable saying. I will however, try to convince you to see it.

So I only heard of this film (it was never given a theatrical release in the US) thanks to the guys over at the Slashfilmcast, who spent about ten minutes of one episode raving about it but not actually saying what it was about. Naturally this piqued my interest. I convinced my roommates to watch it, even though they knew nothing about it other than it was a horror movie and we all enjoyed the hell out of it.

Triangle operates on a pretty familiar, yet unique wavelength. It features numerous tropes common to all horror movies, but manages to effectively turn them against the audience and create a film that will probably take two viewings to completely understand (assuming it can be fully understood) and will probably possess Memento-level rewatch value for those who enjoy narratively twisted horror films. The protagonist/antagonist relationship, the attrition of the cast and the straight-forward, goal-oriented plotting of single location horror films are all features present in Triangle, but all of them take on bizarre new dimensions, thanks to a story-telling technique that, while not wholly original in itself, is applied here in a scenario where it is quite unexpected.

This is the ultimate success of Triangle, I think. It presents itself as a film that shouldn't require much thought, but abruptly and deftly begins to make you crank your brain into overdrive at the end of the first act and doesn't let up until the final frames. It would be easy and not completely incorrect to call this film pretentious and ultimately incoherent (I'm sure you could tear the plot to pieces if you were so inclined), but ten years into the 21st century, it manages to be a gripping and effective horror movie without being disgustingly violent, overly self-referential/meta or broad and pandering. And that, my friends, is refreshing.

I'd never heard of Christopher Smith before seeing this film, although I'd been aware of his latest film The Black Death, with Sean Bean, and am now all the more interested in seeing it. He makes some interesting visual choices, given the genre he's working with (I don't think I've seen so much effective use of soft focus in a modern horror movie), and some of his shots are simply striking. And Melissa George, who was serviceable if not particularly inspiring in 30 Days Of Night (that's a good way to describe that whole movie actually), is extremely capable of playing the wide range of emotions and scenes required of her in this film. Her character, Jess, is given a surprising amount of depth for the blonde protagonist of a horror movie and George perfectly strikes the balance of beautiful vulnerability and raw brutality that is at the core of every female character in a horror film.

If you've got any interest in this film, I'd recommend that you read nothing else about it and check it out as soon as possible. I don't think it will disappoint.

THE LITTLE GIANT

Dir. Roy Del Ruth USA 1933

The Little Giant is one of at least 4 films Edward G. Robinson made that spoof the gangster persona that launched in to stardom in Little Caesar. A Slight Case Of Murder is the best of the ones I've seen so far, although Brother Orchid is solid as well (I have yet to check out Larceny, Inc.). Little Giant has a bit of workhorse quality to it (Roy Del Ruth directed James Cagney in Lady Killer, which I reviewed a few months ago, another enjoyable, if unremarkable gangster comedy), but it's more than worth the 75 minutes it takes to watch it, and does take a slightly different perspective on the very narrow "Edward G. Robinson playing a retired gangster trying to fit in with high society" genre. Seriously, he made at least 4 movies about that.

So Eddie G. plays Bugs Ahearn, a wealthy bootlegger who gets out of the business when Prohibition is repealed. Eager to put his ill-gotten gains to good use, he and his crotchety right hand man move to a fancy resort town in California and attempt to rub elbows with classy high society types. There he acquires a snarky Girl Friday secretary in the form of Mary Astor and falls in love with a callow socialite who is only trying to land him because her family is broke. Zaniness ensues.

As I said, despite being a highly specific formula, the film is formulaic nonetheless. However, it's still massively entertaining for a number of reasons, chief among them being Robinson himself. Perhaps the reason Robinson made these fish out of water comedies so often was due to the way he felt about his real life career. A highly educated European immigrant, Robinson ironically became famous for portraying uncouth toughs with delusions of grandeur. His real life passion for and knowledge of art lends an extra layer of amusement to a scene in which Bugs shows off a Cubist painting he spent many thousands of dollars on, claiming it's got "loads of perspective" and claiming, "I'm just crawlin' with education. I been reading all them Greeks. They do plenty besides shining shoes and running lunchrooms." in a bit of hilariously obscure racism. Robinson sells all of this with his usual pitch-perfect theatrical hand gestures and machine gun delivery. I could watch a whole movie of him just ranting about things.

The film also shines as an example of what you could get away with in the Pre-Code era (basically the years between 1929 and 1934, when films had sound but no organized system of regulating content, until the Hayes Code was instituted). The scene I quoted above also contains a joke about cocaine use (actually using the word cocaine), which is never even mentioned, let alone joked about in old films. Some one also gets called a faggot, which I didn't even know was an slur back in the '30s. Not that racism and bigotry are funny (only sometimes), but it's pretty wild to see what you could get away with back during that tiny window of time, and it gives the films a looser, more natural feel, rather than the stuffy, uptight tone that people now associated with older films.

Finally, although she has a pretty small part, the film is a nice showcase for Mary Astor, who always left me a little cold in The Maltese Falcon. Granted, her character in that film is a remorseless, manipulative bitch, but the fact that she played it so well always kind of made me dislike her. Unfair, I know. Here, she plays a clever, sympathetic wise-ass and displays some pretty great comedic timing as the straight (wo)man to Robinson's motor-mouth gangster. The film as a whole makes an interesting choice to breeze through the crime elements and focus most of its time on the absurdities of the upper class and anyone who would try to fit in that crowd, an unsurprising, but understandable viewpoint for a film made during the height of the Great Depression. After all, who doesn't like to laugh at their betters?

WINTER'S BONE / THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

Dir. Debra Granik US 2010

Dir. Lisa Cholodenko US 2010

There's a lot to work with when comparing these two films. I watched them both as part of my Oscar catch-up (making me 8 for 10 on Best Picture noms). Odds are that neither would have been nominated if the Academy were still operating under the 5 film structure. Both feature nominated Best Actress and Supporting Actor performances. Both were directed by women. Both are about (in their own very different ways) the importance of family and the difficulties therein.

I watched Winter's Bone at a pretty interesting point in my life, in terms of what I'm watching and reading. I'd just finished my second viewing of The Wire a week or so before I saw it. Later that night I watched the second season premiere of Justified. And just this past week I re-read all my issues of Scalped, my current favorite comic book from Vertigo. All four of these works deal with American communities functioning in abject poverty, places where the drug trade, substance abuse and violence run rampant. Places with their own cultures and codes and lifestyles. Justified even takes place in roughly the same area of the country as Winter's Bone (Harlan, Kentucky and the rural Missouri, respectively). Winter's Bone seems like an easy contender for the most realistic of the four (with The Wire probably being a close second), and it's definitely the most meditative. Structured loosely as a detective story (much of what I've read about it calls it a noir, although I don't totally agree with that), Winter's Bone is at its core a story about a girl who must endure the hell that is her extended family for the sake of saving her immediate family.

Jennifer Lawrence (Best Actor nom) stars as Ree Dolly, a 17-year old girl living in the wooded mountains of Missouri. Having dropped out of high school in order to care for her younger siblings and her mentally-disturbed mother, Ree's efforts are further complicated when she discovers that her father, who cooks meth for a living, skipped his court hearing after posting their home as collateral. Facing eviction within the week, Ree descends into a world of crime and violence in order to find her father and save what's left of her family.

Winter's Bone does a lot with very little. The dialogue is sparse and to the point. Other than Ree, the characters are vague sketches left to be filled in by a cast of weathered-looking and very effective character actors. The camerawork and editing are minimal as well, much of the mood being set by the chilly cinematography and the drab landscape. More than anything, Winter's Bone is a mood piece, the simple plot merely acting as a towline for the audience as they are dragged through a dark corner of America.

Within the plot itself, the more is less approach applies as well. Despite there being almost zero onscreen violence in the film, the threat of violence in the film is almost omnipresent. Nearly every character Ree encounters is willing to do her harm if it serves there interest, and unlike the protagonist of a detective novel (who would most likely be in the same situation), Ree is never afforded any means of protecting herself. Her willpower alone fuels both her character and the plot.

Lawrence herself, in her first leading role, plays along with the film's aesthetic; her voice is muted but clear, her reactions solid and measured. The believability of the entire film rests entirely on whether or not you believe that a 17-year old girl can be as hard, as determined and as savvy as Ree. The other nominated performance in this film is John Hawkes, who plays Ree's dangerous uncle, Teardrop. It was pretty wild to see Hawkes get an Oscar nomination, I have to say. I've been a fan of his since Deadwood and its nice to see someone doing so much solid character work get the recognition. Teardrop is definitely a departure for Hawkes, who manages to exude a gloomy, world-weary menace despite his thin frame and short stature. There's a scene toward the end of the film between him and the local sheriff (played by Garrett Dillahunt, another great Deadwood alum), that kept me on the edge of my seat despite being extremely underplayed by Hawkes. Neither Lawrence nor Hawkes have a chance in their respective categories at the Oscars, but I'm sure they appreciate the thought.

As for the movie as a whole, my feelings toward it could best (and most obnoxiously) be described as chilly. The premise and the execution are all solid, but by the end of the film I still felt like I was still at arms length from all the characters, even Ree. The overwhelming bleakness of the film doesn't allow much room for humor (and rightly so), but moments of levity are ultimately the best device for generating sympathy for characters, and there is none to be found in this film. It's a fascinating world and flawlessly made on a technical level, but I don't know that it's something I'd ever want to revisit.

Speaking of levity. The Kids Are All Right. Following the unanimous praise the film received in the immediate wake of its release, I starting coming across a lot of backlash against the film, especially following its multiple Oscar nominations. I agree with a number of these criticism, which I'll get to, but on an emotional level, I felt a pretty strong disconnect from this film as well. Maybe I'm just dead inside.

So the movie is about a middle-aged lesbian couple Nic and Jules (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore; a more realistically hot middle-aged lesbian couple would be tough to come by), who each gave birth to one of their two kids via artificial insemination. Their kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutchinson) are now 18 and 16, and become curious about their biological father. They meet him without telling their moms and discover that he is a free-spirited hip(ster/pie) who owns an organic farm and rides a motorcycle (unsurprisingly, he's played by Mark Ruffalo). They all meet each other and heartfelt wackiness ensues.

One of the more common criticisms I heard about this film was that no one would have been that impressed if it had been about a straight couple. I'm inclined to agree. I'm grateful that the movie used only its broad premise to establish its quirky indie cred (other than a few details which varied in annoyance; the kids calling them 'the moms' was kind of charming, the son being named Laser, which is never explained, was pretty stupid). The characters are all well acted, but I really wasn't sure who I was supposed to be rooting for (among the three adults as least), and eventually ended up feeling ambivalent about their collective relationship(s). Benning and Moore have a natural chemistry together and the scenes between them where they're at peace, but their 'personality flaws' were a little too neatly drawn (Benning as the functioning alcoholic/control freak and Moore as the capricious, irresponsible one) and it made all the domestic drama a bit too predictable. Ruffalo's character felt a bit more real, mostly due to how increasingly despicable his actions become as the film progresses (although he was still fairly sympathetic by the end). His character arc is also left completely hanging, which I felt was a strange choice, but ultimately it does reinforce the familial bond between the other four characters, which is the point of the entire film.

I don't know how deserving any of the three adult leads are of their Oscar nominations. None of them are stretching themselves too far outside their comfort zone (not that you need to do that to deserve an Oscar), and the script was competent enough for it not to feel like they were carrying the movie entirely on their shoulders. I'm also not sure if its the fault of the marketing or the film itself that so much of the buzz revolved around its portrayal of a 'normal' gay family, but it does at times seem like its trying a bit too hard.

The Oscars are on tonight (it took me forever to post this review) and I don't see any of these films winning big (Annette Benning for Best Actress is probably the strongest possibility), but I'm glad I got to check them out beforehand. If I have time I may do a quick write-up of the ceremony in the next day or two. Other than that, I'm watched a pair of horror movies last week that I will hopefully get too soon.

YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE / YOU & ME

Dir. Fritz Lang USA 1937

Dir. Fritz Lang USA 1938

My final cinema seminar at NYU was a comparative directors course on the work of Fritz Lang and Luis Bunuel. Both were prominent European directors who were forced out of their own countries and continued to make films in America (or Mexico in Bunuel's case). Both were know for their striking visual styles and incisive social commentary. Of the two, I vastly preferred Lang's angular expressionism and pulpy narratives to Bunuel's dreamy surrealism and bizarre storytelling devices. Although he will always be remembered (along with F.W. Murnau) as the pioneer of German Expressionism, Fritz Lang actually had a much lengthier career as a workhorse of the Hollywood studio system, directing one film a year from 1936 to 1957. These ran the gamut from social awareness pictures to crime dramas to westerns to noirs. Although the quality and importance of his American work varied, his auteurial stamp (bold, expressive shadows, shots of staring eyes, the steep price of vengeance, etc.) is clear, at least in all the examples I've seen. The Film Forum on Houston Street was showing a Lang in Hollywood series for the past few weeks and I caught a double feature at the tail end. I'd seen You Only Live Once in the aforementioned class. I was seeing You & Me for the first time.

You Only Live Once stars Henry Fonda as Eddie Taylor, a small time crook just released from prison with the assistance of his fiance Jo Graham (Sylvia Sydney) and her boss, a sympathetic city attorney (Barton MacLane). Despite his attempts to live honestly, Eddie finds himself framed for a bank robbery and facing the electric chair. Following a violent escape from prison, Eddie and Jo go on the lam, condemning themselves to a life of crime and violence on the road.

At a punchy 76 minutes (there's apparently a more violent 90 minute cut somewhere out there), You Only Live Once is narratively and structurally similar to Gun Crazy or, most obvioiusly, Bonnie And Clyde. But whereas the protagonists of those two films are genuine criminals and psychopaths, Eddie and Jo are simply good people pushed too far by circumstance and injustice. Despite its occassionally hokey plotting and some very on-the-nose dialogue (even by the standards of the era), the film does a good job of portraying many of the ills that normal people were forced to endure toward the end of the Great Depression (seriously, like, every ill you can imagine. The string of bad luck these two have strains even my generous credulity). The film pull as few punches as it's time allowed, featuring a number of scenes that would be bleak even by today's standards. Notable moments include Jo sucking milk from a punctured tin can, the two of them raising an infant in a bullet-riddled car and a pair of gas station attendees robbing the register and blaming it on them after they've stolen some gas and driven off.

Thematically, this film is very similar to Lang and Sydney's previous collaboration, 1936's Fury, which was also a powerful tract on the injustice suffered by individuals when they are faced with indifferent institutions and mob mentality. Sylvia Sydney is wonderful here as the wide-eyed, always encouraging Jo, who believes the best of Eddie and is willing to follow him into Hell with a naiveté and optomism that's always understandable and never annoying or ridiculous. Less impressive is Henry Fonda, who is more than capable when it comes to portraying Eddie as a desparing, down-on-his-luck shell of a man, but less convincing when he's required to appear dangerous or violent. I suppose that's the point ultimately, given that Eddie is by nature not dangerous or violent, but I found myself struggling to take him seriously whenever he was waving a gun around.

I was much more invested in You & Me, a film that addresses very similar issues, but does so with a bit more levity and charm. The film features George Raft and Sylvia Sydney as Joe and Helen, a pair of employees at a department store with a kindly manger (Harry Carey) who goes out of his way to hire reformed cons who have trouble finding work. One of these cons is Joe, a decent man with impulse control problems who manages to ground himself in a relationship with Helen. Initially told that they need to hid their marriage due to store policy, it is eventually revealed that Helen herself is an ex-con who knows that their marriage is a violation of both their paroles (is that still true? Seems kind of Draconian). While Joe begins to grow suspicious of Helen's behavior, he also finds himself being drawn back into a life of crime by his old gang members, who claim to be the only family he'll ever truely have.

It would be a stretch to call this film a comedy, but it features plenty of witty dialogue and doesn't really get serious until the back half. It also features two extremely bizarre pseudo-musical sequences that were very interesting, but felt extremely out of place in an otherwise grounded film. Beyond that though, I was pretty charmed by this film overall. It begins as a comedy of errors (of sorts) that seemlessly segues into an effective social drama without feeling tonally imbalanced. It's got a strong supporting cast and some clever dialogue, some of it a bit risque for the time (nothing like gregarious Jewish landladies for some inappropriate humor, amirite?)

What really sold this movie for me, however, was the pairing of George Raft and Sylvia Sydney. I've never been a huge George Raft fan, and this movie didn't quite convert me, but I was definitely the most enjoyable performance I've seen of his. Raft coasted for most of (if not all) his career by pretty much playing himself. Bogart and Cagney were able to fill same roles while having a lot more range as actors and thanks to bad career management and his own vanity, Raft popularity waned throughout the 40's while his fellow tough-guy actors went on to win Oscars (Raft actually inadvertantly launched Bogart to stardom by passing on the lead roles in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon). His role in this film allows him to stretch a bit, incorporating his usual act into a more broadly comedic role. Surprisingly, while I found his dramatic performance in the film to be a bit stiff, early scenes of him joking around with Sydney while having a night out on the town are some of the best in the whole movie. His personality bleeds into the performance to such a degree that some of the dialogue feels as though it might be ad-libbed (although that doesn't really seem like something Fritz Lang would have allowed).

Sylvia Sydney, who plays a very passive second to Henry Fonda in You Only Live Once, is given much more to work with in this film as a second protagonist alongside Raft. Savvier and more down-to-earth than Jo, Helen is a proactive, intelligent character and allows Sydney to play both the sexy flapper and the cute girl-next-door personas that she combined so well. She's rapidly overtaking Priscilla Lane as my favorite underrated early film actress.

I'm happy to finally be getting to the Film Forum on a semi-regular basis. Hopefully I'll be able to check out some other cool things in the coming months. The double features especially, are tailor made for this blog.

UP NEXT: Winter's Bone and The Kids Are Alright as part of my 2010 Oscar catchup.

APPALOOSA / THE FURIES

Dir. Ed Harris 2008 USA

Dir. Anthony Mann 1950 USA

Leave it to a pair of Westerns to get me back in the groove. Oddly enough, both of these films are fairly unconventional as Westerns go, but at least that gives me something to talk about.

Appaloosa is Ed Harris' sophomore directorial effort following 2000's Pollack. Based on a novel by crime writer Robert B. Parker, Appaloosa is the story of Virgil Cole (Harris) and his partner Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), a pair of gunslingers who roam the West and hire themselves out as law enforcement officers. They arrive at the titular New Mexican town in 1882 to find that the local sheriff has been murdered by a vicious rancher named Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) and his gang of thugs. Cole and Hitch's attempts to clean-up the town are stymied by the arrival of Allison French (Renee Zellweger), a mysterious widow with uncertain allegiances.

By my standards, all Westerns fall into one of three time periods, Classic (1903 to 1964), Revisionist (1964 to 1992) and Modern (1992 to present). Classic Westerns are your old school John Ford/John Wayne style films. Clear-cut good guys and bad guys, the usual stock characters and plots, basically the foundations of the genre. Revisionist Westerns begin and end with Clint Eastwood (A Fistful Of Dollars and Unforgiven to be specific). They introduce morally grey protagonists, shifting cultural dynamics and graphic, omnipresent violence. Both of these eras are fairly well defined, whereas the Modern Western remains a categorically murky classification that has yet to fully form. After Eastwood's Unforgiven became the final word in Revisionist Westerns, the genre remained stagnant for much of the 90's before a small resurgence in the middle of the last decade, mostly thanks to the success of the HBO series Deadwood. The films that followed in its wake (The Proposition, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford and Seraphim Falls are what I would consider the stand-outs) were marked by fastitious attention to historical detail, sparse, yet measured storytelling and a minimalist (but still brutal) approach to violence.

So what makes Appoloosa such an oddball? The film features the plotting and sensibilities of a Classic Western (well-mannered characters, and a story featuring a hero, a villain and a love interest) combined with the visual aesthetic of a Modern Western. What little gunplay occurs in the film is over in a manner of seconds and the attention to detail is convincing and immersive. Ultimately however, this created a tonal imbalance that ended up bothering me for most of the film. And while I'm not opposed to a light-hearted Western, I found it difficult to take the film seriously as a whole.

Beyond the issues of genre, the movie is a mixed bag overall. Jeremy Irons is does an excellent job with the material he's given, but ended up feeling wasted. Renee Zellweger (who just bugs the crap out of me anyway) didn't seem to have a clear idea of how to play an admittedly difficult character. Allison French is duplicitious and sycophantic, and her relationship with Cole distracts from Cole's far more interesting relationship with Hitch. The character would have probably been a problem no matter what, but casting an actress I dislike in the role didn't help.

The characters of Cole and Hitch are interesting and well-drawn and Harris and Mortensen are extremely convincing in their portrayal of two guys who have been friends for so long that they're able to communicate their intentions and plans to each other in glances and nods. They're emotionally complex while still being consistent and reliable in their words and actions. You can read a lot of homosexual subtext into their relationship, but that actually makes it feel richer. You could also kill yourself with a drinking game based around all the instances of Hitch putting down and picking up his shotgun. I chalk that up to Viggo Mortensen being even cooler when insinuating violence than he is when committing it.

The Furies can really only be called a Western by virtue of it's setting (New Mexico again, but ten years earlier in 1872). It's actually more of a dynastic family drama with unusually impressive scenery. Known for a series of five Westerns he made with Jimmy Stewart in the early and mid-50's (Winchester '73 and The Naked Spur are the best ones, incase you care. Bend In The River is pretty good too.), Anthony Mann noted use of landscape to set the mood of his films is clearly present in The Furies. Unlike the Jimmy Stewart collaborations, which were shot in Technicolor, The Furies shadowy black and white cinematography does a excellent job of conveying the bleakness and dread that pervades the film.

Barbara Stanwyck plays Vance Jeffords, the daughter of ruthless, self-made cattle baron T. C. Jeffords (Walter Huston in his last film role). While scheming to wrest the titular estate from her father, Vance falls in love with an awesomely named, but extremely shady gambler, Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey). Meanwhile, her father intends to marry a shrewd widow (man, you can't trust widows apparently) with her own designs on The Furies.

Although the film is almost two hours long, The Furies feels a bit like an epic that never quite got off the ground. There are a number of plot threads, several of which I left out of the recap above, and while nothing ever feels half-baked or cut-off, there are a number of avenues the film could have explored in order to give the film the scope it seems to be after. For example, Vance has a brother who's introduced at the beginning of the film and who presumably hangs around the entire time, but is never given any kind of character development. You'd think he'd have something to say about who inherits the estate, but nothing ever comes of it.

Despite feeling a bit rushed, The Furies is quite the odd little gem, unsurprisingly brought to DVD by the good folks at Criterion. Barbara Stanwyck is fantastic as Vance, a character that allows her to bring her impressive range as an actress to bear. Ruthless and ambitious, she's nonetheless vulnerable and sympathetic when necessary and generally an all around badass by the standards of a woman in a film made in 1950 and set in 1872. This is somewhat disappointingly undercut by her relationship with Wendell Corey's character, who's chauvinism struck me as a bit much, even given the era. Corey himself is also a bit bland, not quite possessing the charm of Gable or Grant, who could slap a woman around all day and still manage to be pretty damn likable.

Also excellent is Walter Huston as T.C., a hilariously self-possessed man's man who prints money with his own face on it and begins circulating it into the local economy in order to escape his crippling debts. The relationship between Vance and T.C. is, despite seeming vaguely incestual at times, is uniquely entertaining, as they scheme against each other while still maintaining a genuinely respectful and affable rapport.

As I said, the film doesn't really qualify as a Western, despite a fairly large shoot-out toward the end of the second act, but I probably enjoyed it more than Appoloosa, which was a bit of a mixed bag.

Well. It's good to be back. I think I'm just going to blame my month-long lapse on the weather. It's been depressing. I'm feeling good about this though. Thanks for sticking around.

UP NEXT: I'm going to a double feature at the Film Forum tomorrow night. They're winding down a Fritz Lang in Hollywood run and I'll be seeing You Only Live Once with Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sydney and You & Me with George Raft and Sylvia Sydney again. Good thing she's adorable. Also, as part of my Oscar catch-up, I've got Winter's Bone and The Kids Are Alright from Netflix. Exciting times.

What Happened To This Thing?

Damn.

So I kind of over did it while I was home for the holidays. I was watching a few movies a day and keeping up with everything started to feel more like a burden or a chore than something I actually wanted to do. I kind of figured this would happen eventually, but I thought it'd take a bit longer than this. It hasn't even been a year yet.

I'm not abandoning this blog altogether, but I'm (obviously) going to be cutting back on my reviews. Maybe to just what I've seen in theatres. Since Black Swan, I've only seen Season Of The Witch (Capsule Review: It sucked), so there. I'm all caught up. If I see something I really want to write about on DVD, I'll do that too. And I'll definitely be doing week by week reviews of A Game of Thrones when it starts in April.

Anyway. Sorry to disappoint the 8 people that read this thing, but I didn't want to leave things hanging. Hopefully my inspiration will return.

BLACK SWAN

Dir. Darren Aranofsky US 2010

"I just want to be perfect."

I've been doing a good job this season of seeing all the probable Oscar contenders. I usually do this more out of a sense of personal necessity, rather than an attempt to win an Oscar pool or even come up with my own list of winners. Who or what gets an Academy Award is decided just as much by politics and popularity as it is by the quality of a movie or a performance. The Social Network seems to be the front runner this year for most of the big awards, but if I were allowed a vote, Black Swan would be my choice for Best Picture as well as Natalie Portman for Best Actress and Darren Aronofsky for Best Director. Had I not been sitting down while watching this film, it would have knocked me on my ass. While I wouldn't call it my favorite movie of the year (Hi-five Scott Pilgrim!), I did find it captivating and moving in a way that I haven't felt about a movie in a long time.

The film stars Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers, a sheltered young ballerina who is desperate to win the lead role in her company's production of Swan Lake. Her success is both encouraged and hampered by her disturbingly over-involved mother (Barbara Hershey) and her director Thomas (the always creepy Vincent Cassel). As Nina struggles to master the role of the seductive black swan, a rivalry with the newly arrived Lily (Mila Kunis) transforms her quest for perfection into a descent into madness.

This film is advertised as a psychological thriller, but I would have no trouble calling it a horror movie. There are a large number of moments in the film that are frightening for a variety of reasons. There's jump scares, gross-out moments and scenes of creeping, hypnotizing dread, all masterfully executed by Aronofsky, the actors and the effects team. Much of what I've read about the film compares it to David Cronenberg's work, but I would say that Dario Argento (especially Suspiria) is an equally strong influence. Many modern horror films claim/try to be "gritty and realistic", but Black Swan demonstrates how far off the mark they are by immersing you in an extremely mundane, tangible setting (Aronofsky uses the same over-the-shoulder camera work and grainy cinematography that he used to great effect in The Wrestler) and then having it come alive with other-worldly horrors.

Another little advertised fact about this film is how completely it is about ballet. It's a risky proposition, given the narrow range of popularity that ballet commands, to dive so completely into it in a film. With the exception of a ten minute segment in the middle of the film, the entire movie is set at either the ballet studio or Nina's apartment, which offers no reprieve given Nina and her mother's constant preoccupation with it. Surprisingly, this immersion isn't particularly expository. I don't feel that I learned a lot about ballet by watching this film (and I don't think I necessarily needed to) but I did get an extremely close look at everything that goes into it. The constant practicing, the endless preparation, the suprising amount of injury sustained, the abscence of the glamour and tranquility normally associated with ballet is all front and center in this film. It makes for an interesting look into something most people probably never think about.

Carrying this entire work on her skinny little shoulders in Natalie Portman. I've always wanted to like Natalie Portman more than I've actually liked her. She's very demure and intelligent in interviews, and clearly has a good sense of humor, but her film choices are always a mixed bag and she seems to always play the same few notes (worried, upset, scared) in every thing she's in. Her role as Nina pretty much takes her usual persona and cranks it up to a raw, vicious extreme. Portman lost 20 pounds for the role of Nina (she didn't really seem like she had them to lose before that) and this weight-loss, combined with Aronofsky's intimate, naturalistic style of filmmaking, keeps her looking haggard and exhausted for the entire film. And even though it's not really possible to cover up the fact that Natalie Portman is insanely hot, small imperfections in her skin and way her ribs stick out during the dance sequences are all tiny reminders that neither she or the film are concerned with her looking her best. The emotional transformation that Nina slowly goes through is never anything but completely convincing and requires Portman to play her usual just as much as she goes against it. She seems to be the front runner for Best Actress this year and she totally deserves it.

Given how completely this movie is about Nina (I'm pretty sure she's in every single scene of the film), the rest of the cast is somewhat marginalized. Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel do what they do best (be extremely sexy and be sexy in a creepy, douchey way, respectively), but the biggest standout other than Portman would be Barbara Hershey as her mother, Erica. I'm not to familiar with the earlier part of Hershey's career, but here she walks a passive-aggressive line between tragically sympathetic and utter batshit insanity. Sure she treats her 28 year old daughter like she's 8, but as Nina becomes more and more unhinged, the fear and concern in Erica's eyes makes her much more relatable that you'd want her to be.

Oh yeah, there's a lesbian sex scene in this. Between Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman. As I mentioned above with regards to Natalie Portman's unnatural waifishness, this movie does an excellent job of showing you something sexy and then making it fucked up and/or revolting. The sex scene is no exception. There's also a masturbation scene that's even worse, playing out exactly as a scene from a horror movie would. Fucked. Up.

I could probably go on forever about this movie. It's beautiful and frightening and engrossing and sad. If you see one Oscar-caliber movie this season, make it this one.

UP NEXT: Christmas break has left me far behind on my reviews. I'm going to try to knock out one a night this week until I'm caught up. Wish me luck. Tomorrow: Kid Galahad, starring Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis and Humphery Bogart.

TRUE GRIT

Joel and Ethan Coen USA 2010

I've seen just about every film the Coen Brothers have ever made, and after a while, they begin to become a bit predictable in their weirdness. The wacky characters, the random plot twists, the relentlessly clever dialogue. With all of that in mind, True Grit, their remake of the 1969 film for which John Wayne won his only Oscar, was surprising for its straightforward, old-fashioned tone and predictable (but still thrilling) narrative.

Set in the late 1870's, True Grit is the story of Mattie Ross, a tenacious 14-year old girl who, while traveling West to reclaim the body of her murdered father, decides to take revenge upon the killer, with the assistance of drunken, trigger-happy Marshal Rooster Cogburn and a pompous Texas Ranger named LeBeouf.

I saw the 1969 version of True Grit a number of years ago and my memories of it are fairly dim. Given the linear nature of the plot, I assume the Coens changed little when re-adapting the novel, but 4o years of social progress have allowed them to punch it up with some of the violence and swearing that would have been common in the Old West. That said, this a fairly tame film by the Coen's standards, featuring almost no sexuality, cursing that's more amusing than shocking and violence that, while bloody, is fairly brief. This, combined with it's no-frills approach to the plot, gives the film an almost quaint, timeless feeling. It's a nice change of pace.

Continuing their successful run with cinematographer Roger Deakins (who also shot The Assassination of Jesse James, which is one of the best looking movies I've ever seen), the Coen Brothers coat the film in the slick grittyness that's been popular with Westerns ever since Deadwood. The color palette is pretty interesting as well, evoking old sepia tones while still maintaining a natural feel.

The biggest draw for this film, it would seem, is the acting. After being crushingly disappointed by his performance in Tron, it was nice to see Jeff Bridges back in top form for True Grit. He does an excellent job of distancing himself from both Wayne's performance as well as his own Oscar-winning portrayal of a drunken old codger in last years' Crazy Heart. With his indistinct, yet loquacious mumbling and his simultaneously irritable, yet Zen-like approach to life, Bridges creates a character that is entirely distinct, yet distinctly his own. Plus, he rocks the eyepatch pretty hard.

What's got most people talking though, is newcomer Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie. Highly precocious, as all child actors must be, Steinfeld also possesses all the poise and determination the role requires as well as a precisely annunciated, Judy Garland-style line delivery that further contributes to the films classic feel. Matt Damon rounds out the main cast as the preening Texas Ranger and does a nice job of making him enjoyable while still keeping him a pompous ass.

Despite really enjoying this movie, I left the theatre feeling a bit indifferent to the whole thing. I think the ending put too fine a point on the whole thing and it felt a bit abrupt (not as abrupt as No Country For Old Men). It was nice to see them do a straight Western after dancing around the genre in the past, but I'd much rather see another original offering from them in the future.