The Rake Magazine

Once again, it's a children's holiday, film-wise, here in our lovely city. Saturday at 10:15, the library's showing the lovely Horton Hears A Who (1966) and Sneetches and Zax (1972). Both films are light years better than the horrible, hateful Jim Carrey and Mike Myers vehicles of the past few years. The two cartoons are the creation of Chuck Jones and Fritz Freling (respectively), two of the geniuses in the Warner Bros. stable (Jones also directed the superior Grinch cartoon). Wendy Knox will be telling stories before the show.

Sunday at 2, Cine-Kids, the Alliance Francaise children's film program, will be screening Loulou et Autres Loups, which I would gladly take in if I could speak a word of French (no subtitles here). These nifty animated shorts "hope to break stereotypes of the Big Bad Wolf."

Yes, I am aware that cornucopia is spelled incorrectly.

Being grouchy from both the inanity of the Oscars and the fact that Zodiac continues to fare poorly against 300 and Wild Hogs, I found myself playing the list game, hopefully releasing some of the bile that's accumulated over the years. A caveat: some of these movies listed below are actually decent. In fact, a couple of these films I've enjoyed very much, just not as much as the majority of the world. And time is of the essence, as there is not one film from this year, as it is a film's staying power that makes it overrated. For instance, Little Miss Sunshine is horribly overrated, as is The Departed, both films faring better at the box office than Children of Men and Cache, to name but two. However, time may heal those very public wounds. If they're still being regaled in fifteen years, then I'll amend my list. Dogs are left out--everyone knows that Congo is hideous, therefore it's not overrated.

Furthermore, the Academy has no bearing on this list. Gandhi and Titanic took the brass ring, but so what? They're not overrated by anyone but the Academy.

Of course, I also haven't seen everything that's ever been released. Great are the gaps in my history: there's a dearth of Chaplin, Cassavetes, Hal Hartley, and others whose works I've caught glimpses of, were unimpressed, and therefore resisted future screenings. If you see something here you dislike, complain. If you want to post a grumble about my leaving David Lynch off the list, fine, but I love Lynch, and that's how it goes. Keep that in mind... and post your own complaints, or the movies you think are overpraised hoo-hah. Maybe next week I'll post an under-rated list.

10. Psycho, 1960. My father saw Psycho recently, and said, "I forgot that I was bored by it the last time". So true: Psycho has not dated well. The film's not necessarily bad, it's just not that great (though it gets worse when placed beside Hitchcock's other classics, including and especially Rear Window, a much better examination of voyeurism and its trappings). Watch it again, however, and it starts to get a bit creaky. Gone are the rich characterizations of Hitch's past films, and really, the central conceit, which everyone knows by now, isn't enough to float an oddly tension-less film. Not to mention the fact that Perkins has been much better doing nearly the same shtick, including Orson Welles' The Trial and the underrated Pretty Poison.

9. Fargo, 1996. I like Fargo. Despite this, I still don't believe it belongs in the Coen Brothers' top five (Miller's Crossing, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple, and Barton Fink are all better). Fargo is well made, but empty. Is it a crime caper, a comedy, a meaningful examination of life on the frozen prairie or the wages of greed? Who knows? Too often, emotional connections are never fulfilled, characters killed or tossed aside cruelly. What, for instance, is the point of the scene in which the rotten father (played by William H. Macy) comforts his son... who is never seen again? Or the father-in-law who gets blown away? The movie reaches for moments of intense emotional clarity, only to devolve into jokes like the shredding of an accomplice in a wood chipper, which has had tongues wagging now for over ten years (please stop--it's not that incredible). And then there's Marge, a character who no one really seems to know. Can anyone truly relate to her? What are her goals, ambitions, sorrows, frustrations?

8. To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962. Perhaps it's the source novel that should bear the blame, but this classic has always grated on my nerves. Maybe it's the endless preaching, the lessons that are hammered on your skull every fifteen minutes, or perhaps it's that the true story is not about little Scout learning her lesson, but poor, crippled Tom Robinson having to defend himself, unsuccessfully, from the charge of rape. He dies, of course, but the little white girl sure grew up fast! And consider the names: Atticus, Scout, Dill, Boo Radley, Heck Tate, Robert E. Lee Ewell, and... Tom Robinson, the black prop with the dull moniker (why bother to give him any character?). Here, African Americans are there for white folks to earn salvation, to learn lessons, or reveal their dark side. And Gregory Peck has been so much better in stronger films (Duel in the Sun, Cape Fear, and Roman Holiday to name three). Why, you might forget the guy has range...

7. American Beauty, 1999. A rotten, hateful, misogynist film. Apparently, ladies, you can only find beauty by paying attention to the guys in your life who film garbage blowing in the wind. Annette Bening is light years better than Kevin Spacey, and her role is thankless, the shallow woman for whom Spacey gets to bounce his lines off. See, Spacey's character knows that red convertibles and underage girls are transcendent, but Bening's love of fine clothes and SUVs is a reflection of her shallow nature. Go figure. Unfunny, un provocative, and deeply insulting, I am at a complete loss as to why anyone likes this film.

6. The George A. Romero Zombie Flicks. Night of the Living Dead (1968) isn't bad, with its political message shoved on at the very end, and quite potent. But then Romero got it into his brain that these were going to be serious films. Dawn of the Dead (1978) with its goofy blue-faced zombies (yes, makeup wasn't that bad then, even in cheap films) is dull; Day of the Dead (1985) is worse, claustrophobic without tension, mean-spirited and lacking wit; and Land of the Dead (2005) wowed critics because it took on the Bush Administration! That's a bold move in 2005. Interesting to see that the underclass of Romero's Land are the Irish, and that his cities, and his undead, don't contain Muslims or Asians. This is important because Romero seems to think of himself as a social critic, and yet he seems more a man who is the product of his times than someone who thinks outside of the box. Without that, his films had better be interesting. And they're not.

5. Nashville, 1975. A perfect summary of Robert Altman's erratic career. At times brilliant, with some magnificent performances, like the always splendid Lily Tomlin. But mix that in with the self-indulgent crap Robert Carradine calls acting, and then fold in all the songs that were written by Hollywood stars who don't seem to have a clue what a country-western song should sound like, and this is one flat cake. Nashville's ending is insulting, as is Altman's need to browbeat you with obvious clues as to the identity of the assassin ("Are you a musician?" asked over and over, to which we eventually shout "no, he's going to shoot someone!") Altman cares little about his audience, with his gratuitous celebrity shots (a common occurrence in his movies), and his lack of understanding the eponymous city or its music. No, he's better than those rubes, and his arrogance comes through. Technically interesting (especially the sound), it's still baffling that his so-called 'command' of all his characters is what is praised, as so many are forgettable. Considering Altman's made McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Gosford Park, that Nashville is considered his masterpiece is confounding.

4. An American in Paris, 1951. Easily the most difficult entry on this list, as American isn't a bad movie, and in fact is downright fun the first time around. But it's widely acclaimed as one of the greatest musicals ever, and it isn't. In fact, it really isn't close, for you'd have to forget Singin' in the Rain, Fred Astaire, and many, many others. As a vehicle for both Gene Kelly and Oscar Levant it's wonderful, but the plot is creaky, nonsensical, and its ballet goes on and on and on, and only emphasizes that there's no plot to keep you occupied. The film also lacks wit. Singin' in the Rain, for instance, is an abundant pleasure even without the singing and dancing. An American in Paris is not so good in its quiet moments, actually quite a forgettable experience outside of a few great songs (and how could you go wrong with Gershwin). A film whose potential was never realized.

3. All About Eve, 1950. Considered the apex of sharp wit, All About Eve should also be regarded as the nadir of story-telling technique. A film that begins with so much narration you feel as if you're watching a book on tape. When it finally gets rolling, well, then the action stops while another character sits down and tells a story, with cuts to the actors shocked faces at the words coming out of her mouth. It only gets worse. You could rightly criticize My Dinner With Andre as dull, but Eve is roughly the same film, all yakity-yak. Does anybody actually do anything in this movie? The answer's a resounding no, and the performances are sterile and hackneyed to boot. This film walked off with an armload of Oscars and has been widely regarded as one of the few films to deserve them. Horribly dated, lacking insight, not even fun by bitchy standards, All About Eve is instead a wretched bore.

2. Schindler's List, 1993. The greatest Holocaust film ever made. We know that because Spielberg and his minions have made sure to tell us, over and over (even going so far as to distribute the thing to schools). True, Schindler's List has about 90 minutes of great filmmaking. Too bad, then, that it's still got another 100 minutes to account for. Included in its crimes are the creepy shots of the doomed blonde girl in the red coat, apparently heading off to die, and, we learn, one of the secret motivations for Oskar Schindler's kindness. A girl in a red coat in a black and white film? Why, it's just another way for the master of schmaltz to drive home a point. Of course, Spielberg has a dozen moppets flung about (he could quite possibly be the worst director of children), including one cute little boy in a toilet, who, like the rest of them, has no personality or character. Spielberg's camera zooms around like he's chasing giant sharks again, and the whole thing looks like Nazi Germany from an Indiana Jones perspective. Then there's the patronizing attitude toward the victims, culminating in Schindler's reminding a rabbi that it's the Sabbath, so why doesn't the old fellow go ahead and pray. News to Spielberg: you can bet that the rabbis knew exactly what fucking day the Sabbath was on, and did what they could to praise their God, without Schindler's little grin to egg them on. Or the fact that the director didn't trust us to have a film with an enigma at its center, and Schindler, in the last ten minutes, becomes a weepy and sentimental guy, thus sparing an unintelligent audience difficult questions about the nature of selflessness. The problem with Schindler's List is that its failures are so great and resound so loudly that they upend its strengths. Furthermore, I'm convinced that Polanski saw this too, and that The Pianist, flawed though it is, is a no-holds-barred response to many of Spielberg's soft-centered conflicts (most notably the scene with a Nazi officer's gun jamming--there's one in each film, and Polanski's is truly disturbing.)

1. Every Kubrick film since Spartacus. What happened to Stanley Kubrick? The Killing is very good, Spartacus is fun, and Paths of Glory could be the greatest anti-war film ever made. All three are masterful, moving, with rich characters carrying plots that are both supremely entertaining and challenging. You can't walk away from Paths of Glory and not be moved.

Then he made Lolita, which to this day makes you wonder if he read the damn book. Nabokov wrote a screenplay that wasn't used, and what Kubrick did was take a curiously touching (and disturbing) story and make it into a collection of cheap double entendres and empty performances, including an indulged Peter Sellers and a wasted Shelley Winters. That film was the beginning of Kubrick's removal from the world of people--only George Lucas' second Star Wars trilogy is colder and less human than the Kubrick oeuvre. Dr. Strangelove is fun, but it doesn't withstand repeated viewings, its jokes echoing through empty rooms, as if delivered by robots. 2001 is itself a joke, a vision of the future and the dawn of man whose depth has been eclipsed in imagination by any number of Star Trek episodes (and that is not to praise Star Trek). It is overlong, obsessed with its special effects, a story that could have been told in a twenty minute short and with an ending calculated to take advantage of an audience of stoners. A Clockwork Orange is a loud, boorish insult, poorly acted (Kubrick was never an actor's director), and cannot be said to have influenced anything of quality, though it's look can be seen most notably in the idiotic Pink Floyd's The Wall (that's a legacy for you). Orange has so little to say about the nature of violence, and there's tons of other movies (Peter Weir's Witness comes to mind) that speak with much clearer insight on this subject. These four films alone make you wonder if Kubrick has actually ever known people who have been in love or victims of violence.

Of course, after Clockwork Kubrick was pretty much through: I haven't seen Barry Lyndon or Eyes Wide Shut, though perhaps someday a cruel judge will sentence me to endure both. Stanley's movies since that time have all been flops, barely resonating with society in general and Hollywood in particular. The Shining was easily the most popular, though it ushered in the age of Screamin' Jack, and Kubrick couldn't get over his new toy (the Steadicam use was gratuitous and called attention to itself). Again, what could have been a decent horror film is bogged down with Kubrick's usual ponderousness and his inability to relate to his characters.

Finally, Full Metal Jacket utterly ruins a magnificent little novel (The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford) that was absurd and could have been Kubrick's second anti-war masterpiece after Paths of Glory. But look at those two films: in Paths there is a perfect balance between beautifully executed shots and the actors within them. It boasts a tight script, intelligent and emotional performances, and comes in at a brisk 87 minutes. With Full Metal Jacket (and who knows where that title came from, as the Hasford loathed it), Kubrick again treats the examination of war and violence as mere intellectual exercise, as opposed to being something that actually affects people. The casting of Matthew Modine as Private Joker is a reflection of Kubrick's inability to see his characters as people--Modine was never a great actor, had virtually no range, and is as full of himself as Kubrick (he once claimed he'd never made a bad movie... you're asking for it, kid). Hasford's Joker is loud, rude, fighting against what the military and Vietnam does to him, a sort of Randle Patrick McMurphy in fatigues, while the Joker of Full Metal Jacket has as much to do with a human being as, well, as HAL did in 2001.

David Thomson wrote that Kubrick "was a 'master' who knew too much about film and too little about life--and it shows." Indeed.

There is nothing--I repeat, nothing!--more intriguing cinematically this weekend than the selection of children's films at the Central Library. Oh, you can check out the movies you should have seen over the past few weeks, or haul your child to see Terabithia, which, for my money, ought to have left that mysterious book alone (and allowed our collective imaginations to outdo the ridiculous CGI). This Saturday's showings are particularly fascinating: Folklore Restaurant, for ages 3 and up, and later, the manic Bonkers, which looks like oodles of fun.

Ah, but you scoff, do you? Worldly sophisticate you are, why would you, childless you, take in morning movies amongst the kiddies? Or, cutting-edge parent that you might be, why waste time with a movie, especially ones with subtitles?

Because here you will find a morning and afternoon of cinematic magic, that's why. For the childless and jaded, I can think of no better opportunity for a person to reclaim their love of cinema by watching youngsters react to the beauty they witness on the silver screen. And with these Saturday screenings, you're also watching movies made with, dare I say it, love--a love of storytelling, filmmaking, and a respect for the audience.

At 10:15 you'll see Folklore Restaurant, a lovely fairy tale, locally made, which is described as a "trio of fox tales from Native America, Finland, and Japan." The director, Tomoko Oguchi, will be on hand to answer questions and perhaps give the enthralled some insight into her animation techniques (using washi, a Japanese paper). Screened with Folklore Restaurant will be a number of number of other shorts, including Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears.

Around 1:00, we'll get a sneak preview of the Childish Film Festival's Dutch film Knetter (Bonkers). Here's a film that kids can really sink their teeth into, and a have a blast besides. The story of a girl whose mother suffers from manic-depression (hence the name--she's bonkers), this is a crazy-fun film that appears not to sugarcoat life. There's a single mom with a mental illness, sexually active, the grandmother dies, the girl gets an elephant. In America, the subjects would be driven into our heads with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, or softened for the kiddies. Can't have Mom with boyfriends, and discover the two of them (gasp) in bed. If you do, well, then the movie's for adults--got to spare our young ones the grim nature of life. Hogwash, I say. Why is it that Europeans alone seem to understand that children can learn about the darkness of life from the art they participate in? It beats me, but the preview for Bonkers is one of the most loving, exciting, and hilarious shorts I've seen in ages. Parents: don't deny your child this experience. If only this child of a single-mom with depression had this to latch on at an impressionable age, well, I'd have been a lot happier knowing there were others like me out there. Maybe I'd have even finagled an elephant as a pet!

Both movies are being shown in the Pohlad Hall at the downtown library, the first at 10:15 (ages 3 and up) and the second at 1:00 (8 and up due to subtitles). Whole Foods Market's providing the snacks. See you there!

Gwoemul (The Host), 2006. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, written by Joon-ho and Baek Chul-hyun and Ha Won-jun. Starring Song Kang-ho, Ko A-sung, Bae Doon-na, Park Hae-il, Byeon Hee-bong, the cockeyed Paul Lazar, and, as the voice of the beast, Oh Dal-su.

Now showing exclusively at the Uptown Theatre.

There's a multitude of beasts in The Host, a new South Korean monster movie that has hit our shores with all the fanfare of, well, of a giant fish emerging from the Mississippi. Aside from the titular Host, predators include America, Chemicals, Technology, and others--probably dozens of others, small cultural references that elude those of us who don't live in South Korea. As usual, man has created the creature: here, an anal-retentive American officer has ordered a poor, subservient Korean to dump bottles and bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, where it pours into the mighty Han river. Voila, the Host emerges, one that looks like a catfish, lopes like a greyhound, and pirouettes off bridges with the ease of a Brazilian cliff-diver. Frankly, the creature is beautiful. And in keeping with the tradition of the great monster movies the director, Bong Joon-ho, has made sure to show that the beast in question is as much a victim as the people he pursues for his nightly repast. It is possessed of a sense of dignity, and there is an understanding that, after all, he's not a serial killer, but merely an animal. Sure, he eats people, but there's no malice involved. Unlike The Host's cinematic counterparts (like the meanies in Alien or last year's Descent) we feel for both victim and killer.

After The Host's explanatory prologue (the dumping of formaldehyde), we go to the pacific shores of the Han river, where we get to see our first monster, Gang-du (Song Kang-ho). Gang-du is a giant, a sleepy, hungry giant of a man, who can't seem to wake up and peel his face off the candy bars he's selling, and looks as if he's going to stumble with every lumbering step. He works in a measly little snack stand with his hard-working father (Byeon Hee-bong), a weary man who's raised his three kids after his wife abandoned the family. And what a family! Aside from the loafer, there's Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na) who, unbelievably, is a professional archer with a tendency to pause before releasing her arrow, disqualifying her in a gold medal international competition, and leading us to wonder just how she'll fare when she has to kill the big fish. Then there's older brother Nam-il (Park Hae-il), an unemployed college graduate who is also an unrepentant drunk, frustrated that he cannot find work after studying for so long. Perhaps most incredibly, of the three it is Gang-du, the slob and bum, who has a child, Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung), a sharp little girl and the pride of the family.

One typical afternoon--typical being Gang-du and his father serving snacks to Seoul's riverside picnickers--a giant fish swims around the murky waters of the Han. The people stop and stare and taunt the thing as it circles menacingly. Suddenly, in the periphery, the creature has leapt ashore and, again in typical monster movie fashion, sends great waves of people scrambling to flee from its hungry jaws.

This is an incredible scene, and the director shows off his considerable skills here alone. The live-action churning of the manic crowds like a great human tsunami, coupled with the special effects creature--at this point still a shock to behold--are breathtaking. I haven't seen such manic choreography in years and years, if ever perhaps. Monsters chasing great crowds of people seem to be a specialty of Asian cinema, perfected, of course, with Godzilla, and something even Spielberg couldn't capture in his awful Jurassic Park II. Parked cars, trailers, overpasses all become methods of escape and traps where the unfortunate meet their gruesome end. We are swept along in this tide, dually hoping for the escape of the heroes we've come to admire, and, really, trying to beat the next guy so that he--not us--will be the monster's next meal.

In the confusion the little girl, Hyun-seo, is lost, carried away by the creature to its lair for later devouring. The Host then begins its long route through a variety of genres: government conspiracy (the creature is supposed to have a contagion, giving the Americans and Koreans the right to quarantine our heroes, and keep them from finding her), fairy tale (girl in the lair), comedy, drama, horror. But at its heart is a tale of a dysfunctional family brought together under trying circumstances involving both the beast and the government--so trying, in fact, that at times the film resembles less a creature feature than some sort of odd hybrid between Godzilla, Little Miss Sunshine and Brazil. As a friend put it (albeit about a theater production in town), the film is diffuse, spreading its horror, its humor and pathos, and even its character development around so thinly as director Joon-ho tries to cover everything plaguing Korea in its two hours.

Some of this works, some of it doesn't, but what makes The Host narrowly miss being a classic of the genre is that the creature eventually loses its ability to frighten. Apparently the monster's main weapon of destruction is picking people up with its long tail and smacking them on the sidewalk. We don't need more blood necessarily, but we do need more thrills, less of the creature in the light, more people being swallowed, and something much more visceral than fatal concussions. Even the monster's regurgitation of bones and trash lacks slime and blood. As the movie proceeds, Joon-ho then makes the error of taking his criticisms too seriously, and the film eventually begins to slow down considerably.

But The Host is beautifully directed, well acted, and worth seeing--were it only playing a couple of months later at our local drive-ins! No, The Host is art-house fare, and our suburban and country cousins will have to settle for garbage like Dead Silent instead. And that's worse than monsters popping out of the Mississippi if you ask me.

If you're looking for a distraction from the misery of rain pounding snow into thick, icy crusts, well, you've got it in spades this weekend.

On Friday night, the Alliance Francaise is going to have a screening of the little-seen (as of late) 1983 classic Rue Cases-Negres (Sugar Cane Alley) at 7pm (donations accepted). This is the story of a family trying desperately to rise above their hardscrabble life hacking away at sugar cane in Martinique.

Saturday morning, the Central Library continues its Movietime For Kids series, a wonderful alternative to the garbage that spews out of the TV at that time (or anytime, really). From 10 to 12, we'll see Dan the Accordion Man warm up the kids with his awesome riffs, and then watch one of Disney's truly great films Make Mine Music, which highlights some of the animated shorts from Fantasia, Peter and the Wolf, and The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met.

Saturday's piece de resistance is Intolerable an entertaining and thought-provoking short from director Alison MacLean and starring actor/author/adventurer David Rakoff. Intolerable isn't so much a story as an actor's exercise: Rakoff waits at a table and explains to the bewildered talent auditioning for a role in a fictional film called Flight. Essentially, Rakoff explains, the actor is supposed to conjure up that thing that scares them the most, and flee from the room, down the hall (and past the other surprised actors), and not return. It's not so simple, though, as Rakoff ratchets up the tension by openly provoking some of the poor souls, like the guy who is told that they need him to sing, but not that song, stop snapping your fingers, you're horrible. "I was called in here to snap!" the guy shouts, though that's certainly not why he was called in.

Intolerable is a sharp, intelligent, entertaining short film, a great study of editing, casting prowess, and acting. It also points to the fact that the Oscars are buffoonery on even this scale: I saw all the nominated shorts and none of them, not one, held a candle to this film--with the film that did win, it would be akin to You, Me, and Dupree taking the best picture award.

Intolerable shows at the Walker Cinema on Saturday night at 7:30 with The Music of Regret, no doubt another quality short that was ignored at the red carpet.