Discuss: Performer of the Decade?
Like many critics I'm working on my list of the best films of the decade. I have been doing lots of shuffling around, swapping some of the films in the top 20 with films in the top ten, just to see how they look. But something occurred to me. A lot of the films had one thing in common: Scarlett Johansson. What does that mean? Does it mean that she's the greatest actor of the decade? Or is she just lucky? I'm not sure what to make of it. I have never interviewed her (I was once all set for a phone interview for Girl with a Pearl Earring that was canceled) so I can't claim to know what she's like in real life. Frankly, she's not the greatest actor in the world; in bad movies she can seem awkward, fumbling with troublesome dialogue. But there's definitely something about her, and it goes beyond her blonde-haired, full-lipped, smoky-voiced, voluptuous beauty. I might make an argument for her as "performer" of the decade.
Let's look at her first great film of the decade, Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World (2001). She plays Rebecca, the best friend of Enid (Thora Birch). They have just graduated high school, and face a long, boring summer. They have long-standing plans to get jobs and rent an apartment together. Rebecca holds to her end of the bargain, but Enid becomes sidetracked with a summer class and a friendship with a nerdy record collector (Steve Buscemi). When they are together, Rebecca and Enid have a funny, dark, cynical rapport. Rebecca is good at keeping up with her friend, but there's the tiniest hint that she's getting tired of it, that she wants to move on. Johansson was only 16 here, and two years younger than Birch, but she seems much older and perhaps wearier.
Their Best Role: Meryl Streep
Welcome to a new series here on Cinematical where we select an actor or actress and the role we think is their all time best.
Last August, "Meryl Streep" wrote an op-ed piece for The Onion called "Name One Masterpiece Of Cinema That I've Starred In." It was really written by the Onion staff, of course, but they (and Streep) made a good point. For a woman who is very possibly the finest living actor of any sex, she has made very few truly unforgettable films. Her resume doesn't contain anything quite like Rear Window, The Godfather, Chinatown or Pulp Fiction. Case in point: the article brings up Kramer vs. Kramer. "Streep" says "I'd watch it if it were on," but it isn't really a masterpiece. Also, it's more Dustin Hoffman's movie than Streep's movie, and if you look at it that way, it ranks pretty far down on Hoffman's list of classics.
Streep's two best bona-fide classics are without a doubt Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979) and Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978), but she has only tiny roles in both. Despite Streep's excellence, films like The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Sophie's Choice (1982), Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985), Plenty (1985), Ironweed (1987), A Cry in the Dark (1988), Marvin's Room (1996), One True Thing (1998), Music of the Heart (1999) or The Hours (2002) aren't exactly compulsively watchable, nor do they turn up on very many lists of favorite films. You could also eliminate her comedies like She-Devil (1989), Postcards from the Edge (1990) and Death Becomes Her (1992), and her recent string of lightweight hits like The Manchurian Candidate (2004), The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and Mamma Mia! (2008).
400 Screens, 400 Blows - What's Up with Whip It?
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400 Blows
Drew Barrymore's Whip It (260 screens) opened seven weeks ago and still hasn't broken even on its initial cost. What's going on? When I walked out of the press screening, the critics were all buzzing about how much fun they'd had. The reviews were stellar: it has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. But somehow this critical enthusiasm just didn't translate for viewers. Something about tough chicks beating each other up during roller derby games just didn't appeal to the masses. Maybe it's because the movie is supposed to be set in Texas and was actually shot in Michigan. Maybe it's because our hero Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) was supposed to fall in love with a cute boy (Landon Pigg) who really wasn't very interesting, and you actually root for them to break up.
Free Flick of the Day: Mr. Arkadin
Filed under: Drama
One of the great fallacies of film history is that Orson Welles made his directorial debut at age 25 and then burned out and never made anything else of note. And it's true that he spent a lot of time doing acting jobs for money and starting projects that he never finished. But in reality, he directed, completed and released thirteen films between 1941 and 1976 -- including that debut, Citizen Kane -- and every single one of them is notable. Some are masterpieces, some are ahead of their time, and some, like Mr. Arkadin (1955), require a little work. Mr. Arkadin was only one of two original screenplays in Welles filmography (along with Citizen Kane), and they have many things in common: a flashback structure and a secondary character snooping around in the life of the title character. (A book was published with Orson Welles listed as the author, but Welles insisted that he wrote the screenplay himself and the book was ghost-written by someone else after the fact.)
Should Herzog Have Made 'Bad Lieutenant'?
Filed under: Remakes and Sequels
Werner Herzog's new film Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans has raised all kinds of hackles, mainly over the "remake" issue. Some movie buffs are crying foul over the remaking of Abel Ferrara's classic Bad Lieutenant (1992), including Ferrara himself, who launched some famously acid comments in the press. This fuss has caused most critics to address the issue of how closely the two films resemble one another. In most cases, critics have concluded that the two films are entirely different with totally different feels and approaches.
Frankly, I'm fascinated by the two films, given that both directors are crazy mavericks, both indulging in their looniest personal whims, no matter what the cost or the outcome. This is not a remake in which anyone is concerned with "staying true to the material" or anything boring like that. Ferrara went nuts on his original film, and Herzog has gone nuts on the new film. Herzog has claimed that he never even saw Ferrara's film, and indeed, it more closely resembles his own earlier films with Klaus Kinski, with Nicolas Cage playing the part of the unhinged, psychopathic terror onscreen. (Most people I have spoken to have compared Cage's performance with some of his earlier, more extreme work, such as Vampire's Kiss).
Free Flick of the Day: Black Sabbath
Filed under: Horror
Anthologies are common in the horror genre, whether two or more directors band together on a project, or whether one director takes on several short stories alone. Usually the result is that at least one of the entries is pretty weak, but the strongest entry makes the film worthwhile. Once in a while, however, you get something like Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, which has three strong entries. Bava's secret is that he was never very strong on plot or story or character; he could direct the hell out of any old script with his astonishing use of colors, mood and atmosphere. The best thing about Black Sabbath -- which the distributor American International Pictures re-titled to cash in on the success of Bava's Black Sunday -- is that it actually does have some good stories. In the first one, "The Telephone," a woman gets a phone call and learns that a dangerous man from her past has been released from jail; the entire story is set in her apartment, and Bava makes you jump each time the phone rings.
Free Flick of the Day: Night of the Living Dead
If there were any justice, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) would be counted as one of the great movie debuts of all time. (Yes, up there next to Citizen Kane.) In some quarters it is, but the fact that it's a horror film and the fact that it has languished for decades in the public domain (and many, many cheap, sub-par VHS tapes and DVDs) counts against it. Not to mention that younger zombie fans that come to the movie for the first time will most likely be surprised -- and probably disappointed -- as to how slow and thoughtful it really is. But if you consider things besides gore and terror to be important in your horror movies, then Night of the Living Dead endures, not just as one of the great genre movies of all time, but one of the greatest movies ever made, period. (It's currently ranked at #260 on the list of the 1000 greatest movies of all time at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?.)
Night of the Living Dead achieved several notable things during its time. Firstly, it established an artistic tone and a directorial signature that Romero would carry through the rest of his career, up to the present day. Secondly, it was an independent film (produced, of all places, in Pittsburgh) long before "independent film" came to be a marketing term. It was made by a cast and crew of people who genuinely wanted to make it, and -- somehow -- it was actually distributed and shown in theaters. Thirdly, by casting an African-American (the late Duane Jones) in its lead role, by introducing the "basement versus the ground floor" conflict, and by featuring gun-toting rednecks as the clean-up crew, it managed to subtly suggest a few ideas about America at the time, and indeed, it still suggests a few things about America in 2009.
Watch Night of the Living Dead on SlashControl!
Directors We Love: Alfred Hitchcock
This is a no-brainer, right? Everyone loves Hitchcock. But it was not always so. The great director, whose North by Northwest comes out on a new, 50th Anniversary DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday, was once considered a populist panderer with little artistic value in his work. Even if you were a film critic, it was not the done thing to explore the mood and structure of a film. And even the rare critic that did that, such as Manny Farber or James Agee, tended not to go crazy over Hitchcock's work. (He was too popular and supposedly did not need defending.) At the time, it was more important in film to have a strong moral message, or to impress audiences with size and scale. Hitchcock worked in the lowest genres, telling stories about creeps and murderers and kidnappers, none of which had any benefit to society. Yes, Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director five times, so it's clear that other filmmakers at the very least acknowledged his skill, but he was mostly nominated for his biggest hits, like Rebecca, Spellbound, Rear Window and Psycho (just as George Lucas was nominated for Star Wars) and he never won.
400 Screens, 400 Blows - Sandy's Beaches
Filed under: 400 Screens, 400 Blows
This week I caught up with Anges Varda's The Beaches of Agnes (2 screens), which -- if nothing else -- is a strong contender for the year's best documentary. Of course, it helps if you know who Agnes Varda is, or at least have a passing interest in her work. She was associated with the French New Wave, and made her movie directing debut, La pointe-courte (1954), years before Francois Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard. However, she was not a member of the guy's movie club and was not a critic; in fact, she claims that she had seen less than a dozen movies when she first picked up her camera. She came from a background of photography and mingled with a group of other artists. Over her long, impressive career, she has made many films, including such notables as Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), Vagabond (1985) and The Gleaners and I (2000). In recent years, she has become the keeper of her husband Jacques Demy's legacy, overseeing restorations of some of Demy's films (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, etc.) and making various films about him.
Free Flick of the Day: Black Sunday
Filed under: Horror
The great Italian horror director Mario Bava isn't as well-known today as he should be; perhaps it's because his films relied more on mood and atmosphere than on plot and character, and very often his plots and characters were a little pathetic. But in terms of crafting a moody, moving picture with a genuine sense of nightmarish dread, he was practically unequaled. He had worked as a cinematographer in Italy for nearly 20 years when he made Black Sunday (1960), his official directorial debut. It was low budget, but considered rather sophisticated -- and even violent -- for its day (at least compared to things like Attack of the Giant Leeches). Today it's Bava's best known film and considered to be his masterpiece, which is ironic given that his greatest strength is his mysterious, majestic use of color, and that Black Sunday is in black-and-white.
Apparently based on a story by Nikolai Gogol, Black Sunday was a huge hit. It also made a star out of the haunting, sensuous Barbara Steele, who plays two roles here. She's a 200 year-old witch, Asa Vajda, who was burned at the stake and forced to wear a horrible mask with spikes on the inside. Two centuries later, she plays Katia who lives in a (haunted) castle with her father and brother. Some weary travelers become stranded near Asa Vajda's tomb and accidentally bring the old witch back to life (don't you hate that). She revives her old lover, turns people into vampires and plans to drain the blood of Katia so that she can gain immortality. Everything takes place in or around the creepy castle and the unholy graveyard. Bava's very simple use of the elements, like fog, light and shadow are still amazingly effective today. (No one could arrange spidery tree braches in the frame quite like Bava.)
Enjoy a day of rest and watch Black Sunday!
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