Tag: first watch cinema club

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Cinema First Watch

First Watch Club: May 2018

rififi 1955

I don’t normally talk about theatrical releases in this space, but I feel forced to mention that I saw Solo: A Star Wars Story twice in the theater. In a fair world, it would totally have a spot on this list. I’m already calling it violently underappreciated and if you want to have some actual fun in the movie theater in 2018, you should go. You don’t have to be a Star Wars fan. In fact, if you don’t have any preconceptions about what this movie is *supposed* to be, you might even enjoy it even more. Ehrenreich and Glover give referential performances, but they each inject much of their own personality, and I’m excited to see how their frenemance blossoms in the planned future Solo films.

In the absence of Solo, what you will notice about my May 2018 First Watch list is that it features three musicals. Spoiler alert: the next Cinema Shame podcast will feature a conversation with Jessica Pickens about classic Hollywood musicals. I watched a lot of musicals last month. It just so happened that three of them made the list alongside another future Cinema Shame podcast spoiler.

First-Watch Cinema Club: May 2018

#5. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954)

seven brides for seven brothersKnowingly(?) cringe-y sexual politics scattered throughout a colorful, imaginative 19th century wife-grabbing musical romcom. Elaborate dance choreography and inventive depth of staging make this a memorable classic Cinemascope musical. Still — hard not to question how the movie played the lady stealing with such a straight face.

Jane Powell carves her own slice of female empowerment in a movie about “just needing a man.” It’s a wonderful performance. I also can’t stress enough how this wouldn’t normally be my cup of tea, but there’s something totally charming about the relationship between Keel’s woodsman and Powell’s love-struck cook.

This movie proved to me that Stanley Donen really was a wizard. Now’s the perfect time to pick this one up for a first time viewing since Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was just released on a Warner Archive Blu-ray and it’s a wide margin better than the DVD.

#4. Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)

footlight paradeBusby Berkeley out the wazoo. Elaborate, mass kaleidoscopic choreography scattered throughout a passable showbiz tale that provides the venue for Jimmy Cagney to do some hoofing in a not-so-vaguely racist grand finale.

I oversimplify.

The end of this film is a 40-minute four-course feast for the eyes and ears. Joan Blondell and Cagney needed 200 movies together. They’re positively combustive on the same screen. Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Frank McHugh, Guy Kibbee round out the impressive cast.

I dare you to watch this and not feel conflicted about having “Shanghai Lil” being stuck in your head for three days.

Footlight Parade is available on a 4-movie Busby Berkeley TCM DVD Collection. 

#3. Fantomas (Louis Feuillade, 1913-1914)

fantomasRather than treat the Fantomas films as separate entries, I’ll tackle them all individually, but as one continuous serial, as it was intended.

Fantomas I: In the Shadow of the Guillotine

Stoic, early silent narrative camera can’t quite keep up with Feuillade’s ideal pacing and style. It’s something akin to the silent film equivalent of the cart before the horse. The narrative techniques have yet to develop the necessary language to match Feuillade’s ambition.

Solid opening Fantomas entry suggests room to grow as Feuillade pushes the language of narrative film in interesting ways. Excellent introduction and establishment of Fantomas as a legendary evil mastermind.

Fantomas II: Juve Against Fantomas

Fantomas #2 gives us a far stronger inspector/nemesis relationship by foregrounding Inspector Juve rather than Fantomas’ machinations. More engaging start to finish with a better cinematic pace. Narrative polish that feels way ahead of its time for 1913. Feuillade’s made huge strides between these first two episodes.

Fantomas III: The Dead Man Who Killed

This one gets dark. Fantomas wears skin gloves made from a dead man to leave false fingerprints and truly becomes the twisted evil worthy of a serial detective story. Feuillade weaves multiple narratives and establishes a larger Fantomas network of villainy. Plus a twist ending. Top notch serialized silent entertainment.

Fantomas IV: Fantomas Against Fantomas

In the realm of the image, this fourth Fantomas left a potent legacy. The bloodstained wall where Fantomas entombed one of his victims must have left scars on unsuspecting 1914 viewers. Very Edgar Allan Poe. Dual pit traps abruptly ends the episode with a haunting final message.

Ultimately falls short of the narrative admiration earned in Part III, but still incredibly advanced and layered. Feuillade has proven himself influential in nearly every genre that would form during these early days of cinema. He is horror, suspense, spy and police procedural. They all owe something to Fantomas.

Fantomas V: The False Magistrate

I don’t even know what to think about early silent cinema anymore. I once believed that the pre-1920’s era consisted largely of whimsical vignettes and static-shot mugging as filmmakers worked on ironing out the techniques that would guide narrative cinema through the 1920’s.

It’s generally not too difficult to keep up with a silent film what with our brains already trained to navigate rapid editing and layered narrative. The nature of the production itself — the title cards and deliberate miming — gives the viewer ample time to process the on-screen events. Don’t get me wrong, I adore great silent cinema, but misdirection was rarely a strength. The False Magistrate weaves such a complex tale of crossing and double-crossing and red herrings that I had to rewatch multiple segments because I couldn’t believe what Feuillade accomplished in a film from 1914. (For the record, some of them didn’t quite add up… specifically as the motivations of our heroes are concerned.) Still, I’ve never seen anything like it from this era.

Some of the Fantomas V becomes bogged down in text and letter reading — and much of that became necessary to detail Fantomas’ complex web of lies and intrigue with a number of segments missing from the print. Ultimately that makes this film hard to rate as a standalone entry. I’ll tell you one thing though — you’ve never seen anything like what Feuillade does to the man stuck in the bell tower.

The final confrontation doesn’t disappoint, and the aftermath is a solid kick in teeth, re-establishing Fantomas as the greatest criminal mastermind of all time. Essential viewing for film fans interested in the roots of all narrative filmmaking.

Fantomas is available on a Kino Lorber Blu-ray. 

#2. Broadway Melody 1940 (Norman Taurog, 1940)

Astaire’s good, you know, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Eleanor Powell. I didn’t miss Ginger when the two of them appeared on-screen together. She seems to bring more elegance out Fred, whereas Ginger harnesses some playfulness.

My first exposure to Eleanor Powell, somehow. I discussed how she mesmerized me in the Cinema Shame podcast, but maybe it bears repeating. She’s a revelation and I wish the Astaire/Powell coupling had born more fruits, but Broadway Melody of 1940 offers a tantalizing morsel of what could have been a long and fruitful partnership. Though the two of them might have danced the other into the ground due to their perfectionist natures.

Broadway Melody of 1940 appears on Warner Archive DVD.

#1. Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955)

As a huge fan of Jean-Pierre Melville’s French crime films and Jules Dassin’s Night and the City, it’s inconceivable that I’d not bothered to watch Rififi until Kerry Fristoe (@echidnabot)  swapped me some Cinema Shame during the May prompt.

Dassin escaped his Hollywood blacklist by traveling to France to make films where sane individuals didn’t care about such things as attending meetings related to communist activity in the 1930s. Rififi serves as a potent response to the unfortunate hand he’d been dealt. The film’s grim, disillusioned tone feels angry, perhaps even fatalist. What it does so well, however, is establish characters of both likable and unlikeable qualities and eventually depict individual revelations of their true selves. Charm and charisma turn into cowardice and malice. A face-value cretin becomes the film’s lone representation of altruism.

The legendary 32-minute silent heist scene has the power to change cinematic frames of reference. There’s a reason that Rififi has been billed as the greatest bank heist in cinema history. Dassin’s girtty city noir lived up to the hype.

Rififi is available on Criterion Blu-ray and DVD.

 

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Cinema First Watch

First Watch Club: April 2018

wuthering heights first watch cinema

I’m behind schedule. Ideally this post drops the first week of the new month. The TCM Film Festival happened, and I had to write some features to put food on the table. And if I’m being honest I still have some of that writing to do but I’m avoiding it so I’m on here writing posts for free.  You know how it goes.

Speaking of TCMFF, this month’s First Watch Club will not include ANY films I viewed for the first time at the festival. (I already covered them here.) Instead, these five picks are going to come straight from the garden variety home viewings from April of 2018. The benefit here is that you’ll get another edition of First Watch Club in only a couple of weeks. Huzzah!

First-Watch Cinema Club: April 2018

#5. Remote Control (Jeff Lieberman, 1988)

remote controlIf you’re a child of the video store-era, Remote Control will carry extra resonance. This is Lieberman’s indie-film commentary on 1950’s sci-fi by way of 1980’s kitsch. Intriguing Videodrome/TerrorVision ideas tossed about without a lot of cohesion.

Kevin Dillon’s an interesting actor but I’ve always found him best as part of an ensemble.  Deborah Goodrich might be the best thing going for for the film — which is generally true for just about any film in which Deborah Goodrich appears. Jennifer Tilly gets offed in the first 15, which is a mistake. Obviously. Because if you cast a Tilly — any Tilly — you need to keep that Tilly around for the duration.

Nostalgia for 1988 rental shops will ferry this into the hearts of a specific generation, but others might be nonplussed. Of course, I belong to this particular generation so Remote Control scratched a whole bunch of those 80’s itches.

Remote Control is available on Blu-ray directly from Jeff Lieberman.

#4. The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950)

asphalt jungleThere are certain films, based on the time they were made and the nature of the narrative, in which our anti-heroes cannot and will not survive. We know this from the beginning based on extratextual information. Yet, still we cling to the hope that just this once our good-natured bad guy (Sterling Hayden in this instance) gets away, undermining the system, shaking the oppressive “bad guys must be punished” production code stipulation to the core.

Soderbergh feels Asphalt Jungle in his loins when he directs a heist movie. It feels as if the film has infiltrated and transformed his DNA. He recognizes how much the audience wants that catharsis, despite the good-people-doing-bad-things conflict of interest, and because of the era in which he directs, he’s allowed to make that movie. Huston must punish his evildoers in the name of righteousness. So it goes.

I can love Asphalt Jungle and I can still wish for hope.

The Asphalt Jungle is available on Criterion Blu-ray. 

#3. The Black Pirate (Albert Parker, 1926)

black pirateFairbanks doing what he does best.

The most impressive part about The Black Pirate is that these pirates are true, merciless big screen monsters. The brutality is always just off-screen, but the aftermath leaves no doubt as to what just occurred. This sets the film apart from most of these early swashbucklers, hell, really any swashbuckler.

Take the following scene for example: a captured privateer swallows a ring to keep it from the pirate captain — the captain has his musclebound heavy “fetch” it by slicing the man open. The heavy returns covered in 2-strip Technicolor red and cleaning his knife.

I’m coming around to this notion that this Fairbanks fellow was a true entertainer. I’m just a century behind the curve. After also recently viewing The Mark of Zorro (1920) for the first time, the big Fairbanks picture is finally falling into place.

The Black Pirate was released on a now out of print (and crazy expensive) Kino Blu-ray but can still be purchased on Kino DVD. 

#2. Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939)

Haunting melodrama, supernatural romance — Wuthering Heights turned out to be much more accessible and entertaining than the novel that I can’t seem to finish.

Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon make you feel their pain in your bones. The house becomes an omniscient third party to their labored relationship. The set design and cinematography set the mood, everything else falls into place around it. Olivier’s furrowed brow and Oberon’s eyes.

Thanks to Kristen Lopez for adding this to my original Cinema Shame list. Without her recommendation I likely never would have made the effort — I mean have you read (or tried to read) the book?

Wuthering Heights is available in HD on Amazon Prime Video. 

#1. California Typewriter (Doug Nichol, 2016)

california typewriter

Passion-filled documentary about the contemporary place of the typewriter and the struggle to keep the dream alive. This film resonated all over this typewriter believer.

I don’t often love a documentary. I’m fairly entertained and solidly informed. California Typewriter, however, moved me as a document to disappearing technology that has been deemed outmoded. I firmly believe that our lives would be richer if we still used typewriters on a daily basis.

I use a typewriter to compose first drafts of articles and stories for the same reasons that Tom Hanks, Sam Shepherd, and David McCullough discuss in this film. Shortly before viewing this film, I learned that all three of my known typewriter repairmen in Pittsburgh had retired within the past two years.

You don’t have to be a typewriter nut to appreciate the message in this film. You just need to be a human that’s lived long enough to see how Digital Age technology has shaped our lives, for better and for worse.

California Typewriter is available on Blu-ray and DVD.

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Cinema First Watch

First Watch Club: March 2018

March wound up being a lackluster month overall for personal moviewatching quantity, but not necessarily quality, as life and work seemed to intervene in normal viewing time. I finished strong, taking advantage of some Spring Break time (aka, the let’s-flee-home-renovations trip to the sister-in-law’s) to catch up. First-Watch Club March of 2018 offers a wide variety of cinema spanning 106 years.

Since the April edition will likely be dominated by TCM Film Festival offerings, this one will be the last whole-grain, non-homogenized, organic First Watch Club, untarnished by the glow and spectacle of Los Angeles and the TCM Film Festival, for some time. Next month I’ll still be sleep deprived and basking in the warm glow from a trip to Los Angeles. The kind of glow one can only achieve, however, by spending 16 hours per day inside a movie theater.

First-Watch Cinema Club: March 2018

#5. Frankenstein (S. Searle Dawley, 1910)

I stumbled onto the first adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel as I researched clips on early silent serials for a forthcoming article in Action-a-Go-Go. Instead of a proper two- or three-paragraph blurb, I’ll mix this up and include my solo, impromptu live tweet commentary because it will better capture my surprise and enthusiasm for the film.

So the creation of Frankenstein’s monster was actually a pretty cool effect. This figure was set on fire and then edited into sequence in reverse. The flames give away the trick, but visually interesting nonetheless. #Frankenstein1910

I’m pretty sure Dr. Frankenstein called his monster “Gene Simmons” but I have no support for this theory other than this image. #Frankenstein1910

Okay, #Frankenstein1910, that was a really cool ending. The monster sees himself in the mirror, flies into a fit of rage and then disappears, except for his image in the mirror. Dr. Frankenstein enters and the image of the Dr. syncs with the image of the monster in the mirror.

This concludes my #Frankenstein1910 broadcast day. I really do need to get back to research. If you’d like to view FRANKENSTEIN (1910) dir. J. Searle Dawley for the Edison Company, here’s the link:

#4. Somewhere in Time (Jeannot Szwarc, 1980)

first watch club march somewhere in timeThe narrative simplicity creates an unusually proximate intimacy with our time-crossed lovers. That something as minimal as a character staring into the eyes of a photograph has the ability to orchestrate a crescendo of emotion speaks volumes about the potential power of the film.

I say “potential” because you must give this film access to the emotions. Skeptics will find it hokey or schmaltzy — and in truth, it is both of those things in some measure, with a little bit of TV-movie atmosphere mixed in.

Time travel undertaken with the least amount of exposition. Convince yourself you’re in a certain place and a certain time. And it works because you’re not forced to question any brand of pseudo-scientific gobbledygook. Suspension of disbelief becomes an emotional leap rather than rational acceptance.

Despite the brief runtime of the film, the viewer and our protagonist — Christopher Reeve in a wonderful performance — experience a swell of emotion in step. So when it all comes crashing down, we’re also invested in this perfect, timeless romance. Who wouldn’t be madly in love with 1980’s Jane Seymour?

Somewhere in Time works because the value of this movie lies in the spaces between the unusual narrative beats. It’s about getting swept up in a believable romance despite the impossibility of time and distance.

Much respect to Scott Weinberg and Drew McWeeny for calling attention to this film on their wonderful 80s All Over podcast.

Somewhere in Time is available on DVD.

#3. The Love Witch (Anna Biller, 2016)

first watch club march the love witchI love that this movie exists more than I love this movie. But my love of the movie also supersedes my individual caveats with the execution.

The film is overlong and occasionally too blunt. It’s in need of an editor that isn’t the director. My criticisms, however, don’t do justice to the individual accomplishment of director Anna Biller.

The Love Witch is a perfect homage to low-budget films of the late 1960s/early 1970’s. Is she borrowing from exploitation? Horror? It’s really hard to say. (I know much has been made about critics misunderstanding filmmaker intent.) At the same time, however, calling this “homage” would be selling the film short. It exists in that world. It breathes that same air. And don’t you dare call it camp, because camp is ribald and often referential mockery.

This is an important, living, breathing, clearly personal and sincere film about women’s aspirations, fears and desires. About the dual stations of projected perfect womanhood and private sensuality.

The male gaze does not knowingly want to be called out by a woman in control of her sexuality. Once this character takes control, once she asserts a measure of dominance over a man — he becomes either hopelessly infatuated or tries to burn her at the stake. The clear-eyed observations that comprise the emotional core of the film make this an essential work about gender dynamics for the times in which we live.

The Love Witch is available on Blu-ray.

#2. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Colin Higgins, 1982)

first watch club march best little whorehouse in texasHinges on Charles Durning’s beautifully comic “Sidestep” number. For a man of his size, he moved like a jungle cat.

Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton (aka national goddamn treasures) flash their charismatic best in this “how the hell did this get made” Hollywood musical. Seriously. How did a big budget musical about the benefits of prostitution get a green light? When Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds laugh at the same time, you’ll suddenly think everything is right in the world.

I love the 80’s.

Gonzo mainstream cinema is an odd duck, and this should be one of the greats of the genre, but it just doesn’t get the kind of positive attention it deserves.

Part of me wonders if Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” would have been the same massive chart-topper if the general populace had known that it was originally written about a madam singing to the local sheriff who had closed down her brothel.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas is available on Blu-ray.

#1. Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984)

first watch club march stop making senseLong time concert film appreciator, first time lover.

In practice, the concert film should reveal something new about the band that wouldn’t be readily accessible to the average fan. There’s value in having the “best seat in the house” but that’s less a “film” than a concert on film. Important difference.

As a long time Talking Heads obsessive, I inexplicably never made the effort to watch Stop Making Sense. I never believed a concert film could transcend the genre. It’s not that I didn’t want to watch — “I just never got around to it.” Thank goodness I have Cinema Shame to guilt me into these first-time watches.

Demme’s Stop Making Sense became the first of my Shame conquests that I can’t comprehend not having had in my life. The film straddles the line between David Byrne performance art and music video. It’s the perfect distillation of Talking Heads-ness eccentricities and musicality.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve spun my vinyl or the expanded CD version of this soundtrack. This music has been in my blood for as long as I can remember, but now I finally feel as if I’ve heard the record for the first time.

Stop Making Sense is available on Blu-ray.