Matty

Christmas is a holiday of peace and contentment...but try saying that in the Chasseur household and you will incur wrath. Rather like someone yelling at you to shut your mouth or die, and someone else tapes your mouth shut. Sometimes it just doesn't work out, nerves fray, the concentration of tension in the holiday atmosphere builds up beyond the long ignored limit and the prospect of polite chatter in the family circle goes out the window. Occasionally, on the other hand, it’s fine when pressure from external forces compels the reorganisation of the long established order and dad, for the sake of variety, smashes the Christmas tree and grandma looks for arguments to defend her plastic surgery. Anything can come out of an uninvited guest sitting down at the table; in this case, that’s a successful comedy of Christmas discontent that will help many to steel their nerves in advance. You never know if a subject will come up that may elicit a strong allergic reaction from your uncle. The subject matter could have been made into an even more interesting theatrical tragicomedy with three characters. 75%

Casting and disrobing Moreau and Bardot in the same film was a brilliant marketing move. Luc Besson later did something similar with Bandidas. In any case, Viva Maria! is an almost too laid-back comedy that spends a needlessly long time wagering on the title characters’ sex appeal. The ladies expose their bodies without any inhibitions and find themselves caught up in the whirlwind of the revolution (probably led by Zapata at that time) only under the pressure of circumstances, not on their own initiative. A similar approach to female heroines leads me to suspect that, without even a hint of artistic ambition, Malle actually wanted the same thing that the absolute majority of viewers would want – to please the eye. 55%

I would object to the effort to come up with some sort of “scandalous revelation” at any cost, furthermore enhanced with needless dramatic background music, but I find the central idea of The Man from Earth seriously likable. Very simple, very stimulating, compelling us to think beyond the framework of the film. As one of the characters suggests, however, you can contemplate the position of the individual in human history, the advantages and disadvantages of eternal life and the fleetingness of time, and just listen and be entertained by the screenwriter’s intellectual flourishes, which aren’t annoying. Nit-pickers will undoubtedly find some inconsistencies that don’t correspond to the information in the book of wisdom, but factual accuracy is not what this is about. It’s enough to join the filmmakers in hypothetically asking “what if?”, which I found extremely entertaining and I wasn’t bothered by the fact that the whole thing (like most philosophising) is actually useless. 80%

The slow revealing of John Cassavetes’ creative methods with special attention given to his work with actors and his own personality (his own commentary is very piercing, especially the summary of his complete filmography in the opening few minutes). Instead of a quantity of information suitable for film history textbooks, the makers of this documentary give space primarily to people who personally knew this pioneer of independent American film and spent so much time with him that they could undoubtedly reminisce about him for more than three and a half hours (there is something to the equating of his crews to a family). What I found most absorbing was the second half of the film, which is focused less on actors and more on the director, his view of the world and his demands for truthful cinema. I haven’t yet taken in enough of Cassavetes’ films to come to any overall conclusions, but after seeing this documentary, I’ve begun to take interest.

The gentlemen try. They reminisce, talk, compose a picture of the film legend from personal recollections that reveal more than (only marginally present) biographical facts. With their undisguised admiration for the master, it doesn’t matter that some of incidents have significantly greater (nostalgic) value for the speakers than for the listeners. The selection of scenes was also pleasing, as it was not limited only to those that are iconic, but in the end it is still Ford who best depicts Ford.  One sentence: Mr. Ford, you made 3 Bad Men, which is a large-scale Western. You had quite an elaborate land rush in it. How did you shoot that? – With a camera. (Extended version from 2006.)

Scorsese plays clips from films by influential Italian directors (Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Fellini, Antonioni), edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and accompanied by his explanatory commentary. As is his custom, he speaks eruditely and with passion, but for the four hours of material, he doesn’t speak enough to overcome the intrusive thought that this is the film form of abridged versions of classic novels from Reader’s Digest. For viewers who don’t want to first spend hours in a cinema and then hours thinking about what they’ve seen and how to understand it. It’s hard to rate it, but that feeling after it ended, that naïve faith that I know cinematic Italy a little better…priceless.

Both Abrams and Spielberg used 8mm cameras to preserve their first forays into filmmaking for future generations. It’s up to you whether you appreciate or condemn the fact that Super 8 raises questions as to which of them actually directed the film. The sci-fi plot isn’t entirely meaningless, but it essentially serves as a MacGuffin (symbolically entering the story together with a train) that aids the development of the characters and the relationships between them. The increasingly tense situations accelerate the process of growing up, which happens in relation to the protagonist’s parents. Joe has to accept the death of one of them and the authority of the other, who comes to understand that he can leave some responsibility to his son (and thus also let up on his excessive strictness). As in early Spielberg films with adolescents, basically ordinary characters become heroes when coming face to face with an extraordinary adventure. Super 8 also references films such as The Sugarland Express, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial by situating the plot in a small American town and through its interest in a family whose cohesiveness is a crucial condition for a happy ending. Abrams managed to seamlessly combine a 1970s family drama with action for the 21st century, though he doesn’t show the same skill in directing the dialogue scenes as he does in the dynamic action sequences, when it doesn’t matter at all that a bunch of kids are running away from an unknown danger. More than other films, Super 8 will please those who love movies, and not necessarily only Spielberg’s films. It humorously draws attention to the make-believe of film, especially during the good forty-minute introduction, an enchanting tribute to all amateur filmmakers (it’s just fake blood). But most of the scenes are pervaded by an amusing nostalgia, including making light of certain “rules” in earlier films of the same type (“Since when is this guy the boss?”). It’s Joe, the film’s protagonist, who is in charge of the special effects and masks in the micro-crew. He passes off reality as more attractive, offering what life itself doesn’t provide. Which, as we well know, is what movies do. Of course, it’s not a bad thing to be reminded of this from time to time by the people who make the movies. 80%

Though W.C. Fields was not a man of modest dimensions, his contribution to the comedy genre can be classified as lightweight despite the quality of the jokes. The gags come without a long warm-up, shortly after the comical situation is set up. After that comes another situation, going beyond the permitted limits in making use of Fields’s inability to overcome a banal obstacle. The mindless piling-up of such situations instead of more well-thought-out development is symptomatic of the whole film, a simplified manual on how to diminish slapstick anarchy by putting it in a family setting (the ending brings forth an uncritical affirmation of the very values that the real masters of slapstick humorously dumped on). 50%