"The Roaring Twenties" (1939)

The 1920’s are often remembered for being both glamorous and gritty, overflowing with decadent excess built on questionable and troubling enterprises. The decade is consistently depicted as a time of reckless abandon right before the Great Depression put the carefree lawlessness of the Jazz Age to an end. Whether this is true or not, Prohibition was inextricably linked to this allure, and nowhere was this more noticeably seen than in a number of 1930's James Cagney gangster films. The Roaring Twenties nostalgically looks back on the illicit enterprises that made the twenties so “roaring”. Cagney plays Eddie Bartlett, a WWI veteran who can’t find work when he comes back home, and falls into criminal activity out of necessity. He soon discovers a knack for bootlegging and rises to the top of the gangster underworld, only for the repeal of the 18^th Amendment to turn Eddie into a man with a useless skill-set. With a charming, hard-nosed mug, Cagney was able to make his gangster characters highly absorbing and likable but also tragic and repellant. Eddie’s motivations are deeply sad, even when he’s at his grandest. Raoul Walsh’s thoroughly energetic and stylized direction snappily moves the story along and grounds Eddie’s exciting and fateful rise and fall. "He used to be a big shot," goes the film's great closing line, and the nobility implied rings true. Eddie may have been a bruiser, but it's hard to resist that Cagney grin.

Grade: A-

"The River" (1951)

“Films have grown so aggressive and jittery that it takes patience to calm down into one like ‘The River,’” Roger Ebert wrote about Jean Renoir’s great film. Renoir’s characters are not characters, but people, humans, and his story is more observationally than narratively driven. Renoir was praised for his humanism, how he seemed to have such deep affection for his characters. “I didn’t know growing could hurt,” young Harriet informs her mother late in the film, and she does a lot of growing up, and just as much remaining the same. Harriet (Patricia Walters) lives in colonial India, and she has her first crush on a man visiting, Capt. John (Thomas E. Breen), who lost his leg in the war and has grown sullen. She is naïve and young, and her story is told to us in voiceover by a much older Harriet (June Hillman), fondly recalling her memories. The film does not confront the issues of colonialism and racism that pervade the film; Renoir, in stead, lets them subtly play out in the background. The older, but still guileless, Valerie (Adrienne Corri), also likes Capt. John, as does the half-Indian Melanie (Radha), though her relationship remains quiet and unnoticed by most. They each vie for the man’s attention in their own way and this is the main narrative thrust, but otherwise this is a film about time and place. Renoir filmed on location in India, and he captures the beauty of not just the country but the culture as well. This is some of the best color cinematography ever put to film. The River looks beautiful but it is also a deeply felt film. It is beautiful for its simplicity but also for its powerful understanding of human nature. Life goes on, and life repeats itself, and it keeps flowing on and on.  

Grade: A

My Film Review of "Robocop" (2013)

I wrote a review of the re-make of Robocop for my college's newspaper, The Lafayette. So if you're interested in my somewhat pointed take-down of the film, I would direct you to the online version of the article. I'm really pleased with how this came out, and it's one of my personal favorite reviews I've done so far writing for my school's paper. I also get to make transparent but thoroughly amusing metaphors, so that's always fun.

"Closely Watched Trains" (1968)

Milos Hrma (Vaclac Neckar) is a go-getter. What he’s trying to get, and how good he is at achieving it, well, that’s up for debate. But he will try to get it none the less, and that’s what counts. Closely Watched Trains is Milos’ coming of age story -- and what a delight, for us, it is. He works as a train dispatcher in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia, and he spends his days desperately trying to impress everyone around him, especially a young, sultry female train conductor (Jitka Bendova). Milos is naive and clueless, but he’s also chipper and enthusiastic. He’s teased, which he doesn’t quite mind, except on the subject of sex, which he’s still a bit inexperienced with. The film suggests realism, observing the everyday lives of Milos and his co-workers, and frankly and wryly depicting and discussing sexual mores. But the film is also buoyed with a fanciful, whimsical sensibility. Often the film plays like a delightful farce, and more than one moment is a piece of pure comic absurdity. Director Jiri Menzel contrasts the seriousness facing the Czechs under the Nazi regime with Milos desperate and irreverent journey to get deflowered. Like the titular trains that should be but aren’t watched, Milos misses the very history that he is part of and even occasionally defining. But like all of us, he's got bigger concerns on his mind.

Grade: A-

"Performance" (1970)

Life is one giant performance. Shakespeare’s old adage about the world being a stage is accurate. We act differently around different people, and we change our mannerisms or appearances to impress or deceive individuals. Performance is about this performance, but it’s also about other performances. It regards a low level gangster, Chas (James Fox), who takes out his sadism as a piece of performance art on the individuals who’ve crossed the criminal outfit he works for. When his boss seeks to rub him out, Chas goes out on the lam and hides out in a bohemian pad, inhabited by Turner (an electrifying performance by Mick Jagger), a musician, a performer you might say, who quickly sees through the fake persona Chas has adopted in hiding. Chas might be gay, and this adds another layer to the film’s thematic interrogation: Isn’t hiding your homosexuality a type of performance, posturing hyper-masculinity to feel safe and hidden. As Turner deconstructs Chas’ many performances, reality begins to breakdown and their identities blend together. The film is like Persona filtered through the late swinging 1960’s milieu. But even this sells it short; Performance is a deeply experimental film, as much about experience as narrative. Frantically paced and edited, it is a film that feels surprisingly modern, a precursor to music videos and jumpy action blockbusters, where its finger prints can be seen all over. 

Grade: B+

"Rock ‘n’ Roll High School" (1979)

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is a musical built around The Ramones, but the musical aspects aren’t really what make the film so entertaining. If you enjoy the music of The Ramones it will be enjoyable, but, though the musical moments are well-shot, The Ramones are an uncharismatic screen presence. Instead, what makes the film work is the simple fact that anyone can get behind the film for its embracement of the punk ethos The Ramones represented (and the band could easily be swapped out for any other late 70’s punk band and this would still work). Like Freaks, the film that inspired one of The Ramones’ best songs, the film has an abiding affection for weirdos and misfits, and it gives them, led by the band’s self-proclaimed biggest fan (PJ Soles), an opportunity to fight for control of their school, through music and an anarchic spirit, against the dictatorial control of the new principal (Mary Woronov). For most of its runtime though, the film is simply a very self-aware teen film. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School functions off of a lovable cartoon logic. There’s a Looney Toons appeal to the film, which functions less on plot than on a grab bag of high jinks and tomfoolery. This is a film where one of the best running gags involves taking a joke about a lab experiment on mice to its logical conclusion, having the mice become human sized; no one bats an eye at this. But it makes sense within the rationale of the film’s world: anything goes, as long as you’re not keeping anyone down.

Grade: B+

"Woyzeck" (1979)

Until the 19^th century the treatment of those with mental illness was horrendous, and even the reforms from that century were inadequate. At present, we still have a long way to go but there are now opportunities to help those who need it. But if you lived at any time before the last century: you were fucked. You’d be looked down upon at best, but you were even more likely to be taken advantage of or seen as a problem. Werner Herzog’s Woyzeck is about a German soldier Johann Franz Woyzeck (Klaus Kinski) who is very clearly a ticking time bomb. He is paranoid and hears voices. This is exacerbated by everyone around him, who only see how pathetic and nervous he is. Kinski was an intense method actor and director Werner Herzog brought out some of his best performances by bringing out the ferocious intensity Kinski could convey like few others. Kinski allows his face to sink in further and further as he suffers indignity upon indignity and his madness sets in. At any given point, Kinski’s posture is rigid but his eyes constantly suggest the depths of his emotional turmoil. Woyzeck is in a loveless marriage with Marie (Eva Mattes), who’s bored and looking to have affairs. Woyzeck seeks the help of doctor and the doctor begins using Woyzeck as a subject of experiment. The doctor makes him eat only peas for a year, which only serves to worsen Woyzeck’s instability. The doctor takes the madness as a joke and laughs about Woyzeck as if he were an amusing oddity. Herzog plays this all out with a sense of forgone conclusion; madness is inevitable once it sets in. 

Grade: B+