"Grand Hotel" - Film Review

When I think of the spectacle of Old Hollywood, I think of films like Grand Hotel. Sugary to the point of being saccharine, Grand Hotel is one of those films that stuffs a lot of stories and a lot of stars into one film and hopes that its sheer charm will be enough to cover up for its flaws. And for the most part, it succeeds.

The film is clichéd but there’s a great deal of star power, glitz, and glamour that make the film a good deal of fun even when you can so clearly see the plot strings being manipulated. These characters are types. The penniless baron (John Barrymore); the evil businessman (Wallace Berry); the clever stenographer (Joan Crawford); the mild-mannered assistant (Lionel Barrymore); the disillusioned singer (Greta Garbo). 

Director Edmund Goulding largely balances these stories without it becoming overwhelming; a fact eased by the singular setting of the story set in the titular hotel. The stories begin to intersect in interesting and unexpected ways and eventually the film privileges ones story over the others, that of the Baron, and has the other stories play into this one story. The new found focus allows the film the get away with its excesses. It also helps that this privileged story is a love story. 

The story of the baron becomes about his efforts to pay off a debt so he can be with the singer. By a strange turn of circumstances, he falls in love with her after getting stuck in her room while failing to cat-burglarize some pearls. She’s suicidal and he helps talk her down. She’s quickly won over by him, all the more so after he admits to stealing the pearls. 

The stenographer has a crush on the baron. The assistant is taught to love life and stand up to his boss with the baron’s encouragement. The evil businessman is increasingly slimy and awful, and his despicableness culminates in an act of manslaughter. At which point the last third of the film becomes something far more brooding and dark. You kind of wish it would emphasize this development more, but instead it balances between the old happy-go-lucky tone and the sadder one with mixed results. By film’s end, the story disappointingly chooses to go for a full on happy ending. 

It’s all one of those alluring showcases of Old Hollywood with stars and laughs and tears, and it all plays out mostly predictably. But it’s hard to not to be won over just a little bit by all the spectacle; the charmingness of let’s put on a show! It was meant to be a crowd pleaser back in 1932, and it, for the most part, remains pleasing even if it’s all just a little lightweight and thinly strung together. 

Grade: B-

"Where is the Friend’s Home?" - Film Review

We’ve all been faced with a choice at one point or another. It may not have been the most earthshattering choice, but in the moment, on that day, that choice felt like life or death. We’ve all had to make a decision where we didn’t need to do something, but by not doing something it would lead to consequences for other people.

Where is the Friend’s Home? is about a choice. A boy Ahmed (Babek Ahmed Poor) accidentally takes his classmate Mohamed Reda Nematzadeh’s (Ahmed Ahmed Poor) schoolbook and he realizes that if he doesn’t get it back to him, the other boy is going to get expelled from school.

His mother (Aruna Irani) tells him he’s not allowed to return the book, and he’s torn. He knows deep down what the right thing to do is: return the book. But his moral compass gets the better of him and he flees his home and runs over far away to the city where his friend lives. He doesn’t know where his classmate lives in the city; all he knows is that he has to get this book back to him somehow.

It sounds like such a simple story and on the surface it is. But director Abbas Kiarostami plumbs the story and turns the simple ethical quandary into a fascinating exploration of ageism, growing up, and doing the right thing.

There are moments in the film that are oddly intense. Nothing major is happening, but the roadblocks the character keeps running into make what should on its face be an easy task turn into a scenario where it feels impossible. 

The more frustrating the task becomes, the more we start to root for the task’s success, and the more powerful the film’s storytelling becomes. It gradually becomes almost mesmerizing. 

Ahmed has to start asking him if it’s worth getting the book to his classmate, and may be if it’s not worth finding him. He really struggles with this decision, and the more difficult doing it becomes, the more worrisome it starts to feel that he won’t get the book to his classmate on time.

Every person he comes across proves to be useless. They either provide less than helpful information or just don’t care about an eight year old’s single-minded goal. Everyone doesn’t think much of him or his plight because he’s so young, and they just don’t see the importance of what he’s trying to do. He’s a soft-spoken kid, and he never has the courage speak up over other people and people keep ignoring him. 

The film take a brief detour to show the boy’s grandfather criticize the youth of the present day. He talks at length with a friend about how kids these days don’t have discipline. But his grandfather’s generation and his parent’s generation are often far too nostalgic or lack the understanding to appreciate the youngest generation. Ahmed is trying to get information about where his friend lives and his grandfather can’t be bothered to listen to him, but instead makes him get cigarettes for him. Then he scolds Ahmed when he comes back empty handed, and this is all despite the fact he already has a pack of cigarettes and doesn’t need anymore. The grandfather thinks he’s teaching him a valuable life lesson, but he’s really getting in the way of his grandson doing something profoundly kind and important. 

The elderly blacksmith that helps Ahmed find his classmate’s house talks about how people are changing their doors. Their switching out their wooden ones, many of which he helped put in place, with stronger iron ones. The blacksmith laments that things are changing. There’s a generational gap between him and the boy.

Eventually Ahmed does find the friend’s house after an arduous day looking. However, he’s too scared by the nighttime noises to follow through. He ends up deeply regretting his decision and feeling sick to his stomach.

The classmate sits in the school-building nervously the next day, and it’s uneasy to sit through. The teacher works his way through checking other student’s homework, and we wonder if Ahmed will show up and save his friend…

The film plays out like a beautiful little short story and as it moves along it proves itself to be an insightful, profound and engrossing fable. 

Grade: A

Community - "Intro to Felt Surrogacy" - Review

Community has had a rough time this season. Whether it was due to the vagaries that all shows suffer as they get older or the loss of creative talent, many episodes have failed to stick the landing. However, there have been episodes that, though not the best efforts the series has done, showed a way forward. On a conceptual and emotional level they didn’t feel forced. The first of these was in “Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations” where Jeff met his father and it featured some nice, well-earned emotional moments. The most recent episode “Herstory of Dance” was another episode that though it had problems in the way this whole fourth season had problems didn’t feel like it was going through motions and like the show still had some tricks up its sleeve (I was pleasantly surprised by Abed's story with the girl who's equally obsessed with television tropes, and the Jeff-Britta conflict paid off well).

The third season had some bigger problems than many of us were willing to admit at the time, but I was willing to forgive it because it was still reaching the dizzying heights of “Remedial Chaos Theory”. The fourth season hasn’t yet reached those creative highs once again. “Intro to Felt Surrogacy” doesn’t achieve such heights but it comes within spitting distance. Of course, I can’t quite put my finger on what makes it land just shy of genius, but it doesn’t completely nail what it’s trying to do. But it’s a cool conceptual episode that the show mostly goes broke for like it did in older season rather than half-assing it like it has recently, and it chooses not to lean on campus hijinks but on the crazy concept (the characters as puppets!). In turn, it plays off the absurdity of the concept including a few musical numbers and also finds a way to pull off some solid character moments that the show just hasn’t been successful at recently. 

The series is also funnier during this half-hour than it has been in just about in any other episode, which helps a ton. It’s not all up to snuff with what we’ve come to anticipate from this series but much of this works far better than you’d expect and rises above its gimmickeness. 

Grade: A-

What did everyone else think?

New Girl - "Bachelorette Party" - Review

If the Nick-Jess plots of recent episodes have been the highlight of the season, it came at a price. Every other potential storyline that could be done with the characters had to be put on hold in the name of Nick and Jess’ awkward dance towards coupling. In the process, Schmidt and Cece dealing with the fallout from their break up has been put on the sideline for what has arguably been far, far too long.

“Bachelorette Party” is a funny episode, but it’s an episode that focuses on Cece and, well, that’s a problem. Hannah Simone is good performer, but Cece has never been well handled for story time with our four apartment dwellers. There’s a logic to her talks with Jess about Jess’s relationship woes, but every other character doesn’t really have a reason to interact with her anymore because Schmidt is no longer dating her.

That means next to Winston, Cece is the least developed character on the show. That means that Simone has to carry the character largely by herself and the strength of her performance. The show has treated Cece only so far as she relates to Schmidt. She was vaguely made out to be this bossy type with hidden insecurity, but the series has not done the necessary groundwork with the character in the way it has with Schmidt, Nick, and Jess. 

Cece pretty much solely exists now to be won back over by Schmidt. That means that Cece essentially has no agency. And that’s a huge problem. 

Why exactly is Cece choosing to marry Shevrang? Yes, she doesn’t have much longer to have kids. But what beyond this do we know that makes her arranged marriage a sensible action on her part. Shevrang is a nice guy and he likes Cece, but Cece’s hesitancy about the whole ordeal hasn’t been played up as significantly as it likely should be.  

Winston, by the same token, is a character who the show doesn’t know what to do with. He’s whatever the writers need him to be. For instance, in this episode, Winston randomly taking things too far comes out of nowhere. Now Lamorne Morris is a very funny performer and so most of the times its forgivable because the writers have him doing things that are amusing and make me laugh. But the show needs to develop him more or else in time it will become distracting. 

The show needed to come back to Cece’s marriage in time for the finale, and it’s a good thing because it’s been overlooked for so long. But some of this episode’s impact is nullified due to how little time we’ve spent with Cece.

"Nights of Cabiria" - Film Review

I love, love, love Giulietta Masina. So much of Nights of Cabiria is sold by Masina’s great performance. Cabiria is stubborn, proud, quick-tempered, and naïve, and played by the wrong actress our sympathies wouldn’t necessarily lie with this character. It’s a tricky line being walked and Masina nails it. She’s warm and charming, and there’s something about her performance where she easily draws you in.

Cabiria is a prostitute working the streets of Rome. But the film never makes her job a big part of her character. Nights of Cabiria is part of the Italian Neorealist tradition of postwar Italian filmmaking. Cabiria a working class gal who, like many Italians of the 1950’s, was struggling to get by. Her mother put her to work at fifteen, when she was too unsuspecting to fully comprehend what she was doing at such a young age. 

She’s a bit clueless in that way though. The film starts with her getting pushed into a river by a man who feigned affection for her so he could rob her. She nearly drowns but she doesn’t immediately accept the truth of the situation; it’s only after her loving but stern friend Wanda (Franca Marzi) sets her straight that she snaps back to reality.

Throughout the film she keeps meeting men and falling head over heels for them despite her better judgment. She meets a big shot movie star, Alberto Lazzari (Amedo Nazzari), who spends the night with her after he’s spurned by his girlfriend. Cabiria flirts with the idea that something might happen even though she’s only kidding herself. The girlfriend shows up in a huff and Cabiria is forced to sit in the next room while the guy sleeps with the girlfriend. Clearly she’s chasing after the wrong men.

She becomes convinced she can’t change her life. She meets a man who provides charitable help to homeless people in the countryside, and she wonders why she can’t do something more with her life. She goes to a religious procession to a shrine for the Virgin Mary and asks for guidance, but it doesn’t help.

Cabiria’s outward cynicism hides a hopeless romantic side deep down. She finally shows this side after being hypnotized at a magician’s show. It’s a surreal scene with a dreamlike quality. I was given goosebumps; there’s a transcendence to it.  The world seems to shut out and Cabiria is told to imagine she’s talking to a man named Oscar; she’s like a giddy teenager all over again as the magician has her imagine sweet nothings are being spoken to her. She’s soon snapped back into reality and completely embarrassed. After the show, a man claims his name is Oscar and that it’s fate. 

They start spending time together. He claims he doesn’t care about her past. She even tells him about her line of work and he doesn't appear to mind. He asks her to marry him. Could this be for real? 

Director Federico Fellini sets the story in the world of the everyday. There’s a beautiful naturalism to the story and events unfold with a pleasing simplicity and feel as if they could go anywhere at any moment. Though there’s a true to life nature to the film, it also has this inexplicable whimsicalness.

Its marvelous simplicity deceptively hides a powerful tale and slowly builds to a knockout of an ending. Utterly charming, lyrical, funny, and sad, Nights of Cabiria is a fantastic movie. 

Grade: A

"The Invisible War" - Film Review

The Invisible War is a documentary that succeeds at being both incredibly informative and incredibly engaging. There’s not a moment where my eyes weren’t glued to the screen, even as I grew more uncomfortable and disgusted.

Writer-director Kirby Dick is scathing in his examination but he rarely forces a reaction out of us. He largely lets the terrible truth about the sexual assaults of women in the military speak for itself through the testimonies of a number of former servicewomen who were the victims of rape and sexual assault. 

These stories form the spine of The Invisible War. Dick inserts intertitles with facts, and there are more information-heavy portions where experts lend information on the nature of the situation interspersed throughout, but more important than this is how Dick finds the human story. 

He draws us in, letting the interviews with the servicewomen slowly unravel the awful reality of the military’s terrible handling and concealment of sexual assaults.

The film is never overdone or heavy-handed despite the seriousness of its subject matter.  Dick also moves the film along at a fast clip, never getting caught up for too long in any one aspect of the problem. The way he manages to pull out unexpected pieces of information is another nice detail to the film, notably a brief tangent on the rape incidences for male service members. 

The film is provocative, enlightening, and powerful. It earns just how emotionally fraught it is and it treats its subject matter with the appropriate level of sensitivity. 

Grade: A

"Grand Illusion" - Film Review

Saying Grand Illusion is a prison break movie doesn’t do it justice. Much of the film is about a group of French POW’s attempting to escape from a war camp and later a mountaintop castle. But it’s also more importantly about the things people do in the face of the futility and pointlessness of war.

Grand Illusion frequently has little in the way of plot, but is content just to observe people as they live their lives and try to survive. It’s a joyously humanistic work that’s filled with all different sorts of personalities.Our two big protagonists Captain de Boeldieu and Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay) are French officers taken in as prisoners of war when their plane is shot down in First World War. They soon find themselves in the company of other French POW’s who have begun tunneling towards freedom. But when they’re not digging their way to uncertain freedom, they joke around, work in a garden and even put on a play. 

The film, for all its bleak undertones on the arbitrary nature of war, is rather funny. Soldiers use jokes as defense mechanisms, and different country’s soldiers throw jabs at one another. Julien Carette’s Cartier stands out as the clown amongst the bunch, always trying to lighten the mood. 

The film breaks down into three segments. The first two revolve around “prison breaks” at two very different holding centers. The first is a war camp, but the second is a chateau lorded over by commanding officer Captain von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim – noted character actor). The third becomes something far more contemplative. The two soldiers, Maréchal and Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) who have escaped try to make their way to Switzerland but find themselves starving and cold. Rosenthal has broken his ankle and the two of them are at eachother’s throats. A sweet German widow Elsa (Dita Parlo) with a daughter is kind enough to take them in until they’re prepared to move on. Maréchal falls for the woman which makes his inevitable departure all the more painful. 

Grand Illusion isn’t concerned with making a good versus evil conflict out of its story. The Germans and French see themselves as just playing their role in the war, and both sides complain about the pointless nature of the war. The French POW’s don’t seem angry at their captors and respect their position. Both prison escape attempts come from a motivation simply to pull it off, break the rules, and stave off boredom rather than some ill-will, grudge, or fear towards their captors. Much of this provides Grand Illusion with a lovely naturalistic quality. 

All of this sounds like it would be so obvious and forced but director Jean Renoir handles it with a simplicity, subtly and grace that puts other films who've attempted its sentiments to shame.

Funny, sad, and thrilling, and filled with great performances, Grand Illusion is a deeply humanistic film. 

Grade: A-