(Criterion/Kanopy/VOD/Vudu/YouTube)? Robert Downey, Sr. passed away this week at the age of 85. While his son is mostly known for more accessible fare, Downey Sr. was an anarchic indie filmmaker, and there’s no better example of his cinematic skills than PUTNEY SWOPE.
PUTNEY SWOPE is a nihilistic indictment of Madison Avenue, American capitalism and everything it’s created (including filmmaking and anti-American capitalist revolutionaries), while also being damn funny and inventively shot. The faux-commercials it features are perhaps only rivaled by ROBOCOP (1987) or the best of Adult Swim. For instance:
I need to note that this is an incredibly insensitive film in ways I haven’t quite managed to personally reconcile — after all, it’s a film written and directed by a middle-aged white man about a Black man breaking the system — but it is also endlessly fascinating.
(kanopy/Prime) I’d argue that THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO has one of the best opening scenes in the last five, maybe ten years? It’s brilliantly executed: it tells you everything you need to know about the world, the primary characters drawn with so little dialogue, and does it so artfully and succinctly:
Even if the film was just this short scene, I’d still be raving about it. I can’t get enough of Adam Newport-Berra’s visuals or Emile Mosseri’s Michael Nyman-esque score.
However, THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO is far more than its opening. I -love- this film. It intersects with a lot, but the male friendship portrayed here is something rare. It’s also about an infatuation with a house, the history of a building, and the complex history of a city.* It’s also about exploitation, gentrification, modern classism, economic race disparity, the obligations of those who come into a city, and homeownership all dovetailing regarding a space with pre-existing history. It’s dense, but it never overwhelms you. It’s an astounding work, an intimate tale that takes on a larger context.
* If you want to read about the origins of film and San Francisco in one big gulp, I highly suggest THE INVENTOR AND THE TYCOON, which is the story of early photographer Eadweard Muybridge and his railroad tycoon backer Leland Stanford. (Yes, Stanford University is named after him.) I guarantee you that it’s far more interesting and intriguing and ruthless than you’d suspect. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/7965/the-inventor-and-the-tycoon-by-edward-ball/
(Hulu/kanopy/VOD)? Every film nerd I’ve known has their favorite seat. I certainly do: I prefer middle aisle as I have long legs and prefer not to be tightly compacted for ~two hours, and I enjoy a slightly more distanced view of the screen, as opposed to having the screen fully fill my vision.
However, sometimes — especially with film fests — you aren’t going to score your favorite spot. Sometimes you’ll get the worst seat in the house. My wife and I certainly did when we nabbed stand-by tickets for a screening of MELANCHOLIA during the 2011 Chicago International Film Festival.
If you aren’t familiar with MELANCHOLIA, it’s Lars Von Trier’s meditation on depression and, while I run hot-and-cold on von Trier (especially regarding his on-set approach to filmmaking), MELANCHOLIA is certainly one of his more palatable films and features fantastic performances all around, but especially from Kirsten Dunst. It’s also arguably one of the most visually jaw-dropping films from von Trier; there’s a scale and scope and painterly look to MELANCHOLIA that’s absent from the majority of his other works. (One exception might be the psychodrama horror of ANTI-CHRIST.) While it’s absolutely gorgeous, this is a film that was not meant to be viewed in an offset front row seat which, surprise, was what our stand-by tickets garnered us.
You’re left without any distance from the mind-numbing depression and cosmic confrontation. It hammers itself into your head; you have nowhere to run. I’m sure von Trier would smirk if he read this, but it turns the film into something absolutely appropriately overwhelming and suffocating, but a perspective on the film that I would not recommend. Keep with the middle row or watch it at home and keep your distance, or it will mess with you even more than it’s intended to.
(hoopla/kanopy/VOD) I’ll preface this by saying this isn’t exactly a recommendation. I found merit with the film and ultimately enjoyed it, but it is not a perfect work and is, perhaps, inherently exploitative.
PLEASE STAND BY is the story of a young autistic woman, Wendy (Dakota Fanning), who has been placed in Toni Collette’s home for autistic individuals by her older sister Audrey (Alice Eve), who has recently had a kid and self-proclaims that she doesn’t have the time to babysit Wendy as well.
Wendy, who has always been a huge STAR TREK nerd, sorts this out by writing a four-hundred some-odd page STAR TREK screenplay involving the complicated relationship between Spock and Kirk — Spock representing herself, Kirk representing her sister — for a $100,000 competition to celebrate STAR TREK’s 50th anniversary. Shortly after Wendy completes the absurdly long script, she realizes there’s not enough time to mail it, so she has to go on a journey to deliver it by hand.
A personal note: when I was a kid, I -loved- STAR TREK, and I particularly identified with Spock because he struggled with similar emotional issues that I grappled with. So, to see Wendy do the same warmed my heart, even if Spock is one of the easiest autistic analogues.
PLEASE STAND BY mirrors another relatively recent work centered around an autistic protagonist, Mark Haddon’s THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME: autistic person is mostly sheltered, has to venture out in the world, and their life becomes a living hell. It, like CURIOUS INCIDENT, was also written by a dude that found the concept of an autistic character ‘interesting’ and ‘challenging’, and they decided they were the ones to tell this story. In the case of PLEASE STAND BY, writer Michael Golamco was inspired by the New York Times article ‘What Autistic Girls Are Made Of’ to write a one-act stageplay, and then turn that into PLEASE STAND BY. (Similarly, CURIOUS INCIDENT started as a novel, then became a Tony award winning musical.)
CURIOUS INCIDENT frustrated me because of how little research Haddon did. He wanted to tell the tale that he envisioned, details be damned. PLEASE STAND BY frustrates me because it’s a work extolling the creative nature of those with autism, but it’s written, directed, and performed by neurotypicals. It feels inherently disingenuous, despite the amount of research and experts they enlisted.
That said, it’s still an entertaining film, with fantastic performances all around, and it seems to have been well-received by the autistic community, especially since it is a positive portrayal of an autistic woman. Representation matters, but I would rather that it wasn’t via the writerly curiosity of a neurotypical man, regardless of how well-wishing his intents were.
(fubo/kanopy/Showtime/VOD) Josephine Decker’s films always take a bit of time for me to come to terms with. I remember seeing MADELINE’S MADELINE as part of a self-imposed triple-feature at the Music Box during a particularly stormy Chicago day, and it left a sour taste in my mouth, as if the characters I’d seen writ large on the screen weren’t being portrayed fairly.
Then, after haunting my memory for a month or so, it clicks. I realize why the actions were made, no matter how selfish, how distasteful, how the film couldn’t be any different.
(Also, it helps that her films are uniquely surrealistically stylized in a way that most indie filmmakers eschew nowadays, and it’s a style I can’t help but love.)
(kanopy/Plex/Pluto/tubi/Vudu/VOD) SOUND OF NOISE is a Swedish feature film that’s based on the short film MUSIC FOR ONE APARTMENT AND SIX DRUMMERS about a collective of musicians who break into an apartment and make music solely with whatever exists in the apartment. There’s a lot of clanging on ceramics and glasses, rhythms created via vacuum suction, books thrown to the floor and the like.
“How can that possibly be turned into a feature film?” you might ask. The answer is: in a very cartoonish way. The troupe is sheer anarchy as they break into hospitals and banks to realize their musical works, progressing to one ultimate performance, all while being pursued by a tone-deaf cop. It’s funny and infectious, and the musical pieces stand on their own. (Well, they do if you’re a fan of say, avant-garde, percussive works.)
While there is an attempt to give an emotional, romantic core to the film, it falls a bit flat, but it’s not entirely unwelcome. Really, the set-pieces are the allure here.
One of my favorite pieces is a skillfully edited highway driving scene — it features co-director/co-writer Ola Simonsson and is a bit more liberal with its use of sound sources — as it vaguely reminds me of the experimental electronic band SHINJUKU FILTH:
-Music for One Highway-:
SHINJUKU FILTH – The Art-:
(Also, check out the companion track, -The Sale- if you can.)
(hoopla/kanopy/VOD) Coincidentally, this was released in the same year as CHRISTINE, but by the radical documentarian Robert Greene, again about Christine Chubbuck.
While I dodged Christine’s life events in yesterday’s recommendation of CHRISTINE, I can’t do so here because it’s the crux of this documentary. So, if you’d planned on watching CHRISTINE, go ahead and do so before reading further.
I’ll wait.
Still waiting.
Pad, pad, padding the post.
Okay, ready?
While giving a news report on the local news network she worked for, Christine diverged from the report and said: “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in ‘blood and guts’ and in living color, you are going to see another first—an on-the-air suicide.” She then shot herself in the head, and died shortly after.
While CHRISTINE is a fictionalized exploration of Chubbuck’s psyche, KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE sees Kate Lyn Sheil (previously mentioned: the STRANGE WEATHER music video, also of YOU’RE NEXT and SHE DIES TOMORROW, as well as previously recommended director Sophia Takal’s debut GREEN) doing research for the role of playing Christine Chubbuck.
If you aren’t familiar withe Robert Greene’s work, he plays with the nature of recreation in documentaries. His follow-up, BISBEE ’17, explicitly explores that as he enlists an entire town to recreate what becomes a xenophobic, union-busting exiling of denizens. As a fan of documentaries, I believe this sort of meta-exploration of the inherent exploitation of documentaries is important, but also potentially fraught with their own sort of problems.
That’s why, with KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE, Greene’s smartly — and just as potentially problematically — documentary puts it entirely on Shell’s shoulders, and — if what we’re shown is to be believed — really puts her through the wringer. Shell is recreating Christine, physically and mentally, and it takes its toll.
It’s worth nothing that KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE is partially constructed around the urban legend that Paddy Chayefsky’s NETWORK was inspired by Christine’s on-air suicide, which is complete and utter bullshit — Chayefsky had been workshopping NETWORK well before her suicide — but something Greene defends as “being not quite true seems completely appropriate.”
It’s also worth noting that the dramatic re-enactments are terribly scripted, feel stilted and, apart from a few scenes, probably should’ve been excised completely, even if they were intentionally mawkish. That seemingly undercuts all of the work that everyone — especially Sheil — has done, but I get the feeling Greene doesn’t care.
Before writing these two recommendations, I’d felt that KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE was the ‘better’ film versus CHRISTINE; it conceptually tackles more; it’s more artfully, abstractly constructed; the intent is to take a magnifying lens to why we want to examine this story. Today, I’m not so sure.
At the end of the day, it’s still just a bunch of dudes reappropriating Christine’s story for their own reasons, for reasons she Christine herself probably wouldn’t agree with, which seems like the biggest sin here. Fundamentally, this is a story about a woman trying to live the life she’d set out for herself. The fact that she lived in a masculine world of journalism, or that she killed herself in what would be considered a masculine way, shouldn’t require a masculine retelling, but instead we received two re-appropriations of the tale.
“You have to tell me why you want to see it. … Are you happy now?”
(fubo/Hulu/kanopy/Netflix/tubi/VOD/Vudu)? No, not John Carpenter’s adaptation of Stephen King’s CHRISTINE — a fine horror film, but you hardly need me to tell you that — this is a dramatized depiction of Christine Chubbuck, a local TV news reporter in the 70s who struggled with depression. The film details her personal and professional troubles as she tries to grow her career and realize the life she wants.
There are other facets of Christine’s story that you may or may not be familiar with. I’m not completely sure whether detailing them would improve a viewing, so I’m going to err on the side of caution and intentionally bite my tongue.
If this were a fictional film, I’d feel a lot better about it, and it wouldn’t have the ending it has. Every thing leading up to that is a smart, nuanced portrayal of a complicated woman, bolstered by Rebecca Hall’s amazing performance. It’s fantastically cast film — Michael C. Hall as Christine’s fellow news man, Tracy Letts as her boss, Maria Dizzia as her co-worker, J. Smith-Cameron (from the previously recommended RECTIFY) as her mother, and VEEP’s Timothy Simons as the weatherman — but this film wouldn’t work without Rebecca Hall’s nuanced handling of Christine. She’s a persona we rarely see on-screen: a smart-but-flailing woman, clearly awkward in general, but so goddamn determined to succeed, and to hide from and survive her mental issues.
Again, if it were fictional, it’d be a triumph. While it’s still a stunningly scripted movie, it just feels… dirty. But that’s a matter for tomorrow.
(kanopy/VOD/YouTube) Sure, F.W. Murnau directed NOSFERATU, FAUST, as well as one of the greatest melodramas ever with SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS, but my favorite film of his is THE LAST LAUGH.
THE LAST LAUGH is an extraordinarily depressing story of a hotel porter’s fall from grace starring Emil Jannings, an actor exceptional at portraying broken characters. While the tale is simple, it’s not simply told, as Murnau puts forward all of his talents with his ‘untethered camera’ as possible. Briefly put: the aging hotel porter (Emil Jannings) loves his job, loves the limelight of the front door and accommodating the hotel’s guests. However, his boss deems him too old and re-assigns him to be a washroom attendent. Despite the very slight story, it’s an expressionistic marvel, pure cinema, with Murnau’s camera visually and emotionally gesticulating all over the place, eschewing title cards except for one which is displayed upon Jannings falling asleep in his newly anointed washroom attendent’s chair. (Yes, yes, one might construe the following as a spoiler):
“Here our story should really end, for in actual life the forlorn old man would have little to look forward to but death. The author took pity on him, however, and provided quite an improbable epilogue.”
The last fifteen minutes of the film consists of an orgy of food, montage, and lower-class well-wishing. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
A clip:
The full film via YouTube (it’s in public domain, but there are restored editions out there that are worth your hard-earned cash):
(Criterion/kanopy/VOD) One of the first screenings I attended upon moving to Chicago was for Jacques Tati’s MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY at the Music Box Theatre. Sadly, it was in their sidecar theater and, if you think that room is ramshackle now, you should’ve seen it in the 90s. It was a matinee and, while I’d seen it before — I was introduced to Tati and MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY back when I was a Purdue student — I couldn’t wait to see it in a proper theater, even if the screen wasn’t much larger that one in a college classroom.
Sadly, in a predictably Tati-esque manner, the print burned and tore apart no less than twenty minutes into the film. So it goes.
But! I’m here to extoll Tati’s PLAYTIME, both his greatest film, and also the film that would doom him. Before PLAYTIME, he was a celebrated physical comedian who had directed several very visually clever and humorous movies, including MR. HULOT’s HOLIDAY. PLAYTIME was to be his magnum opus, and he sunk all of his money into a number of dazzlingly huge sets, all constructed to fuel his vision of satirizing modern urban architecture and mode of living.
The end result was an absolute marvel. At the risk of sounding pretentious, it’s pure cinema, each frame densely packed with revelations, but never overwhelming the viewer. It’s a marvelous onion of a work, one where you’ll see something new with each and every screening, jam-packed with gags, either with the blocking, a flourish of color, someone’s line of sight, but the film is always in complete command when it needs to draw your attention to one of the few plot-related setups.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. It’s one of the few films I’ll always make a point to catch when it comes to town. It’s an utter delight — one of a handful of films I consider ‘perfect’ — which is why it’s so sad that production overruns bankrupted Tati, then the film flopped upon release, and he never quite recovered from its failure.