Lost In Translation

Post Mortem

Post Mortem (2011) is the second part of Chilean Director Pablo Larrin's trilogy related to chaotic 70s in Chile where Salvatore Allende's socialist government was overthrown by dictator Augusto Pinochet. Once again it stars Alfredo Castro (previously starred in Larrin's Tony Manero the first film in his trilogy) as a pathologist's assistant. He sports a curious pageboy haircut that resembles that Javier Bardem's hairstyle in No Country for Old Men. He falls in love with a neighbor who dances for a burlesque show and whose brother and father are involved in the communist movement and are in danger following the overthrow. At the same time he has to deal with pressure from the military who want to hide the real cause of death of the bodies piling up in the morgue. It is a curious and powerful indictment of the excesses of the Pinochet regime.

Story Of A Prostitute

Seijun Suzuki's Story Of A Prostitute (1965) is probably as close as he got to creating a prestige film. The film is set in China on the Manchurian front in the late 1930s where Harumi (Yumiko Nogawa) has volunteered as a “comfort woman” after being betrayed by her fiance who decided to marry a girl from a better family.  Harumi is chosen as a favorite by the cruel Lieutenant Narita (Isao Tamagawa)at the army base, but falls for Narita’s direct subordinate Mikami (Tamio Kawachi). Seijun Suzuki’s Story of a Prostitute is an adaptation of a Taijiro Tamura novel that challenges the military and male codes of honor. I was surprised to learn from the extras that it was not shot on location, the set designs by Takeo Kimura do a compelling job of creating the Manchurian plains. There is some great cinematography and a surreal dreamlike sequence in which Harumi strips and run in slow motion through a coutyard and up some steps into a room that is visually striking and memeorable.I am still working my way through Suszuki's oevre, but this might be my favorite so far. Teh Criterion edition has some good features such as new video interviews with director Seijun Suzuki, production designer Takeo Kimura, and film critic Tadao Sato, the original theatrical trailer, new and improved English subtitle translation and a new essay by film critic David Chute.

Anatomy Of A Murder

Anatomy of a Murder (1959) is one of Otto Preminger's best films and a compelling courtroom drama starring Jimmy Stewart who plays a small-town Michigan lawyer who takes on a seemingly impossible case. It is the defense of a young soldier (Ben Gazzara) accused of murdering a local tavern owner who he believes raped his  provocative wife (Lee Remick). The most popular film by Hollywood emigre Otto Preminger, was considered groundbreaking for the frank discussion of sex in the film. It Features an outstanding supporting cast: a young George C. Scott as prosecutor gun for hire and the famous real life attorney Joseph N. Welch as the judge. The film includes an influential score by Duke Ellington. It was nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture. The Criterion extras include: a new interview with Otto Preminger biographer Foster Hirsch, critic Gary Giddins explores Duke Ellington’s score in a new interview,  a look at the relationship between graphic designer Saul Bass and Preminger with Bass biographer Pat Kirkham, newsreel footage from the set, excerpts from a 1967 episode of Firing Line, featuring Preminger in discussion with William F. Buckley Jr., excerpts from the work in progress Anatomy of “Anatomy,” behind-the-scenes photographs by Life magazine’s Gjon Mili, trailer, featuring on-set footage, and a booklet featuring an essay by critic Nick Pinkerton and a 1959 Life magazine article on real-life lawyer Joseph N. Welch, who plays Judge Weaver in the film. It is a great package overall, which I've come to expect from Criterion.

Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai

Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri is one of the greatest Japanese films of all time and one of my favorite films, so I questioned Takashi Miike's decision to remake it. However, I must say I was pleasantly surprised by Miike's Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai (2011). Miike's version is essentially faithful to the original film, and therein lies the strength of a powerful anti-feudalistic film where the codes of ninjo (human emotion) and giri (duty) become meaningless when those that enforce them don't follow the codes themselves. Miike has chosen to film in a darker setting with subtle lighting that may reflect the tragedy that is being recounted in the film. I think it is also significant that when Hanshiro (Ebizo Ichikawa) comes to the House of Ii to exact revenge for their lack of mercy and humanity concerning the treatment of his adopted son, Motome (Eita), Miike sees to it that he uses a wooden sword. In the original, Hanshiro uses a regular sword. However, for a samurai to sell his sword is the ultimate insult to the code and it is one of the reasons Motome is punished as he was. It also shows that this code of giri is not as important to Hanshiro or Motome as ninjo and familial obligations. Thus highlighting the anti-feudalistic theme.  This is a worthwhile remake, but I think the original is essential viewing.

Tony Manero

I was intrigued by Pablo Larrin's original film Tony Manero (2008) after reading Andrew O'Heir's praises for the film. It is a sort of dark comedy about a middle aged, petty criminal's obsession with Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever during the brutal reign of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. it is part of a trilogy that includes the film Post Mortem (2010), and recent Best Foreign Film Academy Award nominated No (2012). This criminal's obsession to create an impressive disco dance dinner show and win a Tony Manero look-a-like contest on TV result in brutal violence and criminal acivities that mirrors the violence that is perpetuated by the secret police and the Pinochet regime.

Sweet Smell Of Success

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) directed by Alexander Mackendrick and starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis has been revealed to be a sort of forgotten masterpiece to me on viewing. I was not familiar with it until I saw references to it in the Criterion library in the last couple of years (this edition was released in 2010). It contains many appealing elements of film that I find attractive: it has great dialogue, not to mention a top rate screenplay, a film noir sensibility, it is shot on location in Manhattan, boasts impressive cinematography, and stand out performances from the two leads Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. The screenplay was originally written by Ernest Lehman based on two short stories he wrote about his experiences as a press agent in New York and was punched up by Clifford Odets. (These are included in a booklet with an essay by critic Gary Giddins, notes about the film and the two short stories introducing its characters by screenwriter Ernest Lehman, and an excerpt about Clifford Odets from Mackendrick’s book On Film-making, introduced by the book’s editor, Paul Cronin). I believe this must be one of the first films to try and film on location-I was really impressed by James Wong Howe's cinematography. (There is a documentary called James Wong Howe: Cinematographer, a 1973 documentary about the Oscar-winning director of photography, featuring lighting tutorials with Howe included on the extras disk). lancaster plays the mostly unsympathetic or unlikeable journalist J.J. Hunsecker (a sort of approximation of real-life columnist Walter Winchell). I can see references to this film in the Coen Brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy. At any rate, it was a pleasure to discover this film. Other Criterion extras include: audio commentary featuring film scholar James Naremore, a documentary, Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away, a 1986 documentary featuring interviews with director Alexander Mackendrick, actor Burt Lancaster, producer James Hill, and others, video interview with film critic and historian Neal Gabler (Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity) about legendary columnist Walter Winchell, inspiration for the character J. J. Hunsecker, a video interview with filmmaker James Mangold about Mackendrick, his instructor and mentor, and an  original theatrical trailer. This is highly recommended for cinemafiles.

Empire of Passion

After reading Maureen Turim's book length study, The Films of Nagisa Oshima, last year I realized there were several films of his that I still needed to see. Oshima died at the beginning of this year incidentally. At the top of that list was Empire of Passion (1978). It is essentially the companion piece to his best and most (in)famous film, In The Realm of the Senses (1976), which gathered accolades and was censored in Japan and elsewhere for it's graphic depictions of sex. However,  Empire of Passion is a radically different, as pointed out by Tony Rayns in his informative essay by noting opposites: urban/rural, shameless/guilt stricken, artifice/nature, exposure/concealment, female voyeurs/one frustrated male voyeur, male narrator/female narrator, etc. This story focuses on the defiance of Seki (played by Kazuko Yoshiyuki) a married mother of two and Toyoji (played by In The Realm of the Senses lead Tatsuya Fuji) a discharged soldier 26 years her junior. They conspire to murder Seki's husband Gisaburo, a rickshaw driver in a rural village during the Meiji era. Oshima incorporates a ghost story into the film as Gisaburo haunts Seki and the villagers in their thoughts, dreams, and supposed sightings. The films takes place after the Sino-Japnese War and shows how the central government begins to affect people's  lives for the first time, this is seen in the police inspector who comes to the village to solve the mystery of Gisaburo's death. Oshima employs a number of visual themes and motifs to great effect such as circles, the changing of the seasons, and long tracking shots. There are many striking visual images throughout the film. The artistry of the film reflects the selection of a veteran and proven cast with the likes of cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima (Harakiri and Kwaidan) and composer extraordinaire Toru Takemitsu (Woman in the Dunes and Pale Flower). The Criterion extras include: Double Obsession: Seki, Sada, and Oshima, a video essay by film historian and critic Catherine Russell, interviews with actors Kazuko Yoshiyuki and Tatsuya Fuji, an interview from 2003 featuring production consultant Koji Wakamatsu and assistant directors Yusuke Narita and Yoichi Sai, the U.S. trailer, and a booklet featuring an essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns and a 1978 interview with Nagisa Oshima.

Marwencol

Marwencol (2010) is a curious documentary that is mostly about the fictional world that was created by Mark Hogancamp partially as therapy to recover from a savage beating that he received from five men. Marwencol is a fictional Belgian town built to one-sixth scale in his backyard using dolls and creating his own sets and then reenacts an original story of his own creation and photographs scenes that he has staged. Some of the dolls represent people he knows. About halfway through the film, after he has been established as a sympathetic figure, it is revealed that he is a cross-dresser and was beaten savagely because of it. They also reveal that he was mean-spirited, divorced alcoholic. However, little or no attention is given to his past-as to why he divorced or as to why he became an alcoholic, which isn't central to this film's storyline, but are the questions I wanted to know about after seeing the film. There's no denying that he has talent and created an amazing alternate universe in which to express his imagination.

Guilty Pleasures and A Mistake

I've seen a few films that generally didn't get a lot of love from the critics. For example, Gangster Squad (2013) directed by Ruben Fleiscer, didn't fare well with critics. I had mixed reactions to it, because I like gangster films and crime stories. It was stylishly filmed, but had some stilted dialogue, some poor plotting, and some casting choices didn't work for me: Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, and Emma Stone to be precise. There's not much good I can say about Ecstasy (2012), perhaps made 15 years too late, I gave it a chance because I used to be an Irvine Welsh fan around that time. I have to say I largely enjoyed the visual spectacle that was David Koepp's Premium Rush (2012) despite one note characters and a contrived plot. The cinematography and stunts were pretty spectacular.

Amour

Believe the hype, Michale Haneke's Amour (2012), is a masterpiece. It won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Festival and Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards (Haneke was even nominated for best director). It seems like somewhat of an unlikely masterpiece given the types of films Haneke was making until recently-dark, sinister films like Cache and Funny Games. The strength of the films lies in the script and the mesmerising performances of the two leads Jean-Louise Trintignant (for whom Haneke wrote the part for) and Emauella Riva.
It is a powerful story of love, aging, and hard choices that come late in life.