It's a Gift film posterIf this is W. C. Fields’ idea of a gift then I hope he kept the receipt, because I need to exchange this film for something that fits me better. Like the ugly sweater that your grandma knitted you that was two sizes too small, It’s A Gift (1934) should have been donated to Goodwill and forgotten.
Somehow either based or inspired by his retired vaudeville acts, Fields’ strives for laughs but settles for sighs. The star plays Harold Bissonette, a small town New Jersey grocer with dreams of owning an orange ranch in sunny California. When a relative dies and bequeaths to Bissonette enough money to purchase a ranch, he does so without discussing the decision with his wife and two children. Once the film introduces the timid man’s family, his covertness becomes all too clear. This is a film that finds humor in frustration, like a 15-minute scene of watching a man be miserably thwarted from falling asleep by random nuisances amusing. The shallow plot would perhaps be better suited for the stage, where it makes sense to sacrifice progression and development for mindless pratfalls and gags.
Speaking of gag, Mrs. Bissonette, played by Kathleen Howard, is as unlikable a character that has ever been put on film. Her time on screen is ample and insufferable, somehow believing being repugnant and spiteful would be funny. Instead, her performance and subsequent interactions with her husband only serve to offer a small notion as to how the tortured victims in Salo, Or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) might have felt. There is no love, no life, and no spirit in It’s A Gift. If the jokes and set-ups in this film are reminiscent of the classic vaudeville style of the early 20th century, than I understand now why it so quickly disappeared.
If you find this funny, then you will love this film. I hated it, so let me know what you think of this clip.
Few films demand a sincere exhortation before I recommend them to someone. I immediately think of Lars Von Trier’s disturbing meditation on marriage counseling, 2009’s Antichrist, or Michel Haneke’s Funny Games, a film so devious it knows what the audience wants before they do, and then takes it away from them with a smile on its face. These films were thoughtful, excessive, and brutal, requiring fair warning to any potential viewer that what they were about to watch may effect them in ways they may be ill-prepared. Dogtooth is one of those films.Dogtooth film poster
The film opens with two girls in a bathroom; in their late-teens it looks like, receiving a vocabulary lesson via a tape-recording. Their young faces look nervous while they seem to be listening quite intently, as if there will be a very important test on these new words in the future. The camera focuses on the eldest of the two girls, content to sit idly by while she memorizes her new terms. The gruff voiced man coming out of the speaker sounds intelligent enough, so it seems odd that he defined “sea” as a type of armchair. Well, this is a foreign film from Greece, so it is not unreasonable that the word “sea” in that country may have more than one meaning. The monotone voice quickly moves on to the next word, “highway.” The man reads, “ … a very strong wind.” “Carbine – a beautiful white bird.” Unaware the definitions are wrong; the girls’ attention disappears when they decide to play a game of endurance by seeing who can hold their finger under the hot water tap the longest.
You have to wait until the last frame of the film if you want to find out who won. It turns out these young ladies are actually sisters, and they have a brother, around the same age, who must play this game as well. They are the children of a man and a woman referred to only as “Father” and “Mother.” In fact, no one in the family has been given a name. Father provides his children with a gorgeous home, a generous backyard with grass and a swimming pool with which the children can lazily play, and a strong wooden fence that encloses they entire compound. They can never leave; they have never left. There is mentioning of a fourth brother, and a noticeable empty space at the dinner table, but the siblings are not sure of his whereabouts or his condition. The oldest sister sometimes sneaks food into the backyard and throws it over the wall.
Dogtooth film
To watch Dogtooth to its climax is not unlike the game of endurance the siblings play. There are questions that remain unanswered, and motives that are never quite made clear. Dogtooth could simply be a 90-minute defense against parents that home school, but I don’t think so. Perhaps it is a brutal allegory of fascism; the father rules over his household with complete control, attempting to deny his family any essence or knowledge of the outside world, demanding perfection and never hesitating to use force to maintain control.
Dogtooth film 2010
Whatever the film’s themes or motives, what director Giorgos Lanthimos creates is as spectacular as it is exhausting and bewildering. It maintains a controlled elegance throughout, finding beauty and intrigue in the most unsettling of situations. Lanthimos is able to evoke utter chaos while maintaining complete control. The film never loses focus, and blissfully slips in and out of joy, laughter, and Hell whenever it sees fit.
I am being vague, I know. I fear discussing the plot anymore will spoil an experience you may never have had. If you enjoy hypnotic, experimental storytelling than just dive into Dogtooth. If taboos of any kind make you uncomfortable than you have been warned.
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The Fighter film posterOf all the sports movies I love, boxing films are my favorite. They strip away all of the nonsense associated with team sports like baseball and football. With a boxing flick, it forgoes common tropes and focuses on the man, and how he succeeds or fails in and out of the ring. The Rocky franchise is the most famous, and Ron Howards Cinderella Man is a personal favorite, but David O’ Russell’s newest film The Fighter is the best.
Marc Wahlberg plays “Irish” Mickey Ward, a struggling boxer who unfortunately is often hidden by the crack-addled shadow of his older brother Dickey Ecklund Jr. (Christian Bale). Once referred to as the “Pride of Lowell” (Massachusetts), Dickey was an upcoming boxer himself whose claim to fame was knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard. Regrettably, Dickey’s potential in the ring was stolen by an addiction to crack, an addiction that he hasn’t kicked some 20 years later when The Fighter takes place.
Throughout the film Mickey has to contend with his mother Alice (Melissa Leo) who is also his manager, his brother that is also his trainer, and professional boxers who only see him as a stepping-stone to reach the top. His family shows him little respect, and has little expectations for Mickey’s success. Instead Alice and Dickey have deluded themselves into believing that Dickey is ripe for a comeback. Matters only worsen when HBO asks Dickey to star in a documentary about his life, which Dickey believes is to chronicle his comeback into the ring. Throughout it all, Mickey sits quietly in the back, too timid to speak up and too loyal to leave his family behind and try to make it big on his own.Christian Bale in The Fighter
As a fan of all of David O’Russell’s films I was excited to watch The Fighter. I was curious to see a simple boxing movie from the guy that directed the superb Three Kings and the perfectly playful/existential/philosophical I Heart Huckabees. While it is unlike anything the director has made, you really can’t say any of his films are similar to each other. Like many of O’Russell’s films, The Fighter has an ability to find humor in areas that you would not suspect, and yet the humor never feels forced or too dark. It is natural, just like every other aspect of this movie. It takes place in a reality rarely visited by O’Russell, proving the director is not only capable, but also far more versatile than many of his more respected peers.
Christian Bale and Melissa Leo are receiving most of the praise out of the cast, including the two acting Oscar nominations, and rightly so. While Wahlberg gives his best performance since Boogie Nights, Bale unsurprisingly gives a transformative interpretation of Dickey Ecklund. His dedication is obvious, but his weight-loss should not overshadow his skill. Bale is absolutely mesmerizing as the failing boxer, brother, father, and son. The film is as much about him as his brother, and that is in thanks to Bale’s abilities.
Mark Whalberg in The Fighter
For fans of sports films and melodrama alike, The Fighter choreographs the sparring between family as well as it does the fisticuffs inside the ring. The arguments and manipulations are perfectly matched by the intense battle scenes between Wahlberg and his multiple opponents. The actor’s training is evident; each match is exciting and believable. Every punch carries a weight that is both physical and emotional, and by the last match my body flinched with each swing and I was left in tears. Although it went on for too long, The Fighter was a fantastic experience. It is perhaps the most traditional of the films nominated for best picture and for that I commend it, because while it covers many of the same beats we have all seen before, it covers them perfectly and reminds me why I love going to the movies to watch a sports film; to be inspired and entertained, and The Fighter succeeds in spades.
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Steamboat Bill Jr. film posterBuster Keaton made films for the YouTube and Twitter audiences. With set-ups and gags that fit nicely within the five to ten minute structure of an Internet clip, the silent auteur’s Steamboat Bill Jr. forgoes complicated plot for clever stunts and the anticipation of blood. Title cards of no more than 170 characters prove the director’s primal intuition of the forthcoming Twitter phenomenon. If he was making films today, ol’ “Stone Face” Keaton would be an online sensation, no doubt devoting all of his efforts into a personal crusade to receive a million of hits on his YouTube page.
A crusade it would be too. Films like Steamboat Bill Jr. and the esteemed The General are perfect examples of Keaton’s complete dedication to his craft. He risked life and limb, challenged gravity, and defied Mother Nature, all in the hopes for a laugh. A master of comedy, Keaton understood it wasn’t the terrible situations his characters found themselves in; like sailing through the air clutching a tree during a hurricane, but how those characters reacted to their situations. My biggest laughs came from Keaton’s face, not whatever near-death experience he just survived. His eyes rarely express panic, barely even concern. Usually his Bill Canfield Jr. appears slightly irritated by his many obstacles throughout Steamboat Bill Jr. These obstacles very from minor inconveniences like finding a hat that both he and his father could agree on (my biggest laugh of the film), to committing felonies and fighting for his life dodging flying houses. No matter the unbelievable disadvantages blocking Bill getting the girl, or the impossible challenge of gaining the respect of his father, Keaton’s titular character is as dedicated as the director himself. Watching the lovesick graduate struggle to reach his goals is often uncomfortable, sometimes exciting, and always entertaining.
Here is the hat shopping sequence I mentioned
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I am a huge fan of movie trailers. A great trailer, like the Coen's for A Serious Man, is capable of not only getting you excited for the film it is promoting, but somehow gets you emotionally invested in the characters and their plight. Video game trailers are a different beast altogether. They not only need to set up the game's plot and style, but also intercut with in-game footage giving the player an idea of what he or she will be doing. Very rarely do video game trailers illicit the same guttural reaction that a strong movie trailer can. In fact, the only one I can think of was the teaser for the original Gears of War. It was pretty brilliant, showing footage of the game's protagonist Marcus Fenix kicking tons of ass while Gary Jules' cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" softly hums in the background. The makers of the upcoming zombie-horror game Dead Island have taken a similar approach to their trailer, achieving an even more powerful result. It is beautiful and terrifying, showing in reverse chronology the horrible results of a zombie outbreak. If you play video games or not, you should watch this trailer! After you watch it let me know what you guys thought! It left me floored and excited to see where the gaming industry is going to go next.
With over a century’s worth of sophistication and context behind us, viewing the silent pictures of the early 20th Century is more an experience judged by the emotions evoked, not by the mastery of the filmmaker. Even so, after watching D. W. Griffith’s The Country Doctor and Laurence Trimble’s Her Crowning Glory, I would dare argue that while modern cinema has matured, the art of visual storytelling is still very much the same.
Griffith’s tearjerker is a short, but effective examination of the Hippocratic Oath, and just how far a doctor must go to care for his community. Watching it with modern-eyes, the film’s silent build-up and execution is as powerful as it is quaint. While very much limited by the technology at his disposal, Griffith was able to craft a compelling cinematic passage, defined by a singular sorrow that can be universally understood. The Country Doctor is not an example of simple storytelling, but drama at its purest.
Equally entertaining but filled with a welcome tone of irreverence was Trimble’s Her Crowning Glory. The film provides a glimpse into the sweetly dysfunctional relationship had between a loving widower and his young, imprudent daughter. When he begins to fall in love with her Rapunzel-esque nanny, the jealous daughter sets out to clip the blossoming relationship. The nanny’s treatment is cruel and often hilarious, but what is most disturbing is the father’s lack of empathy for the poor woman he once loved; perhaps a brief look at the blatant inequality between men and women in the early 1900s.
While understandably dated, both films display a mastery of the basic three-act structure employed by the majority of filmmakers working today. Without the benefit of a century’s worth of sophistication and context, directors like D.W. Griffith and Laurence Trimble laid the groundwork for all of the visual storytellers that followed.
Who would have thought a documentary about a comedienne that I can’t stand would be so entertaining. Joan Rivers has made a career out of annoying me. Her bits were usually mean and gossipy, concerned with berating celebrities on the “red carpet” and judging everything from their shoes to their sex-life. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work does a great job showcasing the woman I never saw on her E channel specials. With much humility and humanity, Rivers (and at times her equally irritating daughter Melissa) gives a rare glimpse into her world. Her pressures are varied, but are mostly concerned with two subjects: finance and/or ego. You see, no on of any substance is knocking on Joan Rivers’ door anymore. The once queen of crass is left with small comedy clubs and a lot of bills. People rely on her making money, she is aware of her responsibilities. The documentary takes on an almost inspiring tone when Rivers takes it upon herself to get back into the spotlight. She produces a one-woman-show that she also stars in, and even with her many let downs and failures, the 75-year-old showbiz antique keeps her head up. This doc is fun and funny, and a humbling example of how Hollywood will take everything from you and leave you asking for more.
Monday, February 28, 2011 at 1:21PM 
It's a Gift film posterIf this is W. C. Fields’ idea of a gift then I hope he kept the receipt, because I need to exchange this film for something that fits me better. Like the ugly sweater that your grandma knitted you that was two sizes too small, It’s A Gift (1934) should have been donated to Goodwill and forgotten.
