The Whole Shooting Match (1979)

Could it be that the best movie I’ll see in 2007 is from 1979? Seeing as how rarely I go to the movies these days and now most of my movie watching is done at home, where stacks of older films pile up around me, begging for my attention, this probability is not as odd as it sounds.

This small budget, regional film from Austin, Texas has been lost for years and thanks to the work of Mark Rance at Watchmaker Films its been given a re-birth. Eagle Pennell was only 25 or 26 when he started shooting this tale of two blue collar Texas buddies trying to strike it rich. While it brought him some attention, most notably from Robert Redford who credits this film for inspiring the Sundance Film Festival and Institute, Eagle Pennell would turn out to be his own worst enemy. Often drinking or snorting up future production money, in many ways Pennell is like the lovable losers at the center of The Whole Shooting Match.

Shot in black and white the film is comprised of loose scenes captured in a style that bounces gracefully back and forth between intimate handheld camera work, reminiscent of cinema verite and the more composed and locked-down tableaux of neo-realism. Set in and around the Austin area, long before it became a hotbed for hipness, the film captures a deep regional flavor. Lou Perryman and Sonny Carl Davis provide genuine performances that are both comical and touching. At one instance they feel like cartoon characters come to life, akin to those in King of the Hill. Over time their humorous edge dissolves to reveal struggling, troubled personalities who squander opportunity for simple pleasures.

Introduced by Mark Rance, The Whole Shooting Match is being positioned as the sort of regional film made between the two coasts that captures the wide, varied nature of the American Dream. Even though Rance over-stated a few claims about the cost of film during this era and the relative lack of filmmaking of this ilk during the 70′s, I completely understand that he is simply attempting to promote a relatively unknown film in an already over-saturated film market. Getting people to care about any film, particularly one that is more than 25 years old is difficult.

I’ve waited many years to see this film. Unlike many other ‘unknown’ films that I’ve been able to track down through gray market trades or alternate avenues of distribution, The Whole Shooting Match proved to be impossible to find. Thankfully, the wait was more than worth it. So rarely do you find a film this well balanced in its use of humor, drama, pace, and style. It is even more rare to find a film that cares so greatly for its characters’ faults. Most uniquely, especially in today’s independent film market, it is refreshing to find a young filmmaker producing a rather adult piece of fiction that deals not with the existential crisis of young college students or those young than the filmmaker, but rather with issues of adults inhabiting the ‘real world’. How great it is to see someone looking closely at the American Dream of those blue collar families and not just the navel gazing solipsism of love sick twenty somethings who exist seemingly without parents or family.

On a side note, this is the only film I got to see at this year’s Milwaukee International Film Festival and I greatly thank them for bringing the film and Mark Rance to Milwaukee.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006)

Had I written about this film right after leaving the theatre I might having praised the film for its brutal depiction of violence and revenge, so stomach turning that you wonder how anyone could ever resort to either and still remain human.

Instead, I am writing about this film an hour or two after last scene tugged at my heart strings and all I can think is, what happened to Ken Loach and why should anyone trust the taste of the Cannes festival judges?

The same director responsible for Poor Cow and Raining Stones has proved that he can do better, but The Wind That Shakes The Barley won the Palme D’Or. Why?

The film sure does look pretty and it stirs emotions, but it also sticks of some of the worst cliches and trappings you’d expect to find in any Hollywood history lesson.

I simply cannot understand why Loach cannot tell a sympathetic story kind to the struggle of Republicans fighting to free Ireland from Britain, with out employing the tired story of two brothers who find themselves on opposing sides. Furthermore, need to bring the film to a near screeching halt for a throw-away scene of two moonlit lovers finally enjoying a moment together is horribly hackneyed.

I should have seen this scene coming from a mile away, in fact there was a moment, earlier in the film, when I wondered if the awkward emphasis placed on the lead character and this one female character would lead to such a hoary need for romance among politics. However, I gave Loach the benefit the doubt and hoped that he would stir his picture away from such trivial and even bogus matters in favor of the politics at hand. I was wrong.

I’d expect this mix of melodramatic drapery and historical action (and violence) from some one like Mel Gibson, not Ken Loach. Still, for all its faults, The Wind That Shakes the Barley does a great job of depicting the physical pain that comes with any act of violence as well as the endless cycle of retaliation that spawns from such violence.

Maderlay (2006)

The word pretentious often accompanies Lars Von Trier’s name. Just recently Variety called his newest film The Boss of it All Von Trier’s “least pretentious and most sheerly enjoyable film in years.” I can only assume that the reviewer is referring to films before Dancer in the Dark and Dogville, open, scathing attacks on American’s social and political problems.

If pretentiousness is supposed to be describe a work tries to impress, but falls short due to lack of depth or talent, it seems hardly fair to hang the word from Von Trier’s neck. I can think of few American directors who could even consider crafting a story that thoughtfully considers whether or not America was or even is ready to accept blacks as being equal to whites.

Other than asking questions of America’s history and the roles played by all parties after the emancipation of slavery, there is little pretension in the film. Actually, just as it was in Dogville, the film is more like a play, set on one sound stage with limited props and set dressing.  Wouldn’t have been more pretentsious to allocate all the work and money Hollywood often throws at depicting a bygone era only to leave the politics of the time unquestioned?

Really Weird Tales (1987)

Can you parody something that’s already laughable? Really Weird Tales looks to poke fun at Twilight Zone and Tales From The Crypt stories of the supernatural and unbelievable.  Three odd stories, each starring a former cast member of SCTV, are filled with modest laughs, but rather tame premises. At it’s best Really Weird Tales presents three mildly amusing, drawn out skits, that each have a little fun with social commentary.

In  “‘ Well That Ends Strange” Martin Short plays an untalented lounge singer working for a Hugh Hefner like magazine mogul. When he’s offered a permanent position at the the playboy’s mansion Short thinks he’s been given the gig of a lifetime. That is until he realizes that the magazine mogul is looking to extend his own lifetime indefinitely.

John Candy makes what is listed as a guest appearance in “Cursed with Charisma”. This tale of get rich quick real estate schemes and intergalactic felony rambles on and on with Candy desperately trying to wring as many laughs as possible out of a rather thin idea. Still, he is capable of carrying the whole piece with his affable, larger than life, charm.

Finally, there is “I’ll Die Loving” which stars Catherine  O’Hara as a woman incapable of loving – without killing the  target of her affection.  Like the two previous pieces, “I’ll Die Loving” sprinkles  small jokes, only worth a chuckle across a premise that is only slightly weird.

Tying together all of these stories is Joe Flaherty, a sort poor man’s Rod Serling. There is something irksome about Flaherty’s performance. He is too knowing of his own strangeness, something you never felt with Serling, who’s delivery was as strange as it was iconic. In other-words, Flaherty lays it on too thick.

That’s the over all problem with the entire project. While all of the characters act as if something really weird is going on, we, the audience, don’t quite understand what they are reacting to. Nothing seems that weird or if anything, it feels as if it is trying to be weird, but comes up sort, mainly due to directorial inability to create weirdness both dramatically or visually.

Where Really Weird Tales shines is in the commentary it makes on trends of the mid-80′s. Pyramid schemes and Cabbage Patch Dolls find themselves being ridiculed and while recent nostalgic trends may find the styles and fashions on display to be cool, for anyone who lived through the 80′s – the shiny suit coat, skinny tie, large hair look is no over-exaggeration, but spot on. It truly was an era of really weird tastes.

Surf II – The End of the Trilogy

There never was a Surf I nor a Surf III and unless you are lucky enough to track down a VHS copy of this early 80′s surfer comedy you might never know there was a Surf II.

Unlike Killer of Sheep, a seminal work of American Cinema that has long languished on shelves due to music rights issues, Surf II is a dim-witted surfer comedy with little going for it other than a killer soundtrack, a few novel names in the cast, and a somewhat humorous plot.

Menlo, an evil genius with a hatred for surfers, creates Buzz cola which turns those who drink it into mindless zombies. A young Eric Stoltz plays one of the surfers bent on stopping Menlo. Ruth Buzzie appears as an out of touch mother. Linda Carriage of Fade to Black and Mixed Blood provides ample down-under sexiness. Cleavon Little is the high school principal, also known as Daddy O. Lyle Waggoner plays police Chief Boyardie and Ron Palillo (aka Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter) plays Inspector Underwear.  Best of all is Eddie Deezen who relishes the role of Menlo. Every time he enters the frame he steals the spotlight in a grand showboating fashion, much like a Nicholson or Travolta. It’s too bad Deezen has been relegated to playing nerds.

While there are some amazingly hilarious lines sprinkles throughout the film, the movie is mostly what you would expect from a beach comedy. Top drop, gross-out gags abound, and everything comes down to a surf contest.

But check out this sound track:

Oingo Boingo, The Beach Boys, The Stray Cats, Wall of Voodoo, Talk Talk, Thomas Dolby, The Deserters, The Circle Jerks, The Untouchables, Dick Dale, The Ventures, and more!

The Gladiator (1986)

After his kid brother is killed by a hit and run murder a feed-up auto mechanic turns his own vehicle into an indestructible wrecking machine. Ken Wahl plays the grease monkey vigilante known as the Gladiator who uses his suped-up truck to remove drunk and wreckless drivers from the roads of Los Angeles. Nancy Allen plays a radio personality and the lover interest who unknowingly is dating The Gladiator.

Between directing episodes of Miami Vice and Crime Story Abel Ferrara directed this made-for-television action-drama that both capitalizes on the mid-80′s concern for drunken driving and growing trend of self-appointed justice fighters. The Gladiator plays like a M.A.D.D. sponsored Chuck Bronson film. Of course, Wahl is no Bronson and Ferrara feels restricted by the material. It is not as gritty or tough as Ferrara’s other work, but it is uncertain as to why.

Were it not for this being a Ferrara film, there would be little interest in seeking out this forgotten film. The acting is very stagy, the action is just alright, and the drama is hardly worth getting sucked into. Watching this film after having seen Deathproof, there is an added air of curiosity about the movie. Was this one of the unmentioned influences on Tarantino?

The Birth of the Goalie of the 2001 F.A. Cup Final (1985)

Films don’t change, we do.

A young couple considers having a baby. The wife becomes pregnant. They try to pick a name. The husband plays soccer while his wife gives birth. He visits his new baby in the hospital, cut to years later and he’s playing soccer with his son.

It’s a long span of time for a short film and Leigh chops the scenes down to the most crucial lines of dialog. At the same time, the husband and wife are so casual about the whole affair that their easy, almost dry reactions cut against the usual panic-filled, over-prepared, under-pressure responses that typically most comedies about first time parents.

When I first watched this film a year or two back I read the lack of excitement or hysterics in the couple’s reactions to first being pregnant and second to the child’s birth as being an ironic response simply designed for laughter. This is how many of the students watching the film with me read it. However, for me, having recently become a father I could no longer see the lack of elation as a mere gag. No, the husband and wife, in their restraint of pure elated joy are exhibiting the unmentioned fears that come with a newborn.

Wood

Leighton Pierce‘s backyard masterpiece, Wood, still continues to marvel years later. Subsequent viewings of the work always expose something new. This time around my eyes were transfixed on small bubbles bursting in a small pool of water.

Mr. Hayashi (1961)

When Bruce Baillie made Mr. Hayashi, an intimate portrait of a  Japanese gardener, he whimsically placed a title card before the film announcing that Mr. Hayashi was looking for employment. This was in the early sixties and a black and white, three minute film, such as this had a limited audience of mostly art minded spectators seeking experimental and avant-garde work. The film is not really about find Mr. Hayashi work. Instead, the film plays like a poetic, personal document of a man. Students in my class complained that the audio, with rather percussive Japanese music playing over some of the dialog, made it hard to hear. Most of the audio difficulty could be attributed to poor optical sound transfered to video, but that is only a technical matter. The bigger matter is that they were more interested in hearing and not seeing the film. Mr. Hayashi is a visually rich film, with eye-catching compositions and muted tones of grey. This eluded most of my class, but it made me think about more recent work that is strikingly similar to Mr. Hayashi. In particular, I am thinking of videos posted to YouTube. Many of these films are designed to reach an audience and not only be seen, but to promote something. Looking long enough at YouTube one could surely find people posting videos in the hopes of securing employment. You would also find videos of poor visual quality, due to Flash video compression schemes, but with relatively decent audio, at least audio better than an optical soundtrack.

Again, this proves a point I often try to hammer home to students – People will deal with poor visuals and good sound more often then they will deal with poor sound and good visuals.

News From Home (1977)

Chantal Akerman’s News From Home combines mostly static shots of New York City with letters written to Chantal from her mother in Belgium. Other than the growing desire to have her daughter return home, there is no narrative progression and the film plays out like an animated slide show or picture gallery.

This form of observational, landscape documentary has grown to become one of my favorite forms of cinema. While the work is always a challenge, especially when not seen projected large, I find that days later the struggle is worth the effort as key images from the film haunt my memory. Without a doubt, News From Home ranks up there with Sans Soleil, Nas Correntes de Luz da Ria Formosa, New York Portraits, or most of Jim Jennings’ work.

What intrigued me most about News From Home were the banal qualities of the city that Akerman chose to capture on film. Rather than showing picturesque postcard imagery of New York, the iconic buildings and locations we associate with the Empire City, her choices feel leisurely, almost random. Because the film is now 30 years old, becomes a curious piece of archeology. You watch to see what has changed and what has remained the same. Some fashion styles have returned, others invoke giggles. Signs with prices look implausible. Did gas really used to cost that little?

Two other added surprises come from people looking or rather not looking into the camera. It would seem to me that in 1977 a moving picture camera, in public, would be quite a spectacle and that those who see it would either retreat in fear or ham it up. While there is one noticeable case of the former, the latter does not happen at all. Why is this? Today, we are surrounded by cameras. Certainly now more than then we would have grown bored or skeptical of them.

The second surprise came at the end of the film. A relatively static camera became quite mobile as Akerman started pointing her camera out the window of moving cars and trains. The final shot of the film has the camera resting on the back of a ferry as it pulls away from the city. The skyline of New York City opens up before us and then recedes into the distance and sure enough, there they are the Twin Towers, still standing.

Seeing as how it was the 6th anniversary of September 11th, there was an added air of uncertainty in the audience. Just how are we to respond to this? I felt as if we should all rise up and sing the national anthem or at least a Toby Keith song. The chaos and horror of that day has all but left the minds of those who were not there to suffer through it. While the war drags on and stays too fresh in our minds. The World Trade Center and 9/11 have simply become a symbol, hijacked by those who wage an endless war. Images of those towers still standing represent a time of innocence.

Akerman certainly could not have forseen the emotional weight that this shot now carries. If anything, this shot pre-2001 could be dismissed as a last ditch effort by the filmmaker to show the city. The shot is simply too divergent from other shots in the film. It is symbolic of her departure from the city, perhaps back to her mother in Belgium. It is also a shot seen in many other films, not just about New York, but any city on the water. The towering skyline taking up the top two-thirds of the film, the wake of a boat the bottom third. However, with those towers no longer standing the shot holds new meaning or at least a memory.

Yoko Ono once said something to the degree that any film is important in 50 years, simply because it’s a document of a bygone era. I wish I could find the exact quote. I read it in a Might magazine, I think. Seeing a piece like New From Home reminds me of this fact, but not just because of the World Trade Center. Rather, it is the images of New York before it got a face lift. While Akerman’s camera never travels to the surface of Times Square, the true ground zero of New York’s renissance, there are enough hints in all of her other images to clue even the most casual viewer into the fact that New York circa 1977 was not the New York of 1997 or 2007. Her’s is the New York of late night jokes, where every tourist is mugged and the streets all smell of piss and rat feces. As her mother says in one letter, New York is hell. Or at least it was. Yet, because of that last shot this hell feels a lot safer and saner than our world today.