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HIDE AND SEEK / John Polson (2005)

January 30th, 2005 by Scott Marks

Robert DeNiro in HIDE AND SEEK (2005)

Hide and Seek (2005)

Directed by: John Polson

Written by: Ari Schlossberg

Cast: Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen, Elisabeth Shue, Amy Irving, Dylan Baker, Melissa Leo, Robert John Burke, Molly Grant Kallins, David Chandler, Stewart Summers, Jake Dylan Baumer

Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1

Genres: Thriller, Drama, Horror

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

After the audience is led to believe the first Mrs. Spielberg committed suicide, psychologist/grieving-ex Robert DeNiro decides the best thing to cushion their daughter’s (Dakota Fanning) loss would be near-total seclusion. They move to the boonies and the isolation brings forth Charlie, Dakota’s imaginary, and deadly, playmate.

This is the type of film where anybody that comes to the front door is either a suspect or a victim making the surprise ending hopelessly telegraphed. Helen Keller in another multiplex with gloves on could see how this one’s going to resolve. The only genuine shock is that filmmakers still think a Dolby-enhanced cat jumping from a closet is going to scare an audience.

DeNiro underplays the first hour to the point of somnambulism. What about this vacuous, predictable project appealed to him? One can understand little Dakota wanting to work with “the greatest actor of his generation,” but the other way around? Fifteen years ago, would anyone have believed that critics would be positive simply because DeNiro held his own against a child? Even after the big reveal I kept craving something different, but he just wasn’t up for it.

Given the way Bobby D’s been whoreing of late, “Robert DeNiro is Chucky” as opposed to a mean-drunk version of Harvey would have been preferable. What was his excuse this time? Can’t use the “Rocky and Bullwinkle,? I-did-it-so-my-kid-could-see-one-of-my-movies defense. Not quite the embarrassment of Godsend or Showtime, just another artistic stumble in Bob’s unbreakable string of new millennium runs for the paycheck.

In this case, the patented, patronized-Pupkin voice is misapplied. He’s a jealousy-driven murderer living out life as a widowed father and all he can muster are banal pleasantries in a therapist’s nonjudgmental tone. The inadequate dialogue doesn’t help, but where’s the old Bobby D. who could infuse even the most inarticulate blockheads with layers of gist? (I’m talking artistic blockheads like Quentin Tarantino and Penny Marshall, not Jake LaMotta or Travis Bickle.)

Instead of a psychological drama, the filmmakers instead opt for the safe whodunit approach. Develop the two sides of the DeNiro character instead of trying to obscure one in favor of a humdrum surprise ending. As for the newly brunette toddler with the Max Factor raccoon eyes, she’s a good kid actor. What do you want me to say? But even for a kid her taste in projects is unsophisticated.

Some clever vidiot should cut together a comparison reel of this film’s, “Come out, come out wherever you are” tagline and DeNiro’s Max Cady-read from “Cape Fear.” I remember feeling Marty was bamboozled by Bobby into directing an Amblin-produced re-make. When Minnelli and Hawks tried to work in as many genres as possible, there was no such thing as a slasher picture. I never thought I’d say it, but in comparison this makes Max Cady look like DeNiro at his zenith. In this case, a little of Cady’s charm would not have hurt.

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BORN INTO BROTHELS: CALCUTTA’S RED LIGHT KIDS / Zana Briski & Ross Kauffman (2004)

January 21st, 2005 by Scott Marks

Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids (2004)
Directed by: Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman
Written by: Zana Briski, Ross Kauffman
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Genres: Documentary

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Another windowboxed, grainy, hand-held documentary on an emotionally burdensome topic.

We open with cumulus-sized close-ups of a child’s eyes intercut with long shots of poverty and famine. Why not just throw bricks? Is it really that hard to make a well-intentioned film about children void of sentiment?

We follow the lives of several children of prostitutes trapped by fate in Calcutta’s red light district. The goal of the film is to document their hell in hopes of making their lives better. Where does one draw the line between enlightenment and exploitation? It’s one thing to document the plight of third world children being forced into prostitution. It’s another to choose brutal images that, at the expense of the film’s narrative, may have been prevented.

There are a couple of scenes where mothers call children “f***ing c****” and, in one case, beat up on a boy. Put the camera down and do something to stop this abuse. I know this breaks the first rule of documentary cinematography, but what about the laws of humanity, something this film definitely wishes to hammer home.

The filmmakers hope to liberate these children by giving them still cameras in order to allow them artistic expression. After about the third or fourth on-screen portfolio it became what Pauline Kael called a “coffee table movie.” The majority of quality photos by the children on display are happy accidents. The most praised picture of the bunch has a child’s hand in the center that was not intentionally placed there. Is this really teaching children how to “see” or is this just a distraction to help get them through their lives (in addition to giving Briske and Kauffman a chance to produce a film)?

What’s ironic is that the children’s images are a hell of a lot more aesthetically competent than the cinematography. Briske is a still photographer who knows nothing about cinema and it shows in virtually every frame. Strictly shoot-now-and-figure-it-out-later filmmaking. Formally, this is no better or worse than Jackass: The Movie. Of course the message is an important one, but were it transformed into a literary essay loaded with grammatical errors would she still court the critic’s favor? Call me cynical, but this film raised more questions about the misapplication of cinema and sentiment than answers to the children’s dilemma.

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BEAR CUB / Miguel Albaladejo (2004)

January 12th, 2005 by Scott Marks

Miguel Albaladejo’s BEAR CUB (2004)

Cachorro (2004)

Directed by: Miguel Albaladejo

Written by: Miguel Albaladejo, Salvador García Ruiz

Cast: José Luis García Pérez, David Castillo, Empar Ferrer, Elvira Lindo, Arno Chevrier, Mario Arias, Josele Román, Diana Cerezo, Daniel Llobregat, Juanma Lara, Jorge Calvo, Josep Tomàs, Juanjo Martínez, Ramón Ramos, Patxi Uribarren

Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1

Genres: Comedy, Drama

With a title like this you’d be half-expecting live-action Disney or a Jean-Jacques Annaud follow-up on little Youk’s life. Instead, we have a film that goes against everything I stand for, proving once again that it ain’t what you say but the way that you say it.

First, it’s that loathsomely predictable (and manipulative) approach to storytelling, the set-‘em-up-to-watch-‘em-die. Bernardo (David Castillo) is left with his uncle Pedro (Jose Luis Garcia Perez) while his mother Violeta (Elvira Lindo) goes to India on “business.” For reels I sat waiting for something to befall her. No plane crash. No CG-enhanced terrorist bombing. Not even a fiery car wreck. What keeps Bernardo and his uncle together is not death, but that other dependable cinematic punisher – drugs! Violeta is imprisoned for smuggling and director Albaladejo wisely spares us the “Midnight Express” torture route and heavy-handed moralizing.

Not since Edith Massey’s pleas for a queer son in John Water’s Female Trouble has a cinematic mother so desired a gay offspring. Violeta’s constant reassurance of her young son’s homosexuality even wobbles Pedro’s lascivious leanings.

Any one of the films numerous subplots could be expanded into 90 minute, made-for-TV, crisis-of-the-week melodrama. Grandparents ought to have visitation rights, gays make loving parents, dentists with HIV deserve to make a living, HIV is not a death sentence, etc. The true villain (and victim) in the piece is Bernardo’s paternal grandmother Teresa (Empar Ferrer). Infectiously despised by Violeta, Bernardo refuses to visit with her and Pedro respects his wishes until she blackmails him with photographic evidence of a nasty “tunnel bunny” tryst.

Instead of transcribing yet another culture clash between gays and straights, each character is presented with depth, dimensionality and a revitalizing lack of sentiment.

Teresa would want time with her grandson no matter what Pedro’s sexuality. Were his condom-strewn, drug-soaked, sexually free-for-all ways centered on heterosexuality, grandma would have still found ways to blackmail.

As in any good thirties programmer, crime and/or promiscuous behavior do not pay and the guilty must be punished. We learn that Pedro is HIV positive and thankfully he is allowed to live. It is particularly gratifying to leave a film that manages to transcend all that in lesser hands would be a ten-hankie male weepy. The director’s honestly continually keeps the film from caving in under the weight of its own implications.

Throw all the topical messages aside, for this is as much a film about lost love as Citizen Kane. We exit the proceedings locked inside Teresa’s gated burial grounds watching as an older Pedro and Bernardo leave her funeral. Death and imprisonment separate Bernardo from the two women in his life. Violeta and Pedro have come to terms with the impact she made on Bernardo’s life, and it is only fitting that the last gaze before the final fade belongs to Teresa.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

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THE MERCHANT OF VENICE / Michael Radford (2004)

January 10th, 2005 by Scott Marks

Michael Radford’s THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (2004)

The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Directed by: Michael Radford
Written by: William Shakespeare, Michael Radford
Cast: Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins, Zuleikha Robinson, Kris Marshall, Charlie Cox, Heather Goldenhersh, Mackenzie Crook, John Sessions, Gregor Fisher, Ron Cook, Allan Corduner, Anton Rodgers, David Harewood
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Genres: Drama

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

I do not pretend to speak with any authority on the subject of Shakespeare. In my youth, when all students are supposed to be brushing up on his works, I was too eager to structurally analyze Michael Avallone’s drugstore novelizations of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. series.

With the exception of Akira Kurosawa and Orson Welles, adapters tend to put the bard before cinematic discourse. This version is no better than trash like “Shakespeare in Love.” What SCTV referred to as, “good acting at its finest.” This reverence may work on stage, but not when transcribed to cinema with zero appreciation of the art form and, at times, a near-contemptuous misunderstanding of how to “open up” a play.

The film-lover inside of me wanted to bolt when the “pound of flesh” agreement was prefaced by a goat having its throat slit and a slab of meat hitting a sidewalk butcher’s scale. This type of symbolic visual underscoring would make Eisenstein choke. Were Shakespeare this clumsily obvious his fame would rank somewhere below that of Norman Krasna or Neil Simon.

The least they could do is allow you to clearly understand the generally under-recorded dialogue. Jeremy Irons, one of the most vocally gifted performers today, is reduced to Dolby-muffled mumbling. Al Pacino’s accent is pitched somewhere between Georgie Jessel and Lord Olivier’s Rabbinical patriarch in The Jazz Singer. Nothing disgusts more than being painfully made aware that an actor is acting, and Pacino’s self-consciousness should be carved and served on a platter.

He’s not the only one fails to deliver. Joseph Fiennes would be better suited to reprise the Tim Matheson role in a remake of Animal House. His fratboy good looks and irrepressible smirk add eye-candy, not depth.

Were the director more assured of himself, he would have backed the camera up a few paces to allow us to watch his players as a group, not in isolated close-ups so the morons in the back row will know they can act real good. His use of the widesceeen is virtually nonexistent and the lighting scheme simply designed to brighten, not illuminate. Instead of a filmmaker, we have of a theater buff clamoring to preserve the integrity of the play, not enhance the experience or understanding through cinema.

As for the anti-Semitism, show this on a double-bill with The Passion of the Christ and I’ll take up permanent residence under my bed. Give them credit for not trying to sanitize the original work.

In the end this film is about faces and words, not images or style. Read the play, don’t see the movie.

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LOOKING FOR LOVE / Don Weis (1964)

January 7th, 2005 by Scott Marks

Miss Connie Francis
Looking for Love (1964)
Directed by: Don Weis
Written by: Ruth Brooks Flippen
Cast: Connie Francis, Jim Hutton, Susan Oliver, Joby Baker, Barbara Nichols, Johnny Carson, George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux, Paula Prentiss, Danny Thomas, Charles Lane, Joan Marshall, Jesse White, Jay C. Flippen
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Genres: Musical
Unintentional Laffs: Rating: ★★★☆☆

Connie’s third of her four musical comedies at Metro and the only one that doesn’t have the word ‘boy’ in the title.

By 1964, Hollywood had pretty much thrown in the towel as far as television was concerned and began openly sleeping with the enemy. Not only is the film crammed with popular personalities of the day (Johnny Carson, Danny Thomas, Jesse White, Joby Baker), and cute (overly-rehearsed) on-set mishaps, the structure, pace and composition are strictly small-screen.

It’s easy to understand how screenwriter Flippen (wife of Jay C.) would eventually write on such ground-healing 60’s pigswill as The Brady Bunch and The New Scooby Doo Movies. What’s truly tragic is that these TV-safe anamorphic frames, crowding characters to the center, were lensed by Minnelli mainstay Milton Krasner.

Stardom eluded Libby Caruso (Francis) for an entire month, so she decided to get out of the music business and snare a man. Aside from her voice and her Lady Valet, a glorified clothes hanger she invented, Libby’s only talent is sniffing out Mr. Right. Enter Jim Hutton, a co-worker into TNT (Tall ‘n’ Top-Heavy) who lands Libby a spot to tout her creation on the Tonight Show. It’s a flop, but her singing connects and for another hour we watch Libby slalum her way around a light powder of familiar supporting players in search of true love.

The film was made to cash in on the success of earlier Francis/Hutton vehicles, most notably the enormously entertaining, guiltiest of all guilty pleasures, “Where the Boys Are.” As sociologically and cinematically backwards as that film is, it plays like a sophisticated Lubitsch romp compared to this set-bound stiff. We briefly get to visit a neon drenched sixties supermarket only to be shuttered back in the studio after one establishing shot. “Where the Boys Are?” alumni George Hamilton, Yvette Mimieux and the vastly underrated Paula Prentiss appear, adding little more than name recognition to the poster.

Connie Francis was a firecracker. She had the neurotic frailty of a young Judy Garland, Ethel Merman’s pipes and the comedic traction of a Danny Thomas. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. Pert and delightfully ditzy in the light comedy (comedy-lite?) passages and capable of showing her range even in trash like this, she could have been a contender had it not been for that tragic night in a Howard Johnson’s motel room.

Director Don Weis has come through in the past, but this time he’s simply punching Metro’s timeclock. Impress me once, good for you. Disappoint me after an imposing start and I’ll probably still keep giving you the benefit of the doubt in hopes of a return to form. Who do you think brought me to garbage like this?

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SEX IN CHAINS / William Dieterle (1928)

January 3rd, 2005 by Scott Marks

Geschlecht in Fesseln - Die Sexualnot der Gefangenen (1928)

Directed by: William Dieterle

Written by: Herbert Juttke, Georg C. Klaren
Cast: William Dieterle, Gunnar Tolnæs, Mary Johnson, Paul Henckels, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Hugo Werner-Kahle, Carl Goetz, Friedrich Kurth, Arthur Duark

Aspect Ratio: 1.33 : 1

Of all the director’s to work at Warner Bros. in the 30’s, only Raoul Walsh came closest to William Dieterle’s visual involvedness. Although Michael Curtiz gets the lion’s share of the glory, it is Dieterle, with his incredible sense of illustrative storytelling that remains the least lauded member of the studio’s directorial roster. In his essential Hollywood Directors, Jean-Pierre Coursodon argues that Dieterle was forced to tell his early stories through pictures in order to compensate for his inability to speak English.

Thanks to Kino Video, we now have a chance to see one of the director’s early German films in near pristine form. Under the subheading, “Gay-Themed Films of the Silent Era,” Kino has released a set of four films that were, to say the least, dicey in their day. The package includes G.W. Pabst’s “Diary of a Lost Girl,” Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Michael,” Richard Oswald “Different from the Others” and Dieterle’s “Sex in Chains.” Under the skilled guidance of film preservationist/silent film Maharishi David Shepard these films probably haven’t looked this good since their initial release. Continue reading SEX IN CHAINS / William Dieterle (1928)

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