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Funny Ha Ha

Film review

Alfred Hitchcock may have preferred “slices of cake” to “slices of life,” but the cinema has excelled at both ever since its inception. If the latter is more rare in American film production, it has appeared from the works of Robert J. Flaherty to Little Fugitive (1953), a film remembered this year for the death of Morris Engel last May and for its impact on independent cinema, John Cassavetes, and the French New Wave. More than painting, music, or literature, film has an astonishing ability to record ordinary people in ordinary settings with an aural and visual clarity that can …

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Nang Nak

DVD review

George Lucas isn’t the only filmmaker who can turn ancient myth, graphic eye candy, doomed romance, and Buddhist non-attachment into box office gold, so can Nonzee Nimibutr. What’s more, Nimitbutr did it six years ago in Thailand with Nang Nak (recently released on DVD by Kino International), where the film became a popular sensation and helped finance festival hits like Last Life in the Universe (2003) and The Overture (2004).

For my money, Nang Nak is also a lot more fun–and even touching–than any one of the Star Wars prequels or Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring (2003), for that matter. …

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The Tracker

DVD review

The new issue of Paste magazine (number 16) is currentlly on newsstands, and it features a number of articles I’ve written, including introductions to Australian cinema and Robert Bresson (highlighting New Yorker’s L’Argent and Criterion’s upcoming Au hasard Balthazar DVDs), and a short write-up on Welles’ F for Fake.

One of the films I wanted to include in my Australian article, but didn’t because I couldn’t obtain the region 4 DVD in time, was Rolf de Heer’s The Tracker (2002), a potent and formally inventive depiction of three white, mounted police in the 1920s who chase a black Aboriginal …

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White Dog

Film review

Hollywood will re-cut, delay, or undersell its films if it suspects they’ll pose economic or political risks, but it rarely shelves productions entirely. But unfortunately, this is exactly what it did with Samuel Fuller’s White Dog (1982), a movie about a canine trained to attack black people. Paramount has never domestically released the film outside of festivals, but the American Cinematheque screened it last night as part of its “Movies Not Available On Video” series. And Fuller’s film is a powerful, inspired critique of racism, tapping into the relationship between humans and animals in a way that places it within …

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Fury

DVD review

Fritz Lang's first American film, Fury (1936), was released on DVD this week as part of Warner’s Controversial Classics Collection box set, and while it’s not entirely clear what designates each film as being “controversial,” I’m not going to quibble; Warner continues to set the standard for excellent transfers, noteworthy extras, and comparatively low prices for such classic titles.

Lang’s talents are also fully on display in this film, too, although his transition from European to Hollywood production generated its share of tensions–rigid shooting schedules, difficult stars, and a studio that prided itself on glossy musicals frustrated Lang, known for …

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Los Angeles Plays Itself

Film review

After extended runs in New York, Chicago, and London–among other places–Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) has finally opened in Los Angeles at the American Cinematheque. Of course, this bit of irony is completely in tune with one of the documentary’s central theses, that despite being the host city for the film industry, Los Angeles–its people, places, and character–is virtually absent in the movies. Multimillion dollar productions by “tourist” directors, absurdly over-privileged and removed from the realities of the majority of Angelenos (less than 3% of whom actually work in the industry), continue to perpetuate myths about America’s second largest …

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