Week #3. My eyes are bloodshot.
Hail, Caesar! (2016) dir. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
17/03/16
Cinema as gospel. My friends who didn’t enjoy this told me that their cinemas consisted of a scatter of 5 or so people, none of whom were familiar with the Coen’s sense of humour-suckers. For me, the cinema was packed, Caesar having found its way into the largest of Nova’s cinemas (at least that I’ve seen) and into the hearts of the masses. Not a joke went astray. Josh Brolin is a star and Alden Ehrenreich is a superstar. ★★★★½
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) dir. Wes Anderson
22/03/16
Odd how the Intro to Cinema course screened the least Wes Anderson-y movie (I am yet to see The Darjeeling Limited so I can’t say this in full confidence) for its obligatory Wes Anderson screening (ok, the screening was actually for mise-en-scene but it wouldn’t be an introductory film course without an Anderson). Handheld here plays a big part in breaking his typical visual style but it isn’t all for the worse, creating a certain freedom of expression which is vacant from his other works. Also contains one of the craziest scenes Anderson has put to screen (this one) which is a riot in itself. ★★★★
Night Nurse (1931) dir. William A. Wellman
23/03/16
Pre-code era worked wonders on Night Nurse. Barbara Stanwyck undressed multiple times on camera, sleeps with both a skeleton and a woman, is almost raped only to be knock unconscious by a drunkard, and attempts to stop a couple from systematically starving their children only to laugh the film to its conclusion after discovering the death of a man. ★★★★
Meet John Doe (1941) dir. Frank Capra
23/03/16
The finale of the six-part Barbara Stanwyck showcase at the Cinematheque. Also happens to be the worst of the bunch; I was sadly left feeling every minute of its 2 hour runtime. Stanwyck is great as per usual but is kept in the background for the most of the picture, leaving an (admittedly fantastic) Gary Cooper front and centre. Alludes to communism in ways odd in a 1940s American picture also. ★★★★
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) dir. Zack Snyder
23/03/16
Don’t even get me started. This is no way deserves the title that it has. Not the Batman v Superman we deserve, nor the Batman v Superman we need right now. No rating
Henry Fool (1997) dir. Hal Hartley
25/03/16
★★★★
Fay Grim (2006) dir. Hal Hartley
25/03/16
★★★★
Ned Rifle (2015) dir. Hal Hartley
25/03/16
Written for the trilogy. Also written for Letterboxd.
If there’s one thing I love and adore about Hal Hartley’s Henry Rifle trilogy it’s his commitment to the absurdities of his self-contained universe—these joyous implausibilities range from Simon Grim’s humble beginnings in the domestic epic Henry Foolas a garbageman to his fantasies of arousing a career as a stand-up comedian following his Nobel Prize-winning poetry venture in Ned Rifle, and to the adjacent timeline of his sister Fay concerning a wholly-tilted dreamlike espionage segment (the entirety of Fay Grim) in which she is sentenced to life imprisonment after committing treason against the United States). And this is only the beginning… Hartley has stumbled onto something fantastical here, a truly unique three-part masterwork of hilarious oddities which embrace the buoyant possibilities of transcending the mundane disposition of suburban life while equally balancing the more morbid and melancholic sides of the human psyche.
As Henry Fool once said, “Certain work needs to be experienced all at once in order for one to appreciate the full force of its character”, and this globe-trotting tragicomic saga is one of those works. ★★★½ (for Ned Rifle)
For real, my eyes are bloodshot.