Adrienne

Concerning
Unbelievable
Truths

Adrienne
USA 2021
Directed by Andy Ostroy
HBO

I never really react much when favourite film stars or composers die. I see people on Twitter proclaiming their grief and always wonder why the heck the person is so vocal and shook up about it, considering he or she’s never likely to have even met or corresponded with that person. Maybe I’m demonstrating what psychiatrists call an ‘absence of appropriate affect’ but, yeah, I never really understood it.

Except once.

I remember going on to the internet one day in 2006 on my lunch hour at the office and reading that Adrienne Shelley had been found dead in her flat, a suspected suicide. That one really hit me and I remember tearing up and trying to figure out why the heck I was reacting that way? I’d never met her and she was as distant to me as another planet in the heavens but, yeah, she was an actress I really empathised with, it turns out. I’d only seen her in three things... two films by my favourite living director Hal Hartley, called The Unbelievable Truth and Trust and also a random TV episode of a show called Early Edition. They were the first two feature length films by Hal and were also Adrienne’s first two films ever. I’d never seen a single episode of Early Edition, before or since but, I remember seeing a trailer for the show and, upon seeing Adrienne was in it, I made a point of watching it. So, yeah, something obviously clicked and I was also looking forward to a new film she’d apparently written and directed (and appeared in) called Waitress at the time. I felt grief over her passing for, I dunno, some inexplicable reason, being that it was for someone who I never knew but even more so when it was later discovered she’d been murdered (it was originally a suspected suicide but, when you see this beautiful documentary, you’ll see how ridiculous it was that anyone could ever believe it).

The actress had everything about to really come together for her. She didn’t know it yet but, a few days or so after her untimely death at the age of 40, leaving behind her loving husband and daughter, Waitress was accepted into the Sundance festival. It went on to become a hit movie and was then adapted into a very long running, successful stage musical... but she was not around to experience her success.

This documentary, Adrienne, is certainly about her life but, perhaps somewhat more so, it’s about the husband Andy Ostroy and their daughter Sophie, who were left behind and how they dealt with it. How they are continuing to deal with it. It’s directed by Mr. Ostroy and there’s much less of the ‘talking to the stars’ aspect than you might think of in this kind of movie. I mean, sure, there are various interview moments from the likes of Robert John Burke, Hal Hartley, Cheryl Hines, Kerri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Paul Rudd and various friends and family... and it all paints a wonderful picture of Adrienne. However, this documentary is also, I dunno, it’s plays as something like an exorcism of bad spirits or at least an acknowledgement of the struggle of the surviving family members.

It’s structure and focus, which then allows us to slip into a continuing look at Shelley’s personal story, is of Andy and Sophie. Andy also remembered the many difficult but heart tugging conversations he had with his daughter, who was just three when her mummy left them, and the two have reconstructed the conversations as voices in some lovely, very moving little line drawing animated sections which punctuate the movie at regular intervals. I have to say... maybe it’s more to do with me getting old but I started tearing up a little from about two minutes into the film and didn’t really let up until after it had finished.

This first two minutes or so show a Halloween party that Shelley was at (or had thrown) the night before her untimely death at the age of 40 and she looks so happy with her daughter and where she was in her life that, when you think of it, it was preposterous that the police could, for even one minute, believe this was a suicide. And so the film also starts to highlight Andy’s story of getting the police to investigate the case seriously and getting an arrest and confession very quickly (as it turns out, yeah I remember at the time it was a quick turn around on the media), due to a smart cop who spotted a feint trace of construction dust and a tell tale footprint in Shelley’s bath tub, where the killer had staged the murder to look like a suicide.

While this piece highlights the good work of The Adrienne Shelly Foundation, set up by Andy to help women filmmakers get projects made, the film builds to a moment when the killer agrees to Andy’s request to meet with him in jail, where he is about 15 years into a 25 year sentence. That’s an interesting interview and I’m not a hundred percent sure of what to make of it... so I’m not going to judge that sequence because I don’t have any real understanding of how both parties are dealing with their actions, emotions and consequences at that time but, yeah, it maybe brings a certain amount of closure to the audience, if not to the people caught up in the events.

At the end of the day, Adrienne is an absolutely wonderful tribute to one of the unsung, or at least underseen, geniuses of the art of cinema (writing, acting and directing) and, also, for me personally, as I’ve been putting off watching Waitress for the first time for years because I’m still upset about Shelley’s death... it’s a wake up call to get it out of the ‘to watch’ pile on the other side of the room where I type this. Also to explore a fair few other things she either co-starred in, wrote or directed... which I had no idea she was even involved with. So that’s something else I have to squeeze into the next couple of years, if I can find these films. Needless to say, I think Andy Ostroy has made a bold and beautiful film here and I would recommend it to anyone. I hope this one gets a Blu Ray release at some point because I’d like a proper physical edition on the shelf.

Ned Rifle

To Hal And Back

Ned Rifle
USA 2015
Directed by Hal Hartley
DVD Region 2

You know, it’s always quite hard to review perfect films like the ones Hal Hartley tends to make. For many years now I’ve been citing him as my favourite living writer/director and, though I found a couple of his later shorts and one feature of his that I didn’t like as much as the others... it has to be said that he rarely disappoints and is the last word in US independent film making as far as I’m concerned. So much so that this particular movie was even funded by a Kickstarter campaign and, since I’m unaware of any screenings in this country, I had to wait for a DVD to become available from his website before I was able to see this.

Ned Rifle is a very interesting name for a feature from Hartley as many fans will know the name. He’s more often than not written the musical scores for the majority of the movies he’s directed and, again, more often than not, they’ve always been absolutely appropriate to his subject as well as being pretty good listens away from the movie... if one is actually fortunate enough to come across a release of any of them. The point is, before everybody caught on and realised it was Hartley “pulling a Carpenter” and doing the scores for his own movies, he used to use the name Ned Rifle as his compositional pseudonym... sometimes playing as part of a group with the further deviation of the name, called Ryful. Of course, everyone’s wise to all that nowadays but it was truly a full circle kind of feeling watching the opening credits of a movie called Ned Rifle with Music by Hal Hartley. Kinda made me chuckle.

Ned Rifle is a bit of a miracle for an independent movie maker because it’s actually the final part of a trilogy which he started back in 1997 with his most popular feature Henry Fool, which I saw and loved at the time of its release, either at the Lumiere Cinema in London (if it was still just about open by then) or maybe at the London Film Festival one year... I can’t remember. It was pretty self contained and had a lovely, ambiguous ending which really didn’t need any closure heaped on it. So it was pretty unusual to find that, indeed, closure did come nine years later in the form of a follow up focusing on the further adventures of Henry Fool’s wife, Fay Grim, in the movie... um... Fay Grim, in 2006.

Now, going back to my first paragraph here, it has to be said that Fay Grim was about the only feature film by Hal Hartley that I didn’t really like as much as his others. It was, as I would expect from “the greatest living director”, well made but I didn’t chuckle as much as I usually do during Hartley’s movies and I was less impressed than I’d hoped I would be. By then, though, I believe some people were saying that Fay Grim was Hal Hartley’s The Empire Strikes Back... in that there would hopefully be a ‘concluding’ part to what was shaping up to be the Henry Fool trilogy. And here it is now, in the form of Ned Rifle... another nine years after the last one.

One of the things which had impressed me about Fay Grim was the casting. In the original Henry Fool, a film where the titular character played by Thomas Jay Ryan is, maybe, a modern philosophical genius or a perverted degenerate... probably a compelling cross between the two... Fool is a catalyst for change on those about him. He eventually marries Fay Grim (played by Parker Posey), the sister of the film’s other main protagonist Simon Grim, played by James Urbaniak (you might also remember him playing comic book artist Robert Crumb in the excellent American Splendour). About three quarters of the way through that first movie they have a son, Ned, and he’s played for the last bit by a then 7 year old actor called Liam Aiken. Startingly, he returned as the 16 year old version of the same character for Fay Grim and, oh yeah... with the character’s second name changed to Rifle as part of his witness protection programme after events in that second movie, he’s back here playing the same character at 25 years of age (I guess, although he may be playing slightly younger in story years... couldn’t really tell). So he, and a lot of the regular cast from the other two, are all back for this one. Which is no mean feat.

Aiken has, of course, always been a pretty good supporting actor and he easily handles the main protagonist role in this movie, aided by Hartley’s often criticised but much loved (by this humble movie watcher), less than naturalistic dialogue. And as usual, Hartley’s writing is wonderfully performed by the various actors who, this time around, include a much loved and frequent Hartley collaborator from his early days, appearing for the first time in one of the Henry Fool films, the always watchable Martin Donovan. Here he plays a priest, which is kind of a step down in religious terms, I guess, after playing Jesus opposite Thomas Jay Ryan’s performance as the devil in Hartley’s amazing millennial movie The Book Of Life.

So this film is Ned’s story and it starts off with the revelation that he’s “found God” and so, being an unshakingly religious person, he decides to seek out the man responsible for the incarceration of his mother... his father Henry Fool... and kill him. Yeah... I guess that’s the problem with religious types, isn’t it?

Of course, this then becomes a little bit like a road movie as Ned follows the clues given to him by various old characters (and actors) from the previous movies in the trilogy, such as his mother Fay and his Uncle Simon. He’s also simultaneously aided and abetted by a character called Susan Weber, played by an actress called Aubrey Plaza, who is new to the Hal Hartley universe and seems pretty suited as a typical Hartley character... reeling off long and overtly complicated passages of his brilliant dialogue and still managing to make it all sound just about acceptable and highly comical, just the way it’s written. Actually, this character has a surprise twist revelation which, and this is my one slight criticism of this film, I feel Hartley reveals too early on in the storyline. I’m obviously not going to spoil this and tell you what it is here but what I will say is that, fans of the character Henry Fool will get a little surprise about a story element from his past turning up to haunt him... it’s a really nice touch and explores the kinds of problematic issues which are less talked about in mainstream cinema... if one can exactly call Hartley a representative of mainstream cinema these days. Though goodness knows he should be... I’ve never understood why this guy isn’t a more lionised and celebrated writer/director in his own country. The man is such a vital artist.

The film itself is typical Hartley, with crisp, witty images and the kind of strong, clean compositions you would expect from this man’s work. Beautiful, even colours create their own blocks and shapes and the director and cinematographer tend to section parts of the images off using these various shapes so that everybody gets their own little section of the screen to cleanly fit into. There’s an absolutely amazing and extreme, almost audacious culmination of this visual style at one point where the amazing Martin Donovan is sitting in the foreground of a shot in sharp focus next to a ladder. As his daughter is talking to him in the background, she moves to fill a square formed by the rungs and sides of the ladder as she does so, also in deep focus. Wow. Visual orgasm or what?

Another example is where Ned Rifle is sitting on a bed on the right of screen and Weber is lying at the other end talking to him, the shot split in half by a lampshade dividing them visually in the centre of the frame. This is great stuff and also, of course, can be seen as a visual metaphor for the divide between the lives of the two characters. The dialogue is less clever here but certainly tugs the heart somewhat as Ned says, “I have to...”. Weber finishes the sentence for him, “Pray?” “Yeah.” says Ned. Weber continues, “You have to tell me about that one day.” “What’s to tell?” asks Ned. Weber concludes the scene by responding, “How it feels to have someone listening.” The almost split screen created by the lampshade is a nice touch to augment that dialogue and it’s little moments like this which allow me to conclude, with this movie, that Hal Hartley is still a cinematic genius or, to put it another way... yeah, he’s still “got it”.

Hal Hartley’s Ned Rifle is available on iTunes and you can watch, stream and grab the DVD from the director’s website www.halhartley.com If you’ve never seen a Hal Hartley film before then this may not be the absolute best one to jump on with, being as it’s technically a sequel to two of his other movies... but you can check out a load of his other films at the website and others are available from the usual channels. If you are already a fan of Hartley you’ll definitely want to pick up a copy of Ned Rifle in whatever format is your poison... if you’ve never seen a Hal Hartley movie before but are a fan of cinema in general... well, just pick any one and get to it. I’m sure you’ll soon want to watch them all.

Meanwhile

MeanHal


Meanwhile US 2011
Directed by Hal Hartley
Possible Films Region 0

I’ve long held the belief that Hal Hartley is the greatest living director and generally taken every possible opportunity to herald that sentiment to anybody who a) likes movies enough to have heard of Mr. Hartley and b) will actually sit still and listen. This kind of overly positive attitude to people can sometimes make me nervous when I set myself the task of “reviewing” that person’s work... and it’s worse when the person has not, as yet, shuffled off this mortal coil.

That is to say... if I was writing a review about one of my other directing heroes like Akira Kurosawa or Andrei Tarkovsky, I would be pretty nervous, sure, in case my personal theories and feelings about their work ran contrary to what their intentions were (and I missed something really obvious, which is always a worry) but the ghost of Akira Kurosawa is not going to come and give me a good seeing to with Toshiro Mifune’s spare samurai sword. Similarly, Andrei Tarkovsky is not going to spring to life, zombie like, and shamble around after me trying to make me drink a good, unhealthy dose of liquid oxygen.

Hal Hartley is still alive. In the “extremely remote” chance that he actually might read something I wrote and disagreed with it or, you know, generally disliked it... he could possibly find out where I lived and break my arms.

So I guess I’m kinda nervous on this one... forgive me if I stumble.

Okay, so Meanwhile is Hartley’s latest feature and, by feature, I mean it in the good old Universal B-movie sense because, frankly, it’s only an hour long (boo, I wanted more). Even so, one hour of Hartley after his continued absences from the commercial cinema/movie scene is like a glass of cool water to a man stranded in the desert.

The quality of the... (insert pretty much all aspects of film-making here)... is absolutely everything you could hope for in a distinct return to form for Hartley (yeah, okay, I’ll admit I didn’t like Fay Grim so much... but I loved every other feature he’s made and most of the shorts too... can I be forgiven please? I’m going to give Fay another try sometime soon, I promise!). All of the action takes place in a roughly 24 hour time period in New York and D.J. Mendel, who is absolutely superb in this role (as I would expect), plays Joseph and follows him on his day as he tries to keep his head above water.

Joseph, it seems to me, is an eternal optimist. He has no money but he is always giving it away or promising it to people when he is struggling, quite cheerily, to make some money in the first place. He can pretty much fix anything (harkening back to Matthew Slaughter as played by Martin Donovan in Trust) but, although he does go around fixing things for people all day, he refuses to accept any money for his good work. He even fixes a Spanish housekeeper’s back in a scene which is very old school, obvious (almost slapstick) and broad comedy.

He continues this optimism all the way through the film, even though he has a crushing weight on him as he failed, to his knowledge, to prevent a woman from throwing herself to her death off the Brooklyn Bridge. This in some ways informs certain choices he makes through the picture... or at least gives his dogged determination in the face of rebuttal a sense of being justified if you don’t happen to share his kind of mindset... but ultimately, as I said before, he’s just the great optimist. At least that’s how I see him. This is nowhere more apparent in his ultimate fate and his last line in the movie. This is "the guy" you would always want to hang out with down your local pub. The talented everyman in pursuit of the break and gently nudging along with the mundane and “everyday” occurrences which make up a lot of people’s lives.

And, of course, he spouts those great Hartley lines. The real poetry of the way people interact with each other is a joy to listen to, as well as see perfectly and cleanly and, mostly, simply framed in this director’s awesome shot designs. Fans of this writer/director will love this movie anyway but more-so because this one has a distinct retro feel when it comes to this director’s back catalogue. I’ve already mentioned the slight character trait connection the main protagonist shares with an earlier Hartley hero but there are lots of little nods to the director’s early works in this movie. One girl’s initial dialogue/monologue came off sounding exactly like what Adrienne Shelley’s character Maria (also from Trust) might have said... heck, for all I know it could be one of the same speeches with just a few tweaks. There are lots of little moments in this which sent little blips of deja vu echoing through my Hartley movie memories and I really liked this stuff. Hell, even the title of the movie is a visual echo of the captioning in The Unbelievable Truth (I hate mentioning Godard in comparison to Hal Hartley’s stylistic distancing techniques but... I’m sorry... this movie shares a similarly Godardian device in that it uses a series of intertitles which make up chapter references).

This is not to be derogatory to the director, of course. The last thing he may want is to hear that this movie looks and sounds like something from his earlier period. Maybe I’m just responding to the directors style on this one... the rawness of the poetry being particularly potent in this maybe just means that the dialogue is, you know, kinda Hartleyesque... which I guess must be a compliment of some sort... or at least a truth, unbelievable or not.

This film is very self-referential too. We’ve seen Hartley playing himself before in the third segment of the feature-length version of Flirt and, once again, he’s mentioned in this movie... even though he doesn’t actually show up at all. His wife, a constant actress in Mr. Hartley’s work, does though. Playing herself for a change. Joseph borrows her apartment while she’s in Shanghai overseeing her fashion label and so he goes to pick up the key from Possible Film’s offices, where a woman borrows the novel of Meanwhile overnight. These days I think I’m supposed to describe this kind of element in a movie as “meta-textual”... but I’m really not sure I’m all that fond of the meta word to be honest and, a decade ago, I would have referred to this movie as having a postmodernistic attitude... which would have probably sounded a bit better but ultimately, still means the same thing. Either way, the movie takes place in a universe where the director, wife of the director, offices of the director and the template of the movie you are watching, exist as fictional elements that appear in the story (if you really want to call it a story... I’m not too fond of stories, as you may have figured out by now if you’ve been reading any of my other blog posts semi-regularly). Make of that what you will.

Personally, I just thought it was kinda fun.

The music is cool on this too, of course. It’s typical Hal Hartley music... which is to say, it’s catchy and works really well laid over the visual images (and probably works really well as a stand alone listen too... “Hartley the musician” has that knack about him). The director comes clean about having composed the music himself this time... none of this Ned Rifle or Ryful playfulnesss on this one. He’s got over that, I think.

So yeah, this is a fun movie and a fun listen and there are some little sections of this movie that might also make you think... and the main protagonist is somebody to aspire to be like in their attitude too. How cool is that?

I started off this review restating my belief that Hal Hartley is the greatest “living” director working in film. After having seen this movie, I can find no evidence pointing to the contrary... this is another mini-masterpiece made by an absolute genius on the cinematic landscape. It’s also a really great jumping on point for this director if you’ve never experienced his work before. A really solid intro to some of his recurring themes and his ways of expression. I’d give this movie (and this director, obviously) a Grade A recommendation to anyone. A perfect watch. Go to his website Possible Films and go buy a load of his stuff, including this movie. He deserves it and so does your mind!

Mission Statement/Coming Soon

Missionary Position

“Restate my assumptions”

Maximillian Cohen, Darren Aronofsky’s PI.

I think I need to make a slight adjustment to my own, and possibly other people’s, expectations about this blog review thing I’ve got going on here. But, just to make it a little more fun (hopefully), this’ll also take the form of a “coming soon” kinda thing for future entries on these pages... as much as it will an apology of sorts.

My faith in film blogging has been shaken a little recently. That is to say, my selection process as to whether I write about a movie has had to undergo a very minimal rethink... here’s what happened...

On Halloween weekend I, and a few friends, went to a special screening at my local “art complex” although, to be fair, complex is a bit overblown for the kind of building it is. Anyway, we were there for a double bill screening of Universal’s 1931 film Frankenstein and their 1935 sequel Bride Of Frankenstein. It was also meant to, not just celebrate the spirit of Halloween, but also to honour the memory of a famous local celebrity of days gone by who used to attend my school, namely... Boris Karloff.

All was well until the first film screened... they’d squashed (or stretched, depending on your point of view) the original 4:3 aspect ratio of the movies into a 1.85:1 aspect ratio to fit the size of their screen (this film was made before the traditional widescreen process as we know it today had been invented, don’t forget). This resulted in a load of fat, bloated actors looking like they were walking around the set of a crazy fun house... ushered in, not by the traditional Universal globe but by a Universal rugby ball... or so it seemed from its shape.

Now I went out to complain about the films being improperly framed but was fobbed off and told, in more or less these words, that they had decided to show them in an aspect ratio distorted to fill their screen... rather than actually show the film properly. Nothing was changed and people were forced to watch this painful mockery or leave.

Now I sent a lengthy letter of complaint to a couple of my local newspapers and was happy to see that they’d both published my angry and, it must be said, sizeable rant against the “cinema-nazis” and their “crimes against filmanity”. Hopefully the people responsible will take heed of some of the points I raised in my letter.

However, this left me with a dilemma because I wanted to review the two films for this blog... but hadn’t actually seen them (this time around) in their best light. Now I’ve seen both films a fair number of times (at least into double figures) and I could probably write a fairly accurate and honest appraisal of both these films in my sleep without even bothering to watch them again I suspect (and please, no comments about the blogs coming out more comprehensible if I stuck to writing them in my sleep :-7 ) but the point was... should I?

I thought about my original intentions with this blog and how I wanted to ensure that every film and TV show I watched would be reviewed here (along with the majority of the books I was reading and a smattering of music reviews when I felt brave enough) but I then thought, rather than write about these films right now... I would save these two for a future year (maybe next year, maybe the one after) and watch them again properly... but this time in context as an occasional running series on all the classic Universal Horror movies of the 30s, 40s and 50s in chronological order of their release... so readers new to the material could get a sense of the progression (or possibly digression and regression, depending on whether you love these movies as much as me or not) and context with the series of films. So that’s what I’m going to do...

So there you have it... my apologies for not reviewing two films I’ve seen recently... but they will go back on the list and be done properly, rather than write a review based on the hideous screening I saw at the end of last month.

Actually, series’ of reviews are something I want to get into more in the coming months/years so, here’s a little preview of some of the things I hope to achieve on the blog sooner or later...

For one thing I want to continue to watch and promote small independent films which have no or little mainstream commercial appeal... they’re definitely not in it for the money... they’re in it purely for the art (for once). So films by writer/directors like Rouzbeh Rashidi and actor/writer/directors like @eJamesDevereaux are something I’m going to continue to promote here on my blog... and hopefully Leilani Holmes will make some more of her excellent movies and I’ll be able to watch and review them here. In fact, I’m hoping to get an interview with Devereaux on my blog sometime in the very near future and also, if she’ll still consent, an interview with gothic horror photographer and jewellery designer Amanda Norman at some point either late this year or, more likely, sometime in the New Year.

I’d also, as I said, like to get into some reviews which review a large body of work over a period of time... so in addition to the aforementioned Universal Horror classics... I’d like to do something like a serialised review for the complete feature films of Akira Kurosawa, another series on Andrei Tarkovsky (including The Killers and The Steamroller & The Violin) and another on a man who I personally believe to be the greatest “living” writer/director, Mr. Hal Hartley .

And don’t worry... I’ve still got the cinematic trash and exploitation covered... gialli, b-movies, blaxploitation, westerns, sci-fi shockers... it’s all in a pile on the floor waiting to be watched. So don’t be surprised if you find... along with all the reviews of what I’m seeing currently at the cinema... and alongside of the Bergmans and the Kieslowski’s... stuff like Invasion Of The Crab Monsters, Galaxina, Blood Sabbath (on the recommendation of Hypnogoria... so blame him) and Four Flies On Grey Velvet (of which I seem to have now acquired four different prints of... not bad for a film which has only had a commercial DVD release in the last few years).

So there you have it... I’m going to keep on blogging with some interesting titles to review to suit, hopefully, lots of different tastes (I’m nothing if not eclectically post-modern)... so as long as you brilliant readers continue to pop by every now and again and check out the odd review or two (and some will no doubt be odder than others)... I’ll keep churning them out for your entertainment and, perhaps once in a while, enlightenment.

Thanks for reading... a new review coming soon!

The Discreet Charm of Hal Hartley

PF2: Possible Films Volume 2 2010

US Directed by Hal Hartley

Possible Films DVD Region 0

Okay... something you should know about me before you start to read this mini review is that I’m completely biased when it comes to the subject of Hal Hartley. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again... Hal Hartley is the greatest "living" director and it’s always been a mystery to me that people in his home country aren't lining up to throw huge piles of money at him to make whatever movies he wants.

I’ve always trusted him completely but... that being said... the last two DVDs I bought of his were a bit hit and miss, which is a really unusual reaction from me to his work. Possible Films Volume 1... which was a collection of some recent shorts... failed to keep me entertained in the style I had become accustomed to when it comes to this great man’s work and, similarly, Fay Grim... his sequel to his excellent Henry Fool, left me a bit cold, even though it had one of my favourite actresses in it (Hartley regular Parker Posey).

Not letting this throw me and since every other film he’s made has not failed to thrill me, entertain me, make me think and otherwise revel in the very nature of film... I decided to purchase his new collection of recent shorts, the starkly titled PF2: Possible Films Volume 2.

All I can say is... he’s still very much at the top of his game. The DVD contains five shorts, as follows:

1. A/Muse (11 minutes)

A/Muse is a quick character sketch of an actress attempting to hook up with “a great director”. There’s something about the style of this one that recalls his character Audrey Roget in his first feature The Unbelievable Truth... this woman is definitely a direct descendent in terms of the character's mix of comical confidence and naivety. He’s even using his old style of captioning (and in a few of the other shorts on offer in this collection). You know... imprecise titling like “Meanwhile” and “After a while”. After about half way through this one it had me chuckling and then giggling. Without giving too much away, the window denouement and then the marvellous demonstration of “why the window denouement” (I have NEVER seen windows that do that... I live a sheltered life) was really excellent.

2. Implied Harmonies (28 minutes and 5 seconds)

Okay, so this is a documentary with just a few little dramatised “reconstructions” of a collaboration between famous composer Louis Andriessen and Hal Hartley as Hartley tries to stage an opera by the former. This contains interviews with both Hartley and Andriessen and is quite fascinating to behold.

3. The Apologies (13 minutes and 36 seconds)

Three characters who don’t share any screen time together shot in an apartment. The words didn’t speak to me as much as they usually do but the women are so beautiful that I was easily distracted.

4. Adventure (20 minutes and 26 seconds)

A light examination of a period in the life of Hal Hartley and his wife, actress Miho Nikaido. This is quite charming if mildly alarming... I didn’t realise they had separated as such... let alone gotten back together again.

5. Accomplice (3 minutes and 8 seconds)

Right. All through his early career I remember Hartley being constantly labelled as being “heavily influenced” by the work of Godard. Now I never agreed with this because, even though I love the work of Godard, I was always easily absorbed by Hartley’s work. It enveloped and pulled me inside in a way that Godard would never have wanted me to be with his movies... in fact Godard employs every tactic in the book to constantly remind you that you are participating in the act of watching a movie. I don’t think Hartley tries to do that. However, I COULD see the influence of Godard in Hartley’s feature The Girl From Monday (going as far as to say that I thought it would make an excellent double bill with Godard’s Alphaville). Well this three minute short seems to wittily address those observations/criticisms from the early nineties. If having the credits popping up every now and again throughout the length of the film arent enough to make you aware of what he’s doing... the footage of Godard which turns up certainly clues you in. I have to say... after having watched this short I have absolutely no idea what it’s about... but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I really liked this whole collection of films and I hope we see something new from Harley again soon. His web site www.possiblefilms.com is always worth a visit. If you are a newcomer to Hal Hartley then I probably wouldn’t recommend this collection as a starting point (try his shorts Ambition, Theory of Achievement or Surviving Desire or definitely a couple of his early features such as The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men or Amateur... oh heck, most of his body of work will probably get you going... check out his filmography). For fans of this genius of modern cinema though... this is an essential collection.

As far as I’m concerned... a Hal Hartley film is a film rich in clean, visual landscapes and with witty, thought provoking dialogue. I place him shoulder to shoulder with such greats as Kurosawa, Tarkovsky and Fellini. Like them, he is a soft spoken but individual voice that deserves your attention.

Centipedal Force

The Human Centipede (First Phase)

2010 Netherlands

Directed by Tom Six

Six Entertainment DVD Region 0

Ok, I’ll admit it. I wasn’t that much interested in seeing this movie to be honest. I’ve been around the block a bit and I’m way jaded beyond my time and so I assumed that this film was in no way going to be anything as horrible as people were saying... and to a large extent I was right about that (seen it all before)...

However... there’s a small problem getting in the way of me dismissing this as something on a par with the grubby little j-horror clone I thought it was going to be.

If you don’t know why this movie is getting a lot of knee-jerk hype at the moment, this is the basic plot. A mad German doctor joins a Japanese guy and two all American gals backside to mouth so they make up a human centipede sharing a cobbled together digestive tract (and all that your imagination might struggle with at that last half a sentence).

I was prepared for the movie to be a bit of a “one joke repeater” in terms of it’s plot development... and yes, to be fair... it is.

But... what I wasn’t prepared for was for it to be really well acted, not terribly written and having some of the best cinematography I’ve seen in movies for a long time. Seriously, if you want to see some of the most beautiful and colourful and, frankly, very clean but not quite clinical shot composition... then take a gander at this flick. The look of it reminded me of the beauty of the design of Hal Hartley’s Simple Men or No Such Thing. You know that kind of carefree but informed look which you only get from good European cinema or independent US films?

And the lighting is fantastic too. They’ve used a suggestion of a fire and the suggestion of a swimming pool to have moving light bouncing off walls so that if a shot is in danger of being too static, you’ve got all this going on in the background. Really amazing work. Renoir filtered through Ridley Scott! And it has nice, slow, leisurely paced camerawork which slowly reveals things to you... not a shaky cam MTV job for the kiddies.

And the performances are just amazing. Dieter Laser as the “enthusiastic” Dr. Heiter, the villain of the piece, is absolutely riveting. A really interesting person to watch on screen who will have all of your attention. And the three “segments” of the centipede are all quite sympathetic characters in their own right. A little speech by the Japanese guy towards the end of the movie before he does... something which was a bit silly all things considered... and the doctors reaction to his words is truly compelling and it’s a shame there wasn’t time to see a proper dialogue between these two characters in the earlier stages of the film.

Would I recommend this film to people who are primarily interested in story as their main response to cinema? Heck no... there’s nothing you don’t know about this movie from a one sentence synopsis. You will know how it’s all going to pan out and there’s not a whole lot of variety to be had.

Would I recommend this film to lovers of cinema who don’t give a damn about the story and are more conscious of their cinematic pleasure by the way it is conveyed through the medium? Absolutely. A film for the discerning cinephile if ever there was one.

So... I don’t know who this Tom Six guy is but...

Kafka meets Cronenberg with some spit and polish so as not to dirty the camera lense... the joy of Six!

Three Colours: Blood Red

Let The Right One In 2008 Sweden

Directed by Tomas Alfredson

Momentum DVD Region 2

Let The Right One In

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

By Johan Söderqvist Moviescoremedia MM508022

Glad I finally caught up to the DVD release of this movie. Been a while since I saw it at the cinema and at that time I hadn’t had the benefit of having read the source novel by John Alvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay. Actually I read the novel last summer and I have to say that I’m glad I went into the movie blind. The novel was okay and the movie adaptation is not unlike the best of movie adaptations considering there were whole characters and subplots left out of the film version.

I actually prefer the movie in many respects and I think the writer and director were very wise in choosing to leave out the amount they did because, although I’m sure a lot of the excised material could have easily been accommodated in a two hour feature... you wouldn’t have been able to ramble along at the same pace that this movie has and that would have been very much to it’s detriment.

There are also things that are ever so slightly alluded to in the movie which you won’t necessarily pick up on unless you know the characters from the book and I’m pretty sure that this has been done to raise the commercial profile of the film and lessen risk at the box office more than anything else. Like the fact that as the burgeoning love affair between the twelve year old Oskar and Eli, the vampire “girl” who has been twelve years old for a great many years now, grows throughout the running time... it is not made clear that Eli is in fact a permanently young, castrated “boy” vampire who chooses to pass himself off as a girl. When Eli in the movie twice alludes that she’s “not a girl”, the general interpretation of that... with myself and the other people who I know have seen this film, is to think... no you’re not a girl, you’re a vampire. The sexual identity of the vampire is never really called into question but once you’ve read the novel these little passing references take on a more significant meaning.

It’s all pretty meaningless anyway because the film is an absolute treat for the senses. The film starts with a shot of snow so it had me right from the opening. I’m a sucker for good snow shots. But the framing and lighting and subdued colours and sheer elegance of the shot designs are nothing short of visually stunning... shot after shot after shot. They feel like they’ve been ripped ruthlessly from the lense of a Krzysztof Kieslowski movie like The Double Life of Veronique or one of his Three Colours trilogy and then delicately spliced into this little masterpiece. Alfredson is a director who’s not afraid to use long takes and to use medium and long shots as opposed to close ups to tell the story. Good for him. Characters can walk off frame or be out of focus or be seen as a reflection and the director never once flinches at going for the jugular when it comes to camera placement. The shots are deceptively simple and are just genuinely blinding. For example, there’s one where a dark green pastel room is framed by a red wall on the left and by a red chair and wall on the right... it sounds like something out of an Argento movie... but it’s closer in subtlety to something Andrei Tarkovsky or Hal Hartley or the aforementioned Krzysztof Kieslowski would have shot.

The score too, by Johan Söderqvist (which I’m listening to as I type) is a great achievement. At times subdued and spare but not afraid to swell up into a passage of orchestral beauty when the mood is called for. One of the most genuinely beautiful and intelligent scores of the last ten years. Definitely a treat for the ears and if moviescoremedia have any of their 500 limited edition CDs left, it’s worth checking out. Or you could always purchase it as a download from itunes if you are so inclined. Seriously worth a listen.

In many ways the score for this movie seems to perform the same kind of function that Zbigniew Preisner’s score used to produce for Kieslowski. And yeah, sorry to push the metaphor again but I think I’m going to have to go on record now as saying... to all fans of the genius of Polish cinema...seriously... if Krzysztof Kieslowski had ever deigned to address the subject matter of blood drinking vampires in one of his films... Let The Right One In is what it would have looked and felt like.

The UK DVD has a commentary track by both the director and the writer (who also wrote the novel). I haven’t the time to listen to this right now but you can bet that it’s worth listening to.

For anyone who is truly a fan of the art of cinema... this film will help you to remember why you fell in love with film in the first place.

Holy Bikini! A female Santo substitute!

Bat Woman. 1968. Spain.

Directed by René Cardona. :-) DVD. Region 0.

I now have to share with you, gentle reader, the unfortunate news that I have recently viewed a movie which deals with a crime so unspeakable, nameless and terrifying that it could only been pulled from the pages of true life.

In this movie a troubled scientist, or “evil medic” if the subtitles are to be trusted, is murdering wrestlers so he can extract the juice from their pineal glands and use it to create a half human, half aquatic “fish man”!

Why does he do this? Well apparently, and in his own words...

“We will go to another country and make a dozen; a hundred fish-men, we will control the seas and oceans. We will create HUNDREDS!”

Luckily for us, this infernal scientist, and his assistant Igor (honest guv, I’m not making this up), has on his trail the one and only Batwoman and her special agent friend. Oh... and her new Police Inspector friend.

She certainly has that Barbara Gordon look about her and Yvonne Craig might have been proud (she may even have been prouder if she’d had got to headline a Batgirl movie herself but one look at the quality of this one and she might have Bat-run in the other Bat-direction). She has an Adam West mask/hood, a cape, yellow utility belt, boots, gloves... and hardly anything else. Yes, this plagiaristic Spanish homage to the DC character rounds out her Bat-costume with a bikini top and bottom (see my handy artists impression above). Just so she can visibly jiggle in all the right places when she’s busting crime, beating up bad guys and deep sea diving... and yes, she does a lot of Thunderball inspired swimming in this movie and yes, she is wearing her cape while she’s swimming. Quality!

Ok... so anybody who’s ever seen a Santo movie will know exactly what to expect with this one. On the plus side, at least when you cut to the pointless wrestling and gym scenes predominant in this genre of movie, the female wrestlers have more interesting curves to show off.

I can’t say much for the acting or cinematography of this unparallelled masterpiece... but I have to mention the baffling complexities of the script because, if the subtitles are correct, the screenplay is far from acceptable in even the worst movie... you will be in fits of laughter with this one.

For example, when a few of the villains try to "make a pinch" and kidnap our plucky heroine, they make their intent implicit with the brilliant line... “You’re coming with us to an isolated place!” Now this is dialogue worthy of the great Hal Hartley*, but he would have written it for a much different reaction than is intended here.

After Batwoman throws acid in the face of the aforementioned evil medic on board his private yacht (a yacht named Reptilicus), he plots a terrible revenge... and spends the rest of the movie trying to nab her so he can turn her into a female fishmate for the fish-man he’s already created... which he affectionately named Pisces (no, really... I’m not making this up!). He is frustrated in his attempts time and time again and this prompts the memorable line... “I must grab this woman as soon as possible!”

Ultimately this is a terrible movie which delivers the goods for all the purposes you’d want to watch it for. Gather the beers and mates and try not to chuck things at your precious television. If you want to see a wrestling superhero movie done really well (relative to the genre confinements of that statement) then watch something like “Superargo Contra Diabolicus”... if you want to see one done right - that is with little consideration for continuity, lighting and perhaps even having the camera pointing in the right direction - then watch either this or one of the Santo movies.

*Hal Hartley is currently the world's greatest living director.