Classic nouveau vague, the first Truffaut movie – "The 400 Blows" (French) – demonstrates empathy for our protagonist and his tormentors, especially mom and stepdad. Even the cold and rule-bound schoolteacher is shown to be a victim of his circumstance before his bullying side comes out.
Is “The Brown Bunny” as bad as its reputation? Only kind of. The sex scene is explicit enough, but it has enough emotional weight that it works if you don’t mind that stuff (fellatio, not sexy, but very real). What bothered me more was that The Brown Bunny is one of those movies where the plot twist at the end is designed to provide a different resonance to the whole movie – similar to “Memento”, or more recently, “Shutter Island”. If Vincent Gallo had given us some foreshadowing earlier in the movie, we might have made an emotional investment in him and in the spare and flat manner in which the movie is filmed.
I don’t know why I placed “Hands Over the City” (Italian) on my queue, but it was a good watch. A 1960’s take on neo-realism, “Hands Over the City” is essentially a left vs. right face-off that takes place on the street, in offices and in city hall. Good movie.
In the 1960’s Jerry Schatzberg took photos for fashion magazines, and shot the cover of Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde. He made a number of movies mostly in the 1970’s and 1980’s. He doesn’t have the critical acclaim he deserved. His second feature, “The Panic in Needle Park” is a love story in a sad and bleak milieu. The acting is fabulous, photography seems ahead of its time. The screenplay, by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, doesn’t let up. This movie needs some investment from your side to get its power across.
The 1957 movie, “The Strange One” featured a cast and director all from New York’s Actors’ Studio. It is a little stagey, and the psychosexual underpinnings take over the real conflict within the plot, but overall it’s worth watching if you like that kind of thing – you know, 1950’s Elia Kazan-ish stuff.
I’m working through Laurent Cantet’s movies, and saw “Time Out” (French) in April. It’s another of his movies such as “Human Resources” and “The Class” about a person’s identity wrapped up in one’s job and career. Also it’s a meditation on family secrets and driving (not since “Play It As It Lays” has a character done so much aimless driving).
Alex Cox who made “Repo Man” and “Straight to Hell” allegedly ruined his career with “Walker”. It was an old-fashioned epic with big name stars and a screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer – author of Monte Hellman and Sam Peckinpah westerns. But it was an Alex Cox old-fashioned epic, so there was a twist or two. I really liked it, but I tend to like this kind of stuff. A little too hear-on-its-sleeve left-wing, but what the hell; left wing action pictures always have some level of contradiction about them.
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