Viva (2007)

With its leisurely pace, it's impossible to miss how much work went into this film. To match the specific look Anna Biller and her collaborators were going for, all these period props and costumes had to be found or made. The same goes for the sets and locations. The result is gorgeous to look at and filled with bare flesh, but thanks to the presentational acting and blatant sloganeering, it's much closer to Jean-Luc Godard than Russ Meyer. Biller wants us to take something away from this film. Like Guy Maddin, she's using the form of vintage media to deconstruct the artificiality of both the past and the present. You become hyper-aware of the sexism and hypocrisy that was just underneath the surface of the "free love" movement and America in general. With a Trump presidency looming, a film like Viva provides as an uneasy reminder of the "good times" red hats want to get back to.

The Duke of Burgundy (2015)

There are only so many stories that can be told. I know this might sound weird but: with the gradually shifting power dynamic of the dominant and submissive switching places in this film, I found myself constantly reminded of Annie Hall. And while I can't think of a particular example, I'm 100% certain that many people told this same story long before Woody Allen. Probably Shakespeare and/or the Greeks. So now that we've established that nothing is original, how do we make a story new again? By telling it in a style we have not seen it in before. Take that old skeleton, drape it in lush/fetishistic cinematography, surround it with haunting music, then tie it up and sit on its face. What was once old, is now new again. Gotta do something to keep the romance alive, right?

The Housemaid (1960)

After the release of Oldboy and Memories of Murder in 2003, South Korean cinema was everywhere. Suddenly cinephiles all over the globe were talking about the genius of Kim Jee-Woon, Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook. But this cinema didn't just spring up overnight. We in the West can be so egocentric some times. If we haven't seen it, it doesn't exist, right? Korea's domestic film industry dates back to the start of the last century. By the time Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid came along in 1960, the industry was more than half a century old.

It's interesting to compare and contrast this film with American films of the same time. Many of the concerns are the same (wealth, reputation, etc.) but this film addresses those issues in a way that Hollywood would have really soft-peddled. In fact, they probably would have considered this trashy, exploitative and low-class. Yet, thirty years later, facsimiles of this film (Fatal Attraction, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, etc.) were filling American multiplexes. I hope that fact prompted some Koreans to giggle. The Americans finally caught up.

Crash (1996)

As I move deeper into my 30's, I increasingly find myself looking back on my early 20's as though it was a lifetime ago. It almost feels like I'm remembering a different person altogether. Mostly I just see the fuck ups. So much regret. Why did I do all those things? Why did I hurt others? Why did I allow myself to be in positions where I could be hurt? The flowery and romantic answer is love. The blunt and cynical answer is sex. Either way, the things a human being will put themselves through for that connection are insane. We will deliberately hurt others and deliberately hurt ourselves just for the possibility of love/sex. Is it too much to imagine that the hurt can then become part of the overall experience? With all those different feelings and impulses swimming around at the same time it's easy for wires to get crossed. Is that how a fetish/addiction is born? And then suddenly it is the thing that rules you. Suddenly you can't have one without the other. Thankfully I was able to emerge from the wreckage of my 20's relatively unscathed. It's all in the rearview now, growing more distant each day.

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

Though most famous for all the sex and butter, what I was most drawn to with this film was the production design. Usually design has to be really ostentatious to get the average viewer’s attention. It has to be some sort of story-book, alternate world like in a Wes Anderson film or set in an alien/future world like Blade Runner. But when you really get down to it, all films are designed. Someone has to pick this location rather than that location because this location helps to better tell the story.

With its brown tones and dirty walls, this film epitomizes what we who did not live through the 70’s imagine that they looked like. But this film is not reality. Director Bernardo Bertolucci, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and production designer Philippe Turlure consciously got together and picked a color pallet and a location that would give them what they needed. That cloth draped mass in the back room was not there by accident and the same goes for the stained walls that are reminiscent of a painting by Mark Rothko. And oh that pebbled glass! It’s a shorthand that creates a mood which instantly sucks you into this film’s world of lust, rage and anguish. You could turn off the sound and still “get” what is being conveyed. This is pure cinema.

Nymphomaniac: Extended Director's Cut (2014)

I've seen Gone With The Wind and I’ve seen The Chelsea Girls, but this easily takes the cake. Barring an unexpected screening of The Clock, Shoah or Berlin Alexanderplatz this will easily go down as my longest theatrical experience. Sure I've marathoned an entire TV series in a just over a day, but this is another matter. This is five and a half hours in the dark, alone, with no cell phone. Some films you can watch passively while doing errands around the house. A Lars Von Trier film is not one of those kinds of films. Undertaking Nymphomaniac in a theater rather than at home, on demand requires five and a half hours of actively giving your attention to one thing. But is it worth it?

Though the most extensive addition in this new version of the film is a graphic depiction and thought provoking discussion of abortion, I feel that the most important addition is that of Von Trier himself on the film's poster. This, along with the deliberate inclusion of a shot where the camera crew is reflected in a mirror, only helps to further my feeling that above all else this is a film about Lars Von Trier and his life in cinema. Substitute the word sex with cinema and you could easily re-title the film Cinephile.

The only real "new thought" I had on this go-around was contemplating whether the "next generation" represented by the character of P was meant as a stand-in for any young filmmaker in particular. But seeing as that thought could just as easily have come from a re-watch of the original cut of Vol. II, it's nothing really to write home about. If you saw the original two-volume incarnation, you didn't really miss much. Still overall a fascinating film worth chewing on.

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Not everyone can be Martin Scorsese. By this I mean that in the current filmmaking climate, it is extremely difficult for a director to find the proper budget to realize a project of any significant scope. Some auteurs like Brian De Palma and David Cronenberg have had to resort to making small movies where the lack of budget is plainly visible in the so-so effects and underpopulated crowd scenes. They seem to understand that most people will not be seeing these films in a theater and have adjusted to a more TV-friendly aesthetic. David Lynch and John Waters aren’t even able to drum up budgets at all. But thankfully there’s Lars Von Trier.

While everyone else is getting smaller and smaller, the man who made two films where the sets were merely outlines on the ground, has opted to get bigger and bigger. Beginning with Antichrist and continuing with Melancholia, Von Trier started implementing what he has referred to as his, “monumental style”. This style consists of extremely precise, high definition, slow motion photography that runs contrary to the more handheld, run and gun style he was known for in the 90's. But like Miles Davis at his height, once you've perfected something, it's time to move on and try something new.

Though he seems to have abandoned the, “monumental style” for Nymphomaniac, Lars has miraculously found a way to get even bigger by putting together a two-part, four-hour, widescreen epic, with all sorts of visual tricks, a huge cast and explicitly graphic sexuality. He even implemented the head-replacement technology that David Fincher pioneered in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network to make it seem as though the movie stars onscreen are actually copulating with one another. So what if the majority of viewers will be watching this on flat screens, in the privacy of their own home? Lars doesn’t care. He’s put everything he has into this funny, sad, erotic and thought provoking magnum opus. He’s attempting to fill all of your (aesthetic and emotional) holes, and for the most part he’s successful.

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More than any other filmmaker I know, Lars Von Trier loves to work in trilogies. There's the Europa Trilogy (Element of Crime, Epidemic and Europa) The Golden Heart Trilogy (Breaking the Waves, The Idiots and Dancer in the Dark) and the incomplete USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy (Dogville, Manderlay and the un-produced Washington). Nyphomaniac has been described as the culmination of a Depression Trilogy following the director's well publicized 2007 breakdown. Yet, while the other films of this trilogy (Antichrist and Melancholia) are content to wallow in the morose muck of a depressed state, Nymphomaniac seems to be about emerging from that mire via perverse humor and playful provocations.

After his breakdown, Lars was quite literally Joe, laying bruised and beaten in some forgotten alleyway. Fortunately audiences/critics were there to play Seligman and sympathetically listen to his tales of woe (ie: the other films in the trilogy). At first Lars/Joe was receptive to our kindness, but gradually he came to resent us for it and started to kick back against the compassion with tiny verbal barbs and cinematic provocation. By the end of Volume II we have a fully recuperated Lars Von Trier who is back in fighting form and itching to bite the hand that feeds...even if it kind of shoots his own film in the foot. So then why do it you ask? I guess the best way to describe that is with a Seligman-esque digression:

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is reluctant as he fears the scorpion will sting him during the trip. The scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, they would both sink and drown. Reluctantly the frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks, "Why?" the scorpion can only reply, "It's my nature!"

Nymphomaniac Vol. II (2013)

More than any other filmmaker I know, Lars Von Trier loves to work in trilogies. There's the Europa Trilogy (Element of Crime, Epidemic and Europa) The Golden Heart Trilogy (Breaking the Waves, The Idiots and Dancer in the Dark) and the incomplete USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy (Dogville, Manderlay and the un-produced Washington). Nyphomaniac has been described as the culmination of a Depression Trilogy following the director's 2007 breakdown. Yet, while the other films of this trilogy (Antichrist and Melancholia) are content to wallow in the morose muck of a depressed state, Nymphomaniac seems to be about emerging from that mire with perverse humor and playful provocations.

After his breakdown, Lars was quite literally Joe laying bruised and beaten in some forgotten alleyway. Fortunately audiences/critics were there to play Seligman and sympathetically listen to his tales of woe (ie: the other films in the trilogy). At first Lars/Joe was receptive to our kindness, but gradually he came to resent it and started to kick back against the compassion with tiny verbal barbs and cinematic provocation. By the end of Volume II we have a fully recuperated Lars Von Trier who is back in fighting form and itching to bite the hand that feeds...even if it kind of shoots his own film in the foot. So then why do it you ask? I guess the best way to describe that is with a Seligman-esque digression:

A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is reluctant as he fears the scorpion will sting him during the trip. The scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, they would both sink and drown. Reluctantly the frog agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks, "Why?" the scorpion can only reply, "It's my nature!"

Vol. II is running at The Frida Cinema through April 24th.

Nymphomaniac Vol. I (2013)

Not everyone can be Martin Scorsese. By this I mean that in the current filmmaking climate, it is extremely difficult for a director to find the proper budget to realize a project of any significant scope. Some auteurs like Brian De Palma and David Cronenberg have had to result to making small movies where the lack of budget is plainly visible in the so-so effects and underpopulated crowd scenes. They seem to understand that most people will not be seeing these films in a theater and have adjusted to a more television aesthetic. David Lynch and John Waters aren’t even able to drum up a budget at all. But thankfully there’s Lars Von Trier.

While everyone else is getting smaller and smaller, the man who made two films where the sets were merely outlines on the ground, has opted to get bigger and bigger. Beginning with Antichrist, Von Trier started incorporating what he has referred to as his, “monumental style” which consists of extremely precise, high definition, slow motion photography that runs contrary to the more handheld, run and gun style he’s come to be associated with. It’s a style that could not be further from the Dogme ’95 movement Lars began with Thomas Vinterberg back in the mid-90’s, and he continues with it in the absolutely gorgeous Melancholia. So where do you go from there?

Though he seems to have abandoned the, “monumental style” for Nymphomaniac, Lars has still opted to get even bigger by putting together a two-part, four-hour, widescreen epic, with all sorts of visual tricks, a huge cast and explicitly graphic sexuality. He even implemented the head-replacement technology that David Fincher pioneered in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network to make it seem as though the movie stars onscreen are actually copulating with one another. So what if the majority of viewers will be watching this on flat screens, in the privacy of their own home? Lars doesn’t care. He’s put everything he has into this funny, sad, erotic and thought provoking magnum opus. He’s attempting to fill all of your (aesthetic and emotional) holes, and for the most part he’s successful. Can’t wait to see Vol.II!

If you live in Southern California and want to see this film in all its widescreen glory, get thee to The Frida Cinema where it will be running through April 10th...when Vol. II comes out!

The Piano (1993)

After seeing Quevenzhané Wallis at the Oscars this year, I was curious to finally see the film that won another young actress an Oscar. Anna Paquin became the second youngest Oscar winner for her performance in this film (see her adorable acceptance speech here) and it was well earned.

A mute woman (Holly Hunter) and her young daughter (Anna Paquin) are sent to New Zealand for an arranged marriage. Also along is the woman's beloved piano, which serves as her voice, in a way. Her marriage ends up being completely devoid of any affection on her part and her new husband sells her piano to his friend and neighbor. She learns she can earn the piano back by giving the neighbor lessons...but there are a few more conditions she didn't anticipate.

In addition to Hunter and Paquin's outstanding performances, two things stood out to me while watching this film, the first being the music. The music she plays on her piano isn't classically pretty. It's moody, it's dissonant, it communicates her innermost feelings and frustrations, and it's perfect for her character. The second thing was the photography. So many of the shots in this film are eerie and beautiful. A mother and daughter, dressed all in black, on a gloomy beach with all of their possessions in the world. The woman with her back to us, on her knees in the mud in utter despair. And the last shot, which I won't spoil, is one of the most hauntingly gorgeous shots I've ever seen.

As of this writing, The Piano is streamable on Netflix so I suggest you get some music in your life! Enjoy.

Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970)

A trio of female rockers called The Carrie Nations come to Los Angeles with dreams of stardom, what they find is absolute cinematic insanity.

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Nobody makes movies like Russ Meyer. Ridicule his subject matter all you want, the man had a vision. There is no way to mistake his work for someone else's and vice-versa. His world-view was uniquely his. Sure that world-view included women with inhumanly large breasts, but so what? So did Fellini's! If  photographing some giant cans was all it took to make it in the film world, half the San Fernando Valley would have three-picture deals at Fox. And I don't care if you do Pilates, eroticism alone can only hold an audience's interest for a so long. So what is it that sets Russ apart from the rest? Well of course there's the precise framing and the perfectly paced editing, but more than anything, there's the sense of fun. It overwhelms the entire picture. Fun is the thing that keeps viewers coming back again and again and again, even through the dark/moralistic conclusion. It's HIS happening and it freaks US out!

The Dreamers (2003)

An American in 1968 Paris (Michael Pitt) befriends a cinephilic brother and sister (Louis Garrel and Eva Green) who have a rather...complicated relationship.

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I love how this film feels like it could exist right among the Nouvelle Vague films that were being made during the time which this film is set. This film could absolutely be included in a double feature with Jules et Jim (files that one away for the future). The energy is there, the cinephilia is there, the desire to smash taboos, the politics, the sexuality, etc. I think if you are in your 20s you are hardwired to connect with this film. You can relate to the idea of trying to build your own paradise far away from everything and everyone else. You can also relate to the heartbreak that accompanies the pesky incursion of the real world which ALWAYS seems to come a-knockin'. C'est la vie. At least there are naked pretty people to help ease the pain.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

After his wife (Nicole Kidman) makes a startling confession, Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) descends into the dark and dreamlike world of New York after dark.

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As much as I love early Kubrick (especially The Killing and Dr. Strangelove) it is the later films that I find myself returning to for visual inspiration. Up through Strangelove, Stanley covered scenes in a fairly conventional way. Of course the lighting was always beyond reproach, but his framing and angles were still very much in keeping with other filmmakers of the time. But after 2001 all bets were off. From that point on there is a distinct visual unity to his work that is uniquely his own. Very few set-ups, a taller ratio, symmetrical compositions, zooms and natural/source lighting. All the fat is trimmed away.

Regardless of genre, this visual style remained consistent through the remainder of his career. Sci-Fi, War, Horror, Costume Drama all received the same treatment culminating with the unfairly maligned Eyes Wide Shut. This time out there was no genre tropes to hide behind. No crazy costumes. No special effects. No blood. Just Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and their relationship blown up to the size of a cinema screen. Stanley the minimalist working at his most minimal, and the result is absolutely fascinating and gorgeous. Definitely worth another look.