Salon.com > The Perfect Double Bill

Better than “Hunger Games”?

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Ever since the release of the 1932 pre-Code classic “The Most Dangerous Game," hunting humans for sport has been one of the world’s oldest movie pastimes. It allows the audiences to have it both ways: to feel superior to the craven fictional thrill-seekers who implement these hunts, and viscerally partake in the same process.

The genesis of the dangerous game that drives “The Hunger Games” is somewhat more complicated. It is the end product of a true cultural Cuisinart. Some point to the Japanese novel and film “Battle Royale”; others to the over-the-top Italian movie “The Tenth Victim,” based on Robert Sheckley’s 1953 short story. Then, there is Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Richard Dawson’s greatest hit “The Running Man,” or Stephen King’s other futuristic nightmare, “The Long Walk.”

The perfect double bill: Classic Hollywood from “The Artist,” Chaplin

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 12:10:00 +0000

There is the thing. And things about the thing. Or, to dress that thought up, all proper-like, there is meta perspective, a post-ironic approach, or that old standby, the homage.

"The Artist" was a much-beloved phenomenon last year. An exquisitely crafted love letter to the lost Art of Silent Film, it levitated into the hearts of some audiences -- including just about all the critics and the ever-unreliable Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Why then, does it feel like such a chore to watch? And why do I feel guilty even thinking such a thing, let alone writing it? It’s like kicking the adorable Uggie the Dog.

Michel Hazanavicius approached this project with the most noble of intentions. To transport modern movie audiences back into time, by lovingly re-creating the vocabulary of the silent film. He succeeds totally in that department. But is this a round trip really worth taking? For "The Artist" seems like the master thesis of an absolutely brilliant film student, who really, really wants to impress the faculty on just how well he has done his homework. Hazanavicius has been candid on how he obsessively studied the silent film masters. Murnau’s "Sunrise" and "City Girl," and Chaplin’s "City Lights," were his textbooks, and it is clear that he read them well. Too well. There is the thing, and things about the thing.

When geniuses bomb

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Since when did “passion project” become such a dirty phrase?

When Andrew Stanton’s magnum opus "John Carter" was released just two short months ago, you’d think he had committed some kind of original sin. Just about every article or review dwelled on the fact that either A.) the film was going to lose a massive amount of money, or. B.) Disney was insane to entrust a massive studio blockbuster to some naïve “artist."

Talk about self-unfulfilling prophecy.

The history of Hollywood is littered with artists going one Bridge Too Far, a distinguished field of creative carnage that began with D.W. Griffiths’ "Intolerance." The story is simple. Having gathered their chips through some mega-success, deranged creative types bet their stack on a personal epic. "Jaws" begets "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," a win, and then, Steven Spielberg craps out on "1941." "The Godfather" gets topped by a sequel, but soon "Apocalypse Now" comes staggering from the jungle. Francis Ford Coppola was lucky enough to make it out of that casino, but then, had to return to Vegas for "One From The Heart," the opening act of the slow-motion dissolution of his career. And of course, there is Billy Wilder’s corrosive masterpiece, "Ace in the Hole," a cynical treasure that cost him most of the goodwill he had earned from the previous 10 years of commercial success. We won’t mention "Heaven's Gate," as that is too damn easy. But, I will say, deep inside Michael Cimino’s deranged epic there is something mesmerizing. It deserves to be taken on its own terms as an deranged vision, clearly made – if not made clearly -- by some kind of cinematic idiot savant.

The kids are all wrong

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:20:00 +0000

The best movies act as a kind of amber, trapping the life of their times. Sometimes, you get jewels, other times you get, well, amber.

It was hard to read anything about “We Need to Talk About Kevin” without some reference to its distinguished antecedents in the “there’s something about that boy, June” school of demon child cinema. "The Omen," "Rosemary's Baby" and "Problem Child" all got their time on deck, but one film in particular gets mentioned, for it invented this entire genre. And that film is Mervyn LeRoy’s 1956 epic "The Bad Seed." This is one of those movies embedded in our consciousness that perhaps should stay embedded and not actually be pried loose.

Which brings us to this week’s double bill. “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” just out today, is an unrelentingly grim, absolutely depressing, difficult-to-recommend-to-anyone work of sublime, essential filmmaking. Say again? OK. In the words of Preston Sturges, there is “nothing like a deep-dish movie to drive you out into the open.” “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is that kind of movie, an absolutely brilliant work of narrative and deliberately elliptical narrative storytelling. It takes this trope of the bad seed and plants it so it grows into some kind of hallucinatory kudzu. It cannot be easily eradicated once it is experienced first-hand. Not since Billy Mumy wished those pesky adults into the cornfield in one of the all-time creepiest works of TV Noir has a demon child been depicted as being quite so, well, “hellish.”

The perfect Beatles double bill

Tue, 01 May 2012 12:30:00 +0000

If I were the Texas School Board in search of the one text that could justify teaching “intelligent design,” I would use the Creation Myth of the Beatles as my sole curriculum. It is a story oft retold with wonder, as it defines the word “supernatural.” Two musical prodigies of staggering gifts, with complementary personalities, just happen to meet in the same fairground, and just as casually decide to change the world. They soon meet a third musical force of nature, and, just before they march from their secret fortress, they add the final element to what is now an impregnable weapon of mass musical distraction.

In the words of noted musicologist Steve Jobs, "It was the chemistry of a small group of people, and that chemistry was greater than the sum of the parts. And so John kept Paul from being a teenybopper and Paul kept John from drifting out into the cosmos, and it was magic. And George, in the end, I think provided a tremendous amount of soul to the group. I don't know what Ringo did.”

Thatcher vs. “Nixon”

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0000

What’s the point?

That’s a simple question that any work of art must ask and answer. But for the political biopic, this question is fraught with complications. Is the point to: a) Re-create accurately the life and likeness of a famous person? b) Take what is larger than that life and likeness and bring it down to an accessible level? Or c) Just reinforce an audience’s existing preconceptions? And what happens when you get d) None of the above? Well, you get "The Iron Lady."

It’s not easy to pull off a successful historical biopic. From Ben Kingsley’s nobly soporific "Gandhi" to Bruno Ganz’s ignobly Hitler-iffic "Downfall," where Ganz’s climactic tantrum has been remixed, biopics risk breaking the law of unintended historical consequences. And please, don’t mention Daniel Day Lewis’ incoming "Lincoln: The Bearded Years."

It would be heretical to argue that Meryl Streep’s third Oscar for best actress wasn’t deserved. Streep is a flawless actress and technician, and her supernatural gifts for getting inside the skin of her characters are well displayed here. But, you know what? Who cares? In "The Iron Lady," Streep is all dressed up, with no place to go. And it’s not her fault.

Perfect Double Bill: “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” and “A Thousand Clowns”

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:20:00 +0000

Now, where were we?

The last edition of Double Bill was way back in March of 2010. A simpler, more innocent time, one filled with such promise. What happened, you probably aren’t asking? Well, I got distracted. In my ongoing role as Sancho Panza to Werner Herzog’s Don Quixote (i.e., his producer), we tilted at not one but two cinematic windmills. The first was "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," along with what I boasted upon its release was the “Feel Bad Movie of 2012 Christmas Holiday Season,” the despairing Death Row documentary “Into the Abyss." If only I had seen “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" before I opened my big yap.

And that brings us to our first new double bill, our shotgun marriage of two available-on-DVD films. One is new, and just out, and the other, older, somewhat more obscure. Each complements and/or amends and/or purges the viewing experience of the other.

Cases in point? "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" and "A Thousand Clowns."

The perfect double bill: “Princess and the Frog” and “Song of the South”

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:30:00 +0000

I live to serve, in this forum at least, but I must deliberately frustrate you now.

I want to entice you into seeing a movie that you are not allowed to see. Rest assured, I do not take this lightly. But you should be frustrated, because the reasons why you aren't allowed to screen the second half of this double bill is why the first half got made.

When word of the production of "The Princess and the Frog" got out, the controversy began. How would it get around the racial issues of a black would-be princess, living in the South in the 1920s?

The answer turns out to be easy. By doing what the Disney organization has always done best.Inventing reality. Ducking controversy. And making money. Case in point.

Released this week on DVD, "The Princess and the Frog" is a marvel of neo-classic animation and cultural avoidance. Set in New Orleans, the plucky Princess Tiana's traditional "I Want" song outlines the plot in all the detail we need. She's "almost there" to her dream of running her own restaurant, but not so fast. Her destination is changed by an encounter with an evil voodoo man and a hunky and oddly hued prince who apparently hails from the same "Pseudogravia" much beloved in Marx Brothers movies.

The Perfect Double Bill: “2012″ and “Miracle Mile”

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:03:00 +0000

Two weeks after 9/11, in perhaps the finest and bravest act any American media institution undertook before Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner roast, the Onion ran a story with the headline, "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie."

They got that right.

One of the many things besides irony that faded in the few days after the attacks was a sense that assembly-line, ham-fisted, institutional movie violence of the kind so ably demonstrated by Bruckheimer's entire oeuvre was now behind us. A new era of a truly United States was ahead, and after the inevitable capture of Osama bin Laden, a new City on the Hill would rise, along with that magnificent Freedom Tower.

Well, as John Cusack says in "2012," ripping off Woody Allen in "Annie Hall," welcome back to Planet Earth.

This week marks the release of the above-mentioned blockbuster from that Auteur of Dumb, Roland Emmerich, a director who makes Irwin Allen seem like Michael Haneke, the man who puts the "nothing" in sound and fury signification. The most offensive thing about "2012" isn't that it is stupid, or about an hour too long, or full of bad science and worse dialog.

The perfect double bill: “Black Dynamite” and “Dick”

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000

What can you say about Richard Milhouse Nixon that hasn’t been said? Plenty, it seems, as Nixon is both star and supporting character in two films that go straight into that cultural heart of darkness called the 1970s, with some peculiar results.

We begin with "Black Dynamite," a wonderfully execrable send-up of those blaxploitation films that Quentin Tarantino saw way too many of during his video clerk days. Had Tarantino seen just a few less movies in his formative years, the world might be a safer place, or, at least, his films wouldn’t feel quite so much like overlong exercises in genre dissertation. But unlike Tarantino’s "Jackie Brown," "Black Dynamite" is truly an appalling movie, with almost no redeeming merit, other than lunatic conviction that someone, somewhere would want to pay to watch it. Like its hero, "Black Dynamite" is BAADDD.

The perfect double bill: “A Serious Man” and “Parents”

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:30:00 +0000

In their 25-year career, Joel and Ethan Coen have taken the expression "leaving the audience cold" as a mission statement, not as criticism. They've consistently put American life, past and present, in the wrong and distorted end of their creative telescope, and usually found the results wanting. Consummate craftsmen, the Coens can be a hit-or-miss proposition. When they hit, they hit hard; when they miss, well, they are still worth watching.

Which brings us to this week's DVD release of "A Serious Man," the latest exercise in Coen Gothic, this time set in a Minneapolis suburb in 1967's so-called Summer of Love.

There is a Dickensian quality to the best of the Coens' films, where every character is just shy of caricature, but somehow their conviction and commitment makes it work. Every director's film needs its "non-submersible" units, in the words of another sublime craftsman, Stanley Kubrick, and the Coens can always be counted on to serve those units up, with relish, on the side.

The perfect double bill: “Zombieland” and “Road to Utopia”

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:20:00 +0000

One can argue that the reign of the American Empire stretched from the Japanese surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in September 1945 to another September day in 2001: A 56-year bracket where a self-confident America insouciantly blundered around the world, without any real intimations of mortality.

How things change.

If one looks to our most enduring export for signs of those times, movies are filled with portents. Forget the films that actually set out to make any kind of explicit artistic statement about the subject. More cryptic road signs can be found in this week's double bill.

"Zombieland" and "Road to Utopia" are fun-house mirrors of one another, two road pictures that sprawl across the American landscape, with antiheroes wisecracking their way through life-and-death situations, both shot through with comic surrealism, both featuring perhaps the coolest living human being of their respective times in a pivotal role.

“This Is It” and “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is”

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:26:00 +0000

British director Peter Hall once said of another British Peter, one named Sellers, "It's not enough in this business to have talent. You have to have the talent to handle the talent."

This dark art of handling the talent and dealing with deification is the tie that binds this week's Double Bill, which would be today's release of "This Is It," and its doppelgänger, the 1970 documentary "Elvis: That's the Way It Is." Obviously, it does not take any particular genius to point out connections between Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. Haunted relationship with parent, incomprehensible musical genius, pet chimps, oh yeah, Lisa Marie, to count off just four of the easiest ones.

“The Hurt Locker” and Bogart’s 1943 “Sahara”

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:12:00 +0000

The best double bill I ever witnessed was an inadvertent one. Between the hours of 2 AM and 5 AM, somewhere in the late 1970s, on San Jose, Calif.'s late, unlamented Channel 36 ("the Perfect 36," as legendary stripper Carol Doda would leer in on-air promos), I saw Busby Berkeley's 1943 surrealist masterpiece "The Gang's All Here" in an unholy coupling with Ingmar Bergman's equally surreal "The Seventh Seal."

Simply.

Wow.

Life, death, chess and giant bananas, in one mesmerizing, miscegenationist vision. The whole became oh so much more than the parts.

Of course, that kind of lightning does not strike twice in one's lifetime. And the near death of the local repertory cinema at the hands of home video has reduced the odds of celebrating the classic double bill. Might I suggest a way to keep this glorious tradition alive in the privacy of our own homes?

I propose to conduct a semi-regular conversation between two films, one recent and just out on DVD, and the other a less visible offering, also available on DVD (or easy, legal download) that in some strange way complements the "A" part of our bill.