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Screening Room
Like our Criterion Collection feature, The Screening Room will offer a collection of short reviews from an eclectic mix of films. Since I spend so much time watching movies, I figured I might as well update the site with quick thoughts on each one. This feature will be updated every Sunday - a regular column that I hope I can consistently update like Pete’s Cult Clash. If there’s a week I go film-crazy (which happens often), I’ll try to update the article twice. Most of the films I watch are from the ‘40s - ‘70s, but every so often a recent film will pop up. I’d like to present a wide variety of reviews, old and new, foreign and domestic. This week's article will be a preview of what to expect.
Welles, Ozu, and.......Hot Fuzz
Chimes at Midnight - Orson Welles
I was greatly looking forward to this film once I found an import dvd on Amazon, and not only did it live up to expectation, it surpassed them easily. But hey, that’s Orson Welles for you. Chimes at Midnight is based on plays by William Shakespeare, the biggest and most obvious influence on Welles’ extraordinary career. While most of his Hollywood films were altered in some way by angry studio executives, a few of his films in Europe were made with little compromise. Films like The Trial and Chimes at Midnight give you Orson Welles the way he wanted, and it is indeed a glorious thing to behold. It’s a shame so many of his movies suffered the studio treatment, but even that doesn’t prevent his rightful place as one of the four most important people the medium has known. As Roger Ebert so perfectly stated, “here was a man who made the best film of all time and was never forgiven for it”. Chimes at Midnight is a rousing, epic, surprisingly amusing tale of Shakespeare’s Falstaff (Welles), an overweight, sometimes drunken companion of Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) who dwells in a tavern with an assortment of interesting characters. Welles impressively rearranges Shakespeare while never inserting his own dialogue. It’s kind of genius, really, and further proof of Welles’ visionary storytelling sensibilities. From a visual standpoint, Chimes at Midnight is startling. Now I finally see why Martin Scorsese called the battle sequence in this film the best of all time. It’s an enormous, brilliantly constructed set-piece that clearly influenced the opening battle in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. The editing is quickly paced and immediate; the violence confusing and brutal. This is master filmmaking.
Equinox Flower - Yasujiro Ozu
The films of Yasujiro Ozu are not for everyone. Some people like movies to be fast and entertaining, others have patience for something quiet and subtle. Ozu is for the latter. His films are about the deep emotions hidden beneath the quiet lifestyles of people living in post-war Japanese society. In Equinox Flower, Ozu looks at the clash between the sensibilities of the old and new generations. A successful businessman is sympathetic to the way customs are changing except when the issue involves his young daughter. He wants to arrange her marriage in the traditional sense, while she decides to make up her own mind about the man she truly loves. It’s clear that her father is envious of the freedom the new generation enjoys. He gives strong advice to young women who ask for it and encourages people to follow their heart. But his daughter’s choices hurt his views, putting a greater distance between him and the family he created. The stillness of Ozu’s films give the drama a subtle impact. The performances are great from everyone involved, including a few Ozu regulars. Like many of his previous films, the camera never moves. The delicacy of the characters is conveyed through the look and pace of the story. The only filmmaker who even remotely dares this level of subtlety in contemporary film is Hou Hsiao-hsien, who is not surprisingly one of Ozu’s greatest admirers.
Hot Fuzz - Edgar Wright
From the high-art of Welles and Ozu to the low entertainment of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. I’ve heard nothing but great things about Hot Fuzz since its release earlier this year, but now that I’ve finally seen the film, I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with the world. I thought Shaun of the Dead was an entertaining and funny take on the genre, but nothing spectacular. Hot Fuzz is ranked in the Top 150 Films ever on imdb. That’s pretty sad. It’s not that the film is the worst thing I’ve seen. I laughed at a few sequences (Pegg and Frost watching Point Break) and enjoyed the presence of Timothy Dalton and few others in the cast. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have great chemistry and clearly love working together.....but this isn’t “good”. It’s a riff on all the shit movies of the 80s and early 90s, and like those films, its purpose is to be imbecilic and outrageous. If I was nostalgic for the buddy-cop genre, then perhaps this film would’ve appealed to me. But I’m not.
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