O Pornógrafo (1970)

A man's career in a magazine of erotic comics. A certain change in the editorial line provokes a series of tragic incidents.

A puerile comedy, with an inordinated number of jokes based on characters' pranks. That being said, it has a certain amount of charm. For one thing, the central performance is extraordinary, and lifts the movie into a level it wouldn't have otherwise.

Rating: 40

The Hunger (1983)

A female vampire has a male partner who is suffering from accelerated aging. He seeks help from an aging specialist, a woman who later gets acquainted with his partner.

Second viewing. An intelligent vampire movie, formally a bit uneven (something which may have gone unnoticed on my first viewing); these formal infelicitousnesses seem to have been the main cause of this film's bad reputation.

Rating: 74 (down from 100)

On the Waterfront (1954)

A longshoreman belongs to the union mafia that controls New York harbors. His brother is a high-ranking official in that organization. He falls in love with the sister of a man who was murdered by the mob because he threatened to testify against it.

Second viewing. Technically, it's a very involving film, and the fine performances help too. Morally, there is no arguing with the correctness of the view espoused, insofar as a film can be said to espouse a moral view at all. However, there are problems with the film as I see it. First, let's get the realism issue out of the way. Although the film depicts situations which, broadly speaking, are within the sphere of possible ones which a man, and especially a working man, may encounter, they are perhaps not probable to occur with the same level of brutality as the film depicts, and especially not in a big city like New York. In what concerns dramatic consistency strictly, I have some objections also; two of these objections, perhaps the main ones, were already raised as questions in the Frequently Asked Questions section of the Internet Movie Database, and were answered there, in an unsatisfactory way. The two questions are: "Why do Terry's friends give him the cold shoulder after he testifies if they hate the mob as much as he does?" The answer they give is "For fear" and it is an unconvincing explanation; fear would determine restraining in the manifestation of support for Terry, but it would not go as far as making him an outcast. The other question is "Why does Tommy kill all the pigeons (and becomes hostile to Terry) after Terry testifies?" Again, it is a most unconvincing answer they give: Tommy would have been driven by a misled loyalty to the mafia boss, and would have seen Terry as a snitch. Well, no child is as naive or misinformed as that, or can revoke his early feelings as easily. Finally, a note about the ending, which is acknowledged to be Kazan's own contribution in disregard of Schulberg's original script's ending; although it is staged in an inspired way, and Brando adds power to it with his whole body's movements, the sheer absurdity of it makes it plain that it is just that: staging, for the sake of melodramatic spectacle.

Rating: 57 (up from 50)

Mogari no mori (2007)

English titles: The Mogari Forest; The Mourning Forest.

A young woman takes care of older people in a rest home; she devotes special attention to a widower who shows signs of demency. She takes him for a ride near the forest in the home's vicinity, and has some setbacks.

Quite dull, yet not devoid of human warmth.

Rating: 30

The Last Picture Show (1971)

A small town in Texas, in the early fifties. Sonny and Duane are best friends. Duane dates upper-class Jacey, the best looking girl in town. Sonny begins an affair with a sexually frustrated married woman. Sam "the Lion" owns the local poolhall and also a diner and a cinema theater. Sonny and Duane are so bored they decide to go to Mexico for a few days. And so on.

Second viewing. A true work of art, every single frame of it. It tells of an old man with a big heart and also of a young woman with no heart at all. And a lot more, but the images count more than the plot. The kind of film it's not much use talking about. Seeing it is everything.

Rating: 91 (up from 88)

The Front (1976)

A restaurant cashier serves as front for blacklisted TV writers. He ends up getting involved in the lives of the persecution's victims.

Second viewing. Often funny, and with several memorable bits, but ultimately a sentimental film whose meaning is hard to decipher. The plot's kinship to Cyrano de Bergerac is obvious, but it upends that work's morals in an ending which seems to respond to the necessity of having a sympathetic central character.

Rating: 67 (down from 78)

The Man who Would Be King (1975)

Based on a novella by Rudyard Kipling (first published in 1888).

Two adventurers devise a plan to rule a remote region peopled by barbaric men, steal as much as they can and come back rich to civilization.

A very good film, which places its main emphasis on comedy, yet never loses its epic flavor. The casting of the two main actors was very felicitous. My admiration has shrunken a bit on this second viewing, though.

Rating: 74 (down from 97)

The Heart of Me (2002)

Based on the novel "The Echoing Grove" (1st ed. 1953), by Rosamond Lehmann.

A love triangle in 1930s London between a man, his wife, and his sister-in-law.

The script is built exclusively on clichés, and quite humorless. It's not badly directed, though.

Rating: 38

Birdy (1984)

Al and Birdy become best friends in their adolescence, despite being very much opposites in nearly everything. Al is a sociable guy who likes girls, whereas Birdy is completely asocial and asexual, devoting his entire time to birds. Both guys are drafted to the Vietnam war, and go back scarred -- Al physically, Birdy mentally.

Second viewing. Not as rewarding an experience as I seem to have considered on my first viewing. While an interesting movie, it has problems, the biggest of which being perhaps that its main dramatic axis -- will Birdy return to sanity or not? -- is not very interesting, especially as it is handled in a very ponderous manner. I think a possible reading of the film is that Al and Birdy are actually two sides of the same person; their attitudes towards women, for example, although apparently opposite, are equally resulting from an ideology that forbids seeing them as persons.

Rating: 56 (down from 74)

The Backwater Gospel (2011)

Animation short. Set in a small American town, with its fanatic priest who antagonizes the town singer, blaming him for the appearances of death in the guise of The Undertaker, a supernatural character.

Not bad.

Bottle Rocket (1996)

Two brothers. Anthony is mildly depressive. Dignan is enthusiastic about pursuing a life of crime; he is slightly detached from reality. The latter's guru, one Mr. Henry, is his former employer at a gardening company.

A masterpiece. This is my second viewing. I am not sure I can put into words the very special quality of this film. I could point out the perfect mastering of the technique, or the perfect understanding of comedy rules, or even direct one's attention to Owen Wilson's phenomenal performance. But it would all fall short of making justice to this film's many perfections.

Rating: 86 (unchanged)

The Age of Innocence (1993)

Based on the novel by Edith Wharton (1st ed. 1920).

New York, 1870. Ellen Olenska is an American woman returning from Europe after a failed marriage. Everybody initially rejects her, but Newland Archer, a young lawyer, defends her and convinces the high society to change their attitude toward her. Newland and Ellen fall in love with each other, but she hasn't gotten a divorce and, more importantly, he is engaged to another woman.

Second viewing. An excellent film, with excellent performances. The extensive use of voiceover gives it a literary air and helps understand the inner workings of the characters' minds. The recurring images of dishes remind us that these are very rich people.

Rating: 83 (unchanged)

Taken (2008/I)

An ex-CIA agent's daughter is kidnapped while on vacation in Paris. He learns she has fallen in the hands of a gang that traffics young women. He goes after her.

Unpleasant, predictable, unreasonable.

Rating: 10

Downton Abbey (First Season, 2010) (TV Series)

In the second decade of the twentieth century, a manor in England faces an inheritance-related crisis. We get to watch its inhabitants' lives until the outbreak of the First World War.

Basically a soap opera, and a dull one at that. Stereotypes abound.

Cabaret Mineiro (1980)

Second viewing (first one: September 10, 2000)

A man journeys through the interior of Minas Gerais, Brazil, leading a life of leisure, meeting women who are invariably available to his pleasure.

Reportedly it results from an project which was aborted and then morphed into something else, which may explain the visibly disjointed nature of its narrative. Its occasional inspired moments add up to a kind of audiovisual poem on hedonism, of a very Brazilian type. The score and the cinematography are good. There is no apparent connection between the first hour of the movie (to which the synopsis above refers) and its last 10 minutes, which are an adaptation of Rosa's short story "Soroco, his mother and his daughter" (but I have not read it, so this is secondhand information).

Rating: 30 (up from 18)

São Bernardo (1972)

In Northwestern Brazil, a man makes his way from very poor origins to owner of a big farm. His lack of scruples and brutality alienates the people around him.

Second viewing. A very static film. It makes its points well (through a Marxist analysis), but is not a rich cinematic experience.

Rating: 62 (down from 71)

Kingpin (1996)

Second viewing. My previous synopsis and comments are sufficiently good, so here they are:

A former bowling champion sees in an Amish amateur player his chance at big bucks.

Imaginative, consistently funny, with inventive visual gags, in short this is a successful comedy. It is also an influential film, playing with excess and shock in a way that has been imitated by many but was only equaled by these directors themselves. The comic skill of the two leading actors contributed significantly to the success of the movie.

(written on June 30, 2006)

I would like to add the sole observation that my shifting from present perfect to simple past on the same sentence is bizarre and obviously incorrect.

Rating: 71 (up from 67)

Exit through the Gift Shop (2010)

Documentary about street art, but also about one specific person whose filming habit drew him closer to the street art scene.

Entertaining and funny documentary, which draws its appeal simultaneously from its take on contemporary art and from its central character and his idiosyncrasies.

Rating: 63

Royal Wedding (1951)

Dancing partners and siblings Tom and Ellen go to England to do a show. Their stay there coincides with a royal wedding.

This is a film about siblinghood, between people and between nations; notice how, apart from the central pair, there is also a comic actor playing twins, one American and the other British. The idea of incest is present, in a very subtle way as expected from a Hollywood musical, and the rather sudden decision to get married at the end of the movie can be best explained by considering the overhanging shadow of that age-old taboo. Let's not forget also that royal weddings are historically notorious for happening between relatives, so it is ambiguous the exact manner in which it works as an inspiration for the marrying protagonists. And there is the inevitable joke: (--We are getting married! -- I thought you two were related.). Apart from these thematic issues, the film is a pleasant watch, with good dancing, fair-to-good songs, good choreography, and fair-to-good comedy.

Rating: 63 (second viewing; unchanged)

The Big Heat (1953)

An honest policeman in a corrupt police force is under pressure to abort further investigation of a retired officer's suicide.

Second viewing.

A technically perfect film, with some memorable lines of dialogue, and an above-average realism in the presentation of police corruption.

Rating: 65 (unchanged)

L'illusionniste (2010)

Animation. A decadent magician travels overseas in search of a job, and befriends a lonely teenage girl.

In its general contours, an interesting film; a flawed one, however. The middle section is a little plodding at times, and the whole episode of his job at the advertising agency is uninspired. There is a structural resemblance to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968) as both films explore, among other common threads, the idea of non-existence, a very compelling one in its metaphysical and psychological ramifications.

Rating: 52