Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

March 6, 2015November 26, 2015 ~ Sean Gilman

A rather trite, unnecessarily-complicated wartime romance in which the most cynical drunk in the world is persuaded, after getting a second chance with the love of his life, to sacrifice his happiness (and hers, but that’s not really relevant) for the war effort, by tricking her into returning to her anti-Nazi activist husband and continuing her loveless sham of a marriage. He and the corrupt local chief of police (he uses his powers to extort sexual favors from pretty young women in exchange for the chance to flee the Nazis), then wander off into the desert.

Depending on how you define your terms, Casablanca might be the greatest motion picture ever made. An example of Hollywood studio filmmaking at its finest, with assured direction by Michael Curtiz, perhaps the greatest non-auteur director of all-time, and brilliant performances not just from the leads but also from a remarkable cast of character actors bringing depth, nuance and personality to even the smallest role (I’m not kidding: even the croupier manning the roulette wheel is a major talent, Marcel Dalio, who only three years before had starred in Jean Renoir’s masterpiece The Rules of the Game). Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Sidney Greenstreet, Dooley Wilson, SZ Sakall, Leonid Kinskey and John Qualen are simply overkill in a film that already features Paul Henreid and Claude Rains in the major supporting roles. Ingrid Bergman is luminous of course, on the precipice of superstardom, she has the kind of purity that almost makes you forget she’s trying to exchange sex for her husband’s freedom. But Humphrey Bogart reminds you (and her husband – how bold that line is, said by Bogart to Henried, “She did her best to convince me she was still in love with me. . . and I let her pretend.”) It’s his finest performance, cynical cruelty melting before our eyes into wounded romanticism and self-sacrificing heroism. He’s everything America aspires to be: too cool to care about right and wrong, but determined to do the right thing anyway.

If you’ve never seen Casablanca, or if you’ve never seen it on the big screen, or if you’ve seen it a hundred times already, go see it this week at the Central Cinema.

Fists and Fury at the Cinerama

February 27, 2015February 28, 2015 ~ Sean Gilman

This week, the Cinerama is playing what they’ve dubbed their “First Mixed Martial Arts Festival”, a collection of movies, Hong Kong and Japan mostly, in which kicking, punching and/or swordplay is prominently featured. Playing two or three different movies per day, mostly DCP but with some 35mm, its an eclectic mix of masterpieces, curiosities and what amounts to an almost-complete Bruce Lee retrospective.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as mixed about a film series as I am about this mixed martial arts series. On the one hand, and probably most importantly, there are a bunch of great movies playing here, included some films that haven’t played in Seattle since the heyday of Landmark’s Hong Kong repertory run in the mid-1990s. The chance to see Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Toshiro Mifune, Stephen Chow and Jet Li in that gorgeous Cinerama environment is not to be dismissed lightly. Even under less than ideal conditions, like digital projections of DCPs and Blu-Rays, seeing these films is a treat. But there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the way this festival was put together, with many of the best films showing at the most inconvenient times, no clear threadlike connecting the films from different countries or eras and a lot of sub-standard source material for a repertory festival.

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Samuel Fuller at the Grand Illusion Cinema

February 27, 2015February 27, 2015 ~ Sean Gilman

Playing at the Grand Illusion this week is Samantha Fuller’s 2013 documentary about her father, A Fuller Life. Aside from a short introduction explaining the concept, her movie consists entirely of excerpts from Fuller’s memoir, as read by a variety of his friends, co-workers and fans (generally shot in the kind of propulsive close-ups so recognizable from Fuller’s films). The images we see are a combination of archival footage, clips from Fuller’s movies and never-before-seen 16mm home movies shot by Sam over the decades. It’s a loving account of a remarkable American, one of the unique and definitive personalities of the 20th Century. Beginning his professional life as a newspaper boy in 1920s Manhattan, he quickly worked his way up to teenaged crime reporter. During the Depression he set out across the country, making his living as a freelance journalist and pulp novelist, chronicling the darkest corners of a turbulent decade (an anecdote he relates about a KKK woman is especially vivid). At the end of the 30s, he settled down in Hollywood, making a living as a screenwriter for hire.

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The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013, Isao Takahata)

February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 ~ Michael Strenski

It is certainly a shame that The Tale of the Princess Kaguya lost to the pleasant if disposable Big Hero 6 in the Best Animated Feature category at last week’s Academy Awards, but it’s even more of a travesty that the film was not nominated for the biggest category, Best Picture. Yes, the Oscars are silly but there’s a special circle of silliness for the continued separation of films solely because they are animated or in a foreign language. Sure, the occasional film sneaks out of its categorical ghetto and garners larger attention, such as Toy Story 3, but by and large these vital films are given their token nod in these subcategories and forgotten. To extrapolate, if we are to have a category called Best Animated Feature, its nominees should only be judged on their animation, not their story nor their music nor their editing. Continue reading “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013, Isao Takahata)” →

What We Do in the Shadows (Jemaine Clement/Taika Waititi, 2014)

February 17, 2015April 17, 2015 ~ Michael Strenski

Last year, Jim Jarmusch reestablished himself in many eyes with the existential ennui of Only Lovers Left Alive. The film interrogated the realities of being a vampire, looking at the practical ramifications of living for hundreds of years. How do the centuries affect one’s outlook on life, love and art? Now an unlikely companion piece arrives from New Zealand with the mockumentary, What We Do in the Shadows, from Eagle vs. Shark director Taika Waititi and frequent collaborator, Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords.

What We Do in the Shadows follows the daily humdrummery of a household of vampires, all of various vintages and dispositions. There’s the dandy, the slob, the troubled one, and Nosferatu. House meetings are called to revisit the neglected chore wheel which has resulted in a stack of blood-drenched dishes in the sink. The film is basically variations on this joke for 80-odd minutes and somewhat surprisingly, it works. It’s a slight but amiable feature, low-key but consistently fun.

In keeping with the documentary facade, much of the film is shot closely with a spotlight shining directly on the leads, leaving their surroundings bathed in titular darkness. This style is particularly effective when the film introduces special effects such as flying and mutation, all of which are blended seamlessly and provide an occasional jolt amongst the chuckles. And it is mostly chuckles. But they’re consistent chuckles.

The funniest scenes occur when Clement and Waititi decide to go for broke. Despite being a low budget comedy, the film doesn’t shy away from its horrific roots, occasionally doubling down on gore with fountains of deep red blood. Sure, they lay down a newspaper first but come on, that stuff gets everywhere.

(What We Do in the Shadows is now playing at the Sundance Cinemas, The Majestic Bay Theatre, and the SIFF Uptown.)

R100 (Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2013)

February 10, 2015February 10, 2015 ~ Michael Strenski

Takafumi Katayama likes it kinky. He works all day in a furniture store and comes home to an adorable son who proudly proclaims he is now the third shortest kid in his class. In between this life of domestic drudgery, Takafumi enjoys getting the snot kicked out of him by dominatrixes dipped in leather. When he discovers that a club provides subscription-service public humiliations, he is nothing but eager to register. But soon the beatings begin encroaching on his normal life and he wants to cancel. Sorry, Takafumi, no refunds.

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Spotlight on Cinema Books

February 6, 2015June 11, 2015 ~ Michael Strenski ~ 1 Comment

Update June 11th, 2015: Last week, Stephanie Ogle announced she would be closing her beloved store, Cinema Books, later this summer. We’ve long been fans and patrons of the store (it was, in fact, the very first place I went the day I moved to Seattle almost 17 years ago), and Stephanie has always been helpful to us in our various projects, either in finding books on Hou Hsiao-hsien, photos of Hollywood starlets or in providing prizes for our old Metro Classics trivia contests (she mentioned that one of those old gift certificates was used this week, in fact). We’ll be sad to see the store go, the latest in a string of closings and transformations that has turned the Seattle movie scene I knew into something else entirely. Shortly after we launched the site here, Mike interviewed Stephanie, and we’re rerunning that below in place of our Featured Film this week.

Seattle is a unique and vibrant film town. We have the best video store in the world in Scarecrow, which carries over 120,000 titles. Our film festival began in 1976 and is now the largest in the country, playing more films per year than any other. A year after SIFF premiered, our local film noir series debuted and it is just as popular now as it was four decades ago. Also in 1977, a specialty bookstore opened on Capitol Hill that was dedicated solely to film.

Cinema Books Sign — Photos by stupidhead

Now located in the University District, Cinema Books is owned and operated by the invaluable Stephanie Ogle. Stephanie is the key to the glorious, overflowing stacks of her store. Classic stills of John Wayne in Red River are buried in a backroom and only Stephanie knows where. Little Totoros pop up here and there. There are posters, postcards and imported magazines but most of all, there are books. Cinema Books carries every conceivable type of writing on film. There are screenplays, coffee table books on Disney animation, and in-depth interviews with directors.

Stephanie graciously agreed to sit down with Seattle Screen Scene to talk about her shop’s history, the diversity of film obsessions, and of course, submarines.

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Actress (Robert Greene, 2014)

February 6, 2015July 14, 2016 ~ Sean Gilman

One of my favorite movies of 2014 is back for one night only this Thursday at the Northwest Film Forum. I caught the movie when it played at the Grand Illusion Cinema a couple of years ago, and here is the review I wrote then on my blog.

I think I “related” to parts of Robert Greene’s non-fiction film in the way so many other people “related” to Boyhood, in that when we join her, stay-at-home mom Brandy Burre is very much looking to reestablish an identity for herself outside the home. This manifests itself as one of the main threads of the film’s story: her preparing to restart her acting career after a several years’ hiatus. That need for a creative outlet, for a definition of self that doesn’t revolve around one’s children (and the guilt inherit in that, a little voice telling you that not devoting yourself 100% to your children makes you a bad parent) is something I imagine every parent experiences, especially for those of us who abandon our careers for full-time parenthood. But also, more obliquely and (thankfully) alien to my own experience, this identity shift for Ms. Burre manifests itself in the collapse of her relationship with her partner Tim. This ultimately becomes the dominant storyline of the film: while Burre looks for jobs and gets her hair done and meets with friends, nothing really happens on the job front, but the relationship story unfolds dramatically in time as Tim gradually moves out of the house and we learn ever so little about what actually happened to break them up (both the proximate events and the emotions that underlay it).

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Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2014)

February 6, 2015March 20, 2015 ~ Sean Gilman

Continuing this week at the SIFF Uptown is the latest from neo-realist Belgian masters Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Two Days, One Night, their first foray into movie-stardom thanks to an Oscar-nominated performance from Marion Cotillard (The Dardennes themselves have never been nominated for an Academy Award, though they have accomplished the rare feat of twice winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival). Cotillard plays a factory worker (solar panels) who has just recently and barely recovered from the suicidal depression that caused a prolonged work absence, thus proving to her bosses that the factory will run just fine without her. She’s been laid off because her co-workers were made to vote on whether they’d rather she continue to work or they get their annual bonus. It’s an absurdly blunt premise that the Dardennes, whatever its worth, remain firmly committed to with their meticulous direct-cinema style. After talking her way into a revote as the film begins, the bulk of the movie follows Cotillard visiting each of her coworkers in turn over the weekend to beg them to allow her to keep her job. The fact that the Dardennes manage to make such a didactic and schematic premise watchable at all is a credit to their skill, and a testament to the fine performances of their cast. Cotillard first and foremost is a stunner, her portrait of a woman desperately trying to keep it together on the brink of disaster is easily on par with her exceptional work in 2013’s The Immigrant, which she probably should have been Oscar-nominated for as well. The only other recognizable face in the film is the man who plays her husband, Fabrizio Rongione, who also played the architect in 2014’s La Sapienza (look for Eugène Green’s very fine film to get a US release in the coming months, hopefully it’ll make it to Seattle), but all the performances are wonderful, each new co-worker bringing a wonderfully individualized set of hang-ups, guilts and possibilities of hope.

Two Days, One Night plays Friday through Thursday at the Kirkland Parkplace Cinema.

Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993)

February 6, 2015February 6, 2015 ~ Sean Gilman

The middle film in the Ephron/Ryan trilogy that defined the romantic comedy from 1988 (When Harry Met Sally…) to 1998 (You’ve Got Mail), is back on the screen this week at the Central Cinema. Meg Ryan plays an affianced journalist (Bill Pullman is her Bellamy) who happens upon a late night talk show where she hears the sad story of recently widowed Tom Hanks and his precocious son. Instantly in love, Ryan struggles for most of the film with the weirdness of her feelings, ultimately leading to a meeting at the top of the Empire State Building.

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