“Alien” @ the American Cinematheque, Hollywood, CA

Despite vacationing on the Left Coast, I’ve still managed to squeeze in a screening or two. My first night here, a friend and I just happened to be scouring the movie listings, and seeing “Alien” was a total afterthought. She’s new to the idea of film appreciation, and I figured “Alien” is as good a film as any to show to a budding enthusiast.

I saw “Alien” a few years ago, most likely at the same theatre, but it didn’t make much of an impression. I found the film to be a little on the slow side and, “Star Wars” exempt, hadn’t cultivated much of a taste for science fiction yet. “Blade Runner: the Final Cut” wrested me from that little hang up, and made me more receptive to early Ridley Scott.

What I liked the most about “Alien” was how grounded it was, relatively speaking. This is a film that centers around a merciless killing machine and a cryptic supercomputer, yet the [human] characters are surprisingly casual and present-day. They smoke cigarettes and drink coffee like their 20th-century counterparts. Antique photographs and centerfolds are pasted to the walls, like the “instant ancestors” in “Blade Runner.” Those scenes in the mess hall with the entire crew could have been lifted from another late-70s film – the overlapping dialogue and round table atmosphere are classic New Hollywood. Even Hawiian shirts and trucker hats have a cameo.

But what kind of horror film would this be if that comraderie didn’t disepate midway? Scott takes care leading up to this change in atmosphere, will all sorts of “don’t-go-in-there” moments. Nevermind that I knew what was coming – there are more than enough ubiquitous scenes – but to the first time viewer, that gruesome stuff is pretty surprising. This movie operates at such a low frequency, that even the slightest shock echoes throughout the rest of the scene. Silence fills every corner of the ship, first as a beacon of womb-like sleep, then as a harbinger of danger. When Sigourney Weaver, as Ripley, finally defeats a seemingly unbeatable predator, the silence she returns to is a little of both. Alone on the escape pod, her reward is one of safety and solitude. In the final scene, she recounts her trauma, and the feeling of being preyed upon is still on her. The film ends, and we’re left with the surplus of her lingering fear.

“Pineapple Express” @ the Regal Union Square

Part of the reason why I’m drawn to dumb summer comedies is because they require little cinematic anaylsis on my part. As soon as I part with my $11.75, I’m guaranteed 90 minutes of digestable idiocy. “Pineapple Express” is one such film, a stoner comedy that begs to be seen in its proper context. Years ago, it was “Anchorman” and those “Landlord” videos and Adam McKay reigned supreme. Now, Apatow and Co. have become this summer’s purveyors of fine dick jokes and compound swears. Luckily for us, they’ve lasso’d in David Gordon Green, adding some much needed directorial skill. It’s a little like switching from Crest to Colgate – same thing, different package.

As acerbic as this all sounds, “Pineapple Express” is actually one of the better summer blockbusters I’ve seen. Unlike other half-baked (yuk!) examples, this one is funnier, more entertaining, and well-made. Using talk radio as Seth Rogan’s calling card fills in for the kind of character depth you’d see in a regular movie. And, as is the case with all genres, having an interesting supporting cast can only help you. The characters may be a little underdeveloped, but at least they’re fun to watch. The tone of the film is so colloquial that you can’t help but root for everyone. Even those barely-there villains are funny and loveable – for example, all that paling around between Rosie Perez and Lumberg.

There are only so many jokes you can make in a stoner comedy, and only so many ways to make them, but Apatow and Co. manage to pad it out. Sometimes characters go into a long, “Pulp Fiction”-y talk about some inconsequential thing. Bizarre acts of violence are peppered throughout, culminating in a totally awesome, totally implausible ending. Towards the end, it gets a little tiresome, but not so as the dampen the whole film. If nothing else, at least I got my money’s worth – none of these little flaws occurred to me until well after 90 minutes in.

“Little Caesar” @ MoMA

Normally I’ll show up at MoMA, claim my free ticket, and relax with the Boynton Beach Club, but Monday’s outing was a little different. My dad was in town, so I brought him along in the hopes of showing him New York, Caroline style, and all the excitement it entails. When I told him the evening’s plans included seeing an 80-year-old gangster picture at a museum, he was just thrilled.

“There isn’t going to be a lecture or anything, is there?” dad asked the ticket clerk. “No pointy-headed art stuff?”

“Not at all,” he said. Then, gesturing towards me, “she’ll give you the rundown.”

But what rundown was there, really? Even film-wise, the movie is so simple it practically watches itself. “Little Caesar” is always cited as a prime example of that emerging gangster genre – usually alongside Wellman’s “The Public Enemy” and Hawks’ “Scarface” – but it hardly stacks up. The film starts off with the usual Bible verse, to placate the censors, and ends with one of those “crime-doesn’t-pay” scenes. Just compare Edward G. Robinson’s “is this the end of Rico?” line with the image of James Cagney’s bandaged body falling to the floor – no contest there.

Nevermind that Robinson’s gangster shtick is the stuff of “Looney Tunes,” which made it damn near impossible to take this movie seriously. I was raised on a steady diet of old cartoons, courtesy of “Pa” Golum, and my first encounters with many classic films were in the form of parody. Bogie, Garbo, the Marx Brothers – growing up, I could imitate these people to a tee, despite having never seen them in a film. That’s why, weaknesses aside, it’s the perfect film to see with dad (mine, that is. I can’t speak for yours).

Every time Rico let out with a “yeah, see?”, dad and I would shoot each other a look. After constant exposure to the film’s post-modern offspring, it was weirdly comforting to see the mug that started it all. When the film ended, we talked a little about the movie – there wasn’t a whole lot of subtext there, so we focused mostly on the stereotypes-as-characters, how great the clothes were, and better examples of the genre. Our discussion basically morphed into a talk about “Angels with Dirty Faces,” and how James Cagney was also a very talented dancer.

“The Human Condition II/III” @ Film Forum

Misery and longing get plenty of screen time in Kobayashi’s film so, if you’re jonesing for a little more, listen to this one:

Having seen parts one and two earlier in the week, I was more than ready to finish the massive investment I’d made in this film. So imagine my shock and anger when the first scenes of part three came on the screen, and I’d already seen it before. Last week, in lieu of part two, I saw part three by mistake. Having missed the middle third of the film, I’m not ashamed to tell you that I was nearly distraught. I am, however, ashamed to tell you that, despite my disappointment, “The Human Condition” still made some sense without that middle third.

The ending of part three, “A Soldier’s Prayer,” seemed ambiguous when I first saw it, if only because I was expecting another chunk of film to tie the whole thing together. Now, having only seen the beginning and end of a 10-hour film, I can’t help but feel a little cheated. I think this “Mad fold-in-azation” is my way of justifying the fact that a simple mistake pretty much negated the six hours (and $22!) I spent at Film Forum.

So here, for your morbid curiosity, is my unfinished write-up of “part two.” Wallow in its naivité, won’t you?

After “No Greater Love,” I was so taken aback by the film I’d just seen that I opted to give a purely emotional account. For “A Soldier’s Prayer,” I was slightly more removed. Either part two is less harrowing, or I’ve simply grown accustomed to Kobayashi’s style: not unlike Kaji, he guides us through these gruesome things like a true humanist, keeping a safe distance just for good measure. I can’t speak for the rest of the audience, but I feel I’ve adopted a similar attitude – it’s essential when watching a massive film about forced labor during wartime.

Last summer’s big New York-epic-revival-theater-event was “Berlin Alexanderplatz”. I think I remember it playing in installments for a few weeks, with two opportunities to see the whole thing over a weekend. Having seen “Satantango” a few months earlier, I felt up to the challenge. To compare this kind of movie-going to a marathon isn’t too far off – you literally have to train yourself to sit still and focus your attention for more than six hours. If it sounds strange and pathetic, that’s because it pretty much is – read that previous sentence a few times, and you’ll see what I mean.

“The Human Condition” seems apart from that whole scene, for reasons that I’m having trouble articulating. I hate to keep coming back to “Berlin Alexanderplatz,” but there’s something about it that challenges you to test your endurance – it’s a 13-hour mini-series awash with camp and incincerity. “The Human Condition,” on the other hand, benefits from serialization – to see it all at once, I feel, would distract from the film itself. Personally, I’d be so caught up in the density and volume of the film – all of that “look how long I can sit still!” nonsense – that I’d completely disregard its themes and principals. Without a proper period of digestion, those beautiful little moments would just be lost in a giant deluge of Movie.

“The Human Condition I: No Greater Love” @ Film Forum

I don’t know whether to write about Kobayashi’s three-part, 10 hour film all at once, or installment by installment. I don’t know whether or not I’m qualified to, either. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t paying attention to the technical flair of “No Greater Love” after the first half hour – it’s not that I wasn’t interested, it’s that I simple couldn’t.

There is so much movie there, and not just in length. So much of this film – the cinematography, the score, the framing of the actors – is worthwhile and beautiful, albeit distracting. These things, wonderful though they may be, can’t possibly compete with such a terrible, frightening story. Normally, when I (or we) watch a film with a hero and a villain, it’s easier to digest. We’re given an abstract situation – one boxer fights another, for example – we pick a side, and we run with it for 90 minutes. In the case of “The Human Condition,” the disparity between hero and opponent is so big you simply can’t root for the home team – the best you can do is just wait it out.

I derive a lot of enjoyment from this feeling that occurs when the protagonist realizes he’s finally trapped – he’s surrounded on all sides by phyiscal or emotional obstacles that hinder his happy ending. Maybe it’s a touch of schadenfreud, but I simply find it interesting. Film noirs have a lot of that going for them, as do suspense and horror films, mostly along the lines of someone waking up in a strange house and no memory of how he got there. In “The Human Condition”, we don’t progress to this point after a series of bad decisions and wrong turns – our hero, the benevolent Kaji, simply exists in that strange house. Instead of spending the third act watching him escape, we spend a whole film watching him thrash around.

Kaji, a lackey working for an iron company in Manchuria, is placed in a sort of “human resources” position at a forced labor camp. He oversees the laborers, the “comfort women,” and the POWs brought to the camp as “special workers.” His is a position instilled with a good amount of authority – worse (read: weaker) men in his position aren’t half as humane. He attempts to make the workers’ conditions as hospitable as possible – greater food rations, safer working conditions – but predictably fails. What he’s fighting against, fundamentally, is Imperial Japan and its rampant colonialism. Throughout the first part – all three-and-a-half hours – he tries desperately to sway his superiors, to instill in them an empathy for their fellow man. But before the officers can experience any kind of compassion, they must first acknowledge the Chinese prisoners as human begins.

Kobayashi manages to toe the line between empathizing with, and dehumanizing his Chinese prisoners. They’re treated with dignity – such is the nature of the film – but visually degraded in a way that can only help to disgust the audience. His treatment of crowds and groups make for some of the film’s most powerful scenes. The first such instance I can think of is the prisoners’ arrival. We don’t see them until halfway through the scene, but we feel their presence. We feel it as we pan across a train’s length of cattle cars – windowless, black boxes, inorganic and incompatible with the prairie that surrounds them. The ironworkers and Japanese generals have been talking about these “special workers” for nearly a half hour, and we simply can’t wait to see them. When we finally do, it’s beyond horrifying – the cars are opened and they tumble out, gasping for air, writhing in the sun like worms. The camera, the story, the soldiers have reduced them to nothing more than human vermin.

It’s strange deriving so much pleasure from a film that, moreso than any other I’ve seen, blatantly displays the worst kind of human suffering. It’s a lot to report on but, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a lot of movie. For “Part II: A Soldier’s Prayer,” I’ll try to focus more on the artistic aspects of the film, and less on man’s inherent, crippling evil.

“Kind Hearts and Coronets” @ BAM

This is another one of those instances where, in spite of the better films showing around town, I opted to see an old favorite. Last night, I saw Alec Guinness play twelve members of the D’Ascoyne family, little bastards all, who are steadily picked off by a disgruntled relative. It’s a great movie, very funny, but with rare moments of actual laughter.

Dennis Price plays the spurned relation, Louis, who manages to turn his murderous rage into a sort of soufflé. He treads so lightly around the – get ready for it – oven of vengeance, lest his cake fail to rise. His patience throughout the film, and the cavalier way by which he executes (heh) his plan, is truly enjoyable. Above all, he manages to stay interesting to the audience, despite a different costumed Guinness in every scene.

Afterward, while discussing the movie with a friend of mine, I likened it to “Topsy-Turvey.”

In both “Kind Hearts” and “Topsy-Turvey,” individual scenes are longer than what we’re used to in contemporary films, or in any American film from that era. The culprit here is that dense, antiquated dialogue, where characters speak at length to convey even the simplest idea. An example: last semester, I took a course where the bulk of our curriculum involved directing scenes from existing films (or “Rescue Me”) on the spot. For some reason, our professor always stuck me with the scenes from “Topsy-Turvey.” I’d recieve a few pages – three or four at the most – and sneak off with a few actors while they rehearsed the “high style.” Usually, those three pages took upwards of six or seven minutes to perform.

I’m getting seriously off topic here, but not without good reason. “Kind Hearts and Coronets” has that high style all throughout, and it’s completely in on the joke. What “Kind Hearts” has going for it – outside of multiple Guinnesses – is the crash course in Victorian mannerisms. The film is incredibly restrained and polite – a far cry from that housewife-baiting mess I saw on Monday. Even the set-ups and implimentations of those family murders are so clever as to be almost cordial.

“Scapegoat” @ BAM

I’ll admit that, right up until I bought my ticket, I had no idea what this movie was called. The film was part of a Robert Hamer mini-retrospective (four, really) that I mentally filed away as an “Alec Guinness series.” If you were to stop me on my way to the theatre today, or casually ask what I was seeing after work, all I could have done was shrug and say “Alec Guinness?”

So imagine my joy when, 15 minutes into the film, Sir Alec begins to field off come-ons from his own doppleganger. Believe me when I tell you it’s the strangest pick-up in All Moviedom, and quite possibly one of my more bizarre daydreams. Throughout act one, it’s nothing but dry Englishness in stereo. The two (?) of them, split screened, are lapping brandy like, well, Englishmen. It’s a little awkward, initially, but as the film progresses one gets the feeling that the filmmakers are steadily getting the hang of this whole “special effects” thing.

Of course, those clumsy special effects are long forgotten by act two. The “first” Alec Guinness (heretofor referred to as Guinness I), a milquetoast professor in the throws of an existential crisis, has been tricked into swapping places with a titled lookalike (Guinness II). He wears another man’s clothes, drinks another man’s booze, and lives in another man’s house, where every occupant looks on the verge of hysterics.

The film feels a little like “Rebecca,” and no wonder – it’s based on a novel by Daphne Du Maurier, with an adaptation by Gore Vidal and costumes by Patricia Field. Having read “Rebecca” in school nearly 10 years ago, I can safely say that I don’t understand why this woman is famous. My most vivid memory of the book was it’s cover, which had raised lettering.

Every time a character swoons or drops something or gestures more than four inches away from their own body, a pushy tinkling of keys can be heard. Ominous music follows every scene, like a creeping shadow in a film that would have built-in ominous music. Guinness I’s voice over narration stays mostly in the first act, unless it’s needed to pad out a few key scenes. Sitting there, eyes fixed intently on the screen, I wonder what it must be like to have Daphne Du Maurier narrating your inner monologue. It’s a circle jerk of melodrama, to be sure.

The film is very quickly resolved – within the last 15 mintues, I’d say – and ambiguous enough. After such a hasty job, I can’t tell if the ending is a happy one, or so short it’s de facto mysterious. The final scene is a Guinness, tenderly reunited with his mistress. I suppose that, among British aristocracy, this sort of thing is very heartwarming.

“Animal Crackers” @ MoMA

I should’ve spent last night the throws of this thing with the rest of New York’s film snobs. Instead, I was at the Titus 1 theatre with two friends and a smattering of seniors.

I couldn’t have had a more run-of-the-mill evening at MoMA if I tried. The theatre was filled to half-capacity, at best. It was a Wednesday night crowd – the elderly, the unwashed, and the compulsive. Rather than try and catch a new release, or something I’d never seen before, I chose to sit through “Animal Crackers” for the 80th time this year, and laugh at the same old vaudeville.

“Animal Crackers” is one of their earliest film efforts (what “Cocoanuts?”), a filmed version of their play, written by George S. Kafuman. It’s a funny little movie, but sometimes hard to watch. The filmmakers, no doubt blinded by the new technology of sound, don’t really bother with visual artistry. Occasionally they’ll do that early-30s thing where the camera moves along a track for a zoom in, or for no apparent reason, but the effect is lost in relation to the other shots. In another scene we hold on a window, watching as a storm breaks out – the camera moves and shifts, like bad handheld, but I couldn’t tell you if that’s intentional or not.

On top of that, I had a sort of realization that “Animal Crackers” might be one of the tackiest films I’ve ever seen. Nearly every piece of furniture in the Ritten-house is angular, inorganic, and seemingly covered in triangles. Pick any other film from that era – Astaire-Rogers pictures, or Frank Borzage – and the set design is just another beautiful old element. Here, it’s a little much. The cast, clad in soft gowns and well-worn dinner jackets, stick out like a lace pimple.

In spite of the lack of expertise, I’m still glad I went. I didn’t pay a dime, the theatre was dry, and there were no fist fights. And as far as I’m concerned, nothing beats a bunch of shticky Jews falling all over each other in front of a crowd of baffled socialites.

“The Dark Knight” @ the Regal Union Square

I think it’s indicative of the company I keep – nerds, mostly – that I’m the last in my social circle to see this movie. It should also be mentioned that said friends guaranteed me a trip through the wringer – to hear some people talk about it (critics, too), you half expect to be bombarded by nothing less than a giant Cthulhu. I guess this makes them not just nerds, but bébés, too. I recall sleeping soundly that night, but we’ll get to that in just a minute.

Let me start by telling you, my taste in comic books is more “Smartest Kid on Earth” than “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” In spite of these shortcomings, I’ve still got a working knowledge of superhero lore on my side. As a kid, I was an ardent follower of the well-intentioned Batman movie franchise of the 1990s. Running with geeks, even back then, I fondly recall a cappella renditions of “Kiss from a Rose” on the playground. So when I bought my ticket (a day early) and hit the theater, I was still living in the bygone days of the dynamic duo and their plastic nipple suits.

I wasn’t surprised by the fact that “The Dark Knight” was not the outré Batman of my youth. It’s not Jim Carrey bouncing around in a green jumpsuit, looking like Matthew Lesko at the Mudd Club. It’s not a doughy Adam West giving Otto Preminger the old “biff! pow!” It’s not even Jack Nicholson, rocking out to Prince on what I’m sure were leftover sets from “After Hours.” That said, seeing Christian Bale, steely and gruff, tear through Chicago on a giant bigwheel while a city’s worth of people wrestle with those Big Moral Questions seems almost totally alien to me. Naturally the film, like most examples of its genre, never lacks for cringe-inducing moments. Unfortunately, people are quick to confuse immediate discomfort with being genuinely spooked – it’s like that old Hitchcock bomb-under-the-bench scenario. Seeing a man’s mouth get split from ear to ear is graphic and effective, sure, until it’s replaced by something just as bad in the next scene.

“Dark Knight” is lauded as one of the most violent and topical “comic book” movies in recent history: cellphone bombs, wiretapping, everything but the kitchen sink of modern fearmongering! And while I consider myself to be relatively news-savvy, seeing terrorism and offshore Chinese banking get the royal treatment in a Batman movie seems a little incongruous. I suppose it’s the subtle political commentary that’s really supposed to scare us but, here, Chris Nolan and I have met halfway: I think Batman is too ridiculous to be taken seriously, and all of his serious stuff feels a little limp.

What’s strange about the whole affair is that, while attempting to inject a comic book franchise with some real seriousness, a very real, very serious thing actually happened. Sure, “The Dark Knight’s” publicity team could have treated Heath Ledger’s death like an elephant in the room  - instead, they plastered his face all over town. Taking the bait, like they do, American film critics have managed to buoy this tragedy with all sorts of praise, crying “Oscar” and all that. This untimely death is simultaneously No Big Thing and a Big Fucking Deal.

Honestly, and with all due respect, Ledger’s performance isn’t the best I’ve seen all year. Like most actors of his generation, he relied a little too heavily on tics and gestures for my taste, but he gets the job done. And with Bale giving such a prick-ish performance as Master Bruce, we needed a swell villain to round it all out. The Joker’s M.O. is making Batman look like an ineffective chump and, wouldn’t you know it, he totally does. With all the heavy-handed, half-executed CNN “world-we-live-in” trimmings, I was drawn immediately to Ledger as the comic relief. Even though our villain is a really bad egg – some of his actions, taken out of the context of cinema, are genuinely frightening – he’s still funny enough that, like the tacky “Batman” films of yore, I was spared from having to take the whole thing too seriously.

“The Last Picture Show” @ BAM

My last chance to see “The Last Picture Show” was a year or so ago at LACMA. It was after a showing of “Hud” and, as anyone who’s seen “Hud” can tell you, something like that doesn’t exactly leave you hankering for another two hours in the dark. So it’s a nice sort of coda now, seeing it on a summer Sunday in a well ventilated, sparsely populated theater.

And of course, I don’t have to remind you that “Last Picture Show” is one hell of a movie. It’s greatness was so distracting, I completely forgot about Bogdanovich and his silly little scarves. In fact, I have to hand it to him – from the first scene on, we waste no time dawdling over backstories. Over the course of a year, characters are simply added to the story under the assumption that you already know, or can simply surmise, everything about them.

In many was, you can, because these people flesh out the old American archetypes so well that you completely forget the cliches: you’ve got Sonny, the quiet, sensitive loner and his hedonistic friend, Duane. There’s Jacy, a coveted beauty who trades on status and sexuality, and Lois, her faded alcoholic of a mother. We’ve seen these people before in countless other films about that morbid, small-town thing – “Picnic,” “American Graffiti,” etc.

“Last Picture Show” operates on what otherwise might be considered a weakness – the focus tends to shift in every act, never settling on who the film is “about” – but there’s something so accessible and amateur about that film that it actually works! On the surface, you could easily say it’s about Sonny and Duane, and the inevitable realization that their friendship will soon unravel. They’re living in that diorama of senior year where important things like “best friends” lose their meaning real fast.

Scratch the surface and you’ll think it’s all about Sam the Lion, who runs the eponymous picture show. The movie’s all about him, even if it’s not. Those beautiful scenes before his offscreen death are especially telling: he and Sonny have spent a day at the lake. We slowly zoom in on his craggy face, hold, and zoom out. It’s a little awkward, but effective. All the while, he recalls a crazy young girl he brought to that same spot and we, the captive audience, struggle to guess who it is (or at least, I did). At his funeral, we finally learn, and act two is over.

For the last 30 minutes or so we’re subjected to the sight of Sonny’s gradual separation from his friends and family. He takes up with Duane’s girl, the aforementioned Jacy, and quickly loses her. Duane enlists and meets and uncertain, though most likely grim fate. Finally Billy, the sweet-hearted “village idiot” and Sam’s de facto son, is killed without much fanfare. In a way, this final act is like watching him hatch. Sam, Duane, Jacy – they break off like pieces of an eggshell, soon-to-be detritus. Sonny is finally left naked – hatched and alone, and his growing pain is the pain of new life.

So, by the end of the film, we’ve gotten to the gumball center of this story – it’s friends and lovers and all that transience. The only true love these people have for each other is the love they feel in absence – it’s a town-wide game of hard-to-get. Sam’s scene at the lake – my god, that scene at the lake! – is just a hint of it.

Soon, you see Duane and Sonny come to blows over Jacy who, now a co-ed in Dallas, could care less about the boys she left behind. And Lois (Sam’s mystery girl! Surprise!) really brings it on home when she tells us it’s “…terrible to only meet one man in your whole life who knows what you’re worth.” Facing Sonny in her spotless car, they share a flask our bourbon and talk about old Sam the Lion and the origin of his nickname. “I’ve looked, too.” she continues. “You wouldn’t believe how I’ve looked.”