Cinematical

It's pretty easy to pick out Christmas movies and Halloween movies, and it's not too hard to find a New Year's movie, or even Arbor Day or Memorial Day movies. But how do you select a Fourth of July movie? Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) takes place during the Fourth of July, when the sheriff (the late, great Roy Scheider) tries to close the beach to protect the people from the killer shark and the greedy mayor wants to keep the beaches open to make lots of money. And who can forget Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991), with its image of a cackling, cigar-smoking Robert De Niro looming over the helpless, passive family, while fireworks explode overhead? These movies may not be entirely appropriate, or they may be all-too-appropriate symbols of America in 2008, but either way, they're both terrific movies.

The road movie is a uniquely American genre; unlike other parts of the world, Americans have the freedom to drive across 3000 miles of open land without getting hassled. It also involves cars, for which Americans have a singular passion. There are dozens of great road movies (not surprisingly), but let's go with three of the most unique examples. Tim Burton's cult classic Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) brings the title hero on the road to find his stolen bicycle; the film also has the best hitch-hiking sequences since It Happened One Night. Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) is the ultimate existential car movie, and David Lynch's The Straight Story (1999) is the road movie transplanted to a power lawnmower (which is pretty American, too, when you think about it).

In describing today's best directors, three terms are generally used (and overused): Maverick, Genius and Auteur. A "maverick" is now used to describe virtually anyone who makes a movie without using Hollywood money. An "auteur" is used to describe anyone who writes as well as directs. And "genius" is used to describe anyone who makes a halfway decent film. I'm taking these words back. In reality, a "maverick" should be a button-pusher. It's a filmmaker who is so radical and daring that even high-minded, forward-thinking critics sneer at their work, people like Vincent Gallo or Catherine Breillat. These people are so dangerous that they have trouble making and distributing films. Harmony Korine, director of Mister Lonely (5 screens) is very much a maverick. Korine has pushed many buttons and many envelopes over the years and though I love his work, he's someone I wouldn't want to invite to my house. (He scares me.)

Werner Herzog, director of Encounters at the End of the World (1 screen), is also a maverick (and, incidentally, a buddy of Korine's). His physically dangerous films have probably had insurance companies slamming the door in his face, and his co-workers have included people who might not be fit for polite society. (At the very least, most of them would turn heads.) Some of his actors have reportedly threatened to kill him. It cracks me up that, because Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man was such a hit, Herzog was allowed to make his new film for the Discovery Channel. I'd really love to have been in on that board meeting. Did they really know who they were dealing with? At the same time, Herzog is also an auteur: all of his films have the same roaming curiosity, fearlessly exploring man's tenuous connection to nature, from Aguirre navigating the Amazon looking for El Dorado, to Timothy Treadwell seeking to befriend the bears.

Four of the most exciting movie stars in the world are currently appearing in two of the least interesting new movies, taking a back seat to less interesting stars. Jackie Chan and Jet Li are master martial artists, Chan with a comedian's touch and Li with an appealing stoic quality. They team up for the first time in The Forbidden Kingdom (105 screens), a movie about a white kid and his attempt to beat up some bullies. Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh team up for the second time in The Children of Huang Shi (43 screens), about a British journalist (not played by Chow) and an Australian nurse (not played by Yeoh) saving some orphans.

Chow had a suave, cool quality that could have turned him into the next James Bond or Cary Grant, and Yeoh is a beautiful martial artist who could have become a groundbreaking feminist action star. It's a sad state of affairs, but I guess these films are the final proof of the cold, dead corpse of the Hong Kong New Wave.

Over the course of my time in this job I have acquired a reputation as someone who reviews and appreciates lots of foreign films. Of course, at the same time I have occasionally been accused of not understanding these films at all, which is partially true. It's not technically possible for one person to fully absorb and comprehend every facet of every industrialized culture in the world. For one thing, subtitles never accurately translate what's being spoken, and then there are little cultural things, certain behaviors, for example, that may not translate either. Conversely, it's impossible for any one person -- filmmakers included -- to represent a culture. It gets even more complex than that, if you want to boil it down. For example, I could say that I identify with the characters in High Fidelity (2000), but if you consider that I've never been to Chicago, and consider further that the book was originally set in London, then it creates a cultural divide. That movie has levels that will forever be out of my grasp.

You do your best. You keep an open mind. Although, I admit I'm usually disappointed when I see too many Western filmmaking elements slavishly copied in Eastern films (Mongol, The Counterfeiters, etc.); it shows the overwhelming influence of Hollywood on other parts of the world. I'm sure more people in Portugal saw Transformers than saw Manoel de Oliveira or Pedro Costa's latest films.

June is here, and summer has more or less begun, even if we have to wait until June 21 for the official start date. I'm here in the Bay Area, under a blanket of fog, wearing a sweater (if you saw last year's wonderful Colma: The Musical, you'll get a visual) while everywhere else people are sunbathing and drinking frosty frappuccinos. No matter. I've spent many summers like this and I have my share of fond summer memories even if they happened in the freezing cold rather than the relaxing heat. I was just remembering back to my first summer here. I had a pretty laid-back, part-time job that allowed me to go to as many movies as I wanted. So this week I thought I would do a flashback to the summer of 1991. (Imagine a pre-Tarantino world!) Things started well with the 50th anniversary re-release of Citizen Kane, and although I'd seen it many times before (and since) I got to see it on the big screen for the first time.

Next up came the documentary Truth or Dare. I wasn't a particularly big Madonna fan, but there was one scene that made the movie an event. Warren Beatty (then dating Madonna) turns up in her dressing room and is nonplussed about the intruding cameras: "She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk. There's nothing to say off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point is there existing?" Little did we know that those words would come to define our country and culture in the 21st century.

I had a friend once who claimed that there was no point in listening to a record or seeing a movie that was merely good, that to invest the money and time, it should be great. I later caught him listening to -- and enjoying almost to the point of tears -- a CD that would never be described by anyone as great. The point is that sometimes a good movie does wonders for the soul that a great movie could never hope to replicate. Take a look at Iron Man, still on nearly 4000 screens and still raking in the returns. It's well on its way to earning $300 million and shows no signs of stopping there. It's currently the #1 highest grossing film of the year, as well as one of the top rated films at Rotten Tomatoes, with a whopping 93%. I'm one of the movie's fans, but it seems to me that this response is based more on sheer gratitude than anything else. Everyone seems to be simultaneously chiming in: thanks for the good movie!

2008 has been a lousy year for great movies, but I have seen quite a few good ones. The documentary Young@Heart (212 screens), for example, has continued to live in my memory long after I saw it, and long after any of the award-winning Iraq documentaries I've had to sit through. I suspect that it's one of those rare, word-of-mouth docs like March of the Penguins or Grizzly Man that people actually tell their friends about. I don't want to give anything away, but before I saw the movie I didn't care much for the band Coldplay, and now I can't listen to "Fix You" without getting a lump in my throat. The key to this movie is that it looked terrible before I went in, and it turned out to be a huge and happy surprise.

Since it's Indiana Jones week, I wanted to do something Indy-themed for my column this week, perhaps something along the line of "Indy indies," but I kept coming back to an idea that has been gnawing at me for some time: a recently re-discovered appreciation for Steven Spielberg, flaws and all. As a kid, I was treated to Spielberg's childlike fantasies, including E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and, to a lesser extent Poltergeist and The Goonies. He, along with George Lucas, seemed to be able to tap directly into the universal fantasies of boys (and some girls, too) everywhere, thereby discovering a gold mine.

But he eventually felt the need to grow up, not because he wanted to, but because he yearned for the acclaim that goes with making more grown-up movies. His first attempt, The Color Purple, was oddly, almost uncomfortably childlike, but he eventually made the leap with Schindler's List. At least three times he has jumped back and forth between childhood and adulthood in a single year: 1993 (Jurassic Park and Schindler's List), 1997 (The Lost World and Amistad) and 2005 (War of the Worlds and Munich). It's only natural, then, that fans and critics began to see this as a kind of betrayal, or worse, inconsistency. Not to mention that his gargantuan success, both financial and critical, tends to breed contempt in others.

I noticed that Lloyd Kaufman's Poultrygeist (subtitled Night of the Chicken Dead) has finally emerged in theaters (currently playing on 1 screen). Kaufman is the president of Troma, a production company and distributor that has survived as an indie for over 30 years, mainly due to salesmanship. By any count, they have been responsible for at least 150 movies, and Kaufman himself has over 200 on his resume. Anyone who has ever frequented a video store has probably come across titles like Blondes Have More Guns (1995), Cannibal! The Musical (1996), Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1991), Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger Part IV (2000) (and, indeed, the entire Toxic Avenger series), Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986), Femme Fontaine: Killer Babe for the C.I.A. (1994), Killer Condom (1996), A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1991), Rabid Grannies (1988), Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1991), Surf Nazis Must Die! (1987) and Tromeo and Juliet (1996). They have also distributed such nuggets as Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party (1969), Samuel Fuller's Shark! (1969) and Dario Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome (1996).

A few weeks ago a DVD of Laurent Cantet's 2000 film Human Resources arrived on my doorstep. I hadn't seen it, but it rung a bell for me, and it took me a little while to remember: the Shooting Gallery series! I couldn't believe I had forgotten about it. It was a huge event in less-than-400-screen lore, successful as well as artistically daring. I poked around and discovered that this brave little distributor had -- of course -- gone out of business. In 2000 and 2001, the Shooting Gallery lined up three series of six movies each, releasing each one for a two-week period, usually on a specific movie screen in selected cities, and then replaced it with the next in the series. If something took off and became a hit, it could play longer. I didn't see all the films, but there were some amazing entries, and certainly some films that otherwise would never have seen the light of day.

The first series unfolded in the spring of 2000. The quirky, dreamy, black-and-white comedy Judy Berlin, starring a then up-and-coming Edie Falco ("The Sopranos"), came first. It didn't exactly break any box office records, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has a small following today. Next up came Peter Mullan's Orphans, which I didn't see, followed by Such a Long Journey, which was yet another story from India about an old-fashioned father balking at the ways of his modern children, but beautifully realized. (The great character actor Om Puri was on hand for a supporting role.) Southpaw was a snappy little boxing documentary about promising Irish fighter Francis Barrett. The sixth film, from Japan, was Adrenaline Drive, a kind of crime story crossed with a drawing room comedy. It seemed ripe for an American remake, which never came.

Iron Man opens this week, and thus the summer movie season has officially arrived. I love a good summer movie as much a the next guy, but this morning I found myself looking back at some of the little films that cropped up during the summer; some of them managed to get a "summer" feel on a much lower budget and without all the advertisement and hype. My absolute favorite summer art house movie has to be Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1999). I saw it three times that summer, and each time I clutched my seat, my heart pounding. I was amazed at how brilliantly Tywker had mapped out his three possible storylines and how lovely the small, quiet interludes were. I loved Franka Potente, and I loved his throbbing score, which practically entered into your bloodstream and pumped up your adrenaline by hand. Every color, movement and cut was designed for maximum effect (I've always been puzzled how Tykwer's movies since have seemed so long and sluggish.)

Also that same summer, John Sayles delivered his baffling adventure/suspense film Limbo, which had several people trapped on an island awaiting rescue and stalked by bad guys. The ending had everybody in an uproar and caused the film to die a quick death. The summer before that one, Darren Aronofsky's debut feature Pi gave me a good dose of sci-fi thrills, as well as a few head-scratching puzzles (which were actually real). 2000 was a particularly bad summer, but John Waters' Cecil B. DeMented provided a mischievous little oasis in the middle of it all. In that film, renegade filmmakers kidnap a Hollywood starlet and force her to be in their indie production; each team member has a tattoo of a maverick filmmaker's name. (I've often wondered which filmmaker's name I would pick for a tattoo? Maybe David Cronenberg...)

Like a collector of stray dogs, I have likewise assembled my personal canon of misfit filmmakers, artists who have fallen out of fashion or just never caught on. Jacques Rivette, whose new The Duchess of Langeais (6 screens) is currently struggling in art house theaters, is a prime example. According to his bio on the IMDB, he has always nestled in an uncomfortable place between film snobs and film populists. His films are too playful for intellectuals and yet too severe for mainstream consumption. He was a critic at Cahiers du Cinema alongside Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol (some of his writing has been translated to English; I especially love his piece on Howard Hawks and the 1952 film Monkey Business) yet his work does not seem like that of a film buff; it springs more from literature and from his own temperament. Indeed, he's very hard to pin down, perhaps partially because hardly anyone has seen very many of his films. His 12-1/2 hour film Out 1 (1972), which has been called his greatest achievement, has screened in America so few times that probably less than a thousand people have seen it.

(ed. note: This post was accidentally published at 1AM, instead of 1PM, so we're re-publishing it at the correct time.)

I've been thinking about the largely negative response to Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights (6 screens), a film I quite liked. As of today it's at 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, though it opens wider this weekend (including here in the Bay Area) and more reviews are surely coming in. Most critics I've spoken with around here likewise didn't think much of it. What are the reasons for all this disappointment? The main reason has to do with its weight. It's a lightweight movie, a trifle, flimsy, vapid, thin, etc. Wong is considered one of the world's greatest filmmakers, a maker of "weighty" works of art, and so this "lighter" film is beneath him. It's a letdown, a step backward.

Well, I say that's nonsense. Many great filmmakers dallied in lightweight, lesser trifles during their careers, and it didn't make them any less great. Martin Scorsese has made lots of them. After Hours (1985) and The Color of Money (1986) may not pack the punch of Raging Bull, but they are quite enjoyable, and pure Scorsese. (His current Shine a Light, 277 screens, feels like a trifle.) Fritz Lang came to the United States from a position of great power and unlimited resources in Germany and found himself assigned cheap crime pictures. Yet few critics today would complain about the "lightness" of The Big Heat or Scarlet Street. Max Ophuls also made crime films in Hollywood (Caught and The Reckless Moment), and his reputation remains intact. Some consider John Ford the greatest American director of all time, and even though his goofball Donovan's Reef (1963) isn't counted among his classics, I love it just as much. It has moments of great beauty that reflect its maker's personality. My Blueberry Nights may not stand up to In the Mood for Love, but it's unquestionably a Wong Kar-wai film.

Among my favorite film books is Michael J. Weldon's two-volume "Psychotronic" film guide. The first was published in 1983 and the second in 1996 (Michael hopes to publish a third at some point). Unlike Leonard Maltin's annual book, Weldon doesn't update an existing guide; each new guide is an entirely new volume. If you want to read about Halloween, you need Vol. 1 and if you want to read about Halloween 4, you need Vol. 2. A "Psychotronic" movie can be fairly easy to define. It's basically any of the "lower" film genres, dealing with the more questionable elements of society: horror, sci-fi, bikers, strippers, superheroes, zombies, kung-fu, vampires, comic books, drugs, sex, action heroes, rock 'n' roll, midnight movies, monsters, witches, cults, serial killers, magic, time travel, robberies, heists, contract killers, gladiators, Spaghetti Westerns, mad scientists, murder mysteries, pimps, voyeurs, etc.

Not many people care to admit it, but Hollywood is run by fear. Fear is an emotion generated by things that are not known or understood, and in the movie business, no one ever knows what's going to happen. (William Goldman was right when he said, "Nobody Knows Anything.") All those accountants, producers, publicists, entertainment TV shows, ad campaigns, etc. are all an attempt to get a handle on the unknown, an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Anything can happen. The world's biggest movie star can jump up and down on a couch and suddenly become a weirdo outcast. Or the star of a dismal turkey like Showgirls can turn around and find herself cast in a Woody Allen film. This fear, in essence, is why so many movies are so bad. The more investors and business people try to control their investment, the more they clamp down on it, and the more it gets smothered.

See, movies can live and breathe like an organic life form, but they have to have a chance. If brave producers step back and let the movie come to life in the hands of a genuine artist, they could wind up with something extraordinary like Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (229 screens), a film that somehow pleased critics both highbrow and middlebrow, won a handful of Oscars and has nearly grossed $75 million. This film has already entered the cultural canon as a classic of cinema. More or less the same can be said of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (224 screens), which, having lost the Oscar for Best Picture, is now in a position of being an underrated underdog. But those are exceptions to the rule. No one is immune to the fear: a few years back the Coen Brothers teamed up with sleazy producer Brian Grazer, of all people, and came up with their first dud, Intolerable Cruelty.

Are films political? Do they fall into left-wing and right-wing camps? I would imagine that not all films have an agenda. Some films can be considered "great uniters," in that they bring together agreeing audiences from all over, films like the $200 million hits I Am Legend (264 screens) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (177 screens) or a critical favorite like There Will Be Blood (339 screens) that has pleased nearly everyone who has seen it. Of course, There Will Be Blood is about a snaky, sinister, blustery oil baron willing to sacrifice his family, country and humanity for the allure of black gold, which may or may not have a little something to do with current events. (Not to mention that director Paul Thomas Anderson dropped the word "Oil" from the title of the source novel and replaced it with the word "Blood.")

In recent years it has been determined that film critics are a liberal bunch, educated, well-read men and women of letters, who can see and comprehend the human condition in films from different cultures all over the world. Or, they're sometimes known as pompous, ponderous, pretentious, conceited, snooty know-it-alls, lacking in good old-fashioned horse sense. "Why can't you just enjoy the movie," is a question very often asked of critics. Rambo (201 screens) is a fascinating case. It's impressively violent, but very grim and not much fun. Rambo debuted and reigned during the Reagan era (Rambo: First Blood Part II grossed three times the amount of the new film, even with 1985 ticket prices). Bringing him back in a decidedly different political atmosphere didn't seem to work, though the film was screened for the press and earned a few good reviews. It's now starting a downslide, and it's still shy of breaking even on its $50 million budget.