J.D. Hansel

Thriller

The Silence of the Lambs Review

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It’s always difficult for me to write anything about films which have already received immense praise from countless better writers than I, so I’ll be brief: this film is practically perfect.  I love it to death.  One significant thing about it is that, while it is clearly a Hollywood entertainment film, it unusually has no clear place in the genre system.  It’s kind of a detective drama, kind of a psychological drama/thriller, kind of a horror film, and kind of a comedy.  Maybe it’s all of them, and if it is, that’s a tough balance to achieve.  While this may not be my favorite Jodie Foster performance, Hopkins makes up for this in spades, and his character clearly shaped many later works of media which I love.  It’s not quite in my top 20 favorite films – maybe it’s just not a very “J. D. Hansel” kind of movie – but I approve of its status as one of the best films of all time without any reservations.

Taxi Driver Review

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I’d like to talk about a French movie called La Haine.  Easily one of the most historically significant French films of the last 25 years, La Haine (or Hate) tells the story of young men of different ethnic backgrounds living in one of the poorest parts of France who are the victims of police brutality.  While the American tendency is to make all characters that the audience is expected to read as “victim type characters” very nice, sweet, and innocent, this film has a brutal realism to it – the characters are not the loveliest people.

They are very aggressive, rude, profane, and obsessed with drugs and guns.  The only jokes they know how to tell involve having sex somebody’s mother or sister.  They are wrapped up in maintaining an impossible self-image of pure masculinity, never showing weakness, always being ready to shoot anyone who stands in their way.  While I can’t relate to them much, I do feel for them: their attitudes, interests, and behaviors are all part of a persona they feel they must assume in order to stand up to unjust authorities – a persona thrust upon them by American pop culture.

While a variety of artists, films, and film genres clearly affected the film and/or the characters in it, the only movie I recall being cited explicitly as a source of self-image for these kids is Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.  The famous “You talkin’ to me?” scene (in addition to the scene pictured below) is performed by a character in this film who feels like he has no power and no future – all he has is the fantasy of pulling out a gun like Robert De Niro and shooting a cop.  I think that’s because the purpose of Taxi Driver is to resonate with people who just want to be masculine, dominant men, which is why the whole film is nothing but a showcase of what masculinity looks like without the “fun parts.”  Without the fast cars, monster trucks, explosions, wild sex, rocking out, and sports games, all that’s left to make a movie manly is precisely the contents of Taxi Driver – no more, no less.

The plot concerns a retired war veteran returning to his home city in America and trying to find a way to readjust – a clever nod not only to the contents of films noir but also to the historical phenomenon that film historians/theorists propose prompted the film noir genre.  He becomes a taxi driver and sees a variety of strange characters and concerning events, which Scorsese used to show us the darkness of New York on a level that few other directors have been able to achieve.  Then he stalks a woman, so that’s not good.  Then he and that woman attempt to have a romantic relationship, but it doesn’t go very well.  Then he buys a bunch of guns and decides to become a vigilante, hoping to rescue a very, very young prostitute from her situation.

The number of events in the story are few, although they happen over the span of a rather long, slow movie, and there aren’t many engaging twists and turns in the story, so what gives?  Why is this movie considered so great?  I already mentioned the film noir references, and I think a lot of people admire the lengths to which Scorsese goes to show how awful a place New York City can be, all without losing the sense of realism.  People also surely like Scorsese’s ability to use very subtle camerawork to create a unique style of uneasy “swaying” that makes the viewer feel continuously unsettled.  It’s all apart of the idea that great filmmakers aren’t the ones who follow the Hollywood formula really well to please a large audience.  The great director, it is believed, is one who comes up with his/her own distinct ideas for specific events, moments, vignettes, and characters he/she wants the audience to see, then carefully crafts them with clever dialogue and unconventional cinematography, then packages them together in just the right order to give the audience the experience he/she wants.

That’s not quite my idea of a great film – it’s close, but it’s not quite there.  At the end of the day, film is a communication medium, and that means I can’t only look at how well the filmmaker uses the channel of communication (the channel being video) – I have to look at the value of that which is being communicated.  I think the reason why I like the show Louie more than Taxi Driver, even though Louis C. K. meets that same definition of a great director I offered in the previous paragraph in Louie, is that Louis is expressing something that speaks to my values and showing me things I would want the whole world to see.  He shows life in the rotten parts of the city from a perspective that makes sense to me.  I can’t say that for the popular Scorsese films, which seem to approach the world from the perspective of an animal rather than a rational agent.

I really don’t know how to care very much about what happens in the movie, so it’s hard for me to care about the movie.  I don’t really connect much with the characters, and based on this film I don’t think I connect much with Scorsese either.  The only people who do connect with either of them through this film, I estimate, are people who enjoy their own manliness too much.  I can greatly appreciate the interesting character studies, the fascinating exchanges between the (very different) characters, and the craftsmanship involved here – I’m really glad that Scorsese showed me so many things that so few people have ever seen before on or off the screen – but that’s not enough.  It simply doesn’t resonate with me.

Notorious (1946) Review

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It took me a while to recognize the fact that this film is great.  Part of that’s a side effect from the fact that this film is one of Hitchcock’s somewhat lesser-known works – it’s hard to get a good copy of it on DVD with good sound quality, so I had a hard time hearing the dialogue.  When you have to replay scenes over and over again like I did (just to hear them), you lose a lot of what makes a Hitchcock film work.  You need to let yourself become completely and effortlessly lost in the mood of the scene – to let each scene wash over you.  Once I finally moved my DVD to a player that let me turn the subtitles on, I was finally able to stop trying to tell what was going on and just experience it.  Once I did that, it made all the difference, and I could see clearly that this film is quite brilliant.

Since some of the earlier scenes in the film are a little boring (the story takes a while to build) the first thing I noticed about Notorious that really impressed me was the cinematography.  As one would expect from a film noir by Alfred Hitchcock, it’s excellent, but not just because it’s visually pleasing – although it certainly is that.  What’s great about it is the way Hitchock shows us different kinds of shots that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, thus creating moods and feelings I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before.  Hitchcock uses the camera to tell his story, carefully revealing only what he wants us to see when he wants us to see it and creating a level of subjectivity from the characters’ perspective that puts us in the shoes of the characters all the more.

That being said, the story is compelling enough without the camera’s help.  While I’ve only seen about three or four of Hitchcock’s films previously, it feels like more attention was paid to the script this time than in most of his films.  You don’t watch this movie for the scary silhouette with the knife coming at you or for the birds attacking the children.  It’s not horror.  The viewer is simply so wrapped up in the characters’ mission that he/she cannot help but be scared, purely from the suspense of knowing they may get caught.  Right up until the movie’s end, the intensity of the drama is turned up to ten, making it impossible to look away from the screen.  As if that wasn’t enough, the dialogue is exquisitely clever, and it doesn’t hurt that story is being performed by many of the greatest actors of Classical Hollywood, who present some of their finest work here.

And did I mention that I adore Ingrid Bergman?  Because I adore Ingrid Bergman.

The Third Man Review

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Have you ever seen one of those movies that pulls such a clever trick on you with its slick, surprising writing that you just sit back, swallow your pride, and give it a nice, slow clap?

This is The Third Man, which is one of those odd films known as a “British Noir.”  It’s within the cinematic territory of film noir, most certainly, yet it comes from another country, which goes against some definitions of what can be counted as real film noir.  It’s really a shame, too – I want to count it as film noir because I think it’s the best film noir.  I’ve written before about how film noir is my kind of genre, with over-the-top drama, cynical representations of humanity, and an atmosphere of extreme, theatrical darkness, but there are very few films in the genre that I really enjoy as movies.  Sure, nearly each and every one I’ve seen has looked great, but the stories, characters, and general logical structures have often been severely lacking, so I can really only think of two or three films noir that I can say I love.  Of course, with the addition of The Third Man, it’s three or four, because this is almost certainly my favorite thus far.

It may seem like I’ve been so disappointed by films noir in the past (see Detour) that I could very easily be pleased by a film in the genre that just had a decent story, good plot twists, smart dialogue, and enjoyable characters, but I actually came into this film with high expectations.  The cinematographer on the short film I’m working on at the moment told me it’s her favorite movie of all time, which is an odd thing to hear about a 1940s British drama from a millennial college student.  I was ready to heavily scrutinize this film, but there’s really so little here to hate.  The characters are stronger here than they are in nearly any noir I’ve seen since Double Indemnity, which is probably my favorite American noir, and the visuals here (including atmosphere, camera angles, lighting, editing, location choices – all of it) may be the best I’ve seen in any noir since Key Largo, which is possibly my second-favorite.  I love the writing of this movie particularly because it’s so intelligent in the way it delivers information and transitions to new scenarios, consistently throwing the viewers off guard while keeping them engaged.

The one hinderence to this sense of engagement, however, is the pacing.  Some of the film has excellent pacing, but much of it seems to lag, making for several scenes that are just plain boring.  Even the ending, which I think is fairly difficult to get wrong when it’s been set up so perfectly such that any almost any imaginable ending after the climax’s conclusion would have provided satisfactory closure, is remarkably boring.  I imagine that the slow pacing is largely for deliberate, artistic reasons, but it’s still a major fault on the movie’s part for me because it pulls me out of the story – just as I get sucked into the emotions of the characters, a tedious moment arises that makes me zone out and miss information.  This is very frustrating, and what makes it so strange and disappointing is the film’s regular use of rapid, quick-cutting montage to add intensity to the scene, which should pick up the pace, but actually seems to hold it back.  I think with just a little more focus on the plot, this film would have gotten a higher rating out of me.

All that being said, I don’t think I’ve ever been so impressed by a movie in this style/genre before, and I tip my hat to Carol Reed and Graham Greene for telling one of the far best mystery stories I’ve ever heard.

Psycho Review

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SPOILER WARNING

I think I’m being very kind with my rating – perhaps overly kind.  While I’m not sure I would say that I had high expectations for Psycho, I will say that I was hopeful.  I have often been curious about how this film would work ever since I heard that it killed off its protagonist within the first act.  I had concerns that the movie would feel like it had no real purpose after that scene, but fortunately, the structure of the movie is perfectly fine.  The problem is that I nearly fell asleep watching it (and that is no exageration) because of how slow and boring it gets at times.  It’s another one of those films that falls into the category of “tederesting” – films that are fascinating and keep me curious about how they will unfold, but don’t grab me emotionally and consequently leave me with an annoying sense of boredom.  I can’t say I dislike it – some parts are genuinely chilling, and the ending is satisfyingly eerie – but it had such a hard time holding my attention that I can’t really consider it one of my favorites.  It may not be the kind of horror classic one watches for a fun date night, but it is a fascinating example of the kinds of strange and surprising stories that can be told when a filmmaker has the boldness to play with the story structure and keep the audience guessing what could possibly come next.  It’s not quite as good as The Birds, but it’s still worth the watch.

Dark City Review

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READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE SEEING THE FILM

For what it’s worth, I really tried to watch this movie the right way.  I had been warned that the film has an opening voiceover (added by the studio due to concerns that humans are stupid) which gives away many of the biggest surprises, reveals, and twists.  So, I did my filmic duty and muted everything up until the opening titles, which is what everyone who sees it ought to do.  Unfortunately, I forgot that I had the closed captions turned on, so I still had something important spoiled for me, but it wasn’t much more than had already been spoiled by the guy who had informed me about the voiceover in the first place.  I think the best way to avoid this issue is to just watch the director’s cut, which does not spoil itself at the start and remains more true to what the film was meant to be.  I eagerly look forward to watching the director’s cut for myself, if only because, in spite of its problems, I actually greatly enjoy this movie – so much so that I started watching it again from the beginning almost immediately after it ended.  No matter how many times the movie explains itself (and it is a lot), it manages to stay surprising and interesting, holding my attention from start to finish.

One of the things that makes it so captivating is the editing, which is incredibly fast.  When I started watching the movie from the beginning for a second time, it felt normal to me, but during my initial viewing, it threw me off with its rather awkward speed and tight transitions, throwing out so much of the space to catch one’s breath between cuts/scenes that other films offer.  It’s obviously visually outstanding – that’s arguably the point of the film – but I think there’s more to it than that.  Yes, it’s about getting lost in another world and exploring a strange, anxiety-inducing place, but it also makes an argument for how the human mind/soul works, and it makes it well.  Its story may be nothing remarkable, but that doesn’t matter – It’s still one of the most thrilling films I’ve ever seen.  If not for the film’s inability to keep its mouth shut and let me figure it out for myself, and if not for the film’s disinterest in making me feel emotion, I would be hailing it as practically perfect and as one of the all-time greatest movies ever made.