J.D. Hansel

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The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover Review

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I’ve been meaning to see this film for a long time – unlike most people my age, it’s been on my radar for years, and I have often joked about its incredibly long title.  Upon seeing it, I’ve found that it’s approximately what I thought it would be, only better.

It’s very much an artsy movie that seems to focus on visuals, themes, and cinematic experiments than entertaining, but it actually gets rather captivating and exciting in the second half.  The characters are, to my surprise, very interesting, with many characters I root for and one character who reminds me (and reminded the professor who was showing the film when I saw it) of a certain bushy-haired billionaire who’s been in the news lately.  The fear of “The Thief” intensifies as the film progresses, making for an intense and chilling third act.  All of this, of course, gets elevated and enhanced by the excellent soundtrack, and of course by some of the greatest visuals in cinema history.  Director Peter Greenaway seems to care very little for making a film that feels like real life, instead preferring a theatrical atmosphere, an unbelievable ending, and at least one subtle moment that is physically impossible (specifically the moment when a the wife’s dress changes colors instantly to match her surroundings).  While I must confess that some of it feels somewhat slow and boring, and there is definitely an aura of pseudo-intellectualism coupled with needless violence throughout, the film basically works because of its ironic conclusion, which is just as dramatic and chilling as it is ridiculously absurd.

It’s a bit awkward and grim for my tastes, but at least it’s fresh and well-done.

Network Review

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The first part of this film I ever saw was the famous scene with everyone shouting from their windows.  It was in a film history course I took a few years ago, and ever since I saw the clip, I’d been really wanting to see the whole film.  That scene really moved me when I first saw it – it spoke to me in a way that the most touching and emotional of scenes from other classic movies don’t – but I had to wait to watch it until I was in the right mood.  Since that course was back in early 2014, it seemed like late 2016 was a good time, ensuring that the scene wouldn’t be so fresh in my memory that it would be spoiled.  For this most recent viewing, once I could tell the scene was coming, I turned off the lights, sat up close to the screen, and let it overpower me.  Because the scene is so greatly enhanced by its context in the plot, I found myself quivering as tears fell down my face, and all I could do was remark at the beauty of what I was experiencing.  I’ve found myself tearing up while writing this review just at the thought of it, and this is a very unusual sort of experience for me.  This is exactly what cinema should be doing, and in a time when artsy drivel like 2001 is seen as the kind of thing the elite film critics want from Hollywood, it’s nice to know that a film with true meaning and power is still regarded as a great cinematic achievement.

As for the rest of the film, it’s not bad.  It can be a little boring at times, but most of it is pretty satisfying in its comedy, its irony, or at the very least its brutal honesty.  The film shows us exactly what we would like to think the evil overlords behind our television programming would be saying and doing behind closed doors.  The balance between comedy and drama is pretty good, particularly with the way the lines between the two are blurred.  I will say that I found it somewhat difficult to keep track of names and faces, but the story kept me interested.  The writing is smart, the characters are what they ought to be, and the ending is just perfect (and it merits comparison to the ending of another of my favorite ’70s movies, Phantom of the Paradise, to gain an appreciation of the cinema of the Vietnam-era and the years that followed).  What’s most impressive about the story is that it manages to be very dramatic, very absurd, and very believable all at the same time, such that the ridiculous solution proposed at the end of the film leaves the viewer gaping and thinking, “By gosh, at this point that actually seems plausible!”

Essentially, the movie is an interesting analysis of the normalization of madness, and it raises the question of just how sane a species we truly are.

It’s a Wonderful Life Review

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This movie is not supposed to be a classic – it happened by accident.  It was a flop at the box office (far more so than The Wizard of Oz) and only got played on TV because the studio let its copyright on the film lapse in the 1970s.  Because so many people watched it as children with how often it was on television, it became a tradition to watch the movie every Christmas, but that doesn’t mean it’s that great.  It’s one of those movies that we remember as being great from our childhood, so we can still enjoy it, much like with the Rankin-Bass specials.  The difference is that It’s a Wonderful Life feels more original with the classic, memorable, charming moral of its fable, more high-quality with its top-notch director, long run-time, and great cast, and more like it fits in stylistically with the family of Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, and other films that just feel emblematic of Classical Hollywood.  At the end, however, it feels like a pretty average Classical Hollywood film to me: sometimes boring, sometimes charming, sometimes impressive, and sometimes absurdly (and dare I say stupidly) weird.

First of all, its structure is about as bizarre as that of a film noir.  While Out of the Past has its interesting part in the first act and what feels like a boring afterthought for its second, this film spends the first two acts on generally humdrum exposition, leaving its iconic fantasy story for the ending.  Consequently, the whole film seems long and drawn-out, and while I can appreciate how interesting it must have seemed when it first came out because its high concept was completely new to cinema at the time, I couldn’t really stay all that interested seeing as how I knew exactly how the story ends.  I will say that the character of Mary Hatch/Bailey (Donna Reed) kept me interested in the story for a while, but the way that George Bailey (Stewart) treats her in most scenes, and the way he behaves in general, struck me as entirely unappealing and unrelatable.  I have a very difficult time caring about what happens to Bailey in general, but I will say that the film’s ending oddly warmed my heart far more than any movie I’ve seen in a long, long time.  The strength of the ending, however, is counterbalanced with the weirdness of the scenes at the beginning with the blinking stars, which were nearly a face-palm moment for me.  This film is a mix of a great many distinct and interesting things, some positive and some negative, and while I can’t say that I like it, I do think its concept is one worth consideration, and I can appreciate the original ideas it has brought to the art of the moving image.

Touch of Evil Review

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Very often for these reviews, I like to take the general critical consensus of a film’s worth into account for the star rating.  I usually don’t let what the professional critics have to say influence the body of my review very much, but for the number of stars, it’s nearly always a factor.  This is because I want the star rating to serve as at least one of the following: an objective, logical analysis that reduces the influence of the specific emotional context of my viewing of the film and just focuses on quality; the extent to which I recommend the film to others; a “protest vote” to counter the views of the other reviewers; a bold statement to bait its viewers to read the article that goes with it.  Sometimes I go for somewhere in the middle of all four, but I usually use the reviews of the other critics to help my more objective ratings by rounding them up to a higher number of stars when I’m stuck in a dilemma.  For this film, I’m definitely rounding up due to critical consensus – I just can’t figure out what my own feelings are about the film, but I can’t think of anything wrong with it either.

I have no issue with the protagonist, apart from the fact that the casting is comically bizarre, and most of the other characters are fine by me as well.  Welles’ character in the film is obviously a delight, and his handiwork as a director is as much of a big, eye-catching performance as his acting is.  The lighting is wonderful, making for excellent “noir” visuals, and the way that some of these scenes are shot is exceptionally impressive.  The choice for the music is particularly interesting because its very fun for a drama from this time period, including a lot of classic (then-contemporary) rock ‘n’ roll, making for some unique juxtaposition.  The film has a few truly great scenes throughout, and the climax is just perfect.  As much as I like the story of Welles’ character, it really feels like there isn’t a whole lot of story in the film – at least not for the first half.  It can feel kind of slow and boring at times, leaving me wondering why I’m supposed to be interested, but these moments are balanced out with moments that are shocking, dazzling, or otherwise intriguing, making for a very fascinating piece of work in the end.  If Touch of Evil is the last film noir, as many historians say it is, it’s nice to see the genre went out with a bang.

The Passion of Joan of Arc Review

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This is a very strange movie in very strange ways.  It tells an interesting story of an interesting character in a way that makes sense, has good drama, displays directorial prowess, employs creativity, and is overall reasonably enjoyable, but it is still very odd.  It’s a silent film that’s based entirely on a record of dialogue, making it a very strange choice for the subject of a silent film (especially since sound cinema was pre-heating and could have easily been foreseen in 1928) as the text seems to get about as much screen-time as the people.  It’s also bizarre because of the acting, which was hailed at its time, but today seems somewhat over-the-top.  I’m not sure that I like either of these things, but I do like the movie overall.  It’s not my favorite, but I am rather fond of movies that explore what terrible things can happen when religious authorities are given too much power, and it’s an interesting courtroom drama.  When its contributions to cinema on a technical level are brought into account, it is easy to see why the film is considered a classic.

Gone with the Wind Review

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This is perhaps the most wasteful film I have ever seen in my life.

There is a tendency in film criticism to give the highest value and praise to films that show off the power of cinema – the epics that make the medium seem overpowering, thunderous, and majestic, even if the stories they tell are terrible.  Gone with the Wind, as impressive as it may have been at the time, was the Oscar-bait of its time, and it feels like another one of those films that panders to those who just want a film that looks really cinematic and beautiful and has some unconventional storytelling elements.  Ultimately, however, the problem is the characters.  These people exist in a world that seems so distant from my conception of American history, yet it seems to be trying to offer a genuine perspective that many people had, and I get the impression that this film appealed to those subscribed to the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” narrative, which just isn’t me.  The one of the film’s main theses seems to be, “have pity on the poor slave-owners who lost the war,” and I simply don’t have the capacity to do that.

Not only are the general vibes and themes of the film off-putting for me, but the main character is simply unbearable throughout most of the film.  I can deal with focusing on a character I don’t entirely like, but the problem here is that this is a four-hour romantic epic that can only hold my attention by being romantic.  When the romantic lead is a rotten, spoiled brat who hardly seems human, the romance fails, and the film becomes uninteresting.  I also find her values incomprehensible, because the obsession with the family’s land seems entirely stupid – it’s just dirt, and there is nothing special about it.  Everything the film romanticizes is unromantic, and as impressive, powerful, and beautiful as the film is technically, visually, and musically, it can’t trick me.  A Clockwork Orange is impressive because it made me care about a character I knew I was supposed to hate, but Gone with the Wind couldn’t make me like a character whom I desperately needed to like in order to make it through all four hours, which is utterly pathetic.  Even if most of the complaints I’ve expressed appear to be about things that may have been done on purpose, I still feel as though my time has been wasted.

Frankly, my dear, shut up.