jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Ten years later, Tom Tykwer’s pop masterpiece still fascinates and exhilarates. It’s a film with a simple premise and complex philosophical implications, a movie that’s all about movement which nonetheless points to big questions best contemplated in complete repose. It’s a film about chance, second chances, repetition, and contingency. It’s Groundhog Day with a techno beat, Rashomon reimagined as a stylized game played on a Google map of Berlin. Rules are established — black and white for flashbacks, video for scenes without Manni and Lola, a quick succession of stills for the future of strangers — but even after the umpteenth viewing, mysteries remain: what is the significance of Lola’s scream? Which characters remember the events of the previous episode? Run Lola Run is emotional, conceptual, symbolic, philosophical, spiritual, local, and visceral. Not bad for an 80 minute joyride you can dance to.

Lola Rennt. Tom Tykwer, 1997. *****

A music video featuring the vocal stylings of Franka Potente:

I’m behind the curve on David Cronenberg’s Russian mobster tale of sin and redemption, so I’ll make this short. At any rate, I can’t discuss the narrative slights-of-hand I admired most without spoiling the film — so let’s just say that the acting by Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, and Armin Mueller-Stahl is top notch, the violence and spilled bodily fluids are uniquely Cronenbergian, and the script is a wonder of tightly wound efficiency. You can tattoo that on your kneecaps.

Eastern Promises. David Cronenberg, 2007. ****

• Eastern Promises on Rotten Tomatoes
• Jordan and Kerry on David Cronenberg
• The trailer

Veteran director Sidney Lumet sends Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke to Westchester for a botched robbery in this grim family crime drama scripted by playwright Kelly Masterson. “It’s a hell of story,” Lumet boasted at the press conference following the New York Film Festival screening, “it’s masterfully plotted.”

The rest of my review of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is up on About.com.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Sidney Lumet, 2007. **

Bonnie and Clyde are the names of the cats we’re currently staying with, so there was no way around rewatching Arthur Penn’s 1967 classic. The film is still horrifying and hilarious in its casual depiction of murder, love, and grand theft Ford Model T, and it’s this last part I found most curious: Bonnie and Clyde provides the blueprint for a gazillion crime-spree romances to follow, and the car already occupies a central role, as if American lawbreaking in the 20th century wasn’t even possible without the automobile — even when there weren’t roads to drive on. You know Ms. Parker and Mr. Barrow are doomed when their escape vehicle is hit by a hand grenade, and the final machine-gunning riddles not just their bodies but also their “death car” with bullets. This movie has led to many ruthless but gentle mock machine gun executions of our feline friends.

Bonnie and Clyde. Arthur Penn, 1967. *****

• Bonnie and Clyde on Wikipedia
• Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow on Wikipedia
• Bright Lights on Pauline Kael and Bonnie and Clyde
  
• A review of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, Lester D. Friedman (ed.)
• Bonnie and Clyde on All Things Considered
• Greenbriar Picture Shows on the film’s 40th anniversary (via)
• Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg: Bonnie & Clyde

A computer-animation from Norway featuring a junkie elephant, a gang of rabid animal rights activists, hapless stoners, and the Lappish mafia on choppers, with the voices of Simon Pegg, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, and Kyle MacLachlan? Sure, I’ll go see that. Too bad that everything that’s even remotely funny or interesting about Free Jimmy was contained in the previous sentence.

For an irreverent, free-wheeling comedy that wants to shock and amuse by breaking taboos and letting ‘er rip, the only shocking thing about Free Jimmy is that it’s almost entirely devoid of jokes. The mirthless CGI characters are uniformly ugly, and the voice talent is woefully underused. Samantha Morton, as an exaggerated cliché of the annoying vegan, only gets to mope and whine.

In the best sequence of the film, the tragically addicted elephant faces heroin withdrawal with the help of a friendly moose, but a few minutes later, he’s shot dead for one last misguided, cynical attempt at humor. A truly miserable time at the movies.

Free Jimmy. Christopher Nielsen, 2006. *

• The trailer

Billy Wilder’s timeless noir about the tragedy of fame attained and denied provides up-to-the-minute commentary on the Passion of Lindsay and her latest closeup, but that’s not the angle I’d like to pursue today. Instead, let me draw your attention to a connection that took me by complete surprise last night (yes, I screamed.) Compare and contrast:

Sunset Blvd.:

INLAND EMPIRE:

The film-within-a-film Gloria Swanson and William Holden are watching is a 1929 silent called Queen Kelly. The actress in the movie is in fact a younger Swanson, and Queen Kelly is directed by Erich von Stroheim, who also plays Norma Desmond’s storied butler Max in Sunset Blvd. It’s a delicious bit of recycled cinema that functions as inside joke and helps deepen Norma Desmond’s character.

Lynch’s reasons for quoting both movies halfway through INLAND EMPIRE are more obscure. Because the character, known as the Lost Girl (Karolina Gruszka), is speaking Polish, the caption from Queen Kelly is rendered in subtitles. Without knowing anything about its provenance, I found that it summed up the dark undercurrents of INLAND EMPIRE so well that I used it as a title for my original review.

On frieze.com, Kristin M. Jones writes that “[the Lost Girl] may represent the souls of ambitious actresses stolen by their dreams.” The intrepid interpreters on the INLAND EMPIRE forums believe that the scene is a good starting off point for theories about the film — after all, both Sunset Blvd. and INLAND EMPIRE concern Hollywood stars in spectacular houses with strange butlers, champagne and caviar, and movies that have the power to kill. Like Nikki Grace, Norma Desmond is “a woman in trouble.” Come to think of it, so is Linsday Lohan.

Sunset Blvd. Billy Wilder, 1950. *****

• INLAND EMPIRE on DVD
• Ten minutes of Queen Kelly on YouTube
• Sunset Boulevard on Wikipedia

Even a “minor” Truffaut is still a delight. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the owner of a tobacco plantation on Reunion who places an ad for a bride… and Catherine Deneuve gets off the boat. But much like in 2001’s overlooked Birthday Girl, the mysterious stranger is no innocent. There’s murder, international intrigue, and a man so smitten with the young Deneuve he’s willing to throw his life away. What else do you need?

La Sirène du Mississippi. François Truffaut, 1969. ***

• Mississippi Mermaid at Wikipedia
• Mississippi Mermaid at Rotten Tomatoes: 88%
• Mississippi Mermaid at Amazon.com

“That’s a lot of entertainment for five grand!” Philip Marlowe’s talking about the questionable spectacle of a bunch of gangsters (including an uncredited Arnold Schwarzenegger) stripping to make a point, but it applies equally to Robert Altman’s time-traveling Chandler adaptation as a whole. Mumbling Elliott Gould is miles apart from Humphrey Bogart but drop dead cool in his own inimitable way, and all of 1970s Los Angeles emerges as his deceptively sunny antagonist.

The Long Goodbye. Robert Altman, 1973. ****

• Roger Ebert
• Terrence Rafferty revists The Long Goodbye
• Terrence Rafferty on the occasion of Altman’s 81st birthday
• Ill-Informed Gadfly
• Christopher Sieving at PopMatters
• The Long Goodbye at Wikipedia

The trailer: