Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?(1962, directed by Robert Aldrich, based on the novel by Henry Farrell, screenplay by Lukas Heller)

It's an unfortunate reality that most classic horror movies have lost a lot of their effect over the years. Many have aged very well (no one can deny that Graf Orlok is still the most disturbing Dracula incarnation) what scared back then just simply does not scare now. This is not the case for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Baby Jane was a huge vaudeville star in her youth, constantly overshadowing her sister, Blanche. As they grew up, her sister took center stage and became an adored movie star; Baby Jane could never quite live up to her past success. After an accident confines Blanche (Joan Crawford) to a wheelchair, it falls to Jane to take car of her crippled sister. We soon see that, sadly, Jane has never quite been able to let the past go and decides to take advantage of her sisters sorry state.

By the end of the film Baby Jane Hudson (a demonic Bette Davis) has taken such a disturbing mental nosedive that even the hardest horror fans will be left shaken. Robert Aldrich uses the black & white cinematography (this was the early 60's, the B&W was a stylistic choice - a damned effective one) to maximize the creepiness of Baby Jane's psychotic descent. A puzzling subplot, involving a massively overweight songwriter (Victor Buono) starting a half-business, half-emotional relationship with the elder Jane, only adds to the disturbing factor. This comes highly recommended for anyone looking for a deep-rooted scare.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009, directed by Michael Bay, written by Alex Kurtzmann, Roberto Orci and Ehren Kruger)

What's there to say about Transformers 2 that hasn't already been said? How about "what the fuck"? This is a head-scratcher if I've ever seen one. I'm still not 100% certain what happened in it. Bay may have topped the spectacularly shitty Bad Boys II for pure, incoherent action.

The plot goes something like this: Sam Witwicky (Shia "Fast-forward" LeBeouf) is off to college, much to displeasure of his unbelievably obnoxious parents. A perfect storm of incoherent exposition - involving asshole Democrats, some ancient transformers, some kind of key-thing, and absolutely no respect for ancient Egypt - converges around him to necessitate going on a search for the Matrix of Leadership (?) in order to stop Megatron, revive a fallen comrade, save the (snore..........)

Saying that this movie has a plot is sort of like saying there are people who believe in creationism - it's true, but it still doesn't make any fucking sense. Trying to discern the individual motivations of characters, or who is fighting who in the action scenes is like trying to understand a language you've never even heard of. There are probably an upwards of thirty transformers in this movie, but I could maybe pick two or three out of a line-up (it should be said that the CGI is amazing. If only the same could be said for the design of the robots) .

I still don't understand how Kurtzmann and Orci, creators of the excellent TV show Fringe and writers on the new, awesome Star Trek, had anything to do with this. I mean, Star Trek moved with the same kind of vigorous pacing, but it kept me caring and consistently interested. Every scene had at least a modicum of purpose to the plot. What makes it even worse is that I can see their influence here. There is (possibly) a half-decent movie buried somewhere underneath this loud, bright, angry clusterfuck. Star Trek and Transformers 2 can be watched side-by-side as a handy "How to" and "How to not" make a summer blockbuster guide.

The Killing (1956, directed by Stanley Kubrick)

Peppered with gun moles, hard boiled tough guys, a dastardly racetrack robbery, a devious femme fatale (Marie Windsor, who lives the role), and a host of some of the best noir dialogue you’ll ever hear (“You like money. You’ve got a great big dollar sign where most women have a heart!”) “The Killing” probably fits in better with its genre – film-noir, if you hadn’t guessed – than another film Stanley Kubrick ever made.
The film takes a non-linear look at a robbery, orchestrated by Johnny Clay, a just-out-of-prison, mean sunofagun, at a local racetrack for the tidy sum of two million dollars – “If I’m gonna commit crimes again, there gonna be worth committing”, or something to that effect, Clay says at one point. To pull this ambitious heist he puts together a host of misfits and part-time criminals. One of these men, George Beatty (played by Elisha Cook Jr. – who, after watching this, I think William H. Macy has been trying to channel for his entire career), makes the mistake of telling his wife, the two-timing Sherry Peatty (Windsor); she, in turn, gets her boyfriend into the mix and, well, you can imagine the plan gets pretty royally fucked.
Kubrick’s intense attention to detail is noticeable immediately, though, as I stated earlier, this is Kubrick doing major genre work. It figures that it’s universally considered one of the best of all time, Kubrick could seemingly do no wrong when it came to working within, and subsequently eviscerating, a studied genre (he was quoting once as saying that one day he’d like to make a porno, just to show them how it’s done). If you’re a Kubrick or noir fan, this is a no-brainer; if, for some reason, you are not a fan of either of those things, you’ll probably have trouble seeing what all the fuss over The Killing is about – aside from maybe the Reservoir Dogs-ian structure.

A Serious Man (2009, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen)

We go from Kubrick to a couple of Kubrick-obsessed filmmakers with the seriously awesome “A Serious Man”. Larry Gropnick (played the perfectly-faced Michael Stuhlbarg), a timid, Midwest physics professor, sees the threads of his life begin to pull apart with the announcement that his wife is planning on leaving him (but no hanky-panky has occurred, Gropnick is certain) for a neighbor.
The Coens’, this being probably their most personal movie to date and, certainly, the most Jewish focused since Barton Fink, are masters of putting their protagonists through the ringer, and A Serious Man is no exception. Larry gets the “Job” treatment, having every aspect of his life and faith tested to the point that he can find solace in nothing and he begins to confuse his dreams with reality.
The Coens, possibly my all-time favorite filmmakers, are on their game here in a big way; this is most certainly their show. The setting (a Minneapolis suburb where they grew up), the characters (their father was also a University professor) and the themes can all be traced back to their youth and previous films. A Serious Man is another fantastic film for their already flooring canon.

Hello, good reader, and welcome to my blog of movie reviews. I'm a bit of a film geek, and in this blog I'm going to post a weekly blurb-review of a classic (of which, most of the time, there will be no very good reason for me to have taken this long to see) or generally considered "art house" film and a more contemporary one; usually in stark juxtaposition to the earlier film, quality-wise.

If you are unfortunate enough to have stumbled in here by mistake (probably), I won't be offended if you leave; this is mainly just a personal blog to give my critical writing skills a much-needed honing. If, for whatever reason, you came here on purpose (unlikely), then please feel free to watch whatever movie I've reviewed and complain about my opinion. Also, read the "movie-a-day" or "movie-a-week" columns on Ain’t-it-cool-news; they were the main inspiration for this blog (that, and forcing myself to watch more classic movies).

This week:

"Hiroshima Mon Amour" (1959, directed by Alain Resnais)

Boy, does Resnais have a knack for imagery that kicks you straight in the teeth. Following quickly on the heels of his classic documentary short "Night and Fog", comes a very unorthodox love story between a French actress and an ex-WWII Japanese soldier. The film begins with a series of haunting, nebulous images of Hiroshima architecture, the two lovers embracing, bombed-out landscape, etc, which, taking advantage of the peotic lull, quickly segues into a brutal reel of post-"Little Boy" bomb victims. Like the unflinching concentration camp images from "Night and Fog", Resnais lets you know immediately that this will not be a comfortable film; I'm not ashamed to say I looked away more than once.

The man and woman, referred to only as that, share a sexy night together. The man, played by an amazing Eiji Okada, who, reportedly, did not know any French (he learned basic words and spoke the rest phonetically), falls immediately in love with her and asks her to stay with him in Hiroshima. What follows is an account of the woman's first true love (I will not reveal his identity here; it plays as a particularly poignant surprise) and why she cannot allow herself to love this new man.

Resnais and writer Margeurite Duras show immense depth of characterization, allowing the characters to be completely abnormal, especially for the time, and yet completely understood. A love story between a woman, who lived in France during the Nazi occupation, and a Japanese WWII solider must have been quite a shock when the film was first released and, apparently, was extremely controversial, especially in Resnais’ native France.

The last act of the film gets a little too stilted for its own good (I had difficulty telling who was doing what and where and why at a few points), but, generally, the narrative flows smoothly. Throughout, Resnais subtly criticizes the West’s decision to drop the bomb, but, other than in the opening scene, never makes the implication too obvious. “Hiroshima mon Amour” suggests a better world through diversity, and has a cultural clairvoyance very rarely seen in films today, let alone in the 1950’s.

And...

G.I. Joe (2009, directed by Stephen Sommers)

Like Resnais, Sommers suggests a better world through diversity: the Joe’s are no longer ‘real American heroes’, but a multi-cultural band of do-gooder badasses. Unlike Resnais, that’s about the only good thing you can say about the movie. Sommers has taken “G.I. Joe’s” cartoon roots to heart and made a film that can barely even be referred to as that. It’s a cacophonous clusterfuck of loud noises and embarrassingly crappy action scenes. An action set-piece that takes place in Paris mirrors the opening scene of “Team America” so closely that part of me has to believe that it was at least marginally satirical. Channing Tatum, kind-of-OK in this year’s “Fighting”, provides no charisma whatsoever in the lead, and is backed up by an equally adept cast, the only standout of whom is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the only cast member to get suitably hammy.

Sommers brand of human-faces, CGI-everything else, ensures that the movie captures the essence of its cartoon forefather; in other words, the 8-to-13 year-old demographic is sure to love this, but, unless you had serious love for the cartoon as a youngster, almost no one else will. It’s marginally more watchable than Sommers’ own “Van Helsing” from 2004, if for no other reason than because I care a whole lot more about Universal movie monsters than a pro-war children’s cartoon. One can only hope that Sommers' realizes now that no one on the damn planet takes him seriously.