Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread III

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

La Libertad
Alonso (2001)
**crickets chirp**

A day in the life of a man living on his own, chopping and selling wood and noshing on some BBQ armadillo in rural Argentina.

La Libertad is a certain type of movie that I’m glad exists and yet I rarely ever want to spend time with. I appreciate it and am certainly glad it’s a very lean 70 minutes or so but I won’t be missing it now that it’s gone. It’s not really a character piece and it’s not really about process. It’s just kinda there. I think I would have preferred a straight documentary on a similar individual or the same subject. Surely that would be more interesting and engaging? Perhaps that’s a pretty basic opinion, but so be it. I’m all for using fiction to reveal truths, but when your points and execution are so banal, I’d rather see it made with a genuine article, not an actor. The last scene though with the lightning flashing in the background is nice and I thought the brief split from our protagonist’s world, where the camera goes careening off on its own through a windy day, was a welcome break. Otherwise, I thought the execution was sort of generic — man walks through woods from left of screen to right, cut to man walking left to right, cut to man walking left to right. The question of whether or not this man is “free” didn’t really take hold with me. I might be hindered by the fact that the version I tracked down did not have subtitles, though I suspect the actual discussions aren’t that important. Credit to all involved that the gist is conveyed fairly well with action and expression.

If I were a more obnoxious and confrontational film observer, this is the type of movie I’d be tempted to call bullshit on people actually liking and enjoying as it exists at one of the extremes of arty snobbery. But I’m not, so I won’t.
Glad it’s in the world, but it’s 100% not for me.

 

[kihei]

If anybody wants to explore a really beautiful piece of slow cinema, check out Tsai Ming-Liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) which was among the first films reviewed on this thread before you guys arrived. It is the best movie that I have ever seen about the importance of companionship, and it has probably my all-time favourite ending. It's the second best film that I have seen this century and in my all-time Top Ten, so I may be a little biased, but it's a gem

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

House of Games
Mamet (1987)
“What’s more fun than human nature?”

Margaret Ford is a successful psychiatrist. She’s got a popular book and seems to be revered in her profession — though something is missing. The psych has a psych herself who points out that Ford is uptight and not finding pleasure from life. But into her office walks Billy, a troubled patient with a $25k gambling debt and a menacing mien. The Dr. feels spurred to action. She ventures to the so-called House of Games to meet Mike, who at first presents himself as not Mike. Ford susses this out quickly. Impressed, Mike invites her to sit in on a back room poker game that proves to be a con within a con. She’s the mark, but a leaky water pistol gives the game away. Despite the intent of these men, she’s energized and interested. She and Mike start a relationship. He begins to teach her — confidence game, he explains, is “because you give me your confidence? No. I give you mine.” Things, as they are wont to do, escalate. A misplaced briefcase of money. An undercover cop. An accidental shooting. A stolen car. It’s a rough path that leads Ford to cutting a big check to bail her lover and his partners out of a jam. But something isn’t right, right? A convenient snooping trip leads her back to the House of Games where lo and behold every person who has crossed her path (including the dead cop) is sitting there gabbing away. She’s been played. The cruel genius of this very complex con is that though she could turn the gang in, it would ruin her reputation as a psychiatrist and knower of people. She comes up with a more primal solution though. She shoots Mike in cold blood. The decision doesn’t haunt her much. Though her checkbook is lighter, she seems to have gotten something in the transaction after all.

Not the first con man movie, but certainly among the most heralded. It’s a Russian nesting doll of deceptions within deceptions within deceptions. As with any film of this sort, upon multiple viewings, the mind tends to turn toward the question: Does it hold up? This was probably my fourth or fifth time through and I have to say it does. Sure, the entire string of cons is complex and probably could have gone awry at any point, so there is some straining of credulity there. But every time I’m tempted to say, “Why is Ford so stupid and can’t see SOMETHING coming??” I’m reminded that that’s point. An entertaining, twisty story that is ultimately a pretty nasty shot at if not psychiatry in general then a certain celebrity strain of it in specific. Now, the fact that you spent the last two hours watching a film that sort of openly disdains its protagonist -- viewer mileage may vary there. Having your noir built around something of a dope is a classic set-up, but other films have been more sympathetic.

It’s the journey not the destination, some may say. And the journey is an entertaining one if you’re at all interested in the ins-and-outs of some basic confidence gaming. Joe Mantegna is a charming guide — until he’s cornered, of course. There’s something fitting in that cold, cold ending. You can’t really out talk or outsmart a gun. But while he’s on this mortal coil you see how he embodies that aforementioned adage about the con, you see how he wins Ford over by trusting and believing in her and you see how she wants that, which raises other potentially icky readings about the film which I wouldn’t push back against since Mamet’s work often has a clear distrust and distaste of females. He likes his chatty rogues.

The biggest problem I have with House of Games is Lindsay Crouse herself. If I’m being blunt, I think it’s an all-time bad acting performance. She’s awkward and wooden. Is that the point? Very possible. No deep dive needed there. But still, it’s always a painful performance to watch for me. I put that on Mamet. Rebecca Pidgeon, a future Mamet staple, is the same in her roles in his films. So, it’s got to be the dude, right? Both are former girlfriends/wives of his too. As a director, Mamet is a stellar writer. Perhaps it is unfair to hold the stiffness and staginess of a first movie against a trained playwrite, but I’ve long been a fan of his work and that has never really gone away so I don’t feel bad docking him a few points here. I go to Mamet to listen more than to watch and his slangy, caustic, aggro dialogue often pleases.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

In honor of the recently Oscar feted Spike Lee, let's watch his epic Malcolm X.

Edit: Apparently it's Spike Lee's birthday today. I did not do this on purpose.

 

[kihei]

House of Games (1987) Directed by David Mamet

House of Games left me cold as ice. In fact, having forgotten K's reference to Mamet when he picked the film, I initially thought I must have seen the wrong movie. But I looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes and discovered to my utter disbelief that it got nothing but raves (97%), with one critic rating it as among the best movies of the last millennium. Yikes. While I am often a fan of the genre (The Usual Suspects; Nine Queens; Purple Noon, for example), this one didn't work for me at all. The initial con seemed entertaining to me, but after that I didn't buy anything. Plus regardless of the merits of the story, The House of Games has two really big problems. First, the film is Mamet's first go as a director, and, obviously, he is teething. Such movies almost require a certain sense of style, but this movie looks like a made-for-TV effort. The direction is flat, unimaginative, obvious, often badly lit; where successful con artist movies require a certain flow, this one merely thuds from scene to scene. Mamet's inexperience in the director's chair may also help to explain the other big problem: Lindsay Crouse's wooden performance, though calling it even that is an insult to trees everywhere. This gal is going to shoot somebody?? And she is going to put on an invisibility cloak or something so that she can sneak into the bar and hear the con artists explain every thing just at the right moment?? She has approached her research as a lab experiment--no emotional involvement noticeable. Hard to believe she would fall for the initial con, let alone the extended one. Nor is she a woman who seems likely to write the big second check (though, indeed, I wouldn't have thought that she would write the first one either). Her character isn't believable because Crouse doesn't invest her with anything. A con happening to a cardboard character--where is the fun in that?

Ricky Jay may be the single most sleaziest actor I have ever seen. Perhaps that is testimony to his skill, but, man, he exudes low-life, bottom-of-the-barrel scuzz with a petulant attitude better than anybody who comes to mind. This is a weird thing to say, but, hey. In every performance I have ever seen him in at some point I have thought "I bet that guy never gets laid." Hookers, excepted, of course. He makes my skin crawl. Mamet is fascinated by him, though. In addition to his supporting actor gig in House of Cards, Jay is listed as Mamet's consultant on "con games," an area of expertise about which I can well believe Jay knows a lot. Mamet has devoted two documentaries to him, focusing on Jay's amazing sleight of hand card tricks--which are indeed impressive.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

House of Games is a romantic thriller about Margaret, a successful psychiatrist, and Mike, a charismatic con man. There's a little bit of Salieri/Mozart in their relationship though. Despite professional acclaim, Margaret feels self-doubt. Her patients are frank with her and share details of their personal traumas, but her probes of "and how did that make you feel" just aren't helping her get the understanding she needs to be able to help them in any meaningful way. She feels a bit of a fraud. And along comes Mike, who can read people's souls like they were tattooed on their foreheads, simply by interpreting their body language and their responses. She wants to help but struggles to get a grip on human nature, while he plays with it like a toy for his personal gain. No wonder she wants to destroy him, he is basically a mockery of her ambitions. That, and all the money he stole. And, oh yes, the sex. Note to self: never call the bluff of a woman scorned. Especially when she's pointing a gun at you.

Do you like a good story? House of Games is a good story. It may not be a good movie, but it's a good story. A magician may not like revealing how his tricks are done, but that's where the fun is. After dazzling us with a skillful sleight of hand, our first response may be to say "show us how you did that!" House of Games does this: takes us into the world of con men and lets us marvel at the mechanics of the con as well as the balls and brilliance it takes to fool people out of their money. It's great fun.

Nothing gets in the way of a good story here. Certainly not emotional attachment to the characters, who may as well be hand puppets. Who's the hero? Who's the villain? You could probably make a case for either of the leads, if you were inclined to care either way. Convincing acting? I felt like I was watching dress rehearsals, but maybe deadpan is the way to go to if you have to say lines like "let's talk turkey" with a straight face. (To be fair, the snappy poker table banter and underworld lingo is one of the movie's charms. But it does get corny at times.) Plausibility is not an issue here either. Poker players can discuss strategy and not be overheard while their opponents sit a few feet way...and yet elsewhere they can overhear conversations taking place in another room. OK. The final confrontation between Mike and Margaret takes place in the baggage storage room of an airport, conveniently deserted for the occasion, I guess the baggage handlers were on their coffee break or something. I could go on, but...shut up! You're ruining a good story!

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

If anybody wants to explore a really beautiful piece of slow cinema, check out Tsai Ming-Liang's I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) which was among the first films reviewed on this thread before you guys arrived. It is the best movie that I have ever seen about the importance of companionship, and it has probably my all-time favourite ending. It's the second best film that I have seen this century and in my all-time Top Ten, so I may be a little biased, but it's a gem

Haven't seen it but if it's as good as What Time Is It There? then I'm in. Saw this movie yesterday and was enchanted. (Eventually...it took a while to get into, being unfamiliar with its style, but it was worth being patient.)

 

[kihei]

Haven't seen it but if it's as good as What Time Is It There? then I'm in. Saw this movie yesterday and was enchanted. (Eventually...it took a while to get into, being unfamiliar with its style, but it was worth being patient.)

I like that a lot, but I think I Don't Want to Sleep Alone is Tsai's masterpiece. Just a flat out masterpiece, period. Though not quite in the same league, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is more challenging but fun if you have the patience. It almost all takes place in an empty movie theatre after hours when ghosts (perhaps, perhaps not) arrive to catch a flick. The focus is not so much on the few strange customers but on the cleaning lady, who goes up and down many, many stairs--many, many stairs. When she starts to mop that big floor, buckle in for a long stay--bring a book even or plan your next trip if you want. I'd say Tsai is the most off-the-wall of the slow cinema directors, and I intend that as a complement. He is also a visually exquisite director--see Face, his take (perhaps, perhaps not) on French New Wave cinema starring a smattering of French New Wave veterans.

 

[Jevo]

House of Games (1987) dir. David Mamet

Margaret Ford (Lindsay Crouse) is a famous psychiatrist who just authored a best selling novel. One of her patients is a compulsive gambler who complains about a big debt he can't imagine ever paying back. To aid him she decides to seek out the bookie Mike (Joe Mantegna) in a sleazy pool hall. Mike is in the back in a poker game, but he comes out to talk to her. He admits being in a bit of trouble himself, being fleeced by an out of town player. But if Margaret is willing to help him beat the guy, Mike will let the gambling debt slide. Margaret is intrigued by Mike and his charm, and she obliges. When it comes to the fateful hand where she has to help Mike, Mike admits he doesn't have the money to call the out of towners bluff, and Margaret offers to put up the money for him to play the hand. Despite Margaret spotting the tell she was supposed to look for, Mike loses the hand. The out of town gambler becomes aggressive about getting his payment straight away, and even brandishes a gun. Margaret is about to hand over a check to him, when she notices the gun leaking water. Turns out the poker game was a setup designed to scam her out of money. Margaret gets involved with Mike and learns more about his lifestyle of scamming, and becomes just as turned on by it, as she is by Mike.

House of Games is like a poker game. Everyone are constantly trying to bluff the other participants to win the hand. Margaret believes that she is still only an observer of this poker game, and only too late does she realise that she too is a player in this. This however gives her the upper hand, allowing her to pull a bluff, while the others don't consider her capable of bluffing. Allowing her to pull the biggest gambit of all.
Is House of Games sexy? Perhaps not, but there is a whole lot of sexual tension. It is hanging thick from the second that Margaret and Mike meet. But it's not just between Margaret and Mike, it's also between Margaret and this whole scam artist life style that Mike shows her. When they finally do the deed, she's just as much submitting to the life style as she is to him. But with her being psychiatrist and all, it becomes a bit too freudian for my taste. It's a minor complaint however, as it's not that big a part of the movie, and the movie is such a fun ride that I hardly have time to notice while watching it.

House of Games seem to lean heavily on old noirs and Hitchcock movies for inspiration, and Margaret looks like what I imagine a Hitchcock leading lady would have looked like in the 80s. But House of Games is still something of its own. Taking the story in a new and interesting direction, always playing games and keeping things tense and interesting. The movie really is a fun ride, as long as you don't think too much about the details. Like how do you kill someone in an airport and just walk out of there no problem? Or how did the construct the poker gambit on the fly, or did they just sit around waiting for her to come? You are not doing yourself any favours by asking these questions while watching the movie, or afterwards for that matter. It's better just to enjoy the fun for what it is.

 

[kihei]

House of Games (1987) dir. David Mamet

The movie really is a fun ride, as long as you don't think too much about the details. Like how do you kill someone in an airport and just walk out of there no problem? Or how did the construct the poker gambit on the fly, or did they just sit around waiting for her to come? You are not doing yourself any favours by asking these questions while watching the movie, or afterwards for that matter. It's better just to enjoy the fun for what it is.

For me, though, the good ones (The Usual Suspects, for instance) don't allow you to think about the details. They really con you, and that's the point. Like any good magic trick, it is hard to have fun when the magician allows you to become aware of the machinations that are part of the attempt to fool you. I guess I am just not a big fan of the "don't think about it, just have fun" school of thought. I like thinking and I am suspicious of any art or entertainment that requires me to stop.

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I wonder if the brutal way in which Mike met his end washes away any concerns about plausibility? By which I mean...my guess was that Margaret was going to somehow beat Mike at his own game. Out-con the con man. Let him feel what it's like to be "the mark". This would require some kind of elaborate counter-plot. So what does she do? Pull out a gun and blow him away. Real subtle...so much for fine details.

Oh how funny that would have been if her gun was just a water pistol too!

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Joey, a seven year old Brooklyn boy, escapes to Coney Island after believing that he accidentally shot and killed his older brother. Alone with six 1953 dollars in his pocket he's in heaven; he quickly forgets his grief and has the time of his life: going on all the rides, eating all the carnival food, but running out of money just as he discovers the pony rides. Now he must find a way to raise more money. Meanwhile, his older brother Lennie, who was left in charge of him by their mother, is sweating to find Joey before Mom gets home.

Little Fugitive must have been a breath of fresh air to those that saw it back in the day. Here was an alternative to the style of Hollywood, whose studios had become known as "dream factories". A misnomer since dreams can be dark, disturbing, scary and just plain weird. More accurately, Hollywood was a fantasy factory. We're not in control of our dreams, but our fantasies (or day dreams, if you prefer) always go our way. Hollywood movies are fantasies and to be fair, so is the story in Little Fugitive--everything works out well in the end. But Little Fugitive has an entirely different look and feel to it, something more akin to the neorealist films that were coming ashore from Italy at the time. Everything in a Hollywood film looks perfect--hair, costume, makeup, set design, lighting--it all looks so polished. Even the work of auteurs like Ford and Welles adhered to this aesthetic. And compared to Little Fugitive, they look phony. Little Fugitive, shot on location, in daylight, against the bustle of a real city crowd, removed the sheen of artifice and applied a documentary-style realism.

It's a realism with a photographer's eye for sharp contrast and composition. While Hollywood recognized Little Fugitive with an Oscar nomination for its story, it's really the hand-held cinematography which is most striking. It's like seeing the world for the first time with a new, fresh pair of eyes. Which in a way is what Joey is doing in the movie.

(There's a scene involving a public message board which is priceless when seen in context of today--shows just how much technology has changed while people haven't.)

 

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Next pick is Woody Allen's (formerly Senkichi Taniguchi's) What's Up Tiger Lily?

 

[Jevo]

Little Fugitive (1953) dir. Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin

Joey Norton is a small kid in lower middle class Brooklyn. He lives with his mother and his older brother Lennie. Joey often hangs around with Lennie and Lennie's friends, who'd rather be rid of the kid. One day their mother has to go visit her sick mother and leaves the boys alone for the day. Lennie and his friends decide to play a prank on Joey, by making him think he's killed Lennie with an air rifle. Joey gets scared and runs away. He gets on a train to Coney Island. There Joey spends the day going on rides, eating ice cream, riding horses, and collecting bottles for deposit money. Lennie quickly realises that Joey has run away, and he can't find him anywhere. Lennie gets scared about what happened to Joey, and what will happen to him when their mother gets home.

Joey is in no way a special kid, and that's part of the point of the film. He's not a savant, he's not smarter than the adults, he's just a normal 7 year old kid. When Joey gets scared and runs away, he does it to perhaps the only place he knows outside of his neighbourhood in Brooklyn, Coney Island, which his brother had also been mentioning a lot in the past few days, so it was fresh in his mind. It's also a place he's been before and have good memories of. It's also not his home, which would require facing his mother and possibly the police. Better to run away to Coney Island. Joey does the best he can to distract himself from the predicament he thinks he's in, which is not hard to do in Coney Island, especially if you can get to go horseback riding. He doesn't appear to fully realise exactly what death entails, only that something bad has happened to Lennie, and that he's in trouble if the police gets him. And the police seems a bigger worry for Joey than what happened to Lennie. Which isn't that surprising for a 7 year old, who probably still haven't fully grasped the concept for death. Joey isn't exactly shocked to see Lennie again, while the older Lennie is much more relieved to have found his brother in good health. I think that really good thing that Joey not really understanding what has happened does for the story, is that it allows the story to focus on how Joey deals with being alone in Coney Island for a day. Instead of being about his mental state after having killed his brother. With the former being a much more interesting subject in my mind. The writing of Joey is really great. I can't remember exactly what it's like to be 7 years old. But I think Joey has a great mixture of innocence, naivete and curiosity, which captures that period in life very well. Richie Andrusco also does a good job as Joey, and the direction of his is quite good as well, because Andrusco isn't asked to do a whole lot of speaking, and he does it's not great. But most of the film is about him interacting with the world around him, playing in it. And when he's being asked to do that it looks like the most natural thing in the world for him.

Little Fugitive is one of the first successful indie films in America. Its influence on later indie films is apparent. It's sort of a cross road of many different film movements. It seems to take many cues from Italian neorealism, not just in terms of subject matter, but also in terms of production. Italian neorealism somewhat wrote the book on how to produce cheap movies. Hire non-professional actors, film on location, use small portable cameras, don't record sound instead dub voices in later. Something that Little Fugitive all does. Truffaut has cited Little Fugitive as main catalyst for creating the French New Wave, and a big inspiration for him in how he made The 400 Blows. I also couldn't help but think about Jafar Panahi's The Mirror, which also features a young child of the same age lost in a big city, and I wouldn't be surprised if Panahi drew inspiration from Little Fugitive when making The Mirror.

I never really felt scared about anything bad happening to Joey, and I don't think that was the point of the film. I just loved seeing the childish curiosity that Joey meets the world with in Coney Island. I think My Neighbour Totoro has managed to capture exactly what it is like to be a child. Little Fugitive might be the closest that live action film has come to achieving the same thing. Little Fugitive also ends with a great note about the love that the two brothers share, even if Lennie would normally be hard pressed to admit it.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Little Fugitive
Engel (1953)
“Joey ain’t so bad, but he’s a pain in the neck.”

An NYC summer. Lennie and his friends just want to have fun, you know, bein’ kids, playin’ in the neighborhood, plottin’ a trip to Coney Island to ride the parachute ride. One problem? Joey, Lennie’s kid brother. Grandma is sick and momma has to spend all her time there. That means Lennie is charge. Kids being kids and all, he doesn’t much care for this responsibility. His jerkiest friend has a brilliant scheme only a punky 12 year old can concoct — trick lil’ cowboy Joey into believing he accidentally killed his brother. The plan is aces. Poor, scared Joey goes on the run. Where’s he end up? Coney Island of course, on a 24 hour binge of games, candy and the innocent sort of exploration only a young boy can do. When Lennie’s fun starts to die off, he realizes the severity of what he did and sets out to find his missing brother, enduring a few comically karmic mishaps. The duo are reunited in a happy ending and are home in time for the return of their unsuspecting mom who who provides a pair of delicious comic punchlines. First she accuses Joey of spending the entire time in front of the TV and then offers her good boys all kids in that day and time and place could possibly want — a trip to Coney Island, of course.

Little Fugitive has an admirable shabbiness. It’s a gauzy-eyed, gentle little time capsule. Kids being kids at a time when things at least seemed far more innocent. Every line of dialogue feels like it could be punctuated with “oh geez” or “awww schucks.” A peppy sound track of harmonica and carnival music — oh give me a home where the buffalo roam ... — adds to the wistfulness. A small part of me was on edge throughout. Was something bad actually going to happen to Joey? Of course not, but I’m such a grumpy cynic, I sometimes forget the others don’t (or didn’t) occupy themselves with such negativity. This is a frolic. The world is a playground.

Engle has a neo-realist bent. I was taken with the shots and shadows under the boardwalk as well as when the storm rolls in. The big winner for me was Joey off in the distance on a deserted beach, picking up pop bottles to earn some money to survive. Remarkably resilient kid. That’s when Lennie finds him. A thing of beauty. It’s all a perfect crime in the end for The Little Fugitive and his accomplice. Mentioned it already but it’s worth repeating those two final jokes from the mom are great. Knowing that end, I admire Engle’s restraint earlier in the film, on the carousel scene where the horse heads spin by and by with a soundtrack of people saying “no”. How did he not work in a single, “neigh!”

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Next pick is Woody Allen's (formerly Senkichi Taniguchi's) What's Up Tiger Lily?

Funny. I very nearly picked a Woody Allen movie as well for my last movie though one of a different time period and different vibe ...

 

[kihei]

Little Fugitive (1953) Directed by Ray Ashley, Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin


Little Fugitive is more a curiosity from a certain period of movie making than it is a piece of watershed film achievement. While the movie is obviously cheaply made (part of its charm), it is a pretty accomplished work obviously done by people who knew exactly what they were doing and knew how to get the effects that they wanted. The story is simple: Little nuisance of an annoying kid brother Joey is duped into thinking that he has shot his older brother Lenny and killed him. Joey heads off to Coney Island where he spends a day and a morning happily bopping around, riding the cheap rides and figuring out a way to make money quickly by collecting discarded soft drink bottles. The movie manages to establish early on with its hokey harmonica soundtrack of Home on the Range and worse that nothing too bad is going to happen in this movie (my fervent hope that Joey would quickly get eaten by a shark was sadly dashed early). So there is no drama to speak of in the movie—what you see initially is basically what you get throughout--a little kid playing hooky and having fun. The movie undoubtedly has a certain Mickey Mantle/Phil Rizzuto-era kind of charm, but it is really more interesting for reasons other than its simple story.

Its creators certainly are not without skill. Whether they were influenced by Italian neo-realism of the post-war years or saw themselves as artists making a statement about the possibilities of movie making, I don’t know. But they get an awful lot right. For starters, being rather subtle about it, too, the movie is mostly shot from an 8-year-old’s point of view—the camera placement often a couple of feel lower than normal to reflect what a kid's eye view would be. Obviously, someone involved has experience in photography because many of the shots on Coney Island are beautifully framed—stand alone images that you don’t get when someone is shooting haphazardly with a hand-held camera. Certainly the film suggests the kind of work that can be achieved on a low budget with talented people involved in the project. As such Little Fugitive is an example of East-Coast experimentation, derived from the same gene pool that later defined John Cassavettes' more sophisticated works.

The movie also stands as a postcard of a particular period in New York City history when everybody except teenagers and children looked middle-aged but nonetheless the future seemed to offer endless possibilities. This is a New York that we seldom see in movies—working-class New York at play. Working-class London is a fixture in movie history, but one seldom thinks of working-class and New York going together in the same description. Yet, Little Fugitive presents a snapshot of the lives ordinary people able to afford an almost laughingly cheap day at the beach. Another innovation, we seldom see people’s heads in the close ups as everything remains considered from little Joey’s perspective. As a result, the effect doesn’t seem impersonal just a fact of Joey’s little boy existence. I don’t know if Francois Truffaut saw this film before making 400 Blows. But Little Fugitive provides a rough template for what an artist of the stature of Truffaut could do using some of the same devices evident in this earlier film.. Like its time, Little Fugitive reflects a future full of possibilities for not only Joey but for the art of film as itself.

 

[kihei]

Valley of Shadows (2017) Directed by Jonas Matzow Gubrandsen

Valley of Shadows is about Aslak, a quiet little boy with a moptop of blond hair who lives in northern Norway on a farm that borders on a dense and very forbidding forest. When sheep start being gruesomely killed, obviously the community has a big problem on its hands. 6-year-old Aslak’s slightly older friend thinks werewolves might be the cause. He’s really just letting his kid imagination run wild but it is enough to spook Aslak. Meanwhile all is not well at home as Aslak’s bother is missing and his mother is in her own world of worry and pain. When Aslak's dog, his one real anchor in troubling times, runs off unexpectedly, he makes a very brave decision—to go into the scary woods and try to find him all on his own, werewolf or no werewolf. I first saw this movie at its TIFF premier in 2017. From the point when little defenseless Aslak enters the woods to the conclusion of the film nearly an hour later, I could have heard a pin drop in that jam-packed theatre.

What follows has been called “gothic horror” and “Nordic horror,” but calling this movie a horror movie unintentionally diminishes what it manages to accomplish. More generally I see the film as an exquisite mood piece, one in which atmosphere is everything. Every single shot seems perfectly composed and in just the right order. In fact the editing and sequencing of the images is done with such precision and such attention to detail that in its slow burn sort of way Valley of Shadows creates a reality almost totally dependent on mood. The remarkably foreboding atmosphere evident in this film surrounds the little boy as he ventures through the gloomy woods, providing a cloak of beauty, foreboding, fear, and even a sense of wonder. Plus the images of the child, gorgeously shot in a scary but beautiful setting, never allow us to feel too comfortable about his possible well being. The end result is that the movie casts a spell that is both captivating to observe and aesthetically satisfying at the same time—a spell created by an unending series of beautifully judged images and perfectly rendered soundtrack music provided by Krzysztof Kieslowski’s principle composer Zbigniew Preisner who created the soundtrack music for The Double Life of Veronique, perhaps the all-time high water mark in atmospheric film.

Valley of Shadows is a sort of faux horror movie in a way—it uses a lot of horror tropes to make us nervous about the fate of the child but then one by one takes them out of play. In fact the movie has a rather surprising message underneath its surface—that the unknown may be scary but ultimately it is not something to necessarily fear. Life is a journey on a small boat on a dark river and you don’t know where it is going, but that doesn’t mean the worst will always happen. Not all strangers will hurt you, and the dark forest has as many wonders as it has frights. An artist has to have perfect touch to make a movie like this work, and Gubrandsen and his brother cinematographer have it.

This notion that children don’t really act—I don’t know why people think that. The little boy is very young but he knows what to do with his eyes in every scene. The director makes a lot of his bubble of blond hair, but the kid lends just the right amount of stillness to his performance to complement the mood of the movie. What gets created in the process is something I can feel but which I find beggars language to describe, a story whose impact is literally, for me, beyond words—the kid should get some credit for that at least.

The shots of the forest are amazing, magical, scary, unexpected, engrossing. When Aslak first encounters the forest only to quickly run out back into the open fields, the trees look all encompassing, menacing and angry as though if they were not attached by roots to the ground, they would chase him. The director has a real talent for holding a shot and letting something unexpected come into focus eventually, another technique that adds to the suspense and foreboding of the film. Valley of Shadows does what cinema should do—tell its story visually. Probably a good half of this movie is without dialogue, and I didn’t even notice its absence until I thought about it later. To realize that this is the director’s first film, to me, is jaw dropping. How do you establish such control over the medium this fast and with such assurance?

How did Valley of Shadows not get picked up for distribution in 2017? Unfortunately, obscurity is the fate of many fine movies. Makes me wonder what else I have been missing all these years.

Easily in my top three or four for 2017. In fact, among my favourite films of this century.

subtitles

 

[kihei]

Hou Hsieh Hsien's The Assassin (2015) will be my next pick.

 

[Jevo]

I've tried quite hard, but Valley of Shadows I haven't been able to find a away to watch Valley of Shadows. Amazon doesn't allow me to stream it from Denmark, and I can't find it having been released in Denmark outside of theatres. So sadly I'll have to sit this round out.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Valley of Shadows
Gulbrandsen (2017)
“What we don’t understand scares us so we need a monster to blame.”

Aslak is a young boy in rural Scandinavia. Sheep are being slaughtered in horrific ways. He and a neighbor boy overhear the adults talking about the out-of-control perpetrator. The neighbor knows the truth — it’s a werewolf, descending from the nearby dark woods. Werewolves also eat children. Wide-eyed Aslak doesn’t seem afraid though he isn’t exactly brave either. The real story gradually fills in. There’s a room Aslak can’t enter. There’s a brother missing and, eventually, dead. A junkie. The mother wails and mourns. Amid all this Aslak ventures out, trusty dog Rapp in tow. They explore an abandoned trailer and Rapp, lured by something in the woods darts off. Poor Aslak packs a meal and ventures in after him. What he encounters isn’t a werewolf, but rather a ghost. An otherworldly trip down a river leads to a cabin and there the young boy gains a bit of understanding. He’s found sometime later, no worse for the wear and returned to his mother where they both may wind up living fine lives after all.

Ooh boy this is NOT Little Fugitive, where young Joey romps through an innocent day or so on the beach in Coney Island. Kihei, was this a pick in response to Little Fugitive or just a total conicidence? I watched both fairly close together and it was hard not to conflate these runaway-child-in-peril stories from different countries and decades. Though I was a tad nervous for Joey in the former, I was on constant edge for Aslak in this. There’s a fairy tale vibe throughout Valley of Shadows, The river trip is almost another world. It’s spectral. The soundtrack is church. I was relieved to see it not go full Grimm on us both for the sake of Aslak (and Rapp for that matter). But in the end, the evil and the damage never comes. Aslak actually winds up with some peace and understanding. It’s a neat and unexpected sleight-of-hand. That said, it’s been a while since I felt a gut-level sadness as sad as I did in a film as I did when Aslak is alone, crying, soaking in the rain and letting his sandwich fall from his defeated hands. He returns to a warm bed and a loving mother in the end.

It also reminded me a fair amount of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime if anyone has read that book. Like this, it takes real life adult events (there a divorce, here a missing and relative/dog) and filters it through the perspective of an imaginative child to whom divorce and drug abuse are abstractions, but monsters and other mischief are very much real and logical. It’s quite an affecting approach when done well as it is in that book and in this film.

I was lucky streaming-wise. Here in the U.S. it’s available free through Amazon. I forget that the various services only make some things free in certain geographies. Everything is generally so much easier to get these days, it feels odd to encounter issues (though it does happen). I tried to grab Galveston on Kihei’s suggestion yesterday, but alas, U.S. Netflix doesn’t seem to have it while Canadian Netflix does.

 

[kihei]

Valley of Shadows
Gulbrandsen (2017)
“What we don’t understand scares us so we need a monster to blame.”

Aslak is a young boy in rural Scandinavia. Sheep are being slaughtered in horrific ways. He and a neighbor boy overhear the adults talking about the out-of-control perpetrator. The neighbor knows the truth — it’s a werewolf, descending from the nearby dark woods. Werewolves also eat children. Wide-eyed Aslak doesn’t seem afraid though he isn’t exactly brave either. The real story gradually fills in. There’s a room Aslak can’t enter. There’s a brother missing and, eventually, dead. A junkie. The mother wails and mourns. Amid all this Aslak ventures out, trusty dog Rapp in tow. They explore an abandoned trailer and Rapp, lured by something in the woods darts off. Poor Aslak packs a meal and ventures in after him. What he encounters isn’t a werewolf, but rather a ghost. An otherworldly trip down a river leads to a cabin and there the young boy gains a bit of understanding. He’s found sometime later, no worse for the wear and returned to his mother where they both may wind up living fine lives after all.

Ooh boy this is NOT Little Fugitive, where young Joey romps through an innocent day or so on the beach in Coney Island. Kihei, was this a pick in response to Little Fugitive or just a total conicidence? I watched both fairly close together and it was hard not to conflate these runaway-child-in-peril stories from different countries and decades. Though I was a tad nervous for Joey in the former, I was on constant edge for Aslak in this. There’s a fairy tale vibe throughout Valley of Shadows, The river trip is almost another world. It’s spectral. The soundtrack is church. I was relieved to see it not go full Grimm on us both for the sake of Aslak (and Rapp for that matter). But in the end, the evil and the damage never comes. Aslak actually winds up with some peace and understanding. It’s a neat and unexpected sleight-of-hand. That said, it’s been a while since I felt a gut-level sadness as sad as I did in a film as I did when Aslak is alone, crying, soaking in the rain and letting his sandwich fall from his defeated hands. He returns to a warm bed and a loving mother in the end.

It also reminded me a fair amount of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime if anyone has read that book. Like this, it takes real life adult events (there a divorce, here a missing and relative/dog) and filters it through the perspective of an imaginative child to whom divorce and drug abuse are abstractions, but monsters and other mischief are very much real and logical. It’s quite an affecting approach when done well as it is in that book and in this film.

I was lucky streaming-wise. Here in the U.S. it’s available free through Amazon. I forget that the various services only make some things free in certain geographies. Everything is generally so much easier to get these days, it feels odd to encounter issues (though it does happen). I tried to grab Galveston on Kihei’s suggestion yesterday, but alas, U.S. Netflix doesn’t seem to have it while Canadian Netflix does.

My picking it as a follow-up to Little Fugitive was totally a coincidence. I hadn't seen Little Fugitive at that point and didn't know what it was about. I was just thinking, "wow, this is among my favourite movies of the past few years, and only about 500 North Americans have ever seen it. Throw it in there right away."

Have you seen the stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night? It is spectacular. If you are wondering how someone could make a play out of that book, well, a lot has to do with staging. My partner and I saw it in New York, we sat in our seats and looked at a bare stage that only had electronic grid lines on all its flat surfaces, no furniture, no colour, no nothing. This modern technology is then used to create a myriad of special effects which the actors play in front of (or, more accurately, immersed in). Absolutely mind-blowing. It later played Toronto and we bought tickets for our daughters, tough sells when it comes to theatre, and they both were blown away by it, too.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

My picking it as a follow-up to Little Fugitive was totally a coincidence. I hadn't seen Little Fugitive at that point and didn't know what it was about. I was just thinking, "wow, this is among my favourite movies of the past few years, and only about 500 North Americans have ever seen it. Throw it in there right away."

Have you seen the stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night? It is spectacular. If you are wondering how someone could make a play out of that book, well, a lot has to do with staging. My partner and I saw it in New York, we sat in our seats and looked at a bare stage that only had electronic grid lines on all its flat surfaces, no furniture, no colour, no nothing. This modern technology is then used to create a myriad of special effects which the actors play in front of. Absolutely mind-blowing. It later played Toronto and we bought tickets for our daughters, tough sells when it comes to theatre, and they both were blown away by it, too.

Haven't had the chance to see it. Still sort of amazed it hasn't been turned into a movie.

 

[kihei]

Haven't had the chance to see it. Still sort of amazed it hasn't been turned into a movie.

The book might make a good movie, certainly a challenge for a director of the quality of, say, someone like Villeneuve. No way in the world one could turn the play (or this production anyway) into a movie. Kind of one of the things I like about it. The play actually has a trailer which provides a tiny taste of the stage production.

 

[kihei]

I've tried quite hard, but Valley of Shadows I haven't been able to find a away to watch Valley of Shadows. Amazon doesn't allow me to stream it from Denmark, and I can't find it having been released in Denmark outside of theatres. So sadly I'll have to sit this round out.

That's too bad, Jevo. Hopefully you will get a chance to catch it some day because I would bet money you would like it.

We are up to reviewing the 326th movie on this thread. Just counted. That's mind boggling. And you get a ton of credit. If you hadn't resuscitated this thread years ago, it would have been ancient history by now.