Film Freak Central

The Documentarian Becomes the Documented: FFC Interviews Errol Morris

The legendary documentarian comes out from behind THE FOG OF WAR

February 8, 2004|My first was The Thin Blue Line in the winter of 1988. Working backwards, finding Errol Morris's first two films was extremely difficult in the years before DVD and the blossoming of the Internet as the world's finest rummage sale, but the picture made enough of an impression on me that I spent the next six months tracking them down. Gates of Heaven was a revelation, Vernon, Florida changed my life, and it didn't occur to me until much later that the obsessive process of finding them and the unexpected rewards of that search were similar to this filmmaker's process was, in fact, the profession (private detective) through which Morris made his living in the seven years between Vernon, Florida and The Thin Blue Line. (Vernon, Florida is just brilliant enough to be career suicide, apparently.) So while Vernon, Florida has become something of a Medium Cool for a new generation of film brats (All the Real Girls director David Gordon Green cites the work as one of his all-timers), The Thin Blue Line has become the moment that many point to as the definitive modern reintroduction to the debate about the matter of degrees that separates fiction from non-fiction cinema. The title referring to the line of law enforcement that separates civilization from chaos, The Thin Blue Line is almost better read as the line between fabulism trusted as fact, and fabulism accepted as fantasy.

"Sum" Kind of Wonderful: FFC Interviews Phil Alden Robinson

May 17, 2002|With a background in broadcast journalism and corporate and educational films segueing into a short stint writing teleplays for "Trapper John M.D.", Phil Alden Robinson broke into feature films in 1984 with the screenplays for All Of Me and Rhinestone. The two experiences (the former with Carl Reiner, the latter with Sylvester Stallone) represented disparate filmmaking philosophies, one collaborative, the other in which an egotistical star decides everything. Wisely taking a page from Reiner's book, Robinson has endeavoured in each of his films as director (beginning with the little-seen In the Mood and continuing through Field of Dreams, Sneakers, Freedom Song, and now The Sum of All Fears) to recreate that feeling of conviviality and bonhomie with his extended ensembles.

From Flies to Spiders: FFC Interviews David Cronenberg

November 15, 2002|Of the many opportunities afforded to me by my association with FILM FREAK CENTRAL, the ones I treasure most are interviews with favourite filmmakers. Guillermo Del Toro, Cory McAbee, John Sayles, and now David Cronenberg--easily the most important Canadian auteur of the last thirty years, and one of the most vivid and innovative voices in a horror genre otherwise moribund since the early 1980s. Cronenberg's films are obsessed with the twisting of the flesh by machineries and ambition, sexual perversion and insectile disassociation, and the blurring of lines between reality and the phantasms constructed by the Icarean aspirations of its doomed protagonists.

Speak of "The Devil's Backbone": FFC Interviews Guillermo Del Toro

January 6, 2002|Guillermo Del Toro's films resonate with the weight of archetype: They find their thorniness down among the insects, the religious martyrs, the sexually infertile (including the aged and the very young), and the Stygian underside of the fairytale. It might have something to do with the gothic fact that the director read Frankenstein at the age of nine and fell asleep on his mother's lap while watching Wuthering Heights. The victim of a horrific Catholic upbringing that at one point involved bottle caps in the shoes as a means to mortify the flesh, it's clear that the well where many of Del Toro's demons live is deep and Byzantine.

The Apartment (1960) - Blu-ray Disc

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston
screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
directed by Billy Wilder

click any image to enlarge

by Walter Chaw The older I get, the better I understand Billy Wilder. And the better I understand Billy Wilder, his weariness and acerbic sense of humour, the more I feel comfortable saying, with that complicated mix of affection and fair warning that I think indicates his work as well, that his movies are assholes and mean it. Billy Wilder, the ten-cents-a-dance Austrian gigolo, the roommate of Peter Lorre who learned English by listening to Dodgers games on the radio, the admirer of Ernst Lubistch. The guy who demanded he be allowed to direct his own screenplays and so made a legendary hyphenate debut with Double Indemnity. The writing partner of both Charles Brackett and I.A.L. Diamond, the man who made whores of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe and Shirley MacLaine, because nothing could ever be as simple, as innocent, as it appeared at first glance. The guy who lost family in Nazi concentration camps, who came up with the best closing line in movie history, which was "nobody's perfect." Maybe the last line of The Apartment--"Shut up and deal"--is a close second. Narrative context tells us the line refers to a card game; the Wilder context suggests a certain way of looking at the world: coping, acceptance, fatalism. Would you believe The Apartment is actually one of Wilder's optimistic films? Optimistic because the way it views the world is through a scrim of absolute cynicism--and despite it, despite all the towers falling down, there's the possibility of love, sweet and simple, between Ms. Kubelik and Mr. Baxter.

Pretty Woman (1990) - Blu-ray Disc

***½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Ralph Bellamy, Hector Elizondo
screenplay by J.F. Lawton
directed by Garry Marshall

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Well, I'm willing to admit this much: Pretty Woman has a ridiculous premise. Corporate raider Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) buys up struggling companies and liquidates their assets. While in Los Angeles planning the purchase of ship manufacturer Morse Industries, he gets lost on the way back to his Beverly Hills hotel and stops on Hollywood Blvd. to ask for directions. This is where he meets Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts), a hooker desperate to pay off a few debts. She subsequently drives him to his hotel; as Edward recently broke up with his girlfriend in New York and feels bad about making Vivian take the bus home, he invites her to spend the night. They bargain over her price, arrive at the figure of three-hundred dollars, and sleep together. In the morning, Edward has a phone conversation with his lawyer, Philip Stuckey (Jason Alexander), who suggests he have dinner with James Morse, the owner and founder of Morse Industries, and that he bring a date to keep things social. Still on the phone, Edward walks in on Vivian singing along to Prince in the bathtub and offers to pay her for the entire week to be at his "beck-and-call."

Film Freak Central's Top 10 of 2012

by Walter Chaw I wish To the Wonder had been released this year--Take Shelter, too. The one because I love Terrence Malick and I'm excited that he's working so much, the other because I fear that Take Shelter is the last time Michael Shannon will anchor a picture without being instantly Christopher Walken-ized. It's his The Dead Zone, and he's amazing in a movie that takes big risks and pays off in a meaningful way; if he were to star in it now, I think it would be mistaken for camp. I also wish I'd seen Margaret in time for my 2011 list. Alas, local publicity has never been terribly interested in my participation. Nevertheless, thanks mostly to Netflix and FYC screeners, I saw a great many great films this year.