dmkuehn Reviews

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

certainly not for everyone!

[9/10 · 17 March 2010]

I showed this film a couple of times back in the glory days of campus film societies in the mid 70s. There were a number of memorable moments in that experience.

It was pretty much a guarantee that fully 50% of the audience had bolted by the end of the first reel. The print from New Line was loaded onto 2 oversize reels so it was real easy to take note of this. Curiously enough, most people did not ask for their money back (all of a buck in those days) since the film group I was involved in did show a lot of art films. Either people felt that they had got the idea and/or they just saw it pointless to go further into it. I have not seen the film in a long time but I think some of the more disquieting things may not have even happened by the midpoint of the picture but oh well. Kinda like Eraserhead in that people bolt, but in that film it is the squab chicken dinner that usually started the exodus, and if you had made it past the beastly baby sequence you were liable to stay until the end. Besides Eraserhead had only a 20-30% bolt rate (mostly women) perhaps in testimony to the budding cult reputation David Lynch was building at the time (1978 or so)...

As I recall at one showing one of the reels fell off the projector and the projectionist had to chase it down the aisle of a narrow rectangular room all while the film was running. Classic.

While it formally wasn't really one of Herzog's most challenging films (not like watching a plane land over and over as in Fata Morgana) is certainly is the subject matter that really pushes most people to the limit. I agree with most reviewers here in that the anarchy indicates that freedom alone doesn't necessarily lead to liberation. I had forgotten some of the cruel animal things seen in the film - Herzog was known to push the limit but that would not fly so well these days no matter how much one could justify it in terms of artistic expression. Knowing that Crispin Glover is in on the Herzog oeuvre makes perfect sense. I think the ultimate point to be taken from the film is that once you cut people loose from any sort of societal moorings, it is hard to predict what or if there will be any new world order whatsoever. What is the point of being free if you can't drive a car, your own people are liable to exploit you, and you are far away from any relief from this environment? Might as well wreck everything.

Desperate Hours (1990)

Cimino: high on style. low on logic. form=content. go figure.

[29 July 2002]

I think on a certain level this film works quite well. First, throw out everything you know about the 1955 version. Next, abandon paying too much attention to how the plot progresses (gee, Kelly Lynch's character seems to disappear for extended periods of time, and it's amazing that the FBI ever found following her to be worth it. And she is supposed to be one of the smarter characters, but then again, you took what Lindsay Crouse's character said about her too seriously.) The film has a most curious tone, and just when you think it's going to turn into an art film, we get a shoot-em-up or some other plot contrivance to bring it back to earth. The soundtrack is a moody pastiche of 50's style orchestrations (no rock music!) and recalls moody post-noir thrillers of the late 50's-early 60's.

And what a fascinating line-up of players, performances, and characters. Kelly Lynch's acting directions must have been "look snappy, especially topless, act like you just ingested a gram of cocaine, and all will go well."

One of these first years Cimino will put together all the pieces and come up with a really good, coherent film. For a really good obtuse film, reference Walter Hill's "The Driver" with Ryan O'Neal.

Oh, and if you ever thought you could mess with Lindsay Crouse, this film should dispel that notion. She's much badder than Mickey Rourke - and that's the biggest surprise of the whole picture! And with a lot less screen time, too. And by golly I guess Mickey Rourke's character is just an obsessive lover of the enigmatic Lynch. That explains a lot.

Coolest line in the film: FBI agent says to Crouse (after she got shot in the leg) : "Where are you hit?" Answer: "In the ego."

Evolution (2001)

Another scattershot effort that everyone got paid for....

[25 July 2002]

My preliminary comments:

1) Reitman's seems to have a 1:8 success ratio with his films. Guess which part of the scale this one falls on....

2) This is what Duchovny left X-Files for?

3) Julianne Moore, what were you thinking when you took this film? Did you owe someone for that third Mercedes you bought last month?

4) I'm sorry, this isn't anywhere near Ghostbusters....or Airplane!....or Caddyshack (one of the original dumb-and-dumber epics)...

5) I am thoroughly convinced that some films only get made because everyone gets paid for doing it, and there is always life on cable forever and ever. It's amazing what gets produced out there, but I guess there is always the thin chance that something like this could be the next Ghostbusters. Very very thin chance.

6) Mars Attacks! was a vastly superior movie - and it had a lot less pretension that this one. Reitman's probably had smoke blown up his rear for the last 20 years - and since his last real hit is probably getting to be around 8 or 10 years ago, his well will run dry real soon.

7) I hear MS3K is looking for contemporary films to use - I think Jim Mallon and friends would find they could get the rights to this bow-wow for the price of a 20# bag of Puppy Chow - hey, it's all ancillary income, right?

8) What ever happened to his halcyon days of Cannibal Girls(1973) -or Tigress(1977)(aka Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia - evidently one of any number of films inspired by Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS) - now that's filmmaking!

The Baileys of Balboa (1964–1965)

Idiosyncratic view of a fisherman's family foibles and life on the wharf....

[14 April 2001]

Holy cow, does anyone even remember this one? Evidently unavailable in general circulation (hmmm, any trade tapes out there?), it is certainly a lost gem of TV land of the 60s. If memory doesn't fail me, Paul Ford is the patriarch of a goofball family that make its living off the wharves of San Francisco Bay. Their main source of income is the sale of a unique item at their shanty restaurant of "Bailey's Smoked Fish-On-A-Stick" though they always seemed to be dirt poor (er, or fish poor, as it were) and cooking up get-rich-quick schemes to get around the fact of their ineptitude at making an honest living. Any series, albeit short lived, that has Judy Carne as a regular and Rachel Welch as a walk-on is fine by me!

A Double Life (1947)

Certainly a hidden gem.....

[13 March 2001]

I was astonished at how good this picture was - Ronald Colman's scenery chewing was great, as well as the script and all supporting performances, as well as it being one of George Cukor's better but least seen works. It is a very disquieting film, almost in a Hitchcockian sort of way, and perhaps that accounts for its obscurity. Besides, an early Shelley Winters film is all right by me (carumba!) Hopefully you can find a better print than the one I saw on cable which looked like it was culled from a 16mm positive. C'mon, film preservationists, get on it!

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Re-establishes and raises the bar for "drug movies"

[3 January 2001]

So many others have contributed their comments on the stars and general style and arc of this film, so I will be more focused in this analysis on placing this film within a wider context.

After a number of films appeared in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s that stripped away at least some of the romanticism of drug use, Requiem For A Dream sets a new standard through which to see the new crop of upcoming drug films, including Traffic and Blow. Among the earlier efforts, I felt both Rush (a rather underrated film) and Drugstore Cowboy came closest to an accurate portrayal of the life cycle of using/abusing. Others have cited Christiane F also in this regard, though I have yet to see it. Other films, especially Bad Lieutenant, Liquid Sky and Trainspotting, were narratively driven more by their flashy stylistics than the story told through the characters, though the former has very subtle plot threads that appear above Abel Ferrara's stylistic excesses. Trainspotting tended to be romantic about drug use despite it's "choose life" metaphor. Films such as New Jack City cloaked any anti-drug messages amid the flashy excitement of the drug mafia. Perhaps King Of New York is a more balanced view in that regard, being actually a rather restrained Ferrara film, a kind of warmup to Bad Lieutenant. True Romance quickly abandoned any relation to accuracy in turning to a cartoon-like portrayal of the good guys versus the bad guys with the doomed couple in-between.

Though there have been any number of films in the later 90s that had drug use as a subtext (High Art, for example), the cycle of drug-themed movies has ebbed until the advent of Requiem For A Dream in late 2000. It surely takes off at a level beyond anything we've seen before. It is realistic: real and hyper-real at the same time, it shows us people like some we may know who want more out of life, and feel they deserve it now, so they take the short cut that drugs offer in many ways, shapes and forms. The incredible stylistic effort of Aronofsky's production puts the film form in place to drive the content - again, the story portrayed is quite simple, the message not quite so. It shows us escapism in any form can be a recipe for tragedy, with the outcome quite different from the desired result.

As I left the film, quite stunned in a way I have not felt since Henry Portrait Of A Serial Killer, a woman asked me how I felt about the picture. I told her unless she had been around the block a couple of times, she may find the film hard to relate to (this despite Ellen Burstyn's part). I think anyone who has been in situations where drugs are seen as the goal to the promised land, with people around who literally proselytize drug culture as a model to be aspired to, can clearly see what's going on here. The forceful nature of this film may obscure some of its message, but upon careful examination the thematics of the film can be teased out.