Talk about suffering for art.  Or maybe suffering because of it.

Nude for Satan was meant to be a nice pairing for a double feature with Vampyros lesbos (1971).  I hope that you can imagine the theme of the pairing from the titles alone.  However, I didn’t manage to watch them both in one night, and it’s just as well.

Nude for Satan is definitely one of the worst films that I have seen in ages.  From the camera work, the special effects, the half-assed narrative to the downright dullness, it’s really not worth the effort. 

The story follows a doctor who discovers a beautiful woman in a car crash on a desolate country road.  He goes up to a mansion on a hill to seek help and finds (literally) behind door number 1: a cackling man lying on the ground with something like a rod through his neck, then behind door number 2: a sex scene (which he shudders at more quickly than the creepy dead guy.)  And yet, he keeps looking.  Like maybe the telephone is behind door number 3?

There is this whole duality thing, with doppelgangers of the man and the woman.  And there is the devil,…I guess.  The devil likes orgies.  And then there is this very bizarre, quite humorous really, scene in a big spider web with the phoniest-looking spider ever made.  I actually thought to myself that Ed Wood, Jr. might have enjoyed this film.

There is one other scene, the only cool effect, I thought, where the woman, confronted by the satan guy suddenly flashes naked like he has just undressed her with his eyes.  In the film in which the camera effects are as amateurish as you can possibly imagine, this was the one trick that worked.  You gotta take it for what you can.

In the end, it seems that the whole narrative is somewhat of a bizarre dream, brought on by the car crash, which, though one of the most cliche narrative devices around, somehow surprised me here.  Maybe just because I wasn’t expecting it.  This film does make Vampyros lesbos look like Citizen Kane (1941).

You know, it’s funny, but I’d never seen a Jesus Franco film before.  He’s one of these living legends of cult/horror/exploitation/weirdness.  Still kickin’.  My interest in this film (yeah, I know the title suggests a lot), stemmed from my childhood, from a book I had on zombie films, featuring stills and movie posters.  The titilating title stayed with me and finally, the time had come.

Vampyros lesbos is exploitation.  The unbelievably beautiful Susann Korda is the female victim/inheritor of Dracula’s legend.  The film is a mod and odd take on the traditional Bram Stoker tale, playing the characters with sexual obsession, love, repression, and pop psychology.

It’s both arty and trashy, which is probably what appeals about Franco’s work.  It’s only arty enough, really, to recognize its artiness.  It’s only trashy enough to stoke some tantalizing images of lesbian vampire love and lots of comfortable nudity in the days before plastic surgery.

While it doesn’t quite reach the sublime pleasures of Doris Wishman’s Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965), it does reckon of other European horror films from the period of exploration and exploitation, Daughters of Darkness (1971) also comes to mind.  It’s not horrid, no.  It’s strange, semi-pretentious, mucho-camp art trash. 

Is that not a form of beauty somewhere?

And it has this crazy-ass groovin’ soundtrack.  Weirdness.

The question of the day may be which is funnier, Tropic Thunder or Pineapple Express (2008), the two big comedies that have hit theaters in the last two weeks.  For me, it’s hands-down Pineapple Express, and you know, I don’t care if you disagree.  This is an opinion for crissakes!!  I doubt seriously that there is a true measurement of humor, no matter how scientific you want to make it.

That said: here is some formulaic issues for Tropic Thunder.

Jack Black.  Somebody, please, stop this man from making movies.  He flails like a parody of himself while he tries to parody others.  Jack Black is self-parody.  He should open a bike shop or something.

Ben Stiller.  After his previous directoral/writing efforts (Reality Bites (1994), Zoolander (2001)), we already know that he thinks that he is far funnier than he really is.  Why other people may be under this illusion, I cannot say.  He’s always the same dude in his films, this smart, yet loserish fellow with varying degrees of self-awareness.  He’s highly tiresome and not clever.  I am sorry.

Tom Cruise.  In a “made to make me cool again by being crude and acting like a doofus in a fat suit” role, Cruise is not nearly as amusing as others might make you think.  His dancing hip-hop style as a balding, hirsute executive is akin to white people trying to rap for comedy effect.  It’s obvious, not funny, and still painful.

What the film does get right: Robert Downey, Jr.

With Iron Man (2008) under his belt for the year, Robert Downey, Jr. completes his comeback here in Tropic Thunder with one of the most outrageously funny and completely compelling roles to come out of Hollywood all year.  Playing a multiple-Oscar winner, method actor extroirdinaire, Downey’s character, a blonde, blue-eyed Australian has his skin dyed and hairpieces fitted to play an African-American soldier in this would-be Vietnam film.

Downey is extremely funny.  His character has charm, wit, the best lines…  Given the most to work with, he takes it to the wall and through it.  His character is a stroke of genius, playing up stereotypes, perceived stereotypes, positive racism and yet some intensive level of integrity and humanism that it’s absolutely stunning.  He’s worth the film alone.  He redeems it beyond its deserved redemption and makes all the muddling worthwhile.

The film has its flares of humor: witty parodies of Hollywood types and garbage, including fake trailers at the beginning that promote the fake characters’ previous film roles.  And there are some clever and surprising cameos that make for good fun.  It’s not that the film is awful.  It’s okay.  But without Downey, Jr., it’s nothing.

It’s worth seeing for Robert Downey, Jr. alone.  There are plenty of laughs, and it’s a good time.  But Pineapple Express has better comedy throughout.  It itself is not Superbad (2007), but it does have James Franco, whose stoner character may not reach the heights of Downey, Jr.’s character, but is quite amusing.  They are both good films.  Good enough.

But since I started this as an argument of which is the better comedy of the moment, I have to say that it’s Pineapple Express.  But Robert Downey, Jr.  He’s more the man than ever.

Roman de gare, a French thriller/mystery that has lingered in San Francisco cinemas for a few months, turns out to be not nearly as compelling as I had hoped.  There seemed to be a small handful of French thrillers.  I guess that I’d assumed that this one was the best of the bunch.  I actually think I liked Tell No One (2006) better.

According to Wikipedia, the title translates: “The title is French slang for “trashy novel one reads in a train or train station” similar to the English phrase “beach book,”" which kind of makes sense.  The film is about an author of such works, a trashy thriller novelist whose story for her latest novel is not only lifted from real life, but conflated with it throughout much of the film.

Really, the film is at its best when the audience is unsure of who the characters are, being led down one alley of belief and then another about the characters.  Are they killers, writers, ghost-writers, prostitutes, hairdressers, lovers, runaway husbands?  Quite a while, this illusion carries on, with the “story within a story” conflating as well: Are we seeing the story of the book or the story the book was lifted from?

This conflation is highly self-reflexive and really embodies the mystery of the film.  And as the narrative unwinds, knowledge and concern mix with the surprises of the characters and their hidden “lives,” their pretenses initially displayed, to which the audience follows as well.  We only know what we are shown, right?

This would all be well and good if at the end (and I don’t think I am ruining the surprises here), like so many a mystery story, someone pops up to explain each circumstance, which was the “real” story, the actual, uncovering the lies and exposing the imposters.  It’s a weakness of the genre, and in this case, really seemed to deflate the film’s clever conflations.  See, in the end there was only one story, the real story, and now we know.

I guess that the ending has one open-ended question of motive, but the finale, the final scene, seems to indicate that there indeed is only one story, not another lie, not another trick, but a closure that sucks out the confusion and cleverness of the story before.

“Hands off the loot.”  That’s what Touchez pas au grisbi roughly translates to.  It’s French noir, an interesting contrast to American noir or even American filmmaking in general in some ways.  It’s one of several notable French noir or crime films that I’ve been meaning to see.

The story, about a suave but world-weary aging criminal who has made his last big haul and is ready to get out of the game, isn’t something all that unusual in a sense, but the film’s focus on the fluctuating morality and integrity of Max, played by Jean Gabin, is where the focus is.  The girls still flock to him even in his middle age, in part due to his suave character, perhaps in part to his flush pocketbook, and while he admires their charms (breasts are squeezed and complimented explicitly in ways Hollywood wouldn’t have allowed), he’s ultimately a bit of a loner, but also a dedicated friend to his pal Riton, who he has to pull out of trouble.

There is a surprisingly violent and exciting confrontation toward the end of the film, which is a stark contrast to these characters’ outer demeanors.  When things get tough, the smooth, well-heeled criminals slap people around and grab their machine guns.  Their ability to become remorseless and capable of violence demonstrates the oppositional hearts in these fellows.

Ultimately Max throws down for his buddy, a friendship that he questions in a “thinking” voice-over.  What does this all signify?  It’s kinda complicated, I suppose.  It’s a humanist portrait for the most part, one that shows some of the futility of life’s actions and leaves with a sensibility.  It’s definitely a good film.  I liked the fact that these guys are tossing slang around like American counterparts in these little French cafes, middle-aged criminals, sipping coffee, with showgirls.  Who knew?

The Savages is a family dramedy about dealing with a parent with dementia, coping with estrangement, self, and many other things.  Oddly, it reminded me to an extent of a sort of female Noah Baumbach story, a New York middle-class tale of family, in which the characters are talented and intelligent, though plagued by emotional traumas of different kind.  Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (2005) is more of a backward glance, and in some ways, much more funny.  The Savages, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, centers the story around Laura Linney’s character, a 39-year old woman from a broken middle class family who aspires to be a playwright, yet is stymied in her self in her relationships and profession.

Jenkins previously made The Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), which I remember liking quite well.  It was also about a dysfunctional family, and I remember it being pretty funny.  It’s not that The Savages needs to be funny.  How funny is the slow descent of an elderly family member into dementia and death?  Certainly, I think, this is a topic that many can probably relate to or prescribe with fear as to something that may eventually occur to loved ones.

The film is good, though not profoundly good.  Linney is lovely, neurotic to an extent, directionless, and mildly adrift.  As her brother, Philip Seymour Hoffman is typically strong.  As a professor and Brecht scholar, he too is damaged by his childhood, but overall more realistic and successful.

While Jenkins does a lot with showing the environs of the characters (the surreal suburbia of Sun City, AZ or the freezing drabness of Buffalo, NY), there just isn’t a lot more to say.  It’s a good film.  Not extra-special, but good.

It’s amazing that there are so many movies out there in the world that something as odd and specific as a horror film genre of giant creatures of the order crocodilia could exist, but I am proposing that it does.  Most recently, there was the film Primeval (2007), about a real life killer crocodile in Africa.  There is the earliest one in the genre that I can think of, Alligator (1980), which had the critter in the sewers of Chicago rather than its native habitat.

Well, the latest in the genre is the less campy and far more earnest film, Rogue, from Australian writer/director Greg Mclean, whose previous film, Wolf Creek (2005) also was a cautionary tale of the beautiful Outback of Australia for tourists and pleasure-seekers.  In Wolf Creek, it was a madman serial killer (also allegedly based on a true story).   In Rogue, it is a massive male rogue crocodile, enormous and angry, who doesn’t like his very isolated territory invaded.

The film does truly have an earnestness.  A lot of Australian films seem to take great pride in the weirdness of the Aussies of the bush, whack-jobs, yet colorful.  Mclean does use quite recognizeable character types in his film: the gorgeous, tomboy tour boat operator, the English family with a crippled, ailing mother, a colorful Irish hippie frump, the bad boys of the swamps…  But the characters are less “stock” than is often the case.  It feels like they were chosen more for a purpose than simply to get eaten up.

Mclean shows great love for the Northern Australia visually depicted in the film.  It’s stunning, and according to comments that they made, some landscape that has literally never been captured in cinema before.  It’s isolated and ancient, like the rogue crocodiles, the living dinosaurs who have not needed to evolve for a long, long time.  There is a small hat tip to the Aboriginal mysticism, noting that part of the river is sacred, marked with native art.  There is an attempt to show the beauty and the age of the largely unbefouled Outback.

And Mclean shows lots of shots of actual crocodiles as well, peppering the narrative with facts and factoids, showing that this story really isn’t meant to be as far-fetched as one might think.  Mclean even relates back to a specific crocodile that in real life attacked many a boat to protect its territory, and he notes that there are crocodiles that have been reported that are even bigger than the digitally animated Rogue of our story.

It’s earnestness is admirable.  But I think I was expecting more outlandishness.  The camp value is smaller, but the film is still a fairly intense thriller, one that will certainly have me thinking more than twice before taking a river boat ride up the crocodile-infested waters of Northern Australia.

The title of the film “Man on Wire” comes from the police report that detailed the arrest and description of the public nuisance charge perpetrated by Philippe Petit in August of 1974.  Simply descriptive but cannot begin to capture the enormity of the feat that Petit executed with the help of friends and collaborators.  Petit and his team snuck into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City, strung a high wire across between the buildings, and Petit crossed the wire, at the insane heights of the then tallest buildings in the world, performing his simple and elegant highwire act, even laying upon the wire, hanging above the world.

It must be said that it doesn’t sound like the most compelling topic for a feature-length documentary, but the film is constructed with the power of the narrative, from Petit’s earlier highwire stunts to the collaborative adventure that drove his friends and colleagues to help attempt one of the most amazing stunts of such sort ever perpetrated.  The narrative grows, particularly through the vivid storytelling of Petit, and the beauty of the idea and the passion and the execution eventually becomes quite palpable.

The act, which is compared a few times in the film to that of a bank heist, is acknowledged as criminal by the crew, but recognized as also one in which no one is harmed, rather an act of performance and grandeur is perpetrated.  Which again sounds potentially insignificant, but the immensity of the act and the artistry of Petit’s athleticism is strong.

But what makes the film resonant beyond the history and the grandeur of the achievements is the very backdrop of the event.  The now long-gone, and far from forgotten towers loom throughout the film.  It is when Petit first hears of their construction, when the work is just initiated on the structures, that Petit is inspired to accomplish his strange goal.  The builidings speak to him, even from before they existed.

But the invasion of the building, the infiltration with all the equipment, while the building was being utilized yet still under construction echoes of the ultimate events perpetrated on the same structures.  Petit and his team run against harrowing odds to accomplish their infiltration and execution of the stunt, but yet they run into far fewer, smaller problems than one could imagine.  It’s not just the invasion and vulnerability, the heist of sorts, but the contrast in human aspiration behind the invasion.

Petit is not merely an artist.  It’s not merely performance.  While the cops and media keep wondering aloud to him as to “why” he did what he did, he has no answer.  It is someting, something of human achievement and artistry, something bizarre and dangerous, radical and risky, something that is in a sense indescribable.

The latest comedy (and this seems to be measured by almost every week) from producer Judd Apatow, he of Superbad (2007), Knocked Up (2007), and The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) among many others, is probably the funniest of the films with his name attached to it since Superbad.  Pineapple Express is a stoner comedy, a buddy film, and an action film, though most successfully, a comedy.

Perhaps most strangely, the film is directed by David Gordon Green, who is best known for indie American films like George Washington (2000) and more recently, Snow Angels (2007), whose work I have only once ventured into, his 2003 film All the Real Girls, which I think I am still scarred by, these many years later.  What he is doing, helming a mainstream comedy for Apatow, well, who knows?  It’s certainly better than his other film.

Written by star Seth Rogan and his Superbad co-scribe Evan Goldberg, Pineapple Express is a romping, rolling, goofball run at the stoner film.  It’s funnier than not most of the time, sometimes for quite long sequences.  And beyond the script, which keeps up the gags and physical comedy, Rogan himself and co-star James Franco, with The Foot Fist Way (2006)’s Danny R. McBride, along with a number of other characters, make for a pretty solidly riotous time in the theater.

James Franco is perhaps the biggest surprise, and the film’s best performance.  Well, I guess that I’m not really surprised by Franco anymore.   My introduction to him was from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002) and its sequels, playing Harry Osborn, son of the Green Goblin, and straight-laced best pal to Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker.  But after my brother-in-law loaned me the DVD collection of Judd Apatow’s tv series, Freaks and Geeks, in which he and much of his catalogue of colleagues got their starts, I saw Franco as the cute bad boy character and realized that he had a lot more going for him than Sam Raimi had allowed for.  He’s hysterical as Saul, the pajama bottom-clad pot dealer who becomes Rogan’s best pal after their adventures on the run from the murderous drug dealers.

The film’s biggest problem is its action side, which works to create the narrative construct, but in the end just winds up being pretty violent and extraneous in a lot of ways.  It seems silly to criticize it, but it really drew away from the rest of the movie.  And Rogan’s high school-aged girlfriend, an amusing characteristic of his immature process server pothead, ends up being a sort of unnecessary track as well.

That said, it’s funny and a lot of fun.  It characterizes a consistent theme often cited in Apatow’s work, these sweet-natured but languishing “man-children”, who are not capable of romantic relationships, but oddly, find their emotional centers in what popular culture has recently coined as “bromances”, two best buds who find their way to communicating their humorously and occasionally ironically inflected homoerotic relationship, dude to dude.

It works though because there is a sweetness to their friendship and the characters, for their flaws, come across, and are enjoyable. 

It’s funny stuff.  Really it is.

Jean-Luc Godard is one of the most significant and challenging directors in cinema.  It’s kind of amazing how many important films he made in the 1960’s.  It’s also amazing how radically he approached the issue of cinema, the issues of cinema.  It’s still striking, even now, how much he challenged and questioned, utilized in his films, which feel like ongoing discourses on life, culture, politics, art, you name it.  It’s a lot to take in.  It’s a lot to have put out.

It’s kind of weird, but looking back over my film diary, since I’ve seen a bunch of Godard films, but it seems that the only one that I’ve watched in recent years is Une femme est une femme (1961).  Maybe I caught another while I wasn’t updating, I don’t know.  His films are a challenge for me, I would think for most people.  It’s not just that they are non-conventional, but rather that they work in direct opposition to convention, they are a critique of convention, in many ways, a meta-critique of everything.

Pierrot le fou was recently re-released via Criterion, a clean print, which played theatrically locally not long ago.  I missed it when it played the Castro.  I noticed it’s coming to the Red Vic in a week or two.

The film has a loose narrative.  Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina (about as beautiful as women are allowed to get) escape their lives down to the French Riviera, romping, hiding from society, ranting about love, writing poetry, jumping around on things.  Their love and frolics become challenged with an strange turn of events regarding a crime caper, a brother who is a gun runner (is he a brother or a lover?), and ultimately everyone gets killed.  Belmondo wraps his head in dynamite and explodes.

There is fun and lightness in the frolicking.  It is not joyless.  But it is also not embracing.  There is a constant striking at the subjectivity, a concentrated self-awareness, a sensibility that the film might actually have not had a script (which I have read was something the Godard has said).  It’s never really about the story, though in many ways it is about the romance or the concept of a cinematic romance.  About the concepts of genre, of art.  Many images of modern and classical art pop to the screen, populate the walls of rooms, books and films are verbally referenced.  It’s an ever-moving romp.

I can’t say that I can totally get my hands around it.  It’s very colorful, in striking contrast to Godard’s earlier black-and-white films.  It reminded me of a later Godard film, Week End (1967), which is much less about love or narrative, much more political and apocalyptic.  These films seem very much of a similar ilk, road movies fraught with disasters and modernism, and post-modernism.

I think I’ve better enjoyed Godard’s work on the big screen.  It takes energy to watch his films, focus, concentration.  His work still seems quite polemic even now, forty years later.  And it’s still challenging.