Buh-Bye 2016!

I don't think I'm overstating it when I say that 2016 was a super-huge dick this year. When 2016 wasn't chopping down what felt like an inordinate amount of classic film notables like Alan Rickman, Marni Nixon, Haskell Wexler, Gene Wilder, and the double-whammy of Carrie Fisher, and Debbie Reynolds, it was busily shooting up nightclubs, and saddling us with the tacky, infantile reign of one Donald J. Trump.

Like many of you, I often find solace from the cold, hard world in the flickering of an old movie, so to insure that you start 2017 off right, here are my Top 5 Films I Saw in 2016:



The Boys in the Band (1970)

For years I had been hearing about this movie. Whether lauded or reviled, Boys is seen as a landmark in gay film history. Adapted from the stageplay, it chronicles the goings-on in a New York apartment when a group of gay friends gather together to celebrate a birthday. Like an all-gay Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, booze and pot cause the party to spiral out-of-control, and when an old friend of the host's shows up, secrets (and the host) come out.

This may not sound like much of a plot now, but in 1970, gay issues were just starting to be discussed in national forums. The Stonewall Riots of 1968 ignited a public movement and gays and lesbians were not going to be quiet anymore. Boys works so well because while that spirit of revolution is evident in the film, the underbelly of shame and masculine overcompensation are still there- reminding us that coming out of the closet is only the first step in a long march to equality and acceptance from others and ourselves.

While some have been critical of the gay stereotypes and the fetishization of gay life as tragedy portrayed in the film, (director William Friedkin would court gay controversy again in his movie Cruising (1980)), I was surprised how timely this film felt. Issues of femininity, self-loathing, and how to define gay couples are still active debates in our culture.

I've heard scathing ripostes about looks and love like the ones between Michael and Donald at many a party from people who weren't even alive when the film came out. This movie could be made today, and with a cast that would include Matt Bomer, Neil Patrick Harris, Jim Parsons, Chris Colfer, Tituss Burgess and Drew Droege, people would go see it.

The only thing absent is the haunting presence of AIDS, which wouldn't make national headlines for another ten years. Five of the original cast members would succumb to the dreaded disease, however- a bitter reminder how AIDS would shape the gay community for decades to come.

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

When Tilda Swinton isn't in a fight with Maragret Cho about Asian invisibility in Hollywood, she is one of the most interesting actresses in film today. Like a more punk version of Cate Blanchett, Swinton adds beautiful complexity to her roles making us feel the emotional immediacy of her characters' dilemmas. Swinton's dilemma in Kevin is gut-wrenching and everytime some jackass commits some heinous act of barbarity in the world, I think of this film and Swinton's desperate, empty gaze.

I wrote about Kevin after recuperating from the flu, but I've never recovered from this movie.

Repulsion (1965)

If you're thinking of staying in alone this New Year's, read my review of Repulsion and get out of your apartment before the walls start sprouting arms. Roman Polanski is a master of psychological horror, and Repulsion set the stage for his later masterwork on women losing it in apartments, Rosemary's Baby (1968).

Two for the Road (1967)

New Year's is all about the passage of time, and no film handles time and our memory of it quite like Two for the Road. Many people like this movie for its refreshing leads Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn, but I was really taken away by director Stanley Donen's editing, which made the concept of life seem so fleeting and circular. It's important in these times to remember a life is more than just this moment- so instead of dreading Trump's next tweet, read my review of Two for the Road.

Madame Satan (1930)

This New Year's I hope you have a great party full of friends and wine and little nibbly bits- but I guarantee no matter how fabulous your party, it won't compare with the dirigible masquerade party in Cecil B. DeMille's Madame Satan. I can't stop thinking of the sheer decadence and visual over-stimulation of the last half of this movie. It's like an Adrian costume collection disaster movie. What better way to ring out the old than by pushing it out of a blimp?

To all my Lance's Werthwhile readers, I wish you the most movie-filled 2017!

Film Forum's Return of the Double Features

Double features. These wonderful cinematic dinosaurs roamed the earth back before megaplexes hit and caused the great extinction. In order to sell as much of their film product as possible to exhibitors, the studios would often sell their top movies along with other B movies to force theaters to show both. This meant movie audiences often would see two movies back-to-back- the double feature! Moviegoers could sit back and eat popcorn, mello-rolls, drink original Original Coke, heavy pet, and watch two movies for the price of one.

As time went on the studios were legally prevented from these block booking tactics, and television ate into movie screening time. Most people no longer went and sat in the movie theater for a whole day anymore. So theaters moved towards showing one A-level movie over and over (on however many screens they had) to maximize the audience. Double features were relegated to drive-in movie theaters and second-run houses that specialized in film festivals- making the double feature a rare connoisseur's delight. Well, for the next 3 1/2 weeks, New York's Film Forum is showing a Double Feature Festival, hooking-up movies like a cinematic Grindr.

Here are my recommendations that are guaranteed to double your fun:

Friday 8/19
Vertigo (1958) & Rear Window (1954)

Two well-known Hitchcock classics. Personally I would show Rear Window first because Vertigo feels a little long- but no matter. Seeing both of these on the big screen is a must. Vertigo because it's an effective psychological use of color and image and Rear Window because it's a wonderful use of camera perspective... and because they both star the lovable Jimmy Stewart.

Monday, 8/22
Sunrise (1927) & Nosferatu (1922)

The silent film era was uniquely able to innovate storytelling through the use of images and F.W. Murnau was masterful at it. His Oscar-Winning romantic drama Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is beautiful and touching to look at, and its vision of The City makes me want to move to this crazy, magical place.

Earlier, Murnau went for the dark side of the film image with his Dracula (1931) progenitor, Nosferatu. Some people love Bela Lugosi's Dracula, but I put my money on Max Schreck's Count Orlok. Creeparific.


Friday 8/26
Psycho (1960) & Repulsion (1965)

Let's go crazy! Whether it's the shower scene or Mama Bates in the basement, Psycho is one of Hitchcock's best shockfests. Anthony Perkins' portrayal of Norman Bates became iconic, creeping around the edges of "normalcy", hiding his true proclivities away in that famous hotel.

In Repulsion, poor Carol (Catherine Deneuve) also has a problem relating to other people, but for her, hiding away in her sister's apartment doesn't help. It intensifies her madness until the walls are reaching out to her. Literally. Polanski's impressive first English-speaking film is terrific and hints at ideas he would explore later in his horror classic Rosemary's Baby (1968). This film duo may give you nightmares. I'm just sayin'...

Sunday, 8/28
Singin' in the Rain (1952) & The Band Wagon (1953)

Two musicals made a year apart covering two eras of the movies.
Singin' has Gene Kelly & Co. dancing through the birth of the talkies, and Band Wagon has Fred Astaire dancing through the end of his character's movie musical career.

Directors Stanley Donen and Vincente Minnelli both excelled at filming musicals: Donen and Kelly's athletic dancing perfectly capture the excitement of the beginning of the sound era when musicals could finally take flight; and Minnelli's sensitive filming style and Astaire's graceful movements make us empathize with endings as well as beginnings. And both feature the excellent writing of Betty Comden and Adolph Green and the unparalleled hoofing of Cyd Charisse.

Monday, 8/29
The Bicycle Thief (1948) & Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985)

Two movies- two important bikes. Bicycle Thief is pure Italian neo-realism and Pee Wee pure '80's escapism. Two great tastes that taste great together.

On a persnickety side note, I prefer the title Bicycle Thieves to the oft-used The Bicycle Thief. It represents the central relationship of the film of the father and his son better than the singular version. But that's just me.


Friday, 9/2
Ed Wood (1994) & Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

First watch the touchingly wacky Tim Burton-directed bio-pic of the infamous B-movie director and then watch one of Wood's best-worst films. Look for Bela Lugosi's stand-in through most of the latter.


Saturday, 9/3
Badlands (1973) & Days of Heaven (1978)

If it's possible to overdose on too much breathtaking natural cinematography, these two might just kill you. Terrence Malick's two movies about couples who break the law are very different in tone- but oh-so gorgeous to see on the big screen. As usual, Malick's visuals link man and nature and our baser instincts.

Sunday, 9/4
City Lights (1931) & Modern Times (1936)

Hands down these are my two favorite Chaplin films. City Lights in particular is such a beautiful blend of comedy and touching romance, that I dare you not to cry at the end. I dare you!
You can cry at the end of Modern Times too if you like- it's just not required- especially since the song playing at the end is "Smile."

Thursday, 9/8
The Maltese Falcon (1941) & The Thin Man (1934)

Dashiell Hammett is known as one of the fathers of the modern crime novel- so it's natural that his work would be the basis for some of Hollywood's best film noirs. The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man take two different approaches to his material, however. Falcon is a dyed-in-the-wool crime movie with a conflicted hero, shadowy criminals, and twists and turns.

Thin Man takes a more urbane and comical look at the crime story with Nick and Nora Charles (the sublime William Powell and Myrna Loy) bantering and drinking their way through the first of a series of hit films. So whether you like your men thin or fat (Sydney Greenstreet in Falcon is a rotund masterpiece), these two crime-classics are the stuff that dreams are made of.

Friday, 9/9
Notorious (1946) & His Girl Friday (1940)

If I were forced to choose the two best Cary Grant movies out of his long Hollywood career, I could not settle on just two. So Film Forum made the task easier by selecting the two best Cary Grant movies written by Broadway playwright and screenplay doctor extraordinaire Ben Hecht. Notorious pairs Grant with Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's tale of a party-girl who marries a suspected German spy (the very suspectable Claude Rains) in order to catch him in the act of espionage. Is she doing it for love of country, or for love of Grant? Just don't drink the coffee.

In His Girl Friday Grant and Rosalind Russell verbally rat-a-tat Hecht's sharp dialogue like a couple of fencing pros, creating one of the smartest romance films of the Forties. Grant and Hecht also worked on Gunga Din (1939) and Monkey Business (1952) but that's for another double feature.

Sunday 9/11
Laura (1944) & Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Gene Tierney was one of the most beautiful leading ladies of the Forties and these two movies show her off at her best. In Laura she is the beguiling girl in the painting at the center of one of the best murder mysteries ever made, and in Leave Her to Heaven, she is the woman who will do anything to keep her man- even if it means giving Darryl Hickman a swimming lesson. Whether in black and white or blazing Technicolor, Tierney was gorgeous- and if you like Vincent Price, he's in both movies too.

Tuesday, 9/13
Double Indemnity (1944) & Mildred Pierce (1945)

Hollywood loved making movies out of James M. Cain's novels, and these are two of his best. Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck headline the Billy Wilder noir classic Double Indemnity as a couple who can't keep their hands off each other. That spells trouble for Babs' husband.

Mildred Pierce came along a year later and because Cain's Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice were such successful murder novels, director Michael Curtiz decided to turn Mildred Pierce into a noir film too- even though the murder that opens the movie never happens in Cain's book.

Mildred Pierce the movie is an exquisite blend of noir and women's film and Joan Crawford's performance was career-defining- even if she'd already had a hugely successful career for almost twenty years before she made Mildred. If you wanted to add a third Cain marital murder movie, Lana Turner and John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) should finish off the night nicely. But that might be overkill.

So those are the Film Forum's choices. What's your dream double-feature?

The Insanity of Roman Polanski

Let me start off by saying if you are hoping for a blog post about Roman Polanski's personal life, I will be a huge disappointment to you. I apologize ahead of time, and assure you it is not the first time I have disappointed someone... ask some of my exes.

What I want to talk about instead is Polanski's cinematic triptych about decaying sanity called his "Apartment Trilogy": Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976). Although made a little over ten years apart, and based on different source material, these three movies have very similar elements that make watching them together a trip down a bizarre rabbit hole of Polanski's twisted design.

Let's start with Repulsion. This dark little number was Polanski's first English-language, full-length film. Set in London, it follows young manicurist Carol (a luminous Catherine Deneuve) who has a case of man trouble. The trouble is, she doesn't want them around. She blows off (not literally) a date and is grossed-out by her sister's boyfriend's razor being left in her toothbrush glass.

When the noise of her sister screwing wafts through the wall of her bedroom, it's all she can do to keep from pounding on it and telling her to knock it off. So when her sister takes a vacation to the leaning Tower of Pisa, you would think it is a good opportunity for Carol to get some alone time. The problem is, Carol's not alone.

Carol hears noises outside her bedroom door, and the walls start to crack. Soon men are appearing in her room, raping her. She can no longer concentrate at work, mutilating rich, white cuticles as she stares into space.

Polanski films these episodes so that we know Carol is hallucinating- but it is so skillfully done that we can't help but join Carol in her first-person madness. The problem intensifies when real men show up in the apartment and Carol is assaulted. The imagined men are joined by the corpses of real ones.

Polanski uses Carol's homespace as a representation of Carol's headspace. The claustrophobia of the apartment mirrors Carol's stifling fears of men. The gaping cracks in the wall are cracks in reality. The decaying food a symbol of the rotting away of Carol's mind.

What is so interesting about Repulsion is that the focus is less about explaining why Carol goes off the tracks, and more about the visualization of madness- the creating of an atmosphere that makes us experience Carol's downward spiral rather than explain it. The film closes with a close-up of a picture of Carol as a child creepily standing out from a family portrait. Apparently she was just born that way.

Repulsion was a very successful independent import, and it turned out to be an excellent dry-run for Polanski's first high-profile Hollywood project, the controversial Rosemary's Baby. Based on the popular Ira Levin best-seller, Rosemary is the story of young New York City newlyweds Guy (John Cassavetes married to Gena Rowlands at the time) and Rosemary (Mia Farrow getting divorced from Frank Sinatra at the time) who move into a new apartment to start their lives together. After a visit  from their kooky next-door neighbors (Sidney Blackmer and Oscar-winning cutie patootie Ruth Gordon) Guy's acting career takes off, and Rosemary gets a bun in her oven.

The American dream sours, however, when Rosemary sickens and suspects that there's something not right with the bundle of joy growing inside her. Add to that she fears her neighbors are more than just herbal supplement enthusiasts. And why is Guy always defending them? Are they in cahoots?

As with Repulsion, Rosemary focuses on the question of sanity. Are Rosemary's wild suspicions about Satan worshipers and visions of being raped by the Devil real, or is she losing her mind?

The questions of sanity go from affecting a single woman as the target of men's advances (poor Carol's dilemma) to a young wife bearing the burdens of motherhood both physical and social. Polanski's surreal shooting and editing styles create absorbing, visual madness, making us doubt Rosemary and what we ourselves have seen.

Here too, the apartment is a centerpiece for depicting this internal conflict. The apartment is isolated by the dark, decrepit hallway, and Rosemary hears strange, unintelligible whispering from the other side of her bedroom wall. It's as if the apartment is set aside from reality. Rosemary has to try and discern what's going on outside the walls of her own perception.

In the end, Rosemary discovers the truth by finding a secret passageway that leads her from what she thinks she knows in her apartment to the secrets enshrined in the world next door.

Rosemary was a huge hit and made Polanski a hot director in Hollywood. But a year later, he would experience his own real-life horror movie when his wife and unborn child were murdered by the Manson Clan in their home. (I guess it's hard to avoid Polanski's f-ed up personal life.)

In 1976 after getting an Oscar nom for Chinatown (1974), Polanski returned to the theme of apartment insanity with The Tenant. In this film Polanski cast himself as Trelkovsky, a man who snags an apartment in Paris because the former occupant, Simone, jumped out the window. Feeling guilty for getting an apartment because of someone else's misfortune, Trelkovsky visits Simone in the hospital, only to find her encased in a body cast unable to speak.

She lets out a big scream and croaks, though, when Stella (Isabelle Adjani) arrives. This doesn't prevent Trelkovsky and Stella from going to the movies and fondling each other.

Trelkovsky's stroke of real estate luck goes south as his neighbors and the concierge (the eternal Shelley Winters) begin to nag him about the noise from his apartment. He begins watching his neighbors through windows- seeing their forms and their shadows- a voyeur of the outside world instead of a part of it.

He is absorbed in the grungy apartment, finding a hole in the wall that contains a tooth, and Simone's dress stuffed in a cupboard. Paranoia morphs into personality incoherence as Trelkovsky begins to believe he is Simone- dressing up like a woman; gushing over shoes and realizing, "I think I'm pregnant,"; and finally jumping from his window mimicking Simone's fate.

The film's spiral into weirdness is only heightened by the fact that Polanski is the main character. He is the director of two previous films about women going insane who then directs himself as a man who turns into a woman who goes insane. The final scene with all of the neighbors watching his meltdown as if he is on a stage leaves us with the feeling that Polanski was struggling with the very public exposure of his work and tragic private life.

His life had become a must-watch horror movie, so he blurred the lines between his life and his art- by literally inserting himself  into the surreal visions that he had depicted in his earlier films. It's one of the strangest descents into madness by a character (and perhaps a director) in film.