(Late) February, 2009

Auteur House customers,
Belated ‘February’ greetings.  Apologies for not quite keeping to the monthly schedule.  I must have thought 2009 a leap year. 

New Releases

The jewel in February’s crown is “The Counterfeiters”.  An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film this sly Austrian effort manages a different take on the Holocaust, even flirting with black humour in telling a largely true tale of pre-war Jewish criminals forced to fake Allied currency from within a concentration camp.  The ethical dilemmas this poses makes for riveting drama.

Another Film Festival favourite is “Head On” director Fatih Akin’s “The Edge of Heaven”.  A more direct examination of the Turkish/German experience than its celebrated predecessor, “The Edge of Heaven” has a delicate structure and deliberate pace with overlapping stories of two generations of families bound together by violent tragedy.  Amongst a strong cast it is pleasing to see Fassbinder veteran Hannah Schgulla contributing to 21st century German cinema.

Austrian Michael Haneke makes his English language debut with “Funny Games”, a remake of his 1997 classic of the same name featuring Naomi Watts, Tim Roth and Michael Pitt.  Although given a lukewarm critical reception in the States, the latter day “Funny Games” retains the creepy sense of dread and self-reflexive elements of the original. Haneke’s innate intelligence and seriousness of purpose separates it completely from contemporary thrillers like “Saw” or “Hostel” where the torture is there to be enjoyed.

Of an entirely more romantic disposition is “Paris”.  An ensemble piece loosely structured around the potential last weeks of young dancer with a life threatening heart condition, it blends laughs and tears in a typically effortless European manner.  Juliette Binoche is her usual luminous self.

Far more light weight is French farce “The Dinner Guest”, a comedy whose title - reminiscent of the classic “The Dinner Game” - does it few favours.  Still, Daniel Auteuil gives another polished performance as a long unemployed fifty-something desperate to get his toe back in the managerial door and willing to tweak his slightly eccentric image in order to do so.

“XXY” is a Cannes winner from Spain.  A coming of age drama in which the protagonist struggles with both sexuality and gender, it is probably not a rental option for the conservative or religiously inclined.

More politically confrontational is “Redacted” Brian De Palma’s take on the Iraq war.  Long the least respected of the ‘movie brat’ generation of American filmmakers who emerged in the 1970s De Palma here shrugs off his usual stylish excesses to confront the wayward foreign policy of the Bush Administration in a manner in someways reminiscent of “Casualties of War”, his version of Vietnam.

George A Romero, the father of zombie cinema, has been around almost exactly as long as De Palma.  His latest, “Diary of the Dead”, sees a  return to his independant roots and with it a return to form.  Shooting digitally with complete artistic control Romero produces something far superior to his last studio financed effort, 2006’s “Land of the Dead”.  Examining the communications revolution and the information overload that comes with the internet Romero isn’t subtle, but he is effective in ways other would-be zombie directors will never be.

The synopsis of “Starting Out in the Evening” makes it sound like the thinking person’s “Finding Forrester”.  Frank Langella, recently lauded for playing Tricky Dicky in “Frost/Nixon”, is a once respected novelist who has fallen on hard literary times.  He senses a chance at redemption when his work is rediscovered by a graduate student.

For those wanting a guilty pleasure there is “The Bank Job”, a fascinating true story of cockney gangsters and corruption in Tory places superficially directed by our own Roger Donaldson.  Whatever its failings “The Bank Job” at least moves quickly and offers a lot of T & A.  I express these thoughts at greater length elsewhere:

http://auteurhouse.com/blog/2008/09/16/the-bank-job-2008/
My personal favourite for February, arguably the best film of 2008, is the Coen brothers satire “Burn after Reading”.  Every bit as good as their previous, award-winning effort, “No Country for Old Men”, it sees Joel and Ethan at their most bitter and satirical, with little respect for their self-obsessed, self-serving characters.  For those interested, I’ve reviewed it twice:

http://auteurhouse.com/blog/2008/10/20/burn-after-reading-2008/

http://auteurhouse.com/blog/2009/03/01/burn-after-reading-2008-capsule-review/

New to DVD:

Fans of silent cinema will be well pleased to hear that the House has acquired “The Cabinet of Dr Caligari” on DVD.  The granddaddy of all German expressionist films, with its strange somnambulist, stylised sets and painted light, is ninety years young and has not looked this good since first release.

Perhaps even more exciting is a box set containing all the silent features and most of the sound work by the great comedian Harold Lloyd.  Clocking in at over twenty four hours, it also features a number of Lloyd’s later shorts together with supplementary documentaries to better contextualise the career of a man who was more popular in the 1920s that either Chaplin or Keaton.  Particularly recommended are “Why Worry?” (arguably Lloyd’s funniest film), “For Heaven’s Sake”, “The Kid Brother” and, of course, the classic “Safety Last”.

Jean Vigo’s 1934 “L’Atalante” is the best work of a short-lived genius who only made masterpieces.  Poetically realistic, it is a highly romantic story of newly weds on a river barge.  The unforgettable Michel Simon plays grizzled cupid to the couple who find, lose and regain love in the course of 87 glorious minutes.

Francois Truffaut was one of Vigo’s greatest fans as well as the leading cineaste of the French New Wave.  His 1973 “Day for Night”, a self-reflexive tale of film-making features an ensemble cast which mixes Truffaut veterans such as Jean-Pierre Leaud with then stars like Jacqueline Bisset.  The director’s most explicit homage to the medium, “Day for Night” won the Best Foreign Language Oscar of its year.

Another award winner new to Auteur House is “Padre Padrone” which took out the Palm d’Or at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.  It is a true account of an Sardinian lad who survives a violent upbringing to educate himself.  Two later works by the same directors, Vittorio and Paolo Taviani, are also available: 1982’s “Night of the Shooting Stars”, the tale of a small Italian town during World War II immediately prior to its liberation by American forces and 1984’s “Kaos”, a multi-story epic set in 19th century Sicily.

Less critically respectable but equally Italian are a pair of horrors by maestro Mario Bava: 1966’s “Kill Baby Kill” and 1971’s “Twitch of the Death Nerve”.  Like Dario Argento, Bava is a renowned stylist of the genre and his work is highly recommended to aficionados.

The director Mira Nair returns to form with “The Namesake”, her best work since 2001’s “Monsoon Wedding”.  It examines the Indian immigrant experience across two generations, exploring the experiences of a young married couple who arrive in America in the late 1970s and those of their son who returns to his parents’ country thirty years later.

One of the British ‘kitchen sink’ cycle of the early 1960s “The Loneliness of the Long Distant Runner” sees a young, scrawny and angry working class man (Tom Courtney) come up against the establishment and serve his time in borstal.  Director Tony Richardson’s fondness for tampering with film speed anticipates his “Tom Jones” even if the “Runner”’s tone and look are radically different.  Michael Redgrave does good work in support.

Far more colourful - psychedelic, even - is “A Technicolour Dream”, a documentary about a 1967 London ‘musical happening’ that featured a Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd.  It is very groovy.  The bonus material includes full performances of the band’s “Astronomy Domine” and “Arnold Layne”.

A Criterion Collection copy of Laurence Olivier’s landmark version of “Henry V” dates from a much earlier era of British cinema.  We also have the best possible print of “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp”, the World War II satire made by the wunderkinds of that age, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Powell’s and Pressburger’s “A Matter of Life and Death” (aka “Stairway to Heaven”) rates as the finest film acquired by Auteur House this year.  An elaborate fantasy whose parallel plot-lines trace life and afterlife, anticipating and far surpassing the likes of “Pan’s Labyrinth”, it has David Niven as a RAF pilot who miraculously escapes death only to be put on celestial trial for his cheek.  Visually sumptuous, both in early technicolour and period monochrome, it is equally well written, easily transcending propaganda messages designed to enhance then strained  relations between Britain and America.