Film Reviews

High and Low (1963)
[Tengoku to jigoku]
directed by Akira Kurosawa
Frames in this review are taken from the Criterion DVD released in 1998.

This is a series of two articles.  The second article compares this film with its source material, Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom.

Akira Kurosawa is often mentioned in film critique as a Japanese director who was too Western to be successful in his own country.  This might seem strange, for his best-known works are largely set in Medieval Japan — Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo.  Some of them are based on works of Shakespeare, but the the settings are unmistakably Japanese and the themes are surely universal.  In addition, several of his samurai adventures were later remade into Hollywood or spaghetti westerns, but you can’t blame that on him.

High and Low, one of his less well-known films, supplies an explanation.  Although it is set in bustling Tokyo, the film’s atmosphere comes practically right out of film noir Los Angeles.  There are beachfront locations, remote hideaways, kidnapping plots, corporate power plays over a company that makes women’s high heels, and even little kids playing with cowboy hats and toy revolvers!  What's more, the film is based on an American crime novel, Ed McBain's King's Ransom.  Shakespeare in a Japanese setting is high art, but adapting an American detective thriller?!

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One in a Million (1936)
directed by Sidney Lanfield
Frames in this review are taken from the VHS tape released by Fox Video in 1993.

When you see a Hollywood studio film from the Golden Era, you know pretty much what you'll get.  However much the plot may twist and turns, Judy and Mickey will put on a show, Fred and Ginger will dance round and round, and Esther Williams will find a way to get wet.  If the film happened to come from Twentieth Century-Fox and star Sonja Henie, then you’ll be sure to see a skating exhibition.  The Norwegian figure skater Henie was one of the first to cash in on her athletic prowess on a grand scale, and is often regarded as the prototype for Olympians on cereal boxes.

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Le Déclin de l'Empire Américain
(The Decline of the American Empire) (1986)
directed by Denys Arcand
Frames in this review are taken from the Koch Lorber DVD, released in 2004.

The Decline of the American Empire is a satirical title, because the film is actually about sex. Look at the movie poster: three people holding up placards with the letters “S E X!” marked in pink. Except that the characters in Decline are academics at a Canadian university, so what they actually do is sit around and talk about their sexual escapades. Indeed, this is a very stagy film, one that has barely been opened up for film with only moderate use of location and camera moves. And these are more eye candy than a visual language -- as when the camera focus-pulls back and forth as a character exercises on a weight machine. A stage version could make do with only three sets: a kitchen, a gym, and a living room.

The film recounts one day among a group of academics in Québec. Rémy (Rémy Girard) is hosting a dinner party for his friends, and is spending the afternoon cooking with the help of three male buddies. His wife is off at the college gym, working out and swapping girl talk with the three other female invitees. As the dinner takes shape, both the men and the women talk frankly about sex — about lovers, partner-swapping, dangerous hitch-ups, drug-enhanced orgasms, and more.

The ensemble characters are defined principally in terms of their sexual relationships. Diane (Louise Portal) reveals red whip marks on her back in the locker room, and explains that she's been pursuing a masochistic relationship with a guy she met at a bar, the rough biker type Mario (Gabriel Arcand). Diane previously could never stand to be dominated by a man, but now she loves getting her hair pulled "like a horse's mane" while crouching doggy-style. [...]

Becket (1964)
directed by Peter Glenville
Frames in this review are taken from the MPI DVD.

Some Kings and Queens of England just make for better subjects of drama than others. George IV isn't nearly as interesting a character as George III, and Anne can't hold a candle to the various Henries. Such audacious and colorful characters they were, those Henries! There was Henry VIII, who converted England to Protestantism for purely selfish reasons, and ended up changing the course of history. There was Henry V, as forever immortalized by Shakespeare [link to film review], who established the English claim on the French throne and brought back a French bride from his continental wars.

But it is an even earlier Henry who features in Becket, only the second King of England to carry the name. Although the credits award first billing to Richard Burton in the title role of Becket, the film is as much about Henry as it is about Thomas à Becket. Becket is straightforward and uncomplicated — at first a worldly and scheming advisor to the King, he later becomes resolute in his godliness after becoming Archbishop of Canterbury.

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
or: How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes (1965)
directed by Ken Annakin
Frames in this review are taken from the Fox DVD, which shows once again that price is entirely unrelated to technical quality.

Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines is surprisingly funny for a comedy from 1965 filmed in 70mm. [...]

The wry verbal humor works better. The two most important capitals of the world are, of course, London and Paris. Tossing a dozen letters into international mail bins: "You know, between these invitations and the newspapers, we should reach every flying man in the world." And the pervasive joke about the limited capabilities of the planes — Flying across the English channel? How daring, it's twenty-two miles of open water! There's also the girl that Dubois keeps seeing, but she's always a different nationality each time and named after a famous actress: Brigitte, Ingrid, Marlene, Françoise, Yvette, or Betty.

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