92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane, 1975)

 

Margot Kidder and Peter Fonda in 92 in the Shade

Cast: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Margot Kidder, Burgess Meredith, Harry Dean Stanton, Elizabeth Ashley, Sylvia Miles, William Hickey, Louise Latham, Joe Spinell. Screenplay: Thomas McGuane, based on his novel. Cinematography: Michael C. Butler. Film editing: Ed Rothkowitz. Music: Michael J. Lewis. 

Thomas McGuane's 92 in the Shade feels like a souped-up home movie, as if he had invited a group of his friends down to Key West to smoke weed and act out scenes from his novel. The movie is all set-up and no delivery, the set-up being the efforts of Tom Skelton (Peter Fonda) to muscle in on the business of taking tourists on fishing trips that has been monopolized by the team of Carter (Harry Dean Stanton) and Dance (Warren Oates). The rest is a collection of incidents involving oddball characters played by scene stealers like Burgess Meredith, Elizabeth Ashley, Sylvia Miles, and William Hickey, though Joe Spinell manages to steal more scenes than any of them. Eventually, the movie has to end, a problem that McGuane solved by filming at least three endings, only one of which, the darkest, I have seen. It's the kind of film that could only have been made in the 1970s, the heyday of stoner movies, which means that its audience today is probably limited to film historians, curiosity seekers, and aging potheads. 

It Felt Like Love (Eliza Hittman, 2013)

Ronen Rubinstein and Gina Piersanti in It Felt Like Love

Cast: Gina Piersanti, Giovanna Salimeni, Ronen Rubinstein, Kevin Anthony Ryan, Nyck Caution, Nicolas Rosen, Case Prime. Screenplay: Eliza Hittman. Cinematography: Sean Porter. Production design: James Boxer. Film editing: Scott Cummings, Carlos Marques-Marcet. 

Eliza Hittman's first feature, It Felt Like Love, is a dip into the hormonal stew of adolescence, centered on 14-year-old Lisa (Gina Piersanti), who wants to be like her older but not wiser friend Chiara (Giovanna Salimeni). It's summer, and the girls don't have much to do besides hang out on the beach, while Chiara goes through a series of boyfriends. Taking her cues from her friend, Lisa singles out Sammy (Ronen Rubinstein), who works in a convenience store, and makes a play for him that ends in an awkward sexual encounter. There's not much more to the film than that, but Hittman, working on a shoestring budget, manages to craft an edgy portrait of a time in life when desire dangerously encounters possibility.  

The Boys From Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983)

Cast: Doze Niu, Chang Shih, Chao Peng-chue, Lin Hsiu-ling, Chen Shu-fang, Jang Chuen-fang, Tuo Tsung-hua, Hou Hsao-hsien, Lang Li-yin. Screenplay: Chu T'ien-wen. Cinematography: Chen Kunhou. Film editing: Liao Ching-song. Music: Jonathan Lee, Su Lai. 

Like the boys of its title, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Boys From Fengkuei isn't going anywhere in particular. The boys are in a kind of limbo, out of school and waiting to be called up for military service, spending the time as adolescence segues into adulthood by goofing off and getting into fights. It centers on Ah-ching (Doze Niu), the most thoughtful of the group, but also the one who gets them in trouble with the police, spurring their departure from the small town of Fengkuei to the larger port city of Kaohsiung where they manage to do a little growing up. A colorful coming-of-age movie, its strengths lie in the way it universalizes its particulars, capturing an epoch in the boys' lives and vividly depicting its Taiwanese setting.

True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital ... (Abdenour Zahzah, 2024)

Alexandre Desane in True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital ...

Cast: Alexandre Desane, Gérard Debouche, Nicolas Dromard, Omar Boulakirba, Amal Kateb, Catherine Boskowitz, Chahrazad Kracheni, Kader Affak. Screenplay: Abdenour Zahzah. Cinematography: Aurélien Py. Film editing: Youcef Abba, Abdenour Zahzah. 

The full title is True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, When Dr Frantz Fanon Was Head of the Fifth Ward Between 1953 and 1956. Which pretty much tells you that the film is a docudrama about the work of the revolutionary intellectual during a crucial period of his life. Fanon, played by Alexandre Desane, came to work at the Algerian mental institution when the conflict between the colonizing French and the Algerian people was nearing a flashpoint. He found a hospital in the grip of antique psychotherapeutic practices and racist assumptions by the French doctors in charge. His work transformed the hospital and drew attention to his ideas about the mental damage done by racism and colonialism not only to the native Algerians but also to the French who were occupying their country. It's a sober film, a series of incidents with no leavening humor or narrative suspense, but a provocative one even today, as racial stereotyping and inflexible ideology continue to afflict even those of us who oppose them. 

The Escapist (Rupert Wyatt, 2008)

Joseph Fiennes, Brian Cox, Liam Cunningham, and Seu Jorge in The Escapist

Cast: Brian Cox, Damian Lewis, Joseph Fiennes, Seu Jorge, Liam Cunningham, Dominic Cooper, Steven Mackintosh. Screenplay: Rupert Wyatt, Daniel Hardy. Cinematography: Philipp Blaubach. Production design: Jim Furlong. Film editing: Joe Walker. Music: Benjamin Wallfisch. 

Prison break movies tend to fall into three types: the moral fable like A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956), the technical thriller like Escape From Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979) and Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960), and the sentimental melodrama like The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994). The Escapist tries to be all three, which results in something of a muddle. Director and co-writer Rupert Wyatt intercuts the drama leading up to the escape with scenes from the escape itself, which challenges the viewer to keep track of time and place. This scrambling of the narrative serves a purpose which is revealed at the end of the film, at the risk of alienating the viewer. Fortunately, he has an ensemble of fine actors, headed by Brian Cox, who make things watchable even amid the confusion and occasional implausibility.  

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)

Nora Aunor and Phillip Salvador in Bona

Cast: Nora Aunor, Phillip Salvador, Marissa Delgado, Raquel Monteza, Venchito Galvez, Rustica Carpio, Nanding Josef, Spanky Manikan. Screenplay: Cenen Ramones. Cinematography: Conrado Baltazar. Art direction: Joey Luna. Film editing: Augusto Salvador. Music: Max Jocson, Lutgardo Labad.

Nora Aunor, who was a superstar in the Philippines, gives a fine performance in the title role of Bona, Lino Brocka's portrait of toxic masculinity. Hanging out on the fringes of a location shoot for an action movie, Bona develops a crush on Gardo (Phillip Salvador), a good-looking bit player who has aspirations to stardom. Gardo notices her and starts letting her run errands for him, but when she neglects her duties in her large working class household, her irascible father (Venchito Galvez), beats her with his belt. Bona moves into Gardo's shack in the Manila slums, serving as his housekeeper. He's a drunk and a layabout with a succession of girlfriends, but he's not as given to violence as Bona's father -- or, as we will see, her older brother. Their relationship gradually disintegrates until, expelled from her family and threatened with abandonment by Gardo, Bona finally takes revenge. It's a solid domestic melodrama given bite and purpose by Brocka's characteristic attention to the actuality of life on the fringes of Philippine society. 

The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke, 1989)

Cast: Birgit Doll, Dieter Berner, Leni Tanzer, Udo Samel, Silvia Fenz, Elisabeth Rath, Georg Friedrich. Screenplay: Michael Haneke, Johanna Teicht. Cinematography: Anton Peschke. Production design: Rudolf Czettel. Film editing: Marie Homolkova. 

In The Seventh Continent, Michael Haneke reveals himself as a mannerist filmmaker, relying more on camera and editing technique than on conventional narrative and characterization. He knows precisely how to manipulate the audience, realizing that they're likely to have a visceral reaction to images of tropical fish flopping in their death throes, money being flushed down a toilet, or perfectly good clothing and furniture being ripped to shreds and smashed wantonly, and that their reaction has a greater emotional immediacy than the fate of his human characters. He only trusts that the audience will realize the enormity of their reactions afterward. The problem, I think, is that his mannerisms become almost comic, allowing viewers to distance themselves from whatever Haneke may be trying to say about existential ennui or whatever else motivates the ordinary family in his film to do the terrible thing they do. 

Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971)

Cast: Caroline Cartier, Danièle Croisy, Françoise Guégan, Patrick Verde, Bernard Menez. Screenplay: Jacques Rozier. Cinematography: Colin Mounier. Film editing: Odile Faillot, Jacques Rozier. Music: Daevid Allen, Gong, Gilli Smyth.

Jacques Rozier's Near Orouët is about the summer vacation of three young women on the Atlantic near the village of Orouët, the name of which (pronounced with a final T) seems to set these Parisians into fits of giggles -- but then almost everything does. This is a giddy account of nothing more than their summer of sunning, eating, drinking, sailing, horseback riding, flirting with one young man, and tormenting another. The tormented one is Gilbert (Bernard Menez) who during the rest of the year works in a small office as the supervisor of one of the women, Joëlle (Danièle). Obviously smitten, he shows up uninvited after learning where she is vacationing, but his attempt to ingratiate himself with her and her friends is thwarted by the arrival of a more handsome and self-possessed young man, Patrick (Patrick Verde), who has a sailboat. The film is a trifle, one of those movies that expect you to enjoy getting to know the characters. But it's also two and a half hours long, so by the time it ends you may have become better acquainted with the three young women than you wanted to be. 

Miami Blues (George Armitage, 1990)

Alec Baldwin in Miami Blues

Cast: Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Fred Ward, Charles Napier, Nora Dunn, José Pérez, Obba Babatundé, Shirley Stoler. Screenplay: George Armitage, based on a novel by Charles Willeford. Cinematography: Tak Fujimoto. Production design: Maher Ahmad. Film editing: Craig McKay. Music: Gary Chang. 

Miami Blues is one of those movies that just miss. Alec Baldwin's ex-con comes to Miami because it seems like a good place to start over, which he does with some deft larceny (and some incidental manslaughter) at the airport. He checks into a hotel and asks the bellhop to procure him a woman, who turns out to be Jennifer Jason Leigh's sunny, naïve hooker. Meanwhile, he captures the attention of Fred Ward's scruffy cop, and the three of them begin a playful but sometimes brutal interaction. The movie has all the elements: a cast working at top form, a story with some amusing reversals of expectation, a gallery of quirky supporting characters, and a colorful milieu. The three leads are all cheerful caricatures drawn from crime fiction, but reality overlaps the caricature and the tone of the movie goes sour, turning it  darker and heavier than it really wants to be.

Bully (Larry Clark, 2001)

Nick Stahl and Brad Renfro in Bully

Cast: Brad Renfro, Bijou Phillips, Rachel Miner, Nick Stahl, Michael Pitt, Leo Fitzpatrick, Kelli Garner, Daniel Franzese, Natalie Paulding, Jessica Sutta, Ed Amatrudo, Steve Raulerson, Judy Clayton, Alan Lilly, Irene B. Colletti. Screenplay: David McKenna, Roger Pullis, based on a book by Jim Schutze. Cinematography: Steve Gainer. Production design: Linda Burton. Film editing: Andrew Hafitz. 

Is Larry Clark's Bully sleazy exploitation, or is it a dark tragicomedy? That it might be both suggests a failure of the filmmakers to maintain a consistent tone. The first part of the film clearly seems designed to shock and titillate, as we get to know the coterie of teenagers that has formed around Bobby (Nick Stahl) and his so-called best friend, Marty (Brad Renfro), who are locked in a sadomasochistic relationship. Blasting hard-core rap on their radios, they cruise their Florida neighborhoods in search of sex and drugs. They find a lot of both, and the sex is generously depicted on screen. But then the film turns in another direction as Marty's girlfriend, Lisa (Rachel Miner), begins to see Bobby as a threat to her relationship with Marty. She takes the process of eliminating that threat to its extreme: murder. The film then tilts into black comedy, as the inept, drug-addled gang develops a plot to off Bobby. But then it veers back into something like reality when their plot almost accidentally succeeds and the members of the gang sober up enough to be aware of what they've done. I think Bully would have been received more generously if Clark had treated the sex scenes more discreetly, giving some in the audience an excuse to dismiss it as semi-pornographic. But the film, which is based on an actual case, still has the power to disturb.