CS Film Club II

Night Moves

Night Moves is an interesting movie that I'm still trying to wrap my head around.  In fact, there's a part of me that feels maybe I should give it another day or two to settle in.  On the one hand it comes across as a straightforward noir but on the other hand there are definite layers to peel back, not in terms of the plot but layers regarding character motivations and backstory.  The story itself isn't terribly complicated although it does have its twists and turns like any noir worth its salt would have.  It's the other elements of the film that make it feel real, elements that at first don't feel like they really pertain to the story but are important all the same.  We get tangled up in side plots regarding adultery, blame, reconciliation, confronting trauma, and at first you think 'why am I watching this?'  Even at the end some things don't feel completely resolved but those elements serve a different purpose other than just driving the plot along from point A to point B.  It's a different type of mystery movie that hits you in ways you don't expect at all.

Gene Hackman gives a more subdued performance as Harry Moseby, a former pro-football player and current private investigator who's hired by a washed up Hollywood actress to find her runaway teenage daughter and bring her home.  Moseby quickly finds the girl in the Florida Keys but also uncovers a smuggling scheme that involves all the players in an otherwise straightforward case of a missing girl.  On paper this sounds like another neo noir about a P.I. getting in over his head while trying to root out corruption beneath the surface of a simple case or premise.  Night Moves however explores the inner workings of Moseby, his current personal conflicts with a marriage on the rocks, a vague but disturbed upbringing and his non-committal approach to his job as an investigator.  Gene Hackman plays this role very close to the vest compared to other roles and earned a BAFTA nomination for his work.  We don't get any Hackman shouts or scenes of him flying off the handle, no stern 'I'm the commander of this ship!' line.  It's a more quiet and sensitive character but still cunning, soft spoken but determined.  I might compare him to his character in The Conversation but I haven't seen that one since college so I'm not sure how apt that comparison might be.  

Aside from the plot structure, what I also noticed right off the bat is how the movie is cut.  While the movie itself moves rather slowly at points the cuts are very abrupt, almost like smash cuts between scenes.  The camera certainly doesn't linger or dwell on any location or character and even establishing shots move right along.  It gives the movie a sense of urgency and is a nice visual way to quicken the pace and keep you engaged.  Arthur Penn is a filmmaker whom I'm familiar with but I can't say I've really explored his filmography in depth.  I've seen Bonnie and Clyde which is the obvious stand out and Little Big Man but other than that it's mostly films that 'I've had on my radar' but haven't gotten around to yet.  I would be interested in reading more about the guy but I just don't think there's a lot of literature written about him.  It doesn't even need to be a book by a major publisher, I would settle for an in-depth essay, maybe not a high school paper but perhaps something at the doctoral level.  Oh forget it, no such thing exists.

B+ so says Doomsday

Wow, what a concept!

In all seriousness I'm glad you liked the film. It's one that I've only loved more and more with time. I'd also say it's Penn's second best film.

Funny Games (1997)

There are two registers at which Funny Games operates. First, at the surface level as a home invasion thriller, where a bourgeois family have their summer home invaded by a pair of sadistic young men who physically and psychologically torture mother, father, and son. The film is very effective in this regard. Michael Haneke establishes a thick layer of dread and the slow ramp-up in violence and desperation is gutting precisely because of how clinical Haneke's style is. He doesn't go in for extreme angles or aggressive cutting or tense music, he lets things play out as cold and realistically as possible. The second register is as a meta-textual critique of thrillers themselves and the nature of violent media, with one of the villains repeatedly breaking the fourth wall in ways which start to break the diegesis. This was the element I was more suspicious of. The idea of Haneke making a violent thriller than finger waving at me for liking it seemed more than a little eye-rolling, all the more so given some of the statements Haneke's made publicly.

Thankfully, I think the film's meta elements are a lot more sophisticated than that. I'm not even sure the film is a critique so much as it is a commentary on thrillers, about how we engage with their characters, what we want from them, and what purpose they serve. There's a lot here to grapple with if you're so inclined and the fact that Haneke commits so hard to the surface elements makes its meta-elements all the more compelling. I'm not sure I quite love Funny Games but it's a serious work of filmmaking made with real skill and conviction.

A-

Batman in June. Beetlejuice cartoon in September. This was Burton at the peak of his powers.

Southern Comfort (1981)
Walter Hill and John Boorman are two directors I frequently get confused: two filmmakers whose careers overlapped temporally, who tended to cover hyper-masculine themes, and who often kind of rode the line between making full-on B-movies and making relatively “legit” Hollywood action movies. So it’s also perhaps telling that Walter Hill’s 1981 film Southern Comfort sure seems like it was at least somewhat inspired by Boorman’s most famous film Deliverance in that both of them are about city slickers who find themselves too deep into the wilderness in the South and antagonize some potentially violent locals forcing them to fight to survive. That said the plot of Southern Comfort distinguishes itself in several ways: the city people we’re following are not just vacationers but rather national guard soldiers going into the Louisiana bayou on some kind of training mission without even having much in the way of live ammo on them, and the people they antagonize are Cajuns who have more legit reasons to see these gun toting assholes as a legit threat they would need to fight against. As this mission turns into a fight for survival it’s not too hard to detect an allegory here: these are arrogant American troops in a jungle-like environment fighting against locals they don’t understand and who they’re surprised to find are able to fight back using their knowledge of the land. I don’t think the film ever says the word “Vietnam” but that’s obviously what it’s about. Make no mistake though, for whatever high minded allegory there may be here this is still basically operating in the language of the B-movie. Keith Carradine is serviceable enough as a star here but his character isn’t wildly complex or memorable and I was never quite sold on how they could be this profoundly trapped in this whole situation. As an action movie there’s also a bit of a ceiling to how spectacular it gets too. Still, this is reasonably ambitious for a low budget action movie and you definitely get your Walter Hill’s worth out of it so if this is what you’re in the mood for it’s a pretty decent choice.
***1/2 out of Five

How are people feeling about the next round? Should we put a hold on it during Halloween? Or do you guys want to try to squeeze a round in?

No need to be hostile. Y’all have 809 spooky time movies to choose from.

letterboxd.com/princessmerida/list/809-halloween-movies/

Leprechaun 1, 2 and 3.
Leprechaun In Space
Leprechaun In the Hood

Ended up getting an old DVD copy of Lone Star from a friend and despite the disc looking like it was attacked by stray cats the film played mostly without issue. I'm glad it did because the film was pretty damn great. Definitely a high point of film club recommendations.

Tubi is your friend.

tubitv.com/movies/100014355/lone-star

Tubi is no friend to Canadians.

Lone Star

Lone Star has been on my radar for a long time as one of the most acclaimed American films of the 90s that I had never seen and at a certain point I realized I knew very little of what the film was actually about. I assumed it was some sort of crime story given the poster and eventual Criterion cover art but otherwise I really wasn't sure what to expect. The fact that my lone experience with writer/director John Sayles was indie afro-futurist film The Brother from Another Planet, which made me all the more intrigued but also all the more unsure. Finally having seen the film, it's not totally surprising I didn't know much about the film as its a fairly quiet and modest film despite its acclaim. Lone Star is ostensibly a murder mystery which kicks off when smalltown Texas sheriff Sam Deeds discovers a skeleton buried in the desert, believed to be the remains of Charlie Wade, the bigoted and much hated Sheriff who disappeared in the fifties. Wade was succeeded by Sam's father Buddy who become a much beloved and legendary figure in the community but is someone Sam had a much thorny relationship with, and the discovery of Charlie's remains threatens to challenge that mythic standing.

That's the premise anyway and while the murder mystery plotline is interesting, it is neither overly layered nor Sayles' primary focus. The real dramatic thrust of the story are the many interpersonal links effected by this discovery that Lone Star slowly teases out and explores. We are introduced to characters and their storylines before it is entirely clear how they connect to the central narrative, the film instead generating histories in them as people before contextualizing them in the plot. I quickly found myself much more consumed by the interpersonal drama than I was what exactly happened to Charlie Wade in 1957. These relations play out across the complex racial and ethnic lines of Texas and the cross-cultural mingling and tensions between white, Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people, which itself is backgrounded by debates about how the history of Texas is taught to students. An early scene where white teachers bemoan their Latino or white allies peers teaching high schoolers in such a way which acknowledges genocide, colonialism, and racism is strikingly prescient in an era of outrage over critical race theory and wokeism. Nothing changes.

Sayles' screenplay is quite an accomplishment in developing a complex intersecting web of multi-faceted characters and conflicts amidst a rewarding murder-mystery. His direction is far less showy but this too is a strength. Lone Star deals with some extremely incendiary material and its plot also veers into potentially melodramatic territory but Sayles' hand is always restrained. The film's tenor rarely rises to even a shout. It is a mature, thoughtful rumination on the myths which construct our history and how we are to move forward, and it is executed with sublime storytelling instincts.

A

Excellent recommendation, Phantom. In for next round.