What We're Watching: The Belated Editon

What We're Watching is back! As noted below, Facets Features was on brief hiatus to enjoy wine on the Seine and walks through the Marais. So, as we're covering two weeks, this new edition should be larger than usual.

On Facets staff playlists....

Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) - As ordered by the Facets Marketing Department, I watched Scorsese's masterpiece. I waited decades, why? The boxing ring has never been so poetic, and the sound design ranks amongst cinema's best. (Phil Morehart)

American Hardcore (Paul Rachman, 2006) - Find my Cincinnati CityBeat review of the punk rock doc, here.

Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette, 1958-60)

Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) - Note: Rivette and Godard are perfect trip-planners for a Paris vacation. (PM)

Pars Vite et Reviens Tard (Régis Wargnier, 2007)

Moliere (Laurent Tirard, 2007)

Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006)

Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, 2006) - I'll watch anything on an airplane. Luckily, Air France, in addition to offering excellent food, also features fine film selections to distract passengers from the fact that they are hurdling through the air thousands of miles above the Earth. Pars Vite et Reviens Tard was pure popcorn fare about a cop investigating a nutjob determined to bring the black plague back to Paris, complete with chases across the Parisian rooftops. Mon dieu! Moliere was light, costumed comedy, with Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) as the young playwright living the situations and meeting the characters that would pop-up in his later work. Bobby was a bloated corpse bogged down by too many marquee names, but the interspersed documentary footage of Robert Kennedy was interesting. Rocky Balboa was the biggest surprise. Perhaps it was the wine at a high altitude or maybe because I'm in the midst of an unexpected boxing flick kick (see Raging Bull above and Golden Boy below), but I was completely wowed by the franchise's last installment. Stallone's direction was solid and, for once, he was believable as Balboa, now a restauranteur/boxing caricature, alone without wife or son, who fights for a taste of the ring again. (PM)

Golden Boy (Rouben Mamoulian, 1939) - This 1939 boxing classic about the fatally determined kid torn between the ring and his love for the violin screened as a part of a retrospective on Mamoulian at the Cinematheque Francais. It was the perfect ending to a near 12-hour day of non-stop walking - light and corny, yet no less dark in its portrayal of the dirty, cynical side of New York City's boxing biz. Barbara Stanwyck as the woman who confuses the boxer's heart and William Holden as his very Italian father deliver standout performances. (PM)

Art School Confidential (Terry Zwigoff, 2006)

Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971) - Julie Christie is a honey. (Dan Mucha)

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, 2006)

The Namesake (Mira Nair, 2007) - I loved it, but Kal Penn does not make a convincing 16-year-old. (Ed Husayko)

Fracture (Gregory Hoblit, 2007) - A delicately crafted cat-and-mouse game between two opposite characters, which is the point. I guess that is too subtle for the reviewers who didn’t seem to get it. (Susan Doll)

Starbucking (Bill Tangeman, 2006) - An amateur documentary about a guy who attempts to visit all of the Starbucks in the U.S. Must be a little wired to appreciate it. (SD)

Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino, 2007) - Go see this before the Weinsteins divide it into two films and ditch the faux trailers. (SD)

Vanishing Point (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971) - See Grindhouse, then see this. (SD)

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (Matt Maiellaro/Dave Willis, 2007) - So postmodern it’s “postmodern.” (Brian Elza)

Death Race 2000 (Paul Bartel, 1975) - Possibly the most invigorating work of art to come out of the post-Classical epoch. (BE)

In Dreams (Neil Jordan, 1999) - Neil Jordan knows how to direct a picture and DP Darius Khondji sure knows how to light them, but man alive does In Dreams blow. The opening sequence is genuinely creepy, but the treatment of Annette Bening’s growing madness is masochistic, if not downright anti-feminist. (BE)

Le Mans (Lee H. Katzin, 1971) - Robert Altman directs Days of Thunder. (BE)

Little Murders (Alan Arkin, 1971) - Stage play about nihilism and random violence in New York adapted by Alan Arkin. He avoids establishing shots and shies away from filming exteriors, which complements the hyper-Jewish characters’ neuroses. Big ups for Donald Sutherland’s cameo as a hippie minister. (BE)

THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971) - On the plus side of this Lucas dystopia flick: It was the source of the opening sample on NIN’s The Downward Spiral and provided Lucas a platform to work on some Star Wars effects. On the minus end, the narrative drags in the midsection and Lucas, like a good fascist*, went back and added CGI monkeys in 2004 to perfect his vision. (BE)

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (Francis Ford Coppola, 1988) - Coppola’s shamefully overlooked biopic of the nonconformist automobile designer Preston Tucker. Beaming and effective, it makes Scorsese’s analogous movie mission, The Aviator, look like a “Spruce Goose” in comparison. (BE)

*Citational props go to Northwestern University professor Scott Curtis for this dead-on observation.