Suffer the Children

Film: Entre les Murs (The Class)
Format: DVDs from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I have watched a lot of movies in my lifetime. There are movies that I have loved, movies that I have hated, and movies that have bothered me on a deep level. But until tonight, I have never seen a movie that flat out pissed me off as much as Entre les Murs (The Class). I’ll be blunt here: I had to actively force myself to continue watching this after the first half hour, and the film runs somewhat longer than two.

I’ll make this short: the film takes place in a school in France. I’m not really sure of the level. The kids are in their middle teens, but they talk about eventually going to high school. Perhaps the French system is different. I’m not really sure. Anyway, the film tends to focus on the French teacher, Francois Marin (Francois Begaudeau). More specifically, it focuses on one specific class of his, which appears to have about 8,000 students.

Garbo Laughs!

Film: Ninotchka
Format: DVDs from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I have discovered that I have a real appreciation for Ernst Lubitsch’s work. He had a style and a quality that most filmmakers past and present seem to lack. There is a touch of class and humanity to Lubitsch’s work as well as moments of sublime comedy. A part of his working philosophy was that even the most dignified person is completely ridiculous at least twice a day. It’s a great observation, and it’s one that informs a great deal of his work, including Ninotchka. (Incidentally, as an Anglophone, it’s disconcerting to type the names “Lubitsch” and “Ninotchka” over and over—all those damn consecutive consonants!)

Anyway, Ninotchka is a love story, and true to form for good ol’ Ernst, it’s a genuine romance. There’s comedy, there’s some intrigue, and there are some characters who are quite a bit more than they appear on the surface. This is a smart film, while it comes from the era of the screwball, it is most definitely not one. Oh, there’s plenty of comedy here, but it’s not of the laugh-out-loud variety. Most of it is subtle, occurring in the margins of the story. It’s the sort of comedy that causes a smile and a knowing nod rather than a knee-slap.

Re-Enlistment Blues

Film: From Here to Eternity
Format: DVDs from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

There’s a reason that many films involving the military paint a fairly positive picture. This is particularly true of older films. A positive portrayal of the military means military cooperation—actual soldiers to work as extras, equipment, legitimate uniforms, all the perks. Go off script and paint the military as something less than stellar back in the day, you were on your own. A film like From Here to Eternity? There are a lot of military sins to make up for with this one.

The story takes place in the months leading up to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. We start with Private Robert E. Lee “Prew” Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) being reassigned to the military base at Pearl Harbor. Prewitt is a good soldier and also the top man in the bugle corps, but asked for a transfer when he was replaced as the top bugler by the friend of his commanding officer. Prewitt is also an accomplished boxer, and this will be important as we move along. When he arrives at the base, he encounters his old friend Maggio (Frank Sinatra) and also meets Sergeant Milt Warden (Burt Lancaster), a by-the-book sergeant who essentially runs the company.

The World is Yours

Film: Scarface: Shame of a Nation, Scarface
Format: DVDs from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

At the start of every quarter in school, I ask my students to answer a few questions for me juts to help me learn their names a little better. One of those questions, naturally, is their favorite movie. Scarface gets named with relative frequency, and when it does, I ask the student in question if he (it’s invariably a guy) means the original or the remake. “The original!” he’ll say each time. “The one with Pacino!” And so I sadly shake my head and explain how that’s the remake, and that particular class never again gets in my grill about my movie knowledge.

The original, frequently called Scarface: Shame of a Nation will be familiar to those much more comfortable with the remake, because the remake really is a remake in a lot of ways. In this case, though, we are dealing not with a Cuban cocaine lord but a Prohibition-era Italian beer runner named Tony Camonte (Paul Muni). Camonte is the muscle for a booze runner named Big Louis, but Big Louis doesn’t make it past the first ten minutes of the film. It’s pretty evident that Camonte is the man behind the trigger, and that he is working at the behest of Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins).

Off Script: Death Machine

Film: Death Machine
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop

When you watch films off a planned list, you start to realize particular things. One things that you realize pretty quickly is that any list—even the AFI’s top 100—on some level reflects the tastes, opinions, and ideas of the list creator(s). Sometimes that’s easier to hide, and longer lists, since they include more, are less prone to personal bias. I say all of this because I’m starting to learn things about the editors of Fangoria Magazine and about their personal tastes in films beyond the basic “We like ‘em splattery!”

Death Machine is an odd choice for the Fangoria list. At least I found it an odd choice because I really don’t know what to make of it. It feels very much like a film created by a very talented and clever amateur. There are certainly some aspects of this film that really work and others that fall about as flat as a typical SyFy Original.

Wild Card

Film: One-Eyed Jacks
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

The revenge picture is about as old as movies themselves, and the revenge Western pretty much starts with the first ever Western. Even a film as rudimentary as The Great Train Robbery contains an element of revenge in the narrative—bad guys rob the bank and the good guys track them down and shoot them for their crime. As the genre grew and changed, so too did the nature of revenge in Westerns. One-Eyed Jacks, the one and only directorial effort from Marlon Brando, uses revenge as the driving force throughout. The nature of the revenge changes as the film continues, but don’t kid yourself; it’s revenge all the way through.

We start with a trio of (naturally) bank robbers. Rio (Brando), Dad Longworth (Karl Malden), and Doc (Hank Worden) manage to rob a bank in Mexico and get out of town, heading to a local whorehouse after the robbery. Rio goes off on his own, and when the posse rolls into town, they kill Doc. Rio and Dad ride off, pursued by the Rurales. Eventually, Dad and Rio are trapped on a hilltop with only one horse. They make a deal—one will ride off for fresh mounts while the other holds off the posse. Rio arranges for Dad to ride away, and he does, getting himself a fresh mount at a nearby farm. However, instead of going back for his friend, he rides away, allowing Rio to be captured and imprisoned for five years.

Goin' to a Show

Film: Jalsaghar (The Music Room)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I find it difficult to classify Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar as a musical despite the fact that it features a number of musical performances. It’s not a musical in the traditional sense; we don’t get people singing about their feelings or emotions. Instead, the film is based in part around a series of musical performances that are, more or less, staged concerts.

Biswambhar Roy (Chhabi Biswas) is one of the last zamindars in India, a zamindar being the equivalent of a feudal lord. The time of the zamindars is ending, and Roy is suffering financially due to a lack of lands to control. This doesn’t bother him much, and he lives his life as if the money will never stop. His great passion is music, and he frequently hires musicians to come and play in his private music room, inviting other important people in the area to enjoy the concerts. These cost him a great deal—in addition to paying for the entertainment he must pay for refreshments for the guests. It doesn’t trouble him, though.