Swing Time

Swing Time (1936)

a film by George Stevens

I liked Swing Time for what it is: a light-hearted comedy with outstanding dance sequences. This movie features the amazing dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers who hover over the dance floor in some of the most beautiful sequences in the history of cinema but lack the narrative power and brilliant lines of Dancing In The Rain. When they stop dancing the movie stops glowing.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are amazing. The scene in the dance floor of the dancing academy is outstanding both because of their excellent performance as well as the camera movements which follow them without losing their moving interpretation. This sequence lingers in the history of cinema for its technical complexity but mostly because it is gripping to see this couple move with such grace and charm.

The downside of this movie was on every gap between dancing sequences. I had a hard time liking the character of Pop, I didn't believe the story and it was for me just a weak thread connecting the scenes where the dance and the music sparkle the movie with beauty and perfection.

This is a happy movie made in the hardest times and it is a spirit-warming film. With Astaire and Rogers one feels that dancing reaches perfection, that beauty is possible, that the such ease and grace make the world a better place.

Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai (1954)

a film by Akira Kurosawa

The Seven Samurai is a great combination of epic and visual lyricism. It is the kind of movie that makes kids want to be samurai and practice their sword moves and it can at the same time inspire the most elaborate speeches about the aesthetics and symbolism of Japanese cinema. This film is both a great movie and an iconic piece, it is one of those movies from which others have found inspiration and rich ideas.

A village of farmers is terrorized by a gang of bandits and in despair they look for the help of a group of samurai to defend them offering nothing but food to pay for their services. That is the premise of this story in which Kurosawa explores the nature of society, the meaning of justice and the role of the individual constrained by the circumstances of its time. Using the elements of the samurai movies and introducing the elements of what will become the Western, this movie manages to address these deep and interesting topics with great care for the visual aesthetics and a strong narrative power.

The images in this film are powerful and evocative: bandits riding towards the town blighting the life of the peasants, peasants packed together unable of fighting back the dark destiny of their village, an archer points under the rain reaching the highest epic note on the climax of the movie. The composition of the images is rich and multi-layered: the is always something going on in the foreground and in the background and this simultaneity is also used in the narrative to drive the rhythm of the story, a trick that has been used again and again but seen in this movie feels like seeing an original Dali after knowing it only through gift-shop postcards.

It doesn't get anymore epic than in this movie. The action elements of this movie are smart and make the story really enjoyable and seed the ideas that lay underneath the wonderful surface of this movie. There is action, there are cool moves, great sequences, drama and humor and in the end there is the desolation of the samurai and the peasants that linger.

Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver (1976)

a film by Martin Scorsese

Finally watching Taxi Drive turned out to be a surprising experience after the multiple of images from this movie that are part of popular culture. Printed in t-shirts and quoted to exhaustion the image of Travis Brickle came to me in a different context that the one I found in the movie. Far from witnessing a pop culture icon I was shocked by the darkness of the story of this man descending in to madness. There is no reason I can find to wear a t-shirt with the image of this character on it, but I loved the movie and its crepuscular atmosphere.

Taxi Drive is the story of a man falling into madness, but also the story of the darkness in the human soul and in one of its greatest achievements: the city. In this case it is New York City who plays the role as a dark and perverted metropolis. Gray, filthy and populated by pimps and prostitute the city is the context in which Travis is alienated by the isolation that ultimately drives him into madness. The lack of sleep, the abuse of alcohol, the obsession with a woman, this character is an spiral to dementia.

The movie is brilliant at depicting the city and the character, and as Travis finds himself sinking deeper and deeper the city also seems to present a more hostile and depraved environment. The melancholic music that follow the images of the night in New York is as memorable as the images of this character that is brilliantly brought to the screen with the ambiguous image of victim and executor that Robert De Niro delivers. This movie is a great portrayal of madness, the madness of the character and of the society which isolates him and then exalt him as a hero.

Some of the images in this movie are really iconic, they are dark but they have the visual aesthetic brilliance that make movies live outside the screen and integrate into popular culture. Perhaps, I'll buy that shirt after all.

Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet (1986)

a film by David Lynch

with Isabella Rossellini

Tue., Oct. 12/10 - 10:00pm

TIFF Bell Lightbox

I don't know how David Lynch does it but works. Picked fences and flowers, firefighters saluting from the fire truck, colorful front gardens, all of them look really scary and without being dark this movie delivers the constant feeling of desolation and siege, that something is not alright in this town even before you reach the explicit scenes.

Blue Velvet is a the story of crime and obsession but there is more in the film than just the story. This film is more about the atmosphere of constant threat is about the feeling of distress that linger whether the crime is solved or not. This atmosphere is feed by a sort of theatrically in this film, like a layer of normality that lies on top of the darkness and that can be funny like the chicken walk or entertaining like the singing performances but that keeps only a facade.

This movie features brilliant performances. There is Isabella Rossellini as a club singer that is victim and tormentor, a masochistic character that seems to suffer from Stockholm syndrome. There is Kyle Maclachlan -from twin peaks- obsessed and in the edge of crossing the line between his quiet small town life and the world of depravation. There is Laura Dern, fresh and beautiful even with the 80s styling. And finally there is Denis Hopper playing a small time lowlife with such brilliance that becomes the incarnation of evil.

Blue Velvet is a memorable movie, and it is an example of pushing the limits of what movies can achieve and deliver. A visually disturbing and aesthetically brilliant film that will haunt you after the credits are over.

Fantasia

Fantasia (1940)

a film by Samuel Armstrong, James Lgar and Bill Roberts

Walt Disney got the essence of the music video era 40 years before MTV. Fantasia features breakthrough 2D animation as visual companion to the music of great masters.

Fantasia features pieces like the Dance of the Hours, Ave Maria and accompanies them with animation shorts that do not necessarily follow the original story suggested by the music but use its rhythm and dramatical emphasis to construct new settings and images.

The animations of this movie tackle really hard problems of animation and the result is visually beautiful. Particles falling, bubbles, water, this movie has them all as no other work of 2D animation before and that itself is enough to make it a milestone. It is the beauty of those images what gives Fantasia the status of a brilliant work of art in motion and yet it is quite entertaining.

As a visual work of art Fantasia can be watched again and again and new elements are found. I'm fascinated by the timing of the animation with the music and the aesthetic beauty of the images but this movie is so rich in contents that it gives ground to analyze the political situation in Europe in the segment of Night on Bald Mountain or the great care with which ideas of evolution and origin of life are recreated in The Rite of Spring. With this film, Walt Disney took animation to a whole new level and made a wonderful film that can defy the barriers of time, today as back in its time Fantasia is an enormous piece of art.

Singin' in the Rain

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

a film by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen

The most amazing feature of Singin' in the Rain is that despite of being a brilliant musical it is also a great movie about movies. What make this movie a classic is the combination of memorable dancing sequences and a simple but entertaining story sparkled with sharp humor and vibrant characters.

Singin' in the Rain is a comedy for movie lovers. It talks of the transition to the sound-era, it plays around with stars and the studio dynamics. But what really stands out are the musical featuring a talented cast: the screwball Cosmo and his memorable "Make 'em laugh", the extremely athletic and talented Gene Kelly and the beautiful and sexy Debbie Reynolds. The dancing is modern and great, the music is beautiful, the lyrics are witty and really entertaining.

Despite being a product of a great studio and one of many musicals produced in the 40s this movie seems to defeat time and remain enjoyable many years later and provides many elements that are interesting and brilliant. The story is simple but memorable and is the testimony of an age of changes in cinema, the costumes are great and the sets are impressive. I really like the structure of the movie inside of the movie and the sequences in the studios or in the movie theater that add a sense of circularity to the mere act of watching this joyful film and trully enjoyable.

Pillow Talk

Pillow Talk (1959)
a film by Michael Gordon

I don't know what I was doing when I was a kid, but everybody seems to have watched at least one Doris Day film. I've seen clips of her movies but I was never encouraged to watch a whole movie. It took the limited selection of Netflix Canada and the distant memory of a film of a more recent film (Down with love) to get me to watch Pillow Talk. It proved to be a nice and entertaining experience. It is a fun and refreshing movie with a tone of romantic comedy that never ages even when people don't have to suffer party phone lines anymore.

Doris Day plays an independent and stylish interior decorator who has to share a phone line with Rock Hudson who plays a chauvinistic and handsome music composer. They hate each other and I don't want to spoil the movie by describing how they fall in love.

Rock Hudson and Doris Day make a really funny duo and their dialogs and the scenes are fullof humor and grace. In this sense pillow talk seems to be a manual for making a good romantic comedy. There is a best friend of the couple, there is teasing and there is romance. What is memorable about Pillow Talk is the freshness and the perfect combination of the elements that are still in use for this kind of stories.

This film is not an art-house production but it is great in its own style and addressing a wide audience. It is an aesthetically beautiful and stylish film in the lighthearted spirit of a fresh and entertaining romantic comedy.

Sweet Smell of Success

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

a film by Alexander Mackendrick

It was the news of Tony Curtis dead what drove my attention to this movie. All columns coincide in pointing towards his great talent for comedy and his role in this film as his best performance in drama. Pretty early in the film it is evident what the columns are talking about as Tony Curtis seems processed by the ambitious and bold press agent Sydney Falco who serves as the right hand of J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), an almighty and really scary columnist and media celebrity.

The thing I enjoyed the most about the movie were the dialogues which are fast and fluent and full of the 50s lingo. Characters often seem to be wrestling with really well delivered lines that make vibrant this plot full of intricate connections. Burt Lancaster is great at playing this almighty columnist, laking of any moral but rich in powerful connections and with an incestuous obsession for his sister.

Tony Curtis is the emerging character, full of new tricks and energy but willing to jump any moral barrier to get to his objective. He surprised me sometimes as the representation of an evil spirit when he moves around Burt Lancaster and whispers in his ear the latest details of his plot. His presence in the screen is handsome in an unconventional way with a touch of evil and lots of energy. The praise for his work in this film is well deserved as he grants the energy, the ambition and a soul to this character. As a counterpoint to these two giant characters is the two female roles which I found too weak in the chauvinistic aura that surrounds the male characters.

This movie surprised me as a really engaging and stylish film noir. The camera work is superb and delivers some memorable sequences like the ones of the Jazz quintet in the bar or J.J. facing Dallas in the theater where his show is recorded. It has a great rhythm and great dialogues delivered with great acting and memorable lines, "The cat's in a bag and the bag's in a river".

North by Northwest

North by Northwest (1959)

a film by Alfred Hitchcock

One of the great things about movies is that they can transport the story to places and situations that you wouldn't expect to be driven to and in a blink of an eye you find yourself in the middle of an intricate plot in an exotic or at least unexpected destination. This is exactly the experience that I had with North by Northwest and although some of the scenes that compose this movie have been so widespread in popular culture, the story itself unravels in a surprising and entertaining way.

Cary Grant plays an executive mistaken with Mr. George Kaplan when he summons the hotel attendant who is paging Kaplan. This triggers a series of situations which include his kidnap, an attempt of fake suicide, an assassination in the United Nations, falling in love with a beautiful blonde and escaping from a biplane in the middle of an Illinois cornfield -one of the most memorable scenes of the history of cinema- among many others.

North by Northwest surprised me as a mosaic of preposterous situations that nevertheless compose a really amusing story. This movie is great catching the ambient of the Cold War with an organization in shadows with interests that go beyond any individual and that twist the life of this successful and socially recognized character who becomes a victim by pure coincidence.

I was amazed by the interpretation of Cary Grant who seems to carry the movie on his back as the secondary characters seemed somewhat opaque. It is his expression and his versatility as an actor what articulates the story, and as he jumps from action to comedy so easily he keeps the rhythm of the film. This is a great interpretation and it is delivered in the great scenes that Alfred Hitchcock manages to create, with this brilliance he transported me from New York to North Dakota in the blink of an eye and send me home with a great smile.