Armando Iannucci: 'The Death of Stalin' (2017)

Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin (2017) swirls around the crisis of leadership in the Soviet Union following the sudden death of Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). Count yourself lucky if you live in a time and place where there are institutional checks and balances set up to combat such abuses of power as Stalin committed.  

With comic touches, The Death of Stalin is even more chilling than straight drama. The ensemble cast is excellent, including Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev and Jason Isaacs as the colorful Georgy Zhukov. 

To independent courts, a free press and protocols that help guide us through times of crisis! And to President George H. W. Bush 41, RIP. 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

John Binder: 'UFORIA' (1981, 1985)

John Binder's UFOria, a low budget gem made in 1981 but not released until 1985, somehow fell through the cracks of mass consciousness. 

I was lucky enough to see the film many years ago on video, and never forgot it. It hasn't to date been released on DVD or Blu-ray, nor has it been chosen for salvation by the Criterion Collection, but it sticks with me. In fact, rather magically, I was able to see it again recently! 

UFOria makes up in dialogue, good-natured satire and an excellent cast of characters what it lacks in budgeted technical virtuosity. All the actors fit their characters seamlessly, whether they have a lot of lines or just a choice few. These include Cindy "I am gonna be Noah" Williams (Laverne & Shirley), Fred "get the net, boys" Ward (Henry & June), Harry Dean "I believe I'll have a drink" Stanton (Big Love, Twin Peaks: The Return) and Hank "just for playsure" Worden (Twin Peaks).  The whole script is quotable -- I could still remember many of UFOria's juiciest lines years after last watching it. And: the soundtrack is perfectly attuned to the characters. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Doug Liman: 'Swingers' (1996)

Doug Liman's Swingers (1996), written by (and co-starring) Jon Favreau. Straightforward, low-key and small budget story about a depressed comedian (Mike, Favreau's character) and a couple of his male friends who try to help him rebound after a breakup. 

Worth seeing mostly to behold Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston and Heather Graham kicking into gear. (Ron Livingstone currently plays the lead role in Audience's Loudermilk -- second season begins in October). Swingers is set in Los Angeles and Las Vegas with drinking, swing music and dancing as a more immediate backdrop. Matches, anyone?

Lingo from the movie includes: "babies;" "beautiful babies;" "get the digits" (make sure to get her phone number); "it's on" (the game of pitching woo is on); "you're money" (believe in yourself). 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Vladimir Menshov: 'Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears' (1980)

Vladimir Menshov: Москва слезам не верит / Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1980). Extra hip factor: watched and discussed by Claudia, Elizabeth and Paige in FX's The Americans (Season 6, Episode 3, first aired on April 11, 2018).

It's 1958. Antonina, living in a Moscow worker's dorm with her friends Katerina and Lyudmila/Liudmilla, soon marries Nikolai and moves with him to the country. We next follow the antics of the other two through thick and thin.

Part 2 jumps ahead twenty years, to near the end of the 1970s. We drop in on the three comrades and see where they're at, following them into a new cycle.

A marvelous gem of a movie, providing insight into Russian cultural norms and the state of the Soviet Union at two points in its history. One cannot help but compare and contrast gender, socio-economic class, manners and outlook with other societies then and now. Both fascinating and entertaining.

A presidential note from 1985:

"Reagan Is Urged to See a Film

In the meantime, White House officials said, Mr. Reagan continues to read background memorandums prepared by Government experts on the Soviet Union. They cover everything from the personalities of Soviet leaders, Russian history, culture, foreign trade, internal economic situation and the like.

The officials said they continued to search for ways to give Mr. Reagan a ''feel'' for Soviet life and were considering asking him to watch a Soviet film or two. One possibility is the film titled ''Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears,'' a tale of three young women who come to Moscow in the late 1950's with hopes and dreams and what became of them."

From: Leslie H. Gelb, "THREE PAST PRESIDENTS MAY BRIEF REAGAN," The New York Times, November 5, 1985. Link here.

Today's Rune: Warrior. 

Michael Schultz: 'Cooley High' (1975)

Cooley High (1975). Directed by Michael Schultz, who also directed Car Wash (1976), covered here last month. Here's a link. 

The setting for Cooley High is Chicago in the year 1964. A fairly low-budget film, it was a hit in the mid-1970s, an exciting time for cultural offerings. Scripted by Eric Monte, who also worked on What's Happening!! (which shifted the Cooley High setting to Los Angeles). 

Main actors include Glynn Turman as Preach, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Cochise, Cynthia Davis as Brenda and Garret Morris as Mr. Mason, a teacher-mentor who looks out for them. Hilton-Jacobs was also in Welcome Back, Kotter, a 1970s series that co-starred John Travolta. 

Preach shows the initially dubious Brenda that they have a shared interest in poetry. He's got a sort of Thelonius Monk-Dizzy Gillespie-Spike Lee kind of look with those glasses and, when roaming around, his cap. 

Cooley High isn't all fun and games. There's a sense of mortality hovering in the background, with a couple of poignant drinking salutes to the dead -- a custom with which I am quite familiar.

Cooley High is also nicely enriched with a Motown-powered soundtrack.

Today's Rune: Partnership.    

Xan Cassavetes: 'Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession' (2004)

Xan Cassavetes: Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004). 

This is an alluring documentary that dives back into the 1970s and 1980s, beginning as an origin story and ending with the collapse of Los Angeles-based Z Channel (1974-1989), after a murder-suicide perpetrated by its talented, mentally ill main programmer, Jerry Harvey (1949-1988).

Subscription TV (now streaming, too) began in earnest with the likes of Home Box Office (HBO) in 1972, The Green Channel in 1973 -- which morphed into The Movie Channel (TMC) in 1979 -- and Z Channel. The latter included an influential sampling of international movies with subtitles, director's cuts, B movies and independent films. 

Z Channel had a profound impact on its market, especially among directors, writers, and other "creatives." Xan Cassavetes gives us a taste of representatives from this class, ranging from Penelope Spheeris to Jim Jarmusch. 

When a cool movie or director was featured on Z Channel, this was an event that could be shared in "real time," not just recorded for later, or plucked out of the ethersphere at will, or binge-watched down the pike.  

We may well wonder about delivery and recording systems now vs. then, and now vs. in the future. In those years, battle was also joined globally in the videotaping field between Sony's Betamax (Beta) and JVC's Video Home System (VHS) tapes, with Beta starting in 1975, VHS in 1976, and both lines ceasing production only in 2016.

Digital services now available dwarf what was around in the 1970s. All you need is money, access and time!

In 1975, the global human population was about 4.079 billion, 38% of it urbanized. As of 2018, it has already jumped to 7.633 billion, with 55% urbanized. What do you suppose those numbers will be in 2060?  Imagine the delivery systems forty-two years from now, when handheld devices, streaming services, driverless cars and delivery drones are old hat?  

Today's Rune: Movement.  

Michael Schultz: 'Car Wash' (1976)

Car Wash (1976). Director, Michael Schultz (born 1938), African American director of Waiting for Godot (1966), Cooley High (1975) and Black-ish (2015-2017). Writing credit (with Schultz helping refine the script): Joel Schumacher (born 1939), director of St. Elmo's Fire (1985), The Lost Boys (1987), Batman Forever (1995) and House of Cards (2013).

Car Wash is a workers' movie, a kind we ought to see more of, a kind that had a strong showing in the rough and tumble 1970s. In many ways, the decade of the 1970s was a high water mark for positive change aspirations, certainly a peak period for introspection and multicultural expression. 

Spanish subtitle: Un Mundo Aparte / "A World Apart." It's a Marxian delectable: follow the money trail. Who owns the means of production? 

Speaking of money, Richard Pryor plays Daddy Rich of the Church of Divine Economic Spirituality, certainly not a caricature when you consider that even today, in 2018, Jesse Duplantis, "televangelist and prosperity gospel preacher," wants his followers to supply him with a new fifty-four million dollar jet. (See Tim Morris, "Jesse Duplantis just wants a jet for Jesus," Nola.com and Times-Picayune, June 3, 2018. Link here).

Other characters (all of them memorable) include Antonio Fargas (Huggy Bear in Starsky & Hutch, 1975-1979) as cross-dressing and apparently gay Lindy; T.C., "The Fly" (Franklin Ajaye); Lauren Jones as Marleen, a hooker; George Carlin as "the Taxi Driver;" Ivan Dixon as the gruff-voiced, cigar-smoking Lonnie; and Bill Duke as Abdullah Mohamed Akbar. The last two characters provide moral gravity for the film, which largely through them transcends itself from light commentary into incisive, still way too pertinent social commentary.

Abdullah: "I don't know, man, I don't know. I know I'm not crazy. But every day I have to come here and watch this clown show, man. Sometimes . . . just can't take it."

Lonnie: "I know."

Abdullah has these lines, too, which seem to have been cut from the version I saw: "[to camera] If you are watching this in the future, know that time has had its way with us, and that we knew it would. And it will with you. There is no escaping this. In a strange way, it's what makes life so beautiful and strange, that nothing alive stays the same."  (See IMDB link here).

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Robert Mitchum's 'Thunder Road' (1958)

Starting with the name, "Thunder Road" takes on mythic proportions as it flows from the 1958 Robert Mitchum movie through the 1975 Bruce Springsteen song and beyond. There's even another movie with the same title out in 2018. During the US-Vietnam War, Thunder Road was the dub name for South Vietnam's National Route 13. 

The movie Thunder Road was really Robert Mitchum's labor of love. Arthur Ripley was given the director's credits. but Mitchum was the main man for this project. Much of it was filmed in and around Asheville, North Carolina, standing in for Harlan County, Kentucky, and Memphis, Tennessee.

Thunder Road is a bit different from what one might expect. It's largely sympathetic to moonshine runners in a largely dry American South, but also shows that change is inevitable. Gangsters are trying to take over the routes, lawmen seek to disrupt the system, generational differences are starting to emerge. 

Lucas (the Robert Mitchum character) is a veteran of the Korean War and a very tough dude, indeed. He has a spacial lady friend in Memphis and an admirer in a girl next door in the Appalachians. His younger brother Robin (played by Robert Mitchum's son James) services his smuggling cars but also wants to be a driver -- something Lucas wants to deter at all costs. The Korean War did something to him, too -- made him world weary. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

'Reality Bites' (1994)

Based on Helen Childress's initial ideas and multiple evolving scripts, Ben Stiller's Reality Bites (1994) takes place near the end of both the twentieth century and the analog era. Released twenty-four years ago, it now looks like an entirely different realm of the senses. Only Michael Grates, the goofy Ben Stiller character, lives as if in the twenty-first century: he's the only one with a mobile phone and a lucrative job - producing "In Your Face TV." 

The actors are fun. In addition to Stiller, there's Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawk, Janeane Garofalo and Steven Zahn, among others - Generation X, the all-Anglo version.  

Certain aspects of the film give it some gravitas: Vickie Miner (Garofalo) having to get an AIDS test; Sammy Gray (Steve Zahn) coming out; Lelaina Pierce (Ryder) having to look for a job; Troy Dyer (Hawke) having no social safety net, though he's reading Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit / Being and Time (and incidentally, I read the exact same book in 1991, while working a temp job for a non-profit called AIDSTECH).

Technology. Video recording, videotapes: Lelaina is making a documentary about her Generation X friends called Reality Bites. (Blockbuster, RIP). 

Telephony. Landlines, payphones are used by everyone except Michael and his preferred cellphones, one a clunky car phone and the other a smaller Star Trek style device. Lelaina runs up a long distance bill in no time. The scarcity of wireless and digital technology allow several suspenseful plot points that would be harder to pull off in the twenty-first century.  

Coffee and beer seem to be the preferred drinks. Set mostly in Houston, not much is drawn out of the place to distinguish it from any other large American city of the early 1990s, aside from a few cowboy hats. There's a formal yellow taxi -- no Uber, no Lyft. Lelaina's Dad's gas card covers the extra food expenses. Twenty-four years later, Reality Bites still. Only in the digital age, it's all gooder, man!

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Karel Zeman: 'Baron Prášil' / 'The Fabulous Baron Munchausen' (1962)

Karel Zeman's Baron Prášil / The Fabulous Baron Munchausen / The Outrageous Baron Munchausen (1962), a strangely smooth film that may help put you in an altered state, stars the fabulous Miloš Kopecký (1922-1996) as Baron Munchausen, and the also fabulous Jana Brejchova (born 1940) as Princess Bianca. Tonik / Tony (aka Moonman) is played by Rudolf Jelínek (born 1935). 

Which reminds me of: "They've got a moonman on the telephone / Project X, hey Houston control . . .."  ~ Iggy Pop, "Houston is Hot Tonight" (1981)

Nothing quite like The Fabulous Baron Munchausen. Go where the magic ink flows . . . 

Princess Bianca writes a letter. Hey kids, do you know what a letter is? Do you know what writing is? 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Jan Němec: 'A Report on the Party and the Guests' (1966)

Jan Němec's O slavnosti a hostech  / A Report on the Party and [the] Guests / The Party and the Guests (1966).  Banned in Czechoslovakia! Director exiled! Such facts make this film all the more compelling. In 2018, brutish leaders are in style again, randomness rules, and all bets are off. In short, this film breathes surrealism with a touch of parable concerning social expectations, management, fear and control. 

A small group of friends are enjoying a picnic in the country. They see a wedding party pass by. Then, a group of men led by an apparent psychopath arrive and make them do absurd things, until a higher up appears and next directs them to a lakeside celebration. However, one of the guests prefers not to stay. He escapes, and is then hunted by a mob while some guests remain at table, putting out candles. 

There's an eerie, unsettling feeling watching this film, the kind you might get reading Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Jan Klusák as Rudolf (pictured above) is the most effective actor, projecting volatile menace through buffoonery. He reminds me of the Rip Torn character in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), an adaption of the Tennessee Williams play, as well as "The Misfit."

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Vittorio De Sica: 'Umberto D.' (1952)

Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D. (1952) focuses on the plight of Umberto Domenico Ferrari (Carlo Battisti, 1882-1977), a pensioner trying to scrape by on his small fixed income. His only real friends are his little dog Filke and Maria (Maria-Pia Casilio), a pregnant housemaid in the building where he rents a room. Human cruelty in the film is personified by the landlady, and indifference is encountered in almost everyone else.

What I like best about Umberto D. is the comparison and contrast between Umberto's need for scrounging money before he's kicked to the curb and the day-to-day rituals maintained of necessity by Maria, even while she's pregnant courtesy of one or another soldier (she's not sure which). One cannot help but sympathize with them both. 

Filke is a pretty clever dog, by the way.  

I earlier posted on Ladri di biciclette / Bicycle Thieves (1948), another Vittorio De Sica masterwork, here. 

As I noted in that post, this film and several others somewhat like it are part of "Italian Neorealism," a group of down-to-earth tales set in the immediate post-war years (and even during the war), lasting from about 1943 until about 1952. Why "Neorealism?" Because it is sort of a sequel to "Social Realism" exemplified in works by Émile Zola (1840-1902) and Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). As conditions improved, the desire to make or see such "blues" films largely tapered off. But they are great works of art and very much wonders to behold.

Today's Rune: Flow. 

'I, Tonya' (2017)

I, Tonya, directed by Craig Gillespie and winner of an Academy Award, focuses on the life and times of skater Tonya Harding (born, 1970; as an adult, played by Margot Robbie in the movie, with her mother played by Allison Janney), including her inescapable links to fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan. 

Тоня против всех ("Tonya Against All"), as fashioned in Russian.

Music bolsters the I, Tonya story, which is set mostly in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Most importantly, the Siouxise & the Banshees version of Iggy Pop's classic sing-along tune "The Passenger" accompanies archival footage of the real Harding and crew at the end of the movie. Impressive!

I, Tonya shares a spiritual kinship with Gus Van Sant's 1995 film To Die For, which stars Nicole Kidman, abetted by Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Illeana Douglas and Casey Affleck, among others. Male sidekicks are absurd buffoons in both movies; music adds significant flavor to both (Donovan's "Season of the Witch" takes the cake in To Die For); and both proceed with a jaunty tone that's both satirical and sometimes touching. Put that on ice. Cult classics.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Pier Paolo Pasolini: 'Accattone' (1961)

Accattone (1961), Pier Paolo Pasolini's first film, is set in post-World War Two Rome among deadbeats, "scroungers" and working class denizens. Generally, able-bodied men work as little as possible, preferring to pimp out a girlfriend or commit petty thefts to get by rather than work like dogs. Many sit around at little outdoor cafe tables, clowning off with macho edginess  -- exactly as we later see New Jersey gangster crews do in The Sopranos. 

Here, Maddalena (Silvana Corsini) with Accattone (Franco Citti) in their little crib, which is a shared space.

Once Maddalena is imprisoned, Accatone scrounges up Stella (Franca Pasut) to fill in, with mixed results.

Pasolini keenly observes situations involving collisions between people and living conditions, socio-economic class structure, gender roles, and Catholicism. Shot in crisp black and white with an occasional surrealistic sequence, Accattone is a beautiful film about trapped people. The non-professional actors are superb. They've got The Look. 

Today's Rune; Fertility. 

Jim Jarmusch: 'Stranger Than Paradise' (1984)

Jim Jarmusch: Stranger Than Paradise (1984) -- same year as the Coen Brothers' first movie, Blood Simple.

Stranger Than Paradise, made on a shoestring budget, is all verve and imagination, a lovely film. 

There are really only four substantive characters in it, all related by Hungarian blood or American friendship: Willie (John Lurie), his cousin Eva (Eszter Balint), their aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark) and Willie's pal Eddie (Richard Edson). And one key song: "You Put a Spell on Me" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins. All but Aunt Lotte are in movement -- New York City, Cleveland, Florida. Jarmusch employs fades between scenes, and it's shot entirely in black and white film -- elements that one will not forget. 

Stranger Than Paradise may very well be the "freshest" of all of Jim Jarmusch's films, though Gimme Danger (2016), his recent documentary on Iggy and the Stooges, is "fresh" in its own way. 

Can you dig? I love seeing such perspectives on things, what Russian theorist Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) dubbed --  -- one hundred and one years ago -- defamilarization. Seeing ordinary seeming people and things anew, those and that which we've become "used to" -- or tired of -- with "refreshed eyes" -- and a renewed magical sense of possibility.   

Today's Rune: Strength. 

Carol Reed: 'The Third Man' (1949)

Carol Reed, The Third Man (1949), screenplay by Graham Greene. Starring Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard. 

Set in Vienna in the wake of the Second World War, The Third Man plays more like a dark comedy than the tragedy of Roberto Rossellini's Germany Year Zero (1948). Though both films deal with underground markets and are populated with several seedy, even grotesque characters, Carol Reed's take -- and Graham Greene's -- is more detached and removed from his subjects, less empathetic than Rossellini's. Yet both are fascinating.  

The Third Man underscores the evil that men do because they can. In his own way, Harry Lime (played by Orson Welles) is as ruthless, callous and brutal in worldview as the overthrown Nazis, even while Vienna is under occupation by four of the "winning" powers (Russian, American, French and British). In the face of this, what can his writer friend Holly Martins (played by Joseph Cotton) do but have another drink and contemplate another Western novel? 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Roberto Rossellini: 'Germania anno zero' / 'Germany Year Zero'

Roberto Rossellini's Germania anno zero / Germany Year Zero / Deutschland im Jahre Null (1948), the third film of his "War Trilogy," centers on an ailing father, a daughter and two sons trying to stay afloat in Berlin soon after the end of the Second World War. Life among the ruins.

The before and after: some of the survivors still believe in Hitler times, but quietly accommodate the occupiers, selling artifacts and black market services to "golly gee" Americans. Most are dazed and living day by day with assigned housing, ration cards, and not enough legal work to go around. The aftermath of war in a defeated country.

The Criterion Edition (verso) of Deutschland im Jahre Null includes plenty of extras. More is remembered through defeat than through victory.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Roberto Rossellini: 'Roma città aperta' / 'Rome, Open City' (1945)

Roberto Rossellini: Roma città aperta /  Rome, Open City (1945).

"All roads lead to Rome, Open City." -- Jean-Luc Godard (1959).

"In 2013, [Pope] Francis spoke to Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper and expressed his deep feelings for [Rome, Open City,] Roberto Rossellini’s realist war drama, which is a ground-zero account of the city under Nazi siege — and which features a Catholic priest as its main character." -- Source: here.

Rome, Open City has touches of Casablanca and any number of "under siege" tales, but its nearness to real events, shot among real war ruins, gives the film a powerful boost. It's raw.

An iconic image of Pina, played by Anna Magnani (1908-1973), in German-occupied Rome. 

The Criterion Collection version with extra features, part of the Roberto Rossellini War Trilogy box set (2017).  

Aldo Fabrizi (1905-1990) as Don Pietro Pellegrini, a goodly priest who says: "It's not hard to die well. The hard thing is to live well."  And, akin to Pope Francis: "I am a Catholic priest. I believe that those who fight for justice and truth walk in the path of God and the paths of God are infinite."

Today's Rune: Partnership.  

Roberto Rossellini: 'The Flowers of St. Francis' / 'Francesco, giullare di Dio' (1950)

Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis / Francesco, giullare di Dio (1950). Vignettes of the original Franciscans, played by real Franciscan monks, with a medieval feel, beyond normal time, in black and white. This is the kind of little gem of a movie that distinguishes cinema from books as an art form.

Federico Fellini co-wrote the minimalist script, which is more evident in some of the chapters than others. 

San Francesco d'Assisi / Saint Francis of Assisi lived from about 1181 to 1226 A.D. 

The main cook for the early Franciscans was Fra Ginepro / Brother Juniper, who died in 1258 A.D. He was a bit of a "jester." 

Here, Franciscans spread a feeling of peace in the village, near the end of the film. They also redistribute food to the hungry. 

St. Francis and St. Clare at St. Mary of the Angels. Santa Chiara d'Assisi / Saint Clare of Assisi lived from 1194 to 1253 A.D. 

This memorable film provides an alternative to the many human-directed miseries already wrought in the 21st century. The Criterion Collection package includes extra interviews. Isabella Rossellini (born 1952), daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, provides impressive insight in one of them.  

Today's Rune: Partnership.