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No Exorcist Can Handle Possession

Michał Oleszczyk

To call it overwrought would be an understatement. Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 masterpiece, butchered upon its original American release and relegated to spurious video-nasty circulation, is now returning in all its hysterical glory, as a part of Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek complete Żuławski retro, which will then move to Cinefamily in Los Angeles. Featuring what is arguably the bravest female performance ever put on film – namely, Isabelle Adjani’s Cannes-winning turn of shamanistic intensity – the film dares its viewer to enter a trance-like state, in which genres blur and mate to yield a new level of cinematic expression.

Piracy isn’t always that simple

Matt Singer wrote a thoughtful piece against piracy a few days ago here on Criticwire. I read it with great interest. And I believe that he is correct, provided that Piracy fits a certain context. Let me try and provide some background.When I started writing movie reviews, I was living in the Philippines, a third-world country. Movie-going is deeply tied into our entertainment habits. The masses, most of whom are not able to afford most forms of entertainment, at least have theaters we can go to to escape the hardships of reality.

Ali Arikan of Istanbul, Turkey on “24 Hour Party People”

Roger Ebert

With this video essay by Ali Arikan of Istanbul, Turkey, I launch my site’s new feature, Foreign Correspondents. Film commentators from all over the world will contribute their video reviews, observations, musings, philosophies and pronouncements. Ali has been an online friend of mine for untold years, and is a favorite poster on my blog. He and several other Foreign Corresondents will be panelists at Ebertfest at the University of Illinois in April.

In the wings are fine critics from (alphabetically) Canada, Egypt, India, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Uruguay. These voices are not often heard on internet sites serving U.S. movie lovers. They’ve added immeasurably to the quality of the discussions on my blog. I will link back to their blogs. Comments are open. The same thread will extend under several videos. Roger

A howl of desperation for those who cannot howl

Scott Jordan Harris

Streaming for $2.99 via MUBI.com

There is a shot in “Voices from the Shadows” that shows a man in his twenties lying forlornly in bed.

Like the rest of the documentary, it exists to illustrate the miserable effects of the illness Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or ME, which is often unhelpfully called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

There is a detail in the shot that haunts me. The man has a beard, of a length and thickness unusual, and unsuitable, for someone his age. He has the beard because he is unable to stand up long enough to shave and because having his parents, or a nurse, sit and shave him as he lays in bed is messy, uncomfortable and undignified. Every morning he thinks about shaving but his reserves of energy are so limited that he has to choose between being able to go to the bathroom because he wants to shave or, later in the day, being able to go to the bathroom because he needs to go to the bathroom.

Through Glass, darkly

If you haven’t heard about Stephen Glass, who was a former employee of the New Republic, you may think he is a nice lad who occasionally screws things up while you watch him at the beginning of “Shattered Glass” (2003). Sometimes it’s not easy to be angry about him because he is so sweet and considerate to the people working with him. If it seems they find a problem or error caused by him, he quickly admits and apologizes to them while looking like he is nervous about whether they won’t like him any more for that. He frequently asks to them as if he wanted to check that: “Are you mad at me?”

We don’t want to remember the sadness

• Grace Wang in Toronto, whose four-part video interview with Chung is below her essay.

Lucky life isn’t one long string of horrorsand there are moments of peace, and pleasure, as I lie in between the blows.

– Lucky Life by Gerald Stern

Ringing true to the poem the film is inspired by, Lee Isaac Chung’s “Lucky Life” avoids the typical horrors of cookie-cutter narratives, and belies itself to moments of peace and pleasure that lull within its memory-shaped form.

Growing up with James Bond

Gerardo Valero

I find it mind-boggling that something as trivial as an action film series could become such a constant presence in my life but that’s been the case with the James Bond movies. It’s not so much that their span happens to equal mine (to the very week, by the way) as I didn’t start following them until I was 9 years old — but ever since, they’ve always been around one way or another: from big theatrical openings to re-re-releases in the beat up movie houses of old; from Betamax tapings of network T.V. broadcasts (pausing the machine to edit the commercials), to the great looking discs of today. Every couple of years or so they have made their appearance and I’ve watched each one dozens of times regardless how good or bad they were, an odd fact for which I’ve had no reasonable explanation.

When the Great Gray Cloud comes to call

Yesterday it was cold and rainy and glum. I searched for background movies to put on while I wrote, but my usual George Cukor go-tos weren’t doing the trick. I branched out. Shane, Forbidden Games, Love & Anarchy, Mogambo, and various classic TV shows were turned on and shut off. Nothing worked. I decided to take a twenty minute nap to shake the damp. 

A Simple Plan

Sometimes ordinary people becoming evil are more frightening than Dr. Hannibal Lector or Frank Booth. Villains like them are downright scary, but they are basically outsiders with a monstrous nature beyond our common sense. In contrast, the characters in Sam Raimi’s crime thriller “A Simple Plan” (1998) are nice, ordinary people we can identify with, at least in the beginning. We can recognize their human wishes, desires, and motives. We can understand why they are driven into the plot while it’s getting bloodier and more complicated. As a result, it is frightening to observe them doing horrible things, and one question immediately pops up in our minds – what would I do if I were in their circumstance?

The Unraveling of a Loveless Heart

Omer M. Mozaffar

There is a 20 second moment in Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult” that just floored me. Here is the story of a High School Prom Queen — Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) – revisiting her hometown on a targeted mission to reclaim her old boyfriend. She walks through her parents’ house and sees a large wedding photo. I thought it was a photo of her parents; her mother looks just like her? But, no, it is her own wedding. Not only do her parents keep the photo, but her father casually praises her ex-husband. I don’t remember how long she’s been divorced, but I was devastated just listening to his comments. Any normal parent would break his or her back to provide the child with every benefit; any child knows this. Still, the child also needs to hear the “I love you” and the “I value you” and the “I’m proud of you.” But, when the child’s ears hear, “I like your ex-spouse,” from the two people she needs validation from, they are saying, “I like your ex-spouse, though he is worth nothing compared to you.” What she instead hears is, “You’re no good. You failed. I’m siding with him.”

Would you like to see my tattoos?

Is it love at first sight? It’s certainly lust at first sight between them in the beginning. Something clicks inside. They soon begin their secret affair, and then, motivated by their common desire to escape from the world they’re stuck in, they hatch a scheme to solve their problems once for all. They have a good plan. They can succeed if they carefully tiptoe along the thin line they draw. However, in the world of film noir, it is usually easier said than done.

The great movies of my childhood

Krishna Bala Shenoi

Of late, I’ve been thinking about how I got here. Here, in love with movie watching and movie making. Here, in a design school in India, and not an engineering college or a medical school like predetermined for most Indian students. Here, in correspondence with a huge role model of mine. Here, doing what I love.

Encounters at the End of the Mind

Omer M. Mozaffar

There are a few spoilers here. Because I am mentioning that there are spoilers, I am implying that there are things you do not want to know in advance, thus making you curious, thus lifting your expectations higher than they should be, thus making it harder for you to enjoy the film. So, enter at your own risk.

Occasionally I receive a paper from a student that is so outstanding in content and ideas, that in grading it I am compelled to overlook the shortcomings in argument, style and polish. Such is my experience with Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.” This movie is very ambitious, not only in the ideas it explores, but also in the expectations it has of its audience. In my estimation, having watched the film on a giant screen with a packed theater of cheering, laughing, and groaning moviegoers at a popular suburban multiplex, it fulfills its ambitions of big-budget intelligent storytelling.

A brave film about a fake miracle

Regardless of how one feels about the Vatican and its handling of its recent crises, one cannot help but doubt how much we feel let down. Religion of any sort has long been regarded as our moral authority. Some today will think it is outdated, others still necessary.

Everyone should be able to believe want they want to, but there is no doubt that when it comes to belief, there is nothing quite as dangerous as blind faith.

Inceptions Made of Sand

Olivia Collette

With the exception of “The Matrix” and the odd documentary, movies tend to pay only lip service an architect’s job. “Sleepless in Seattle’s” Sam Baldwin is an architect, but he might as well be a meat-packer. The movie is a romantic comedy with little room for anything but serendipity. It takes us to a couple of architectural landmarks, but not because Sam’s profession compels him to.

So naturally, I was curious to know what the architectural community thought of “Inception,” where the discipline is actually effectual. I was a bit disappointed to discover that while architectural journalists were entertained by the film, they didn’t care much for its buildings. James Benedict Brown calls Ariadne “a dependable square,” Aaron Betsky says her work is “banal,” and David Neustein finds that Cobb and Mal’s dream city is “hardly a honeymoon destination.”

It’s sometimes wise to call the cops

While he has been called “the Master of Suspense,” Alfred Hitchcock has also been called “the Master of the Macabre,” and that title is exemplified by his delightful black comedy “The Trouble with Harry” (1955). On the surface, it looks quite atypical compared to Hitchcock’s more famous works, but this is a vintage story from a great director with a wry sense of humor, and it is also one of the most liveliest works in his exceptional career. Although somebody is dead, there is no suspense or danger or blond lady in the movie, and all we have to do is leisurely enjoy a pleasant walk with its funny characters as they try to deal with bizarre trouble on one fine autumn day in their ordinary peaceful rural town in Vermont.

Goodbye, Smokin’ Joe

Scott Jordan Harris

“Thrilla in Manila” is available on DVD, and in six parts on YouTube.

Joe Frazier was the toughest fighter I’ve ever seen. I keep a picture of him above my bed. It preserves, in one immortal monochrome moment, the most important punch Smokin’ Joe ever threw: the left hook that floored Muhammad Ali, and retained Frazier’s world title, in the final round of 1971’s “Fight of the Century” in Madison Square Garden.

A lesson in life

I have always wondered what it would be like to repeat a year at school, and I often thought about what the consequences of this particular action would be on my social life. This is the primary reason why I went to see the French film, “Camille Redouble” (in English, “Camille Rewinds”). As I hadn’t seen the trailer before seeing the movie, and trusting only the title — the world “redouble” in French has come to mean to repeat a year a school — I was expecting to watch the story of a young girl repeating a year of her education.

A comedy that keeps swimming

Gerardo Valero

No cinematic genre lends itself less for repeated viewings than comedy. Finding a truly funny picture is hard enough (not that you could tell from the typical reactions at a “Fockers” screening) and besides, how many times can people laugh at the same joke? Comedies also tend to age the worst. Among those that I recall once driving audiences wild here in México were “The Party” (1967), starring Peter Sellers, with all the guests falling into a pool full of bubbles, and Peter Bogdanovich’s zany screwball feature “What’s up Doc?” (1972), but watching them today mostly leaves me cold.

Kiss Kiss, Slap Slap!

Michał Oleszczyk

When I first started watching “Dynasty”, I didn’t know what the word ‘dynasty’ meant. Aaron Spelling’s oil-and-soap opera first aired in Poland in July 1990, nine years after its American premiere and a mere year after the fall of the Berlin wall. It was the latter event that had exposed my native land to the consumerist ravishment we all secretly craved. I was eight, the world became new, and even though McDonald’s was still stalling, “Dynasty” was here already: airing every Wednesday and gluing the entire nation to its old-type tube screens.