All in Film

To prepare his cast before making the film The Three Burials of Melquidas Estrada, Tommy Lee Jones had them read The Stranger by Albert Camus since the theme of alienation is central to both that book and the film they were about to shoot. Before he commenced filming the movie Heat, director Michael Mann gave the cast copies of the book No Beast So Fierce by former convicted felon turned author Edward Bunker about a recently paroled convict and his attempt to go straight. In my senior year of college, before we began rehearsals of the one-act play I wrote “Show Me Your Tong Po,” I invited the cast over to my house to watch Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor for similar reasons as those directors.

Each of these characters in Starting Out in the Evening has their own needs and desires, but they unselfishly interact with each other, learning from each other the importance of sharing life. For people who like a meaty intellectual story, there is much here to enjoy. No less than Roger Ebert said that Langella's performance was Oscar worthy. That the Oscars ignored it only confirms that movies of the mind and emotional depth play second fiddle to movies of entertaining merriment. 

FILM / Teen Wolf—An Apology / Logan Silva

The denizens of the United States have long been accused of being culturally deprived. We are starving, lacking an appreciation of the fine art of mime, Goethe and weinershnitzel. Nothing proves this point as well as the jeremiads delivered on the movie Teen Wolf, first released in 1985, starring a young Michael J. Fox. I offer this apology (in the formal sense), laying forth the visionary nature of the film.

FILM / A Hard Heart Kills / Myle Yan Tay

I avoided Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” for years, knowing that it was about the individual experience of being in the military. I knew it was about the Vietnam War and the ensuing cruelty. I knew it was split into two parts, the first part depicting Marine Corps training and the second part in Vietnam itself. And I knew, having served two years in the Singapore Armed Forces, that those topics are rarely things I’m in the mood to watch.

Jawbreaker ultimately distinguishes itself through its specific treatment of high school politics, especially through its wicked screenplay, slick visuals, and lurid narrative. Even the name of the school, Reagan High, evokes a political atmosphere in which, as I mentioned, Foucault’s structures of power apply themselves to angsty, late ‘90s adolescence.

100 WORD FILM REVIEWS / Kurara: The Dazzling Life of Hokusai's Daughter

The great Japanese artist Hokusai (36 Views of Mount Fuji) had a daughter who was his apprentice and later his nurse. This recent film shows how she struggled to find her place as a daughter, artist, and woman in The Floating World of Ukiyo-e , 18th century Japan. The Japanese dialogue is wonderfully sparce but rich. Directed by Taku Katô—using lovely, saturated cinematography which gives context to the great acting in this film—Kurara illustrates how love, and art, and family do not go gentle into that good night.