Feb 29
Louis Malle’s Vanya on 42nd Street is a fascinating piece of work that blurs the lines between film, the theatre, and the human experience while captivating every step of the way. Malle’s last motion picture is handsomely minimalistic as it strips away many familiar storytelling elements to get to the fundamental truth of its characters.
The 32nd entry in Disney’s animated classics canon is arguably the studio’s most popular. The Lion King is the highest-grossing hand-drawn motion picture of all-time and the 16th highest-grossing motion picture of all-time if inflation isn’t accounted for. It has since seen a Broadway adaptation, two direct-to-video additions and a recent 3D re-release.
The Crow was one of those popular movies that was making the rounds when I was in high school. The Alex Proyas picture took most of its mystique from the fact that the film was soaked in tragedy. Brandon Lee was mortally wounded by a dummy bullet during the last weeks of production. Production finished up without him and Lee’s passing has become the stuff of dark legend, with countless websites dedicated to conspiracy theories and other eerie things.
In any event, it’s hard to escape the darkness of The Crow – even now. Still, it’s important to view the film without any sort of morbid mystique hanging around. It’s the only way to make a fair assessment, after all. With that in mind, there’s very little that sets The Crow apart from the other dark action-thrillers out there.
Dec 20
Based on Anne Rice’s book of the same name, 1994’s Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles develops the vampire mythology into a modern context to help further sex appeal of the iconic literary figure. Rice’s books about vampires were immensely popular, echoing the popularity the Twilight series has today. Thankfully the Rice pantheon of blood-suckers carries much more philosophical weight.
Neil Jordan, the Irish filmmaker behind The Crying Game, makes Interview with the Vampire come to life on the big screen with a star-studded cast, a touch of nudity and a nice amount of good old-fashioned blood. He doesn’t shy away from Rice’s work in any way, choosing to go full-bore into the crimson-soaked material with doses of sudden violence and continual sadness.
When Wong Kar-wai was working on his wuxia epic Ashes of Time, he decided that he needed a break. His plan was to create something fresh, quick, and easy. That “break” turned out to be 1994’s Chungking Express, a charming romantic comedy teeming with energy and style. Wong decided to go with three stories, but only two made the motion picture. The third story, a tale of a lovesick hitman, is actually told in his Fallen Angels.
Chungking Express is not structured like the typical Hollywood movies many of us are used to. To fully appreciate it, it pays to have some background in film or some familiarity with foreign cinema. Wong Kar-wai is constructing a measured, stylishly-driven story of romance and getting over romance. It has a lot in common with the hot Godard movies of French New Wave, where the rules were that there were no rules and the conventions of cinema were ripe for experimentation. Some may find the structure, that of two stories with virtually no connection to one another, to be perplexing.
