Category: Movie Reviews

By Joe Bendel. In Winnipeg, they don’t care for black-and-white film noir. They prefer “color crime movies.” It is a strange city, as viewers should know from Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. Although Maddin is much better known today, John Paizs provided the Winnipeg auteur his early inspiration. One can see a kinship in their films, but Paizs’ magnum opus is truly singular unto itself. Color crime dreams turn into nightmares in Paizs’ Crime Wave, which has a special revival screening this Sunday at Anthology Film Archives.

Steven Penny is a shy loner, who rents a room from Kim’s parents above their garage. For some strange reason, the pre-teen becomes fascinated with their lodger and his ambition to write a great color crime screenplay. Each draft of Crime Wave he writes starts and ends the same way. Some eccentric field of employment (like celebrity tribute performers or self-help gurus) is dominated by a small clique that pretty much “has the racket sewn up,” until a brash upstart “from the north” blows into town “with a dream.” Apparently, they commence some sort of crime spree to usurp the competition, but just when they are poised on the brink of success, they are brought down by a violently confrontation.

How does Penny get from the beginning to the end? Unfortunately, he does not know either. Try as he might, he just can’t write middles. The frustration takes a toll on his psyche, even though Kim tries her best to be encouraging. In fact, he seems increasingly uncomfortable with her obsessive attention. However, when she finds him a potential screenwriting mentor in Kansas, the film really veers out into strange, dark territory.

With characters eventually interacting with their failed author, Crime Wave is more in the tradition of Borges or Pirandello than the early color melodramas it ostensibly spoofs. It is often quite funny, especially the successive takes of Penny’s middle-less screenplay we watch play out. Yet, there is something rather sad and slightly unsettling about Paizs’ taciturn performance as Penny. It is hard to describe the eccentric chord he strikes, but it is certainly distinctive.

The look of the film is also perfect in a perfectly idiosyncratic way. Whatever cameras and filmstock Paizs used aptly evoke the look of 1960s educational films as well as the contemporaneous color work of Douglas Sirk and Roger Corman. It is easily one of the most self-referential, postmodern films of the 1980s, but its sensibility not so far removed from a sketch comedy show like The Kids in the Hall, where Paizs did some segment directorial gigging.

It is really amazing how completely insane yet tightly controlled Crime Wave really is. It is clearly the work of a mad auteur that must be experienced from start to finish to truly get its scope and vibe. For obvious reasons, it has become cult favorite amongst Canadian cineastes. It is well worth seeing under any conditions, but especially when Paizs answers post-screening questions this Sunday (11/2) at Anthology Film Archives, because there are sure to be many and the answers will likely be a little odd. Indeed, Crime Wave is definitely recommended for color crime fanatics as a memorable way to wrap-up the weekend.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 30th, 2014 at 12:13pm.

By Joe Bendel. Reality TV show crews make convenient grist for found footage horror films, because nobody will be terribly distraught when they are dispatched in supernatural fashion. That is particularly true of the on-air “talent” comprising S.P.I.T., the Spirit Paranormal Investigation Team. They will pick the wrong haunted orphanage for their ghost chasing in Craig Efros’ Hollows Grove, now available on VOD.

Grove starts out with a canned introduction from an FBI Agent thanking us for cooperating with their investigation by reviewing the footage to follow, which doesn’t make sense. Clearly, it is an attempt to shake up the found footage format, so whatever. What we will see is supposedly edited from the cameras of a S.P.I.T. crewmember and Harold Maxwell, a down-on-his-luck would-be filmmaker trying to produce a documentary on his old college buddies who made good in “reality” TV. Of course, Maxwell is quickly disillusioned when he meets retired Hollywood special effects artist Bill O’Neal, who stages all the spooky mayhem seen on the show.

To maintain spontaneity, they never know what surprises O’Neal has in store for them. This will be important to keep in mind when they start taping in Hollows Grove, an orphanage that became a dumping ground for special needs children. Residents were routinely abused, physically and sexually. At least two nurse committed suicide, in the same room, naturally enough. All that’s missing is a Nazi staff director performing black masses in the basement, but for all we know that happened too.

If the studio could successfully sue the distributors of Abby for infringing on The Exorcist, the Vicious Brothers ought to have a cast iron case to make against Grove for “paying homage” to Grave Encounters. However, Efros has a nice wrinkle with O’Neal’s presumed trickery. Since the lads assume all the weird stuff in the early stages is his handiwork, they mug for the cameras, while viewers realize they are majorly in for it. The crusty veteran FX hand also happens to be played by Lance Henriksen, who is as cool as ever in what is essentially a long cameo appearance.

So yes, we have seen this before—and seen it better in the recent Taking of Deborah Logan and the original Encounters. Nonetheless, the bickering and bantering of Matt Doherty and Sunkrish Bala as the show’s co-hosts helps keep it fresh. Bresha Webb also adds some style and attitude as their somewhat bemused segment producer, Julie Mercade.

Frankly, the entire ensemble sells the madness relatively well, but the stakes have definitely been raised in the found footage game. There are several creepy sequences in Grove, but the aforementioned films are more consistently scary. It is a passably diverting haunted institution movie, but fans should have better options during Halloween. Those who order it up anyway should be warned there is a stinger, so don’t log off when the credits start to roll. For diehard Henriksen fans (and we know you’re out there), Hollows Grove is now available via VOD platforms.

LFM GRADE: C+

Posted on October 29th, 2014 at 11:48am.

By Joe Bendel. Never ask a sideshow somnambulist when you will die. It is simply too easy for him to make his prophecies come true, especially when he is commanded by a psychotic Svengali with advanced psychiatric training. It is a mistake people still repeat in horror movies. There are a great many such genre motifs that can be traced back to this silent German classic, but the inferiority of public domain prints made it difficult to fully appreciate its feverish vision. Happily, Robert Weine’s ground-breaking The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has been digitally restored to its original German expressionist glory, or as close to it as humanly possible. After playing to a packed house as part of MoMA’s annual To Save and Project film series, Weine’s restored Caligari opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Like the Ancient Mariner, Francis has a story that will disturb his elderly listener, but it needs to be told. It involves his rather distraught-looking fiancée Jane Olsen, and his best friend Alan. Like the German equivalent of Jules and Jim, both men openly courted Olsen, but resolved to remain friends regardless whom she chooses. Unfortunately, the choice will be made for her when the two friends attend the annual fair.

This year, Dr. Caligari has been granted a permit to exhibit his somnambulist, Cesare, by the soon to be deceased city clerk. According to Caligari, Cesare exists in a state of uncanny slumber, but can be temporarily roused to predict the future. “When will I die,” asks Alan. “At first dawn,” replies the zombie-like Cesare. Late that evening, a hulking figure roughly Cesare’s shape makes the prediction come true. Distraught over the death of his friend, Francis starts pursuing his killer, quickly focusing his suspicions on Caligari and Cesare.

Hans Janowitz & Carl Mayer’s screenplay is considerably more sophisticated than most silent era potboilers, but the ironic framing device was not their idea. In fact, it is largely thought to subvert their ideological intentions. Nevertheless, it is hard to feel comfortable with the authority Caligari represents, despite the eleventh hour twist. Indeed, Cabinet can be seen as an early example of subjective reality achieving equal standing with objective reality.

Regardless, Cabinet is a thoroughly otherworldly environment that only vaguely approximates the forms of our world. Aside from that titular box, you will hardly find any right angles in this town out of time. Instead, everything is made out of jagged lines and slanting diagonals. Janowitz and Mayer’s screenplay was conceived out of aesthetic notions of film as a truly collaborative, inter-disciplinary endeavor, where set designers would be as creatively engaged as actors, writers, and directors. Cabinet might the greatest realization of their egalitarian ideal.

Visually, it is an absolute wonder—and a disorienting horror show. The 4K restoration went back to the incomplete camera negative and the best extant prints available, adding footage typically not seen in PD cuts. The original inter-titles have been reinserted and the seemingly abrupt cuts have been augmented with previously missing frames. Gone are the hiss and scratches, replaced by a close approximation of the 1920 color tints and washes. It all looks great on the big screen—and the bigger the better.

Rather inconveniently, it is Werner Krause’s performance as Caligari that holds up best for contemporary viewers. He chews the scenery with villainous relish, shifting gears on a dime when necessary. Despite Cabinet’s lineage, Krause would become an outspoken supporter of the National Socialists and star in Veit Harlan’s notoriously anti-Semitic Jew Süss. On the other hand, Conrad Veidt would play Major Strasser in Casablanca, but he sleepwalks (in a literal sense) through the picture as Cesare. Still, the physicality and theatricality of his work have helped make Cabinet so iconic.

This is a true classic film that has lost none of its power to mesmerize, but the restoration makes it a much smoother and more lucid viewing experience. Almost a century later it remains vastly influential, even though for years it has not been shown in its true glory. Very highly recommended, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari opens Halloween Friday (10/31) in New York at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on October 28th, 2014 at 5:07pm.