Capone (1975)

  Hopefully this will go up when it's supposed to.  Content warning:  slurs, nudity, gun violence

Alphonse Capone (Ben Gazzara) started as a low-level thug in Brooklyn in 1916.  He had ambition, however, spotted by Johnny Torrio (Henry Guardino), the mafia godfather of Chicago.  And when Torrio needed a junkyard dog to help him break into bootlegging during Prohibition, he knew exactly who to call.  Capone served under his mentor but soon grew frustrated by what he perceived as an unwillingness to implement extreme measures.  He forced Torrio into retirement and set his sights on eliminating all the other organized crime outfits in Chicago, sparking a bloody series of ambushes and reprisals.  Untouchable thanks to kickbacks in all the right places, the authorities were at a loss as to what to do about Capone without also destroying their careers and lives, until Al's own lieutenant, Frank Nitti (Sylvester Stallone), turned over his bank records to the IRS.

This is an unapologetic and unromantic view of Capone, who has been softened with age.  People focus on how he created expiration labels for milk (true) and not how he regularly gunned down people in the street.  A Robin Hood mythos to balance out the corrupt cops and politicians.  But this is a false dichotomy.  Capone can be a bad guy as well as responding to a bad system.  Gazzara is great as the burly, scarred kingpin, while Stallone is extremely toned-down compared to later roles.  

It's unfortunately only available to stream for rental but physical copies still exist.  It's a nice corollary to Scarface.  Like a biography versus hagiography.

Anna Karenina (2012)

(This was supposed to go up on Saturday while I'm out of town but apparently you can't schedule a post for the future if you've already posted it, so do me a favor and don't read it until then, k?)

I know I said I wasn't going to watch it again, but there it was on my server.  I had forgotten how incredible the production design was.  I was less invested this time and was able to appreciate it much more as an art piece than an adaptation of a novel.  I still think the blond hair on ATJ is awful but the costumes and jewelry are a nice distraction from it.  

If you are a fan of Pining and Forbidden Love, this is probably right up there for you.  If you are a fan of shiny things and gilded trappings, congratulations on also being a magpie.  Originally posted 18 Feb 2013.

Nominated for:  Best Cinematography, Best Costumes, Best Original Score, and Best Production Design    This was an incredibly beautiful-looking film.  From opening credits to close, there was not a single frame that was not gorgeous.  It probably deserves every Oscar it's nominated for.  

I read the book a long time ago, back when I was going through my Russian novelist phase, and did not care for it.  This is actually what broke the phase if you want honesty.  Mild spoilers ahead.

Anna (Keira Knightley) is a Russian noblewoman who lives a life of luxury.  She gets called from St. Petersburg to Moscow by her brother (Matthew MacFadyen) after his affair with a governess.  He wants Anna to get his wife (Kelly Macdonald) to forgive him.  She is also happy to see her childhood friend Kitty (Alicia Vikander) who is about to be engaged to a young cavalry officer named Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).  Unfortunately, the moment Vronsky sees Anna, all thoughts of Kitty are gone.  They have a torrid affair, bringing shame to Anna's straitlaced husband Karenin (Jude Law) and causing the lovers to be ostracized by polite society.

Drama, drama, drama.  This was like the trashiest soap opera of the 19th century.  It doesn't read as well today with the change in social mores on divorce, and Anna comes across more bi-polar than torn apart by love.  I felt like it was weird to see Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a love interest after Kick Ass and that blond hair was awful on him.  This was probably Jude Law's most unattractive movie as well, with the glasses and receding hairline, but he carried it better than his younger rival.  Christy said she found the movie hard to process as "Russian" since the entire cast was British, but that didn't bother me so much.  How many Russian actors can you name after all? 

Almost the entire production is set as though it was on a stage, which was a bold choice but an elegant one.  It really carries the feel of a Moulin Rouge! type of spectacle, minus the singing.  I don't think I could watch it again because it's depressing as hell, but Christy said she'd most likely end up buying it because it's so beautifully shot.

Crows Zero (2007)

  I think I put this in my queue in 2009.  Netflix made it unavailable and it has remained so ever since.  Fortunately, the whole movie (subbed or dubbed, your choice) is available on YouTube.  Video quality isn't great, but it's not bad.

Genji (Shun Oguri) has just transferred to Suzuran Senior High School for Boys.  The school is a battle royale and Genji has been promised his father's (Gorô Kishitani) position as head of the yakuza if he can become King of the Crows.  He recruits Suzuran dropout and minor rival yakuza henchman Ken Katagiri (Kyôsuke Yabe) for help in forming a faction to challenge the reigning champion Serizawa (Takayuki Yamada).

This is a fun, violent movie with a lot of camaraderie through beating the shit out of each other.  If it feels a little familiar, it is a tried and true method of male bonding in film.  The action is good, the music is good, and it even comes across as rather sweet.  Equal opportunity this one is not, however, as the only female character with any lines is reduced to damsel in distress pretty quickly.  The only other parts available were Victim and Sex Worker.  Otherwise, it's not bad.

I've been watching Critical Role as my Comfort Show and I signed up for YouTube Premium because their ads are the freakin' worst so I have no idea how many ad breaks Crows Zero has.  The free trial is three-months long and I'd encourage anyone who uses YouTube more than once a month to just go for it.  Just remember to cancel before you have to pay.

A War (2016)

  You can skip to the last 45 minutes of this film and not miss anything.  In fact, I think it would have been a tighter drama if they had just focused on the courtroom element and not dragged it out.

Claus Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) is a commander with NATO forces in Afghanistan.  During combat, he calls for an air strike on a compound, saving the lives of his men but killing 11 civilians.  He is sent home to face trial for not having positive identification on the enemy before ordering the strike.

Honestly, the least realistic thing about this is the accountability.  Maybe that's how it works in other countries.  In America, the military would write this off as collateral damage and that would be the end.  We barely investigated friendly fire.  You think we'd spring for airfare to transport some dude home for a trial every time a civilian died?  (Not saying it's right, just that it's realistic.)

So I found this annoying for multiple reasons.  All the scenes with his wife and family back home that are supposed to show how strained and distracted his mind was are completely extraneous and just padded the run time.  I watched about half an hour and then just fast-forwarded through to the trial.  It's not worth the time, even if it is streaming for free on Kanopy.

Hard Times (1975)

  This is the directorial debut of Walter Hill, who also co-wrote the film.

Cheney (Charles Bronson) rolls into 1930s New Orleans looking for a fight.  Coincidentally, Speed (James Coburn) is looking for a fighter, both to make money and enact a little personal revenge on a contemporary who embarrassed him.  It is a match made in heaven, as they say.  But Cheney's only planning to make a little money, then bounce, while Speed owes some unscrupulous men a lot of cash.

You don't see this kind of straightforward plot anymore.  There's no twists, no revelations, just "man fights man in underground bareknuckle boxing ring".  It makes the film feel a little more simple, a little old-timey, and very fast.  It's a shade under two hours but it goes by like a blink.

Ah, Coburn and Bronson.  The Jay and Silent Bob of their day.  I love them.  And keep an eye out for Bruce Glover, whose son, Crispin, looks so much like him, it'll make you contemplate cloning.  Hard Times is currently streaming on Tubi.

The Salt of the Earth (2015)

  I feel like Wim Wenders is the anti-Werner Herzog.  Like, they just have two completely different outlooks on humanity.  

Content warning:  starvation, child death, animal death (tribesmen shoot monkeys with arrows), genocide

Okay, so those are objectively terrible things to warn you about but you should make time to see this documentary if you can.  And as an aside, fuck the MPAA that gave this a PG-13 for nudity but didn't mention all of the corpses.

Photographer Sebastiao Salgado has spent a lifetime behind the camera, traveling the world to capture intimate portraits of humanity at its humblest, most vulnerable, and forgotten.  Gold miners in Brazil, flood-displaced Nigerians, famine-stricken Ethiopians, and the victims of genocide in Yugoslavia, Congo, and Rwanda.  The last sickened him so much he retreated to his family farm in Brazil, now a wasteland of erosion.  His wife, Lelia, came up with the radical idea of replanting the Matá Atlantica, the Atlantic rain forest that had been cut down for cattle grazing.  Two million trees later and Salgado was inspired to create a photo project documenting pockets of hope, places around the globe that still retained their natural, almost primeval state.

Wenders is already one of the most empathetic filmmakers.  His sense of humanism, of the capacity for joy, and his sensitivity with his subjects is matched and hightened by Salgado's bottomless reserves of empathy.  As a person who struggles with even identifying emotions, much less expressing them, seeing the depths of feeling on display in this film was nothing less than revelatory.  It is delicate and powerful all at once.

It's currently streaming on Starz, which I get through Amazon.  If you need to remember that all hope is not lost, give it a try.

No (2012)

  Hey, it's a Pablo Larraín film!  He is rapidly becoming one of those directors that I will watch regardless of the subject.  

In 1988, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced to hold a plebiscite to legitimize his authoritarian regime.  Two option were to be presented on the ballot:  Yes for eight more years of Pinochet or No for literally anyone else in charge.  Each side would get 15 minutes of television airtime for the 27 days leading up to the referendum.  The No campaign hired René Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal), an advertising executive to produce its content.  Saavedra discarded attack ads and footage of the violence perpetuated by Pinochet's coup in favor of fun, poppy jingles and a bright rainbow message of happiness.   

Emotional appeals are the backbone of advertising.  Most people don't buy with their brain, despite what they want to believe about themselves.  They buy with their feelings.  Politics is feelings writ large.  Political ads sell concepts like safety, security, hope, fear.  This movie pulls back the curtain a little bit to show the Mad Men-esque machinations that go behind all those appeals.  It's also a fascinating corollary to our current hellscape.

For those of us who grew up in the '80s, the cinematography is shockingly perfect.  That weird three-strip Technicolor with the yellow bleed and the sodium lights.  Everything just slightly fuzzy.  It's some incredible attention to detail.  No is currently only available to rent or to buy but it is worth the rental.