Travis Bickle on the Riviera – month no.1 – January

In 2011 the plan is to document every movie I see over the course of the year, writing something about them whether it be a sentence or a full-length review. Partially because I feel like I need to write about movies more and partially because I need to capture just how much of my life is spent watching these things instead of doing something worthwhile with my life. Every movie, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the thing on tbs on a sunday morning that I just didn’t shut off.

legend –  * = great, RW = rewatch, C = personal classic, X = garbage, T= theater
(no theater movies this month, hopefully that will change whenever I get to see The Mechanic)

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01. The 400 Blows, 1959, Francois Truffaut
- I started off the year marathon-ing a stack of New Wave films I hadn’t seen before. The 400 Blows I’d actually tried to watch once and gave up on. I have to admit if there is a Beatles/Stones thing going on between Truffaut and Godard, I’m definitely a Godard guy. Even the Godard movies I don’t particularly like I can get deep into. Out of all the Truffaut I’ve seen only one has really knocked me on my ass. The 400 Blows is, well it’s a movie I wish I liked more because of how much it commits to being THIS movie, about a bad kid and his horrible parents and never over-dramatizes any of it. The problem is that after 50 years it feels like an exercise to me rather than the jawdropping piece of work that is for so many people.

02. Jules and Jim, 1962, Truffaut – X
- Ugh. Not for me. I’m sure I’ll give it another try eventually but I couldn’t bring myself to care.

03. Breathless, 1960, Jean-Luc Godard
- I love the last scene where Belmondo is just booking down the street and he can barely stand, it’s so goddamn visceral and in-the-moment scary.

04. Je T’aime JeT’aime, 1968, Alan Resnais
- Everything I loved about Nic Roeg’s Bad Timing come from this film first. I first read about this in a book of science fiction films when I was 7 or 8, and it stuck with me for years. I didn’t know it was new wave, I didn’t know it was Alan Resnais, I just knew that a man strobing through his own past was something I had to see, and while La Jetee may do it in a more beautiful and dramatic manner, and Bad Timing in a more nasty one, neither are as devastating as this.

05. Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959, Resnais – *
- The opening 20 minutes is jawdropping – just narration and shots of the city, elliptical and beautiful, until it’s revealed that the whole time we have been listening to a man and a woman talk while in bed. Not just an amazing sequence either, the whole film just builds on the idea that thought and memory can be captured by a film, and few films, even films I love like the Limey, have come as close to achieving it.

06. La Chinoise, 1967, Godard
- What I love about this movie is that it demolishes any political posturing that any young person could care to make without ever coming out and telling you that’s the film’s intent. Just dismantling radicalist, action-oriented, manifesto-writers as just another clique of kids who take something way too seriously. The scene on the train where all the arguments are shown to be empty and unfounded –  and how it’s achieved by the way Godard films it, just a long sustained shot of two people talking instead of the intense framing/blocking/editing that came before. The argument of La Chinoise is that anyone that writes a manifesto, especially a bunch of kids who know nothing about the world – is dangerous, but not as dangerous as the see themselves.

07. Shoot The Piano Player, 1960, Truffaut – *
- Now, THIS is more like it. This is the only Truffaut movie I’ve seen that clicked –  which is probably because it’s the most traditional of the 5 I have seen (400 Blows, Jules+Jim, Farenheit 451, The Bride Wore Black, and this for those keeping track). From the brilliant moment of the chase being broken up by an innocent bystander who needs to talk about his wife to the murder that occurs because the bartender refuses to lose face in front of a cute girl, every scene in this movie is about how men not understanding women leads to violence – and the piano player of the title is the only one who doesn’t fall into this trap because (as we find out in flashback) his macho bullshit forced his wife to kill herself. A crime movie that is actually about relationships, full of little moments that shoot it from smartly thematic and watchable to absolute classic. What I love about this movie is what I love about King City – genre piece that’s all about it’s characters’ emotional life. Goddamn I think I need to watch this again.

08. The Powerpuff Girls Movie, 2002, Craig McCracken
- Great animation, but damn if this wasn’t a show perfectly built for the ten minute episode format. McCracken’s a better designer than Gennedy Tartakovsky, and not enough people bring that up.

09. Nightwatch, 2004, Timur Bekmambetov – RW
10. Daywatch, 2006, Bekmambetov – RW
- There are moments in this movie(and the sequel) that are the kind of odd, compelling scenes I wish I would see more in movies, but they are dropped carelessly into a really cheesy Matrix-style horror movie. Special effects cheese doesn’t kill the charming inventiveness of Anton Gorodetsky buying blood from a vampire butcher to go hunting, or him drunkenly singing Communist battle hymns to a room full of demons at his son’s birthday. Great movies to skip around, kind of terrible to sit all the way through.

11. Martyrs, 2008, Pascal Laugier – X
- Man, if it lost that third act it would have been an undeniable classic. The scene where every member of the family gets shot is too good to be attached to the movie that follows it.

12. Halloween, 2007, Rob Zombie
13. Halloween 2, 2009, Zombie
14. The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, 2009, Zombie – X
15. House of 1000 Corpses, 2002, Zombie – RW
16. Devil’s Rejects, 2005, Zombie – RW, C
- After listening to the very engaging Nerdist interview with Zombie I decided I would watch everything he’d done. Up until then I’d only seen Corpses (which I hated) and Rejects (which I loved). The Halloween remakes I avoided because I’m kind of a John Carpenter fundamentalist. I don’t have a problem with remakes, but I do find it hard to reconcile anyone trying to redo Carpenter when Carpenter himself has had difficulty capturing his own tone. The Halloween remake and Halloween 2 are seen by people as a deferential and over-faithful remake and the sequel as the crazier real deal film. Which is absolutely wrong – the first half of Halloween is fantastic and well considered. He spends so much time humanizing this character that the unknowable evil that he’s supposed to be at the end is kind if ridiculous. But it’s a coherent movie, and an interesting take on the material – my biggest problem with it is the teenage girls are just grating and shrill, but the rest of the cast is stocked with amazing character actors so it’s not that big a deal. The sequel starts off with a motherfucker hospital chase that marries the original Halloween 2 with the finale of Terminator into the kind of slasher sequence you wish Zombie would have made instead. The rest of the film is muddled. I know what he’s trying to do with the symbolism and the metaphysical take on the material but he doesn’t really get all the way there. Brad Douriff’s performance almost makes up for it, almost. Neither of them are great movies but Zombie is a talented guy and neither of them are bad movies, either. The El Superbeasto animated movie gets compared to Ralph Bakshi a lot. It’s a lot closer to Cool World than Wizards. It’s kind of awful. House of 1,000 Corpses still doesn’t sit right with me, but I think that’s because it doesn’t hit my horror movie buttons the way I wish it would. The biggest problem for me is that Zombie uses a lot of his own music in the movie and it takes you out of it – makes it feel a little like a vanity project (except for the “Showtime!” sequence). There are hints of a talented filmmaker here but not many. Devil’s Rejects is a movie that never stops impressing me – I actually want to write something larger/more in depth on it because it’s such a smart movie. Devil’s Rejects is the only “torture porn” movie I’ve ever seen that can withstand real scrutiny, and even then that is such a small element of the whole. Rejects is basically “what if Peckinpah made a slasher movie?”, and then lives up to that idea. Great performances all around (and more than that great casting), particularly William Forsythe and Bill Moseley. Classic dialog (Moseley’s force of nature speech as he kills the guys in the desert, Tom Towles cameo, “they have no hope of attacking God directly”), the sad and slow bloodbath at the bordello that ends with a literal kick in the stomach to the characters and audience, it’s a movie I love, and I know Zombie has more like this in him.

17. Blood Simple [Directors Cut], 1984, The Coen Bros – RW, C
- Watching it this time, I finally spotted how much of Tarantino comes from this movie – down to the foot-focused bar/jukebox montage. Dan Hedeya’s the best.

18. Re-Animator, 1985, Stuart Gordon – RW
19. From Beyond, 1986, Gordon
- Stuart Gordon! Weird, messy, violent, funny shit. Re-Animator doesn’t have the filmmaking insanity of the Evil Dead movies, but Gordon is a lot closer to that (and a lot more talented) than his 80s video store horror rack peers. From Beyond is ickier, and that just makes jab your brain harder. Watching both of these on a non-vhs format is weird, right? A big part of me thinks that 80s horror and kung fu movies need to be in pan and scan. The picture is way too clear.

20. I’m Still Here, 2010, Casey Affleck – X
- Fun, but irresponsibly retarded in the point it’s making. Which is that honesty in art means nothing. Which is true, but that doesn’t make it any less of a dumb argument.

21.No Distance Left to Run, 2009, Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace
- Too nice.

22. Blood and Black Lace, 1964, Mario Bava – RW
- Classic slasher/secret comic book movie, great colors. I watched it in italian without subtitles, which was odd, but I don’t think I missed anything this time. A guy who looks like the Question stabbed some fashion models. Who cares what they’re saying?

23. Sullivan’s Travels, 1941, Preston Sturges – *
- Obviously the proto-Coen Bros movie, but also a virtuoso demonstration that a movie can be heartbreaking, honest, scary, mean, sweet, vicious, broad, specific, sexy, about America, about it being impossible to make a movie without living it, about that being a stupid idea, etc. But above all it is great comedy and more than that it is one of the strongest arguments that comedy is so much more important than serious films.

24. The Limey, 1999, Steven Soderbergh – RW, C, (Commentary)
- A commentary track as 10,000yr Old Man sketch edited by Alan Renais, starring Lem Dobbs and Steven Soderbergh.

25. Black Swan, 2010, Darren Aronofsky – X
- HEY, SUBTLETY, AM I RIGHT?

26. The American, 2010, Anton Corbijn – X
- Lazy piece of shit. The Transporter did a better job with these themes. It doesn’t get anywhere near the Le Samourai/Tokyo Drifter/The Killer/Once Upon A Time in the West sweet spot it keeps grasping at (and referencing). This is a bad movie, and coming out so soon after Limits of Control just makes it feel embarrassing.

27. Four Lions, 2010, Chris Morris – *
- I was expecting this to be so much meaner than it was. It’s a lot closer to the Gervais/Merchant Office than Morris’ own Blue Jam. But in softening his normal ultra-bleak outlook, Morris makes this film so goddamn sad. Really funny, but brutal.

28. Night Moves, 1975, Arthur Penn – *
- Why did it take me so long to see this? Gene Hackman/ 70s/ detective movie, it is exactly the kind of movie I’ll go out of my way to see. There is nothing easy about this movie, so much of it is establishing a character as a person who isn’t dynamic or likeable – Hackman is just a guy, like the Altman take of Long Goodbye gone darker and in sharper focus. Brilliant.

29. Five Easy Pieces, 1970, Bob Rafaelson
- Real movie about real characters with a perfect ending. The hitchhikers kinda ruin it a little, though.

30. Jersy Girl, 2004, Kevin Smith – X
- After all the Kevin Smith nonsense that has gone on lately online (I guess he made a horror movie?) I actually gave this a chance when it was on TBS. Because I’m an idiot.

31. Repo Man, 1984, Alex Cox – RW, C
32. Raising Arizona, 1987, Coen Bros – RW, C
- These are my big “life is horrible I need to watch a movie” movies. The scene where Otto hops out of the car and walks down the street as the hazmat guys are picking up dead bodies? That’s way the hell up there on my favorite shots in movie history (in case you couldn’t tell that terribly ranked movie list I did over the summer, the one no one read? Super-dated already, the rankings are scattered – Bullit isn’t on it, I’ve seen at least 100 movies since I wrote it up, etc, etc). Raising Arizona remains a perfect opening 20 mins followed by a near perfect rest of the movie.

33. Akira, 1988, Katsuhiro Otomo – RW, C
- Rewatched for the first time since I’ve read the comics, which would make it at least 5,6 years ago. The thing that got me this time is Ryu seeing the riots as he dies and the smile that just peaks up on his face as he slides down the wall and slips away. The other thing is how much of the film is predicated on light – light is always a bad thing in this world, culminating in the orbital laser cannon and the light-flooded flashback. Once everything is illuminated and everything is destroyed, the daylight is no longer menacing.

34. Cul-De-Sac, 1966, Roman Polanski – *
- I put this on knowing absolutely nothing about it. So the opening scene grabbed me by the throat. The opening seems to be Polanski’s tribute to Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress, with two injured criminals making their way in a broken-down car through an endless desert. Polanski doesn’t stick to this tribute as much as he uses it to suck you into a film which focuses on unexpected behaviors and characters, and Polanski never stops himself from being symbolic or poetic (the desert floods). But he also never lets the imagery or ideas sideline the characters, or ever takes any scene (or the entire film) to go to the expected ending.

35. What?, 1971, Polanski – X
- Aside from a pretty interesting scene where the entire cast sits at a dinner table and bickers like children, this is dire. There’s a reason that discussions of Polanski’s genius always leave this film out – it’s unwatchable, stupid, and has no ending. Also it’s “naked one-dimensional young girl wanders around a non-story, almost gets raped” plot is very close to Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, down to the vague allusions to Alice in Wonderland.

36. Knife in the Water, 1962, Polanski
- Polanski’s first, all of what makes him an interesting director is in Knife in the Water, with three characters who are immediately compelling without endearing them to the audience. It’s rough, and by the time he made his next two films he could command attention better and feel a lot less episodic.

37. The Ghost Writer, 2010, Polanski – *
- I was really willing to let current day Polanski be terrible, because it wouldn’t ruin all the love I have for all his old classics. And this has all the makings of a fucking disaster – made under international scrutiny, the cast listing reads like a joke, Polanski was in jail during the last days of exterior shooting so there are huge continuity flaws (like when Ewan Mcgregor’s car bounces around that hotel parking lot), “topical” subject matter that will be seen as instantly dated – any and all of which could have ruined the movie if it wasn’t  as amazing at it turned out. Polanski making a movie about guilt, in the old-fashioned hollywood thriller manner, but can’t help making it darker and funnier and more human. Polanski remains one of the few directors that still makes movies about real people, but doesn’t stop himself from getting arch when the story calls for it. And the ending is just plain perfect. The Ghost Writer also has the rare distinction of being  movie where you don’t notice that the lead is unnamed until the credits roll (like The Driver or They Live!).

38. Hilarious, 2011, Louis CK – *
- My favorite comedian, killing it.

39. Cowboy Bebop: Knockin On Heaven’s Door, 2001, Shinchiro Watanabe – RW, C
- As a work of animation, this movie is a huge feat – city streets from all over the globe  that have clearly been shot and studied (and in some case maybe old-school rotoscoped) and recreated as one endless planet-city that blends dozens of cultures. Bebop, as you know, is a series I hold pretty highly and the movie may not have the emotional weight that the series has, but that’s not a crippling flaw. Aside from the city’s layout and the space ships, this isn’t science fiction – this is a proper action movie. It is also a fantastic example of what makes a great action movie – there is no reason for this to be animated beyond budgetary concerns, which makes it all the more interesting to look at it against it’s influences of Bruce Lee, John Woo, Michael Mann, Ridley Scott, Lee Marvin, etc, etc. Bebop – especially this film – got that what made Woo great wasn’t pyrotechnics and excess but emotions being played out in that violence. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door is paced perfectly in macro and micro – sure, you could lose the plane chase/dogfight, but other than that every moment delivers character and every fight plays out in peaks and valleys the way that only the best fights on film do.

40. Four Lions, 2010, Morris – RW, *
- This time watched with my friend Jared Lewis, who high fived me when “Dancin In the Moonlight” came on the second time.

41. Running Scared, 1986, Peter Hyams – *
- Lost buddy cop gem directed by the same dude who made Outland, starring Billy Crystal, Gregory Hines, and Jimmy Smits. And it is AWESOME. Smart, fast, funny as hell and worthy of being stuck next to Midnight Run and 48 Hrs as the greatest low-stakes action movie of the 80s. Billy Crystal has some legitimately badass lines in it too (who’d have thought?).Huge influence on Pineapple Express as well.

42. Hickey and Boggs, 1972, Robert Culp – *
- Walter Hill’s first script, Robert Culp’s only directorial effort. I didn’t know about it until I saw someone advertising a revival showing of it online. It is defiantly anti- I SPY, with Culp giving one of the great performances of a drunk I’ve ever seen and Cosby being the reticent, no-nonsense badass. Hill voice and style are 100% present – down to the extraneous characters who are remarkably well defined and villains who we know nothing about, and the finale that updates the western for the modern day.

43. Insomnia, 1997, Erik Skjoldbjaerg
- One of my big themes lately is movies about memory, and this is one of the best. The Christopher Nolan remake adds one great scene (of Pacino saying “It’s too bright in here” to Maura Tierney), but overcomplicates everything pointlessly. Don’t remake a perfect movie, and while this might not be the kind of movie you can out and out enjoy, it’s almost impossible to assail as anything but flawless.

44. Schizopolis, 1996, Soderbergh – RW, C
- After reading Soderbergh’s book this movie transforms into a huge Richard Lester tribute, and is all the better for it.

-Sean Witzke, January 2011