Category: Film

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A stylized shot of Frank Whaley's character (Jimmy O'Brien) in Frank Whaley's "The Jimmy Show" (2001).

An Underrated Gem: On Frank Whaley’s “The Jimmy Show” (2001)

‘This isn’t funny,’ says Jimmy O’Brien (Frank Whaley) on what is presumably his last night as an open mic stand-up comic. For years, he’s been delivering his stale routine to a handful of patrons, none of whom ever laugh. And why would they? Not only is Jimmy not funny, but rather, very sour in his humor, wit, and delivery. It’s only at the film’s end that he comes to realize this. The years of occasional heckling, stone faces, and coughs in the crowd didn’t deliver the hint, but that he comes to accept this on his own is the important thing. What did it? Perhaps the fact that he’s managed to push everyone away? Something in him tells him to stop. ‘No more jokes,’ he says.

The Jimmy Show opens with Jimmy driving his dilapidated car to the Laugh In comedy club, located in suburban New Jersey. His invalid grandmother is in the passenger seat, ‘I thought we were going to get my pills,’ she says. ‘Wait here, I’ll be right back,’ Jimmy replies, as he eagerly enters and asks about open mic night. The manager is annoyed by his presence, ‘Did you get that tape I sent in?’ Jimmy asks. ‘Look, just sign your name and you get 10 minutes—it’s open mic.’ Here is perhaps the first glimpse of Jimmy’s cluelessness, as he believes that open mic night is his ‘big break,’ then only afterwards does he come to learn that his girlfriend Annie (Carla Gugino) is pregnant. (Jimmy ultimately suggests the name Wendy for the child—after Peter Pan, a reflection of this man refusing to grow up.) […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A stylized shot of Candace Hilligoss anxiously driving a car in Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls".

Company of Others: On Herk Harvey’s “Carnival of Souls” (1962)

Imagine a film where the only time we witness a woman alive is in the first few moments when, following a drag race, the car she is in careens off a bridge and into a river. Following, all are dead, save what appears to be her, who pulls herself out from muck and swamp like a zombie, walking slowly and claiming to not remember anything. Then flashes the title and the eerie, ambient organ music that accompanies. It’s not that the scene is scary insomuch as otherworldly. So who is she exactly?

Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls stars Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) as an attractive young woman who seems to move about in a dream, where she remains detached, and reviles human contact. After the accident, she informs her employers about her new job as a church organist in Utah (she studied organ in college). Astute and cerebral, Mary appears as though something else is continually on her mind. When she’s pleasantly asked to ‘come back and visit,’ she replies coldly, ‘thank you, but I am never coming back.’ Throughout, this emotional detachment is paramount to assessing Mary’s character. ‘I have no use for the company of others,’ she says. At one moment, she seems head strong and alien, as though she does not belong with the human race, but then, when inundated with fear due to the presence of a strange man who continues to follow her (played by director Herk Harvey), she is emotional, feeble, needy. She does not want to be alone. […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A stylized shot from Krzysztof Kieślowski's "The Double Life of Veronique", depicting Veronique (Irene Jacob) being kissed by her lover.

Feeling Invites the Reason: On Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “The Double Life of Veronique” (1991)

Have you ever felt that your life, while real in the most personal sense, could also exist simultaneously elsewhere, even if lived by some other person? Just what might that entail? In my youth, I’d often imagine living in France—perhaps I’d have moved there after living as an exchange student, but then, I’d remember the emotion that brings me back to the familiar. And while it is easy to romanticize, one must remember that wherever this imaged place and person resides, that the same problems will exist there—perhaps not in degree, but in kind.

Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Veronique is indeed a film of feeling. In fact, this is how Roger Ebert opens his review: ‘Here is a film about a feeling. Like all feelings, it is one that can hardly be described in words, although it can be evoked in art. It is the feeling that we are not alone, because there is more than one of us. We are connected at a level far, far beneath thought. We have no understanding of this. It is simply a feeling that we have.’ He chooses the word feeling, and while I don’t disagree, my instinct wants to instead reach for the word intuition, which is somewhat similar, but evokes more of the body—taste, touch, sensation. Within this film, that which goes on is rarely stated, but implied. […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A stylized, red-lit photo of Elliott Smith performing at the Lit Lounge in New York City in January 2003, shortly before his death.

On Elliott Smith: Nickolas Rossi’s “Heaven Adores You” (2014)

I imagine many might wish to believe that our lives are marred by tragedy. That some sort of sadness exists as nothing other than to shape us, wherein we are then forced to grow as result. For the artist, too often this sadness looms underneath—and even with talent and some modicum of success, the artist remains mired in loneliness. (If not emotional, then intellectual.) This, I feel, represents the singer and songwriter Elliott Smith, as showcased in Nickolas Rossi’s 2014 documentary, Heaven Adores You. ‘I don’t feel so different on the inside,’ Smith notes, in an interview. ‘People just started asking me different questions. I am the wrong sort of person to be famous.’

The documentary, while offering a nostalgic view of the mid-1990s and early 2000s in Portland, Oregon, aimlessly offers little narrative into Elliott Smith’s character. To contrast, in Searching for Sugar Man, the 2012 documentary on the ‘lost’ pop artist Sixto Rodriguez, the narrative is stronger in how it unfolds. After all, the film begins with the question of what happened to this mysterious singer, believing that he might have committed suicide, to audiences learning that he is very much alive. However, in the case of Elliott Smith, those who know of his work are aware of his death at age 34 that, despite the cause still being deemed ‘inconclusive,’ has all the indications of a suicide. […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A shot of a miner's wife smoking in a cigarette from Barbara Kopple's "Harlan County, USA".

They Too Are We: Reviewing Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County, USA” (1976)

Too often it is easily taken for granted certain life ‘luxuries’ that should otherwise be considered necessities—electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, and surviving without the limits of poverty. I am always agog when I hear the rich say, ‘Well, I worked hard for my money,’ as if to imply those who undergo poverty don’t work hard. Rather, those who struggle are often stuck in dead end jobs, remain prisoners of their town, and then there are the coal miners who undergo a daily suffering on another level altogether—long hours, low wages, black lung disease, and daily dangers are just some of the problems, not excluding their meager means of living—no decent home with clean, comfortable rooms and a bath. ‘Why don’t they just get out and leave?’ someone might ask. Well, without the financial resources, there is not much freedom for those living on meager wages.

Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA is a must-see documentary that showcases the seminal moment when the Harlan Kentucky coal miners joined the United Mine Workers of America, only to have Duke Power Company refuse to sign. Thus came the strike and the picket line. And that is what this film is about—commiseration, unity, fairness, and joining together for a greater good. The many little Davids who must stand up to this impending Goliath who, with its ‘electricity burning over there—there’s someone dying everyday for it.’ […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A shot from René Laloux’s La Planète sauvage (Fantastic Planet) of a Draag falling asleep next to an Om child.

Ethereal Circle: On René Laloux’s “La Planète sauvage” (“Fantastic Planet”, 1973)

There are some animated films that are not made for kids. In fact, some are not even made for most adults, and this may be one of them. So, let us not be mistaken that René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet (La Planète sauvage) is, on all accounts, a savage and violent tale where humans (called Oms) are nothing more than tiny animals forced to bend to the whims of larger, more ‘sophisticated’ creatures, called Draags. Within this post-apocalyptic world, the Draags rule and humans at best are regarded as nothing more than pets and at worst, they are vicious vermin deserving of extermination.

Fantastic Planet opens with a frightened human (Om) mother running with her baby. She appears terrified, and in her attempt to find safety, she climbs up a hill, only to then be pushed down by some large, blue hand. Once more, she attempts to climb, and is pushed down again. Still clutching her baby, the hand then flicks her several feet away. Suddenly, the blue fingers lift and drop her, wherein the force of the fall inevitably kills her. ‘What a shame. We can’t play with it anymore,’ says a group of three Draag children. Following that, a young Draag child and her Draag leader father approach the scene. The Draag child (Tiwa) asks if she can keep the orphaned baby Om as a pet. ‘Why is he crying, father?’ she asks. ‘He must be scared. Or hungry,’ her father replies. He allows her to keep the baby Om, but instructs, ‘You must take care of that animal.’ […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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A boy and girl with red and blue balloons pass each other by in Albert Lamorisse's "Le Ballon Rouge".

The Whimsical Wonderment of Albert Lamorisse’s “Le Ballon Rouge” (1956)

The first time I watched Le Ballon Rouge was in French class my junior year of high school on VHS. The assignment was also accompanied with a text version of the same story, wherein I had to answer questions (en français no less) about this young boy having gained and lost a red balloon. And while I tended to reject most of the ‘higher art’ thrust onto me as a child (I distinctly recall falling asleep in the back seat of a rental car while driving through some European country as a 13-year-old, as example) I always remembered this film.

Ok, so what is there to say about this 34-minute film that contains little to no dialogue? Well, firstly Le Ballon Rouge is told via the perspective of a child (played by the director’s son, Pascal) in how it portrays both wonderment and dream. We open with a still shot of early morning in Ménilmontant, a neighborhood of Paris in the aftermath of World War II, wherein a young boy enters the screen and leans to pet a small gray cat. Then, from above, he witnesses a large, red balloon whose string is tangled in a street lamp. The boy, in effect, ‘saves’ the otherwise trapped balloon, and this results in a friendship. The balloon, which takes on a life of its own, develops a loyalty and even perhaps a love for the boy, as the two navigate the streets. At times, the balloon plays games and races ahead, only to then stall and hide within a corner in its attempt at peek-a-boo. As they continue on, the boy encounters street folks—young and old—and indeed seems out of place in this world of ‘grown ups.’ […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A stylized shot of the diegetic director, Jake Hannaford (John Huston), surrounded by smoke, in profile, from Orson Welles's "The Other Side of the Wind".

Shoot ’em Dead: Review of Orson Welles’s “The Other Side of the Wind” (2018)

Difference, transience. Force and distance. The title of Orson Welles’s posthumously completed work brings to mind these words, as well as a number of images associated therein: arid landscapes, dust-devils, the ruins of industry. Silhouettes, contrasted, and odd shapes.

These are the images, at least, conjured onscreen via the imagination of old school filmmaker Jake Hannaford (part-Welles, part-Hemingway, part-John Huston, who plays the role) making, perhaps, a last-ditch effort at relevancy with his own pastiche of the type of European arthouse cinema in ascendancy at the time – the prime exemplar being Michelangelo Antonioni, whose Zabriskie Point was shot not far from one of the Arizona mansions where Welles and co. made their film. The title for Hannaford’s film is also The Other Side of the Wind, and both films (Welles’s and Hannaford’s) might just be two sides of the same wind blowing through art and life’s divide, very nearly ungraspable. […]