Zelig
1983. Directed by Woody Allen
A mocumentary extraordinaire, in Zelig Allen pulls all the stops and creates such a masterful fake that it seems real. He plays a mysterious mental patient in the 1930s who has the strange ability to take on the physical attributes of anyone he is around. He becomes a black man, a Native American, a Hasidic rabbi, an obese man etc. The film is told through old audio recordings, stock footage, fake newsreels and interviews with surviving participants. This makes the film move sluggishly, and I got impatient seeing only photos of Allen, waiting to see his neurotic character in live action. But the film finally pays off, and even though the live segments are short, they’re all priceless. Zelig starts out kind of dull, but it grows on you slowly and by the end you are entirely invested in the characters. I found myself cheering near the end. I’ve never been more entertained by a “historical documentary,” and the doctored footage is phenomenally well done. There’s a scene involving actual footage of a Hitler speech that blew me away.
American Graffiti
1973. Directed by George Lucas
Classic rock blares and echoes through the busy Friday night streets. It’s 1962 in a small town in California and the teens are out cruising. That’s really all this film is, a flashback to a time when kids dated by driving souped up cars up and down main street. A pre-Star Wars, and I must say a much more emotionally intelligent George Lucas masterfully directs this story by not really telling a story. A likable cast of characters navigate the city streets, go to a dance, meet old flames and make new friends, all through naturalistic acting, lighting and sound design. They branch off in different directions, get in silly predicaments and pull dangerous pranks, and the camera follows them almost like they’re the subjects of a documentary. There’s a strong sense of nostalgia and sadness over all these mostly innocent proceedings. It’s as if these kids know what’s coming in the next turbulent decade, and they’re trying to make the best of their last days of youth and innocence. I loved this movie and I fell in love with all the characters. Lucas clearly knows how teens act and think, and he makes them seem so real that you start to think that you can talk to them through the screen. This is an American classic and a must-see.
Intolerable Cruelty
2003. Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Originally the Coen’s wrote this screenplay for a different director. They admit that it’s too commercial for their directing tastes and they shied away from doing it themselves at first, but they were finally convinced and the result is Intolerable Cruelty. It’s a film about the cold reality of divorce in modern America, especially among the cultural elite, but it’s also a screwball romp reminiscent of 1940’s romantic comedies. George Clooney is a dashing Hollywood divorce lawyer who plays a lunatic cat-and-mouse game with the beautiful Catherine Zeta-Jones. Sparks fly, the plot twists and turns, and many divorces and affairs later we are left with a farcical indictment of our times. Cruelty reminds me of an earlier Coen film, The Ladykillers, which was similarly commercial in nature. When the Coen’s aren’t working in their signature full-flung weird style, they can be very base, seeming to mock the society they’re pandering to with cries of “are you not entertained?” Just as Ladykillers was full of racial stereotype and crudity, so Intolerable Cruelty is full of debasing cynicism. Not that the Coen’s other films aren’t risque at times, these two films just stand out as some of their less tasteful works. Not that I wasn’t entertained.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
2007. Directed by Seth Gordon
I really enjoyed this documentary, but there were times when I wondered if it was all staged. It deals with an extremely odd assortment of characters who have dedicated their lives to acing old stand-up arcade games. One character in particular dominates the competition until a nobody knocks him off his throne by beating his long-standing Donkey Kong score. The ensuing conflict is at times funny, sad and surreal. The characters are all dealt with fairly, but some still emerge more sympathetic than others. There’s even a bit of spy-like intrigue that is left mostly unexplained. I had no idea there was a sport like this, much less that its participants took it so seriously!
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
2008. Directed by Kurt Kuenne
This is the most shocking and emotionally charged documentary I’ve ever seen. It really packs a wallop. I can’t say much without spoiling its effect. It deals with a murderer who walks free and a vicious child custody battle, but that’s just the beginning. It morphs from a sentimental biography to a terrifying true-life horror film to a powerful piece of propaganda. The justice system of Canada is piece of work, and the director powerfully shows how liberal wishy-washy-ness leads to terrible injustice and suffering. This is a must see.
Halloween
1978. Directed by John Carpenter
The idea of Halloween is more powerful than the film itself. An unknown force of evil is on a one-night killing spree that has no rhyme or reason. He can appear anywhere, and he can’t be stopped. The only solution is to stand and fight. A now over-used, cliched scenario, it originated in this tiny, poorly made film, but it was so powerful that it made an otherwise failed independent feature into a blockbuster classic. Not everything in this film is a disaster. Sure, the acting is putrid, the dialog is stale and pointless, but a few performances shine through. Jamie Lee Curtis delivers a charismatic and likable performance as the straight-laced heroine babysitter and is really the only sympathetic teen character in the film. Donald Pleasence, who is far too good to be anywhere near this film, nonetheless gives it a dramatic backbone as the haunted psychiatrist trying to stop his murderous patient. The cinematography is also quite good, leaving lots of dark empty spaces around the characters where the killer could be hiding and smoothly tracking them as they run from room to room trying to get away. Unlike its many sequels and shameless copies, this film is bloodless and more about shock than violence. The body count is still high, and it feels more like exploitation than art. But it’s still an important film and proves that you don’t need money of visual effects to make an engaging film. (One huge pet peeve: they shot this film in early Spring in Hollywood, California, but set the story in Illinois in late October. Everything is green, they just sprinkled a bunch of dead leaves on the ground. This is unacceptable! I know they had no money, but couldn’t they have just set it in Hollywood? If you can’t make it look at all like the Midwest, don’t set it there. It’s so jarring that I almost turned the film off.)