026 - Don't look back

Synopsis: Documentary following Bob Dylan on his 1965 UK tour

Director: DA Pennebaker

Actors: Bob Dylan

Date: 1965

How viewed: lovefilm rental

Rating: 4/5

David Meyer says:
Because Pennebaker only had one camera .. this adds to the sense of intimacy, of witnessing a secret life made public. 

I say:

This was initially destined to get a 5/5 score - especially as it kicks off with that fantastic clip of Bob holding up the cue cards for Subterranean Homesick Blues in the alley by the Savoy hotel, with Allen Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth in the background, and the first half hour continues with the same ingenuity and at the same pace: arriving at the airport, at press conferences, at hotels, in dressing rooms, and with bold editing of the concert footage (on one occasion all you get is the last line of one song, a bit of fiddling with his harmonica, a bit of re-tuning his guitar, and the first line of the next song). But then in the middle it just flags, there are too many long uninteresting conversations, although it picks up again at the end, and perhaps the best bit is Bob in his dressing room in the moments before going on stage at the Royal Albert Hall - alone for once (except for his manager (Albert Grossman)), silently preparing. Nevertheless it's a great documentary which gets to the heart of what it must have been like for Dylan on that tour, with the chaos, and all the hangers on, and having to answer ridiculous questions from naive reporters. Watch it and see music (and the art of the documentary film) changing before your eyes.  

025 - Two-lane blacktop

Synopsis: Street car racers get involved in a race across the US

Director: Monte Hellman

Actors: James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates

Date: 1971

How viewed: already in my collection

Rating: 3/5

David Meyer says:

.. lots of driving, lots of quiet landscapes, a little sex, and several admirable cars.

I say:

The main attraction for me was the depiction of the street car racing in the US in the 60's/70's - built from scratch hotrods or souped up road cars racing illegally over a quarter mile - did this happen anywhere else in the world - does it still happen?? Taylor (the 'driver') and Wilson (the 'mechanic') drift around in their customized '55 Chevy racing other petrol heads, until they meet Oates in his '70 GTO and agree to race across the US to Washington DC, with the prize being both cars. However, they don't seem too interested in racing - a lot of the 'action' takes place in gas stations/diners, they get involved with a girl, Taylor and Wilson take time to fix Oates' car, etc, etc. The choice of musicians Taylor and Wilson is weird - but they don't say much - Wilson says 'I must check the valves / carburetter jets / exhaust' every 10 minutes or so, and Taylor says even less - you wonder if they just needed a couple of big names to draw in the punters - these days they might have signed up Peter Andre and Pete Doherty! Oates gets all the script telling different tales to each hitch-hiker he picks up (including HD (aka Harry Dean) Stanton) and one the best moments is an old woman with her grand-daughter who almost raps 'goin' to the graveyard, city car killed her folks, goin' to the graveyard..'. Good ending though, even though it feels like a cop-out..

024 - Stalker

Synopsis: In a devastated landscape the stalker guides 2 men towards a room that has the power to fulfil their deepest wishes

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Actors: Alexander Kaidanovsky, Anatoli Solonitsky, Nikolai Grinko

Date: 1979

How viewed: lovefilm rental 

Rating: 2/5

David Meyer says:

An unbelievably slow meditation on the necessary difficulty of any quest for spirituality, and the limited potential for man's redemption

I say:

I realise this is the point where I lose all credibility as a film buff, but I have to admit this film was far too slow and obtuse for me. The story concerns a journey to a room in a building in the middle of the Zone (a sealed off area that has been devastated by war? alien invasion? nuclear explosion?) where it is believed your deepest wish will come true. The guide (the 'stalker') takes 2 men (the 'writer' and the 'professor') to the room, using his intuition to avoid all the unseen dangers and constantly changing landscape. It takes a long time, they get there, they prevaricate, they go home. I know it's really a long philosophical discussion about art vs science, about the difficulty of achieving spirituality, about perhaps the thing that you wish for is not what it seems, but I think I've got better things to do with my time! However, then again there's that last enigmatic scene when his disabled daughter (who was born in The Zone) psychokinetically moves glasses across a table, hmmm...

023 - Don't look now

Synopsis: Psychic forebodings disorient grieving couple in Venice (well, you try to write a synopsis in a sentence!)

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Actors: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie

Date: 1973

How viewed: already in my collection 

Rating: 3/5

David Meyer says:

A complex creepy tale, the ending will scare you to death.

I say:

Don't understand how this qualifies as a DVD 'you've never heard of', but was drawn to watch it again last night as a result of comments my Film Studies tutor made about the editing (especially how Julie Christie's scream at the end of the first section transforms into the sound of drilling into the stone wall of the Venice church), and I'm still not in the right frame of mind to watch Tarkovsky's Stalker! Difficult to imagine the impact seeing this film for the first time has, but now, on the 3rd or 4th viewing, it feels a bit laboured (there's flashes of red in virtually every scene - coats, boots, hats, handbags, shop signs, bottle tops, etc etc), Venice just isn't sufficiently ominous (too many shots of empty open squares - perhaps a result of the impossibility of filming in Venice!), Julie Christie is one-dimensional, and Donald Sutherland's hair and moustache root the film firmly in the 70's. Nevertheless there are still numerous mysteries and red (ha!!) herrings: the 2 sisters laughing maniacally in their room, the demeanour of the priest (who wakes up at night at a key point in the action - is he also psychic?), the fact that at one point Donald Sutherland finds himself at the end of a blind alley and muses 'I know this place' and yet it never seems to appear again, and the significance of the 2nd shot in the film (rain through the shutters of the Venice hotel). Good, but no cigar!

022 - Man of flowers

Synopsis: Middle aged artist tries to deal with his repressed sexuality

Director: Paul Cox

Actors: Norman Kaye, Alyson Best, Chris Haywood

Date: 1983

How viewed: viewed online via Lovefilm 

Rating: 2/5

David Meyer says:

Cox explores repression, lust, destructive relationships, self-loathing, self-acceptance and redemption. Weird and wonderful.

I say:

This is indeed a strange little film, in which a middle aged artist who paints flowers, and is turned on by flowers and music, addresses his sexual repression, with the help of a young girl who models nude at his art class. The girl's boyfriend, also an artist, but the compete opposite of the 'man of flowers', threatens them both, but ultimately he finds a way to protect her (his 'little flower'). It's a slow thoughtful film, and the best bits are perhaps the flashbacks to his childhood (where bizarrely his father is played by Werner Herzog!), but not really worth the effort.

021 - The Killer

Synopsis: Moral hit man meets amoral cop - but kills hundreds of men anyway  

Director: John Woo

Actors: Chow Yun Fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh

Date: 1989

How viewed: bought from Amazon

Rating: 2/5

David Meyer says:

The gunfights go on and on, and every minute is more imaginative, irresistible, exciting and beautiful than the last. Woo is the ultimate poet of on-screen violence. 

I say:

The next Lovefilm rental to arrive is Tarkovsky's Stalker, so I thought I needed something lighter before tackling that (after watching The Sheltering Sky and The Sacrifice in recent days), and this is certainly different!! Not my sort of film at all, as most of it is like a shoot-em-up video game - but other reviews talk about how John Woo changed the genre and the influence this film had on Hollywood - so I guess you have to acknowledge and respect that. The friendship that develops between the hitman and the cop is interesting, but the body count is just too ridiculous - I read somewhere 100 in the final shootout with the Triads alone, and I suspect someone somewhere has added them all up! If you like video games this is for you, if not, not.
PS here you go: http://moviebodycounts.com/Top-Movies.htm says The Killer is currently at No 29 with 149 kills - ho hum - top is Lord of the Rings Return of the King with 836 - enjoy!

020 - The Sheltering Sky

Synopsis: In the 1940's, an American couple travel deep into North Africa to find themselves

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Actors: Debra Winger, John Malkovich, Campbell Scott

Date: 1990

How viewed: already in my DVD collection

Rating: 4/5

David Meyer says:

One of the most rewarding and least appreciated films of the last few years. Oblique, arty, and not for the faint of heart

I say:

The only reason I had this film in my collection was that it was given away free with a Sunday newspaper a few years ago. Sadly it has lain unwatched ever since. Thus this idea to watch all the films in David Meyer's book has again encouraged me to watch something that wouldn't normally have been on my radar, and what a great film this is. It's a road movie, it's a travelogue, it's a documentary of life in North Africa in the 40's, it's a love story, and it's about a relationship slowly disintegrating. Like Cabenza de Vaca (013 in my list) neither we or the trio of travelers know where they're going, or why, what they'll find, or how that will change their relationships. As they travel further and further into the Sahara, and the scenery becomes more and more spectacular, the hotels, the food, traveling, and and life itself, become more and more difficult. Another long, slow, beautifully photographed film, that requires the viewer to be in a certain contemplative state from the beginning, and to be willing to be as lost as the travelers themselves.

019 - The Sacrifice

Synopsis: Man sacrifices everything to save the world (I think!!)

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Actors: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood

Date: 1986

How viewed: lovefilm rental

Rating: 3/5

David Meyer says: 

.. beautiful, miraculous and almost indescribably slow.

I say:

I try not to read other reviews before I see these films and write my comments, and the phrase I struggled to find for this film was 'a meditation', which I subsequently found David Meyer also uses. It's a meditation on life, the universe and everything, and you probably need to get into some sort of meditative state before sitting down for nearly two and a half hours and watching this (drugs might help!) Nevertheless it is a stunning film, although everything is taken at snail's pace. It's almost impossible to determine exactly what is going on - a writer lives with his family in an isolated house by lake in Scandinavia, and on his birthday, when a few friends gather, news comes on the radio that war has broken out, and he makes a bargain with God to restore things to normal if he sacrifices everything, which he does, and normality is restored). There are lots of monologues, languorous long shots of the landscape, and a spectacular fire to enjoy, and bizarrely, it reminded me of '2001' - and that slow motion ballet of spaceships etc...