Welcome to The Penny-Pinching Cinephile, a weekly spotlight of the best free flicks on the web. ‘Cuz sometimes you gotta eat. We hope you enjoy the movies.
1.) Le Quattro Volte
The film’s title refers the Pythagorus’ theory of the four phases of life: man, animal, vegetable and mineral. The film is set in the medieval village of Calabria, where people have lived more or less in the same way for centuries. Our man characters are an old goatherd, his flock of goats, a majestic fir tree and a pile of wood burnt to use as charcoal for the villagers. This simple premise and the slow, deliberately paced storytelling lull the viewer into a kind of sedate trance. Le quattro volte transcends cinema, becoming some kind of visual poem, or a rhythmic song. The film’s unique beauty is achieved without dialogue, making the proceedings all the more mystical and mysterious. Director Michelangelo Frammartino has achieved something sublime here: a deeply felt meditation on life and death, rich with moments of unexpected drama and serene peace.
2.) Happy Together
Wong Kar-Wai’s film is a touching and truthful of a relationship in disarray. Hong Kong natives Lai (Leslie Cheung) and Ho (Tony Leung) travel to Argentina to rekindle their failing relationship, only to suffer a series of break-ups during their trip. The unstable and abusive Lai lives to torment Ho, but Ho keeps taking him back, no matter the offense. It’s a tragically cyclical relationship of abuse and reconciliation, yet Kar-Wai captures the fragile beauty in their relationship without sugar-coating the pair’s destructive tendencies. From the film’s uniquely garish visual compositions (courtesy of cinematographer Christopher Doyle), to its mature and intimate treatment of the main characters’ homosexuality, Happy Together is an important film in Hong Kong Second Wave film and international cinema in the past twenty years.
3.) Crumb
One of the best documentaries of the 1990s, Terry Zwigoff’s portrait of comics artist R. Crumb is a probing and perceptive look at the man and how he turns his obsessions into art. More than Crumb himself, though, Zwigoff’s film is a deeply personal look at Crumb’s entire family, his two brothers and mother who inextricably shaped his peculiar outlooks and perspectives. The two other Crumb boys shared in Robert’s artistic abilities, but their lives turned out sadly tragic. The specter of abuse and mental illness haunts the Crumb family; sometimes the realism achieved in the interviews touches close to the bone. Alternating between fascinating, funny, uncomfortable and shocking, Crumb is must-see viewing, even for people with no knowledge of R. Crumb’s comics work.
4) D.O.A.
This fast-paced thriller star Edmond O’Brien as Frank Bigelow, a notary who is fatally poisoned and only has days to track down the man who killed him and get revenge. This tale of the ordinary man caught in a web of conspiracy and murder is a classic film noir theme, stylishly directed by former Expressionist cinematographer Rudolph Mate. Mate’s photography of vintage Los Angeles is iconic and beautiful, a snapshot of the city in its post-war glory days. The story itself travels the murky roads of criminality, involving a mob boss, a psychotic gunsel and several hapless victims of a serial poisoner trying to cover the tracks of a murder. Composer Dimitri Tiomkin provides the powerful musical score, underlining the sense of impending dread throughout the film.
5) Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky
Every once in a while, I try to include some purely fun choices for The Penny-Pinching Cinephile. Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is one of those just-for-laughs kind of picks. The outrageously bloody, unbelievably violent tale of a martial artist with superhuman strength who breaks out of prison to enact revenge for being unfairly jailed, Riki-Oh is a martial arts comedy masterpiece. If you’re looking for a film where one man strangles another with his own intestines, this is the film for you. Between crushing the heads of his enemies with his bare hands, Ricky fights against the injustice of the privatized prison system. Ricky’s hobbies include grinding his enemies’ flesh in a meat grinder, and social justice.
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2 thoughts on “The Penny-Pinching Cinephile (5/21/13–5/27/13)”
I just watched Happy Together a few days ago. That’s a great movie.
It really is. My favorite WKW.