Welcome to The Penny-Pinching Cinephile, a weekly spotlight of the best free flicks on the web. ‘Cuz sometimes you gotta eat.
1) Akira
Like many an American movie buff raised on a steady diet of Classic Hollywood and Disney animation, I have certain blind spots when it comes to international cinema. This is especially true of Japanese cinema, and doubly true when it comes to Japanese animation. So, if you’re anything like me, it just might be that Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo, 1988) is the most important cultural landmark movie you’ve never seen. An adaptation of Otomo’s own seminal ’80s manga series, Akira is a sprawling dystopian, cyberpunk epic that takes place in the post-third world war Neo-Toyko of 2019. Kaneda, the leader of a teenage biker gang (and wearer of totally rad jackets) organizes a mini-crusade to rescue his fellow biker dude and friend Tetsuo, who has developed dangerous and unwieldy psychic powers due to a secret government experiment called Akira. Things get crazier from there. But Akira isn’t just a movie about cool-looking motorcycles (although it has plenty of that). Otomo’s world is seething with political unrest. Rampant unemployment, disaffected youth, a shadowy conspiracy covering up the truth about WWIII and an angry tumult of backlash against tariffs set the stage for an explosive & expansive sci-fi universe that, despite its retro-futurism, doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Okay, maybe the part about psychic powers does a bit. Obviously a two-hour film can’t capture the scope and depth of Otomo’s 2,000+ page manga, but damn if he doesn’t do a pretty good job of whetting the appetite for more. Akira, both the manga and the film, have been likened to Star Wars in terms of cultural and genre impact, although the former is still much more of a “cult” fascination than a mainstream success. A 25th anniversary edition Blu-Ray of the film was released last year, reinvigorating interest (and almost certainly the reason you can now watch it online for free). A visually stunning movie, intricately detailed and brilliantly complex, Akira is worth seeking out, even if, like me, you know next to nothing about anime.
2) Poison
Along with Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes is perhaps the best example of a queer indie filmmaker transitioning to mainstream Hollywood success. Long before Far From Heaven, Haynes’ 1991 debut feature Poison heralded the birth of a major work of New Queer Cinema. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho premiered the same year.) Loosely based on the works of French writer Jean Genet, Poison tells three distinct stories, each with gay themes. The first story, “Hero”, is presented like a tabloid news story, and concerns a young boy who shoots his father and then, according to the boy’s mother, flies out the window never to be seen again. The second story, “Horror”, is a black and white mad scientist/monster movie in which a scientist researching the chemical basis of human sexuality accidentally ingests the powerful “elixir” and develops leprosy and a penchant for murdering people. “Homo”, the third segment, is the most straight forward adaptation of Genet’s work and tells the story of a man who falls in love with a fellow inmate, whom he recalls was the victim of humiliating hazing while they were both in a youth detention center. The three stories are intercut with each other, creating a sort of disorienting experimental feel. However, the editing also lends a greater cumulative emotional impact as all three stories crescendo at the same time in melange of strange tragedy and horror. Far from the mainstream, Poison very purposefully isn’t for everyone, being more explicitly gay than Haynes’ later works (Velvet Goldmine aside) and deliberately non-linear. But it is worth a screening, especially for fans of Haynes, Genet or queer cinema in general.
Ah, yes, it’s that Sam Fuller bald-headed lady movie! Although it may be most widely recognized as the Daniel Clowes-illustrated Criterion DVD cover, The Naked Kiss‘ defining image is only one in a litany of bizarre moments–strange and wonderful, lurid and surreal, absurd and sensational–that make up the unique DNA of this quintessential Sam Fuller picture. The film’s storyline is pure B-movie pulp: Kelly (the superb Constance Towers) is a prostitute who winds up in the small town of Grantville after being run out of respectable society because of her profession. There, she abandons her night life in favor of a saintly gig as a nurse for crippled kids and falls in love with the richest guy in town, who seems to really dig her despite Kelly’s unsavory past. Turns out her beau is secretly a closet sex fiend, which he figures Kelly will be a-okay with since she used to be kind of kinky herself. In the ensuing fracas, Kelly accidentally kills her fiance (naturally) and is then arrested and jailed by the town sheriff, with whom she had earlier had a brief affair (and he kind of hates her). Although the subject matter is classic potboiler, Fuller is a genuine artist and, working with the incredible cinematographer Stanley Cortez (whose work on The Night of the Hunter is in contention for all-time great black and white photography), they create a visually rich and rewarding palette of borderline hysterical elements. A true maverick and American original, Sam Fuller is a director you need to seek out if you’re not familiar; The Naked Kiss is a great place to start.
4) Room 666
In 1982, Wim Wenders went to the 35th Cannes Film Festival. Turns out a lot of other people were there too. Wenders gathered some of these people in a hotel room, including Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Steven Spielberg and Michelangelo Antonioni, and asked them a single question: “Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?” The resulting interviews make up Room 666, a fascinating cinephile curio of the highest order. The camera never moves. The frame is static and the only objects are the directors in conversation. So, no, Room 666 may not be very visually interesting, but the audience for this film is not anyone looking for compelling narrative cinema; it’s awkwardly excited auteur fanboys sporting Bela Tarr t-shirts. It’s me. It’s us. Each directors’ response serves as a little Rorschach test of personality, some being very easy to predict (Godard and Spielberg taking opposite views is not too surprising), some being quite amusing and all of them quite interesting in a retrospective light. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Wenders’ concept is that the debate over the death of cinema prevails today, maybe more than ever in the age of so many disposable online media think pieces. In 1982, television threatened and home media loomed. In 2014, it’s VOD and smaller screens, soaring budgets and interminable sequels. Speaking of sequels…what would a modern Room 666 look like? Somebody get Wim on the phone. Cinema is dead, long live cinema!
To say that F.W. Murnau’s 1924 silent film The Last Laugh is a masterpiece is kind of understating it. The Last Laugh tells the story of a hotel doorman whose humiliating demotion to washroom attendant triggers in the old man an existential crisis of identity. Discarded by his former employees and hotel guests, openly mocked by his friends and neighbors, the old man is unable to cope with the grief and total loss of self-respect. The old man is played by Emil Jannings, giving, no doubt, one of the greatest performances in movie history. Murnau wanted the camera to focus solely on Jannings’ face as he moved about the hotel performing his duties. The problem, however, was that in 1924, there was no camera set-up that allowed such freedom. So Murnau & co. invented one. The Last Laugh is the first film to feature a camera dolly, so that the camera could move freely along a track wherever the actors moved. Murnau strapped the camera to his cameraman’s chest and had him follow Jannings everywhere. Murnau put the camera in a baby carriage and pushed it around. He fastened the camera to an elevator so he could capture the entire scope of the multi-level hotel set in a single shot. The astonishing visual fluidity of this film eliminated the need for explanatory intertitles, making The Laugh Laugh one of the purest expressions of cinema’s non-verbal, fully visual storytelling power.
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