Os Canibais (Manoel de Oliveira, 1988): The film, told entirely through operatic singing, revolves around a high society gathering and the various intrigues that develop among them. Jeeeeezus is this film boring as sin with the...HOLY SHIT! That guy just revealed himself to be a quadruple amputee and thrust himself into a burning fireplace when his romantic overtures were rejected. Oh my God, now he's singing while burning to death in the fireplace! Wow, this film is worth sitting through the intentionally tedious first half to enjoy the entertaining second half when the wheels come off. The final scene
Spoiler
where a pair of cannibals who have just eaten their brother turn into wolves and attack their lawyer who transforms into a pig
Freeze, Die, Come to Life (Vitali Kanevsky, 1989): Thanks to Zedz for highlighting this one early on in the project. It was already on my radar, but his recommendation gave me the extra push to check it out, and what a magnificent experience it was! The film chronicles the life of a pair of children, Galia and Valerka (played with charming ease by Dinara Drukarova and Pavel Nazarov), as they struggle to survive in Siberia toward the end of Stalin's reign. Although they initially begin as rivals for their street corner sales routines, they develop a kind of friendship where they alleviate each other's pain while still remaining rivals. The black and white cinematography is gorgeous and contains some shots that I'll never forget. Great film from the end of the Soviet era.
The Loveless (Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery, 1981): This, the first film of both Kathryn Bigelow and Willem Dafoe, tells the story of a 50s biker gang that enters a small southern town and causes great discomfort among its uptight residents. The film has a tin ear for dialogue and often relies more on cliches than anything that sounds like phrases that people actually say. However, the story, a potboiler about a simmering town with secrets and racial hostilities, is a fairly decent one that leads to a climax that I didn't expect. Marin Kanter, playing a sexually abused teenager acting out against her father, is the film's standout. It's a shame that she only had a handful of other screen credits. It's far from a great film, but there's enough here to give it a tepid recommendation.
My Twentieth Century (Ildikó Enyedi, 1989): Enyedi's wild free form exploration of gender, identity, and politics in the early twentieth century Eastern Europe. As the film begins, a pair of identical twins struggle to make a living selling matchbooks on the streets. That night two men take the girls in different directions, with neither one to see the other again. As young women in 1900, the two women, both played magnificently by Dorota Segda, find themselves with different personalities (one frivolous, the a dedicate anarchist) and criss crossing each other's paths aboard the Orient Express. The film has some great vignettes (including a look a hunter from the perspective of a family of chimpanzee, and the world's most sexist college professor), but the string of loosely connected scenes never feels like it adds up to more than the sum of it's parts. It is a good film, but I can't help but feel a wee bit disappointed by the fact that it isn't a little better.
Out of Africa (Sydney Pollack, 1985): I may have to turn in my Criterion forum too cool for school membership card over this one, but I'll be damned if I didn't kind of enjoy this one. 1985's best picture Oscar winner stars Meryl Streep as Karen, a wealthy Danish woman trapped in a loveless, prearranged marriage to an African farmer, and Robert Redford as Denys, the big game hunter that steals her heart in her early twentieth century coffee plantation. Yes, Pollack could have been more judicious in his editing and trimmed the film down from its nearly three hour run time, but I never was bored by it at all. The film is neither the best of '85 as the academy held, nor is it the apotheosis of cinematic snooze the way that some posters around here have treated it. It's an okay film at best.
Pale Rider (Clint Eastwood, 1985): Clint Eastwood pulls double duty behind and in front of the camera in this film which tells the story of a preacher that enters the lives of a small gold mining community which is under attack from the large mining operation in town. The film plays out as a slightly less serious version of High Plains Drifter in that Eastwood's character is strongly hinted at being a supernatural savior who enters the lives of the oppressed masses (led in this case by Michael Moriarty, in what may be his best performance). It's not as good as the other film, but Eastwood does his best here (though the hickory stick fight struck me as poorly shot, that's just a niggling) with what he has. I'd still give it an easy recommendation.
Rikyu (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1989): Rentarô Mikuni stars as the titular character, a late 16th century tea expert who becomes an adviser to a warlord (played by Tsutomu Yamazaki) who is on the verge of unifying Japan and possibly invading Eastern Asia. The film apparently is often compared to A Man for All Seasons with Rikyu as a Japanese Thomas More, refusing to rubber stamp his master's plans. I hate to use the criticism of being boring to describe a film, but that's exactly what I found it: tedious and Teshigahara's worst. Perhaps I failed to appreciate it in part because of Sling Shot's disastrous DVD which is horribly cropped and clearly a VHS conversion with burned in subtitles. If you plan to watch the movie, then I strongly recommend avoiding this edition.
