Tony Nigro's blog

Werner Herzog does David Lynch. Or maybe Lynch does Herzog. Either way, they're in bed together for MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE, the other half of Herzog's crazy coin after the recent BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS. Very loosely based on a real murder case in the late 1970s involving a deranged actor, a saber, his mother, and Sophocles' ELECTRA, MY SON has been described by Herzog as "a horror film without the blood, chainsaws and gore, but with a strange, anonymous fear creeping up in you."

Discussion among film nerds of course includes the Lynch factor. Who influenced whom? How much of it is Lynch? Does Herzog make knowing nods to Lynch because he's a producer or are the dwarf, eerie suburb, and Grace Zabriskie coincidental, organic parts of the project? And who really cares? To the play the auteurist card is one thing, but to wrap blanket statements around the film is to smother it before it has a chance to breathe.

Herzog is no more a stranger to surreal imagery than Lynch -- a boat in a tree in a AGUIRRE, the end of STROSZEK, the entirety of EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL, etc. But whereas Lynch's strangeness is more about mood and consciousness, Herzog often employs such imagery as a juxtaposition to a realistic context, imbuing it with an emotion or baroque meaning that might only be explained in Herzog's obtuse way. MY SON's meeting of the minds is less about who influenced what, but how each talent's bizzaro sensibility might be handled.

That said, so far MY SON, MY SON has been received coolly. The timing of BAD LIEUTENANT and inevitable comparisons may have something to do with that, but mixed reviews can also be a boon when headscratchers like Herzog and Lynch are involved. At the very least, it's a decent alternative to the season's holiday fluff and Oscar bait.

WHAT: MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE

WHEN: Friday, December 18, various times

WHERE: Downtown Independent, 251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA

and IFC Center, 323 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY

A lot of specialized venues are closing for the holidays, but some interesting fare is still in order in Los Angeles:

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Specters of the past and future loom large in Kent MacKenzie's 1961 film THE EXILES. The past in question involves the U.S. government's appropriation of Native American land, forming of reservations, and flight to big cities generations later -- in this case, Los Angeles. The future ghost is of the film's predominant setting of Bunker Hill, a once vibrant and colorful community that was deemed a slum and razed, destroying Victorian mansions and displacing thousands of people. The treatment of Native Americans remains one of the U.S.'s great blunders, and so Bunker Hill remains one of the City of Angels'.

Straddling the arguable line between neo-realism and documentary, THE EXILES concerns one night in the life of the city's small Native American community. Drinking, gambling, dancing, fighting, and the ill treatment of women abound as a melancholic way of getting by, and voiceover interviews with the non-actors provide the film's emotional core. The characters seem to exist as immigrants in the city, and in a way they are, but the sad irony is that their people still predate the ruling majority. It all culminates in a gathering of traditional song and dance held atop a hill overlooking the city, a last grab at a culture the exiles can't leave behind. So while the past and future may haunt the film, like so much neo-realism its present is concerned with people simply making it through the day.

As Mary, Homer, Claudine and the gang stroll the steps up the hill and under the Angels Flight funicular railway, it becomes apparent that MacKenzie's portrayal of Bunker Hill is as great an ethnographic contribution as is his portrayal of its residents. This is not the Bunker Hill of film noir fantasy. Nor is it the old neighborhood of nineteenth century money or the current mélange of skyscrapers and Frank Gehry's foil ball architecture. By the late 1950s when THE EXILES was shot, Bunker Hill was already left for dead and on the radar for "redevelopment," an ill-defined project that incidentally continues to this day. Surely MacKenzie knew what he was doing. Perhaps one of the old neighborhood's last occurrences on film, the luscious black and white is archival proof that, as Thom Andersen says in LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF, "there once was a city here," ignored then and missed now.

Not released commercially at the time, THE EXILES now gets its due on Milestone's two-DVD package, which rightfully lifts the film into the pantheon of early American independent films like KILLER OF SHEEP and SHADOWS. Besides a gorgeous picture restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the set offers numerous extras, the highlights of which include multiple commentaries and interviews by author Sherman Alexie, KILLER OF SHEEP filmmaker Charles Burnett, and critic Sean Axmaker; "Bunker Hill 1956," MacKenzie's short, humanist look at the neighborhood; "Bunker Hill: A Tale of Urban Removal," Greg Kimble's informative (if a bit snarky) short about the neighborhood's undoing; and clips from LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF, which deserves some credit for generating interest in the restoration.

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Okay, Los Angeles, it's time to put up or shut up. This weekend, the recently revitalized Los Angeles County Museum of Art cinema program wraps up a two-week Hong Sang-soo series with four films by the director including the L.A. premiere of NIGHT AND DAY, about a painter navigating his way through Paris's Korean expat scene. (Information on the other three films is at LACMA's website.)

Hong is most often compared to Eric Rohmer for his art house drama sensibilities and extended dialogue re: relationships; other names dropped in comparison include Ozu, Antoioni and even Buñuel. That's a heavy roster, but no matter your feelings the consensus is that Hong is a different type of South Korean filmmaker, one who eschews the country's recent genre-fueled blockbusteritus in exchange for films about the uncomfortable beauty of being human.

The self-declared home of The Movies, Los Angeles also claims the largest Korean population in the country, so the arrival of NIGHT AND DAY (which already screened in New York, San Francisco and around the world) is a bit late. Nonetheless, it's a welcome chance for LACMA to draw significant crowds. For those with interests beyond the cinephilic, the series is presented in conjunction with the museum's current exhibit Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea.

WHAT: NIGHT AND DAY

WHEN: Saturday, September 19, 7:30 PM

WHERE: LACMA's Bing Theater, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA

Also of interest in Los Angeles this week:

• September 18 at various times, Joe Berlinger's acclaimed documentary CRUDE opens at The Nuart.
• September 18-20 at 7:30, the Egyptian Theatre has a Stanley Kubrick fest with THE SHINING, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, DR. STRANGELOVE, and BARRY LYNDON.
• September 20-21 at various times, a double feature of Alfred Hitchcock's TO CATCH A THIEF and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH at New Beverly Cinema.
• September 23 at 8:00, more Hitchcock with his third silent film, THE LODGER, at Cinefamily.
• September 23 at 7:30, a Japanese cult horror double feature of HAUSU and GOKE, BODY SNATCHER FROM HELL at the Egyptian Theatre.

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THE BANK DICK (1940), like so many other W.C. Fields pictures, feels less like a movie and more like a waking dream experienced after a long night of drinking. As Egbert Sousé (accent grave on the e: "soo-SAY"), Fields plays Fields' immortalized persona, the henpecked drunkard and hater of children. The story is frail, a loosely connected series of scenes and collections of gags meant as a vehicle for Fields to do his thing. The barely discernible through-line involves Sousé mistakenly catching a crook, being awarded a job as a bank detective, briefly directing a movie shoot, engaging with a con man, and stumbling through ensuing hilarity. Somewhere in there is a scene where Sousé asks his bartender (Shemp Howard) if he spent a twenty-dollar bill last night. The point confirmed, Sousé is relieved: "I thought I lost it."

Story and cinematic beauty aren't the point here. They rarely are in the comedies of that time that featured post-vaudeville performers. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello: they're more about the personalities and reveling in a world lived through their warped views. And warped Fields was, his films best viewed through the bottom of a glass. Forget the breakneck back-and-forth of the classic Straight Man/Funny Man dynamic. Cherish instead Fields' distinctive timing, his sad (drunk) clown face and exasperated misanthropy, his hung over wincing at loud noises.

On August 22, the UCLA Film & Television Archive presents THE BANK DICK on a double bill with Preston Sturges' HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO at the Billy Wilder Theater. It closes the appropriately titled series, "The Jaundiced Eye: Hollywood's Sidelong Glances at Human Nature."

WHAT: THE BANK DICK

WHEN: Saturday, August 22, 7:30 PM

WHERE: Billy Wilder Theater,
Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA

Also of interest in Los Angeles this week:

• BEESWAX [Bujalski/2009] opens August 21 at Landmark's Nuart Theatre.
• NASHVILLE [Altman/1975] screens August 26 at the Arclight Hollywood as part of the theater's AFI 100 Years... 100 Movies series.
• MALE AND FEMALE [DeMille/1919], starring Gloria Swanson, screens August 26 at Cinefamily and concludes this month's Silent Sirens series.
• The Bicycle Film Festival kicks off its L.A. program August 26 with music and art shows, although the movies won't screen until August 28 at the Downtown Indpendent. (Fixie and tight jeans not required.)

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Turning counterculture into family-friendly entertainment can't be easy, but Jim Henson always made it look that way. Turning 30 this year, THE MUPPET MOVIE might be its generation's greatest achievement in that nebulous genre of family entertainment -- the kind of stuff that makes the kids happy but has enough inside jokes to keep adults involved. Henson and company were at their subversive best here, making the crossover into a big Muppet feature by playing Kermit and the gang as nobodies looking to make it big in Hollywood. The self-reflexivity and broken fourth wall only begins there, and that's before numerous cameos and a prescient Bollywood joke.

As Dr. Teeth says, THE MUPPET MOVIE is "a narrative of very heavy-duty proportion." It's also a road movie that owes a lot to screwball comedies of the Preston Sturges variety, introduces and weaves the missing mythology of how the Muppets met, and ends on a genuine, happy hippie note that is a kind of Henson hallmark. Children's programming and animated fare often try making a similar leap to the big screen, but most just end up jumping the shark, soon to be lost. (They should've tried Hare Krishna.)

It was only a matter of time until Henson got his due not only as a beloved entertainer but as an inspired artist as well. In November 2004, BAM Rose Cinemas honored Henson's legacy by screening a boffo series of commercials, features, rare clips, and short films such as the Academy Award-nominated "Time Piece." Following that, in Los Angeles the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre programmed a similar show that sold out three times over, with extra shows being added the same night because the prints had to be returned the next day. Add that to the legacy: Henson broke attendance records at one of L.A.'s most original independent cinemas.

Cinefamily has dedicated every Friday and Saturday of July to Henson films and ephemera, including a redux of the Jim Henson Legacy program to which it owes so much. This weekend marks the series' zenith with a Saturday matinee program called "The Art of Puppetry and Storytelling," which focuses on the art and craft of the puppeteer (an all too endangered species now). Later that night, THE MUPPET MOVIE screens as part of 30th anniversary celebration at Cinespia at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

WHAT: THE MUPPET MOVIE

WHEN: Saturday, July 25, 8:30 PM

WHERE: Hollywood Forever Cemetery Screenings,
6000 Santa Monica Boulevard (at Gower), Los Angeles, CA

Also of interest in Los Angeles this week:

• Friday, July 24 at 8pm: DOG CITY, THE STORYTELLER, and THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER (Cinefamily)
• Saturday, July 25 at 2pm: "The Art of Puppetry and Storytelling" (Cinefamily)