“Some of the more didactic critics asked in their reviews, “What kind of film is this — is it a love story, is it a thriller, is it a political story?’ You could say that it unsuccessfully fails to fuse these elements, but to ask why deal with all those elements together, why not choose one of them, reveals a view of life and films that is very different from my own.” Peter Weir interviewed by Sue Mathews for 35mm Dreams: Conversations with Five Directors About the Australian Film Revival

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)
Directed by Peter Weir
Screenplay by David Williamson & Peter Weir and C.J. Koch, based on the novel by C.J. Koch
Produced by James McElroy
115 minutes

Extracting the natural resources of Pre-Code Hollywood and refining them into a story vital to his own hemisphere, Australian filmmaker Peter Weir mined a diamond from the rough with The Year of Living Dangerously, a historical drama/ love story/ political thriller whose critics waged wasn’t properly committed to any one genre. Yet this Australian production — financed and distributed by MGM — has proven immune to category, forging atmosphere, foreign customs and sensuality into one mesmerizing throwback. It’s June 1965 and Australian radio correspondent Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) lands in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on his first overseas post. Hoping that the friction between populist strongman President Sukrano and a Communist insurgency might spark his broadcasting career, Hamilton discovers an impoverished country seething with anti-capitalist sentiment.

While the seasoned correspondents (Michael Murphy, Noel Ferrier, Paul Sonkkila) scurry for a political scoop, dwarfish photographer Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt) sees potential in Guy to expose the real Jakarta, where the poor scramble for survival. He forms a partnership with Guy: exclusive film work in exchange for access to the contacts Billy has mysteriously developed in Indonesia. These include British assistant military attache Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver) who Billy uses his considerable social acumen to match Guy with romantically. In an effort to protect her lover, Jill tips Guy about an incoming arms shipment that will embolden the insurgents to launch a revolt against Sukrano. Choosing to broadcast this as the scoop he’s waited his career for, Guy takes advantage of Jill and alienates Billy, but as the country descends into revolution, Guy is given one chance to do the right thing.

C.J. Koch’s prize winning 1978 novel The Year of Living Dangerously was influenced by the author’s experiences as an ABC Radio producer and his travels in Southeast Asia. Film rights were quickly optioned by filmmaker Peter Weir. After Koch turned in an adaptation, Weir retained playwright David Williamson to collaborate on a script that hinged less on political intrigue and more on classical romance. Reuniting with rising star Mel Gibson after working together on Gallipoli, Weir chose Australian actor David Atkins to play Billy Kwan. Realizing in rehearsals he’d made a mistake, the director searched for a replacement who met the character’s height requirements. American stage actress Linda Hunt won Weir over in auditions, though even Hunt doubted she could convincingly play a man. Peers in the industry would disagree, voting her to an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Not content to illuminate the corners of a Third World humanitarian crisis as it unfolds, Weir’s fifth feature film works beautifully as another endangered species among movies: adult drama. To put it another way, The Year of Living Dangerously is hot. The screen intensity between Gibson & Weaver is almost as combustible as William Hurt & Kathleen Turner’s in Body Heat; like the tropical texture of Lawrence Kasdan’s film noir, we feel the humidity rising on the streets and how it changes those caught in its wave. A sophisticated screenplay and a spirited performance by Linda Hunt pose questions of individual responsibility to society at large without veering into sermon. Russell Boyd’s medieval lighting suggests uncertainty in the darkness, while Vangelis provided key musical cues to the passion that blossoms from that void.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 7,716 users: 73% for The Year of Living Dangerously

Metacritic “Metascore” average among 9 leading critics: 65 for The Year of Living Dangerously

What do you say?

“The interesting thing about Flesh+Blood is that when Paul was looking for music, he went to Luc Van de Ven, who has a record company, Prometheus Records, and he said, ‘What do you think, what kind of music should I use?’ and Luc played him Conan. That’s the score that took me to Paul. I think he had shown the film to James Horner and Horner said, ‘I can’t do that, it’s a terrible movie.’ And I just was, ‘I got to do it! This is the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life!’ and frankly, it really was. I loved it because I thought it was honest, and it was ruthless, and terrifyingly brutal, but what else would it be like? The whole marriage of politics and religion was brilliant.” — Basil Poledouris interviewed by Olivier Desbrosses in Ubeda, Spain, July 2006

Flesh + Blood (1985)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Screenplay by Gerard Soeteman & Paul Verhoeven, story by Gerard Soeteman
Produced by Gys Versluys
126 minutes

The Dutch filmmaker and cultural lightning rod’s first experience in Hollywood was not 1987′s critical and commercial sensation RoboCop. Paul Verhoeven actually made his English language directing debut two summers previous with Flesh + Blood, his first occasion to spar with the MPAA over censorship, American style. A quick release capsule of medieval death and eroticism, the film was bum rushed out of the U.S. box office, failing to launch action figures or sequels of any sort for its primary investor, Orion Pictures. Yet this relatively low budget pill holds up surprisingly well in a designer age of digital entertainment, delivering a potent kick of complex characterization, historical detail and brass balls, revving its sex and violence past legal limits in the United States.

Set in the way back of 1501 A.D., Flesh + Blood introduces a band of mercenaries receiving communion before they lay siege to a fortified city. The rabble includes an archer (Brion James), the very pregnant harlot he adores (Susan Tyrrell), a defrocked cardinal (Ronald Lacey) and various cutthroats and jezebels led by a charismatic soldier of fortune named Martin (Rutger Hauer). Promised 24 hours to ransack the homes of the rich if they can retake the city for its ousted lord Arnolfini (Fernando Hilbeck) and his captain of the guard Hawkwood (Jack Thompson), the rogues are observed by Arnolfini’s teenaged son Steven (Tom Burlinson), a cocksure engineer who aspires to the heights of Leonardo da Vinci. Victorious in battle, Martin and his band are double-crossed by Arnolfini Sr. and expelled from the city.

While Hawkwood retires to the countryside with a mute nun (Blanca Marsillach) he maimed during the invasion, Steven’s war booty arrives in the form of Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a daughter of aristocracy who enters marriage to Steven pure as the driven snow. The college boy announces he has career plans, but plans change when Martin and his marauders make off with his bride to be. More cunning than she appears, Agnes weighs her chastity against her odds of survival and throws herself at Martin sexually. This shifts the balance of power in the band, which storms a castle they fail to realize sits in a valley beset by the Black Plague. Steven coerces Hawkwood out of retirement to save Agnes, who may not be in as desperate need of rescuing as her prince believes.

Verhoeven and writing partner Gerard Soeteman had amassed medieval research dating back to their 1969 Dutch television series Floris starring Rutger Hauer. Their full throttled script for Flesh + Blood is woven with subject matter as fascinating as it is disparate: the Black Plague, piracy, 16th century mechanical engineering, Catholicism. An onslaught of debauchery that proved too flagrant for the MPAA to award an R rating without cuts, the irony of Flesh + Blood is that amid the impaled chests and bare bottoms, its characters (particularly the ladies played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Susan Tyrrell) possess far greater humanity than the caricatures of generic Hollywood action films. The outstanding international cast is mirrored on the other side of the camera by Dutch cinematographer Jan de Bont and American composer Basil Poledouris.

“I’ve always have been saying and have been saying for years that the position of the camera is as important as what you’re photographing. A dirty word to me is ‘coverage’. You know, ‘two shot’. ‘Over the shoulder’. It’s stuff you see all the time and it just drives me crazy because this to me is not directing. You have to think about where the camera is in relation to the material.” — Brian DePalma interviewed by Noah Baumbach in New York, October 2010

Blow Out (1981)
Directed by Brian DePalma
Written by Brian DePalma
Produced by George Litto
107 minutes

While cameras didn’t roll until the 1980s, Blow Out is the most deviously engineered political thriller of the 1970s. Veering down an alley familiar to anyone who’s poured over the Kennedy assassination or the Watergate cover-up, it’s also a love letter from a filmmaker to the nuts and bolts of his beloved craft. John Travolta (much closer in age to Tony Manero than whatever growed up moron he played in the Look Who’s Talking comedies) delivers just the right combination of geeky obsession and downtrodden sleaze as a B-movie sound man who records what he believes to be an assassination on audio tape. Quentin Tarantino was such a huge fan of Blow Out (placing it at one time among his three favorite movies of all time) that Travolta was likely cast in Pulp Fiction as a result of his performance here.

Travolta plays Jack Terry, a man whose love of electronics and the solitary hours tinkering over a work bench have led him to a shit job recording and mixing sound effects for a Philadelphia based producer of slasher movies. Sent back to the field when his employer (Peter Boyden) demands new effects for their latest picture Coed Frenzy, Terry is on Wissahickon Creek Bridge when he witnesses a Buick plunge into the water. He rescues the passenger — a daffy blonde named Sally (Nancy Allen) — but later discovers the stiff behind the wheel was Governor McRyan, the presumed frontrunner of the next presidential race. Terry’s ear and his tape enable him to reconstruct the blowout, which he believes was no accident. Meanwhile, the assassin (John Lithgow) comes out of the shadows to clip the loose threads left dangling from his crime.

The inspiration to use a sound man as protagonist came to Brian DePalma while he was mixing his previous thriller Dressed to Kill with sound editor Dan Sable. The idea of demonstrating to an audience how sound and images were synched together in an editing room and how that process might reveal a murder quickly obsessed DePalma as well. Filmways put up financing and permitted DePalma to shoot the picture in Philadelphia, where the filmmaker and his agent/producer George Litto had both grown up (the bridge spanning Wissahickon Creek had been a lovers lane when DePalma was a teenager). The film’s stark tone and jarring, unexpected climax may have given critics and audiences a cold shoulder. When Blow Out opened July 1981 in the United States, the press agreed it was a flop.

Viewed under the ever present magnifying glass that sweeps over the film, neither Travolta or Allen come across as very compelling human beings. The characters act and speak within the confines of a trade paperback plot, but the appeal of Blow Out is the doomed nature of their relationship and the technical virtuosity wielded to express it. DePalma’s passion for the possibilities of filmmaking and its limitations are potent, while watching Travolta splice together a snuff film from scratch is intoxicating as well. Blow Out starts strong, wanders around in a stupor a bit before delivering a knockout ending. As a bonus, Dennis Franz appears in the first of many Dennis Franz roles — as a private dick without a single redeeming quality — while cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond collaborated with DePalma on the film’s intricate, spellbinding look.

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

Detroit 9000 (1973)
Directed by Arthur Marks
Written by Orville H. Hampton
Produced by Arthur Marks
106 minutes

Despite using formulas from just about every cop thriller you’ve ever seen, Detroit 9000 has a refreshing taste that’s difficult to resist. The first black themed film shot in Motown, Detroit 9000 was financed and produced by General Film Corporation, a B-movie distributor co-founded by Arthur Marks, who’d segued from Perry Mason episodes in the ’60s to drive-in features in the ’70s. Marks would make three highly entertaining pictures dubbed “blaxploitation”  due to the racial complexion of their casts — Bucktown (1975), J.D.’s Revenge (1976) and Monkey Hustle (1976) — but Quentin Tarantino was so enamored by Detroit 9000 that he chose it for a theatrical and home video re-release in 1998 through his short lived retro distributor Rolling Thunder. Tarantino even devoted a track on the Jackie Brown CD soundtrack to a line of dialogue from the movie.

Ridiculously over the top — with a body count that keeps pace with the annual homicide figures for Detroit and cheeseball dialogue whenever men and women mix it up — Detroit 9000 has a pleasing familiarity more welcoming than worn out. A country cousin to Lethal Weapon, budget limitations reduce the pyrotechnics and give the audience room to chew over the racial complexities of a black cop struggling to identify with a white partner on a case where the racial profile of their suspects is political dynamite either way. The plot is both idiotic and irrelevant. What makes Detroit 9000 worth viewing are the performances, with Alex Rocco as an irascible Archie Bunker cop and a vivacious Vonetta McGee as the most wonderful archetype in the movies, the call girl with a conscience. Luchi De Jesus composed the pulse pounding music.

Trouble hits the Motor City when U.S. Congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger) returns home to announce his candidacy for governor at the “Hail Our Heroes” ball for the black community. In a crackerjack robbery, four masked thieves make off with Hale’s war chest of $400,000 in jewelry and cash contributions. Detroit PD puts its best cop on the case: Lt. Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco), who makes up for what he lacks in racial sensitivity with street savvy. Meanwhile, pro footballer turned homicide cop Sgt. Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes) investigates a dismembered body pulled out of the Detroit River. Running with a hunch that their cases are linked, Williams proposes they work together. Hesitant to the idea of a partner, Bassett is overruled by Captain Chalmers (Robert Phillips), an old friend Bassett accuses of taking his promotion.

Visiting his stressed out wife at Longview Sanitarium, Bassett is harangued for refusing to sacrifice his ethics to do a favor here or there for some cash. Unsure whether his enigmatic white partner is on the take or not, Williams works a tip that Congressman Hale’s right-hand man isn’t too thrilled about his pompous, self-serving boss running for governor and might have organized the robbery. Bassett has more luck with the manager of the brothel he frequents, who reveals that two out-of-town clients came in and aroused suspicion. Bassett & Williams suspect that the thieves must have had contact inside the cathouse and sure enough, professional lady of leisure Roby Harris (Vonetta McGee) warns her manager Ferdy (Herbert Jefferson Jr.) that the cops are on their trail. Shootouts, boat chases and double crosses ensue.

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973)
Directed by Ivan Dixon
Screenplay by Sam Greenlee and Mel Clay, based on the novel by Sam Greenlee
Produced by Ivan Dixon, Sam Greenlee
102 minutes

Any trip through “blaxploitation” would be missing something without The Spook Who Sat By The Door. Written in 1966 and published in 1969, Sam Greenlee‘s political thriller notched 1.5 million copies sold. The author went into business with Ivan Dixon, an actor and television director who’d gunned his way into features with Trouble Man in 1972. Greenlee & Dixon’s plan to finance and distribute the film independently stalled when black investors proved scarce; Greenlee’s attorney put up roughly $800,000 to get cameras rolling and United Artists acquired distribution rights, contributing $200,000 in completion bonds. Yanked from release by exhibitors fearful that the movie would spark revolution in theater lobbies across America, The Spook Who Sat By The Door went underground for almost 30 years.

In 2000, actor/producers Tim and Daphne Reid offered to distribute the cult classic on DVD through their Obsidian Home Entertainment. Fitting to Greenlee’s fantasy of America’s ghetto masses mobilizing into a resistance movement, The Spook Who Sat By The Door is hard hat wearing, metal lunchbox swinging independent filmmaking at its finest, a professional piece of work that makes up for what it lacks in budget with ample amounts of backbone. The material goes easy on the sermonizing to settle into a potent blend of social drama, character study and espionage thriller. Lawrence Cook is exceptionally well cast in the lead, soft spoken and scholarly, highly motivated and lethal, a militant Jack Ryan. Herbie Hancock composed a musical score that’s as durable, spartan and means-business as the movie.

Running a tight reelection campaign, a U.S. senator opts to raise his profile among urban voters by appointing a token black agent to the Central Intelligence Agency. One promising finalist appears to be Dan Freeman (Lawrence Cook), ostracized by his classmates for studying too much and initially overlooked by management due to his habit of fading into the woodwork. But Freeman’s physical, intellectual and personal assets match what the CIA is looking for and he wins the spot. Freeman spends five dutiful years in a sub-basement toiling as a document “reproduction section chief”, growing estranged from his childhood love, a social worker (Janet League) who wants to get married and start a family. Instead, Freeman resigns his position as the first black spy to return home to Chicago, ostensibly to become a social worker.

Freeman makes contact with the leadership of a street gang he ran with as a teenager. Unimpressed with the gang’s puny resistance against the pigs, Freeman drills the hoodlums in guerilla warfare tactics, from building explosives, to organization, to how to rip off the enemy (“Remember, a black man with a mop, tray or broom in his hand can go damn near anywhere in this country, and a smiling black man is invisible.”) Freeman connects with an ex-hoodlum turned cop (J.A. Preston) he hopes to flip to their cause, as well as a D.C. prostitute Freeman dubs “Dahomey Queen” (Paula Kelly) who becomes a crucial source of information. The Black Freedom Fighters of North America find their plans for armed resistance rushed into the field when Chicago police shoot a dope peddler, striking the match for rebellion.

What do you say?

Promoting I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, Steve James, who appeared as “Kung Fu Joe” in the blaxploitation spoof, commented: “I always hated that label ‘blaxploitation.’ I wondered, why couldn’t there just be films with black stars? You know, you’d go around the corner from a theater showing one of them, and there’d be Dirty Harry. And nobody was calling it ‘whitesploitation.’” Right on, Steve! So in February, I’ll take a look at ten films featuring black stars from a certain era.

The Mack (1973)
Directed by Michael Campus
Written by Robert J. Poole and Max Julien (uncredited)
Produced by Harvey Bernhard
110 minutes

Helping graft the message and style of hip hop, there’s room to argue that The Mack is flat out the best “blaxploitation” movie ever made. Robert J. Poole was a convict who — according to legend — wrote a 40-page treatment for a movie on prison toilet paper. Titled Black Is Beautiful, Poole ultimately got his material to producer Harvey Bernhard. Fascinated with the concept of a street Svengali, Bernhard hired a young (white) filmmaker named Michael Campus, who’d shot a few documentaries for ABC, to direct. To play the title role, Max Julien was approached. Julien had written the screenplay for Cleopatra Jones and given the go-ahead to fill in Poole’s blueprint, got on board. Traveling to Oakland, Campus and Julien sought the help of the Ward brothers, the four men who ran the bay city’s underworld. Frank Ward agreed to take the filmmakers into his world, provided they took Ward into theirs.

In addition to being granted a cameo, Frank Ward inspired the title character as Campus and Julien fleshed out the script. Murdered during its production, Ward had the film dedicated to him. Financed by the soon to be defunct Cinerama Releasing Corp., The Mack was shot on a substantially low budget, yet endures because nearly every frame seems infused with a pure love for movies. Julien and co-star Richard Pryor bring star level magnetism to this low down dirty B-movie, while the necessities of shooting on the fly gives the film the power of a documentary on 1970s Oakland. The Mack is still a shoot ‘em up at heart and does get repetitive, but it’s also politically hip to the conflict between capitalism and the greater good of the community. If that’s too much to ponder, Willie Hutch wrote and performed nine killer tunes, including “I Choose You,” “Theme of The Mack” and “Brother’s Gonna Work It Out”.

John “Goldie” Mickens (Max Julien) and his partner Slim (Richard Pryor) shoot it out with gunmen who’ve ambushed them in a junkyard. Unable to escape, Goldie is taunted by two cops (Dan Gordon, William Watson) who debate whether to finish the hustler off or not. Enduring almost five years in prison, Goldie returns to the streets of Oakland. He visits his mentor, The Blind Man (Paul Harris) who ruminates about pimping and the opportunity there for the taking if his protégé adopts the right mental angle. Goldie runs into an old girlfriend named Lulu (Carol Speed), an “outlaw” turning tricks; she implores Goldie to manage her. The ex-con next reunites with his brother Olinga (Roger Mosley), a political organizer dedicated to black empowerment and to running the pimps and pushers out of the community.

Announcing to his brother that he’s down with self-empowerment — while keeping the true nature of his business secret from his Mother (Juanita Moore) — Goldie dedicates himself to becoming “the meanest mack who ever lived.” He reteams with Slim and with Lulu’s help, Goldie’s “professional ladies of leisure” are drilled in the finer points of shoplifting and grand larceny. To control their minds, Goldie rents a planetarium and lays down his rules under the cosmos. Rising to such success that he wins Mack of the Year honors at the annual Players Ball, Goldie spurns an offer from his former employer Fatman (George Murdock) to return to work for him. The vile cops who busted Goldie five years ago resurface next, intent on taking him down. To get out of the game with his life intact, Goldie turns to his brother for help.

What do you say?

“Portmanteau” is French for “coat rack”. Lewis Carroll appropriated the word in 1871 for Through The Looking Glass to explain two words merged into one; “chortle” is a portmanteau Carroll invented, while “Internet”, “blog” and “sexploitation” are three he did not. In the month of January, I’ll take a look at portmanteau films, where we find different coats hanging in the same closet, whether tailored by one filmmaker or the collaborative effort of several.

Four Rooms (1995)
Directed by Allison Anders (segment: The Missing Ingredient), Alexandre Rockwell (segment: The Wrong Man), Robert Rodriguez (segment: The Misbehavers), Quentin Tarantino (segment: The Man From Hollywood)
Written by Allison Anders (segment: The Missing Ingredient), Alexandre Rockwell (segment: The Wrong Man), Robert Rodriguez (segment: The Misbehavers), Quentin Tarantino (segment: The Man From Hollywood)
Produced by Lawrence Bender
97 minutes

A victory lap by the studio that brought you Pulp Ficton, Four Rooms turns into a demolition derby. Alexandre Rockwell hit upon the idea for a portmanteau film tied together by the hijinks of a bellhop on New Year’s Eve after he befriended Allison Anders and Quentin Tarantino at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, where their career calling cards In The Soup, Gas Food Lodging and Reservoir Dogs were on the bill (Robert Rodriguez joined the club when he met Rockwell and Tarantino at the Toronto Film Festival with his calling card El Mariachi). The role of the bellhop was conceived with Steve Buscemi in mind, but when he declined, Tim Roth took the part. With Miramax Films footing a budget that settled at $4 million, Four Rooms was rushed into production while Tarantino was being crowned master of the universe on the press tour for Pulp Fiction in the fall of 1994.

Author Peter Biskind’s account — in Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film — was that Four Rooms was produced in complete acrimony, with studio co-chairman Harvey Weinstein taking a 160-minute cut and lopping over an hour off, eviscerating segments by Anders and Rockwell, who blamed the toxic end product on the hubris of Tarantino. Officially the worst effort “QT” has yet written and directed, the concept behind Four Rooms is completely (and refreshingly) bug nuts to begin with, as if Jerry Schatzberg, Elaine May, George Lucas & Steven Spielberg agreed to make an anthology film together in 1976. There are excellent ideas at play here, an animated title sequence for instance, but like almost everything else in the movie, it’s indicative of how rushed the whole enterprise appears. Rodriguez’s contribution is far and away the most coherent.

On New Year’s Eve at the once glorious “Hotel Mon Signor” in Los Angeles, the crusty bellhop (Marc Lawrence) passes the torch to his heir apparent, Ted (Tim Roth), advising him to “stay clear of night clerks, hookers, kids and married arguments.” In the first of four misadventures, Ted escorts a coven of witches (Valeria Golino, Madonna, Alicia Witt, Sammi Davis, Lili Taylor) to the honeymoon suite, where their ritual to resurrect a 1950s pinup queen from the afterlife hits a snag and requires the aloof Eva (Ione Skye) to elicit a specimen from Ted. Summoned to refill the ice for a Yuppie party in Room 404, Ted then bumbles into a room where a deranged husband (David Proval) has bound and gagged his wife Angela (Jennifer Beals) and lies in wait with a gun for her supposed lover to join them.

In Room 309, a couple (Antonio Banderas, Tamlyn Tomita) depart for a night on the town. The man offers Ted $300 to check on his children (Danny Verduzco, Lana McKissak) every 30 minutes. Making it $500, the “pain the ass” kids torment Ted by discovering a hypodermic needle and the body of a hooker in the room. On the brink of quitting, Ted phones the apartment of his boss, where a stoner (Marisa Tomei) answers and tries to lift his spirits. The boss (Kathy Griffin) talks Ted into staying long enough to service the penthouse, where movie star Chester Rush (Quentin Tarantino) has requested a block of wood, a bucket of ice and a meat cleaver. Chester’s love for “The Man From Rio” episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents has inspired a wager with his assistant (Paul Calderon) that Ted discovers he has a role in.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 14,449 users: 72% for Four Rooms

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured the female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies flunk this test, but in the month of September, I take a look at ten movies that pass.

Coco Before Chanel (2009)
Directed by Anne Fontaine
Screenplay by Anne Fontaine & Camille Fontaine, based on the book L’Irreguliere by Edmonde Charles-Roux
Produced by Caroline Benjo, Carole Scotta, Philippe Carcassonne, Simon Arnal
110 minutes

Quietly bold and gracefully dazzling, Coco Before Chanel rejects the conventions of the biopic while affirming what most good biopics do: cultural icons are rarely born into genius. In 2006, Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta approached Anne Fontaine with the idea of making a movie about Coco Chanel. Having yet to try a period film, the director insisted the right actress be attached first and that she could choose which period of Chanel’s life to portray. Once Audrey Tautou agreed to star, Fontaine urged Camille Fontaine to read Edmonde Charles-Roux’s 1974 biography on the enigmatic fashion designer. The sisters wrote a script focusing on Chanel’s youth, with material by Jacques Fieschi and Academy Award winner Christopher Hampton consulting. Warner Bros. France was sold on the script and raised a budget of roughly $23 million.

With a self-assuredness of style that never threatens to overwhelm the substance of the story, Coco Before Chanel explores a time where the only option for a woman born into poverty was to become a courtesan to wealthy men. Instead of embracing the pageantry of being a fashion designer, the complexity of Chanel’s relationships with her male benefactors becomes the central focus. This is handled with a nuance rare in American films, where political correctness run amok usually translates into men being portrayed as some sort of enemy. Collaborating with director of photography Christophe Beaucarne, Fontaine immerses her film in sophistication and mystery, slipping pieces into the puzzle one scene at a time, hinting at how Chanel built the empire she did. Alexandre Desplat (The Ghost Writer) composed a musical score that is as mesmerizing as the film it illustrates.

10-year-old Gabrielle Chanel (Lisa Cohen) and her sister Adrienne (Inès Bessalem) are delivered to a Catholic monastery, where Gabrielle waits every Sunday for a father who never returns. Fifteen years later, Gabrielle (Audrey Tautou) and Adrienne (Marie Gillain) survive as seamstresses by day and cabaret singers by night. While a baron romances her older sister, Gabrielle’s blunt nature manages to attract an admirer in cavalry officer Étienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde), who dubs her “Coco” after the pooch in her trademark musical number. Fired from the cabaret due to her surliness, Coco indulges Balsan’s lust and hopes he can repay her with an audition in Paris. When she fails the tryout and her sister moves to Paris with her lover, Coco shows up at Balsan’s doorstep and survives as his kept woman.

Sporting an androgynous fashion sense all her own, Coco refuses to entertain Balsan’s degenerate society pals, passing time designing hats or costumes for his lady friends, including actress Emilienne d’Alençon (Emmanuelle Devos). Coco becomes smitten with an English business associate of her benefactor’s named Arthur “Boy” Capel (Alessandro Nivola) and receives Balsan’s blessing to spend two days with him at the resort of Deauville, where Coco sees the ocean for the first time. Crushed by the news that Boy is engaged to marry, Coco accepts a loan from her lover that enables her to open her own boutique in Paris. Chanel’s utilitarian designs — highlighted by styles plucked from her immediate environment — comes to revolutionize women’s fashions in the 1920s, but fame and fortune come at a cost.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 34,237 users: 57% for Coco Before Chanel

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 65 for Coco Before Chanel

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Bitter Moon (1992)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Jeff Gross & Roman Polanski and Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn, based on the novel Lunes de Fiel by Pascal Bruckner
Produced by Roman Polanski
139 minutes

It’s not clear whether Bitter Moon is a bad movie on accident or if its giddy banality was designed, but the end result is a debacle either way. Roman Polanski’s producing partner Alain Sarde had purchased the film rights to a 1981 novel by French essayist Pascal Bruckner titled Lunes de Fiel. Seizing on the salacious paperback cover, Polanski adapted a screenplay with Jeff Gross in Paris, while Gérard Brach and John Brownjohn drafted their own scripts separately. Titled Bitter Moon, the erotic drama was a French-English co-production shot largely at Paris Studios Cinema. While the finished film features only brief nudity and no graphic copulations, it struggled to find a U.S. distributor out of fear that it’s overall tone of degraded sexuality might draw an NC-17 rating. Fine Line Features ultimately released Bitter Moon in March 1994.

Like Showgirls, it’s arguable that the hokey dialogue and aberrant sexual situations were stuffed into Bitter Moon on purpose, maybe as a satire of holiday romances. One miscalculation is the casting of Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner. An adequate actress, Seigner lacks the charisma of Kristin Scott Thomas, who along with Hugh Grant — playing (what else?) a stiff, goofy Brit — are the redeeming factors of the picture. Peter Coyote (taking a role James Woods turned down) does such a good job basking his character in impurity that the act of watching him becomes repellent. The sexual encounters combine old fashioned sophistication with laughable sleaze, as if the men who cooked them up conducted their research at the Playboy Mansion. Vangelis contributed a musical score that comes off too overpowering for such a trifle.

Seeking a holiday after seven years of marriage, Nigel (Hugh Grant) and his wife Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) set sail for Istanbul aboard a cruise ship in the Black Sea. Fiona comforts a distraught French woman in the loo and that evening, Nigel discovers her dancing in the bar, but the precocious Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner) brushes off the stiff Brit. On the deck, a vulgar cripple named Oscar (Peter Coyote) reveals himself as Mimi’s husband and invites Nigel back to his cabin to tantalize him with tales of their love life. Oscar first saw Mimi on a bus between Montparnasse and Porte des Lilas. An American in Paris with grand literary ambitions, Oscar finds himself unable to write until he can reunite with his “sorceress in white sneakers”. Bumping into the apparition as she waits tables, Oscar asks Mimi to dinner.

As Oscar reveals the sadomasochistic routines the couple resorted to out of contempt for their co-dependence on each other, Nigel grows uncomfortable, but is compelled to stay and hear more. Seeking to end their relationship, Oscar concludes the only way to get rid of Mimi is to treat her as inhumanely as possible. After convincing her to have an abortion, Oscar books them a flight to Martinique, only to sneak off the plane and send her off alone. Two years later, a drunken accident cripples him. Mimi returns to Paris under the pretense of caring for her ex-lover, but uses his condition to exact a slow and bitter revenge. Oscar now gives Nigel his blessing to pursue Mimi sexually, but the Brit discovers his wife may be better suited to pushing the boundaries of marriage than he.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average: Not available

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Chinatown (1974)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Robert Towne
Produced by Robert Evans
130 minutes

The only thing really left to debate about Chinatown is whether it belongs among the 25 best films ever made, 10 best or whether it vaults over titles like Citizen Kane or Casablanca as The Best Film Ever Made. According to the legend as repeated by screenwriter Robert Towne, its genesis was a 1969 photo essay in a Los Angeles Times about Raymond Chandler’s L.A. Conceived as a love letter to the vanishing city of his youth and using something as vague as land and water as catalysts, Towne would sell Paramount Pictures production head Robert Evans on his concept for a ‘30s detective mystery and writing with Jack Nicholson in mind, deliver a 178 page script that both intrigued and bewildered director Roman Polanski. Pruning the epic script with Polanski, a point of contention was the ending. The screenwriter wanted good to win the day. The director preferred tragedy.

The power of Chinatown is the care the film takes to recreate Depression Era Los Angeles — which Gittes refers to only half jokingly as “a small town” at one point — and fill it with a complex story that remains mesmerizing no matter how many times it’s replayed. Through stunning production design by Richard Sylbert, a desaturated color scheme that evokes black & white photography and a sensual musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown achieves the illusion it was produced in 1947 instead of 1974. Where most whodunits focus on little more than heists or serial killers, Towne weaves an ambitious tale of natural resources, corruption and family scandal that stretches clear into the horizon, much as the city of Los Angeles does. In addition to the sucker punch ending, Polanski contributes a rhythm that enables locations like a city morgue or a retirement home to leap off the screen and feel real.

In Los Angeles of the late 1930s, private detective J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by “Evelyn Mulwray” (Diane Ladd) to verify that her husband Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) — chief of the Department of Water and Power — is having an affair. Gittes shadows Mulwray at City Hall, where the engineer cites safety concerns for his refusal to build a dam that would ease the burden on agriculture, which gripped in a drought are sharing the water supply with the public. Gittes completes his job by snapping photos of Mulwray with a blonde in Echo Park. The photos are mysteriously reprinted in the newspaper and the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) reveals herself to serve Gittes with a lawsuit. Eager to uncover who set him up, Gittes seeks help from Mrs. Mulwray, who now prefers to drop the matter entirely. Before Gittes can question her husband, Mulwray’s body is pulled out of a reservoir.

Pressed for information by Lt. Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez) — Gittes’ partner when they patrolled the morally ambiguous streets of Chinatown — Gittes is hired by Mrs. Mulwray to solve her husband’s death. Snooping around the reservoir where Mulwray died, Gittes is cornered by two goons (Roy Jenson, Roman Polanski) and has a nostril cut open. Sensing that Mrs. Mulwray is hiding something, Gittes visits her estranged father Noah Cross (John Huston), a power broker who once owned the city’s water supply with Mulwray. His interest lies in finding the girl the private eye photographed with Mulwray and he hires Gittes to do so. A key to the mystery lies in the San Fernando Valley, where farmers are being pressured to sell by an anonymous landowner who stands to make a fortune if the dam project that Mulwray blocked is now approved.

Alex Simon of The Hollywood Interview sat down with Robert Towne on the 35^th anniversary of Chinatown for an exhaustive interview on the development of the script.

Richard Ballad caught up with Roman Polanski 35 years previous for an interview in the August 1974 issue of Penthouse Magazine.

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