MENTAL MASTURBATION I (Re-Issue)

NOTE: This was originally posted in January 2010. The first of several lists of films and their basic information. Since most of the first few posts on this blog have gone unseen, I'd like to re-post this first list. I think the films are brilliant and should be given more attention.


These films are essential for any movie buff, aspiring filmmaker, and pretty much anybody interested in great cinema. Most of them are not very well known, and others are greatly underappreciated.

In Chronological Order:

Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943)
Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel, 1950)
Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951)
Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961)
Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962)
Simon of the Desert (Luis Bunuel, 1965)
A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966)
Portrait of Jason (Shirley Clarke, 1967)
Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto, 1969)
Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974)
The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
The Tennant (Roman Polanski, 1976)
All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)
Nosferatu The Vampyre (Werner Herzog, 1979)
Cruising (William Friedkin, 1980)
Heavy Metal (Gerald Potterton, 1981)
Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983)
The Pope of Greenwich Village (Stuart Rosenberg, 1984)
Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994)
Bang (Ash Baron-Cohen, 1995)
Freeway (Matthew Bright, 1996)
Roger Dodger (Dylan Kidd, 2002)
Simone (Andrew Niccol, 2002)
The Return [Vozvrashcheniye] (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2003)
Mean Creek (Jacob Aaron Estes, 2004)
Reprise (Joachim Trier, 2006)
The Box (Richard Kelly, 2009)

FILMMAKER PROFILE: ALAN PARKER AND ADRIAN LYNE

Acclaimed filmmakers Alan Parker and Adrian Lyne have shared many similarities in both style, theme as well as the people they have worked with. Both men were born in Britain in the 1940s. They both started in advertising in the 1960s and 70s. Parker elected to be a copywriter; Lyne went the commercial directing route. Both also worked extensively with cinematographer Peter Biziou, and 80s megastar Mickey Rourke. Parker made his theatrical film debut in 1976 with the all-children musical Bugsy Malone. Four years later, Lyne made his own youth-themed debut with the female teen drama, Foxes.


Parker and Lyne are both very intellectual filmmakers with an innate sense of the intimacy that is shared between two individuals. In 1978, Parker had his first international success with Midnight Express, a drama that centered on an American imprisoned in Turkey for drug trafficking. Oliver Stone won an Academy Award for his original screenplay. Parker achieved success again in 1980, with the musical Fame, which spawned a TV series and a theatrical remake in 2009. He followed it up with the unusual, music-themed film Pink Floyd The Wall, which has maintained a cult following due to the nature of the film which is an adaptation of Pink Floyd's enormously successful 1979 album The Wall. In 1984, he directed Birdy starring Matthew Modine. In 1987, he directed the noir thriller Angel Heart, which starred Mickey Rourke as a 1950s detective and Robert De Niro as the devil who makes a deal with him. In 1988, he received the second of two Oscar nods for Best Director for the film Mississippi Burning, a highly acclaimed and controversial film during its release.


Three years later, Parker continued experimenting with music and film and directed The Commitments, a wonderful movie centered around the formation and success of a band put together through a random process. This is in fact the way it was done in real life. The producers of the film chose several young aspiring musicians as the members of a new band The Commitments, both a musical group and the stars of the film. The band turned out a great album together, but most of the cast chose not to continue in film and have not starred in any movies since. In 1996, Parker directed another musical, this time starring Madonna, called Evita. The movie was a box office flop. Parker capped off the 90s with Angela’s Ashes based on the acclaimed novel of the same name. He has only directed one other film since, and that is the 2003 drama The Life and Death of David Gale, a brilliant thriller starring Kate Winslet and Kevin Spacey. Parker is now 67 years old and has no plans to make subsequent films.


Adrian Lyne made a splash in the movie industry around the same time Parker did. He directed the 1983 smash hit Flashdance, and Lyne found his first big global success. He revolutionized the stylized and musical approach to film during this time, and Flashdance would win an Oscar for Best Original Song. He followed it up with one of his most controversial films, the 1986 romantic thriller 9 ½ Weeks with Mickey Rourke, and Kim Basinger. The film was infused with raw sexuality, and rich with dreamy sequences of the splicing of food and intimacy.


Lyne was nominated at the Academy Awards the following year for his most successful film to date, Fatal Attraction, which also received Oscar nods for its female lead Glenn Close as well as for Best Picture of the year. Lyne continued pushing boundaries with his dark thriller Jacob’s Ladder, a paranoid horror film that told the tale of a Vietnam war vet haunted by dreams of another life. The 1990 film starred Tim Robbins, and remains one of the more underrated movies of its genre.


In 1993, he directed the box office hit Indecent Proposal starring Robert Redford, Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson. He next directed the second adaptation of the controversial Vladimir Nabokov novel Lolita, the first adaptation being of course the 1962 version directed by Stanley Kubrick. In 2002, Lyne returned to the romantic thriller genre one more time and made the adultery drama Unfaithful, starring Diane Lane and Richard Gere. This was Lyne's final movie, although there are plans for him to direct Back Roads, currently slated for a 2012 release.


The impressive body of work the two have compiled is something that has to be noted and praised. Their incredible sense of visual worth is astounding and evident in almost ever film they've made. Both men have received sizeable criticism and an underwhelming positive response to many of their films. Lyne’s debut, Foxes, is a great example of a little-seen gem that has gone under the radar over the years. Lyne has also managed to create many films with style, and panache, something that was attempted by countless directors but only rarely achieved successfully. Parker also had a period of about two decades where he continuously made worthy films but only won acclaim for a few of them.

Over the course of time, after viewing the majority of their films, it became clearer to me that the remarkable output during their careers is something that simply should not go unnoticed. While they are not the greatest filmmakers that ever lived, certainly never achieving the enormous success of directors like John Ford, Roman Polanski, Alfred Hitchcock or Martin Scorsese, they still have released numerous films of note, and should deservedly be amongst the top of the lists of best directors of the 80s and 90s.

L'APPARTEMENT (GILLES MIMOUNI, 1996)

L’Apartement, France, 1996
Dir: Gilles Mimouni
Starring: Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci, Romane Bohringer


L’Apartement, or The Apartment in English, is a taut, suspenseful, almost Hitchcockian type romance thriller that you probably have never heard of. The film stars Vincent Cassel, and Monica Bellucci, as star crossed lovers right out of classic Shakespeare. Combining many genres into one mold is a very difficult thing to do. Writer/director Gilles Mimouni, does it and does it in style. Eerily enough, this is the only film that Mr. Mimouni has ever directed, written, or involved with in his entire career. It has been 15 years and he has yet to be associated with any other production.

The film was remade in America in 2004, as Wicker Park, starring Josh Hartnett and Diane Kruger. The movie was a failure at the box office and did not achieve the same critical success as its predecessor. Produced in 1996, L’Apartement is the production in which Cassel and Bellucci met on and began their relationship. They are now married and have two children. They have become a power couple in France, and have both achieved sizeable fame in America and all over the world as well. Bellucci starred in the last Two Matrix films in 2003, while Cassel was last seen in Darren Aronofsky’s successful throwback horror film Black Swan.


It seems peculiar that the filmmaker has not been involved in other work, and a hopeless romantic might think it has something to do with the surreality of L’Apartement. The story surrounds several people, who, unbeknownst to all but one of them, are indirectly involved with one another. Max, played by Cassel, is engaged to be married. On his way to a business trip, he bumps into an old flame, who never managed to say goodbye properly years before. He follows her but then is trapped in a game that he has no control over. Because while on the search for Lisa, the former flame in question, he bumps into another girl, supposedly also named Lisa, and suddenly everything turns into Single White Female, but in a much more sexy and mysterious way.



L’Apartement is a film that only the French could produce. This type of storytelling is bizarre and unusual and rarely do filmmakers succeed with such methods. It is not the typical, simple thinking film. It is quite complex, and even though it is not flawless, it earns many points with its boldness and risk taking. The film also stars Romane Bohringer and Jean-Philippe Écoffey as the mysterious “other Lisa” and Lucien, Max’s best friend. The film garnered much acclaim during its release and it managed to win the BAFTA for Best Foreign Film. It also helped shoot stars Cassel and Bellucci into the mainstream subconscious. If you haven’t seen L’Apartement, I seriously recommend you check it out. It is not a film which disappoints.

TWO FOR THE ROAD (STANLEY DONEN, 1967)

Two For the Road, USA, 1967
Dir: Stanley Donen
Cast: Albert Finney, Audrey Hepburn


Sometimes, a movie will not age well, and in time, become a misrepresentation of itself. Stanley Donen’s 1967 classic Two For the Road is exactly that. The film stars Albert Finney, in one of his finest roles, and Audrey Hepburn, in what would be one of her last performances on film. It trails the funny, sad, and turbulent relationship between them over a ten-year period. During that time, they fall in love, they start a family, they move up the social ladder, they have affairs, they separate, and inevitably end up at a crossroads together.

It is an extremely well written film, whose author, Frederic Raphael won an Academy Award in 1965 for the Julie Christie satire, Darling. Raphael also achieved notice in the late 1990s, while collaborating on the adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novel Traumnovelle, or Dream Story. The screenplay that followed resulted in the film Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick’s final masterpiece.

Raphael even wrote a book about the experience of working with such a master director in the novel Eyes Wide Open, a play on the title of the film it’s experiences are associated with. Kubrick died in March of 1999, several months before the film and book were released, thus not given the chance to refute the travesties written in Raphael’s memoir.

Two for the Road however is a brilliant analysis of a relationship from start to finish. That’s the thing with a film. It is born when you press play. It dies when the screen is black again. It doesn’t die per se, it simply sails off into the sky and you usually never hear from it again unless there’s a sequel. Brilliantly filmed and edited by a group of all-around talented Brits, and starring two enormously talented performers in Finney and Hepburn. Audrey did not make another film for nearly a decade after the release of this film. When she returned to acting, she starred in only four more films, before passing away in 1993. Finney meanwhile has collected five Academy Award nominations along the way to present day. His last high profile role was in the Tim Burton film Big Fish.

Two for the Road is a brilliantly well-crafted examination of two people who fall in love and marry and endure many hardships along the path to happiness. It is therefore not surprising that Kubrick chose Raphael for Eyes Wide Shut. Mr. Raphael has a unique sense of the emotions of people and the up and down lives of married couples who’ve been together for some time. He wrote Two For the Road when he was only 35, meaning his insights into love and sex and marriage were way ahead of his experiences, which means he simply possessed a rare talent, which I think is front and center in this piece.

After careful examination, you might even call this one of the great wit-infused romance dramas ever made, alongside other films like His Girl Friday, Annie Hall and When Harry Met Sally. It has an incredibly bold and radical style of filmmaking, alongside a story that broke barriers that went unnoticed because it was released the same year as other barrier-breaking films like The Graduate and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

Two for the Road is most importantly a fearless movie. It was not afraid to discuss openly the sex lives of a married couple. It had no reservations about demoralizing marriage in the modern day. It of course benefited from being released in the late 60’s which was an era of radical moviemaking and helped give birth to intelligent films like this one. One that, with retrospective in hand, can be clearly seen as an inspiration for a generation of filmmakers that followed.

FLASHDANCE (Adrian Lyne, 1983)

Flashdance, USA, 1983
Dir: Adrian Lyne
Starring: Jennifer Beals, Michael Nouri


There is something unique about the 1980s in regards to the movies being produced, the music being recorded and the fashion and culture popularized during the time. The decades that preceded the 80s, the 1960s and 70s produced some of the great artists of the 20th century including The Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Woody Allen, and the Bee Gees. The culture of the 80s washed away everything old and introduce something new and radical. The technological boom of the decade gave us game boys and walkman's, big hair bands and the franchise movie. Flashdance is one of those movies that tries to wash away the music of the 70s, the southern rock bands, and the disco ball, and showcase the music of the modern era which was synth-infused, energized pop.

The soundtrack is one of the most impressive assets of Flashdance, and film won an Academy Award for best original song for “Flashdance… What a Feeling.” The cinematography and editing also received nominations. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Adrian Lyne, this was his breakthrough and he would go on to direct other well-regarded movies such as 9 ½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction and Jacob’s Ladder. Despite being a huge box office hit (it grossed nearly $100 million in the United States alone), Flashdance remains an underrated flick that’s mostly known for its music and dance scenes. There is a lot more than makes up this film. It is evident that the filmmakers were trying to create something different and it ended up being that and much more.


Lyne and co. took a derivative plot and turned it into an iconic film. Flashdance is the story of a young woman who works as a welder in the day and dances at a bar at night, and retains hopes of being a professional dancer one day. Meanwhile, she is courted by her handsome, older boss, and practices for an audition with a top dance school. All you have to do is look at the images and you will see how shockingly distinctive this film is. The movie is a lot darker than it lets on. There is a lot of crude sexual imagery, such as when Beals removes her bra from underneath her infamous collarless shirt while on a date with her boss, or the scene in which she dines at a table, and erotically sucks on pieces of lobster meat. This is the work of a very stylish director, and Lyne had much practice as a commercial director in his native England before moving on to feature films.

Lyne’s movie career began in 1980, when he directed Jodie Foster in the female coming-of-age film Foxes. He followed it up with Flashdance, and soon turned to more serious fare. In 1987, he was nominated for Best Director at the Oscars for Fatal Attraction. He continued to make thoughtful, adult-themed films throughout the 90s including Indecent Proposal and Lolita. His last film, Unfaithful, scored its star Diane Lane the first Academy Award nod of her career. He has since taken a break from filmmaking and his first project in 10 years is said to be in production right now, Back Roads, based on the novel by Tawni O'Dell.

Flashdance is more than just a time capsule of the 80s. It is a musically-themed picture infused with eroticism, spandex and pop music. Most importantly, it’s great entertainment that can never fade away.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, USA, 1962
Dir: Robert Aldrich
Starring: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono


In one of my previous entries, a reader remarked how surprising it was that certain films, chosen by me, were amongst other films that were categorized as being underrated or generally unrecognized. Today, I’m going to discuss a little bit about a film holds a certain infamy, and some might question the authenticity of it being a film that holds place as an understated one, when in fact, it is a much celebrated and Oscar-winning production. The reason why I think this movie deserves mention as an underrated film, is because it has been miscategorized as a melodrama, when it should really be categorized as a horror film. In fact, I would probably list this film as one of the most frightening horror movies ever made. The movie I am referring to is Robert Aldrich’s 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

The film stars two classic, golden age actresses, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford. The two legends were in the twilight of their careers when this film went into production and studio chief Jack Warner even remarked that he "wouldn't give a plugged nickel for either one of those two old broads." The two old broads, however, were cast in the lead roles and the film, on release, became a hit and scored several Academy Award nods including one for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Bette Davis.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? deals with the Hudson sisters, one a former child performer and the other a former Hollywood actress who retired early due to an accident, supposedly perpetrated by her jealous sister, leaving her paralyzed for life. Baby Jane, the former child star, is now an old maid, with a gloomy, wrinkly face, whose lips cover a glass of whisky at every moment of the day. Blanche, her sister, is dependent on her, even though she is to blame for the accident and the end of her career. There are more secrets to reveal before the curtain falls on this picture, but be sure that this is a rather difficult film to watch. Although not initially recognized as such, this is a highly unnerving horror film.

This is, however, a horror film that does not depend on physical violence to scare audiences. This is not a horror film in the way we've become accustomed to it. This is not a slasher film like Halloween, it is not a sci-fi horror film like The Thing, or a tentpole film like Saw. This is a horror film of the mind. It is a psychologically disturbing film. At several moments, I simply could not watch, giving me a sense of claustrophobia, because I was unable to change the actions on screen, there was no way to right the wrongs because what I was experiencing was a fantasy, a piece of cinema, a piece of fiction, nearly 50 years in age.

In real life Davis and Crawford were bitter enemies, a known fact all throughout the world of celebrity and press. In one scene, Davis’ character had to kick Crawford’s character in the face. Bette Davis did it for real. Crawford, in retaliation, would put heavy stones in the pockets of Davis’ costumes making scenes more difficult for her. On Oscar night, Crawford promised fellow nominee Anne Bancroft that if she won, she would accept it on her behalf in case she could not make it. Crawford ended up accepting the award, and walked past castmate Davis telling her shrewdly “I have an Oscar to accept.”

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a shocking film that left me perturbed, and uneasy. The images are hard to forget, the actions are hard to visualize again. But it is an essential film for the serious film student or aspiring filmmaker. This is cinema at its best.

BIUTIFUL (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2010)

Biutiful, 2010, Spain
Dir: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Starring: Javier Bardem, Maricel Alvarez


Alejandro González Iñárritu and Javier Bardem are both incredibly talented people. They have such immense ability to move, and to shake, and to change audiences with their work. They possess God-given talent and they show it off in the remarkable 2010 film Biutiful that comes from Bardem’s native Spain. Iñárritu, is of course, originally from Mexico, but currently lives in Los Angeles with his family. Both men are of similar age, González Iñárritu is 47, Bardem will be 42 in March. Both have gained fame as brilliant artists within the last decade.

Javier Bardem rose through the ranks of actors in Spain during the 90s, working on several of Pedro Almovodar films. His break-through came in 2000, in the Oscar-nominated Before Night Falls. In 2004, he starred in The Sea Inside, which chronicled the life of Ramón Sampedro, a man who battled for his right to die after becoming a quadriplegic. In 2007 came his most acclaimed role, that of serial killer Anton Sugar in No Country for Old Men, which scored Bardem an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He worked with Woody Allen in 2008 on Vicky Christina Barcelona, and has since married co-star Penelope Cruz.


Alejandro González Iñárritu started his path as a DJ in the mid-80s. He became director of the most popular radio station among young adults in Mexico City by the end of the decade. He then went into film. He started a production company with a friend, which quickly became the number one production company in Mexico, Z Films. He directed an extended short in 1995, and then again in 1996. He met writer Gulliermo Arriaga and for three years they prepared the script for their first collaboration: the critically acclaimed Amoros Perros. They re-teamed in 2003, this time in Hollywood, and made 21 Grams. In 2006, their teamwork resulted in Babel, which was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. They’ve since stopped working together, and Garriaga went on to direct The Burning Plain, his debut, in 2008.

In 2010, González Iñárritu finally released the long awaited Biutiful. It is an emotionally deep and profound film. A journey of a man who is able to see the dead, forced to raise his two children alone, while his wife suffers from bipolar disorder. He runs a few illegal rackets, but makes enough that keeps everyone happy and is able to feed and house his family. Then he receives the blow that he cannot prevent: cancer. Told by doctors he has only “a couple months” to live, he falls into a depression. Faced with this death sentence, he quickly tries to wrap up enough dough so that his kids will have something to live on. His wife is a whore and an alcoholic and is untrustworthy.


Bardem’s character, Uxbal, is not a saint. He involves himself in the human trafficking market, is a recovering drug addict, and struggles to raise his kids on his own. He is also a man who is on a mission to salvation. He wants to keep his family safe long after he is gone. He also tries his hardest to help the families of the illegal immigrants who are caught selling drugs for him and are deported back to their countries safe and out of harms way as well. The other star of the film is Maricel Alvarez, who plays Marambra, Uxbal’s unstable ex-wife. This is Alvarez’s feature film debut, and she is utterly fantastic as a woman who desperately tries to balance her family duties as well as her constant urge for drugs and alcohol, and self-titled “fun.”

Biutiful is a difficult tale but essential and important. It is an extraordinary portrait of a man on the way down, who tries everything in his being from falling too far close to the bottom. Co-written, co-produced, and directed by González Iñárritu and shot by Rodrigo Prieto, the vision of the two men, combined with a wonderful score by another frequent collaborator, Gustavo Santaolalla, creates an almost mystical, and transcendent experience. It is nominated for two Academy Awards this year, one for Bardem’s performance, and another as Best Foreign Language Film. Here’s hoping that it wins one or both. It certainly deserves it.

THE CRANES ARE FLYING (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957)

The Cranes are Flying, USSR, 1957
Dir: Mikhail Kalatozov
Starring: Tatyana Samojlova, Aleksey Batalov, Vasili Merkuryev


I've started this review several times now. Each time I stop mid-way through and start over again. I don't know how to explain the brilliance of Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes are Flying, except to say that it is, in many ways, the Citizen Kane of Russian wartime romances. In as many ways that Orson Welles’s seminal film was technically brilliant, The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat Zhuravli) matches it with quiet and unassuming precision. Take a film, produced only a few years after the death of the world’s most famous dictator who censored all forms of art and film during his reign, a film that revolutionized the Soviet film industry before world cinema was changed by the fast talking French New Wave, and you have 95 minutes that will change the way you think about movies.

The tragic story trails the lost love of Veronika and Boris, a young couple torn apart by the eruption of World War II. The innovative cinematography brought gloriously to the screen by Sergei Urusevsky, is moving art at its finest. Hailed as a masterpiece after its release in 1957, The Cranes Are Flying remains the only Russian film to ever win top honors at the Cannes Film Festival, the prestigious Palme D'or award, in 1958. The film is a gut wrenching emotional ride that is as beautiful to look at as the most prized works of Michelangelo or Van Gogh.


Its lead star is the beautiful, vivacious, dark haired Tatyana Samojlova, who plays Veronika. The infamous movie starlet Norma Desmond, immortalized on screen by Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder’s classic Sunset Blvd. described the Silent Movie Era best, “We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!” I noted the French masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc in a previous review, which featured a stunning performance by its lead actress Maria Falconetti. Her performance was enhanced, not limited, by the fact that it was a silent film that featured no dialogue, and no music of any kind. It was her face that made the movie so memorable.

In The Cranes Are Flying, it is Samojlova’s appearance that drives the dagger right into our hearts. She is stunningly beautiful, but there is something unique about her facial structure. It is as if pain and heartbreak was already built into her face, hidden behind gorgeous eyes and lips and nose. Her bravura performance earned her accolades and she was invited to work in Hollywood with the best directors of the period. However, communism was still prevalent in the USSR and she was refused entry into America, a democratic state. Her career was cut short by the fact that she was not allowed to star in films made outside of the Soviet Union. She made only nine more films until she stopped acting altogether in 1975.


The Cranes Are Flying has endured as a landmark film in classic Russian cinema. My only fear is that words are incapable of doing the film proper justice. It is a harrowing account of the horrors of war, and a touching story of love that never came to be. Watch it for yourselves, and you will be pleasantly surprised at a lavishly put together film that speaks to the mind, body and soul of any viewer who observes it.

THE SPANISH PRISONER (DAVID MAMET, 1997)

Who in the world is what they seem?
-Susan Ricci

"The Spanish Prisoner" is a con game that dates back to the 19th century. Typically, the con man informs a victim of a wealthy man held prisoner in Spain. The con man then convinces the victim to put up funds to rescue the wealthy man in exchange for a larger sum of money once the prisoner is released, as well as obtaining the hand of a young, beautiful woman, typically the wealthy man’s daughter. The con game ends once the victim has been cleaned or realizes that he has been duped from the beginning. Writer/director David Mamet uses this con game as the basis of his 1997 film The Spanish Prisoner.

David Mamet is a master of words. He is perhaps the world’s foremost playwright, and has been one of the most successful writers of the last four decades. He rose to fame in his native Chicago in the 1970s with such works as Sexual Perversity in Chicago (later adapted into the 1986 Edward Zwick film About Last Night), and American Buffalo. In the 80s he followed it up with Speed-the-Plow, starring his frequent collaborators Joe Mantegna and William H. Macy, Glengarry Glenross, and also began writing scripts for movies such as the 1982 Paul Newman vehicle The Verdict, for which he was won an Oscar nomination for best Screenplay. In 1987, Mamet made his directing debut starring his then-wife Lindsey Crouse, House of Games. The film marked the beginning of one of the most underrated filmmaking careers in recent memory. It also set the tone for Mamet’s most consistent theme – the art of deception. In the 1990s, Mamet continued to write and direct, including Oleanna, an adaptation of his acclaimed play, and The Winslow Boy, which he directed in 1999. Mamet divorced Crouse and married actress Rebecca Pidgeon in 1991, who has subsequently starred in every single one of Mamet’s films. Mamet’s crowning achievement of the decade was however, The Spanish Prisoner, which in addition to Pidgeon, starred Campbell Scott as a naïve, young inventor, Steve Martin in an uncharacteristically serious role as the man who tricks him into handing over an extremely valuable “process” that he has invented for his company. The film also stars Felicity Huffman as an FBI agent, Ben Gazzara as Scott’s boss, and Mamet regular’s Ricky Jay and Ed O’neill in supporting roles.

The first thing that needs to be said is that David Mamet is a master of words. He is an artist of the American language. He is not a filmmaker whose aim it is to create an arty film, or a visually satisfying film. His main objective is to twist around words to the degree that while we are still aware that is English being spoken, it nonetheless remains far beyond our basic understanding of it. There is no other American filmmaker who packs as many twists into one film as Mamet does with his work, particularly with The Spanish Prisoner. Sometimes, I admit, the twists are too much, even for Mamet’s good.

Mamet’s films are not enigmas that need be unlocked. They are not films that require analysis in order to uncover a greater truth. The thing about Mamet is that he does the work for you and uncovers all there is to uncover by the end of the film. That’s what makes his work enjoyable to watch. You are intrigued by the mystery, and know that by the end of it, nothing else will be required of you, because all will be revealed and completed.

Mamet has directed few films the last few years. Since 2004, he’s only made one – the fantastic Redbelt, another film that centers on a rug being pulled from under everyone’s feet, most of all, the audience’s. He has gone back to doing mostly plays, although he has plans to direct another film in the near future, Come Back to Sorrento, once again starring his wife, as well as William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman, whom he has worked with several times already.

Oftentimes, such films go unnoticed. Movies that are entertaining, intriguing, thought provoking, and enigmatic. They feature great casts, are written by talented and well-known authors, and directed by high profile filmmakers. Yet they fly under the radar and remain lost amidst film archives. I wish I had the answer to this question, but I am afraid I don’t possess it. That might just be the answer. There is none.

MENTAL MASTURBATION PART V

For Part five of my series of lists of underrated films, I’ve decided to include a new feature. Now, if a film has a * symbol next to it, that means that the selected choice is an exceptional stand-out. Rarely will I assign this symbol, but I feel that certain films deserve the special mention.

Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1928) *
Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944)
Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, and Robert Hamer, 1945)
Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
Night and Fog (Alain Renais, 1955)
The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Renais, 1959)
Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1962)
Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963) *
Play It Again, Sam (Herbert Ross, 1972)
The Sugarland Express (Steven Spielberg, 1974)
The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975) *
C'était un rendez-vous (Claude Lelouch, 1976)
The Quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy, 1985)
Caravaggio (Derek Jarman, 1986)
Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (Claude Berri, 1986)
Another Woman (Woody Allen, 1988)
Surviving Desire (Hal Hartley, 1991)
Joyride (Jim Gillespie, 1995)
All Things Fair (Bo Widerberg, 1995)
Big Night (Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci, 1996)
The Daytrippers (Greg Mottola, 1996)
Thursday (Skip Woods, 1999)
Twin Falls Idaho (Michael Polish, 1999)
Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)
Waking the Dead (Keith Gordon, 2000)
Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002)
Candy (Neil Armfield, 2006)
The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin, 2007)
Enter the Void (Gaspar Noe, 2009)