Netflix Almanac: June 2007

So I have this addiction: More than 200 movies stashed away in my cider chest or hutch, taking up valuable space probably best used for the family china or Colonial-era blankets. The scary thing? It could be much worse if I didn’t use Netflix.

I discovered the online rental service a little more than seven years ago, shortly after I bought my first and only DVD player. Despite my love of film, I tend to be a careful buyer; I won’t purchase a movie that I won’t watch more than a few times. Which was a problem.

When DVDs first hit the market in 1997, most studios didn’t support the format, so several independent niche licensors like Anchor Bay Entertainment, Elite, and Tai Seng stepped in. Because they didn’t own their own movie libraries and studios were unwilling to let go of their big classic or contemporary productions, the licensors acquired the odds and ends: Hong Kong fantasy films, b-movies, old American independents, silents, European cinema, Hammer flicks, big screen turkeys, little cult films....

In other words, movies right up my alley.

By accident, DVDs opened up the film world to me, making historically obscure and difficult-to-find film suddenly available. But only if I could buy it.

My local video store didn’t carry most of the new DVDs, and they had just started to sell off their collection of out-of-print videos. Within a few years, that collection would be reduced to major Hollywood films and incomplete anime collections, with nary an oddity to be found. I was faced with the “blind buy,” and after the second-degree burn I got from Alex Cox’s Death and the Compass, that prospect was wearying.

Faced with dozens of new releases each season I wanted to see, Netflix came around at the right time. I joined in March of 2001, back when they had only one distribution center, and it was in California. My queue list grew as the discs trickled in, and by the time another center opened a half hour down the interstate, my waiting list began to resemble one for football tickets. Still, I managed to save money and space, and discovered some interesting film along the way.

Even though I no longer use Netflix as heavily as in the past, I still manage to watch several discs a month. Now that I have a movie blog, a chronicle of those odds and ends may serve as a guide to some unwitting movie lover or a window to my own peculiar taste.

Besides, I need something to write about once in a while.

Three Ages (1923)
Buster Keaton’s first feature, and he was hedging his bets. Done up as a parody of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Keaton tells and retells the same love story in three eras: Stone, Roman, and Modern Day. The Boy (Keaton) woos Beauty (Margaret Leahy), but the family prefers The Adventurer (the great Wallace Beery). Thus, The Boy must prove his worth to the family and reveal the true intentions of The Adventurer. Rather than run through each story piecemeal, Keaton intercuts among the three by story points. For instance, when The Boy needs advice about what to do with his intentions, in the Stone Age, he consults a witch woman, in Roman times a tottering oracle, and in the Modern a daisy (she loves me, she loves me not). As the stories continue to unwind, the intercut becomes quicker, matching the rising frantic energy on screen. Keaton gets a healthy dose of humorous mileage from the interplay among three vastly different times, usually using the Modern era as the punchline, especially in the film’s final joke. Unlike Keaton’s follow-up Our Hospitality, Three Ages is closer to his gag-driven shorts--a technical wonder far beyond what other silent comedians were doing at the same time, but strangely absent of any emotional investment. That would come later. But Three Ages remains worthy of a laugh--a very loud and never-ending one.

Android (1982)
A science fiction b-movie from Roger Corman’s New World factory, but not exactly what you expect. An eccentric scientist (Klaus Kinski) is working on an illegal project when his naive, android assistant Max 404 (writer Don Keith Opper, but billed as “Himself”) lets three escaped convicts land on their station. What follows isn’t a thriller but a study of the spiritual awakening of a machine. Shot economically on a small but well-designed set, Android shows a lot of care behind its ambition, and mostly avoids the exploitation that usually seeps into Corman’s productions. Unfortunately, the good intentions are undercut by human characters too narrowly drawn to be compelling and a plot that really stagnates between the film’s opening and closing sections. Opper makes a nice debut as an actor, but as a writer, he waits too long to introduce some story points and adds a last twist that doesn’t make much sense. In the end, Android is a nice, faulty film showcasing a nice character in Max 404. The rest is mostly forgetful.

Richard Jeni: A Big Steaming Pile of Me (2005)
I’ve already discussed my own feelings on Jeni, and this HBO stand-up special--his last recorded performance--makes me miss him that much more. Jeni, whose routines usually dealt with entertainment or relationships, ventures into the political arena, attacking both right and left with a sly grin. In one hour, he exposes ridiculous societal rhetoric better than a decade of Dennis Miller. Jeni left us too soon, but he left behind a great performance everyone should watch.

And if political humor gives you the gives you the jibbles, don't worry; Jeni still hits on his normal points:



Samurai Banners (1969)
The general conception of knights and samurai is one of honor. Yet, as this classic samurai epic clearly shows, honor is a many faceted thing. Toshiro Mifune stars as Kansuke Yamamoto, an ambitious ronin dreaming of a united Japan. Yamamoto becomes a warlord’s most-trusted strategist by concocting plots to raise both his and his lord’s prestige and power. But the intrigue only sets the table for a wonderfully complex character-study of three people: Yamamoto, his lord Shingen Takeda, and Princess Yufu, the captured daughter of a dead rival whom both love. The film also dissects the common conception of honorable actions, but that’s a post for another day. What makes Samurai Banners all the more interesting is that it is not some grand samurai but a historical film--the legend of Takeda is one of Japan’s greatest. The epic, with its bright and grandly staged battle scenes, is a gloss for a quiet story of three people who nearly changed a country, for better or worse.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
God, I love this movie. “Remember, wherever you go, there you are.” Hee.

A Man Called Sledge (1970)
James Garner does a Spaghetti western. He portrays Luther Sledge, a dour outlaw with no illusions to his ultimate fate. After a partner is killed in a card game, Sledge meets an old man who follows a weekly gold shipment from a mine to a prison. Sledge creates a heist plot to break the gold out of the prison. He succeeds at the cost of a friend, but then the gold begins to turn his gang against each other and, ultimately, him. Like most Spaghetti westerns, this story does not end well for anyone, even the survivors. Garner’s own inherent likeability and natural charisma gives this tale a bit of a twist, but otherwise, it’s pretty standard fare--too afraid to plunge into the nihilistic darkness of the human soul like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly or The Great Silence. An oddity, written and directed by longtime character actor Vic Morrow and featuring some notables like Garner, Dennis Weaver, and Claude Akins riding in territory to which they were not accustomed.