November 8–15, 2001

movies

Screenpicks

by Sam Adams

Intolerance

(Fri., Nov. 9, 8 p.m., $5, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542)

Don’t let anyone accuse Philadelphia of being a one-movie town. Friday night alone, you can choose from Valley of the Dolls at the Prince (see Alex Richmond’s pick, and note the added 10:15 p.m. screening), crazy cartoons Secret Cinema-style (8 p.m. at Moore College of Art and Design), and International House’s screening of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, the first in a monthly series called "100 Years of Cinema: Masterpieces of the World Cinema." Griffith’s 1916 opus is a formal watershed, a historical parable in four acts, each designed to spotlight prejudice in a different era. Cinema historians tend to go gooey when they talk about Griffith and his innovations, but in my limited experience, he seems more the Oliver Stone of his era: a filmmaker whose proficiency far outweighs his artistry. Griffith has taken many deserved knocks for his overtly racist The Birth of a Nation (1915), and while his defenders point out that it’s unfair to hang the director by the standards of a different era, it’s hard to hail as a true artist a man who so clearly fails to get inside the imaginative skin of his characters. If Shakespeare could put himself in Othello’s shoes more than two centuries before, what excuse does Griffith have? That’s not to say he should be swept under the rug — in fact, it only makes the discussion more interesting. In the 85 years since Intolerance, only a handful of filmmakers have ever attempted anything so outlandish — maybe that means they’ve matured, but it also means they’ve died a little.

Through the Lens

(Tue., Nov. 13, 10 p.m., WYBE-TV 35)

The 11th season of the wide-ranging weekly series devoted to short independent films from around the world premieres.

Bald

(Mon., Nov. 12, 7:30 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org)

Vince Mola, apparently styling himself as the John Cheever of the WIP set, follows up SuperPhan with this slight, rough-edged tale of a advertising exec whose obsession with his own hair loss nearly ruins the rest of his life as well. Folks excited by the fact that the film features cameos from Angelo Cataldi, Stu Bykofsky, WB sports guy Mike Missanelli and Bill "El Wingador" Simmons probably won’t mind Bald’s shaky aesthetics (at one point, the camera pans needlessly from side to side and you can see the jagged edges where the set painting stops and the white walls begin). The film could use an ending as well, since right now it slides into a music video rather than going for any kind of real resolution. Still, it’s hard to argue with the film’s moral: "Shave it off."

Paul Verhoeven, Take 2

What a year it’s been for Paul Verhoeven fans (and I can’t be the only one). After releasing three of his early films on DVD back in June, Anchor Bay has upped the ante with another pair of Dutch treats: Business Is Business and Katie Tippel ($29.98 DVD each). Verhoeven’s Dutch films often suffer for lack of a proper budget — like Terry Gilliam or Jean-Pierre Jeunet, he’s a filmmaker who requires a sizable canvas to do his best work — and Katie Tippel in particular suffers from being a historical biography shot on a shoestring. Set in 19th-century Amsterdam, the film (whose title, incidentally, translates as something like "Katie the Streetwalker") indulges Verhoeven’s well-documented interest in sex and the grotesque, or preferably both. In his commentary, Verhoeven admits that having just come off the erotically intense Turkish Delight and working with the same stars — the marvelous Monique Van de Ven and Rutger Hauer — he may have been tempted to overemphasize the sexual events in the narrative, which is a fair cop. Still, Van de Ven is even better than in Turkish Delight, both innocent and hungry, impetuous and calculating.

Verhoeven’s American films are both freer and more constrained than his Dutch work; increased budget and loosening standards made the Grand Guignol antics of Robocop and Starship Troopers possible, but Hollywood’s ever-present prurience means that those of his American films that deal with sex come off as leering rather than lascivious. Basic Instinct ($26.98 DVD), is, as Verhoeven admits in his commentary, basically a remake of his kinky Dutch The Fourth Man, but the Dutch film’s warped, complex sexuality is drowned in a sea of gooey lighting and beaver shots, even in the DVD’s unrated director’s cut. (For the intrepid, Camille Paglia offers her reading of the film on a separate audio track.) Total Recall ($26.98 DVD), also available as a souped-up special edition, is more the ticket, even if Ahnuld’s one-liners are hopelessly at odds with the film’s semi-intelligent plot. (Schwarzenegger and Verhoeven’s commentary track is unintentionally hilarious, especially the former’s insistence on recapping the plot as it happens.) Hyperviolent, self-referential and endlessly circling in upon itself, Total Recall might have been a smarter movie if it had been made for less, but it’s still amazing how much Verhoeven and Co. get away with (especially if you stick with his theory that the film’s happy ending is really a depiction of the main character being lobotomized). Among other things, it’s pretty striking how much David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ lifts from the film, even if Cronenberg’s is the more successful version.