Toward a New Cinema

By Eligah Boykin

The author wishes to offer you more than the standard fare of sex and violence that normally comes with your popcorn, burgers, and fries. He is betting you have been hankering for a little courage and love, spiced with pride and faithfulness, and that you might find a turn to nobility and truth more to your tastes.

This book of movie reviews samples the classics and more contemporary selections. You will discover the author’s observations and thoughts about Twelve Years a Slave as well as Amiri Baraka’s The Dutchman. We will examine Edison with Spencer Tracy and David Mamet’s Oleanna. James Coburn will take us dancing and prancing through death and danger as Our Man Flint, and we will have a front-row seat to Klaatu’s stern lecture to humanity in The Day the Earth Stood Still. After a round trip through The Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and Jett Li, we will, at length, settle down to a glass of milk and a slice of apple pie with Young Tom Edison. Finally, with all this under our belt, we might, at last, find ourselves meditating and contemplating upon a route toward a new cinema.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984558855

Eligah Boykin

The author, Eligah Boykin, has logged many miles hiking to the local Cinema House between Mack and Saint Jean. He has caught the Warren and Crosstown buses many a time to the Grand Circus, Palms and Adams theaters. He has whiled away countless afternoon hours watching the offerings of Bill Kennedy, Elwy Yost, and Robert Osborne; famous Movie Television Hosts. Now he wishes to share with you his own reflections and insights regarding one hundred of his favorite movies. So get the popcorn ready and check your DVD collection. TOWARD A NEW CINEMA is in the house!

Book preview

Toward a

New Cinema

Eligah Boykin

Copyright © 2018 by Eligah Boykin. 786729

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-9845-5886-2

   Hardcover   978-1-9845-5887-9

   EBook      978-1-9845-5885-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 10/26/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

Contents

OPENING CHAT WITH THE READER

ANALYSIS GRAPH FROM GUSTAV FREYTAG

TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE 12 MARCH 2014

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY 11 JULY 2016

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER 9 MARCH 2012

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER 18 JANUARY 2014

ACCEPTED 25 JUNE 2014

A FEW GOOD MEN 17 JULY 2016

ZORBA THE GREEK 22 DECEMBER 2016

ALL EYEZ ON ME (2017) 25 JUNE 2017

ALPHAVILLE (1965) 22 JUNE 2017

ANT-MAN 29 MAY 2016

A PATCH OF BLUE 11 FEBRUARY 2016

BABE 26 DECEMBER 2012

BRING IT ON 16 JANUARY 2013

CATCH-22 10 JULY 2016

CHAN IS MISSING (1982) 23 JUNE 2017

CHINATOWN 30 APRIL 2012

CITIZEN KANE 10 JULY 2016

COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT 5 MARCH 2011

COME BACK, AFRICA 10 JUNE 2017

GUN CRAZY 2 APRIL 2016

DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS 20 MARCH 2016

DINGAKA 31 MAY 2016

DJANGO UNCHAINED 28 JANUARY 2014

DRUMLINE 27 JUNE 2014

DUTCHMAN 9 FEBRUARY 2016

EDISON, THE MAN 22 December 2016

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS 14 DECEMBER 2014

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963) 10 JUNE 2017

GRAVITY 5 FEBRUARY 2014

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER 20 March 2016

HARLEM NIGHTS 9 APRIL 2016

HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALLISON 28 MAY 2016

HERCULES (2014) 23 January 2017

HOUSE OF GAMES 14 DECEMBER 2014

I AM WRATH 23 MAY 2016

ISLAND IN THE SUN 11 FEBRUARY 2014

IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER 17 march 2016

JUNGLE FEVER 11 FEBRUARY 2014

KINGS OF THE SUN 27 APRIL 2012

LADY IN THE LAKE (1946) 26 December 2016

LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD 12 FEBRUARY 2014

RUN LOLA RUN 26 DECEMBER 2012

LORENZO’S OIL 9 APRIL 2016

MALCOLM X 6 FEBRUARY 2014

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA 13 MARCH 2012

MY MAN GODFREY (1936) 8 June 2017

NOTHING BUT A MAN 17 MARCH 2016

NOTORIOUS 3 APRIL 2016

OLEANNA 12 DECEMBER 2014

OUR MAN FLINT 11 FEBRUARY 2016

PATTON 12 november 2014

PHONE BOOTH 12 DECEMBER 2014

Pi (1998) 12 DECEMBER 2014

PREDATOR 26 DECEMBER 2012

PULP FICTION 12 FEBRUARY 2014

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) 22 JUNE 2017

RAISING ARIZONA 19 MARCH 2016

REDBELT (2008) 2 APRIL 2012

RED TAILS (2012) 4 MARCH 2012

REMBETIKO 8 JUNE 2017

RUSSIAN ARK 31 JANUARY 2014

SHAFT 14 JUNE 2014

SHAKA ZULU 23 JANUARY 2016

STARSHIP TROOPERS 3 JANUARY 2013

THE AVENGERS 27 JUNE 2012

THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL 28 MARCH 2016

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946) 25 JUNE 2017

THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT 31 JANUARY 2014

THE BOOK OF ELI 5 MARCH 2012

THE COLOR OF FRIENDSHIP 29 APRIL 2012

THE COMMITMENTS 16 JANUARY 2013

THE DARK KNIGHT 31 MAY 2016

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951) 21 MARCH 2011

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL-(2008) 21 MARCH 2011

THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM 10 MARCH 2012

THE GODFATHER 2 MAY 2012

THE GRADUATE (1967) 2 MAY 2012

THE GREEN PASTURES (1936) 23 JUNE 2017

THE KING OF KINGS 30 DECEMBER 2014

THE LEFT HAND OF GOD 20 MARCH 2016

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (2016) 20 FEBRUARY 2017

THE MATRIX (1999) 20 MARCH 2016

THE NAKED KISS (1964) 23 JANUARY 2016

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004) 4 JANUARY 2013

THE RIGHT STUFF (1983) 12 APRIL 2012

THE STING (1973) 17 MARCH 2016

THE THIN BLUE LINE (1988) 11 JUNE 2017

THE TIME MACHINE (1960) 10 JUNE 2017

THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY (1959) 3 JULY 2016

THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL 9 JULY 2016

THOR (2011) 14 MARCH 2012

UNDER FIRE (1983) 8 FEBRUARY 2014

WATCHMEN (2009) 4 FEBRUARY 2014

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA (1991) 24 JUNE 2017

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA III 24 JUNE 2017

ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA II (1992) 24 JUNE 2017

IP MAN (2008) 5 MARCH 2012

IP MAN 2 (2010) 23 JUNE 2017

YOUNG TOM EDISON (1940) 22 DECEMBER 2016

CLOSING CHAT WITH READER

OPENING CHAT WITH THE READER

I will always remember that day I stood alone in the Blockbuster Video Store. Ours was on Livernois and Margareta. I was looking around at all the covers on the boxes in front of the video-tape cassettes. My bike was parked outside and I was thinking to myself how I already knew what the majority of these movies were about. This conclusion came to me in a blinding flash of certainty. There would inevitably be a conflict mixed more or less with sex and violence.

At that time, I became aware that I was standing in a space devoted to a kind of cultural conditioning. All these movies were a kind of portable Circus Maximus that you could take home with you. Indeed, the microwave popcorn was the ‘bread’ and the flicks were the ‘circuses’ for the ‘masses’. You could be like any Roman Emperor and give your thumbs up or thumbs down on the electronic proceedings of sights and sounds in the dark of your living room. Perhaps that would provide a vent for all that highly charged accumulated malicious energy that could build up. After all, it can be hard out here for those oppressed and exploited in this mechanical age of hi-tech.

A happy thought occurred to me at the time. I could easily present an Entertainment that did not cater or pander to these carnal impulses and values, but in a deft and elegant way successfully rose above them. I recalled a course I took with Elliot Wilhelm at the Rackham Memorial Building that covered the films of Alfred Hitchcock. These films by the Master of Suspense gave me some insight about how to be witty, literate and urbane. You should find at least one reviewed here in this volume.

I also vividly remember a time when my thought probed and focused on what were my favorite Top Ten Films of All Time. I meditated upon this for some time and finally plucked from my memory the ten films that were the most memorable to me. That being done, I found myself busy deducing what was the common denominator to all these films making such a profound impression on me. I found to my astonishment among the eclectic mix that the films in the most hallowed place of my hearts of hearts did not contain much or any sex or violence in them! I thought to myself this could not be; but sure enough, the more I checked and rechecked my little list, the more I found this subtle and quiet truth to hold fast.

From this, I speculated on a truth that I have seen played out again and again in storytelling. Oftentimes, SEX AND VIOLENCE prove to be unworthy substitutes for CHARACTER AND PLOT DEVELOPMENT. That is, when sex and violence drive the narrative, character and plot development tend to be diminished. Conversely, when character and plot development drive the narrative, the less need there is for the graphic presentation of sex and violence.

This is an interesting proposition to explore; whether you agree with it or take umbrage. Therefore, I present to you for your inspection reviews of a hundred of my favorite films. There are spoilers galore in this selection, so I advise you to see the films first before reading my reviews when you can. Writers may find they particularly benefit from these reviews.

You can use the list at the beginning of the book and order the needed DVD or borrow it from the Library. I have used Gustav Freytag’s Pyramid for analyzing story plot and dramatic development and you will find this diagram in the opening pages of this volume. I first found out about this Pyramid stumbling into Pierre Rener’s Humanities Class. My GPA was not high enough to take his class, but I had to bring him a note from the Office and sat in an empty seat to hear his lecture, because nobody interrupted Rener when he was conducting one of his classes. I found out later there are all sorts of criteria for examining the merits of films. You might want to fiddle around with Joe Campbell’s Cycle of the Hero’s Journey or Blake’s Beat Sheet. But, to paraphrase Alan Ladd in the movie SHANE, the way I have chosen is as good as any and better than some.

I have found that Movie Reviewers from Henry Tenenbaum to Roger Ebert almost never give you the criteria by which they dissect the films currently capturing the popular imagination. You will not find that to be the case with me. When I speak about how the movie SHAFT lacks a full Exposition or how THE FORBIN PROJECT lacks a full Resolution as well as Denouement, merely refer to the diagram at the beginning of the book and you will see what I am talking about. This should take most of the mystery out of the conclusions that I draw whether you choose to agree with me or not.

At any rate, I would love to know what you think about all this. You can feel free to contact me at [e-mail] to share your own opinions and points of view. I welcome your thoughts and hope you enjoy my favorite films. These reports filtered as they are through my own life experience are also spiced with personal anecdotes here and there.

Best Wishes,

Eligah Boykin Jr.

ANALYSIS GRAPH FROM GUSTAV FREYTAG

Gustav Freytag was a Nineteenth Century German novelist who saw common patterns in the plots of stories and novels and developed a diagram to analyze them. He diagrammed a story’s plot using a pyramid like the one shown here:

image1.jpg

Freytag’s Pyramid

1. Exposition: setting the scene. The writer introduces the characters and setting, providing description and background.

2. Inciting Incident: something happens to begin the action. A single event usually signals the beginning of the main conflict. The inciting incident is sometimes called ‘the complication’.

3. Rising Action: the story builds and gets more exciting.

4. Climax: the moment of greatest tension in a story. This is often the most exciting event. It is the event that the rising action builds up to and that the falling action follows.

5. Falling Action: events happen as a result of the climax and we know that the story will soon end.

6. Resolution: the character solves the main problem/conflict or someone solves it for him or her.

7. Dénouement: (a French term, pronounced: day-noo-moh) the ending. At this point, any remaining secrets, questions or mysteries which remain after the resolution are solved by the characters or explained by the author. Sometimes the author leaves us to think about the THEME or future possibilities for the characters.

You can think of the dénouement as the opposite of the exposition: instead of getting ready to tell us the story by introducing the setting and characters, the author is getting ready to end it with a final explanation of what actually happened and how the characters think or feel about it. This can be the most difficult part of the plot to identify, as it is often very closely tied to the resolution

5.jpg

TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE

Down the Rabbit-Hole into Slavery…

12 MARCH 2014

‘Twelve Years a Slave’ is a tightly written, well-crafted film that further explores Ingmar Bergman’s assertion that Film has nothing to do with Literature, but shares greater affinities with Painting, Music and Photography. The film itself is beautiful to look at; owing to its Director Steve McQueen and its Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt as well as its Film Editor Joe Walker. While others I talked to found the film ‘brutal’, I found it remarkably restrained and its narrative compelling without being driven by the roller-coaster pyrotechnics of films post Indiana Jones. The film explores a set of issues with intelligence albeit going down a well-trodden road. The Three Laws of Fred Williamson are applied here for once with a subtle sophistication and a hint of profound implication rarely to be seen during the Blaxploitation Era.

The subject matter being as fulsome as it is, I was not exactly foaming at the mouth to see this one. After all, nobody needed to tell me who would be playing the Masters and who would be playing the Slaves. Just as toy dogs fly well when kicked, African Americans and sundry other people of color make great victims to pivot the story around in films such as ‘Spartacus’ and ‘The Sting’. Here in a culture that glories in violence and falls in love so easily with death projected on the silver screen, Blacks make excellent fodder for the pigs in the slaughterhouse.

While I was watching ‘Twelve Years a Slave’, my mischievous imagination started itching me. There must be a parallel universe somewhere, I figured, where Blacks were herding Whites into waiting ships to be sent to distant lands and auctioned off for their strength, beauty and utility in a thousand and one ways as well as to be a supplementary source of energy more valuable than coal or oil. However, this was not to be that story, and ‘Twelve Years a Slave’ hews pretty close to the formula for this kind of fare.

The twist here is that Solomon Northrup starts out a free man privy to all the amenities of his times. That is before someone can whisper in his ear that the white man speaks with a forked tongue and he then finds himself waking up in chains. This turn of events comes after a night of revelry with new-found friends, who, unbeknownst to Northrup, are looking for another slave to log into the books. At this point, the gate begins to swing wide on the horrors of the antebellum South.

Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Solomon Northrup is a gifted and intelligent man able to postulate his own solutions to many problems and this becomes apparent throughout the narrative. But here in Slave Country his skills and talents win him no reward or empowerment, simply the inverse of such phenomena. This is heart-wrenching to watch and makes you want to grab something hard to hit somebody with. It is the age-old conundrum. How do you reason with someone who simply wants to control and dominate you for the thrill and empowering pleasure of it? Is feeling superior to someone or something really that valuable an experience?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Perhaps the most troubling character is Lupita Nyong’o as Patsey. She is a woman born and bred into slavery. You see her producing two to two and a half times as much product picking cotton as any of the other slaves male or female. Today she would probably be working her way up the ladder to running her own company and eventually rubbing elbows with Oprah Winfrey. But here in this cultural context, her exceptional production wins her abuse, disfigurement and mutilation and the choice between cultural murder of the spirit and the body by degrees at the hands of slave owners or the death wish of the suicide.

I’ll have to admit I was glad she won an Oscar for such an anguishing and haunting portrayal.

The flashbacks to Northrup’s life prior to slavery are musically handled and the scene at the end of Northrup meditating upon his misery is one of the best interior monologues I have seen in Cinema. The cast is well rounded out with veterans like Alfre Woodard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Sarah Paulson and Paul Dano holding down supporting roles. Until that film comes out where whites are walking in chains seething with self hatred, I’ll have to tip my hat to the elevated craft of ‘Twelve Years a Slave’.

There are three additional thoughts of note that have come to mind. While I do not plan to be doing any slave owning any time soon, it seems to me Patsey’s ‘owners’ might have been curious as to how she was outproducing all the other slaves in her party. Could it be possible she was using advanced techniques that could be shared with her other brethren, or was she simply exercising a higher level of manual dexterity due to her gender? The other thing that came to mind is that I was finally convinced due to the meditative quality of this film that the great Carter G. Woodson was right. The African mind is essentially an Oriental mind. Finally, it seems to me that ‘Twelve Years a Slave’ can be seen as a darker (no pun intended) version of ‘Sullivan Travels’.

But, unlike the Butler in ‘Sullivan’s Travels’, I do not advise you to shun the subject of slavery even for the purposes of study.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

A Tale of Natural, Technological and Spiritual Reinvention…

11 JULY 2016

I saw this film with my sister in Cinerama way back in 1968. I’ll never forget the completely lost look on her face as she turned to me and asked innocently, What’s going’ on?

I chuckled and said nothing.

Many people have to know before they can go, but I must say I have never had a problem with this. That is not to say that there are not a vast number of things beyond the ken of my understanding, but I have always felt that if you just keep on truckin’ you will arrive at the Truth sooner or later.

This is a stellar film (no pun intended) and once again rivals CITIZEN KANE for its sheer inventiveness. The inventiveness here, however, is not based on spending Saturday afternoons with the cinematographer learning novel ways to set up and use the camera to frame shots; as was the case with Welles and Toland, but is based on staggering and exhaustive research within and without the Space Program and various communities of High Technology.

This is actually quite a simple film to understand, as it is designed to evoke mystery, to generate questions rather than answers, to launch the viewer on his or her own personal odyssey and voyage of discovery.

That’s really about it. This film is about as close to pure cinema as you are likely to get; with the possible exception of THE GOLD RUSH by Charlie Chaplin or Russian ARK by Alexander Sokurov, and yes, I could share all of my associations about the film with you, but what would be the point when that’s the whole point? That is, your take on this movie is as good as mine and a great jumping off point into the realms of higher dimensions where together we can learn a great many new things.

I will say this. I must have seen this movie over thirty times before I finally fully comprehended the gist of what Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke were attempting to express, while after reading the second of Clarke’s Odyssey novels I attained full understanding in mere seconds.

Once again, this is really a simple film. I agree with Kubrick that it is meant to be a nonverbal experience aimed at arousing emotions and moods of awe and sublimity and at this succeeds enormously. I also agree with Roger Ebert that this is a fable for Mankind albeit from a Western perspective or standpoint. Unlike many movies, it defies surrendering to a surface interpretation and challenges you from the outset not necessarily to agree with its open-ended conclusions but rather to explore and understand it from the inside out as Frank Lloyd Wright used to exhort us to do.

This film is also the gentlest introduction into the world of abstraction that I know pertaining to the cinema. I must admit it is one of the reasons I stumbled into the Fine Arts wanting to understand how the aesthetics of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY was able to affect me so profoundly. Here, the Magician works his magic and leaves it to you to ferret out his secrets.

I would like to conclude by saying that you might be interested in AN IN DEPTH ANALYSIS OF 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY by Roger Ager 2008 as more food for thought. Also, at the risk of uttering ironic heresy, I have to remark that I have been surprised here and there by how well atheists like Isaac Asimov understand the Concept of God.

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER

O where for art thou Galactus?

9 MARCH 2012

The career of Stan Lee, like that of Muhammud Ali, are two things I can proudly say I was there