Quinoa1984

Caught Stealing is not anything that goes much deeper than what, if you have seen a trailer or ads (and how could you not if you've been to the theaters once this summer or passing any given billboard), this appears to be on first sight as a crime drama filled with colorful characters and a gritty (but still fast-moving) sheen and setting with downtown Manhattan as largely where this is set, with Flushing, Queens and east Brooklyn getting time in the second half. I am fine with that sort of approach to genre as long as the filmmaker knows what he or she has, and Darren Aronofsky does the most important thing which is to accentuate the "I'm in waaaaay over my head" kind of chaotic storytelling that we have seen more or less since the 1980's.

Sure, this is no After Hours, but then again else what is (incidentally both featuring Griffin Dunne, here as probably my choice for the low-key MVP of the supporting players, of which there is a heavy line-up of pros); this has more of the pull of, easy reference if not totally accurate, a post-Tarantino 90's riff that I would have definitely seen and gushed over had it come out at the time in 1998 like it is set in, but moreover it really has its feet set in classic Film Noir tropes in terms of the protagonist/sorta Anti-Hero Hank (a totally-on-fire Austin Butler, probably his best work yet) who has to become a proactive character as s*** keeps flying at him from this or that criminal element, be they Russian, Orthodox Hassidic or, you guessed it, the Fuzz, and there is a Dame in the middle of it all (Zoe Kravitz, pretty good as well as everyone is here) who is in more danger than she knows.

I liked that Aronofsky doesn't get in the way, and probably encouraged I'm sure, how dark this story goes, though I do wonder if another director with, not to be totally dismissive, a more experimental/improvisational sense of what possibilities of humor could be available could have done here, like with a Scorsese or even Guy Ritchie at his peak (Schreiber and D'Onofrio and Kane do get what awkward comedy there is with a bowl of Matzoh Ball soup). And while one is tempted to say this is a "Normal" Aronofsky movie, that is in comparison to some of the most transgressive and visually as well as morally tumultuous films in the Western world by anyone in this century; he still has a morbid understanding, if not fascination, of the ways the human body can be punished, and the trauma that Hank revisits is palpable and just that image of the car breaking apart is one that sticks in your teeth, so to speak.

The important thing is we are with Hank on this journey through a hell that comes all thanks to That Darn Cat and That Darn Punk Rock Stereotype, and Butler sells his bewilderment and pain on multiple fronts, and I liked that his Hank understands, eventually, just how much of a boondoggle it is with these opposing sides on the hunt for these millions and that he can play some of them off one another... until he can't. There's intense turns, break-neck and shocking bouts of violence, irony placed in just the right doses and a few genuinely keen plants and pay-offs in the script.

So, despite the fact that I don't think you should look to this necessarily as an accurate depiction of Russian and Orthodox Jewish street criminals, for the sake of the big bag of PULP that this is and how much seeing Hank get through Skin-of-his-Teeth style entertains, it serves for a very good time and that is enough at least for this first viewing. I may also be an easy mark for Scuzzy NYC Crime Cinema in general (and in fiction, nache), so take my recommendation with some salt if you must.

And that Cat: maybe the best Cat Actor since Inside Llewyn Davis? (Hope I am not forgetting a later Agnes Varda since then, but I digress).

Ennio has to be adulatory for the late and of course Every Superlative You Can Muster musician and composer, and you have the man himself to speak about his long life and many, many works both in cinema and outside of it (Tornatore recorded this a year or so before he left the world, this premiered shortly after) with many talking heads (no, Tarantino is not throughout, which is a deliberate and correct choice, just about Hateful Eight and that makes the most sense so go in expecting that). Like any documentary about a subject you think you know one or two things about and come quickly to understand eh no, you don't so much, many of the interesting details are early on in the first 40 minutes or so.

The opposite trajectory happened for him that is usual for most kids, firstly, in that Morricone wanted to do be a doctor or something conventional like that and his own father said he would play the trumpet (it helped that his dad played it as well, until he couldn't, and that itself is a superb detail Tornatore includes that has to do with EM's film score career). He trains and trains and has a mentor who both encourages and tells him to go in this direction (ie he spent lots of time writing before anyone hears a word he had to record), and his career in films going all the way back to being part of the orchestra for Orson Welles's Othello adds an extra sprinkle of resonance and feeliny to that work.

The time spent as an arranger and pop musician is some of the great history meat to scarf down here, so to speak (why Quincy Jones pops up but doesnt have time to elaborate who knows, kind of odd Springsteen has more time to talk than he does), and to find out just how much lively music he created for commercial markets and how he sort of smuggled in classical music into themes is also incredible to learn (just look up Voce E'Notte by Miranda Martino and your day will be made).

There is a process and a search for how to bring a fresh sensibility to that world of music that I found fascinating and, in a very real way, is what led him to film composition as his doubling of themes, of timing that might be off a little (3 instead of 4 chord kind of note progressions), since experimentation was just at that time coming into being and with Morricone's curiosity (Via John Cage) to use abstractions and just odd syncopation to get what was in his head on to the page and then into speakers everywhere.

It is when he meets Sergio Leone and those three titanic works of art that he created for the Dollars trilogy that the bulk of the documentary takes off, but there is shape and progression past it being a series of anecdotes and "I worked with this one and that one" and so on, which is not so much expected as it is that it is what made me want to watch it in the first place (ie what did he think of working with Malick on Days of Heaven? I did not know till sitting with this and it turned out to be one of the most important experiences of his musical life, good to know).

We see him sometimes, as would happen to anyone doing at his peak close to two dozen scores a year, repeating himself and that becoming a (good?) Problem for him to have in thr early 1970s. But the fascination of the documentary and its subject is how adept EM was at adapting to the director and material, sometimes with a quick instinct and other times through hard work (the Joan Baez story was surprising and one of my favorite sections). If there was one small piece I might have liked Tornatore to get into more - aside from Carpenter's The Thing - is that period where Morricone wanted to leave film music and do more Chamber music; it gets a mention, but is strangely left behind as it goes back to the "and then this score story" structure.

The strength of this though is that for cineastes as well as more casual movie watchers who may wonder about the guy that Tarantino sampled a bunch of times before working with at long last it just tells a compelling story of artistry and how that process takes dedication and a real sense of being true to oneself as well as the work. Frankly, this has the kind of "problem" that other movies don't which is that it could have been longer in sections; just Morricone and Leone alone could be its own documentary this exact length, and it is hard to listen to that chorus for Once Upon a Time in the West and not start sobbing, uncontrollably. Ok, I need a minute, where is that harmonica...

In other words, very loving, sometimes critical, and like the recent John Williams documentary about what it means to create on a collaborative and deeply human level above all.

A Chinese Ghost Story is something special for not only now in the 2020s but for back when it was made; I have not dug deep into interviews or behind the scenes stories, but it can't help but seem like the filmmakers had seen The Evil Dead by this point (as any of the proverbial cool kids were doing by 1986/87) and were totally in the tank for Sam Raimi's intense In-Your-Face-And-Everywhere approach to the camera as a character. This is only a handful of times so hard to miss, but also notice when the film goes into stop-motion animation for several of those unlucky rancid skinny-ragged skeleton ghouls trying to claw their way up part of the haunted Temple only to get thwarted by the (at first) clueless "Scholar" Ling Choi San (played by baby Leslie Cheung).

There is imagination up the wazoo in the filmmaking and I am just impressed and amazed how much the production designers and stunt coordinators and whoever it was on set who had to get the performers from point A to B or even back over to D flying high in the sky by way of camera tricks or wire work, and it is in that last era before computers came in and took away some of the excitement to be had seeing how much some smoke and fog on a set could do wonders, not to mention some great plaster-casters and just how long it could seem Cheung could hold his breath underwater in that tub (sometimes with the cute Joey Wang stepping in amid the subterfuge of that scene, wowzers).

I also really love how the story does take the romance part seriously and it manages to be tender and sweet because the Choi San character is a good person at heart, like the kind of decent dude who can't help it to the point where the ghost Siu Shin even writes him a note pointing out that much as part of the warning for him to leave... but then where's the mpvie in that? There is a certain innocence to what we see them go through on these nights (watch out for snakes!) where he is so close to getting killed this way and that and she is looking out for him while she is also trying to get away from some of the crueler ghosts.

One can even excuse the few minutes around midway through the movie where we see a recap of the cute parts of the human and ghost bonding together in mishaps (maybe to give the couples a moment to neck in the theater, or to get caught up on what they missed while locking lips earlier, not sure if that was a thing back in HK cinemas, I digress). And then the question becomes paramount: can he get her out of this Temple and reincarnated? What is a Scholar to do?

Chinese Ghost Story probably/definitely has some lore that went over my head, but when the entire production and this cast are so entertaining and locked in to creating something really special - up to and including some editing that, Raimi influence aside, also took cues from MTV videos of the era (not a bad thing in this case) - it makes any faults seem miniscule as it all has the handmade quality of supremely talented film students making their go at the Big Time. It has a good bit of philosophy at the center of it too: who is one to judge a ghost as bad when humanity is... what it is?

And ot all goes by so relatively quickly and yet I don't want to see any extra footage, what is here is cut together and paced so briskly and we also get to have a good amount of time with Wu Ma as the swordsman who has so lost his way he may not be sure he is a ghost or a human any more. Wish I had not waited this long to watch it but so very, very glad I did, and especially in the new 4K restoration from Shout!