FilmJerk Favorites

A group of unique directors and the essential works that you've got to see.

||| Stanley Kubrick |||
Stanley Kubrick

A filmmaker of international importance, Kubrick was one of the only directors to work within the Studio System and still have full artistic control over his films from scripting through post-production, prompting Time Magazine to compare Kubrick’s early independence with the magnitude of Orson Welles.

An uncompromising antiwar film, this gut-wrenching drama depicts a World War I officer as he labors with an ultimately futile defense for three painfully sympathetic men tried for cowardice. Kubrick artistically utilizes a beautifully washed-out black and white photography to represent the muddied boundaries of right and wrong, and the many gray areas that lay between.

A fabulous and inspiring adventure, this visually stunning epic stars Kirk Douglas as the heroic slave who fights to lead his people to freedom from Roman rule. Although a clear departure from Kubrick’s oeuvre, “Spartacus” is an all time classic helmed by a man with a precise vision who is equally capable of crafting colossal spectacle, tense tête-à-têtes, and a tender moment between lovers.

This film is so stylish it’s easy to forget it’s a horror film at heart. Considered to be the thinking man’s thriller, Kubrick molds this very particularly “Stephan King” material into the portfolio of his films about human failure, as the hero’s desperate desire to become somebody ends in frustration and tragedy.

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Undertow

By BrianOrndorf

November 10th, 2004

I really want to like director David Gordon Green. His gift for unique visuals and storytelling is refreshing in an age of cookie cutter cinema. But sometimes it seems like he wants to make bad movies; like he’s satisfying some urge to mystify the audience with his southern idiosyncrasies. “Undertow,” his latest paint-eating opus, has many moments of competency and mystery, but soon enough, the nonsense kicks in, with interest in the film exiting soon afterwards.


Living in Georgia squalor with his two sons Tim (Devon Alan) and Chris (Jamie Bell, “Billy Elliot”), John Munn (Dermot Mulroney, “About Schmidt”) is trying to keep his family together after the tragic loss of his wife. When his long lost brother, Deel (Josh Lucas, “Hulk”), comes back into the picture after his parole, John is willing to forgive past sins for another chance at a peaceful family. However, Deel isn’t interested in reunions, but rather a Mexican gold coin inheritance he feels is owed to him. Sensing trouble, Tim and Chris run away from home, heading out into the unknown wilds to keep the last hope of family alive between them.

David Gordon Green is an Arkansas filmmaker who adores the textures of his homeland. In his debut film, “George Washington,” Green went overboard trying to recreate the languid, rambling life of southern adolescents. The film was torture to watch. Things improved last year with the release of “All The Real Girls,“ Green’s gorgeous ode to the mysterious and painful realities of fresh romantic relationships. It was near perfect. “Undertow” is Green trying on a more conventional plot this time out, dressing the film up as gritty, grainy southern thriller made in 1976 (down to the yellow simplicity of the opening titles and pulling out the old United Artists studio banner). The results are disappointingly stuck in the middle of what Green is capable of.

Green can be a confounding filmmaker. More often than I think he realizes, he invokes the abstract spirit of David Lynch, pumping his films with “people of the Earth” oddities of all shapes and sizes that it often decimates the drama. Whereas “Washington” climaxed with a character boasting that he could roll his tongue, “Undertow” is a little less classy, with one character likening chewed gum to boogers, Tim’s long monologue on the world of chiggers, and his oral fixation, which has him eating paint and dirt nonstop, which always leads to his eventual regurgitation of said items. Green’s weakness is his inability to comprehend when he’s indulging his vision a little too much, allowing scenes to roll on long past their due. It might add personality to the film, but the man needs a stricter editor who can tell him “no.”

Of course, this comes from a director who opens his film with the main character stepping on an exposed rusty nail attached to a board, who then promptly bends the nail with a brick, then runs off with the board attached to the foot. Comedy? Tragedy? You tell me. I admire the eccentricities found in his films, but Green loves to go too far, sometimes turning stirring drama into “Hee Haw” like comedy situations without notice.

For the first 45 minutes, the picture is a confidant, sturdy southern gothic mystery, featuring a corker of a mid-movie twist that changes the speed of the film drastically. “Undertow” cautiously balances the sweaty and grimy Georgia farmland atmosphere with good dramatic storytelling, carefully revealing surprises and character in a quiet way, until the electricity of the story takes over. Once that has past, and the two boys find themselves on the run, “Undertow” switches over to a rambling, wandering feel (the film was co-produced by Terrence Malick for a reason), which induces a monotony that didn’t seem possible before, and eggs on Green to start tossing in the weird location touches just to keep his frame alive.

“Undertow” has individuality, and Green’s gift for giving the story a unique feel and setting that nobody else would want to touch. However, his mise-en-scene is getting cloudier with each production, and his predilection for southern idiosyncrasies takes a decent thriller in “Undertow” down with him.

My rating: C