It's a DePalma kind of week in New York, with a Blogathon hosted by Cinema Viewfinder. I'll join the party by chiming in a bit on Brian DePalma and his endless, messy ambitions. I`m gonna name my 3 favourites of his in a sort of mini essay that will contribute to what Tony Dayoub is doing over there at Cinema Viewfinder. DePalma is one of the more polarizing filmmakers around- one day he makes an incredible piece of filmmaking such as the 3 listed below and then the next he pulls out a Mission To Mars or the unwatchable Femme Fatale.
His best movie- (1) Blow Out- is a smart, hallucinatory take on voyeurism & is more relevant now than it ever was 29 years ago. John Travolta with his sound equipment evokes to me an image of what DePalma can do truly do with cinema- it's his only perfect movie and succumbs to the Hitchcockian tradition in the best of ways. It's also the best Joh Travolta performance I've ever seen -safe from his Pulp Fiction comeback- in fact I think Blow Out is far superior work than his trashy Dressed To Kill, which has the kind of kitsch overcooked superficiality I despise in the some of his other movies.
(2) Carrie does not have that- from the get go you know it's a horror delight, featuring the greatest prom scene carried out on film. Sissy Spacek is the perfect match to DePalma's weird ways- her face is not that of supermodel & very much out of sync from DePalma's usual choice of females. DePalma has the tendency to overstylize everything & bring a sort of what I`d like to call `Hitchcockian queerness` to it all. This is one of the rare times that DePalma takes a back seat and paves the way to a towering performance. There's an abandon in the filmmaking that I don't think DePalma ever achieved again- a fearless, joyous abandon that makes you realize how talented the man truly is.
2 predictable choices that will likely solicitate yawns but the third one is a less conventional choice. It isn`t the towering Pop of The Untouchables or the overrated assault of Scarface. My third choice is (3) Carlito`s Way, a personal favourite that is everything his 1983 Scarface was supposed to be. Sean Penn is amazing -tell me when he isn`t- & the overall excitement is palpable. It`s pure DePalma with a story that grabs you as if -Taking a cue from the honorable Glenn Kenny- you`re being cuckolded. I guess we can end this mini essay with that.
Noah Baumbach's “Jay Kelly” is joining the Criterion Collection on February 16, 2027. It's one of the headliners of the newly announced February slate, and it's coming out barely a year after Netflix released it.