KEITH UHLICH
Russian Ark
film classics
The Muppet Movie (1979, James Frawley, UK/United States) You will believe a frog can bike in the first feature-length outing for Kermit the Frog and company. A bare-bones plot—the Muppets trekking cross-country to find success in Hollywood—provides just the right foundation for a series of hilarious vignettes featuring all your felt-covered favorites. The one-liners come fast and furious (“Have you tried Hare Krishna?”) as do the celebrity guest stars (Steve Martin is especially wonderful as a most contemptuous waiter, as is Orson Welles as the stogie-smoking studio head who has a “rich and famous contract” at the ready). Miss Piggy steals the show, of course, her lust for her green companion only outdone by her hunger for fame. And the Paul Williams songs, particularly “Movin’ Right Along” and “Rainbow Connection,” are emi24
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nently hummable.(Streaming on Disney+.) Russian Ark (2002, Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/Germany/Japan/Canada/Finland/ Denmark) Utilizing the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg as his setting, director Aleksandr Sokurov explores several generations of Russian history from the 19th-century to WWII, not necessarily in chronological order. A catty French aristocrat acts as onscreen guide and commentator (as does Sokurov himself via omniscient voiceover). Though Russian Ark’s primary hook is that it was filmed by cinematographer Tilman Büttner in an astonishing single 87-minute shot (the movie runs 96 minutes with credits). Technical prowess and all other gimmickry aside, the one-shot method is apropos of Sokurov’s view of the past as a fluid thing subject to the whims of the present. There may be victors
to whom the historical spoils go, but they are all of them eventually absorbed into the equalizing flow of existence. (Streaming on Filmatique.) Young Frankenstein (1974, Mel Brooks, US) It’s pronounced “FrAHNkenstEEN,” as you surely know. That’s just one of the hilarious tweaks writer-director Mel Brooks makes in his comic retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic tale of a brilliant doctor reanimating a corpse. Gene Wilder is the mad (in all senses of the term) scientist, Marty Feldman his deformed subordinate (whose hunchback keeps switching sides), and Teri Garr the buxom blonde assistant who likes taking a “roll in zee hay.” Add in Peter Boyle as the singing and dancing monster, Madeline Kahn as his C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E
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