Inventory Get omnibus: 17 salvageable segments from multiple-director anthology movies

1. Jim Jarmusch’s “Int. Trailer. Night” from Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002)
Beware the omnibus project so vaguely defined that filmmakers can basically do whatever they want, confident that the theme is abstract and generic enough to admit any concept imaginable. Ostensibly organized around the notion of time as perceptual river (per an opening epigram from Marcus Aurelius), the twin Ten Minutes Older films—one subtitled The Trumpet, the other The Cello; thankfully, we were spared The Accordion—found an alarming number of world-class directors, from Claire Denis to Werner Herzog to Jean-Luc Godard, just dicking around for half a reel. Only Jim Jarmusch bothered to think seriously about just what 10 minutes might signify. Surpassingly lovely and deceptively simple, his “Int. Trailer. Night” observes a movie star (Chloë Sevigny) during the entirety of a short break in the midst of an endless shooting day, as she struggles in vain to find even 10 seconds of genuine repose. In other hands, this might have come across as merely a sad celebrity whine; Jarmusch uses Sevigny’s natural grace and Frederick Elmes’ shimmering black and white cinematography to make it a melancholy but far-from-depressive meditation on how few of our lives’ moments are truly our own.

2. Martin Scorsese’s “Life Lessons” from New York Stories (1989)
“Life Lessons” occupies a significant place in the Martin Scorsese filmography, even though it’s rarely discussed as one of his major works. After Raging Bull, Scorsese spent much of the ’80s in the Hollywood wilderness, unable to get the projects he wanted to make off the ground, and unable to get critics or audiences interested in what he did direct. In 1986, Scorsese took a paycheck from Disney and helmed the impersonal (but still pretty good) The Color Of Money in order to gain the leverage he needed to make The Last Temptation Of Christ. Having finally gotten his Biblical epic out of his system, Scorsese cleansed his palate with “Life Lessons,” working from a script by Richard Price and in a genre he hadn’t attempted in more than a decade: a complex, intimate drama about unrequited love. Nick Nolte plays a famous painter who pines for his aloof assistant (and ex-lover) Rosanna Arquette while he prepares for a show; meanwhile, Scorsese loads up on stylistic filigree, capturing an artist in action and isolating his obsessions with color, movement, music, and alluring female body parts. It’s a mesmerizing piece of work, bravura yet down-to-earth. His batteries recharged, Scorsese jumped right into his next project: a modest little gangster picture called Goodfellas.

3. Federico Fellini’s “Toby Dammit” from Spirits Of The Dead (1968)
Though Spirits Of The Dead pays homage to the macabre stories of Edgar Allen Poe, Federico Fellini uses his segment—an adaptation of Poe’s “Never Bet The Devil Your Head”—to continue working the vein of La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2, by immersing viewers in the world of the rich and self-involved. Terence Stamp plays a renowned Shakespearean actor whose career is being derailed by his love of excess, until ultimately, his unwillingness to heed anyone’s sound advice leads to a horrific accident. “Toby Dammit” follows the basic outline of Poe’s story, and even keeps some of the author’s sardonic wit, but the look and feel of the film is pure Fellini. It’s all about the grotesques who leech off Stamp’s celebrity, and about Stamp zipping around the city in a Ferrari, desperately (yet coolly) chasing his lost youth.

4. Joe Dante’s “Roast Your Loved One” from Amazon Women On The Moon (1987)
The 1987 omnibus comedy Amazon Women On The Moon is undeniably hit-and-miss, but just about all the segments directed by Joe Dante connect, especially his two-part look at the life and death of ordinary schmoe Harvey Pitnik: first via a Siskel & Ebert-like TV review show, then via a celebrity roast at Pitnik’s funeral. The Pitnik material is funny not so much because of the actual jokes—many of which are intentionally corny—but because of the way Dante and writers Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland nail the rhythm of what they’re parodying. (No great leap for Barrie and Mulholland, who earned their stripes writing jokes for roasts in the early ’70s.) The juxtaposition of Pitnik’s pathetic life with the dismissive commentary of critics and comics emphasizes how the patter of TV personalities has become so routine that it can be applied to anything—even the sorry fate of a useless loser.

5. Samira Makhmalbaf’s “God, Construction And Destruction” from September 11 (2002)
There was a palpable feeling of nervousness heading into the Toronto Film Festival première of September 11, an anthology project featuring work from the expected polyglot of auteurs from around the globe. After all, 9/11 itself fell in the middle of the festival the year before, and there was a general anxiety that it might be too soon on any number of levels. Then Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf (Blackboards) kicked things off with “God, Construction And Destruction,” a sweet, perfectly proportioned short that offered the perspective and wisdom that all the other entries sorely lacked. While her peers were exploiting the tragedy to political (Egypt’s Youssef Chahine), visceral (Mexico’s Alejandro González Iñárritu), or sentimental (America’s Sean Penn, France’s Claude Lelouch) ends, Makhmalbaf focuses on how word of 9/11 might have resonated in a more obscure corner of the world. In an Afghan village, a teacher rounds up her young students and asks them if they’ve heard the big news. They assume she’s talking about two men who fell down a local well; she tries to get them to imagine the unimaginable, which is what a lot of people were doing that day. 

6. Joel and Ethan Coen’s “World Cinema” from To Each His Own Cinema (2007)
The parameters given to the 36 directors participating in To Each His Own Cinema were extremely narrow: In honor of the Cannes Film Festival’s 60th anniversary, they each had three minutes to express their current state of mind about the movies. The Coen brothers responded with the hilarious “World Cinema,” a fish-out-of-water scenario in which Josh Brolin, a rube in full No Country For Old Men get-up, wanders into a theater and asks the clerk (Grant Heslov) to help him choose between two films he’s never heard of: Jean Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece The Rules Of The Game, or the contemporary Turkish drama Climates, by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. A stranger to the arthouse scene, the cowboy uses an odd decision-making process (“Is there nudity?” “Is there livestock in any of them?”) to settle on Climates, and there’s every indication that his moviegoing experience will be unlike any he’s had before. Viewers should discover the terrific punchline for themselves, but suffice to say, the Coens express an uncharacteristically sunny perspective on how great movies can transcend cultural boundaries and speak to universal truths. 

7. Alexander Payne’s “14e Arrondissement,” from Paris Je T’Aime (2006)
Paris Je T’Aime’s 18 wildly uneven shorts attempt a portrait of the city through vignettes set in Paris neighborhoods. Though it packs a cast of reputable directors, including the Coen brothers, Gus Van Sant, Olivier Assayas, and Walter Salles, many of the films fall back on stereotypical notions of Paris and bland, after-school-special-toned messages on cultural acceptance. Each short speaks to a relationship inside the Parisian perimeter, but Alexander Payne’s film gets at the anthology’s core: a relationship with the city itself “14e Arrondissement” touches on a collective dreaming of Paris, and the met and unmet expectations that come with experiencing such a storied city. Payne follows a Denver mail carrier (Margo Martindale) through the streets of Paris while she narrates her day in an essay for her French class back home. He invites a gentle mocking as she bumbles around Paris in a fanny pack and giant white sneakers, ordering hamburgers and inelegantly popping her ears in an elevator. But ultimately, Payne delivers more pathos than any of the other directors. While Sylvain Chomet’s short on mimes contains a quick jab at fat American tourists in cowboy boots, Payne looks at the romance that brings Americans to Paris in the first place. Character actress Martindale does an exquisite job in her mostly silent role, plainly wearing a complicated, soft loneliness as she walks around the city. On a bench in a cemetery, she thinks of her dead sister and mother, and while taking in the view from Tour Montparnasse, she wishes simply for someone to share it with. At the film’s end, Payne breaks from the narration, and we join Martindale in her silence, taking in the sights and sounds of a Parisian park. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this park scene—people lounge around on benches and on the grass—but in this moment, Martindale finds a quiet contentedness in her loneliness and feels, as she puts it, vivant. It’s a silent appreciation inspired by an old, breathing city, and a fitting final testament to the film’s titular aim.

8. Sam Taylor-Wood’s “Death Valley” from Destricted (2006)
Recently, British conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, best known for her work with the Pet Shop Boys, made her feature-film debut with Nowhere Boy, a portrait of John Lennon’s early life that was selected to close the London Film Festival. Whether the world really needs another Beatles-related movie is a fair question—does anybody still remember Backbeat?—but there’s reason to hope that Taylor-Wood may bring a fresh perspective to the subject, as her debut short, “Death Valley,” was the sole inspired contribution to the art-porn film Destricted. Having already endured masturbatory work by Matthew Barney and Larry Clark, the Sundance audience groaned when treated to the sight of a young man jerking off alone in the middle of the desert; as the film goes on (and on), however, and the guy’s rhythm becomes more and more frantic because he just… can’t… seem… to come, the setting becomes a hilarious metaphor for the poor dude’s Sisyphean struggle. By the end, the entire crowd was clapping in time with each stroke, and it felt almost sweet. Do you believe in orgasms, boys and girls?

9. Wong Kar-Wai’s “The Hand” from Eros (2005)
Although this sex-themed trilogy was conceived as an homage to Michelangelo Antonioni, who famously introduced L’Avventura by proclaiming, “Eros is sick,” the maestro’s entry is an unfortunate embarrassment, a dreadful self-parody clogged with fatuous dialogue delivered by buxom, blank-faced women whose clothes fall off at the merest provocation; it might as well be called Carry On, Ennui. Steven Soderbergh’s glib shaggy-dog story is scarcely better. The only wise move the film’s producers made was leading with Wong’s “The Hand,” a miniature masterpiece that echoes the hothouse sensuality of In The Mood For Love. Gong Li, a brocaded cheongsam stretched tight over her curves, plays a Hong Kong courtesan who engages tailor Chang Chen to look after her professional wardrobe, and pays him off in the currency of her trade. Simultaneously sumptuous and restrained—Li’s economical elbow-jerks take place just below the frame—the film’s characteristically languorous imagery embodies the erotic push-pull of sexual pursuit, always one of Wong’s pet subjects, and unlike its compatriots, it actually ends with a satisfying climax.