Fear of sounding like a philistine kept me silent for quite a while about the fact that I simply did not like this movie. However, I finally feel free to say it: My name is Brooke, and I did not like “La Dolce Vita”.
Never before has a film so highly regarded in the canon disappointed me so greatly. Its sin was not to be offensive; while I don’t particularly care for “Salo”, I respect its boundary-pushing and don’t begrudge it an inclusion on anyone’s great films list. Nor was it impenetrable; you’re talking to one of the great evangelists for “Last Year at Marienbad” here. I have no problem with a movie making an artful sort of nonsense. No, “La Dolce Vita”’s sin was that it bored me.
I am not a newcomer to Fellini, as anyone who knows me well is already aware. In fact, I adore “8 ½” and am generally fond of many of his other works despite our differing sensibilities. (Give me one mid-century European art-house director’s films for a desert island, and I’m going to take Bergman every time.) However, “La Dolce Vita” had me checking my watch in several places as it appeared that entire scenes were taking place for no reason. Whole conversations would pass without a single interesting line and without any discernible point.
The plot concerns a playboy who has grown disillusioned with his life of endless parties and women and seeks out a series of escapes from the “sweet life” to which he has grown accustomed. None work, however, and he ends the film resigned to continue living the life of pleasure he is immune to enjoying. I could understand the point of long, seemingly endless scenes at parties as a way to make the audience understand the plight of our hero. However, these scenes also contain no poetry, no sense of connection; the filmmaker has aligned himself instead with the bores our hero longs to escape.
Roger Ebert adores this film and claims that it improves with viewings throughout life. I admit to the possibility that I will see this film again in my forties or fifties just to see if his opinion, which I so greatly respect, but for now I must file it under “possibly misunderstood, probably just overrated”.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
2012, 2.5 stars
Roger Ebert gave this film a nearly perfect review, and in a way I see his point. No one who knows anything about this movie will leave feeling disappointed. The special effects are hilariously over-the-top, as is the acting, the plot, and just about everything else. The plot is this: through typical disaster-movie pseudoscience, solar flares have caused the earth's crust to boil and shift and the magnetic poles to reverse. Of course, this means many long scenes of explanation where scientists are asked to explain things, "in English, please!", another scene wherein a man and his daughter outrun the Yellowstone supervolcano, and many feats of physically impossible aviation.
However, I could have done with a bit less of the kitchen-sink approach to throwing cliches into the film. In a way this felt like a perfect disaster-movie corollary to Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which did the same for summer action blockbusters. However, Roland Emmerich as a director is above such postmodern nonsense. Trimming a few subplots and characters or including fewer completely improbable sequences would have made this a tight yet still excessive action film. Emmerich has a better eye for spatiotemporality than Bay does and should use it to make a disaster film that is truly interesting, instead of one that simple grinds its gears, goes through the motions, and then shuffles quietly out the door.
However, I could have done with a bit less of the kitchen-sink approach to throwing cliches into the film. In a way this felt like a perfect disaster-movie corollary to Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which did the same for summer action blockbusters. However, Roland Emmerich as a director is above such postmodern nonsense. Trimming a few subplots and characters or including fewer completely improbable sequences would have made this a tight yet still excessive action film. Emmerich has a better eye for spatiotemporality than Bay does and should use it to make a disaster film that is truly interesting, instead of one that simple grinds its gears, goes through the motions, and then shuffles quietly out the door.
The Brothers Bloom, 4.5 stars
OK, Rian Johnson really needs to get out of my head. First he sets a film noir in a high school, creating one of the most original and charming genre blends of the past decade. It's one of those ideas that left everyone wondering why they hadn't tried that before. Now here he comes with a film that blends a classic con-game plot with the trappings of an aggressively quirky indie film such as those lovingly crafted by Wes Anderson.
Stephen and Bloom (whose last names are actually never given) are brothers who have made a career out of long cons. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has seen even one con-game film, one of the brothers wants out but is talked into one last con before retirement. The object is an heiress right out of Bringing Up Baby by way of Garden State. She is played by Rachel Weisz, a perfect choice for the role because she is a woman who can never seem dumb. Despite her character's inherent ditziness, she is never an object of our pity because her warmth and intelligence make her a believable target for con men.
The film is laugh-out-loud funny at times and quietly poignant at others. It suffers from the common con-game film reversals at the end which leave some audiences feeling cheated. However, anyone familiar with the films Johnson is referencing will realize that this is homage instead of derivation, and leave the theater with a smile on their faces at the lovingly crafted mashup that has resulted.
Stephen and Bloom (whose last names are actually never given) are brothers who have made a career out of long cons. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has seen even one con-game film, one of the brothers wants out but is talked into one last con before retirement. The object is an heiress right out of Bringing Up Baby by way of Garden State. She is played by Rachel Weisz, a perfect choice for the role because she is a woman who can never seem dumb. Despite her character's inherent ditziness, she is never an object of our pity because her warmth and intelligence make her a believable target for con men.
The film is laugh-out-loud funny at times and quietly poignant at others. It suffers from the common con-game film reversals at the end which leave some audiences feeling cheated. However, anyone familiar with the films Johnson is referencing will realize that this is homage instead of derivation, and leave the theater with a smile on their faces at the lovingly crafted mashup that has resulted.
Orgazmo, 1.5 stars
I really wanted to like this film, and caught hell on Facebook for disliking it. Living in the thick of Mormon country as I do, I wanted to appreciate a spoof on the religion's squeaky-clean adherents; as a former resident of Los Angeles I was also willing to see the cultural cesspool beneathe the surface of L.A. parodied equally.
Instead I was treated to a film so sophomoric and poorly shot that at times I was convinced that the directors had used a single camera. No other excuse could explain some of the film's shots. There were a few mildly funny running gags (such as the "I'm not gay, but..." spiel) but overall the production seemed haphazard and overlong. Folks, a 95-minute movie has no business feeling overlong.
Even the execrable "Idiocracy", which runs in a similar vein of humor, had more genuinely funny moments than this. I failed to laugh aloud even once. Skip this and rent "Borat" or "The Hangover" for scatological, risque humor that still...well, works.
Instead I was treated to a film so sophomoric and poorly shot that at times I was convinced that the directors had used a single camera. No other excuse could explain some of the film's shots. There were a few mildly funny running gags (such as the "I'm not gay, but..." spiel) but overall the production seemed haphazard and overlong. Folks, a 95-minute movie has no business feeling overlong.
Even the execrable "Idiocracy", which runs in a similar vein of humor, had more genuinely funny moments than this. I failed to laugh aloud even once. Skip this and rent "Borat" or "The Hangover" for scatological, risque humor that still...well, works.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Number 23, 2.5 stars
Wow, what a hideous mess of a movie. Here is a movie that goes so completely to the side of "wrong" that it almost makes a full circle and comes back around to being gloriously, irrepressibly right. Jim Carrey plays dual roles, one as a mild-mannered dogcatcher whose life changes when he chases a dog into a graveyard one afternoon, and the other as the fictional detective hero of a story read by the dogcatcher character. Carrey attacks this as if it's an assignment from an acting class; he sets up the two characters as polar opposites of each other and refuses any actions which might hint that they have something in common. While this helps keep the film's big twist under wraps, it also robs both characters of their humanity.
It fails to rob them of their power to amuse, however. Walter, the dogcatcher character, finds himself obsessed by a book about the 23 enigma that he finds in a used bookstore. The author, incidentally, is named Topsy Kretts, and with a name like that I think it's unnecessary to issue a spoiler warning for what follows in my review. Walter gradually alienates his family and friends by obsessing over the number 23 and its permutations in his life. In the parallel storyline of the book Walter is reading, a modern noir-type detective antihero is watching beautiful blondes throw themselves out of windows to the accompaniment of painfully emo music. Walter eventually comes to the realization that the book was written by him about events he suppressed, including a murder he committed. Freed of his burdens, he cheerfully allows himself to be carted off to prison.
Plot summary cannot describe how campy and humorous this movie is. Director Joel Schumacher actually succeeds at creating some striking images within the parallel world, but such skill is immediately negated by Carrey's hilariously intense brooding over a saxophone while flaunting tribal tattoos. In the more mundane world, Carrey's attempts at acting retiring and unassuming (used to far better effect in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") simply serve to make his histrionics when he finds out what he has done all the more humorous. This film was a notorious failure, but I enjoyed every minute. I was not bored even once and laughed aloud numerous times. The film's two-star rating, in fact, was gathered from an average of 0 stars and 5, since I still remain undecided as to whether this film is utter trash or some sort of perverse masterpiece.
It fails to rob them of their power to amuse, however. Walter, the dogcatcher character, finds himself obsessed by a book about the 23 enigma that he finds in a used bookstore. The author, incidentally, is named Topsy Kretts, and with a name like that I think it's unnecessary to issue a spoiler warning for what follows in my review. Walter gradually alienates his family and friends by obsessing over the number 23 and its permutations in his life. In the parallel storyline of the book Walter is reading, a modern noir-type detective antihero is watching beautiful blondes throw themselves out of windows to the accompaniment of painfully emo music. Walter eventually comes to the realization that the book was written by him about events he suppressed, including a murder he committed. Freed of his burdens, he cheerfully allows himself to be carted off to prison.
Plot summary cannot describe how campy and humorous this movie is. Director Joel Schumacher actually succeeds at creating some striking images within the parallel world, but such skill is immediately negated by Carrey's hilariously intense brooding over a saxophone while flaunting tribal tattoos. In the more mundane world, Carrey's attempts at acting retiring and unassuming (used to far better effect in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") simply serve to make his histrionics when he finds out what he has done all the more humorous. This film was a notorious failure, but I enjoyed every minute. I was not bored even once and laughed aloud numerous times. The film's two-star rating, in fact, was gathered from an average of 0 stars and 5, since I still remain undecided as to whether this film is utter trash or some sort of perverse masterpiece.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Black Christmas, 3 stars
This was praised to me as a classic of the slasher genre, and I must admit it takes several stylistic risks that I was not expecting. Possible spoilers are ahead, although I'm fairly confident most of my readers will be aware of the plot points that this film was the first to use.
Most importantly, this film is apparently the first to use the "the calls are coming from inside your house!" ending, wherein the police discover that the harassing phone calls that have tormented a group of women all night were actually placed from another floor of the house. It also features extensive subjective camerawork from the POV of the killer, and the killer's identity and motives are deliberately left open-ended. For a film that at times seems mechanical (a fault many slasher movies share), it broaches the subject of abortion and seems surprisingly comfortable not tying up all the loose plot ends. It makes extensive use of the Christmas setting to create a feeling of dread about a holiday that, if we're honest with ourselves, we've all felt a little discomfort about for one reason or another. Overall, a tight little slasher picture with a few surprises up its sleeve: an ideal gift to give yourself on a dark night this holiday season.
Most importantly, this film is apparently the first to use the "the calls are coming from inside your house!" ending, wherein the police discover that the harassing phone calls that have tormented a group of women all night were actually placed from another floor of the house. It also features extensive subjective camerawork from the POV of the killer, and the killer's identity and motives are deliberately left open-ended. For a film that at times seems mechanical (a fault many slasher movies share), it broaches the subject of abortion and seems surprisingly comfortable not tying up all the loose plot ends. It makes extensive use of the Christmas setting to create a feeling of dread about a holiday that, if we're honest with ourselves, we've all felt a little discomfort about for one reason or another. Overall, a tight little slasher picture with a few surprises up its sleeve: an ideal gift to give yourself on a dark night this holiday season.
Border Incident, 3 stars
Let me make one thing clear: this is a two-star film with a four-star premise, particularly for the time. Plotwise it is a typical film noir: g-men infiltrate an illegal operation and one of them gets put in mortal danger in the process. The difference is that this time the illegal operation is the smuggling of immigrants across the US-Mexico border. A plot that addressed this issue at all would have been quite progressive for the time. Yes, there are stereotypes of Mexicans, including sombreros and banditry, but the main characters are fleshed out and the plot does not shrink from showing the human toll of the operation.
Anthony Mann apparently directed this film in his sleep, save for a few striking nighttime sequences such as a harrowing scene where a man is chased relentlessly by an approaching combine. Ricardo Montalban is excellent in an early role that gives him little to do; he makes the most of it. The other performances are undistinguished, but this is definitely a B-movie with an edge that elevates it above other stock entertainments of the time.
Anthony Mann apparently directed this film in his sleep, save for a few striking nighttime sequences such as a harrowing scene where a man is chased relentlessly by an approaching combine. Ricardo Montalban is excellent in an early role that gives him little to do; he makes the most of it. The other performances are undistinguished, but this is definitely a B-movie with an edge that elevates it above other stock entertainments of the time.
Crazy Stone, 3 stars
This is a film I watched because it apparently typifies the films actually seen by Chinese people, in contrast to the serious art-house films we Americans are fed. It was sold as a Chinese "Ocean's Eleven", and while it doesn't quite live up to the slick coolness of that film's veneer, it was a perfectly entertaining example of popular cinema. Of course, China's cinema is so varied that no one film can encompass the tastes of the country, but it was nice to have something to contrast with widely praised, stiff films like "Yi Yi".
The plot, which is as straightforward and uninvolved as caper plots usually are, concerns a valuable piece of jade which several groups of men are attempting to steal. Many reversals occur, a replacement piece wounds up stolen, then it turns out not to have been, and all the while flashy editing and over-the-top performances are keeping our interest in the proceedings high. Many of the cuts and zooms reference classical Hong Kong action films, and the characters are recognizable as stereotypes even to Western eyes. I probably missed some economic commentary (the jade is being displayed in a factory by a social-climbing factory owner). However, none of the film was a waste of time and I appreciated its insights into what draws bodies into Chinese theaters. I'll take this over "Farewell My Concubine" or an American blockbuster like "Transformers" any day.
The plot, which is as straightforward and uninvolved as caper plots usually are, concerns a valuable piece of jade which several groups of men are attempting to steal. Many reversals occur, a replacement piece wounds up stolen, then it turns out not to have been, and all the while flashy editing and over-the-top performances are keeping our interest in the proceedings high. Many of the cuts and zooms reference classical Hong Kong action films, and the characters are recognizable as stereotypes even to Western eyes. I probably missed some economic commentary (the jade is being displayed in a factory by a social-climbing factory owner). However, none of the film was a waste of time and I appreciated its insights into what draws bodies into Chinese theaters. I'll take this over "Farewell My Concubine" or an American blockbuster like "Transformers" any day.
Surviving Desire, 4 stars
Perhaps the McCarran airport after a week in Vegas was not the ideal setting for watching a literate, heartfelt exploration of love and lust. However, I think my opinion of Hal Hartley's sweet, lightly humorous romantic drama was actually improved by the louche hedonism all around me. Martin Donovan portrays a literature professor who enters an affair with one of his students, a Jean Seberg type who insists on discussing her feelings in eloquent, insistent monologues.
In a parallel storyline, Donovan's best friend enters a strange and impulsive romance with a street woman who proposes to any man who walks by. These opposite and complementary relationships provide a charming, featherweight commentary on the extremes of attraction and love. Hartley can be a filmmaker of very big hits and wide misses, and with this short film he pushes no boundaries but simply gives us characters who say the things we wish we could say to those we desire. The title is misleading; this is not a film to be survived but enjoyed minute by precious minute.
In a parallel storyline, Donovan's best friend enters a strange and impulsive romance with a street woman who proposes to any man who walks by. These opposite and complementary relationships provide a charming, featherweight commentary on the extremes of attraction and love. Hartley can be a filmmaker of very big hits and wide misses, and with this short film he pushes no boundaries but simply gives us characters who say the things we wish we could say to those we desire. The title is misleading; this is not a film to be survived but enjoyed minute by precious minute.
9, 3 stars
Here is an example of why one should never mix new age psychobabble with steampunk aesthetics. (Yes, I'm sure the world was clamoring for more proof that this should not be attempted.) Here is a film that has the look of Little Big Planet and the half-baked plot and ideas of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The plot concerns a group of sentient sack-people who awaken self-aware in a postapocalyptic wasteland. They struggle to understand how they got to this world and why they have been awakened.
I will not give away the ending here, since to do so would be to invite a long diatribe on its new age treacle, but suffice to say it requires a belief in a higher power and an afterlife that I just couldn't summon, particularly not after a buildup so visually interesting as the one that "9" establishes. For about the first 20 minutes of this movie I was entranced by its visual style, which borrowed from "The Triplets of Belleville" and certain Marilyn Manson music videos as well as from the classic steampunk look. However, as I realized there was another hour of the film left and not much substance to fill it, the look of the film suddenly became repetitive and hollow, as I longed for the characters to do something besides engage in another chase sequence or go through labored plot mechanics. Steampunk should not mean that we can hear the gears of the plot creaking.
I will not give away the ending here, since to do so would be to invite a long diatribe on its new age treacle, but suffice to say it requires a belief in a higher power and an afterlife that I just couldn't summon, particularly not after a buildup so visually interesting as the one that "9" establishes. For about the first 20 minutes of this movie I was entranced by its visual style, which borrowed from "The Triplets of Belleville" and certain Marilyn Manson music videos as well as from the classic steampunk look. However, as I realized there was another hour of the film left and not much substance to fill it, the look of the film suddenly became repetitive and hollow, as I longed for the characters to do something besides engage in another chase sequence or go through labored plot mechanics. Steampunk should not mean that we can hear the gears of the plot creaking.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Holy Mountain, 2.5 stars
I think I have come to Alejandro Jodorowsky backwards. I started with his short "La Cravate" and moved on to "Fando & Lis", which I found perfectly maddening in that art-film way that I love. Now I come to one of his most praised works and find it simply dull.
It tells an allegorical story of a priest gathering people to symbolize the nine planets and then taking them to the top of a holy mountain for mystical knowledge. However, Jodorowsky insists on telling this story through amateurish camerawork and a script that focuses on long monologues full of new age psychobabble. I checked my watch multiple times and broke the movie up over two nights to relieve the boredom. I can't see much to recommend this film unless you have an ample supply of pot or other intoxicants available. That might make this film feel something like its 2 hours, instead of the 4 it felt like to me.
It tells an allegorical story of a priest gathering people to symbolize the nine planets and then taking them to the top of a holy mountain for mystical knowledge. However, Jodorowsky insists on telling this story through amateurish camerawork and a script that focuses on long monologues full of new age psychobabble. I checked my watch multiple times and broke the movie up over two nights to relieve the boredom. I can't see much to recommend this film unless you have an ample supply of pot or other intoxicants available. That might make this film feel something like its 2 hours, instead of the 4 it felt like to me.
Sorority Row, 2.5 stars
Well, well. Here is a typical slasher film, full of bad acting, undeveloped subplots, and the world's nosiest cats. I had a special relationship to this film, in that the lead role was played by Leah Pipes, a former client of a talent scouting agency I worked for in Los Angeles. This was probably the largest role I had ever seen anyone I know play on the big screen, and I had trouble properly evaluating the movie for that reason.
However, from what I could discern, the film was shot and edited in workmanlike, indistinguished fashion. It concerns a sorority prank gone wrong when a group of friends tricks a boy into thinking one of their group is dead. When they go to hide the "body", the boy takes things too seriously and actually kills the sorority sister. The rest of the movie is taken up with plot mechanics so rusty we hear the gears grinding. Is the killer now stalking campus the sorority sister resurrected from the dead? Do we care?
As a paint-by-numbers thriller this is perfectly serviceable, but I have trouble finding anything to recommend it over many better options in the genre.
However, from what I could discern, the film was shot and edited in workmanlike, indistinguished fashion. It concerns a sorority prank gone wrong when a group of friends tricks a boy into thinking one of their group is dead. When they go to hide the "body", the boy takes things too seriously and actually kills the sorority sister. The rest of the movie is taken up with plot mechanics so rusty we hear the gears grinding. Is the killer now stalking campus the sorority sister resurrected from the dead? Do we care?
As a paint-by-numbers thriller this is perfectly serviceable, but I have trouble finding anything to recommend it over many better options in the genre.
Gamer, 3 stars
After the pyrotechnic pastiche of the Crank films, I had such high expectations for the next stop on the Neveldine/Taylor thrill ride. Their sly humor and offbeat palette were sadly missing for most of this serviceable but strangely heartless action film. Shot mostly in a gray color scheme that shows all the flaws of digital video, it concerns a future where people control real-life avatars in video games that end in real death. Gerard Butler, whose emotional affect often implies that he is being controlled by outside forces even when the plot suggests otherwise, is our hero, who must win only one more battle to be released from the prison where he has landed after being framed.
There are moments of genuine wit and near-brilliance in the film. There is a choreographed dance fight set to "I've Got You Under My Skin" near the end of the film that is largely carried by Michael C. Hall's calmly villainous performance, and there are a few easter eggs for the eagle-eyed, such as the screen behind an obese gamer that displays nothing but an endless loop of bacon frying. Overall, however, the film is shrill without the self-referential humor and bright, thoughtful production design of the Crank films. Let's hope this is Neveldine/Taylor's sophomore slump, and that they soon come back with another fantastic postmodern mishmash that doesn't waste most of its time in a grayscale, oh-so-predictable gaming set.
There are moments of genuine wit and near-brilliance in the film. There is a choreographed dance fight set to "I've Got You Under My Skin" near the end of the film that is largely carried by Michael C. Hall's calmly villainous performance, and there are a few easter eggs for the eagle-eyed, such as the screen behind an obese gamer that displays nothing but an endless loop of bacon frying. Overall, however, the film is shrill without the self-referential humor and bright, thoughtful production design of the Crank films. Let's hope this is Neveldine/Taylor's sophomore slump, and that they soon come back with another fantastic postmodern mishmash that doesn't waste most of its time in a grayscale, oh-so-predictable gaming set.
Monday, October 26, 2009
On Dangerous Ground, 3 stars
It's always refreshing to see the marvelously formulaic film noir genre try a few new tricks. By now we all know the hallmarks: urban setting, femmes fatales, expressionistic lighting, world-weary protagonist, etc. Here is a film, directed by the masterful Nicholas Ray, that tries a few refreshing twists on the old formulas.
At first it seems as though we are in for the same old, same old. Robert Ryan plays a cynical, washed-up cop with no hope or ethics left. He works the dirty city streets and has let them soil his soul. But just when we think we know where this is going, the story opens up. Ryan is assigned to a case in the country in the winter, and suddenly the film noir has gone blanc, with a setting of a countryside full of snow and a bucolic mountain cabin. Ida Lupino is no femme fatale, either; instead she is a gentle blind woman who is trying to protect her murderous but uncomprehending brother. And instead of seducing or destroying Ryan, she sets out to open his heart and make him forget the cynicism he embraced in the city.
Openness is a theme that resounds through "On Dangerous Ground". While its script and performances are fine if not outstanding, it deserves credit for attempting to toy with some very familiar conventions. The ideas of taking the police chase off the city streets and setting it in a snow-covered field or making the lone female a character of sympathy instead of disdain show a willingness to experiment with form that was all too infrequently attempted by noir directors. Ray, of course, would go on to prove himself a master at transcending genre, and "On Dangerous Ground" shows this tendency of his just beginning to take form.
At first it seems as though we are in for the same old, same old. Robert Ryan plays a cynical, washed-up cop with no hope or ethics left. He works the dirty city streets and has let them soil his soul. But just when we think we know where this is going, the story opens up. Ryan is assigned to a case in the country in the winter, and suddenly the film noir has gone blanc, with a setting of a countryside full of snow and a bucolic mountain cabin. Ida Lupino is no femme fatale, either; instead she is a gentle blind woman who is trying to protect her murderous but uncomprehending brother. And instead of seducing or destroying Ryan, she sets out to open his heart and make him forget the cynicism he embraced in the city.
Openness is a theme that resounds through "On Dangerous Ground". While its script and performances are fine if not outstanding, it deserves credit for attempting to toy with some very familiar conventions. The ideas of taking the police chase off the city streets and setting it in a snow-covered field or making the lone female a character of sympathy instead of disdain show a willingness to experiment with form that was all too infrequently attempted by noir directors. Ray, of course, would go on to prove himself a master at transcending genre, and "On Dangerous Ground" shows this tendency of his just beginning to take form.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
N is a Number, 3 stars
Any comments I have on this film must be prefaced by the fact that I am not the target market for this film. It is a modest, charming documentary about the mathematician Paul Erdos, of whom I was vaguely aware before seeing this film. I suppose I know more about him after seeing it, though it would have been difficult for me to know less.
I will give the film credit for being as layperson-friendly as possible in the segments where Erdos himself is not speaking. The filmmakers try to drum up interest in Erdos' love life and curiously vagrant lifestyle, which are indeed charming peculiarities of the man himself. Erdos, when he speaks, is witty, expansive, and curious. However, he simply does not make for a compelling screen presence. Those viewers who tune out at the more technical segments will not find much between those segments to hold their interest. As someone with a passing and general interest in mathematics, I found this to be a serviceable documentary that is unlikely to convert anyone to a life in math. However, if you too have a general interest in getting to know more about one of the leading figures of modern mathematics, this is a perfectly fine place to start.
I will give the film credit for being as layperson-friendly as possible in the segments where Erdos himself is not speaking. The filmmakers try to drum up interest in Erdos' love life and curiously vagrant lifestyle, which are indeed charming peculiarities of the man himself. Erdos, when he speaks, is witty, expansive, and curious. However, he simply does not make for a compelling screen presence. Those viewers who tune out at the more technical segments will not find much between those segments to hold their interest. As someone with a passing and general interest in mathematics, I found this to be a serviceable documentary that is unlikely to convert anyone to a life in math. However, if you too have a general interest in getting to know more about one of the leading figures of modern mathematics, this is a perfectly fine place to start.
12 Angry Men, 4 stars
Well, don't I feel sheepish. Here I was, paying most of my attention to this movie and finding a well-acted but psychologically trite drama that, for its time period, I found to be well above average. Then I went to read the secondary literature on it and found that the director, Sidney Lumet, had subtly changed the focal length of his lenses to pull us more into the action and flatten out the frame as the film progressed to create a sense of claustrophobia. I had one of those forehead-slapping moments where I thought I should just be sent back to film analysis 101 until I learn to notice these things myself.
After forgiving myself, however, I did not alter my rating of the film. Its flaws are unimproved by this new knowledge about the lenses. While it is a taut drama that was probably quite daring formally for its time, the fact remains that the psychology of the film is suspect. It is unlikely that men with such strong personalities would change their minds in the course of an afternoon, and that they would reveal their psychological failings so quickly to a roomful of other men that they barely know. The film's strengths are many, however: the aforementioned "lens plot", the performances (Henry Fonda is rightly praised but the entire cast is deserving), and the formal daring required to set a film essentially in one room, in near-real time, and trust the script and performers to draw the audience into such a closed setting.
This is a classic film for those interested in the law, and I read with interest that a remake has been made in Russia which addresses the Chechen conflict there. I also note that this remake is nearly twice as long as the original. It will be interesting to see what "12" (the remake) does with such a tight, flawless conceit as the one found in the classic "12 Angry Men".
After forgiving myself, however, I did not alter my rating of the film. Its flaws are unimproved by this new knowledge about the lenses. While it is a taut drama that was probably quite daring formally for its time, the fact remains that the psychology of the film is suspect. It is unlikely that men with such strong personalities would change their minds in the course of an afternoon, and that they would reveal their psychological failings so quickly to a roomful of other men that they barely know. The film's strengths are many, however: the aforementioned "lens plot", the performances (Henry Fonda is rightly praised but the entire cast is deserving), and the formal daring required to set a film essentially in one room, in near-real time, and trust the script and performers to draw the audience into such a closed setting.
This is a classic film for those interested in the law, and I read with interest that a remake has been made in Russia which addresses the Chechen conflict there. I also note that this remake is nearly twice as long as the original. It will be interesting to see what "12" (the remake) does with such a tight, flawless conceit as the one found in the classic "12 Angry Men".
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Racket, 3 stars
Now here is the perfect definition of a formulaic film noir. The formula goes something like this:
((Robert Mitchum + Robert Ryan) x (gangsters + cops)) + shadows + women= "The Racket".
A perfectly serviceable film, but for excitement or technique it's best to look elsewhere.
((Robert Mitchum + Robert Ryan) x (gangsters + cops)) + shadows + women= "The Racket".
A perfectly serviceable film, but for excitement or technique it's best to look elsewhere.
Inglourious Basterds, 4.5 stars
Well, it's obviously been quite a while since I saw this film, and in the meantime I have been pleased to see an entire eloquent and vital web discussion spring up around the film. Strong arguments have been made on all sides, and while I happen to think the film is a masterpiece I can definitely see the points of view of those who disagree in whole or in part with that opinion.
The film itself is almost secondary to the controversies at this point, but this is not a "controversist" blog, so I will attempt to confine myself to the strengths of the film as I see them and only bring in other sources when necessary. The film is a revisionist World War II fantasy filtered through the lens of spaghetti westerns, Nazi exploitation films, and (of all things) The Wizard of Oz. The titular Basterds are a group of American soldiers who make a point of scalping and defacing Nazis wherever they may find them. In a parallel storyline, Shoshanna Dreyfus, the lone survivor of a Nazi massacre of her family, plans to murder all of the top Nazi officials during a premiere of a Nazi film in her theatre in occupied France.
I didn't realize until seeing "Basterds" how much Tarantino influenced the way I read films. I take his manner of reference as a default. When watching something by, for example, the Dardenne brothers, it is much harder for me to spot references because I am so accustomed to the way they are made in Tarantino. But the "Sunset Boulevard" and "Wizard of Oz" references in the theater inferno scene stood out to me instantly. Perhaps this is because Tarantino possesses all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. But I like to think that it is because seeing "Pulp Fiction" at a pivotal and formative age prepared me to read his films naturally and that I have to work harder to understand a style too different from his.
But the question remains: Will you like this film as much as I did? Bizarrely, I believe the best litmus test for this would be your feelings about Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" (not coincidentally my second-favorite film of all time). If you feel that subjugating plot to a general atmosphere of love for the cinema is unfair and boring, perhaps you should skip it. If on the other hand you enjoy the feeling that you are catching Emil Jannings references before the rest of the crowd, and that the filmmaker has secretly planted these Easter eggs for you, the true cinephile, then you will be just as rapt as I was for the movie's perfectly paced running time. If the general idea of the film's alternate history offends you (this has been one of the main "controversies" to which I referred), obviously your time would be better spent elsewhere. For my money, this is one of the best films of the year, even including that Eli Roth..."performance". See it, love it, hate it, but I guarantee you'll have something to talk to your companions about afterward.
The film itself is almost secondary to the controversies at this point, but this is not a "controversist" blog, so I will attempt to confine myself to the strengths of the film as I see them and only bring in other sources when necessary. The film is a revisionist World War II fantasy filtered through the lens of spaghetti westerns, Nazi exploitation films, and (of all things) The Wizard of Oz. The titular Basterds are a group of American soldiers who make a point of scalping and defacing Nazis wherever they may find them. In a parallel storyline, Shoshanna Dreyfus, the lone survivor of a Nazi massacre of her family, plans to murder all of the top Nazi officials during a premiere of a Nazi film in her theatre in occupied France.
I didn't realize until seeing "Basterds" how much Tarantino influenced the way I read films. I take his manner of reference as a default. When watching something by, for example, the Dardenne brothers, it is much harder for me to spot references because I am so accustomed to the way they are made in Tarantino. But the "Sunset Boulevard" and "Wizard of Oz" references in the theater inferno scene stood out to me instantly. Perhaps this is because Tarantino possesses all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. But I like to think that it is because seeing "Pulp Fiction" at a pivotal and formative age prepared me to read his films naturally and that I have to work harder to understand a style too different from his.
But the question remains: Will you like this film as much as I did? Bizarrely, I believe the best litmus test for this would be your feelings about Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" (not coincidentally my second-favorite film of all time). If you feel that subjugating plot to a general atmosphere of love for the cinema is unfair and boring, perhaps you should skip it. If on the other hand you enjoy the feeling that you are catching Emil Jannings references before the rest of the crowd, and that the filmmaker has secretly planted these Easter eggs for you, the true cinephile, then you will be just as rapt as I was for the movie's perfectly paced running time. If the general idea of the film's alternate history offends you (this has been one of the main "controversies" to which I referred), obviously your time would be better spent elsewhere. For my money, this is one of the best films of the year, even including that Eli Roth..."performance". See it, love it, hate it, but I guarantee you'll have something to talk to your companions about afterward.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Satantango, 4.5 stars
When reading others' thoughts on this amazing and completely unique film, I came across the notion (I fear I have forgotten where) that this film was a slap in the face to the "easy" art-house movies that were coming to America in droves in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Loads of family-friendly or unchallenging dramas and comedies were released and were essentially interchangeable at art-house cinemas.
Bela Tarr threw down an unmistakable gauntlet with this 7.5-hour, black-and-white long-take masterpiece. It is a very nearly perfect film, suffering only from some very minor problems with pacing. Honestly, when pacing something this long, it would be a miracle for a director and editor to have absolutely no moments which lag, no moments which make the viewer consult his watch. But for the most part it is madly successful, telling a deceptively simple story of a con man who comes to a collapsing communal farm in an attempt to con the residents out of their savings. Essentially this describes the plot. But the map is not the territory.
The story is told in fragments, dancing around the story like the tango for which the the movie is named. Various perspectives and time changes occur between the movie's 12 portions. 8 and 9 minute unbroken takes are commonplace. This is truly a film which redefines what it means to watch a movie. During some of these takes we at first grow impatient. Then we begin to search the scene for additional points of interest. At some point after that we are simply in the room, drinking and dancing or arguing with the characters. The transition is so subtle that we only realize it when the scene changes and we have the sense of having just left a room ourselves.
This is probably the most humanist film I have ever seen, in a pure and simple interpretation of the word. Tarr clearly knows and loves humanity, and has tried to recreate it as closely as possible while telling a story that is so bleak that it barely allows for love at all. These marvelous contradictions are given room to breathe and develop within Tarr's expansive canvas, and the result is a gift we can only humbly accept and offer murmured thanks.
Bela Tarr threw down an unmistakable gauntlet with this 7.5-hour, black-and-white long-take masterpiece. It is a very nearly perfect film, suffering only from some very minor problems with pacing. Honestly, when pacing something this long, it would be a miracle for a director and editor to have absolutely no moments which lag, no moments which make the viewer consult his watch. But for the most part it is madly successful, telling a deceptively simple story of a con man who comes to a collapsing communal farm in an attempt to con the residents out of their savings. Essentially this describes the plot. But the map is not the territory.
The story is told in fragments, dancing around the story like the tango for which the the movie is named. Various perspectives and time changes occur between the movie's 12 portions. 8 and 9 minute unbroken takes are commonplace. This is truly a film which redefines what it means to watch a movie. During some of these takes we at first grow impatient. Then we begin to search the scene for additional points of interest. At some point after that we are simply in the room, drinking and dancing or arguing with the characters. The transition is so subtle that we only realize it when the scene changes and we have the sense of having just left a room ourselves.
This is probably the most humanist film I have ever seen, in a pure and simple interpretation of the word. Tarr clearly knows and loves humanity, and has tried to recreate it as closely as possible while telling a story that is so bleak that it barely allows for love at all. These marvelous contradictions are given room to breathe and develop within Tarr's expansive canvas, and the result is a gift we can only humbly accept and offer murmured thanks.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Julie & Julia, 3.5 stars
A bland crab cake of a movie like this is disappointing on many levels, because it has such potential. The plot follows Julie Powell, who in a year cooked all 500+ recipes in Julia Child's French cookbook, and Julia Child herself, who is shown discovering her passion for food in postwar France. The movie clearly should have been a conventional biopic of Child, whose life is rich enough for two movies and doesn't need the sagging support of the underdeveloped and somnolent Julie Powell chapters. It seems simply unfair to throw Meryl Streep and Amy Adams together as the protagonists of parallel stories and expect the stories to stand up as equals. The effect the movie leaves is of having been in a room papered half in red leather and half in garish children's wallpaper, and being flung between the halves regularly for two hours.
You can't really blame Amy Adams too much for doing her best with what is clearly an underwritten afterthought to the Julia Child story. Adams makes Julie as appealing as possible (the facts we are given through the screenplay make it impossible to see her as much more than a spoiled child out of her league). The Paris scenes with Child, however, sparkle with a wit and sense of place that the movie's other half lacks. It is encouraging to see Julia and her husband living with gusto and verve and remaining sexually active for their entire lives together, a portrait of marriage not often seen in a conventional Hollywood film. If this had been Julia's movie, it would have been encouraging, new and fresh. However, much like Julie's versions of Julia's food, I can't help feeling that her chapters are a lame and uninspired rehash.
You can't really blame Amy Adams too much for doing her best with what is clearly an underwritten afterthought to the Julia Child story. Adams makes Julie as appealing as possible (the facts we are given through the screenplay make it impossible to see her as much more than a spoiled child out of her league). The Paris scenes with Child, however, sparkle with a wit and sense of place that the movie's other half lacks. It is encouraging to see Julia and her husband living with gusto and verve and remaining sexually active for their entire lives together, a portrait of marriage not often seen in a conventional Hollywood film. If this had been Julia's movie, it would have been encouraging, new and fresh. However, much like Julie's versions of Julia's food, I can't help feeling that her chapters are a lame and uninspired rehash.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Waltz with Bashir, 5 stars
How rare and wonderful it is to find a much-hyped foreign film, or animated film, or foreign animated film, that actually lives up to what people have said about it and more. Yet here is Waltz with Bashir, an animated film attempting to tease apart one man's complicated emotions about his participation in the Israeli war against Lebanon in the 1980's. It is just that, and it is as serious as a plot summary implies, but it is so much more.
Immediately the film draws you in with its unusual animation style, something akin to rotoscoping but without the unmoored, handheld feeling that rotoscoping seems to have. I was watching this on a much smaller screen than I normally use, and I was still instantly afraid of the opening scene, a nightmare involving a pack of dogs. My heart pounded along with the narrator's. It seems redundant to praise editing in an animated film, since frames that aren't needed simply aren't made in the first place But this sequence is proof that editing in animation does exist, and needs to. The film only goes uphill from there.
The director, Ari Folman, animated interviews of his friends and comrades in an attempt to remember his actions during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, memories which he has repressed and is now attempting to reconstruct. Many tones mingle side-by-side here, which is often the way wartime experience can really feel. When the strains of OMD's "Enola Gay" began to play in a flashback of Ari's comrade partying on a luxurious boat, I couldn't help laughing. Of course the soundtrack would use the best (and as far as I know, the only) synthpop song to deal with mass murder. At other times, however, the film is quietly heartbreaking. One of the most touching moments, for me, was when one of his fellow soldiers tells him he can record their interview but not film it. What Folman has created is so much more truthful, in its way and about these events, than film could ever be. Many of the actions described would not be filmable without extensive and costly reconstructions of battles and explosions. By intercutting excerpts from interviews with animated reconstructions of the actions being described, Folman makes his point equally if not more effectively. This is proven by the footage of actual victims of the invasion which closes the film. After all that had come before, I actually found the footage dry, a method of presenting the material which has lost its effectiveness in a media-saturated world. Folman's friend should have told him, "You can film all you want, but just don't draw."
Immediately the film draws you in with its unusual animation style, something akin to rotoscoping but without the unmoored, handheld feeling that rotoscoping seems to have. I was watching this on a much smaller screen than I normally use, and I was still instantly afraid of the opening scene, a nightmare involving a pack of dogs. My heart pounded along with the narrator's. It seems redundant to praise editing in an animated film, since frames that aren't needed simply aren't made in the first place But this sequence is proof that editing in animation does exist, and needs to. The film only goes uphill from there.
The director, Ari Folman, animated interviews of his friends and comrades in an attempt to remember his actions during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, memories which he has repressed and is now attempting to reconstruct. Many tones mingle side-by-side here, which is often the way wartime experience can really feel. When the strains of OMD's "Enola Gay" began to play in a flashback of Ari's comrade partying on a luxurious boat, I couldn't help laughing. Of course the soundtrack would use the best (and as far as I know, the only) synthpop song to deal with mass murder. At other times, however, the film is quietly heartbreaking. One of the most touching moments, for me, was when one of his fellow soldiers tells him he can record their interview but not film it. What Folman has created is so much more truthful, in its way and about these events, than film could ever be. Many of the actions described would not be filmable without extensive and costly reconstructions of battles and explosions. By intercutting excerpts from interviews with animated reconstructions of the actions being described, Folman makes his point equally if not more effectively. This is proven by the footage of actual victims of the invasion which closes the film. After all that had come before, I actually found the footage dry, a method of presenting the material which has lost its effectiveness in a media-saturated world. Folman's friend should have told him, "You can film all you want, but just don't draw."
The Perfect Getaway, 3.5 stars
If studios were still in the business of specializing by genre, this is precisely the sort of taut, efficient entertainment that Warner would have turned out. It takes the typical mistaken-identity thriller and sets it under the friendly blue skies of Hawaii, a welcome change of scene for a genre that tends toward claustrophobia. Then it simply winds itself up, does its dance and bows to applause for a job perfectly well done.
Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn are our entrance into this film, a a couple vacationing in Hawaii when another young couple is killed there. They encounter two perfectly opposed couples on their way: a pair of grungy hippies with a threatening air, and another composed of an Iraq veteran and his sunny southern girlfriend. When the second couple joins Jovovich and Zahn on their trek to a secluded beach, strange clues begin to surface. Or do they? The southern belle certainly is skilled at disemboweling animals, and her boyfriend insists on traveling with an uncomfortably large knife and lecturing people about never disregarding their surroundings.
For once I refuse to spoil the ending of a film I'm reviewing. You don't need to know the ending to appreciate it, and a simple reflection on what went before will suffice to make everything clear after the film ends. This is a movie that ties up all of its loose ends, and a second viewing will reveal no details which don't add up in the light of the twist ending. Along the way enough jitters and jumps are generated to keep the viewer perfectly entertained by what seems to be the primary mystery. An exemplary example of a lean thriller, the type of tight little B-picture that no one (except apparently David Twohy) is interested in making anymore.
Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn are our entrance into this film, a a couple vacationing in Hawaii when another young couple is killed there. They encounter two perfectly opposed couples on their way: a pair of grungy hippies with a threatening air, and another composed of an Iraq veteran and his sunny southern girlfriend. When the second couple joins Jovovich and Zahn on their trek to a secluded beach, strange clues begin to surface. Or do they? The southern belle certainly is skilled at disemboweling animals, and her boyfriend insists on traveling with an uncomfortably large knife and lecturing people about never disregarding their surroundings.
For once I refuse to spoil the ending of a film I'm reviewing. You don't need to know the ending to appreciate it, and a simple reflection on what went before will suffice to make everything clear after the film ends. This is a movie that ties up all of its loose ends, and a second viewing will reveal no details which don't add up in the light of the twist ending. Along the way enough jitters and jumps are generated to keep the viewer perfectly entertained by what seems to be the primary mystery. An exemplary example of a lean thriller, the type of tight little B-picture that no one (except apparently David Twohy) is interested in making anymore.
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Notebook, 1 star
I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie.
Sorry, I'm plagiarizing. The above is actually taken from Roger Ebert's hilarious review of the movie "North", which remains one of my favorite reviews of all time even though I've never seen the film in question. With critical reaction like that, would you?
This film had been praised to me as one of the most romantic ever. Curious to see if anything could top the gold standard set by "Brokeback Mountain" or the Colin Firth version of "Pride and Prejudice", I gave this one a shot. I was aware of the slight plot twist, although careful observers can see the end coming about ten minutes in. **SPOILERS FOLLOW** James Garner and Gena Rowlands portray an elderly couple in an assisted-living facility. He reads to her daily from a notebook describing the love affair of two young people in the 1940's (played in flashback by Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams). The big surprise is that the two couples are the same people at different moments in time. The conceit itself is not irredeemable, even if a bit maudlin and pathetic in the original sense of the word, but it is hindered by the following problems:
1. Our main characters are assholes.
This idea first began to percolate in the scene where Gosling, upset that McAdams' moneyed parents don't want her dating someone poor, breaks off their relationship because it has no long-term potential. This will turn out to be his last sensible act. McAdams responds by following him outside, pushing him and punching his chest with her fists while telling him he can't leave her. This makes her an abuser, and one he would do well to stay away from. After this scene I found it impossible to root for them to end up together. McAdams meets and gets engaged to a handsome, wealthy stockbroker whom she genuinely seems to enjoy. However, she inexplicably abandons him after one night with Gosling, who has painstakingly restored the house where they first made love. His behavior has grown disturbing and creepy, and her decision to stay with him is insensitive and inexcusable. Things apparently don't change over time, either; as the end of the movie shows, the Garner version of the character reads the love story over and over to his wife, who is now stricken with Alzheimer's. She always forgets until the end of the story that it describes the two of them. Then for a few minutes, perhaps an hour, she remembers their love and is affectionate and warm toward Garner, until the dementia returns and she is dragged away screaming to be sedated, terrified by a man she does not remember. This behavior by Garner is sadistic in the extreme and forces an ill person into more misery just so that he can have a few minutes of validation by a woman who once cared for him.
2. The movie is an asshole.
We get no idea of what transpired between the two time periods directly shown to us in the film. The couple's children show up at one point, but we don't know anything about their births or childhoods. It is unrealistic to expect that such intense, giddy feelings would persist throughout a marriage of many decades, but if the film even tried to show us how these feelings have been nurtured throughout the marriage it would up the believability factor. "Away From Her" did a remarkable job of this while dealing with similar themes.
3. The director is an asshole.
Freud would have a field day with the idea of Nick Cassavetes directing his mother Gena Rowlands in a film where she fails to recognize her own children and has a spectacular, uncomfortable breakdown whose shadow looms over the end of the film. Rowlands' acting in this scene is volcanic, chaotic and utterly believable, reminiscent of the work she did for her husband John in far better films than this. My imagination fails when trying to conceive of the on-set atmosphere on this day of shooting. The way that the camera lingers and intrudes on her character's private, embarrassing moments would be slightly unethical if shot by anyone; the fact that it is the work of Rowlands' son is inexcusable.
The notion of this as one of the most romantic films ever is misguided and overlooks the glaring psychological flaws of every character. The aforementioned "Away From Her" is a textbook example of how to treat this material; "The Notebook" is a textbook example of everything one should not do.
Sorry, I'm plagiarizing. The above is actually taken from Roger Ebert's hilarious review of the movie "North", which remains one of my favorite reviews of all time even though I've never seen the film in question. With critical reaction like that, would you?
This film had been praised to me as one of the most romantic ever. Curious to see if anything could top the gold standard set by "Brokeback Mountain" or the Colin Firth version of "Pride and Prejudice", I gave this one a shot. I was aware of the slight plot twist, although careful observers can see the end coming about ten minutes in. **SPOILERS FOLLOW** James Garner and Gena Rowlands portray an elderly couple in an assisted-living facility. He reads to her daily from a notebook describing the love affair of two young people in the 1940's (played in flashback by Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams). The big surprise is that the two couples are the same people at different moments in time. The conceit itself is not irredeemable, even if a bit maudlin and pathetic in the original sense of the word, but it is hindered by the following problems:
1. Our main characters are assholes.
This idea first began to percolate in the scene where Gosling, upset that McAdams' moneyed parents don't want her dating someone poor, breaks off their relationship because it has no long-term potential. This will turn out to be his last sensible act. McAdams responds by following him outside, pushing him and punching his chest with her fists while telling him he can't leave her. This makes her an abuser, and one he would do well to stay away from. After this scene I found it impossible to root for them to end up together. McAdams meets and gets engaged to a handsome, wealthy stockbroker whom she genuinely seems to enjoy. However, she inexplicably abandons him after one night with Gosling, who has painstakingly restored the house where they first made love. His behavior has grown disturbing and creepy, and her decision to stay with him is insensitive and inexcusable. Things apparently don't change over time, either; as the end of the movie shows, the Garner version of the character reads the love story over and over to his wife, who is now stricken with Alzheimer's. She always forgets until the end of the story that it describes the two of them. Then for a few minutes, perhaps an hour, she remembers their love and is affectionate and warm toward Garner, until the dementia returns and she is dragged away screaming to be sedated, terrified by a man she does not remember. This behavior by Garner is sadistic in the extreme and forces an ill person into more misery just so that he can have a few minutes of validation by a woman who once cared for him.
2. The movie is an asshole.
We get no idea of what transpired between the two time periods directly shown to us in the film. The couple's children show up at one point, but we don't know anything about their births or childhoods. It is unrealistic to expect that such intense, giddy feelings would persist throughout a marriage of many decades, but if the film even tried to show us how these feelings have been nurtured throughout the marriage it would up the believability factor. "Away From Her" did a remarkable job of this while dealing with similar themes.
3. The director is an asshole.
Freud would have a field day with the idea of Nick Cassavetes directing his mother Gena Rowlands in a film where she fails to recognize her own children and has a spectacular, uncomfortable breakdown whose shadow looms over the end of the film. Rowlands' acting in this scene is volcanic, chaotic and utterly believable, reminiscent of the work she did for her husband John in far better films than this. My imagination fails when trying to conceive of the on-set atmosphere on this day of shooting. The way that the camera lingers and intrudes on her character's private, embarrassing moments would be slightly unethical if shot by anyone; the fact that it is the work of Rowlands' son is inexcusable.
The notion of this as one of the most romantic films ever is misguided and overlooks the glaring psychological flaws of every character. The aforementioned "Away From Her" is a textbook example of how to treat this material; "The Notebook" is a textbook example of everything one should not do.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
His Kind of Woman, 3.5 stars
Had I not had any expectations of this movie going in, it's likely I would have found it a four-star film. However, the sleeve brags of a "film noir with periodic incursions from the Monty Python crew", which set me up to expect a crazier, much more haphazard film than the one that I actually saw.
The casting is perfect and enjoyable as Robert Mitchum, a gambler who has been offered five figures to lie low in a Mexican resort for reasons unknown to him, arrives at the resort and promptly encounters Jane Russell. Kids, if something is too good to be true it is never what it seems. Being paid 10,000 to lounge in the sun and oil up Jane Russell is not something that happens to your average Joe. It turns out the gangsters who offered Mitchum the money are planning to kill him and steal his identity so they can smuggle their boss into the country.
This is boilerplate stuff, you say. Where does Monty Python come in? Well, the closest thing to a Python comes in the form of Vincent Price, playing a gun-crazy vacationing American actor. It is impossible to tell how this character was written because Price's performance is so over-the-top; he cries at his own films and spouts Shakespeare as if it is appropriate everyday conversation. It is also impossible to pay attention to anyone or anything else (even Jane Russell's "things") when he is in the frame. He completely steals this movie from Mitchum, who always tends toward the laconic, and Russell, whose thespian abilities were never the whole reason she was given roles. While it's true that the film has a zanier sensibility than most films noirs, this is not a particularly high achievement. The serious, fatalistic tone of crime films of this era has been replaced by an airy Mexican setting (still with its share of venetian blinds through which light can fall) and witty banter without the deadly double entendres of an average film noir. Those attributes add a star to what is otherwise an average and predictable plot, but they aren't enough to raise it to a four-star, Monty Python-level rating.
The casting is perfect and enjoyable as Robert Mitchum, a gambler who has been offered five figures to lie low in a Mexican resort for reasons unknown to him, arrives at the resort and promptly encounters Jane Russell. Kids, if something is too good to be true it is never what it seems. Being paid 10,000 to lounge in the sun and oil up Jane Russell is not something that happens to your average Joe. It turns out the gangsters who offered Mitchum the money are planning to kill him and steal his identity so they can smuggle their boss into the country.
This is boilerplate stuff, you say. Where does Monty Python come in? Well, the closest thing to a Python comes in the form of Vincent Price, playing a gun-crazy vacationing American actor. It is impossible to tell how this character was written because Price's performance is so over-the-top; he cries at his own films and spouts Shakespeare as if it is appropriate everyday conversation. It is also impossible to pay attention to anyone or anything else (even Jane Russell's "things") when he is in the frame. He completely steals this movie from Mitchum, who always tends toward the laconic, and Russell, whose thespian abilities were never the whole reason she was given roles. While it's true that the film has a zanier sensibility than most films noirs, this is not a particularly high achievement. The serious, fatalistic tone of crime films of this era has been replaced by an airy Mexican setting (still with its share of venetian blinds through which light can fall) and witty banter without the deadly double entendres of an average film noir. Those attributes add a star to what is otherwise an average and predictable plot, but they aren't enough to raise it to a four-star, Monty Python-level rating.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Twilight, 3.5 stars
So here it is, my entry point to a phenomenon that simmered in the back of my awareness for the better part of a year (starting when I moved to a relatively Mormon area of the country). Of course, being the cinephile I am, I waited until the movie had come out and the clamor for it had died down. The film seemed the natural way for me to approach the story; if I can't find something to like in a film, it's unlikely that I will enjoy other forms of the story (especially if the novel forms have a reputation for sophomoric, adverbial writing).
The good news is that there is something to like in the film of "Twilight", and possibly several things depending on your gender and tolerance for teenage shoegazing. Catherine Hardwicke directs, and brings her usual deft touch for the feelings and inner workings of teenagers to this film just as she did with "Lords of Dogtown" and "Thirteen" (the latter is hearsay; I've yet to see it). She has a rare ability to take teenagers as seriously as they take themselves, while still taking the audience outside the most melodramatic moments and reminding us that, come college, none of the characters will remember most of what we're seeing.
The twist here is that many of her characters will be remembering these events forever. For those of you living under rocks for the last couple of years, the plot concerns the Cullen family, vampires who abstain from human blood, and the dangers arising when their son Edward falls in love with clumsy mortal Bella Swan. The setting is the Pacific Northwest, ideal for creatures averse to sunlight, and Bella has just moved to the tiny town of Forks. The rest of the story reads like a wish-fulfillment for any young woman who ever felt awkward or misunderstood in high school. (I think that would be all of us.) So many of the confusions of teenage boys are made literal in Edward: he can read minds, but not Bella's, which explains why he always knows the right thing to say but stammers and hedges when she is around. He disappears for long periods with no explanation (turns out he's hunting mountain lions to eat) and seems to love Bella one day and hate her the next (the result of his efforts not to suck her fragrant blood at any given moment). If only such reasonable explanations existed for the vagaries of real teenage boys!
The advantages of the film are its cinematography, which is appropriately gorgeous yet chilling, and the work put forth by all the actors to make a generically-written, underplotted young adult novel into compelling cinema. Much of the dialogue made it onscreen intact, which surely pleased fans but results in clunky, amateurish lines that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart mostly make believable through herculean effort. Pattinson in particular, like the other Cullens, is saddled with a pasty, caked makeup job that makes him look less like the undead and more like a deranged KISS fan. But the film is mostly entertaining, and its 2 hours don't feel limp in places or overlong like many teen movies today. After seeing the film I was inspired to read the books because of the curiosity the film implanted in me. I cared about these characters and wanted to know what happened to them next. The twelve-year-old girl in you may feel the same way; those without a 12-year-old girl somewhere inside them may want to seek entertainment elsewhere.
The good news is that there is something to like in the film of "Twilight", and possibly several things depending on your gender and tolerance for teenage shoegazing. Catherine Hardwicke directs, and brings her usual deft touch for the feelings and inner workings of teenagers to this film just as she did with "Lords of Dogtown" and "Thirteen" (the latter is hearsay; I've yet to see it). She has a rare ability to take teenagers as seriously as they take themselves, while still taking the audience outside the most melodramatic moments and reminding us that, come college, none of the characters will remember most of what we're seeing.
The twist here is that many of her characters will be remembering these events forever. For those of you living under rocks for the last couple of years, the plot concerns the Cullen family, vampires who abstain from human blood, and the dangers arising when their son Edward falls in love with clumsy mortal Bella Swan. The setting is the Pacific Northwest, ideal for creatures averse to sunlight, and Bella has just moved to the tiny town of Forks. The rest of the story reads like a wish-fulfillment for any young woman who ever felt awkward or misunderstood in high school. (I think that would be all of us.) So many of the confusions of teenage boys are made literal in Edward: he can read minds, but not Bella's, which explains why he always knows the right thing to say but stammers and hedges when she is around. He disappears for long periods with no explanation (turns out he's hunting mountain lions to eat) and seems to love Bella one day and hate her the next (the result of his efforts not to suck her fragrant blood at any given moment). If only such reasonable explanations existed for the vagaries of real teenage boys!
The advantages of the film are its cinematography, which is appropriately gorgeous yet chilling, and the work put forth by all the actors to make a generically-written, underplotted young adult novel into compelling cinema. Much of the dialogue made it onscreen intact, which surely pleased fans but results in clunky, amateurish lines that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart mostly make believable through herculean effort. Pattinson in particular, like the other Cullens, is saddled with a pasty, caked makeup job that makes him look less like the undead and more like a deranged KISS fan. But the film is mostly entertaining, and its 2 hours don't feel limp in places or overlong like many teen movies today. After seeing the film I was inspired to read the books because of the curiosity the film implanted in me. I cared about these characters and wanted to know what happened to them next. The twelve-year-old girl in you may feel the same way; those without a 12-year-old girl somewhere inside them may want to seek entertainment elsewhere.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Revolutionary Road, 4.5 stars
I was pleasantly surprised by this film, which I should have disliked for several reasons. I read the book first and found several parts of it unfilmable without extensive voiceover. The character of April was underwritten, which did not prevent the book from being extremely involving but which could make for a lopsided and uninteresting film. Then I found out about the casting of Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank, which conjured up the unappetizing prospect of a whiny, one-sided film told entirely from the perspective of one of my least favorite actors.
And yet, here I am, giving it 4.5 stars. The unhappy side of 1950's suburban life has never been given quite so banal a face as those of Frank and April Wheeler. Intelligent but not gifted, they are convinced they are somehow "above" their neighbors, even as they burrow deeper and deeper into such an existence. They attempt to persuade themselves that suburbia is a stopover, temporary, just until the children grow up. Then they will live the bohemian lives they envisioned when they first got married. Of course, Frank finds being a "company man" more fulfilling than he ever imagined, and suddenly "excuses" begin to crop up and delay the family's move to Paris.
The casting of DiCaprio in this story has the (probably unintended) effect of making this April's story much more than Frank's, reversing one of my main quibbles with the book. Kate Winslet's performance as April is so far above DiCaprio's that we come away with a deep sense of April as a person, and exactly how her wants and desires converged to drive her actions. Even when she is listening in silence to others or drinking a martini in the background, her expressions tell us more than DiCaprio gives us during his few explosive scenes of emotion. At the end of the film, his strange complacency in the face of tragedy is no more inexplicable than any of his other reactions thanks to DiCaprio's youthful cipher of a face. It has a certain appropriateness, given how repressed men's emotional lives were at this time, but Winslet's grace and stubborn refusal to see the truth are the emotions we leave the theater with. As an evocation of its milieu of unhappy households and the myriad ways in which they differ and yet are alike, Revolutionary Road has no equal.
And yet, here I am, giving it 4.5 stars. The unhappy side of 1950's suburban life has never been given quite so banal a face as those of Frank and April Wheeler. Intelligent but not gifted, they are convinced they are somehow "above" their neighbors, even as they burrow deeper and deeper into such an existence. They attempt to persuade themselves that suburbia is a stopover, temporary, just until the children grow up. Then they will live the bohemian lives they envisioned when they first got married. Of course, Frank finds being a "company man" more fulfilling than he ever imagined, and suddenly "excuses" begin to crop up and delay the family's move to Paris.
The casting of DiCaprio in this story has the (probably unintended) effect of making this April's story much more than Frank's, reversing one of my main quibbles with the book. Kate Winslet's performance as April is so far above DiCaprio's that we come away with a deep sense of April as a person, and exactly how her wants and desires converged to drive her actions. Even when she is listening in silence to others or drinking a martini in the background, her expressions tell us more than DiCaprio gives us during his few explosive scenes of emotion. At the end of the film, his strange complacency in the face of tragedy is no more inexplicable than any of his other reactions thanks to DiCaprio's youthful cipher of a face. It has a certain appropriateness, given how repressed men's emotional lives were at this time, but Winslet's grace and stubborn refusal to see the truth are the emotions we leave the theater with. As an evocation of its milieu of unhappy households and the myriad ways in which they differ and yet are alike, Revolutionary Road has no equal.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
MASH, 4 stars
What is left to say about a movie so classic as this, and one whose reputation holds up upon viewing such a unique and humanistic film? I won't reiterate the plot; it is languid and multi-faceted and most people are familiar with at least some aspects through either this film or the T.V. show that followed. I will simply say that while it is impossible to imagine film now without the influence of this movie's laconic yet surprisingly sharp style, trying to imagine how influential it was is quite a thought experiment.
Robert Altman had been a director of shorts and television before this film brought his name to national attention. His style is instantly recognizable. Overlapping conversations, a roaming camera, and an improvisational spirit are already present, although he would refine these signature techniques in countless ways over the long career that followed. I was surprised when researching this film afterward to find that there was strife on-set and that Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould spent most of the movie trying to get Altman fired. Anyone seeing the finished product will wonder why The style, as well as being distinctive, is a perfect fit for the material and the performances are uniformly hilarious and appropriate. When a note of stronger emotion interjects, it is always handled perfectly and the overall tone of the film doesn't suffer. Why, then, only 4 stars for the film? While Altman's style is instantly engaging, there are minor pacing problems, and some of the characters seem underwritten (if you can stop laughing at them long enough to ponder such an issue). I am also grading on a sort of reverse curve, having seen later Altman films which show the heights to which he would take his unique filmmaking style. While this early example is terrific on its own merits, as an Altman film it hovers around second or third place among those I've seen. Still not one to miss at any cost; take it from someone who missed this film for 28 years and now feels relieved at remedying that oversight.
Robert Altman had been a director of shorts and television before this film brought his name to national attention. His style is instantly recognizable. Overlapping conversations, a roaming camera, and an improvisational spirit are already present, although he would refine these signature techniques in countless ways over the long career that followed. I was surprised when researching this film afterward to find that there was strife on-set and that Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould spent most of the movie trying to get Altman fired. Anyone seeing the finished product will wonder why The style, as well as being distinctive, is a perfect fit for the material and the performances are uniformly hilarious and appropriate. When a note of stronger emotion interjects, it is always handled perfectly and the overall tone of the film doesn't suffer. Why, then, only 4 stars for the film? While Altman's style is instantly engaging, there are minor pacing problems, and some of the characters seem underwritten (if you can stop laughing at them long enough to ponder such an issue). I am also grading on a sort of reverse curve, having seen later Altman films which show the heights to which he would take his unique filmmaking style. While this early example is terrific on its own merits, as an Altman film it hovers around second or third place among those I've seen. Still not one to miss at any cost; take it from someone who missed this film for 28 years and now feels relieved at remedying that oversight.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Scanners, 3 stars
The good news is the head-explosion scene has aged remarkably well and is still quite shocking even in today's desensitized filmgoing climate. The bad news is that the movie around it probably looked dated when it was released and now looks even worse. This is a classic by early Cronenberg standards, similar in tone and skill to "Shivers", which was made six years earlier. Between the two films Cronenberg made "The Brood", a film that foreshadowed what a fine and distinctive director he would become. But "The Brood" is bookended by two films that hint at Cronenberg's obsession with bodily fluids and control of the physical by the mental, yet which both feature acting which could be confused with line reading and wardrobes that seem to have come from the actors' own closets.
Cameron, our hero, wanders the world hearing the thoughts of others and being able to control them (the film calls this ability "scanning"). For this he has been ostracized and wanders as a vagrant until a kindly doctor takes him in and shows him how to control this ability. In return for these skills the doctor would like Cameron to find a rogue scanner named Darryl Revok, who has been leading an underground movement and threatening stability with his mind-reading powers.
**HERE BE SPOILERS** In a final-act twist that will surprise no one, Cameron and Darryl are revealed to be brothers. An unintentionally hilarious scanning showdown follows, in which Stephen Lack (Cameron) and Michael Ironsides (Darryl) frown intently at each other for several minutes and bug their eyes until one of them catches on fire. I won't give away the result, but suffice to say that the blaze seems to have freed up the loser for a long and prolific career as a film heavy, while the winner was never heard from again.*
**SPOILERS END HERE**
It may sound as though my opinion of this film merits somewhat less than three stars. In defense of my rating I will say that, were this a one-time film from a director we never heard from again, it would earn fewer points. Sad, but true. As a step in the career of David Cronenberg, however, it reveals early stages of many obsessions he would later elaborate on. The fact that in 1981 someone was shooting bags of liver with shotguns and calling it cinema is encouraging, and the long and ever-evolving career this man had ahead of him is even more so.
*Apparently this is a half-truth. Stephen Lack, who appears to be reading from cue cards for this entire film, has a few other credits to his name. Cronenberg apparently gave him a part in "Dead Ringers", which I have not yet seen, and he had an unnamed role in something called "A 20th Century Chocolate Cake" in 1983. His most recent credit is "Ernstfall in Havanna" from 2002, which is apparently in Swiss German. I rest my case.
Cameron, our hero, wanders the world hearing the thoughts of others and being able to control them (the film calls this ability "scanning"). For this he has been ostracized and wanders as a vagrant until a kindly doctor takes him in and shows him how to control this ability. In return for these skills the doctor would like Cameron to find a rogue scanner named Darryl Revok, who has been leading an underground movement and threatening stability with his mind-reading powers.
**HERE BE SPOILERS** In a final-act twist that will surprise no one, Cameron and Darryl are revealed to be brothers. An unintentionally hilarious scanning showdown follows, in which Stephen Lack (Cameron) and Michael Ironsides (Darryl) frown intently at each other for several minutes and bug their eyes until one of them catches on fire. I won't give away the result, but suffice to say that the blaze seems to have freed up the loser for a long and prolific career as a film heavy, while the winner was never heard from again.*
**SPOILERS END HERE**
It may sound as though my opinion of this film merits somewhat less than three stars. In defense of my rating I will say that, were this a one-time film from a director we never heard from again, it would earn fewer points. Sad, but true. As a step in the career of David Cronenberg, however, it reveals early stages of many obsessions he would later elaborate on. The fact that in 1981 someone was shooting bags of liver with shotguns and calling it cinema is encouraging, and the long and ever-evolving career this man had ahead of him is even more so.
*Apparently this is a half-truth. Stephen Lack, who appears to be reading from cue cards for this entire film, has a few other credits to his name. Cronenberg apparently gave him a part in "Dead Ringers", which I have not yet seen, and he had an unnamed role in something called "A 20th Century Chocolate Cake" in 1983. His most recent credit is "Ernstfall in Havanna" from 2002, which is apparently in Swiss German. I rest my case.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
The Hurt Locker, 4.5 stars
This is quite possibly the most suspenseful movie I have ever seen, which becomes even more of an achievement considering that I was spoilered before going in. Hitchcock said that showing the audience a bomb under the table while innocuous conversation goes on overhead was suspense. I can report to the master that it is possible to show a procession of bombs, under all manner of tables and with all manner of conversation going on overhead, not all of which will go off, and create a nearly unbearable amount of suspense.
Our story centers on a bomb disposal expert in Iraq. I am spoiling nothing to tell you that his predecessor dies in the first fifteen minutes of the film in quite possibly the best-filmed explosion I have ever seen. This is not a film concerned with the politics or justifications of the second Iraq war. This is a film about a group of men who cannot choose the comrades they must work and possibly die with, who get through endless stretches of alternating boredom and adrenaline in the ways that men always have: wrestling, whiskey, and cigarettes. Jeremy Renner gives a performance of such subtlety that it at first seems out of place in such a loud, unpredictable environment. However, a man in such a situation would not wear his feelings openly. He would show us through movements of eyebrows or the corners of his mouth how he feels about the life he left behind. It is a common complaint that men wear a sort of armor over their emotions; a man who makes his living in a physical version of that suit would not be given to weeping or speeches. The supporting performances are equally strong; a moment when Renner's companions seriously consider "accidentally" killing him to prevent his foolhardy behavior could easily have drawn unintentional laughs. Instead it seems serious and affecting.
The verisimilitude of the film is remarkable. I know comparatively little about matters such as accents or whether the extras were actually locals. Suffice to say that this film feels more authentic than many documentaries I've seen which were actually filmed in Iraq. Nothing is spared for the audience's sake, and we come away with more understanding and empathy for the men on the ground there than after a confection like "Gunner Palace", which wastes time showing us soldiers' amateur rap sessions. A word about the direction of this film: I could write a separate entry about the implications of the fact that Kathryn Bigelow, a woman, directed this film. It can never again be said that a woman can't direct an action film. Perhaps I am being overly generous, but the attitude this film takes toward its characters feels distinctively feminine to me. Giving characters development and daring to ask us to care about them feels almost new for a film of this type. If this is the beginning of a new type of action film, someday to dethrone the testosterone-driven"Transformers" model, it would be long overdue.
Our story centers on a bomb disposal expert in Iraq. I am spoiling nothing to tell you that his predecessor dies in the first fifteen minutes of the film in quite possibly the best-filmed explosion I have ever seen. This is not a film concerned with the politics or justifications of the second Iraq war. This is a film about a group of men who cannot choose the comrades they must work and possibly die with, who get through endless stretches of alternating boredom and adrenaline in the ways that men always have: wrestling, whiskey, and cigarettes. Jeremy Renner gives a performance of such subtlety that it at first seems out of place in such a loud, unpredictable environment. However, a man in such a situation would not wear his feelings openly. He would show us through movements of eyebrows or the corners of his mouth how he feels about the life he left behind. It is a common complaint that men wear a sort of armor over their emotions; a man who makes his living in a physical version of that suit would not be given to weeping or speeches. The supporting performances are equally strong; a moment when Renner's companions seriously consider "accidentally" killing him to prevent his foolhardy behavior could easily have drawn unintentional laughs. Instead it seems serious and affecting.
The verisimilitude of the film is remarkable. I know comparatively little about matters such as accents or whether the extras were actually locals. Suffice to say that this film feels more authentic than many documentaries I've seen which were actually filmed in Iraq. Nothing is spared for the audience's sake, and we come away with more understanding and empathy for the men on the ground there than after a confection like "Gunner Palace", which wastes time showing us soldiers' amateur rap sessions. A word about the direction of this film: I could write a separate entry about the implications of the fact that Kathryn Bigelow, a woman, directed this film. It can never again be said that a woman can't direct an action film. Perhaps I am being overly generous, but the attitude this film takes toward its characters feels distinctively feminine to me. Giving characters development and daring to ask us to care about them feels almost new for a film of this type. If this is the beginning of a new type of action film, someday to dethrone the testosterone-driven"Transformers" model, it would be long overdue.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Moon, 4 stars
Yeah, if I were David Bowie's son I probably would have passed on using "Space Oddity" in this film also. The interest both the song and the film show in space exploration and its strange attractions seems to run in the family, and if Duncan Jones progresses as much through his fledgling film career as his father did through his musical career he will one day be an artist of great interest.
**SPOILERS FOLLOW**
In the meantime we have this, a directorial debut which Jones gets a story credit on. More experienced screenwriters were apparently trusted with the actual screenplay, which shows a remarkable ability to delegate that few first-time directors, drunk with newfound filmmaking power, are able to show. The story concerns Sam (Sam Rockwell) who is the lone employee of a mining base on the moon. He putters around the base doing the sort of vaguely pointless, repetitive activities that men alone in space usually do in films, until one day he crashes a moon rover and awakens back at the base, where a solicitous helper robot (Kevin Spacey) seems genuinely concerned for his recovery. Eventually Sam is up and about, suspiciously missing any injuries sustained in the crash. He goes searching for the missing rover and finds it...with his injured self still inside. What follows I will not spoil entirely for you. It combines elements of "Solaris" with elements of (of all things) "The Island". I leave it to you to decide which parts of which were placed where in this film.
Jones has a talent for directing. His ability to coax two fairly opposite performances from star Sam Rockwell shows promise with actors, and the fact that the audience is occasionally moved to laughter bespeaks a rare ability to change tones without inducing whiplash. He has hired the immensely talented Clint Mansell to score the film, although I was less impressed with Mansell's score here than I was with his work for Darren Aronofsky in "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream". The score wisely chooses to be silent at some pivotal moments and never stoops to the level of "goosing" the audience at surprising points. Jones' directing of the moon-surface scenes are the ones that stand out to me most, a week and a half after seeing the movie. It is sometimes hard to tell if we are seeing miniatures or full-scale moon rovers and antennae, but that adds to the otherworldly idea of a future where mining on the moon is so simple that one man can do it. This is an austere, haunting vision of a future which makes me wish we could clone Duncan Jones and replace so many careless, lazy directors working today.
**SPOILERS FOLLOW**
In the meantime we have this, a directorial debut which Jones gets a story credit on. More experienced screenwriters were apparently trusted with the actual screenplay, which shows a remarkable ability to delegate that few first-time directors, drunk with newfound filmmaking power, are able to show. The story concerns Sam (Sam Rockwell) who is the lone employee of a mining base on the moon. He putters around the base doing the sort of vaguely pointless, repetitive activities that men alone in space usually do in films, until one day he crashes a moon rover and awakens back at the base, where a solicitous helper robot (Kevin Spacey) seems genuinely concerned for his recovery. Eventually Sam is up and about, suspiciously missing any injuries sustained in the crash. He goes searching for the missing rover and finds it...with his injured self still inside. What follows I will not spoil entirely for you. It combines elements of "Solaris" with elements of (of all things) "The Island". I leave it to you to decide which parts of which were placed where in this film.
Jones has a talent for directing. His ability to coax two fairly opposite performances from star Sam Rockwell shows promise with actors, and the fact that the audience is occasionally moved to laughter bespeaks a rare ability to change tones without inducing whiplash. He has hired the immensely talented Clint Mansell to score the film, although I was less impressed with Mansell's score here than I was with his work for Darren Aronofsky in "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream". The score wisely chooses to be silent at some pivotal moments and never stoops to the level of "goosing" the audience at surprising points. Jones' directing of the moon-surface scenes are the ones that stand out to me most, a week and a half after seeing the movie. It is sometimes hard to tell if we are seeing miniatures or full-scale moon rovers and antennae, but that adds to the otherworldly idea of a future where mining on the moon is so simple that one man can do it. This is an austere, haunting vision of a future which makes me wish we could clone Duncan Jones and replace so many careless, lazy directors working today.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Boys, 2.5 stars
If anyone knows of a fantasy land where I can transplant the entire cast of a movie into better material, please let me know, stat. This film takes a cast containing Winona Ryder, Lukas Haas, John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, James Le Gros, Wiley Wiggins (yes, that one), Chris Cooper, Skeet Ulrich, and Maddie Corman and plunks them down into an underwritten teen soap opera about a teen who finds an injured, troubled older woman after a horseback-riding accident and nurses her back to health. No, really, that's the plot. Along the way he falls in love with her, of course, and multiple reveals are made of plot points which seem so insipid that they should have stayed hidden.
**SPOILERS BELOW**
The movie's big mystery is why Patty (Ryder) is so frightened of the police. She refuses to go to a hospital when she is initially found unconscious in a field and later abandons Haas (her new lover) at a carnival when a cop seems too curious about what she's doing there. Flashbacks slowly reveal that she had left a party drunk with a major league pitcher, also drunk, and he had then driven them into a river. She escaped the sinking car but he didn't. If this was told in chronological order it would make for a movie of such resounding stupidity that it would never have been made even by whoever greenlit the existing version. But the movie is almost worth seeing, in a curious way, if you ignore the plot entirely. You can focus on the performances, which are interesting portraits of all involved at pivotal points in their careers. Ryder was on the way down from a career high she would never recapture, as was Haas; Ulrich was a scant two years from his breakthrough in "Scream". Cooper and Reilly were on the rise as well, though their careers are still strong today. Catherine Keener was probably no one's choice for an indie darling in ten years' time, but she has since carved and defended that niche for herself. It is also possible to focus on the script's many random, abandoned subplots. Wiggins, playing Haas' best friend, at one point erupts into anger and breaks his hand punching a wall. This character trait is never explained, never resurfaces, and is only referenced in a cast Wiggins wears for the rest of the film. There is an extended scene in a Spanish class where the only Spanish word Haas can remember is "zanahorias". It is played for a kind of dark comedy, yet the tone is wrong and the scene has no ultimate point. It is as if the screenwriters took a Robert McKee seminar, made a negative of it, and then did everything he instructs you not to do. The film is a perplexing artifact of its time, but when you have to go this far outside the story to find the interesting parts, you're probably better served by something else.
**SPOILERS BELOW**
The movie's big mystery is why Patty (Ryder) is so frightened of the police. She refuses to go to a hospital when she is initially found unconscious in a field and later abandons Haas (her new lover) at a carnival when a cop seems too curious about what she's doing there. Flashbacks slowly reveal that she had left a party drunk with a major league pitcher, also drunk, and he had then driven them into a river. She escaped the sinking car but he didn't. If this was told in chronological order it would make for a movie of such resounding stupidity that it would never have been made even by whoever greenlit the existing version. But the movie is almost worth seeing, in a curious way, if you ignore the plot entirely. You can focus on the performances, which are interesting portraits of all involved at pivotal points in their careers. Ryder was on the way down from a career high she would never recapture, as was Haas; Ulrich was a scant two years from his breakthrough in "Scream". Cooper and Reilly were on the rise as well, though their careers are still strong today. Catherine Keener was probably no one's choice for an indie darling in ten years' time, but she has since carved and defended that niche for herself. It is also possible to focus on the script's many random, abandoned subplots. Wiggins, playing Haas' best friend, at one point erupts into anger and breaks his hand punching a wall. This character trait is never explained, never resurfaces, and is only referenced in a cast Wiggins wears for the rest of the film. There is an extended scene in a Spanish class where the only Spanish word Haas can remember is "zanahorias". It is played for a kind of dark comedy, yet the tone is wrong and the scene has no ultimate point. It is as if the screenwriters took a Robert McKee seminar, made a negative of it, and then did everything he instructs you not to do. The film is a perplexing artifact of its time, but when you have to go this far outside the story to find the interesting parts, you're probably better served by something else.
Monday, July 27, 2009
SLIFR quiz
If you, like me, are a reader of several film blogs simultaenously, you will have noticed the meme of a quiz originally posted over at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. I'm finally ready to add my contribution, so herewith my answers:
1) Second-favorite Stanley Kubrick film.
2001: A Space Odyssey
2) Most significant/important/interesting trend in movies over the past decade, for good or evil.
The ease of production and distribution made possible by digital video.
3) Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) or Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman)?
I have to pass on this one since I have not seen the movies in question.
4) Best Film of 1949.
The Third Man.
5) Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) or Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore)?
Again I must pass.
6) Has the hand-held shaky-cam directorial style become a visual cliché?
As much as Steadicam, but it can still be used in exciting ways.
7) What was the first foreign-language film you ever saw?
Kamikaze 1989.
8) Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) or Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre)?
I haven't seen the Mr. Moto films, so I pass.
9) Favorite World War II drama (1950-1970).
Closely Watched Trains. If that doesn't count because the war is a bit tangential, I'll go with Judgment at Nuremberg.
10) Favorite animal movie star.
Asta from the Thin Man movies.
11) Who or whatever is to blame, name an irresponsible moment in cinema.
The janitor throwing away master prints of "Greed", thinking they were trash.
12) Best Film of 1969.
The Wild Bunch.
13) Name the last movie you saw theatrically, and also on DVD or Blu-ray.
Theatrically: The Hurt Locker; the last film I finished on home video was Revolutionary Road on Blu-Ray.
14) Second-favorite Robert Altman film.
MASH.
15) What is your favorite independent outlet for reading about movies, either online or in print?
http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com
16) Who wins? Angela Mao or Meiko Kaji? (Thanks, Peter!)
No thanks, Peter. I don't know who these people are.
17) Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) or Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly)?
I've got to go with Olive. Jennifer is one of my favorite actresses in any setting, and I'm still not forgiving Tomei for that Supporting Actress win.
18) Favorite movie that features a carnival setting or sequence.
Strangers on a Train.
19) Best use of high-definition video on the big screen to date.
Public Enemies.
20) Favorite movie that is equal parts genre film and a deconstruction or consideration of that same genre.
Body Heat.
21) Best Film of 1979.
This is a genuine tie between Alien and The Marriage of Maria Braun.
22) Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.
Junebug.
23) Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).
Hitchcock's birds.
24) Second-favorite Francis Ford Coppola film.
Apocalypse Now.
25) Name a one-off movie that could have produced a franchise you would have wanted to see.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
26) Favorite sequence from a Brian De Palma film.
Sissy Spacek killing Piper Laurie in Carrie.
27) Favorite moment in three-strip Technicolor.
"Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
28) Favorite Alan Smithee film. (Thanks, Peter!)
I have seen none of the movies that IMDB credits to Alan Smithee.
29) Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) or Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)?
I haven't seen Bull Durham, but I'm going with Matthau here.
30) Best post-Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen film.
I know I'm going way out on a limb here, but I'm going with The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Yes, really.
31) Best Film of 1999.
Fight Club.
32) Favorite movie tag line.
I had a hard time deciding between "In space no one can hear you scream" and "Garbo Talks", so I'll include them both.
33) Favorite B-movie western.
Does Lemonade Joe count? For some reason I don't watch B-movie westerns unless they're Czech.
34) Overall, the author best served by movie adaptations of her or his work.
James M. Cain.
35) Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) or Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)?
Susan Vance.
36) Favorite musical cameo in a non-musical movie.
It's more than a cameo, but I'm bending the rules for Keely Smith in Thunder Road.
37) Bruno (the character, if you haven’t seen the movie, or the film, if you have): subversive satire or purveyor of stereotyping?
I haven't seen the movie yet and would need to see exactly how the subject matter is handled to make this decision. There is a possibility for both or either.
38) Five film folks, living or deceased, you would love to meet. (Thanks, Rick!)
Jean-Luc Godard, Sergei Eisenstein, Marlene Dietrich, Thelma Schoonmaker, Marilyn Monroe
1) Second-favorite Stanley Kubrick film.
2001: A Space Odyssey
2) Most significant/important/interesting trend in movies over the past decade, for good or evil.
The ease of production and distribution made possible by digital video.
3) Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood) or Buffalo Bill Cody (Paul Newman)?
I have to pass on this one since I have not seen the movies in question.
4) Best Film of 1949.
The Third Man.
5) Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) or Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore)?
Again I must pass.
6) Has the hand-held shaky-cam directorial style become a visual cliché?
As much as Steadicam, but it can still be used in exciting ways.
7) What was the first foreign-language film you ever saw?
Kamikaze 1989.
8) Charlie Chan (Warner Oland) or Mr. Moto (Peter Lorre)?
I haven't seen the Mr. Moto films, so I pass.
9) Favorite World War II drama (1950-1970).
Closely Watched Trains. If that doesn't count because the war is a bit tangential, I'll go with Judgment at Nuremberg.
10) Favorite animal movie star.
Asta from the Thin Man movies.
11) Who or whatever is to blame, name an irresponsible moment in cinema.
The janitor throwing away master prints of "Greed", thinking they were trash.
12) Best Film of 1969.
The Wild Bunch.
13) Name the last movie you saw theatrically, and also on DVD or Blu-ray.
Theatrically: The Hurt Locker; the last film I finished on home video was Revolutionary Road on Blu-Ray.
14) Second-favorite Robert Altman film.
MASH.
15) What is your favorite independent outlet for reading about movies, either online or in print?
http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com
16) Who wins? Angela Mao or Meiko Kaji? (Thanks, Peter!)
No thanks, Peter. I don't know who these people are.
17) Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) or Olive Neal (Jennifer Tilly)?
I've got to go with Olive. Jennifer is one of my favorite actresses in any setting, and I'm still not forgiving Tomei for that Supporting Actress win.
18) Favorite movie that features a carnival setting or sequence.
Strangers on a Train.
19) Best use of high-definition video on the big screen to date.
Public Enemies.
20) Favorite movie that is equal parts genre film and a deconstruction or consideration of that same genre.
Body Heat.
21) Best Film of 1979.
This is a genuine tie between Alien and The Marriage of Maria Braun.
22) Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.
Junebug.
23) Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).
Hitchcock's birds.
24) Second-favorite Francis Ford Coppola film.
Apocalypse Now.
25) Name a one-off movie that could have produced a franchise you would have wanted to see.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
26) Favorite sequence from a Brian De Palma film.
Sissy Spacek killing Piper Laurie in Carrie.
27) Favorite moment in three-strip Technicolor.
"Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
28) Favorite Alan Smithee film. (Thanks, Peter!)
I have seen none of the movies that IMDB credits to Alan Smithee.
29) Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) or Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)?
I haven't seen Bull Durham, but I'm going with Matthau here.
30) Best post-Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen film.
I know I'm going way out on a limb here, but I'm going with The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Yes, really.
31) Best Film of 1999.
Fight Club.
32) Favorite movie tag line.
I had a hard time deciding between "In space no one can hear you scream" and "Garbo Talks", so I'll include them both.
33) Favorite B-movie western.
Does Lemonade Joe count? For some reason I don't watch B-movie westerns unless they're Czech.
34) Overall, the author best served by movie adaptations of her or his work.
James M. Cain.
35) Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) or Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)?
Susan Vance.
36) Favorite musical cameo in a non-musical movie.
It's more than a cameo, but I'm bending the rules for Keely Smith in Thunder Road.
37) Bruno (the character, if you haven’t seen the movie, or the film, if you have): subversive satire or purveyor of stereotyping?
I haven't seen the movie yet and would need to see exactly how the subject matter is handled to make this decision. There is a possibility for both or either.
38) Five film folks, living or deceased, you would love to meet. (Thanks, Rick!)
Jean-Luc Godard, Sergei Eisenstein, Marlene Dietrich, Thelma Schoonmaker, Marilyn Monroe
Thursday, July 23, 2009
He's Just Not That Into You, 2 stars
Boy, I have now forgotten how this wound up in my queue in the first place. I blame a certain girly emotion which compels me to rent otherwise unappealing, unfeminist trash out of a misguided desire to see a happy ending and love conquering all. (See also "The Holiday".) The happy ending is provided in this particular film, but at the expense of any pretense of believability.
Speaking of believability, it is somewhat remarkable that this movie even exists in the first place. It's based on a book whose title came from a throwaway line in a "Sex and the City" episode. The book itself is not a work of fiction and has no characters. It is instead a collection of witty self-help aphorisms about relationships. (The one time I encountered the book, I turned to a random page which warned me away from having post-breakup sex.) From a book with no characters now comes a film with too many. There are at least four main couples and several peripheral characters, none of whom seem to know how to be honest or even verbalize their desires properly. We have a married music exec who can't keep it in his pants when hot young singers come sniffing for connections. There's the classic woman pushing 40 whose boyfriend refuses to commit to marriage. The film's most annoying couple is composed of a clingy simpering woman who is Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction inexplicably played for laughs. She meets her perfect match in the Mac Guy. Come to think of it, maybe that's what he deserves for so many smarmy, sanctimonious commercials.
If all of this sounds overstuffed and tired, that's because it is. Many talented actors are thrust into the film and left to spin their wheels for the movie's two-hour-plus (!) running time. Jennifer Connelly appears to have wandered here from the set of "A Beautiful Mind"; her weepy, put-upon-wife schtick works less well here when her husband has made the understandable decision to cheat on her with Scarlett Johansson. Jennifer Aniston plays another thinly disguised version of herself, and poor Ginnifer Goodwin (who I hear is actually pretty good in Big Love) is given such a thankless and annoying role that I would actively avoid seeing her in anything again. A pity, because she may well have talent that this film didn't have room for. Overall, the film is offensive, stereotypical, and an insult to intelligent romantic films like Annie Hall or Before Sunrise.
Speaking of believability, it is somewhat remarkable that this movie even exists in the first place. It's based on a book whose title came from a throwaway line in a "Sex and the City" episode. The book itself is not a work of fiction and has no characters. It is instead a collection of witty self-help aphorisms about relationships. (The one time I encountered the book, I turned to a random page which warned me away from having post-breakup sex.) From a book with no characters now comes a film with too many. There are at least four main couples and several peripheral characters, none of whom seem to know how to be honest or even verbalize their desires properly. We have a married music exec who can't keep it in his pants when hot young singers come sniffing for connections. There's the classic woman pushing 40 whose boyfriend refuses to commit to marriage. The film's most annoying couple is composed of a clingy simpering woman who is Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction inexplicably played for laughs. She meets her perfect match in the Mac Guy. Come to think of it, maybe that's what he deserves for so many smarmy, sanctimonious commercials.
If all of this sounds overstuffed and tired, that's because it is. Many talented actors are thrust into the film and left to spin their wheels for the movie's two-hour-plus (!) running time. Jennifer Connelly appears to have wandered here from the set of "A Beautiful Mind"; her weepy, put-upon-wife schtick works less well here when her husband has made the understandable decision to cheat on her with Scarlett Johansson. Jennifer Aniston plays another thinly disguised version of herself, and poor Ginnifer Goodwin (who I hear is actually pretty good in Big Love) is given such a thankless and annoying role that I would actively avoid seeing her in anything again. A pity, because she may well have talent that this film didn't have room for. Overall, the film is offensive, stereotypical, and an insult to intelligent romantic films like Annie Hall or Before Sunrise.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Public Enemies, 4 stars
Ignore the single most frequent criticism of this movie. Johnny Depp is not a complete cipher around which the movie swirls. He is only mostly a cipher, and that is the point. Yes, this is a period piece, and a gorgeously shot and meticulously researched one at that. However, it is also a commentary on the cult of celebrity and its tendency to inflate normal human beings to fill inhuman expectations. Often those whom we make into celebrities are strangely empty vessels for our adoration; the reason for their popularity is a sort of blankness onto which many fans can project their individual desires.
The plot will be familiar to anyone who knows the story of John Dillinger, who robbed banks in the early 1930's, when affection for banks was at a strangely familiar low. He was debonair and charismatic and did a few stints in prison before being shot outside Chicago's Biograph Theater after seeing a gangster film. This near-perfect intersection of notoriety and the media's portrayal of it reminds us why the Dillinger story is so oddly appropriate. Here is a criminal who would have loved the myriad ways of communication available to us today but who was instead born in a time when his physical description was so poorly circulated that he could walk into the Dillinger Bureau of the Chicago police department and, unrecognized, ask for sports scores from the men hunting him. This being a Michael Mann film, there is a foil for Dillinger in the person of Melvin Purvis, an FBI agent trying to make a name for himself. Christian Bale plays this man as so repressed that we can barely imagine him having warm blood, and this performance in my opinion is the low point of the film. Also since this is a Michael Mann movie, there is much well-choreographed gunplay and scenes of men grimly going about their work, whether that work is tracking criminals or counting the take from a robbery. Marion Cotillard, as the sole representative of the fairer sex in most of the film, manages this burden well and seems natural in the period setting, unlike some more minor actors who seem mannered and ill-at-ease. This is a fun film with which to play spot-the-character-actor. The answers to "Is that Stephen Dorff?", "Is that Lili Taylor?" and "Is that Leelee Sobieski?" are all yes, and then some. Most viewers will go into this film knowing what to expect, but those who don't will still find a solid retelling of Dillinger's last years of life, as well as a meditation on who we choose as celebrities and why.
The plot will be familiar to anyone who knows the story of John Dillinger, who robbed banks in the early 1930's, when affection for banks was at a strangely familiar low. He was debonair and charismatic and did a few stints in prison before being shot outside Chicago's Biograph Theater after seeing a gangster film. This near-perfect intersection of notoriety and the media's portrayal of it reminds us why the Dillinger story is so oddly appropriate. Here is a criminal who would have loved the myriad ways of communication available to us today but who was instead born in a time when his physical description was so poorly circulated that he could walk into the Dillinger Bureau of the Chicago police department and, unrecognized, ask for sports scores from the men hunting him. This being a Michael Mann film, there is a foil for Dillinger in the person of Melvin Purvis, an FBI agent trying to make a name for himself. Christian Bale plays this man as so repressed that we can barely imagine him having warm blood, and this performance in my opinion is the low point of the film. Also since this is a Michael Mann movie, there is much well-choreographed gunplay and scenes of men grimly going about their work, whether that work is tracking criminals or counting the take from a robbery. Marion Cotillard, as the sole representative of the fairer sex in most of the film, manages this burden well and seems natural in the period setting, unlike some more minor actors who seem mannered and ill-at-ease. This is a fun film with which to play spot-the-character-actor. The answers to "Is that Stephen Dorff?", "Is that Lili Taylor?" and "Is that Leelee Sobieski?" are all yes, and then some. Most viewers will go into this film knowing what to expect, but those who don't will still find a solid retelling of Dillinger's last years of life, as well as a meditation on who we choose as celebrities and why.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Eagle vs. Shark, 3.5 stars
How the shadow of Napoleon Dynamite grows shorter as time passes. I perused other reviews of this quirky, affecting comedy and found endless comparisons between the two films, which came out within a year or so of each other. However, with a few years intervening, I can truly say that unless I had been primed by those other reviews, "Napoleon Dynamite" would not even have entered my head for comparison.
Our setting is New Zealand. Lily is a cashier in a fast-food outlet at a mall. She is pretty in the way that such service workers often are, a unique attractiveness that ensures that more looks-based professions will never open to her. Compounding this is her shyness and her less-than-hip hobbies, mostly revolving around 32-bit video games and resoundingly average guitar-playing. Jarrod is a clerk at a nearby video game store. Lily loves him from afar in that idealized way that arises from only seeing someone under mall lighting. He likes the same video games she does and fancies himself a formidable physical threat to anything he sets his sights on. One night at a costume party they bond over a fighting game and have unintentionally touching sex. This cements their bond, at least as far as Lily is concerned, and a relationship blooms enroute to Jarrod's hometown, where he aspires to have a showdown with a bully who tormented him in high school.
This is a more realistic, darker film than "Napoleon Dynamite". Perhaps its milieu of unhip fringe dwellers who are legends in their own minds prompted the comparisons, but "Eagle vs. Shark" puts a bit more distance between us and the characters, allowing us to see the gaps between their self-image and the labels the world has placed on them. This added believability is crucial to scenes like the one where Lily discovers that Jarrod has a young child who lives with his parents in his tiny hometown. Such a down-to-earth revelation would be out of place in most quirky-loser movies, but this one deals with it sensitively and with a perfect touch. Jarrod's reaction both masks his obvious emotion and gives us a hint of where his desire to be seen as a hero may come from. This is a small film with small ambitions, but it ably exceeds them. Overall it is touching despite a few false notes, and while not as laugh-a-minute funny as others in its genre, it rings truer.
Our setting is New Zealand. Lily is a cashier in a fast-food outlet at a mall. She is pretty in the way that such service workers often are, a unique attractiveness that ensures that more looks-based professions will never open to her. Compounding this is her shyness and her less-than-hip hobbies, mostly revolving around 32-bit video games and resoundingly average guitar-playing. Jarrod is a clerk at a nearby video game store. Lily loves him from afar in that idealized way that arises from only seeing someone under mall lighting. He likes the same video games she does and fancies himself a formidable physical threat to anything he sets his sights on. One night at a costume party they bond over a fighting game and have unintentionally touching sex. This cements their bond, at least as far as Lily is concerned, and a relationship blooms enroute to Jarrod's hometown, where he aspires to have a showdown with a bully who tormented him in high school.
This is a more realistic, darker film than "Napoleon Dynamite". Perhaps its milieu of unhip fringe dwellers who are legends in their own minds prompted the comparisons, but "Eagle vs. Shark" puts a bit more distance between us and the characters, allowing us to see the gaps between their self-image and the labels the world has placed on them. This added believability is crucial to scenes like the one where Lily discovers that Jarrod has a young child who lives with his parents in his tiny hometown. Such a down-to-earth revelation would be out of place in most quirky-loser movies, but this one deals with it sensitively and with a perfect touch. Jarrod's reaction both masks his obvious emotion and gives us a hint of where his desire to be seen as a hero may come from. This is a small film with small ambitions, but it ably exceeds them. Overall it is touching despite a few false notes, and while not as laugh-a-minute funny as others in its genre, it rings truer.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Last Life in the Universe, 4 stars
I thought this would be my first Thai film. I was wrong; that spot was taken by "Tears of the Black Tiger" two years ago. They are remarkably similar, however, in their shifts of tone and their global influences. "Tears of the Black Tiger" reached through space and time to be influenced by trashy genre films of all countries and decades; "Last Life in the Universe" takes place in the airport-like limbo of foreign service industry workers in many countries, understanding little and understood still less.
Our hero, if you can call him that, is a shy, depressed librarian who happens to witness a horrible car accident in which a beautiful woman he had seen earlier in the day is gravely injured. His concern leads him to follow the girl's less attractive but more interesting sister to the hospital, where the two initiate a bond that results in him becoming her reluctant roommate. The film borrows from a variety of classic plots: at times it veers into the "odd-couple" genre as the neat librarian and the sloppy-haired pot-smoker try to get along. Eventually it becomes the classic opposites-attract love story, but the film avoids a familiar feeling about any of this. Due to gentle, unexpected pacing and the charm of having the characters communicate in three languages (none very well), the film succeeds at creating and holding a mood and then simply allows its characters to wander through it. Magical realism intrudes at times, as in a house-cleaning sequence with unfortunate and probably unintended overtones of "Requiem for a Dream". The characters have room to breathe and explore in the environment of the film, and the effect is gratitude on the part of the viewer for being allowed to wander alongside these finely drawn, interesting souls for a few minutes.
Our hero, if you can call him that, is a shy, depressed librarian who happens to witness a horrible car accident in which a beautiful woman he had seen earlier in the day is gravely injured. His concern leads him to follow the girl's less attractive but more interesting sister to the hospital, where the two initiate a bond that results in him becoming her reluctant roommate. The film borrows from a variety of classic plots: at times it veers into the "odd-couple" genre as the neat librarian and the sloppy-haired pot-smoker try to get along. Eventually it becomes the classic opposites-attract love story, but the film avoids a familiar feeling about any of this. Due to gentle, unexpected pacing and the charm of having the characters communicate in three languages (none very well), the film succeeds at creating and holding a mood and then simply allows its characters to wander through it. Magical realism intrudes at times, as in a house-cleaning sequence with unfortunate and probably unintended overtones of "Requiem for a Dream". The characters have room to breathe and explore in the environment of the film, and the effect is gratitude on the part of the viewer for being allowed to wander alongside these finely drawn, interesting souls for a few minutes.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Flower of Evil, 3 stars
I blush to admit this was my first Chabrol film. I probably should have started with something earlier, or more experimental, or more unified, but there you have it. As fate would have it, I started with a very recent film by a man who has been making films for about half a century.
From subsequent research on the film, I find that it apparently reflects on themes that Chabrol has been addressing for his entire career. You'll have to look elsewhere to find that discussion, though. Since I came to the film clear-eyed and unaware, that seems like the most logical way for me to review it. The plot concerns a French family of some wealth and history. Many dark secrets reverberate in the family home, including a romance between two step-siblings and whispers that Aunt Line may have murdered her own father because he was a Nazi. The film doesn't have a plot so much as a mood. The matriarch is running for a local political position, but this mainly serves as an excuse for more whispering behind innumerable backs. The step-sibling relationship is actually believable and a bit touching, and we root for the young lovers to such an extent that a tragic yet inevitable final twist leaves us hoping their relationship survives.
The film is chilly and reserved, especially considering the passionate topics with which it deals. Everything is kept at arm's length, which seems to be the way the family deals with the same emotions. Everyone drinks their troubles away or has ill-advised affairs rather than confront the emotions running so close to the surface. This was a perfectly serviceable film, quite French in its way, with strong performances and just the right amount of surprise. I've no desire to see this film again anytime soon, and yet you can certainly do worse on a rainy, chilly summer evening.
From subsequent research on the film, I find that it apparently reflects on themes that Chabrol has been addressing for his entire career. You'll have to look elsewhere to find that discussion, though. Since I came to the film clear-eyed and unaware, that seems like the most logical way for me to review it. The plot concerns a French family of some wealth and history. Many dark secrets reverberate in the family home, including a romance between two step-siblings and whispers that Aunt Line may have murdered her own father because he was a Nazi. The film doesn't have a plot so much as a mood. The matriarch is running for a local political position, but this mainly serves as an excuse for more whispering behind innumerable backs. The step-sibling relationship is actually believable and a bit touching, and we root for the young lovers to such an extent that a tragic yet inevitable final twist leaves us hoping their relationship survives.
The film is chilly and reserved, especially considering the passionate topics with which it deals. Everything is kept at arm's length, which seems to be the way the family deals with the same emotions. Everyone drinks their troubles away or has ill-advised affairs rather than confront the emotions running so close to the surface. This was a perfectly serviceable film, quite French in its way, with strong performances and just the right amount of surprise. I've no desire to see this film again anytime soon, and yet you can certainly do worse on a rainy, chilly summer evening.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Dolls, 4 stars
Yes, this is directed by that Takeshi. Coming into this movie I knew its director as the man responsible for "Takeshi's Castle", a Japanese physical challenge show whose low points were then overdubbed MST3K-style by two American comedians to form the SpikeTV show "MXC". However, I had seen none of his films although I knew that he had a successful film career in Japan.
*THERE ARE MANY SPOILERS IN MY REVIEW. I CANNOT DISCUSS HOW AFFECTING THIS FILM WAS WITHOUT GIVING AWAY MAJOR PLOT POINTS.*
This film did not let me down, although the leap from fat men in ill-fitting helmets smacking their faces into giant logs to a stately, quiet drama about the absence of free will was not a small one. This was everything I was not expecting it to be and was instead a well-observed if slightly manipulative meditation on loss and choice. There are three storylines, each dealing with a character who has failed to act decisively at a crucial moment. The first storyline deals with a young man who is very much in love and engaged to the woman he cares so much for. However, he bows to pressure from his parents and breaks up with her to marry the boss' daughter for business reasons. On his wedding day, he hears that she has attempted suicide and does not recognize anyone now. He takes responsibility for her, and as her instability causes them to become more and more outcast, they begin wandering the countryside tied together with a length of red rope. In one of the film's most moving moments, when the couple stands outside the house where they announced their engagement, the girl makes a gesture to show that she recognizes her former love as the man who has been caring for her all this time. I actually gasped aloud a little at the simplicity and tenderness of this moment and how it was handled.
The second, and most moving for me, of the stories concerns an aging yakuza boss who had made a fateful decision years ago to abandon a woman he loved because he felt he could not give her the life she deserved. She tells him she will wait for him every day on a certain park bench and bring a lunch for him in case he ever decides to join her. From the looks of the characters 20 years or more pass, and then the boss decides to see if his former love still waits for him. To his surprise, she has apparently been lunching on the same park bench in the intervening years, still awaiting his return. The moment when he sits beside her and she does not recognize him was for me the most affecting in the film, a nearly perfect reversal of the moment I described above in the first story.
The third and least successful story concerns a Japanese pop star who is blinded one day in an accident that may have been caused by a daydreaming fan of hers who happened to be a traffic cop at a busy intersection. The fan blinds himself in a final effort to be closer to his idol, and one day manages to finagle a meeting with her at last, when he can no longer see her.
The film is gorgeously shot and could serve as a primer in a class called "Shooting Autumn Leaves Attractively Yet Ambiguously". The first two stories are quite affecting and all three make very good points about the role of choice in happiness. This was quite a pleasant surprise considering that I was expecting a crime film, or failing that, a straightforward film of any type. Instead I found a elliptical, nonlinear gem that also opens and closes with two moving scenes of bunraku. While all characters in the film become dolls in their own indecision, the film's effect on us is anything but, reminding us how to be more human than the characters Kitano has created.
*THERE ARE MANY SPOILERS IN MY REVIEW. I CANNOT DISCUSS HOW AFFECTING THIS FILM WAS WITHOUT GIVING AWAY MAJOR PLOT POINTS.*
This film did not let me down, although the leap from fat men in ill-fitting helmets smacking their faces into giant logs to a stately, quiet drama about the absence of free will was not a small one. This was everything I was not expecting it to be and was instead a well-observed if slightly manipulative meditation on loss and choice. There are three storylines, each dealing with a character who has failed to act decisively at a crucial moment. The first storyline deals with a young man who is very much in love and engaged to the woman he cares so much for. However, he bows to pressure from his parents and breaks up with her to marry the boss' daughter for business reasons. On his wedding day, he hears that she has attempted suicide and does not recognize anyone now. He takes responsibility for her, and as her instability causes them to become more and more outcast, they begin wandering the countryside tied together with a length of red rope. In one of the film's most moving moments, when the couple stands outside the house where they announced their engagement, the girl makes a gesture to show that she recognizes her former love as the man who has been caring for her all this time. I actually gasped aloud a little at the simplicity and tenderness of this moment and how it was handled.
The second, and most moving for me, of the stories concerns an aging yakuza boss who had made a fateful decision years ago to abandon a woman he loved because he felt he could not give her the life she deserved. She tells him she will wait for him every day on a certain park bench and bring a lunch for him in case he ever decides to join her. From the looks of the characters 20 years or more pass, and then the boss decides to see if his former love still waits for him. To his surprise, she has apparently been lunching on the same park bench in the intervening years, still awaiting his return. The moment when he sits beside her and she does not recognize him was for me the most affecting in the film, a nearly perfect reversal of the moment I described above in the first story.
The third and least successful story concerns a Japanese pop star who is blinded one day in an accident that may have been caused by a daydreaming fan of hers who happened to be a traffic cop at a busy intersection. The fan blinds himself in a final effort to be closer to his idol, and one day manages to finagle a meeting with her at last, when he can no longer see her.
The film is gorgeously shot and could serve as a primer in a class called "Shooting Autumn Leaves Attractively Yet Ambiguously". The first two stories are quite affecting and all three make very good points about the role of choice in happiness. This was quite a pleasant surprise considering that I was expecting a crime film, or failing that, a straightforward film of any type. Instead I found a elliptical, nonlinear gem that also opens and closes with two moving scenes of bunraku. While all characters in the film become dolls in their own indecision, the film's effect on us is anything but, reminding us how to be more human than the characters Kitano has created.
What's New Pussycat, 4 stars
You can just tell that Woody Allen wanted the lead role in this film for himself. It is a blessing for the audience that he did not get it. Allen wrote this sex farce himself and makes his film debut in it, but the lead goes to the great Peter Sellers. Allen should probably sue Sellers for copyright infringement for so successfully impersonating the Allen persona that has been the linchpin of Allen's film career since "Annie Hall".
Sellers is a therapist whose patient (Peter O'Toole) is constantly beset by women wanting to sleep with him. Why this is a problem is never fully explained. O'Toole acquits himself ably here, in the first role I've seen him in that requires humor. Sellers and O'Toole eventually wind up at a country chateau with their respective women, and a slapstick farce of the highest order occurs. Of course Ursula Andress shows up in a bikini. Of course there will be bizarre, brightly-colored mid-60s decor everywhere. Of course there will be a scene resembling a bumper-car ride (it is Woody Allen, after all).
The plot of the film takes a backseat to slapstick, wordplay, and an overall tone resembling an early Marx Brothers film plopped down into the swinging '60s. Bosley Crowther, a man completely in tune with films of this period, said that it is as though "the characters were all disturbed children engaged in violent, sex-tinged water-play". To me this was a reason to like the film; I will let you decide for yourself.
Sellers is a therapist whose patient (Peter O'Toole) is constantly beset by women wanting to sleep with him. Why this is a problem is never fully explained. O'Toole acquits himself ably here, in the first role I've seen him in that requires humor. Sellers and O'Toole eventually wind up at a country chateau with their respective women, and a slapstick farce of the highest order occurs. Of course Ursula Andress shows up in a bikini. Of course there will be bizarre, brightly-colored mid-60s decor everywhere. Of course there will be a scene resembling a bumper-car ride (it is Woody Allen, after all).
The plot of the film takes a backseat to slapstick, wordplay, and an overall tone resembling an early Marx Brothers film plopped down into the swinging '60s. Bosley Crowther, a man completely in tune with films of this period, said that it is as though "the characters were all disturbed children engaged in violent, sex-tinged water-play". To me this was a reason to like the film; I will let you decide for yourself.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Irma La Douce, 2.5 stars/One, Two, Three, 3.5 stars
Over the course of two days last week, I watched two Billy Wilder comedies with vastly different levels of familiarity to the public. Unexpectedly, I found the quality of the movies varied inversely with their reputations and wish that more people knew of the underappreciated "One, Two, Three" while ignoring the bloated and unfunny "Irma La Douce".
"Irma La Douce" was touted as reuniting the director and stars of "The Apartment", a movie that was also disappointing to me compared with what I had heard about it. Jack Lemmon here plays a Parisian cop who is fired for being too honest and proceeds to fall in love with one of the prostitutes (Shirley MacLaine) he had previously arrested. The film is nearly two and a half hours long and changes tone approximately six times. The middle of the film is the most inspired and features Lemmon, now jealous of MacLaine's customers, dressing up as a British lord who monopolizes her attention. These farcical scenes recall the best bits of "Some Like It Hot", with Lemmon rushing around behind everyone's back to avoid being recognized while he changed identities at the drop of a hat. However, the film then takes an utterly baffling turn when Lemmon is arrested for "killing" the lord, and we are actually asked to watch his trial, imprisonment, and jailbreak. MacLaine leaves Lemmon when he hits her during an argument about money, but of course the plot requires that she take him back in the end. The film's morality is murky overall, with Lemmon at one point being feted for being the most successful pimp on the block and seeming to enjoy it without thinking of where his money is coming from. At 45 minutes shorter, this could have been a satirical gem. Instead it is overlong and tries to be too many places at once.
"One, Two, Three", on the other hand, had me in tears at several points and left me wondering why I had never heard of this Wilder film before. James Cagney plays a Coca-Cola executive who is trying to bring the product to East Germany. Cagney's boss' daughter slips through the Iron Curtain one night and marries a Bolshevik, and the rest of the film is spent first trying to cover up the marriage and then attempting to convert the Bolshevik to American capitalist ways. Perhaps this type of humor is not in vogue at the moment; everyone in the film seems quietly assured of American superiority, a position which is not particularly tenable today. However, the jokes crackle and Cagney seems born to deliver them. Able support from the entire cast makes this one to watch if, like me, you're a Wilder fan who is at the point of seeking out little-known works of his to complete your viewing.
In pondering these two films together, it seems that the reason for the difference between them might have to do with Wilder's feelings about their subjects' potential for satire. From his other films we can gather that he is not truly moralistic about sex, seeming to believe that society causes most of the sexual hang-ups that plague neurotic individuals. That makes him a fairly poor choice to direct a film with such a preachy tone as "Irma La Douce"; Irma ultimately learns that she should let her man support her and that women have no business owning and using their sexuality in unconventional ways. However, as a Jew who was personally affected by the Holocaust, I dare say Wilder probably felt a bit more comfortable satirizing postwar Germany and espousing the capitalist philosophy of his adopted country. While "One, Two, Three" is anything but timely, it remains hilarious and a fine example of what Wilder can do at his best.
"Irma La Douce" was touted as reuniting the director and stars of "The Apartment", a movie that was also disappointing to me compared with what I had heard about it. Jack Lemmon here plays a Parisian cop who is fired for being too honest and proceeds to fall in love with one of the prostitutes (Shirley MacLaine) he had previously arrested. The film is nearly two and a half hours long and changes tone approximately six times. The middle of the film is the most inspired and features Lemmon, now jealous of MacLaine's customers, dressing up as a British lord who monopolizes her attention. These farcical scenes recall the best bits of "Some Like It Hot", with Lemmon rushing around behind everyone's back to avoid being recognized while he changed identities at the drop of a hat. However, the film then takes an utterly baffling turn when Lemmon is arrested for "killing" the lord, and we are actually asked to watch his trial, imprisonment, and jailbreak. MacLaine leaves Lemmon when he hits her during an argument about money, but of course the plot requires that she take him back in the end. The film's morality is murky overall, with Lemmon at one point being feted for being the most successful pimp on the block and seeming to enjoy it without thinking of where his money is coming from. At 45 minutes shorter, this could have been a satirical gem. Instead it is overlong and tries to be too many places at once.
"One, Two, Three", on the other hand, had me in tears at several points and left me wondering why I had never heard of this Wilder film before. James Cagney plays a Coca-Cola executive who is trying to bring the product to East Germany. Cagney's boss' daughter slips through the Iron Curtain one night and marries a Bolshevik, and the rest of the film is spent first trying to cover up the marriage and then attempting to convert the Bolshevik to American capitalist ways. Perhaps this type of humor is not in vogue at the moment; everyone in the film seems quietly assured of American superiority, a position which is not particularly tenable today. However, the jokes crackle and Cagney seems born to deliver them. Able support from the entire cast makes this one to watch if, like me, you're a Wilder fan who is at the point of seeking out little-known works of his to complete your viewing.
In pondering these two films together, it seems that the reason for the difference between them might have to do with Wilder's feelings about their subjects' potential for satire. From his other films we can gather that he is not truly moralistic about sex, seeming to believe that society causes most of the sexual hang-ups that plague neurotic individuals. That makes him a fairly poor choice to direct a film with such a preachy tone as "Irma La Douce"; Irma ultimately learns that she should let her man support her and that women have no business owning and using their sexuality in unconventional ways. However, as a Jew who was personally affected by the Holocaust, I dare say Wilder probably felt a bit more comfortable satirizing postwar Germany and espousing the capitalist philosophy of his adopted country. While "One, Two, Three" is anything but timely, it remains hilarious and a fine example of what Wilder can do at his best.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Superfly, 3.5 stars
This is the first movie I've seen where the budget probably had a line for "coke spoons". Everyone here seems to have one, and people even lounge about wearing nothing but them. While I've probably seen some blaxploitation before, in college and with an ironic attitude, I tried to take "Superfly" seriously on its own terms and found a surprisingly well-assembled movie whose main strength is its strong yet subtle performances.
The plot is tired and barely worth recapping (stop me when this sounds familiar): A coke dealer decides to make one last big score and then use the profits to go straight. His underworld friends have other ideas and attempt to defeat this plan. The filmmaking and performances quickly elevate the material, however, as "Requiem for a Dream" has done more recently. Priest, the coke dealer, is played by Ron O'Neal as a clear-eyed, realistic man who is more honest than most others in his line of work. O'Neal allows us to see a desire for security and a fear of winding up shot to death on a sidewalk, both of which motivate Priest to try for one last score. In addition to this strong lead performance, the film boasts a well-tailored, jazzy Curtis Mayfield score and an filmmaking style that stops the action temporarily for an experimental montage of stills showing the various users of Priest's big score. The use of split-screen can be tricky by itself; so can stopping your action at a fairly pivotal point to show a series of stills. The fact that both techniques are combined here to make a scene that is one of the more memorable in the film speaks to the skill of the filmmakers.
I haven't yet seen the other blaxploitation classic that casts a long shadow over the genre (I refer of course to "Shaft".) However, I couldn't help feeling that in this case there was very little exploitation going on, and instead there was a piece of solid filmmaking and acting with an ending where the only exploitation is of the white establishment.
The plot is tired and barely worth recapping (stop me when this sounds familiar): A coke dealer decides to make one last big score and then use the profits to go straight. His underworld friends have other ideas and attempt to defeat this plan. The filmmaking and performances quickly elevate the material, however, as "Requiem for a Dream" has done more recently. Priest, the coke dealer, is played by Ron O'Neal as a clear-eyed, realistic man who is more honest than most others in his line of work. O'Neal allows us to see a desire for security and a fear of winding up shot to death on a sidewalk, both of which motivate Priest to try for one last score. In addition to this strong lead performance, the film boasts a well-tailored, jazzy Curtis Mayfield score and an filmmaking style that stops the action temporarily for an experimental montage of stills showing the various users of Priest's big score. The use of split-screen can be tricky by itself; so can stopping your action at a fairly pivotal point to show a series of stills. The fact that both techniques are combined here to make a scene that is one of the more memorable in the film speaks to the skill of the filmmakers.
I haven't yet seen the other blaxploitation classic that casts a long shadow over the genre (I refer of course to "Shaft".) However, I couldn't help feeling that in this case there was very little exploitation going on, and instead there was a piece of solid filmmaking and acting with an ending where the only exploitation is of the white establishment.
Gunner Palace, 3 stars
Sheepishly I admit to being among the majority of the American public who have shown little tolerance for films, fictional or documentary, dealing with the second Gulf War. I skipped "In the Valley of Elah", "No End in Sight", "Taxi to the Dark Side", and many of the other media portrayals of this conflict. The only other Iraq documentary I had seen was "Voices of Iraq", which has risen in my estimation since I saw "Gunner Palace." "Voices of Iraq" was made by editing footage taken by Iraqis who had been given digital video cameras and told to record their experiences. This resulted in a level of access and candor that would almost certainly not have been given to a white/American/British cameraperson.
In contrast, "Gunner Palace" seems to have been made by a cameraman embedded with a particular company of soldiers who have their base in a run-down pleasure palace that once belonged to Uday Hussein. This interesting change of use is not particularly well-addressed, despite the movie being named after the place. Some context or history, or perhaps records of events that had happened there under Hussein, would have provided contrast. Instead we come in after the American forces have already repurposed the palace. We tag along on raids and daily patrols, and here the film actually does a serviceable job of conveying the monotony of these tasks. Soldiers are asked to alternate instantly between boredom and taut alertness when suspicious packages show up on the road, and the stress of this lifestyle expresses itself in impromptu music and rap from the soldiers. Besides conveying this state of mind, however, the film seems to have little reason for being. No new information is conveyed and the territory seems familiar. The subtitling is irregular, sometimes accompanying spoken English for no reason, and the camerawork (as might be expected in such a hostile environment) is workmanlike. I'm sure there are better documentaries out there; "Voices of Iraq" is one, and if I had not joined the American public in avoiding this topic in film, I would probably have futher recommendations.
In contrast, "Gunner Palace" seems to have been made by a cameraman embedded with a particular company of soldiers who have their base in a run-down pleasure palace that once belonged to Uday Hussein. This interesting change of use is not particularly well-addressed, despite the movie being named after the place. Some context or history, or perhaps records of events that had happened there under Hussein, would have provided contrast. Instead we come in after the American forces have already repurposed the palace. We tag along on raids and daily patrols, and here the film actually does a serviceable job of conveying the monotony of these tasks. Soldiers are asked to alternate instantly between boredom and taut alertness when suspicious packages show up on the road, and the stress of this lifestyle expresses itself in impromptu music and rap from the soldiers. Besides conveying this state of mind, however, the film seems to have little reason for being. No new information is conveyed and the territory seems familiar. The subtitling is irregular, sometimes accompanying spoken English for no reason, and the camerawork (as might be expected in such a hostile environment) is workmanlike. I'm sure there are better documentaries out there; "Voices of Iraq" is one, and if I had not joined the American public in avoiding this topic in film, I would probably have futher recommendations.
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