Saw Shoah. This final segment detailed a Czech concentration camp with schools and so forth, and a recounting of the ghetto at Warsaw. The days when the Warsaw ghetto stood are powerfully recounted by some kind of Polish diplomat. He breaks down several times as he recounts his journey through a Brueghelian hell-scape. The diplomat is lead through the ghetto by a member of the resistance. Whenever he asks what people are doing or why, the resistance member always replies "they are dying." He witnesses naked corpses rotting in the street, Jews terrorized by two handsome Hitler Youths with pistols, and men and women and babies starving on their feet in public squares. After his tour is complete, the resistance member tells him emphatically to report to the world what he has seen. Tell even the Germans and the Polish people. "Perhaps they do not know!" This is very near the end of the film and the film-maker chooses this time to linger over the famous, haunting piles of shoes, glasses, toothbrushes. This seems to be his purpose too. To tell the world. Perhaps we do not know.
This is an exhausting film, not least for its length. It wears down our defenses through sheer duration. It is not a film which inspired shock and horror for me. It was too slow for that. Rather, it inspired a sort of reeling, numb resignation. There is so much to see and to know, and we know there is yet more that is lost forever. This is difficult for me. In my weakness I eagerly anticipate a return to more facile fare, to films where twist endings can be considered daring and where ghosts and zombies can be considered terrifying.
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 15, 2013
Shoah (Attempt 2)
Second crack at Shoah. I'm not 6 hours, 30 minutes in (3 hours to go!)
The repetition of atrocities is getting to me. If it were the same story over and over, I imagine I'd eventually get bored but the variety of plot and intensity of the stories ensures things never get predictable. The stories are told over footage of reenactment on over-grown ruins. At one point, we re-walk the steps of new arrivals at Auschwitz.
I was particularly struck by one segment following a survivor brought back to his home village. He used to sing on barges piloted by the Germans, so they let him live longer. Of course, they still put a bullet in his head later, but he somehow survived this and therefore the war. He re-enacts his singing on the barges and is later surrounded by Christian Poles as they celebrate the Madonna's birthday. The film maker asks the Poles about a massacre which had happened in the town. He asks them about the quality of the screaming of the victims, about their professions and how long they had to wait, trapped in this very church. The conversation moves on to antisemitism in the general populous and how much gold all the Jews had. The camera tightens in on the survivors face and he is smiling, seemingly untouched by everything around him.
Another memorable scene is recounted by a barber. He recalls cutting the hair of the women in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The film maker mercilessly grills him about his feelings and he finally admits 'look, it was hard to feel anything back then.' Feelings were a luxury that he could not afford. He breaks down as he recounts how one of the other barbers cut the hair of his own wife and sister.
The film maker is merciless not only to the survivors but to the ex-Nazis as well. He aggressively grills the man I thought was an official in the last attempt (it turns out he was a not-very-high-up guard) refusing to believe him when he claims that women were not beaten at his location. He concedes that they were 'undoubtedly' beaten at the mouth of the gas chambers but, he insists, not before!
A deeply depressing film. There is no one scene that I could show in isolation which would convey this awfulness to you. The horror of this film comes from the endless, numbing parade of new information. It's enough to wear down anybody. Not visceral enough to be stomach-turning, it instead works on our ability to meditate on information. Enough.
The repetition of atrocities is getting to me. If it were the same story over and over, I imagine I'd eventually get bored but the variety of plot and intensity of the stories ensures things never get predictable. The stories are told over footage of reenactment on over-grown ruins. At one point, we re-walk the steps of new arrivals at Auschwitz.
I was particularly struck by one segment following a survivor brought back to his home village. He used to sing on barges piloted by the Germans, so they let him live longer. Of course, they still put a bullet in his head later, but he somehow survived this and therefore the war. He re-enacts his singing on the barges and is later surrounded by Christian Poles as they celebrate the Madonna's birthday. The film maker asks the Poles about a massacre which had happened in the town. He asks them about the quality of the screaming of the victims, about their professions and how long they had to wait, trapped in this very church. The conversation moves on to antisemitism in the general populous and how much gold all the Jews had. The camera tightens in on the survivors face and he is smiling, seemingly untouched by everything around him.
Another memorable scene is recounted by a barber. He recalls cutting the hair of the women in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The film maker mercilessly grills him about his feelings and he finally admits 'look, it was hard to feel anything back then.' Feelings were a luxury that he could not afford. He breaks down as he recounts how one of the other barbers cut the hair of his own wife and sister.
The film maker is merciless not only to the survivors but to the ex-Nazis as well. He aggressively grills the man I thought was an official in the last attempt (it turns out he was a not-very-high-up guard) refusing to believe him when he claims that women were not beaten at his location. He concedes that they were 'undoubtedly' beaten at the mouth of the gas chambers but, he insists, not before!
A deeply depressing film. There is no one scene that I could show in isolation which would convey this awfulness to you. The horror of this film comes from the endless, numbing parade of new information. It's enough to wear down anybody. Not visceral enough to be stomach-turning, it instead works on our ability to meditate on information. Enough.
Dec 14, 2013
Shoah (Attempt 1)
Had my first attempt at defeating Shoah. This film is a documentary about the holocaust which is 566 minutes (or about 9 and a half hours) long. So far I'm 2 hours, 15 minutes in (7h 30min left to go!)
The film is shot in a sombre, relaxed style which reminds me of Tarkovski's work. The film maker mercifully uses mostly interviews to tell his story. He speaks with Polish farmers who lived near Auschwitz and another death-camp town (whose name I didn't recognize) along with interviews of survivors and people who were more intimately involved (such as a train operator. He reveals that the Germans paid him in vodka which he required to be able to ignore the screams coming from his cargo. Other trains' operators were not so lucky.) These interviews are played over and intercut with footage of overgrown train platforms and forests that once housed mass graves, along with some cemetery memorials.
The interviews seem to be in a rough chronological order, first interviewing the train operator and asking survivors about conditions in the ghettos and on the train (apparently french Jews were delivered by passenger car, as opposed to the usual cattle-cars. They point out the grotesque irony of women applying makeup before disembarking at their death camp.) We'll see how far we progress in this manner. We've just started interviewing an official of some kind. He begs the filmmaker not to use his name and we see him being filmed with the aid of some surveillance van. There's reference to what was said at his trial. So far he has told about women mercy-killing their children. We'll see what else he has to say.
The film sports grainy footage and slightly shoddy subtitles. I'm mostly struck by the decay of information on display here. The film maker is sometimes annoyingly obsessed with details. Where exactly did they pile clothing? What did that Polish man mean by the finger-across-throat gesture? This obsession is understandable however when we see what he's up against. The Poles he interviews via a French translator, (cruelly extending the length of the film and) adding yet another layer of lossy translation that must be done. The survivors sometimes refuse to speak or give contradictory accounts. Everything he discusses has happened 30 or 40 years ago and is overgrown sometimes unto obscurity. This is all beside the point of course, but it's something I thought about.
I will continue with further installments when I can. I intend to see this in one shot, so to speak, not interrupting it with any other films from my lists.
The film is shot in a sombre, relaxed style which reminds me of Tarkovski's work. The film maker mercifully uses mostly interviews to tell his story. He speaks with Polish farmers who lived near Auschwitz and another death-camp town (whose name I didn't recognize) along with interviews of survivors and people who were more intimately involved (such as a train operator. He reveals that the Germans paid him in vodka which he required to be able to ignore the screams coming from his cargo. Other trains' operators were not so lucky.) These interviews are played over and intercut with footage of overgrown train platforms and forests that once housed mass graves, along with some cemetery memorials.
The interviews seem to be in a rough chronological order, first interviewing the train operator and asking survivors about conditions in the ghettos and on the train (apparently french Jews were delivered by passenger car, as opposed to the usual cattle-cars. They point out the grotesque irony of women applying makeup before disembarking at their death camp.) We'll see how far we progress in this manner. We've just started interviewing an official of some kind. He begs the filmmaker not to use his name and we see him being filmed with the aid of some surveillance van. There's reference to what was said at his trial. So far he has told about women mercy-killing their children. We'll see what else he has to say.
The film sports grainy footage and slightly shoddy subtitles. I'm mostly struck by the decay of information on display here. The film maker is sometimes annoyingly obsessed with details. Where exactly did they pile clothing? What did that Polish man mean by the finger-across-throat gesture? This obsession is understandable however when we see what he's up against. The Poles he interviews via a French translator, (cruelly extending the length of the film and) adding yet another layer of lossy translation that must be done. The survivors sometimes refuse to speak or give contradictory accounts. Everything he discusses has happened 30 or 40 years ago and is overgrown sometimes unto obscurity. This is all beside the point of course, but it's something I thought about.
I will continue with further installments when I can. I intend to see this in one shot, so to speak, not interrupting it with any other films from my lists.
Dec 13, 2013
Chungking Express
Saw Chungking Express. It was great! A Wong Kar-wai film, it has the loopy vague feel of good music. This feel dovetails nicely with the confusing and meandering love stories the film tells. Both revolve around cops trying to get over a woman.
The first one occupies the first half-hour and revolves around "Cop 223" (which character also appears in the also excellent Fallen Angels) who is trying to get over his ex girlfriend, May. She dumped him on April 1st and he assumed it was a joke. When he realizes it's not a joke he continues to self-defensively act flip about the dump. She liked pineapples, so he buys cans of pineapples every day, making sure that their expiration date is the 1st of May. Eventually, it is May 1st and he upsets his stomach, gorging on now-expired pineapple. His ex is his world and his world is expired food. Even the homeless reject rotten food.
The second story revolves around a cop who is beloved by a girl who works at a fast-food bar. She gets hold of a duplicate set of keys to his apartment and sneaks in, redecorating. She replaces his soap with a new bar, puts new clothes in his closets, replaces his ratty dish-cloth. He reacts to this by scolding his soap for letting itself go and becoming fat. He stoically reminds his washcloth, as it drips in his hand, that it may change its appearance but it cries just as easily as ever. He is of course only talking to himself. His admirer is fixing him up the best way she can, but he is resisting the change, preferring instead to wallow in a sentimental sorrow.
As you can see, there's a good dose of whimsy going on here, but it never gets oppressive. It's nicely balanced by excellent atmosphere and a sense of laugh-so-you-don't-cry heartbreak. The ridiculousness of a house-breaking romance and a pineapple addict distract from the kind of miserably sad romances. This film was an excellent companion for my free-floating pre-winter blues. It's a movie that, despite its deeply felt melancholy, feels very cozy to me. It's like a sappy sad pop song after a breakup. Just perfect.
The first one occupies the first half-hour and revolves around "Cop 223" (which character also appears in the also excellent Fallen Angels) who is trying to get over his ex girlfriend, May. She dumped him on April 1st and he assumed it was a joke. When he realizes it's not a joke he continues to self-defensively act flip about the dump. She liked pineapples, so he buys cans of pineapples every day, making sure that their expiration date is the 1st of May. Eventually, it is May 1st and he upsets his stomach, gorging on now-expired pineapple. His ex is his world and his world is expired food. Even the homeless reject rotten food.
The second story revolves around a cop who is beloved by a girl who works at a fast-food bar. She gets hold of a duplicate set of keys to his apartment and sneaks in, redecorating. She replaces his soap with a new bar, puts new clothes in his closets, replaces his ratty dish-cloth. He reacts to this by scolding his soap for letting itself go and becoming fat. He stoically reminds his washcloth, as it drips in his hand, that it may change its appearance but it cries just as easily as ever. He is of course only talking to himself. His admirer is fixing him up the best way she can, but he is resisting the change, preferring instead to wallow in a sentimental sorrow.
As you can see, there's a good dose of whimsy going on here, but it never gets oppressive. It's nicely balanced by excellent atmosphere and a sense of laugh-so-you-don't-cry heartbreak. The ridiculousness of a house-breaking romance and a pineapple addict distract from the kind of miserably sad romances. This film was an excellent companion for my free-floating pre-winter blues. It's a movie that, despite its deeply felt melancholy, feels very cozy to me. It's like a sappy sad pop song after a breakup. Just perfect.
Dec 12, 2013
Bunraku
Saw Bunraku (thanks, Basil!) It was an excessive film. It was lit in harsh, ugly, clashing colors with a heavy dose of chiaroscuro on a set that looks like slightly tamed German expressionism with characters that are explicitly cardboard cut-out archetypes. The film merrily mixes cowboy, samurai, and circus imagery with martial arts, comic books and just a hint of video-game, all with a kooky swing-dance soundtrack. I feel nerd-bated in a way that's only mostly pleasant. This film looses a lot by being on my little screen. There were a few scenes I could tell were supposed to overwhelm me, but of course it's hard for 1 square foot of monitor to overwhelm.
The plot is a giant mishmash of stuff. Set in the post-apocalyptic future a cowboy and a samurai team up to take down the evil big boss of the city who is a woodcutter because a reaper would be too obvious. The townsfolk are helping via some kind of resistance and there are rival gangs tearing up neighborhoods. There's a lot of unnecessary stuff going on and I wonder if it was released with an accompanying comic book (ala Southland Tales, another beautiful mess.)
There's some pretensions to an epic good-vs-evil, allegorical reading of the film (the characters are both sent by their fathers and talk of being Men. The narrator claims this to be a universal, timeless story.) but really it has all the depth of a magician's stage patter. It's there primarily to bamboozle you into accepting a town with a wild west district (called Little Westworld, cutely.) and for getting your brain to sit down and let your eyes see. This is kind of a pity because the whole mess of violently different plots and settings winds up becoming kind of flatly homogeneous instead of the interesting collage I wanted.
My enjoyment suffers a bit due to jaded cynicism (as I say, I felt bated for some of the film. I would have enjoyed it better when I was younger and more willing to be manipulated.) and my itty-bitty screen, but even so, the film was delightfully ridiculous and pretty to look at. Like a roller coaster, it's a wild ride that's mighty pushy but fun while it lasts.
PS - The film stars Gackt, who is the prettiest dude on earth. Final Fantasy characters are based off of him, that's how inhumanly pretty this dude is.
The plot is a giant mishmash of stuff. Set in the post-apocalyptic future a cowboy and a samurai team up to take down the evil big boss of the city who is a woodcutter because a reaper would be too obvious. The townsfolk are helping via some kind of resistance and there are rival gangs tearing up neighborhoods. There's a lot of unnecessary stuff going on and I wonder if it was released with an accompanying comic book (ala Southland Tales, another beautiful mess.)
There's some pretensions to an epic good-vs-evil, allegorical reading of the film (the characters are both sent by their fathers and talk of being Men. The narrator claims this to be a universal, timeless story.) but really it has all the depth of a magician's stage patter. It's there primarily to bamboozle you into accepting a town with a wild west district (called Little Westworld, cutely.) and for getting your brain to sit down and let your eyes see. This is kind of a pity because the whole mess of violently different plots and settings winds up becoming kind of flatly homogeneous instead of the interesting collage I wanted.
My enjoyment suffers a bit due to jaded cynicism (as I say, I felt bated for some of the film. I would have enjoyed it better when I was younger and more willing to be manipulated.) and my itty-bitty screen, but even so, the film was delightfully ridiculous and pretty to look at. Like a roller coaster, it's a wild ride that's mighty pushy but fun while it lasts.
PS - The film stars Gackt, who is the prettiest dude on earth. Final Fantasy characters are based off of him, that's how inhumanly pretty this dude is.
Dec 11, 2013
Vernon, Florida
Saw Vernon, Florida, an Errol Morris film. His documentaries are tough for me. They usually have no agenda and are not seeking to educate except in the broadest sense. They defy easy categorization and that makes them fairly puzzling. This time we're interviewing the retired and bored inhabitants of the tiny town of Vernon, Florida. They talk of wild animals and god. Probably the best sequences are those with a wild turkey hunter who speaks lovingly and lyrically of his times hunting turkeys. There is also an old man who freely associates from stars to the future to politics. There is an old couple near the end who talk of sand which they possibly believe is actually alive. A preacher has a rambling, pointless sermon about the exact definition of 'therefore,' a word which appears "over 119 times" in the bible.
Apart from slightly ugly hick gawking (which I may be more guilty of than Morris,) I don't know what this film is doing. This could be used to discuss the simultaneous adulation and condemnation of small-town America, but I don't think that that was it's purpose specifically. This film is like a tree in a forest, complete and functional but without point or reason. It's a kind of pleasant meander while it lasts, I just wish I could penetrate it a bit more. I'm confused.
Apart from slightly ugly hick gawking (which I may be more guilty of than Morris,) I don't know what this film is doing. This could be used to discuss the simultaneous adulation and condemnation of small-town America, but I don't think that that was it's purpose specifically. This film is like a tree in a forest, complete and functional but without point or reason. It's a kind of pleasant meander while it lasts, I just wish I could penetrate it a bit more. I'm confused.
Dec 10, 2013
Greenberg
Saw Greenberg, an indie-feeling movie. That is to say, a film of semi-restrained performances and dealing with romance in these arch, modern times. It stars an incredibly distracting Ben Stiller who plays an aging rocker who has become a mental-case and also a carpenter. So self-absorbed is he, he writes letters to the editor and mails virulent complaints to any corporation that crosses his path. He does not drive but casually volunteers his friends to give other friends rides. He only listens to music of the 70s and 80s which I think is meant to be symptomatic of his habitual retreat into younger, happier, more promise-filled times. Near the end of the film, he joins in on a party with a bunch of teenagers and slowly, painfully, warms to their attention before suddenly realizing that they are laughing not with but at him and that they regard him (though not consciously) as some absurd and marvelous horror.
His romantic foil is a laid back/possibly spineless woman, Flo (as in 'go with the') who is the caretaker of his (far richer) brother's house. She tries to help out the obviously damaged Stiller without getting too hurt herself. She sometimes flirts dangerously close to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype (I shamelessly steal this notion from Nathan Rabin) but seems fully real enough and does retreat when the going becomes emotionally abusive, so she's believable at least, if perhaps not likely. She personifies the relaxed acceptance of youth and of the west coast (where this movie is emphatically set) and is set in healing opposition to Stiller's neurotic, egocentric east coast self.
There's also a subplot with a dog and Stiller's old band-mate but enough about the plot. The film is just really well observed. It has all of these little clues into the scarey mystery of Stiller's character. He's the frustrated and desperate future that lies in wait for all of us, if we're not careful. He is self-obsessed but not self-aware. I was extremely discomfited to see more than a little of myself in him. Thanks for the rides everyone, btw!
His romantic foil is a laid back/possibly spineless woman, Flo (as in 'go with the') who is the caretaker of his (far richer) brother's house. She tries to help out the obviously damaged Stiller without getting too hurt herself. She sometimes flirts dangerously close to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype (I shamelessly steal this notion from Nathan Rabin) but seems fully real enough and does retreat when the going becomes emotionally abusive, so she's believable at least, if perhaps not likely. She personifies the relaxed acceptance of youth and of the west coast (where this movie is emphatically set) and is set in healing opposition to Stiller's neurotic, egocentric east coast self.
There's also a subplot with a dog and Stiller's old band-mate but enough about the plot. The film is just really well observed. It has all of these little clues into the scarey mystery of Stiller's character. He's the frustrated and desperate future that lies in wait for all of us, if we're not careful. He is self-obsessed but not self-aware. I was extremely discomfited to see more than a little of myself in him. Thanks for the rides everyone, btw!
Dec 9, 2013
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Saw The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a film by the Powell/Pressburger duo. I'd read somewhere that they sought to bring the outsized passion and drama of the opera to the silver screen. Judging by The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and this film, I'd say they've succeeded. Full of rich color and old-world sentimental emotion, which is all the keener for being slightly hallucinatory, their films are awesome.
This film opens on a war-game just before WW2 where the old bloated Home Guard is up against the sharp-eyed army. The dashing army's general laughingly barges into the private quarters of the Colonel of the home guard to take him prisoner. The Colonel is a fat, bewhiskered old man who bloviates and blusters and is the very image of an old fat pretentious fool. But he is the titular Colonel Blimp (actual name: Clive Candy. I don't know what Colonel Blimp refers to.) and we flash back, back into his past where we get to know him and, after two hours, discover that he is indeed an old fat pretentious fool.
But seeing him as an impetuous youth, growing older and more foolish, we begin to love him. He is idealistic, but the sort of gentlemanly idealist who invites his dueling opponent to drinks after this nasty duel is over with. Later, he cannot believe that after the armistice of WW1 is declared, that the British people are so mean as to still hate the Germans. He is hastily prevented from declaring on radio, shortly before going to war (this time against the Nazis,) that the Nazis are not a chivalrous people and that England would rather be defeated than win by less-than-chivalrous means. He is absurd, but he is grand. He thinks of himself as a common, tough but humble soldier but evokes a fragile ideal of something uniquely and un-ironically British that could barely survive the cruelties of the first world war (it is heavily implied his co-officers in WW1 do not share his ideals re. torture,) and will not survive the second. There is some hysterical business about Nazis here as well ("the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain: Nazism.")
A really moving film. This is what all those lame sincere dramas of the 50s and 60s were trying to imitate.
This film opens on a war-game just before WW2 where the old bloated Home Guard is up against the sharp-eyed army. The dashing army's general laughingly barges into the private quarters of the Colonel of the home guard to take him prisoner. The Colonel is a fat, bewhiskered old man who bloviates and blusters and is the very image of an old fat pretentious fool. But he is the titular Colonel Blimp (actual name: Clive Candy. I don't know what Colonel Blimp refers to.) and we flash back, back into his past where we get to know him and, after two hours, discover that he is indeed an old fat pretentious fool.
But seeing him as an impetuous youth, growing older and more foolish, we begin to love him. He is idealistic, but the sort of gentlemanly idealist who invites his dueling opponent to drinks after this nasty duel is over with. Later, he cannot believe that after the armistice of WW1 is declared, that the British people are so mean as to still hate the Germans. He is hastily prevented from declaring on radio, shortly before going to war (this time against the Nazis,) that the Nazis are not a chivalrous people and that England would rather be defeated than win by less-than-chivalrous means. He is absurd, but he is grand. He thinks of himself as a common, tough but humble soldier but evokes a fragile ideal of something uniquely and un-ironically British that could barely survive the cruelties of the first world war (it is heavily implied his co-officers in WW1 do not share his ideals re. torture,) and will not survive the second. There is some hysterical business about Nazis here as well ("the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain: Nazism.")
A really moving film. This is what all those lame sincere dramas of the 50s and 60s were trying to imitate.
Dec 7, 2013
The Blair Witch Project
Saw The Blair Witch Project. The movie which inspired endless found-footage shakey-cam horror-stravaganzas. Largely it holds up. Having picked up a lot information about the film by osmosis, I can sort of see where the enforced method acting breaks down (they never really explain why they're constantly filming) and where a bit of direction would have come in handy, but this film is very, very committed to the concept which results in some warts-n-all realism. It sounds funny to be complaining about naturalism in a film about a witch, but there it is.
I was impressed by the lack of explanation about the witch. Possibly inhuman, possibly just a lunatic, we don't know. And we don't have jump-shot glances into the witch's face or any silly nonsense like that. I felt oddly comforted because, without music and mostly without direction, this film is necessarily jump-shot free. I'm glad about this because I really can't stand jump-shots. It requires no skill to make me jump at a loud noise. Far better is to inspire creeping dread, as this movie does. I also knew, unfortunately, that no real special effects were available to the filmmakers and that they were smart enough not to rely on creatures, so I knew this would be largely a psychological thriller, which sucks some of the danger out of it.
So not a terrifying film, even to a wimp like me, but well done, smart, and not cheap. The climax is sufficiently frightening and only feels anticlimactic, rather than insulting.
I was impressed by the lack of explanation about the witch. Possibly inhuman, possibly just a lunatic, we don't know. And we don't have jump-shot glances into the witch's face or any silly nonsense like that. I felt oddly comforted because, without music and mostly without direction, this film is necessarily jump-shot free. I'm glad about this because I really can't stand jump-shots. It requires no skill to make me jump at a loud noise. Far better is to inspire creeping dread, as this movie does. I also knew, unfortunately, that no real special effects were available to the filmmakers and that they were smart enough not to rely on creatures, so I knew this would be largely a psychological thriller, which sucks some of the danger out of it.
So not a terrifying film, even to a wimp like me, but well done, smart, and not cheap. The climax is sufficiently frightening and only feels anticlimactic, rather than insulting.
Dec 6, 2013
Badlands
Saw Badlands (thanks, Steve!) It was like the picnic scene from Bonnie and Clyde (67) stretched out to 90 minutes. Full of strange poignant moments, it celebrates the idea of the outlaw, though not the reality. It was deliberate but not boring, full of steady shots and declarative voice-over from the Bonnie character that is lyrical and slightly opaque. The pair seems to drift into a life of crime, going on the lam because it is the most logical next step, rather than because of any desire for notoriety or anything like that. In another life, they both might have been perfectly happy and law abiding.
The film is directed Terrence Malick, of recent Tree of Life fame. I'd only seen his film The New World which I found also deliberate, but sleepier than this one. The wild beauty of nature is on great display and after the pair go on the road, the film becomes almost a series of vignettes. It neither glamorizes nor condemns the pair, eschewing their growing notoriety and their daily struggles in favor of documenting their idle time and their half-understood (and high-school-ishly half-developed) inner lives.
Unfortunately, though I enjoyed the film there's not much I can easily grab on to to tease it apart. There was only one concrete thing I didn't understand and that was the fish on the bedside table near the beginning of the film. There's a catfish on the nightstand. I've no idea why. Apart from that uncharacteristic absurdity, this film is too amorphous for me to attack. I don't know why but it leaves me feeling confused and pleasantly unsettled, as though I'd seen a magic trick. If I hadn't just seen a good movie, I'd be pretty aggravated at the failure of my powers of analysis.
The film is directed Terrence Malick, of recent Tree of Life fame. I'd only seen his film The New World which I found also deliberate, but sleepier than this one. The wild beauty of nature is on great display and after the pair go on the road, the film becomes almost a series of vignettes. It neither glamorizes nor condemns the pair, eschewing their growing notoriety and their daily struggles in favor of documenting their idle time and their half-understood (and high-school-ishly half-developed) inner lives.
Unfortunately, though I enjoyed the film there's not much I can easily grab on to to tease it apart. There was only one concrete thing I didn't understand and that was the fish on the bedside table near the beginning of the film. There's a catfish on the nightstand. I've no idea why. Apart from that uncharacteristic absurdity, this film is too amorphous for me to attack. I don't know why but it leaves me feeling confused and pleasantly unsettled, as though I'd seen a magic trick. If I hadn't just seen a good movie, I'd be pretty aggravated at the failure of my powers of analysis.
Dec 5, 2013
Vendredi Soir
Saw Vendredi Soir. It opens on beautiful shots of the rooftops of Paris. They are deliberate, slow, and kind of cold. We pan slowly to street level to see the chaotic motion of sped-up cars and pedestrians. The slow, measured shot was in fast motion the whole time. The film is like that, a collection of interesting little contradictions. The film is lyrical and ever so slightly magical but always a bit chilly, a bit remote.
The plot follows a woman who is moving. She packs up and takes stock of her possessions, she loads her car full of boxes, and instantly gets stuck in horrible, miles-long bumper-to-bumper traffic. On a generous whim she invites a man into her car. There's a feeling of isolation, like their car is an island at sea and they are the only man, the only woman. We see into shops and into other cars which are their own plexiglass islands with their own inhabitants. The man and woman in the car are together and apart from the world. They are attracted to each other but their romance has a desperate feel to it. Less a consummation of passion than a sharing of loneliness.
The woman is the central character and she's often shot like a figure in an oil painting, beautiful and composed, but still and kind of arid. We are let inside her imagination here and there. At one point the logo on the bumper of the car in front of her dances to the music on her radio. A lampshade magically jumps onto a lamp, which turns on. There's a bit of whimsy and delight which saves this from being an absolute existential bore, but the black of night hovers nearby and things never really get truly heart-warming.
I admit, I fell victim to my favorite vice of nodding off while watching this slow, deliberately paced film, so my analysis may be a bit off (or, you know, I'm just not seeing what's right before my eyes, as usual) but I found the film very pretty, ever-so-slightly magical and interestingly cold.
The plot follows a woman who is moving. She packs up and takes stock of her possessions, she loads her car full of boxes, and instantly gets stuck in horrible, miles-long bumper-to-bumper traffic. On a generous whim she invites a man into her car. There's a feeling of isolation, like their car is an island at sea and they are the only man, the only woman. We see into shops and into other cars which are their own plexiglass islands with their own inhabitants. The man and woman in the car are together and apart from the world. They are attracted to each other but their romance has a desperate feel to it. Less a consummation of passion than a sharing of loneliness.
The woman is the central character and she's often shot like a figure in an oil painting, beautiful and composed, but still and kind of arid. We are let inside her imagination here and there. At one point the logo on the bumper of the car in front of her dances to the music on her radio. A lampshade magically jumps onto a lamp, which turns on. There's a bit of whimsy and delight which saves this from being an absolute existential bore, but the black of night hovers nearby and things never really get truly heart-warming.
I admit, I fell victim to my favorite vice of nodding off while watching this slow, deliberately paced film, so my analysis may be a bit off (or, you know, I'm just not seeing what's right before my eyes, as usual) but I found the film very pretty, ever-so-slightly magical and interestingly cold.
Dec 4, 2013
Stranger Than Paradise
Saw Stranger Than Paradise, a Jim Jarmusch film about trio of kids. A Hungarian guy, his pretty and incredibly self-possessed cousin, and his friend who has a kind of crush on the cousin. They hang out in various locations and hatch schemes to make money. The film is almost perverse in the un-exciting-ness of its storytelling. They plan to go the racetrack, but we don't see their adventures there. Rather, we stay with the cousin who is left behind in the hotel. Eventually we see the fallout of the racetrack adventure, but not before we get to really feel the lolling indolent boredom of the stranded cousin.
Shot on a shoestring, talky but listless, this film feels like the immediate ancestor of the mumble-core films. It's very arch and deadpan, like a cool kid in high school. This film comes from a list of "hipster" movies but I think this one is the first film to really nail that "hip" feel of listlessness and disaffection. Unfortunately, the film is very low-key and your enjoyment of it depends very much on how inaccessible and dry you like your entertainment. This film is dry like a wine, bitter but subtle and complex. Also like wine, enough will make you feel sleepy.
As an aside, I was very entertained by the Hungarian dude's Hungarian aunt who furiously speaks in rapid Hungarian and industriously feeds them soup. Having Hungarian grandparents myself, I was able to make out a word here or there and it made me happy.
Shot on a shoestring, talky but listless, this film feels like the immediate ancestor of the mumble-core films. It's very arch and deadpan, like a cool kid in high school. This film comes from a list of "hipster" movies but I think this one is the first film to really nail that "hip" feel of listlessness and disaffection. Unfortunately, the film is very low-key and your enjoyment of it depends very much on how inaccessible and dry you like your entertainment. This film is dry like a wine, bitter but subtle and complex. Also like wine, enough will make you feel sleepy.
As an aside, I was very entertained by the Hungarian dude's Hungarian aunt who furiously speaks in rapid Hungarian and industriously feeds them soup. Having Hungarian grandparents myself, I was able to make out a word here or there and it made me happy.
Dec 3, 2013
Mean Streets
Saw Mean Streets, a colorful film by Scorsese. It followed the adventures of a small-time businessman on the fringes of organized crime. His hands are clean, but his friends' hands are not. He struggles to get ahead and to help his gambling-addicted relation (their precise relationship was probably explained, but I missed its exact nature) to stay straight. I may be reading too much into this film (I don't really like gangster films and was idly digging into its (possibly imagined) symbolism) but I felt this struggle is given a slightly religious tinge. Several times, Roman Catholic imagery is shown (which may be unavoidable in an accurate portrayal of Italian-American life) and the protagonist loudly proclaims that "St Francis of Assisi had the right idea." Familial relationships are prominent, references to fathers especially, and the protagonist is (shall we say) quite self-sacrificing. Especially when it comes to his gambling friend.
The protagonist is fascinated by the concept of hell, going so far as to often stick his hand into open flames, perhaps to simulate the inferno. He talks also of the spiritual hell which seems, for him, to take the form of constant, low-grade desperation. He seems trapped by tradition and obligation, trapped in a relationship with a woman he doesn't particularly like and kowtowing to his mob-boss uncle for favors and handouts. He wants to talk back, against these impositions, but stops his mouth with a fiery red napkin.
The film is gorgeously colored, technicolor (possibly) being still new and exciting at this point, and I noticed a theme of red white and blue throughout the film. the film opens on a random junky in a blue jean jacket worn over a red-n-white stripped shirt and ends with a doctor in white, a cop in blue, and red blood. The gangsters seem to inhabit clubs lit entirely by infernal red lights. At one point they take a walk through a graveyard of very white stones, perhaps symbolizing death or purity. I don't know what all of this is in aid of however, beyond a sort of "Look! This is America!" message, which I think is a bit silly (America is pretty much just gangsters having a hard life, didn't you know?) but I am smug in my identification of this theme, so I won't complain. Also, by the way, there's some nice long-takes, if you're into that.
A brutish film about brutish men. I didn't really like it, but it was smarter than it seemed at first blush and well done.
The protagonist is fascinated by the concept of hell, going so far as to often stick his hand into open flames, perhaps to simulate the inferno. He talks also of the spiritual hell which seems, for him, to take the form of constant, low-grade desperation. He seems trapped by tradition and obligation, trapped in a relationship with a woman he doesn't particularly like and kowtowing to his mob-boss uncle for favors and handouts. He wants to talk back, against these impositions, but stops his mouth with a fiery red napkin.
The film is gorgeously colored, technicolor (possibly) being still new and exciting at this point, and I noticed a theme of red white and blue throughout the film. the film opens on a random junky in a blue jean jacket worn over a red-n-white stripped shirt and ends with a doctor in white, a cop in blue, and red blood. The gangsters seem to inhabit clubs lit entirely by infernal red lights. At one point they take a walk through a graveyard of very white stones, perhaps symbolizing death or purity. I don't know what all of this is in aid of however, beyond a sort of "Look! This is America!" message, which I think is a bit silly (America is pretty much just gangsters having a hard life, didn't you know?) but I am smug in my identification of this theme, so I won't complain. Also, by the way, there's some nice long-takes, if you're into that.
A brutish film about brutish men. I didn't really like it, but it was smarter than it seemed at first blush and well done.
Dec 2, 2013
The Killing
Saw The Killing, a heist film by Kubrick. It has his usual brilliant shooting and clever plot. The film jumps forward and back in time, nervously and obsessively detailing the characters' movements. They are attempting a very complex robbery of a racetrack and twice they walk by the track's spectators who are gazing with open mouths at the race, almost as we viewers are staring in wrapped fascination at this film. This is a sort of joke on us viewers, I think, but it's so damn clever that I don't mind it a bit. There's a more obvious, but more clever pseudo-joke involving a horseshoe that I don't want to spoil, but it's brilliant.
The imagery of characters behind bars is repeated so many times, it's a motif unto itself. Chain link fences, rungs of a staircase, the crossbeams of a window, venetian blinds, a bird in a cage, even the habitual plaid shirts of one of the conspirators. All of the conspirators are locked into this scheme in some way. The film even opens by explaining via (a very disdainful sounding) narrator that one conspirator feels he is as responsible for his actions as a puzzle-piece is responsible for the image it produces (another bit of locking in but with an added bonus-promise of a puzzle to be pieced together.)
One man's wife needs an operation, one man needs money to get married, one man needs it to make his shrew of a wife happy. This last wife is a prominent character. Tellingly, she owns the fore-mentioned birdcage and about her bed is a collection of oriental ornaments. Like a concubine, she exploits sex to manipulate men into doing her bidding. Her husband is put in the painful position of having two masters.
The cinematography is flawless. When the conspirators conspire, they are always lit from directly overhead, making them look nervy and claustrophobic. They are often shot from below and against black, making the characters seem remote and sinister and yet kind of lost. When the money is being stuffed into bags, it's loose and unstacked, making the cash spill everywhere in great plumes, demonstrating its great abundance. Two characters bookend the words "The End" in the final shot, a perfect little diorama to end this little Swiss watch of a film. Very clever, very subtle, and a lot of fun to spot little trends and cute flourishes (even if, as I freely admit, some of those flourishes perhaps exist solely in my own head.)
The imagery of characters behind bars is repeated so many times, it's a motif unto itself. Chain link fences, rungs of a staircase, the crossbeams of a window, venetian blinds, a bird in a cage, even the habitual plaid shirts of one of the conspirators. All of the conspirators are locked into this scheme in some way. The film even opens by explaining via (a very disdainful sounding) narrator that one conspirator feels he is as responsible for his actions as a puzzle-piece is responsible for the image it produces (another bit of locking in but with an added bonus-promise of a puzzle to be pieced together.)
One man's wife needs an operation, one man needs money to get married, one man needs it to make his shrew of a wife happy. This last wife is a prominent character. Tellingly, she owns the fore-mentioned birdcage and about her bed is a collection of oriental ornaments. Like a concubine, she exploits sex to manipulate men into doing her bidding. Her husband is put in the painful position of having two masters.
The cinematography is flawless. When the conspirators conspire, they are always lit from directly overhead, making them look nervy and claustrophobic. They are often shot from below and against black, making the characters seem remote and sinister and yet kind of lost. When the money is being stuffed into bags, it's loose and unstacked, making the cash spill everywhere in great plumes, demonstrating its great abundance. Two characters bookend the words "The End" in the final shot, a perfect little diorama to end this little Swiss watch of a film. Very clever, very subtle, and a lot of fun to spot little trends and cute flourishes (even if, as I freely admit, some of those flourishes perhaps exist solely in my own head.)
Dec 1, 2013
Shaolin Soccer
Saw Shaolin Soccer (Thanks, Basil!) It was the source of this reaction face (if you're into that sort of thing.) It was a hilarious Chinese comedy about a rag-tag troupe of secret Kung-Fu masters, currently stuck in various dead-end jobs, who band together to form a soccer team to fight the villainous Team Evil. The comedy is silly and absurd. At one point they have a practice match against a team of street thugs. Their leader is a pencil-necked nerd who wields a ball-peen hammer on the pitch. The Kung-Fu masters, full of naive high hopes, are decimated by the evil thugs. (This is early on in the movie. They haven't had the getting-stronger montage yet.) Their leader, the forward kicker, crawls along with a broken leg, other players' feet and arms flailing around him. Bullets whiz overhead as he crawls through mud under barbed wire, calling frantically for back-up on the radio.
This kind of gutsy, free-association nonsense is exactly the kind of absurd comedy I love. There is a dream-logic to it that almost makes sense. Later on they fight a team composed of teenage girls wearing false mustaches. This is played straight and, apart from the inherent absurdity of the premise, is not used as a punchline. As far as we know, the film-makers could only get girls that day. Hilarious.
Of course there's also the typical Asian hyper-drama, but the operatically overblown emotions only serve to make this feel like a yet more surreal parody of life. There is also the apparently typical xenophobia (which I guess is a trend in Chinese movies, unfortunately.) It turns out Team Evil has been cheating by using American steroids which give them the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon-style powers of flight and superhuman poise. This can also be deliciously absurd to the American viewer if you forget the relative seriousness that I believe the Chinese viewer would receive it with.
A hilarious movie with nothing more on its mind than absurdity and laughs. It is broad enough to translate well, but not so broad as to be boring. It's surprising and stupid. I liked it.
This kind of gutsy, free-association nonsense is exactly the kind of absurd comedy I love. There is a dream-logic to it that almost makes sense. Later on they fight a team composed of teenage girls wearing false mustaches. This is played straight and, apart from the inherent absurdity of the premise, is not used as a punchline. As far as we know, the film-makers could only get girls that day. Hilarious.
Of course there's also the typical Asian hyper-drama, but the operatically overblown emotions only serve to make this feel like a yet more surreal parody of life. There is also the apparently typical xenophobia (which I guess is a trend in Chinese movies, unfortunately.) It turns out Team Evil has been cheating by using American steroids which give them the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon-style powers of flight and superhuman poise. This can also be deliciously absurd to the American viewer if you forget the relative seriousness that I believe the Chinese viewer would receive it with.
A hilarious movie with nothing more on its mind than absurdity and laughs. It is broad enough to translate well, but not so broad as to be boring. It's surprising and stupid. I liked it.
Nov 30, 2013
Fog of War
Saw Fog of War. It was a fascinating equivocation by Robert McNamera, the Secretary of Defense during Vietnam. The filmmaker's (Errol Morris) and McNamera's interests in making this film dovetail in an effort to understand and explain the colossal quagmire that was Vietnam, but are opposed when it comes to McNamera himself. Morris wants to understand him and open him up, while McNamera, seasoned pro at press conference cross-examinations, deflects and counters these questions while freely admitting he is doing so. The film is slightly dry, but I was thankfully alert enough to be interested and fascinated anyway. Morris has a nose for poignant images and intersperses McNamera's talking head with Koyaanisqatsi-like images of frantic, densely layered montage (and also some hackneyed domino-falling imagery. When he talks about Vietnam dragging on, we see soldiers trudging through mud up to their waist. Almost like... a quagmire, huh?) at another time he drops a human skull down a flight of stairs simply because the image is striking.
The main thesis of this film seems to be that Vietnam was far too frightfully complex to be easily explained. There was too little information and too many agents working and communicating at cross purposes. There's an incredibly poignant anecdote where McNamera relates a meeting between him and the Prime Minister of Vietnam (the name went by quickly, I believe Đỗ Mười (this was after the war was over)) where they nearly came to blows about the purpose of the fruitless war. The Americans saw it as an extension of the cold war, saving the east from Communism and The Domino Effect (cue falling domino visual) whereas the Vietnamese saw the Americans not as liberators, but as just another colonial power, seeking to subjugate them. They would never ally themselves with the Russians and the Chinese, didn't we know that? The idea that the entire meaningless war could have been avoided if only we had spoken sensibly to each other is tantalizing and infuriating. Very interesting to someone as profoundly ignorant of history as I am.
It's tempting, but I think fruitless to read this film with an eye toward the current troubles in the middle east. To do so is too reductive. McNamera (and Morris, via McNamera) is trying to understand war in general. We are rational people who do not wish to kill each other, McNamera points out, and yet we go to war. He does not ultimately have any simple answers, but argues (convincingly) that no simple answers can exist. Troubling, but honest and true-sounding at least.
The main thesis of this film seems to be that Vietnam was far too frightfully complex to be easily explained. There was too little information and too many agents working and communicating at cross purposes. There's an incredibly poignant anecdote where McNamera relates a meeting between him and the Prime Minister of Vietnam (the name went by quickly, I believe Đỗ Mười (this was after the war was over)) where they nearly came to blows about the purpose of the fruitless war. The Americans saw it as an extension of the cold war, saving the east from Communism and The Domino Effect (cue falling domino visual) whereas the Vietnamese saw the Americans not as liberators, but as just another colonial power, seeking to subjugate them. They would never ally themselves with the Russians and the Chinese, didn't we know that? The idea that the entire meaningless war could have been avoided if only we had spoken sensibly to each other is tantalizing and infuriating. Very interesting to someone as profoundly ignorant of history as I am.
It's tempting, but I think fruitless to read this film with an eye toward the current troubles in the middle east. To do so is too reductive. McNamera (and Morris, via McNamera) is trying to understand war in general. We are rational people who do not wish to kill each other, McNamera points out, and yet we go to war. He does not ultimately have any simple answers, but argues (convincingly) that no simple answers can exist. Troubling, but honest and true-sounding at least.
Nov 19, 2013
500 Days of Summer
Saw 500 Days of Summer. It was a really cute not-really-love story. It not so much about love as about the idea of love. The story follows Tom, a man with a grossly simplistic view of love (evidence of said simplicity to follow.) Tom falls in love with Summer, the titular girl with markedly different (though also immature) views on love. Tom believes in Disney-style love-at-first-sight True Love but Summer, terrified by the divorce of her parents and self-trained in the powers of suppression, believes love does not actually exist in any sense. This difference hews all the way down to their philosophical outlooks. Whereas Tom wants more celebration of what is beautiful in the world, Summer wants more redemption of what is ugly. Of The Beatles, she loves Ringo best simply because nobody else loves him.
Tom is such a romantic that when he has the sex with Summer for the first time, the world erupts into a full-on musical dance number as swooning pop songs play on the soundtrack. He is great at his facile greeting-card job, but avoids working toward a more artistically demanding job as an architect (which is the dream he seems content to continue dreaming about.) We get to know Summer less, but she reveals a bitter-sweet love of the idea of being strong alone which she recognizes as noble and sad.
Together they attempt a fumbling romance wherein both deny their true feelings of affection out of deference to Summer's insecurities but also suppress their fears and doubts for the sake of Tom's delusions. "Why label it?" they keep repeating about their maybe-maybe-not relationship. This is the epitome of the cutesy quirky romance that would never last a month outside of a rom-com and (not a spoiler) they break up after a year. As sometimes happens in life, they argue without arguing and actually swap sides on the romance issue by the end. Tom is the new-born cynic and Summer the romantic true believer. How interesting.
Everyone in this film has a differently flawed take on romance (except the precocious relationship-guru who is Tom's niece or something.) Tom's friends are a chronically dateless schlub and a man who has been dating the same girl since grade school out of apathetic inertia. The boss at the greeting card company has bought into his own flower-scented bullshit long ago. We are given a wide variety of options on the idea of romance but Tom, our avatar, is left confused.
Coming into this movie, I was kind of hell-bent on liking it (for silly reasons) and I succeeded in this endeavor. It's a more philosophical romance (which isn't even really a romance, as the opening narration warns us.) Don't take your smart girls to this one, guys. The conversations it inspires are dangerous first-date material.
Tom is such a romantic that when he has the sex with Summer for the first time, the world erupts into a full-on musical dance number as swooning pop songs play on the soundtrack. He is great at his facile greeting-card job, but avoids working toward a more artistically demanding job as an architect (which is the dream he seems content to continue dreaming about.) We get to know Summer less, but she reveals a bitter-sweet love of the idea of being strong alone which she recognizes as noble and sad.
Together they attempt a fumbling romance wherein both deny their true feelings of affection out of deference to Summer's insecurities but also suppress their fears and doubts for the sake of Tom's delusions. "Why label it?" they keep repeating about their maybe-maybe-not relationship. This is the epitome of the cutesy quirky romance that would never last a month outside of a rom-com and (not a spoiler) they break up after a year. As sometimes happens in life, they argue without arguing and actually swap sides on the romance issue by the end. Tom is the new-born cynic and Summer the romantic true believer. How interesting.
Everyone in this film has a differently flawed take on romance (except the precocious relationship-guru who is Tom's niece or something.) Tom's friends are a chronically dateless schlub and a man who has been dating the same girl since grade school out of apathetic inertia. The boss at the greeting card company has bought into his own flower-scented bullshit long ago. We are given a wide variety of options on the idea of romance but Tom, our avatar, is left confused.
Coming into this movie, I was kind of hell-bent on liking it (for silly reasons) and I succeeded in this endeavor. It's a more philosophical romance (which isn't even really a romance, as the opening narration warns us.) Don't take your smart girls to this one, guys. The conversations it inspires are dangerous first-date material.
Nov 18, 2013
Once Upon a Time in America
Saw Once Upon a Time in America. It was a gangster movie, set during the gangster-sploitation-era of the 20s. The film rocks steadily back and forth through time between the 1900s and the indefinite modern day of the 60s/70s. The protagonist is a gangster named Noodles but played by Robert De Niro, so he's not as wimpy as his name implies. In the past he is a tough kid who drifts into crime, lured by the easy money and relative freedom. He is aided and abetted in this endeavor by his partner in crime, Max, played in the future by James Woods' creepy, alien, cement-like face. Usual gangster business ensues.
They take over their neighborhood from a small-time thug, some guy in a suit says he likes their moxie, they hootingly have their 'first time' with a prostitute etc etc. The story is told from the perspective of the old-man Noodle, remembering his entire life (as people in epic films tend to do (this movie is 229 minutes long, so it counts as an epic, I say.)) The result is that this is all extremely nostalgic. The blood is there in cartoony fire-house red and there's violence, but not many bad times and not much suffering. The most sympathy we ever feel for the victims of the boys is when we hear a news-stand owner lamenting as his stand burns down. This lament is drowned out by the lil rascals' giggling. It's not done in an obvious way, but this is memory lane and Noodles' story. A recurring musical theme in this movie is a schmaltzy version of Yesterday by The Beatles that has violins drowning out everything but the words "Yesterday" and "Suddenly." Even the title! "Once upon a time..."
In all of this sentimentality is the childhood sweetheart of Noodle. She's an ultra-serious girl who wants him to give up his egocentric life of crime for her. This he does not do of course and lives to deeply and centrally regret it. The entire movie is full of regret and strangely full of cruel acts of mercy. The ending in particular hits the revenge-by-mercy nail on the head. It's telling that Noodles' drug of choice is opium, famous for inducing a happy trip through memory lane. There's a sequence near the end that casts a strange ambiguity over the film. Leaving a party, our hero sees a creepy garbage truck go by, followed by a car packed full of drunken party-goers (that are perhaps from another time?) going in the opposite direction. Clearly someone's trying to tell us something.
An interesting take on the gangster genre, especially coming from Sergio Leone, who seems to be really interested in moral ambiguity. I suppose there's a good deal of sympathy for the devil which I normally am annoyed by but this time perhaps I was seduced by the Hallmark treatment of Tommy-guns. The film is more than just sentimentality, but that was the most interesting thing about it for me.
They take over their neighborhood from a small-time thug, some guy in a suit says he likes their moxie, they hootingly have their 'first time' with a prostitute etc etc. The story is told from the perspective of the old-man Noodle, remembering his entire life (as people in epic films tend to do (this movie is 229 minutes long, so it counts as an epic, I say.)) The result is that this is all extremely nostalgic. The blood is there in cartoony fire-house red and there's violence, but not many bad times and not much suffering. The most sympathy we ever feel for the victims of the boys is when we hear a news-stand owner lamenting as his stand burns down. This lament is drowned out by the lil rascals' giggling. It's not done in an obvious way, but this is memory lane and Noodles' story. A recurring musical theme in this movie is a schmaltzy version of Yesterday by The Beatles that has violins drowning out everything but the words "Yesterday" and "Suddenly." Even the title! "Once upon a time..."
In all of this sentimentality is the childhood sweetheart of Noodle. She's an ultra-serious girl who wants him to give up his egocentric life of crime for her. This he does not do of course and lives to deeply and centrally regret it. The entire movie is full of regret and strangely full of cruel acts of mercy. The ending in particular hits the revenge-by-mercy nail on the head. It's telling that Noodles' drug of choice is opium, famous for inducing a happy trip through memory lane. There's a sequence near the end that casts a strange ambiguity over the film. Leaving a party, our hero sees a creepy garbage truck go by, followed by a car packed full of drunken party-goers (that are perhaps from another time?) going in the opposite direction. Clearly someone's trying to tell us something.
An interesting take on the gangster genre, especially coming from Sergio Leone, who seems to be really interested in moral ambiguity. I suppose there's a good deal of sympathy for the devil which I normally am annoyed by but this time perhaps I was seduced by the Hallmark treatment of Tommy-guns. The film is more than just sentimentality, but that was the most interesting thing about it for me.
Nov 17, 2013
Kids
Saw Kids, a film from the writer of Gummo and the director of Bully, so this is gonna be an ugly trip through youth culture. The story follows a loose collection of urban teenagers in New York City (I guess) who skate and hang around parks, smoking pot and hooking up. They seem good natured and obviously think of themselves as friendly but they maybe beat a guy to death for daring to speak angrily to them and they all have this tough attitude, so they're troubled (of course.)
The central two teenagers are Telly and his friend Casper. Telly likes to have sex with virgins and, in a voice-over narration near the end, he reveals that that's sort of all he has in his life, this fascination with deflowering virgin girls. Alright fine whatever but we also learn fairly early on that this Telly has the AIDS and doesn't know it. This lends a yet more sinister edge to his constant talk of bangin' virgins. He is the villain of this piece. The hero is the increasingly partied-out Jenny, the girl who learns he has AIDS by contracting it herself, from him. She follows him from party to party always frustratingly one step behind him.
The whole movie is very frustrating. I'm not sure if this movie is supposed to be just luridly shocking, or some kind of Reefer Madness-style cautionary tale, or some self-righteous head-shaking at the youth of today. Any of these is not exactly flattering goals and I suspect it was actually trying for a combination of all three. This film upset me but that is clearly its aim (to upset,) so well done, I guess. There's an extended sequence of the characters just hanging out which is intersting and kind of pleasant (it reminded me strongly of Chain Camera, but this one is scripted.) This film has the reality and serious tone which the Troma films lack and is therefore actually subversive and kind of dangerous (as opposed to (say) Class of Nuke 'em High.)
This film plays as a very lurid tragedy. It aims to be shocking and in parts it is (although compared to A Serbian Film or Salo of course it is as nothing.) It mainly plays on the hand-wringing fears of parents that their sons and daughters are being lead astray which feels like cheap fear-mongering to me. Instead of scaring parents into locking up their progeny, let's be help everyone understand each other. There's a gross feeling I got that these kids are beyond redemption which is a kind of shitty thing to say and especially about children. I think I'm slightly hysterically reading into the film a bit much (as I say, mission Unsettle The Viewer was a success) but it's the sort of shit-stirring film that invites social-commentary-based readings. Bleh. Review over.
The central two teenagers are Telly and his friend Casper. Telly likes to have sex with virgins and, in a voice-over narration near the end, he reveals that that's sort of all he has in his life, this fascination with deflowering virgin girls. Alright fine whatever but we also learn fairly early on that this Telly has the AIDS and doesn't know it. This lends a yet more sinister edge to his constant talk of bangin' virgins. He is the villain of this piece. The hero is the increasingly partied-out Jenny, the girl who learns he has AIDS by contracting it herself, from him. She follows him from party to party always frustratingly one step behind him.
The whole movie is very frustrating. I'm not sure if this movie is supposed to be just luridly shocking, or some kind of Reefer Madness-style cautionary tale, or some self-righteous head-shaking at the youth of today. Any of these is not exactly flattering goals and I suspect it was actually trying for a combination of all three. This film upset me but that is clearly its aim (to upset,) so well done, I guess. There's an extended sequence of the characters just hanging out which is intersting and kind of pleasant (it reminded me strongly of Chain Camera, but this one is scripted.) This film has the reality and serious tone which the Troma films lack and is therefore actually subversive and kind of dangerous (as opposed to (say) Class of Nuke 'em High.)
This film plays as a very lurid tragedy. It aims to be shocking and in parts it is (although compared to A Serbian Film or Salo of course it is as nothing.) It mainly plays on the hand-wringing fears of parents that their sons and daughters are being lead astray which feels like cheap fear-mongering to me. Instead of scaring parents into locking up their progeny, let's be help everyone understand each other. There's a gross feeling I got that these kids are beyond redemption which is a kind of shitty thing to say and especially about children. I think I'm slightly hysterically reading into the film a bit much (as I say, mission Unsettle The Viewer was a success) but it's the sort of shit-stirring film that invites social-commentary-based readings. Bleh. Review over.
Nov 16, 2013
Chronicle
Saw Chronicle (thanks, Susan!) It followed Andy, a troubled kid with an abusive (step?)father and sick-n-dying mother. He and two other (apparently 30 year old) teenagers happen upon a mysterious, glowing rock in a cave and gain telekinetic abilities. This can only end well. They refine their powers and joke around, mainly using their abilities for pranks. I kept waiting for the trio to start thinking about becoming super-heroes or just, you know, do something with their abilities. They wind up bending their super-powers to the task of making Andy popular and, for a while, succeed.
I remember seeing the trailer for this film and it seemed like it was being marketed as a slight deconstruction of the super-hero genre. Well and good, but this does the film a slight disservice. It is more a teenage power-fantasy (although it is not exactly that either.) It played as a sort of tragedy for me. With my bleeding heart, I wanted Andy to be cared for and loved, but <spoiler>as the film went on, it became more and more clear that this was not going to happen. The film was ultimately more interested in creating and defeating a compelling bad guy than saving the innocent</spoiler>. I don't know how else the film could have ended, however, without feeling like it was cheating us in some way.
Also, when the film ended, I felt like chapter 2 was left as yet unwritten. Do the boys go on to change the world? They claim they will some day, but we never see it. Think how interesting a film about superheroes saving the world would be, if they were to save it from want and poverty. I think I just really wanted this to turn into Miracle Man (which is excellent if you haven't read it.)
The film is also composed entirely of 'found footage' from Andy's camera, and later from news reports. This is a little annoying and seems unnecessary, although some neat visual effects are mined from it. Every time the camera floats out of Andy's hands it seems a little magic. But I wish the film had just adopted the omniscient eye that most movies do.
Make no mistake, I enjoy the film a lot as it stands. It has interesting and believable characters in fantastic situations and usually you get only one or the other. It would have been interesting had it been slightly different, but the same can be said of every film.
I remember seeing the trailer for this film and it seemed like it was being marketed as a slight deconstruction of the super-hero genre. Well and good, but this does the film a slight disservice. It is more a teenage power-fantasy (although it is not exactly that either.) It played as a sort of tragedy for me. With my bleeding heart, I wanted Andy to be cared for and loved, but <spoiler>as the film went on, it became more and more clear that this was not going to happen. The film was ultimately more interested in creating and defeating a compelling bad guy than saving the innocent</spoiler>. I don't know how else the film could have ended, however, without feeling like it was cheating us in some way.
Also, when the film ended, I felt like chapter 2 was left as yet unwritten. Do the boys go on to change the world? They claim they will some day, but we never see it. Think how interesting a film about superheroes saving the world would be, if they were to save it from want and poverty. I think I just really wanted this to turn into Miracle Man (which is excellent if you haven't read it.)
The film is also composed entirely of 'found footage' from Andy's camera, and later from news reports. This is a little annoying and seems unnecessary, although some neat visual effects are mined from it. Every time the camera floats out of Andy's hands it seems a little magic. But I wish the film had just adopted the omniscient eye that most movies do.
Make no mistake, I enjoy the film a lot as it stands. It has interesting and believable characters in fantastic situations and usually you get only one or the other. It would have been interesting had it been slightly different, but the same can be said of every film.
Nov 15, 2013
State and Main
Saw State and Main, a farcical showbiz film about a hoard of Hollywood-types who descend on a sleepy little town straight out of Norman Rockwell. This is written and directed by David Mamet though, so things are a little poisonous, a little dangerous. The film is kept busy and frantic by a motor-mouthed William H Macy (Mamet's muse) and a thronging team of assistants all clamoring for his attention. He must talk a hysterical actress into doing a topless scene while an interviewer is on the phone with him.
Meanwhile, the town is reacting with dull surprise to all the goings on. The ancient farmers change from gently teasing each other to reading Variety and commenting on average view per screen ratings. The local politician, a hideously self-serving ass who is "this close from being this close to being next in line for congress!", reacts with hostility to what is supplanting his role as the mover and shaker. Cleverly, the film has cast famous actors as the Hollywood types and unknowns as the townsfolk.
The central plot of the film revolves around the budding romance of the writer and the local politician's girlfriend, a bookish woman who is constantly adopting an attitude of "gee shucks, us country folk with our wise little ways, huh?" which I imagine must get tiring eventually. The film intelligently avoids the easy sentimentalism of siding with the townsfolk against the Hollywood-ites, rather adopting a more turbulent middle-ground. Of course the actors come off way worse than the townsfolk, but the townies have their failings too. In the Mamet-verse everyone is swinish to various degrees. The nearest thing to a villain in this film (apart from the elemental force of chaos, the engine of all farces) is the local politician, after all.
The dialogue is snappy, the plot constantly frantically spinning, and the underlying juggling act of our interests and alliances as audience members is masterful. Not a brilliant or stuffed-shirt kind of a movie, but very good.
Meanwhile, the town is reacting with dull surprise to all the goings on. The ancient farmers change from gently teasing each other to reading Variety and commenting on average view per screen ratings. The local politician, a hideously self-serving ass who is "this close from being this close to being next in line for congress!", reacts with hostility to what is supplanting his role as the mover and shaker. Cleverly, the film has cast famous actors as the Hollywood types and unknowns as the townsfolk.
The central plot of the film revolves around the budding romance of the writer and the local politician's girlfriend, a bookish woman who is constantly adopting an attitude of "gee shucks, us country folk with our wise little ways, huh?" which I imagine must get tiring eventually. The film intelligently avoids the easy sentimentalism of siding with the townsfolk against the Hollywood-ites, rather adopting a more turbulent middle-ground. Of course the actors come off way worse than the townsfolk, but the townies have their failings too. In the Mamet-verse everyone is swinish to various degrees. The nearest thing to a villain in this film (apart from the elemental force of chaos, the engine of all farces) is the local politician, after all.
The dialogue is snappy, the plot constantly frantically spinning, and the underlying juggling act of our interests and alliances as audience members is masterful. Not a brilliant or stuffed-shirt kind of a movie, but very good.
Nov 14, 2013
Happiness
Saw Happiness. Another Todd Solondz film, he who directed Welcome to the Dollhouse, which I found so painful. This one is similarly a full-blown menagerie of all different kinds of pain. The film surrounds a central trio of sisters. There is a lonely, kind of perpetually embarrassed singer who still lives with her parents, a suburban house-wife who seems to effortlessly and obliviously say the exact cruelest thing in every situation, and a self-absorbed and self-admitted phony of a poet whose cruelty, it seems, has been honed by endless catty luncheons. Their parents are getting divorced, the house-wife is married to a serial child-rapist, the poet's neighbor is a fat Philip Seymour Hoffman who mastuba-prank-calls women all over the state (the state of New Jersey specifically. That state just gets no good publicity.)
All of these characters are major ones and all of them suffer sort of continually. Far from angels, they are shown mainly to be cruel, vain, idiots who are the main causes of each others' suffering. However, whereas I found Welcome to the Dollhouse deeply depressing and unnerving, somehow either I or Solondz hit the right wavelength and this one is kind of hilarious. One of the early scenes is of the house-wife comforting the signer after the singer has just broken up with Jon Lovitz (this breakup is also shown and is bizarre and painful and sets the dark-humor tone.) She tells her that there's still "a glimmer" of hope for her and then goes on to say that it sounds ridiculous now of course, but that she always thought that the singer would wind up alone and jobless forever (she says, smilingly, into the face of the sister who is still living at home and is now newly single, whose music career is nonexistent.)
The movie has all these moments that are incredibly grotesque and painful and then someone adds just one little thing extra and it becomes hilarious. Solondz is still an artist of pain (a sort of filmic cenobite) but this time he is being funny with his art, instead of dismal.
All of these characters are major ones and all of them suffer sort of continually. Far from angels, they are shown mainly to be cruel, vain, idiots who are the main causes of each others' suffering. However, whereas I found Welcome to the Dollhouse deeply depressing and unnerving, somehow either I or Solondz hit the right wavelength and this one is kind of hilarious. One of the early scenes is of the house-wife comforting the signer after the singer has just broken up with Jon Lovitz (this breakup is also shown and is bizarre and painful and sets the dark-humor tone.) She tells her that there's still "a glimmer" of hope for her and then goes on to say that it sounds ridiculous now of course, but that she always thought that the singer would wind up alone and jobless forever (she says, smilingly, into the face of the sister who is still living at home and is now newly single, whose music career is nonexistent.)
The movie has all these moments that are incredibly grotesque and painful and then someone adds just one little thing extra and it becomes hilarious. Solondz is still an artist of pain (a sort of filmic cenobite) but this time he is being funny with his art, instead of dismal.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Saw Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The title is the protagonist's name and address. This bit of information is very personal (you wouldn't give it to someone on the street) but it is not revealing at all. Who is Jeanne Dielman? The film follows her daily routine, as she makes dinner and coffee, bathes, talks to her son. This all seems very personal and revealing as well, but we don't really get to know her. She sits passively and is only summoned to life by door buzzers and kettle whistles. Until almost the end of the film, she displays all the personality of a fancy kitchen appliance. Again we ask, who is Jeanne Dielman?
I kept trying to discern if she had even a personality, hiding deep within her, or if she was really the void that she presents. Bits of her past are revealed via nightly talks with her son, but they reveal a life of further passivity. She reveals one night that she did not particularly love her husband but only married him because it seemed like the thing to do.
There's a painful scene near the end where she starts off literally staring into space but is called into action/existence by the door buzzer. It's the baby she minds for a bit each day (which she does by completely ignoring the baby in its bassinet as she makes dinner.) But, dinner made and presumably bored, she picks up the baby and tries to coddle it. As soon as she touches it, it bursts into wails. Again and again she tries and the baby just can't stand her. A failure as a baby-holder, she sits back down and stares into space again.
Two things I've not touched on yet: first is that she has a side-business of prostitution where middle-aged men discretely show up at her apartment and leave, after a while, giving her a tidy sum. I think this fits in thematically as further kinda-exploitation via her passive persona.
The other thing is that this film is incredibly slow and dull. Most of the time we are only watching a possibly-personality-less woman go about her boring routine. The flow is spiced up by domestic emergencies (a hunt for exactly the right button, over-boiled potatoes that must be replaced,) but it is testament to the tedium of this film that these count as "spice."
The question of the existence of her inner life is finally answered, at the climax of the film five minutes before the very end of it. It is a twist of sorts which is shocking and kind of vindicating. It didn't make the previous 3+ hours worth it for me. If you see this movie, see it with someone else, so you can keep each other awake! An interesting movie, but incedibly austere.
I kept trying to discern if she had even a personality, hiding deep within her, or if she was really the void that she presents. Bits of her past are revealed via nightly talks with her son, but they reveal a life of further passivity. She reveals one night that she did not particularly love her husband but only married him because it seemed like the thing to do.
There's a painful scene near the end where she starts off literally staring into space but is called into action/existence by the door buzzer. It's the baby she minds for a bit each day (which she does by completely ignoring the baby in its bassinet as she makes dinner.) But, dinner made and presumably bored, she picks up the baby and tries to coddle it. As soon as she touches it, it bursts into wails. Again and again she tries and the baby just can't stand her. A failure as a baby-holder, she sits back down and stares into space again.
Two things I've not touched on yet: first is that she has a side-business of prostitution where middle-aged men discretely show up at her apartment and leave, after a while, giving her a tidy sum. I think this fits in thematically as further kinda-exploitation via her passive persona.
The other thing is that this film is incredibly slow and dull. Most of the time we are only watching a possibly-personality-less woman go about her boring routine. The flow is spiced up by domestic emergencies (a hunt for exactly the right button, over-boiled potatoes that must be replaced,) but it is testament to the tedium of this film that these count as "spice."
The question of the existence of her inner life is finally answered, at the climax of the film five minutes before the very end of it. It is a twist of sorts which is shocking and kind of vindicating. It didn't make the previous 3+ hours worth it for me. If you see this movie, see it with someone else, so you can keep each other awake! An interesting movie, but incedibly austere.
Nov 11, 2013
Leon, The Professional
Saw Leon, The Professional. It was very good. It was a tricky combination of bad-ass action and a touching story of parenting (maybe.) The story is as follows: young Mathilda's horrible family is killed by crooked cops. Fearing for her life, she hides in the apartment of her neighbor, Leon, who happens to be a professional hit man. They (blarg) cause mutually beneficial growth in each other, Mathilda having a caring care-taker for possibly the first time in her life and Leon having to nurture and thus becoming something more than a death-machine.
Mathilda is at first confused by her foster-parent's profession but, fed a steady diet of cartoons and domestic violence, quickly comes to accept it and is soon begging him to teach her. There's something interesting here, in the effortless way she transitions from merely streetwise to stone-cold deadly. Is she supposed to be the troubled latch-key kid of the 90s? Are we to believe that the only thing preventing the youth from becoming stone-cold killers is who they know? She is shown watching TV, but only Transformers. Not the most compelling cartoon if the film did indeed want to suggest that she has a deeply troubled mind. It may well be that Mathilda doesn't appreciate the reality of what Leon does. She accompanies him to hits, even helping out, but <spoiler>doesn't ever actually kill anyone, though she is obviously ready and willing.</spoiler> At the very least, there is something about desensitization here.
Mathilda later declares her sexual love for Leon. I don't know how seriously I'm supposed to take this development, but I chose to believe she's misinterpreting her feelings of respect and admiration for him. Her behavior towards him is very uncomfortable at parts (she sings him Happy Birthday Mr President, ala Marilyn Monroe.) and her clothing is kind of precocious but Leon (thank god) never acts on her advances. The level of seriousness in her love is left fairly ambiguous however, which makes the movie feel slightly dangerous and interesting. It gives the non-action-oriented viewer a little mystery to puzzle over as the film progresses. As I say, I choose to interpret her love as misinterpreted love for a father-figure but there's room for debate (of the strongly oh-aren't-we-edgy variety.)
At any rate, I was captivated by the film and found it entertaining enough to keep me awake through a post-caffeine crash. Good show.
Mathilda is at first confused by her foster-parent's profession but, fed a steady diet of cartoons and domestic violence, quickly comes to accept it and is soon begging him to teach her. There's something interesting here, in the effortless way she transitions from merely streetwise to stone-cold deadly. Is she supposed to be the troubled latch-key kid of the 90s? Are we to believe that the only thing preventing the youth from becoming stone-cold killers is who they know? She is shown watching TV, but only Transformers. Not the most compelling cartoon if the film did indeed want to suggest that she has a deeply troubled mind. It may well be that Mathilda doesn't appreciate the reality of what Leon does. She accompanies him to hits, even helping out, but <spoiler>doesn't ever actually kill anyone, though she is obviously ready and willing.</spoiler> At the very least, there is something about desensitization here.
Mathilda later declares her sexual love for Leon. I don't know how seriously I'm supposed to take this development, but I chose to believe she's misinterpreting her feelings of respect and admiration for him. Her behavior towards him is very uncomfortable at parts (she sings him Happy Birthday Mr President, ala Marilyn Monroe.) and her clothing is kind of precocious but Leon (thank god) never acts on her advances. The level of seriousness in her love is left fairly ambiguous however, which makes the movie feel slightly dangerous and interesting. It gives the non-action-oriented viewer a little mystery to puzzle over as the film progresses. As I say, I choose to interpret her love as misinterpreted love for a father-figure but there's room for debate (of the strongly oh-aren't-we-edgy variety.)
At any rate, I was captivated by the film and found it entertaining enough to keep me awake through a post-caffeine crash. Good show.
Nov 9, 2013
Shaolin
Saw Shaolin (thanks, Basil!) It was a martial arts movie set in an unspecified time shortly before world war 1 in China (my knowledge of history is abysmal. Machine guns are new and amazing but guns are common. Electricity exists, but China is being torn apart by warlords. Make of that what you will, those of you with better background than I.) The plot is a bit too complex to be easily summarized, but essentially a vicious warlord is brought low by his own betrayal of his "sworn brother" and the subsequent double-cross-betrayal of his right-hand man. He joins a central Shaolin temple, renounces his evil ways, and sets about making amends and also defeating his power-mad and evil ex-right-hand man.
The film is increasingly histrionic as it progresses. There are scenes of crowds of people crying and wailing in slow motion as sad violins play and all but flash neon signs emblazoned with "THIS IS SAD NOW, OK?" at you. This is annoying but kind of to be expected. People don't go to martial arts movies for the subtle acting. Also, what subtle acting there is may be slightly lost in translation. In any case, I found little nuance in the performances.
The action scenes are kickass however. Jackie Chan makes a cameo as a cowardly cook (which I don't buy for a second. C'mon: he's Jackie fucking Chan! and sure enough...) He gets to be in a pretty good (though goofy) fight with some children aiding him. There's many fight scenes with what I take to be Mongolians (again, my knowledge of history. Mea culpa) which are neat and well-done. There's some Shaolin monk vs rifleman fights which stretch my imagination a bit, but they never become unbelievably absurd, so good.
The film is also surprisingly nationalistic. The hidden engine which drives all of the conflict (and which ultimately becomes the overt antagonist) are non-specific but English-speaking foreigners. They have a nefarious plot to loot China of its cultural riches by pitting the warlords against each other. The protagonist, when he's still a warlord, cautions his right-hand man not to make agreements with the foreigners, but to leave China to the Chinese. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. Chinese films must get past their own censorship board after all, and I'm sure nationalistic pictures are more likely to get through. It's not like we don't have our share of chest-beating feel-good-about-the-US films. It doesn't spoil the picture or anything, just something to notice.
So, not a bad movie. High on action and low on nuance.
The film is increasingly histrionic as it progresses. There are scenes of crowds of people crying and wailing in slow motion as sad violins play and all but flash neon signs emblazoned with "THIS IS SAD NOW, OK?" at you. This is annoying but kind of to be expected. People don't go to martial arts movies for the subtle acting. Also, what subtle acting there is may be slightly lost in translation. In any case, I found little nuance in the performances.
The action scenes are kickass however. Jackie Chan makes a cameo as a cowardly cook (which I don't buy for a second. C'mon: he's Jackie fucking Chan! and sure enough...) He gets to be in a pretty good (though goofy) fight with some children aiding him. There's many fight scenes with what I take to be Mongolians (again, my knowledge of history. Mea culpa) which are neat and well-done. There's some Shaolin monk vs rifleman fights which stretch my imagination a bit, but they never become unbelievably absurd, so good.
The film is also surprisingly nationalistic. The hidden engine which drives all of the conflict (and which ultimately becomes the overt antagonist) are non-specific but English-speaking foreigners. They have a nefarious plot to loot China of its cultural riches by pitting the warlords against each other. The protagonist, when he's still a warlord, cautions his right-hand man not to make agreements with the foreigners, but to leave China to the Chinese. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. Chinese films must get past their own censorship board after all, and I'm sure nationalistic pictures are more likely to get through. It's not like we don't have our share of chest-beating feel-good-about-the-US films. It doesn't spoil the picture or anything, just something to notice.
So, not a bad movie. High on action and low on nuance.
Nov 6, 2013
Gosford Park
Saw Gosford Park. I now understand the attention given to Robert Altman. The film is set at an upstairs/downstairs sort of country estate. The film is filled with multilayer scenes, where in foreground one scene is going on, in the background a subplot is unfolding, and on the soundtrack we can overhear scraps of some conversation which is important to a third storyline. The action progresses smoothly upstairs and downstairs, with both inevitably neatly meshing.
The servants are clearly exploited throughout. Their sense of self-worth and dignity is clearly bound up not in who they are, but in who they serve. There are echoes of Remains of the Day, though this film is a bit more wacky. Especially exploited is the more central Mary, maid to the never-more-childishly-cruel Maggie Smith who casually commands her to stay up all night washing a shirt, only to languidly decline the freshly washed garment in the morning. She's really delightfully horrid. She has this cutesie little 'yummy-yum-yum' that she says before every meal. This is the (second) most egregious abuse of the servants in this film, but reflects the upstairs mindset. At one point one of the gentlemen is smooching with his lover when a butler enters the room. She's startled and he says "don't worry, it's nobody." Indeed.
There is a slightly painful scene where one of the guests (an actor, much despised as a performer by the old money) plays a song on the piano. The other guests can scarcely conceal their boredom, but all of the servants (who have only seen him in the cinema or heard him on the radio) stand in dark hallways watching through cracked doors and listening to echoes in stairwells.
There is another subplot where an actor goes undercover as a valet to research a role. He is supposed to be a sort of James Dean type who (it is suggested) is pumping both sexes for their money. He also kind of casually almost-rapes the maid Mary and makes advances on another maid, so clearly this is also kind of sport for him. (The subjugation of women is also on this film's mind perhaps.) Anyway, this actor's subplot seems to pay off in an exchange with a maid after he has come clean about his non-servant status. He can't understand why the servant treat him so differently. She tells him, "you can't play for both teams." This is a delightfully rich line (the implicit opposition of the 'teams,' the implied bisexuality, the explicit 'you're one of them now,' etc.)
A rich film, bursting with hidden bits and pieces that must be fit together post-viewing. It is busy and yet somehow streamlined. I loved it.
The servants are clearly exploited throughout. Their sense of self-worth and dignity is clearly bound up not in who they are, but in who they serve. There are echoes of Remains of the Day, though this film is a bit more wacky. Especially exploited is the more central Mary, maid to the never-more-childishly-cruel Maggie Smith who casually commands her to stay up all night washing a shirt, only to languidly decline the freshly washed garment in the morning. She's really delightfully horrid. She has this cutesie little 'yummy-yum-yum' that she says before every meal. This is the (second) most egregious abuse of the servants in this film, but reflects the upstairs mindset. At one point one of the gentlemen is smooching with his lover when a butler enters the room. She's startled and he says "don't worry, it's nobody." Indeed.
There is a slightly painful scene where one of the guests (an actor, much despised as a performer by the old money) plays a song on the piano. The other guests can scarcely conceal their boredom, but all of the servants (who have only seen him in the cinema or heard him on the radio) stand in dark hallways watching through cracked doors and listening to echoes in stairwells.
There is another subplot where an actor goes undercover as a valet to research a role. He is supposed to be a sort of James Dean type who (it is suggested) is pumping both sexes for their money. He also kind of casually almost-rapes the maid Mary and makes advances on another maid, so clearly this is also kind of sport for him. (The subjugation of women is also on this film's mind perhaps.) Anyway, this actor's subplot seems to pay off in an exchange with a maid after he has come clean about his non-servant status. He can't understand why the servant treat him so differently. She tells him, "you can't play for both teams." This is a delightfully rich line (the implicit opposition of the 'teams,' the implied bisexuality, the explicit 'you're one of them now,' etc.)
A rich film, bursting with hidden bits and pieces that must be fit together post-viewing. It is busy and yet somehow streamlined. I loved it.
Nov 4, 2013
Hannah Takes the Stairs
Saw Hannah Takes the Stairs, another mumble-core about romance. This one follows Hannah, serial monogamist at large. She starts off breaking up with her friendly but ambition-less boyfriend who recently quit his job (and his band) to find something that he enjoys. This freaks Hannah out and it's on to the next romance for her. Her central problem of not being able to settle down is spelt out fairly explicitly in one of the final scenes in a conversation with her next new boyfriend. We abruptly close on a shot of the two of them in the bath. We hope the best for them, but the sharp cut to credits leaves us uncertain.
This film was not as funny or ingenious as the other films I've seen in the genre and it has the feel of heavy improvisation. This almost always works and when it works it feels like a high-wire act, barely sticking its landings and not falling into ridiculousness only by the greatest care. The drunken half-sentences that riddle the script (much of the film takes place in cheap, echo-y living room parties) reveal the characters' inner thoughts more succinctly (if not more articulately) than full sentences. The film has an artfully guileless feel (which is of course carefully contrived) which will probably annoy some (the eternal handheld camera started to get to me too, by the end,) but is refreshing and sufficiently different to entertain me.
This film was not as funny or ingenious as the other films I've seen in the genre and it has the feel of heavy improvisation. This almost always works and when it works it feels like a high-wire act, barely sticking its landings and not falling into ridiculousness only by the greatest care. The drunken half-sentences that riddle the script (much of the film takes place in cheap, echo-y living room parties) reveal the characters' inner thoughts more succinctly (if not more articulately) than full sentences. The film has an artfully guileless feel (which is of course carefully contrived) which will probably annoy some (the eternal handheld camera started to get to me too, by the end,) but is refreshing and sufficiently different to entertain me.
Nov 3, 2013
Belle Du Jour
Saw Belle Du Jour, directed by Luis Buñuel, a man who makes some strange films. This one opens with an attractive woman and her also attractive husband on a horse-drawn carriage. Sleigh-bells jingle as he asks her if everything's perfect. They are the picture of Barbie-doll bucolic love. Suddenly they begin arguing and the husband, in a fury, commands the coachmen to 'do what we agreed!' They leap down and drag her, struggling, into the woods where they horse-whip her. We close up on her face to find that she's actually kind of enjoying the whipping and then zoom out to find she's been in her bedroom the whole time.
This sets the ambiguous tone of the whole film. She slips into other fantasies with little warning throughout the film. On its surface, it is the story of a libidinous woman who slides into a very pleasant-looking life of prostitution (apparently out of sheer frustration with her squeaky-clean husband.) Eventually her double-life comes to a terrible climax, and an apparently happy ending is rendered deeply ambiguous by the deafening sound of sleigh-bells.
But has the whole thing been imaginary? It seems the stuff of fantasy for a suburban house-wife to join a brothel. Perhaps the ending is a double-fake and is the signifier of a return to reality? To be utterly pedantic about it, the entire film, as we know, is a fantasy. This woman does not exist: she is only an actor. This line of thinking begins to teeter on the brink of a hall of mirrors. Exactly how much of what's being shown on screen is real and how much is fantasy is the engine that drives this film.
Edit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061395/trivia?item=tr0641582 Well that's stupid.
This sets the ambiguous tone of the whole film. She slips into other fantasies with little warning throughout the film. On its surface, it is the story of a libidinous woman who slides into a very pleasant-looking life of prostitution (apparently out of sheer frustration with her squeaky-clean husband.) Eventually her double-life comes to a terrible climax, and an apparently happy ending is rendered deeply ambiguous by the deafening sound of sleigh-bells.
But has the whole thing been imaginary? It seems the stuff of fantasy for a suburban house-wife to join a brothel. Perhaps the ending is a double-fake and is the signifier of a return to reality? To be utterly pedantic about it, the entire film, as we know, is a fantasy. This woman does not exist: she is only an actor. This line of thinking begins to teeter on the brink of a hall of mirrors. Exactly how much of what's being shown on screen is real and how much is fantasy is the engine that drives this film.
Edit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061395/trivia?item=tr0641582 Well that's stupid.
Nov 2, 2013
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Saw The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It was a grizzly western. Unlike the romanticized wild west of John Wayne this film has the old west fetishized in a different direction, trading the fantasy of the noble cowboy for the fantasy of the wild outlaw. This at first seems more realistic, but when people start cleanly dying by clutching their stomachs and gracefully falling down, it becomes clear that we've only traded one dream for another.
The film stars a trio of baddies all after a pile of loot buried in a cemetery. They circle around and around each other, the "ugly" and the "good" guy mostly against the "bad" one. (I use quotes because this film engages heavily in the no-one's-right morality of a lot of action films. The "good" guy is called so not because he is actually good, but merely because he is less bad.) The plot twists and turns and it is left ambiguous almost until the very end who will come out on top. The shoot-outs are tense and the nods at characterization are well done. There's a scene where the "ugly" meets his brother that's revealing and good.
However, the film takes place during the American civil war and has a lot of creepy sympathy for the soldiers of the confederacy. The only time union soldiers are shown, they are cruelly exploiting their prisoners of war (at the protest of a (literally) lame captain who is openly sneered at and made to seem hopelessly naive, but then we are supposed to hate the union. I guess.) or, later on, drunkenly proclaiming that the side with the most booze wins a war (which is something that sounds funny and true late at night in a bar, but doesn't really hold up to any scrutiny.) The confederates are always tearful and noble and beautifully, pathetically dying. I understand that for the most part the confederate soldiers were small people at the mercy of forces beyond their control, but the focus on the nobility of the confederates smacks of lazily rooting for the underdog for the sake of rooting for the underdog, never mind their stance regarding slavery.
Anyway, the film is pretty grizzly and bad-ass and quite respectable but is therefore, unfortunately, not really something I'd dig. I need to see more shitty films, so I can appreciate a movie like this.
The film stars a trio of baddies all after a pile of loot buried in a cemetery. They circle around and around each other, the "ugly" and the "good" guy mostly against the "bad" one. (I use quotes because this film engages heavily in the no-one's-right morality of a lot of action films. The "good" guy is called so not because he is actually good, but merely because he is less bad.) The plot twists and turns and it is left ambiguous almost until the very end who will come out on top. The shoot-outs are tense and the nods at characterization are well done. There's a scene where the "ugly" meets his brother that's revealing and good.
However, the film takes place during the American civil war and has a lot of creepy sympathy for the soldiers of the confederacy. The only time union soldiers are shown, they are cruelly exploiting their prisoners of war (at the protest of a (literally) lame captain who is openly sneered at and made to seem hopelessly naive, but then we are supposed to hate the union. I guess.) or, later on, drunkenly proclaiming that the side with the most booze wins a war (which is something that sounds funny and true late at night in a bar, but doesn't really hold up to any scrutiny.) The confederates are always tearful and noble and beautifully, pathetically dying. I understand that for the most part the confederate soldiers were small people at the mercy of forces beyond their control, but the focus on the nobility of the confederates smacks of lazily rooting for the underdog for the sake of rooting for the underdog, never mind their stance regarding slavery.
Anyway, the film is pretty grizzly and bad-ass and quite respectable but is therefore, unfortunately, not really something I'd dig. I need to see more shitty films, so I can appreciate a movie like this.
Oct 30, 2013
Evil Dead 2
Saw Evil Dead 2 (thanks, Steven!) It was a lot of fun. Creepy in parts, but so full of fluids and goofy spectacle it didn't really register as a horror. It's completely over-the-top and invites its own loving mockery. Unfortunately, I really don't have much to say about it. I don't want to spoil any of the scenes (the 'groovy' scene is fairly well known, but apart from being stupid and awesome, I don't have anything to add) and anyway they're much more reliant on rubber suits and gallons of colored liquids than on cleverness or visual poetry. There's no tree-rape this time around. The entire thing is kind of campy and spectacular. (I feel like I'm just saying the same things over again.)
Suffice to say it was exactly what I expected and I'm tired right now. Sorry to disappoint.
Suffice to say it was exactly what I expected and I'm tired right now. Sorry to disappoint.
Oct 29, 2013
Stellet Licht
Saw Stellet Licht. My god, what a tedious movie. Every scene is a creeping pan, a crawling zoom, or an arid static shot. Characters spend entire minutes on end stuck in pregnant pauses, regarding each other. Eventually the scene changes. What story there is is as follows: a Mennonite farmer falls in love with a woman who is not his wife. He is tormented by this, but open with his wife about his feelings. His father, a preacher, preaches fortitude. Eventually things come to a head, his wife dies of a literally broken heart (which is a cute touch) and then the only lyrical or at-all-interesting thing in the entire movie happens. Unless you have a strong stomach for endless shots of nature, or a large pot of coffee, it's not worth it.
My viewing of this film had a lot going against it. I was extremely tired and thus not up to these very long takes. At one point, I found myself wondering why the protagonist didn't fire his blast lasers at his mistress thereby breaching her hull because I was falling asleep while watching this. Also, I had no idea until I looked it up that the characters were Mennonites and I have no idea what Mennonites are exactly. So there's that source of drama and symbolism gone. There's many vistas of lush nature and gorgeous skies which were unfortunately jpg-ed into mushy blurs by my copy. Such are the dangers of movie-watching. To be honest, I think I missed the boat on this one. It does itself no favors by being so austere, so I semi-excuse myself.
The long takes, I believe, are intended to force us to regard and consider the characters, getting us to wonder about them and getting us inside their heads a bit. I just felt sleepy. I kept nodding off at the beginning which makes me worry that I missed some of the visual poetry I noticed at the end. I may well have, but I now have an almost hysterical disinterest in seeing this film ever again. I found it very oppressive and very dry.
Edit: a review I read connects this film to Terrence Malick whom I find more accessible and also Carl Dreyer, which comparison I think is dead-on.
My viewing of this film had a lot going against it. I was extremely tired and thus not up to these very long takes. At one point, I found myself wondering why the protagonist didn't fire his blast lasers at his mistress thereby breaching her hull because I was falling asleep while watching this. Also, I had no idea until I looked it up that the characters were Mennonites and I have no idea what Mennonites are exactly. So there's that source of drama and symbolism gone. There's many vistas of lush nature and gorgeous skies which were unfortunately jpg-ed into mushy blurs by my copy. Such are the dangers of movie-watching. To be honest, I think I missed the boat on this one. It does itself no favors by being so austere, so I semi-excuse myself.
The long takes, I believe, are intended to force us to regard and consider the characters, getting us to wonder about them and getting us inside their heads a bit. I just felt sleepy. I kept nodding off at the beginning which makes me worry that I missed some of the visual poetry I noticed at the end. I may well have, but I now have an almost hysterical disinterest in seeing this film ever again. I found it very oppressive and very dry.
Edit: a review I read connects this film to Terrence Malick whom I find more accessible and also Carl Dreyer, which comparison I think is dead-on.
Oct 28, 2013
Wecome to the Dollhouse
Saw Wecome to the Dollhouse. It was a deeply frustrating movie. It revolves around Dawn, a girl who is the bottom of the social ladder in junior high. She sticks up for others who are victimized like she is but, recognizing her desire for companionship as a weakness, they instantly turn on her, cashing in her friendship for miniscule status-points. She seeks safe-harbor with her family. A family that, when they aren't actively ignoring her, are demanding sacrifices from her (with punishment, of course, if she does not comply.) Her barbie-doll-adorable little sister prances about the house in a ballerina outfit, whimsically highlighting the contrast between her effortlessly easy life and Dawn's life of unending trials and indignities. Her brother is a skinny lump of emotion-free nerd and her mother is a narcissist who probably resents her non-ballerina children for ruining her perfect life. Dawn's every attempt to fight back at the injustices in her life backfires spectacularly. She tells on a kid trying to cheat off of her, she gets in trouble. When she protests the harsh treatment, she's assigned a 100-word essay on dignity. The irony is cruel and what humor there is is pitch black. After about 15 minutes, I was rooting for Dawn to burn the whole fucking school down.
She even tries to buy affection with her body, seeking comfort and attention from an impossibly sleazy high-school boy (who looks about 30) who casually steals from her family and talks about ex-girlfriends who only lasted a few days. Her only other 'friend' is an angry, knife-owning boy who uses her in public as an outlet for his rage and in private as an outlet for his insecurities. Of the entire film, he is the kindest to her and even he sees her as just a resource to be exploited. It is depressing, but little wonder, that by the end of the film she's becoming just as bad as the rest of them, selfish and cruel. The only escape seems to be New York, a dangerous but perhaps better land. She never gets to New York.
I highly recommend this film to anyone who had a good experience in high school/junior high. If you had a shitty time of it, avoid this movie. A painful and frustrating film. Dawn is a pillar of strength in a sea of bullshit and that pillar is sinking.
She even tries to buy affection with her body, seeking comfort and attention from an impossibly sleazy high-school boy (who looks about 30) who casually steals from her family and talks about ex-girlfriends who only lasted a few days. Her only other 'friend' is an angry, knife-owning boy who uses her in public as an outlet for his rage and in private as an outlet for his insecurities. Of the entire film, he is the kindest to her and even he sees her as just a resource to be exploited. It is depressing, but little wonder, that by the end of the film she's becoming just as bad as the rest of them, selfish and cruel. The only escape seems to be New York, a dangerous but perhaps better land. She never gets to New York.
I highly recommend this film to anyone who had a good experience in high school/junior high. If you had a shitty time of it, avoid this movie. A painful and frustrating film. Dawn is a pillar of strength in a sea of bullshit and that pillar is sinking.
Oct 27, 2013
Red River
Saw Red River. John Wayne plays against type, from under a black hat. He plays a man who is one of three survivors of an Indian raid on a wagon train of settlers (oh, did I mention this is a western? It's a western.) The other two survivors are the comic relief (a Shakespearean wise-cracking servant (here a cook)) and a callow youth with a lot to prove. Wayne slaps everyone and they then merrily steal some land from some Mexicans. Luckily, they have a bull and a cow so... fade-a-few-years-into-the-future... they have a ranch. The callow youth has become the quite attractive Montgomery Clift and Wayne has become a hard man. "The war" has sucked the money out of the south and Wayne is broke. He stakes everything on a desperate trek from Texas to Missouri, where beef is in high demand. He rounds up his cattle, instructing his field-hands to gather up any other cows that might be out there as well. The other ranchers grumble about this but he buffaloes them into agreeing to a small cut. On the trek the situation deteriorates, with cowboys abandoning Wayne, shooting at him, and eventually mutinying.
I was surprised by Wayne actually playing an actual bad guy. He softens somewhat eventually, but he snarls and swears he'll kill anyone who crosses him and is generally beastly. The only people who can handle him at all are the ancient cook and Clift. The deterioration of the relationship between Wayne and Clift is the most interesting aspect of this film. At first fiercely loyal, Clift grows critical of Wayne and finally becomes openly rebellious. I entertained myself by imagining that they were lovers whose relationship was crumbling. The film gave me much fuel for this allegorical reading. Twice the cowboys talk about the trail as being no place for a woman (they are not 'strong' is why) and there's a strange intense relationship Clift develops with another rancher who always seems to be wandering around in this shirt. Later when they come across a troop of gamblers/whores, one lady gambler (not a whore, of course! She's still marriageable) declares that Wayne and Clift love each other too much to hate each other. Of course in this more innocent time they mean as a father loves a son, but the line made me smile.
So, not wild or histrionic enough to fully entertain me (or at least not enough to distract me from mentally pairing up the male actors) but a ripping yarn and not terrible and not ethically bankrupt. Perhaps there's hope for the western genre after all. (I hope so, because I kind of dread an upcoming list of westerns I have to saw through.)
Edit: Ha! Ha ha!!
I was surprised by Wayne actually playing an actual bad guy. He softens somewhat eventually, but he snarls and swears he'll kill anyone who crosses him and is generally beastly. The only people who can handle him at all are the ancient cook and Clift. The deterioration of the relationship between Wayne and Clift is the most interesting aspect of this film. At first fiercely loyal, Clift grows critical of Wayne and finally becomes openly rebellious. I entertained myself by imagining that they were lovers whose relationship was crumbling. The film gave me much fuel for this allegorical reading. Twice the cowboys talk about the trail as being no place for a woman (they are not 'strong' is why) and there's a strange intense relationship Clift develops with another rancher who always seems to be wandering around in this shirt. Later when they come across a troop of gamblers/whores, one lady gambler (not a whore, of course! She's still marriageable) declares that Wayne and Clift love each other too much to hate each other. Of course in this more innocent time they mean as a father loves a son, but the line made me smile.
So, not wild or histrionic enough to fully entertain me (or at least not enough to distract me from mentally pairing up the male actors) but a ripping yarn and not terrible and not ethically bankrupt. Perhaps there's hope for the western genre after all. (I hope so, because I kind of dread an upcoming list of westerns I have to saw through.)
Edit: Ha! Ha ha!!
Oct 26, 2013
True Romance
Saw True Romance. It was about a comic-book store employee who falls in love with a delightful and winsome "call-girl." Prompted by the desire to maintain a self-image of bad-assery (as personified by the ghost of Elvis,) he kills her pimp and accidentally steals a lot of cocaine. They then travel to LA to sell to a Hollywood exec, always just out of reach of the mob who he stole from and the cops. At first we're rooting for him, he being a normal nerd with grand ambitions, but later on, though our affection for him stays constant, he himself actually changes. He dispatches mob goons at first by great difficulty and later on with relative ease. The first goon that's killed actually has a monologue about how the first killing is always the hardest but that, by repetition, even murder becomes dull. Indeed, by the end, cops are laughing at what a slick, stone-cold killer this kid is and he's finally become just another gangster. But he's the gangster we're watching and somehow we like him therefore.
Cinematic slight-of-hand is used to keep us liking him. This gradual shift from naif to actual bad ass goes unremarked by the film. Similarly the desire of the protagonist to be as cool as Elvis, despite working in a comic-book shop and having nothing at all, is deeply pathetic but is never portrayed as such by the film. Notice that he delivers a monologue about how awesome Elvis was to a woman in a bar and later, when he's with his girlfriend, we catch the tail-end of the same monologue, probably delivered again, word-for-word, but if this is noticed at all, it more funny than sad. In general, the film does not comment at all on his desire for cool and either wants us to make up our own minds or hopes we forget about it.
Thematically, an obsession with pop-culture and a desire for cool pops up again and again. When the protagonist and girlfriend first meet he asks her about herself but she responds noncommittally to every question until he asks about her favorite band and movie. Then she responds without even thinking. Of course she knows which altar of media she worships at, doesn't everyone? Most tellingly, near the end of the movie, the girlfriend narrates that "three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you're so cool, you're so cool, you're so cool." Note: not "I love you." I submit that though this film is called True Romance, these two are not in love with each other, they are in love with their adopted personae.
Cinematic slight-of-hand is used to keep us liking him. This gradual shift from naif to actual bad ass goes unremarked by the film. Similarly the desire of the protagonist to be as cool as Elvis, despite working in a comic-book shop and having nothing at all, is deeply pathetic but is never portrayed as such by the film. Notice that he delivers a monologue about how awesome Elvis was to a woman in a bar and later, when he's with his girlfriend, we catch the tail-end of the same monologue, probably delivered again, word-for-word, but if this is noticed at all, it more funny than sad. In general, the film does not comment at all on his desire for cool and either wants us to make up our own minds or hopes we forget about it.
Thematically, an obsession with pop-culture and a desire for cool pops up again and again. When the protagonist and girlfriend first meet he asks her about herself but she responds noncommittally to every question until he asks about her favorite band and movie. Then she responds without even thinking. Of course she knows which altar of media she worships at, doesn't everyone? Most tellingly, near the end of the movie, the girlfriend narrates that "three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you're so cool, you're so cool, you're so cool." Note: not "I love you." I submit that though this film is called True Romance, these two are not in love with each other, they are in love with their adopted personae.
Oct 24, 2013
Dragon (2011)
Saw Dragon (2011) (thanks, Basil!) It was a martial arts movie that borrows the rough outline of A History of Violence. The central character is a man trying to escape his violent past by starting afresh as a paper-maker. A detective uncovers his past and indirectly reconnects the paper-man with his old 'friends.' The detective, in a bizarre addition, self-medicates via acupuncture to kill his own emotions. The detective explicitly thinks of his emotional self as another person who is sometimes seen by us viewers. This is kind of strange but is thematically interesting as both the protagonist and the detective have other "selves" they wish to overcome. One by running and hiding, the other via (a kind of) medication. This struggle to escape one's past takes on an interesting tint when viewed through a Chinese lens. As far as I know (with all of my vast worldly knowledge, gleaned from years of never leaving New England,) the Chinese have much more faith in destiny. There's not as much emphasis on choosing your own life as there is in America. Again, this is only so far as I know, but I feel like there's a paper on comparative culture to be written here.
As usual with Asian cinema, the emotions are completely over-the-top. Everything is so dramatic that the very scenery takes notice. At one point a character shouts "WHAT HAS HAPPENED?" and the entire house around him rattles in shock. Hilarious. The fight scenes are pretty good. There's about four, each one better than the last. I particularly liked the fight between the paper-man and the woman with two short blades. There's also a scene where the detective and paper-man concoct a plan to evade their enemies that for some reason causes a montage of previous and future scenes from the film. Though the choice of montage is strange, the montage itself is awesome and thrilling.
As usual with Asian cinema, the emotions are completely over-the-top. Everything is so dramatic that the very scenery takes notice. At one point a character shouts "WHAT HAS HAPPENED?" and the entire house around him rattles in shock. Hilarious. The fight scenes are pretty good. There's about four, each one better than the last. I particularly liked the fight between the paper-man and the woman with two short blades. There's also a scene where the detective and paper-man concoct a plan to evade their enemies that for some reason causes a montage of previous and future scenes from the film. Though the choice of montage is strange, the montage itself is awesome and thrilling.
Oct 23, 2013
Brother Bear
Saw Brother Bear. It was alright. Everything about it was kind of middling. They were doing something strange with the background art. I think they were showing off some technique of partial matte-paintings made available by digital backgrounds. Neat. The artwork is pretty but unremarkable. It's the pinnacle of the kind of art you'd find on jigsaw puzzles. The characters are animated in the trademark Disney way, all shovel-shaped eyes and comfortingly cute characters with lyre-shaped mouths. The animators have clearly done their homework and when the headstrong protagonist transmogrifies into a bear he indeed sometimes moves like an actual bear and not like a man in a fur suit.
The plot is more interesting: a young man wants to prove himself as a man (thereby, of course, signifying his current immaturity) and decides to take revenge on a bear who indirectly killed his brother (full disclosure, his brother sacrifices himself as a means to save our hero. Not 15 minutes in and there's already a suicide for the greater good.) The "spirits" do not take kindly to this however and turn him into a bear to teach him a lesson. As a bear, he befriends a precocious cub who is in full-on annoyingly cute mode and travels to a mystic mountain to turn himself human again. The film's ending surprised me (though not terribly) and the message of general acceptance is a good one. Especially nice is the slight breaking of the gender roles what with the male bear acting as caregiver/big-bro to the young cub. Also interesting was the removal of any real villain from the film. This meshes nicely with the central thesis of what makes something a "monster."
The songs were tiring and the comic relief was (I think) pitched mostly at the younger crowd. It smacks slightly (the humor does) of Shrek-damaged snark, but it's not quite as cruel. So the whole thing is not exceptional but is competently made and perhaps I was just up too late when I saw it, but I thought several parts were quite moving. Like a sausage, it is undistinguished but good.
The plot is more interesting: a young man wants to prove himself as a man (thereby, of course, signifying his current immaturity) and decides to take revenge on a bear who indirectly killed his brother (full disclosure, his brother sacrifices himself as a means to save our hero. Not 15 minutes in and there's already a suicide for the greater good.) The "spirits" do not take kindly to this however and turn him into a bear to teach him a lesson. As a bear, he befriends a precocious cub who is in full-on annoyingly cute mode and travels to a mystic mountain to turn himself human again. The film's ending surprised me (though not terribly) and the message of general acceptance is a good one. Especially nice is the slight breaking of the gender roles what with the male bear acting as caregiver/big-bro to the young cub. Also interesting was the removal of any real villain from the film. This meshes nicely with the central thesis of what makes something a "monster."
The songs were tiring and the comic relief was (I think) pitched mostly at the younger crowd. It smacks slightly (the humor does) of Shrek-damaged snark, but it's not quite as cruel. So the whole thing is not exceptional but is competently made and perhaps I was just up too late when I saw it, but I thought several parts were quite moving. Like a sausage, it is undistinguished but good.
Oct 22, 2013
Rocket Science
Saw Rocket Science, a coming-of-age story about a bitter little boy with a stutter who joins the debate club. He joins mainly as a means to get to know the assertive female star of the team. She initially recruits him and at first it seems like the film's going to be a cut-n-dry girl-fixes-boy love story and nearly veers in that direction, but the girl is uninterested in romance (good for her) and the boy quickly sinks into histrionics and yet bleaker bitterness. I found the protagonist fairly unlikeable. It's kind of hard to feel much sympathy for him when the only sentences he manages to quake out are sullen ones. Okay, okay, he's just a kid and, as the narrator puts it, he has this dream of a beautiful, confident voice and keenly feels the distance between the dream and reality.
Ultimately, he comes to accept himself, in all his limitations (no real spoiler there, this is an immediate consequence of the coming of age archetype.) He contacts an ex-debate star who spectacularly failed at the height of his game, clamming up mid-speech. The opening narration implies that on the day the ex-star stopped speaking, the beautiful dream of the voice appeared in the protagonist's head. This is not established very well however, especially since the protagonist and ex-debater look strikingly similar (I thought they were the same person at first. I had to write down their names.) I feel like this film was based on a short story that was probably better. It has these devices which feel terribly awkward.
Also of note: every debate topic is frankly sexual (Masturbation: good or bad? Abstinence: should schools advocate it?) The seasons always change suddenly, always marked by a nicely-framed shot of a couple kissing. There is a Korean neighbor who is either supposed to be inscrutably foreign or is slightly insane (and also maybe gay?) All of these things annoyed me to some degree.
I think this movie was stealing heavily from Wes Anderson (there are worse people to steal from, but they seem to only copy his stylistic quirks.) A strange mishmash of a film, it's full of false starts and red herrings (as I said, the first half of the film seems like a slightly quirky romance) and I think I got a little frustrated with it. In any case, I was left feeling dissatisfied and wanting to discuss it with someone. A surprisingly troubling film.
PS - No trivia on imdb. Nothing involved in making this movie was trivial.
Ultimately, he comes to accept himself, in all his limitations (no real spoiler there, this is an immediate consequence of the coming of age archetype.) He contacts an ex-debate star who spectacularly failed at the height of his game, clamming up mid-speech. The opening narration implies that on the day the ex-star stopped speaking, the beautiful dream of the voice appeared in the protagonist's head. This is not established very well however, especially since the protagonist and ex-debater look strikingly similar (I thought they were the same person at first. I had to write down their names.) I feel like this film was based on a short story that was probably better. It has these devices which feel terribly awkward.
Also of note: every debate topic is frankly sexual (Masturbation: good or bad? Abstinence: should schools advocate it?) The seasons always change suddenly, always marked by a nicely-framed shot of a couple kissing. There is a Korean neighbor who is either supposed to be inscrutably foreign or is slightly insane (and also maybe gay?) All of these things annoyed me to some degree.
I think this movie was stealing heavily from Wes Anderson (there are worse people to steal from, but they seem to only copy his stylistic quirks.) A strange mishmash of a film, it's full of false starts and red herrings (as I said, the first half of the film seems like a slightly quirky romance) and I think I got a little frustrated with it. In any case, I was left feeling dissatisfied and wanting to discuss it with someone. A surprisingly troubling film.
PS - No trivia on imdb. Nothing involved in making this movie was trivial.
Oct 21, 2013
Black Narcissus
Saw Black Narcissus, a '40s film about nuns trying to establish a convent in an old palace in India. There is a heavy dose of the mystical orient here, but done in a low-key kind of way. There's no actual magic, just talk of clear air and heat and 'this place' and so on. There's also a good dose of outdated imperialism as well. At one point the people are compared to children (as usual. Eyes cannot roll hard enough.)
The convent is located in a palace called 'the palace of women,' where harems of women used to be kept. The irony of the nuns praying while overlooked by frescoes of smiling, large-breasted women is inescapable. Indeed in its restrained, important-film, 1940s way the film throbs with barely suppressed female sexuality. There is a young girl who is sent to the convent to cure her wonton ways. The only other English person nearby is Dean, the hot (well, hot by 40s standards anyway) assistant to the general whose palace this is. He's always hanging around and being infuriating and attractive and generally stirring the pot. Eventually one sister, sister Ruth, falls in horrible love with him, although he clearly favors the mother superior. Ruth confronts the mother superior in a jealous rage, baring her teeth in a rat-like grimace. The mother superior sends her away after a tense argument and the scene fades into a jarring shot of bright, red flowers (oh, Georgia O'Keeffe! Oh!) Much drama is mined from the interplay of the characters' restrained faith and their weak flesh.
Eventually things come to a head during a sunset, as the mother superior walks and talks with Dean while Ruth listens from behind a screen, barely containing her fury. This scene is set just at sunset and the light is beautiful and golden. It may be the most beautiful scene in the whole movie. Shortly after, there is a tense showdown which is also quite beautiful, though in a more sinister way. The ending is almost Herzogian, in its long shots of untamed nature. An interesting film. At first restrained, but becomes wilder and wilder as it progresses, unto a very nice crescendo. Nothing breathtaking, but surprisingly effective.
The convent is located in a palace called 'the palace of women,' where harems of women used to be kept. The irony of the nuns praying while overlooked by frescoes of smiling, large-breasted women is inescapable. Indeed in its restrained, important-film, 1940s way the film throbs with barely suppressed female sexuality. There is a young girl who is sent to the convent to cure her wonton ways. The only other English person nearby is Dean, the hot (well, hot by 40s standards anyway) assistant to the general whose palace this is. He's always hanging around and being infuriating and attractive and generally stirring the pot. Eventually one sister, sister Ruth, falls in horrible love with him, although he clearly favors the mother superior. Ruth confronts the mother superior in a jealous rage, baring her teeth in a rat-like grimace. The mother superior sends her away after a tense argument and the scene fades into a jarring shot of bright, red flowers (oh, Georgia O'Keeffe! Oh!) Much drama is mined from the interplay of the characters' restrained faith and their weak flesh.
Eventually things come to a head during a sunset, as the mother superior walks and talks with Dean while Ruth listens from behind a screen, barely containing her fury. This scene is set just at sunset and the light is beautiful and golden. It may be the most beautiful scene in the whole movie. Shortly after, there is a tense showdown which is also quite beautiful, though in a more sinister way. The ending is almost Herzogian, in its long shots of untamed nature. An interesting film. At first restrained, but becomes wilder and wilder as it progresses, unto a very nice crescendo. Nothing breathtaking, but surprisingly effective.
Oct 20, 2013
The Road
Saw The Road. It was very sad. The protagonist and his son struggle to survive amidst an unspecified global catastrophe. Bands of marauding cannibals are an ever-present threat. Often other survivors are reduced entirely to the weapons they wield, their faces obscure but their knives flashing. This is meant to signify the open hostility of this post-apocalyptic hell. A dismal soundtrack keeps things sorrowful and their desperation as they search houses and gas stations for food is palpable. The film is technically excellent, spare, and powerful. But why must it be so sad?
The obvious answer is to help convey the shittiness of the situation, but then why flash back to when the father's wife was alive? Why intercut footage of his idyllic youth and focus on the bird-like crying of his son? Sad movies try to work on your sense of empathy to put you in a receptive mood for their (often extremely humane) moral. In general, really sad movies are desperate attempts to make us better people. So, with this in mind, I tried to uncover the film's moral leanings.
There's some grist to argue for a religious allegory: they talk a lot of 'carrying the fire,' there is a prominent son, talk of God abounds (the father even narrates a line about if he were god,) and they spend a night in a church, gazing at the murals of saints. Unfortunately, I don't know what to make of all of that, except to buttress my argument that this film has ethics on its mind. The son is clearly the moral compass of the film however, often nagging his father into merciful acts, referred to as an angel, and, in the opening narration, as "the word of God." Indeed. A more interesting take on all of this, I thought, was revealed by the ending which I'll discuss in white font (highlight to read the next paragraph.)
The film ends with the simultaneous death of the father and rescue of the son. It is revealed that the shadowy figures pursuing the duo are benevolent but wary, keeping their distance out of fear of the father, rather than for any sinister purpose. The father is always reprimanded by the son for being too suspicious and every time the son is correct. The black dude was harmless, the old man friendly, even the dog snuffling around their bunker was, it is implied, attached to the friendly family. The father usually responds to this reprimand by calling the son naive, but it is the father himself who is naive. His experience has made him so paranoid that he perpetuates the hell which he believes he is escaping. In the narrated line I mentioned above, the father says "If I were God, I would have made the world just so and no different." I thought that was interesting (though to be honest, I've come across this meme of the self-perpetuated hell before in The Sandman, among other places. There's a connection to prison life here as well.) Alright, enough of this.
The story bleak but the message uplifting, this is a hard movie. It is indirect in its points which may annoy the more literal-minded, but it's a lot more intelligent than some other post-apocalyptic films, with their mindless glorification of rugged individualism and pseudo-sophisticated dismal outlook. This film is, underneath it all, suffused with hope.
The obvious answer is to help convey the shittiness of the situation, but then why flash back to when the father's wife was alive? Why intercut footage of his idyllic youth and focus on the bird-like crying of his son? Sad movies try to work on your sense of empathy to put you in a receptive mood for their (often extremely humane) moral. In general, really sad movies are desperate attempts to make us better people. So, with this in mind, I tried to uncover the film's moral leanings.
There's some grist to argue for a religious allegory: they talk a lot of 'carrying the fire,' there is a prominent son, talk of God abounds (the father even narrates a line about if he were god,) and they spend a night in a church, gazing at the murals of saints. Unfortunately, I don't know what to make of all of that, except to buttress my argument that this film has ethics on its mind. The son is clearly the moral compass of the film however, often nagging his father into merciful acts, referred to as an angel, and, in the opening narration, as "the word of God." Indeed. A more interesting take on all of this, I thought, was revealed by the ending which I'll discuss in white font (highlight to read the next paragraph.)
The film ends with the simultaneous death of the father and rescue of the son. It is revealed that the shadowy figures pursuing the duo are benevolent but wary, keeping their distance out of fear of the father, rather than for any sinister purpose. The father is always reprimanded by the son for being too suspicious and every time the son is correct. The black dude was harmless, the old man friendly, even the dog snuffling around their bunker was, it is implied, attached to the friendly family. The father usually responds to this reprimand by calling the son naive, but it is the father himself who is naive. His experience has made him so paranoid that he perpetuates the hell which he believes he is escaping. In the narrated line I mentioned above, the father says "If I were God, I would have made the world just so and no different." I thought that was interesting (though to be honest, I've come across this meme of the self-perpetuated hell before in The Sandman, among other places. There's a connection to prison life here as well.) Alright, enough of this.
The story bleak but the message uplifting, this is a hard movie. It is indirect in its points which may annoy the more literal-minded, but it's a lot more intelligent than some other post-apocalyptic films, with their mindless glorification of rugged individualism and pseudo-sophisticated dismal outlook. This film is, underneath it all, suffused with hope.
Oct 19, 2013
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Saw It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (thanks, Mark!) It was an ensemble piece where various comedians compete for attention and screen-time, chasing the famous jackpot under The Big "W." It reminded me a lot of Cannonball Run, but better. I feel both films are overstuffed and rely too heavily on our assumed affection for the actors involved, but I thought that Cannonball Run had too much behind-the-scenes competition for lines and a few times it seemed like the actors were trying to out-mug each other, whereas that problem doesn't occur in this film. I suspect the actors were kept a bit more isolated and a bit more tightly controlled in the group scenes. Also the morals involved are a bit better. This film condemns the greed of men in a non-school-marm-ish way. One of the women has this incongruously melancholy monologue about wanting to just get away from these greedy people she's gotten involved with. I sympathize with her because whenever I watch screwballs I can't help but think "why don't they just leave all of these jerks to their jerk-ery and be done with them?" She never gets another line for the rest of the film after that.
So the film is good, but very slap-sticky (which I don't find very funny. I'm an absurd humor kind of guy.) Also, the women involved in the films are all either useless and irrelevant if not actively damaging. 60s sexism aside, the film is mad-cap and fun. I liked the bit just before the intermission, where the film intelligently spins the various story-lines up to a fever-pitch. Also the crescendo in the park is good.
I think this film fell slightly flat for me, but other cameo-heavy screwballs like Cannonball Run and Around the World in 80 Days similarly fell a bit flat, so this is my problem I guess.
So the film is good, but very slap-sticky (which I don't find very funny. I'm an absurd humor kind of guy.) Also, the women involved in the films are all either useless and irrelevant if not actively damaging. 60s sexism aside, the film is mad-cap and fun. I liked the bit just before the intermission, where the film intelligently spins the various story-lines up to a fever-pitch. Also the crescendo in the park is good.
I think this film fell slightly flat for me, but other cameo-heavy screwballs like Cannonball Run and Around the World in 80 Days similarly fell a bit flat, so this is my problem I guess.
Oct 17, 2013
Shattered Glass
Saw Shattered Glass, an apparent drama-doc about a young cool journalist who runs into hot water over a possibly fake story. I liked this film, though for purely evil, schadenfreude-laced reasons. The journalist is this young guy who flirts with the secretary, talks winningly to classrooms of pretty, blond girls, and remembers birthdays and that one woman once said she prefers her diet coke partly frozen (protip to any guys reading this: remembering unimportant details about people for years is serial-killer behavior.) At one point he oh-so-adorably bribes two people into bailing him out of a deadline with gum. I hated this guy within the first ten minutes or so and therefore had a vested interest in seeing him squirm, suffer, and fail. When he pitches his stories to the editors, he always milks his story until he has them practically drooling for more and then says "Well, I guess it's all pretty dumb, I don't know if I'll even finish it." Which of course elicits groans and teasing from the other journos and a gee-whiz grin from the protagonist. What an ass.
The film has little twists and turns, but the conclusion was so far-gone for me it was only a question of the film fulfilling my expectations or being annoying. Does that count as a spoiler? I think the ending is telegraphed pretty hard, especially for anyone who can recognize html from a slight distance.
A marvelously hate-able sociopath of a protagonist makes this picture an interesting character study and an ultimately satisfying one, if for evil reasons.
The film has little twists and turns, but the conclusion was so far-gone for me it was only a question of the film fulfilling my expectations or being annoying. Does that count as a spoiler? I think the ending is telegraphed pretty hard, especially for anyone who can recognize html from a slight distance.
A marvelously hate-able sociopath of a protagonist makes this picture an interesting character study and an ultimately satisfying one, if for evil reasons.
Oct 15, 2013
The Puffy Chair
Saw The Puffy Chair. At first it seems like a garden-variety romance, but soon becomes a kind of anti-romance. The anti-romantic Josh goes on a road-trip with his just-about fed-up girlfriend Emily (her attendance on the trip is supposed to be a kind of apology for badly screwing up a romantic goodbye dinner, so you know things are off to a good start.) He thuds around deaf-tone to her needs (when she asks him late at night why he loves her, he responds "isn't it kind of late?") and unattractively schemes for 10 dollars off at a motel, to the inconvenience of everyone involved (and further impotent finagling later.) Part of the Josh-ian puzzle is solved when we meet his artist brother who whiles his days away filming lizards and talking huskily of how his gift for his father's birthday was going to be himself. "It's me" he groans. "I'm the gift." At first a nice change of pace from the artless Josh, the brother's oh-so-sensitivity slowly becomes oppressive and infuriating. There's a scene in a hospital near the end where I think the brother is meant to be touching/cathartic, but I just wanted to slap him.
Most of the movie is spent on the dynamic between Josh and Emily. Their relationship is clearly deeply troubled. Emily's romantic nature is at direct odds with Josh's grim and sullen outlook. Josh seems to be set up to be an ogre most of the time, but at one point he plays a beautiful song he'd written that he's clearly shy about and when, after an argument with Emily, he's proven right, he doesn't gloat. He's got feelings too it seems, but they're all so buried and guarded he may as well not have them at all. The ending is touchingly ambiguous about his feelings. We are made to try to understand this jerk, not just condemn him. It's a great ending too. Very real and believable. There's no Hollywood schmaltz in this picture.
Most of the movie is spent on the dynamic between Josh and Emily. Their relationship is clearly deeply troubled. Emily's romantic nature is at direct odds with Josh's grim and sullen outlook. Josh seems to be set up to be an ogre most of the time, but at one point he plays a beautiful song he'd written that he's clearly shy about and when, after an argument with Emily, he's proven right, he doesn't gloat. He's got feelings too it seems, but they're all so buried and guarded he may as well not have them at all. The ending is touchingly ambiguous about his feelings. We are made to try to understand this jerk, not just condemn him. It's a great ending too. Very real and believable. There's no Hollywood schmaltz in this picture.
Oct 14, 2013
Don't Look Now
Saw Don't Look Now. It was a scary movie. Well, not exactly scary so much as ominous. There's all these baroque signs and omens which could be considered scary, but need not be.
The story follows a married man and woman working in Venice shortly after the death (by drowning) of their daughter. One example of an ambiguously menacing omen is as follows: the two are lost in the side-streets. They come upon a narrow set of stairs leading into the water. White rats scurry around their feet. The man mutters "I know this place" while his wife keeps shouting "let's get out of here." Eventually they leave. I can offer no explanation for that scene. Ominous and weird but nothing you could actually pinpoint as creepy, just kind of Lynchian and oppressive. I actually really liked this at first. I liked that the possibility of self-delusion was also part of the horror. Similarly, I argue The Exorcist is scarier before the possession is revealed. What's worse than watching your child dying, dying of an illness without explanation or reason? Demons come as a relief to that. In this film, however, the omens become increasingly less prosaic and more spiritually suggestive, so so much for mundane horror.
Anyway, all of these signs and portents must be building up to something of course. The movie is not so brave/stupid as to cheat us of a climax after all. Unfortunately when that climax occurs the movie kind of falls apart for me. The ultimate cashing-in of the residual creep in this film is cinematically awesome, with its weaving together of predestined through-lines, but just don't see it with other people or the laughter may never die down. Truly disappointing.
Far better in terms of buildup and payoff is the girl's initial death scene. The husband is looking at photographs of a church in Venice while his children (they also have a son) play outside. The son runs his bike over an inexplicable pane of glass just as the father drops a glass of whiskey, cutting his finger. A drop of blood drips onto the photo, right over a shot of his daughter's blood-red raincoat. He stares transfixed as suddenly the drop runs across the photo on its own. He runs outside but his daughter is already dead. The movie works in this kind of dream-logic. Water and red appears again and again from then on. This film is like a tamer version of The Tenant. There's the same eerie creep, but little payoff. The ideas feel slightly half-formed and too ambiguously wishy-washy for me. The horror is pitched at an almost subconscious level which is fascinating, but requires you to play along too much. I could see this film inspiring interesting, and more accessible, horror films. It has the right evocative ideas, just not the finale I could have hoped for.
PS - according to imdb, this was originally a double-feature with the original Wicker Man, which is awesome. Both are super-British and low-key horror.
The story follows a married man and woman working in Venice shortly after the death (by drowning) of their daughter. One example of an ambiguously menacing omen is as follows: the two are lost in the side-streets. They come upon a narrow set of stairs leading into the water. White rats scurry around their feet. The man mutters "I know this place" while his wife keeps shouting "let's get out of here." Eventually they leave. I can offer no explanation for that scene. Ominous and weird but nothing you could actually pinpoint as creepy, just kind of Lynchian and oppressive. I actually really liked this at first. I liked that the possibility of self-delusion was also part of the horror. Similarly, I argue The Exorcist is scarier before the possession is revealed. What's worse than watching your child dying, dying of an illness without explanation or reason? Demons come as a relief to that. In this film, however, the omens become increasingly less prosaic and more spiritually suggestive, so so much for mundane horror.
Anyway, all of these signs and portents must be building up to something of course. The movie is not so brave/stupid as to cheat us of a climax after all. Unfortunately when that climax occurs the movie kind of falls apart for me. The ultimate cashing-in of the residual creep in this film is cinematically awesome, with its weaving together of predestined through-lines, but just don't see it with other people or the laughter may never die down. Truly disappointing.
Far better in terms of buildup and payoff is the girl's initial death scene. The husband is looking at photographs of a church in Venice while his children (they also have a son) play outside. The son runs his bike over an inexplicable pane of glass just as the father drops a glass of whiskey, cutting his finger. A drop of blood drips onto the photo, right over a shot of his daughter's blood-red raincoat. He stares transfixed as suddenly the drop runs across the photo on its own. He runs outside but his daughter is already dead. The movie works in this kind of dream-logic. Water and red appears again and again from then on. This film is like a tamer version of The Tenant. There's the same eerie creep, but little payoff. The ideas feel slightly half-formed and too ambiguously wishy-washy for me. The horror is pitched at an almost subconscious level which is fascinating, but requires you to play along too much. I could see this film inspiring interesting, and more accessible, horror films. It has the right evocative ideas, just not the finale I could have hoped for.
PS - according to imdb, this was originally a double-feature with the original Wicker Man, which is awesome. Both are super-British and low-key horror.
Oct 13, 2013
Boogie Nights
Saw Boogie Nights. It was great. It charted the rise of a male porn star through the cheap drugs and easy love of the 60s and 70s. All is right with the world, everyone's getting high and getting laid. Then, during a new-years party, William H Macy finds his wife fucking some other guy for the last time and starts shooting. Welcome to the 80s. Suddenly cute-n-cuddly love-making turns into angry screwing, pot gives way to crack, unshaven pits turn into silicone tits, and porn theaters give way to cheap videotape. Some of the impact of the above is kind of force-fed via voice-overs (I'm thinking specifically of Jack's direction on set. "No girls, that's nice, but there's no passion in it.") but it is effective, and I'm perhaps only seeing the machinery.
Music is used to great evocative effect to place the scenes. The soundtrack is great. The character of Roller-girl had an interesting arc: at first she flees from normal society into porn because porn (adorably) still respected women. Later on porn catches up and she beats the shit out some asshole who chastises her for "leaving him with a hard-on" during some porn-van shoot. That scene is awesome with its hateful, cheap, smeary videotape lights. It's also inter-cut with the rock-bottoms of the other characters, so the whole mood is pretty shitty. The worst scene by far is one of a drug deal gone wrong. Some cracked-out gay guy is playing Russian roulette while the latest pop hits blare out of his stereo. Meanwhile his goon carefully weighs the fake dope while a Chinese twink blasts off fire-crackers. The music plays at deafening levels, punctuated with the gun-blast explosions of the crackers, and our heroes just sweat and sweat. Just awful.
I'm kind of rambling, but the movie has a lot in it that's great. Homosexuality is used interestingly as well: the fat, ugly Seymour Hoffman is the only gay character and is kind of side-lined in the 60s. The whole world is an orgy but he's not invited. Later on, his attempt to kiss the protagonist at the new-years party is the little pre-death of the free-love era. When our hero is at his lowest, being beaten by homophobes for resorting for prostitution, their shouts are almost kind: "You shouldn't be doing this." They're right, he shouldn't. Homosexuality is unfortunately mostly used in a negative context in this film (see also the cracked-out gay guy above,) which is a pity because things were going great for gays for a little bit in the 70s, before AIDS. In fact, this film could have focused on gays without losing too much.
Anyway, the film is great. I would expect nothing less from P T Anderson.
PS - I didn't see this mentioned on the imdb page, but listen to the end of the credits. It gets weird.
Music is used to great evocative effect to place the scenes. The soundtrack is great. The character of Roller-girl had an interesting arc: at first she flees from normal society into porn because porn (adorably) still respected women. Later on porn catches up and she beats the shit out some asshole who chastises her for "leaving him with a hard-on" during some porn-van shoot. That scene is awesome with its hateful, cheap, smeary videotape lights. It's also inter-cut with the rock-bottoms of the other characters, so the whole mood is pretty shitty. The worst scene by far is one of a drug deal gone wrong. Some cracked-out gay guy is playing Russian roulette while the latest pop hits blare out of his stereo. Meanwhile his goon carefully weighs the fake dope while a Chinese twink blasts off fire-crackers. The music plays at deafening levels, punctuated with the gun-blast explosions of the crackers, and our heroes just sweat and sweat. Just awful.
I'm kind of rambling, but the movie has a lot in it that's great. Homosexuality is used interestingly as well: the fat, ugly Seymour Hoffman is the only gay character and is kind of side-lined in the 60s. The whole world is an orgy but he's not invited. Later on, his attempt to kiss the protagonist at the new-years party is the little pre-death of the free-love era. When our hero is at his lowest, being beaten by homophobes for resorting for prostitution, their shouts are almost kind: "You shouldn't be doing this." They're right, he shouldn't. Homosexuality is unfortunately mostly used in a negative context in this film (see also the cracked-out gay guy above,) which is a pity because things were going great for gays for a little bit in the 70s, before AIDS. In fact, this film could have focused on gays without losing too much.
Anyway, the film is great. I would expect nothing less from P T Anderson.
PS - I didn't see this mentioned on the imdb page, but listen to the end of the credits. It gets weird.
Oct 12, 2013
Dragon Inn
Saw Dragon Inn (thanks, Basil!) It was a ridiculous martial-arts movie. Set in feudal china, the children of an executed political dissident are being smuggled to safety by his friends. They hole up in the Dragon Gate Inn (or Dragon Inn, depending on translation, apparently) where they are delayed for a period by weather, then by elaborate games of pretend played with scouting troops hunting for them, then by the army coming to kill them. There is also a scheming mistress of the inn whose allegiance swaps at a dizzying rate. The whole thing is really an excuse for awesome fight scenes. The fights never reach the eye-popping spectacle of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (et al) but what it lacks in beauty it makes up for in quantity. No one walks, only jumps and twirls are allowed. No one has a conversation, only talking during battles. My favorite scene in the film was when our heroes, the inn staff, and the scouts are in a three-way standoff one night. The mistress comes out of her room to find secret fights breaking out around every corner. Does no one sleep? Hilarious.
A deeply goofy movie. Possibly the goofiness is accidental, but I think not. It feels like a comedy-action where the comedy is mostly lost in translation.
A deeply goofy movie. Possibly the goofiness is accidental, but I think not. It feels like a comedy-action where the comedy is mostly lost in translation.
Oct 10, 2013
Slasher
Saw Slasher, a film which, in spite of its title, is a documentary about a high-pressure used car salesman, called a "slasher." He travels from car sale to car sale, with his "mercenary" DJ and salesman in tow. I don't know where the director found this guy but he's fascinating. He's simultaneously repulsive and loveable. Probably suffering from some form of ADD, he constantly twitches and shakes, his high-adrenaline patter very effective for moving cars, but impossible for relationships. He drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, and has been "inside" as he puts it. He only ever calms down (to merely excited levels) when he talks about his wife and two daughters whom he obviously loves very much (although they seem to live in a storage unit. I think I misunderstood this though. That's a bit too weird.) In one scene he calls his wife from outside a strip-bar, one cigarette in his mouth and a second one (also lit) in his beer-holding hand to tell her that he's okay and he loves her. Later on, he talks at length about how sweet his wife is and reveals that he doesn't think he deserves her. He wonders aloud what she sees in him. Like I say, he's repulsive but loveable.
His partners in crime, the DJ and salesman, are respectively a mild-mannered man and an eternally frustrated joker. The salesman is great on camera, utterly un-self-conscious, funny, and friendly. The three of them are summoned to the grotesquely impoverished Memphis, Tennessee where they must move 30 cars in 3 days. They hit upon the gimmick of having one secret car that's being sold for only $88 (as one winner remarks, "It sure drives like an 88 dollar car.") Enticed by this deal, waves and waves of hostile, suspicious, poor people haggle and dither and make the 30-car goal almost seem completely unreachable. There is some manipulative editing going on, but the frustration of the three as the last day looms is palpable. It kind of got to me and I began to hate the jackass customers for wasting our heroes' time (even though, of course, the patrons are only trying to save money.) One woman haggles for an hour, is ready to sign, calls her father-in-law, re-haggles for another hour and then, finally, signs. The salesman gloats about how he talked her up at the last second and I felt glad for him.
An interesting documentary, it is everything I wish reality TV were. An intimate look into the life of a man I'd never want to actually meet. For a while, we share in even the hopes and dreams of the lowly used car salesman and for a while at least, he becomes human.
His partners in crime, the DJ and salesman, are respectively a mild-mannered man and an eternally frustrated joker. The salesman is great on camera, utterly un-self-conscious, funny, and friendly. The three of them are summoned to the grotesquely impoverished Memphis, Tennessee where they must move 30 cars in 3 days. They hit upon the gimmick of having one secret car that's being sold for only $88 (as one winner remarks, "It sure drives like an 88 dollar car.") Enticed by this deal, waves and waves of hostile, suspicious, poor people haggle and dither and make the 30-car goal almost seem completely unreachable. There is some manipulative editing going on, but the frustration of the three as the last day looms is palpable. It kind of got to me and I began to hate the jackass customers for wasting our heroes' time (even though, of course, the patrons are only trying to save money.) One woman haggles for an hour, is ready to sign, calls her father-in-law, re-haggles for another hour and then, finally, signs. The salesman gloats about how he talked her up at the last second and I felt glad for him.
An interesting documentary, it is everything I wish reality TV were. An intimate look into the life of a man I'd never want to actually meet. For a while, we share in even the hopes and dreams of the lowly used car salesman and for a while at least, he becomes human.
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