Brick

Rian Johnson, USA, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

I always thought of noir as a genre, but after watching this film and talking with my friend about it, I’m beginning to see that even (especially?) at its best, it’s really more of a formula. Chinatown seems to be the exception which proves the rule (or at least proves that noir doesn’t just have to be variations on a theme), but then again, some quite good films are made by introducing very unlikely or outrageous variations on said theme, such as The Big Lebowski.

The premise of this film is both fascinating and in danger of becoming old before you even see it. High school noir? Haven’t these people seen Veronica Mars? In fact, Brick tries to fit high school into noir, whereas Mars more successfully fits noir into high school. Certainly, a high school setting shouldn’t define a production, considering the wide varieties of quality and genre among films and shows which such settings. This wide variety, however, does lead one to wonder if setting anything in a high school is something to get that excited about. This is after all an “indie” film rather than a wide-release, mainstream piece, but it nonetheless comes off as a weird cross between a high-concept studio pitch and a film school experiment (you at least seem to need to know a bit about noir in order to get much out of it).

All this said, it’s a good film, if not entirely great or as clever as it’s meant to be. The very-stylized dialogue is nigh-impenetrable at the beginning, and it rubbed me the wrong way at first because I felt like someone was just showing off to me. Eventually I did get sucked in, but I’m not sure I was jolted in quite the way I was supposed to have been at the beginning there. The hero is engaging, if significantly less sympathetic than his predecessors. The plot is, well, formula, but the best feature, aside from the brief, kinetic fight sequences, is the sight of the noir formula transpiring in suburban homes and veritable wastelands. Noir usually takes place in Southern California, but this manages to be the least “glamorous” depiction of the usual noir landscape yet.

Source: Universal DVD
14 August, 10:29 PM

Velvet Goldmine

Todd Haynes, UK / USA, 1998
2 out of 4 stars

I really wanted to like this colorful flick about glam rock, featuring thinly-veiled portrayals of two key figures from the time and an ostensibly-fictionalized intimate relationship between them. Unfortunately, the film is a mess despite the great music, the trippy performances and the compelling recreation of a classic subculture. Todd Haynes tries to slap some faux-Citizen Kane writing-an-article narrative onto what is otherwise a surreal, drug-induced haze of rock and sexual ambiguity, and while the journalist has his own story to tell through flashbacks, this only serves to throw us more off balance as we try to figure out which of the three male leads is supposed to be the protagonist. Haynes’ work is frustrating because he can’t decide whether to go for narrative or non-narrative, surreal or realist, linear or non-linear, and instead, he just goes with “all of the above.” What this leaves us with is a wealth of good content made tiresome by the awkward, fractured structure of the piece.

Source: Buena Vista DVD
12 August, 8:47 PM

The Best of Youth

(La Meglio Gioventú)
Marco Tulio Giordana, Italy, 2003
Three and a half stars

This epic six-hour film (more of a television miniseries actually, but its quality apparently netted it some festival showings and distribution, in two parts) tracks an Italian family from the 1960s to today. While there were clearly references to pieces of historical background that I wasn’t able to pick up on, overall this film does a good job of portraying a “slice of life” for Italy during most of the postwar period. Because Marco Giordana has so much room to breathe due to his running time, he is able to fully develop a wide variety of characters and themes, none of which end up seeming shallow or insubstantial. Although he uses these elements to comment on modern Italian historical and cultural phenomena, he doesn’t make the mistake of boiling his characters down into mere allegories. The result is a very rich, nuanced viewing experience, and while you may find yourself more interested in some plotlines than in others, Giordana has nonetheless created a wonderful tapestry that is well-worth your time (although you may well choose to watch it in multiple installments, as I did and as the original Italian TV audience did).

Source: Buena Vista DVD
9 August, 10:40 PM

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Shane Black, USA, 2005
3.5 out of 4 stars

What a shame this film didn’t get a real wide release, because it seems like with some real promotion and distribution, this might really have caught on. Here you have a seemingly worn-out premise, the buddy/romance/detective picture, somehow brought to new life with just the right flavor of wit. Writer-director Shane Black was responsible for writing the Lethal Weapon series (I only saw the fourth one and some of the many imitators), and it seems like this movie is about as revolutionary (from what I’ve heard of the original) in attempting to rejuvenate the genre… too bad nobody is ready for that anymore nowadays.

Robert Downey, Jr. and Michelle Monaghan are quite formidable here (in different ways), while Val Kilmer is more just okay, although his gay detective character is great anyway. Downey narrates the whole film (as his character, but also as a “narrator) and his commentary is mostly hilarious, although there are a few moments of meta that fall flat (and that must be saying something considering how much I love meta). The plot is convoluted, but it sets off the difference between “fantasy” and “reality” in a much more creative and even insightful way than how these films usually present outlandish events while impotently asserting their verité. It’s not perfect, but I do feel vindicated in my constant protests that mainstream film doesn’t have to be the thoughtless swamp of nonsense that it usually is now. The experiment doesn’t always work, but overall this film is meant to entertain and succeeds; are you really telling me that it was “too challenging” for the average moviegoer?

Source: Warner DVD
6 August, 9:32 PM

The Big Lebowski

Joel Coen, USA, 1998
3.5 out of stars

When I first saw this movie on video as a teenager, I didn’t understand what a stoner film it was (I don’t even know if I understood what he was drinking), or what a cult film in general it had become, or even, in a more general sense, the Philip Marlowe tradition that the Coen Brothers were once again subverting here. I personally think it’s pretty clear that they do a lot better job than Robert Altman did with The Long Goodbye, but this is just a much more viscerally entertaining film, bloody hilarious in its absurdity and likeability. The plot actually works, but it doesn’t need to and it doesn’t have that much to do with why the film works… or does it? The truth is, The Big Sleep is not at all affected negatively by the presence of an incident in the plot that could never be suitably explained, even by Raymond Chandler himself. This film, as far as I can tell so far, doesn’t have any such moments (I’m probably wrong) but it just manages to underscore the degree to which the detective plot doesn’t matter and is a mere vehicle for something else; comedy in this film, romance in Big Sleep.

Source: Universal DVD
6 August, 7:37 PM

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

(Angst essen Seele auf)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany, 1974
4 out of 4 stars

This film is the starkest thing I’ve ever seen in such bright (if ultimately eery) colors. It’s a “more-than-meets-the-eye” melodrama about intergenerational and interracial love back when such things were even more frowned upon (and even the protagonist is shown, in odd ways, to have Hitler on the brain, despite her love for a younger Arab man). Even before they get together (fairly early on) there is such a weird sense of menace and discomfort, as if you’re being forced to see how strange and “wrong” this is even though you yourself don’t feel it personally. Everyone who thought Crash was somehow insightful should watch this film, because it’s definitely the best film about racism that I’ve ever seen, even though it’s also “more” than that. The first part of the film is not oblique at all; if anything, it’s direct, like a series of punches to the gut. The final third, by contrast, moves inward more as we see the price of compromise (and some other factors that are more difficult to understand). This is one of those film-school classics that actually lives up to its reputation, and I strongly recommend it.

Source: Home Vision DVD
6 August, 8:49 PM

Rebels of the Neon God

(Ch'ing shaonien na cha)
Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 1992
3 out of 4 stars

In his first film, international “arty” director Tsai Ming-liang tells what is apparently, for him, a fairly accessible tale about two fake thugs, the sometimes-girlfriend of one of them, and a younger teenager who has a strange preoccupation with the three of them. He does so largely with long, one-take, unmoving shots (when the action moves into the background, the camera usually doesn’t follow). It’s not always easy to understand the relationship between these various characters, which is just as well, as it is pretty languid and obscure in general; teasing out the nuances of these relationships was my main source of interest while watching this film. Overall, it seems to be worth a try, but not worth a recommendation. I got a generally positive impression from it (meaning that it didn’t just totally irritate me), but it didn’t provoke a strong visceral aesthetic appreciation (that’s a little paradoxical I guess) that I get from my favorite “art films.” I’m tempted to watch one of Tsai’s later, “better-known” (relatively speaking) films, but I’m not sure that I’m that enamored with his visual style or his style of storytelling (as opposed to, say, that of Wong Kar-Wai).

Source: Wellspring DVD
3 August, 8:37 PM