The Proposition

John Hillcoat, Australia / UK, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

Like any good western, this film is about bringing “civilization” to those who are uninterested in it, but ambiguity sets in as the villains seem almost like the victims at the beginning, and when they reveal themselves later to be far from harmless, we find ourselves unsure how the film wants us to regard the idea of civilization… and that seems to be the point of it all. The main character in the film turns out to be the lawman (an capital in the imperial army though, not a sheriff) who proposes an interesting way to deal with the villainous gang, and then watches his society and even his own marriage nearly break under the strain when his choices gradually come to light. The relationships between the murderous band of outlaws are a bit murkier, and perhaps required more work to understand than I was willing to put in (especially as far as the ending was concerned). Overall, though, the film manages to be taciturn without being inscrutable, which is always nice. Certainly worth a look for the interesting questions it raises, and then refuses to answer.

Source: First Look DVD
26 September, 8:37 PM

Reality Bites

Ben Stiller, USA, 1994
2.5 out of 4 stars

Winona Ryder stars, generally exhibiting her desirableness and her lack of talent. Ethan Hawke is her co-star, playing the scuzzy asshole who gets the girl even though I sometimes wished he didn’t, and concurrently found it very probable that he did. Director and secondary love interest Ben Stiller is the most interesting case though, as he plays a viable if hapless foil to Hawke in perhaps the only human performance I’ve ever seen him deliver (as opposed to his current career, which consists entirely of encouraging the audience to enjoy bad things happening to him). This is particularly fascinating because within the overall film, Stiller the director uses his own character more as a symbol of a lifestyle and ideology than as an important participant in the plot.

Actually, the long stretches of the film in which Stiller disappears seem to enable the two-headed nature of the film, as it lunges between the romance plot and the career plot. While these wouldn’t seem to be particularly contradictory, the film uses his presence or absence to dismiss one plot, almost out of hand, in order to focus on the other, which leads to a resolution that actually seems to ignore what the movie was about… well, at least half of the time.

All that said, Reality Bites is an interesting time capsule of a film, if wildly uneven, and it does contain some genuinely great character moments. My favorite of these is Stiller’s speech about Yorick, the only time when the film doesn’t try to convince us that Hawke has one-upped him.

Source: Universal anniversary DVD
24 September, 7:21 PM

Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India

Ashutosh Gowariker, India, 2001
3.5 out of 4 stars

Unlike, say, Once Upon a Time in China, with which this film shares at least its English (sub)title, this is populist anti-Western colonialism done right! For one thing, having the villains actually be white goes a long way; Paul Blackthrone is an extremely effective "evil Englishman," and he actually speaks Hindi for a good chunk of his role! As a result, we get a real struggle, rather than an ultimately-meaningless proxy battle as we usually do in Tsui Hark's film. This is, however, no Gibsonesque exercise in Anglo-bashing, and everything comes out extremely balanced, perhaps too obviously so. He does, after all, have a sister that helps out the village people as they try to learn cricket and beat his wager. More importantly, untouchables and Muslims, despite earlier misgivings, are welcomed into the team, providing a heartening, inclusive vision of Indian resistance against the occupier.

What's nice about this film is that it is clearly a high-profile Bollywood picture with an eye towards crossover, but it is not so compromised that it becomes unrecognizable to anyone who is already somewhat familiar with Bollywood. I imagine this is one of the better "gateway drugs" for the genre, as the music is good and fits with the plot, and one rarely feels that the more-than-three-hour running time is needlessly padded. Sure, they could have made it shorter, but this is actually epic enough to deserve it.

Source: Sony DVD
13 September, 8:17 PM

Thank You for Smoking

Jason Reitman, USA, 2005
2.5 out of 4 stars

To no one's surprise, I wasn't able to get this one written until quite a while after having actually watched it, so it will be slight, to say the least. This is the first movie in a while that I can remember watching from start to finish on an airplane. It was certainly an effort, as I had to hold the headphones to my ears to understand what was being said. Luckily, since this was British Airways, no censorship was employed, meaning that there was both sex and bad language. What was the most curious was the way in which they chose to deal with screen ratio. Some scenes were in widescreen, but then others were cut off at the sides. The weirdest thing was when this transition occurred in the middle of a given scene!

Okay, as for the movie itself, I'm not even sure if it could be classified as satire. It features a rather engaging antihero, the tobacco lobbyist, who faces enemies that are largely bufoonish. As our sympathy is continually placed with the lobbyist, we start to wonder who is being lambasted, exactly. There does actually seem to be a larger point that the filmmakers want to make about the system, but I'm not entirely sure if pays off. The humor is wry, although not as dark as it could be. Most of the enjoyment comes just from watching the man work and not caring if it's "right."

Source: Jaguar airplane video
17 August, 4:45 PM

The Illusionist

Neil Burger, Czech Republic / USA, 2006
2 out of 4 stars

So is this a mystery film, a fantasy film, or what? Well, rather than successfully blurring the boundaries of genre, this film just seems to be a confused muddle of several genres, including the period piece. It's actually hard to speak in much detail about the film without spoiling it. What I will say is that while I enjoyed the character who played the main role in the film, I felt that some more focus on the other characters might have made the goings-on more meaningful. I also felt that the film suffers greatly right up until the ending, as it starts to appear even more pointless than it really is just for the sake of an interesting ending. While the "German" accents of the Austrian characters are actually not half-bad, they are still woefully unnecessary (if you want it to be authentic, film it in German!). Finally, there's the "small" matter of using Asian people as props in search of some mystical shorthand; I think it would be disingenuous to say that this is only supposed to work within the film. Overall, while not a painful experience, it was largely forgettable and not as clever as it was meant to be.

Source: Yari 35mm print
14 September, 11:55 AM