The Walker Film Review

Goodfellas

2008-09-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

Martin Scorsese, USA, 1990
3.5 out of 4 stars

Okay, I have to admit it; all these gangster movies really blur together after a while. Whereas I usually have a strong preference for forming my own opinion before reading any other reviews, I’ve found that films from this genre only really become legible for me after I find and read a piece that puts the innovations of that film into focus for me. To take just a trivial example, it’s hard to even think of this film as particularly violent, even 18 years later, yet the article reminds us how it was viewed at the time.

All this is not to say I didn’t enjoy it. I felt like the youth scenes were particularly well done, setting the tone quite effectively and avoiding sentimentality. The narration really holds the film together (why does every film I see recently have it?), and the addition of narration by the female lead, Lorraine Bracco, is a particularly nice touch, as it injects some hint of female agency (as uninspiring as her character actually is) into the hyper-macho proceedings.

Unfortunately, Bracco’s narration seems to disappear about halfway through the film, right when we most want to know what she was thinking. That’s not the only problem I had with the picture. In particular, I’m not quite convinced by Ray Liotta, however; is he supposed to sound like a psycho when he laughs (Joe Pesci seems to have that role taken) or is he just supposed to seem like someone who’s trying too hard (or is that the actor, not the character?). Pesci and Robert De Niro also largely content themselves with hamming it up and revisiting their personas, which only pushes me towards my blasphemous suspicion that De Niro doesn’t quite merit the hallowed tones with which people usually speak of him.

That said, there’s a lot of style here and I think it all works. There’s also a good helping of social critique, although I was a bit oblivious to it while watching it. I feel like the glorification of gangster mythology (particularly in gangsta rap, with which I am ultimately more familiar than the films that inspired it) has really obscured the meaningful (if not unproblematic) things that the filmmakers were trying to say, even in a film that tries to demystify everything. I also feel like I will probably be taking a break from this genre for the time being!

Source: Warner DVD
9 Sep, 9:55 PM

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

2008-09-08T00:25:00.000-07:00

Andrew Dominik, USA, 2007
3.5 out of 4 stars

I’m sure there are exceptions, but most of the films I’ve seen lately that run 2.5 hours or longer seem to have had fairly obvious sections that could have been removed. It’s to the credit of Andrew Dominik that, in the exhilarating closing sequence of the film, he made me forget these relatively-extraneous scenes, but sitting down to write this “review,” they are slowly coming back to mind. I still have to conclude that they don’t mar the film to any great degree, but they do raise questions about editing as well as the sometimes-lazy assumption that a film can instantly achieve “prestige” with a longer-than-average running time.

That said, Dominik and his crew have otherwise done a technical job that is unimpeachable. The visuals are crisp and engrossing, the shot composition is inventive but unobtrusive, and the narration is delivered effectively, especially in comparison to Woody Allen’s more recent effort. Thematically, the film is what you’d expect from the title; it deals with the ambivalent and unpleasant aspects of celebrity worship, addressing itself to what seem to be postmodern problems while simultaneously reminding us that some cultural diseases reach back into supposedly more idyllic times.

The only question is whether the plot is focused enough, as Dominik sometimes makes long detours to follow Jesse James (Brad Pitt) to his meetings with ex-underlings. The overall thrust of the picture suggests that Bob Ford (Casey Afflect) is the subject of the piece, and Jesse’s dealings with others do provide context to Bob’s trials, but overall I felt as if, at least in retrospect, the meandering was a bit self-indulgent and unnecessary.

Source: Warner DVD
5 Sep, 10:29 PM

Hamlet 2

2008-09-06T01:57:00.000-07:00

Andrew Fleming, USA, 2008
3.5 out of 4 stars

I really loved this film, even if it made me cringe at times, but I definitely think there’s a possibility that I’m giving the filmmakers too much credit for sophistication. It doesn’t help that, when I heard about the concept, I immediately wanted it to be great or at least good, as it just seemed like something too good to squander. It was this that caused me to overlook the mixed reviews and go see the thing in theaters.

It’s indisputable that some level of “meta” is going on in Hamlet 2, as it opens with Dana Marschz, a drama teacher played by Steve Coogan, mouthing the words to a staging of his own “adaptation” of Erin Brockovich (which, in itself, shows how easy it is to take the piss out of "earnest" films just by repeating them with less conviction and skill). Yes, his eventual decision to create the play after which the entire film is named is actually a step forward in originality for this guy, and when he is confronted with an influx of “troubled” (or are they?) Latino students in his drama class, he reaches into that same category for reference to “classics” of middlebrow underdog uplift, especially Dangerous Minds. His students, of course, initially waver between disinterest and mockery.

Most of the film, then, consists of Coogan acting pathetic in almost every way possible, but Dana is not exactly deluded, which is what I’m used to in this “zany” sad sack portrayals. The most important part, for me, is that Coogan and the filmmakers make the effort to actually extract jokes from this patheticness, rather than just merely reveling his lameness and trolling for unearned laughs, as so many “lowbrow” comedies do nowadays.

Where the film gets more complicated, and where I start to become more uncertain about what’s really going on, is when the inevitable staging of the “sequel” play occurs. It’s certainly entertaining in a perverse way, but it finally concludes with a brief sequence almost devoid of laughter; I have my theories as to why it happened, but it’s here that I may have especially been over-interpreting. The way I see it, either they were making a very clever move near the end there, or they eventually got lazy (or went soft) with their subject matter. Honestly, I’m not even sure if it’s a satire. I guess you can see why it got mixed reviews, right? It may be worth a look for you, but it’s probably a better bet for DVD, where I’m sure most will see it as it becomes a cult classic.

Source: Universal 35mm print
9 Sep, 1:00 PM

Memories of Murder

2008-09-02T23:25:00.000-07:00

(Salinui chueok)
Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2003
3 out of 4 stars

This film takes us to a rural Korean village in 1986, where a uniformly incompetent and undertrained police force is fumbling about, attempting to find a serial murderer. Korean film is somewhat famous for its unlikely mix of comedy and melodrama, but Memories of Murder manages to combine these elements very organically (moreso perhaps than Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up film, The Host, although I think ultimately that film is more rewarding). Much of this film’s effectiveness comes from setting up the usual oppositions, in this case between the oafish, out-of-shape local policeman and the suave, professional detective from Seoul, and then gradually undermining our expectations as things progress. Meanwhile, characters who initially seem indistinguishable gradually distinguish themselves in often-shocking ways.

Indeed, the filmmakers have clearly set out to shine a light on the incompetence of these rural cops, but the film clearly shows that it was not so much a failure of will, but rather more of a structural problem. The abuse of power that the police frequently engage in is subtly put into a larger political context by occasional scenes of military force and pointed comments, one of which is particularly devastating and therefore best left unspoiled (it might help to know that South Korea was still under a dictatorship during this period, but I think even if you were ignorant of this fact, you would be able to gather it from the scenes I’m referring to). Once again, I thought that the political barbs were a bit subtler than in Bong’s later film.

You might still be wondering where the humor comes from, and how it can possibly be appropriate. I think it works because of the gap between what the police want to accomplish and what they are actually capable of accomplishing, considering the significant structural limitations they are operating under. I certainly found this picture to be much more valuable than my the "typical" serial killer film, at least as I understand it (I rarely watch films about this subject), as it addresses much larger issues than the usual cat-and-mouse game. That said, Zodiac is certainly an even-better attempt at broadening the genre, and it is made with greater technical and creative flourish. Memories of Murder is well-done, but it didn’t always hold my interest, although it’s hard to say exactly why.

Source: UMVD DVD
31 Aug, 11:45 PM

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2008-08-25T01:09:00.000-07:00

Woody Allen, USA / Spain, 2008
3 out of 4 stars

I’m not sure what to make of this movie. A spoiler-heavy review that I read after I’d decided not to see this movie (a decision I obviously reversed) indicated that it was just another example of Allen’s simplistic, misogynist depictions of women, which possibly primed me to react unfavorably when the two titular protagonists were introduced via a condescending, brutally reductive monologue, delivered by an unseen, apparently omniscient male narrator. These women are clearly presented as types; one is free-spirited, the other is straight-laced, and while they may not do what you (on the most superficial level) might expect them to do at all times, they largely stay true to their characterizations.

So is this misogyny, or merely a kind of (im)morality play, with the characters representing life paths rather than real people, and the narration constituting a judicious use of what Bertolt Brecht called the alienation effect (with which, I must confess, I have only a passing familiarity)? As the film progressed, with the narration continuing but becoming more infrequent, I found myself more accommodating of the latter hypothesis, and later, my female friend did point out that the men are easily more loathsome or pathetic (usually not at once) than the women, hands down. I’m not sure that debunking the misogyny accusation is as simple as merely pointing that out, but there’s something to it.

Overall, then, it’s an entertaining film with some dubious values (I don’t know just how laughable I should regard the depiction of “European men,” for one thing, as the one presented here seems more like a cinematic cliché than anything). I laughed quite a bit throughout, although I wasn’t always sure if I was supposed to be laughing (which, I suppose, is better than being sure that you’re not supposed to be laughing). I don’t quite recommend it, largely because there does seem to be a certain emptiness of purpose here, but it’s not that bad either.

Source: MGM 35mm print
22 Aug, 9:30 PM

A Moment of Romance

2008-08-17T20:48:00.001-07:00

(Tian ruo you qing)
Benny Chan, Hong Kong, 1990
2 out of 4 stars

A jewelry heist leads to a getaway, which leads to a hostage situation, which leads the most carelessly-run police lineup I’ve seen in a film (who knows if the Hong Kong police were or still are that careless), which to an unlikely, and somewhat poorly-motivated, love between a triad (Andy Lau) and a well-off, sheltered young woman (Wu Shien-lien. The English title is perhaps misleading in that the majority of the “moments” in the film are devoted to “romance.” The gangster plot, while crowded with violent but ill-defined feuding bigshots whose machinations are difficult to follow, is mostly relegated to the backdrop.

Despite all this, A Moment of Romance is a particularly unfocused film even in its brief 90 or so minutes. Characterization is all but nonexistent; instead all the principles, including a “sidekick” who hints at being developmentally challenged, are just one-dimensional stock characters, which is perhaps unsurprising considering that the plot is also quite clichéd; there are a couple flirtations with moral ambiguity, but even those seem to be rote in the context of the overall film. Furthermore, nothing about how the film unfolded encouraged me to relate to the characters or to be concerned about their fates; the closest I came to that was a highly-detached, mild curiosity about which of the several conventional paths the filmmakers would take as the ending loomed (and it’s not all that hard to guess, either).

Of course, style can sometimes make up for these failings, but despite some promising flourishes in the early car chase sequence, there is little about the film that is stylistically compelling either. As is typical of even the better Hong Kong films from this era, the music is uninformly horrible, either baroque or repetitive, and at least three interminable Cantopop song montages caused me to decrease the volume. Honestly, it wasn’t an entirely painful experience, but I’m at a loss as to why this was recommended on various websites (I forget which, exactly). Perhaps it was more a product of its time than anything, or perhaps I just don’t appreciate the style.

Source: Tai Seng DVD
17 Aug, 11:06 PM

The Godfather

2008-08-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1972
3.5 out of 4 stars

The key question here is, was the enjoyment I got from actually, finally watching The Godfather greater than the entertainment value I got from all the times people asked me, dumbfoundedly, “you’ve never watched The Godfather?!” As much as I would like to be a perverse contrarian (I admit it), yes, it was worth the trade-off.

There is, however, something of a profound miscalculation involved in watching a film like this when one is already 27 years old, which is to say that almost nothing in film could seem as familiar as this. I’m usually not that good at anticipating things, but this time I was able to see almost every murder or atrocity coming. Recognizing the origin not only of well-worn but sometimes-amusing catchphrases, not to mention the entire gangster genre as we know it today, with its tortured attitude towards glamorization of the practice, is fun in a way, but also invariably distancing.

The fact is, some seminal, watershed films were not as heavily imitated (because people didn’t “get it” at the time) and still have amazing power even now, while some were a bit too successful and as such can be robbed of their power by the legion of imitators that one may have had the misfortune to have seen first. Let me just say that the story is compelling, but moreso in the beginning, that the characters are interesting, but not especially complex, that the depiction of and attitude towards women could have been worse, but is still pretty pitiful (so what is the point of Michael’s first marriage, exactly?), and that (and this is perhaps the most regrettable) expectations for hyper-violence and confrontation have been inordinately escalated to the point where this film seems, dare I say it, quaint in some aspects. That we, the bloodthirsty mail viewers, don’t entirely get what we want (even if, at the time, we might not have known that we wanted it), constitutes one of the few suggestions that we should actually not admire and envy the mafia; of course, the glamour is there in enough quantity that that is not the overall message most young men got from the film (in particular, an entire generation of “gangsta rappers” who made names like Corleone even more familiar for me).

I am a bit curious about seeing the next one, as I could readily imagine how it might indeed be better. I will probably wait a while, though.

Source: Paramount DVD
8 Aug, 8:08 PM

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

2008-08-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

Guillermo del Toro, USA / Germany, 2008
3.5 out of 4 stars

I was greatly relieved to see that this film actually was a tremendous improvement upon its predecessor; the potential was clearly there in the firs tone, and it was finally lived up to here! I would go so far as to say that if you haven’t seen either film, you could go ahead and just see this one, as I don’t think that the sequence is particularly crucial here (a prologue sequence primarily sets up the plot but also gets viewers up to speed on the premise).

Just as I had read, there were in fact many more monsters in this film, part of an overall improvement in visual effects and all-out imaginativeness. The fight scenes are filmed more dynamically, and have more variety in how they are carried out. The pacing is worlds better than it was before; whereas before I was frequently bored by the languid scenes of character interactions, here I was laughing quite frequently, and I was otherwise invested in what happened to the characters. The plot is much more interesting, but also much less convoluted, and the villain, while still not portrayed by the most compelling actor, at least has a stronger motivation and a more interesting and even poignant scheme.

Finally, to only is Rupert Evans’ putrid “regular guy” character gone, but there is no attempt to create another character to take his place. Instead, Jeffrey Tambor is given more screen time in his often-hilarious role as the hapless, incompetent human handler of the “weirdos,” and in his case, I thought they did a good job of building upon his relationship with Hellboy as it stood at the end of the last one.

That does however lead to the one complaint I had, which is that the principle characters’ attitudes regarding regular human agents of the BPRD (Hellboy’s bureau), already somewhat callous before, has become starker, particularly in the beginning of the film, and whereas Hellboy at least was chastised for it then, it goes completely unremarked upon here. While I understand that his character is supposed to have some sort of “edge,” it doesn’t quite work with his colleagues. It might be peevish to object to the time-honored use of canon fodder, and I’m not doing so on grounds of “realism” (the female lead should have been killed within the first 10 minutes, but it’s not as if I actually want to see that), but more on moral grounds, as the idea that the non-special people are expendable is one that, in fact, I do find objectionable.

Source: Universal 35mm print
4 Aug, 8 PM

Get Carter

2008-08-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

Mike Hodges, UK, 1971
2 out of 4 stars

At first, I felt sheepish about not getting into this more, as the plot (gangster Jack Carter leaves London for Newcastle because something about his brother’s death seems suspicious to him) isn’t even clear without reading the Netflix sleeve (for once I was glad that I did), at least not until about 15 minutes into the film, and because everything moves really slowly. Because this is a gangster film, you know that you will eventually get some carnage, but (and perhaps there is something to be said for this) it’s far some satisfying when you do (although I did let out some grim chuckles here and there). It was around the time that Jack started doling out comeuppance that I realized that I was, surprise, under no obligation to consider this a good film.

I actually tend to think of myself as someone who’s fairly fond of antiheroes, but Jack Carter makes me realize just how warm and fuzzy most contemporary antiheroes really are. The only thing that keeps you on his side is that he is trying to avenge a clear wrong; it’s equally clear that no one would ever root for him in any other situation. That’s another way of saying that crime itself is not even remotely glamorized here, which I suppose is also commendable.

Yes, Jack lacks flair for the most part, and he mostly lacks humor (and unquestionably lacks romance). I’m sure that it’s still possible to make an engrossing movie centered around an entirely despicable, joyless character with no redeeming or endearing qualities, but this doesn’t quite seem to be it. I respect what Caine and the filmmakers were trying to do, and the more I think about it, the more I do consider it to be “responsible” in a perverse sort of way, but I can’t consider it entertaining. The film itself does contain a few interesting shots, but is overall similarly lacking in flair. And I suppose it goes without saying that the sexual politics of this film are quite heinous. I can’t say it’s bad er se, but I can’t say that it’s recommended either.

Source: Warner DVD
31 Jul, 8:42 PM

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

2008-07-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

(Kaze no tani no Naushika)
Miyazaki Hayao, Japan, 1984
3 out of 4 stars

I think my opinion of this film was jinxed due to a very brief, somewhat dismissive review that I scanned shortly before reading this, but perhaps I would have inevitably regarded this as something of a dry run for, or rough draft of, Miyazaki’s later masterpiece, Princess Mononoke. In fact, it’s easy to summarize the plotline so that it sounds exactly the same: diabolical empires hubristically reignite ancient ecological problems in the face of dire warnings from wiser characters (alright, perhaps slightly different).

One thing this film does have going for it is the main character, Nausicaä, who is I suppose the first of Miyazaki’s strong female heroes (so common his work and so rare in other works). Miyazaki strikes a good balance with his depiction of her character, although the peoples’ obsessive devotion to their princess is a bit unnerving and is never suitably interrogated (although we get some brief glimpses into the strain it puts on Nausicaä herself).

It might seem strange to focus on the political aspects of the film, but as previously mentioned, a critique of militarism and an advocacy of ecology are key elements throughout. Perhaps Minyazaki ultimately takes the Dickens route in this film, suggesting that we just need better leaders in order to minimize the problems we’ve encountered so far; I think that the views expressed in Mononoke do suggest some sort of philosophical development, in that case.

Concerning the plot and the overall structure, Nausicaä ultimately comes off as too complex and too simple at the same time. Each sequence in the film seems to introduce yet another piece of mythology or another plot by an abruptly introduced nation, inspiring both excitement and confusion in the viewer; yet when the film ends, we feel as if everything was resolved relatively easily despite all the complications (and we wonder if, were we to think about the plot more carefully, if everything that had been brought up truly was resolved). The simplicy also derives from the relatively narrow focus on the one principle character (as I said, everything revolves around her). To return to the comparison one last time, Mononoke seems to reverse this phenomenon by providing us with a story that seems both richer and more streamlined.

All that said, this is certainly a beautiful, imaginative and worthwhile film. If you haven’t seen Miyazaki’s later works, there might even be something to be said for watching this first!

Source: Buena Vista DVD
29 Jul, 10:17 PM

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

2008-07-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Chris Carter, USA, 2008
1.5 out of 4 stars

I knew it wasn't going to be that good, but I just wanted to see Mulder and Scully again. Having seen it, I realize that this is what I get for making fun of all those people who unthinkingly ran out to see Harrison Ford crack the whip for one last time. Hopefully I've learned my lesson, and next time something comes out that interests me purely as a nostalgia piece, I'll wait for the rental!

The first problem is that Mulder and Scully aren't anywhere near as fun or as interesting as they should be. This is, frankly, inexcusable. David Duchovny tries his best and his character is written to be as appealing as possible, but he just looks old and worn out for most of the film. Gillian Anderson, meanwhile, has aged quite well, but Chris Carter heinously saddles her with a newfound commitment to hospital work, which leads her to deliver lines more suitable to the tiresome "nagging wife" stock character that we see in so many movies about any form of heroism. Scully may even be justified, in the "real world," in voicing these sentiments, but in a film like this, the viewer just feels resentful towards her for being a stick-in-the-mud... and later, resentful at Carter for doing that to his once-great female hero character. In fact, there are other things in the film that struck me as misogynist, not to mention aspects of xenophobia and homophobia. It made me wonder if this was always in the show, or if Carter has just gotten worse, politically speaking.

As for the plot, it's uninteresting, and without question insufficiently paranormal. As you have no doubt heard, the film is in line, structurally speaking, with the "monster of the week" format the show engaged in roughly more than half of the time (as opposed to the "mythology" episodes that advanced the conspiracy plot), but the phrase is misleading in this case, as the villains are shockingly mundane. There is also a possibly psychic, child-molesting ex-priest, but I'm sure that this wouldn't have been enough paranormality to fuel an episode of the show.

To sum up, I really don't know what Carter (or anyone who worked with him) was thinking, as there's nothing here that even has the potential to be good. Forget waiting for the rental on this one; I should have just rented some of the best episodes of the show from Netflix!

Source: Fox 35mm print
25 Jul, 5:40 PM

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

2008-07-22T19:20:00.000-07:00

Wofgang Reitherman & John Lounsbery, USA, 1977
3.5 out of 4 stars

First, some background information. Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree was released as a half-hour theatrical short (aired before some forgotten film) in 1966. It was followed by And the Blustery Day in 1968, with And Tigger Too! released in 1974. Apparently a bit short on material in 1977, Disney packaged all three together in this feature presentation, which features very minor new transitions, and a surprisingly moving ending sequence. The latter was, however, somewhat undermined by the eventual release of And a Day for Eeyore in 1983, which is included as a bonus feature on the DVD.

As a child, I had the latter two shorts on videotape, and I occasionally had access to the first two, but I’d never seen the feature version until now. If the same could be said for you, I would say that the aforementioned ending is alone worth renting this version. If on the other hand you’ve simply never seen the adventures of (sometimes) British youngster Christopher Robin and his menagerie of talking stuffed animals, you should certainly remedy that now.

There’s no question that this series of eminently British children’s tales has been Disneyfied and Americanized to a certain extent; it’s more that, in the context of other Disneyfications, the treatment that Pooh-bear underwent seems comparatively minor. I would say about half of the songs are good, and the others are inoffensive, and the comedic attempts, slapstick and all are surprisingly effective even for a jaded graduate student such as myself.

Of course it would not surprise you to learn that the “film” is very episodic, and not just because it wasn’t originally a feature; each short comprises roughly two stories usually connected only by vague, thematic concerns, and this feeling of disunity is perhaps the only weakness of the Pooh tales, which probably would be better viewed separately when it comes right down to it. What makes this work at all is the use of the Narrator character, through which the filmmakers introduce a degree of ‘meta” that is still fresh and surprising even when, 21 years later, we live in an age increasingly familiar with such fictional self-referentiality. The Narrator manipulates the book and firmly locates the characters within its confines. It’s one of my fondest memories of the Pooh cartoons, alongside the nostalgic pleasure of Pooh himself, once more.

Source: Buena Vista DVD
20 Jun, 9:08 PM

Hellboy

2008-07-20T01:27:00.000-07:00

Guillermo del Toro, USA, 2004
2.5 out of 4 stars

I decided to watch del Toro’s first adaptation of Mike Mignola’s comic book almost entirely because, probably owing to the success of Pan’s Labyrinth, he had been able to release another one. I figured that, if possible, I should try to avoid seeing the sequel first, and I would also try to see if I’d really be interested in paying $5-$10 for it. Well, I’ve read a few of the early issues of Mignola’s series, focused around a demon raised by humans who work for the government, along with his other paranormal colleagues, and I like the idea although I’ve never been blown away enough by it to seek out the whole series. One thing you notice in del Toro’s version is that there is basically no attempt to emulate the shadowy, impressionistic quality of Mignola’s art (perhaps this just wasn’t possible). Hellboy himself is after all bright red, and there was no willingness to alter his appearance into something more film-friendly or shadow-friendly (as they did in, say, the X-Men films, with the black uniforms replacing the bright costumes of the comics). Fidelity seems to be the bywords here, and it seems to have unfortunately been a limiting factor in the film’s success. The scenes added back in for the director’s cut may well have been worthwhile, but the augmentation probably should have been accompanied by some reduction.

Another hindrance seems to have been a disregard for pacing and an unwillingness to excise or trim languid, less-than-engrossing scenes. The “Nazi mysticism” opening is actually quite interesting, albeit campy, but the film starts to stumble as soon as del Toro moves us to the present day, and continues to kind of amble along after that. The fight scenes, when we get to them, are fun to watch and involving, but hindered here by the lack of variety, as Hellboy fights the exact same monster on at least three different locations.

Hellboy himself, as played by Ron Perlman, has a strong if overly laconic presence. Doug Jones complements him well as Abe Sapien, but most of the time Perlman is playing against his neophyte handler, John Meyers. Rupert Evans plays the ultimately pointless, but unduly-emphasized role of the would-be audience identification character with almost no spine or wit, and not that much intelligence either. I’m not sure if the studio forced del Toro to include a “regular guy” figure (for the first part of the film, he almost seems to be the main character!) but even if they did, they still could have done better than this (and there is at least one more interesting “regular guy” character present here). I should also mention that the archvillain, Rasputin (yes, that Rasputin) gets more and more ridiculous as his scenes get longer and you have to actually listen to him.

All that said, this very imperfect attempt made me want to see del Toro take another shot at doing it right this time, particularly in light, of course, of Pan’s Labyrinth. I am heartened by reports I have read indicating that there are many more monsters in the sequel, as I am by indications on IMDB that Evans is not returning (and in fact seems not to have made it in Hollywood at all). I do suspect, though, that seeing this film first may not actually have been necessary, as I’m sure the sequel was made with full knowledge that the original was not a great success.

Source: Sony director's cut DVD
18 Jul, 12:00 PM

The Dark Knight

2008-07-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

Christopher Nolan, USA, 2008
4 out of 4 stars

Let me just say that I’m glad we got to have Iron Man, and to a lesser degree, Hancock before we got this film, so we could have some optimistic superhero films to gently lead us into easily the grimmest summer blockbuster I can recall in the last several years. I imagine this feeling is only heightened if you spend the film ruminating upon the tragic end of Heath Ledger, an actor who did indeed seem to be improving more and more with every film. In fact, I barely thought about Ledger’s fate or even Ledger himself while watching, which in and of itself I take as a testament to the spectacular job that he did here.

I disagree strongly with the friends I saw it with, who felt that Ledger’s performance was the only standout element of the picture. It is true that Ledger outshines Christian Bale here, but that only stands out as much as it does because Batman Begins focused more on the backstory and development of Bruce Wayne than almost any other Batman screen adaptation that I can recall. Christopher Nolan, however, continues to eschew the traditional focus on the villain’s origin. Instead, we get an amazing, unrelenting confrontation between Batman and The Joker, which builds organically out of another, much more benign rivalry between Batman/Bruce and Harvey Dent, played excellently by Aaron Eckhart. Depending on your level of Bat-expertise, you may or may not know what awaits Harvey, but either way, they are some surprises in store.

Overall, the environment of Gotham City is fully fleshed out (a detour to Hong Kong is interesting but perhaps extraneous), but most importantly, the film has a very foreboding, almost oppressive atmosphere, especially in the second half, although even in the first half, there’s hardly anything like humor or romance to distract the viewer. In this case, the strategy works: The Dark Knight is the most focused, artistically coherent superhero film that I can recall seeing. Although Nolan eventually throws a crumb to mainstream sensibilities near the end (it isn’t quite pandering, as it works more-or-less organically), overall he avoids the something-for-everything approach to blockbusters that so often makes them feel more like a two-hour theme park tour than a wholly-realized motion picture. I don’t really want to spoil anything for you, so you should just go check this out… and you should probably also watch something really goofy the next day!

Source: Warner 35mm print
18 Jul, 12:00 PM

Hancock

2008-07-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Peter Berg, USA, 2008
3 out of 4 stars

It's not that the second half of the film is bad, it's just that it is not as good as the first half, and that it probably would have been better as a second film; the two halves just don't fit together. This is especially interesting hot on the heels of Wall-E another film with a two-part structure that seemingly holds an even greater break between the halves but nonetheless manages to hold them together much more effectively.

The first half concerns what you saw in the preview; Will Smith as Hancock, a misbehaving, alcoholic superhero, correctly perceived by the media as a negligent destroyer of property. I can't recall seeing Smith as a full-on bum, and it's interesting as it provides some variety for him from his appealing-but-familiar "cocky" persona; he seems to capture the right-level of self-loathing. He is however outdone to some degree by Jason Bateman, who unlike Smith is fully operating within his Arrested Development persona, that hilariously-cheesy but genuinely well-meaning regular guy who tries his hardest to bring stability and respectability to a spectacular screw-up. Bateman's PR agent comes up with a plan to rehabilitate Hancock's image, and the scenes between the two of them are terrific; I found myself laughing at almost every silly thing that Bateman says.

The thing is that we seem to have already reached a resolution (albeit an imperfect one) when the entire plot shifts with a "twist," and while the reveal doesn't immediately imply that the plot will suffer, the relegation of Bateman to the sidelines goes along with an increasingly jarring shift in subject matter. It's not that there weren't hints that something was up, it's just that they were more fun as hints.

The "wayward superhero" concept seems much less "new and shocking" to a comic book fan as it might viewers familiar with the cinematic adaptions of Marvel and DC series, but it is still fun to see it on the big screen. The second half is, even with its somewhat-daring overreach, actually more familiar for the cinema. It's not quite a success on 's own terms, but it's an interesting concoction.

Source: Sony 35mm print
8 Jul, 1:45 PM

Wall-E

2008-07-09T13:53:00.000-07:00

Andrew Stanton, USA, 2008
4 out of 4 stars

It's not perfect, I have to admit. At times, I found the title character to be just a little too pathetic, and some of his behavior is frankly disturbing if you look at it a certain way, even if the director clearly tries to spin it in a later scene. I enjoyed the ending, but I'm not sure if it's justified by the film. Although it's endearing enough, one has to scratch one's head just a little bit at the imposition of entirely recognizable and familiar heterosexuality (or any sexuality, I suppose) onto robots. And I'm not sure if the two disparate halves of the film are wedded together in the most effective manner.

With that out of the way, let me make it clear that I absolutely loved this film. The message (critiquing consumerism) is delivered in a way that would be positively shocking in any film, and I believe is not significantly undermined when you "consider the source" (this actually just makes it more shocking my view). While I recognize that there is pandering going on (the ending), overall I am really impressed with how much the filmmakers decided to challenge the viewers, yet if the kid in the row behind me is any indication, effectively reach them at the same time.

There are also any number of scenes of incredible wonder, visual magnificence, and subtle humor. There are mistakes and there are conditional mistakes, but overall this is a film that reaches high and succeeds most of the time.

Source: Disney 35mm print
6 Jul, 7:20 PM

Vantage Point

2008-07-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

Pete Travis, USA, 2008
2 out of 4 stars

After some perfunctory exposition, the president is assassinated, while introducing an anti-terror conference in Spain! Then a building is blow up! And yet, soon, we are asking, why should we care?

More precisely, we're asking what exactly we're supposed to care about, or even how. In fact, I think the spectacular terribleness of the incident was one of the only things that kept my interest in the first place.

Having shown us this tragedy, the film rewinds back to show it (and some preliminary goings-on) from another perspective, and does so again two or three more times until finally reaching a conclusion. Of course there is some repetition, although this is kept to a minimum, it still wore on my patience to see much of any material repeated in what is only a 90 minute film.

So we soon come to the problem of what character to focus on, and the answer seems to be none of them (although this answer seems to change again in the ending scene). Although many have commendable qualities (in one case, to an improbable and annoying degree), the film mostly seems to be about displaying a certain imagined cleverness as far as the "how'd it happen?" question goes. If anything, this just served to alienate me from the film. As usual, it didn't help that the most potentially interesting "twist" was spoiled in the trailers, which I saw a few months ago.

Politically, Vantage Point is all over the place, and not even in a particularly interesting manner. On the one hand, the president, when we finally meet him, seems to be some kind of liberal fantasy, showing an restraint in military matters that only the deluded could truly expect from, say, a President Obama. On the other hand, the filmmakers seem to enjoy showing the degradation of a reporter who intentionally bucks the corporate line on air and rails against censorship to her boss; what's strange is they seem to be agreeing with her at that point, so did they just fail to realize that it would seem as if they were delivering her her comeuppance afterward? It's quite hard to say.

As usual, the ending is also quite objectionable, as you don't realize until the film has concluded that the goalposts, so to speak, have been shifted in a way that raises uncomfortable questions about our nation's priorities (in contrast, once again, to the more internationalist ideology that the film sporadically promotes).

Source: United uncut pan-and-scan airplane video
30 Jun, 1:20 PM

Kung Fu Panda

2008-07-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

Mark Osborne & John Stevenson, USA, 2008
3 out of 4 stars

The title, as well as the studio (DreamWorks) was enough to tell me that this was a must-avoid, but an invitation from friends led me to notice a surprisingly-high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so I went ahead and checked it out. The first thing that hit me, not having seen any trailers in advance, was that this film is clearly operating on a entirely different visual level from almost all previous DreamWorks efforts (if you can call them that). Colors are lush, movement is dynamic and kinetic, and backgrounds are beautiful and detailed (character designs are less impressive, perhaps, but still solid). I might even venture the slightly blasphemous opinion that Kung Fu Panda is prettier than some Pixar films!

Of course, when it comes to plot, this falls behind probably all Pixar films, but it's still surprisingly workable, if a bit rambling and, let's say, uncluttered. Although the film has its usual voice actor roster overcrowded with stars (many of them almost unrecognizable due to their marginal personalities and small roles), the film is dominated by Jack Black, who plays Po with minimal crudeness (there were for instance far less fart jokes, perhaps almost none, it's hard to recall, then you would expect for a character primarily known for his size and propensity to eat). Po is very clearly a fanboy, seemingly unsuited for a destiny as a fighter, but nonetheless intimately familiar with their history, and while this is a familiar cartoon plot, it was nonetheless endearingly done by Black. The other interesting character choice is Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of Shifu, Po's reluctant, diminutive master; as far as I can tell, his vocal performance is a pastiche of the English dubbing voices used on kung fu films of the 70s.

If anything, I was tempted to overvalue this picture while watching it, but in the end it is not at all transcendent, just a surprisingly solid example of pop, mainstream filmmaking with a lot of appeal and a minimum of idiocy or nastiness. It should also be added that despite being an American film about China, there is almost nothing offensive in the picture (although I'm sure you could get some mileage out of looking at which characters actually read as "Chinese" and which don't).

Source: Paramount 35mm print
7 Jun, 3:40 PM

Children of Men

2008-06-12T16:31:00.001-07:00

Alfonso Cuarón, UK / USA, 2006
4 out of 4 stars

Luckily, this film is just as strong on a repeat viewing, although I suppose it didn’t hurt that I had forgotten many of the major plot points (this is the upside to not watching your favorite films too often). One thing that really struck me was how directly Cuarón chose to visually quote from the Abu Gharib photos when the heroes enter the detention center. Of course, the parallel would have been obvious in any case. I tried to point this out to my students, but of course they didn’t even know what Abu Gharib was! I suppose they were around 13 years old at the time, but I still find that unacceptable. It makes me wonder if there is any real need for the pervasive propagandizing that this film portrays; even when the press openly and extensively reports on a heinous offense, the average person still remains blissfully ignorant of it.

The other interesting element is that Cuarón is combining the “terrorist detention” crisis with the “illegal immigration” crisis. Perhaps I’m being naïve to even view them as separate “issues,” but in any case, I do find the conflation of the two problems (and by problem, of course, I am referring to how the West and particularly the US has dealt with things) somewhat illuminating, as if Cuarón is sketching out for us the whole continuum of heinous treatment of the other, and perhaps reminding those of us who may be only, or more, concerned with one problem than the other, that these things can bleed into each other after a while.

Source: Universal DVD
30 May, 2:28 PM

A Mighty Heart

2008-06-08T19:29:00.000-07:00

Michael Winterbottom, USA / UK, 2007
3.5 out of 4 stars

I was a bit surprised by some of the less-than-charitable reviews that I saw of this film after watching it, but upon further reflection, I think that the disparity of opinions can be readily explained by its somewhat-divided nature.

On the one hand, we have scenes of Marianne Pearl (Angelina Jolie) working alongside people from various agencies to find her husband, Danny, who has been kidnapped (and if you read the news, you know how this ends, but the film doesn’t inform you at the beginning if you aren’t already aware of it). Jolie pulls off a fairly competent attempt at mimicry, made a bit politically dubious in that they seem to have darkened her face ever so slightly in order to make her look more like the French-Afro-Cuban Mrs. Pearl (I also felt that, in her biggest “acting” moment near the end, Jolie embarrassed herself a bit, although I am not sure whose fault that is or if my reaction is even fair). I found Archie Panjabi and Irfan Khan to be particularly likeable, the former as a colleague and roommate (who unfortunately, due in part to the somewhat-elliptical storyline, comes off as an assistant at first), the latter as the main Pakistani investigator.

As I later learned, all these scenes involving Jolie in the Pearl house were actually shot in India for security reasons, and many of the actors playing Pakistani characters, such as Khan, are from Bollywood (Panjabi is British). And while these scenes are fairly strong, some of the most interesting stuff happens in the scenes that were actually shot in Pakistan, where the actual investigation gets underway (leaving behind the ostensible main character for large periods of time, more and more as the film continues) Because there is a bit more of a story in the conventional sense, the film was able to keep my attention a little more thoroughly than Michael Winterbottom’s earlier films that used this as a setting, namely In This World and, to a lesser extent, The Road to Guantánamo.

I only watched the first minute of the DVD’s “making of” featurette, but I was interested by Winterbottom’s explanation that he found something in Pearl’s memoir (by the same name) that resonated with his own experiences in Pakistan, making those earlier films. What he didn’t say, I imagine, was that by making use of the cachet from both the star system and the cult of the “true story” (not that this isn’t an important true story), he could try to convey what he’s seen about this area to the mainstream audience who has missed his previous work. He does so with some of the best filmmaking I’ve seen from him, using very short scenes and abrupt, yet seamless transitions in order to get plenty of information and sensation across without indulging himself or boring the viewer. I don’t know if this film is actually better than his other “political” films or if I am still just mainstream enough that I need something conventional to latch on to, but I do think that it’s an effective combination, if a little uneven when you really think about it.

Source: Paramount DVD
29 May, 9:11 PM

Raise the Red Lantern

2008-06-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

(Da hong deng long gao gao gua)
Zhang Yimou, China / Hong Kong / Taiwan, 1991
3.5 out of 4 stars

I have become an admirer of Zhang Yimou's work (you may be noticing a pattern here, as I seem to be drifting towards some kind of partial adherence to the "auteur theory"), starting with his most successful film (at least here), Hero, and I frequently saw this film mentioned in reviews of his later work. Up until last year, however, there was no decent DVD version, meaning that I saw his less-well-regarded but more recent films first.

Having finally made it back to this one, widely regarded as a classic, I almost felt as if I had failed some kind of test, because while I certainly liked it, I think I got more out of films like Not One Less or Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, both of with are more in the neo-realist mode with the usual cast of nonactors.

This one has some of the same sense of languidness, as it follows Songlian (Gong Li) character through four seasons as the fourth wife of a polygamous nobleman in 1920s China. At least for me, it was hard to be sure of the time period until I looked it up afterwards (perhaps this would not be the case for a Chinese audience). The palace, if it can be called that, is expansive but decaying, and the outside world is never shown after Songlian arrives. This creates a very striking feeling of isolation, as you might imagine.

On top of that, the family has its own elaborate customs which seem explicitly concocted with the aim of heightening the already-inevitable tension and conflict between the four wives. Althoug she is the heroine, Songlian certainly doesn't take the high road, as she tries her best to play the game and win advantage for herself. While she seems to have an advantage due to her youth and beauty, we soon start to wonder if her late introduction is too much of a disadvantage. The maneuvering that go on are subtly depicted, and Gong does a good job of depicting the anguish that exists just below the surface of her crumbling, icy facade (to mix some metaphors). Certainly not a fun time, and the very end seems slightly half-baked or at least forced, but interesting, undoubtedly.

Source: Fox DVD
28 May, 7:38 PM

Helvetica

2008-05-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

Gary Hustwit, UK, 2007
2 out of 4 stars

On certain occasions, I can be somewhat susceptible to persuasion when someone makes an off-the-wall film recommendation, particularly in the classroom for some reason, and this is a perfect example of it; a feature documentary on a font, for gosh sakes, that a guest lecturer in my “history of the book” seminar enthusiastically recommended.

I actually respect it as a valiant effort, but of course it turns out to be largely boring to someone who doesn’t already care about fonts or design. Helvetica consists of two kinds of scenes; talking-head interviews with designers and typographers, and series of brief shots of Helevtica use, mostly in various street signs. I’m slightly more interested in fonts than most people, and I was surprised to realize, for instance, how many major logos are all in this same font, which honestly in its large street-style is almost unrecognizable from its computer version. I found the London sequence to have some particularly interesting visual touches, but overall these sequences are quite repetitive.

As for the interviews, I felt that relatively few of the people with whom the director spoke with were either interesting or insightful (much less both). The young designers come off as pompous art-school twits with almost nothing to say, while the experts who tried to explain its historical origins nearly bored me into a stupor. A few people make some interesting points about Helvetica’s cultural and economic significance, and at times I almost felt like the film was worth it. Overall, it’s not; this could have been an interesting article but for the unconverted it cannot be an interesting film.

Source: Red Envelope DVD
19 May, 9:05 PM

Iron Man

2008-05-19T20:47:00.000-07:00

Jon Favreau, USA, 2008
3.5 out of 4 stars

When the script and the actors suck, a superhero action movie, with minimal action and maximum buildup and exposition can be one of the most painful things to suffer through. The best recent example of this is the excreable Fantastic Four, which doesn't even feature a battle sequence until the last 15 minutes of the film, rather spending most of its running time as the lifeless cast blandly ruminates over powers that only took them a minute to obtain. Thankfully, Iron Man is more in the vein of Batman Begins, another film in which a man with no inherent superpowers accumulates both the skills and the experiences necessary to ultimately inhabit his role as superhero.

Yet although I've given them the same rating, I should be clear that Batman Begins was definitely a deeper, more complex and more thought-out film. Iron Man would probably be significantly worse without the presence of Robert Downey, Jr., who seems to be gradually making up for last time, even as he cleverly trades off of his own unfortunate public persona in his role as the dissolute-but-brilliant Tony Stark. Unlike Bruce Wayne, Tony is not traumatized, he's just in a stage of arrested development that has prevented him from considering the consequences of his actions as a weapons designer/merchant. It takes an origin story centered in Afghanistan to reorient his thinking and kick off some gradual, but worthwhile, character development.

Interestingly, the original Iron Man was born of the Vietnam War, and that story's attitude towards said war was much less complicated, to put it lightly. The comics have already updated both the setting and the politics, so I'm not sure how this stacks up to more recent incarnations (I only really started recognizing Marvel injokes during the very last scene), but I think Jon Favreau's film walks a fine line regarding the depiction of terrorists and ultimately succeeds in avoiding the main pitfalls. Overall the attitude is one of sophistication, although some things are nonetheless overlooked out of necessity.

As for the action, well, as I said there's not exactly tons of action in this film, but the story and acting are such good quality that the action feels even more earned. Watching Iron Man fly around is in itself exciting, which is somewhat surprising considering that "you'll believe a man can fly" was the original superhero movie tagline, even before I was born. Above all, it did leave me looking forward to the sequel (and I wouldn't mind if there was a bit more action that time).

By the way, if you go see it, make sure to stay until after the credits.

Source: Paramount 35mm print
16 May, 8:00 PM

Solaris

2008-05-09T23:31:00.000-07:00

Stephen Soderbergh, USA, 2002
3 out of 4 stars

Something, not quite explained, is going wrong at the end (or at least it feels like it) of space, but despite the somewhat-goofy spacesuits, the significance of the events is much more focused on the interpersonal. Sent to investigate this phenomena (even the message apparently doesn't mean what it seems to mean), Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is soon visited by someone who could not actually be there, specifically his wife Rheya (Natascha McElhone). Flashbacks ensue (not for the last time, either) in which we get a surprising level of detail about their relationship, from beginning to end.

All this unfolds at a fairly deliberate pace, despite the short running time, and it can be quite captivating at times; there is a certain visual appeal to the shot composition (really starting to wish I had the language to describe this stuff better) and the performances are often compelling. Overall, though, I couldn't quite get involved enough in the thing, even though I felt like I cared about the characters, and was at least interested in what was going on without being too removed from it. The spaceship sets don't look particularly good on a mid-sized television (I'm gonna assume that they look much better on a movie screen), which is a bit of a problem considering how long we end up staring at them when not that much is going on. The ending is interesting, but I wish I knew what it meant, although I suspect that I'm being needlessly obtuse here (it was probably the best part of the film). I consider this a good film, overall, but I'm not sure that I would recommend it; it's just too hard to get a handle on.

Source: Fox DVD
9 May, 8:56 PM

Sólo con tu pareja

2008-05-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico, 1991
4 out of 4 stars

I have been working my way through Cuarón's filmography ever since, believe it or not, I saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and I was just as pleased with this film, his feature debut, as I had been with his others. It's basically an absurdist sex comedy, at times solidly in the realm of farce, while other times it verges into even stranger or darker territory. Despite the more limited resources and the seemingly less-conducive subject matter, the film looks great and has the same sense of visual inventiveness that one sees in his later films

The protagonist is the usual lothario type, who we meet in the process of fooling around with both his boss and the nurse that works for his amiable neighbor, a good bourgeois doctor who is content to live vicariously through tales of his sexual exploits (although even this leads to problems for both characters on more than one occasion). We also learn that the hero is not particularly concerned about protection, which also becomes an issue.

I definitely wouldn't try to claim that the film is entirely original; it seems fresh enough to me, but some aspects of the story are more familiar than others. What I like is that there is nonetheless a good balance of optimism and cynicism which allows the viewer to forgive some of the lapses. More importantly, the film just gets more and more hilarious, particularly the darker it gets. It's definitely worth looking into.

Source: Image DVD
3 May, 9:57 PM

No End in Sight

2008-05-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

Charles Ferguson, USA, 2007
3 out of 4 stars

I was slowly making my way through "Bush's War", a two-part "episode" of PBS Frontline, when I got the notification that this movie would be the next to arrive in my mailbox. The redundancy seemed unfortunate, but I ultimately became so consumed with what I learned in "Bush's War" that I found myself interested in seeing and learning more, so I went ahead and watched the film. The result of all of this is that I found myself in a better position to actually judge No End in Sight on its merits as a work, rather than giving it a knee-jerk four-star rating due chiefly to the shock of what I learned from it.

Instead, I found this documentary to be a solid piece of work, but perhaps a bit undeserving of its de facto status as the flagship Iraq War documentary. Part of this is indeed because Frontline has in fact, it turns out, been doing shows on this stuff for years; "Bush's War" was something of a synthesis of earlier shows, with the focus to some extent being on the decision-making process that led us to war, whereas No End in Sight is more interested in the colossal mistakes made in the beginning of the occupation (there is apparently a Frontline on this subject as well, and director Charles Ferguson even uses a clip from it at one point!). Being that it is PBS, it is also pretty neutral on the face of it; of course, the facts line up to present a picture so damning that there is no real need to lay it on with any extraneous, overt ideological critique.

Ferguson, of course, is not a public television journalist, so he has no need to strive for objectivity; even so, he seems to have sensed that the facts speak for themselves (not something I always believe, mind you, but clearly the case here). The question is, really, whether he has made any use of film as a medium. There seems to be a very small amount of original footage (although who knows how original), but it's mostly a talking-head piece. This is compelling enough, as much of the things we learn are quite shocking, and not all of it was covered at least in the particular Frontline that I saw. The downside to Ferguson's approach and his status is that he is able to get only one unrepentant proponent of the Bush policies. With this guy, he sets up a very theatrical, indirect "confrontation" with one of his key witnesses; the narrator makes a point of informing us that these two men were interviewed again in order to reconcile contradictions between their testimonies. Although contrived, it's also satisfying in that you always wish that these things were actually "resolved" more thoroughly, and the confrontational aspect of it is something that Frontline largely eschews.

Overall, though, this is best suited for television; I really can't imagine watching it in a movie theater (although the occasional use of split screen did render some footage hard to focus on for someone with a modest-sized television). For film, I think I would be more interested in one of the docs that actually focuses on original, on-the-spot footage. Ferguson does augment the work of the PBS journalists, but he ultimately comes off as a little redundant. All that said, you're more likely to want to see this film then you are to watch three hours of "Bush's War" on streaming video, so on that basis alone I recommend it; this is stuff you need to know, and you will be better off, albeit angrier, for having seen it.

Source: Red Envelope DVD
29 April, 9:41 PM

One Nite in Mongkok

2008-04-21T23:18:00.000-07:00

(Wong gok hak yau)
Derek Yee, Hong Kong, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

They tell you from the beginning, if you're paying attention, that this movie is about fate. Although many of the Hong Kong films dealing with cops and gangsters emphacize some form of honor or heroism, this picture very quickly sets the stage for a tale that is grittier not in the sense that it depicts unpleasant events (although there is that too), but in that it does not provide us with these comforting lenses through which to observe the action.

For one thing, it takes quite a while for the protaganist, a young man from the mainland hired to kill a gang boss, to even appear in the picture. Although his story ultimately drives the film, albeit with frequent cutaways to the police and their attempt to avert a gang war, the fact that he doens't show up until events lead to his introduction seems to show that, even though our focus is on him, he is only a part of larger events. In fact his introduction is surprising, as before we meet him the film seems heading towards more of an ensemble approach, but Daniel Wu turns in a good performance as the often-conflicted, somewhat naive and moralistic would-be killer. His costar, Cecilia Cheung, does overplay her more cliched "prostitute with a heart of gold" role (although it may just be overwritten as well), but their relationship, strange as it is, is nonetheless appealing, as they are both in Hong Kong due to similarly dire conditions in their home villages, bringing in an important social critique to the film (not something I've seen in many Hong Kong cop films).

I enjoyed this film quite a bit, in part because it is extremeley foreboding, particularly the closer you get to the end, but is not unrelenting. Rather than whip you up into some exaggerated frenzy of dread, One Nite in Mongkok (pity about the idiotic spelling in the English title) is more about the banality of coincidence (or fate, I guess) and the compromises that all the characters have made with varying degrees of deliberateness. This makes for a film that is both more interesting and more challenging than most.

Finally, although I lack the filmic vocabulary to go into detail, the film is shot with a good degree of energy and artistry. While ultimately it falls under the umbrella of mainstream film, there does seem to have been an artsy inclination on the part of the filmmakers, and in this case I'd say their ambition was well-realized.

Source: Tai Seng DVD
21 April, 8:45 PM

Modern Times

2008-04-16T20:27:00.001-07:00

Charlie Chaplin, USA, 1936
3 out of 4 stars

Honestly, I am tempted to give the first two sequences 4 stars and the rest of the film 2 stars; as it is, I split the difference and ended up with the good-but-not-great 3 star rating.

This is actually my first Chaplin film, and as I am not a film student (but rather a "projectionist," in which capacity I saw this film), it will most likely be my last. I didn't find the conventions of the "silent" (with occasional speech near the beginning and sound effects throughout) film too difficult to get a hold of, and for the most part the humor was not incomprehensible.

If anything, the bar was perhaps set too high by the first sequence, in which Chaplin's "Little Tramp" desperately tries to make his way through a day at the factory, becoming increasingly unhinged with results that myself and most of the undergraduates found absolutely hillarious. No surpise that an English professor would assign this, as Chaplin demonstrates the "alienation of labor" concept far better than Karl Marx or any of his followers could hope to!

There are flickers of brilliance throghout (the first jail sequence is pretty solid), but the film increasingly becomes repetetive (near the end the Tramp ends up in yet another factory, even mirroring many of the earlier gags albeit in a different context. It seems that Chaplin was regrettably unable to maintain the high level of both social commentary and humor that he shows at the beginning.

Source: Warner DVD
15 April, 7:10 PM

The Host

2008-04-15T22:36:00.001-07:00

(Gwoemul)
Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2006
3.5 out of 4 stars

This Korean mega-blockbuster came to my attention during its small but respectable American run thanks to major critical Internet hype, to the point that I watched it despite my general antipathy to "monster movies," and in this case the hype was mostly justified. The random attacks on the people of Seoul by a large mutant fish-creature serve as a very interesting vehicle for biting social commentary on Korean society (surprisingly easy to grasp despite my general ignorance about said society), and more importantly, a critique on the US' paternalistic, borderline-malevolent (at least here) relationship with the Republic of Korea.

Political themes are not that rare to horror films, I understand (not so much from watching them as from reading reviews), and the perspective on America is not unfamiliar to me from the handful of American films I've seen, dealing both with the early 21st century and the mid 20th century. Nonetheless, The Host, like all the best blockbusters (increasingly an oxymoron, at least domestically) is a terrific genre mishmash of satire, melodrama and suspense. The fact that certain scenes, such as a notably excessive display of grieving by the family around which the film revolves, leave the viewer unsure as to whether they are meant as melodrama or satire (or both) only increases the impact and appeal of the film.

The plot itself is aimless in a good way, as the twists and turns effectively convey the sense of frustration with the South Korean and American governmental and military response to the monster, as well as the struggle of the average (perhaps even below-average), regular family to fight both the monster and the monstrously uncaring systems they are at the mercy of. There are definitely flaws; the main female character is woefully undeveloped particularly in comparison to her male counterparts, and there was one glaring aspect of the film that I found to be extremely problematic (but cannot reveal for fear of spoilers), but overall this is a surprisingly effective piece. And for those who care, there is thankfully not too much gore (the most extreme scene is probably the one where the monster belches out an improbably large heap of bones).

Source: Magnolia DVD
14 April, 9:52 PM

The Battle of Algiers

2008-04-14T21:17:00.001-07:00

(La Battaglia di Algeri)
Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy / Algeria, 1966
4 out of 4 stars

I expected this to be more of a "broccoli" film, meaning that it would be "good for me" but not particularly interesting. Yet from fairly early on (after some getting used to it), I was very impressed by how engrossing, even thrilling at times, a film about terrorism could actually be.

Calling it "terrorism" might sound wrong, considering that this is a film that very much celebrates the national liberation struggle of the Algerians against French colonialism (a situation that, while never all that far from our American experience, is more uncomfortably familiar to even the most clueless citizen than it has been for us in quite a while). Part of what makes this film great, though, is that while it does glamorize to an extent through sheer cinematic force, it also forces you to take a clear look not only at what's at stake but also at precisely who will, for instance, die in a bomb blast (children included). As such the film manages to transcend both propaganda and facile, disingenously "neutral" docudrama to create something altogether more compelling and troubling.

Finally, when I mention terrorism I am also referring to what is sometimes called state terrorism, as the second half of the film, roughly speaking, is dedicated to the French Army's response to the revolutionary upheaval. While their leader might arguably be portrayed in an overly-sympathetic manner, the main Algerian rebel is still clearly the hero, and furthermore, the fact that the colonel does have a sense of "honor" only makes his actions the more disturbing. As the press corps finally start to reflect a growing civilian unease with harsh military tactics (sound familiar?), the best moment comes when the colonel reminds just how implicated they are in the colonial project. I should also note that the Ennio Morricone score is quite awesome!

Source: WEA subtitled VHS
10 April, 6:10 PM

The Taste of Others

2008-04-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

(Le Goût des autres)
Agnès Jaoui, France, 2000
3 out of 4 stars

Some time ago, I watched a film called Look at Me and enjoyed it enough to add director Agnès Jaoui's earlier (and first) film to my Netflix queue, but not, apparently, enough to make it any kind of priority. My conclusion is that this is a solid, entertaining effort, but that Jaoui definitely improved in her subsequent outing.

There is definitely a similar style at play here, as we have witty but often dry dialogue, frequent cuts between different sets of characters, and a somewhat sudden and jolting introduction into the plot (you figure out who is who and what relationship they have to each other about 15 minutes into the film). Although this film does juggle several storylines, most of the focus is on a bumbling, bourgeois industrial manager who becomes more interested in his English lessons (forced upon him by higher-ups so that he will be able get this international deal through) when he becomes enamored of his tutor during her performance in the theater. This plot allows for the filmmakers to provide amusing but not entirely earthshaking commentary about the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the art-intellectual caste, among other things. While some of the characters may seem simplistic at first, most ultimately become sympathetic and invovling.

That said, this film does ultimately seem a bit slight. Jaoui and her husband, co-writer Jean-Pierre Bacri (also the de facto star here) try to weave together all these characters, but some ultimately don't seem to contribute too much, concerning the plot or the overall conceptual thrust of the piece, which as I said is not eathshattering in and of itself. While Look at Me wasn't perfect, either, Jaoui and Bacri seem to have worked out some of these problems in their following film, so it's a bit disconcerting to go backwards as I ended up doing with their work. I guess on the off chance that you were to see either of these films, you should see the first one first, or only see the second one.

Source: Buena Vista DVD
1 April, 10:09 PM

Offside

2008-03-16T00:23:00.000-07:00

Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2006
4 out of 4 stars

Iranian women, as the text at the beginning helpfully explains to American audiences, are barred from attending sporting events, which of course means that this film is about a handful of young women, who, for different reasons, try to sneak in to particularly important soccer match that will decide whether or not Iran will make it to the 2006 World Cup. It bears noting, by the way, that much of this film was actually shot in the background during the game (although you won't see much of it).

The film, then, is about gender in Iran, but it is also about class, as the often-hapless soldiers who become the reluctant guards of these seemingly privileged city women come from rural, provincial backgrounds, and its theme inherently leads to a consideration of nationalism as well. We know that there are “bad guys,” so to speak, in the Iranian system, but for the most part those figures stay offscreen; instead, we have two mostly sympathetic groups who both have legitimate grievances. The director chooses to present both of these sides rather than telling us what to think. It might be tempting to chalk all this restraint up to an aspiration to see the film screened in its own country and not just in international markets (it didn’t work), but I think that the presentation of the film is actually quite sincere and insightful, albeit very subtle (I'm sure plenty of the nuances escaped me from my vantage point).

Like all the other handful of Iranian films I’ve seen (almost all of which were banned domestically by Iranian censors), this one is filmed in a neo-realist style with long takes and a cast of mostly non-actors. Ths one, however, is undoubtedly my favorite of the ones I’ve seen, as it is the first one with an overall comic tone, which is pretty rare not just in Iranian film but in any neo-realist film. While it does start slow, the confrontations are amusing while also thought-provoking, and the characters are quite engaging, but the comic nature of the film does not mean that important questions are being dodged; although Persepolis was a good film, I felt like this one was in many ways more enlightening and entertaining. Even if you’re skeptical about this kind of film, I would recommend you give it a chance.

Source: Sony DVD
16 March, 10:17 PM

Super Size Me

2008-03-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

Morgan Spurlock, USA, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

I’m gonna assume that everyone has heard about this movie, and as such, I’m not gonna spend any time describing it for you. The first thing I will say is that it probably benefited from really low expectations on my part. Intellectually, I still object to Spurlock’s methodology; it’s the film version of what a public radio panel recently referred to as “extreme sports writing,” and I think that documentaries should not, in general, be documents of stunts. Furthermore, It’s hard not to be bothered by the futility of the whole thing, and it’s also hard not to wonder what would have been the point if, say, he had managed to get himself permanent kidney damage.

My greatest critique of this film, prior to actually watching it, was that it dramatized the obvious, and therefore must not have any real purpose; in this respect, I believe myself to be proved wrong. The truth is that what is obvious to some is not obvious to others, and I found myself increasingly uneasy at the degree to which I personally felt indicted by the film. I remember feeling this way when I first read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, but the effect has not been the same upon reviewing it for my class (the film was also shown during three class periods, interspersed with some other activity), and any case, I think the visual effect is very crucial; I was disturbed simply by the sight of how gigantic the now-defunct “super size” actually was.

The real question is whether this film can cause anyone to change their behavior; Spurlock obviously would like the government and corporations to change theirs, but he explains the lobbying system (overlapping with Schlosser here, as he often does) clearly enough to show us that that’s not going to happen, so he does leave it up to us in the end. Initially, I felt irritated at being condemned without actually being enlightened (it’s not like I didn’t know that I shouldn’t eat that Western Bacon Cheeseburger, after all), but over time I feel more hopeful that I may have actually internalized some of the message. And most importantly, the film is much more entertaining than I expected, due mostly to its shock value; aside from that, the interviews in particular and such consist of a more complete package than the marketing would suggest (in fact the central stunt is largely just a marketing gimmick when it comes right down to it). My students did not react audibly as often as I did, but many of them had after all seen it before. But if I’m gonna measure this by how much impact it had on me, I should probably come back in a month and raise or lower the rating based on how concerned I am by that point!

Source: WEA DVD
5 March, 3:20 PM

Breach

2008-03-07T23:42:00.000-08:00

Billy Ray, USA, 2007
3 out of 4 stars

The film launches with some footage of a press conference with John Ashcroft in early 2001, as he announces the capture of a mole in the FBI; a title card takes us two months back and engages us in the story of a young operative, Eric O’Neil (Ryan Philippe), tasked to play the obedient subordinate to grumpy old man Chris Cooper and dig up some dirt on him. Of course, things are not what they seem and Philippe’s character has not been told the whole truth, but the film for the most part plays out as a complicated dance between the competent young hero and the grizzled, prickly character actor. It’s not just about the guys, though, as Philippe’s real boss, gamely played by Laura Linney, shows up every now and then to act tough; the obligatory cameos by the Wife Who Doesn’t Understand are as annoying as they usually are, but you can tell the filmmakers sorta know this, and it does pay off more than you might expect.

So as the critics say, Cooper’s performance is often compelling, and Philippe does a reasonably good job at keeping up. The film can also be very tense at times, and Ray does a good job selling us on the gravity of the whole situation. Ultimately, however, I can’t help but feel like the film is not quite exciting or significant enough due to its excessive dependence on standing up to the scrutiny they felt would ensue from the “based on a true story” tagline; this impression was only strengthened after viewing the bonus features, in which you see. I do think that they made the right choice, even in an artistic sense, in not seeking to “explain” Cooper’s character anymore than they did, as this would only detract from his performance. The problem is that the filmmakers seem to have decided that just putting on a fairly compelling reenactment of a recent even is enough of a raison d’être. Honestly, how can you do a story about intelligence failure in that brief pre-9/11 Bush period without trying to say, I don’t know, something about it! And finally, the ending really underwhelms; perhaps this was unavoidable, but perhaps a director should also ask if the thrill of a “true story” necessarily justifies a plot that will eventually just sorta go flat (I’m sure they punched it up a bit here and there, but it feels like they didn’t do so enough). As entertaining as the film is, it ultimately comes off as a more mature, more polished version of America’s Most Wanted.

Source: Universal DVD
6 March, 8:42 PM

There Will Be Blood

2008-02-23T10:27:00.000-08:00

Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2007
3 out of 4 stars

I’m beginning to wonder if I have overly specific expectations for films about historical problems. You probably wouldn’t expect me to draw parallels with Sweeney Todd and my reception of it, but once again I found myself a little miffed, at least when the film was over and I reflected on it, that a filmmaker had almost threatened to make a film about something like the social impact of the early 20th century oil boom on a small town, but had instead decided to focus on how crazy this one guy is.

The parallels are limited, admittedly. I thought this was a much stronger film, partly because I didn’t really notice the missed opportunities until after. Just as all the critics said, Day-Lewis is a captivating presence, although there is a valid question as to whether he is believable as a fully-realized character, rather than as a human phenomenon.

And maybe I’m being too literal in my approach to the film. You see, there is a scene where the main character, Daniel Plainview, makes copious promises for economic and infrastructural development to the aforementioned small town. We are probably supposed to gather that he is lying, but you never even get enough of a glimpse of the world outside Plainview himself to really ascertain the truth of his statement. His story of demented, solitary obsession is compelling, but particularly considering the length of the film, it’s remarkable that it is depicted in isolation to such a pronounced degree. Maybe his character progression (if you can call it that) is supposed to represent the social trends, and maybe his rivalry with a young churchman played by Paul Danno is supposed to serve the same purpose, but the approach ultimately led, for me at least, to a sort of decontextualized feeling, the feeling of “what’s the point?”

I actually still did get something out of this film and you very likely will too. I don’t quite think the critics and the Oscar voters are wrong; I just think they are conditioned to value, perhaps even overvalue, certain things, and this movie is to some extent designed with those things in mind. A familiar story, of course.

Source: Paramount 35mm print
12 February, 2:50 PM

Paprika

2008-01-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

Kon Satoshi, Japan, 2006
3.5 out of 4 stars

When a film centers around a device that enables psychotherapists (at least that's what I think they were) to enter into the dreams of their subjects, you expect for there to be a certain amount of trippy, mind-bending imagery, and perhaps even a general abandonment of literal narrative in favor of a more "dreamlike" approach. Of course, we do get plenty of this imagery (parades full of monuents and "Children's Day" dolls, amusement parks, and so on), and it's both exhilitaring and disturbing in a way that no other film I've seen lately has been (nice to see the Japanese still doing something with animation, particularly the mostly-hand-drawn, traditional kind). However, the odd thing about Paprika is that this imagery is contained within an overall plot structure that bears many of the trappings of a straightforward narrative, as the scientists, sometimes with the help of a police detective, try to recover a missing device and deal with the havoc apparently caused by its misuse.

It's only as the film continues that it becomes apparent that the filmmakers are not playing as straight with us as they initially lead us to believe. Most of the characters in this film have unexpected relationships with each other, and these relationships are generally revealed in very awkward, confusing ways, usually after quite a bit of time has elapsed. Some of these are obvious whereas others just seem like they should have been obvious. Yet even though the audience had been left hanging about certain aspects of the plot, the occasional reveals leave us expecting a greater degree of narrative closure than we are ultimately afforded by the film. We are in fact cleverly misled into expecting more of an explanation.

Of course, I don't believe that any of this is accidental, although it did frustrate my friend a lot more than it did me; I suppose I was in the mood for something that didn't entirely want to make sense, and I really do think the trojan horse of the traditional narrative was cleverly implemented. As to what the film is saying philosophically, well, as usual I'm at a bit of a loss as far as that goes. I found the use of what I understand to be stock anime depictions of women (cold-hearted scientist, peppy bright-haired witch-type), not to mention men (stern detective, absent-minded old man) to be both somewhat tiresome and seemingly knowing at the same time (it's interesting that it shows up in what strikes me, perhaps incorrectly, as more of an "art-house" anime). I should also mention that as much as the "dream device" and the amusement park imagery sounds horribly unoriginal when I describe it, much like something that has showed up in one Star Trek or X-Files episode too many, it is in fact much more mindblowing than it sounds. Check it out but be prepared for weirdness and incoherency!

Source: Sony DVD
18 Jan, 9:21 PM

Killer of Sheep

2008-01-17T21:56:00.000-08:00

Charles Burnett, USA, 1977
3.5 out of 4 stars

You may or may not have heard of this film; it's was a UCLA film school thesis long ago, never got distribution until last year due to music rights issues (too expensive). It's basically European-style neo-realism applied to a depiction of working-class life in Watts (and if all that sounds like I am cribbing off of introductory remarks by academics from my university, well that's because I am).

I'm afraid that I don't really have much to add to what others have said about this film, but I'll solider on anyway since this may possibly be your introduction to it. I was impressed by the degree to which, as many pointed out, narrative was entirely eschewed throughout. Sometimes I find this frustrating, but it seems both appropriate and effective in this instance. Too many films about oppressed people rely too heavily on grand, impending tragedy, while the Hollywood version usually relies on implausible or unearned, uplift, but Burnett shows us that things are not that simple in this environment. He chooses to focus, to some extent, on the unspoken turmoil of a family man working in a slaughterhouse, drawing obvious but understated parallels between his job and the conditions of living in his neighborhood. People bluster their way through various mundane (and sometimes, grimly hilarious) situations, but are largely unable to articulate their deeper problems. Interspersed throughout are scenes of children playing, roughly, trying to claim their post-industrial spaces as best they can, visually paralleled directly with the sheep. I can't claim that I was able to come to that profound of an understanding of the film on my own, so I will say that I appreciated seeing it in this "academic" context. It's worth a look as long as you know what you are getting into!

Source: New Yorker DVD
17 Jan, 6:26 PM

Reno 911!: Miami

2008-01-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

Robert Ben Garant, USA, 2007
1.5 out of 4 stars

This is of course one of those films that defeats criticism, if only in the sense that when you say it’s bad, people who are likely to agree with you say “no duh, why did you watch that anyway?” while people who disagree with you will call you names like “elitist,” or tell you that it’s supposed to be dumb. Admittedly I am not a big fan of stupidity for its own sake, but I have found the show fairly entertaining in small doses – if you’re not familiar with it, it centers around really idiotic and obscene police officers in Reno, sort of a broad Cops parody with a strong basis in improv.

I think it’s pretty clear that there was no real chance of the material being made into a good film, as the people involved just don’t seem to have the discipline for it. One bit that really struck me was an extended sequence in which successive interactions consistently had an awkward dissolve transition as the editor had to skip over the unsuccessful improvisations the actors had probably stumbled through. I could go on about other ways in which this film was poorly thought-out or shoddily made, but the main point is that, for the most part, it was not particularly funny. The best praise I can give is that I didn’t really think that much about how bad or pointless it was until afterwards; I wasn’t really enjoying it, but neither was I angry about how bad it was (and that is saying something, with me)

Source: Charter VOD
10 Jan, 9:13 PM

Persepolis

2008-01-06T14:22:00.000-08:00

Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, France / USA, 2007
3.5 out of 4 stars

Ah, it’s nice to see a good movie again. It’s certainly not perfect. I’ve read the first volume as published in the US, and I definitely felt that the second half of the film, adapting the second half, was not as strong. The first half deals with Satrapi’s childhood in Iran and has some really interesting things to say about how children struggle with and process the complex, yet inane, political changes around them in times of extreme strife, such as the Iranian Revolution. We are not robbed of a sophisticated treatment through this perspective, rather we gain new insight on something that most of us probably didn’t have much insight into in the first place!

The second part of the film, meanwhile, is on her high school experiences as a lone member of the diaspora in Vienna – still strong, but more familiar – and her college years back in Iran, which is a bit stronger. None of this, however, reduced my positive feeling towards the movie too much. The animation, while stylized, is very expressive. Little Marjane is cute but not overly so, and the imaginative universe (in which she talks with God) is effectively juxtaposed against the dark reality of political purges without missing a beat. There are a few awkward transitions between various short episodes, paradoxically moreso in the mostly-stronger first half, but this is mitigated by the surprisingly-high level of humor (when appropriate, that is).

It’s something new, different, and worthwhile as animation is concerned, and as far as “third world memoir” is concerned; there are flaws but they are quite easily overlooked. Go see it, when you can!

Source: Sony subtitled 35mm print
5 Jan, 1:30 PM

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

2008-01-03T22:02:00.000-08:00

Tim Burton, USA / UK, 2007
2.5 out of 4 stars

The sad thing is, I enjoyed most of this movie, particularly its atmosphere (sure it’s the same as the other Burton films, at least aside from the blood, but Burton still does a good job at pulling you in as always) with two major reservations. The first of these was, of course, that the performances of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter were definitely not good enough to justify their casting in light of their insufficient vocal talents. It’s slightly unfair to lump them together, as Carter, as much as I like her, is significantly worse than Depp. Either way, it’s a shame, as the songs were really awesome and the orchestration in particular does its best to prop up these singers, allowing you to overlook their faults as much as possible.

My second problem with the film was that it seemed to be dragging on a bit, and this was only compounded when it took a turn that I had trouble following. You see, the title character undergoes a pretty complete shift in modus operandi something like three-quarters of the way through the film. I don’t know if this worked better in the musical, but in the film, I really felt like the transition was just unsatisfying and incoherent, and from there on out, I had a lot more trouble “relating” to the action, as it were. Although I might not like the musical any better, I suspect that I’m just not impressed with Burton’s psychology or his social conscience, as he usually operates on the surface and this work asks for a greater insight into Todd’s mentality than Burton can ultimately provide us. Or maybe the premise just doesn’t work for me in the first place.

Source: Paramount 35mm print
3 Jan, 1:50 PM

The Great Debaters

2008-01-02T22:18:00.001-08:00

Denzel Washington, USA, 2007
2.5 out of 4 stars

There are a lot of unflattering things I could say about this movie, and believe me, I will say them. Much of it seems over-familiar, such as the love triangle, the pubescent fantasies, and even the general whiff of what some critics call “underdog uplift.” It’s definitely weighed down too heavily with conventionality, something my compatriots and I were quick to blame on the fact that it comes out of Oprah Winfrey’s production company.

So, it’s not entirely a good film, but nonetheless, I found that as it went on, my reservations about the often ham-handed execution were increasingly overridden by my interest in the story itself, because if aspects of it are too familiar, there’s something about the overall thrust that seems worth telling in a sociopolitical sense. That is to say, this movie should have been better, but it still may indeed be good for you, or at least for someone, and it doesn’t entirely lack complexity either.

The subject here is a debate team at a black college in 1930s Texas, coached by a leftist agitator type played by the director. One can’t help but feel that one is being patronized a bit by how their debates transpire – we are given to understand that they do not get to choose the position they will take on an issue, but, mysteriously, they are nonetheless always depicted as taking positions consistent with civil rights and leftist thoughts in general, while their black (at least initially) opponents always sound like Clarence Thomas or worse.

Clearly, the filmmakers aren’t really comfortable with the idea of “debating.” I would assume that if the position is not chosen by the debaters, they must occasionally have had to defend unpalatable positions, but that’s apparently too complex for this film. That said, I couldn’t help but feel after a while that there was something, dare I say it, uplifting about seeing these young people triumphing through showing their verbal prowess and speaking truth-to-power, and of course, uplift is the more important goal for the filmmakers.

Aside from that, I felt that there was some real insight in some of the formulations the film puts across regarding racial injustice at the time, specifically considering the sometimes-contradictory intersections between poverty and race. It also doesn’t shy away from the horrific nature of phenomena such as lynching, something that is in itself valuable for any historically-illiterate young person (this being almost a redundant statement). Finally, I really appreciated how the relationships were put across, as there seemed to be some interesting things being said about black masculinity, specifically regarding how relationships are strained by the pressures of racism, but ultimately preserved out of mutual understanding and the not-uncritical support of women.

Source: MGM 35mm print
2 Jan, 3:40 PM

Sweet Land

2007-12-26T15:30:00.000-08:00

Ali Selim, USA, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

The premise of this film is that, somewhere in the Midwest immediately after the first world war, a Norwegian immigrant has summoned a mail-order bride who turns out to be (somehow unbeknownst to him) from Germany. It’s not quite on the order of what happened to Japanese Americans in the next one, but as the film presents it there is still quite a large degree of anti-German sentiment that prevents the marriage from occurring as planned, starting with the openly bigoted preacher. Other arrangements are made while the two perhaps get a better chance at becoming acquainted with each other than they otherwise would have without the obstacles.

In a sense, this is the Minnesota version of the British “heritage” film, complete with a tiresome framing story within a framing story in which the next generation agonizes over the old “selling out to the developer” conundrum. This stuff threatens to mar the film proper but is thankfully forgotten for most of it.

Most of the movie is taken up by an understated, but ultimately not underplayed love story set against the backdrop of a less-discussed form of intolerance. I particularly found the minister’s character interesting; there are things about his character arc that are cliché, but I give the filmmakers credit for making his character more complex than you might expect. The lead actors also have good chemistry with each other, and the film ultimately isn’t too sedate. It’s a pleasant experience – take that with both its positive and negative connotations.

Source: Fox DVD
25 Dec, 7:56 PM

Annie Hall

2007-12-24T12:06:00.000-08:00

Woody Allen, USA, 1977
3.5 out of 4 stars

At first I was worried. I consider Allen, perhaps unfairly, to be a misogynist at best, a child molester at worst (how the icons of the 70s have fallen – in his case, due to both new ideas in general and new misdeeds on his part) so I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy a film that began with his self-indulgent mug filling up the screen while he told unfunny jokes and made observations about himself that didn’t seem to be particularly insightful.

That said, whatever baggage Allen carries for me as a kid from the MTV generation who’s never even seen one of his films before was basically set aside after that brief sequence, after which the film became funnier and more insightful at a lightning pace.

I can only imagine that some aspects of this film were much more revolutionary when it came out, such as the confessional, talking-to-the-camera aspect of it. While we may have suffered more than benefited from this development (in my opinion, many much less talented comedians have become way too self-centered and self-indulgent in their films these days), it works surprisingly well here. Allen is quite funny and his persona is more likeable and more complex than it seems at first glance.

The off-kilter chronology of the film is something else that we see in a lot of self-consciously “quirky” movies that are released today, and it’s here that we also see Allen work with greater skill (and of course, with more innovation) than most of his imitators, seeming to tap into an emotional logic with his chronology rather than merely indulge in clever gimmicks).

Finally, the title character, as performed by Diane Keaton, is given much more personal and self than I would have expected. Of course, Allen’s persona dominates the film’s narrative and threatens to squeeze out Annie’s perspective entirely, but Allen still provides Keaton with enough moments to bring across herself as an equal partner in the relationship and a person of her own. Compare this to something like Zach Braff’s Garden State, where Natalie Portman’s character (through no fault of her own) is more a collection of attractive quirks than something approaching a self-possessed character with her own presence.

And of course, it’s just a really funny film. From what I hear, I shouldn’t ruin it by watching his later work, in which his bad urges seem to get the better of him.

Source: Warner DVD
23 Dec, 8:13 PM

The Golden Compass

2007-12-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

Chris Weitz, USA / UK, 2007
2.5 out of 4 stars

I was disappointed when the bad reviews started coming in for this would-be blockbuster adaptation of one of my teenage self's favorite fantasy books, so I steeled myself for a sub-par product well before I finally went to see it with my folks (who also once enjoyed the book). The result was that I enjoyed it enough, but I was consistently looking for imperfections, to the extent that I may have noticed faults that would have escaped my attention if I hadn't been preconditioned to expect them.

That said, this movie certainly reminded me how difficult it is to set up an entire fantasy world and an exciting adventure story all at once in a feature-length film, and while Peter Jackson certainly figured out how to do it, comedy director Chris Weitz is no Peter Jackson, to say the least. It's no surprise to say he lacks vision, and that both he and the studio that hired him (and once hired Jackson) should have known better. Nor is there any of the loose interpretative genius evidenced by, say, Alfonso Cuarón. Particularly during the first half or so of the film, there are far too many awkwardly paced sequences of short, abrupt scenes in which the exact amount of information necessary to keep things going is dispensed in a stilted manner. The actors are for the most part good; Nicole Kidman does vamp it up a bit too much as the villain, but that is pretty much the character. Meanwhile, child protagonist Dakota Blue Richards acts at times as if she doesn't believe she's in peril, she is never overly cute and displays the right degree of sass at all times.

And in fact, once we get through most of the setup, the movie gains some focus as it narrows down to the journey of Lyra, Richards's character, as she tries to fulfill a promise while chasing half-understood magical-scientific revelations from her "uncle." The big fight scene is a bit murky but still feels triumphant. The ending, though, is only a revelation in that they seem to have kept the actual ending for the opening of the next film, if there will be one. Fans of the book will be left wondering how much of this controversial scene will be changed when and if it is adapted for the screen. Speaking of the next one, I can only hope they get a more talented director, because if Weitz faltered here, he's going to crash and burn when adapting the somewhat sparse and dreary events of book two (of which I'm no longer assured of its quality after all these years).

Source: New Line 35mm print
21 Dec, 1:05 PM

The Color of Paradise

2007-12-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

(Rang-e khoda)
Majid Majidi, Iran, 1999
3 out of 4 stars

My family and I were, I think, in a bit too much of a silly mood to be watching such a "serious" and "understated" picture, so the emotional impact of this tale of a rural blind child in Iran was perhaps not what it should have been. I suspect, however, that this might be true to some extent under any viewing circumstances.

There are some very impressive aspects to the film, however, and overall, it's worth viewing. While I'm sure it's not the first or last film to try to put this across, it nonetheless did a pretty good job of conveying the young blind protagonist's sense of hearing and touch, showing us how it both isolates him and puts him on the same wavelength as nature. There were also some odd touches that I'm glad weren't explained (although while watching, I assumed that I wanted an explanation).

So, it's a solid effort, and the characters and their plights are engaging enough. Yet while a movie like this usually feels like it needs to be short, the 90 minute running time here actually makes the film seem a bit slight. There is actually a fairly solid plot, and ultimately this just leads one to feel like the viewer may have seen an overly small sliver of the pie (while at the same time, it's doubtful that a longer film would have been superior).

Source: Sony DVD
16 Dec, 8:04 PM

Across the Universe

2007-10-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

Julie Taymor, USA, 2007
3 out of 4 stars

So, you all know that this is the musical based entirely upon songs by The Beatles, right? Plot-wise, there's not that much to tell. I feel like I saw this movie already in that network minseries from a few years back entitled The 60s, and in any case, the attempt to "tell the story of the 60s" in some impossibly all-encompassing manner seems pretty well-worn by now, so really all the film has going for it is the high concept. The characters are trite, the politics are verging upon the irresponsible, and the film really starts wobbling around the halfway mark when it tries to get serious.

I stand by all these objections, but for the most part, they occurred to me after the film was over. Maybe it's because I grew up watch musicals and MTV, and therefore have a tendency to imagine myself, while walking to or around campus, in some kind of music video, but I really felt captivated from this movie from the beginning. I don't really know how this movie rates against the best musicals, but it represents my idea of what a musical should be in that it does not shy away from including singing in real, lived-in spaces, as did, for instance, Chicago with its lame cut-aways to imaginary stage sets. To me, all the charm of the musical form is summed up right in that scene where people dance and sing in the bowling alley. It wasn't even one of my favorite numbers, but it looks like something I probably have, at least once, imagined myself.

So, I think one of the good aspects of the high concept is that it enabled the filmmakers to make (what I consider) a real musical. Another bonus is that they seem to feel the need to treat the Beatles songs well and give us, across the board, actors with strong vocal chops who deliver often beautiful renditions (I particularly enjoyed the songs by female lead Evan Rachel Wood and soul singer/guitarist Martin Luther McCoy, whom I've seen in concert with The Roots). I'm sure that not including any vocally-impaired stars helped contribute to the dismal box office, but it's probably the only way we can get a movie musical that actually sounds good (dismal reports are already coming in about the quality of the A-list cast's singing in Sweeney Todd). The only real objection I have here is that Jim Sturgess, while also a good singer, delivers vocal performances that, perhaps deliberately so, are too similar to that of originals (albeit with an obvious musical-theater flavoring). Such mimicry defeats the purpose of a reinvention, in my opinion.

Finally we come to the visual styling of Julie Taymor, which I found, here, to be more distracting and less essential than they were in the superior, if certainly less fun to watch, Titus. Taymor seems to know that her love story is, to put it lightly, far from original, but she tries to punch it up with awkwardly abstract set pieces that ultimately don't belong in the film.

If you weigh the pros and cons, the faults probably outnumber the virtues, but anyone who can't stop themselves from humming a tune here and there will probably appreciate this film at least on a visceral level.

Source: Sony 35mm print
16 Oct, 7 PM

3:10 to Yuma

2007-10-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

James Mangold, USA, 2007
3 out of 4 stars

As we all know, the Western used to be one of a few dominant genres, until people starting losing their nostalgia for the wild west (actually I don't know why the western declined, or even precisely when) and the western went all but extinct. Then in the 70s, various filmmakers started making occasional "deconstructionist" Western films, and this trend has continued, off and on, to this day. Of course, we can go years without a major western and then end up with two in the same month. I tend to assume that this is a genre I enjoy, but while I enjoyed this film, I'm not sure that it leaves me wanting to spend another three hours with people in cowboy hats within the next few weeks. I am, it seems, a postmodern consumer of westerns, someone who appreciates them because they haven't been dominant in a long time.

That said, I also bring up the "deconstructionist" thing because it's not entirely clear that this is that kind of film. One brings these assumptions to the table, particularly considering the respectable acting talent (Christian Bale and Russell Crowe) and the lack of attempt to convert the thing into a modern action film, but whereas the film has certain unnerving things to say about heroism, order, law, and masculinity, I'm not sure that, ultimately, any of these things really subverts the western genre.

This may well be because it's a remake of a film from exactly 50 years prior, and I wonder if my opinion of it wouldn't be lower if I'd seen the original. While not a long film, the 2007 version is about 30 minutes longer than the original, and you can imagine that almost the entire extra half-hour is plugged in there at the beginning. I say this because the film is very meandering for about that length of time, until the villain (Crowe) is apprehended. You can't even really say that there is any buildup going on during this time, as the plot is not even apparent yet. Instead, the filmmakers seem to be, quite leisurely, setting the scene, but they also don't seem to be saying that much during this time.

Instead, all the meaning and most of the characterization comes when the journey to take Crowe's character to Yuma begins. Whereas up to this point I figured I would just gently tolerate this film, I found myself really enjoying the characters, the portrayal of the characters by the actors, and the conflict of wills and ideas. It is the kind of film where you can correctly speculate about three of the four things that are going to happen, and it's also the kind of film where the teenager is just really annoying even as you understand that you're supposed to be witnessing his journey or some rot. Nonetheless, it is, at least without seeing the film it's based on, a very solid, enjoyable western, with, yes, some good action to boot.

Source: Lionsgate 35mm print
29 Sep, 9:30 PM

Grand Illusion

2007-09-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

(La Grande illusion)
Jean Renoir, France, 1938
3 out of 4 stars

This classic film attempts to deal with the legacy of the first world war, as the countries involved teetered on the verge of the next one. It's an interesting exercise, albeit one that is perhaps almost lost on a 21st century American. Of course, the first thing that struck me was the unreal, "gentleman-like" manner in which the French officers are treated after they are captured and placed in the officer's prison camp. It's obvious, but it's still quite amazing to see the ways in which the class structure took precedence over nationalism even in times of war. This is still effective today, because this phenomenon was basically put to death by the war depicted (offscreen) here, and we regard it today with as much puzzlement as viewers then would have (okay, probably more).

If you've seen the film, however, you'll object to my over-simplification of the special treatment recieved by officers as due to the class structure. In fact, I assumed it was that simple for at least the first half of the film, because I was blind to the subtle, but frequent hints of class difference between the officers themselves. It was only after a complete change of scenery that these issues came surging to the surface. It's probably not a coincidence, then, that I really didn't appreciate this second half anywhere near as much as the first half, as I didn't really understand what the source of the conflict was until it was, finally, spelled out for me (and the fact that the film eventually does so indicates that these issues were perhaps already a bit muddled for some people as of 1933). The conflict itself is interesting, but it does feel a bit protracted. Finally, the film concludes with a fairly-tired road/buddy movie sequence that, thankfully, doesn't last all that long. I imagine that even this part of the film is probably more influential than tired, but some things are hard to appreciate in retrospect.

So, just to sum up, I was pretty impressed by the portion of the film that takes place in the first concentration camp. The message was clear and the surreal nature of the proceedings kept me interested. After that part, the film was still strong, but it was harder for me to relate to it, and by the end, I felt like everything had been dragged out for longer than necessary. Considering that this is a revered classic, it's probably not a fair judgment, but it's mine nonetheless!

Source: Home Vision DVD
19 Aug, 8:35 PM

Stardust

2007-09-02T09:12:00.001-07:00

Matthew Vaughn, UK / USA, 2007
3.5 out of 4 stars

In a recent interview, Neil Gaiman wonders aloud whether this new film adaptation of his illustrated fantasy novella can really make a go of it, explaining that it is "the thing itself" whereas something established in popularity such as Shrek is "a comedy... that's making fun of the thing." After seeing it, I was tempted to disagree with him, as this film does not, by any means, play things as straightforward as the two major fantasy franchises of our day. That said, Shrek is probably the closest cousin in terms of subject matter (the faux medieval, rather than the pre-medieval or modern) and, furthermore, the film's gross is singularly unimpressive, particularly considering how in vogue fantasy is today.

That's a shame, because this was a film that I thought really struck the perfect balance between mocking and embracing the conventions inherent in the "fairy tale" genre (if there is such a thing anymore). Admittedly, you could very easily make the critique that this film is just a parade of zany and whimsical characters with a quest that barely even qualifies as a quest tying them together. All this is somewhat true, but there is a real charm to the proceedings, and a real love of fantasy is apparent, but the filmmakers also show that they are not blind to the absurdities of it. The platitudes that it espouses, about people being free to understand and appreciate their uniqueness, are familiar, yet appreciated, and the chemistry between the two leads is strong. Definitely a strong effort.

Source: Paramount 35mm print
17 Aug, 1 PM

The Twilight Samurai

2007-09-01T23:44:00.000-07:00

(Tasogare Seibei)
Yamada Yoji, Japan, 2002
3.5 out of 4 stars

This is either the world's slowest action movie, or it contains the best couple of fight scenes you could ever expect to see in a historical romance, but either way, it's a surprisingly effective film because of, not in spite of, its languorous pace. Through occasional flashback voice overs, a woman tells us about her samurai father, Seibei, who raised her and her sister after their mother died and found, perhaps to his surprise, a contented, if difficult existence in which he was focused not on raising his meager status or on drinking at the bar with his co-workers (he seems to be an accountant, actually), but on taking care of them. Seibei's priorities, however, generate some negative attention from his superiors and colleagues alike. is If this doesn't sound like enough to base a plot on, there's also a female childhood friend involved, in addition to the occasional hints that the age of the samurai is very quickly nearing an end, leading to questions about everyone's role in society.

This may well sound like a downer, but actually, it is a very hopeful and engaging movie, and when people make choices that are, to put it lightly, not exactly audience-pleasing, there is always some clear, understandable motivation behind it. I don't know if this is what the samurai was "really" like (and in fact, Seibei is not supposed to be a regular samurai at all, or even a typical man for his time), but it certainly gives a well-rounded, full realized portrayal on the individual, family, and cultural levels, and is all the more rewarding for when the action actually does come (by which point I really didn't expect it at all).

Source: Empire DVD
15 Aug, 9:14 PM

The Bourne Ultimatum

2007-08-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

Paul Greengrass, USA, 2007
3.5 out of 4 stars

First off, I should mention that there's this theater in the Ontario Mills mall, not far from where my uncle lives, that has three mega-sized screens, and after going to see stuff there for years when we visited, my mother and I finally managed to see something in the largest of the three screens. The movie thus fully consumed my field of vision, and the sound was also booming.

I mention all this because I can't help but suspect that it was probably in a factor in my deciding that this is easily the best film in the Bourne series. To be honest, I was somewhat surprised that the first one was so well-regarded, as it seemed like typical fare to me. The second one made a more favorable impression, but I did wonder, after watching it, if Paul Greengrass' jerky, pseudo-documentary camera technique wasn't better suited for pieces like United 93 than for action films (Greengrass did not direct the first film, by the way).

Indeed, I had the same questions as this film opened; actually, I was initially worried that I was going to get some combination of nausea and whiplash from seeing this kind of camerawork on this size of screen. Instead, I felt particularly engaged in the action, in a way that I haven't felt in a while. I do suspect that the only thing that's really changed between this film in the last is the medium I saw it in, hence my disclaimer above.

That said, i did find the storyline to be a lot less impenetrable this time. Some might point out that shortcuts were taken, or perhaps claim that the story was more sophisticated in the last film. However, I felt that I really appreciated the clarity with with the conflict was drawn. The primary villain, played by David Strathairn, is a CIA man whose methods will not be unfamiliar to anyone who has been paying attention to the news about renditions, secret prisons, and so on, giving this film a much-needed jolt of relevance. Bourne's attitudes towards the goings-on aren't always clear, but a strong supporting cast anchored by Joan Allen and Julia Stiles facilitates a strong, compelling conflict centered around these issues. It might be cheating to tie in Bourne's brainwashing campaign to the recent news of CIA misbehavior, but it felt like it was well-earned to me. I strongly recommend this film!

Source: Universal 35mm print
6 Aug, 2:15 PM

The Maltese Falcon

2007-08-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

John Huston, USA, 1941
4 out of 4 stars

I first saw this film before graduate school, and I have now shown it three times for the last class in the composition series. The last time, I went out for a sandwich at one point, so I don't consider that a "full" viewing.

The time before that, I registered some displeasure at the one time that my students laughed. Well, if that's truly a bad thing, then I should have been out of my mind this time, as a big chunk of my students laughed numerous times throughout the movie. Actually, one student later explained in office hours that one of her peers in that corner of the room had a very contagious laugh, which makes a lot of sense, if only because I found myself laughing quite a bit as well!

So, did it take the serendipity of a giggly 19-year-old woman to reveal that The Maltese Falcon was actually a comedy after all? I think that's going a bit far, but it did make me think more carefully about the obvious fact of how ridiculous many elements are - deliberately, mind you. Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), the walking gay/foreign stereotype is always throwing these absurd fits, while Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) at one point throws his own fit, just to get his foes into the right mindset (why this works is unclear, but it certianly does, and he calms down as soon as he leaves the room, to let us know he was just kidding - he doesn't really have that much emotion!).

I'm not sure I have much more to add than that for this viewing. I did raise the rating by a half star, if only because I'm not sure that I can find a whole half-star worth of flaws in this movie (does it really matter that much that Mary Astor is not that convincing? Maybe she's not supposed to be).

Source: Warner special edition DVD
24 July, 11:30 AM

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

2007-07-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

David Yates, UK / USA, 2007
3 out of 4 stars

I’m sure anyone that’s talked to me is tired of hearing me say how much better The Prisoner of Azkaban is than any of the other films, not to mention me going on about how it’s probably better because it’s possibly the most unfaithful adaptation. To be honest, I’m mostly going off of what other people say, as I usually don’t remember the book to well by the time the movie version comes out, although as the gap between the two shortens, that’s gradually changing.

Well, I wasn’t too thrilled with The Goblet of Fire, but this film, the fifth installment, does seem to be an improvement, even if, from what I read, the changes that were made were fairly superficial; this, as I explained to my friends, who were generally less impressed with it, probably prevents the film from being better than it is, as we should be able to recognize that film as a medium has different story requirements than a novel (to put it mildly).

What bothered me about The Goblet of Fire was that it seemed to be a clip show, a “greatest hits” of the book, and that there was no real attempt to lend coherency to the narrative, as there had been in the third film. I don’t know if it’s the new director, the screenwriter learning from his mistakes, or just a more adaptable narrative in the novel itself, but this film definitely achieves thematic unity. To my friends, this mean that it was less action packed, but to me, Imelda Staunton’s bone-chilling portrayal of super-evil Stepford bureaucrat Delores Umbridge will stick in my head much longer than the dimly-remembered CGI hodgepodge of the last film. (Not to mention that Staunton was over-the-top in a more suitable fashion than most of her scenery-chewing predecessors). The same can be said for the final confrontation, which, while somewhat unsatisfying in terms of narrative, at least hit the right geek chord (I’ll be vague here, just in case).

What’s funny, I suppose, is that I figured that the fourth film would lack appeal for those who hadn’t read the film due to its disconnected nature, while the unity of the fifth film would be more appealing to them. My friends, however, have not read the books, and reacted in the opposite manner, as detailed above. It seems that it’s actually quite hard to guess what interpretative choices would be better for someone who’s coming to the material from a different place.

Source: Warner 35mm print
20 July, 7:30 PM

Ratatouille

2007-07-21T17:04:00.001-07:00

Brad Bird, USA, 2007
4 out of 4 stars

In the first segment, I really wasn’t sure about this film. “Where is this going?” I wondered. Later on, I realized how nice it was not to know where everything was going, as almost everything that happened, even most of the major characters, came as a complete surprise. I don’t know how much the trailers have been giving away, but I guess it helps that I haven’t seen a movie in theaters since Spider-Man 3 and that I no longer have cable.

As for the film itself, well, it’s “heartwarming” in the good way, without the schmaltzy or annoying connotations that word usually has. Having skipped Cars, it’s a real joy to see both Pixar and director Brad Bird delivering a perfect follow-up to The Incredibles, providing a populist balance to the previous film’s vaguely elitist philosophy, as well as effectively achieving the elusive balance between the depiction of the human world and the anthropomorphized rat world (so much so that I objected, verbally, to the portrayal of a different kind of interaction in the trailer for Bee Movie that I saw later, as if Ratatouille should in fact be the last word on that). Finally, it portrays the French in a very-endearing warts-and-all manner that speaks fairly effectively to some real issues in their culture, certainly a better depiction than you might expect from the guy who brought us Bomb Voyage in his last film.

Source: Buena Vista 35mm print
6 July, 7:40 PM

The Thin Man

2007-07-01T00:45:00.000-07:00

W.S. Van Dyke, USA, 1934
3 out of 4 stars

A few months back, NPR did a brief feature on the Thin Man series, explaining how what started as a throwaway, low-budget B picture, starring actors who were either no-names or washed out, actually gave rise to a mega-popular franchise based entirely on the witty banter and touching chemistry between the mystery-solving married couple. Having rented the film based on this description, I couldn’t help but be disappointed when the detective ditched his wife whenever it was time to actually do any sleuthing. Admittedly, it might beggar belief that he would bring his wife along to potentially violent encounters, but I can’t help but wonder if there is more of a sense of actual partnership, at least as far as the cases go, in successive films, after the producers realized what the draw really was. As for the film itself, it certainly has more filler than one might like, particularly since it’s only 90 minutes long, but the repartee between the two leads is quite entertaining, and there is an effective use of slapstick humor, much of it involving their very cute dog. And despite the separate beds we see the couple sleeping in, there is no shortage of often-hilarious innuendo; even my clueless students, who asserted in their papers that no one has sex in The Maltese Falcon, oughta be able to recognize the passion between this couple. I figured that the writers were just pushing the limits of the Hayes Code, but after a bit of research, it appears that this film was released about a month before the Code was actually enforced. If I do get around to watching the next film in the series, it will be interesting to see if and how the innuendo is reigned in.

Source: Warner DVD
30 June, 10:10 PM

Breaking News

2007-06-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

(Daai si gin)
Johnnie To, Hong Kong / China, 2004
3 out of 4 stars

The film kicks off with a violent confrontation between police and robbers, in which a beat cop is caught in the fray and, what’s worse, caught on camera looking particularly unheroic. This opening sequence is a setup for an hostage plot in which the commanding officer’s main goal is to craft a counternarrative for the media in order to restore her department’s credibility and public image.

The word “satire” popped into my head as I thought about how to describe this movie, but aside from some typically dubious uses of technology, the film avoids that slightly-exaggerated, larger-than-life tone of most satirical films. Indeed, it’s commentary on how PR holds equal importance with solving crime for police today is not particularly subtle, but it does constitute an interesting angle for what could have otherwise been a rote police drama. I find it interesting that, for the most part, the filmmakers refrain from condemning anyone overtly. This leads to less of the usual hand-wringing and finger pointing that we might expect from an American mainstream film attempting to tackle this subject.

The main downside to this film is that characterization is very slight. This is, of course, a film without much filler or prologue, so this decision seems to have been deliberate. I must confess, however, that I do like characterization, and without it, the connections between the characters sometimes seem hard to understand or unearned. It’s also a little difficult to see how the stock “renegade cop” character really ties in to the central commentary of the film, except until maybe the end, and that doesn’t seem to be that crucial, really. It’s almost as if his character is a major concession to the “bread and circuses” reality of mainstream film, something that is as much of an issue in Hong Kong as it is here, in all honesty.

Source: UMVD DVD
10 June, 8:27 PM

Devil in a Blue Dress

2007-06-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

Carl Franklin, USA, 1995
2 out 4 stars

I always find it tiresome when a reviewer, or just someone with whom I’m having a conversation, starts off on how the book was so much better, and how the movie was bad because they changed things, and how dare they. When it comes to some recent franchises, I am strongly in favor of the plot alterations made by Peter Jackson and his screenwriting partners, and Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter film is the best in part because it is the least slavishly faithful of the films that have been released so far.

Of course, the reason that I hold these opinions is because I believe Jackson and Cuarón each show better storytelling instincts than Tolkein or Rowling, or, if that’s too blasphemous for you, let’s just say that they know what works for cinema. So when I complain that Carl Franklin’s film seems to miss the point of Walter Mosley’s book in almost every way possible and is almost completely inferior, I hope that I’m merely recognizing that Franklin clearly falls short of Mosley. Even so, I have taught this book twice now and, in a month, will probably teach it for the third time, so I do wonder if I haven’t reached the point that so many others have, at which I am no longer receptive to an alternate version.

Suffice it to say that this is one of my least favorite noir films, perhaps because Denzel Washington’s character never really gets his hands dirty like the book’s protagonist, Easy Rawlins, does. The narration that he recites and the moral dilemmas he goes through just seem like going through the motions compared with the original. Indeed, although I like Washington, he is too unambiguous here. Don Cheadle, who plays an antihero of sorts, would have made a much better Easy. Considering that, even in 2004, Hotel Rwanda had to be made independently so that Cheadle instead of Washington, it’s safe to say that the studio system’s very narrow list of black stars considered “marketable” mandated casting here – to the detriment of the film. What’s perhaps harder to understand is why almost all the other characters seem miscast as well.

Most of the film just falls flat, in the end analysis. Franklin certainly missed the point of the book in many ways, which is not to say that the book is perfect; indeed, any adaptation would have to “fix” many awkward or confusing elements in it. Unfortunately, the fixes attempted here mostly just expose new holes.

Source: Sony VHS
2 June, 8:24 PM

Ali G Indahouse

2007-06-03T16:56:00.000-07:00

Mark Mylod, UK / France / Germany, 2002
2.5 out of 4 stars

I was enjoying myself during the larger part of this movie’s running time, so I figured that I would give it a good rating. However, as I sat down to review it, I increasingly felt defeated by the film in my attempt to assess its quality, as if the idea of “quality” didn’t really apply to a film like this. It’s a lot easier when you’re just repelled by an often-disgusting, plotless film just as this, in which case you can dismiss it as dreck or whatever. I started to wonder if I even wanted to continue “reviewing” films here, considering that movie-watching is taking up less of my time lately, but some kind words from friends encouraged me to continue on, reviewing this film quite a while after the fact.

So, is this a good movie? No, although neither is it an awful film. Perhaps this is splitting hairs, but it’s possible to enjoy a movie even though it is not very good, although I will say that if the whole film had been funny, I probably would rate it higher. I think it starts off fairly strong, particularly in the south-central Los Angeles fantasy scene, and in the scenes in Ali G’s hometown of Staines. It starts to show the cracks around the time Ali makes it to Parliament, and, strangely, becomes less and less funny as it tries to put together a plot near the end. Everything is capped off with a protracted closing sequence that isn’t even remotely amusing.

You see, unlike Borat, here Sacha Baron Cohen is interacting with actors throughout, and there is not even an attempt to feign a “documentary” aesthetic. This frees sensitive souls such as myself from any need to feel sorry for the people he harasses, but it also robs the film of any pretensions of “outsider commentary” (and perhaps one could observe that said pretensions are exposed from the get-go by the reminder that Baron Cohen started his career by harassing his own countrymen). This just seems like the kind of movie a former cast member of Saturday Night Live would make, if slightly-more-inspired film than those efforts. And finally, Baron Cohen sure seems to put the truth to David Sedaris’ assertion that straight people spend too much time thinking about gay sex (I don’t even know if his “interest” is homophobic or not, it’s too weird to even be sure).

Source: Cinemax on demand
25 May, 9:17 PM

The Painted Veil

2007-05-20T22:54:00.001-07:00

John Curran, China / USA, 2006
3 out of 4 stars

Those of you that are familiar with my kneejerk leftism will know that I’m no big fan of “white people in Asia” movies – I prefer to let the Asians speak for themselves, to put it bluntly. Nevertheless, this picture, aside from The Quiet American, is one of the better examples of this kind of film. The focus is on the spoiled socialite wife (Naomi Watts), and her microbiologist husband (Edward Norton), who find themselves acting out the ups and downs of all-but-arranged marriage against the backdrop first of Shanghai, then later of rural China, as Norton’s character tries to stem a cholera outbreak.

The perspective of the film is such that it does not try to instill the couple with an unrealistic level of insight regarding their complicity in 1920s Europeans imperialism. It does not shy away from pointing out these issues, but it also manages to avoid heavy-handedness. Ultimately, the movie really is about the trials of the couple themselves, and the actors both do a good job with some shifts and changes that might have seemed absurd if acted out by others. Finally, the cinematography is certainly nothing to sneer at.

Source: Warner DVD
19 May, 9:59 PM

Volver

2007-05-14T00:34:00.001-07:00

Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2006
2.5 out of 4 stars

Certainly, Almodóvar retains his interesting, bright visual style, although it doesn’t seem quite as distinctive overall. And he continues spotlighting the generational traumas and triumphs of women and whatnot. Yet despite all that, this film fell fall short of the only other one I’ve seen by him, All About My Mother. There is much here that should be involving, but I felt strangely uninvolved for the most part. Despite the serious issues at play, the plot is structured in a manner that felt either like a sitcom or a soap opera, I’m not quite sure which. It’s also all over the map; threads get dropped or deemphasized at will, leaving me unsure as to what I was really supposed to be paying attention to.

If I’ve been vague about what happens in this film so far, it’s because anything that is really important happens after a good 30 minutes is past, which is generally my vague cut-off point for giving away plot details (this rather conservative spoilerphobe policy is a direct response to all those TV and film trailers, not to mention TV listing and DVD box covers, that carelessly tell you everything that’s gonna happen). To give you some kind of hint, though, just let me tell you the apparent use of magical realism was one of the more interesting things about the film, and I felt more than a bit let down once I realized how this element was actually being put to use. That might just be my fault, and perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood for this film, but as it is, I did not enjoy it very much.

Source: Sony DVD
13 May, 9:27 PM

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

2007-05-08T22:24:00.000-07:00

George Roy Hill, USA, 1969
3.5 out of 4 stars

My parents showed me this film on videotape when I was a teenager, and then, on DVD, I’ve seen it in a composition class and now again as a projectionist for a lower-division film class. Each time, it holds up as an effective, entertaining deconstruction of the Western ethos, even in an era in which deconstruction is a dime a dozen. To be honest, I don’t think I knew much at all about what was being deconstructed the first time I saw this film, as, much like the neo-noir of the 1970s, it all ends up being “the past” for today’s generation, or even mine, so some level of genre awareness is required to understand what is transpiring (for this class, it was provided by an episode of Bonanza that I was unable to sit through due to its, well, suckiness).

That said, this kind of awareness is not necessary in order to be entertained by the film, which was evidenced by the significant amount of laughter I heard from the undergrads throughout the screening. Of course, wisecracks are that eternal, postmodern form of humor that resontates throughout the ages, but the actors clearly have good chemistry and really sell the material. I do think some parts are more uneven than others, and perhaps we have ended up with a lot of bad formula films as a result, but this film overall reminds one of how the formula can work.

Source: Fox DVD
7 May, 5:09 PM

Spider-Man 3

2007-05-06T00:48:00.000-07:00

Sam Raimi, USA, 2007
2.5 out of 4 stars

So rumor has it that this film, at $250 million, surpasses Cleopatra as the most expensive movie ever made (adjusted for inflation, obviously), and while this might be an obvious angle on the latest in the spider-franchise (and one should try one’s hardest not to judge the film on the basis of what is said in the entertainment press), I can’t help but feel like they could have saved about $100 million and made a better film in the process. The third film, at 140 minutes, manages to seem both over-crowded and overly languorous.

You see, certain scenes from the second film, such as the first skyscraper fight with Dr. Octopus, or the climactic train scene, still stick with me, even though I only saw it once. Yet although the special effects are plenty bombastic and impressive here, I don’t think I will remember anything very specific about this movie even a few months later.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I will remember Raimi’s really peculiar decision as to how to dramatize “evil Spidey.” My friend called him Emo-Spidey, whereas as the ridiculous montage of him strutting and prancing on the street continued, I was more inclined to view him as Metro-Spidey. No matter how you slice it, these scenes really take you out of the movie and into some truly bizarre, retro-musical pastiche, in which Maguire actually voices the words “dig on this” in a non-ironic manner. Huh?!?

There are other problems, mind you. The film is hyperviolent in the most disingenuous of ways; death only counts when the filmmakers want it to, to the extent that the same bomb exploding at the same range will produce entirely different results at different times. Emotionally, the film cheats as well, actually giving MJ a good reason to be mad at Pete early on, but then, about halfway through, drastically obscuring the issues at hand as if it is too distracted to really close the can of worms that it has opened.

You know, I did enjoy it, more or less. It’s just fortunate that I was expecting it to be a bit of a trainwreck thanks to what I have read. See it as long as you are expecting another installment in the cycle, but don’t go expecting any kind of culmination for the trilogy. The studio is already thinking about number four; let’s hope they learn to scale back for once.

Source: Sony 35mm print
5 May, 9 PM

Hot Fuzz

2007-04-29T19:57:00.001-07:00

Edgar Wright, UK / France, 2007
3 out of 4 stars

If you’ve noticed the tagline “from the makers of Shaun of the Dead,” which in this case means not merely the producers but the same writers, stars, and director, then you know why I was looking forward to this film so much. In such an instance, the inevitable comparison must be made, and so I regretfully have to say that this movie is definitely not as good as their previous effort, which I rated at 4 stars, for whatever that’s worth.

That’s not to say that this isn’t a strong effort. In fact, it works on perhaps even more levels that Shaun did, although I don’t know if I’m saying that merely because I’m somewhat more familiar with the cop action genre and its clichés than I am with previous zombie horror films. Actually, I think it is fair to warn you that parts of this film are not entirely unlike a horror film, which is perhaps not that unusual for the genre.

Here, we have the meta aspect of the characters actually discussing other cop action films and comparing their own lives to it. This doesn’t merely take the shape of that lame “life isn’t a movie” type of false claim to realism that some self-referential films take, but neither is it the overly-knowing, braindead plotless “parody” of stuff like Epic Movie (which I admittedly have not seen) either.

The thing is, this is an intricately-crafted film that actually contains some good action and an interesting plot with a very chilling twist, one that I probably should have figured out early (oh sure I spotted the red herring, but I didn’t pay enough attention to most important bit of foreshadowing). The slash subtext (which seems to be rapidly becoming text) is hilarious and dead-on without being purile or homophobic, as one would expect in an American comedy. In fact, this relationship is probably the best part of the film. It just seems like, in the end, the film isn’t quite as funny as the other one, despite all that it has going for it. And although it doesn’t really bring the film down or anything, there are some peculiar ideological contradictions – it’s hard to be sure what the filmmakers are saying about the cops… perhaps nothing?

Source: Universal 35mm print
29 April, 4:30 PM

Good Night, and Good Luck

2007-04-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

George Clooney, USA, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

A film like this raises inevitable difficulties when one sets out to evaluate it, and it is safe to say that these difficulties have been well covered by the criticism that has already been written regarding Clooney’s agit-prop resurrection of the newsman who, we are told, took down McCarthy and therefore left a lesson to us all, media people and common people alike, that we are clearly not living up to in the age of Bush II.

First, there is the question of whether this even really counts as a film. I would say yes, but just barely, and clearly filmmaking for its own sake was not key to Clooney’s agenda. It’s tempting then to ask what, exactly, this film is supposed to do. So-called intellectuals such as myself don’t really need to be educated on who McCarthy was. Perhaps I needed some education on Ed Murrow, the primary figure here, but amusingly, that has already been provided by the significant media coverage of the film. Of course, this coverage would not exist without the making of the film itself, and that leads me to conclude that the main reason that this is a motion picture is that, due to the medium, it therefore demands more attention than a book or, dare I say it, a television special, either of which might have been more appropriate for conveying this “lesson,” especially considering how much archival footage is used and how long the film spends showing us some of it.

Finally, then, we must consider how the “ignorant” would respond to such a film. I vaguely remember my roommate, who is not the brightest pulp in the package, being unsure as to what time period the damn thing took place in, but on the other hand, the undergraduate class that I watched most of it with (in my role as “projectionist”) seemed to get involved in the thing, cheering at some of Murrow’s more provocative lines.

And sure, I imagine we could have gotten the benefit of these choice tidbits from archival footage of Murrow’s show itself, but it goes back to the question of “would anyone have watched it in that case, even in a classroom?” I think the answer is no, and I have to admit that, for some reason, the film actually is pretty entertaining. It is a slight but also hard-hitting propaganda piece that has the benefit of being on the side of truth, more or less. So yeah, I recommend it, even if I’m somewhat bemused by it.

Source: Warner DVD
23 April, 6:37 PM

The Namesake

2007-04-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

Mira Nair, India / USA, 2006
3 out of 4 stars

This is one of those movies where the progression of events is quite clear and linear, but the plot is nonetheless somewhat fluid, and not very defined. This partly results from the shifting focus from the couple that immigrates from Calcutta to New York, played by two Bollywood actors, to their American-born son, played by Kal Penn. If you've seen the trailer, you'll probably be surprised by this, as the advertising department has attempted to impose this very definite narrative on the film in which Penn's character is the sole POV and his identity crisis dilemma consumes the entire film. They do this by drawing almost all the trailer from one scene of the film, and by disrupting sequence the sequence in one key instance.

Suffice it to say, the actual movie is more interesting in that; we don't just see the son's journey towards understanding the parents and their "foreign" ways, rather we start with the parents, making us feel more understanding of their frustration with him. Overall, it's not a very didactic piece at all, and the son's identity crisis is a very subtle one. I think the performances were very effective and the film itself is rather well done, if perhaps still a bit familiar.

Source: Fox 35mm print
30 March, 1:10 PM

In America

2007-03-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

Jim Sheridan, UK / Ireland, 2002
3 out of 4 stars

Maybe it's just because I went a while without watching any movies, but lately, I've been having a lot of trouble evaluating the films I've been seeing. This in particular is a strange animal, in that it constantly threatens gloom and doom but veers away from it towards something else, as the bad events are mostly in the past, gradually developed through furtive references.

In fact, it's had to get a handle on the rhythm of this story, in which an Irish family illegally immigrates into Manhattan. It seems to be some kind of memoir which may explain why the story doesn't unravel in a very "clean" manner, but there are nonetheless some pretty obvious cinematic conventions going on here, the most glaring of which is the Magical Black Man (a la The Green Mile et al), played here by Djimon Hounsou. Dismissing his plotline in such a way may seem harsh, but it's pretty accurate.

And yet... it is a crime for a story not to go the way you expect it to? This does seem like a fairly insightful character study, and the acting is good, especially from the children, believe it or not (although they do sorta look a bit too clean and happy, too much like they are about to go home to their suburban homes right after the scene wraps, which of course they are, I imagine). I can't really tell if the filmmakers are subverting expectations or just confused or deceitful about the story they want to tell, and I suspect I'm being too hard on a good film... so consider this somewhere in between 2.5 and 3 stars.

Source: Fox DVD
27 March, 8:35 PM

Primer

2007-03-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

Shane Carruth, USA, 2004
2.5 out of 4 stars

Who's up for some indie, low budget realist scifi adventure? Okay, perhaps "adventure" might not be the right word for a rather low key film about a couple of tech workers who try to invent things in their garage until one day, they stumble upon a reality-bending device. I might well be being too easy on this one, simply because it was so difficult to understand what was happening that I ultimately decided that I shouldn't hold my lack of comprehension against it. It seems clever and sort of dark, but it also seems a bit like the Sundance version of any number of Star Trek episodes I could name. Like another film I've seen recently, it's also 77 minutes, and it seems pretty clear that it's not any longer than the filmmaker could afford to make. I think that it's somewhat possible that some of the missing pieces of information here are actually a result of running out of money, and instead are made into a virtue by creating a "mindbender," but maybe it really is just difficult to understand. I usually try to avoid reading any websites about a film until after I've written these, but in this case, I'm looking at some stuff that explains how this is all about science and how really no one gets it after the first viewing. I guess I am not much of a science guy or a repeat-viewing guy, so I am willing to consider that it might be a masterpiece after watching it 50 times, but there are other films to watch, after all.

Source: Warner DVD
25 March, 7:53 PM

The Science of Sleep

2007-03-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

(La science des rêves)
Michel Gondry, France / Italy, 2006
3 out of 4 stars

The stock critical narrative regarding this film is that Michel Gondry's visuals are still entrancing, but without the help of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, with whom he collaborated on with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the visuals are just adrift and things are just meaningless, too indulgent. The trouble with reading reviews and criticism is that, if you don't have a strong feeling of your own about a film, it's fairly easy to go along with the established critical narrative, and in this case, I suppose I agree, but I would go so far as to agree with those who see this as a "bad" film.

It is quite amazing but nowhere near as amazing as his "other" film, because it is so directionless. The characers are just as "charming" but their relationship is very over-familiar, only dressed up with mass amounts of quirkiness. Luckily the quirk is quite engaging and all, so it's not just a rote film, but yeah, a story would help, I am afraid.

Source: Warner DVD
24 March, 8:05 PM

The Motel

2007-03-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

Michael Kang, USA, 2005
2 out of 4 stars

This Asian American coming of age story is a bit unusual, but largely ordinary, in the way that many low-budget, self-consciously "indie" films strive to be. I usually don't mind it when a film is short, but this one seems to be only 77 minutes because the filmmakers simply don't have anything else to say. Everything seems to follow a pattern and the acting is a bit off, perhaps because the emotions are overly muted. I understand the value of understatement, but this is a film that wants to make some kind of statement, so it's a bit problematic in this case. It's a valiant effort, but just not that good.

Source: UMVD DVD
23 March, 9:28 PM

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles

2007-03-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

(Qian li zou dan qi)
Zhang Yimou, China / Hong Kong / Japan, 2005
4 out of 4 stars

An elderly Japanese man is trying to bridge an unexplainable gap that has developed between him and his son, when his daughter-in-law gives him a tape of that son’s trip to China to film a folk opera. Inspired by a promise the son makes to film a different piece next year, the old man travels to Yunnan province to do it himself, hoping that this gesture will mean something to his son.

Yes, in between the interesting but flawed House of Flying Daggers and the positively infuriating Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou actually made another “human” film hearkening back to his old days, but the introduction of the Japanese element makes this a different film, as we now have Ken Takakura, apparently a major film star, acting alongside the local non-actors that Zhang had become accustomed to using before he switched to wuxia. And of course, Takakura’s character and the Chinese villagers he meets don’t understand each other and interpreting services are not always easy to come by.

Simply put, this is one of the best quest-driven films I’ve seen in a while, and although I’ve liked Zhang’s earlier films, I think I liked this one even more because it has those quiet, reflective moments but uses them in service of a surprisingly-compelling story (whereas that description above might have given away the entire plot of some of his films, there are plenty more twists and turns in this one). The theme of communication, or lack thereof, is very successfully developed throughout; this man can’t talk to his son, he can’t talk to the Chinese, but somehow these folks find a way, more or less. It’s all very moving and surprisingly funny at times. I strongly recommend checking this out.

Source: Sony DVD
22 March, 12:02 PM

Zodiac

2007-03-04T16:40:00.001-08:00

David Fincher, USA, 2007
3.5 out of 4 stars

Sometimes it helps to read the press. In my case, I probably would have avoided the film if I had been under the false impression that this film addresses the serial killer subject by engaging in some kind of creep-out gore-fest (whereas my friends, and the teenagers apparently being kept out be a heightened alter of ID checking, were indeed expecting such a thing apparently). And of course, Fincher does have a certain reputation thanks to Seven. But no, what we have here, and what I was prepared and made interested in for thanks to various pieces I read and heard, is a very talky procedural concerned with the role of the media in society, the nature of obsession, and other things that I find more interesting than the lurid wallowing in the bloody details; this is more the subject of the film itself than its actual modus operandi.

Another key here is the thoroughness of the film, and Fincher's desire that it be seen as fairly accurate. While I'm sure liberties were taken, there is a reason why Dirty Harry, a more fictionalized, contemporary version of this story, features prominently in one segment. There seems to be a real need for the filmmakers to tell a story that hews as close to the facts as possible, meaning that various laws of dramatic structure are clearly transgressed in order to give a more accurate, but still very compelling picture about how this case affected the lives of two men working at the San Francisco Chronicle and two SFPD officers. Admittedly, I am usually not all that fond of Law and Order and its spawn, but this film does take care to provide us with compelling characters and engaging dialogue. It is long, but it is worth checking out.

Source: Paramount 35mm print
4 March, 11:35 AM

My Sassy Girl

2007-02-28T11:11:00.001-08:00

(Yeopgijeogin geunyeo)
Kwak Jae-young, South Korea, 2001
3 out of 4 stars

If you are a young Asian person or a young person with Asian friends, there’s a good chance that you have heard someone rave about this film, even though it is not readily available in stores here. I finally had a chance to watch it, and I found it charming, entertaining, and also a bit frustrating, mostly near the end.

What we have here is the purportedly blog-inspired story of a somewhat ineffectual dopey male college student and a drunk girl he meets on the subway. As they fall into some kind of weird relationship, she endlessly terrorizes him with her irrational demands and erratic behavior, but of course, is strangely irresistible as well. I am well aware that Korean film has a reputation for being melodramatic - and even if I wasn’t, some cleverly-integrated parody vignettes gently satirize this trend - and so it is almost with resignation that I anticipated the second half of the film, when things get a bit more serious, and complications ensue (as if “complications” weren’t already built in to the relationship!).

Without question, this is much more nuanced, engaging, and clever than any recent domestic romantic comedy that I can recall, and it will most likely be bled of these qualities when the remake comes around later this year, even if some of the more prolonged melodrama might possibly be excised without too much detriment. Ultimately, however, I think I am being too hard on the final portion of the movie. There are enough interesting developments to sustain interest throughout the second hour of the piece; it’s only really in the last twenty minutes or so (yes, this is a long film) that things started to get repetitive. I guess the point is that for the first hour, it was just a fun film to watch, but near the end, I started to feel more like it was more just a good film to watch with a girl. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.

Source: Starmax DVD
27 February, 8:40 PM

Dark City

2007-02-22T19:50:00.001-08:00

Alex Proyas, Australia / USA, 1998
4 out of 4 stars

I suppose it’s silly to try to talk about this film without giving away the twist, but I fondly recall being all but blown away by the multiple reveals that really brought the film together, so I can’t help but stick to my usual “no-spoiler” policy, even though I could see this time that the twists might be fairly obvious to many people. It’s true that there were a few films that drew upon similar ideas (although with much different styles) that came out not long after this one and met with much greater success (this was a critical and commercial failure), but that isn’t as surprising to me upon this viewing. This is, after all, more of a great vision than a perfectly-executed film.

What’s interesting is that, at the outset, the film seems to be some kind of neo-noir, but the opening shot and the narration clues you in that there is a mysterious sci-fi element, which becomes more apparent once you meet the villains. These villains, I have to say, do get lamer as the film goes along, although I think the giggles of the students I was watching the film with say more about their unwillingness to go along with the film than the film itself (the next-door drilling, and the failure of one of the speakers, didn’t really help). There is a lot to overlook; I felt like of the main cast, only William Hurt and Jennifer Connelly give really good performances. But nevermind that, as this is really about the art direction and the obvious, yet brilliantly conceived conceptual mind-trips. It struck me this time, as I’m sure it has others, that this is an especially interesting form of metacinema, making interesting comments on the act of filmmaking itself (and that doesn’t give as much away as you think it might). It’s definitely something that everyone should take a look at, although it probably isn’t for everyone.

Source: Warner DVD
22 February, 5:10 PM

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

2007-02-15T22:19:00.001-08:00

John Cameron Mitchell, USA, 2001
3 out of 4 stars

By far, the best part of this flashback-driven road film (without the road) is the music, containing all the best tendencies of rock and the musical in any number of rousing numbers. The lyrical content, as you might expect considering that the singer character is a transgendered person whose operation didn’t really go that well, is quite explicit and shocking, but it’s done with the right balance of accessibility and shock value, to the point that I think almost anyone could get behind this music with the right level of open-mindedness (which I understand is a tall order for some folks).

I’m not entirely sure, however, about the actual film this music is contained it; I think it’s good but more of a vehicle for the music than particularly great in and of itself. For one thing, I am a bit irked at how musicians are apparently considered to be the only acceptable subject matter for musicals, indicating that the convention of people breaking into song for “no reason” is really truly consigned to the dustbin of cinema, despite Joss Whedon’s best efforts. In fact, there is really only one true “musical number” here in the traditional sense, and it’s no coincidence that it was my favorite sequence.

Otherwise, most of the movie consists of one-song performances carried out at various gigs in different locations of a thinly-veiled Applebee’s knockoff; this conceit is more pragmatic than anything, as the evil of the chain restaurant is that you could plausibly be in different regions of the country even though the setting changes only superficially. These performances are entertaining, if a bit MTV-style and not exactly all that filmic. The narrative that is conveyed through the aforementioned flashbacks is compelling and develops the character fairly well, but overall, the story itself becomes increasingly underserved at the end, eventually leading, most frustratingly, to a sort of Lord of the Rings multiple ending syndrome. While I usually approve of a 90 minute running time, I feel like storyline was slashed here in order to make room for the songs. If that was the tradeoff they had to make, they chose wisely, but I would have preferred a longer film that allowed both the story and the music some room to breathe, as I feel like important questions were answered in an overly oblique manner at the end.

Source: Warner DVD
15 February, 5:10 PM PM

Welcome to Dongmakgol

2007-02-15T02:28:00.000-08:00

Park Kwang-hyun, South Korea, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

This is something of a high-concept drama, lighthearted at times, but one that takes its subject, the Korean War, very seriously of course. It involves soldiers from the North, the South, and even the US who end up separated from their colleagues and take refuge in the titular village, an inexplicably utopian settlement that has something of an Edenic quality to it, as the villagers don’t even understand what the guns do, leading of of the funniest standoff scenes I’ve ever seen. The filmmakers wisely avoid making these unsophisticated country folk the butt of any jokes, while similarly avoiding any heavy-handed, didactic speeches. Instead, there are some spectacular visual scenes, although I wasn’t always entirely sold on the style used in some of them, particularly the boar scene. The characters are a little thin, too, although this may not be entirely inadvertent.

I mentioned earlier that there is actually an American soldier in the town along with the soldiers from the two Koreas, and I can only figure that he is there for balance, because, overall, the Americans are portrayed with visual and musical queues that remind the viewer of the Empire from Star Wars. While I think it would be an exaggeration to say that this film is entirely a straightforward political allegory, it’s hard not to draw parallels with how many Koreans in the south today feel about America’s role in the division of the peninsula.

Source: KD DVD
14 February, 11:15 PM

Conversations with Other Women

2007-02-08T22:53:00.000-08:00

Hans Canosa, UK / USA, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

I had never heard of this film until I saw it on a Blockbuster shelf, and having one last in-store rental from my free trial with the online service, I picked it up solely on the strength of the actors, Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter. I anticipated that the film would be exclusively focused on them, and that their performances would be very engaging, and I was right on both counts.

The two actors play wedding guests who meet and begin flirting. Two things stand out right away. The first is that the dialogue is sparking and quite clever, and the second is that everything is in split-screen. This is a difficult effect to describe; sometimes each actor occupies a different side of the screen, sometimes we get different angles, different moments in the scene (some of which appear to have not actually occurred), and even flashbacks, on occasion. It actually did take me a little while to get accustomed to this very singular stylistic choice, as sometimes it’s hard to know where to direct one’s attention! Furthermore, although as usual I don’t want to give anything away, you can’t take everything these characters say to each other at face value, at least not at the beginning.

Ultimately, I would say that the interplay between these characters is really entertaining and moving, and that the actors definitely sell it. I think the split-screen works, although it perhaps would have been better to just use it in part of the film, as there are moments in which it seems unnecessary. This is a good solid film; there just isn’t enough here for it to be a great one (and with less-talented actors, it might well have been a bad one).

Source: WEA DVD
8 February, 8:32 PM

Fong Sai Yuk

2007-02-08T00:49:00.000-08:00

Corey Yuen, Hong Kong, 1993
3.5 out of 4 stars

Old kung fu films have a reputation in the US as being overly-corny, which is perhaps why all of the 21st century, internationally-targeted martial arts films are so deathly serious, perhaps overcompensating a bit with the gravity in order to pure associations with the perceived silliness of the older stuff. Meanwhile, most of Jet Li’s 1990s film output has been released in English-only, cut versions, with anything too “weird” or even worse, “foreign” being excised in order not to offend the aesthetic (?) sensibilities of the Western viewer.

With all that preamble, I guess the point is that I watched this early Jet Li film on the uncut, original language DVD (with less-than-perfect, but comprehensible English subtitles), and I really enjoyed it. I don’t want to indiscriminately label all films of this time period and genre as lost classics, because many of them are actually quite boring, others are indeed just too ridiculous, and still others are just hodgepodges, with no discernible unity to them. This film might seem to fall under the last category, as it starts with pure comedy and somewhat unexpectedly transitions to something a bit weightier (although not grim, by any means) about two-thirds of the way through. Although Jet Li had already played Wong Fei-hung and would soon get a little too stuck in his “goody goody” persona, at this point he is still willing to put on the happy go-lucky persona that I saw in Swordsman II, which I watched last year.

That said, Josephine Siao largely steals the show as the mother of Li’s titular character. Her manic energy and frantic delivery is always just one step shy of total overkill, but her performance is ultimately quite effective. What’s more, a surprising amount of pathos arises from a romantic plotline that, for fear of spoiling it, I won’t describe in detail here. Although much of the plot is rather slapstick, there is a certain element of Shakespearean comedy to the proceedings, perhaps paralleled by Chinese precedent as well. Finally, the fight scenes are quite good, not overly-dependent on special effects (as, surprisingly, some kung fu films of this time period are), but not too prosaic either, containing various interesting setpieces, such as one in which two characters fight while using the heads of the audience members as their platforms.

Source: Universe remastered DVD
7 February, 10:30 PM

The Queen

2007-02-03T23:42:00.000-08:00

Stephen Frears, UK / France / Italy, 2006
3.5 out of 4 stars

I may have some Anglophile tendencies, but I tend to draw the line at the contemporary monarchy, which is why I had to be convinced by the recommendations of at least three friends that this was something that I should see (and not just another celebration of middlebrow mediocrity on the part of the Academy). It has also been implied, at least by one of my professors, that a woman of intelligence such as Helen Mirren is giving the supposedly dim Elizabeth II too much credit by playing her in the first place.

The truth is, I don’t know anything about the British monarch, and I suspect that I don’t know that much more about her after having seen this film. Perhaps in part due to an interview I read with the director, I didn’t feel, despite the television footage that is peppered throughout (these segments serve to give some context, and are crucial considering how much of the purported discontent was being conveyed through news media), that I was meant to take the depictions at face value. This is not a docudrama, as will probably be clear from the fact that most of the attention has been given to Mirren’s performance.

Instead, Mirren’s queen and Michael Sheen’s Prime Minister (I was told ahead of time that his performance was also quite good, and that person was right in saying so) portray real, living people with a fine level of verisimilitude and imitation, while also performing obvious and yet fascinating roles as emblems of different trends in modern British society. I do think that there are times at which this thread threatens to become too didactic, as I didn’t appreciate the queen and her aide explaining to each other what Blair’s politics were at the beginning (meaning that any viewer with some knowledge of the subject matter must have felt this way at some point in the film). But even though the conflict of values would seem to lend itself to broad strokes, the script and the actors combine to make it a surprisingly successful sort of parable. Finally, I have no investment in Princess Diana whatsoever, so it’s particularly impressive that I could be this involved in a film that is concerned entirely with events surrounding the aftermath of her death.

Source: Buena Vista 35mm print
3 February, 7:25 PM

Monster House

2007-02-03T03:43:00.000-08:00

Gil Kenan, USA, 2006
4 out of 4 stars

Pixar may have faltered last year (okay, I didn't see Cars, but everything I've heard and seen points to an artistic, if not commercial, failure), but at least for 2006, there was an unexpectedly successful attempt to take their place in 3D animation domination with this film. It's very high concept, almost deceptively simple in its commitment to a very basic plot; two boys and a girl face down a house that doesn't so much "contain" monsters as it actually is the monster in and of itself. Around this core concept, the filmmakers manage to craft a surprisingly well-realized suburban fantasy world (this is, apparently, Anglo-American magical realism). The characters and the situations they find themselves range from funny to hilarious, and there was enough emotional involvement and genuine spook factor to keep me hooked throughout. This is definitely not one that is only for the kids, but it manages to be so in a way that doesn't make you wonder whether kids should actually be watching it (here I'm referring primarily to much of the DreamWorks product). I'm glad I happened to read some positive evaluations of this film online, because this is definitely something I wouldn't have given a chance without the right prodding. Believe me, it's much better than you might expect.

Source: Sony DVD
2 February, 11:26 PM

Orlando

2007-02-02T00:00:00.001-08:00

Sally Potter, UK / Russia / France / Italy / Netherlands, 1992
3.5 out of 4 stars

I have only a passing familiarity with this particular slice of Anglo magical realism, so I kept feeling like the director had made more alterations to Woolf’s novel (or “biography”) than is probably the case. Such irrelevant questions aside, I thought that this was a great showcase for a quietly impressive performance by Tilda Swinton, who, at least at the outset, is a man, and who also seems to live for a very long time. This was the first time that I got to see her in a leading role (perhaps it is her only one?), and I was as impressed as I expected to be; she certainly has the right quality to pull of this very peculiar role, whereas I imagine few other actresses would. Although the quality of the film suggests that the movie was done on the cheap, the various pageantry and location shooting is rather well done, although this is not perhaps the most visually dynamic film I’ve ever seen. It’s actually a hard film to describe, seeing as how there is no logic, not even a clear emotional logic, to what happens, but in this sense, I think the film is faithful to the novel. What I’m saying is, I’m once again not really sure what this is about, but I found that it held my attention throughout and gave me some things to think about.

Source: Sony DVD
1 February, 9:24 PM

Idiocracy

2007-02-01T01:06:00.000-08:00

Mike Judge, USA, 2006
3.5 out of 4 stars

The same studio that was responsible for dumping this film into all of 130 theaters last year, 20th Century Fox, just this last weekend opened Epic Movie, a film that has 0% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes and is unanimously described as a film that contains no actual jokes, merely a random sequence of reenactments of various blockbusters alongside depictions of bodily functions. Of course, this was last weekend’s #1 film. Unsurprisingly, some people on the Internet feel that Fox is engaged in some kind of conspiracy, preferring that we not see this comic (but also very angry) depiction of dystopic society in which, 500 years later, everyone has become terminally stupid due to natural selection no longer taking its course (“only stupid people are breeding,” as the song goes).

Rumors also circulate that this film has been butchered by the studio, and I couldn’t help but engage in guessing games while watching the film. For instance, did they really need that narration? Although it was often funny, it also felt, often enough, like it was really just explaining the obvious, although you could take that as some kind of perverse metacommentary. The film is also only 84 minutes, which made me wonder if the narration wasn’t covering up the gaps left by all the footage that had been hacked away (unless Mike Judge got his budget slashed and had to use narration to convey what he wasn’t able to film).

Indeed, there are ways in which the film seems cheap or hastily done, but there is still a spark of malicious genius to the whole thing, a sort of tremendous hate-letter to our modern society and its valorization of the idiotic; the cynic will claim that most of the things in the film are only slightly exaggerated. I don’t think I agree with Judge that people are getting dumber, and will only get dumber in the future. I think that the popular culture certainly is getting dumber, but I think that this is, for the most part, due to the media’s increasing willingness to pander to our more vapid and venal impulses, rather than attempt to pacify us as they did in the Father Knows Best days (what was so “smart” about that stuff, after all? I think, then, that our overall intelligence isn’t decreasing, it’s more that the visibility of the unintelligent is at an all time high, and whatever thrall the intelligent once had over those who are less so is at an all time low. I will say that the part that rang the truest for me was when the “average” hero is time and time again shot down for his apparent effeminacy, because that is how the future people read anything other than idiocy. I may not agree with Judge’s diagnosis (much less his reading of class and sex, which is questionable at best), but I agree that something is rotten, and I found his vision, powered by righteous anger, to be appropriately disturbing.

Source: Fox DVD
31 January, 10:32 PM

The Claim

2007-01-29T01:11:00.001-08:00

Michael Winterbottom, UK / Canada / France, 2000
3.5 out of 4 stars

It’s an interesting feeling when almost everything in the plot suggests that some awful collision is about to take place at the expense of the main characters, but the result, instead, is always something more nuanced, if not, ultimately, less catastrophic. I was quite impressed with this unique “western,” in which a railroad engineer and his crew come to a town called Kingdom Come in order to determine the course of the railroad and, it’s understood, the fate of the town itself. Arriving at the same time is a woman and her adult daughter, both of whom lead to a revelation, in flashback, as to the somewhat dubious origins of this town, and of course, everyone’s plot line intersects as well.

It’s interesting to see what a filmmaker like Winterbottom, concerned mostly with films that contain some measure of “reality,” does with a mid-level epic such as this one. Although he uses actors rather than real people, and works in a historical period rather than in the “now” of most of his other films, I think there is definitely some sense that he is trying to capture a historical turning point (through microcosm) by showing us the low-key interactions and almost mundane incidents that make up these kinds of shifts, entirely eschewing the melodrama and tragic elements that often are assumed to be necessary components of anything remotely epic or historical. This is not to say that he has made a boring film, or a film that tries the viewer’s patience in a self-consciously “arty” fashion. Rather, he seeks to overturn those assumptions I mentioned at the beginning, making everything a bit more immediate and, by consequence, more engaging. If I have any complaints, it’s that the plot is actually somewhat hard to follow at times, partially because you have to connect the dots to a certain extent.

Source: MGM DVD
28 January, 10:36 PM

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

2007-01-27T22:15:00.000-08:00

(Moartea domnului Lazarescu)
Cristi Puiu, Romania, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

Spending two and a half hours a man slow decaying towards a fate preordained by the title itself is the kind of film experience that critics rave about (it was on many top 10 lists) and audiences shun (the American box office was a whopping $80,301). As for myself, well, I often lean towards the critics in cases like these. I think they may have overpraised the film a bit, but I also think that this film is exactly what it is supposed to be.

The length is certainly excessive (even some of its strongest proponents have said so), and yet the lackadaisical pacing is key in the director’s attempt to convey the maddening delays and demurrals of the Romanian medical system – at least as depicted here. The characters are thinly sketched, but this is also necessary; Lazarescu needs to be enough of everyman that the pathos can come from the events (or lack therof) alone. While I wasn’t exactly rapt with attention, I was invested enough with Lazarescu’s plight that, even though I knew what would happen, I felt hopeful when he seemed to come across someone willing to do something for him. The point is, this is not an unrelenting film in which people are all bad, which is what you might expect from the premise and from the execution. Instead, it shows a world in which pettiness and decency are mixed, often in the same people. It might try the patience of some folks, and it’s not the masterpiece that some critics claim it to be, but it is a good, solid, and unusual film.

Source: Genius DVD
27 January, 7:03 PM

Pan’s Labyrinth

2007-01-26T21:43:00.000-08:00

(El Laberinto del Fauno)
Guillermo del Toro, Mexico / Spain / USA, 2006
4 out of 4 stars

This is an extremely well-realized, gripping vision of fairies in fascist Spain, which sounds like some kind of ridiculous high concept project, and in a way, it is quite ridiculous, but del Toro manages to make it work for him. He has very effectively created a sense of terror without resorting to cheap tricks. Although the Faun that the heroine encounters is very big on rules, these rules seem arbitrary at best, and overall I was never quite sure what would happen to whom, which means that everything seems more crucial and more tense. Finally, the picture is shot in a way that is grim but not unrelenting or lifeless. I found the ending, actually, to be the most unsettling thing about the picture, largely for the unanswerable questions it brings up. I wouldn’t call it a perfect film, but at the same time, there are no significant flaws for me to pick on. It is definitely a triumph.

Source: New Line 35mm print
26 January, 6:45 PM

Kill Zone

2007-01-26T01:04:00.000-08:00

(Sha po long)
Yip Wai Sun, Hong Kong / Macau, 2005
2 out of 4 stars

So what happens when you mix the martial arts genre (more recently associated, at least by Western audiences, with the period piece) and the cop genre? At least in this film, the result seems to be some kind of reconstituted slasher film, and I have to admit that I have never been one to get behind the slasher genre. It’s one thing to have some gore in the battle scenes, but some of these characters aren’t even capable of putting up enough of a fight, meaning that many of the “action” scenes are nothing more than slaughters.

In fact, the fighting is quite good in this film, although it is nothing groundbreaking. Although the filmmaking isn’t incompetent, there’s not all that much else to celebrate I about it, and the acting is particularly laughable at times (strong emotions come out of nowhere and then disappear again). My usual complaint in these kind of films is that I am just waiting through the bad acting for the good action, but in this case, I guess I also have to complain about the general nihilism that is the inevitable consequence of veering too far into slasher territory. It seems like the filmmakers wanted to have some kind of weight behind the whole thing, but really, this is an insubstantial picture with a underlying morality that is muddled at best.

Source: Genius DVD
25 January, 10:53 PM

Gabrielle

2007-01-23T01:51:00.001-08:00

Patrice Chéreau, France / Germany / Italy, 2005
4 out of 4 stars

This is, in essence, a chamber drama that basically sustains a very narrow focus on an unexpected marital crisis for 90 minutes, and yet it is much more filmic and more alive than such an accurate description would suggest. There are certainly some surprising, successful flourishes employed to tell this story, such as the unusual use of monochrome and title cards. Furthermore, the classical music score is expertly done and quite disturbing, especially when it (apparently) doesn’t at all match with what we’re seeing on screen. Finally, the camera work is very vibrant when needed, and when otherwise, it conveys very well the moroseness of the situation.

All that said, of course a film that is mostly about two people imploding needs some good performances, and these are certainly provided by Pascal Greggory and Isabelle Huppert, the one manic and strangely engaging, the other hiding something with a series of elliptical looks and remarks. I do imagine this film is not for everyone, but for me, it was one of the better films that had its American release (such as it was) in 2006.

Source: Genius DVD
22 January, 11:55 PM

Letters from Iwo Jima

2007-01-20T22:55:00.000-08:00

Clint Eastwood, USA, 2006
3.5 out of 4 stars

To some extent, the most remarkable thing about this film is that it was made by an American director and an American studio, and that it is actually on wide release in American theaters, and as such, I can’t help but wonder if the film would seem more ordinary to me if it was a Japanese film. In an industry that makes Memoirs of a Geisha to satisfy our “curiosity” about Japan and usually makes war films that recycle our old propaganda with only slightly updated sensibilities, it is quite impressive that this film even exists, because the perspective of the “Other” is something that we need to see a lot more of in American film.

Putting aside all that baggage, if possible, I can safely say that this is a very solid, well-acted, and emotionally compelling humanist drama about the lives of soldiers whom we all know to be doomed. Quite a bit of the film, actually the stronger part of it, is concerned with the buildup and character development, and this definitely makes the battle scenes a lot more effective when they finally come. Even then, the focus is on how the soldiers interact and reconcile conflicting instincts, giving some quality insight into what has always been portrayed, in American film and schools, as entirely incomprehensible behavior.

Of course, it’s not entirely a perfect film. It probably should be mentioned that any hint of Japanese imperialism is entirely left out. Of course, the reality of soldiers forced to defend an imperialist order really shouldn’t impair our identification with these folks, but I don’t think Eastwood was ready to think about our own modern imperial projects in that way. Finally, the script does imply that some of the more sympathetic characters perhaps derive some of their humanity from the time they spent in the US, which does remind you that this is indeed an American film.

Source: Warner 35mm print
20 January, 6:40 PM

The Fountain

2007-01-20T02:28:00.001-08:00

Darren Aronofsky, USA, 2006
3.5 out of 4 stars

It would be hard for me to spoil this movie for you, seeing as how I had a very minimal understanding of how the three parts of the film (past, present, and… future? I’m not sure) connect to each other. Visually, it’s an astonishing piece, and it’s also very emotionally compelling, which is a nice thing in such an admittedly esoteric film. The relationship between Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz is quite affecting, helping to make this a very human film in the midst of all the weirdness and mindtrips.

Unfortunately, my viewing experience was also very far from ideal, which makes it even harder for me to evaluate the film. The bargain theater has given us trouble in the past, such as when Talladega Nights was out of focus (for the entire film) or when the sound went out a couple of times during Babel, but this was definitely the worst they’ve done yet, because they somehow managed to present us with a viewable area about 1/8 of the way down from what we were supposed to be seeing. This meant that we saw boom mikes during some dialogue scenes and large black rectangles during some visual effects scenes, and that during close-ups, the actors’ mouths were never visible. The problem was not resolved even after two different trips to complain, and it took me quite a while to stop obsessing about it and just enjoy the film as much as possible. I strongly suspect I will enjoy this film even more when I watch it on DVD, as I will, you know, actually get to see the shots the director wanted me to see!

Source: Warner 35mm print
19 January, 9:30 PM

Miami Vice

2007-01-18T02:15:00.000-08:00

Michael Mann, USA / Germany, 2006
1 out of 4 stars

I was intrigued when this film started showing up on all kinds of top 10 lists, but my reaction to this film’s inexplicable year-end celebration is summed up by a talkback comment, regrettably one I can’t find a link for, that read something to the effect of, “Oh, I didn’t realize that the reason I was bored out of my mind is it was supposed to be an art film.” Michael Mann has certainly done good work in the past, but giving him any credit for this piece of nonsense is certainly as good a case of the auteur theory run amuck as I can think of. The alternative theory would be that if there’s no joy in it, it must be “good” for you. But what use is there for a film that has no joy, no beauty, no energy, and no anything.

This is just an all-around dreary, listless affair, with ugly digital cinematography (it worked in Mann’s Collateral but it sure doesn’t work here), tacky dialogue (even if it is deliberately so, it’s just a trial to listen to), an aimless, unengaging story, a near-total lack of action… even the music is bad! The cast is either poor (puppy-dog sleazeball Collin Ferrell), misused (Gong Li, who just looks lost), or perhaps some of both (Jamie Foxx, who I think was more interesting before he somehow achieved instant stardom. The worst of it is that there is hardly any action in the film, and when you finally get a shootout, it is deliberately muddled and scattershot. Maybe there was a point here, but it was all I could do to not just turn off the DVD player at the one-hour mark. Avoid at all costs, no matter what the critics say!

Source: Universal DVD
17 January, 11:15 PM

Curse of the Golden Flower

2007-01-15T01:38:00.001-08:00

(Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia)
Zhang Yimou, China / Hong Kong, 2006
2 out of 4 stars

Nothing short of maddening, this film certainly indicates that Zhang Yimou’s prolonged detour into the field of martial-arts extravaganza is a case of diminishing returns (but more on whether that tag really fits this film later). While Hero was a masterpiece, House of Flying Daggers as problematic at best. This film is just crazy, baroque overkill, and while I did get involved enough in it to be intensely annoyed by what happens at the end, perhaps because of the work that Gong Li does or perhaps just because she gets such a raw deal, I was never really engaged in a meaningful way by the action.

Undeniably, the sets are extravagant in a way I haven’t often seen on screen. I don’t know whether it’s at all accurate, but Zhang’s depiction of the Tang dynasty is a veritable orgy of color, really bright and gaudy color, and the costumes are very ornate and flashy as well. While this all lends to the general “overkill” feel in the long run, it probably also keeps the film from being any less engaging than it already is.

See, the problem is that this is not really a wuxia film like the ones I mentioned at the beginning, although the only reason it’s even being distributed (and given a wide release) in the US is that people like myself will assume that it is one based on the director’s past work. It takes quite a while to get to any real fight scenes, which actually makes them seem more random and ridiculous when they do finally occur. This, in fact, is a period drama, and while the period is more fully realized than in Hero or Daggers, the drama is decidedly weaker, which is a bad sign, obviously. Zhang aims for tragedy, but he comes up with an absurdist trainwreck instead. I’m still interested to see what the director does next, but I do hope it’s something that’s a bit more grounded, as this was a major disappointment (although I did have my suspicions going into it).

Source: Sony 35mm print
14 January, 7:15 PM

L’Enfant

2007-01-14T02:43:00.001-08:00

Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium / France, 2005
3 out of 4 stars

The film opens with a young woman carrying a very little baby, but this is misleading – we end up spending much more time with the emotionally-stunted father of the child as he embarks upon a series of very ill-considered choices, none of which I will mention here as you could basically spoil the entire story in a few lines (I find myself generally avoiding even the Netflix or Blockbuster disc sleeves as they tend to give you plot points from halfway through the film, so I try to do what readers I have the courtesy of facilitating an unspoiled viewing of a film if they choose to watch it).

Although this is the typical French understated drama, in which characters don’t say a lot, especially not what they feel, my comments above are misleading, in that the Dardenne brothers, at least in this film, use this style to tell an actual story, rather than just a mood piece or a character study. While the latter two possibilities wouldn’t necessarily make a bad film, it was nice to see some storytelling nonetheless, and the plot is indeed fairly compelling.

So overall, I enjoyed this film, but I didn’t think it quite lived up to its potential, although I’m not exactly sure what could have been done differently. While I won’t describe the ending, I will say that it was at that point, as it often is for me, that I realized that I hadn’t quite been emotionally involved in the piece. I watched what was seemingly a very moving moment with near-total detachment. Maybe that was what the Dardennes wanted from me, but even if this is the case, it doesn’t change my assessment; this is a compelling movie worth watching, but it’s, I hate to say it, sometimes hard to tell what the point is.

Source: Sony DVD
14 January, 12:30 AM

The Road to Guantánamo

2007-01-13T02:13:00.001-08:00

Michael Winterbottom & Mat Whitecross, UK, 2006
3.5 out of 4 stars

Michael Winterbottom, as any article you read about him will tell you, is a man of many filmic styles, but one that he seems to keep coming back to, albeit in varying shapes and forms, is the docudrama. While his earlier film In This World used nonprofessionals reacting naturally to more-or-less fictional occurrences, this film uses actors to depict the true story of a handful of young British South Asian men who, while visiting Pakistan for a wedding, make an extremely ill-advised detour into Afghanistan right when the Americans start bombing it.

As you can guess from the title, these guys eventually end up in Cuba, where we are treated to a series of harrowing mistreatments and abuses of power that, let’s just say, made me even less proud to be an American than I already was. The docudrama style is effective here because the depictions of prisoner abuse stand on their own, without any need for manipulative music or embellishment of psychological detail. This isn’t to say that I value “realism” in film for its own sake, but in cases such as these, some form of it is probably the best way to get the point across. The decision to include interview segments is an interesting one, but it ultimately prevents this from becoming some kind of inscrutable art-film by allowing us some idea of what the prisoners were thinking.

It must be said that the entire film does not take place in prison camps, and the lead-up to this portion of the film is a quite captivating sort of travelogue, as these guys place themselves in the belly of the beast in a misguided effort to make some kind of difference. The film does a good job at conveying their shifting cultural identities, making their fate all the more compelling.

Source: Sony DVD
12 January, 11:55 PM

West Side Story

2007-01-11T22:12:00.000-08:00

Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise, USA, 1961
4 out of 4 stars

I saw this film in my capacity as a “projectionist” (actually, I just put in the tape or the DVD) for an undergraduate class, and many of the people there couldn’t help but laugh, even though the professor asked them to look past the cheesiness that admittedly is present in the film. But much as this film is now a touchstone for its now laughably tame portrayal of gang violence, it is actually quite far from the cheesefest that its reputation suggests.

There are certainly weaknesses, such as the sometimes-uncomfortable minstrelsy of two of the three actors portraying the principle Puerto Rican characters (silly accents, mostly, especially in the singing), and the just plan weakness of the white male lead. In fact, I think the best parts of the movie don’t even include the main couple, which makes it amazing that the film works at all.

It does, however, work quite well. I found the dance to be quite exciting and dynamically filmed, and I appreciated how, minstrelsy aside, the depiction of the struggles of the immigrants and the racial prejudices puts the treatment of the same issues in most modern films to shame. The cops, after all, openly state their preference for the white gang (although there are occasional reminders that these kids are “merely” first-generation Americans, and shouldn’t take too much for granted). The fact that the white kids still fight shows that the generational gap is just as importance for them, but it also makes them more complicit in the tragedy that ensues because they don’t really need to fight, at least not as much.

Source: Warner widescreen VHS
11 January, 5:10 PM

Clean

2007-01-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Olivier Assayas, France / UK / Canada, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

When a musical legend self-destructs, we have a bad habit of blaming his decline on his wife or partner, as if he had no agency in bringing about his own end. This film is about such a wife, played by Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung (speaking mostly English and French here), and what she has to do when she finds herself all on her own. I found her character very sympathetic, perhaps because I am always resistant to those blame-the-woman narratives in the first place, but I think Assayas and Cheung do a good job at crafting a character who you can root for even though she obviously is a little bit complicit in some things, especially when it comes to drugs.

The main weakness of the film is that the plotting is a bit haphazard at times, which is somewhat problematic because it’s a largely plot-driven film. Although much of the film is spent depicting some rather difficult times for the protagonist, I felt that the overall tone was surprisingly optimistic, but I don’t know if I was just filling in the blanks the way I wanted to in order to see it as a story of redemption (rather than the opposite). That, however, may be the point; if so, it only enriches the film when two kinds of spectators could validly take something entirely different from the same film.

Source: UMVD DVD
6 January, 1:07 PM

Children of Men

2007-01-06T01:26:00.000-08:00

Alfonso Cuarón, UK / USA / Japan, 2006
4 out of 4 stars

So far, this dystopian, apocalyptic tale is easily the best film of 2006. It consists largely of extremely long takes, and while this might sound a bit gimmicky, it’s a very effective and engrossing stylistic choice, and it makes for some absolutely astonishing cinematography. Much as in V for Vendetta, we once again find ourselves in a Britain that has remained stable – but at what cost – in the midst of a world that is apparently in turmoil, due to an unexplained epidemic of infertility. In the case of this film, we know that the outside turmoil is not mere propaganda, thanks to the sight of the many refugees desperately trying to get in or stay in the UK, most of whom end up in camps. Obviously, this a very openly political film, and so of course, Clive Owen’s character presents us with an apparently apolitical hero who is drawn back into action on a course that he doesn’t quite understand, until of course it’s too late for him to step away from it.

Much as he did in his Harry Potter film, Cuarón very effectively sets his atmosphere, conveying quite clearly, even before we see the refugee camps, that “survival” has had a high psychological cost for the British people. While it’s unlikely that we ever have to worry about not enough babies being born, the film nonetheless takes a very compelling look at how far the state could go in response to such a conundrum, and yet, it doesn’t come across as preachy at all; this is in many ways a very good action film, and very accessible despite its many layers.

Source: Universal 35mm print
5 January, 7:10 PM

Once Upon a Time in America

2007-01-03T23:48:00.001-08:00

Sergio Leone, Italy / USA, 1984
2 out of 4 stars

This would-be epic about Prohibition-era Jewish (!) gangsters caught my attention at first, as the contemplative tone, elliptical style and in medias res opening suggested that there were many interesting layers to be peeled through in this 229 minute (!!) film. In fact, I did like the stretch of the film concerning the protagonist's miscreant childhood, for the most part. But by about halfway through, the promise of the opening just seems like smoke and mirrors. Leone’s film is overall quite empty at heart, and even if he did film more than 10 hours of footage, there really doesn’t seem to be enough story, characters, or interest here to justify the time spent. I guess I can see what Leone was getting at, I just don’t think I would buy into it in any form. Admittedly, I do have some trouble being objective about a film that trivializes rape in such a horrendous manner, but I don’t really feel that I am in error in making that value judgment either.

Source: Warner DVD
3 January, 6:31 PM

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

2007-01-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

Kevin Willmott, USA, 2004
3 of 4 stars

This mockumentary, formed out of fake commercials and reenactments as well as decontextualized photos and video, purports to show the viewer how America would have developed if the South had won the war and established the Confederate government over the entire nation. The point of this is that, through various ingeniously repositioned quotes and rearranged or reversed historical occurrences, the director is able to show us how our own society has developed into a slightly cleaned-up, more polite version of this slave society dystopia, rather than something completely opposite from it as we would like to think. What turns out to be shocking is not how alien this scenario is, but instead, how easily various real aspects of American history fit into this alternate trajectory.

I do think that without a basic knowledge of American history (and I don’t claim any more than that), some of these parallels might be lost on the viewer. That is perhaps the main weakness of the piece, which is that it requires a certain amount of knowledge and saavy in order to draw the needed connections, and that those who lack one or both may feel confident in rejecting the content of the film as a mere “what if” flight of fancy. There is some text at the end that attempts to ground us in real history, but while admittedly informative, it comes off as heavy-handed.

It also must be said that the film is not of consistent quality, which is perhaps due to Willmott’s grand ambitions and his low budget. For instance, some period pieces, especially the 1946 film, don’t evoke their periods very well, and we could have used a greater variety of fake talking heads (the ones we have are sometimes a bit too didactic or obvious). Finally, Willmott seems to lose control of his alternate history near the end, as some threads are never resolved properly, such as the fate of Nazi Germany, and this really undermines the effectiveness of the film.

Nonetheless, the message is worthwhile and compelling, and above all, the film is darkly humorous… that is meant in the sense of “black comedy,” but I can’t help but be self-conscious about these kind of expressions after watching this film! The point is, I laughed with horror throughout, and this seems to indicate that Willmott at least captured the right tone, even if he faltered at times in the execution.

Source: Genius DVD
1 January, 8:58 PM

Babel

2006-12-30T20:25:00.000-08:00

Alejandro González Iñárritu, USA / Mexico, 2006
2.5 out of 4 stars

I liked this film, but it didn’t really work and it was not a success. The subject of the film is an attack upon two American tourists, played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, but neither actor is really the “star” of the piece; if anything, the film revolves around them while marginalizing them as subjects, in order to focus more on subjects that are more typically marginalized; in this case, families in Morocco, Mexico, and Japan who go through trauma as a result of what has happened. Actually, scratch Japan off that list, because the story that takes place there, while arresting, has only a shallow connection at best to the rest of the story. This would be fine, were it not that the other stories are very closely interconnected, and that there doesn’t even seem to be a thematic connection in this case.

I think that there is a clear and useful message in this film, and I do like how Iñárritu showcases the people on the outskirts that suffer as a result of the trials of the privileged, rather than making the white folks the POV characters, as would occur in a single-narrative film. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feel like he was making all these stories as one film because no one would give him funding for any one of them by itself; I would think that this has to be the explanation for the Japan story, but I have heard that at least one of his earlier films is a bit like this as well, although not on such an international scale. I do think that there needs to be some real questions asked as to whether this hodgepodge narrative, fused with the Hollywood “message” picture, really works, especially as it is becoming an annual occurrence.

Source: Paramount 35mm print
30 December, 4:10 PM

Yi yi

2006-12-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

Edward Yang, Taiwan / Japan, 2000
3 out of 4 stars

I found it hard to get a handle on this film, but ultimately, I found it to be rewarding and worthwhile. Being that it is almost three hours long, Yi yi is able to be a rather leisurely portrait of a Taipei family whose members are going through a series of lowkey personal crises. Although there really aren't that many main characters, it is hard to keep everyone straight at first, because you don't know who is who and who is important, and because Edward Yang shoots most of this movie in wide angle shots that, at least on video, don't exactly help the viewer discern one person from another.

Why is this movie worth watching, then? It definitely has a good organic, naturalistic feel, and it is free of much of the hysteria and melodrama one has regrettably come to expect from a film about a semi-dysfunctional family. It also features one of the better child performances I've seen in a while on the part of the 8-year-old son who develops an interest in photography. It seems to be a film about patience, both in what it's about and in how it was made, and overall if you are able to be patient, I think you'll find this family worth spending almost three hours with.

Source: Image DVD
21 December, 8:15 PM

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

2006-12-22T18:39:00.000-08:00

Danny Leiner, USA / Canada / Germany, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

Despite all the hype and positive comments from friends, I ignored this film for a while due to my prejudice against what I refer to as "grossout comedies." However, I should have listened. This film is actually quite groundbreaking in that it manages to destroy the assorted "model minority" and "perpetual foreigner" stereotypes that are the plague of Asian Americans, specifically young men in this case, in an entirely "conventional," mainstream setting, through the vehicle of the stoner buddy comedy, which, even if you don't enjoy this kind of film all that much, you have to admire the project. I find it fascinating that the whole thing was written by a couple of apparently Jewish (I'm just guessing from the names here, but they did insert a doppelganger stoner buddy pair that is more overtly Jewish) writers, who apparently understood representation enough to feel like they wanted to do write by their Asian college buddies (in the DVD they say that there is even a real Harold Lee).

Of course, this film could provide all sorts of great comedy and yet ultimately work more against its purpose if it turned out not to be funny. Luckily this is not the case, although i suppose it's impossible for me to know if I would have found it less funny if I wasn't the kind of viewer to appreciate "low" comedy better because of its "political" content. John Cho and Kal Penn are certainly very likeable though, and the fairly traditional quest structure of the plot is largely effective in maintaining our interest while serving as a vehicle for jokes and character development. The only real problem with the film (aside from a few moments that are perhaps a tad bit overkill, although overall this movie fell short of my "grossout threshold") was the low budget, which occasionally required the director to stage an instant night-to-day (and vice versa) transition, something that I've never seen before, at least not so glaring as it was here!

Source: Warner DVD
20 December, 8:42 PM