Actors: Jonathan Pryce, Robert Deniro
Director: Terry Gilliam
Dystopic movies often have a long uphill climb towards being entertaining because they first have to introduce the film's world without a lot of clunky exposition. Most dystopic films do so via long lectures (e.g. The Matrix, Logan's Run) that tend to end up, like, well, clunky exposition. Brazil refreshingly just throws the viewer right into the quagmire. This makes for a sprawling mess of a film full of half-realized tangents and oddball quirks. That's okay - the film seems to revel in its imperfectness as a way of form following function - i.e. its imperfectness can be explained away by its being created by artistic human beings who make mistakes, as opposed to the faceless bureaucrats portrayed in the film.
It seems no accident that Brazil was made in 1985, as it is an update of Orwell's 1984. Once again, it lacks 1984's clunky (yet fascinating) exposition - we are really left with no idea where in the world our characters are, how they came to be, etc. Gilliam is instead interested in the internal - the effect of this future society on a 'normal' person.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Doubt - 2008 - 4 Stars
Actors: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Director: John Patrick Shanley
Legendary director Howard Hawks once observed that the best films have two great scenes and no bad ones. He did not say what happens when a movie has three great scenes and one bad one. Doubt is such a movie - an amazingly well-constructed film that still falls short of greatness. However, one attribute of a good film is that it takes your expectations and messes with them - Doubt has this in spades.
Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman have been great actors for so long that it's barely worth noting just how good they are in anything; it is awesome that they share the same space in this film.
Director: John Patrick Shanley
Legendary director Howard Hawks once observed that the best films have two great scenes and no bad ones. He did not say what happens when a movie has three great scenes and one bad one. Doubt is such a movie - an amazingly well-constructed film that still falls short of greatness. However, one attribute of a good film is that it takes your expectations and messes with them - Doubt has this in spades.
Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman have been great actors for so long that it's barely worth noting just how good they are in anything; it is awesome that they share the same space in this film.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Scanners - 1980 - 3½ Stars
Actors: Stephen Lack, Michael Ironside
Director: David Cronenberg
Do you like sci-fi movies? Do you like movies with lots of people writhing in agony? Do you like movies about all-powerful corporate conglomerates? Do you feel that not enough films are shot in French Canada? Do you think the best way to make an office feel more 'homey' is to put some underwatered plants in a corner? Do you think that your life lacks monochrome computer monitors? If you said yes to all of these things, run, don't walk, to your nearest local DVD rental store, remember that it went out of business, and return home to illegally download and watch Scanners.
Scanners is a good film in a tiny and unappreciated niche of movies the 'best-seen-at-13-on-a-Friday-night-when-your-parents-have-gone-to-bed'. This niche also includes The Terminator, Blade Runner, and Total Recall. Scanners, like those three movies (perhaps not Blade Runner), is very silly in a very earnest way. The goofy sincerity in Scanners is best conveyed by the lead character, who appears to have no inner monologue and expresses himself in monosyllables like an unemotional child. This acting technique would be (and often is) ultra-cheesy in other films, but it works very well here.
Director: David Cronenberg
Do you like sci-fi movies? Do you like movies with lots of people writhing in agony? Do you like movies about all-powerful corporate conglomerates? Do you feel that not enough films are shot in French Canada? Do you think the best way to make an office feel more 'homey' is to put some underwatered plants in a corner? Do you think that your life lacks monochrome computer monitors? If you said yes to all of these things, run, don't walk, to your nearest local DVD rental store, remember that it went out of business, and return home to illegally download and watch Scanners.
Scanners is a good film in a tiny and unappreciated niche of movies the 'best-seen-at-13-on-a-Friday-night-when-your-parents-have-gone-to-bed'. This niche also includes The Terminator, Blade Runner, and Total Recall. Scanners, like those three movies (perhaps not Blade Runner), is very silly in a very earnest way. The goofy sincerity in Scanners is best conveyed by the lead character, who appears to have no inner monologue and expresses himself in monosyllables like an unemotional child. This acting technique would be (and often is) ultra-cheesy in other films, but it works very well here.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
The Princess Bride - 1987 - 3½ Stars
Actors: Cary Elwes, Robin Wright
Director: Rob Reiner
I know it seems very hard to believe, perhaps even inconceivable, but I've never actually seen The Princess Bride until today. Its catchphrases are of course ubiquitous - 'I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, etc.', 'Never start a land war in Asia', etc. Unfortunately, this ubiquity does ruin some of the film - 'I do not think that word means what you think it means' is an excellent joke. Nonetheless, I found it quite enjoyable, and it's easy to see why a certain set of people simply love this film.
One thing I didn't know is that the movie is a story within a story, which disappointed me. To me it signals the filmmakers felt the audience can't be trusted to 'get' this movie. By using a frame story and constantly cutting back and forth between the 'real' world and the story, we're made to understand that the elements of the story are farcical and untrustworthy. I feel this movie could've been played straight - what Reiner ends up doing is telling a story about the power of stories, which struck me as alternately heartfelt and masturbatory. (That's not to mention the Billy Crystal cameo, which was easily the worst part of the film).
Director: Rob Reiner
I know it seems very hard to believe, perhaps even inconceivable, but I've never actually seen The Princess Bride until today. Its catchphrases are of course ubiquitous - 'I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, etc.', 'Never start a land war in Asia', etc. Unfortunately, this ubiquity does ruin some of the film - 'I do not think that word means what you think it means' is an excellent joke. Nonetheless, I found it quite enjoyable, and it's easy to see why a certain set of people simply love this film.
One thing I didn't know is that the movie is a story within a story, which disappointed me. To me it signals the filmmakers felt the audience can't be trusted to 'get' this movie. By using a frame story and constantly cutting back and forth between the 'real' world and the story, we're made to understand that the elements of the story are farcical and untrustworthy. I feel this movie could've been played straight - what Reiner ends up doing is telling a story about the power of stories, which struck me as alternately heartfelt and masturbatory. (That's not to mention the Billy Crystal cameo, which was easily the worst part of the film).
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Shadows - 1959 - 4 Stars
Actors: Benny Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni
Director: John Cassavetes
I have seen three John Cassavetes films within the last few months, and I can say this about him: His films are very distinctive and very hit or miss. At his best, Cassavetes' 'realistic' techniques bring out actions and emotions that other films simply cannot. At his worst, his scenes play like self-indulgent acting exercises rather than a movie. Shadows sticks mostly to the former, and its 81 minute running time means that no scene is drawn out well past its welcome.
A particularly brilliant scene in Shadows shows racial tension without the high theatrics and casual use of racial slurs of Hollywood films. Cassavetes shows that racism is often merely in a glance, in the way a thing is said; my Hollywood-trained mind kept waiting for an explosion that never quite came.
Director: John Cassavetes
I have seen three John Cassavetes films within the last few months, and I can say this about him: His films are very distinctive and very hit or miss. At his best, Cassavetes' 'realistic' techniques bring out actions and emotions that other films simply cannot. At his worst, his scenes play like self-indulgent acting exercises rather than a movie. Shadows sticks mostly to the former, and its 81 minute running time means that no scene is drawn out well past its welcome.
A particularly brilliant scene in Shadows shows racial tension without the high theatrics and casual use of racial slurs of Hollywood films. Cassavetes shows that racism is often merely in a glance, in the way a thing is said; my Hollywood-trained mind kept waiting for an explosion that never quite came.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Whatever Works - 2009 - 1½ Stars
I may be recalling the scene incorrectly, but I think it's in Annie Hall where Woody Allen plays a kind of neurotic, narcissistic misanthrope obsessed with his own death - anyway, it's Annie Hall, where Alvy Singer is going to write jokes for this insanely lame comedian, and the comedian has an idea about what he thinks is marvelously entertaining and Alvy skewers him with some pointed ironic statement and walks out on him.
That is what I wanted to do to this film. If someone wanted to parody a Woody Allen film, they'd make this one - there is no indication that Allen put an original thought into it at all.
The trouble with narcissism is that calling someone a narcissist is actually a form of gratification to them - Woody Allen, when confronted with the charge, would say 'Of course I know that - how could I not know that about me?' And yet in this film we're subjected with the same tirades, the same love of classical and jazz music, of old films, of everything that's insanely familiar and tired about an Allen work. I can't understand what Woody Allen gets out of making a film such as this - but I suppose he has to, and when people reach a certain age they should just be allowed to do what they want.
That is what I wanted to do to this film. If someone wanted to parody a Woody Allen film, they'd make this one - there is no indication that Allen put an original thought into it at all.
The trouble with narcissism is that calling someone a narcissist is actually a form of gratification to them - Woody Allen, when confronted with the charge, would say 'Of course I know that - how could I not know that about me?' And yet in this film we're subjected with the same tirades, the same love of classical and jazz music, of old films, of everything that's insanely familiar and tired about an Allen work. I can't understand what Woody Allen gets out of making a film such as this - but I suppose he has to, and when people reach a certain age they should just be allowed to do what they want.
Bad Lieutenant - 1992 - 3½ Stars
Actors: Harvey Keitel, Mad Dog
Director: Abel Ferrara
It's hard for me not to like a movie that opens with Chris 'Mad Dog' Russo's voice and includes references to Kal Daniels. And as it turns out, I did like it.
Note: Non-Kal Daniels related spoilers
In the famous essay Hamlet and His Problems, T.S. Eliot observes that Hamlet is a dramatic failure because the action of the play occurs mostly within Hamlet's head. Since we cannot access what's actually going on there, we cannot understand Hamlet's motivations. This was the problem I had with this film - there's a very stylized way of trying to get into Keitel's head, but we never really get a sense that Harvey Keitel's character is an actual person. Thus this is a film about good and evil - but how he is pulled by these forces he can only convey with soliloquies and grotesque whimpers. Even more unrealistic was the plot point involving the Mets being in the playoffs.
Like Darryl Strawberry in the film, Bad Lieutenant swings for the fences; sometimes connecting, sometimes missing terribly.
Director: Abel Ferrara
It's hard for me not to like a movie that opens with Chris 'Mad Dog' Russo's voice and includes references to Kal Daniels. And as it turns out, I did like it.
Note: Non-Kal Daniels related spoilers
In the famous essay Hamlet and His Problems, T.S. Eliot observes that Hamlet is a dramatic failure because the action of the play occurs mostly within Hamlet's head. Since we cannot access what's actually going on there, we cannot understand Hamlet's motivations. This was the problem I had with this film - there's a very stylized way of trying to get into Keitel's head, but we never really get a sense that Harvey Keitel's character is an actual person. Thus this is a film about good and evil - but how he is pulled by these forces he can only convey with soliloquies and grotesque whimpers. Even more unrealistic was the plot point involving the Mets being in the playoffs.
Like Darryl Strawberry in the film, Bad Lieutenant swings for the fences; sometimes connecting, sometimes missing terribly.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Le Samourai - 1967 - 4½ Stars
Actors: Alain Delon, Francois Perier
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Some film worlds are expansive - they suggest a past, present, and future of the characters inside that world. This is not so with Le Samourai, a movie concerned solely with the present. The title character, who goes by the name of Jef Costello, is an ideal of film badassery, but it's hard to imagine him outside his film context; difficult to imagine his childhood, or how he came to be how he is.
No matter, since what we get out of Le Samourai is a kind of Parisian film noir - everyone's doing a great job of looking out for Number One and looking really cool while doing it. Highly recommended, and were I between the ages of 15 and 20, this would be an easy five-star film.
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Some film worlds are expansive - they suggest a past, present, and future of the characters inside that world. This is not so with Le Samourai, a movie concerned solely with the present. The title character, who goes by the name of Jef Costello, is an ideal of film badassery, but it's hard to imagine him outside his film context; difficult to imagine his childhood, or how he came to be how he is.
No matter, since what we get out of Le Samourai is a kind of Parisian film noir - everyone's doing a great job of looking out for Number One and looking really cool while doing it. Highly recommended, and were I between the ages of 15 and 20, this would be an easy five-star film.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Dog Day Afternoon - 1975 - 4½ Stars
Actors: Al Pacino, John Cazale
Director: Sidney Lumet
Note: Very Minor Spoilers
A friend of mine, confronted in a philosophy class about what he was trying to say about a dense political treatise, stammered out, 'Well, it's about love.' If put on the spot about Dog Day Afternoon, I'd say the same, despite many appearances to the contrary. A bank heist turns into an examination of the robbers - about what and who they value most.
Al Pacino's tendency towards over-the-top hamminess plays perfectly here, and Lumet knows exactly when to dial him down to low intensity. He also knows when to ratchet up the tension and when to ease it - only tiresome, superfluous commentary about television keeps this from being a 5-star film.
Director: Sidney Lumet
Note: Very Minor Spoilers
A friend of mine, confronted in a philosophy class about what he was trying to say about a dense political treatise, stammered out, 'Well, it's about love.' If put on the spot about Dog Day Afternoon, I'd say the same, despite many appearances to the contrary. A bank heist turns into an examination of the robbers - about what and who they value most.
Al Pacino's tendency towards over-the-top hamminess plays perfectly here, and Lumet knows exactly when to dial him down to low intensity. He also knows when to ratchet up the tension and when to ease it - only tiresome, superfluous commentary about television keeps this from being a 5-star film.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Paris, Texas - 1984 - 4 Stars
Actors: Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Nastassja Kinski
Director: Wim Wenders
Paris, Texas's opening credits claim that the film won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1984. I don't know why a film production company would put this there except to say, "People better than you thought this was a great movie, so you better damn well like it." Watching an award-winning film reminds me of the old Homer Simpson line - 'I don't want to build it up too much, but this will be better than ten Super Bowls!'. Nothing ruins a film like Paris, Texas more than eager anticipation.
Watching this film yesterday, I felt myself beginning to doze off, and stopped it around a third of the way through. The film seemed too similar in theme to Gerry, Stroszek, Easy Rider, and the Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada; it's similarly glacially paced, and I thought the characters were totally flat, the film entirely too precious - the sort of thing that people at Cannes love. I considered sending it back and putting it on my queue again in a few months - it wasn't fair that I was harshly judging it because I'd seen so many films like it recently.
Today, it won me over - great visuals, a story that's almost worth it, and dialogue that's not witty or entertaining but true. Everything in this film is kind of loose and illogical and it just sort of happens - I tend to downgrade movies like this (e.g. Stroszek, and Wenders's Wings of Desire) - but there are some wonderful touches that make this worth viewing.
Director: Wim Wenders
Paris, Texas's opening credits claim that the film won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1984. I don't know why a film production company would put this there except to say, "People better than you thought this was a great movie, so you better damn well like it." Watching an award-winning film reminds me of the old Homer Simpson line - 'I don't want to build it up too much, but this will be better than ten Super Bowls!'. Nothing ruins a film like Paris, Texas more than eager anticipation.
Watching this film yesterday, I felt myself beginning to doze off, and stopped it around a third of the way through. The film seemed too similar in theme to Gerry, Stroszek, Easy Rider, and the Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada; it's similarly glacially paced, and I thought the characters were totally flat, the film entirely too precious - the sort of thing that people at Cannes love. I considered sending it back and putting it on my queue again in a few months - it wasn't fair that I was harshly judging it because I'd seen so many films like it recently.
Today, it won me over - great visuals, a story that's almost worth it, and dialogue that's not witty or entertaining but true. Everything in this film is kind of loose and illogical and it just sort of happens - I tend to downgrade movies like this (e.g. Stroszek, and Wenders's Wings of Desire) - but there are some wonderful touches that make this worth viewing.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Niagara - 1953 - 3 Stars
Niagara wishes to convey two pieces of information:
A: Niagara Falls is a terrifically swell place to go for your honeymoon.
B: Niagara Falls is also a great place to plan a murder.
The film seems to have only gotten permission to be about B by ensuring that precept A was also followed.
It is disappointing that with such a great locale the film turns out to be a by-the-numbers thriller and likely would've fallen off the map if not for the presence of Marilyn Monroe. Items A and B could've really combined into a great movie, a Canadian version of Touch of Evil. No such luck - I guess the idea of a Canadian Touch of Evil is pretty absurd, regardless.
A: Niagara Falls is a terrifically swell place to go for your honeymoon.
B: Niagara Falls is also a great place to plan a murder.
The film seems to have only gotten permission to be about B by ensuring that precept A was also followed.
It is disappointing that with such a great locale the film turns out to be a by-the-numbers thriller and likely would've fallen off the map if not for the presence of Marilyn Monroe. Items A and B could've really combined into a great movie, a Canadian version of Touch of Evil. No such luck - I guess the idea of a Canadian Touch of Evil is pretty absurd, regardless.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)