In The Mood For Love - 2001 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chung Wai

Director: Wong Kar Wai

I was excited to see In The Mood For Love - I didn't know very much about it, but I did know that it sometimes tops people's best film of the decade list. It's a tale of two young couples from Hong Kong who move into rented rooms in apartments next door to one another. While it's clearly a well-crafted film, I have to admit I didn't get it. It strikes me as the kind of film that requires two viewings to understand, yet is not compelling enough to demand that treatment.

Note: Spoilers below

The characters are ciphers, probably intentionally so. We never see their spouses, who are supposedly cheating on them - do they even exist? Are they fictions? The constant play-acting by the woman, acting out scenes with the man, as though the man were her husband - is he actually her husband? The choice to keep their spouses out of the film entirely (besides audio) is an interesting one. However, it also makes the supposed pain of their spouses' adultery that much dimmer, and their passion for one another that much more muted. Maybe I just needed Al Pacino shouting about something in here, I don't know. Now, time to read a bunch of glowing reviews to explain what I missed.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - 1948 - 5 Stars

Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston

Director: John Huston

Some scenes are absolutely perfect and unforgettable - such is the conclusion to the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It could be deconstructed in eighteen ways, all of which I won't bother with here. Regardless, the film is a pitch-perfect examination of greed and paranoia; Bogart is a master at conveying both states. It's a must-see classic.

The only disappointment in the film is the constant use of close-in shots, as is standard in films of this era - one imagines they shot this movie in Griffith Park, and couldn't use wider shots because it would be a dead giveaway. Still, the focus here is not nature, but man - wider shots may have distracted from the overall film.

Leaves of Grass - 2009 - 2½ Stars

Actors: Edward Norton, Richard Dreyfuss

Director: Tim Blake Nelson

Edward Norton's career is just about impossible to figure out. In the late 90s, he was the kind of actor who turned everything he touched to gold. In a 4 year stretch, he was in Rounders, Fight Club, American History X, Death to Smoochy, and 25th Hour. I don't think all of these are great films, necessarily, but they're all stuff worth seeing (Okay, Death to Smoochy's on the borderline). Perhaps we had found our generation's DeNiro or Pacino, the guy who picks the good stuff, the guy who you've got to see in everything. And then - nothing. He stopped being in interesting movies. I saw him in The Illusionist, which was okay, but an eminently forgettable film. Then this movie.

Leaves of Grass is a mess. It's a glorious mess - featuring references to Whitman (duh), obscure Latin cases, hydroponics, and orthodonture - but a mess nonetheless. It's extremely hard to not label this film as 'minor Coen' - it's very reminiscent of something like Raising Arizona. The problem is that the film is in a middle ground - it should either embrace caricature, as the Coens tend to, or reject it entirely.

Norton is excellent as both leads, even as distracting as having one actor playing two roles can be. Still, one wishes he could give that performance in a better film.

Grizzly Man - 2005 - 3½ Stars

Director: Werner Herzog

Subject: A man who lives among grizzly bears

A good documentary should leave a person more confused than when he or she began the film. To this end, Grizzly Man is a success. Its opening portrayal of Timothy Treadwell as a happy wanderer, or perhaps as a Peter Pan figure in the Alaskan wilds, becomes something different by the end of the film.

Grizzly Man is also an interesting documentary in that most of the footage is not Herzog's - Treadwell recorded over a hundred hours of video that Herzog edited to make into this documentary. Having this much material is like a blank canvas - the editor can make it into whatever he chooses.

I'm considering going to a 'See It/Don't Bother' rating system for documentaries.

Floating Weeds - 1959 - 4¼ Stars

Actors: Ganjiro Nakamura, Machiko Kyo

Director: Yasujiro Ozu

I was deciding back and forth between 4 and 4½ stars for this film, when I decided that it's my rating system and I don't really care if I have to throw a ¼ in there.

Floating Weeds opens with two shots that are almost tableau-like - we're not 100% sure we're watching an Ozu film after them, but we can be pretty sure we're watching the film of a very confident, precise filmmaker. The film concerns a traveling band of Kabuki actors, the leader of whom has secretly fathered a son in the town he's visiting. Stuff ensues.

One of my favorite Ozu touches is the constant need for establishing shots. Unlike most establishing shots, which point the camera directly at the building/place our scene is going to take place in, the camera will sometimes be pointed near where the scene is going to take place, or from where the scene will take place, looking out. It's almost like a reset button for the movie; it prepares us for the scene that's about to take place.

I've only seen two Ozu films, but a drawback of both these films is that their plot structure is flimsy and loose. Tension builds inconsistently - it's there, but it's often well in the background, and it comes to the fore in unexpected ways. This can sometimes make what seem like boring scenes engrossing, and vice versa.

Paul - 2011 - 3 Stars

Actors: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost

Director: Greg Mottola

(Note: I saw Paul several weeks ago, but decided to wait until the film came out to review it.)

I am almost always turned off by ads for comedy films, which invariably choose the most pandering and lowbrow jokes to put out front. I've been scared away from more than a few recent comedies, only to have to discover that they're actually good. However, seeing a film before one sees the advertisements is an intriguing peek into the inner workings of the movie industry juggernaut. Not only are the jokes not ruined for me, but I get to guess, which jokes will ultimately end up being ruined by trailers and television ads?

There's not too many ruined here, but one of the better gags of the film is destroyed. If you watch television at all, you've seen Paul the alien bringing a bird back to life only to eat it while it's still alive. This is a great gag - I recall cringing at the scene and hoping internally 'please be a joke here, please be a joke here', and then, boom. It's a well-executed gag whose surprise is now gone.

Oh yes - the film. Well, Paul was okay. It has a ton of Comedy Ringers™ - the actors who typically populate the periphery of a Hollywood comedy. Jeffrey Tambor, Jane Lynch, Jason Bateman, and David Koechner all appear. The writing is good, but not great. There's some jokes that are re-used too often. The main characters are likable. There's a better film somewhere inside this one, but unfortunately this appears to be a rather big-budget movie, so it will be trapped forever. Still, it's worth seeing - on DVD.

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps - 2010 - 2 Stars

Actors: Shia LaBoeuf, Michael Douglas

Director: Oliver Stone

Note: Minor Spoilers Ahead

I haven't seen many Oliver Stone films, but his movies can be summed up in a line he wrote in 1983 - 'Nothing exceeds like excess.' If one is good, ten is better. Make sure to have the characters say everything, rather than imply it.

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps is an endlessly talking movie where no character has time to become empathetic because they're too busy telling everyone what it is they're thinking and feeling at any given moment. Michael Douglas reprises his role as Gordon Gekko, but he's been neutered - Stone fails to realize that Gekko was the most fascinating character in the original film because he was the most confident and wittiest. His wit here has been denuded into crowd pandering and applause lines.

There's some interesting direction to simulate the flow of information in financial markets, and endless shots of a gleaming New York City - Stone once again fails to realize that, on film, glossy sheens and fancy suits are compelling, rather than repellent.

Tetro - 2009 - 3½ Stars

Actors: Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

The patriarch of an artistic family is wildly talented and successful, while the rest of his family struggles in his wake? Sound like anyone? It's hard not to imagine that there's something very personal about Tetro, but often personal films are the best ones. While the situation is not one that most people can exactly relate to, the difficulties of the main characters are well spelled out. It's a tad too long, but I find myself saying that about every film lately.

Vincent Gallo is exceptional as the title character - Gallo is perfect at presenting stubborn anger and resistance to others, which is what this part calls for. Both here and in Buffalo '66, Gallo's character says that my will is going to win out - I can resist you.

Coppola makes an interesting choice - the film is in black and white, but any flashbacks are shot in color. I'm sure some other film has done this before this one, but here it's a striking choice, and something true as well - sometimes the past can seem more vivid than a lifeless present.

Get Him To The Greek - 2010 - 3 Stars

Actors: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand

Director: Nicholas Stoller

Detailing the excesses and absurdities of the pop music industry is a tad bittersweet as the era of radio-aided rock hits fades into the background. Still, Get Him To The Greek is an often funny look at this diminishing world. Russell Brand is perfect reprising his role as Aldous Snow from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Hill is passable as his shepherd. I do wish Hill had lost at least 30 pounds so that the idea of him picking up girls throughout the film is at least plausible.

One thing that's interesting about the Apatow network of films (here he merely produced) is how meta-entertainment so many of them are. Knocked Up is about a television reporter, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is about a TV composer and actress, and Get Him... uses at least five different television shows to generate easy recognition laughs in the early going. Paul Krugman's cameo in this is perhaps even more confusing as Dr. Joyce Brothers' in The Naked Gun.

Children of Men - 2006 - 3 Stars

Actors: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore

Director: Alfonso Cuaron

As I've written before, films about a dystopic future have to have a lot of things go right. They have to avoid clunky exposition, the world created within has to be believable and internally consistent (not necessarily realistic), and then there's all the normal hurdles a film has to jump to succeed. It may have just been my mood, but I didn't get into Children of Men. It's clearly much better than I am rating it. There's brilliant action setpieces, a general feeling of dread, and some inspired direction. I guess my criticisms come down to Clive Owen, who I didn't like, and his character development, which I felt was haphazard. Dystopian films are usually over 120 minutes - this one wasn't, and I think it suffered for that. We don't get a full sense of his world before we get thrown down the rabbit hole.

Fanny and Alexander - 1982 - 4 Stars

Actors: Bertil Guve, Ewa Froling

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Some films' world is so vivid and well-drawn that we feel like we are reading a book. Fanny and Alexander is such a film. There's no technical wizardry, and every frame feels like it was slaved over to get the proper look. The camera just seems to be placed at the right point every time. It's the film of a completely confident filmmaker.

Set in early 20th century Sweden, the film concerns a brother and sister as they grow up, first in a family of great wealth, then in a family of great austerity. The transition is understandably difficult. Underneath all this is a commentary on the role of imagination in art, and the nature of truth and falsehood. It's perfectly constructed, but the plot is sparse, sometimes difficult, and the film is over three hours long. If I taught a film course, I could spend half a semester here, but I'm not sure I want to unravel what's going on at the bottom of this one.

Grindhouse: Deathproof - 2007 - 3 Stars

Actors: Kurt Russell, Rose McGowan

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Note: Spoilers Ahead

There's not a filmmaker who frustrates me more than Quentin Tarantino. It's interesting to parallel his career development with Kevin Smith, another wunderkind who grew up from total obscurity into an instant success. Smith's descent into a rabbit-hole of self-referentiality and fan service is really not upsetting - he is not a gifted filmmaker. He has an ear for comedy, but he's in love with his own voice. This, too, is my problem with Quentin Tarantino, who basically hit a home run with Reservoir Dogs, then followed it up with a huge grand slam in Pulp Fiction. Since then, he's basically had carte blanche, and that's where auteurism can be a bad thing.

Tarantino's world is very engrossing - it's in his head, and yet we're usually invited inside. That's a gift in itself - to make what is clearly an extraordinarily personal world accessible to others. So we're in his head from the moment the film begins. At first, he tells a great story, and I'm totally rapt - I don't need to be part of the conversation. Eventually, though, I feel like I'm not really invited - he drones on about this cool album he heard or this awesome movie I've just got to see. Of course I've never seen the movie or heard the album, so now we've got to check it out. Tarantino makes himself into the ultimate fanboy - his goal is not to make his own film with its own soundtrack, but rather to introduce me to a bunch of other films and music. Then he tells me about this girl he was dating who wasn't into this movie or this album, and how he grew tired of her - anyway, my story is here getting convoluted, but my point stands - Tarantino is frustrating. He's frustrating because he takes huge chances in his films that usually pay off, but then he can't seem to get out of his own way. His endless world of references ultimately isn't his own - it's just a pastiche of everything he's experienced. It's ultimately not coherent.

Grindhouse: Deathproof is a very cool idea - a throwback to 70s B pictures, none of which I have ever seen. He is relentless in remaking these films' aesthetic, right down to intentional frame skips and film scratches. There's a scene that's awkwardly shot day-for-night and it seems like it's intentional. The two stories in the film being basically the same is intentional. Throw in some Tarantino dialogue, an evil Kurt Russell, some unbelievable stunts, and we've got us a great picture, right?

Kind of. There's multiple references to white-line pictures like Vanishing Point (which I doubt that two groups of females have ever discussed, ever). There's women who are endlessly discerning about film and music. Quentin himself shows up as a character and makes reference to a 'tasty beverage'. The annoying choices just go on and on until the end, which is one of the greatest fan service moments I've ever seen. Maybe Quentin's world bothers me because in the end, it's too much like my own - Tarantino is the only director I can imagine who goes around quoting his own films.

Intolerable Cruelty - 2003 - 3 Stars

Actors: George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones

Director: Joel Coen

Intolerable Cruelty doesn't really work, which is a damned shame. There's a lot to like here - the snappy dialogue, the constant scheming, the totally hollow existences of all the main characters. The elements never cohere into a whole, plus the film has some Coen-y touches that make what could be a somewhat lighthearted film rather dark.

Like most Coen films, it's a pastiche of influences with a distinct Coen feel. It's worth seeing for the Coen completist, but it's far from their best work.