The Spanish Prisoner - 1997 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Campbell Scott, Ricky Jay
Director:  David Mamet

Why is there not a statue of David Mamet somewhere?  No one writes dialogue like Mamet and no one writes plots like Mamet.  Yet he's become a ghost of the cinema in the 2000s, hardly writing or directing anything for the screen.  We must demand that he return, because there won't be another David Mamet or anything like him again.

Indeed, no one writes like Mamet, but a lot of people direct like him - he's not a particularly interesting director.  Everything's very matter-of-fact.  He doesn't get great performances out of people - it seems like at times he doesn't want them.  Even so, The Spanish Prisoner is the closest thing we get in these diluted times to the wonder of Alfred Hitchcock.

The Naked City - 1948 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff
Director:  Jules Dassin

How much credit do we give to films that break molds?  How much generosity do we have towards films that explain things we as a modern audience already know?  The Naked City attempts to lay out how homicide investigations work, then leads us methodically through their chase.  This feels novel for the time, but it's quite tedious to any veteran of procedural shows.  The film's 'gimmick', and the reason why it's any good at all, is that it also has the twist of being shot largely on location.  The film even makes it a point to state early on that it's shot on location.  As a result, it's hard for me not to experience the exhiliration that must've been watching the film's climax in 1948 - that this feels REAL, and the earlier slow-paced scenes drive home that reality even more.  It's a shame how in these days of CGI how so much of film has retreated once again to the studio.

This Is 40 - 2012 - 3 Stars

Actors: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann
Director:  Judd Apatow

There isn't a great film trapped inside This Is 40, but there's certainly a much better one than what ends up on screen.  Juggling comedy and drama is an Apatow forte, but here he manages to make a film that's tonally all over the place - it doesn't know if it wants to be a well-observed drama about the difficulties of marriage (I was reminded most of Husbands and Wives) or a wacky comedy about same.  Confounding the matter is the service he has to give to the ensemble of recognizable faces - there's almost something Shakespearean about how he gives minutes of this film over to side characters who have no stake in the action.  Rudd and Mann are excellent, and even the Apatow children have difficult scenes and manage them well.  I guess I'd just like to see Apatow make a film without all these people.  If I can be permitted to read into things, I suspect part of the issue with this film is that Apatow got his start in television, where it's awfully hard to let an audience expecting a comedy to go several minutes without laughing.  This could've been an effective drama with several gut laughs instead of a misshapen comedy (still w/ some gut laughs) but whose dramatic elements are scattered.  I'm just not sure Apatow will ever make that kind of film though, and his comedic instincts are not evolving, so I unfortunately expect diminishing returns.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - 2011 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner
Director:  Brad Bird

Mission: Impossible has always had a relation to media since the TV show began in the 1960s - think of 'This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds'.  The idea of disappearing, erasable, non-traceable items, posing as other people, etc.  It's fared a lot better with technology than its 1960s franchise counterpart Star Trek - the idea of fully manned spacecraft now seems absurd.  But spies in an era of facial recognition technology and drones?  Still necessary.  Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol's best sequence involves the use of a 'real', intra-movie special effect to deceive someone, which both functions as great visual fun as well as a nod to how much film special effects and the conceits of the spy film (and perhaps espionage in general) owe to one another.  In addition, it gets around the problem of modern cinema where a character is sitting at a computer looking intently and typing furiously - due to machinations of a particular plot, these computer scenes are often considered action.

I wanted to rate this higher, but action films today (well, not just today, Hitchcock's films often have this issue) have a problem with the final setpiece because you know how the film has to end.  Still, for the first 90 minutes, this movie is as good as modern action films get - low exposition, minimal character development, but still high tension and excitement.

Kind Hearts And Coronets - 1949 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Alec Guinness, Dennis Price
Director:  Robert Hamer

Old films can sometimes feel like cinematic vegetables - necessary to consume, sure, boring and bland, without question. One of the joys of a director like Hitchcock that so many of his films traffic in dark humor as well as thrills - they're fun, they look like fun to write, direct, and act in.  Kind Hearts And Coronets is a film in this tradition.  It's a slow starter that relies heavily on narration, but as it gathers momentum it becomes darkly funny, featuring many twists and turns - it's more like a high-class British noir film (noir in theme, not in style).  I hadn't even realized that Alec Guinness plays eight different roles, which is good, because that would've been distracting.

Holy Motors - 2012 - 4½ Stars, 2 Stars

Actors:  Denis Lavant, Edith Scob
Director:  Leos Carax

I was going to think of films and directors to try to describe Holy Motors by way of analogy, but that is decidedly unfair - this is a singular film.  At no point is it predictable or does it allow you to get into a rhythm with it.  I've given it two ratings because I feel like this aspect of the film succeeds wildly while the other parts of the film are not so well-developed.  Its singularity gets in the way of everything it attempts to do.

Warning:  I won't spoil any plot elements, but I will be discussing themes which are kinda spoilers for this one

What I'm having trouble grappling with is the idea that Holy Motors is more than a meta-film.  It's both an imagination of what could be - how the world theoretically could be, what's going on behind our collective backs - and seemingly also a meditation on the role of the stage/film actor in society.  Since the latter film has been done a thousand times and is not particularly interesting or emotionally affecting, I'm trying really hard to get past that.  We don't really get a sense of what our lead character truly is (nor does his existence present very much that's equal to our own), so how can we empathize with his life?  Indeed, I think that's the trouble with this film and why it doesn't fully work for me - the layers of artifice make it very difficult for any of the emotional sequences in the film to resonate, as they would in a more conventional film.  Or is the emotional content our (and the characters') awareness of the artifice itself?

I'm reminded very much of films like 8½ and Synecdoche, New York, and I didn't love either one of those.  Then again I'm also reminded of David Lynch and I do like him.  I don't know - I wish this had been just a little different, I think I might've loved it.  It is one film that I can legitimately call 'post-modern' - every element in this film is unstable and prone to alteration.

Happy People: A Year In The Taiga - 2010 - No Rating

Subject:  Russian sable trappers living in Siberia and their life during each season
Director:  Dmitri Yasyukov, Werner Herzog

I give documentaries no rating when I feel that they are about interesting subjects and capably done, but there's nothing extra to them.  I feel like it's unfair to rate a documentary by how interesting the subject is, even if the documentary doesn't really hang together as a narrative.  This documentary never constructs a narrative, nor does it build to anything, but it is still worth seeing.  It's a bit too eager to suggest that people using plane tools, chainsaws, plastic sheeting, and snowmobiles are doing things by the 'traditional way', but some of the traditional ways are also shown and are fascinating.

I'm curious about Herzog's involvement in this project, as he is listed as a director (and narrates).  One scene in particular feels like Herzog's contribution to the film, and also feels out of place and mean.

L'Avventura - 1960 - 4 Stars

Actors: Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti
Director:  Michaelangelo Antonioni

I'm not sure I've seen a more stunning black-and-white film than L'Avventura.  Thing is, I can't even imagine how difficult it is to try to shoot this kind of film in black-and-white, because how can you be sure how color textures will go together when they're reduced to shades of two colors?  No matter.  There's a myriad of terrifically composed shots in here.

L'Avventura is one of those films where at every moment, the characters' feelings, thoughts, and actions all make sense, but when you look at the film as a whole, they simply does not.  Which is fine - it seems Antonioni is going for a scripted Cassevetes feel, where it's only the moments that matter.  Part of me also thinks that the actions in the film don't make sense because the characters do not have cell phones (or lack easy communication with people who are not present) - it's interesting to think about how that changes our perception of the way people should be reacting to one another.

Safety Not Guaranteed - 2012 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Mark Duplass, Aubrey Plaza
Director:  Colin Trevorrow

I honestly thought this was a Duplass brothers film throughout - it makes similar choices and has a similar tone to the two films of theirs which I've seen, but also seemed superior - I thought they 'got it' here.  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at the end to find out that while it is not their film, they were executive producers.  Safety Not Guaranteed manages to carry on two solid parallel plots and service four characters without (fully - one character may not get full service) resorting to cliches, while also turning what was an Internet joke into a sincere examination.

Arbitrage - 2012 - 3 Stars

Actors:  Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon
Director:  Nicholas Jarecki

Arbitrage is a plot film - we're forced down a path towards our characters having to make moral choices.  Trouble is, while the plot is excellent, the character development is weak - all of our characters are out of the Cliche School Of Stereotypes.  While the film plays out excellently, it doesn't feel like a lived-in film.  Richard Gere is surprisingly good here, though - I've only seen a few movies of his, and while his character doesn't feel real, to some degree he's not supposed to.

I may be holding it against this film that I saw it after Blue Jasmine and that both movies feature the ultra-wealthy.  Indeed, it is better than a film called 'Arbitrage' has any right to be called (and the film does not feature the concept of arbitrage at all).

Also nice to see Chris Eigeman getting work here as Gere's flunky.

Never Let Me Go - 2010 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield
Director:  Mark Romanek

Note:  Minor spoilers ahead

Dystopian films often follow a prescribed narrative - tons of exposition, as wide a look as we can possibly get at the dystopian world, then an escape.  Never Let Me Go is a dystopia that suggests a world actually lived in; it's not loads of security that keep people where they are, but a recognition of their ultimate fate.  Indeed, it seems as though we've missed a lot of exposition, but this works to the film's advantage - it keeps us in a similar state to our characters.  Like many films adapted from books, the plot feels messy, but I enjoy when a film suggests a large world outside the view of the camera lens for our imaginations to play around in.

We're hardly aware that this film takes place in a different society than our own - in this way, the film reminded me of Tarkovsky's Stalker - directors too often mistrust a viewer's eyes, not realizing that good acting and writing can make up for what seem to be budgetary limitations.

Blue Jasmine - 2013 - 4 Stars

Actors:  Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin
Director:  Woody Allen

Woody Allen films are successful if they manage to develop a meaningful subtext.  The overarching text is usually going to be flawed in the ways most Allen films are flawed - characters don't feel three-dimensional, anyone who isn't a Woody Allen surrogate feels like an alien, and Woody left behind the real world in the 1970s.  Most of these flaws are present here.  It's whether or not even within that flatness and tone-deaf-ness, something more resonant emerges.

Cate Blanchett's character - a wealthy socialite from New York - does feel like someone Woody Allen has a grasp on, and he does an excellent job of showing how the trappings of such a life aren't easily discarded even after one's circumstances have changed.  Blanchett's acting here is also phenomenal - Allen films these days tend to be worth seeing just for the performances he can drag out of people.

The Player - 1992 - 2 Stars

Actors:  Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi
Director:  Robert Altman

It's difficult to be generous to a film like this, because it is SO satisfied with itself.  It thinks it is the greatest.  It even has an answer to any criticism - any elements of the film which feel 'off' such as, well, all of them - short of the masterful directing - are Hollywood sendups.  Flat characterization?  Ponderous satire?  A plot that argues for itself as superfluous and necessary at the same time?  The Player has its cake, eats it too, then invents new words for possession and consumption and does both of those to cake at the same time as well.  It is an ouroboros wrapped in a Mobius Strip.  At bottom, it is meaningless.  Ah, just like Hollywood chatter!  How droll! And so forth.

Even more maddening is that it's the kind of movie that critics love, and I love reading critics, so after I get done with writing this, I'm going to read 4 or 5 paeans to this.  Maybe it would've been better in 1992 - observations about car/cell phones and bottled water belong with Lorena Bobbitt jokes in the dustbin of humor.  

The Parallax View - 1974 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss
Director:  Alan J. Pakula

Note:  Very Minor Spoilers Ahead

These days, action movies have a shorter and shorter window to be exciting.  What I mean is, movies have to wow you in the first hour or so, because they're likely not going to surprise you near the end.  The Parallax View concludes with an incredible setpiece where everyone's fate is legitimately questionable.  It's not a great film, but a jaunty one - over in only 100 minutes where a modern film about this subject would be at least 130.  As such, it does feel like it leaves the viewer wanting a little more exposition.

It's amazing how outdated the ideas in this film are - Cold War paranoia, assassinations, journalism being a really important profession.  At one point our protagonist buys a plane ticket on the actual plane.  Considering our shadow organizations now operate behind computer terminals, it's difficult to make paranoia cinematic these days, but at least we'll always have The Parallax View.