The What Have You

Moneyball - 2011 - 3 Stars

2012-02-10T09:28:00.001-08:00

Actors: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill

Director: Bennett Miller

I've read Moneyball, and reading books before seeing the filmed adaptation of the book is usually a way to dislike the movie. I'm not aggrieved at what was cut out of the film - in fact, this is a rather excellent adaptation of the work. I think the writing was strong. I think the performances throughout were strong. I'm just not sure that a film could've gotten to the heart of Moneyball and its central character Oakland GM Billy Beane.

Beane is driven to win, and that's a difficult thing to portray on screen - yes, there are some thrown chairs, smashed stereos, and angry speeches made at a losing team. Yes, he's incapable of watching his own team play, because he gets too worked up about it. But the film has a hard time letting us into Beane's head - perhaps it never really wanted to go there, but it never ends up there. Well-made, worth seeing, but ultimately forgettable.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore - 1974 - 4 Stars

2012-02-09T09:06:00.001-08:00

Actors: Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson

Director: Martin Scorsese

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a classic '70s' film - it's a slow-moving character study about a largely regular person. Do we even have movies about poor people anymore, or just movies about poor people who become rich? Alice struggles to find employment after her husband's death, as she goes on the road with her 12 year old son with the hope of eventually returning to her hometown to live.

Knowing what I knew about this movie going in (very little), I joked to myself that Scorsese would have all sorts of fast camera zooms and 'Sympathy For the Devil' on the soundtrack. Not quite - but the film is laid out with the vision of a master. A lot of these 70s talkfests stick the camera in one place, or they'll start a scene in an interesting place but not finish anywhere interesting. This film is clearly made by someone who thinks visually first and foremost.

Crank 2: High Voltage - 2009 - 3½ Stars

2012-02-08T08:19:00.001-08:00

Actors: Jason Statham, Amy Smart

Directors: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

Is there anything sillier than the Crank movies? Probably not. Anything more awesome? Probably lots of things. Still, the lengths to which the Crank films go to entertain is quite something - no act is too foul or too violent, and no camera movement is too stylized.

Crank 2 revolves around a protagonist whose artificial heart has only an internal battery - the only way it can be charged is if Jason Statham exposes himself to electricity. This video-game style premise permeates the entire film. The only downside is that this video game gets slightly repetitive - even at 85 minutes, a film this constantly amped up gets tiresome, especially when we know our protagonist is in no real danger. I'm not sure I would watch a Crank 3.

Southern Comfort - 1981 - 4½ Stars

2012-02-04T21:49:00.001-08:00

Actors: Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe

Director: Walter Hill

Thanks, A.V. Club and the death of Walter Hill, for making me aware of this film. A chilling look at what happens when a routine military exercise goes awry for National Guardsmen, this movie is both suspenseful and meaningful. Hill manages some amazing shots and coaxes great performances out of a who's who of 'that guys' - Powers Boothe is particularly great as 'the new guy'.

The movie invites obvious comparisons to Deliverance, but eschews Deliverance's shock value for a subtler aesthetic. It's a shame this movie is not even available on DVD - it should be much more widely known.

The Red And The White - 1970 - 4 Stars

2012-02-03T17:09:00.000-08:00

Actors: Jozsef Madaras, Tibor Molnar

Director: Miklos Jansco

The Red and the White is about the battle between the upstart Bolshevik forces and the tsarist White forces. In retrospect it's obvious who's who, but I spent the entire first half of The Red And The White trying to figure out who were the Red and who were the White. I suspect this is part of the point - ultimately it's not that important, as war tears apart towns, cities, and nations.

The Red and the White features a number of stunning long takes, which help keep the viewer in the moment - the camera pans around during a climactic scene, unsure what to focus on, trying to take in the entirety of the moment and failing. At one point, we see a person about to be executed, the camera moves away, and when it moves back, he's no longer there. Such must be the horrors of war.

Saboteur - 1942 - 3 Stars

2012-02-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

Actors: Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Saboteur is the weakest effort I've seen from Hitchcock. Most of Hitchcock's plots don't make a damn bit of sense when you stop and think about them for 2 seconds, but Saboteur's is especially convoluted. Throw in strange characterizations, propagandizing, and an awkward scene with circus freaks, and it's a mess. The film, like North by Northwest, manages to breeze from a factory in California to a climactic confrontation at the Statue of Liberty with surprising ease, but aside from an interesting, albeit mustache-twirling, villain, there's not much here that's must-see.

The Two Escobars - 2010 - 4 Stars

2012-01-27T11:21:00.001-08:00

Subject: The relationship between Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and murdered soccer star Andres Escobar

Director: Jeff Zimbalist, Michael Zimbalist

Athletes have it nice in the United States - their benefactors are usually corporations or the owners of corporations. But what about poorer countries? What supports big-time sports there? The answer is typically a mix of shady money or a fierce nationalistic government. Even in Russia, it's the petrochemical oligarchs and Mafia leaders who run the Russian hockey league. The Two Escobars examines what can happen when sports, nationalism, and a complete disregard for humanity collide.

The Two Escobars scores some great interviews with Pablo's and Andres's relatives, as well as Andres's teammates. It's a sports documentary in name only, as it really examines how criminals and governments interact with one another in a corrupt country, with the Andres Escobar story as the backdrop. One can only imagine how terrifying it was to live in the early 1990s version of Colombia.

Lifespan - 1974 - 2 Stars

2012-01-19T07:44:00.000-08:00

Actors: Hiram Keller, Tina Aumont

Director: Sandy Whitelaw

None of you will ever see Lifespan, which is just fine; you probably shouldn't. Somehow a film with Klaus Kinski performing simulated cunnilingus in a Faust mask, grave robbery, Anne Frank's house, a Terry Riley soundtrack, and a conspiracy involving a method to stop the aging process adds up to way less than the sum of its parts. The film is ruined by an absurd amount of narration and the poor performance of the lead actor, not to mention the awkwardness of the writing and staging. There's a lot of elements here for a low-budget sci-fi/horror type deal like Scanners, and there's even some good Hitchcockian elements to the film (I was reminded of Rebecca), but overall it's a mess.

Kinski is supposed to have rejected a part in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark by calling the script a piece of shit - I'm not sure how he accepted this one.

Harlan County U.S.A. - 1976 - No Rating

2012-01-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Subject: A strike by coal miners in Eastern Kentucky

Director: Barbara Kopple

Harlan County U.S.A. could have devolved into either poverty porn or agit-prop. It barely touches on the former - we briefly see that the subjects live without power or running water - but it veers awfully close to the latter. We're treated to conflicts between picketing workers and replacement workers. We're shown how striking union laborers are able to organize even in the face of real violence. We're shown how management can lie and deceive in order to maintain the status quo. It's not exactly a two sided film, but regardless, Harlan County U.S.A. is a powerful examination of the brutality that can exist and persist between labor and management. One wonders how these people and their children live today.

In The Company Of Men - 1997 - 4 Stars

2012-01-06T09:44:00.000-08:00

Actors: Aaron Eckhart, Stacy Edwards

Director: Neil LaBute

Red herrings and embarrassing music choices aside, In The Company of Men is a powerful film. It's not hard to see why Neil LaBute was considered talented, and also not hard to see how he ended up remaking The Wicker Man several years later, to disastrous results. I'm too lazy to look this up, but I suspect this was a play first, as it has several monologues and the camera stays static for most of the film. It leads to little things like line misreadings being left in the film because there are very long takes - I find those things can make a film more realistic.

I suspect this was Aaron Eckhart's career making performance - he absolutely nails it. Everyone knows someone like Eckhart's Chad - he's an outsized version of a certain type of person that any suburban-raised American knows. It's a brutal look at the corporate mentality and how that mindset can warp interpersonal relations.

Young Adult - 2011 - 3½ Stars

2011-12-25T20:09:00.001-08:00

Actors: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt

Director: Jason Reitman

I suppose in an age of narcissism where people write their thoughts about movies on the Internet as though anyone cared, it's only realistic that our indie film type characters have gotten more narcissistic. Charlize Theron's Mavis Gary is endlessly self-involved to the point of parody - she's constructed a fantasy world where she can liberate her ex- high school boyfriend from his outwardly happy marriage and satisfying life.

It's tempting, given that Theron's character is a writer of young adult fiction and that the writer wrote Juno, to read this as a meta-film about the difficulty of writing high school characters without being one yourself. On the one hand, this is pretty unfair, but on the other hand, it's damn hard to see other ways of looking at it.

Blow Up - 1966 - 4½ Stars

2011-12-22T09:05:00.000-08:00

Actors: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

What if a shitty movie ended with a setpiece like Blow Up? I won't give anything away, but its ending is bizarre even by foreign film standards. I guess shitty writers and directors wouldn't have the balls to end their film that way, too.

Anyway, I'm in a giving mood, so despite the fact that Blow Up is at least 10 minutes too long, I give it a nearly perfect rating. It was the 60s, no one knew where to make their edits. The film has two unforgettable set pieces and a completely bonkers plot - it's a shame that its plot has been thrown into other movies and warped. Antonioni keeps the film Hitchcockian and thus centered on the individual.

D.O.A. - 1949 - 4 Stars

2011-12-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

Actors: Edmond O'Brien, Pamela Britton

Director: Rudolph Mate

I normally try to avoid all critical reaction before I write up my posts, but I did happen to catch the fact that critics of this film lauded its revolutionary plot. I had not thought it so revolutionary - I just thought, 'Oh, this is the noir version of Crank.' I have to wonder what kind of studio oversight a film like this had, because there are several scenes that feel modern: a long tracking shot to open the film, a musicless suspense scene where all we hear are footsteps, and a scene that was shot on location at a time when that seems rare (Wikipedia informs me that this is a stolen shot, and it certainly appeared that way).

D.O.A. starts out dreary and shapeless but quickly becomes a classic noir, where the hero knows more than the audience and is trying to put together the pieces before he's killed.

The Descendants - 2011 - 3½ Stars

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

Actors: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley

Director: Alexander Payne

About as Oscar bait-y as a film can be without featuring British nobility, The Descendants still manages to be a decent way to spend two hours. The performances are good, the writing's generally good, and aside from some early clunkiness, the film is well-directed.

I noticed this in Win Win as well, but these movies that combine comedy and drama have a very fine line to walk - give a character too many laugh lines, and he or she is out of place in the dramatic portions of the film. It takes skill to draw a character who is both funny and real - The Descendants doesn't quite accomplish this with all of its characters.

World's Greatest Dad - 2009 - 4 Stars

2011-12-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

Actors: Robin Williams, Daryl Sabara

Director: Bobcat Goldthwait

World's Greatest Dad might be the funniest film I've seen from the last five years. It's darkly hilarious and yet at the center there's actually a heart. Furthermore, not only is there a great performance by Robin Williams, but he doesn't even have a scene where he does 6 different voices in the space of a minute. Williams is underrated as an actor because of his tendency towards improvisation and look-at-me scenery chewing - when directors can get him away from those things, he's capable of both sincerity and humor.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives - 2010 - No Rating

2011-12-09T10:09:00.000-08:00

Actors: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas

Director: Apitchatpong Weerasethakul

I give Uncle Boonmee... no rating because it's such an unusual film. The 'story' is about the eponymous Uncle Boonmee who has a kidney ailment and is dying. Yet there are long interludes about his dead wife and a strange incident with his son. The meaning of some events in the film appears inscrutable, and it did sometimes struggle to hold my attention. Still, some of the shots in this movie are incredible. I think I say this too often, but while I love that there are films like Uncle Boonmee... - non-linear, inscrutable, prone to raise questions without answering them, I don't know how much I enjoy them. I also have to imagine that this film is far, far better on the big screen.

Shame - 2011 - 3½ Stars

2011-12-07T14:07:00.000-08:00

Actors: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan

Director: Steve McQueen

Drug and alcohol abusers usually have a social network of sorts - enablers, bartenders, co-addicts - who can at least pass as friends. It's part of why addiction recovery is so difficult; one not only has to give up the substance, but probably distance one's self from all of one's old haunts and enablers. Shame takes a look at sex addiction, something that's often looked at as a joke, but is perhaps more alienating than run-of-the-mill substance abuse.

The film has many long takes, some of which work beautifully to capture tension, and others which seem like they should've been left on the editing room floor. One issue with addiction movies is that the addict turns himself and his world into a series of objects - it's hard to care deeply about willfully self-destructive people.

The Driver - 1978 - 3½ Stars

2011-11-30T11:00:00.000-08:00

Actors: Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern

Director: Walter Hill

I shouldn't write anything about The Driver except a single sentence, because that's pretty much all the speaking Ryan O'Neal does in the film. If you like car chases in downtown Los Angeles and Ryan O'Neal being a badass, this is the movie for you. I happen to like these things. Apparently the film was heavily influenced by Le Samourai, which is something that a person who has a film blog should notice. Maybe I was just too caught up in the car chases, which rival The French Connection and Ronin.

The Outlaw Josey Wales - 1976 - 3 Stars

2011-11-21T09:20:00.000-08:00

Actors: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke

Director: Clint Eastwood

That's it, I'm not watching another Clint Eastwood movie for a long time. I enjoyed The Outlaw Josey Wales as a piece of fluff, which is to say, probably not the way that it should be enjoyed. Eastwood movies' characterizations are always awful - if we don't know exactly what a character is like within their first two lines, Eastwood thinks he's done a bad job. Now while these characters sometimes change, most of them don't.

I did like Eastwood's use of light and dark in this film, though - at the very least, it's much better than The Eiger Sanction.

Crumb - 1994 - No Rating

2011-11-17T09:15:00.000-08:00

Subject: Artist R. Crumb and his strange life

Director: Terry Zwigoff

How perfect is it that I watched Crumb after watching American Graffiti? Amazingly perfect. R. Crumb was 19 years old in 1962, and his experience of America was quite different from the experiences depicted by George Lucas.

As an artist, Crumb struggles with the fact that not everyone is an artist. What may be more fascinating than Crumb are his two brothers, both of whom are basically non-functional and destitute - they're an even darker side to Crumb's already dark side. One gets the sense of just how lonely the true artist can be when he's left with only his art and his urges.

American Graffiti - 1973 - 4 Stars

2011-11-16T09:00:00.001-08:00

Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard

Director: George Lucas

Aren't we due for another one of these movies? American Graffiti came out in 1973 and was about kids in 1962. Dazed and Confused came out in 1993 and was set in 1976. Soon enough, there should be a movie about the last days of high school set between the years between 1995 and 2003.

American Graffiti and its blatant nostalgia masks the fact that the film's characters themselves are trying vainly to hold on to something even as it is falling away. Like Dazed and Confused, there isn't really a plot - things happen, sure, but it's all very loose; the conflicts aren't defined right away, they tend to emerge organically out of the characters' mere existence and interaction with one another.

As a sidenote, the characters seem to have contempt for the town they're thinking about leaving, but everything seems to be open 24 hours a day and there seems to be stuff to do at all hours of the night - I don't see the problem with it.

Everyone Else - 2009 - 3½ Stars

2011-11-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

Actors: Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger

Director: Maren Ade

Everyone Else is the sort of film that it looks like it's easy to make but is in fact very difficult to do correctly. It's largely about a troubled relationship between two people in their late 20s or early 30s - but there aren't many grand gestures or long overtures. It's simply clear that neither person has much of an idea of what's going on in the other's head, and that can be both exhilarating and tormenting. And I think it's very difficult to make this kind of film without making it either overly boring or overly theatrical.

There's shades of Blue Valentine and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in here, but it's really not that kind of film. I don't know exactly what to make of it - it feels like a Woody Allen film with all of Woody Allen's pithy observations removed.

Win Win - 2011 - 3 Stars

2011-10-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

Actors: Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan

Director: Tom McCarthy

There's a growing sentiment that the quality of television now surpasses the quality of movies. The best shows can offer giant story arcs, character development, references to things in seasons long since past - TV shows grow, and movies are just there. Win Win is a pretty great example of why these people have got a good point - while it's a decent film, it simply cannot give us the full character development that this story deserves. Its characters are two-dimensional, but want desperately to become three-dimensional. Its rhythms are too slow for television, and too slow for the 150 minute film that could've fit in all that development.

Win Win is a 'chuckle indie' - a term I just invented for movies that try to be both serious and funny, but never really manage a gut laugh. It's worth seeing for some of the performances, but it's disappointing that it doesn't quite hit the notes it wants to.

Russian Ark - 2002 - 2½ Stars

2011-10-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

Actors: Sergei Dontsov, Mariya Kuznetsova

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov

Russian Ark is a stunning achievement in technical filmmaking. Filmed entirely in one take in St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, the camera glides past crowds, alights on sculptures and paintings, and somehow manages to stay out of everything's way. The final 'scene' - the staging of a ball complete with orchestra and dancers all in period costumes - is quite simply breathtaking.

The problem is, the film relies on this 'Museum Tour' trope - our main character is a man who's lost and invisible, and he is a kind of narrator - the entire film is seen though his perspective. The secondary character is a lost 18th century French nobleman who thinks Russian culture is alternately backwoods or derivative. Furthermore, it's even more educational film-like when random passers-by will explain what a painting is or what something means. While there's some interesting insights into Russian culture, the film sags in the middle. Despite the fact that the film is all in one take and therefore emulates life as it's lived, we're still being reminded that we're watching a staged thing. I suspect this film would be far better on the big screen.

Observe and Report - 2009 - No Rating

2011-10-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

Actors: Seth Rogen, Anna Faris

Director: Jody Hill

I always give comedies 3 stars, so I decided to give this no rating. My reasoning is simple - I have no real idea what I thought of this movie. I laughed a fair amount - one gag in particular is probably the best joke I've seen in a movie in years - but I also spent the final 2/3rds of the movie hoping it would end soon.

When did it become a trend in comedy to have an unlikable protagonist? I want this to fall at the feet of Adam Sandler, but it may predate that. Seth Rogen's character is completely reprehensible and irredeemable. He's irritating, but not in a funny way. As a result, the film is funny but unsatisfying. I have to admire the balls of Rogen to appear in this movie at the height of his career, though, and I also suspect this movie will have a small but passionate cult of defenders.

The Eiger Sanction - 1975 - 1½ Stars

2011-10-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

Actors: Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy

Director: Clint Eastwood

I wasn't sure whether I was going to write this film up for this blog - I watched it mostly as a goof, and had I watched it alone, I would have probably turned it off halfway through.

The Eiger Sanction is about shadowy government organizations, assassins, and mountain climbing. Clint Eastwood plays an assassin/mountain climber turned art history professor who has to go back into both assassinating and mountain climbing for one last job. I'm not making this plot up. This sounds amazing on paper, but on film it's an absurdly talky film, with characters endlessly droning exposition while making non-funny quips. Occasionally the movie veers into offenses against homosexuals and non-white races. The film is also lit terribly - I get the sense that Eastwood was aiming for the awesome lighting in Dirty Harry, but really it makes parts of the film incomprehensible. The mountain climbing scenes were clearly an ordeal to shoot, but they don't manage to capture the tension that I imagine the director wanted.

I only mention this film here to note the anti-recency bias that tends to exist among cultural critics, including myself. There's a lot of great films in the past, but there's also a lot of terrible ones, too. Time has largely forgotten the terrible ones, so I tend not to see them.

Scarlet Street - 1945 - 4½ Stars

2011-09-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett

Director: Fritz Lang

Scarlet Street could easily have been written and directed by the Coen Brothers. The twists and turns, the characterizations, the black humor - I'd be shocked if they haven't seen this movie. It's a near-flawless noir masterpiece. The way in which the characters continually deceive one another while also deceiving the audience (and themselves) - it's brilliantly structured.

A year before Scarlet Street, Edward G. Robinson was in Double Indemnity, where he played Keyes, the logical and confident insurance man. Here he plays almost the very opposite - a put-upon low-level employee trapped in a loveless marriage. He's perfectly believable as both. The shots of him with an apron on, washing dishes, had to be more emasculating in the 1940s, but they look pretty bad today, too.

One problem is that the print of this film is rather awful - colors are muted and there are some strange cuts. Ah well, such is the cost of enjoying largely unloved films from long ago.

The Fighter - 2010 - 3 Stars

2011-09-25T07:10:00.001-07:00

Actors: Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg

Director: David O. Russell

It is interesting that the popularity of the boxing film seems to have increased just as interest in boxing has gone down. I think it's easy to say that boxing is the most cinematic sport - renderings of other sports emphasize director fakery or accidentally highlight the tedium of the actual game by making the cinematic version nothing like the real thing. But boxing is pretty simple: two guys (or girls) beating the hell out of one another.

The Fighter is a good movie, but will I remember much about it in six months or a year? Probably not. It does have a memorable rendering of desperation - where desperate people hold on to one another without realizing they're strangling one another to death. Bale's performance as Dicky Eklund is hammy and sometimes distracting, and in general the film is an acting showcase. Obvious music cues don't help either - at least David O. Russell is back, and perhaps he will earn his way back to making a crazy film like I Heart Huckabees.

Grand Illusion - 1937 - 4½ Stars

2011-09-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

Actors: Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio

Director: Jean Renoir

I dislike watching Great Movies. Let me explain - it's hard to escape the fact that Grand Illusion is considered one of the great films of all time. I literally knew nothing about it other than that fact when I started watching. So about halfway through I'm wondering what the big deal about this movie is - maybe there were a bunch of film techniques invented for this movie, and we know that's something critics really get off on. I liked Citizen Kane a lot, but I didn't think it was the greatest movie of all time.

Then I remembered that Great Movies don't necessarily start well, and don't always have a great middle section - I'm thinking here of something like Ikiru. The Great Movies have great endings, and that's where Grand Illusion shines. Not only is the final third of the movie brilliant, but it puts much of the first two thirds into perspective. So I too won't reveal what it's about. I will only say that the 'Qwikster' summary of the film is terrible and not worth reading either.

Martin and Orloff - 2003 - 3½ Stars

2011-09-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

Actors: Ian Roberts, Matt Walsh

Director: Lawrence Blume

Why had I never heard of Martin and Orloff until recently? It's written by and stars alums of the Upright Citizens Brigade sketch show, a program that rivals Mr. Show and Monty Python's Flying Circus as the greatest sketch shows ever. Not only that, but comedy favorites David Cross and H. Jon Benjamin also play prominent roles. Somehow this movie escaped my notice.

Like just about every comedy movie ever, Martin and Orloff is hit or miss, but one thing it avoids is devolving into a series of sketches - it's actually a movie. Roberts is excellent as the put-upon Martin, playing the straight man to Walsh's strangely confident and bizarre Dr. Orloff. Maybe I shouldn't recommend this so highly - Walsh can crack me up with a glance, as he does several times in this film. Regardless, it beats the hell out of Run Ronnie Run.

Prince Of The City - 1981 - 3½ Stars

2011-09-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

Actors: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach

Director: Sidney Lumet

I found out about Prince of the City when Sidney Lumet died earlier this year; it's the kind of movie I probably never would have stumbled onto myself. While it is an excellent movie, it really has no business being almost 3 hours long - had Lumet been able to cut this down to 140 minutes, he might've had an excellent film here. As it stands, his 2nd film about police corruption can only suffer by comparisons to Serpico, as it covers many of the same themes.

The acting in the film is Lumet-y - stay away if you don't like overemotive shouting. Still, the cast is a who's who of character actors - you'll spend half the movie being like 'oh, it's that guy/girl'. Whoever scouted locations for Lumet in the 70s was brilliant, as this film rivals Serpico and The French Connection for best use of 70s New York City.

The Art Of The Steal - 2009 - 3½ Stars

2011-09-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

Subject: A priceless collection of art's transition from being part of a private collection to being housed in a public museum

Director: Don Argott

Why do we mistrust documentaries that make no pretense about their position on a particular subject? Or I guess, why do I mistrust them? I suppose it's because it has an agenda - it desperately needs me to agree with its position. Also, there may well be some obfuscation going on behind the scenes; I may not be getting all the facts.

The Art Of The Steal is wonderfully one-sided - it takes a strangely elitist tack that it's difficult to disagree with. Everything is well laid out, the music is a fine Philip Glass knockoff, although I must take issue with having titles to various 'chapters' of the movie - that came off as amateurish. Regardless, it's an interesting story that touches on the importance of property rights and 'the greater good'.

Mad Dog And Glory - 1993 - 1½ Stars

2011-09-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

Actors: Robert DeNiro, Bill Murray

Director: John McNaughton

Mad Dog and Glory is a film that exists in MovieLand but doesn't know it. Let me explain. MovieLand is where most movies are set - people have thoroughly exciting jobs, have sex with attractive people, and come into contact with an unending parade of interesting characters. Everyone always has interesting things to say. Just about all action films and comedies take place in MovieLand. One problem with films set in MovieLand is that it's difficult to empathize with the characters because everyone is so unrealistic. A lot of 'famous' films from the 70s try not to take place in MovieLand - characters may be bored or boring; they may be interesting people with nothing to say.

Mad Dog And Glory tries to be a 70s-type film, but the characters fall totally flat. On the one hand, the plot is completely ridiculous and implausible, but the dialogue is largely 'realistic' (i.e. dull). Are the characters funny? Some of the things they say seem like they're trying to be funny. I don't know. All in all, it's a giant waste of DeNiro and Murray, both of whom seem like they're miscast here.

This movie's direction and style feels straight out of the 1980s. It's therefore hard to believe that 5 years after this movie, Murray would be in Rushmore, and DeNiro in Ronin. One year later, Uma Thurman would be in Pulp Fiction. I also feel like I have a mental divide that exists in the mid 90s when I became a seeker of movies, rather than a passive receiver of them. Anything before that time feels ancient, anything after that time feels 'new'.

Encounters At The End Of The World - 2007 - 4½ Stars

2011-09-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

Subject: Antarctica and the people who work there

Director: Werner Herzog

All the Herzog films I've seen have generally been about the individual's struggle against society. Antarctica is therefore the perfect place for him to film - there is a 'society' there at the McMurdo base, filled with souls who've fled normal life, and then there's the vast wilderness that surrounds. Herzog not only manages to film the beauty and strangeness of Antarctica's natural wonders, but he's also able to get some insight into what kind of people decide to come here. In doing so, he asks much larger questions about the animal kingdom, human civilization, and humankind's place in societies and on the planet.

One thing Herzog does in this film that he also did in Grizzly Man is that he either dupes a subject, or finds an unwitting one - he puts a moment in the film where it appears as though the subject thinks the camera is off. This makes the person appear quite awkward and bizarre. It's rather unfair of him to do this, but I can guarantee that Herzog does not care.

Blue Valentine - 2010 - 4 Stars

2011-09-01T08:51:00.001-07:00

Actors: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams

Director: Derek Cianfrance

What's there to say about Blue Valentine? Don't watch it with the person you love.

Gosling and Williams play a married couple on the verge of disintegration, while alternately portraying their meeting and eventual union. The film is generally low-key - the stakes are small, but they're also the biggest stakes that most of us will face.

One thing I like about this film is that it (mostly) doesn't happen in New York or Los Angeles, and it's not about two artists or two actors or an actor and an artist, or a writer and another writer. I wouldn't say it's about 'real people; either, but sometimes I think the film industry feels that New York and LA have a monopoly on relationships disintegrating into petty bickering and glowering hatreds.

Cobra - 1986 - 7 Million Stars

2011-08-31T08:40:00.000-07:00

Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen

Director: George P. Cosmatos

I wanted to give this 8 million stars, but I felt that was a bit extravagant. Where to begin with Cobra? Its 80s pop soundtrack where, after killing a terrorist, the music opines that the title character has been 'workin' too hard'? Its place in the pantheon of a proud tradition of films that endorse Fascism? (Dirty Harry and Boondock Saints come to mind immediately, I'm sure there are many others). From its opening sequence where a bunch of weirdos click axes and claw hammers together in some sort of unexplained ritual, I knew this was going to be one of the greatest movies of all time, and it delivered. Cobra is a Stuffed Crust pizza with extra cheese - the director wastes no opportunity to be ham-fisted (or should that be cheese-fisted?). I could discuss this movie forever, but it's one I definitely should have seen 15 years ago. I try not to say this about anything, but when it comes to a film like Cobra, I don't think they quite make them like they used to.

Family Nest - 1977 - 4 Stars

2011-08-28T08:51:00.000-07:00

Actors: Laszlone Horvath, Laszlo Horvath
Director: Bela Tarr

Does anything not depressing come out of Eastern Europe? That area of the world seems to be a leader in misery per capita. I'll save my reader(s) an Iron Curtain pun.

Family Nest is perhaps the most 'realistic' movie I've ever seen. Three generations of a Hungarian family, due to housing shortages, is forced to live in a tiny apartment. Each member has separate interests. People want to move out but they cannot, so what can they do?

Aside from a scene that feels exploitative, Family Nest evokes Cassavetes at his best. Characters talk but they rarely listen. Characters express their needs knowing full well the people listening cannot possibly meet them. Recommended for anyone who wants to check out a Tarr film without having to sit through all of Satantango.

Hidden Fortress - 1958 - 4½ Stars

2011-08-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Misa Uehara

Director: Akira Kurosawa

I sometimes wonder why most of Kurosawa's great films take place during the same time period in Japanese history. I suppose I don't know enough about Japanese history to say - most of my knowledge of the time period was cribbed from the beginning of the instructions to Nobunaga's Ambition. Still, there's a combination of lawlessness and terror during this period - fief rulers are concerned only with conquering other fiefs, and the average person suffers; towns are empty of young men, bandits and deserters rule the roads, and food shortages seem to be a constant problem.

Hidden Fortress, besides being an enthralling film, looks at how class distinctions can subsist even after rule of law has broken down. Our two 'main' characters are lowly vagabonds, lorded over by the authoritarian Mifune. The two constantly bicker and believe they are conspired against at every turn - they look to betray Mifune whenever possible. Regarding Mifune's conspiring, they turn out to usually be right and yet are usually hilariously wrong. I won't give away any more than that, except that I have absolutely no idea how Kurosawa managed to film the opening ten minutes of the film.

Paranoid Park - 2007 - 3½ Stars

2011-08-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

Actors: Gabe Nevins, Taylor Momsen

Director: Gus Van Sant

Note: Minor Spoilers Ahead

What's most interesting to me about Paranoid Park is that it easily could have been a forgettable genre movie. It's not going to be the sequel to Gleaming The Cube, but there's the skateboard element, the unfortunate circumstances element, the 'will he or won't he' element. The script would need some touching up - everyone in this movie actually talks like a teenager, which makes them awkward and mumbly.

Still, Van Sant tells the story all out of order, he leaves out many elements that another film would include, and a possible climax happens near the beginning of the film. I'm not sure if I would be so forgiving towards another director for doing this, but the characters are the focus regardless.

Black Swan - 2010 - 4 Stars

2011-08-17T08:08:00.001-07:00

Actors: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Why is monomania the subject du jour of films? We've got two of the top three contenders for Best Picture last year heavily featuring it (Black Swan, The Social Network). All four Darren Aronofsky films I've seen have featured it - whether one wants to call it monomania or obsession, I don't know. Aronofsky characters are internally driven to seek out the one thing that seems to make them forget that they are imperfect and human.

Black Swan both manages to avoid gimmickry and remains compelling even if the main character is (outwardly) not. There's some trademark Aronofsky moves which are still novel despite being used more often in other films - frequent cutting, a camera being affixed to a person so it follows them around. I don't know what to say about the larger themes, because I'm really trying to resist the interpretation that this movie is about Method acting and art generally. Regardless, the thing I'll most likely take away from this is Natalie Portman's performance - it's completely fearless.

White Heat - 1949 - 3½ Stars

2011-08-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

Actors: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo

Director: Raoul Walsh

I think movies used to rest more on acting than on anything else. Older movies usually don't have interesting visuals or clever writing - it is up to the actors to make the film compelling. While this film had to be shocking at the time, featuring a mother-son crime duo, this gimmick is well-known to anyone who saw Kindergarten Cop. So it's on the actors' shoulders to make it work, and James Cagney certainly succeeds as the protagonist. Still, this movie's difficulty is where its sympathies lie, because it's not really with Cagney, but it's also not really with those who oppose him either. The climax is certainly inspired, though - and, actually, I thought of Mann's Heat. Los Angeles is full of great shooting locations like this, it's a shame we don't see them more often.

Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work - 2010 - No Rating

2011-08-11T18:31:00.001-07:00

Subject: Famous comedian Joan Rivers

Director: Ricki Stern, Annie Sundberg

So much of the entertainment that existed before my birth has been reduced to caricature and parody by the ravenous maw of comedy. It's interesting what lies behind that caricature - what the person is without the hooting commentary. Joan Rivers is a person I knew more for red-carpet interviews and plastic surgery, but as it turns out, she's an incredibly hard-working comedian. This documentary follows her for a year, around to Indian casinos in the Midwest and theaters in Edinburgh.

The constant undercurrent to this documentary is how difficult show business is for older entertainers. How does a person re-invent themselves when they have fifty years of history in the public consciousness? The answer is that they can't, but they can continue to perform until people stop showing up to see them.

The King's Speech - 2010 - 3½ Stars

2011-08-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

Actors: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush

Director: Tom Hooper

Note: Minor Spoilers Ahead

While The King's Speech is superficially about a stammering king who needs to consult with an eccentric speech therapist to cure his problem, the film is actually about the overwhelming political importance of acting and theater. Is it any wonder that this film won an Oscar? It unintentionally panders to Hollywood's basest and most self-congratulatory instincts.

The King's Speech is a marvelously acted film, and takes all the right turns at all the right places. The direction has some interesting choices, too - long takes, people positioned intentionally off-center in the frame - that make a talky film more visually appealing. Still, it's difficult for me to see past the artifice - I suppose I'm just glad that the United States doesn't have a fucking king.

Family Plot - 1976 - 3½ Stars

2011-08-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

Actors: Karen Black, Bruce Dern

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Family Plot is Hitchcock's last film, and it's not one of his best. Still, while this sort of story isn't particularly compelling or new, Hitchcock does have some interesting visual ideas. This movie isn't like the best Hitchcock, which burrows into your head and puts you into the frame of mind of one of the main characters. Here, we actually know more than the characters, putting us outside any of them. Still, it's worth a look if you've blazed through all the best Hitchcock already.

It's also strange to see a Hitchcock film where people curse.

The Other Guys - 2010 - 3 Stars

2011-08-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

Actors: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg

Director: Adam McKay

The Other Guys's plot revolves peripherally around high finance, and over the credits, there's a lot of animated graphics about Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs, and the 'bailout'. Really, The Other Guys? A movie starring 4 top actors plus another ex-top actor, shot in Manhattan, with multiple car chases and egregious product placement - this film can't even pretend it's not part of the System. It cost a fortune to make and its primary goal is to entertain and therefore make a profit.

I don't normally like Will Ferrell, and again here he's hit or miss for me. His best quality as an actor is his blitheness - he acts as though his thoughts and actions are completely normal. Wahlberg plays a terminally angry character, so much so that the movie even comments on one of his shouting episodes. All in all, the film was mildly entertaining, with some decent laughs, but it won't be toppling any corporate power structures anytime soon.

The Last Temptation Of Christ - 1988 - 4 Stars

2011-08-02T13:07:00.001-07:00

Actors: Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel

Director: Martin Scorsese

The Last Temptation of Christ could be one of the most ambitious films I've ever seen. A re-telling of the Gospels in a colloquial fashion, with some added 'facts' about Jesus scrawled in the margins of the film, it's no surprise that this film was controversial. It's amazing to me that it was even made.

It feels tasteless to say that Dafoe nailed this role, but his mixture of warmth, cool, joy, wrath, and mercy are perfect - he hits all of those notes when he has to. Harvey Keitel is also brutally effective as Judas Iscariot, who cares more about freedom than salvation. The film feels uneven - alternately rushing through the source material, then pausing for long stretches. I'm not sure if that comes from the novel or was Scorsese's choice - either way, the film feels like it should be either a half-hour longer or shorter. Still, I wouldn't hesitate to put this in a list of Scorsese masterpieces.

The Social Network - 2010 - 'Like'

2011-08-01T11:24:00.001-07:00

Actors: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake

Director: David Fincher

What is there to say about The Social Network? It's a thoroughly entertaining film. It traffics in hoary tropes of class and the alienated genius. Everyone speaks in a Sorkin-esque staccato, firing out words as fast as they can be said, almost like they are typing them instead of saying them.

All of that sounds like I didn't much like the film, but I would give it 4 stars. Eisenberg is perfect as the stone-faced Mark Zuckerberg - he's completely unreadable. What does he want? What is he thinking? It's the question that guides the film - Sorkin and Fincher neatly edge us to the outside of Zuckerberg's inner circle by the end of the movie.

A downfall of the film is its reliance on a frame story and flashbacks as vehicles - while frame stories in and of themselves aren't bad, it does make the ending less tense. I suppose there's a difference when everyone going to the movie ostensibly knows part of the story - that Facebook is wildly successful. Still, the flashbacks and frame story rob the film of some narrative power, even if we do get Zuckerberg sniping at his adversaries and telling baldfaced lies to lawyers.

World On A Wire - 1973 - 4 Stars

2011-07-28T07:29:00.001-07:00

Actors: Klaus Lowitsch, Mascha Rabben

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Here is a link to the World On A Wire trailer (I'm sure there's a way to embed this, but I'm not going to bother to learn how): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URq7m3-SOtA

Let's check off all the awesome items:

- Very early electronic music

- Ridiculous 70s style furnishing

- A giant flashing red screen and a guy having a bad hair day walking towards the camera

- Why is there a whole crowd chasing that dude? Anyway, awesome.

- 'Who benefits?' 'Everyone, if it's up to me.' *closes car window*

- 'For your sake, forget everything you've seen.'

This could be the greatest trailer I've ever seen. I had to see this movie, even if it was nearly 3 and a half hours long. What followed couldn't live up to the trailer, but it was certainly well worth seeing.

Note: Minor Spoilers Ahead

Where to begin? I suppose with the Simulacron. The Simulacron is a fully computer-simulated world created by the IKZ corporation, populated by 'identity units' - essentially, computer-generated people. The Simulacron is nearly complete, but naturally there's some issues - one identity unit is aware that his world is not real, and he's not reacting to that news too well. Another unit committed suicide, which the creators deem impossible. Along the way to finding this out, a ton of goofy stuff happens - there's a party thrown by a leading IKZ member in an impossibly ridiculous house. The leader of the Simulacron project dies unexpectedly. There's something about the United Steel Corporation's interest in the Simulacron project as it relates to the potential profitability of steel.

Fassbinder's camera rarely stays still - sometimes it will pull way back from a conversation with seemingly no purpose. Other times, two characters will be speaking, and he will zoom in on a character's face who isn't talking. There's an infinite number of mirrors in the film; seemingly no wall or surface is worth anything if it's not reflective. Fassbinder uses this to frame a myriad of interesting shots. His motile camera often settles where one character is in view, and another character is only in view through a mirror. For a film that does a whole lot of talking, the constant motion of speaker and camera makes what could be a dull affair less so.

However, there are some odd touches. There's a scene that provides all sorts of exposition (most of which we already know) nearly an hour and a half into the film. There's a scene that appears to summarize the entire film to this point, as if we weren't aware. One has to remember that this movie was made for TV and was cut into two 100 minute segments. As a result, seemingly, there is a fair bit of padding and several red herrings. I have to imagine this could've easily been made into an 150 minute film.

Still, it raises questions that are more relevant than ever - does existence matter if it is within a computer construct? How realistic could we actually make a computer simulation? Why would we do this? I always like it when more thoughtful directors tackle sci-fi - they don't always care about precise technical details, they care about the philosophical implications of technological advancement.

Hopefully this film is released on Netflix, but right now, Netflix doesn't even know it exists.

Metropolitan - 1990 - 3½ Stars

2011-07-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

Actors: Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements

Director: Whit Stillman

Does the world of Metropolitan exist? That was the question I kept asking myself - it appears to be made up of young New York socialites home from college on winter break. Yet the world appears indistinct - there's no talk of current movies or music. Instead, the socializing seems to be made up of wild pontificating, witty rejoinders, character assassination, and anxiety about the future.

It's not hard to see people like Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach getting into this extraordinarily talky film. The plot is stunningly low-key, the Chekhov rule is violated, and it's more about the characters than it is what happens to them. Still, lines like 'Oh, I don't actually read literature, I prefer to read literary criticism' make the film well worth it.

The Mechanic - 2011 - 3 Stars

2011-07-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

Actors: Jason Statham, Ben Foster

Director: Simon West

Enough of that art-house bullshit! 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was a lovely insight into...' - time for a real movie.

The Mechanic starts with a rather awesome sequence and goes downhill from there. It's unfortunate that action films so often put the coolest thing first. Still, if you want to see some shit blowing up, people hiding in heating ducts, one of the recurring musical themes from Barry Lyndon (Barry Lyndon? What's that, a gay porn?), and assault-rifle armed men crawling over rooftops, this is the movie for you.

One thing I love about a well-constructed action film is how everything in the world is repurposed as a weapon. In this film, a refrigerator door, a garbage disposal, a seat back, and a fire extinguisher pin are all used to harm other people. Furthermore, action films traffic in the unseen - we get to see elevator shafts, skyscraper rooftops, heating vents, and the like. The world is full of hiding places that we rarely think about.

One thing I don't like about modern action films is the ridiculous filters they put on the movie. Why is this movie so unbelievably yellow? Is it to make sure everyone knows they're watching an action movie? Is it to heighten the sense of unreality? Whatever the case, half of this film appears like it's been pickled.

Days Of Heaven - 1978 - 4 Stars

2011-07-22T07:03:00.000-07:00

Actors: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams

Director: Terrence Malick

Days of Heaven is easily the most beautifully shot film I've ever seen. A director would likely be happy to get one shot to look like any of shots in this picture. Malick seems to have an endless supply. The images are so pure that they hurt.

However, the story is paper-thin, the acting is sub-par, and the symbolism throughout feels weak. The film is almost too beautiful; it doesn't want you looking under the surface. Perhaps under all that beauty, there is a deeply meaningful film, but I'm not going to watch it a second time to find out.

Woyzeck - 1974 - 2½ Stars

2011-07-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

Actors: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes

Director: Werner Herzog

Was it frequent commenter Ian who said he didn't like Herzog's 'man-in-society' films? I can't remember, but I'm beginning to realize I don't really like them either. Woyzeck is about a low-level soldier who takes the world's abuse.

Woyzeck's problems are two-fold:

A: It was adapted from a play and it shows. Many scenes are staged with little inventiveness, just two characters talking to one another in a sparse room.

B: Woyzeck's 'insanity' is evident from about the 10 minute mark of the film - as a result, there's really no character who we sympathize or empathize with. We don't know that if Woyzeck's plight is a result of his constant mistreatment, mere insanity, or whatever. This is also the problem I had with Stroszek, where Bruno S's elfin nature as the protagonist doesn't really evoke sympathy.

Woyzeck has a few interesting ideas, but ultimately it's too talky and the characters are loosely drawn.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - 1964 - 4 Stars

2011-07-13T07:09:00.000-07:00

Actors: Nino Castelnuovo, Catherine Deneuve

Director: Jacques Demy

I hate musicals. And The Umbrellas of Cherbourg begins with a scene where an auto mechanic is singing to his auto mechanic friends about what they're going to be doing that night - one said, 'going out with a girl', which seemed to me to be a pretty bald-faced lie, given the singing and the general Frenchness of the whole thing. Anyway, getting past the notion that this entire movie is sung aloud took some doing, but it definitely beats the normal convention of musicals where people stand around talking normally and then spontaneously burst into song.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg excels for two reasons. One is in making a rather simple love story interesting and emotionally resonant by way of musical expression. The second reason is its camera work - I think of musicals as these very staid affairs where people face the camera and the entire thing is staged like a play put on film. Not so in this movie - the characters and the camera are always moving. The director knows that song alone isn't enough to carry it.

The Straight Story - 1999 - 4½ Stars

2011-07-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

Actors: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek

Director: David Lynch

This is my second time viewing The Straight Story, and I'm not sure if I love The Straight Story because it's a great film or because it's an anti-film. By anti-film, I mean that it's staggeringly mundane - at one point, the protagonist asks which area code he's in and whether he has to dial the extra three numbers. Most of the performances don't feel like performances - most characters in films are a little more charming, a little more witty, a little more beautiful than the rest of us. Not here. In fact, the characters are so devoid of these things that it wouldn't be hard to view the film ironically, but I don't think that's the intent.

Farnsworth is unforgettable as Alvin Straight. Straight is honest, stubborn, and endowed with a folksy sense of humor. The Straight Story was, in typical fashion, passed over for Academy Awards, but Farnsworth was nominated for Best Actor. Only one off-note scene, which feels like it's imported from another Lynch project, keeps this from being a 5 star film.

Capturing The Friedmans - 2003 - No Rating

2011-07-08T08:05:00.001-07:00

Subject: The Friedman family and their dissolution during troubled times

Director: Andrew Jarecki

Documentary Rating: Must-see

I think if there were a Gallup poll on the most monstrous crime a person can commit, pedophilia would likely rank #1. It's loathsome and completely unforgivable. And yet, there's a more troubling aspect that Capturing the Friedmans adeptly raises - since the victims of pedophilia are so young and impressionable, how can you glean the truth from people whose memories are unreliable and who don't respond well to interrogation?

Where Capturing the Friedmans really excels is in its use of home video taken at the time of the Friedman controversy. For whatever reason, the eldest son was recording their daily life. This saves us the use of endless panning shots across family photos and repetition of video from the news media at the time. It also ensures that the people involved, being interviewed 15 years later, are unable to use their unreliable memories to gloss or distort what was actually going on.

Audition - 1999 - 3½ Stars

2011-07-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

Actors: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina

Director: Takashi Miike

I'm not going to try to trick people into watching Audition, a movie which seems entirely non-threatening until it becomes the exact opposite. So while I won't be spoiling the plot, I will be spoiling some of the themes. You have been warned, both about this review and the film itself.

I'm not sure whether to take Asami's actions as mere psychosis, or as extreme reactions to the nature of women in art. Whenever women perform art, there is often a sexualized aspect to that performance - Asami finds three different avenues to express herself, and in all three, she's regarded as a sexual object rather than an artist making a statement.

Whatever the case, Audition is strange and disturbing - I was reminded at many points of David Lynch. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

Before Sunrise - 1995 - 4 Stars

2011-06-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

Actors: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Director: Richard Linklater

Before Sunrise is a film that's easy to hate. It's certainly sentimental, and it's painfully sincere. In fact, the sincerity of the two main characters is their defining characteristic. Before Sunrise asks a question, 'What if two attractive people, a man and a woman, met one another and began speaking honestly? What would happen if they spent a night together?'

Before Sunrise works because while its characters are romantic, it itself is not especially so - I don't think its characters' long conversations are words from the director's mouth, or that we're supposed to believe that either person has a 'foolish' perspective that we as viewers are inherently superior to. Rather, it's a film about the promise and wonder of youth (and youthful love) coupled with the fear of losing that youth.

Starship Troopers - 1997 - 3½ Stars

2011-06-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

Actors: Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Starship Troopers is basically two movies - one is standard sci-fi fare about destroying colonies of gigantic space bugs. the other involves the sly observation that much of our education and athletic training can easily be used in the service of killing things.

One of the best parts about Starship Troopers is that its exposition is hidden inside a fascistic 'newscast' which always manages to sound chipper and stoic even when it's reporting bad news. The entire world of Starship Troopers is never quite explained - for instance, we never know why there's now a worldwide government or why humanity is at war with giant space bugs. It's a welcome change from films that try to overload with exposition, so as to assure the viewer that the 'good guys' are definitely in the right (or perhaps the wrong, e.g. District 9).

Lawrence Of Arabia - 1962 - 4 Stars

2011-06-15T07:31:00.001-07:00

Actors: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness

Director: David Lean

Note: Some Spoilers Ahead?

Lawrence of Arabia is a remarkable feat in filmmaking. Just about every other scene, I asked, 'How the hell did they do this?' Hundreds of extras, hundreds of camels, out in the middle of nowhere in a desert. Lean doesn't keep the shots tight to fool us into thinking things are on a grander scale than they are - sometimes the camera is put so far away from the action that I have no idea how it was conceived to be put there in the first place.

The desert is a major character in the film, and Lean does a marvelous job of conveying just how hot it must be, day after day after day. I was reminded of The Searchers, and Wikipedia notes that The Searchers was a major influence on this movie.

The music is also brilliant - the theme is unforgettable, though that may be because of its use in Spaceballs. (I finally get that 'Nice dissolve' joke, it only took 20+ years).

Where the film falls apart for me is the characterization of Lawrence himself - we go through the film, he's in nearly every scene, and yet I feel I barely know anything more about him than when the film started. He's presented as a scholar, but his scholarly facade falls away halfway through the movie. Maybe it's me - maybe the notion of 'fighting for freedom' is so often revealed to be an empty concept that I can't take seriously people who purport to do so, especially under the aegis of the British during their colonial period.

The Double Life of Veronique - 1991 - 3 Stars

2011-06-11T08:48:00.001-07:00

Actors: Irene Jacob, Phillipe Volter

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

The Double Life of Veronique falls into that category of film that has to be watched a second time, but is not interesting enough to merit a second watch. Irene Jacob's Veronica takes a trip to Poland where her exact double (Weronica) glimpses her riding a bus. Then some unusual stuff happens, and then the film ends.

There's clearly a lot in here about the nature of identity, how environment shapes who we are, and the role of art in guiding us into our adult selves. Still, this film seems like a flight of fancy for the Cannes crowd - I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to care about in it.

Best Worst Movie - 2008 - No rating

2011-06-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

Director: Michael Paul Stephenson

Subject: Troll 2, the 'worst movie of all time'

Movies are an unusual art form - unlike most other forms of art, they require a large group to make. Best Worst Movie is about what happens when some of that large group realize they've been in a historically terrible movie, and their reaction to it.

I'm not sure this was the director's intended subject, but Best Worst Movie seems to be about man's need to create something and receive affirmation for it. Most of the people in the film do not seem to be ashamed to be associated with Troll 2 - in fact, our film's protagonist seems to love it. If groups of strangers are willing to applaud the actors for their role in this debacle, they will be there to receive it.

Zelig - 1983 - 2½ Stars

2011-06-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

Actors: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow

Director: Woody Allen

Zelig is one of those ultra-clever concepts for a film that just falls flat for me on execution. A mockumentary about a famous man of the 1920s and 30s, Zelig reworks old photographs to add Allen's absurd visage. It also uses new camera footage, made to look like it's from that era, to construct this fictional portrait.

In a world where Forrest Gump made this sort of digital re-imagining commonplace, Zelig's technical feats don't really compare. Apart from that, the movie is highly inventive, lampooning the nature of mass media at the time, old films, newsreels, etc. But many of the jokes fall flat, and the story held no interest to me. Woody Allen films are great - if you don't like one, there's only forty more to choose from.

Bridesmaids - 2011 - 3 Stars

2011-05-31T07:59:00.000-07:00

Actors: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph

Director: Paul Feig

Bridesmaids effectively weds large comic setpieces with small 'human' moments. That's its main strength, and indeed, that's been the strength of the Apatow juggernaut. Its problem is that the large comic setpieces don't exactly work, and that the film has to squeeze itself into comedy film conventions. This results in a film that is at turns mildly amusing and mildly touching, which I suppose is more than can be said for film comedy these days (Apatow projects aside).

Rebecca - 1940 - 4½ Stars

2011-05-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

Actors: Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Some directors create characters for us who are singular film entities. They have very firm identities, they're certain in who they are, they have well-defined idiosyncrasies - if they're well-created, we may strive to be like them. The protagonists of Alfred Hitchcock movies are usually the opposite - they're defined by a few loose items. They could be anyone. That's the Hitchcock trick - once the viewer realizes that the person on screen could just as well be them, Hitchcock has done his job; he's in your head, and he's not leaving for a good long while.

Hitchcock's triumph in this film is making the most vital, interesting character in the story never appear on screen - she's already dead when the film begins. Yet she looms over both our main characters, especially Joan Fontaine as the recently betrothed. Fontaine is perfect as the anxious, eager-to-please newlywed - she is trying to live up to a person she never knew.

Naturally this is the only movie Hitchcock won an Oscar for, as it's about wealthy English people. Did Oscar bait exist in 1940?

Point Break - 1991 - 3 Stars

2011-05-19T08:56:00.001-07:00

Actors: Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze

Director: Kathryn Bigelow

Point Break is a movie that requires the presence of multiple viewers. Its alternating tone of total absurdity with complete self-seriousness is ripe for parody - there has to be someone else in the room to glance at, so you can wonder "What the hell was that?"

As a totally disposable popcorn movie, Point Break runs entirely too long, shoehorning in endless sequences of guys who may or may not be Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze surfing. It feels like the kind of movie that film executives say, "Hey, surfing and skydiving are popular things, let's put them together in a movie!". By the time Keanu utters his amazingly portentous 'Vaya con dios', I had already checked out. This film is alternately a must-see and an inevitable disappointment.

Jackie Brown - 1996 - 3½ Stars

2011-05-12T08:17:00.000-07:00

Actors: Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Jackie Brown is an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, which immediately lends the film an air of cool. Throw in a visit to TarantinoWorld, and the cool goes up even more. Even better is the addition of Robert Forster as a decidedly uncool bail bondsman - this movie's so cool that one of its main characters can be completely lame.

Like any Tarantino film, Jackie Brown is filled with virtuoso moments and talky digressions. It's a very entertaining trifle that goes on for a touch too long, but hey, he was coming off Pulp Fiction, he could do what he wanted.

The Prestige - 2006 - 3½ Stars

2011-05-10T07:23:00.000-07:00

Actors: Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman

Director: Christopher Nolan

Note: Major Spoilers Ahead

David Cross once said of magic - "The best result of [watching magic] is saying, 'Oh... hm, yeah, that was my card.'" Christopher Nolan has built a film out of such trickery, and while it's an exhilarating ride, the end only produced in me that same reaction. It's an interesting puzzle, but there's no real connection with the characters, merely twist after twist that keeps the audience guessing.

Nolan, for all his big-budget wizardry, seems to be an Important Filmmaker to some degree. Still, both this and Inception function too greatly as meta-films and have little or no emotional content. Emotions are limited to nostalgia for a moment - the hug of a child, the look of a tree, and so forth. However, these moments merely seem to be aping actual emotion, as Nolan realizes his films need something more than just a puzzle to have meaning.

Mr. Death: Fred A. Leuchter Jr. - 1999 - 4½ Stars

2011-05-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

Director: Errol Morris

Subject: Fred Leuchter, constructor of execution equipment

I don't know how Errol Morris finds these fascinating subjects, and I know even less about how he gets them to appear in his documentaries. The story of Fred Leuchter is a great study in epistemology - how what we know can very often mislead us if there's one key fact we're omitting. We can be even more misled if we are purporting to use rigor - our rigor may lead us right off a logical cliff.

I won't spoil what this documentary eventually turns into, but it's completely unbelievable. I wish I hadn't spoiled it for myself by looking at the Netflix movie jacket. A must-see for fans of Morris.

Barry Lyndon - 1975 - 4 Stars

2011-05-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

Actors: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berensen

Director: Stanley Kubrick

There's a popular Internet podcast entitled How Did This Get Made? that discusses legendarily awful films. While Barry Lyndon is not an awful film by any stretch, the same question applies quite well to it. How did Stanley Kubrick convince anyone to let him make this movie the way he made it? It's 3 hours long, it's a period drama, Ryan O'Neal is not really a leading man, and it's also directed by Stanley Kubrick. The costumes and settings are all first-rate. Kubrick no doubt did a million takes of everything, as he tends to do. I'd like to thank whatever studio took a gigantic bath on this film for wasting their money.

Barry Lyndon is an amazing technical achievement - the synthesis of image, dialogue, and music is incredible, perhaps unmatched in any movie I've seen. The film is filled with picturesque shots - Kubrick will often pull back to reveal an even more picturesque backdrop. However, this is my second time through the film, and while I certainly enjoyed it, I was far less moved. Story is this film's greatest downfall - I don't really know what to take away from Barry Lyndon.

I Am Comic - 2010 - 3½ Stars

2011-04-21T08:26:00.000-07:00

Director: Jordan Brady

Subject: Stand-up comedy

Near the beginning of I Am Comic, Dave Attell wonders why comedy documentaries have to be so fucking serious. Jordan Brady seems to have taken his cue from that comment - there's not much discussion of the sad clownery and non-quiet desperation that goes into being a successful stand-up comedian. There's instead loose stories about bad clubs, bad hecklers, joke theft, drug use, and so forth.

I Am Comic spends its first half generally interviewing comedians about their experiences, then switches during the second half as a guy who was run out of the business at the end of the comedy boom tries to regain his stage presence. I think watching him struggle is supposed to demonstrate just how difficult it is to go on stage and tell jokes to crowds of strangers. Still, there didn't seem to be very much at stake here, and the documentary seems to leave off with no conclusion to this tale. Regardless, it ties together something that would just be 80 minutes of talking heads. I recommend it, but only if one is interested in stand-up comedy.

Sanjuro - 1961 - 4½ Stars

2011-04-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

Actors: Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Is there a greater filmmaker than Akira Kurosawa? I ask this in all earnestness. I think Kurosawa's detractors, like Spielberg's, declare him to be oversentimental and obvious. These are legitimate criticisms - ones which I think it's difficult to answer if one doesn't speak Japanese. Kurosawa could be accused of focusing on a certain historical period in Japan, except that Ikiru is set in modern times (and I think some of his other films are as well).

Sanjuro is the sequel to Yojimbo, and it features Mifune in the titular role as an itinerant disgraced samurai. Sanjuro is alternately bored and cunning, as well as an exceptional fighter. He is like a modern man dropped into feudal Japan - in a land bound by honor and God, he has neither. The film almost comes off like noir - Sanjuro is comparable to, say, Nicholson's J.J. Gittes. He's a natural wiseass who gets by on his own wits.

Kurosawa meticulously stages each scene. Notice where Sanjuro is placed in each scene, and how his nine followers arrange themselves relative to him. See the way the nine followers move together in a way that Sanjuro doesn't. Kurosawa understands that filmmaking is primarily a visual medium - it's about time some of our modern filmmakers figured this out.

Midnight Run - 1988 - 3½ Stars

2011-04-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Actors: Robert Deniro, Charles Grodin

Director: Martin Brest

It's the 80's! Where Charles Grodin can get second billing, and Yaphet Kotto can get third billing, where a breezy, annoying Danny Elfman soundtrack conveys whimsy even during the darkest moments, where plots about estranged wives and children get thrown into a mismatched buddy road movie, and where smoking was still allowed in restaurants, airports, and on planes.

Midnight Run is overstuffed, to be sure. I don't know this, I am only speculating, but Midnight Run feels like one of those first-time scripts that someone finds at the bottom of a pile and says 'This would make a great picture!' And somehow it gets made with DeNiro attached to it and a huge budget.

All in all, it's an entertaining film, with fun set pieces, good character actors, and DeNiro puts an A effort into B material. Still, there's no excuse for this film to be 125 minutes long.

Theremin: An Electric Odyssey - 1993 - 3 Stars

2011-04-07T08:38:00.000-07:00

Subject: Leon Theremin, his life, and the musical instrument he invented

Director: Steven M. Martin

I'm probably being too harsh on this intriguing documentary - I shouldn't read people's biographies on Wikipedia before I watch a documentary about them. Leon Theremin is the inventor of the instrument that carries his namesake, and he's had a fascinating life. I would've liked to have seen a little more about how his instrument affected electronic music in general.

Note: Minor Spoilers Below

One of the biggest cringe-inducing moments in a documentary or television show for me is a reunion after a very long time apart. There's one here - now perhaps the people being studied in the documentary felt it important that this be recorded. Still, these people haven't seen each other in half a lifetime, why have cameras there? What would compel someone to do this? I've never understood it, plus the subjects usually come off as awkward or rehearsed, making it even worse.

Source Code - 2011 - 3½ Stars

2011-04-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

Actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan

Director: Duncan Jones

Clunky exposition has done in many a sci-fi film. Source Code drops us right into the middle of the action and uses moments of diminished tension to explain what the hell is going on. It trusts itself, which is really the hallmark of a good film - it doesn't necessarily have to be 100% believable (and Source Code most certainly is not), but it has to trust that the world it has created exists. Show, don't tell, etc.

Duncan Jones also directed Moon, and many of the same themes are at play here - the dehumanization that comes with technological advancement, servitude to distant masters, and an exploration of the forces that sustain us through difficult times. Jones needs commending for being able to jam these themes into a Hollywood-friendly film - I hope the movie does good business. There's room in Hollywood for science-fiction films that aren't enormous blockbusters.

In The Mood For Love - 2001 - 3½ Stars

2011-03-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-22T09:13:00.001-07:00

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

2011-03-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-16T09:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-11T07:57:00.001-08:00

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

2011-03-08T07:43:00.001-08:00

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

2011-03-05T13:11:00.001-08:00

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

2011-03-04T09:51:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-02T07:37:00.001-08:00

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.

The Pope of Greenwich Village - 1984 - 3½ Stars

2011-02-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

Actors: Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

There's a certain type of film where the writing is not meant to stand out, the plot's nothing particularly special, and the director is not pulling a lot of fancy tricks. I've reviewed a lot of them here - The Last Detail and The King of Marvin Gardens are two that I can think of. The Pope of Greenwich Village is unquestionably in this vein. A largely shapeless film, it concerns Rourke and Roberts as guys trying to hustle just a little more money out of their workaday lives.

Films like this are acting setpieces, and neither Roberts nor Rourke disappoint - Roberts as the jumpy, impetuous, well-meaning idiot, and Rourke as his wiser, put-upon cousin. There are a few standout scenes and a few that drag, and ultimately the film seems too long at 2 hours. I almost always say this about this sort of film, but I always say there should be more of this type of film.

Here's a fun game to play. Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke starred in this film in 1984, and here is what they looked like:

http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/pope-of-greenwich-village.jpg

They also starred in The Expendables - here is what they looked like there:

Eric Roberts: http://tinyurl.com/4s5stmg

Mickey Rourke: http://tinyurl.com/493wug6

O Time, must you ravage us so?

Once Upon A Time In The West - 1968 - 4 Stars

2011-02-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

Actors: Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson

Director: Sergio Leone

Sergio Leone is the master of the close-up facial shot. His films are filled with shots of sketchy dudes suspiciously eyeing one another, sizing up how threatening they are. In the lawless West, any stranger can be the last person you ever see, especially if you forget all the people you've pissed off.

Leone's film purports to have an epic sweep, but it's really only concerned with vengeance and the death of the Old West. There's a group of men that live by the scores they have to settle, progress be damned, money men be damned.

Bronson's performance as a Man With No Name is stellar, and the rest of the performances are solid as well. The film is nearly three hours, which begins to feel padded by the end - it's as if he is trying to make a film with huge scope without a grand story or budget behind it. Regardless, I'd say it's (probably) worth the time.

The Mirror - 1975 - 3½ Stars

2011-02-13T15:04:00.000-08:00

Actors: Margarita Terekhova, Oleg Vankovskiy
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky

Film with disconnected plots tend to make us think more, but is this necessarily a good thing? I couldn't make very much sense out of The Mirror, which treats us to dreams and flashbacks and poems but doesn't really go beyond that. Still, it was thought-provoking, and has surely inspired many a film student to a prize-winning deconstruction.

The Mirror reminds me of La Dolce Vita, although in Soviet Russia it's difficult to have a Dolce Vita. Like my reaction to Fellini's supposed masterwork, I was confused by its intense personality - it seemed so personal to the director that I could not access it myself. The Mirror is similar, though there are scenes of stunning beauty and sadness.

This film seems to make no apologies for the fact that it's disconnected and extremely personal - in fact, it seems to argue that all of us are mirrors, even the great artists; even the most imaginative and deep-thinking artist can only reflect back what's presented to them.

Spellbound - 1945 - 4 Stars

2011-02-07T06:58:00.000-08:00

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

When I watch a film like Spellbound, it's easy to see why Hitchcock was thought of as an excellent populist director until the French New Wave came along. The plot of Spellbound is so terrifically stupid and so unbelievably hokey that it's almost embarrassing. Even Sigmund Freud would be ashamed to have his psychiatric work on display here. And yet, it still works.

Hitchcock's films are all a direct stab at the psyche of the viewer - he's looking to get in my head. Once he's in there, it doesn't really matter what the plot is, I'm so caught up in the tension. His protagonists are often posed with a very simple moral dilemma; the protagonist makes one choice, and their fate is spun out of that choice. In Spellbound, that choice is a simple lie, which compounds into further untruths.

Wordplay - 2006 - 3½ Stars

2011-02-04T07:31:00.000-08:00

Subject: The New York Times Crossword Puzzle

Director: Patrick Creadon

I'm a sucker for documentaries about obsessive nerdy subcultures - I saw Spellbound, and both the Scrabble documentaries. I'm continually amazed at the participants' willingness to share with the camera, though I suppose if someone spends that much time on some pursuit, they are likely eager to talk to anyone about it.

Wordplay's strength is the celebrity gets - several public figures from all walks of life discuss the passion the NYT Crossword Puzzle inspires. Its weakness is the exploration of crossword competitions, which feature your garden-variety obsessives.

The Expendables - 2010 - 2½ Stars

2011-02-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham

Director: Sylvester Stallone

The Expendables is big, dumb Hollywood fun for people who still can't help watching Commando any time they see it on cable. Dolph Lundgren and Sylvester Stallone have a face-cragginess contest (Stallone wins). The plot is hilariously thin, cribbed from other, similar films. No worries - we are familiar enough with the tropes.

I've noticed this tendency in other action films, but could we please stop the trend of using an extremely blue filter during night scenes? Yes, it does give the film a ridiculously sleek look. It also makes everything in the film look CGI, whether or not it actually was. Although perhaps they did CGI the whole movie - if they'd used real scenery, we'd probably be able to see teeth marks from where Stallone, Eric Roberts, and Steve Austin chewed it.

The Small Back Room - 1949 - 3 Stars

2011-01-31T06:56:00.000-08:00

Actors: David Farrar, Kathleen Byron

Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

The Small Back Room is a strange film - I don't know whether it is a great bad movie or a bad great movie. A British film set during World War II, it concerns a disabled scientist involved in weapons development. I shall break down what is good or bad:

The Bad: The plot seems to go nowhere. The film wants us to care deeply about this main character, but we're not given very much to care about. Other characters just seem to drop in and out. The film has satirical targets, but it doesn't exactly hit those either. I may just not know enough about wartime Britain to understand what goes on here. I also think I am panning the film for not being Hollywoodized - it doesn't hit all the notes we would expect a film about a scientist to hit.

The Good: The film's camera work is extremely interesting. Scenes are staged in a way that shows someone put a lot of thought into how a film should look and sound. Stylistically, one wishes that films still employed this sort of look and feel.

I imagine this film caused an uproar in its day, but we live in a post-Strangelove world; political and military satire will never be shocking again.

Deconstructing Harry - 1996 - 4 Stars

2011-01-26T12:42:00.001-08:00

Actors: Woody Allen, Kirstie Alley

Director: Woody Allen

I'm developing Stockholm Syndrome with Woody Allen films, I think. I was ready to declare a moratorium on Allen films for at least six months, now I can't wait for the next one to arrive.

Because Woody Allen films tend to cover the same themes in a very similar way, I don't need to pay attention to the plot of the film. I don't even need to pay attention to the dialogue, necessarily. I can instead focus on Allen's underrated quality as a director. Deconstructing Harry is not his best film, but it's one of his most inventive. It gets at what Allen's been kicking around his entire career - the relationship between a writer of 'fiction' and his art, and the way that one's life is altered when one becomes a fiction writer.

Note: Spoilers Ahead

Allen's character in Deconstructing Harry is totally unable to understand the world without the help of the fictions he is constantly creating. This is interesting in light of Allen's continued contention that his films are not autobiographical. It's especially interesting when we consider just how close Allen's films always skirt towards reality - e.g. casting his former love interests as failed lovers in his movies.

One thing that was quite effective was his use of jump-cutting during the film - it denotes the film as yet another 'telling'. We only see the parts the creator remembers, or wishes to remember. It's therefore just as false as the fictions of the Allen character. We never really know if it's Woody Allen, the writer/director, telling the story, or Harry, his surrogate.

Lastly, this is definitely the most depraved character I've seen Allen play. Allen's protagonists rarely say 'fuck' - this one says it all the time. Allen's protagonists are philandering, but they don't sleep with prostitutes. His protagonists are often charmingly narcissistic, this one is mind-bogglingly self-obsessed.

Detour - 1945 - 3½ Stars

2011-01-26T06:57:00.001-08:00

Actors: Tom Neal, Ann Savage

Director: Edgar Ulmer

Film noir is always about poor choices - the wrong place, the wrong time, or the wrong woman. Sometimes all three. Detour is a tale about what can go wrong while hitchhiking - it's hard to tell whether it's a cautionary tale, or a Job-like rumination on fate. Whatever the case, Detour is an effective thriller, with fine touches. It's a shame they don't make psychological films like this very often anymore.

The unfortunate thing about the movie is that it has been poorly preserved - the dialogue will sometimes jump or fall out entirely. I suppose it's lucky that we have it at all.

Exit Through The Gift Shop - 2010 - 4 Stars

2011-01-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

Director: Banksy

Subject: Street art

Documentary filmmaking is a tricky art. Do we want to tell a story more through images or more through interviews? What if something peripheral to the subject is more interesting than our intended subject? The Thin Blue Line and Grey Gardens are two classic documentaries that sprouted from a filmmaker's confidence to pursue a story tangential to their original subject. Exit Through The Gift Shop takes this notion even further, playing with the idea that the man behind the camera might be more interesting than those in front of it.

Given that both films are about art and authenticity, I was immediately reminded of F For Fake. Exit Through The Gift Shop goes down a similar rabbit hole, and its conclusion is similarly quixotic. Banksy warns us at the beginning that the film will surprise us, but even so, the execution of this trick is seamless.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans - 2009 - 3½ Stars

2011-01-23T07:31:00.000-08:00

Actors: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes

Director: Werner Herzog

I was pretty sure when I heard about this movie that it would be the greatest thing ever. Nicolas Cage gets a lot of flack from wags who criticize his choice of roles or the fact that he is seemingly unable to make a film in which he doesn't freak out. So what about making a movie where you know going in that he's going to freak out?

It's hard to know whether I would have forgiven the total absurdity of this film if Herzog were not the man behind the camera. Bad Lieutenant: PoCNO plays at times like the trashiest of genre pictures, and its being shot on a digital camera occasionally makes it look like a direct-to-DVD film. But if I know all that going in, how can I be disappointed?

Being There - 1980 - 2½ Stars

2011-01-20T08:24:00.001-08:00

Actors: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine

Director: Hal Ashby

Hal Ashby's Being There apparently won an Oscar for something, but to me it sounds like two lowlife Hollywood producers changed the premise of this film by a tiny bit to make Weekend at Bernie's. Peter Sellers's Chance is a Kaspar Hauser-like figure who spends his days watching television and gardening. He's incapable of real human emotion and doesn't really listen to people. Set free from his master's house after his master's death, he falls in with an extremely wealthy family who confuse his misunderstandings with true wisdom. Soon, so do all sorts of powerful Washington D.C. types. Hijinks ensue.

While Sellers's performance as the blank and obsequious Chance is remarkable, the film repeats a very similar pattern - Chance is confronted with some awkward situation, he somehow pretends like he is paying attention, and the world continues around him. It's also 130 minutes long, interminable for what's essentially a single joke. The satire may or may not be strong, but it's rather passe now. Give me Peter Finch being mad as hell over this reserved idiocy.

Winter's Bone - 2010 - 4½ Stars

2011-01-19T07:23:00.000-08:00

Actors: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes

Director: Debra Granik

Film and poverty rarely mix well. Something about the camera alters the suffering - even in a documentary, it can feel staged (Powaqqatsi). Directors tend to think poverty must be ennobling or somehow glamorous; since it is truly awful, there must be some sort of hidden benefit. Maybe a poor family can be actually be a rural quirkfest (What's Eating Gilbert Grape?). The film doesn't condescend to its characters' values, nor does it seem to modify them to fit our prejudices.

Winter's Bone manages to slip past all the pitfalls. The protagonist, Ree, does not have a heart of gold, she's not made better by her suffering, and she's not that much more knowledgeable than the people around her. The film succeeds by putting real characters around her - John Hawkes turns in a masterful performance as Ree's uncle. The world of Winter's Bone may or may not be real, but it sure as hell feels real, and that's all a film needs to do.