Crumb - 1994 - No Rating

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.